Let's turn in our Bibles to Luke
chapter 7. Luke chapter 7. Those hymns that I, those first few
hymns that we sang were not picked out. They were intentionally
picked out to go along with the message that we're going to look
at today. Sing songs, you know, it isn't
just because we follow some kind of a redundant pattern for no
reason, okay? We sing songs, as I mentioned
a minute ago, after one of the hymns that we sang, is that we
sing songs because that's what we're instructed to do during
worship. That we sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs, singing
and making music in our heart to the Lord. And so that's one
of the ways that the church, whenever they gather together,
that they praise God. You know, a lot of times when
I come to church, you see that everything as far as worship
and ministry is done on a stage by people and everyone else comes
as like an audience to watch some kind of a play or a concert
or some sort of a lecture or something like that. But the
reason that we have congregational hymns, the reason why we have
prayer, the reason why we have time at the end of the message
for anybody to share or to bring up questions or to ask is so
that everybody in the congregation has an opportunity to take part
in the worship. And congregational singing is
one way that all of us can participate outwardly and personally in the
worship service. Now, of course, we know that
the ladies, you don't have the authority under Christ to be
able to get up and preach and teach within the assembly. But
you surely can lift your hearts to the Lord in song, encouragement
and testimony that you can share in the gifts that the Lord has
given you while in this assembly. But the congregational singing
is one of those ways in which you are able to be able to reach
out and to minister to the congregation as well. as lift up your voice
to the Lord. And so that's why we encourage
congregational singing over solo singing or worship team singing,
because usually at that point, then we're looking at someone
as either a spectacle or lifting them up and giving them accolades
for their talent or whatever it is. But the Bible says that
we're to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. All you people,
And so we as a congregation, we lift up our singing to the
Lord in congregational style. And we sing hymns that are doctrinally
rich. We do sing experiential songs
once in a while because we are experiential people. We do experience
the salvation that's been given to us, not just in a head knowledge,
a theological knowledge, but we experience it in the heart. We know that Christ has died
in our mind. But yet, whenever that comes
by the spirit, becomes real to us personally, then we feel that
and we know our depths of sin. We know our need for Christ.
And then whenever we hear the gospel of Christ's satisfaction,
his death, his redemption, his saving us, then that lifts the
heart and it gives us joy. And that's where our singing
comes from. That's why we sing both doctrinally
rich hymns and experientially true hymns. And whenever I say
experientially true, I mean those experiences that truly come as
laid out in God's word that we experience as the people of God. We experience forgiveness of
sins, right? Forgiveness of sin is something
that Christ did or that God did on behalf of the work of Jesus
Christ. But we experience it whenever we hear the gospel of
that, and we know that we are unworthy, and we know that we
are full of sin, but to hear that all those sins are forgiven,
that creates an experiential thing inside of us of thanksgiving,
of gratitude, of love, of joy, of praise and honor to give to
our God who did that for us. And so just to say we can't sing
experiential songs because they're not doctrinal songs, I don't
believe that's true. Matter of fact, if you look at
the Psalms, the Psalms is packed with doctrine, but the Psalms
are also very experiential. They were the heart of David.
David was feeling that, you know, his enemies were crushing in
on him. So he writes about it. You know, the Lord saved me.
The Lord pulled me out. The Lord did this for me. The
Lord did that for me. I mean, he was experiencing the
salvation of God on his behalf, and he was going to the Lord
in prayer. So the time of singing hymns is very important. It's
not just something we just kind of tag on because that's what
you do when you come to church. But it is an integral part of
our worship, and I want to encourage everybody to participate in that. Don't fluff it off as just, well,
you know, I can skate during this part. No, this is your opportunity. We all have roles within the
church, and this is the role of the congregation to participate
in the songs and the hymns and the spiritual songs that are
being sung to the Lord. So I want to encourage you guys
in that. Luke chapter 7, we're going to
be reading starting in verse 41, and I'm going to read down
to verse 47 this morning. And we're going to talk about Debts fully paid or payment in
full or whatever. I don't remember now what we
talked about the time a minute ago, but the debts being fully
paid. We're going to talk about that,
but let's bow, go to the Lord. Lord Jesus, we come to you now
and we thank you so much for your mercy and grace. We thank
you for the salvation that we have, the very things that we
just sung about what you have done on our behalf and our stead,
fully completing all of salvation on our behalf of satisfying God
and taking the place of man. Father, we don't know how to
rightly lift up our voice or rightly lift up our praise to
give clarity and to give full honor to what you have done,
but Lord, we do it to the ability that you have given us. We pray
that it is truly from our heart, that it is true from our lips,
that what we are singing, what we are saying is truly our experience. Father Lord, we ask you now to
be with us during this time of preaching, that we might hear
your word. You send your spirit so that
we might learn and understand. And we cannot grasp and understand
things in the flesh, but only as your spirit gives us wisdom
and knowledge of you. We know that we grow in the grace
and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, that this understanding
of spiritual things and the word of God doesn't just come all
of a sudden as a data dump into our minds as soon as we become
born again. that as your spirit teaches us
in his time, in his way, we learn and grow in you. And Father,
we pray this morning that that will be true by the preaching
of this word, that the things that I say will be of the truth
and not an error. I pray, Lord, that you would
keep me from that, that you would speak and minister through me.
