And number 1125, 1125. And number
1125 in your gadget. Two or three are gathered. We'll
sing this to the tune of Just As I Am. How sweet to leave the world
awhile and seek the presence of the Lord. Dear Savior, on Thy people smile
and come according to Thy Word. From busy scenes we now retreat
That we may hear converse with thee O Lord, behold us at thy the chief of 10,000 that we that we thy voice may hear and
let thy presence fill this place then let the world leave those
its joys we've made to eat Amen. We're born to serve. Let's bow and have a word of
prayer this morning before we get any further. Our gracious heavenly Father,
we thank you this morning for your mercy and your grace. We
thank you for this time that we do have together, together
to be around your word, to be around your people. Father, we
thank you for this time We know it's a blessed time, that it's
a special time that you've called us together, that we might worship
you, that we might hear from you. We do as we just sang, Lord,
ask that you might come and meet with us here, that we might hear
your voice. We need to hear a word from you,
Father. Our hearts fail and our minds
drift from you. We often wander, and Lord, we
just need to hear a word from you. We need to hear the gospel
over and over again, telling us of what you've done for us. that you might touch and minister
in it, Lord, that you might teach your people, that you might encourage
and that you might reprove, Lord, that you might instruct us in
righteousness, Lord, we pray that as the word is being preached
that there is any here today that is your sheep, that has
yet to hear your voice, Lord, may you let them hear that today,
that they might come, that they might be converted and believe
the gospel, and that they might be baptized, that by joining
with the church, Father, that they might be instructed day
by day and week by week, Father, and they might serve you and
minister not only to you, but to the people of God. Lord, we
just pray that you might be with our church, that you might just
continue to bless it, grow it, Father, according to your will,
not ours. Lord, I pray that by the preaching
of the gospel, by the singing of the hymns, By the ministering
of the word and the ministry of the people, Father, I pray
that your people that desire the truth and desire the church
as it's known in the scriptures, Father, might find it here, that
you might keep us faithful, that you might help us. Lord, we thank
you for Christ. We thank you for salvation, Lord.
Without your bloodshed, Father, we'd be hopeless and we need
you, not only in our everyday life, but Father, for the end
of life. We need you, Father, to save us. And you have done
that to your people in the person of Jesus Christ. And we come
here today rejoicingly glad to be counted among the number.
And we come rejoicing in the one who did it, and that's the
Lord Jesus Christ. And so, Father, I pray that in
all that we do and all that we say today, that we might glorify
Jesus Christ and that he might be honored in our message honored
in our singing, honored in our fellowship, and it's all to the
praise and the glory of God. For it's in Jesus' name that
we pray, amen. All right, turn your handbooks
back to hand number 778. 778 in your Gatsby. 778. And two, that the Lord helped
us. Though straight be the way, with
dangers beset, and we on the way are no farther yet. Our good guide and Savior has
helped us thus far, and tis by His favor we are what we are. Sorry, I got missed a word there,
didn't I? My brethren reflect on what we
have seen. My brethren reflect what we have
been. How God has respect to us under
sin. When lower and lower we every
day fell. Then let us rejoice and cheerfully
sing with heart and with voice to Jesus our King who thus far
has brought us from evil to good no less than his blood. For blessings like these, so
boundlessly give, for prospects of peace and for taste of death,
tis grateful, tis pleasant to sing and adore. Be thankful for present and then
ask for more. Amen. Sorry I got off on there
a couple of times. All right, turn now, if you would,
back a few pages to 609. 609. We'll take any requests for hymns
after this song. So if you have one that you would
like to sing in any of the hymn books, we'll do that after this
song. 609. Lord, we faint, would walk in
love. But our lives have slowly moved. Pride that haughty monster pride
often makes us start aside. Pride that haughty monster pride
often like the sun at noon day shine as the purchase of thy blood. May we see each other's good
and be it our great concern thee to view, of thee to learn and
be it our great concern Thee to view, of Thee to learn. May we mourn with those that
mourn. Make each other's cause our own. Ever keeping this in mind. We are to each other joined Ever
keeping this in mind We are to each other joined Flesh of flesh
and bone of bone, with the King of glory one, of one body each
a part, Jesus, make us one at heart. of one body, each a part. Jesus, make us one in heart. King of kings enthroned above,
come and share thy brood. King of kings enthroned above,
Come and shed a broad thy love. Fill us with that source of joy,
which can never, never coy. Fill us with that source of joy,
which can never, never coy. All right. 110. 110, the old school's input. 110 in the old school. Reverend, we have a motion. Good. 110. Brethren, we have met to worship
