Good morning and welcome. We're
going to be launching from Acts the 17th chapter this morning. And as you recall in our message
last week, we've got to start here because this is where our
pastor was and it's interesting that Paul had intended to go
to Spain too. Norman and Nancy's plan is to
end up in Barcelona and then fly home with Paul in the 15th
chapter of Acts. It was his desire to go to Spain
as well, but I don't think he made it. So anyway, in our previous message,
in Acts 17 verse 1, they pass through Amphipolis and Apollonia
and came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews.
And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them in three Sabbath
days, reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, opening and
alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again
from the dead. and that this Jesus whom I preached
unto you is Christ. And then we went on through that,
and some of them believed, and the Jews kind of put up an uproar
there and ran him out of town. They kind of scuttled him out
of there and took him to Berea, which was, in our previous message,
it was about 50 miles to the west of Thessalonica. And he spent some time there,
three Sabbath days I think he was in Thessalonica. And then
he went to Berea. And as our message title last
week was, and as part two today is, Elements of the Gospel. And here we have just a brief
sentence where He says he went to the synagogue and reasoned
with them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ
must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead and
that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ. Well, you
know, he just did the same thing that Philip did when he went
down to the Ethiopian eunuch and the Ethiopian eunuch was
reading from Isaiah and Philip started at the same scripture
and preached unto him Christ. And as was the custom in the
synagogues, they would select a person and he would stand up
and he would take a roll and he would read a passage or a
block of scripture from one of the rolls and then I'm sure Paul
did the same thing there. He probably went to that scripture
and said, this is talking about the Savior. This is talking about
Christ. So this one brief sentence can't
really tell us all of the gospel that he preached there, but he
was there three weeks, so he must have said more than one
brief sentence. But we do know from the other
scriptures, for example in in 1 Corinthians 4, verse 17, he
said, For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my
beloved son, faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you to
remembrance of my ways, which be in Christ, as I teach everywhere
in every church. So he didn't have a different
message for the different places that he went. He had the same
message of the same Gospel no matter where he went. You know,
it's interesting about Thessalonica. We had that one brief sentence
there that he opened and alleged that Christ must need suffer
and be raised again from the dead. And that's really all it
says about it. But then we have this nice letter
to the Thessalonians, two letters actually to them where he says,
Knowing brethren beloved. He calls them beloved. your election
of God, for our gospel came not unto you in word only." When
he was there, the gospel he preached to them, went to them not in
word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost. And in
much assurance, as you know, what manner of men we were among
you. And so we have that record that the word of God took hold
there and their people believed. So we can look there and we can
look in other places, other letters that Paul wrote, Ephesians, all
the epistles that he wrote, a pretty complete record of the gospel
that he declared no matter where he went. And so in our text today
from verse 3, opening and alleging that Christ's must needs have
suffered, and Mike touched on that just a little bit during
the Bible class about it was necessary that He suffer. And
you know, that's kind of a crucial part of the elements of the Gospel.
And He must needs have suffered. And that would have been clearly
understood to mean, in the parlance of the Greek of the time, that
he was bound. It was an obligation. It was
a Christ must need suffering. It was a binding by necessity
and a binding by oath. in the covenant of grace, that
He accomplished that. So when He says that Christ must
needs have suffered, it was a powerful statement there about what His
part of the covenant of grace there. He must suffer as a substitute
for the children of God that God the Father gave Him in the
covenant of grace. And if He didn't suffer, then
they must pay the penalty for their sins
themselves. And the good news is, the gospel
that we preach is that the Son of God agreed to joyfully accomplish
that part of the covenant of grace. It says for the joy that
was set before Him, He endured the cross and despised the shame
and satisfied God and is set down at the right hand of the
throne of God. And you know our previous message
we cited a little bit from Daniel chapter 9 in verse 26 which prophecy
this is Messiah shall be cut off but not for himself. Cut off but not for himself.
