All right, last week we started on a journey.

I've been asked to do a brief kind of encounter with theology.

And we started off looking at theology proper.

Theology proper is a study of God himself.

We're gonna get there sooner or later.

The problem with it is it's a massive area to think about.

So I've condensed it.

I actually brought something to show you how I got through seminary.

Because those massive volumes were so intimidating.

This is everything you need to know about theology.

With the verses.

And I mean, if you look at mine, I've got it underlined and marked because this is how I got through my ordination.

I was examined by no one less than J.

Dwight Pentecost.

Yeah, you didn't wanna think about it.

So to get ready for this, I studied Charles Ryrie's study graphs, four pages.

And this is taking theology and compressing it down to its essence.

Now the whole Bible talks about God.

So if somebody asked you about God, what verse are you gonna use?

Where are you gonna turn?

What passage?

Well, Dr. Ryrie, God bless him, he was a saint.

He knew how to say things very succinctly.

And by the way, when you took his exams, it was really fun because he gave you one, count them one, do you see the number one?

Eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper.

Final exam, he would ask a question and your task was to answer it.

One sentence.

You either knew it or you didn't know it.

You're talking about pressure.

So he wanted to know, do you know it?

If you do, put it down, if you don't, it's okay.

I was grateful for him because he kept us from just going all over the planet.

And when you get with a bunch of seminary professors, that's where we go.

We visit the stars and the planets and various galaxies and we did it in faculty meetings and we did it in casual conversations.

So it was hard to get them to compress and deal with just the essence.

That's what he gave me.

I'm so grateful for it.

By the way, I still use it.

That's why I have it.

I didn't lose it.

I kept onto it.

You can't get it except in his study Bible.

Who was showing me their study Bible just a moment ago?

There, okay, you got one.

There you go, you got one.

In the back of that study Bible is this.

So, by the way, if you don't have Ryrie's study Bible, go to Amazon, type in Charles Ryrie's study Bible, and buy a used copy.

You can get one for two to $4, unbelievable.

And it has all the notes.

Now, you might have a familiar marking or two, but it's okay.

You have the theology and you have his study notes for the chapters of the Bible, outstanding.

He was a great scholar and a great mentor.

And he would, you know, I had many conversations with him.

He says, Mike, you can either say it or you can't.

Well, okay then, let me see if I can say it.

So what a great mentor, what a great professor.

We're studying theology.

Okay, well, a number of years ago, I had a burr under my saddle, as we say in the West, and I decided that I was going to write a theology for children.

You'll find dozens and dozens and dozens of children's story Bibles.

They're just everywhere on the market.

Nobody writes a theology for children.

And so I had the bright idea, that's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna write a theology for children.

And so, I mean, I taught them for 17 years.

Here, some of you were the victims of that teaching.

But I thought, that's what I'll do.

And I got that idea on an airplane.

I was flying out to California.

I was gonna do a series of messages out there.

And all of a sudden, this thing comes into my mind, and I think, wow, I could not write fast enough.

I had a big burr.

I had an outline.

I was ready to go.

I thought, I'll knock this thing out.

I'll have this done in 30 days.

That was the last of it.

Nothing else came.

I got the outline.

How hard is this?

And so, you know, you go to the Lord in times like that, because you think, well, I've got this thing down.

I mean, I've got a T-H and M from Dallas Theological Seminary.

How hard can this be?

I'm just writing a theology for children.

But when you actually get on your knees and come to the Lord with something like that, he has messages for you.

They're not always pleasant.

Oh, hello, Mike.

You're gonna write about me.

That's good.

I'm glad you're doing that.

Oh, by the way, did I mention there was something between the two of us that we need to get cleaned up?

Yeah, you don't want a conversation like that.

Because there were things.

I didn't even know there were things.

And the Lord says, yeah, this is something that you've got to straighten up.

The two of us have got to work this out before I give you any more.

Because it's coming from me and you're writing about me.

Okay.

So I started working on things he was talking about.

And sure enough, I got those done.

And you know what?

I got another section, but I didn't get all of it.

Stop, just shut off like a water faucet.

What is going on?

Oh, I didn't mention everything.

There's a few other things that you need to get straightened out, son.

You're just not there yet.

This book was the most painful book.

Took me three years to write this thing.

It was not a fun journey.

There were things that the Lord wanted to clean up in my life, straighten up in my life, teach me in my life.