Give me in my mind the things to say, the things that I've
prepared, Lord, I pray that they have not been of man's traditions,
but truly the truth of what this word says. We need your word,
not what I say. And so, Father, help me to preach
it. Help these who are here to hear
it and to apply it by your spirit. Father, that we might know you
more and understand our salvation better. Father, we need your
help today. I pray for those that are here. There's one here that is not
been born from above, we pray Your Spirit come and give them
life. Bring them from darkness into
light, Father. I pray that if there's any here
that You have born from above, but yet they have yet to understand
and be given the knowledge of the Gospel, that today, Father,
that You just might convert them to the truth. And that they might
repent of their dead works and look to Christ alone for their
salvation. That they might come and receive
from you the command for baptism, that they might be baptized and
immersed to show forth their confession of faith in Christ
Jesus, that they might be added to the church for instruction
and for help in the labors of the gospel. Father, we pray that
you might bring others to us and that we might grow not only
spiritually but exponentially, Father, for any pride or selfish reasons, but so that
we would have others here that can share in the praise and the
glory to feed those that may be out there that think that
they're all alone, as many of us have in times past, not knowing
that there's a congregation that preaches and teaches the gospel
of Jesus Christ and it's truth. And Father, that there might
be others that come to share in the spreading of this gospel
through the local church. So Father, we lift these things
up to you. We ask for those who are watching and listening today
by Facebook or by sermon audio, Lord, we've asked that you might
minister to them and that you might bless them and that you
might encourage them. For it's in Christ's name that
we pray, amen. Luke chapter seven, starting
in verse 41, The Word of God says this, there was a certain
creditor which had two debtors. The one owed 500 pence and the
other 50. And when they had nothing to
pay, he frankly forgave them both. Now remember, one had 500
pence that he owed and the other had 50. And when they had nothing to
pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me, therefore, which
of them will love him most?' Simon answered and said, I suppose
that he to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast
rightly judged. And he turned to the woman and
said unto Simon, See thou this woman? I entered into thine house,
thou gavest me no water for my feet, but she hath washed my
feet with tears. and wiped them with the hairs
of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss, but this
woman, since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my
feet. My head with oil thou didst not
anoint, but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore
I say unto thee, her sins which are many are forgiven, for she
loved much, but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth
little. I'll just go ahead and read down
the rest. And he said unto her, thy sins are forgiven. And they
that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, who
is this that forgiveth sins also? And he said to the woman, thy
faith is saved. You go in peace. Now, I want
to speak to you this morning about our debts being paid in. full. We see here that Jesus
is speaking a parable to these men on behalf
of the fact that this woman that Jesus had forgiven had come and
was anointing Him with oil and kissing His feet, praising Him. I mean, all these things that
she was doing And he brought up the question of
the fact of, to whoever is forgiven most, loved most, most. As we come into our salvation,
whenever we're born again and the gospel begins to be preached
and taught to us, and we begin to fully see what has been done
for us, we begin to realize the heavy weight of sin that we have
caused and created. The sin that we have committed
against God becomes more and more and more evident to us. I'm reminded of the publican
and the Pharisee who were in the temple and they were praying
and the publican was crying out for God to forgive him and that
he knew that he was a sinner. And this publican was praying
to God and saying, hey, I'm glad that I'm not as bad as this guy
is. And so he did not see or realize that he needed to be
forgiven much because he didn't understand or think that he had
committed much sin. Again, a lot of times we think
that we are keeping God's law because we are doing pretty good.
You know, the old adage that I always use here, that my grandpa
used to use, you know, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't
chew, I don't go with the girls that do. Or whatever the case might be.
I don't go gamble. I don't get drunk. I don't beat
on my wife and my kids. I don't steal. I don't rob banks. I don't cheat
my employer whenever I'm on the clock. You name it, whatever
it is. bear false witness, lust, commit
adultery, commit fornication. These things are all transgressions.
