Let's turn to the last book of
the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, the third chapter. Malachi chapter 3. And I'll never forget that first
meeting and all the meetings since. It's a special time. Malachi chapter 3. And I want
to read the last three verses of chapter 3 and the first two
verses of chapter 4. So beginning in verse 16. Then they that feared the Lord
spake often one to another. And the Lord hearkened and heard
it. And a book of remembrance was
written before him for them that feared the Lord and that thought
upon his name. And they shall be mine, said
the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels, and
I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.
Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the
wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him
not. For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, And
all the proud, yea, all that do wickedly shall be stubble. And the day that cometh shall
burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave
them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name
shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.
And ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall. Let
us pray. Things hadn't changed a whole
lot since then either. That hymn, We're Just Making
Jesus Your Friend. You know, I write articles for
the newspaper, been doing it for the last 23 years, but for
the first 20, they didn't print them. But I kept writing them and I
kept sending them. Finally, one Saturday, They printed
one of my messages, Jesus is the sinner's friend. That was
the title of it. And they didn't print it in the
place where they normally print the guest sermons. They put this
big bold print. They don't edit my messages,
but they did edit this title. Lucky for us, Jesus is the sinner's
friend. The whole width of the newspaper. I still have the copy of it.
I cut it out and saved it. I said, I don't care. And just
spell the name right. Show where our hope is. Because
the message was good. And it's still good. Well, Claudia told me a story. I'm going to start. You want
to look in Exodus chapter 12. If you don't want to listen to
this story, you can just start reading it. This preacher was
so punctual. He had OCD, I guess, that's what
they say I have, you know, but he was very punctual. He did
the same thing every time they met, the same way, the same length
of time. And the women, they just learned
to trust him after so long a time. And man, they'd put their food
on the cook. And they knew that when he got
done at a quarter to 12 and they got home, their food was going
to be done. Well, one Sunday, he went on and on and on and
on. They got home, food was all burnt
up. Well, they called him before the board. They wanted to know
what happened. They had just learned to rely on his punctuality
so much. He said, well, I can explain
why. He said, on the way to church,
he said, a button popped off my shirt. And he said, I got
the button, and he said, I just stuck it in my pocket. And he
said, the way I'm so punctual, he said, when I get ready to
preach, you can guess the end of this story, but he said, when
I get ready to preach, I put a mint in my mouth. And he said, when that mint dissolves,
I quit preaching. And he said, that's why I'm always
so punctual, but he said, I reached in my pocket and I got that button
out. Put it in my mouth. and it just
didn't dissolve. Well, I hope that's not tonight
or in the morning. Here in Exodus chapter 12, I
think every pastor here has preached from this passage of scripture
a number of times. I can remember the first time
I preached from it in English, preached a number of times in
Spanish in the years we lived in Mexico, Joyce, you and Carter
were there. It was on Easter Sunday, 23 years
ago, and I preached from Exodus chapter 12, first time I'd ever
preached from it in English. I love this passage of scripture,
and since then, there's just no telling how many times I've
preached from this. But I want to say something to
us this evening, and I hope it'll be a blessing to you. Let me
start off by by reading these first 18 verses. And I'm just
reading 18 because I don't have time to read all of it. Start
in Genesis chapter 1 if we had time. But here it says in chapter
12, Exodus 12, the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land
of Egypt saying, this month, this month shall be unto you
the beginning of months. and it shall be the first month
of the year to you. I speak you unto all the congregation
of Israel, saying, in the tenth day of this month they shall
take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their
fathers, a lamb for a house. And if the household be too little
for the lamb, Let him and his neighbor next unto his house
take it according to the number of the souls. Every man according
to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb
shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You shall
take it out from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall
keep it up until the 14th day of the same month. And the whole
assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the
evening. And they shall take of the blood
and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post
of the houses wherein they shall eat it. And they shall eat the
flesh in that night, roast with fire and unleavened bread. And with bitter herbs shall they
eat it. Eat not of it raw. nor sodden
it all with water, but roast with fire his head with his legs
and with the pertinence thereof. And you shall let nothing of
it remain until the morning, and that which remaineth of it