So if you ever decide to write a children's book, be careful.

It can be serious business, especially if you decide to write about God.

He takes it seriously.

You think it's just a children's book.

Yeah, it is.

It was designed for them.

I wrote it for them.

And you know how he blessed me?

Got this thing published.

We were in a small church down in Kingston, and I gave it to the children.

And one of those little boys, about, I don't know, three months later, he's carrying this to church every week.

That thing was so dog-eared.

And his mom and dad says he is reading that over and over and over again.

You only need one.

You only need one.

So one little boy, he got it.

He got it, and it helped him come to know God better.

That's what we're trying to do.

That's the reason you study theology.

You're studying theology in order to come to know Him.

And He allows you to do that, but only in measured amounts.

Very honestly, we can't tolerate it all.

I remember when I first became a believer.

1963, University of North Texas, and I could see that people knew the Bible better than me.

It didn't take much, I didn't know anything.

So I'm thinking to myself, wow, okay, Lord.

Let me tell you what I really like, Lord.

I'm gonna take a nap.

And I'd just like for you to take this with all of your wonderful miraculous powers and implant it.

Would you like that?

Wouldn't you like to know the Bible just kind of bang, implanted?

I would, that's what I, and if you think I'm kidding you about what I did, I am not.

I'm telling you the honest truth.

I thought he could do that.

He can, can't he?

Nod your heads, he can do it if he wanted to.

Problem is, that wasn't what he wanted.

What he said was, oh, Mike, I will answer your prayer, but it means that you'll have to go to Dallas Theological Seminary.

I will not just give it to you in the English, Mike.

I'll give it to you in the Hebrew and the Greek.

What an answer to prayer.

Be careful what you pray.

The Lord God may decide to answer.

And sometimes it is a shock.

It surely was to me.

I thought, oh my goodness, this is not what I wanted.

I just wanted you to do a miracle, Lord.

He is gracious.

He is gracious.

Over and over and over again in my life, God has intervened and actually answered prayer, just not answered it in the way that I thought he was gonna answer it, but in a marvelous way.

So we, and this last time we talked about theology proper, which is God himself, a vast subject.

I mentioned seven volumes of Chaffer's Systematic Theology, massive tome, we had to read it.

But I didn't do that to you, did I?

I mean, you came back, you came back, some of you were a little injured, but you came back anyway.

And this time we're gonna talk about the Lord Jesus, monster subject.

I don't even know how to tell you how many volumes have been written about him.

He is the centerpiece of history.

He is the centerpiece of theology.

There's nobody more important than Jesus Christ.

And when you come into his presence and you ask him for help, and you talk to him about who he is, who he's like, who am I dealing with, oh my goodness, oh my goodness.

So when I wrote this book, I decided that I would write a book on theology.

I would use traditional concepts, but I would also use some non-traditional concepts.

Because when you study theology, what you actually are studying is an answer to Greek philosophical questions.

I didn't know that.

It took me a while to kind of sort that one out.

But when I started in writing this book, I realized that Chafer's systematic theology didn't say everything I wanted to say to children.

For example, God is musical.

I don't have to prove that to you.

If you've read the Psalms at all, you know he's musical.

He loves it when we sing, doesn't he?

Now, it may not be the music style you prefer, but he does love it when you sing.

That's a part of who God is.

He is musical.

They don't actually spend much time on music, except when Lewis Barry Chafer was running the seminary, because he himself was a musician.

In fact, Lewis Barry Chafer did not have a master's degree in theology.

Lewis Barry Chafer only had a bachelor's degree.

In music.

Isn't that amazing?

What can God do with a man who only has a master's degree or a bachelor's degree in music?

Well, found a seminary.

When you turn yourself over to God and let him do with you as he pleases, he would be astounded at what he can accomplish.

I'm not exhibit A, Lewis Barry Chafer's exhibit, I'm exhibit B. God is, be careful, you got your seatbelt on?

God is playful.

Isn't that interesting?

They didn't teach me that in Chafer's Systematic.

He's playful.

You ever been around puppies?

Yeah, I mean, I love them.

I love all of them, each and every one of them.

How did they get that?

Who programmed puppies to be playful?

You, I'm just talking about it, and some of you are already laughing.

You've got it in your mind, you've had that experience, you've seen them, and you're just smiling.