and adore the Lord our God. Will you pray with all your power
while we try to preach the Word? All is vain unless the Spirit
of the Holy One comes down. Let us pray that holy manna may
be showered all around Look and seek for mourners round you,
fearing, trembling as they go. Longing for a consolation, will
you comfort them or know? Let us tell them of the Savior,
tell them that He will be found. Let us pray that holy manna may
be showered all around. Is there here a trembling jailer? Is there here a weeping Mary
pouring forth a flood of tears? Let us join our prayers to help
them. Let our faith and love abound. Let us pray that holy manna may
be showered all around. Let us love our God supremely. Let us love each other too. Let us love and pray for mourners
till their savior they can view. Then we'll love them still the
better. Take them to our kind embrace. Journey with them on to glory
there too. last two songs are exactly what
we as a church ought to be. We should be like looking out
for each other, taking care of each other, thinking about each
other, bearing each other's burdens, making each other's cause our
own, and And in that particular verse,
some may think that it's unscriptural to sing that, to tell them that
the Savior will be found, but it's talking to mourners. The
ones who are mourning are the ones who the Lord has given to
know their sin. So they will be found. He will
be found because the Lord has given them spiritual understanding,
spiritual eyes to see, spiritual ears to hear, and a spiritual
desire to seek Christ, then he will be found. Jesus himself
said, come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and
I will give you rest. He said that, seek me while I
may be found. So Jesus is, calling those mortars
and whenever they hear his voice, they will come. Jesus also said
that my sheep hear my voice and they follow me. And so we know
that that's a guarantee that everyone to whom the Lord sends
that message and gives the ability to hear and believe that message,
they come. All right, does anybody have
any other songs you'd like to sing? We've been looking in verse six
at the subject of being accepted in the beloved. We first looked as we began,
this will be the third installment of this message, and we first
looked at who is the beloved in this verse. Well, let's just
go ahead read the verse and then I'll go back and I'll get you
later. Ephesians chapter one and starting in verse one I'll
read down to verse fourteen and of course our text is in verse
six. Says Paul an apostle of Jesus
Christ by the will of God to the saints which are in Ephesus
and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace be to you and peace
from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us with all spiritual blessings and heavenly places in Christ.
According as he has chosen us in him before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before
him in love, having predestinated us under the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.
To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made
us accepted in the beloved, in whom we have redemption, through
his blood the forgiveness of sins according to the riches
of his grace, wherein he abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence,
having made known unto us the mystery of his will according
to his good pleasure which he has purposed in himself, that
in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together
in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and
which are on earth even in Him, in whom also we have obtained
an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him,
who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will,
that we should be to the praise of His glory who first trusted
in Christ, in whom He also trusted. After that, ye heard the word
of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, after
that you believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,
which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased
possession unto the praise of His glory. Now, as I began a
minute ago saying, we've looked this now, and our text is Ephesians
1, 6, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath
made us accepted in the beloved. And as I gave an introduction
to this message, I talked about that everything preceding and
actually following that down to verse 14, we see is part of
that word grace. To the praise of the glory of
his grace. What was the grace that was given
to us? Well, it was everything that
preceded in those verses, the things that followed after in
those verses, just kind of clicking some of these off, the very fact
that we are called the faithful in Christ Jesus, the fact that
we are blessed by God with all spiritual blessings and heavenly
places, that we have been chosen in Him before the foundation
of the world, that we, in our position before God, is holy
and without blame because of His love for us, He has predestinated
us unto the adoption of children. That's why I believe that every
one of us is gonna come to Christ. We are gonna be adopted. We're
gonna come to know Him as our Father. Jesus said, all that
the Father giveth me shall come to me. And so we will come to
Him. We've been adopted as children,
even though we are of Adam, He has adopted us as His children.
