How it. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It Is well With My Soul is hymn number 88, and that is what we are going to sing. And we've got. We got Randy in the choir, and we got Luke in the choir, and we got Brenda in the choir. Susanna, Charles. Y'all gonna join us in the choir? Yeah. And you, too. Oh, it's number 447. Yeah. Who else is gonna join us in the choir? Come on up, boys. 447. It is well with My Soul. Let's sing that together. Luca, why don't you play it today? Let's stand together Like a river attendeth my way when sorrows like sea billows roll Whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say it is well, it is well with my soul it is well with my soul with my soul it is well it is well with my soul let's do all four of them. Though Satan should buffet Though trial should come Let his bless Assurance control that Christ has regarded my help let us take and has shed his own blood for my soul, it is well with my soul with my soul it is well it is well with my soul. My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought My sin not in part but the whole is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more even third Praise the Lord. O my soul, it is well, it is well with my soul with my soul it is well it is well with my soul and Lord, haste the day when the face shall be Sight the clouds, they roll back as the scroll the trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend even so it is well with my soul it is well it is well with my soul with my soul it is well, it is well with my soul Amen. Let's pray together. Dear Heavenly Father, we're thankful that whatever it is that comes, we do know the One who holds it all together and the One who will bring it all together. And so, therefore, even though it may be painful or uncomfortable or other times maybe something that we take joy in and celebrate, whatever it is, it is well with my soul. Especially as our soul trusts in the. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated. Thank you, each one of you, for being here, and I'm glad you're here. You. You. You may wonder. I'm going to go ahead and tell you now. The. The songs are a little bit deadly. They're a little somber, although that one's. All of them have a real positive message to them, but, you know, a little on the. On the somber side. We're going to sing in a moment. Abide With Me. And now that one we probably haven't sung in a long time. It's a long. It's actually beautiful if you, if you listen to not only the tune but to the, to the words. Charles is on it. Do you know Abide With Me? Learn it during the. I'll play it during the handshake and you know, you can learn it then and then fake it along with the rest of us. But anyway, this. Abide With Me and then we'll do Rock of Ages. They're kind of old fashioned funeral songs. Great. Aren't you glad to be here today on this spring morning? But we're talking about tracking death's dominion today. So, you know, I looked up, I used our, our current minister of music to pick some songs, chat GPT. Thank you. Forgetting that I said what songs go with a sermon about death? And he gave me these three. So, so there you go. Lots of, lots of prayer put into that one. But we're glad you're here. I probably shouldn't. You shouldn't tell how the sausage is made, should you, Charles? Yeah, okay. Anyway, they're, they're, they're, they're good, lovely songs. They actually fit very well. A human couldn't have picked them better. But with, uh, with that then, uh, welcome. I'm glad you're here. Uh, you've got a bullet. And the bulletin's got some announcements on the back of it there. Like Wednesday night we're having chicken fajitas. And I know last week was tostadas, so we got Mexican two weeks in a row. That was because I sat down this morning and Brenda had been gone all week. And Brenda's the one that puts in what we're having for supper. And I thought, what are we having for supper? We got chicken in the freezer. We're having chicken fajitas. There we go. So it'll be good this Wednesday night. And then the Book of Mark, we're in the 16th chapter and there's only 16 chapters and we're coming close to. We might even hit it this Wednesday. The very interesting passage in Mark which talks about handling snakes and drinking poisons and all that kind of stuff. And a lot of Bibles even cut out and say, this shouldn't be there. I'm going to say it should be there and tell you how to handle it. And we'll be bringing the snakes in. But anyway, Wednesday night. Looking forward to that and the other activities that are on there. You can, you can check all that out. And we'll have a good week here. But the big one right at the top, this is potluck lunch Sunday. And so we do have lunch after church. And we look. We look forward to that. Plenty of food back there, enough for everybody. So even if you didn't plan on staying, just come on. I think we're all home folk today. Good to see everybody. Ben, glad you're back. And the rest of you, we missed you boys last week. Glad you're here. Oh, no, we have Sean. Is it Sean? Yeah. I put you in with the rest of the family there, but this is Sean's first time. Thanks, Sean, for being here from Sandia park and Charles and Susanna's grandson. Right. I got the oldest grandson. Yeah. Along with the others. Yeah. So we got the youngest to the oldest here today. How many grandkids do y'all have? Wow. 16 grandkids. You should bring them all some Sunday. That'll be fun. From the oldest. So, Sean, you're a young man. How old are you? 26. Down to 6. 6 to 26. Nice. He was old enough to change diapers. Yes. She's his younger sister. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. We had the privilege of meeting Grace earlier. Thanks, Sean, for being here. God bless you all. Well, let's see online. We probably have Mary Ellen Warren online. She's always online with us. And she was in the hospital this week. She's gone home and is recovering, doing well. So we're glad for that. And I think the rest of our church family's doing well as well. John and Ursula are out this morning. Their family's flying in at noon, so picking them. Ursula's family up. Her dad has a cancer diagnosis, and so we pray for him, but he was able to fly out here, and we'll have a time here together, so all of that will be good. Okay. Thanks for being here. Each one of you, why don't you stand and greet someone? Those of you online, say, say hi to whoever's in the room with you, and we'll. We'll rejoice here. Happy birthday. I like the haircut, though, don't you? What's that it? Okay, let's turn, if you would, to hymn number now. Hymn number 88. Go ahead and remain standing. And let's sing this. This old, beautiful song, Abide With Me Again. We don't sing it very often. We'll work our way through it and figure it out, but. But it is beautiful. Abide with me. And let's. Let's. Let's Sing this together. Hymn number 88 falls even tight the darkness deepens Lord with me abide when other helpers fail and comforts me Help of the helpless O abide with me Swift to its close ends our life's little day Earth joys dim its glories passed away Change and decay in with all the sea O thou the changes not abide with me on the last hold thou thy cross be o'er my closing eyes Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies Heaven's morning breaks and earth faint shadows free in life, in death O Lord, abide with me and now back to the hymnal and hymn number 463. This one we know a little better, although we haven't sung it in a long time either. Rock of ages cleft for me 463arc of ages clapped for me Let me hide myself in thee Let the water and the blood from thy wound decide which food we have seen a double cure Stray from wrath and make me pure Thou believers of my hands can fulfill thy faulty plans that their sin could not atone Thou wast name and thou alone Broken in the peace I bring simply to thy grand cross I cling when I draw this fleeting breath when mine eyes have close to death When I rise to worlds unknown and behold thee on thy throne Rock of ages blitz will be Let me hide myself in thee Amen. Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly father, when we do draw this fleeting breath, we pray that it would be that we would see our favor, our Savior face to face and together with the Lord we should be always and we would rejoice in this be not only with our congregation but with our missionaries around the world like the Clayton and his family that we pray for in Paraguay. And we encourage them and thank you for your watch care over us. Take the gifts that we'll give here in just a moment and use them all for your glory and the expansion of the spread of the gospel. We ask in Jesus name. Amen. Now you may be seated here and in just a moment we will take an offering. And I tell you what, I'm going to do this a little bit different today. And that is. That's because, you know, Kamale just moved off to Carlsbad and so she. She's always done our kids church or has for the last several months anyway, I should say. And now she's gone and so I got the kids right here. So I figure if I got the kids right here, I just as well put them to work. Don't you guys think so? One's going to preach, one's going to. You got the biggest eyes. I think you should do it. Yeah. Here's what. We're going to have the kids take the offering today. Instead of the box back there, you could put it in the box as well. But we're going to have the kids take the offering. And I got three boys right there and I got Isaiah. You three boys come up. We got to have a training class first. You stand right here. Okay? We're going to do it the old fashioned way. Come on up. Arsenio and Isaiah, come on up. You'll be the head usher. You guys stand right there just like you're supposed to. Now, in the olden days, at the end of the last song, you would come and stand right here with the offering plates. Just like that. You got it? Okay. And then the preacher would say a prayer or call on one of you to pray. We'll save that for next week. And then you would go out and hit each aisle. There's four aisles. 1, 2, 3, 4. And there's four of you. 1, 2, 3, four. You got to do it to make it look dignified. Okay. You can't be sloppy. Dignified. And then your job is to pass it down the rows. And if they don't put anything in it, your job is to pass it again. Not really. Don't go yet. Now, actually, some people give online and some people give once a month and some people give once a year. So not everyone may put something in. You can give them a dirty look, but they, they might have given earlier. So don't give them too dirty a look. Okay? And then you collect it all in the back and Isaiah will put it in a box back there. Okay? You got that? You all know what to do. Isaiah knows where it is. And, and, and hey, just to help them out, you guys, you know, even if you give online or gave monthly or, you know, find a buck in your pocket or something, you know, fill these things up. We want these boys to do a good job, right? Okay. So. Oh, we have an offertory. That's the music that plays while you pass it, okay. So that if you drop the plate, it doesn't make too much racket. Okay? So don't leave. Normally we would say the prayer right now and then we would say, in Jesus name, amen, and start the offertory. And now you can go. You go over there. Make sure it goes to all three aisles. There you go. They did good, didn't they? Give them A hand. Yeah. And I saw the money in there. I mean, boy, you guys did really good. Yeah, usually, I mean, you know, we're lucky to find a 25 cent piece in there. Kidding you. But thank you all for doing that. Yeah. You just remember next week I'll give you a little clue when the offertory is and at the end you walk up. Very dignified. I gotta be very dignified. You're the usher. And you know, actually in the old days, they used to bring it back right here and then the preacher would pray over it. Right. And then put it in a hidden chamber where the Lord would immediately take it to heaven. This is the way it worked. Something like that. Thank you, guys. You did well, didn't they? Okay, now we're going to do something interesting here today. We are going to track death's dominion. We are, we are in this series. The series is called Death Undone. It is a pre Easter series as we work up to about, I think five weeks from today will be our Easter Sunday. And as we look at that, we obviously know that the, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ gives us an opportunity to have life. But how does it go? So last week we looked at why