Welcome to the Kerwin Baptist Church broadcast today. Our desire is for the Word of God to be spread throughout the world so that all may know Christ. Join us now for a portion of one of our services here at Kerwin Baptist Church, located in Kernersville, North Carolina. Who has held the oceans in his hand? Who has numbered every grain of sand?
Kings and nations tremble at his voice. All creation rises to rejoice. Behold our God, seated on his throne. Come let us. Adore him, behold our key, nothing can compare.
Come, let us adore him who has given counsel to the Lord, who can question any of his words, who can teach the one who knows all things, who can fathom all his wondrous deeds. We are excited of tonight to Take your time to praise the Lord as we get ready to worship. to have our revival services coming up. And starting tonight, we want to take time to praise God. And I think there's nothing else that's greater that we can do with our time.
with our effort, with all of our heart. And so, if we can tonight, let's take a few minutes. And it's going to be a little different than last night, a little shorter time on the time we take each section. But each of us, staff guys, are going to take a few moments. and go over a different aspect that we can praise the Lord for.
And so tonight I get the privilege to open up about the character of God. I want to read you a verse. It's Psalms 150, verse 2. It says, praise him for his mighty acts. Praise him according to his excellent greatness.
It's not saying anything else other than who he is is great. He is excellent. He is far above anything that we can ever imagine.
So, I want to show you a few things that God is. First of all, God is holy. Isaiah 2. 6 verse 3 says, And one cried unto another. and said Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
The whole earth is full of his glory.
So, what does that mean? What does holy mean? It's God's utter perfection and freedom from sin. Nothing corrupt in God. No one can get to him.
No one can make him go another direction. God is completely holy, perfect, morally impure. Completely pure. Holy pure. Second one is love.
1 John 4:8, the Bible says, God is love. His love has never changed. And it doesn't say that he loved and he will love. It says God is love. It's constant, never-ending, never-ceasing, without limits.
No matter what we've done, God's love doesn't change. God's also just. Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 4 says, He is the rock. His work is perfect, for all his ways are judgment. A God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
God is perfectly righteous. fair and consistent in all actions. Always doing what is right. He judges impartially, upholds moral standards, punishes evil, and rewards righteousness. And we can rely on his justice to be fair.
Number four is merciful and gracious. If nothing else gets to you, this one gets to me. The Lord is merciful and gracious. slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. God doesn't give us punishment for what we do deserve.
And God gives us the goodness that we don't deserve. Number five. God is faithful. Lamentations 3:22 and 23 talks about, he says, Great is thy faithfulness. And we say, What is thy faithfulness?
Well, God is entirely trustworthy. Consistent and unwavering in keeping his promises. even when we are unfaithful. And the last one tonight, and I could take a lot of them tonight and spend a lot of time with things we could praise God for. But I'm going to use this last one, number six, God is our shepherd.
Psalms 23 verse 1 says, The Lord is my shepherd. What does a shepherd do? He provides. He protects, he defends. He's patient.
And he's sacrificial for the sheep. If nothing else, we can praise him for being our shepherd tonight.
So, as we have some music play just for a few moments tonight, will you take time? We're going to put these on the screen. You can look at them, or you can pray at the altar, you can pray at your seat, but let's take some time. Let's praise God tonight as we open our service. Lord God, I exalt you.
God, there are so many things that you've done, so many things that we could praise you for, but we want to praise you for who you are. You are mighty God. You're awesome, God. You're... High above us all.
You're amazing. You're brilliant. And God, we stand in awe of you. And God, tonight, we want to lift you up. We want to exalt you.
For exactly who you are. And so, God, I pray that you'll receive this. I pray that you'll Find this incense, this The savoring Lord.
Something that you enjoy. As we exalt and worship your name tonight. When all that's said and done. Can we bless your name tonight? In Jesus' name.
Amen. Mm-hmm. All right. As we looked at Focusing on the names of God. for our first in the character of God From our first praise.
Our second praise, we're going to look at the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I think that fits in. uh super well going into that Um transitioning to that in John chapter 14. Uh verse 26. puts it um very well, a great explanation of this.
It says this But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance. Whatsoever I have said unto you. This is a great explanation of the Holy Spirit, especially the ministry of the Holy Spirit, what He does for us. This is the third person of the Godhead. We know that we serve one God, there is one and only God, but there's three persons in one God.
We call that the Trinity. We have God the Father, the righteous judge who loved us so much, did not want to judge us in our sins, to leave us open to that, that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to come and die on a cross for us. And pay for our sin. And once we accept that gift of salvation, He's offered to us, then the Holy Spirit comes into our heart. And we ought to praise him for that, specifically what he does in our life.