It says in verse seven, We have redemption through His blood,
that's part of His grace. Forgiveness of sins, that's part
of His grace. He is abounded towards us in
all wisdom and prudence, that's part of His grace. He's made
known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good
pleasure, which He had purposed in Himself. So the Lord gives
us a glimpse into the purpose of His will, into the mystery
of His will. according to his good pleasure,
meaning that he doesn't give it to us all at one time. He
reveals the mystery of his will according to his purpose to us
as he sees fit in his time. We are all growing in the grace
and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are growing
in our understanding. We're growing in our knowing
and And so, the Lord does that in His own dispensation, in His
own giving out, His meeting out those things. That in the dispensation,
full of stone, He might gather together one of all things in
Christ, that's a part of grace. In whom we have obtained an inheritance,
that's part of His grace, being predestinated according to the
purpose of Him, which worketh all things at the counsel of
His own will, that is being part and parcel of His grace. that
we should be to the praise of his glory. Romans chapter nine
says that he has made vessels under honor for his glory, that
he might show forth his glory in those vessels. And that right
there is a grace of God. He has made us a vessel of honor
and not a vessel of dishonor. He has not made us a reprobate
who will only be used for the days of evil, of wicked. and
to be cast into hell fire. But he has made us a vessel of
honor, and that was by his grace. It says, in whom he also trusted,
that very fact that we trusted in him was a grace of God. Being
sealed with the Holy Spirit, a promise, that is a grace of
God. And being a purchased possession
of Christ, we have grace with him. So we see in verse six,
to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made
us accepted in the Beloved. And that's what we're gonna look
about today. Now, we've already looked about who this Beloved
is. We saw that the Bible speaks of the term Beloved, and they
apply that, or the Lord applies that to the elect of God, and
they're called the Beloved. The Bible also attributes the
word beloved to the church, okay? But that's not who is in view
in this passage. We learned that who is in view
in this is the Lord Jesus Christ. And we found out that he is the
beloved. Then in the next section that
we looked at, we saw why the Lord Jesus is the beloved. why
he is the beloved. And we see that he had a, he
is the beloved because he has a divine union with God. The God man, Jesus Christ, the
flesh part of Christ or the flesh part is in union with God. Jesus is God. I had a conversation
yesterday with a man on my Facebook. He's been a Facebook friend of
mine for several years and he claims to be an elder in the
primitive Baptist church, but he had made a statement on his,
and I kind of asked him a question about it, and it had to do with
Jesus' pre-existence. Did Jesus pre-exist before his
question was, did Jesus pre-exist? And I just commented, yes, I
believe that he did. And then he began to ask me some
questions after that. And so what led into a conversation
about the deity of Christ and this man in this little video
thing that he posted about the preexistence of Jesus, basically
was saying that Jesus was just human and that he was created
of God and was just human and he couldn't have been God because
he was created. God can't be created. And so
he went into this whole long thing about this, and so I just
basically asked him, are you saying that Jesus isn't God? And he said, that's exactly what
I'm saying. And I think besides the cultic
people that would claim to be cultic people out there, like
Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims and things like that, I think
that's the first person that has claimed to be a Baptist or
a, especially a primitive Baptist, who has said that Jesus is not
God. I've never heard any of them
claim that. But he actually claimed that Jesus was not God. And he doesn't believe the Bible
teaches that Jesus was God. And of course, I've shared with
him several verses about Jesus being the fullness of the Godhead
bodily, that all the Godhead dwells in him bodily, that he
is the image of the invisible God, that he is the express image
of the invisible God, that Him and the Father are one, that
the scriptures talked about back in Isaiah, the Bible says, you
know, unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. And then
it goes on where it says that he, who we call a wonderful counselor,
the mighty God. And that it says that he is the
everlasting Father. And so this is all speaking of
Jesus. And He didn't want to hear that,
so we just went away in disagreement. But anyway, why is Jesus the
beloved? Because he is in divine union
with God. He's the beloved one because
