Good morning. I remember those
who requested prayer. Happy early this week to Harley. Today. Happy birthday today,
Harley. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. The family of Tom, Junebug Driver. I remember him. Junebug died
this week. Was he kin to you? Was Junebug
kin to you? another group of drivers. Josh worked with him. He's a
real good guy. Remember that family in your
prayers. Okay. If you don't snow us out, we'll
have regular services all the way through today. Hymn number 14 in your Sovereign
Grace Hymn. And can it be that I should gain
an interest in my Savior's love? And can it be that I should gain
an interest in the Savior's blood? Died he for me? Amazing love, how can it be that
thou, my God, shouldst die for me? love, how can it be that thou,
my God, shouldst die for me? Tis mystery of immortal dies
who can explore In vain the firstborn seraph
tries to sound the depths of love divine. Tis mercy all let earth adore
that angels Amazing love, how can it be that
thou, my God, shouldst die for me? He left his Father's throne
above, ? Infinite is His grace ? ? Emptied
Himself of all but love and blame ? ? For His own chosen race ?
? Tis mercy all-dependent ? Oh, my God, it found out me Amazing
love, how can it be That thou, my God, shouldst Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
fast bound in sin at nature's night. Thine I defuse a quick I woke, the dungeon played with
light. My chains fell off, my heart
was free. I rose, went forth, and followed
thee. Amazing love, how can it be that
thou, my God, shouldst die for me? No condemnation. Jesus and all in Him is mine. Alive in Him, my living Head,
and clothed in righteousness divine. Bold I approach the eternal throne
And claim the crown of Christ my own Amazing love, how can
it be That thou, my God, shouldst I after scripture reading and prayer.
We'll sing hymn number 517 on Jordan's stormy banks. If you
have your Bibles, turn to the revelation of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Begin reading with verse 9 and
read through verse 18. Revelation 1. I, John, who also am your brother and
companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of
Jesus Christ, who is in the Isle that is called Patmos, for the
Word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. Now I was in
the Spirit on the Lord's Day and heard behind me a great voice
as a trumpet saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the
last, what thou seest, write in a book, and send it to the
seven churches which are in Asia, to Ephesus, and Smyrna, to Pergamos,
to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.
And I turned to see the voice that spake with me, and being
turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks. And in the midst of the seven
candlesticks was one like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment. down to his foot, and girt about
the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white
like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame
of fire. And his feet likened to brass, as if they burned in
a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he
had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp
two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his
strength when I saw him I fell at his feet as dead and laid
his right hand upon me saying unto me fear not I am the first
and the last I am he that liveth and was dead and behold I am
alive forevermore amen and have the keys of hell and of death
let us pray We thank you that you commissioned
John from the Isle of Patmos to write this particular metaphorical
description of Jesus Christ in his glory, in his beauty, in
his power and majesty, even to the sound of his voice like many
waters in a trumpet. We are thankful, Father, this
is a description, plain and clear, of what it is. When a sinner,
awakened by your mercy and grace, sees Christ, the first thing is to fall dead
at his feet. even as the demoniac Gadara,
when approached by Christ, said, Depart from me, Lord. What have
I to do with thee? So great and wondrous is our
Savior, so mighty and magnificent as He sits enthroned, living
forever to make intercession for His people, that we can but
be in awe and reverence, giving glory due to his worthiness
as the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Father, we pray for those who
are sick, those who are going through trials and trouble, brokenheartedness
and sorrow. We pray for those who still are
struggling from the effects of the flood. Help us to remember
our brothers and sisters in Christ and help us to be a help when
we can be. Father, we pray this hour we
look at your word and the revelation of Jesus Christ that we might truly catch a glimpse
of him for if we see him we will see ourselves as we are
by nature and what we've been made to be by grace. May it be
so for your glory and for your honor we pray in Christ's name.