until the morning you shall burn with fire. And thus shall ye
eat it with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, your
staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's
Passover, for I will pass through the land of Egypt this night
and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man
and beast, against all the gods of Egypt. I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. And the blood
shall be for you or to you for a token upon the houses where
you are. And when I see the blood, I will
pass over you. And the plague shall not be upon
you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt. And this day
shall be unto you for a memorial. And you shall keep it a feast
to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it a feast by
an ordinance forever. Seven days shall you eat unleavened
bread. Even the first day you shall
put away leaven out of your houses. For whosoever eateth leavened
bread from the first day unto the seventh day, that soul shall
be cut off from Israel. And in the first day there shall
be an holy convocation. And in the seventh day there
shall be unholy convocation to you. No manner of work shall
be done in them save that which every man must eat. That only
may be done of you. And you shall observe the feast
of unleavened bread. For in this selfsame day have
I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore,
shall you observe this day in your generations for an ordinance
or by an ordinance forever. In the first month, on the 14th
day of the month, at the evening, ye shall eat unleavened bread
until the one and 20th day of the month at evening. This day,
this day, you're gonna observe this day in your generation by
an ordinance forever. Now go back with me to verse
three. Verse 3 and 4 of my text this
morning, this evening, and I want to say this to you. The lamb,
this Passover lamb, wasn't killed just to be looked on, just to
be looked at and observed and set up as something special. It was to be eaten, eaten. Our Lord Jesus Christ wasn't
crucified just so that we can hear about him, talk about him,
think about him, but that we may feed upon him, taste, and
see that the Lord is good. You have to taste him. Everything that has to do with
Christ's work is a real, practical, vital consequence to believers. He's the food for our soul. Faith
is to receive him, loves to embrace him, hopes to rejoice in him.
Can be eaten. Second thing, it wasn't just
eating part of him, but the whole lamb was to be eaten. And the whole Christ is to be
received by us. all that he is, all that he does,
should be received by us with a grateful heart, all of it. Not going to be picking and choosing
about the things of Christ, what we like and what we don't like,
but all things alike except it. I was talking to a man this week
and he was talking about the problems they're having in the
one of the big Baptist organizations. He said, there's a lot of Calvinism. And he said, they're making special
emphasis, he said, you know, on TULIP. And he started out,
he said, total depravity and I wasn't going to help him a
bit. And he said, and then that limited atonement. I said, yeah,
that chokes them, doesn't it? The only thing negative I said,
I said, one thing about it, we know it's not limited in its
power. He saves everyone that comes to him, everyone that looks
to him, everyone that believes on him. That sort of ended our
conversation, which I was glad, because I didn't want to make
a big donkey out of myself, but I was getting real close. We
don't pick and choose what we like. We don't take part of it
and leave off what doesn't sit well with us. All of it. All
of it. We're all sinners. We all need
a savior. And we need every bit of that
savior. And this Passover lamb was able
to save that whole house. That whole house. And the Lord
Jesus Christ in him is all the power to save. he's able to save
to the uttermost all that come unto God by him. That power is
sufficient to save those that are at the very ends of the earth
to the uttermost, the lowest, the most outcast. And I know
it for a fact because he saved the worst among us when he saved
me. The fourth thing I want to lay down for you is this whole
lamb was meant to be eaten at all at one time. None of it was
to be kept until the morning. If any were kept, it would be
burned with fire. They're going to make a god out of it. Like the manna, it's not going
to be stored up for future use. I tell you, what a joy it would
be ours to rejoice in Christ now, to rejoice in all that He
is now. And not just think, well, one
day in glory. No, right now. Like you said,
can it get any better than this? To join ourselves together like
this and worship the Lord of glory. You know, we don't need
to concern ourselves about what may take place, you know, next
year, a thousand years from now. You know, I thought about that. Who preached on Revelation this
morning? David. I thought about it and read,
you know, 10,000 times 10,000. Can you imagine that sound? I said 10,000 times 10,000. I
think that's a billion. Can you imagine that as one voice? I was just thinking about our
singing in here last night. Just the voices. We're not anywhere
close to that. But can you imagine 10,000 times
10,000 and thousands of thousands singing that song, Worthy is
the Lamb? Worthy is the Lamb. Oh, we can do it now, can't we?
So that lamb's eaten. The whole thing's eaten. It's
going to be all eaten then and there. It's all going to be used
right now. So, this text shows us a great
privilege we have. Oh, and I love this. The first
thing he says is they're going to take to them every man a lamb. Every person. Every person. It starts right here with us.
