Turn back in your Bibles once
again this morning to that little book of Philemon where we read. In case you do not know very
much about the book of Philemon, it is a letter that the Apostle Paul has written
to this other believer by the name of Philemon, and it concerns
a man who is a runaway slave by the name of Onesimus. He has run away. He has been
caught. And he has been imprisoned in
the same prison where the Apostle Paul is being held. And while he is there, he hears
the gospel, and God is pleased to reveal Christ to him and in
him. And so now he's about to be sent
back to his lawful master, Philemon. And he takes with him this letter
written by the Apostle Paul at his own hand that he might be
received by Philemon now, not merely as a slave, but as a brother
in the Lord Jesus Christ. I've entitled this message this
morning, Unthinkable Grace. You see, God's salvation is all
of grace. That means that it cannot be
merited in any way that it is in one outside of ourselves,
the Lord Jesus Christ. But almost everybody makes mention
of grace. The truth is God's grace is exactly
the opposite to our natural way of thinking. That's why I'm calling this unthinkable
grace. Hold your place here in Philemon
and turn back to Isaiah chapter 55. Here in Isaiah 55, the Lord commands by the prophet
Isaiah in verse 7, saying, Let the wicked forsake
his way. Now, by the wicked there, we
naturally think. that he's talking about everybody
who has committed very gross crimes or ungodliness. But he's talking about everyone
outside of Jesus Christ who is himself the way. Let the wicked forsake his way
and the unrighteous man his thoughts, mainly thoughts about how to
be righteous before God. And let him return unto the Lord,
and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly
pardon." And now listen to what God says
to every one of us. For my thoughts are not your
thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my
thoughts than your thoughts." Paul carried on the same thought
writing to the Corinthians. He says, but the natural man,
that's every one of us as we come into this world, The natural
man, every one of us, apart from God's grace in our thinking,
in our natural, logical reasoning, but the natural man receives
not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness
unto him. Can He know them because they
are spiritually discerned? In other words, the grace of
God, the grace of God in salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ must
be revealed to us. One example of this very thing
was clearly illustrated in a man by the name of Naaman. Naaman was a very prominent man,
and he was a man in great authority to the king of Assyria, and yet
he was a leper. And so, at the recommendation
of a young Hebrew maiden who was herself in captivity at the
time, he went down to where God had a prophet in the land by
the name of Elisha. And the Scripture says that Elisha
sent out a messenger unto him saying, Go and wash in Jordan
seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou
shalt be clean." As a matter of fact, when Naaman and his
company rode up in front of the house where the prophet was staying,
He did not even go out to greet this prominent man. He simply
sent out his servant with this word. If you'd be cleansed of
your leprosy, you go and dip in the River Jordan seven times
and you'll be cleansed of your leprosy. But I want you to listen
to Naaman's response. It says, But Naaman was wroth,
that is, he was angry, and went away and said, Behold, I thought, I thought, he will surely come
out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God
and strike his hand over the place and recover my leprosy." He said, we've got rivers, much
cleaner, much more beautiful, such as the Havana and Farpar
in my own homeland, And if that is what it was going to take,
I can go back there and do it. I thought he would surely rub
his hand over the place and heal me. And had he continued in that
line of thinking, he would have continued in his leprosy, but
his servant or one of the soldiers traveling with him said, Master,
if he had told you some great thing to do, you would have done
it without any question. But rather you are following
your natural thinking. And God turned him graciously
to go back and do what was commanded by the prophet. And guess what? He was cleansed of his leprosy. But my friend, that is the natural
response and attitude to the gospel of grace. It is absolutely
unthinkable. And nowhere is it seen, I believe,
so many times and in so many ways as we find it set forth
for us here in this little book of Philemon. You see, it is unthinkable to
the natural mind, to our natural way of thinking, it is unthinkable
that this man Onesimus might be one of God's elect. You see, as a matter of fact,
men by nature reject the very notion of what is plainly set
forth here in the Word of God, and that is that God has a people
that He chose in Christ before the world began. That's not hard
to see in this book. All you have to do is turn to
Ephesians 1 and read the first few verses of Ephesians 1 where
God says that that is exactly what He did. The problem is that
is so contrary to our natural thinking. Because we've been
told over and over again just exactly what we want to hear
by our natural thinking, and that is that salvation is by