Jesus was crucified because he claimed to be God. This week we're going to look at the problem that you and I have. And ultimately our problem is death. Right? We got a lot of intermediary problems, but ultimately our problem is death. That we would like for life to go on farther than it is. I don't know. Are any of you just ready to die today? I didn't think so. Yeah, you might say, well, I'm ready spiritually. I know, you know, I heard some very spiritual and oh, yes, I'm ready anytime. But I mean like, ready ready. Like you've already cleaned out underneath the cabinet so that when the people come over, they won't say, boy, she was kind of messy, Was she? They already know that. Okay, so, you know, we'd like. Yeah, let's, let's at least wait till after lunch, right? We got a good lunch ahead of us. So there are things, places to go, people to see, we'd like to see out there. But we, we know that there is this enemy, even the Bible calls it an enemy, which is death. And I want us to consider that today and see how it came into the world. See how it has changed a little bit over time. See what they knew about death, what they experienced in death, where we are, what our relation to death is now that we're this side of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so, if you will, it's a little bit of a dispensational. Dispensational tour of death. How's that? That we look at today and let's start out all the way in the Garden of Eden and look at death PR to what we call the fall here. I've got a picture of the Garden of Eden there for you. This is from Winchel. Peter and the. In the early 1800s, he actually artist. Peter was a zoological artist. In this painting, there's something like. You only have about a third of the painting. There's something like 200 and some odd animals in it. He was known for painting animals and for getting them in an accurate way. And here he painted the Garden of Eden. And of course you see a lot of the animals in addition to Adam and Eve. If you can see closely right here is the snake as it is traditionally seen, given right there. And somewhere in there, ah, it's right here. I don't know if you can see right there is a peacock. Probably can't tell it from where you are, but there is a peacock that is significant in some symbolism. You may not know that the peacock, for whatever reason, I don't even know why, but the peacock was used as a symbol of the resurrection, that there is life there. So whether he put that in there on purpose or not, there is the, the. The peacock that goes. But in the beginning, let's start out, if you will, in Genesis chapter three. And in Genesis chapter three, verse three, we see what, what the warning was that brought about death to begin with. Genesis 3, 3, God is speaking, or the woman is quoting God actually, and says, but the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it. Neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. Now she added the neither shall you touch. God said, don't eat of it or you will die. She was a Baptist, of course, and so she added, don't even touch it, you know, in an abundance of caution, don't even touch it. And she's speaking to the sermon, to the serpent there. But we've got this understanding and this idea that there was a warning about death. Now when Adam and all these animals were living, they were living in a world without death. As a matter of fact, would you go to Romans chapter 5, verse 12. And then we're going to spend a good bit of our time in Romans. So you can just put a little tag right in there. In Romans 5:12 quite a bit farther back in your Bible, in the New Testament, and it says, Romans 5:12. Wherefore, as by one man, sin entered into the world. Now, would you like to guess who that one man is who introduced sin into the world? Adam. There he is. He's living here pre sin. Oh, she's got the fruit in her hand, by the way, so it's getting close. But she's living. They are living pre sin. And Adam took. He and his wife together and ate. And so the scripture says again, Romans 5:12. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered the world. And then it says, and death by sin. Okay, when sin came, just like the warning was, death came in. It is very hard for us to imagine a world without death. And yet that's what the Garden of Eden was. It was a world without death. Not only was there not death of mankind, I'm convinced there was not death of the plant and animal world. Now, just in case you want to be persnickety, because there's always one, and you're supposed to be, I don't think it means a tree. A leaf doesn't fall off the tree, and the leaf decomposes. That we never say, you know, in the fall, when the leaves are falling, we never say, oh, look at all these trees dying. No, that's, that's the. That's the life cycle that goes through. You know, sometimes you live a long time and your hair falls out, right? But you're very much alive. Arsenio. I am alive. I told him this morning I was going to fix my hair like his. He said, you're bald. I may be bald, but I am alive. So anyway, we, we, we. We had this world without death. Now I want to stop and, and chase one little rabbit here. I realize it's right at the beginning of the sermon, but I want to stop and chase one little rabbit on this and say that our. Let's call it a biblical worldview is that prior to Adam's sin, there was no death. Now, that helps us when it comes to judging a scientific worldview and say, am I going to accept that scientific worldview? Is the scientific. Is that, is that scientific view compatible with what I have in the scripture? What am I going to go with? A scientific worldview? Of course, virtually regardless of what scientific worldview you have, and there are a number of them, but virtually all of them say that we came about through millions and billions of years of death and dying. So if you have Adam, a fully formed, fully functional human being, and death has never occurred. It says, hey, these views are not compatible. These views are mutually exclusive to one another. If you're a biblical literalist like I am and say, you know, by one man sin came into the world and death by sin. So there was a time when there was no death. That means Adam must have been created as the Bible tells us, in