With each one of us. Each one of us. A lamb. Every
person. Do you have to do with Christ
personally? Do you have a lamb? Some of you know I go, there's
a volunteer out in the federal prison system and preach every
week. I go in about five times a week
preaching to these men. There was a time when I would
go in and just, they wanted to to visit with somebody. A lot
of them don't have visitors. They want to visit somebody,
they'd set me up to visit with them. And I visited with this
Jew for a couple of years. Every time we finished talking,
I said, where's your lamb? Where's your lamb? And his response
every time was, maybe next year in Jerusalem. And where's your
lamb? Don't wait till next year. The
next hour, right now, right now, every man, you come to him personally. It's personal repentance, personal
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's personal feeding upon Him. You know, you can't talk to anybody
else about it until first of all you've tried it out. You
can't tell me what it's like if you don't know. I've told
this story so many times, but it fits again. How many of you
have never seen me before, never heard me preach? I mean, y'all
haven't heard this story, so it's for y'all. One year, when I was in Mexico,
I made a trip, got over on the coast of Campeche. Up on the
Bay of Campeche, there's a little fishing village, Champoton, and
I like seafood. So I pulled in this little place
there, and I ordered a meal, and I ordered a shrimp cocktail. I don't recommend you to do this,
but I did it. Well, they don't have, you know,
cocktail sauce, horseradish, things like that, so they just
had some hot sauce on there. I said, I'll make my own. So
they had this one sitting there, and I wasn't sure what it was.
You know, I tried smelling of it and it smelled hot. But anyway,
I asked, wait, I said, is this hot? He said, no. No pica. Well, so I just, I put
a little of this, a little of that, and you know, I stirred
it a lot. Man, I mean, you talk about hot. Hot. I called him
back over. And I said, you said this wasn't
hot. He said, no, it's not hot. I said, taste it. He put his
finger in there. It's hot. You see, you don't
know until you've tasted it yourself. You can't talk about it if you
haven't tasted it yourself. You can't tell me about it if
you haven't tasted it yourself. You don't know. I can't tell
you about it if I haven't tasted it myself. You can't talk to
your neighbor. Now, I have to ask myself this
question. is the blood of the lamb on the
doorpost of my house? Have I fed on this lamb? And then when I've answered this
question for myself, I hope that you'll answer it for yourself.
Not talking about your parents, who your parents are, I don't
care. Talking about what church you go to, I don't care. Not
about what church you're a member of, or your famous kinfolks,
I really don't care if I'm talking about you. You. Have you tasted? If you tasted,
you know that the Lord's good. I tell you the old people, old
professors, you've been around a long time. You've been in this
game a long time. Been in church all your life.
Somebody asked me about these inmates that I preach to. And
the result, I said, look, they're convicts. Emphasis on the con. They're just like Baptists in
these churches. They're con. They'll make you
think anything. They'll talk a good game. Ask
me in glory. I don't know how to judge. I
don't know how to judge. But you know deception, we can
be deceived for years and years and years and years. We can be
deceived all our lives. It's not a set it and forget
it thing. Not one and done, no. Am I looking to Christ right
this minute? It's not what I did yesterday. This ordinance, it continued
every year, year after year after year, to remind them this is
your only hope. This is your only hope. You know
why we come back here? Time after time. You showed me that little
bit that I had written. That's all preachers are, just
remembrances. Reminders. We just remind so
we won't forget it. They were reminded year after
year after year. This is our only hope. You know,
it's an unspeakable mercy that the Lamb of God has provided
for our past soul, for the worst of us, because the gospel is,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. But,
he said, in the house, in the house. Did you see the second
part of what he said here, a lamb? You know, every man, every man. But then he said, according to
the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house. The next part of
this privilege is a savior for our families, our household. I tell you, may we all share
in the blessings which this lamb brought. And what a blessing
it is when all of our children, our household, equally rejoice
in the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, we can't convert our
children. You know, we beat into them a lot of things, just like
we had beaten into us a lot of things. We can't convert them
beyond our power. It's the divine work, the work
of God's spirit. But we have that anxious exhortation,
train up a child in the way that he should go. When he's old,
he'll not depart from it. He can't get away from it. It'll
never leave him. It'll never leave him. What a
blessing to see our whole house beneath that blood. Then there's
something else about this passage of scripture here. There's not
a chance that this lamb's going to be too small for the house.
Did you know that? He said, speaking to the whole
congregation, saying in the 10th month, you're going to take every
man a lamb, according to the house of their father, a lamb
for the house. And then the next thing, he says, if the household
be too small for the lamb, You know, if the household is
not large enough to eat that lamb, share it with the neighbor.