Do you think God planned that?

Of course he did.

Of course he did.

So God is a lot bigger than some of the systematic theologies that we talk about.

And so when you read your Bible, always read it with that in mind.

You're also learning about what God is like.

He's disclosing himself to you, and he's doing it in such wonderful ways.

Silly book cover.

Do you know how hard it is to get a book cover?

It is agonizing.

You know, it's almost like having a root canal.

Okay, just trying to get everybody to agree as to what goes on this thing.

But I'm gonna tell you something.

God is also colorful.

Isn't that interesting?

You do not live in a black and white world.

We live in a colorful world.

And you know what I like about ladies?

Is you tend to wear it.

And just look at me, this is pitiful.

Wait till the summer comes, I'll show you.

I'll show you.

He is colorful, he is musical, he is playful.

He is so much bigger than we typically take into our thinking.

And so when we come to worship him, we ought to bring everything that we have to worship him in gratitude.

And then, on top of everything, he sent us his son, the Lord Jesus.

Now you're talking about a subject to try to condense into 40 minutes.

Let me just mention a few things.

I'm gonna skip a few of these slides.

You've seen them.

We're gonna work through them quickly.

This is the fancy name.

Now, you need to use this in conversations with your neighbors just to impress them that you actually had a class on Christology.

Okay, whew, big words.

Just, it's just the Lord Jesus.

That's who we're gonna look at.

Now, we had categories.

Remember these?

Ryrie's categories.

He has all of those listed on those two little sheets of paper.

Four sheets, I guess, if you count front and back.

In detail, and what I loved about him was he would give you the central passage, the key passage, one or two that were connected to that particular doctrine.

So you didn't wander all over the place.

You knew the heart of the matter and you could go there.

Are those things talked about in other places?

Of course, but here's the central piece of it.

And so helpful.

Future things.

Isn't it wonderful to be in a church where we believe there is a real future?

I have to confess something.

When I first came to Christ, 1963, I read a four spiritual law booklet, very simple, had two circles.

One circle had a throne in it and it had a big E on it, ego, and a bunch of little circles around it.

And basically what it said was, who's running your life?

Are you kidding?

Do you think anybody has any control over my life?

I don't think so.

I've been running this thing.

And by the way, when I said that, I realized, okay, yeah, but you haven't been doing a very good job.

You've got some areas that really are a mess because you've been running it.

Next circle, same areas, organized, because Jesus Christ is on that throne.

Changed me forever.

I'll never forget it.

I can see it happening.

You can't see it, but if my mind could play it for you, you could see it.

1963, I literally read that and thought, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, that's the mistake I've made.

Got down on my knees right there, was in my bed all by myself, in my bedroom at the school, and got down and asked Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Savior.

Lord?

Did I say Lord?

Yeah, I did say Lord.

And my friends at seminary, oh my gosh, you don't even want to talk about, okay, Lordship Salvation, we don't believe in Lordship Salvation.

I said, you may not believe in Lordship Salvation, but I do.

I was 19.

I wasn't gonna die.

Sin and payment for it was a long way off.

I needed some help now.

Need help now.

I've never gotten over that.

I still need his help, every single day.

I want him to be my Lord.

Lord and Savior, that's about Christology.

That's what we're talking about.

And he has a plan, and it's for the future.

And I read it.

I like the book of the Revelation.

It kind of takes me in places that other books don't take you.

There are lesions of angels singing to God.

And I think, yeah, I'd like to do that.

I'd like to do that.

We're gonna look at the doctrine of Christ, and here is how Ryrie outlines it.

He talks about his preexistence.

He talks about the incarnation, which is still, by the way, a mystery.

We have God and man coming together.

And if anybody tells you they can explain that, they're just, you know, na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na.

They're just making it up, because nobody really understands what it was like for God himself to embrace physical humanity.

I don't get it.

I see it in the text.

I watch it, but I don't understand it.

The dynamics are incredible.

His humanity.

We know he was human.

He felt pain, he felt agony, he felt stress, he felt grief, he felt sorrow.

The emotions that we have were part of his experience, but not sin.

Sin was never a part of his humanity.

His deity, of course, of course.

We're glad to bow our knee before him and recognize him as the king of kings and the Lord of lords.

How impressive that when he ascends back to heaven, the Lord God himself says, sit here at my right hand.

