Turn back, if you would, in your
Bibles to that eleventh chapter of John's Gospel. We read the first fifteen verses,
and I want to read one more. Because Christ and those with
Him have now come to the tomb where they buried Lazarus. And that verse is verse 43. And when He had thus spoken,
He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. I wonder what people would think
if they passed by the largest cemetery
in this county and saw that I had taken this
pulpit and set it in the middle of that cemetery and was preaching. I just imagined they would think
that I had really lost my mind then. But that is much the picture of what takes place in the preaching
of the gospel of Christ crucified. As a matter of fact, I've entitled
this message, Preaching to the Dead. And we have in this verse, and in
this situation, An excellent illustration of
the condition that grace meets. The condition of those that God
saves. And the condition that the gospel
meets. Spiritual death. And if you notice, Lazarus is
commanded by Christ to do what he cannot do. Because he's dead. He's commanded
by the Lord Jesus Christ to do something that it is impossible
for him to do. And in the gospel, men and women
are commanded to do what they cannot do. And that is to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. And they cannot do that because
as Lazarus was dead physically, All in Adam are dead spiritually. It's stated several times in
the Scriptures, such as Paul when he says, in Adam all die,
or all died. In Romans 5, when he talks about
death by sin passing upon all men. And we don't need in any
way to kid ourselves or to imagine that man-made inventions or formulas
can in any way deal with this awful state and situation of
every sinner. Now, I know that men and women
logically say that God would not command us to do something
that we cannot do. As a matter of fact, that's pretty
much the basis of all so-called free will doctrine. They say in their own fallen
logic, God would never ask us or command us to do what we cannot
do. And yet, as we have found out
recently in our studies in Exodus, that is exactly what was taking
place when God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses and that people, when
at the very same moment, at the bottom of that mount, they were
breaking all of those commandments. And so there goes on over and
over again, year after year, a debate among men on God's sovereignty
versus man's responsibility. But as is pictured here in this
instance and many more times, There is no ability in responsibility. There is no ability to do what
is commanded, and that is why salvation has to be all of God
and all of grace. Turn back to John chapter 6 and
listen to the Lord Jesus Christ as He declares this two times
in this one chapter. Verse 44 of John 6, He says,
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." Do you see
those first few words? No man can come unto Me. And I'm not a really great student
of grammar and never have been, but I do remember a lady who
taught me in about the sixth grade, straightening us all out
on the difference between can and may. And she said may had to do with
permission. You may do something that you
do not have the ability to do. But can has to do with ability. So in this state that we're talking
about here, this state of spiritual deadness, Christ says it, no
man can come to me. And then just in case we didn't
really understand that or believe it, look down in verse 65. And he said, Therefore said I
unto you, No man can come unto me except it were given unto
him of my father. And when you look in Scripture
in such places as Romans chapter 6, though there seems to be an
activity among these who are spiritually dead, especially
those who are spiritually dead and lost in a false religion,
it speaks of what they do and what they produce that they think
is acceptable to God, and it calls that dead works. And why is that? These are dead
works. They bring forth fruit unto death,
Paul says there, because those who do them are dead. proved to be fruit unto God,
as the believer is enabled to produce, but they are fruit unto
death, because they are performed by these that are spiritually
dead. So this being the case, why does
God command men to do what they can't do? Well, I'd say the first
thing is to show all of us our helplessness. To remind us of
our inability. To show us that we are unable
of ourselves to do anything spiritual, anything acceptable toward God,
anything commanded by God. And not only that, He does it,
I believe, to show that it is His power that saves us. It is His power that enables. You see, in both of those verses
that we read in John 6, the thing that followed our inability was
that which the Father alone was able to do. And I believe it is to glorify
what He says is His purpose to do, and that is to glorify His
grace toward us. Grace that is not, as some would
have it to be, just some benevolent will toward them, like I wish
you well, or I wish you had this, or I wish I could do this for
you. No, the grace of God is omnipotent
grace. And it is that omnipotent grace
that is necessary to save His people from their sins. And to show that it is what He
does that makes the difference. In other words, if it were as
these preachers in our day say, when they say, God has done all
that He can do, so now it's up to you. If it were really that
way, All of humanity, as described by God, would of necessity have
to die in their sins and perish because they could not do anything
to please God. Now I realize this, I know this,
and I believe this, and that is that we are to preach the
gospel to all people that we have opportunity to. In other