his full functioning ability as well as the rest of the world. Not built upon death and dying as say a Darwinian perspective holds. By the way, I just out of curiosity, and the older I get, the more curious I become. But out of curiosity I thought about some of the other world views and did a. Just a little bit of study and I'm going to do, I'm going to do enough of this to that I'll put up front. Any real scientist would say to me, you didn't exactly get it right. So I'm going to say, yeah, I'm not exactly going to get this right, but I think a real scientist would also say, yeah, you got it right. You didn't exactly get the details right, but yeah, you got it right. How many of you heard of Kelvin? Kelvin in science? He developed the, I don't know, the Kelvin scale I guess you call it, we call it today. It has to do with how you measure temperature and especially how you measure a transfer of temperature and a temperature loss. In the 1800s, Kelvin came up with this idea that said, well, the world must have. He did not take a biblical idea. He said the world must have started in a big explosion of sort or a bunch of heat. And that heat created everything. And so he did what is logical and that is he measured how long it takes heat to dissipate on various this and that and the other. Now he did some calculations and came up with, I may be off in the, in the number, but I think it was 12 and a half million years. He said, as I understand heat dissipating and where the earth is today, it must have started out 12 and a half million years ago. And everyone said, you are brilliant, you are brilliant, you are brilliant. Until he became old and there was a guy named Rutherford. I don't remember Rutherford's first name, but later he was called Lord. How's that? Lord Rutherford. He was a scientist in England and he began to say, oh wait a minute, what if the earth is generating heat? Then all of this would go away. By the way, there's a little bit of a humorous story. I should hurry up because I do have a lunch to attend after this. But there's A little bit of humorous story that Rutherford was giving a big speech and he was going to bring out his new idea that had to do more with what we call today radiocarbon dating. And yet Kelvin was in the audience as an old man. And Kelvin was a man of great esteem in the science world. And Rutherford felt a little uncomfortable that he was going to sort of pull the rug out from the old man Kelvin, who was, you know, regarded in such high esteem. And fortunately Calvin fell asleep until it came to the time when he was ready to spill the beans and say, Calvin is wrong. And Rutherford then had a great stroke of political genius and he said, now our friend Dr. Kelvin understands that if there's a heat source generation, then things would be wrong. And so he introduced to us the idea and he presented his new idea. And Kelvin shot up and said, brilliant, brilliant. And. But this new, let's call it radiocarbon dating again, this is where I probably get off in the details. It said, no, it's not 12 million years. It's, it's like a hundred million years is, we were way, way off and all the science world said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what it is. It's okay. Now you go further. I don't know, let's just jump to today. There's this thing called Delta cdm. Does anyone know what that stands for? Cold. Cold. Dark matter. I think delta is the Greek letter cdm. See, like cold. I don't know what it is. Y'all look it up. I tried to look it up. I still don't know what it is. But here's what I found out. That's the, that's the prevailing model of the age of the Earth today. It is, I don't know, much older than Rutherford's model. And it, they, they created a math scenario which makes everything work. But the problem is it was made up math. So then they had to make up matter to make it work. Under the, the prevailing mindset, the matter that we see is 5% of the created universe, or I should say the matter that can be seen. Whether we see it or not, it's 5%. What is the other 95%? It's either dark matter or dark energy. You've probably heard those terms somewhere out there. Dark matter or dark energy. But there are even people coming around today who say, wow, your math works if you make up 95% of what's out there. Because no one has ever seen dark matter or dark energy or can even totally explain it. And so there are other coming out now in what's called modified Newtonian dynamics or something like that, mond, it's often abbreviated and they are saying dark matter and dark energy doesn't even exist. So trying to figure, here's my point, the word there was no death. You can, you can take that and say, haha, that's funny, that's silly, we would never be here. We need billions. You can reject it, you gotta, you gotta accept something then. And so you would have to say, I will accept what the scientists say, or I will accept what the Bible says. I don't know about you, but just looking at Kelvin and then Rutherford and then Delta CDM and now the MOND thing, the scientists keep changing their story. So I don't really want to base my whole worldview on a story that changes is about every two decades and will be completely different and the numbers are completely different and the math is completely different and the scenario is completely different. So I'm going to take a biblical worldview and I think there's a lot of reason and credibility to do that and say, hey, there was a time when there was a paradise and there was no death in the world. But then we came into a time in which there was death in the world. And this is from Adam to Moses. I just picked a representative figure here for our artwork. Here we have Isaac. Isaac, there he is right there. He's not having a good day, is he? Isaac and his father Abraham in the sacrifice done by Caravaggio. And you really can't see much here because I had to cut it off. But see that, the one hand right there on Isaac's arm that he's got the knife in, he is pulling the hand back. You may remember, he saves Isaac life in that particular story. But continuing in Romans chapter 5. Let's get back there. Romans chapter 5, verse 12 says, Wherefore as by one man sin entered the world and death by sin, so death passed upon all men. For the doll of sin. Then it goes on to say verse 13. For until the law. We'll get there in a moment. Until the law, sin was in the world. But sin is not imputed when there is no law. Verse 14. