Now I can't begin to tell you,
I'm always, I love to thank people for what they've done for me.
But I always feel that my gratitude is inadequate to really express
how thankful I am. But this church, this congregation,
this body of believers here in Ashland, Kentucky, hold a very
special place in my heart. I think of you all the time.
I think of the times we had together over the years. The joy and the
laughter, the humor and the gospel of God's grace that we've all
rejoiced in. And I thank you. That's about
as good as I can do. But I thank you for your kindness
and love and support these many years. that I've been there in
Cherokee 44 years. We was all just babies back then,
wasn't we? I remember we used to go to these conferences. I'll
tell you a story. One time, Brother Mahan got to
Scott Richardson's before I got there. And he was staying at the Red
Roof Inn, and I was too, and he was staying in room number
201. And they had booked me in room number 101, right beneath
him. And I pulled in and he was standing
on the balcony waiting for me. He knew I was coming. And I pulled in and got out of
my car and he says, well, Tim James. He says, you're living
in 101. Finally, I'm living above seeing. And I looked at him, smiled,
and said, and finally, I'm living beneath contempt. We got some story. Matthew chapter 11. Our Lord said in verse 28, come
unto me, all you that labor. and they're heavy laden and I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn
of me where I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest
for your soul. My yoke is easy and my burden
is light. Now there can be no doubt that
the words of our Lord are some of the sweetest words that he
spoke concerning the heart of mercy for his laboring and heavy
laden sheep. It is at once a very gentle call
and it's also a very distinctive doctrinal truth. Seen in its
context, it declares the definitive work of the gospel preached and
the sure result of that preaching. There's a reason why those who
preach the gospel don't have a church altar. They don't give
an invitation. There's a reason for that. Because those who know the gospel
know that the gospel always does its business. It always works. Always does what God has intended
to do and never returns unto God void. but accomplishes where
he sends it and accomplishes the purpose as he's attached
to it. I don't know if you know God
or not. I hope you do. I hope you can relate to what's
being spoken of here this morning. But I can tell you this, that
when you leave here today, when you walk through those doors
and go your separate ways, you'll not leave the same you came in.
Because you have been confronted with the singular power in this
universe. The power of God unto salvation. And that is the gospel of Jesus
Christ. And I want to be as clear as I can this morning. So if
you don't believe, you'll leave this building knowing what you
don't believe. I don't want you to be misunderstood.
I don't want to cause you to misunderstand me. The Lord and John the Baptist
faithfully carried the truth here to the Jewish population. And their response has been a
typical religion response to the preacher. They despised John's
message and blamed their hatred for his unwillingness to engage
them socially. John was a fellow who came out
of the wilderness wearing camel hair and eating wild locusts
and said what he had to say and turned around and walked back.
Didn't go to their house, didn't go on visitation, didn't spend
time with them. And they said, well, he just
ain't nothing to him. He's just a mean old fellow. He don't want
anything to do with us. and they despised Christ's message
and blamed their hatred for His willingness to engage with Him.
They just can't win. He ate with them and drank with
them, spent time with them, and they said, He's a winebibber.
He's drunk. He's a sot. He's got the devil. Religion's
never satisfied with the truth. The end result of that vehement
hatred for the truth was that the Lord stood and called for
those whose heart was heavy laden and labored to come to Him. And after that, after He had
summarily dismissed these other folks, He dismissed them out
of hand. Our Lord did that sometimes.
One time the disciples were standing there and our Lord was eating
with publicans and sinners. And the Pharisees came up and
said, don't you know, don't your master know what kind of people
he's hanging around with? Don't you know? And our Lord
heard them. And he says, fellas, upright
full of rectitude, fine, upstanding religious folk, I didn't come
for you. I came not to call the righteous,
but to bring sinners to repentance. And after these Jews had rejected
both John and him, He said, anybody out there labored and heavy laden
with sin, come unto me and you will find rest. Often it has
been said that this call to come is to everyone, but it is not.