he is the first and only begotten of God. He's a begotten of God. Uh, he is the beloved because
he is the mediator for his elect. And we're going to talk about
that more today on, on how we're accepting, but, uh, he is the
mediator for his elect. And, uh, thirdly, we saw that,
uh, he is the beloved because God takes pleasure in him. We
read the passages in Matthew three and 17 and Isaiah 42, uh,
where God claims that Jesus is his beloved. Um, And the other
reason he is called and is the beloved is because his people
love him. And so we saw all that over the
course of a couple of messages. Today, I want to at least begin
the conclusion, if not conclude, with how are we accepted? It says here that to the praise
and the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us. in the beloved. Now, as I mentioned
in the introduction to this few weeks ago, we do not accept Jesus
Christ and then him give us salvation because we accept him. That's
a false understanding that is widely preached in modern Christianity
today. Churches all over the world today
are preaching you need to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and
Savior. They have invitations at the end of their services
where they give people an opportunity to come and accept Jesus Christ
as their Lord and Savior and publicly declare that they've
chosen Jesus or that they've decided to follow Him or whatever. And they sing the song, you know,
I have decided to follow Jesus. Now you were made to be accepted
in the blood. You were given repentance, granted
repentance. You were given to believe. The
Bible says that God draws you. No man can come to me except
the Father draws him. That word draw there in John,
whenever you look at that Greek word draw, it is the word and
the meaning of that word is to drag somebody. Matter of fact,
that verse, we've talked about that before, is used whenever
it talks about where they drove the disciples out, and because
of their preaching and teaching, they drove them away. And that
word drag there, is it something that is a voluntary thing, right? If you're being dragged, that
means somebody is forcefully taking you and bringing you to
somewhere where you weren't planning on going. A good picture of that
is Saul of Tarsus, right? The Apostle Paul on his road,
on the road to Damascus, on his way to persecute the church in
Damascus, on his way to gather people out, possibly kill them
like some of the other Christians had already been killed from
the Jerusalem church. Paul was on his way out to do
that, Saul. And on the road to Damascus,
he wasn't thinking about Christ. He wasn't weighing the options. He wasn't under conviction of
God because he had heard so many messages about this wonderful
Jesus. No, he was, his eyes were set like a flint to Damascus
to go and to persecute the church in Damascus. As a matter of fact,
he even said so in his own autobiography whenever he was telling His testimony
of how the Lord saved him. He said, man, I was on my way.
I was going to persecute. And then all of a sudden, boom,
Jesus intervened. He came down and chose him. Now that wasn't something, Paul
didn't have it. He didn't say, now this is my
plan, Paul. Do you want to be a part of it?
Choose you this day whom you're going to serve. Is that what
Jesus did with Paul? No, that ain't what he did at
all. No. Jesus came and he changed Paul. Paul was saved in the experiential
sense. He was quickened. He was given
spiritual understanding. He was given a spiritual love
for Christ. He was given spiritual knowledge. All that mass learning
of the Old Testament that he did as a Pharisee of Pharisees,
whenever the Holy Spirit came and he began to have understanding
and heard Jesus and the Lord began to teach him, Paul begin to see Christ in all the
Old Testament. He began to follow Christ. He
began to serve Christ, not down the road immediately. He began
to serve Christ. Listen, folks, that wasn't just
because he made the decision. That was because God miraculously
changed the Apostle Paul. And so we see that This is not
something that we do. We do not accept Jesus Christ. Now, I know and I understand
there's some people that may just be ignorant in terminology
or they may still be learning things. They may believe in election
and predestination, but they still have this vocabulary. It
took me a long time and I'm still. You know, years after preaching
this for most of my life and hearing it most of my life, the
other way, now, Sometimes that terminology, I can't get that
terminology out of my mouth, okay? Now, accepted Jesus Christ,
accept Jesus Christ, that is not found anywhere in the Bible.
We're not told anywhere to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and
Savior. And so to be accepted in the beloved is the complete
opposite of what is being preached today. The gospel is being preached
today is accept Jesus Christ. But the gospel says, are you
accepted of him? Are you accepted in the beloved? And that's what we want to look
at about today. How? Do you get accepted in them?