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses. This is the period I want to talk about for a moment. Death reigned from Adam to Moses. There was no law. The there was only one prohibition that God had given that would bring death. And that is do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, otherwise you will die. Who ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve. What about Abel? Did Abel eat from that tree? No, they were cast out of the Garden of Eden. They couldn't get to it. So Abel didn't eat from it. Did Abraham eat from it? No. Did Isaac? Did Jacob? You know, we can go through all of those. And yet if there's one thing that you pick up when you read this period, from Adam to Moses, one of the most prominent things is so and so begat so and so, and lived so many hundred years and he died. So and so begat so and so and lived so many hundred years and he died. What you've got in this period is a string of obituaries, more than any other place in the Bible, from Adam to Moses. It's got dramatic stories, it's got powerful stories, it's got wonderful stories, it's got foundational stories, it's got the patriarchs, but it also has death upon death upon death, upon death. And Here in Romans 5:14, Paul uses the phrase death reigned, Death reigned. I'm going to take that. And if we had a full seminar, we would dig into this a little bit further. But I'm going to take that to say there wasn't really any hope, not much hope at all. Anyway. There's a, there's a glimmer of something out there because Genesis 3:15, the Lord says, you know, I'll send a redeemer out there someday. We'll take care of death. But he's not there. They're separated. There is, you know, Paul called it the times of ignorance. God speaking, you know, to Enoch over here and to Noah over here and to Abraham over here and to Jacob over. But unless you were happened to be there, you know those people, or you can get within earshot of it, you're sort of groping around if happily you might find him, is what the scripture says in the book of Acts. That is maybe circumstantially you'll bump into the word, but otherwise you're kind of stuck there. I, I hold to the message, the witness of the stars, if you will, that there is a message up there, a witness. So there was some degree, but man, it's hard to narrow down in the Bible on what you've got. And so I'll say that what you've got is the best way to put it is from Adam to Moses, death reigned. There wasn't a clear. Everybody knows it. This is how you get out of death, or this is how you overcome it. So you got a period in which life reigned in which you immediately go into a period of death reigned. Now along the centuries, and this is roughly about 1500 years or so, God eventually goes down to Midian and finds a guy named Moses. And Moses, of course, eventually receives the Law. And we have something new that happens during the Law. Let's go ahead and change our picture now and get into the law. Here we have a picture of Moses showing the tablets of the law to the Israelites with portraits of members of the Panhuse family. How about that? It was done by a Dutch artist, 1574-1575. You know, there was a. There was a movement back then. It was a big art era, the Renaissance, whatnot. There was a movement to paint biblical scenes and to paint yourself in the biblical scene. And this. This was not terribly uncommon that a family would come together and say, here we are. We all want to be in this biblical scene. And so here the artist and the family said, I tell you what, I'll paint you as the Israelites and Moses sharing the law with you. And so those were. It was a real family there that was painted by that artist. And as we think of Moses giving the law, we come back up again in. In Romans, chapter 5, verse 13. Notice that we skipped over it a little bit. But it says, for until the law, sin was in the world. But sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses. Excuse me, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him, who's to come, that is, they didn't do Adam's sin, but death reigned. Now, what happens when you get to Moses, from Adam to Moses. And in. In this, I will. I would. I would like to point your mind. You can look it up. It's just one little verse so I can tell it to you. You can look it up if you're not sure if I'm trustworthy or not, which the judges. The jury's still out. But Leviticus, chapter 18, verse 5 is part of the Mosaic Law. And it says, ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them. Okay, that and I could give you probably half a dozen directly from the Torah itself. Scriptures that said that say, if you do this, you will live. That is, imagine what good news that is, if you are in a world in which death reigned and you are struggling around happily to, you know, bump into something that might cure this problem that you've got. But you don't really even know where to begin. And then God comes and gives the law. And the law is, as we've talked about before, it's not easy, but it's also not rocket science. You know, do this on the seventh day and don't do this on the, on the, on the, on the first day. Or you know, don't do this on the seventh day, do this on the first day. All those, you know, don't eat this, do eat that, don't wear this, do wear that, don't say this, do say that. All the things that are in the law, again, not easy, but certainly doable. And there were people that did them. And the Lord laid them out as, hey, here is an opportunity for you. Do this and you shall live. I don't know about you, but even just, you know, because we went through Covid a few years ago and saw what society does in the face of, of a threat or un. Threatened death. It's, you know, we will go to practically no end to make sure that we're not going to die. And so here is this fabulous news that comes with the law. Do this and you shall live. I think that we should not miss the fact that beginning with the law is the first time we know about anyway in the scripture where there is a very clear path forward. Again, we could get some vague pathways