517. On Jordan's stormy banks I stand
and cast a wishful eye to gain a spare and happy land where
my possession I am bound for the promised land. I am bound for the promised land. Oh, who will come and go with
me? I am bound for the promised land. All o'er those wide extended
plains shines one eternal day. There God the sun no river rains
and scatters light away. I am bound for the promised land. for the promised land. Oh, who will come and go with
me? I am bound for the promised land. No chilling windstorm, poisonous
breath can reach that healthful shore. pain and death are felt and feared
no more. I am bound for the promised land. I am bound for the promised land. Oh, who will come and go with
me? I am bound for the promised land. When shall I reach that happy
place and be forever blessed? When shall I see my father's
face and in his bosom rest? I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound Let us pray. Again, Father, we
approach in the precious name and through the shed blood and
perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, the Lord. whom you have
made be unto your people wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. For they elect his all and in
all. They have need of nothing. They are complete in him. And
all they have, they have by grace and by mercy. Let us render unto
thee that which you have given us with a heart of thanksgiving
and praise. I'd like your attention back
to Revelation Chapter 1. If you're reading along with
me, then no doubt you saw the beauty and the glory of this
passage of Scripture. This is the vision that John
saw, the first vision, the first of seven that are related in
this book. In this book, these seven visions
don't deal with seven periods of time or seven dispensations.
They deal with the seven churches of Asia. and the seven things
that are happening at any given time to the churches of God,
the trials and tribulations and how Christ overcomes and is victorious
over all these things and causes us to overcome and in the end
to ride with Him in glory as He returns to this earth to go
out and meet Him in the air if we're still here. If we died,
we're already with Him and we will come back and He will destroy
this world and start it all over again anew. This is the first
of those visions and he saw the Lord coming and this is the vision
that he saw. This is what he saw in a vision.
He knew it was the Lord. He knew it was the revelation
of Jesus Christ that he was receiving. And the description is marvelous.
It's wonderful. And each of it has an indication
of a specific characteristic of who Christ is or what he has
done. not it's not Christ don't look
like this he's a human being he's a man he was a Jewish man
probably had dark hair and a dark complexion and probably wasn't
tall in height and he certainly didn't look like these pictures
that you see on TV and in these posters at Walmart you don't
see him looking like that he was not he was not handsome according
to scripture there was no comeliness in him that men should desire all but his words his words beautiful
for situation and when john saw him his glory john said i fell
away as a day that's the time taken from verse seventeen and
when i saw him i feel it is as day seems to be me in this
day a perverse pervasive religion the son of man Jesus Christ the
Lord is not held in very high steam he is not revered reverence
me and are now all his because he's been presented in such a
low plane file way history me and don't see anything worthy
of worship only the elect see that and that is by the grace
of God. Men call him Lord. They call him Lord but deny the
power thereof for if he is Lord over all that means he is sovereign
over all. That means he rules over all
and does all things according to the pleasure of his own will. That is what it means to be Lord.
they refer to him as one who is up for acceptance with his
creatures that he waits for them to accept him that's the language
of religion won't you accept jesus won't you accept jesus
they speak of uh... his ability to say being dependent
upon men's will to allow him to save them religion begs men
to let the lord of glory into their hearts and make him the
lord of their lives and he is presented as a pursuer of men's
hearts as if he craved validation from men and I think that's what
they think they give him. Men speak of him as the man upstairs
or their good buddy or the facilitator of their own ambitions. Yet in
all of scripture there is no such language or incident that
would make anyone come to this conclusion about him. Nowhere
in scripture. Also if you will not find anyone
who is confronted by him to aver their acceptance to him or make
any reference to the power of their will. Anybody who met Christ,
you'll never hear them talk about their will. Can you imagine blind Bartimaeus
hearing that Jesus Christ was in the area, wanting to receive
his sight. That's all he wanted, just to
see again. crying out jesus now son of david i accept you you don't want to hear that would
you in fact the word i is rarely seen in any of that sinners saved
by grace don't use that word much they talk about him and
not i not long ago in fact a couple months ago a young man we know
who was in the army got an honorable discharge after serving five
years I think it was and the Lord showed him the gospel and
he was saved and his brother started talking to his brother
about the Lord and his brother kept saying well I don't know
if I see myself as sinful I don't know and his brother stopped
him and said too many I's in that equation get rid of that
I start looking to him When John saw him glorified,
he did not begin to spout the idiocy of some who say, I can
accept him or reject him. He did not say, I believe in
whosoever will. He did not spout that he was
the captain of his own salvation. If these things are, as Malty
would say, cardinal truths of Christianity, why do we never
find them upon the lips of those who come face to face with the
Lord Jesus Christ? Why does nobody talk like that
in Scripture? If this is so important, and they call it a cardinal doctrine,
the free will of man, they call it the cardinal doctrine of religion,
the free will of man. Why doesn't anybody talk about
it in this book, which is the book that God wrote and God inspired? Why don't people talk like that?