Do you get accepted in them, beloved, by accepting him? Does
he accept you because you accept him? That's what I used to believe
and preach. I used to believe and preach
that salvation was there, Jesus made it possible, Jesus made
it available, and he wanted to give it. But until you repented
and believed on him, then he wouldn't give that to you. You
wouldn't be born again until after you believed on Him. You
wouldn't receive any of the blessings of salvation until after you
believed on Him. And then once you believed on
Him, then, then you were secure. He wouldn't let you go. Okay? You had to decide for Him, but
then once you made that decision, then you couldn't make a decision
any otherwise. He was going to keep you no matter
what. He wasn't going to let you fall away. Now you see how
crazy that is? You see what kind of Jesus that
preaches? Whenever we preach a Jesus that
has all power in heaven and in earth, knows all things, has all wisdom,
and has died and made a perfect sacrifice for sin, and has made
eternal salvation, has made a perfect salvation, He wants people to
be saved. He desires people to be saved. He's calling people to come and
be saved. But yet he will not do it himself
until you let him. Now, why do people say that?
Why do they think that? Well, I'll tell you why, at least
what I used to preach and what I used to hear in the places
that I used to where I grew up and where I listened to other
preachers and things like that in the group of people that we
used to listen to. The reason that he does that
is because God is a gentleman and he will not make you do something
against your own will. Have you ever heard that one? I've heard that one a lot. God
is a gentleman. He won't force himself upon you. God will not make you do something
that you don't want to do. He wants somebody that actually
loves Him. He wants somebody to come to
Him out of love, not out of coercion. Now let me ask everyone in here
that confesses to be a Christian who believes on the Lord Jesus
Christ. Whenever you came to Christ, do you believe that it
was coercion? Do you believe that God dragged
you against your will? Or did you come and say, I need
this. I need Christ. But why is that? Why is that? Because we had a
change in our understanding. We had a change in our mind.
We had a change in the way that we thought about stuff. Why?
Because we've been born from above. We've been given spiritual
understanding. We have been made spiritual.
We have been natural, and now we have been made spiritual.
We've been made spiritual in our understanding. We now have
Christ in us and the Holy Spirit teaching us. And with that Spirit
in us teaching us, it's teaching us the things that have been
freely given to us. And it tells us that we are lost. That's why I was just saying,
those who are true mourners that that song was talking about,
given them a broken heart. God has given them a contract
spirit. God has given them a sorrow for
their sin and a acknowledgement of God's holiness and their inability
to be saved in their own works, in their own righteousness. And
God has given them that to see that it isn't anything that I
can do, but it's only what Christ has already done for me. that
makes me what I am. And so that mourner who is mourning
over their sin, seeking after relief, is pushed to Christ by
the gospel. The gospel tells them, this has
been given to you. This is what is yours. And that
spiritual life that's in you teaches you that that's where
it's at. That spiritual life that's in
you brings you to Christ, teaches you That's why the Holy Spirit
was given to us, right? Is to convince us of sin and
was to point us to Christ. That's what the law was there
for. And the Holy Spirit took the law and it crushed us showing
that there is no righteousness in us that we can attain. And
so we need something in our place. We need someone to save us. There is no way that I can be
accepted by God in the condition that I am. And so the only way
that you become a poor mourner or a seeker or anything like
that is because you've been born from above and given a spiritual
understanding to see these spiritual things. And so the reason I say
that we all come is because Jesus, in grace, give us that ability,
that spiritual ability to come, that we didn't have on our own.
And without that spiritual ability, we would have been just like
Saul of Tarsus if Jesus hadn't intervened on the road before
him. He would have went on to Damascus, he would have done
what he would have done, and probably, you know, the rest
of his life continued on doing what he did. Just like all of
us. The Bible says, look, if you
would, in Ephesians chapter two, Verse one, it says, and you have
he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, where in
time past you walked according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now
worketh, and the children of disobedience, among whom also
we all had our conversations in times past in the lust of
our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature children of wrath, even as others. Had it
not been for Christ, We would continue on that road never even
thinking anything about God. We might be thinking about religion.