words, I began a long time ago to view this matter of where
and when to preach in this way. I asked the Lord to help me because
I'm so ignorant and hard-headed and so unable to know of myself
that if He wanted me to preach to somebody or in some place,
just open the door for it. And if he didn't, to just close
the door to it. But yet at the same time, The
Lord's servants have a willingness, as Paul said, to preach the gospel
to all kinds of people in any place that God appoints, not
viewing them as whether elect or non-elect or whatever the
case is, just simply for the glory of God to preach the gospel
to every person. And we believe that none are
born again without the gospel. There are some who believe that
God gives spiritual life, and people have spiritual life where
they have never heard the gospel. But the problem is this, and
that is that spiritual life is manifested by faith. In John's Gospel again, chapter
11 I think it is, where our Lord tells one of Lazarus' sisters
that everyone that liveth and believeth, they'll never die. So faith, this believing, is
the evidence that they have now spiritual life. And the only
way faith is ever manifested or exercised, if you will, is
on the object of faith. Who's the object of faith? The
Lord Jesus Christ. And the only manifestation or
revelation that God has ordained concerning the object of faith
is the gospel. We believe and we preach the
gospel to everyone that God gives us opportunity to, and yet at
the same time as we believe that the gospel is to be preached
to all men as we have opportunity, we do not believe in gospel regeneration. You say, what do you mean by
that preacher? We do not believe that a person
is born again simply because they have heard the gospel. They hear the gospel with the
natural ear. They may have even a mental understanding
of it, but being still dead in their sins spiritually, The gospel preached to them did
not guarantee them new birth, did not guarantee them spiritual
life. No, it has to be attended with
the power, with divine power, if it is of benefit to somebody. We sing a song sometimes, I'm
not even sure what the name of it is, I just always remember
that one phrase in this hymn. But in this hymn, the hymn writer
wrote something that is absolutely true. He said, all is vain unless
the Spirit of the Holy One come down. In other words, the gospel
that is preached, since it falls on spiritually dead ears, since
there is no ability in the hearer to raise his or herself to life,
it must be attended by this divine power. And that's the thing I pray for
more than anything else in this day. And that is that the gospel
that is preached, I realize it is preached in so few places. I understand that the true gospel
that gives all the glory to God, that is bound up in Jesus Christ
and Him crucified, I realize that it is not preached in very
many places in our day. But it is preached in some. God
has not left Himself without a witness. It is being proclaimed
in various places over this earth, but wherever it is preached,
to whomever it is preached, it will be in that sense in vain
as far as they are concerned, except it be attended with divine
power. attended by the working power
of the Spirit of God. Because God has to do something. And not only does he have to
do something, for all he says, he has pledged himself to do
something. And that is this, God gives the
enablement to his people in the hour that he has appointed, and
they do what they could not otherwise do. Lazarus, come forth. And when you think about that,
that is the same way that men and women view the gospel in
our day. They say things like this. They've
said it to me. They said, if we believe what
you believe and preach, we never bother to preach to anybody. If we believe what you believe
about the condition of man as he fell in Adam, If we believe
that, there'd be no need to preach to anybody. But the truth is, when the Lord
teaches us, He brings a preacher like myself to realize and to
believe, I wouldn't preach if that wasn't the case. In other
words, if it depended on my ability, or upon my knowledge, or on my
skills of oratory, or my charismatic personality, if it depended on
anything about me or in me, I'd just give it up right now. Because this is the gospel of
God. You see, Lazarus was dead and
he could not do what he was commanded to do, but he did. He did. The command was attended by the
power of God, and the enablement by that power was such that God
enabled Lazarus to do what it was impossible for him to do. You look back in John chapter 11. In that 26th verse that I quoted,
he says, And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never
die. Believest thou this? Believest thou this? What? That whoever lives and believes
on Christ shall never Now, when our Lord began to talk to those
disciples, as He remained two days yet away from where the
town of Bethany was, when He began to describe that, they
thought He was talking about Lazarus resting in a restful
sleep. But our Lord said of Lazarus,
He said, no, Lazarus is not sleeping in that sense. Lazarus is D-E-A-D,
dead. And that's exactly what the Scriptures
show fallen sinners to be, dead. Not merely just sick, and not
merely just weak, or not merely just frail in some way, or misguided,
or whatever expression you might want to use. It says they are
everyone. Just as Lazarus was physically
dead, so are all of Adam's race spiritually dead. And there are
picture after picture after picture in this book to show what is
necessary to bring us to life. Now Lazarus, when he was raised,
came forth and the Bible says that he had, though he was alive,
a lot of grave clothes on him. But the Scripture says that Christ
commanded those who were near him to loose him of those grave