But listen, brethren, if you think that you're keeping the
law because you're doing a fair amount of good in your own eyes,
then you've yet to see and be given to understand the depth
of your sin and what the law is all about. The law isn't there
for a set of rules for you to keep because nobody is going
to keep the law. Matter of fact, the Bible says
that anybody who wants to be justified by the law is obligated
to keep every aspect of the law without breaking anything. And
whenever you break one aspect of the law, you are guilty of
breaking every aspect of the law. So if you think you're doing
good and you're just saying, well, I just sinned a little
bit here, but God's gonna accept that. No, sir. No, ma'am. God
is not gonna accept that. You have transgressed all of
the law of God by even the smallest sin. And if we do not have grace
to be able to see that and to know the depth of our sin, then
we are not gonna see our need for forgiveness. We're not gonna
see how much we need to be forgiven. But whenever we do see that,
whenever God brings that to us and shows us that full way of
just how much we have transgressed Him and His holiness, and we
see and hear that Christ has forgiven us, then that produces
within us a love for Him. A great love as we see in this
passage. This woman had been given forgiven
much, she was an adulteress, caught in sin, had many things
that she had piled up in her sin list against God. And yet Christ had compassion
on her when other men didn't want to have compassion on her. But yet she came to Jesus And
she brought that alabaster box and she broke that alabaster
box open and anointed him with that oil and took her hair and
began to wipe his feet and in much crying knelt humbly before
him and acknowledged her unworthiness
but her gratitude for what he had done for her. Brethren, until we understand
that the debt has been paid in full, or let me rephrase that,
until we understand the great debt that we owe, we'll never
fully appreciate the debt being paid in full. You know, the Bible uses several
metaphors for our sin in the Word of God. Sometimes the Bible
uses it as a disease. uses disease as a metaphor for
sin, such as leprosy. Sometimes we find in the word
of God that it is represented by death. We are dead in trespasses
and sins. Sometimes it's akin to a debt. We owed a debt to God. Now, let
me just say this. While we owe a debt to God, there
is absolutely positively no way that you can ever pay that debt.
You can never pay that debt. But what is a debt? Anybody know
what a debt is? A debt is an obligation to someone
else that has not been met. Many of us, I'm sure, here has
went to the bank before and got a loan to buy a car or to purchase
a house. And let's just say we went and
bought a car. We went and borrowed $10,000
and went to buy a car. Then we owe a debt to the bank
of $10,000. And so until that debt is paid
off, we have an obligation to that bank And we owe, we owe
a debt. And that debt is always hanging
over our heads. If you do not pay the debt, what
happens? You suffer the consequence, right?
Usually in those little papers that you sign and fine print,
it says that if you do not follow through with your obligation
to pay this in the time that was specified and agreed
upon, then that person can come and take your possession back
away from you. We call it repossession, right?
We can have it taken away. If I don't pay my mortgage payment
monthly, then at some point the bank is gonna come and say, well,
I'm sorry, this house now belongs to us. You've not paid your debt. It doesn't belong to you. Same
thing with my car or anything else that I might buy, right?
So a debt is an obligation, whether it be a financial obligation
or a moral obligation. It's an obligation that is not
being met Now, every one of us, every one born of Adam has an
obligation or a debt to God because we have not met our moral obligations
to Him as our Creator. Every one of us owe a debt to God as He is holy
and we are not. The Bible says the soul that
sinneth, it shall surely die. The payment for sin is death. The Bible says the wages of sin
is death. It's not a slap on the wrist.
It's not a, you know, a swat on the rear end. It's not a go
put your nose in the corner for, you know, 400 years. Okay. No, the wages of sin is death. The Bible is very clear of that.
The Bible also says, for all have sinned and come short of
the glory of God. That means every man, every woman,
every child that has ever been born, who is born of Adam, and
that is everybody that has ever been born, falls short of the
glory or obtaining the living to the glory of God. None of
us are able to live to the glory of God because of the flesh.
The Bible says that the flesh is flesh and cannot please God. We are in the flesh in Adam. As we are born from Adam, we
are born of the earth, earthy. We are natural. And as that natural
man, the nature that we have given to us, In our natural birth
is a nature that can do nothing but sin. It can't do anything
but sin. Even the good that we do is sin
before God's eyes. That's why the Bible says that
all of our righteousnesses, plural, are as filthy rags before God. So what are you going to do?