You may already do this, praising him for certain ways that he works in your life, but I just want to simply take the time to kind of define the different ways the Holy Spirit can minister to us. And in this verse, actually in this chapter, Jesus was talking to his disciples and explaining to them. That one day he is going to have to, he's going to have to leave earth. He's going to die and rise again, and then he's going back up to heaven. And they're, you know, oh, we want you to stay and all this.
And Jesus said, no. You want me to leave because the Holy Spirit's going to come and he's going to be in your hearts. And he's explaining here that the Holy Spirit. Job is to remind us. Of the teachings of Jesus, still lead and guidance.
So, what does the Holy Spirit do specifically? First of all, the Spirit works in us. The Spirit works in us. This is salvation and assurance.
So when we were unsaved, the Holy Spirit was working in the sense of it was leading us to show us that we need Him, that we're lost, and that we need a Savior. And once we accepted Christ, He comes into our hearts. And the Bible says here in John chapter 3. Verse 5, as Jesus explained to Nicodemus, except a man be born of water and of spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. And once we accept him, we're his forever.
And I love how it says in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 13: After that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. There's a great illustration that Brother Scott did with the children a couple years ago on a Sunday night, and he took. I believe it was a baby doll, wasn't it? I believe it was a baby doll, and he put it in a glass container and he sealed the container. And I think it's still in a closet somewhere sealed.
And he explained to them. That light, this is sealed in a container. That's a picture of us, the Holy Spirit, sealing and protecting us until the day we get to go to heaven.
So that's a wonderful thing of the work that He's done. And it's not only. The Spirit works in us, but the Spirit works on us through growth and change. We talked about this maturing in the gospel in Galatians chapter 5 through the fruit of the Spirit. As we are not living in the flesh, but we're submitting to the Spirit.
As we grow in Him, we're letting the Lord lead us and guide us as we're. Maybe the Holy Spirit is convicting us of something. Maybe he is encouraging us to make corrections in our life. It's not always fun when that happens, but it's so important. Also, the Holy Spirit is there to help us through trials and tests as well.
Not only does the Spirit work on us, but the Spirit works on us. And the Spirit works through us with His power and service. He does this so we can properly serve Him. And uh We see this in John chapter 16, verse 13. It says there's a phrase there.
It says, He will guide you with all truth, referring back to the Spirit, that it empowers us and helps us. And last of all, the Spirit works for us. In times of challenges, in times of trials, in times of Um loss The Spirit is there to give us peace. to give us comfort To give us joy. And that's something to praise him for.
So tonight, as we take our time just for a couple moments, let's praise him for the ministry. Of the Holy Spirit, that He works. in us and on us, through us. And he works for us. Let's take this time and praise him for that, and then I'll come back up and lead us in a word of prayer.
Lord, we love you so much and we thank you. for everything you do for us. And specifically, we thank you so much for the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We don't deserve salvation, we don't deserve anything. that you do for us, but we thank you so much.
Um that you're there. Not only that you were there to save us. And to see the list of the day Uh till we go home in glory. But also, Lord, I thank you so much that You don't give up on us, you work on us. You show us what we need to do.
Even And we're doing wrong. You want to correct us and lead us back in the right direction.
Well, thank you so much for that. Thank you for the opportunity that you want to use us in service, that you prepare us for that, so that we can bring you honor and glory. What a privilege that is. But, Lord, thank you. That you're always there to help us, to comfort us, give us peace, give us joy, no matter what life throws at us.
Well, we thank you for that. We thank you for the Holy Spirit. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. God has given me a thousand reasons to praise Him, but for this semester specifically, I would say that I am most thankful for His sufficient grace.
Throughout freshman year, sophomore year, junior year, and now senior year as I'm less than two months away from graduating, I can see throughout that entire journey how God has been there for me every step of the way. throughout times that were hard, throughout times that were good. I can see his footprints. right beside mine, showing me that I was exactly where I needed to be and doing what he called me to do. And there were some days where I wasn't sure how I was going to get through.
And he showed me through every step of the way that he was right there with me and that he would never leave me nor forsake me. And so I'm most grateful for his sufficient grace. I just want to praise God for letting me come here to PCC and grow with Him. He's blessed me with great RAs who have taken an interest in my life, and through the hardships of high school. broken hands and snake bites.
God has helped me and continued to let me grow in Him and just guided me through all the things.
So I just want to thank God and praise Him for doing that. I just want to praise God for everything He's done in my life this year. I've seen him move so much, not just in my family, but here while I'm at college. And I'm just so grateful for everything that's done. There's an endless amount of ways I can about this.
I just wanna think Praise God for the gifts of America. Yeah. Though, despite what we are and what we've done, he's still given us that ability to talk to him. Every second of every day. I show my frazing, make it work.
Yeah. The sinister, I am extremely grateful. that I got it. Job. and that I was able to get a good job that is like good with my work schedule, my school schedule.