It is specific to those who are heavy laden and laboring under
sin. And if you take it within the context, the sin that is
labor intensive here that weighs heavenly upon these folks is
the hard and judgmental sin of religion without Christ. And
there's nothing worse than religion without Christ. Legalistic, hard,
cold, exacting religion without Christ. My brother-in-law, who's
now gone on to glory, We were teenage buddies. He always
had a nice car. Had a GTO. And I rode around
with him because he had a nice car. Later, I married his sister, which his mother never forgave
me for. But nonetheless, he had a problem drinking and
drugs. So after he got out of Vietnam,
he come home and he started drinking pretty heavy. He was an expert
roofer. I couldn't hand the roofing to
him fast enough. He could nail it, and he never
used a gun. He could flip those nails and run those beautiful
scenes, beautiful valleys, an expert. He lost two businesses
because of drink. I asked him one time, why do
you drink? He says, "'Cause just for those
few moments I forget all my troubles." But he used to go to church to
try to get right. Because he was raised like we was all raised
in a Baptist church. We was all on the cradle roll. And he'd go to church and all
they did was guilt him. Never gave him no peace, no hope.
Never gave him any where to look for hope. Just preached against
drinking and smoking and going to the movie show and messing
around with folks who do. And he always went away worse
than he came. We were sitting at a restaurant one day in Waynesville,
North Carolina, a little restaurant called Antipasto. It was me and
Wayne Robinson, Henry Mahan, myself, and a couple other men
were standing there. Larry was with me. He wasn't
drinking at the time. He was living with me. And he was sitting there and
he had a strange look on his face. And he reached over and whispered
in my ear, he says, you people are so free. He said, I've never experienced
that in religion. You people are so free. You laugh. You enjoy each other's company.
You joke. You're free. All religion did
was bind him. The Lord said, take my yoke upon
you. You'll find rest to your soul. You'll find freedom. You'll become the Lord's free
man. Thankfully, Larry heard the gospel. The Lord saved him.
He met a fine woman, married her, moved up here in Kentucky,
out in Madisonville. Died a couple years ago. But he knew Christ. And I'll
never forget that. That's what the children of God
are. They are not bound by anything. save their love for Jesus Christ.
They're free men. That's why a preacher can stand
and look out at his congregation if he's preached the gospel of
God's grace and say, love Christ and do as you please. Because if the gospel ever gets
to you, if it ever gets to you, I don't worry about you at all.
I ain't gotta tell you how to live. I ain't gonna tell you
what to do. All I can tell you is about the
King we just sung about. The King, the glory of the Lamb
in Emmanuel's land. Those to whom this call is made
are those who are described as distinctively opposite of those
who practice hard and judgmental religion. Verse 18 and 19 it
says, For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he
hath a devil. And the Son of Man came eating and drinking,
and they say, Behold, a gluttonous and a wine-bibber, a friend of
publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified in our
children. Those to whom this call is made
are different. These are the children that wisdom
justifies. And we know what their wisdom
is. It's Jesus Christ. God has made Him to be wisdom
to His people. These are children to whom the
call is made. And the promise to those who come is rest from
weariness and laborious, useless religion. And that rest is for
their souls. Our Lord calls, come unto me. What does it mean to come to
Christ? The word come is in the imperative form and means come
hither, come now. And being in the imperative is
the same as a command, come, come here. your labor, and your
heavy laden. How can we come to him? He's
in the heavens, enthroned in glory as Lord over all. Men cannot
physically come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul explained that as
good as could be explained by a human being, even though he
was inspired. In Romans chapter 10, he said this, Jesus, but the righteousness
which is of faith speaketh on this wise, say not in thine heart,
who shall ascend to heaven? That is to bring Christ down
from above, or you got to go somewhere to get him. That's
what he's saying. Or who shall descend to the deep?
That is to bring Christ up again. Something you got to do. Don't
say that. Don't say that. But what sayeth faith? The word
is nigh thee. Even in thy mouth and in thy
heart, that is the word of faith which we preach, if thou shalt
confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt
believe in thy heart that God has raised him from the dead,
thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth
under righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made
unto salvation. Don't sound like he's doing anything
but something going on in his head and his heart. That's where
it happens. Come is a verb, a word that asserts
action, yet men cannot physically act to that end. Now religion
has invented ways that men can physically act, a way to be seen
of men, for things to be recorded, a way to record their action
in response to the word come. They can walk down an aisle,
come down to the front. Sylvester Crowe Some of you know
him. He's a character. Been with me
since the beginning. He says, how come they say come
down front? He said, don't they come in the front of the church?