our choosing God, if we will, rather than in Him choosing us. But he says again and again in
this book that he has this people that he loved and chose in Christ. They are described as a covenant
people. They are described as the people
that he loved with an everlasting love and determined to save. He will have all of his people
but one like Onesimus. I remember when the Marine Corps
was sending out in their advertising campaign, and they were saying,
if you remember, the Marines are looking for a few good men. And that's exactly the natural
thinking about salvation. The notion is that God is looking
for a few good people He's looking for somebody good enough to say
or worthy enough to say, but here is a man who is a slave
and a runaway and disobedient and most likely a thief who has
also stolen from his master. But I'll tell you something,
that is a description, that is a picture of everyone who is
saved by the grace of God. Because if God saves any one
of us, if He saves anybody who has ever lived on the face of
this earth, He will have to save those who have stolen God's glory. He will have to save those who
are slaves, the Bible says, to sin, slaves even to Satan, whom
it says he has taken captive at his will, slaves to a fallen
nature. Every one, he says, who has sinned
and come short of the glory of God, and who stands in themselves
as criminals before divine justice, condemned in ourselves, those
who fell and rebelled as we did in our father Adam, and described
in this way enemies in our own minds by wicked works." What are the wicked works? of
our own mind, the notion that we'll be saved by what we think
rather than what God thinks, or rather we'll be saved and
righteous before God by something we do rather than in Jesus Christ. You see, the Bible says that
righteousness is a gift. And that you and I, Paul says
in Romans 3, quoting out of the Old Testament, that there is
none righteous, no, not one. You say, you mean me, preacher?
I not only mean you, I mean me and every other person. He says there is none that understand
it, There is none that seeketh after God. We seek after a God
of our own making. We seek after a God that will
satisfy our natural mind, but not the living God. And when you look and think about
the catalog of those that the Scripture show who God was pleased
to show mercy to and say, There are in the New Testament we find
clearly such as a tax collector of the vilest kind named Matthew. There is such as these wild fishermen,
unruly and ungodly men such as Peter and James and John. He saved and delivered blind
men and lepers and paralytics and publicans and harlots and
soldiers, all of whom picture those that divine and free sovereign
grace and mercy reaches. Because it all boils down to
that which God showed to Moses to be his very glory." What was
that? He said, this is my glory. Moses, after he had seen so many
things, asked of the Lord, Lord, show me, I pray Thee, show me
Thy glory. The Lord says to Moses there
in the book of Exodus, You go and hide yourself in that cleft
of the rock and I'll pass by and this is my glory. I will
have mercy on whom I will have mercy. I will be gracious to
whom I will be gracious. Because mercy necessarily must
be shown to those who are miserable, and not only miserable, but undeserving. Grace is a gift that there is
in no way that you and I could ever do anything to deserve what
this God of glory gives as the gift of His grace. You read the Scriptures, and
you find that the Lord Jesus Christ going out of a town is
in this seeming hurry. But here is a man who is a blind
man and a beggar by the name of Bartimaeus, and he only stops
when this man cries out. We read about him delivering
by his free grace a woman by the name of Rahab who's described
as the harlot of Jericho? We find Christ stepping off of
the boat there in the Gadarenes and come being approached by
a man who comes out of the tombs roaring a wild, crazy man possessed
of devils? He's not looking for a few good
men. He's not looking for a woman
good enough to save. The Bible says that this is the
one message worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus, Paul says,
came into the world to save sinners. And then he put this on the end
of that. He said, of whom I am chief. He came to save those such as
Mary Magdalene. He described as a friend of publicans
and sinners. The Scripture says that Jesus
Christ died for the ungodly. He came to seek and to save those
who were lost. It's just unthinkable that God,
the eternal God of glory, would even be mindful of a man like
Onesim. That He would have His eye fixed
on him from eternity. That He would love him with an
everlasting love. That He would choose him. That
He would so ordain things to save him from his sins and bring
him unto Himself. That's unthinkable grace. There were two brothers. very
prominent in the Scriptures. One of them, I believe, if you
had known him and met him, you probably would have liked him
better than the other. He was a hardy man. He was a man of the feel, we
might say. His name was Esau, and he was
in all senses, outwardly, rightfully the heir of his father. But he had a brother. His name
was Jacob. And that very name, Jacob, means
just exactly what Jacob appeared to prove himself to be, which
was a conniver and a supplanter and a crookster and all the things
that we really don't like, we say. But I'll tell you what God says.
