you. Good morning. Let's all stand
together and sing hymn number 37. Number 37. Oh Lord, my God. I see the stars I hear the rolling
thunder How great Thou art How great Thou art. When through the woods
and forest glades I wander, hear the birds sing sweetly in
the trees. When I look down from lofty mountain
prairie, then hear the brook How great Thou art! How great Thou art! It sinks my soul, my Savior God,
to Thee. How great Thou art! How great Thou art! And when I think that God, His
Son not sparing, Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in. One more time. How great Thou art. How great Thou art. It saves my soul, my Savior God,
to Thee. How great Thou art. How great Thou art When Christ
shall come With shout of acclamation humble adoration, and there proclaim,
my God, how great Thou art. How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee. ? How great Thou art ? How great Thou art Be seated. 1 John chapter one. You
know, if God's not great to you here, and you don't have some
understanding of how glorious How majestic, how powerful, how
sovereign, how august, what glory dwells in him. You'll never understand what
it is. You'll never be able to say he's great there if you can't
say it here. If you don't in your own heart
of hearts know that God is God, not a pretender. Not someone
that's trying to be, he is God. And we worship him, we bow to
him, we rejoice in him, find our rest and hope in God who
measures the waters in the palm of his hands. Declared the end
if we ever start at the beginning. Oh my, you know when we get to
glory, we won't have to say it anymore. We won't have to sing
anymore. It'll be a reality. Oh, what
a reality we got. Oh, what a blessed thing we got
to look forward to. All right, I'm gonna read this
first chapter of John. First John, first John. That which was from the beginning,
which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which
we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life. The life was manifested and we
have seen it and bear witness and show unto you that eternal
life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. That
which we have seen and heard Declare we unto you, that's all
we can do, that's all us preachers can do, what we ourselves have
seen and what we ourselves have heard. We declare unto you that
you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship
is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. These things
write we unto you that your joy may be full. This then is the
message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you that
God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. And if we say
that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we
lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light as
He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And the blood
of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If
we confess our sins, He is faithful, and just to forgive our sins,
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned,
we make him a liar and his words not in us. Our great, glorious, blessed
God of heaven and earth, That one, O Lord, you that inhabit
eternity, and yet you dwell, dwell among men. Come to bless
us and meet our needs. Speak to us. Oh, come down and
speak to worms of the earth, grasshoppers, sinners, weak,
frail creatures. And, O Lord, you come down. And
you speak to us. You speak to our hearts. You
speak to our souls. You lift up our, bring us out
of our weakness and frailties and hold us up. And God meet
every need of our heart, mind and soul. Lord, we thank you
for what's happened to this point. Lord, we thank you for every
word that's been said. Every song that's been sung.
Every message we've heard, it's been such blessed sin of you. And Lord, we have to be thankful
and have to praise you and bless you for it. Thank you for my
preacher brother coming. Thank you for these saints and
all that they've done to support this work here. And God bless
the ones that's visited. See them safely home. And Lord
Jesus, Thank you, just bless you. Save your people in this
place. We have people here that, Lord,
you're the only one that can do anything for them. But they're
here, and I'm thankful. They're here where the gospel's
preached. Here where Christ is honored. Here where God's glorified. Oh God, if it would please you
by your sovereign free grace, to open their hearts, to take
the darkness out of their mind, and bring them to rejoice and
find their freedom and liberty and rest and peace in the Lord
Jesus Christ, our God and our Savior. We bless you in Christ's
name, amen. Does everybody have a bulletin? They were up there on the table
in the front. Let's stand together and sing the hymn of the day
on the back of the bulletin. Oh, give thanks unto Grace His name with one accord
Tell the wonders of His power Grace His goodness every hour
? The ransomed church begin ? ?
Who he has redeemed from sin ? North and South to Interest Through the wilderness they stray
In a lonely, weary way ? Tired and faint ? Unattentive to their complaint
? Oh, that men would praise the
Lord They say that This is the main part of our
service. It's the preaching. The preaching. We gather around to... People
say, I don't want to be preached to. I do. If it's the right message. If it's the right message. Yeah,
I want somebody to preach to me. And God to speak to me through
that preacher. And Billy R. Geropoulos. Billy R. is what everybody knows
him, calls him. He's got a little work down there
in St. Pete, St. Pete's Grace Church.