And then he says, until I make your enemies your footstool.

Whew.

God himself speaks.

Better listen.

I don't want to be your enemy, Lord.

And I know the only way to not be your enemy is to embrace the savior that you sent for me.

His earthly life, I'll just make a confession to you.

Okay, do I read my Bible?

Of course, of course I read my Bible.

But I have to admit to you that the Gospel of John and the other Gospels, but particularly the Gospel of John, is like cool water on a hot day.

Okay, I just finished Genesis.

Can I read John again, please?

I just love it.

John takes you inside and up close.

His discussions of Jesus, his revelation of Jesus goes deeper than the other Gospels who are doing other things in their material.

So his earthly life gives us great pleasure.

Today, we're gonna look at the Kenosis.

This is so interesting.

The Kenosis, you would expect to be in Romans.

I would.

Okay, but Romans is the great theological treatise of the New Testament.

The Apostle Paul writes it himself.

But instead, the Kenosis is found in a little tiny book called Philippians.

What in the fritters is it doing in Philippians?

A Philippi was a Roman colony.

Do you remember how the Gospel came to Philippi?

Paul and the friends that were with him, they didn't have a synagogue to go to, which was their tradition.

And they were now coming onto Greek territory, Roman territory.

And so they went to the place where the Jews worshiped, which was a riverside outside of Philippi.

I've been there.

Now, was it in the exact spot where Paul went?

Who knows?

I don't know.

But the river's the same.

It hadn't gone anywhere.

It's right there.

So somewhere along there, the apostle Paul shows up, and guess what?

There was a lady there by the name of Lydia.

She was a woman of faith.

And she does something completely unprecedented and unexpected.

You need to read your Bible with different eyes.

By the way, just for you ladies, women are not normally mentioned in ancient literature.

Anywhere.

You see it in your Old Testament, you see it in your New Testament.

Ladies, I'm telling you, the Lord is screaming at you.

Listen, listen.

Oh my goodness.

So she makes the apostle Paul, you're talking about a debater.

That's what Paul was.

He was a debater, a debate champion.

By the way, former pastor here, David Cotton was a debater, a national champion debater at the West Point.

Went to West Point Invitational, won a thing as a debater.

So the apostle Paul is outmaneuvered by this Lydia.

She believed that the Lord Jesus Christ was her savior.

She believed it right there when he said it.

And then he, she invites him to dinner.

Well, maybe that was inappropriate, who knows?

But she says, if you really believe that I trusted Jesus, then you'll come.

Now, how are you gonna say no to that?

She put him in a corner where he couldn't escape.

And so they did go to her house and she was a champion of the faith.

The kenosis was given to Philippi, the church where Lydia was at in Philippi.

His impeccability, his inability to sin, okay.

Now, oh my gosh, you don't even wanna start it.

There is this massive discussion in church history about whether he was able not to sin.

Notice where the words are, able not to sin or not able to sin.

Without going there, I'll just tell you, we believe he was not able to sin.

He was never without the divine element in his life, incapable of sin as God is.

His death, ah, his resurrection.

So glad that pastor brought an introduction to the crucifixion.

What on the backside of that is the resurrection.

It's coming, Easter's coming.

This is my all-time, all-time favorite time of year.

This is when I came to faith, Easter.

Never gotten over it.

Easter's still my favorite.

I know, Christmas is wonderful and all the presents and the trees and the lights and one thing or another.

Not even close, not even close.

The resurrection from the dead.

And he didn't just disappear, he appeared.

He appeared to his followers and they saw him.

And that is precisely why these men that ran away when he was arrested show up at the temple to speak of his resurrection and his forgiveness of sin.

If I was still afraid of the Roman authorities, the temple is the last place I would show up.

Okay, out some remote hillside, yeah, sure, talk about it.

No, they showed up, they were arrested over and over and over again.

And by the way, your brothers and sisters around the world are enduring that same experience today.

How about North Korea?

You think there are any believers in North Korea?

I can tell you there are.

And they have a love and a passion for God that is unparalleled.

You get around them, they're focused.

They have no life of luxury.

When I was in Korea the last time, Billy Kim, who's been in our church, brings his Korean choir to sing here, a friend of mine.

Billy Kim told me, he said, this lady came and she wanted to see me.

Well, that's not uncommon.

She was from North Korea, that's not uncommon.