But it says, it doesn't tell us what's to be done if the lamb
wasn't large enough to feed the household, it's just not going
to happen. It starts off with the selection that's made. It's
going to be sufficient when the Lord God of heaven shows that
lamb is big enough for the house. is big enough to feed the whole
household. You know, there's a lot of things
we're not told in the scriptures, but we ought to just learn from
the silence of the scriptures. We ought to believe what the
scriptures say and not question what the scriptures don't say.
You know, we talk about Melchizedek. His parentage is in mention,
and the silence is significant. You know, he was without father,
without mother, without descent, had neither beginning of days
nor end of life, and we're not told anything else. Why question
it? Believe what it says. So here,
this silence concerning about such a possibility of the insufficiency
of this Passover lamb for the household is meant to teach us
something very important here. Oh, and I hope that we don't
ever forget it. Never forget it. Don't forget
about that lamb. You know, if we could just learn
this and preach this to everybody that we come in contact with.
You know, the lamb of God is always sufficient to save. The Lamb of God is always sufficient
to save. You know, it just can never happen
that there shouldn't be enough of the Lord Jesus Christ for
our family. If any perish in their sin, it's
not because Christ isn't sufficient. It's not because the Lord Jesus
Christ is not able to save. There's enough lamb for all that
are in the household, all that are in his household. There's
enough. Jesus said unto them, I'm the bread of life. He that
cometh to me shall never hunger. He that believeth on me shall
never thirst. He said, all that the Father giveth me shall come
to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out
and take notice of that word all. A-L-L, all. Write it down. Underline it,
highlight it, whatever you need to do, don't forget it. Because
there's enough lamb for all that are hungry. Are you hungry? There's enough lamb. Are you
thirsty? There's enough. All. There's nothing in this scriptures
that should stop us from praying for all. A-L-L, all. all the world, all our friends,
all our children. I tell you, you know, Paul told
Timothy, he said, I exhort you, therefore, that first of all,
supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made
for all men. This is good and acceptable in
the sight of God, our Savior, who will have all men to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the truth. All ranks of men,
all conditions of men, all sorts of men. And don't ever give up
on anybody as long as they're still breathing. They're still
drawing breath, don't give up on them. Don't quit. You know,
if the Lord saved me, I take from that that He can save anybody.
For I feel that he went just about as far down as he'd ever
go when he reached down his hand for me. Our Lord told him, Master, the
house said, go out into the streets and the lanes of the city and
bring in hither the poor and the maimed, the halt and the
blind. And Matthew said, so those servants, they went out into
the highways and they gathered together all as many as they
found, both bad and good, both bad and good. And the wedding
was furnished with guests. Don't be satisfied with the fact
that you've eaten. You know, our households alone
are much too little for the lamb. Go share it with your neighbors.
You say, well, they already go to church. We did too, didn't
we? We did too, for the Lord spoke
to us. We went to church years before we ever heard the gospel.
And you may have heard it in a place where you didn't start
out going, but you heard it. Speak to them. You know, you
can't ram it down their throat. You just tell them, don't talk
about our great church. They don't talk about it at Kitchens
Creek Baptist Church. They don't talk about their sweet
little preacher. Because he ain't sweet. He ain't
little. He ain't much of a preacher.
They're going to argue with you. Everybody's going to one-up you.
Just tell them what great things the Lord's done for you. How
he's had mercy on you. They can't argue with that. They
can't argue with that. Tell them. And I tell you only
Christ's sheep hear His voice. Preach the gospel. His sheep
hear His voice. And they follow Him. We don't
try to divide them out. Divide them up. Man, what we
do is we burn all the wheat and sack up the shaft and make us
to the winner. We don't know. We can't tell
the difference in it. We call good bad and bad good. The gospel
does the same. We just preach the gospel. Oh,
and you know why we have such sweet fellowship here? Because
we're all feeding on the same lamb. Your lamb is not even better
than my lamb because we're all feeding on the same lamb. This
household is all eating the same lamb. Don't have to bring in
two lambs for that household, just one is enough. One is enough. Let me say this. When the Lord Jesus Christ comes
in all of His glory and all His redeemed ones come with Him,
When He gathers all that have been redeemed with His precious
blood to this marriage supper of the Lamb, it's not going to
be said that that household is too little for the Lamb either.
It's going to be perfect. The Lord Jesus Christ will then
see the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. It's going
to be just right, isn't it? Just right. Until then, what
do we do? We just keep beating the bushes.
We just keep going into the highways and into hedges, and we just
call them to come. Because the lamb's sufficient
for the household. And I pray that this will be
the beginning of months for all of us. May the Lord bless these
thoughts to our heart. Thank you, Jim Dunn.