Where are you going to go? What is your hope If everything
that you ever try to do cannot please God. Well, the only thing that we
can do is trust and hope in Christ for our salvation. We trust and
hope in Christ for our salvation. We hope that we are His. and
that He has given to us everything that He has promised, that He
has given to us forgiveness of sin. Listen, God's elect, God's people
that He has chosen before the foundation of the world, that
debt has been paid in full. We are forgiven just as this
woman was forgiven of her sin. We are forgiven. before God. I want to speak on a few things
on this and this may take a couple of weeks to get through. But first I want to talk about us
being a debtor for all of sin. We're all debtors to God. Look,
if you would, back at our passage. It says, there was a certain
creditor that had two debtors. Now, whenever we look at this
in the spiritual realm, whenever we're looking at this as it pertains
to God and us, we see that there is one God, and He is the Creator
of all things. And we are the ones who are debtors
to Him. We are all debtors. We are debtors
to God because we are His creatures. We owe Him a debt of obedience. We owe Him a debt of love, of
gratitude. We owe Him a debt of worship
because He is the creator of the universe. And every man that
has ever been born, and that includes women and children,
I'm speaking man in its generic form, knows this. Everyone knows this. I've mentioned
to you guys before that I don't believe in atheists. There's not such thing as an
atheist. And you say, well, I disagree. I know a bunch of atheists. You
may know people that claim to be atheists, But I want to take
God's Word over their word any day of the week. And God says
there is no such thing as someone who absolutely, to the root core,
does not believe there is no God. Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1. Verse 18. It says, For the wrath of God
is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which may be known
of God is manifest in them for God hath shown it unto them."
The fact that God exists, the fact that God is God, the fact
that God is Creator, the fact that God is the Ruler of all
things and deserves to be worshipped is known by every creature. It is manifest unto them. God has shown, that's why I say
I don't believe in atheists. Because God has put that in them
to know that God exists. Now, as I've always mentioned
as we go through these passages here, there is a difference between
the manifesting of God within somebody to know that God exists
and is worthy to be worshiped and knowing the gospel. That
is two different things. Having God in you or manifesting
Himself to you to know who He is and that He deserves to be
worshipped as the Creator, as the Ruler of all things. That
is different than trusting solely upon the Lord Jesus Christ for
all of your salvation. There is a difference in that.
That is not synonymous. God deserves to be worshiped
by you because you are his creation. He created you. He is the potter,
you're the clay. What does the clay do? All it
does is abide as the object of God's use. and it recognizes
and follows the use that God has given it to it. What does
a teapot do? If somebody makes a teapot, I
watched a video the other day, it was very, very amazing. But I watched this woman, she
was a potter, and she made this teapot out of some clay from
the very, I watched it from the very beginning. Now she worked
the inside and the outside and put the handle on, glazed it,
brought it to, and then finally was pouring tea out of it. that
teapot was made by her and the fact that it was pouring tea
out of it into a teacup that she probably also made bore witness
of the fact that she was the creator of that teapot and that
teapot was showing forth the glory of the one who made him
or her, if it's whatever gender the teapot was, that that creator
made it and it showing forth praise and
glory by being that for which it was. Man owes a debt to God to worship
and praise Him for life. He is our Creator. Look at verse 20, it says, for the
invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are
clearly seen. So God, and instilling that in
man to know God for who He is, is also shown
that He is the one that has created all things. All these men that
you see on TV that are talking about the evolution and Big Bang
and all this stuff, these Neil deGrasse Tyson, I just, whenever I see that guy
on TV, I just want to puke most of the time. But all these guys
that are out there that are teaching that we come from this primordial
sludge that happened because of some big bang, and these molecules
colliding together and forming all this stuff, and now everything
you see right here is a product of just some accident out there. and that we are some minute little
creation, minute little speck in the universe, and that the
universe is so vast that we are really nothing compared to the
vastness of the universe and all this stuff. That's hogwash.
All of that's hogwash. Matter of fact, most of what's
taught in schools about what we know about the universe, or
think we know about the universe, is hogwash, according to God's
Word. But yet we know that God has
in them put something to know that. But what is it? Verse 18. These men hold the truth in unrighteousness. They're suppressing the truth.