And got a preacher down there helping him out today. But Billy,
you come and pray the Lord's message that he's laid on your
heart for us this morning. Such a joy to be here. I have
been so blessed. to be able to hear the word of
God. These blessed brethren who have
preached the truth here, and I've enjoyed it so much. I needed
it so badly. It's lifted me up. It's encouraged
me. It's encouraged my faith. Oh,
the sweetness of the Holy Ghost. There's nothing in this world
that can compare with the presence of God Almighty. Nothing can
come up with it. If you have your Bible this morning,
turn to John chapter 6, please. I'll preach to you for a little
bit. I need your prayers this morning. Sixth chapter of the Gospel of
John. I want to read two verses in
your hearing. John chapter 6, verses 44 and
45. John chapter 6, verses 44 and
verse 45. Lord Jesus is speaking here. The Jews had said in the verses
previous, is not this Joseph's son? And he's trying to tell us that
he came down from heaven? And they're murmuring and they're
complaining. And with that thought, we pick
up the reading in verse 44. No man can come to me, except the Father
which hath sent me draw him, and I will raise him up at the
last day. It is written in the prophets,
and they shall be all taught of God, every man Every man, therefore, that hath heard and
hath learned of the Father cometh, cometh unto me." I'm going to
preach to you just for a few minutes. If the message has got
a title, it's what it means to be taught of
God. what it means to be taught of
God. If you look in verse 44, I want
to deal with this first a little bit. Jesus says, and really you
need to break each clause up, I believe, to get a full understanding
of what our Lord Jesus is saying. No man can come unto me. He can't. Now, the modern gospel
emphasizes the historical Jesus, and they tell us that all a man
has to do is believe on the historical Jesus, the Jesus of history. Just believe these facts, that
he is born of a virgin, walked among men, died on the cross,
rose again from the dead. And if you believe these facts, all you have to do, like you're dipping water out
of a bucket, Just say, I make my decision. Lord, I do call
on your name. And you died for me, and you
have to save me. And this world has never seen
who he is. They've never seen it. What does
it mean that no man can come unto me? Why? Why is that so? Now, what I'm about to tell you
determines the gospel that you preach. In Romans chapter 5 and verse
12, the scripture says, For by one man, one man, sin entered
into the world and death by sin and death passed upon all men
because all have sinned in adam all die but in christ shall all
be made alive man was not injured in the fall he was ruined he
was utterly ruined in the fall. And as I said a minute ago, what
you believe about the fall determines the gospel that you preach. Now
if you believe that man was just injured in the fall and there's
some kind of spark in here and we can get the right soul winner
or the right preacher to kind of talk him up into it and coach
him and make him a real good proposition and influences mind
and influences understanding, he has the ability to come to
Christ. But he can't. He can't. He's totally, totally depraved. What does it mean to be totally
depraved? It's a good question, isn't it?
Well, he can still, he still has a mind to think. He can still
walk. He can still talk. He can still
make mental decisions in this world. He can do all of those
things. But what he cannot do is he cannot discern spiritual
truth. Doesn't have the ability. Can't
do it. No man can come unto me. When we think about total depravity, we must understand this. Since we all died in Adam, I
heard it, there's a woman told me one time, she said, Preacher,
I shouldn't have to go to hell because of Adam's sin. And I
told her, I said, don't worry. You won't. You were there. You were there. In Adam, all died. Since we're totally ruined in
the fall, There are some things that I just want to bring to
your attention real quick before I move on because this is so
important here. David said in Psalm 51 verse
5, behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive
me. That's me. That's you. That's
everybody. I was shaping in iniquity. Psalm
58, 3. David said, the wicked are estranged
from the womb. They go astray as soon as they
be born. Speaking lies. Did you know you
don't have to teach a child how to lie? He already knows how. That's right. You have to teach
him. He already knows how. You say,
why is that? That's that nature. That's that
nature. Can't tell the truth. Don't want
to tell the truth. You hem him up between a rock
and a hard place. He's gonna lie. The wicked are estranged from
the womb as soon as they be born. Then, their heart's deceitful. Jeremiah 17 verse 9, the heart
Not talking about this thing that pumps blood. The heart is
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And who can know it? The heart
is the harbor in which all of the vileness and meanness flows. That's right. Jesus said in Mark
7 verse 19, the Pharisees were all in an uproar about whatever
you ate defiled you. Jesus said, no, no. From within and out of the heart. proceeds evil thoughts, adultery,
fornication, uncleanliness, lasciviousness, pride, foolishness. All of these
evil things come from within. That's where they come from.
And what do they do? They defile the man. No man can come unto me. He was
ruined in the fall, totally ruined, spiritually dead. He was estranged from the womb.
