Let me add my welcome to Marks
this morning. It's good to see you here. We're glad that the
Lord has brought you our way to worship with us. And we always
enjoy worshiping with fellow believers. And so we're glad
you're here. And we're going to be talking
about God's people this morning. The title of my message is, You
Can See God's Holy Flock. And the church is called by many
names in the scriptures. He called it a little flock in
Luke. It's a beautiful flock, it's a scattered flock, it's
the Father's flock, but it's also a holy flock. And that's
what I want us to concentrate our few moments together this
morning on talking about God's holy flock. In Isaiah chapter
64 and verse 4, the prophet makes this observation. For since the
beginning of the world, men have not heard nor perceived by the
ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath
prepared for him that waited for him. And I think what he's
talking about here is not every man, but most men, because as
we'll see in a moment, some people have seen. So he's saying all
men by nature, though, fail to see what God has prepared for
them that wait for him. And what is it to wait for him?
It simply means to look to Christ for all my salvation. It's to
quit work, be still, and know that he is God. In chapter two
of first Corinthians, Paul answers or adds to this, this verse of
scripture by the prophet Isaiah. He quotes this verse in chapter
nine, in verse nine, but in 10, Verse 10, Paul says this, but
God has revealed these things to us, us being his elect. He hasn't revealed it to everybody,
but he's revealed it to his elect by his spirit. For the spirit
searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. How God can
be just and justify the ungodly is truly beyond the imagination
of natural man. It's something no man by nature
could ever think of, come up with such a plan as did God to
justify the ungodly. And even Adam, the smartest of
men, demonstrated this ignorance when he tried to cover his sin
with fig leaves. You know, but Abraham, the scripture
says, saw Christ's day and he rejoiced in it. found grace in
the eyes of the Lord. He saw in the face of Jesus Christ
this mystery that we're going to be talking about this morning.
And to Adam it was also revealed in the shedding of the animal
blood. So not all men are ignorant of these things that God has
revealed, but he has revealed them to his people. Until the
Holy Spirit's power in the preaching of the gospel is unleashed on
the sinner, His eye remains darkened, his ear remains silenced, and
his heart is far from God, the scripture says. We are born at
enmity with God. Jeremiah says we come forth from
the womb speaking lies, and this is specifically about God, because
by nature we don't know God, and we have our own preconceived
notions, and it's all a lie. So we come forth from the womb
speaking lies. We are born and imitated with
God, but in the day of God's power, by appointment of the
Father, and execution by the Spirit, based on the Son's redeeming
sacrifice wrought for his people, by his obedience, suffering,
and death, the wandering sinner who comes to himself, as the
prodigal son did, you remember that story, and we'll look at
it in just a minute. But when that sinner comes to
himself, is made aware of his father's love for him and his
place in the father's house. You remember this story of a
young man who had two sons. And the youngest said, father,
give me that portion of thy goods which befalleth me. And he took
his goods and went into a far land and squandered them. And
he would eat with the pigs, the scripture says. But he came to
himself and he said, you know what? My father's servants are
better off than I am. I'm going home to my dad, and
I'm gonna say, father, make me one of your servants. I'm not
worthy to be your son, but make me a servant. How did he come
to himself? The scripture says when he came
to himself, well, that's when the Holy Spirit moved in this
man's mind and in his heart, and he remembered his father's
household, and he remembered his father's love. And that's
what the spirit of God does, it shows us that we have a better
position than what we're in by nature. We're made aware of our
father's love for us and our place in his house. Those things
changed this man's state. It didn't change his standing.
When he came within sight, his father said, this is my son who
was dead and is now alive. Well, obviously he wasn't dead
physically. So he's talking about spiritual life and death here.
He said, my son was dead and is alive again. His rejection
of his father's position, of his position in the father's
family, and the wasting of his father's substance that he had
reserved for him, he wanted to do this to be his own man. Well,
the truth of the matter is, he became a man of want. Great woman. And even his request, listen
to his request, Father, make me a servant. You can't do that. A son is a son. He's always been
a son. Never will be anything but a
son. And that's by divine election. God chooses whom he will, when
he will. His standing never changed, although
his state changed. He was ignorant of his standing
with the Father. Either we are or we are not sons
of God. And as I said before, that's
determined by God's electing love alone. He was not a son
because he came home. He came home because he was a
son. And the spirit's work in our life today is to teach us
those that are God's chosen of our standing with him as sons
and daughters of God. So in chapter 36 of Ezekiel, We have the accord of God saving
his people, the record of him bringing them out of Babylonian
captivity. And he speaks to his prophet
Ezekiel in visions and instructs him to tell the children of Israel
that soon they're going to be delivered. They're in bondage
in Babylon. Ezekiel himself is in bondage.