The term cut off It's another powerful phrase that we find
in the scripture, and it has its roots in covenants. language of the time, it was
keroth, and it means to cut off, cut down, or asunder, to destroy
or consume, specifically to covenant. And we find that in the Old Testament,
and it was to make an alliance or a bargain originally by cutting
flesh and passing between the pieces. That's what it tells
us in Strong's Concordance. So they would take an animal,
cleave it in half, and they would lay the two pieces on it, and
they would pass between the two pieces, And that solemnized their
oath, their covenant. And in Genesis 15, we have a record
of that. If you want to turn over to Genesis
15 regarding Abraham, After these things, the word
of the Lord came to Abraham there in verse 1 of chapter 15, in
a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram. I am thy shield and thy great
exceeding reward. And Abram said, Lord God, what
wilt thou give me? Saying, I go childless, and the
steward of my house is this Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said,
Behold, to me thou hast given no seed. And lo, one born in
my house is mine heir. And behold, the word of the Lord
came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir, but he that
shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.
And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven,
and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them. And he said
unto them, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord,
and he counted it to him for righteousness. And he said unto
him, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees
to give thee this land to inherit it. And he said, Lord God, whereby
shall I know that I shall inherit it? And he said unto him, take
me an heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years
old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle dove, and a
young pigeon. And he took unto him all these things, and divided
them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another. But
the birds he divided not. And when the fowls came down
upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away. And when the sun was
going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and lo, a horror
of great darkness fell upon him. And he said unto Abram, Know
of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that
is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict
them four hundred years. And also that nation whom they
shall serve will I judge, and afterwards they shall come out
with great substance, and thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace,
and thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation
they shall come hither again, for the iniquity of the Amorites
is not yet full. And it came to pass that when
the sun went down and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace
and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. And in
the same day the Lord made covenant with Abram, saying, unto this
seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt unto the great
river, the river Euphrates. So this covenant, this cutting
off, this cutting asunder has to do with a covenant term. In Jeremiah, chapter 34, verse
18, I'll read this for you real quick. And I'll give the men
that transgressed my covenant, which have not performed the
words of the covenant which they made before me, when they cut
the calf in twain. So they made a covenant, they
cut the calf in twain, and then they didn't keep their word.
They broke the covenant. So it was meaningless. And I
will give the men that have transgressed my covenant, which have not performed
the words of the covenant, which they made before me when they
cut in half the calf and passed between the parts thereof. So
this cutting off, it's a significant term that we find. And we find
that Messiah was to be cut off, to be cut asunder. And so there's
an element there where it alludes to the cutting off of the Son
by the Father in that awful but glorious time on the cross where
He was suspended between heaven and earth. And He said, Lord,
why has thou forsaken me? Why has thou left me?" And this
dividing that he took in our place. And you know, as far as
the covenant goes in Hebrews 6, verse 13 says, when God made
this promise to Abraham, Because he could swear by no
greater, he swore by himself. And you can read that in Hebrews
6, verse 13-20, but we'll not take time to do that right now. The primary element that we want
to look at here in the gospel regarding these elements of the
gospel is the components of it and as we alluded to earlier,
this primary element here regards sin and the fall of Adam and
regarding how the Messiah must be cut off but not for himself. He's coming as a substitute as
was brought out in the Bible class this morning. to take the
place of the penalty for the price of the children that God
gave Him in the covenant of grace that we find, behold I and the
children whom God hath given me there in Isaiah 8 to 18, I
believe it is, and then again in John chapter 17 and so forth. So, as we look at this, we have
to take a look at these elements of the gospel and realize that
the very first thing that we run into is the eternal electing
love of God, whereby He loved a people, and that before they
were born, before they did any good or evil, as it tells us
there in Malachi and in Romans, that the purpose of God according
to election might stand. And these children, were affected
by the fall. And as in Adam, we all by heredity
became by nature choice a sinner ruined by the fall. When Adam
sinned, he was changed. I think that we don't really
pay enough attention to that. When Adam was created, God said,
let us make him in our image. And what does the scripture say
about God? God is quite different than what we might imagine. God
is light and has no darkness. And here's Adam that has this
relationship. with God. And when we look at
the people that have had contact with God, they're glowing, they're
shining, they have this light. Remember when Moses came down
from the mountain, he had to put a veil over his face because
his face shone. I think he had kind of absorbed
some of the, by osmosis, so to speak, kind of absorbed some
of that glory of God. And so when Adam sinned, that
all vanished. And he says, I'm naked. So something
transpired there in this fall in the sin that changed him in
a significant way. And he could only pass on the
very thing that he was from that point on, which he was a sinner. And so all his progeny from that
point on became, by their nature, sinners. And so we have that
that issue that we're faced with. But you know, we just don't really
realize that until the Spirit wakens us and causes us to understand
that. So, as Adam died spiritually
in the garden, that nature was passed on to all the seed. Romans
records that from Psalms. As Paul wrote in Romans 3, there's
none righteous. Not a single one. No, not one. Psalm 14, for all of sin. Every
single one is a sinner and comes short of the glory of God. And
that particular scripture comes from Ecclesiastes chapter seven. So he's just going through there
and picking the Old Testament scriptures that make that point. And the devastating consequences
of sin really can't be overstated. and how it relates to God. Sin and Him are just totally
opposite. And sin cannot be in His presence. So there's a problem there. How
can He be just and the justifier? Well, that's the good news of
the Gospel. And since every person in the
world is in fact a sinner by nature, birth, and practice,
no matter how moral they might be, the natural man can't accomplish
righteousness. As I think Bill Parker said,
they can't resurrect themselves. They're dead in sins and trespasses. And so the good news of the elements
of the gospel is that God The Father provided a substitute,
the Lord Jesus Christ, someone that could go and substitute
himself in our place. pay the penalty for our sins.