There's a lot of people who are busy about religion, even Christian
religion. They put Christian above it,
and they're busy about that. They go to church every Sunday,
every time the door's open. They give money to the church. They help the sick. They help
the widows. They quit drinking, they quit
smoking, they quit running around with the girls. And as my grandpa
said, I don't, you know, we don't drink, smoke, chew, go with girls
and do, okay? They quit all this. They quit
watching movies with dirty words in it. They quit watching violent
movies. They quit eating this or quit eating that. They, whatever
the case might be, whatever it is that they stop so that they
can be accepted. Whatever they do that they do,
so that they can keep what they've got. That's self-righteousness. It's all self-righteousness.
And there are a lot of people who are busy in this life that
is after that, and they are looking to be accepted by God based upon
some type of performance that they make. But brethren, you
are not accepted based upon your performance. You are not accepted
by God based upon anything you do. Now, that doesn't mean for
you to go out and live like hell and do whatever you want. That's
not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, is there
is nothing that you can do that God will say, all right, well,
I accept that, come on in. Matter of fact, the Bible says
even though the Old Testament, the old system that Hebrews says
was something that failed, it was a system that failed and
it was designed to fail. It never was meant to be successful
in the fact of saving. It was successful in what it
was purposed for. The old covenant system was designed
to show the child of grace who has been given spiritual knowledge
that they cannot do it. The law was given to show the
sin that is manifest in us. The child of grace is given the
mind to understand that we don't have a righteousness to give,
so we have to look to another's righteousness. And so the law,
that's where we read, where the Bible says that the law came
in so that the offense might increase. Very far back, all
the way to Adam, the reason the law was given to Adam is to show
and manifest the nature of Adam, which is a nature that cannot
do anything spiritual. The law came in to show and manifest
what was already in Adam, and that is a nature that cannot
keep God's law, that misses the mark. I posted a thing on our
church page yesterday, or day four yesterday. A lot of people
talk about sin and that sin is what you do wrong. It's something
that we do wrong, or a transgression that we do. breaking the law
or transgressing the law. But sin is more than that. The
word sin in the Bible actually means, I think the Greek word
is like hamarata or something like that. I probably mispronounced
it. But anyway, that Greek word means
to miss the mark. It means to miss the mark. The
Bible says for the wages of sin is death, okay? The wages of
sin is death. It also says that all have sin,
and fallen short of the glory of God. That's where that word
comes from. For all have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God. That's what sin means. Falling
short of the glory of God. So, your sin is not just in you
breaking the laws of God, okay? Now, that's part of it. If you
break any commandment that the Lord has given to us, that's
a sin, okay? So whether you break it or not,
your inability to meet the standard of God's glory is also your sin. So even if you're a good person
who goes out there and lives a good life and theoretically
doesn't break any laws, that doesn't mean that you're not
a sinner. You're a sinner because you can't keep the standard.
God has set the standard in His Son, Jesus Christ. and if you're
not meeting that standard, then you're falling short of the glory
of God and you've sinned and the Bible says the wages of sin
is death. That's the only wage that you're
gonna get. The only wage you're gonna get from your works is
death. So if you're looking to be accepted
of God, if you're looking to be accepted in the beloved, if
you're looking to be accepted in Christ Jesus, it's not gonna
be on your good works. It's not gonna be on your performance. It's not going to be on your
law keeping. It's not going to be on your religious activity.