He started lying as soon as he was born, his heart's deceitful
above everything and desperately wicked. And then, if that's not
enough, to add insult to injury, his mind is hostile towards God. For the carnal mind is, present
tense, is enmity. The Greek word for enmity actually
means hostility. The carnal mind is hostile towards
God. It's against every spiritual
truth in this book. That's right. Carnal minds, enmity
against God. It's not subject to the law of
God. Neither indeed can it be. So
then they that are in the flesh can not please God. It's a pretty bleak situation,
isn't it? He's ruined in the fall. He's depraved at birth. His heart's
desperately wicked. His mind is utter hostility against
God. Jeremiah 13, 23 says, can the
Ethiopian change his skin? No, can't do it. Can a leopard
change his spots? The last clause of that verse
says, if it's true, if the Ethiopian can change his skin, and if the
leopard can change his spots, then may ye do good that are
accustomed to evil. Man is helpless, hopeless. Without God, without Christ,
he's dead in trespasses and sins. I mean D-E-A-D, dead. Not asleep, but dead in trespasses
and sins. Dead man can't do nothing. Nothing he can do. You can talk
to him. Time to get up. No response. He not only can't do it, he can't
hear you. He can't hear you. He can't,
Donnie, see you. He can't perceive you. Something's got to take place. to awaken that man. Something's got to happen to
the supernatural power from God Almighty has got to awaken that
man, Brother John. And without that, he'll never
be awakened. He's ruined in the fall. Born
depraved, he's got a deceitful heart, his mind's hostile, can't
change himself, and Jesus said in John 5, 40, to top it all
off, ye will not come to me, that you might have life. You
know, if this is the end of the story, If this is the end of the story, hopeless wouldn't begin to describe
it. No man can come unto me. But the very next word is hope. Except, mm-mm-mm. Except, oh, there's
hope there. There's blessing there. There's life there. Except the
Father. Not the preacher, not the soul
winner, but the Father. Except the Father. which sent
me. Draw. That word draw in the Greek,
elko, elko, is the literal Greek for it. And it literally means
to drag, is what it means. I got you. Oh, I'm so glad he got me. He came to where I was. And he didn't invite me. He just
come and got me. He just come and got me. He said,
you're mine, son. I've got you now. I've got you.
But you know what, Donnie? He's always had me. I just didn't
know it. I just didn't know it. Oh, blessed
day. Blessed day indeed. When a man
comes face to face with Christ in the truth. What a blessed
day. Now I'm finally getting to the
text. It is written in the prophets.
They shall all. Let's talk about who all is for
a minute or two. Who's all? Good question. Since you're open to John here
in John 6, 44, go back up to verse 37, if you would. And it
says this. All that the Father giveth me. That's who these people are that
are all taught of God. That's who they are. All that
the Father giveth me shall come, shall come unto me. And him that cometh unto me I'll
in no wise cast out. Before the foundation of the
world, God Almighty, in his infinite wisdom, chose a people for himself. He did not choose them on foreseen
faith. He did not choose them because
of any goodness that was within him. Didn't choose them because
of a foreseen response. There was nothing in us, nothing
about us that God would have respect to. And I guess one of the deepest
verses that I know is this. I have loved you with an everlasting
love. Oh, what wondrous mercy. Oh,
what great grace. How unsearchable is his love. He loved me. He loved me. He set his love on me. He loved
me. God help us to sink our teeth
into that. God help us to to grasp that. Oh, he loved me. They shall all be taught of God. What does it mean to be taught
of God, preacher? Well, I think I can try to sum it up in three
things. No hurry. What does it mean to
be taught of God? What does God teach? these people
that he chose before the foundation of the world. The first thing
that God teaches a man is he's holy. He's holy. In Isaiah chapter 6, very familiar
scripture, Isaiah said in verse 1, In the
year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. Isaiah said, I saw him high and
holy, lifted up. His train, his presence
filled the temple. And there were some seraphims
there and they cried, holy, holy, holy. is the Lord, the earth is full
of his glory. And the scripture says, the posts
of the door shook. What a sight it was for Isaiah
to behold the glory of God. God's holy. God's holy. There's too much familiarity
today with Jesus. Too much familiarity. They call him JC. They call him
the man upstairs. They call him the good Lord. I want to tell you something. If you ever find out who he is,
you ever find it out, it'll take the starch out of
you. It'll take the haughtiness out
of you. It'll take the pride out of you. I mean, it'll sap you. to where you'll be in total awe
of him, Isaiah. I think of blessed John, the
Apostle, Revelation chapter one, this is so precious. John said, John saw the Lord, he said, his
visage or his face was white as snow, He was girt about the
paps with a golden girdle. His face was like the sun shineth
in its strength. His feet were like under fine
brass as if they'd burned in a furnace. And John said, when
I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. First thing God teaches a man
is he's holy. He's holy. And secondly, the
second thing that God teaches a man is not only that he's holy,
but you're not. You're not. Let me say this,
and if you don't hear anything else that I say to you this morning,
I pray the Holy Spirit will drive this home. There is no way that
you can see who He is and not see who you are. It just can't
happen. Talking about Isaiah here in
chapter 6. In Isaiah chapter 5, one chapter before it, Isaiah
is giving everybody down the road, whoa into this city. Woe unto that city! Woe unto
this fellow! Woe unto that fellow! And when
he sees God, it's no longer woe is that fellow, woe is this fellow,
woe is the other fellow. Isaiah said in Isaiah 6, 5, woe
is me. Woe is me. What's the matter with you, Isaiah?