forward. Previously you get the idea of the grave. Previously Jacob, when he thought Joseph was dead, said, you know, he's gone down to the grave and I'll go down there with, with him. But not much to say, you know, oh, blessed day out there when we all meet Jesus, when we all get to heaven, when we all that none of that really was there. There's a Messiah that's going to come someday and fix it. It's all we know. Death reigned. Now do this and you shall live. Now we know that in the time of the law there was death even for those who did it. So what did that mean? Do this and you shall live. The law also gives us, I suppose, the first time, possibly you could argue that Job predates this. But the law gives us the first time. It's expressly given here is there is now a resurrection, though there is death. Do this and you shall live. I'll bring you back to life. Now that brings about great hope and changes the world. You know, in the ancient world there were a lot of religions, right? I mean the, the Egyptians had a God for this and a God for that. You know, the fly God and the blood God and the Frog God and everything. Hoping, I think, same go to the pyramids sometime. I'd like to go. Our friend Roger and Carol just went, I'd like to go sometime to the pyramids. I haven't been to the pyramids. I just taught about them. Which means maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but I have been to Petra, the hidden city in the Jordanian desert. And Petra, I called it a city. Petra is. Is a burial ground. It's a. It's fabulous. It's amazing. But all those things you see in the rocks of the red rocks of Petra, they're all a tomb for somebody. Somebody is buried there and all looking to their pagan gods, trying to. To build something. You go to Petra and you see this one design that looks like a stairway. And the tour guides tell us, I don't know if they're making this stuff up or not, but the tour guides tell us they saw that as the stairway to heaven. They're trying to do this as a sacrifice, you know, try. So everybody wanted something. Now, Judaism was the only religion that brought this very clear, here's one God, one way. Do this and you shall live. Which is why a small group of people, which was basically not even a nation, you know, it was a big group of slaves from Egypt is all they were. And one. One big family of slaves. And yet they get this message about life and it becomes what today we would call one of the five major religions of the world. How does that happen? Except that here's one that finally has an answer to the dilemma. Death reigned. Now do this and you shall live. Well, let's move on, because you and I do not live in the dispensation of the law. We don't live under the law anymore. And so let's go to this one. This is the disciples, Peter and John running to the sepulcher on the morning of the resurrection. So that's my resurrection picture for you here. What about now, the dispensation of the grace of God. It's after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a French artist, by the way, done in 1898. If you want a little history of it, I'll. I'll give it to you. Do you want a little history of it? I thought so. Thank you. The French government actually commissioned this piece. Now this was the. The French had for a long time and were very strongly in. In the late 1800s, into the early 1900s, very. A very secular kind of government. And it was in 1905, they outlawed any religious teaching Done by government of any sort. But here they commissioned this. And maybe this actually doesn't show the empty tomb. Maybe one of the reasons the artist did it this way is because he could hint of the empty tomb but not lose his financial commission. This is a picture of Peter and John. What are they doing running to the empty tomb? They've heard the tomb is empty. They're going to look at it. By the way, the artist tells us the younger guy is John and the older guy is Peter. And I don't know if John and Peter looked anything like Frenchmen, but nonetheless, there's the picture. So there is an eagerness for resurrection. We come in our day as we think of this resurrection that is ours. And let's just continue there in Romans, chapter five, as it says, let's jump down to the. To about the middle of verse 14. So death reigned, it said, those who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression. Then right there at the end of verse 14, who is the figure of him that was to come? Ah, Adam is the figure of him who was to come. That word figure is the word, the Greek word tupos. Sometimes we use the word type. He's the type of him who was to come. Type is not a word we use other than some theological circles. So I almost always have to stop and talk about it. You know, back in the day, we had a typewriter, remember? And a typewriter would write type. It would put type on a paper. It's the same idea. The. The thing on the paper. Let's take the letter A. The thing on the paper, or you remember the letter Z? I think you all remember the letter Z. Do you remember typing the letter Z? That was with your pinky. That's the one. You always got stuck in there and had to have surgery or carry the typewriter around with you. You boys will have to Google this. And Luca, you know nothing about it. You had to push hard to get that in there and then slip. And your finger, your pinky is gone, right? Am I the only one that remembers this? You. Thank you. So you take the letter Z. It would slap it on the paper. That was type. That was an image. That was a figure. The real one was back there in the typewriter. You could look down there and find, oh, there's a Z. That is the real Z right there. You could type it as many as you want. It was an exact representation, for the most part, of this one. So when it says he's a type of one to come. That is, he's not the one to come, but he's the image of one to come. And here it's an image in a very specific way, but this time kind of mirrored. Through one man, death came unto the world. Well, in that same way, through one man, life comes into the world. So we pick up in verse 15, as it says again in verse 14, he was a figure, the one to come, but not as the offense. So also is the free gift. For if through the offense, that is eating of the tree, if through the offense