It's not going to be on your decision or your choice or your
will or your fortitude on how strong you keep a hold of Christ. You are not going to be accepted
in the beloved on anything that you do because everything that
you do falls short of the glory of God. That's why we need a
savior. That's why we need Christ. And that's why he says here,
to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made
us accepted. The only way we get in to the
beloved, the only way we're accepted is by
grace. God has to give you grace. If
God doesn't give you grace, then you are hopeless. Without grace,
we cannot hit the mark. Now, I know a lot of people are
thinking about their family members. You know, Grandma, listen, I
have a good grandma. She's a wonderful grandma. And
she loves the Lord. She talks about the Lord, does
a lot of religious things, does all stuff for our church and
everything like that. But listen to me. The Lord doesn't accept
her based upon that. If she is accepted of the Lord,
it's not because of all that. It's because she was given grace. No matter how wonderful we think
somebody is, my grandpa, my mom, my dad, any of my cousins, my
aunts, my uncles, who all have grown up in a Christian environment. Listen, it doesn't matter how
we're grown up. It doesn't matter who we listen
to. It doesn't matter what we think
or do. We are only accepted if God gives
us grace, and He never gives us grace because we've done something
first. That's not grace. Galatians tells
us that grace is something that's given to us and not earned. If
we do something before God gives us grace and God says, okay,
I wanna give you grace because you have done that, that is a
work. I don't care if it's faith, I
don't care if it's an action, that is a work. And that work
is not gonna be counted because your works will always come short
of the glory of God. We will not be accepted by anything
we do. Look with me if you would, James
chapter two. But by the way, there in Ephesians,
did you notice what we are in Adam? Did you see those things? We are enemies of God. We are
wrathful against God. But look with me if you would
at James chapter two. James chapter two, we'll start
reading in verse eight. It says, if ye fulfill the royal
law according to the scripture, thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself, ye do well. But if ye have respect to persons
ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.
For whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one
point, he is guilty of all the law. So that's why I'm saying,
even if you keep, and I'm telling you, be truthful with yourself,
you've not kept the laws. You've not kept any laws. You've
broken every law that there's out there to break. Jesus said,
if you've looked upon a woman with lust in your heart, you've
committed adultery. So, although you may have not In your heart, you have committed
adultery. You are now an adulterer. The Bible says here that you're
not to kill but in Jesus's discourse, he said, if you hate a brother
in your heart, you're guilty of murder. So, even though you
not physically took a knife or a rock or a hammer or a gun or
a giant lawnmower or whatever and killed somebody, If you hated
somebody in your heart, you're a murderer. See how it's easy
for us to say we keep the law when it's external things and
we're so good about hiding anything from anybody, okay? We're very
good about hiding our sin from everybody. We don't want nobody
to know our sin. or we do good, we just outwardly
we do good, but then we may sit at home and we wish that we had
that, we wish that we did that, we wish we were part of that.
Whatever the case might be, I hated my brother or lusted upon this
woman or this man, guess what? If the Bible says that out of
the heart, the mouth speaks. That grandpa used to say, pops
used to say, what's in the well comes up in the bucket, okay? That's in our heart. Adultery,
murder, bloodshed, kill, steal, greed, hate, all those things
are in our heart by nature. That's why Cain killed his brother
Abel. It's because that was in his
heart already. Adam disobeyed God and said,
you know, I know you said that, but I'd rather do this with my
wife. And maybe the serpent's right,
maybe I will be like God. And he partook that, why? Because
it was in his heart already. James tells us, how do we sin? Sin is whenever we are tempted
by our own lust and drawn away, and whenever we are drawn away
and engage in that temptation, it produces sin. Adam sinned. And how does the Bible say that
sin happens? There's an enticing caused by
your own lust. Adam had lust in his heart for
that. Why? Because he had a nature to do
that. He had a nature that couldn't
meet the standard and so do you. So do you because you're a child
of Adam. And you have a nature that misses
the mark every time. And so here it says, Starting again, it says in verse
12, so speak ye and do so as they that shall be judged by
the law of liberty. Verse 13, for he shall have judgment
without mercy that has shown no mercy and mercy rejoices against
judgment. So here we see that we are transgressors. We are ones who cannot keep the
law. If you've broken the law in one
point, you've broken the law in every point. You are a transgressor
and now have missed the mark and there is no way for you to
enter into life, to enter into heaven, to enter into salvation. There is no way for you to be
accepted of God because you are a sinner. There's only one way to be accepted
of God at that point, and that is by grace. For God to give
mercy upon you and show you grace, that's the only way that you
can ever be accepted. We are transgressors before God.
So how are we? You say, preacher, how are we? If that's the case, then how
does God Well, brother, we are accepted
in the blood. If you turn back just a few pages
to Hebrews chapter seven, Hebrews chapter seven. I'll tell
you what, let's take a break right here and we'll get a drink,
use the restroom and then we'll