It was very stressful at the beginning. And um honestly like God was good before then, like he made a way for me to be able to get this was good before then, but now it's like I should be able to finish off without any help. or anything like that. It's just been a really big bust and I'm gonna load off my back. Hey Kerwin, I love you guys and I miss you guys.
And the way that God has blessed me this semester is just the different ways that He's reminding me. That his way is truly better, and just the friendships that I've been allowed to make during my time here at college, and even just people I've been able to reconnect with from years past. has truly just been an incredible blessing on my life. We get this kind of sense of fear sometimes that we're missing out on different things by following God's will. But he's just showed me time after time with the different people that I've met and the different friendships I've made and different opportunities I have to get to serve people.
that his way truly is better and there's nothing better than following him. All right, shout out to Chris for. filming in the s in the wind. Good job by Chris. I hope he's watching tonight.
It's good to see our students. See them praising the Lord and serving the Lord. And I'm going to tell you, last night I struggled a little bit as far as being able to get up and share with you my part of it. Tonight is more, I'm kind of chomping at the bit to be able to share with you what I get to share with you tonight. This is much more exciting for me.
I struggled in the area that I shared with you last night. And tonight, it is my privilege to be able to talk to you about the promises. Of God. And I was thinking this week when a pastor asked me to share this portion. You know, I started thinking, how many promises are there in God's Word?
And I didn't know.
So I started in Genesis and I went through Revelation. I just started counting. I'm just kidding, I didn't do that. I got on Chat GPT and I asked Chat, how many promises? are in the Bible.
And uh it told me that there are between six between seven and eight thousand promises. that God gives us in His Word. And there's a more specific number that I found. And there was a man who came up with this number, and he said there were around 7,487 promises In God's Word. That was a Canadian school teacher named Everett Storms.
And he spent years cataloging those promises and writing those promises down and searching those. Out, and it's important for us to understand before we talk about some of the promises. that not every promise is for every person. And not every promise is for every time period. There are specific promises to different nations such as Israel.
There are specific promises to individuals such as David and Abraham. There's specific individ or specific promises just to believers. And then there's promises for everybody. But here's the important thing that we realize: out of all those thousands of promises, no matter if they are specific to a nation or a person, God has never broken a single promise. And we can praise God all night just for that fact: is that if he made a promise, he's going to keep it.
And so, Pastor asked me if I would share eight or ten promises. And for sake of time, you know how hard it is for somebody who likes to get up here and talk, how hard it is for you to give a promise and then not expound on that promise.
So, I'm just going to give you the promise, read you the verse, and I'm going to sit down.
So, here are ten promises that God gives us in His Word. Number one, the promise of salvation. John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Here's the promise: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Number two.
The promise of forgiveness of sins. 1 John chapter 1, verse 9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Promise number three, the promise of eternal life and eternal security. John chapter 10 verse 28.
And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. Number four, the promise of peace, Isaiah 26, verse number 3. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace. Whose mind is stayed on thee. Because he trusteth in thee.
Number five is the promise of his presence. Hebrews 13, verse number 5: Let your conversation be without covetousness. and be content with such things as ye have. For he had said, I will never leave thee. nor forsake thee.
Number six is the promise of strength, and there are several other promises in this verse, too. Isaiah 41:10, I love this verse. Fear thou not. for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God.
I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Number seven, the promise of victory over sin. 1 Corinthians 10, 13. There hath no temptation taken you. but such as is common to man.
But God is faithful. Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it. Romans chapter 6, verse 14. For sin shall not have dominion over you. For ye are not under the law, thank God, but under grace.
Number eight, the promise of rest. Matthew chapter 11, verse 28. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. And I will give you rest. Number nine, the promise that he hears us and the promise that he responds to us.
Jeremiah 33, 3. Call unto me, and I will answer thee. and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not. And then number 10. How do you pick just 10, but this is the tenth one.
The promise of heaven. John chapter 14, verse 2. In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. Here's the promise: I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, There you may be also. Second Corinthians five one. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal. in the heavens. Revelation 21 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. You know, we mentioned ten things. We could literally talk about thousands of those things. And so, whether you take this time here in just a moment and pray for these specific promises.
Each and every one of us have specific promises that are special to us because God gave them to us from His Word in moments that we needed to hear it. And so I would encourage you, just take the next couple minutes, praise God for some of these promises, for those that are special to you, and then also praise Him for being faithful to every single one. of those promises.
So let's pray here for just a moment. Thank you for listening today. We hope you received a blessing from our broadcast. The Kerwin Baptist Church is located at 4520 Old Hollow Road in Kernersville, North Carolina. You may also contact us by phone at 336-993-5192 or via the web.
at Kerwin Baptist Church.com. Enjoy our services live and all our media on our website and church app. Thank you for listening to the Kerwin Broadcast today. God bless you.