God committed his love toward us in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us. That's what it tells us in Romans
5, 8. And he loved us in spite of our sin. I think there's even
a hymn called that. He loved me in spite of my sin.
And I think there is a famous quote from a woman that said,
He must have loved me in eternity because after I was born, there
was surely nothing to love in me then. And I think we all could
say that, or to some degree. But He loved us before we were
born and had done any good or evil that the purpose of God
according to election might stand. And you know, the most wonderful
part of the elements of the gospel that we find is what God requires,
He always supplies. He requires a sacrifice. He requires something to take
the penalty for the sins of all the people that He gave His Son. And we find that He did that.
And we have a metaphor of that. We have a picture of that in
Genesis 22, verse 8, where Isaac and Abraham have gone up on the
mountain. to do the sacrifice of his son,
a picture of what the father was doing. And the son said,
well, here's the wood and here's the altar, where's the lamb? And Abraham said in verse eight
of chapter 22, my son, God will provide himself a lamb for a
burnt offering. So they went both of them together.
That's a very interesting phrase there. He will provide himself. which he did. And then he said
he will provide himself a lamb, which was the picture, the metaphor
that we find all the way from the beginning all the way through
the end, from Genesis to Revelation. We have the lamb slain from before
the foundation of the world, as mentioned in Revelation 13,
8. And in 1 Peter chapter 1, it
says, for as much as you know, you were not redeemed with corruptible
things. Your penalty wasn't paid by,
you couldn't just go throw money at it or some corruptible thing. silver and gold from your vain
or useless conversation or manner of life, your religious life,
received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious
blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,
who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world,
but was manifest in these last times for you." But we always
find that God is not taken by surprise. We have a kind of a
misunderstanding of God when we try to assign to Him attributes
of man and not recognize that He says, I am that I am. Before Abraham was, I am. And
His nature is, is eternal in that aspect, and so he's in all
time, all places, all things, and nothing is out of his reach
or control. And so we have this enmity that
we're born with against God because of the fall, that the scripture's
pretty plain about. We, like Adam, try to substitute
our own righteousness, and we have a wrong concept of God there
about what satisfies him. As Adam tried to sow fig leaves
together to cover his nakedness and take care of his problem,
it wouldn't do. And then that went on down to
the next generation where they had the Cain and Abel, where
one brought the work of his own hands and the other a firstling
of the flock. And to the one, the one was a
picture of the lamb slain from before the foundation of the
world. And the other was a picture of the work of man's hands bringing
what he thought would be I worked hard for this, and I don't doubt
having worked a garden. It's back-breaking work and hard
work. He said you'll have to contend
with thorns and thistles and rocks and all these things. Hard work to produce a crop.