But she came in, she's an old woman.

Maybe in her 70s, maybe that's not old anymore.

Who?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A young woman.

But they had appointed her to come because this little congregation in North Korea had been listening to Dr. Billy Kim on the radio.

They pipe it into North Korea and they've been listening to Dr. Billy Kim.

And so she walks up to the guards, she's ready to go out, but she has strapped $18,000 in American money to her body. $18,000 in cash.

Well, you don't get out of North Korea without them searching you.

And this guard came up to her and touched her like that, he could feel it.

He says, what have you got?

She says, I've got $18,000 for Dr. Billy Kim.

Quick, quick, move, move, move, get out of here.

Yeah.

You think God is present?

You think he is active?

So, this lady comes out and she comes to Billy Kim and she says, I have a gift from North Korea.

And he's very busy, he doesn't have to, I'll give you a few minutes.

So then she starts pulling money out.

He calls the secretary and says, cancel everything. $18,000 in cash he had strapped to her that she gave to him for their ministry at FEBC.

God is still working.

Because of his son, the resurrection, he ascended to heaven, he has a present ministry.

And by the way, in case you didn't know it, he plans to return.

Just like he came the first time, people say, well, you know, that was a long time ago.

Is he still gonna come back?

With every scintilla inside of me, I assure you, He's coming back.

He's coming back.

And I often think about it.

I think I was talking with the pastor about it.

Okay, there's this, when we come to be with Him in heaven, there's this massive crowd of people that He has brought out of China, out of Burma, out of Sri Lanka, out of Mexico, out of Latin America, out of Europe, out of all these places.

How many are there gonna be for the last 2,000 years that He's been gathering His saints?

Where am I gonna be in that crowd?

Well, I'm a little guy.

I'm nice and tall like you are.

I've been wanting to be that for a very long time.

I don't even know if I'm gonna be able to see Him.

I was talking to the Lord this morning about it.

I don't, will I see You?

Will I see You?

Studied You my whole life.

I love You.

I wanna see You.

It's like He said, okay, Mike, it's all right.

I'll be there.

You'll see Me, everyone will see Me.

He's not gonna be distant.

That's why He lives here now with us.

Emmanuel, God with us.

Oh my goodness.

I can't wait in case you're wondering.

All right, I wanna talk about the resurrection.

Centerpiece of Christianity.

This is the Achilles heel.

Okay, if you can destroy the resurrection, you can destroy Christianity because this is where our hope is planted.

We believe in the resurrection.

We believe that Jesus Christ came back from the dead.

Now, different theories have been put forward.

One is the swoon theory.

I actually have a book in my library that I didn't give that book to anybody, by the way.

That one's going in.

It will be burned before anyone ever sees it besides me.

He didn't really die.

He just, you know, he was really beat up and in bad shape, and he'd been hanging on a cross, and he just kind of fainted.

And they put him in a tomb, and it was nice and cool in there, and he kind of came to, and somehow got that big stone pulled away, and he staggered out and convinced people that he'd been raised from the dead.

Now, if you believe that, I actually have some property I need to talk to you about.

It's in South Florida.

It's in South Florida.

It's in South Florida.

Swoon theory.

The wrong tomb theory.

Ah, okay, the women were so upset, and they were crying, and they couldn't, they weren't really about their senses because Jesus had died, and they were so sorry about that, and so they were crying and weeping as they went to the tomb, and they just went to the wrong one.

That one happened to be empty.

And so they spread the story that he'd been raised from the dead, right?

Well, I can tell you this.

The Pharisees wouldn't have gone to the wrong tomb.

They would have gone to exactly the right tomb and said, well, if you'd been in your senses, you'd have gone to the right tomb, and you can see that his body is still there.

But it wasn't there.

That's the problem.

The problem is the body was gone.

And what are you gonna do with that?

Well, somebody took it.

Oh, sure.

They had grave robbers in those days.

Real ones.

And so they broke in to that tomb because they knew how wealthy Jesus was and how much money was buried with him, and so they were gonna steal that and make off with it.

And the only thing they found was the body, and so they took it and they thought, we'll just sell the body.

Who would they sell it to?

Fishermen?

Isn't it amazing?

These are the saddest theories I've ever bumped into.

They just don't have a good explanation.

Now, this was the one that they hung on the soldiers who came.

This is the one you had to repeat.