And God in a vision says, go speak to my people and tell them
that I'm going to deliver them shortly. and I'm going to fulfill
the promise that I made you to provide a savior and a shepherd
who would call out a flock of sheep and sanctify them and through
them reveal a nation of ungodly sinners transformed into what
God calls in our message today a holy flock. So I want us to
look at that in Ezekiel chapter 36 verse 37 and 38. Thus saith the Lord God, I will
yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it
for them. I will increase them with men like a flock, as the
holy flock, as a flock in Jerusalem for her solemn feast. So shall
the waste cities be filled with lots of men, and they shall know
that I am the Lord. So you can see where I've taken
the title of my message from, Ezekiel chapter 36. a flock of
holy men. In this prophecy from Ezekiel
36, we see a parallel between the nation Israel, God's chosen
nation, and the spiritual seed, God's chosen people. Israel,
the nation, was chosen through whom the Messiah would come.
Spiritual Israel was chosen through whom Christ would present to
the Father this holy flock. And he did this by liberating,
first of all, Israel from Babylonian captivity and keeping
that nation intact because it was through this nation Israel
that the Messiah would come Who would fulfill all righteousness
for his people and Ezekiel's prophecy is that of every Old
Testament prophecy? Concerning Israel and her sin
and God's impending judgment of that sin. So let's look at
this For a few moments eco chapter 36 in verse 18 tells us what
the problem is Wherefore, God says, I poured out my fury upon
Israel for the blood that they had shed upon the land and for
their idols wherewith they had polluted it. Israel was guilty
of much bloodshed, according to the scriptures here, not the
shedding of human blood in conflict or warfare, but the myriad animal
sacrifices made by Israel over the hundreds of years that they
were under the system that they made on pagan idols temples of
idol worship. If you remember when the ten
tribes of Israel broke away from the two southern tribes, they
built an altar, one in Bethel and one in Dan, and they carved
a golden calf and set it up there, and Jeroboam the king said, this
is where we'll worship God. Well, God had already told Israel
that I'll meet you at the temple in Jerusalem and nowhere else. So they offered all these hundreds
of years blood upon those pagan temples of idol worship. And
the truth here, God is teaching us, is there's only one place
to worship God. There's only one place. And that's
where the throne of grace is. And wherever that is, that's
where Christ is. Christ is our great high priest,
and he's entered into that holy of holies, and he sits at the
right hand of the throne of the Father in heaven, that throne
of grace. And Israel sought by their worship to usurp God's
authority, and they came to a throne of works. Their throne was a throne of
works. How do I know this to be so? The Scripture says it,
like Brother Bill said this morning, if the Scripture says it, it's
so. Well, I know by personal experience that my former throne
was not a throne of grace, it was a throne of works. And the
Scripture tells us this, and especially in Romans 10, one
through four, it talks about sinners being ignorant of or
not submitted to the righteousness of Christ for all of our salvation.
They're going about seeking to establish a righteousness of
their own. If you have truly been justified
by the Lord, you will readily admit that we were going about. And to go about is to reject
the person and work of Christ. Now, I didn't know that's what
I was doing, but that's what I was doing. I thought what I
was doing was pleasing to God, but in reality, it was an abomination
to God. It dishonored every attribute
of God's redemptive character, and it cast shame and reproach
upon his dear son. and the work that he had done.
I worshipped at an altar where the true God was not present.