No, it's not like that. The leper, who wasn't even supposed
to come up in a crowd, came up in a crowd, risked his own life
in doing so. It didn't say unclean, unclean. He said, Jesus, if thou wilt,
your will, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And the
Lord said, I will. Be thou clean. And from that
instant, he was clean nobody ever approach god ever talk to
god in such a way as men say they talk to him today not in
this book so somewhere along the way preachers started lying
to folks you can trace most of it back
to about a hundred fifty years ago to charles finney and that
group insurgents the universal love of God and the universal
salvation of Jesus Christ, you can trace it back to that. To
get the introduction of the altar call, the walking down the aisle.
Take that out of a church and people will think you're a heretic.
I had a dear friend here on the reservation who was a solemn
grace preacher. He told me, you know, a lot of
these fellas in the area were becoming solemn grace preachers.
I said, I'll believe that. that they believe that salvation
is by grace alone when they stop using the altar call. If they believe that God actually
saves a person, personally saves them, then they don't need that. And he got rid of it out of his
church for about three weeks until he got so much flack he
put it back in. The reason is, religion lies to men about this. Nobody, there's no altar call
in scripture. When Christ said, come unto me
all ye that labor and heavy laden, I'll give you rest. Take my yoke
upon you and learn of me and you shall find rest upon your
soul. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. When he said
that, he wasn't making a call to a bunch of people. He made
a specific call and before that he made a specific, specific
word concerning those who didn't come. Those who said he sounded
like a silly preacher and said John the Baptist was too hard
on people. He lifted his eyes to heaven. How would this go
as an altar call? He lifted his eyes to heaven
and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that
thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed
them unto babes. Let's finish that altar call.
Our Lord said, No man can come to the Father. No man knows the Father but the
Son, and no man knows the Son but the Father, and he to whomsoever
the Son will reveal Him. Then He said, Come unto Me, all
ye that are feeling religious and good and careless. No, he
said, all you who are heavy laden, you shall find rest until you
sow. The cardinal doctrine of religion
is one word. The cardinal doctrine of Christianity
is one word. It's Jesus Christ. The only thing that can be rationally
discerned by such language that men use in this day is evidence
that those who speak thusly have never met the Lord Jesus Christ,
because everybody who meets Him reacts in a certain way in Scripture,
every one of them. John's reaction to seeing Christ
as He is is mirrored throughout the Word of God. John said, When
I saw Him, I fell as dead. I fell as dead. There are no
words to say, no offering to make, no law to obey, no thought
of the worth of work, the worth of self. When men see Christ,
they are not and never can be as they were before. Everything
changes when men see Christ. Seeing Christ changes you. What
happens? The first thing you do is you die. You realize you're dead. When
Jacob wrestled with Christ through the night, Christ put his hip
out of Jordan and his walk was changed from that day for the
rest of his life. He limped the rest of his life. That was a
reminder that he had met Christ. He received a new name. He was
no longer Jacob. He was called Israel, a new identity. And nothing looked the same after
he did that. He went over that brook to wrestle
with that angel. And he had spit up his family
and sent them away. He was afraid of Esau was going
to come and kill him. He was scared to death. He was
worried. went across that book and he said brook and he said
this is Jay Bach I'm poured out there's nothing left for me nothing
left of me that night he met that angel the Lord Jesus Christ
and wrestled with him all night long and said I won't let you
go until you bless me he said here's how I'm gonna bless you
put your hip out of joint and he blessed him he limped across
that creek the second time he didn't say I am poured out changed
the name of that creek to Penuel. I've seen the face of God. It's
a whole different outlook, you see. A whole different outlook.