They are holding it in unrighteousness. They don't think that that's
right. That truth is not right. It can't be right. And so they
hold the truth in unrighteousness. But the very fact that God has
put it in them bears witness that they know for the invisible things of Him
from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood
by the things that are made, being understood by the things
that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead." So not only
as Creator has God instilled in every man, woman, and child,
but the very fact that He has created all things, has power
over all things, and that there is a Godhead. It says there, even His eternal
power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Not one man
has an excuse not to say, well, I didn't even know there was
a God. Not one Aborigine in the deepest, darkest jungles of Africa
that have never even seen the light of day that may still be
running around in their birthday suit, eating ants, carving weapons out of wood,
and that absolutely knows nothing about the outside world, if they
even still exist. I don't know. The world has gotten
a lot smaller as the years have gone by. But if they do exist,
if there's still those that are there that have not been reached,
the unreached peoples of the world. There's not one that has
an excuse because God has plainly said that He has shown to every
man the fact that He exists, that He is eternal, that He has
power as the Creator over all things. They're without excuse. So you're not going to be able
to go before God and say, I didn't know you existed. Nobody ever
told me about you. Matter of fact, whenever missionaries
have gone into the hearts of these jungles and found these
unreached tribes, they've often found that there is some kind
of a worship that they do to someone or something. Whether
they're worshiping some animal, some totem pole, some, you know,
spirit or some something, there is something innate in them that
they give credence to. Most of the atheists that you
talk to, theirs is science. Science is their God. That's
the one that they put up on their worship pole. But God has said that they are
without excuse because that when they knew God, They glorified
him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in
their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of
the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible
man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creepy things. Wherefore
God also gave them up to uncleanness, to the lust of their own hearts,
to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. And I'll
just stop right there. But what I wanted to show you
is the fact that God has shown His worthiness of worship, and
yet we as people do not do that. We suppress the truth of God. And so we owe a debt to God because
of who He is. The Bible says that it is He
that has made us and not we ourselves. We are His people, the sheep
of His pasture. Every breath that's in our nostrils
is a gift of God. Every beat of your heart is a
gift of God. The Bible says that we live and
we move and have our being in God. So as our creator, as the one
who sustains our lives, God demands two things of us. You shall love your neighbor
as yourself and you shall love the Lord thy God with all your
heart. Seems pretty easy, don't it? But let me ask you this morning.
Have you loved God with all your heart? And have you loved your neighbor
as yourself? I think we've all missed the
mark on that, right? We've fallen short of the glory
of God. Therefore, we're debtors to God. The wages of sin is death, right? And God is a just God. He is
not going to let that pass. We owe the Lord God a life of
perfect righteousness. A life of perfect obedience. He requires it. Failure to render
such life causes you to be at odds with God. Failure to live
in perfection before God causes you to be in God's debt. You owe. And what you owe is death. That's
what you owe Him. Because that's the ways that
He extracts for sin. If you go down to McDonald's,
to get a job, that employer puts you into employment. And he says, all right, if you
work one hour, I will pay you $8 an hour. Whatever, I don't know
what McDonald's pays anymore. $8 an hour. So whenever I come
to work and I work for one hour, then now the employer owes me
the debt of $8 because he said that he would give me $8 per
hour for every hour of work that I give to him. I owe him one
hour of work as his employee, and he owes me $8 for every hour
that I do that for him. That's called a wage. That's
owed. Now, God doesn't owe us anything,
right? He doesn't owe us anything. But because he is a just God,
if that person has paid in full everything that they owe God,
then God will justify that person. But the fact that God says that
what is owed is perfection, or perfect adherence to the law
of God, then we all come up empty, we
all owe, right? Not one of us in here, from the
greatest to the least, has obeyed the whole law. So that means
that every one of us has been disqualified from justification
of God. The Bible says that God will
not justify the ungodly. So there is, even if you work
your whole entire life of doing good. You go join some monastery
up in a mountain somewhere and put on one of those scratchy
robes and sit and go all day every day and take all your mind
away and don't think of anything, don't think of anyone. All you
do is try to think of God and all day every day all you do
is that No TV that can entice you to lust or entice you to
do anything sinful, take up your time. I mean, all you do is you
just sit and read your Bible and think about God. You've still
fallen short of God's glory. There's nothing that you can
do. There is absolutely nothing you can do to be saved from God's
just wrath. We owe a debt. These two owed
a debt of great magnitude to the creditor. One owed 500 pence,
the other 50. Now what does that tell us? Well,
that tells us that in life there are going to be some people that
seem to be more moral than others. You know, you may be a fairly
decent person. As I said, you may not get drunk. You may not
be a glutton. You may have not ever committed
adultery or fornication. You may have not ever stole anything. You may be a really nice person.
And all your friends around you think, hey, you're a really nice
person. You're the nicest person I've ever met. And then there may be the guy
down the street that may be the drunkard, the drug addict, the
sexual deviant, the one that has, I hate God
all over him, don't want to have nothing to do with God, don't
want to have nothing to do with church. Is that man any worse
off than you are when it comes to the end? The wages of sin, and it says
sin, singular, not sins, the wages of sin is death. One sin
is worthy of death. And the Bible says that in that
last day, that those that will be judged whenever the books
are opened and the judgment is made, that they'll be judged
according to their works. And their works, as I mentioned
a while ago, is what? Filthy rags. Their works are
always gonna come up short. Their works is not enough to
fulfill what God has demanded. And being judged by their works,
God will extract the price. God will extract the price. He
will require that debt to be paid in full. And for that debt to be paid
in full requires them, as God has said, death. And the Bible teaches us that
this death is just not a ceasing to exist death. Whenever your
dog dies, it just gets buried and dies. It's dead. Despite
the cartoon, all dogs go to heaven. Now, if I get to heaven and God
proves me wrong on that, what a joy. I had a couple good dogs
that died as I grew up, and that'd be awesome. I don't think that's
true. Don't have any proof in the scripture
of that, at least. When a dog dies, it's dead. That's
it. Nothing else. But whenever a
person dies, a man, a woman, a child, whenever they die, the
Bible says after that is the judgment. It is appointed unto
man once to die, and after that is the judgment. And you are
going to be judged before an almighty God who will not say,
OK, well, you did all right, who is not going to say, well,
you were just too young. That's OK. Come on in. Or, well,
you was just too sheltered. That's all right. Come on in.