of one, many be dead, much more. The grace of God and the gift of grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded to many. Now, what you and I live in is a world that is in the domain, if you will, of Adam. He is our. We are his offspring. But there is one offer that comes differently, and that is the offer of Jesus Christ. In this age in which we live, one man came and did the work in order that many might have life. Now, what happened? We know that, of course, Jesus was accused of blasphemy, saying, I am God. And they didn't believe it, so they put him to death. They put him to death. He died. He was buried. But on the third day, he rose again. He rose again. Romans, chapter 15, verse 8 tells us that he rose again as Lord, both of the dead and the living. Okay, you are the guy that conquers that which reigns. Death reigned. Jesus conquered death. That makes you the new king of the hill, right? So he becomes Lord, both of the dead and the living. Now, to make a long story short, maybe a difficult story. Simple. If you are Lord, what do you get to do? Thank you. That's the words I was looking for. Whatever you want, you get to do. If you are Lord. How many did you all play King of the Hill when you were young? It was a violent game. Was more kids should play it. And if you are king of the hill, you do whatever you want, right? So as. As king of the hill now or as Lord both of the dead and the living, he can now say, hey, death reigns. But as a good, benevolent Lord, what I would like to do is give life. He can do that. He's King of the hill. He's Lord both of the dead and living. And he could do a lot of other things too, by the way. He could have said, as Lord of the dead and the living, I'm going to make everybody dead. Could have. He didn't. He could have said, as Lord of the dead and the living, I'm going to make everyone alive. I'm going to eradicate death. Could have he didn't or hasn't yet. Rather, what he did is say, I'll give a gift. I'll give it based upon how well you take up the offering the first time you do it. He could have said that, but he didn't. Rather he said, by grace, through faith, not of yourselves. We live in this day in which death no longer reigns because an offer of life is given. That's a good place to be, isn't it? By the way, I'll add one more thing. Not only are we just given an offer of life free for the taking, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. But this is, as I can tell it, this is the first time in all the history of death that anyone has ever said or been able to say, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That is the word in 2nd Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 8. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Under the law, there was a way out. But you know, do this and you shall live. But when were you going to live? You were going to die. You were going to go to Sheol. Somewhere out there at the end, you were going to be raised and you were going to be judged, and then you were going to be present with the Lord. Then you are going to. To begin to live on this earth again. Here it's just immediately. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Often we'll say, especially when a person dies, you know, and maybe even put it in the obituary, you know, that on the, on the 23rd day of blah, blah, blah, we've got so and so breathed their last here on heaven, here on earth, and their first in heaven. We. We see this seamlessness that's new in the history of death that we have in this dispensation of the grace of God and that we rejoice. Now, let's, let's actually go on, because there's something more beyond this dispensation of grace in which there's a gift is not going to last forever. There is something more, and that is here. I put up a Jewish artist here, Bar Baruch Nakson, who died just a few years ago, 2021 has a picture of the coming of the Messiah. That is a very Jewish picture, by the way. One of the things about Jewish pictures is they don't have a lot of facial features, make no graven images. And so it's kind of a. Yeah, I can tell. That's people there. There are Jews that are looking to the city of Jerusalem, the Messianic age, and looking forward to that. That what happens when you get into the Messianic age. There is a passage of Scripture. Again, we won't look there with time, but there is a passage of Scripture in Ezekiel. Ezekiel, chapter 18, verse 4. I know that Ezekiel was written a long time ago, but Ezekiel 18 was looking ahead. It's a prophecy. And it. It prophesies of a time when it says, the soul that sinneth, it shall. Anybody know? Die. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. Now that. Don't misunderstand it, because you say, well, sounds like today. This is not today. Today you can live pure as the driven snow, and you still die. Right. It is looking forward to a day after the dispensation of grace in which the only people who die are those who sin. That'd be kind of nice, wouldn't it? Not only are you present with the Lord then, because the Lord has already come back, but you don't die unless you sin. If you do sin. There's more to the Ezekiel passage. If you do sin, it's not an immediate death. There's some graciousness. But if by the time you're 100 years old, you haven't figured out to give your allegiance to the Lord of the dead and the living, you die. A hundred years old is the outside limit of your sin. And so the soul that sinneth, it shall die. But that means even in the millennial age that's yet to come, there's still death. There are still people who, strangely enough, right in the presence of the Lord, will choose, no, thank you. I'd rather do my own thing. We are kind of an independent sword, aren't we? And so the soul that sinneth, it shall die. The context of that, by the way, is the phrase, how's it going? Make sure I get this right. The fathers eat grapes, and what happens? The children's teeth are on edge. Yeah, I think that's the words. Yeah. The fathers eat sour grapes and the children's teeth are on edge. Now, the idea is, you know when you eat something sour or how it sort of tingles your teeth? Is that the right word? Puts your teeth on edge. And I see everyone now, but we're in a day. The idea is, hey, your kids suffer, you