He said, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. And men and women, they shriek
back at the very notion of such a God. That He can, out of His
own sovereign will and choice, love who He will, save who He
will, bring to Himself whom He will, They say, I don't understand
how God could hate somebody like Esau. That's not a problem. Esau was
a sinner. Esau was a sinner just like every
other one who's ever lived and come out from Adam and Eve, our
first parents, come forth from the womb, speaking lies, born
in trespasses and sin. That's not a problem to understand. The problem is with grace. How
could God love Esau? How could He, holy, infinitely
righteous and perfect, high above all things of such pure eyes
than to even be able to behold iniquity? How could He love Jacob? By grace in Jesus Christ. Let me read you Paul's words
writing to the church at Corinth. He said, For you see, your calling,
brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many
mighty, not many noble, are called, but God hath chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise. And God hath chosen
the weak things of the world to confound the things which
are mighty, and base things of the world, and things which are
despised hath God chosen, yea, things which are not, to bring
to naught the things that are, that no flesh Listen, that no
flesh should glory in His presence. God saves sinners. He saves whom
He will. And rather than fighting, such
a notion is that rather than carrying on in our own natural
thinking, That we'll do something that God will be pleased with.
That we'll sometime be something or decide something or do something
that He will accept as righteousness in His sight. We need to bow. We need to remember
His thoughts are not our thoughts. His way is not our way. The only way to God is in Christ. The only thought of anything
that is right is set forth in His Word, in the Word of the
truth of the Gospel. No flesh is going to glory in
His presence. Every one that He saves, they'll
be to the praise of the glory of His grace forever and ever. They'll be like trophies of grace. Those that He simply saved because
He would save them. I'll tell you this. There's no
reason in you or me for Him to save us. And there's every reason
in us for Him to damn us because we are sinners. And so if He saves us, If He
is pleased to have mercy on us, it will be because of a reason
that can only be found in Himself. And that reason, who is Himself
called the wisdom of God, is the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen to James. My brethren,
have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory,
with respect of person, You say, we look at people and
we decide whether we like them or not. We decide whether or
not we think that they're godly, or we decide whether or not we
think they're righteous, you know, by the natural law. Well,
the Bible says that God looks at the heart. And you know what
He sees when He looks at the heart? He sees nothing but sin,
because all that we are flows out of All that we do flows out
of what we are. So James says, for if there come
unto your assembly a man with a gold ring in goodly apparel,
and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment, And ye have
respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him,
Sit thou here in a good place, and say to the poor, Stand thou
there, or sit under my footstool? Are you not then partial in yourself,
and become judges of evil thoughts? Hearken, my beloved brethren. Hath not God chosen the poor
of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which
He hath promised to them that love Him?" But I like this. Paul, writing in I Corinthians
6, he says this, and God's standard never changes. He says, know you not that the
unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived,
neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate,
nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous,
nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit
the kingdom of God." Somebody said, Amen, brother. That's the truth. And then Paul follows with these
words, and such were some of you. Such were some of you. Well,
you say, well, I've never killed anybody. But Christ said, if
you hate somebody in your heart, you're guilty of murder. Well,
I've never committed adultery. Keith Christ said, well, if you
look on someone to lust after them, you've committed adultery
in your heart. Well, I've never stole from anybody.
No, but if you've looked on what somebody else had in jealousy
or covetous, you're guilty of being a thief. That's right. And such were some of you. But you're washed. But you're
sanctified. But you're justified in the name
of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. How can you be that in Christ? In Christ. The Lord Jesus went out as He
did, as the apostles did, as every true gospel preacher in
every age has. He went out and preached the
gospel. And the majority, the majority
of those who heard Him or who have heard them, they shut their
ears to it. Did he get all bent out of shape? The best people of the day, supposedly,
the Pharisees, they had nothing to do with what
he had to say. But it says on one occasion when
that happened, Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto them. The Pharisees, they didn't hear.
He said, you believe not, because you're not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. They follow me." He's not trying to save everybody.
It's not His purpose to save everybody. He's going to save
the people of His grace. You see, there are none who are
too bad for God's grace. But there are a whole lot of
folks who are too good for grace. Too good for grace. It's unthinkable
that God would save a man like Onesimus. But He did. Now, let me tell you this. It's
unthinkable that the Spirit of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
would find Him where He was. Was he at somebody's big crusade? Was he in a temple? Or was he
in a big brick stained glass high steeple church building?
No, he was in prison. He was in prison. The amazing
thing, too, is that the man that preached the gospel to him, he
was in prison, too. for a different reason. Onesimus was in prison because
he's a runaway slave and a thief. Paul was in prison for telling
men and women the truth. Where was the Philippian jailer
taught the gospel? In a jail. Except he wasn't the
prisoner, he was the prison keeper. You see, that's the way it is.