I worshipped another Jesus by another spirit in another gospel. And you say, where in the world
did you come up with that? Read 2 Corinthians chapter 11. It
talks about another Jesus, another gospel, and another spirit. And
that's where we all are by nature until God called us out. My altar
in ignorance was another Jesus. Now, I did it in ignorance, but
I'm guilty of it. Look at Ezekiel chapter 36 in
verse 19 now. So God said, because of your
idolatry, Israel, I scattered them among the heathen, and they
were dispersed through the countries. According to their way and according
to their doings, I judged them. God judged Israel by their obedience
to the law of God, and that judgment was under condemnation. Why? Look at Galatians chapter three
and verse 10. This tells us why. For as many
as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is
written, cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things
that are written in the book of the law to do them. Unless
we can perform perfectly, We can't please God, and nobody
can do this. We must be perfect. Jesus said,
be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven, which
is perfect. Well, God judged Israel according to their doings,
and with the one standard whereby he judges all men, that imputed
righteousness, and their doing fell far short of this perfection. And he talks about this in 1
John 3 and verse 9 and 10. He says this, whosoever is born
of God does not commit sin, If you're born of God, you cannot
commit sin. Why? Because his seed remains
in you. The seed of Christ remains in
you, and he cannot sin because he's born of God. In this, the
children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil.
Whosoever doeth not righteousness, and what does it mean to doeth
righteousness? Plead Christ's righteousness for all my salvation.
If you don't do that, you're not of God. Neither he that loveth
not his brother, and that brother is Christ. So, whosoever doeth not righteousness,
looking to Christ for all my salvation is not of God. But
if you're born of God, you cannot perish, you cannot sin, because
God will not lose one that he gave to Christ. Okay, let's look
at Ezekiel chapter 36 and verse 20. And when they had entered
into their, this is God speaking to Ezekiel, and he's telling
them what to tell the children of Israel. He said, and when
they entered unto the heathen, whither they went, they profaned
my holy name. When they said, these are the
people of God, and are going forth out of his land. In other
words, Israel went forth out of the land that God gave them.
In other words, they forsook the land, the promised land God
gave them, and thereby forsook the God who gave them the land.
The God who promised to be their God gave them over to their own
sinful lusts. which opposed Christ's person
and work to redeem his people. They wouldn't accept his work.
They looked to their own work. And that's what we all do by
nature. That's what I was guilty of. Remember this. It was through
this nation that the Messiah was to come. And they forsook
this land, this land that God gave them for the bondage of
Babylon. And that's what we do. We reject
Christ by nature. for our own, we reject his work
against our own work. And why do we do that? Why would
a man or a woman reject a finished work by the impeccable Christ
for his own labor? It's either ignorance or arrogance,
one or the other. It's either ignorance of or rejection
of Christ as Lord over them. I'm guilty of this. I once rejected
God's rest in Christ, and thereby, I rejected the God who sent him.
In ignorance of God's righteousness, I worked hard to establish my
own righteousness. And in so doing, I rejected God's
righteousness. Every move I made, every breath
I took, opposed the one true God of whom I really knew nothing. Everything that the scripture
said, I said, well, that's what I believe, but I didn't know
the true and living God. I was like Paul's description
of the nation Israel in Romans chapter 9. He said this, but
Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, has
not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they sought it not
by faith, but as it were, the works of the law. They sought
to be justified before God based on their law keeping. And that's
what we all do by nature, in ignorance. No man would serve
an idol if he knew he was serving an idol. That would be foolish.
Listen, God accepts no person based on that person's character
and conduct, based on that person's work. Like Israel, all I had
to offer was my good works. I had no righteousness to offer
to God. I had no righteousness to plead. before God. I had no
righteousness that satisfied the demands of God's law against
me. All I had was my good works, and that's what I was offered.
I believe that the more blood I shed, the more sacrifice I
made, the more pleasing I was with God. I was, as Paul said
in Romans 3.15, he described me, he said, their feet are swift
to shed blood. I was quick to make the sacrifice.
That's what he's talking about. I was quick to make a sacrifice,
but my heart was far from God. God only accepts the character
and conduct of his dear son in obedience, suffering and death
to satisfy the law's demands against his elect. You know,
it's easy to make a sacrifice. It's easy to give something.
It's easy to do something. But the sinner can't change his
heart. That's one thing he can't do. God has to do that. And we
refuse to be saved by Christ until God changes our heart and
gives us that heart to believe. We will not look to the true
Christ for all our salvation. And refusal to be saved by Christ
alone, whether in ignorance or in insubordination to his righteousness
and beauty, is to profane the holy name of God. It is a reproach
upon the person and work of Christ. And it echoes what Paul said
in Galatians 221, I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness
come by the law, Christ died in vain. So Israel was driven
from the homeland into captivity because they rejected the God
who chose them for a special people of all the earth. Spiritually,
Israel, even God's elect, were subject to the same trials and
tribulations and they were given over to their captors even for
a time, but their reproach would shortly be rolled away by God. It's not your experience, think
about this, those of you who are justified, is it not your
experience of being in bondage to sin that of the nation of
Israel? Did you not think your acceptance
with God was based on your obedience to the law of God? I know you
would say, no, I never thought my obedience is what made me
right with God. But being ignorant of that righteousness,
God says you did. That's exactly what we were doing.