He worked hard probably for that. I've worked hard. This should
work. In my opinion, in my thinking,
this should satisfy God. But it doesn't. He doesn't pay the penalty that
God required. The wages of sin is death. And
so it was unsatisfactory. And so we have this, by birth,
we have this enmity toward God. We have a hatred toward God in
His natural right view and aspect. And we're always trying to convert
Him into something that we think is more malleable or more applicable
to our life. As Paul went down into Athens,
and remember in our last lesson about the Acropolis, it's called
the Acropolis, the highest place. And on top of the highest place,
they had a temple dedicated to a fake god that addressed a need
that they felt that they had. And I'll bet Paul says, I can't hardly wait to get down
there and tell them about the Most High God that actually can
do something, that actually does something, that actually saves
His people, that actually is a solution to this problem of
sin and not this fake man-made structure. He says He doesn't
live in things made by hands and temples and like that, but we think that we can create
a situation, we can create a God that relates to us in our natural
sense. And so we have this enmity against
Him. But in Ephesians 2, verse 12, it says, At the time you
were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,
not national Israel, but the spiritual Israel, strangers from
the covenants of promise, having no hope, without God in the world,
That's a pretty dismal view of how we are by nature. He says,
but now in Christ Jesus, you who are sometimes far off, as far off as the east is from
the west, you who are sometimes far off
are made nigh by the blood of Christ, for He is our peace,
who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of
partition between us, having abolished in His flesh that enmity,
even the law of commandments contained in the ordinances,
those ones that we could never keep." I always think about when
we go back and Norm's been preaching through Leviticus and Numbers
and all those laws and sacrifice and all those things, I would
just, if I'd have been in Israel, Israelite, I would have just
said, God, just shoot me now. Get it over with. I can't keep
all that. And that was the purpose of it,
was the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, for us
to say, we can't do this. We can't do it by ourself. We
need a substitute that can keep all this for us. And so He abolished
in His flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained
in ordinances, for to make in Himself of twain one new man,
so making peace, and that He might reconcile both unto God
by one body, by the cross, having slain the enmity." Boy, that's
a final final way to get rid of that problem through Christ.
He's slain the enmity by his blood on the cross. So the satisfaction
of this covenant by Christ for the children God gave him was
demonstrated in the resurrection, which is another element of our
gospel that we bring out each time. And Mike was referencing
from Isaiah 53 this morning in the Bible class. But in 53.10
and 11, it pleased the Lord to bruise him. The Messiah must
suffer. yet put him to grief. When thou
shalt make his soul an offering for sin, the perfect offering
that we talked about, that lamb slain from before the foundation
of the world, the lamb without spot, without blemish, he shall
be cut off, but not for himself. He shall see his seed, he shall
prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in
his hands. He shall see the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied."
God saw that sacrifice and said, that satisfies my requirement. And that's why in Romans 8, it
says, there's no condemnation to them who are in Christ. So
he bared the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. So we've seen in these gospel
elements, including electing love in eternity by the Father,
the basic nature of sin from the fall, the good news of the
one who was the substitute for the children of God, that they're
called the believing ones here as recorded in Scripture. And
it's usually, as we look at that in John, this is a passage that's
used quite a bit in a universalistic sense that Christ died for everybody
in the world regardless. And it's up to them to decide
whether or not they want to accept that. But when we look at the
words in these scriptures in John chapter 3, it's quite clear
that that's not the intent. And so if you want to turn over
there to John chapter 3, we'll look at that. But it's verses
that's usually presented in religion as a universalistic application
based on, and it's designed to create a reaction in the hearer
or the reader, and believing then sort of almost becomes a
meritorious condition as opposed to the description of the person
being spoken of here. So let's look at this in John
chapter 3, and it's a very interesting set of verses. In John 3, verse
14, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up."