His body was stolen, but of course, it wasn't true.

And Jesus appears to numerous people, not just a few, 500 at one time.

So what's the reality of the resurrection?

One, there was no body was ever found.

For 2,000 years, all we found was an empty tomb.

Catholics are really happy about it right now because they're restoring what they consider to be the empty tomb.

I don't know whether it is or not.

A lot of scholars, a lot of people believe it.

It doesn't really matter to me.

The body matters to me, and it's not there.

Eyewitnesses claim to see him, people who had nothing invested in his resurrection.

They didn't get paid anything, but they believed.

And what is astounding to me is that the disciples believed it.

Guys were close.

And the same guys that ran away in the garden.

Remember?

Remember those guys?

Real brave.

Peter had a little knife, whacked off a guy's ear.

That's all he got away with.

No, no, no, no.

These are not the guys who preached in Acts 2.

Disciples were transformed, completely changed.

I was in South India years ago.

And there are people there that go to church.

And they've been going to church since the second century.

They're called Thomas Christians.

Now, they may not say things exactly like you say it, and they may not believe it exactly like you believe it, but they believe in the resurrection.

Because Thomas came and was martyred in India.

Why would you go to India for anything?

I'm just saying, I've been there.

Okay, I didn't leave anything there that I have to go back and get.

But you have brothers and sisters that are there.

I spoke at a Bible school that was there, and I didn't even know anything about this Bible school.

They just invited me to come and teach, and so I did.

I went to teach, and I'm teaching these wonderful young people, and they were from all over the place.

And then one day, I'm sitting in my room, and all of a sudden, outside comes this parade of little bitty girls.

Little bitty girls, like about this high, about waist high.

And they're going arm and arm.

And they're just singing, singing, singing, singing, singing, singing, singing.

Where in the world did they come from?

What are they doing?

And I went to the administrator, I said, what is that?

Said, we have an orphanage.

Really?

I didn't know that.

So it's an orphanage for these little girls?

You don't want to be a little girl in India.

They'll sell you.

And you don't want to know who they would sell you to.

Little girls.

That's not what happened to these little girls.

They were in this orphanage and they had little uniforms.

They were so cute, had their hair all fixed up so cute, little ribbons in it, singing and marching.

And I thought, oh my goodness, thank you, God.

Thank you, God.

Thank you for the resurrection and thank you that your followers are reaching out even today.

And I said, do they ever get ice cream?

Well, it's a little expensive.

I said, I'm on it.

I said, I want all those little girls up in this room and I'm gonna buy ice cream for everybody.

She says, that's gonna be a lot of ice cream.

Perfect.

I want a lot of ice cream.

I don't want just enough.

I want a lot of ice cream.

And so I'm up there and I'm just happy that they're handing out this ice cream to these little girls.

I may not get through this one.

Little girls, the oldest ones in the group came to me and they said, well, what would you like for us to do for you?

I don't have an answer.

Would you like for us to sing for you?

Oh yeah, that would be fine.

So they gathered the little girls.

Not all of them, they had ensembles.

And each one, they had motions with the songs.

They were the product of Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead and his followers carrying that message forward.

And they sang to me and I wept like I'm on the verge of doing right now.

And they had their little motions and they were eating ice cream and they were so happy.

I'm all, thank you, God.

When the United Nations visited India, Chennai in particular, they went through and put curbs and sidewalks on all the streets where the United Nations ambassadors would go.

None of the other streets have sidewalks.

And children get run over regularly because everybody drives like crazy.

They'll have five, six people on a motorcycle.

You tell me, I don't know.

They got them everywhere on it.

And they have wrecks and trashes.

Those disciples were transformed and they sent that message.

And you bought it, didn't you?

I did.

I believed it.

I still believe it.

And I haven't met any of those guys.

Some of the professors at Dallas Seminary were old enough, but they weren't with those disciples.

The church was planted.

The church was planted.

Do you have any idea how big it is?

I took it off, I thought I wasn't gonna get to it, but I took it off.

I'll bring it when I teach on the Holy Spirit, because it was his job to build the church, remember?

I've got a graphic that gives the world.

Okay, one graphic, the entire world.

Okay.

And where Christianity has penetrated.

Now, okay.

It's penetrated in places where we're still doing evangelism.

By the way, do we still need to do evangelism here in Oklahoma City?

Of course.