Did you not shed rivers of blood to atone for your sin? Were you
not ignorant of the laws designed to set you looking elsewhere
for salvation? Were you not ignorant of God's
righteousness imputed as the sum and the substance of your
salvation? Did you not desire God to judge
you by my works? Weren't you proud of your works,
your doings? Well, no unconverted sinner's
gonna admit this, but everyone who's been converted will say,
yes, you're right. God's right, I was, and I did, and I'm guilty,
and I'm sorry, and I've repented of that. We don't want God to judge us
now based on our doings, do we? If God would populate the way
cities of Israel with holy men, he must perform a miracle of
grace on the ungodly. And if God would populate his
church, which Israel is a picture of the church, with holy men,
they must be liberated from the bondage that we are under by
nature. and made to see what we are in
Christ, how God has set us apart, justified us, redeemed us, and
made us his own. And that's exactly what God does
to his people. For his great namesake, which
Israel profaned, God would sanctify himself, he said, before the
eyes of Israel. Look at chapter 36 and verse
21 through 24. God says here, even though Israel
did what they did, profaned my name." He said, I had pity. That means I had high regard
for my unholy name, which the house of Israel has profaned
among the heathen, whether they went. Therefore, saying to the
house of Israel, thus saith the Lord God, I do not this for your
sakes, O house of Israel, but for my unholy name's sake, which
you have profaned among the heathen, whether you went. And I will
sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen,
which you have profaned or dishonored. in the midst of them. And the
heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God,
when I shall sanctify, I shall be sanctified in you before their
eyes. Here God gives us a reason for
his mercy and grace upon his elect. He does this for his own
glory. The scripture says that everything
God does is for his glory and our good. Isaiah chapter 42 in
verse eight says this, I am the Lord, that is my name. and my
glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven image. Look at verse 23 again. And I
will sanctify my great name before your eyes. What does it mean
for God to sanctify himself before our eyes? I will demonstrate,
he says, my holiness in your redemption from Babylon. Instead
of condemning you and leaving you in your sins and your transgressions,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, in whom I will have
a pardon. My great name is the Lord, our
righteousness, a just God and a Savior. Those given me by the
Father must be delivered from bondage, but he must be just
when he does the delivery. How can man live when God said,
the soul that sinneth, it must surely die? How can he be just? God, he shows this character
in Ezekiel 36, sanctifying himself in Israel before their eyes.
Our God can do that because there's no God like him. He's a just
God and a savior. And that's revealed in the scripture
here, sanctifying himself in Israel before their eyes. In other words, God will reveal
the mystery of godliness to his elect. How he can be just and
justify the ungodly. and he will vindicate his holiness
by the salvation of that remnant of the national Israel. Babylon,
if you know, as we said before, is a type of false religion. In Adam, our federal head and
representative, we all experienced the bondage of false religion
in Babylon. And though banned from God's
presence and fellowship, we were never out of his sight, his mind,
and his affection. Though our thoughts of God were
only evil continually, His thoughts were of our restoration to his
fellowship. And God delivered Israel into
captivity for a season. And even his elect are delivered
into captivity for a season. But he's going to deliver his
elect from spiritual bondage. And how will he do that? Well,
he tells us here in chapter 36 and verse 24 and following. God says, for I will take, I
will take, I'll take you. You won't come, but I'll take
you. And then who's he gonna take? Mine elect. And I'll take you from among
the heathens, Jew and Gentile, and gather you out of all countries
and will bring you into your own land. I'll bring you into
the church. That's the new land. Then will
I sprinkle clean water on you. What is that? That's the gospel.
the gospel of God's free and sovereign grace. And you shall
be clean from what? All your filthiness and from
all your idols. You've never been an idolater?