or you were in a place that never heard the gospel, just come on
in. No, God is going to judge in complete and total righteousness
according to His law. He's going to judge according
to this book. And whenever He judges, if by one sin you have
missed the mark, the wage for sin is death. And the Bible teaches
us that that death, like I was saying, is not just a ceasing
to exist, but an everlasting punishment. You say, well, how
can you be dead if you sin? To be dead is to be completely
separated from God. And He says, not only will you
be separated from Him for all eternity, but you will burn and
never cease to die physically. You will have a physical body
Well, I say physical. I don't want to overstep because
I don't know that. You're going to have a body and somehow that
body is going to be made to endure eternal torment. The Bible says
that there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, that there
will be flames of fire that cannot be quenched where the worm dieth
not. The Bible speaks of us as worms.
We're the worms. Where the worm dieth not. Over and over, torment. in the
lake of fire. The lake of fire made for Satan
and his demons. And you're right along with them.
Because if you're there, that is because you are your father
of the devil. Him and all his children will be there. But listen,
God will not let one person come in unless the debt has been paid
in full. And so if you sin, then you owe
a debt of death. You owe an obligation before
God. So it doesn't matter whether
you owe 500 pence or 50 pence, the end result is the same unless
God, by some just reason, changes that. So, brethren, we have an infinite
debt that we could never pay. It's beyond any calculation. We couldn't calculate 50 pence,
100 pence, 1,000 pence. We can't calculate that. There
is no way to put an amount on how much we owe. It is a debt
that has tremendous consequences. Those who have been saved by
the Lord Jesus Christ, Those who have been pardoned and forgiven
of all their sins by the grace of God through the blood of Christ
are debtors who owe a mighty deep debt of gratitude and love
to God. We are like these ones that he
has seen here, like this woman. If we have been forgiven, it
is because somebody else paid that debt in full for us. See,
if you're forgiven of God, then that debt has been paid. The
debt's going to be paid one way or the other. It's either going
to be paid by you or it's going to be paid by someone else who
is worthy to pay that on your behalf. And so if you have been forgiven,
the debt and gratitude of love should be great. because you've
been forgiven an infinite amount of debt. Now, Jesus was using
an everyday example to us. We don't know what a pence is,
at least I don't. I'll be honest with you, I can
look it up and find out how much money a pence was. But speaking
of money, we could just say, let's say dollars. $500 and $50. I mean, $50 is a lot of money
to me, but let's just say $50 and $500. If somebody owed you
$500 and someone owed you $50, who would you rather let loose? The
guy with $50, right? I would rather get my $500 back than
my $50 back. If I get my $500 back, then I'm
only short $50. I've got $450. But see, God doesn't deal that way. God doesn't deal with, okay,
I'm going to forgive you, but you, I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to
forgive you. No, He forgives based upon righteousness. and
he forgives fully. All of us owe an infinite amount
of debt to God. Now granted, it says here, and
he says, those that have been forgiven
much will love much. But let me ask, if we've been
forgiven, we've been forgiven much, right? An infinite amount
of forgiveness. Because there was an infinite
amount of debt. How much is infinite? Can anyone put a number on that? No, that's why we have that word,
right? The word infinite means that there is no, you know, we
don't know. It goes on and on and on. It
continues without ceasing. It's infinite. So if we've been
given an infinite amount of forgiveness, that means we had an infinite
amount of debt. If God has forgiven us of everything,
then that means everything that we have ever done, have done,
are doing, or will do, has been forgiven. It's an infinite amount
of debt that has been forgiven. So, how should we love? We should love God. We should
love God. For who much is forgiven, loves
much. Those who are forgiven much,
love much. Why? Because they have come to
know their sin before Christ. In 1 Corinthians 6, verse 19,
the Bible says, Do you not know that your body is the temple
of the... Let me just turn it there. I don't want to end up
missing. 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 19. It says, "'Know ye not that your
body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which
ye have of God, and ye are not your own, for ye are bought with
a price. Therefore, in light of the fact
that you've been bought with a price, you owe a debt. Christ bought that debt for you. Therefore, glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are God's. Sin is that which makes men and
women devilish to God. One thing that sometimes happens,
and I can attest to this growing up and also even in our life
since I've been married, The thought is, well, I'm never going
to be able to pay back that debt, so I'm just going to buy whatever
I want to buy and just keep racking up that debt. It don't matter. Well, brother, while in our life
we have bankruptcy to get us out of our debt, which, by the
way, according to the Bible, we should be paying our debts
back. We shouldn't be doing that someone else pay our debts for
us. But in our laws and our land
today, we have ways of getting out. We can rack up a bunch of
debt and then just dump it off on somebody else. As I mentioned
to you guys a couple years ago, I think it was, we had a customer
that we have and they called us and I did a bunch of work.