We got new births.

I'm going to be teaching vacation Bible school.

Do you think that I might find a place for the gospel in vacation Bible school?

Yeah, of course, of course, of course.

We have to re-evangelize and re-evangelize and re-evangelize.

But the world, from one end to the other, if you look at it, it's in color.

And blue is the color of where Christianity has spread.

It's almost the entire globe.

There's a little patch over here called India, where Hinduism is.

There's another tinier patch above it.

In fact, you can hardly see the color.

But it's where Judaism is.

There's a little island, which is the center of Buddhism, called Sri Lanka.

Buddhism is in other places, too.

But it's not dominant in Sri Lanka.

It's the religion.

Except that there are Christians there.

And they're reaching out to the same people that we've always reached out to.

There's a man there.

And we don't know where he came from.

We don't know where he went.

But he went to the slum in Sri Lanka.

You don't even want to know.

You don't want to know, honest to goodness.

And his job was to find these little boys.

They got nothing to do.

They got no place to go.

They don't go to school.

There's not a free school for them.

And he would lead them to Christ.

And he would teach them the scriptures.

And they would come because they had no place else to go.

And then he would handpick a few.

And he himself would go about the business of getting them in school.

And the young man that I met was in a master's program at the school I was teaching at.

And he asked me to preach at his church. 600 people were in that church.

And of course, they had a Sunday school as good as this one, maybe better, actually, in some ways.

The astounding part of it was fully staffed.

But if you teach in his Sunday school, on Thursday, you go back to the slum and you teach that same lesson in the slum.

The mighty hand of God has not stopped working.

It didn't stop working at the end of Acts.

He's still doing it.

And he's doing it because of his son, Jesus Christ.

And people are believing it.

And churches are being planted over and over and over again.

The spread to the Gentiles, that was just crazy.

Remember, this was a Jewish movement.

How many Jewish friends do you have?

Anybody have any?

You got one?

Okay.

You have one?

Awesome.

Yeah, okay, there's a couple that have one.

That's not the common part, is it, anymore?

In the beginning, it was completely Jewish.

Now, not so much.

There are, by the way, there's a great school in Jerusalem.

How cool is that?

I'm sorry, it's not Jerusalem.

I'll get the name of the little town.

It's Christian.

And they're training Christian ministers, and they're on the streets explaining the gospel, just like you read in the text.

So the gospel is spread throughout the world.

It's everywhere.

And it's in every kind of venue that you can imagine.

It's on radio, it's on television, there's a satellite TV that I'm connected with, and they're broadcasting into all the Arab countries, and they're having people write them about the gospel and about Jesus, can you send us more information, et cetera, et cetera.

This has not stopped.

It is still expanding.

People tell me, I only have reports, about what is happening in Africa, and it's almost hard to believe, the number of conversions.

And it's all because of the resurrection.

This is the one that oughta kinda shake you just a little bit.

Do you know how hard it is to get a Jewish person to not worship on the Sabbath?

Fascinating.

I was in Jordan.

Not a Christian country, and not a Jewish country.

And so the poor Jordanian government has to figure out how all these groups who coexist in that country are gonna worship.

So the Muslims worship on Friday, the Jews worship on Saturday, and then the Christians worship on Sunday.

Now if you're a Christian in Jordan, you still have to work on Sunday.

It's not a day off.

You don't have a weekend off.

So the government has arranged it so that over the lunch hour, churches are open, and you can walk to the closest church.

Now that, you know, your home church may be across town.

So the one thing I loved about Jordan was that all the Christians respected all the other Christians.

If you're a Christian in a Muslim country and someone bows the knee to Jesus, brother, sister, because you have a loyalty to the same person I have a loyalty to.

Okay, now do we do this?

Do we genuflect before the cross?

What do we do?

Okay, we'll do whatever you do at your church.

We may not do that at our church, but we're gonna observe whatever you do at your church, and we're gonna get along with one another.

I thought, can I get a blood sample?

I'd like to take it back to Texas and Oklahoma, because I know a few people that aren't getting along, even inside their home church, they're not getting along.

What is that about?

No, no.

All right, so we have the resurrection, false theories, but the reality is he was raised from the dead.

And the confirmation of that is the spread of the gospel everywhere, every nook and cranny, by every means you can possibly think of.

And some of them you would never think of.

I'm at a Bible study.