The prisoner and the prison keeper, they're both in the same boat.
We have a world full of people, on the one hand, that are very
religious and very moral on one side. They despise those who
are very irreligious and immoral over here, and vice versa. But they're going to spend eternity
in hell together. Why? Because they're without
Christ. They're without Christ. There
was a woman, the Bible said, who'd had five husbands. And
she met the Lord Jesus Christ, who revealed Himself to her as
to who He was and who He saved. Where did that take place? The Bible said he must needs
go through Samaria. Did you ever read that? Why does God manifest in human
flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ, why does he need anything? He needed, in the sense that
it was God's purpose of grace, that he come into this world
to save this woman who was a sinner. And he must need go to Samaria
and there to meet her at that well on that occasion. It wasn't
a happenstance kind of thing. where the Ethiopian eunuch is,
in the desert, by a man by the name of Philip. Lydia was gathered
with some women by a river. You see, grace is unthinkable
in that God sends His gospel to where and by whom We, by nature,
think he wouldn't do that, would he? He sent his gospel in a place
that used to be an old two-room schoolhouse. When my son, when we was a boy
and we first drove up to this building, he said, Dad, he said,
this looks like a haunted house to me. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. You see, the Bible says not that
where two or three gather together in His name, He'll be there in
the midst. What that says is this, where
two or three shall having been gathered together in His name,
there He'll be in the midst. Who gathers the church? The Spirit
of God. You just can't start a church
or do this or that or the other. It's not a matter of just people
say, well, you need to attend the church of your choice. No.
It's of God's choice. He gathers. And the Spirit of
God, Christ said, He'll take the things of mine and show them
unto you. And natural false religions always
boast in their numbers. They always boast in their size. They always boast in what they
have to offer. A dear lady that I loved just
this past week. I saw where she told somebody
how delighted she was to be a part of the church talent show. They were going to get up. She
was a part of a group that was going to get up and imitate a
pop singer. Has that got anything to do with
your soul? Has that got anything to do with
the glory of God? That's a social club religion,
which is basically what it is. What do you have for the old
folks? What does your church have for the young folks? What
does your church have for the singles? We have the same thing,
the gospel. the gospel. We tell the truth about who God
is according to His word. We tell the truth about what
men are in themselves. We tell the truth as to how God
can be just and yet justify sinners in the person and work of Jesus
Christ. You see, Christ and the apostles
and God's preachers in every age avoid the places and the
things where man is glorified. I don't want to entertain people
on their way to hell. tell lies on God. I don't want
to say what you want me to say. I don't want to say what you
want to hear. I have to say, Paul said, woe is unto me if
I preach not the gospel. It's all so unthinkable. this
grace, it's unthinkable that Paul would be the man that God
used to preach the gospel. I hear preachers sometimes, I
know some of them don't maybe mean it like this, but they talk
about being used of God. I want to say this, God uses
everybody. You want to get right down to
it. God uses the devil. God uses every king, president,
politician, leader. God uses all things and all people
to accomplish His purpose and glorify His name and save His
people. The heart of the king is in the
Lord's hand. And like rivers of water, He
turns it whithersoever He will. Paul was a zealot, a Pharisee, a religious moralist. Saul of Tarsus, as he was called,
Dr. Saul, that about every preacher in
this area and everywhere else would have delighted to have
in their congregation. You know, and he didn't just
find out about the doctrines of grace. He met the Savior of grace. And
when the Lord delivered him from being what he was to what he
was in Christ, this is what he said. He said, I was before a
blasphemer, a persecutor, an injurious man, and I'd still
be the same thing, but God showed mercy to me. Where was he at when he met Christ? He was on
his way to Damascus to do just exactly what he thought he should
be doing, which was persecute those who believed on Christ,
cast them into prison after beating them, stone some of them, And God arrested him. Apprehended is a word he uses. When I used to be involved in
law enforcement, when we went to get somebody, they usually
didn't want to get God. And so we apprehended them. Saul of Tarsus didn't want to
