*Title:* It Is NOT In Heaven — Pastor Kyle Baldwin, January 31, 2026

In a world where it is getting harder to tell what is real — leaders who have let us down, news that may be fabricated, videos that are not even real — Pastor Kyle Baldwin opens this sermon with a simple question: who are we to believe? Many people, he says, have quietly given up the search for truth, intimidated by the effort they think it will take. But God still speaks, and His Word was never meant to be out of reach. Moses told Israel that God's commandment “is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:11–12) — it was given to be heard, understood, and kept, not locked away where only experts could touch it.

To show what happens when that truth is forgotten, Pastor Baldwin retells a startling story from the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbi Eleazar, debating a fine point of the law, calls on miracles to prove his case: trees uproot, a river flows backward, the walls of the academy begin to cave in, and finally a voice from heaven itself declares that the law agrees with him. Each time, the other rabbis answer the same way: we do not listen to trees, to rivers, to walls — or to heaven. Their reading of Deuteronomy 30:12 had become proof that once the law was given, God had no further say in it. The sermon traces the same pattern through prophecy — the man of sin who exalts himself above God (2 Thessalonians 2:3–4), the horn that thinks to change times and laws (Daniel 7:25) — and names the principle plainly: whenever anyone places their own words above the Word of God, they are putting themselves in the place of God.

The answer, Pastor Baldwin says, is not a louder human authority but a nearer God. No prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20–21); the Holy Spirit guides into all truth (John 16:13), and the Bible was written so that ordinary people can understand everything that pertains to salvation. Quoting Ellen White, he urges every listener to take up the Bible and search its pages for themselves rather than depending on a minister — or any teacher claiming preeminence — to read it for them. The sermon closes where it began, with a choice: the law of God is not above our heads; it has been given to our hearts. What is God asking you to do, and are you choosing to be obedient to what you already know?

*Key texts:* Deuteronomy 30:11–14; John 7:17; John 16:13; 2 Peter 1:20–21; Acts 5:29; 2 Thessalonians 2:3–4; Daniel 7:25; Revelation 13:5–6

*Watch:* https://youtu.be/bJVNPdRoJpo · *Listen:* https://cloud-1de12d.becdn.net/media/original/9ed79a3c3e7423defed1ad41512d3502.mp3