It's a mobile x-ray company. They have these mobile vans that
go around the nursing homes and things like that, take x-rays. And they called and needed some
work done. They bought another fleet of
vans in another location. And they had some pieces of equipment
in there that needed some attention, needed some work done to it.
And so they asked, you know, hey, can you work on this particular
piece of equipment? And I happened to be trained
on that equipment that they had. We said, yeah, we can definitely
work on that. Well, awesome. Can we schedule time to bring
our vans into you and you do all the work that needs to be
done? Sure. So they brought it, I met with them and went through,
put a lot of work and a lot of labor hours and a lot of parts
in these machines that they had to get them back up to work in
order. They'd been sitting for a while. And then after we did
that, then they wanted to buy some other new equipment from
us, so they bought some new equipment from us. Well, it got to the
point where they had racked up a pretty good bill. And so my
boss had contacted him and said, you know, I know you want to
order some more products here, but we really need to get a payment
from you for the stuff that you've already done before we kind of
order anything else for you. And they kind of drove to feet.
Well, our corporate office is cutting the check and usually
they cut checks on this day and this time. You know, then they'll
cut the check, and then once they cut the check, it'll be
mailed out to us, and then we turn around and mail it to our
debtors and, you know, all this stuff. And so we waited and waited,
and they just, you know, they never was going to pay, never
was going to pay. And we started sending them notices
that, hey, it's, you know, it's past 60 days, it's past 90 days,
it's 120 days, you still haven't paid. you know this and at that by
that time they had racked up almost $14,000 worth of stuff
just almost in just parts that wasn't counting my labor hours
but about $14,000 in parts and we had already paid our creditors
for the parts because we have to whenever we order those parts
we had to pay them and then we turn around and charge our customer
with a markup on them. Well they $14,000 racked up and
they just kept going on, going on, going on. So our office began
to start legal proceedings trying to get money back from them.
And whenever we started looking into it, we found out that they
were in the middle of about to declare bankruptcy. They were
going to declare bankruptcy on a certain date. And so we're
trying to get our money back from them because once they declare
bankruptcy, then they don't have to pay us. And we're trying to get our money
back from them. And in all of our research, we found out that
that same company, it's a nationwide company, that same company of
another company like ours down in the Southern states somewhere,
I think it was somewhere in Georgia or something like that, had racked
up $1.5 million in new equipment that they bought from them. They
bought brand new vans and all new equipment. just like a few
weeks before all that, and then declared bankruptcy. They knew
they were going to declare bankruptcy, but they racked up over $2 million
worth of debt and then wrote it off as bankruptcy. Now that's stealing. That's what
that is. That's all that is, is stealing, okay? Whenever it
comes to our sin, There is no way that we can write it off
and just say, well, I'm just going to declare bankruptcy.
And God's going to say, OK, well, come on in. Now, whenever we
get there, either you're going to stand before God and give
an account for what you have done or not done, or the Lord
Jesus is going to stand there. Is your hope in what you are
doing? Or is your hope in what Christ
has done? See, the sin debt is great, brethren. We can rack up, we can say, you
know, well, I'm just gonna keep racking it up, racking it up,
there ain't no way I can pay it, so I'm just gonna keep on
racking it up. Well, listen, Christ is there
and He, no matter how big the debt is, He can be forgiven by
Him. Seeing like a great debt causes
uneasiness in people. You know, there are times whenever
I money stand with us and I got a date coming up that I owe money. My creditors, you know, is owed
money. a car payment or something like
that and something has happened and I've been negligent and just
spent too much money on entertainment or frivolous things that we should
probably should have bought and come close to car payment time
and now I start getting uneasy because why? I know I owe this
debt and I know that man deserves that payment. How am I going
to pay it? I don't know how I'm going to
pay it. There are people that may shun
their creditors. Whenever they see the creditor calling, they
just let it go voicemail. Act like they don't ever hear
it. Whenever the mail comes in the mail, they just chuck it
in the trash and act like they never did see it. But listen,
brethren, the debt is not going to be removed. Whether you ignore
it or whether you're antsy about it, It's not going to be removed. Even if you have the best intentions
of, well, I'm going to pay that as soon as I can pay it. It's
not going to be removed. Matthew 5, if you would. Matthew 5. Look at verse 25. Jesus says
this. Agree with thine adversary quickly
whilst thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary
deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the
officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily, verily, I say
unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast
paid the uttermost for thee. So what's Jesus saying here?