Isaiah, you alright? What's wrong with you? What's
got into you, Isaiah? He said, mine eyes have seen
the king. Mine eyes have seen the king. I'm a man of unclean lips. I
dwell amongst a people of unclean lips. Oh, woe is me, I'm undone. I've seen the king. I've seen
the King. Yeah. What does God teach? What does
it mean to be taught of God? It means to be taught that God's
holy. It means to be taught that you're
not. And then I've got to hurry. You're taught who Jesus is. You're taught who Jesus is. Substitution. Substitution. Peter said next,
412, neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none
other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be
saved. must be saved. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. He's all of it. He's all of it. God always has had the cross
in view. Our blessed Our blessed Lord
was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. That's
right. What can wash away my sin? Nothing
but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is that flow. That
makes me white as snow, no other fount I know. Nothing but the
blood of Jesus. Even while we were without strength
in due time, Christ died for the ungodly as me. He came to save sinners. I didn't
come to call the righteous. I didn't come to call the smart
alecks. I didn't come to call the religious zealots. I didn't
come to call the religious theologians. I came to call sinners to repentance. That's right. He came to call
sinners. You know, if you're a sinner,
he died for you. If you're ungodly, he died for
you. If you're helpless and hopeless,
he died for you. Praise his holy name. He died
for you. Then, as shall all be taught of God, every
man, therefore, there's three things. I got to hurry. There's
three things. Every man that hath heard and hath learned of the Father. You know what's going to happen
when they do that? They're coming. They'll come. They'll come. When I read what Jesus said two
things. People call it two invitations.
I like to call it two commands is what I like to call it. Come
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. He's not begging you. He's not pleading with you. He says, come, come. Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Take, take it. Take my yoke upon you and learn
of me, for I'll make it holy in all. You'll find rest. In that last day, that great
day of the feast, Jesus stood there in the marketplace. If
any man thirst, Let him come to me and drink. Are you thirsty
this morning? Are you? Are you heavy laden
this morning? He says, come. He says, come. And then, this is not just a
one-time thing. This is not a one-off. You'll
always be coming. Isn't that a blessing? You'll
always be coming. Oh, yeah. You'll always be coming. Repentance isn't a one-time thing.
It's an every day. Every day. Whosoever believe us, not a one-time
thing. But it's a continual believement. He that believeth on me is not
condemned. He that believeth not is condemned
already. You'll always be coming. This
school of God, this school, God's university, as it were, Brother John, there are no graduates
at this university. There's no valedictorians. There's
no salutatorians. There are no sigma cum laudes.
And there are no cum laudes. There's not even any honorable
mentions. Boasting is excluded. Boasting
is excluded. All glory and honor goes to the
teacher. Amen? Yes. Let me say this in closing. One day we're going to see him
as he is. As he is. I can't wait to see
him. What I felt here This week, listening
to Brother John preach, and Brother Chris preach, and all heights
fed my soul. But that's just a little bit,
that's just a taste, just a taste of what it's going to be like
when with an undimmed view, with a pair of eyes that can
behold it, and a body that can stand it. We shall see him as
he is. Have you been taught of God?
You ever been to God's school? You ever been to God's university? That's a good question. Our Father, oh, how thankful
we are that you loved us with an everlasting
love. Lord, we, nothing good in us,
nothing that we ever did, but all glory and praise goes to
you. Lord, I pray this morning that, oh, if it had pleased you,
that you'd give eyes to see, give ears to hear. May it be so, Lord, this morning.
And we'll give you all the praise. For it's in your name we pray.
Amen. I'm glad God had a school. Had a
university, yeah. Yeah, when he teaches you, you're
being taught. Thank you, bad Lord. That was
so good. That was so good. Oh, love it.