I'm in Jordan.

And the little pastor comes to me, and he says, I want you to meet somebody.

I'm always eager to meet somebody, whoever it is.

I love it.

And so he brings this little guy over to me.

He says, I want him to tell you his story.

Okay.

He was raised in a cult that still follows John the Baptist.

I know, I know.

I've never heard of it.

So that's who he follows.

And they follow John the Baptist and what he taught.

They never heard about Jesus.

Well, so he's working on an oil ship that drills and is the diver, okay, that goes down.

He's got this big helmet that they wear and the suit and they pump oxygen down to him and that sort of thing.

His job is to walk around and do whatever on the floor of the ocean.

And so his handlers up on top played a joke on him, turned off his oxygen.

But before they had done that, a time or two before, he had been just walking on, you know how they do, you've seen them on TV, you know, trying to walk in these suits and he sees something on the floor of the ocean and he decides to pick it up.

What the heck, there's nothing else down here.

He picks this thing up and when he gets it back up on top, it's a leather-bound Bible in his language.

You tell me how it got there.

And you tell me how it got in front of him.

He takes this, he didn't know what it was.

He takes this book, because he don't have any books.

He's drilling for oil off the Libyan coast.

And he picks this thing up and he decides to dry it out.

Now, as you know, all good Bibles are leather-bound well, and they have India ink, which means it doesn't run.

And that's what it was made of.

And so he gets this thing.

Now, of course, it was fluffy after he dried it out.

And so he was pretty interested in it, and he tried to read it, but it just didn't make any sense to him.

But he kept it because, you know, it's expensive.

He didn't have books.

But after they shut his water off, he quit, or his air off, and catches a flight back to Jordan, where his family had gotten out of Iraq and gotten down into Jordan.

And so he's there and he's looking for them.

Now, these refugee camps are just tight-knit.

Everybody knows everybody.

And so he went, do you know so-and-so?

Mentioned his father's name.

Yeah, well, not here, down two blocks, up three flats of stairs, you know, la, la, la.

And sure enough, he finds his family.

Son Kenny.

And he's so excited, you know, reunion and all that sort of stuff, and finally gets around to telling them.

He said, I found this book.

I don't know what's in it, but it looks like it's important.

It's bound in leather and it's not fading or anything.

And I think it's a Bible, but I'm not sure.

And I'd kind of like to talk to somebody who knows something about it.

And they say, well, you know, it's interesting that you said that because we'd been attending a little place called a church where they teach the Bible.

Now, you know, this is all coincidence, right?

And I would believe it's coincidence, except I heard it from the guy himself.

Tonight is the night that we have our meeting.

Would you like to go?

Yeah, sure, I'd love to go.

So he does, he goes to the meeting and he meets the pastor, a Jordanian pastor, who's in my class.

And do you know the Lord Jesus as your savior?

No, I didn't even know you could.

What does he know?

So he takes his Bible and shows him, of course, the same passages you would look at to come to faith.

And he does.

He and his whole family come to faith in that little church.

And that night, they had a children's choir.

Do you think I enjoy this children's choir?

You don't even know, you have no idea.

The boy that was playing the piano was no bigger than this.

He had no music.

He could barely, he had to kind of lean against the bench because he couldn't reach it sitting on it.

And let me tell you, what he did with those ivory keys, unprecedented.

He whooped them, I'm telling you, he whooped them.

I was all over that thing.

And he, you know, like this, and I mean, those children stood up there, small choir, but let me tell you, big volume.

Sang, blessed me.

And I thank God for whoever threw the Bible overboard for somebody to read and find.

You don't know what you're doing.

I don't know what I'm doing, but I serve a risen savior.

He's come back.

He's come back.

He sent his spirit everywhere.

And he's working through all of his children to do what he pleases.

It is astounding.

And if you don't come to Vacation Bible School and enjoy seeing these little ones come to faith, sing their songs, do their motions, oh my goodness, you're missing out.

What a wonderful God to send his son so that we, we might have our sins forgiven and enjoy him forever.

Let's pray.

Father, we are grateful.

We receive forgiveness and we don't deserve it, but we offer our thanks to you.

Thank you for your son, for all that he has done.

Help us to increase in our deep impression of him.

May we worship deeply at this Easter season, remembering that everything depends on that resurrection.

Thank you.

In Jesus' name, amen.