He's saying, take care of the accounts quick. Take care of the accounts quick.
The Bible says you do not know the hour and the son of man cometh. The Bible says that it's appointed
unto you once to die. You don't know when that day's
coming. And our hope needs to be in Christ
for our salvation and not in the fact that we're gonna pay
God back by our good words. Now, brethren, I know as I speak
these and as I'm speaking it in the way that I'm speaking
it, to some it may say, well, aren't you preaching Armenian
doctrine? Aren't you trying to frighten people into heaven? No, I'm not. You can't frighten
anybody into heaven. But those who have been enlightened
by the Spirit of God, by the new birth of spiritual things,
they need to be told and admonished what the Bible says. You owe
a debt. That debt has to be paid. And
thank the Lord that that debt for you is paid by Jesus Christ. You don't have to worry about
your credit anymore. You don't have to worry about being under
the debt of sin. the wage that is going to be
extracted. You don't have to worry about
that because of Christ. We still speak of the admonitions,
although God has predestined all that is going to take place
to the ear of the believer whenever that word comes into the heart
and the mind of those who have been born from above to convert
them to turn them to trusting Christ instead of trusting on
themselves to pay the debt. Or trusting that God will forgive
the debt on their own merit. So we continue to preach these
things. Because those lost sheep that are out there, whenever
brought to the burden of their sin, needs to hear that good
news. We're going to stop right there,
brethren. That's a good stopping point. There's some other things
I'd like to say about the degrees of debt that we've seen. You
know, there was a 500 debt and a 50 debt. And although one sin
is enough to send us to hell, there are degrees of debt that
we owe. And we're going to see if there's
degrees of punishment will be extracted as well. So we'll stop
there and Lord willing we'll pick up that next time we meet
together. Now I want to remind everybody
that we will not be here and meet next Sunday. We're going
to be gone. We're going to Choctaw Bethel
Baptist Church in Choctaw, Oklahoma for their 25th annual Bible conference. I'll be preaching in that and
we're going to be gone for that whole weekend. The Bible conference
starts on Thursday. I believe it's at five o'clock
as when we'll be eating dinner there. And then we'll have, I
think Brother Royce has a couple of speakers lined up for that
evening. And then we'll start on Friday
morning and we'll have. I think he normally has three
messages in the morning, three messages in the evening, or three
messages in the morning. Then we have lunch. Then we come
back and have a couple of messages after dinner that evening. And
then on Saturday, we go until around noon with two or three
more messages. And then we eat lunch together. And then Sunday, they have just
regular church and whoever's held over for preaching for that.
Anyhow, be praying for that conference, if you don't mind. I'm gonna
be bringing two messages at the conference. There'll be other
speakers besides me, but I'll be bringing two messages. And
keep me in your prayers. I do know that Bethel Baptist,
they stream their services on YouTube, and then they eventually
post it to Facebook. But if you're looking for the
YouTube channel, Manna from Bethel and Manna is spelt with two N's
in their thing. Some people use one N for Manna,
but it's M-A-N-N-A, Manna from Bethel. So if you want to look up their
YouTube channel, it'll be streamed there. If they're not going to
stream their messages live during the conference, then we'll try
to do something with either my phone or Lori's phone. We'll
try to stream the messages so that anybody that's interested
can do that. More than likely, they'll probably
stream their messages from the conference. But we will not be
here. Lord willing though, we'll be
back the week after that and we'll pick up where we left off
and continue on. All right, does anybody have
any questions or comments or anything to add to the message
this morning? All right, all right. Father,
thank you once again for the day and thank you for this time
together that you've given us. We thank you for this word. of
God, we thank you for the forgiveness of sin and our debts that have
been paid in full by the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, again,
I pray for those that are here that still may think that they're
able to slide by and be counted accepted in the beloved because
of their works, because of their good deeds, because of their
coming to church, coming to worship, to sing, to whatever they do
they think they can be saved by. Father, Lord, we pray that
you'll give them the repentance from those dead works and that
you might bring them to Christ, that you might give them rest
and comfort to know that their salvation is secured and finished. Lord, we pray that you'll be
with us this coming week, that we might be testimony of your
grace to those that we're around. We pray that you might use us
to minister the gospel Be with us now, Father, as we eat, that
you might bless the food that we're about to eat to the nourishment
of our bodies, which in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.