God says you are, or you were. He says, I'll cleanse you from
your filthiness and your idolatry. Jesus prayed this prayer in John
17, verse 17. Sanctify them through thy truth.
Father, thy word is truth. And then to the church at Ephesus,
he wrote these words. that he might sanctify and cleanse
the church with the washing of water by the word. So that's
what he's talking about here in Ezekiel. And then he says,
a new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put
in you and take away the stony heart out of your own flesh and
I will give you a heart of flesh. He's talking about regeneration
and conversion here. And he says, I will put my spirit
within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you shall
keep my judgments. and do them. And because of that,
verse 28, you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your
fathers and you shall be my people and I'll be your God. I will
also save you from all your uncleanness and I will call for the corn
and will increase it and lay no famine upon you. And I will
multiply the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field
that you shall receive no more reproach of famine among the
heathen. What he's saying here is, I'll
take care of every need. My God shall supply all your
needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. So
in these verses, God lays out the order in which he deals with
his elect. First of all, he said, I will
take you from among the heathen, verse 24. Secondly, I will bring
you into the church, the church of the redeemed of the Lord,
and I will cleanse you with pure water. Pure water is the gospel
wherein that righteousness is revealed. And I will give you
a new heart to love righteousness and hate evil. And I will keep
you from falling away, he says. You'll be my people. God's people
cannot perish. Righteousness demands their eternal
life. And then in verse 28, he says,
I'll give you a new identity. Look with me at 1 Peter 2 9-10.
This is that new people that he's talking about. Peter wrote,
but you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a peculiar people that you should show forth the praises of him
who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, which
in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God,
which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.
So this is the way God delivers his people out of spiritual bondage
as he delivered Israel out of physical bondage. And notice
in all these transactions, Israel is passive. God is doing the
acting. I will and you shall. Salvation
is of the Lord without any conditions or contributions from the sinner. We'll look at verse 31 and 32.
Notice now the reaction of Israel. Then shall you remember your
own evil ways and your doings that were not good, and you shall
loathe yourself in your own sight for your iniquities and for your
abominations. Not for your sake do I this,
saith the Lord, be it known unto you, be ashamed and confounded
for your own ways, O house of Israel." Here we have Israel's
repentance. Sorrow and shame without fear
of punishment, which leads to true repentance, is a certain
outcome of the Holy Spirit's conviction. and again the prodigal
son. When he came to himself, the
Spirit convicted him. He remembered his father's house
and what his father had taught him, and he was convicted of
his sin. And that's the way it is with
every justified sinner. No justified sinner who sees
the magnitude of his sins and the great cost borne by his Savior
and the great mercy and grace of his God, but that he can show
remorse of some degree for his ungodliness. How can a redeemed
sinner not rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence
in the flesh? How can a redeemed sinner not
marvel at the love of God to give his own son a ransom and
provide a righteousness for him to cover his nakedness and a
ring for his finger declaring him to be a son of God and giving
him shoes for his feet that was once swift to shed blood but
now is shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace? How can
I not love those yet called, uncalled, unquickened? How can
I not love those who share in the ministry of this gospel,
to the saving of the souls of those yet lost, who must hear
this gospel to be enlightened unto the truth of what God has
done for us in Christ? Would I profane the name of the
Lord by failing to do this? Help us not to. If repentance
is a radical change of mind, and it is concerning who God
is and what he's done for his people, then it's of necessity
a radical change of mind in our thinking of ourselves. I'm ashamed
of my former idolatry. I'm not ashamed to admit it,
but I'm ashamed of it. I was completely and totally
wrong in my experience of who God really was and who I am. Nothing but a sinner saved by
the grace of God. I have nothing to offer God but
my sacrifice of praise. And in the process of my being
saved by his grace, I was actively and openly opposed to the true
and living God and didn't even know it. So we see here in the
example of Israel what God's charge against us is, in a word,
idolatry. Secondly, for our transgressions,
God gave us over to our sinful lust. and our desires to be in
bondage. And that bondage is specifically
self-righteousness, seeking to be approved of God based on our
works instead of Christ's work. And then thirdly, God would sanctify
his great name in the salvation of that remnant for whom Christ
died. Jesus said this in John 6, 39.