clothes and let him go. And so just as God uses the human
instrument to preach the gospel and give the gospel command to
those who cannot do it, so when He raises them to life, still
having some of those old grave clothes, those old false notions about
God, those old traditions, those old superstitions, that are harder
to free ourselves from than we can ever imagine things that
we thought about God that we knew for sure were true. And yet the rest of our days,
since He made us alive, He has somebody to help us to get rid
of those old grave clothes day by day for the rest of our lives. And we're still getting rid of
them. Turn over also there. Here's
another picture in Matthew chapter 9. Matthew chapter 9 and look down
in verse 5. Our Lord comes to a man who is
sick of the palsy. He's been laying on this bed
all his life, unable to do anything, and it says in Matthew chapter
9, When our Lord tells him to do something, it says, For whether
it is easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say,
Arise and walk. He first said, Thy sins be forgiven
thee. And we ought to always remember
that God deals with us in our condition based on how He knows
we are, not how we think we are. He deals with us based on what
our need is, rather than what we think we need. But there were
those who were standing by there saying, now only God can forgive
sin. He said, well, which do you think
is easier? If I say, thy sins be forgiven
thee, or arise and walk? Look at verse 6. But that you
may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive
sins, then saith He to the sick of the palsy, Arise, take up
thy bed, and go unto thine house. He couldn't do that. They knew he couldn't do that.
They knew he had laid there on that bed in his inability because
of his affliction, that of all the things that he could have
been commanded to do, that was at the top of the list of what
he could not do. Guess what he did? He rose up, and He took up His
bed, and He went to His house. Now, our Lord did not give us
all these miracles just so we could emphasize what the Lord
can do for our bodies. He did not go and heal every
blind person or every person sick of the palsy. He did it
here and He did it there and in another place, but it was
to show what He does to us as sinners spiritually. He said,
Arise. And guess what? He did. It's the same over in Luke chapter
7. Turn over to Luke chapter 7 and listen in Luke chapter
7 to what takes place. In Luke chapter 7, there's a
funeral procession that passes by and they're carrying a coffin
with a funeral bier. And they're on their way to put
this body, this dead person, into a tomb Which is what you
do with dead people. But they passed by the Lord Jesus
Christ. Verse 11 says, And it came to
pass the day after that he went into a city called Nain, and
many of his disciples went with him, and much people. Now when
he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead
man carried out. the only son of his mother. And
she was a widow, and much people of the city was with her. And
when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said unto
her, Weep not. And he came and touched the bier,
and they that bear him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Well, he couldn't do that, could
he? And he that was dead sat up and
began to speak, and he delivered him to his mother. And there came a fear on all,
and they glorified God, saying that a great prophet is risen
among us, and that God hath visited his people. You see, the thing necessary
to raise spiritually dead sinners such as we are to life is a divine
visitation. God has to come to us in our
deadness. He has to come to us in power
and come to us where there is nothing but death and give life. And as we preach the gospel, we call upon people to do what
they cannot do of themselves, because they are spiritually
dead. And this spiritual death is characterized
by a natural enmity against God, and at the heart of all this
deadness is an unwillingness to do. It's easier. for a man who's
physically dead to raise himself back to life than it is for a
spiritually dead sinner to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. To
cast off all his old hope. To cast off all his imagined
rags of self-righteousness. And trust the Lord Jesus Christ
alone. Something has to take place.
And it is neither in preacher or hearer, it must be a work
of God. And there are many ways that
we have this pictured in the Scripture, and we have many things
that are stated about this raising to life, this new birth at the
command of God, but really when it comes to it, I can't tell you very much about
it. Our Lord said it's like when
the wind blows. The wind blows wherever it will. And you cannot see the wind.
But as the wind blows wherever it will, you see the effect of
the wind. And wherever you see men and
women under the sound of the true gospel, all of a sudden
being brought to believe the truth and trust in the blood
and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, that's where the Spirit's being. wherever you find these doing
what they could not of themselves do. I tell you, I can remember reading
the Bible and hearing lots of preachers and all my life growing
up in Sunday school and all these various things. And when anything
that had even to touch on God's sovereignty, man's true condition,
predestination, divine elect, any of those things, When I would
hear of them, I would not even allow them to come into my mind. I don't even want to hear about
that. There's no way I'd ever believe that. There's no way
I'd ever hear a man preach such as that. But you know what? Something
happened. And that which I could not do.