He said, isn't this the back of the church? What do they say
there? But they figured it out. They say come down front. They
come down to a church altar because they've been convinced that this
is synonymous with coming to Christ. I believed it for a long
time. And I came down front a mess of times. They used to call me
Mr. Rededication. Because I was always guilty.
And they would just swage my guilt for about five minutes
and then I'd go outside and I didn't feel anything and go right back
to the life I was living. Come down front, they say. Move
your body. And we can see and we'll tell
you that you're saved until you never to doubt it. Well, it's
a slick lie, but it works well for the church and for the church
roles. But that does not change the
fact that the Lord does call men to come to Him. The Bible
declares with certainty that some will come to Christ. Some
men do come to Christ. Those who wouldn't come to Christ
in John chapter 6 and refused to believe Christ, the Lord looked
them in the eye. He says, you don't believe me, and you won't
believe me, but all that the Father giveth me shall come to
me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Because
I come down from heaven to do my Father's will, and this is
my Father's will which is sent me, that all He's given me I
should lose nothing, but raise Him up again in the last day.
They're going to come. Later on, he says, no man can come
to me except the Father which has sent me draw him. No man. Then he says, everyone who is
taught of the Father and has learned from the Father does
what? Comes to me. He comes to me. Our Lord said, My people shall
be willing in the day of His power. They are said to be those
who God the Father gave to His Son in election and betrothal.
They will come. They, however, cannot come unless
they are drawn by the Father. We know that. And men will not
come to Christ for life if they hold that their religious endeavors
merit a right standing with God. If you believe that what you
do somehow matters in the salvation of your soul, you're dead wrong,
I'm telling you right now. And you did. You may be dead
altogether. There were those who searched
this book. I mean, they knew it from Genesis
to Malachi. They could write it, and they
wrote it down. They were scribes, and they were Pharisees, and
they loved this book. Man, they would sit on Solomon's
porch, and they would talk about these things of God and try to
figure out what this meant, and they would all have explanations
and such, and oh, they knew the Bible. And our Lord looked them
square in the eye and says, you do search the Scriptures. For
in them you think that you have eternal life. But you see, the
Scriptures testify of me. And you won't come to me that
you might have life. You won't come. The wisdom that
is justified by the children is revealed in that they come
to Christ. They come to Christ. And from that day forward, coming
to Christ is the tenor of their life. They just keep on coming.
They keep on coming. Peter described them as to whom
coming as living stones. The question yet remains, if
we are unable to come to Christ physically or in the flesh, how
can we come, or what does it mean to come to Christ? If not
in the flesh, then those who come must come in the spirit.
That only makes sense. This automatically disqualifies
everyone born of the flesh, for they are born spiritually dead.
Every one of those are disqualified. What you're born with in this
world, the way you come forth from the mother womb, if that's
all you have, that living death that you are experiencing, your
existence in this world, if that's all you have, you can't come
to Christ. If something don't happen to
you, if God doesn't interfere with you, if God doesn't interrupt
your career, Barnard, you say you'll go to hell if you can.
There ain't one thing to stop you. And that's for God to interrupt
your career. Our Lord said, come to me. Come
to me. What is coming to Christ? It's
believing on Him. There's nothing more than that.
Believing on Him. through God-given faith, to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ who has come. That's what he said
at that Feast of Tabernacles, on that last day of the Feast
of the Tabernacles, when they had slain close to 900 beasts
during that week, and blood was everywhere. It was said that
the priest at the end of the Feast would take buckets of water
and pour over the altar and wash the blood down off the altar. And after all those sacrifices
were off and they was pulling their tents together and getting
ready to go home. Hadn't got a one thing. They had done all
the religious stuff. They had slain those lambs and
those kids and those bullets all week long. For eight days
they had done it. Nothing had happened to them.