get God, especially by Christ. And if he had left Him to himself,
to that way that seems right unto a man, the end thereof is
the ways of death, he'd have perished. That's the way grace is. Some call it irresistible grace. Well, we need to qualify that
a little bit. Every sinner resists grace by
nature. But every sinner, God purposes
to say, they can't resist it successfully. Saul of Tarsus. He was so bad that when Ananias
was first told to go meet him in that street that's called
Straight, he was terrified. He said, I've heard about this
guy. Lord, are you sure? I've heard
about how he persecutes those who believe your gospel and how
he does all these things. He throws people in prison, has
them beaten. He even held the coats of those
who stoned Stephen. In Galatians, Paul says, they'd
only heard one thing about me. He said, that He which persecuted
us in times past now preaches the faith which once He destroyed. But when they heard that, he
says, and they glorified God in them. Amos, when he answers before
those who the king called his prophets, he answers, Amaziah. And Amos says, I was no prophet,
neither was I a prophet's son. But I was a herdman and a gatherer
of sycamore fruit, and the Lord, he said unto me, he took me as
I followed the flock." Listen to that. He took me as I followed
the flock. He wasn't sitting around looking
for a job. He wasn't sitting around and
somebody said, you ought to go into the ministry. He said, He
took me while I was following the flock. And the Lord said unto me, Go
prophesy unto my people Israel. Strange thing, these that we
read about that God called, they all had jobs. Matthew was sitting at the seat
of custom. The Lord came by and said, follow
me. John the Baptist, he was certainly
an unlikely candidate. Looked like a wild man, lived
in the wilderness, gird about with a garment of camel's hair,
eating locusts and wild honey. Wouldn't you like to have him
as your pastor? Peter, James, and John, they
still had the smell of fish on them, I'm sure. Remember John Newton wrote Amazing
Grace? Captain of a slave trading ship. William Huntington, he was a
coal heaver. Made his living shoveling coal. That's unthinkable grace. But
God, the Apostle says, He uses such that all the glory might
be to Him. It's unthinkable, grace is, because
of the way that God would save it. Wonderful picture of it right
here. Look down in Philemon, verse
17. Look at the basis upon which
Paul makes his plea to Philemon. Verse 17, he says, If thou count
me therefore a partner. That's the word that means a
sharer or one that is in fellowship with you. Receive him. as myself. If he hath wronged thee, or oweth
thee aught, put that on mine account. I, Paul, have written
it with mine own hand. I will repent." Somebody said, Onesimus still owns that $50
he stole from Philemon. And then Philemon had this extra
expense because of that. And plus he had suffered that
personal affront, you know. Paul said, if he owes you anything,
put it on my account. When David rose up to be king,
took the throne, it was automatic, almost, that when a king came
to that throne, that whoever was in the house of the king
or the family that was against him, take them out and kill them
right then. So there won't be a threat in
the future. What did David say? He said,
is there not one in the household of Saul that I might show a kindness
to, for Jonathan's sake." He had made a covenant with Jonathan. The one whose name means something
like, Son of Jehovah. The one that Jehovah loves. Type of Christ. Isn't there,
is there one that I can show a kindness to of this family
of rebels, Saul of whom hated him, despised David, sought to
kill him? Is there one I can show a kindness
to, would Jonathan say? Oh, there's just one left. And he's lame in both his legs. from a fall. He's living down in the land
of Lodabar, a land of no pasture. His name is Mephibosheth. It
means destroying shame. Does that sound familiar? Sounds like me as a sinner. Is
there one? Not because he deserves it, but
for Jonathan's sake. That's how God saves His people,
shows them grace and mercy, for Jesus Christ. And He does so
in this way that's pictured by substitution. Paul says, he said,
receive Him as myself. And that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ did. He went to the cross as the substitute
of His people, and He bore their sins before God's divine justice
in His own body on the tree. And God dealt with Him as if
He were they, and He deals with them as if they were His son. The Scripture says that He was
made sin, the one who knew no sin for us, that we might be
made the righteousness of God in him. David said, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute
sin. Now, somebody's got to pay. That's
what God says, the soul that sins shall surely die. You couldn't, if you sin one
sin, let me put this differently, don't even do a sin, but just
possess a sinful nature like we come into this world with.