And this is the Father's will, which has sent me, that of all
which he hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise
it up again the third day. God never promised to save everybody,
but he did promise to save all for whom Christ died. He's a
just God. He cannot charge with sin that
sinner to whom Christ has died and paid his debt. God can't
do that. Christ's resurrection from the
dead is God's testimony that he's satisfied with the work
Christ performed, and his righteousness imputed to the account of every
sinner he represents demands our eternal life. In the salvation
of God's elect, he is sanctified, set apart in our eyes for all
the world to see as a just God and a Savior. Okay, look at Ezekiel
chapter 36 and verse 33. Thus saith the Lord God, in that
day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities,
I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the way shall
be built it up, and the desolate land shall be tilled. Whereas
it lay desolate in the sight of all that pass by, and they
shall say, this land that was desolate is become like the Garden
of Eden. And the water and the waste and
desolate are ruined cities are become fenced and are inhabited.
Here God promises to revive the desolate, the barren, and unfruitful
land. He's talking about spiritual
Israel here, left unkept by our captivity into bondage. In Romans
6 verse 17, but God be thanked that you were the servants of
sin, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine
which was delivered you, being then made free from sin, you
became the servants of righteousness. God restores his people who were
servants of sin to make them servants of righteousness. He
will bring the gospel, he says, to the church, which is spiritual
Israel, those he cleansed with his blood from all their impurities,
iniquities. And he says, I'll build my church.
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And it'll
be better than the Garden of Eden. Why? How could anything
be better than the Garden of Eden? It will never be uninhabited
because it's not dependent upon man's doings. But this is dependent
upon the maintaining of the Lord Jesus Christ and his work that
he's done. So he says, I'm going to rebuild
the city. I'm going to rebuild the church. and I'm gonna put
my spirit in it. Look at verse 36 again. Then
the heathen that are left round about you shall know that I,
the Lord, build the ruined places and plant them that were desolate.
I'll cause Israel to grow, the church to grow. I, the Lord,
have spoken and I will do it. You will experience it and they
will see it. Okay, let's look at the last
two verses right here, Ezekiel 37 and 38. Then said the Lord
God, I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to
do it for them. I will increase them with men like a flock, and
the holy flock as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feast.
So shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men, and
they shall know that I am the Lord. The desire of every justified
sinner is to inquire of God to call out the elect from Babylon.
and to fill the church with holy men, men who are holy unto the
Lord as a flock in Jerusalem. What he's referring to there
is there was a place where the high priest kept the flock that
were offered on the altar of sacrifice. They were unblemished.
They had to be kept where they could be checked. And they were
called the holy flock. And that's what God called us.
We are his holy flock. 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse
30 says this, but of him, of God the Father, are you in Christ
Jesus, who of God has made unto us wisdom and righteousness and
sanctification, our holiness and redemption. And this holiness
is not to sacrifice ourselves on the altar like the animals
were sacrificed, but to offer our bodies a living sacrifice,
which is your reasonable service. So God will fill the way cities.
He promises here, Albany, Georgia is the way city. The gospel is
here in this city. So Albany being one with flocks
of holy men, he has a people from every kindred, every tongue,
every tribe, and every nation. In Isaiah chapter 64 and verse
four, He identifies these again, and we read this in the beginning.
For since the beginning of the world, men have not heard nor
perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside
Thee, what He hath prepared for them that waiteth on Him. Second
Corinthians 2.10, But God has revealed them unto us by His
Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things
of God. Every sinner for whom Christ died will know In John 17, 3, Christ is speaking
again. He says, And this is life eternal,
that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ,
whom thou hast sent. Jesus himself said, I am the
door to the Holy Flock, God's Holy Flock. If any man enter
in, he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture.
Well, the question is, has your eye seen? Has your ear heard? Have you found pasture? Has it
entered into your heart what God has prepared for those who
wait for him? Are you waiting on him? Will you wait? Will you
quit your labor and enter into his rest? Well, God has a holy
flock set apart and elect in love in eternity past. He has
a good shepherd appointed, being the substitute, surety, and savior
of his people. It is this shepherd who laid
down his life for the sheep. He has a flock. He's laid down
his life for the sheep. He says, my sheep hear my voice
and I know them and they follow me and I give unto them eternal
life and neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. You
and I will never witness a greater revelation of a greater mystery
than that of a just God justifying an ungodly sinner. Thank God
he does reveal it to his holy flock through the preaching of
the gospel. May he be pleased to reveal it.