No spiritual thing had happened to them. It was something they
did every year. Kind of like Christmas. Did it
every year. And our Lord stood up, as they
said, as the water was being poured on the altar. And said,
Hey! You've been doing this all week
long now. Is there anybody out there thirsty? He dealt with something we can
know. Need. We can know need. Now, people say, preachers get
up to a congregation of people who don't know Christ and say,
you need Christ. They don't need Him and they know they don't
need Him. Preachers can't make you need something. Preachers
can't make you thirsty. What makes you thirsty? Lack
of water. That makes you thirsty. What makes you hungry? Lack of
food. These things you understand. And I can't make you, I can't
say to you, now be hungry. It ain't gonna do no good. You
need. I don't feel any need. Those who need, those who need
come to Christ believing. Are you thirsty? Anybody thirsty? Come to me and
drink. I'm the water of life and out
of your belly shall flow rivers of living water. Come to me if
you're thirsty. And then it goes on to say, and
believe on him. That's what it is to come to
Him. Faith, that wondrous, amazing, miraculous thing that the child
of God has. The only thing that pleases God.
The only evidence that you're actually a child of God. The
only one. Don't go looking elsewhere. Believe. When the Lord said, all things
are possible if you only believe. I believe the emphasis is the
word only. Only believe. What does that
mean? Don't do nothing else. Don't try nothing else. Don't think
nothing else. Only believe. Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believing on Christ is the result
of God-given faith which is born of hearing the gospel. How does
that work? I have no idea. It's one of those
great mysteries. Like the fellow says, how does
electricity work? The fellow says, really well. That's how the gospel works.
It works really well. Paul says, we are always victorious
when we preach the gospel. We're always victorious. Now
sometimes it's a savor of life to some, it's a savor of death
to others, but it always does the work. It always does the
work. And God gives a man faith to
believe. He comes to Christ believing and he doesn't move a muscle.
He doesn't blink an eye. If God has given you faith, you
will come. You will come. God help the person
that gets in your way. You will come. Faith believes
the revelation of Christ and the revelation of Christ is the
cause of faith. How does that work? I don't know.
I stand up here and preach the gospel. I'm nobody. I'm nothing.
As you can see, the hairs are hoary upon my head. The wrinkles
are deep. I wear bright colors so you won't
look at my face. But I'm dying. And when I'm gone,
if Christ don't come back, somebody will take my place. Somebody
will take his place. Do the same thing we're doing. And we won't
have any effect on the result. And if truth be known, we don't
want to. Our job is to tell you over and over again. And somehow
God takes that word and miraculously makes it into the voice of Christ
calling His sheep. And when He calls them, they
follow Him. These words come unto me are uttered in a clear
distinction. They are not a general call to
anyone or everyone because the context makes that clear. Our Lord has declared that some
will never hear these words. Some will never be given a hearing
ear and a seeing eye. They will never come to Him.
He's already said that the children in whom wisdom is justified are
the opposite of those who will not come. In verses 20 through
24, our Lord makes it plain that sin against the light of truth
is worse than the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. And He's told them
the truth. And they've rejected Him. He
speaks to those, or speaks of those who've despised His and
John's message. Then He makes a further distinction.
He gives the reason why these are not addressed with the words,
come unto Me. He doesn't say to those who said,
we don't want anything to do with John, and we don't want
anything to do... He's not talking to them. He doesn't say, come unto Me,
to those folks. He says something else altogether. He says this
in verse 25, At that time Jesus answered,
and said, I thank thee. Christ is thankful for this.
I thank thee, oh Father, Lord of heaven and earth. I'm thankful
because you have hid these things from the wise and the prudent. I'm thankful that you hid these
things. Well, that doesn't sit well with religion, does it? That doesn't sit well with these
altar calls. That doesn't sit well with preachers
who are up here begging people to do something. Christ our Lord
gave thanks that God hid the gospel from these people and
revealed it unto babes. The wise and the prudent are
religiously so, thinking they're so wise they're revealed to be
fools. They were wise in their own conceits,
which means that they were unduly enamored with their own value
and their own worth. That is why they could say what
they said about the Lord's preaching and John's preaching. They act
this way because God has hid the truth from them. And the Lord thanks them for
doing that. It's an amazing, fascinating description. It's
a good thing. God said it's really a good thing.