Now that word must again takes us back to that requirement,
that oath covenant, that oath necessity. He must be lifted
up because it was foreordained. As Mike read from Acts 2.23,
you have by wicked hands have taken and crucified and slain,
lifted up. And that's what the purpose of
that in the wilderness coming out of Egypt He lifted up that
pole with a brazen serpent on it. Well, even so, as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up. And the emphasis here, and this
is where people get off, is they take it from off of Christ and
put it on man. But the emphasis here is really
on Christ and what He did. The Son of Man must be lifted
up. He must suffer. He must need suffer in the place
of the elect. And then the next verse says
that, or in order, in the King James Version, which
was written by the Episcopalian translators for the Church of
England out of the Catholic Church at the time, whosoever believeth. But in the Greek, the rendering
is everyone believing. And again, we need to keep our
focus on who is the main thing here, and that is Christ. In
order that everyone believing, which is really an existing condition
and not a proposition, everyone believing should not perish. but have eternal life. And that
is what it's talking about then. It truly is in respect to what
Christ did and not for the purpose of what a person might do. Believing
versus one who will or might believe. And it's in the Greek
interlinear, the understanding is that in order that all those
to have faith And the next part is really interesting. Less,
not less to destroy fully other things. And the definition there
is the intent of preventing something undesirable and to avoid the
risk of. Christ must be lifted up so that
the children that God gave him from eternity might not, should
not perish, but have everlasting life. And so the focus turns
from putting it on man to what Christ actually did for us. And so this, the term believeth
here is all the, to have faith in, in the Greek expresses one
who is absolutely persuaded. It's a condition that they already
have. one who has faith and has an
expectation resulting from that faith or persuasion, and it's
not really a condition of merit as sometimes is led on. Now, we'll look at the next verse
in 16. Whosoever believeth, and again
that's that same term everyone believing, which is that existing
condition, should not, and that is an absolute denial of is what
it indicates. It's not should, like we think
of a, well, you shouldn't do that. It's that they absolutely
will not perish, but have everlasting life. In a universalistic application,
should not becomes a conditional verb that's linked to believing,
and it's not a product of what God did in giving his son a ransom,
because it was an absolute, fact, an absolute performance there
by God the Father and God the Son. And so in the Greek it gives
us a different perspective of what was related to compared
to how it's used in today's religion. Remember when we looked at Luke
12, 28 about, O ye of little faith, you should have more faith. But he says, you know what? You
have little faith, but it doesn't depend on how much faith you
have. I'm going to clothe you better than Solomon. I'm going
to clothe you better than those lilies in the field or those
flowers in the field. I've taken care of all that.
And it doesn't matter, it doesn't depend on the quantity or quality
of the faith you have. Because he calls them, you little
face. And then he calls them later,
he says, you little flock. The littles are two different
words. The first one means puny. We're puny in faith. He said,
if you had faith like a mustard seed, you could move mountains.
But in our structures that we have now and our capabilities,
we just lack there. He says, you're puny. I'm not. God says, I'm not puny. It's
your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. And it doesn't require you to
muster up more or a higher quality of faith. He takes that from
us and says, I've taken care of that. And whatever we do have,
it's because he's given it to us. Total reliance on Christ
for salvation, for everything. As in that section here where
we saw in the King James Version, it was posed as a question. In
Greek, it's a sentence that ends in a period that just states
a fact. It requires us to pay attention
to the context, to frame things in Scripture as we did there
in Luke chapter 12 and again here in John chapter 3, because
much of Scripture has been translated and preached with a bent toward
inducing some kind of action or movement or to produce a desired
reaction. And deep down, because of the
fall, they have the idea that God's really not that successful
and we need to kind of help Him along a little bit. And here's
how we can do that. We can just kind of put the emphasis
on man and what man can do. I think it was called Finnyism
back in the 1800s, where he said, you know, there's just nothing
to keep people from getting saved than just get up out of that
chair and march down here and repeat after me. And he converted
thousands that way. Just a string of error there.
So when we understand that some of this, what we have, you know,
as we go through our Bible studies, we look at several translations. Mostly I rely on my Greek interlinear
to get the kind of the best understanding of what's being brought forth.
Some of the translations were clearly bent with some obedience and to sacraments
and ordinances that play a hint that they play a role in salvation,
which they really don't. So we've looked at then at the
nature of sin and man, the covenant of grace, where a substitute
was provided before the foundation of the world and In time, we had the fulfillment
of the payment of the redemption price by the Savior. And today,
and Mike touched on this briefly in the Bible class, looking at
how this great salvation is accomplished, because clearly, If what we've
been saying is the correct view, we're dead in trespasses and
sins. We haven't got any ability. And that's what it says in John,
no man can, no man has the ability to come to me except the Father
which sent me draw him. And at the same time, whosoever
will, let him come and drink of the water of life freely.
You know, one of the Scriptures that Mike was just about to read
today said, you won't come. Whosoever will can come, but
we won't, unaided by the Spirit. And so we find that it's so necessary
that the Spirit of God do His part. As Paul said in Thessalonica,
the Gospel has to come to you in power and in the Holy Spirit.