Could not do because of my nature against God. Could not do because
of my unbelief. Could not do because I didn't
want to do it. And I've been doing it ever since
that. What happened? God came to me in my spiritual
death. Though in religion. You know
there are lots of dead places. There are lots of cemeteries
in this world. And some of them are really fashioned
nice with nice stones and such as that. Some of them are just,
maybe don't even have a marker of any kind. But there's one
thing common. Everybody there is dead. Christ looked at those Pharisees
and He said, You will not come to Me that you might have life. What's He telling them? Number
one, you're dead. If He's life, you will not come
to Me. He says that you might have life.
They're dead. And not only that, they have
no ability of themselves and no willingness in themselves
to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. So their only hope is what He'll
do for them. And your only hope and my only
hope is what God's pleased to do for us. He has to come to
where we are in the situation that we are in, all dead spiritually. All the other miracles show us
spiritually deaf and spiritually blind and spiritually helpless. That's who we preach to. But we know that God will attend
the gospel as it is preached to His sheep with power. In the Psalms, we find the Father talking to
the Son as his king. I've set my king
on my holy hill." Talking about Christ. But this is what he says. You see, Christ is a king, and
he said to have a kingdom, but in order to have a kingdom, you've
got to have subjects in that kingdom. Well, here they all
are, rebels and dead folks spiritually. What's going to happen? But the Father says to His King,
He said, Thy people, not everybody, but Thy people,
that people I've given to you before the world began, Thy people
shall be willing in the day of Thy power. Number one, they everyone will
be. And number two, there is a day
appointed for them. And number three, it's the day
of God's power. He'll send somebody to preach
to them the truth, to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. to tell of
that salvation that's the gift and grace of God, to preach that
gospel wherein the righteousness of God is revealed, how that
He is a just God and a Savior. And what they couldn't do, and
what they wouldn't do, they'll do because of His power. And not only that, not only was
it so with Christ, but when Christ went back into glory, and He
sent out those that He called and made to be His apostles,
when they went out in His name, they found a lot of dead folks. They found a lot of weak folks
and lame folks and palsied folks and all. And He enabled them,
as they preached the gospel, to do these miracles. In Ezekiel 16, where we find
the Lord's people pictured in this same way, In Ezekiel 16, they're pictured
as a dead, aborted infant laying a bloody, lifeless mass in a
field. And he says, but I passed by. I passed by. where you were at,
unable to come to me, unwilling to, I passed by where you were. And I looked upon you, and I
said unto you, live. Live. And that's what he has to do
with every sinner. He raised that one that lay dead
in that field up to a beautiful woman adorned, the talk of the
world. But turn over also to Ezekiel
37. Now what we have in Ezekiel 37
is simply a picture of what God commands every one of His true
gospel preachers to do, which is to go out and preach the gospel
and it will meet with the same crowd. The prophet says, the hand of
the Lord was upon me. and carried me out in the Spirit
of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which
was full of bones." He doesn't even say bodies. The flesh has long deteriorated
and gone and rotted away. There's nothing but bones left. And He calls me to pass by them
round about, and behold, there were very many We're not talking
about a few people. There were very many in the open
valley, and lo, they were very dry, very dead, very obviously
dead. And He said unto me, Son of Man,
can these bones live? I don't ever read that question. that I think I believe what Ezekiel's
answer is here in so many words. He says, And I answered, O LORD,
thou knowest. It seems like that Ezekiel said,
Lord, if it's up to me, they can't. You alone know whether
they can live. You are the only one who can
give life. And again He said unto me, prophesy
upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the
word of the Lord." There's Ezekiel, he's at his cemetery with his
pulpit, preaching to the dead. Oh, you
fool. You're just a fool. You believe
people are in this state and yet you stand up there and preach
the gospel to them and all that? Don't you know if they don't
have a free will, if they don't have the ability to make their
decision or to choose, they're never going to come to God? No. Thus saith the Lord God unto
these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and
you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you,
and I will bring flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and
put breath in you, and you shall live. And ye shall know that I am the
Lord." And that's one thing that is a characteristic of everyone,
every sinner, that God makes alive. They know that He is the singular
Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded,
and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a shaking. Things never remain the same.