know, because of the thing you did. It passes on, but it says, hey, the day is going to change. The soul that sinneth, it shall die doesn't affect the children, doesn't affect those around us. It's just right there in that day of the millennium. And then ultimately there is one more. There is a time in which death is totally eradicated. Nobody is going to die in the future. Back to the Garden of Eden. Now, you might think that a strange picture right there, because that's Peter Brueghel the Elder, who painted in 1562. And that is a picture of death and dying and destruction, and it's called the Triumph of Death. Now, I am certain that he said, hey, this is a bummer of a world. Death always seems to win. But there will come a time in. If you want to turn there, we'll look at it very quickly. First Corinthians, chapter 15. If you're still in Romans, just turn to the right a little bit. And First Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 54 speaks about a day all the way in the future when it says, when this. This corruptible shall have put on the incorruption, this mortal shall put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying. The saying comes from the book of Isaiah, by the way. The saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. The song that day will be, O Death, where is thy sting? Can I interpret that a different way? It is standing before a. I'll say a bumblebee. Does a bumblebee ski sting bad? I've never been stung by a bumblebee. Okay, so you see a bumblebee right here and you say, nanny, nanny, boo, boo. This is life standing in front of death and saying, nanny, nanny, boo, boo. Death, where is thy sting? You can't touch me. You can't do anything to me. Again, picking up in verse 55, death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Right, now we could take this picture of Peter Bruegel the Elder, the triumph of death, and we would find, like, here you got. You got the casket. And. And they're. They're. They're. They're pulling it away. You got all the. You know, I think everybody in the picture is dead there, whether they're drowning or they're skeletons or here's the scorpions coming after them or whatever it is. Here's a skeleton crawling down into the grave. Just over and over. All sorts of thing in there. And we could look at that and say, yeah, unfortunately, that is that is a picture, by the way. Does anyone want to get a replica of this to hang in your living room above the. There will be a day when we will be able to gather together and say, you remember when. You remember when there was the triumph of death. But now, thanks be to God, death is undone. Death is completely history. Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory? It is gone. It is no more. Back to the Garden of Eden. And that is really, in a sense, one of the things. It's really one of the benefits, I guess you would say, that we get out of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ is that he now has provided us a gift. We can have life right now by grace, through faith, not of yourselves. We can have it. We can know that when we leave this earth, that will be absent from the body, present with the Lord. We'll know that this body will one day be raised again and be with the Lord as well. And we can know that ultimately, though it's not quite done yet, ultimately, there's going to be no such thing as death in the end. When this time comes, I know that there are no preachers, no morticians and no gravediggers. I'll be out of a job, so stick with plumbing. What'd you say? What a group. Yeah, won't that be nice? I wonder. I wonder where we preachers, grave diggers and morticians are gonna. You want an old mortician joke? I've told you before about the first mortician I ever worked with. His name was Richie Smith, and Richie taught me how to do funerals. I appreciate he's a little Texas town and when they introduced me, this is Richie Smith, he's the mortician in town. He's the last guy to have anything to do with you. You got it, didn't you? Yeah. Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for the victory of death which is coming as. As we struggle with life and death in this world. We know that as one old rock song. I think it was said, whether you're the king or the street sweeper, someday you'll dance with the grim Reaper. And we have the struggles that death seems to creep up on us. Knock on the door. But dear Heavenly Father, there is already a life for us and a presence that has been bought and paid for and is offered to man, woman, boy or girl. We're grateful that so many of us have accepted and received this and rejoice in this. And we. We look forward to the day when death is completely no more. That day out in the future, when the triumph of death has lost and the king of the hill is now the author of life, the one who said, I am the resurrection and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. We rejoice in this. In Jesus name, Amen. By the way, I skipped out a little bit, but Saturday is a big day. John's turning 80. Is that right? I guess you call it turning. I don't know. And Shelly's turning one of those decade numbers, too. It's not 80, it's 20 less, but it's not 80. I won't tell you how old she is, but 20 less than 80. So we got an 80 and a 60 birthday coming up Saturday. And so. So why don't we sing Happy Birthday to you. Happy birthday to you Happy birthday John and Shelley Happy birthday to you. Many more to both of you. Look forward to 20 years from now doing your hundredth. And we'll. We'll celebrate that on, on Saturday. Those online. Thanks for joining us here today and each of you. Why don't we go have a potluck lunch? How's that sound? God bless you. We're. We're dismissed. I. Hello, this is Oroscopic Dental Clinic calling to remind Linda that you have an appointment on Tuesday. Hey there. How are you? Good, good. How are you? Good. See you in a few minutes. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Good to see you. Awesome today. Thank you. It's nice to have that. Yeah. You. You. Can you take your lunch? Yeah. Cool. What's up, buddy? Nice to meet you. He's best dressed in the room every week. I was going to say, I don't think I have any shoes that nice. I don't think I've owned a pair of shoes that nice in my entire life.