And He has to apply it. And at that time, when He draws
us with the Gospel, when He calls us with the Gospel, if that's
what's happening, it's because He's been working. It's because
He's doing His job. And He's not going to let one
of the Lord's elect go by but they're going to be called at
the time that He has before determined. And we can't rush that. We can't
delay it, but we can't rush it. It has to be in His terms and
His time. And since the one that's dead
has no right understanding of sin and the righteousness of
God Almighty, how could he feel compelled to call on Christ for
salvation for something that he doesn't really believe that
he's guilty of. So what we found in the Old Testament
was when I give you a new heart, when I clean you, when I wash
you, then you're going to look at yourselves and your evil doings,
and then you're going to loathe yourself. And at that same time,
he says, the good news is your sins have been paid for double.
The good news is that God sent a substitute to take care of
that. So it's not a linear process, maybe as much as some of the
religious people would like. They say, well, first you have
to read the gospel. Then you have to be convicted.
Then you have to be miserable for like X number of days or
weeks or months. And then when you pray hard enough
and when you do this and this and this and this, then God will
take pity on you and save you. But it's kind of not not that
kind of a linear process. So you can't be aware of your sin
nature and the need for a Savior until you're like Lazarus and
you're woken up from that debt. He couldn't wake himself up.
So one must be made alive for all that to occur. to believe
or be conscious of the nature of sin and the righteousness
of God and the need for a Savior. So, in John 3 again, we go back
to that. He said, Verily, verily, of a
truth I say unto you, except a man be born again. And that
means procreated from above. If you look that up in the Greek,
that's what it says, procreated from above. Born again. And of course, Nicodemus, he
applied the physical aspect of it. Well, I can't,
how can that be? I can't go back into my mother's womb and come
out again. That can't be. But it's talking about something
much different. You must be born from above. You must be procreated
from above. And unless that happens, you
can't see the kingdom of God. much less be repentant or be
sorry for your sins or even take refuge in a Savior. So, except
a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And except
a man be born of water and the Spirit, he can't enter into the
kingdom of God. And we learned from our previous
lesson that the kingdom of God is in the person of Jesus Christ,
so we can't be in Him We can't be in Christ except we be born
again from above. And that being born again is
also known as being quickened. Made alive is what that means.
John 6.63 says it's the spirit that quickeneth. That's His job. That's His purview. The flesh
profiteth nothing. You can't do it by yourself.
You can't produce that out of your own flesh. It can't be done. It's the spirit that quickeneth,
the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit and they are life. And so it's the operation
of that Holy Spirit to to track down every one of the Lord's
people as to where He knows where they're at. And He knows I'm
supposed to be at this place at this time to intersect this
person with the Gospel. And maybe that person got put
on a ship and went from Rome to Spain before he got to a place
where the Spirit intersected him with the Gospel. and was caused to believe. So
He's in charge of all of that. It's His job to intersect the
children of God with the Gospel. It's the Son's job to redeem
them, which He has done on the cross. And it's our job to tell
people the Gospel, the good news of that substitute. And the Spirit
causes them to be quickened to be made alive and to believe
it. We believe according to the working of His mighty power,
which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead.
So we don't even come up with that believing part on our own.
We just can't. So, whosoever shall call upon
the name of the Lord shall be saved. Well, how shall they call
on Him in whom they've not believed? that whosoever shall call upon
the name of the Lord." He says, I've been here and you won't
call on me. There's none that seeketh God. So again, it takes that Spirit
of God to work that out for us. How shall they believe on him
whom they've not heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? One, to bring them the good news
of the gospel. One, to tell them that the substitute
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. I like this one, and we'll close
here, from Romans 10 in verse 20 where he quotes, he says,
Isaiah says, he's very bold and saith, I was found of them that
sought me not. I was manifested unto them that
ask not after me." Isn't that an enlightening verse and gives
us cause to praise the Lord for tracking us down and causing
us to believe in the gospel, to believe in His Son, when of
our own nature dead and trespassed in sins, we wouldn't. Thy people
shall be made willing in the day of thy power. So we'll stop
there. Thank you for your attention.
Lord willing, our pastor will be back next Sunday. I'll be back in Bible class.