Our Lord said it's a good thing that you hid these from this
people. That's a good thing. Sound good to you? Does to me
because the Lord said it. It's a good thing that you hid
this from the people. It's a good thing that they'll
never hear. It's a good thing. I thank you for it. It's a good
thing. And our Lord declares again,
to whom the call is, come unto me. They are babes to whom the
gospel is revealed. The word revealed here is where
we get the word apocalypse. That's what the revelation of
Jesus Christ is, the apocalypse of Christ. And it does not mean
some grand and great calamity. It means to uncover something,
to lay open something that has been veiled or covered up, to
disclose or make bare, to make known, make manifest, disclose
what before was unknown. To these babes, the gospel is
disclosed, open, unveiled. When they hear the words come
unto me, they'll come. They'll come. The use of the word babes does
not describe them as to age, but as to inability, as to lacking
knowledge, as to helplessness and utter neediness. Those who
can't do anything are those to whom the glory of the gospel
in all its beauty is revealed. In a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye, these babes are made aware of everything that has
put them in a right standing with God. Think of that. And
that's the wonder of faith. I marvel at it. I mean, you're
walking down the road, just walking down the road, an unbeliever. You hear the gospel. Just like that. One millisecond
later, you're a believer. Gospel makes you a believer.
If God has given you ears to hear. Think about it. All your
life, You've been an unbeliever. Then all of a sudden, you're
a believer. And no one from that point on
will ever be able to convince you otherwise. You tell me faith ain't a miracle?
That the gospel ain't a miracle? It's a wondrous thing. Come unto
me. The Lord says that In Ephesians
1, that He abounds toward His people in wisdom and prudence.
He abounds toward them. What does that mean? That means
if you know Christ today, you're just so smart, you don't have
any idea how smart you are. I'm telling you, if you know
Christ today, you know everything. You'll know it all. You have
an unction from on high. You know all things. That's what
the scripture said. You have the mind of Christ.
You understand and perceive things. You know the purpose in all things.
You know why all things exist and move and wriggle and writhe
upon the face of the earth. You know that. Why? To glorify
God. You know everything. That's what
faith does. Faith opens up his book. You
say, well, I don't know the whole Bible. You just don't think you
do. You see, God has written that in the heart of his people.
He said, I've written it in their heart. You say, well, I don't
know it all. But when Jim stands up here and
he preaches something you never heard before, what does your
heart say? Well, that's it. How do you know? It's written
in your heart. It's a response to the gospel
that God has put inside you. Faith. When you hear the gospel,
you'll come. There are folks right now in
this congregation that are coming to Christ. They're coming. Not down here. Ain't nothing
down here but fake flowers. There ain't nothing down here. But they're coming. They're coming. Right now, those who know the
gospel are saying, Boy, it just don't get no better than this.
This is just a wonderful thing, this gospel. It's a wonderful
thing. The Lord makes a final distinction
in verse 27. He said, All things are delivered
unto Me and My Father. No man knoweth the Son, but the
Father neither knoweth any man. The Father saved the Son, and
He to Whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. The revelation of
the truth is the sole prerogative of God and His Son. No one will
know the truth unless God has purposed to reveal the truth
to them. The truth is not some commercial commodity to be plucked
at at will from some universal shelf of some salvation superstore. It's not floating up there in
the ether for men to decide whether they want it or not. No, dear
brothers and sisters, if you know the truth, it is because
God, and only because God, through His Son, has revealed it to you. With that grace has given you
faith. to receive and embrace the truth.
What does faith believe? Scripture says, you're justified
by faith. And there are people who argue
about that, you know. I don't argue about that. You
know what faith does? Faith believes you're justified
by faith. Faith believes you're justified by grace. Faith believes
that Christ saved you on Calvary Street. That's what faith believes. Scott Richards, you said, faith
puts the crown of salvation on the head of the master. Come unto me. Are you weary and
heavy laden with the requirement that religion is placed on you
like an iron yoke? Do you long to rest in the delicious
freedom of knowing the truth? To lie down in the arms of the
Almighty? Do you want to cease from your
empty works and only believe? Then hear the words of our Lord. Come unto me. All ye that labor
and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you,
and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly in heart,
and ye shall find rest unto your souls, because my yoke is easy,
and my burden is light. God bless you.