Good morning and welcome to our second service on Sunday morning. We have two, the first of which is our Bible prophecy update that we do weekly, and then this service, our second service, is the sermon, and it's a verse by verse study. We're currently in the book of Hebrews. We'll invite you online at this time to join with us in chapter 12. For those of you here, if I could ask you to stand,

you can follow along as I read. If not where you're seated is fine. We left off last week

in verse 17. We'll pick it up today, verse 18. Lord willing make it through to verse 24.

The writer of Hebrews by the Holy Spirit writes, beginning of verse 18,

you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire to darkness,

gloom and storm, to a trumpet blast, or to such a voice speaking words

that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded, even if an animal

touches the mountain. It must be stoned to death. The sight was, verse 21, so terrifying

that Moses said, I am trembling with fear. But you have come to Mount Zion,

to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly,

to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God,

the judge of all to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,

to Jesus, verse 24, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkle blood that speaks to a better word than the blood of Abel.

That's pretty self-explanatory. We can just close in prayer. I think we all understand.

Let's pray if you would join with me, please. Father in heaven, we have admittedly before us a passage of scripture that requires the

Holy Spirit be our teacher and our guide this morning. Because unless you give us eyes to see and teach

us and show to us that which you desire to minister to us, we're going to miss it.

And our time together today and your word is going to be a waste of time.

I don't think there's anybody here that wants that to happen.

We also need the Holy Spirit to settle our hearts and as only you can, Lord,

enable us to give you our undivided attention so that our minds don't wander and get distracted.

We start thinking about something else. And in so doing, we again,

...