I don't care how it appears outwardly, things never remain the same
where the gospel is preached. An old preacher said, wherever
the apostle Paul preached, there was either revival or riot. And behold, a shaking. And the
bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld low,
the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered
them above, but there was no breath in them. Then said He
unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say
to the wind, Thus said the Lord, Come from the four winds, O breath,
and breathe upon thee slain. that they may live. You have the message that God
sent proclaimed, and you have the Spirit of God attending it
with power. So I prophesied as He commanded
me, and the breath came into them And they lived and stood
up upon their feet an exceeding great army." He stood there in that valley
that was nothing but skeletal remains, evidence of death. And as God commanded him, he
preached. And the Spirit of God attended
that message, and these bones came together. What a sight that
must have been. But not really anything like
the real thing. The thing that takes place when
the Spirit of God, under this message, comes to a sinner's
heart who's been dead from birth. born dead in trespasses and sins, and makes them alive. When that happened to the Apostle
Paul, who was at the time Saul of Tarsus, when he was made alive, you know
what he found out? He found out he'd been dead. When he was dead, he didn't know
he was dead. He thought he was alive spiritually
to God. He thought he knew something
about God. He thought he kind of had a corner on God. No. He's just dead. And so when he's
made alive, he finds out what he was before and he says, I
was before a blasphemer. I didn't just change theological
positions. I didn't just grow spiritually. I was brought from death to life. Because no sinner has life apart
from the Lord Jesus Christ. So there in John 6 where he talks
about, no man can come. No man can come. He says in verse
37, but all that the Father giveth me shall come. Shall come to me, and him that
comes to me I will in no wise cast out. Now that ought to encourage the
gospel preacher. He's preaching to the dead, but
he's got the living God who's able to make them alive. And it ought to encourage us
to witness and to seek to bring men and women under the sound
of the gospel. Because one thing that is so
amazing to me, I hope I never ever forget it, and that is what
Saul of Tarsus was when the Lord brought him to
spiritual life. What would you have said of him?
No need of talking to him. No need to invite him to the
meeting to hear the gospel. Oh, he's hard. He's case-hardened,
as we say. He knows so much, and he's been
this way so long, or he's so self-righteous. He's nothing but dead. Or here's somebody else over
here. They're the vilest person, the worst drunkard, dope addict,
the worst whatever morally, still just dead. And they may be one of God's
sheep that when He brings them under the sound of the truth, He brings them to life. And I tell you this, it ought
to encourage us with regard to our families. Those children that got no interest
in the gospel whatsoever, they got no interest in worshiping
God or learning anything about God or anything like that. As a matter of fact, just the
opposite. But they're no match for the
life giver. They're just dead. Why pray for the dead? Because God can make them alive.
Why pray for the heart of heart, blind spiritually, fighting against
the truth of God? They're just dead. God can make them alive. They're
His child. He will make them alive. Christ came to that tomb. He said, Lazarus, come forth. Can you get any glimpses of the
faces that were around him at that moment? What did he say? Why would he have said that? He spoke. You remember in the book of Genesis,
when God said, let there be light, and there was light. I think
that literally translates something like this. He said, light be,
and light was. He says that to sinners, who
the God of this world has blinded. their eyes to the truth and light
of Christ. Light be. Live. Come forth. And when He does
that, they live and they arise. They take up their bed and they
follow the Lord Jesus Christ. I can't produce that. It's not mine to produce it. But thank God He comes to where
His people are. And under this message, He gives
them life. That's why I want to preach the
gospel. That's why I want men and women to hear the gospel.
Because the one that is set forth in the truth, is the one who
also is giving life to His people to believe on Him. Father, we pray in this hour
that You would come to this world and these
that You've appointed, Lord, and bring them from death unto life. We pray that you would speak
in that voice that raises the dead and say, come forth. Call them
by their names, personally, individually, and most especially, powerfully. Do everything you do in the salvation
of your people to the glory of your name. and let no man in
any way or to any measure seek the credit for it. We pray that you'd help us, not
only in this day, but in the days ahead. Give us more grace,
increase our faith, forgive us of our great sinfulness. and receive our thanks this day
for that bounty of Your grace, all things given unto us in Christ
our Savior. We pray and ask all things in
His name. Amen.