You couldn't do enough from this day forward. of so-called good
deeds to atone for what you are in Adam, what you are by nature. Somebody's got to pay. That's why the Scripture says,
the Lord hath made to me on his head The iniquity of us all. The Lord
charged the sins of His people, all the sins of His people of
all time, He charged them all as one lump sum, if you will,
to Jesus Christ. Well, what was the price? The
soul that sinned shall what? Die. And he imputes all that Christ
is, the Lord our righteousness, the very righteousness of God
to them. That's unthinkable grace. Unthinkable
grace. Somebody use grace as I believe it's an acronym,
God's Riches at Christ's Expense. It's unthinkable grace that such
sin would be overruled. Look back at verse 15. He says in verse 15 concerning
Onesimus, he said, for perhaps he therefore departed for a season
that thou shouldest receive him forever. He departed for a season. All God's elect departed from
God in that sense when they fell in Adam. but it's for a season. And that is that they might be
received in Him again forever. Satan defeated, divine providence
always working in all things toward the salvation of this
elect sinner. He is brought from being unprofitable
to profitable. And that in the highest, greatest
sense, and there's one thing about it,
it's sure that he was not saved because of his character. But I'll guarantee you this,
when God saved him by his grace, it changed his character. He said, perhaps he'll be profitable
to you now. I know he is to me. What was happening in the life
of Onesimus? Oh, he's going downhill. There's no hope for him. Well,
he wound up in prison. That's it. That's it. He must be a reprobate. He's
gone so far down. As we say, he's hit the bottom
of the barrel. He's in prison. Bad enough he
was already a slave. Now he's in prison. No hope for him, is there? Just one hope. And that's the
grace of God. Here's this wild and ruly sinner
running from God as hard as he can, and he's brought by grace
to run right in the arms of God, right in the arms of the gospel,
right in the place where he's a captive audience to hear the truth. unthinkable grace that brings
him now into this unbelievable relationship to the apostle who
now calls him my son, my son in the faith. And to his former
master, still under law, his present master, he'll now become
your beloved brother. And it will be manifested that
he was, is, one of God's children, an heir of God, his son, just
like the prodigal. Well, where does that leave us? I know this now. We are, as Christ commanded,
to preach the gospel to every person. To the worst, to the least likely,
to the unloving, to the unasking, to the unseeking, to the uninterested, If I get a door open, I'm going
to preach the gospel. This morning on the radio, I
preached the same gospel. On the website, I preached the
same gospel. I'm like a man described in the
Old Testament, the man that got Ahab. The Bible says he drew
a bow at adventure. He's just a soldier in the fight,
and he doesn't really know what this is all about altogether.
And so he's going to, like a man, he's going to shoot his gun.
He's going to fire his bow. So he just pulls his bow up and
shoots the arrow, just lets go. And God directed that arrow right
to the joint in the harness of Ahab's armor, and it smote him,
killed him. And we turn the arrow of God's
gospel loose, preach Christ, Him crucified, the only Savior,
grace. And he said, my sheep will hear
my voice. And we do so knowing that if
God saved us, He's able and even likely to save anybody. That we should expect God to
save, and that we'll rejoice with and receive all that He
saves. I don't care where they're from,
who they are, what color they are, what their background is,
if God saves them. He said, don't let anything that
I call clean, don't you call it unclean. And I'll tell you what this means
if you're not saved. It ought to give you hope. Maybe God will change your way
of thinking. I was raised up in religion,
fine Baptist boy. I thought all those Sunday school
pins I had really would, I mean, you know, kind of look like one
of those North Korean generals. Have you seen them on the news
walking behind He told me. And even a preacher. He changed my thinking. God was not who I thought He
was. I certainly was not who I thought I was. And the way
He saved sinners was not the way I thought it was. If God saved a runaway slave
in prison through a man preaching like Saul of Tarsus, it may be that He's hemming us
in. There's no good to run from God.
He runs faster. There's no good to hide from
God. He sees all. Do you think when Mephibosheth
got word that King David wanted to see him, do you think he received
that with joy? Do you think a mere invitation
sent out to him, maybe an engraved letter or something, sent out
to Mephibosheth, he would have said, oh yes, I've been invited
to the king's palace, I believe I'll go. That wouldn't be what
he'd been thinking. He'd been thinking, he's going
to get me. But the Bible says that David
sent his servant and fetched him. That's unthinkable grace, fetching
grace. of the sheep have I that are
not of this folk, them also I must bring." That's my purpose, that's
my desire, that's my will, that's my glory, and they won't come
on their own. So I'll have to bring them. But he said, Thy people shall
be willing in the day of thy power. Oh, that's the only kind of grace
there is, unthinkable grace. Thank God His thoughts, His ways
are not our thoughts and our ways. That that grace which reigns
in righteousness, is that grace, as the hymn writer
said, that is greater than our sin. Our Father, this morning we give to You thanks and praise. We praise You for Your grace. for the gospel of the grace of
God. For that grace that reigns in
righteousness through the sufferings and death of our substitute,
our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. Get all glory to yourself Save all your people from their
sin. Give us more grace, we pray. Faith to look to Jesus Christ
and only Him. Christ crucified, plus nothing
else. and not one work of our own. Bless your word to our hearts, for we thank you and we praise
you in Christ. Amen.