Scripture gives ample evidence of that fact. And when you see
Christ, things change. Isaiah. Isaiah in chapter 6. He was writing down all the good
reports on this king called Uzziah. And he was a great king. God
made him a great king. He was a great warrior. But then he
took it upon himself, since he was so great, and so powerful,
and men bowed to him, and he made great weapons of war, and
everybody's scared of him, he thought, why do I need the priesthood
to go in there and do that stuff in the tabernacle, or in the
temple? I know what, I'll put on the priestly garments, and I'll get me a censer, and
I'll fill it with coals off the altar, and incense off the golden
altar, and I'll go in there and I'll make the sacrifices. But it didn't pertain to him.
Eighty-eight priests tried to stop him. Don't go in there,
don't do this, don't, please. This does not pertain to you.
Your job is king, and there's only one who's king and priest,
and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. He ain't come yet. Your job is
king, not priest. Well, he said, get out of my
way, I'm the king, I'm gonna do it, and he walked in there
with that censer, I went into the Holy of Holies and it said
the Lord smote him with leprosy to the day of his death. He went
in there, robed glorious and came out white as snow, covered
in leprosy. Isaiah just loved old King Uzziah
and he said in the year that king whose eye got leprosy and
started dying, I saw also the Lord, and His train filled the temple,
and smoke filled the place, and the doorpost shook, and I suddenly I realized I wasn't
the PR man for Uzziah. I was a man of unclean lips dwelling
among a people of unclean lips. Woe is me! I am undone, for I
have seen the King of glory. Why am I undone? Because I've
seen the King of glory. That's why I'm undone. I've seen
the King in His glory. Over and over again you'll find
that true in the Scripture of those who bet Christ to see Christ
as He is. is to be indoctrinated with two
indisputable and immutable truths. Christ is sovereign, and we are
totally depraved. Men carp about election and predestination,
in particular redemption, but the real doctrinal difficulty
that evades the mind of men is that they do not believe that
they are totally depraved. Because if you ever get that
right, you'll thank God for predestination You'll thank Him for election.
You'll thank Him for particular redemption. You'll thank Him
for perseverance and preservation of the saints, if you ever get
that right. How do I know men don't believe they're totally
depraved? Because they believe they've got a free will. They believe that they
make a decision for Jesus. And they do that in carnality,
because after that they get faith. So, they don't believe they're
totally depraved. Get that right. and you'll be able to see what
the gospel is. Everyone who sees Christ knows that He is personally
and totally depraved and is a corpse to be despised and done away
with. This is not only the doctrine, but the experience of all who
meet Christ. What does it mean to be dead? It means to be insensible
and insensitive. It means to be shut off from
all that is around you. It means to be corrupt and cursed.
It means you cannot be touched without passing your stench on
to another. It means that you are undone
and you are done in and done for and unfit to be around society
any longer. It means you've got exactly what
you deserved if you go to hell. No man can see this except he
sees Jesus. high and lifted up. Every man
who sees Christ knows this is a fact about himself. The old
poet was right. A sinner is a sacred thing. The Holy Ghost has made him so. The Holy Ghost has made him so.
This is also the true posture of worship in the dust at His
feet, kissing His feet. the one who holds your destiny
in his sovereign hands the most alive you'll ever be is when
you're laying dead at Jesus feet. Note the next word in John's
description he says and when I saw him I fell at his feet
dead and I'm glad that little consonant is there. I'm glad it's not but because
that means everything he said before would be in opposition
to what comes this is a matter of course and a fell is dead
and Christ reveals himself to you by his spirit through the
gospel according to the scriptures by faith you will fall at his
feet and he will touch you with his right hand his hand of salvation it is life from the dead his right hand upon you. It is
deliverance to never die again. That's what salvation is, brothers
and sisters. It's being raised from the dead. You see, before he clothes you,
he's going to strip you. Before he makes you alive, he'll
kill you. Before he raises you up, he'll
knock you down read the prayer of Hannah in
1st Samuel chapter 2 verses 6-9 he killeth and he maketh alive if you see him as a sovereign
as he is sovereign mercy will lay you low and raise you up
at the same time that's what he did and I was a dead man and
he reached out and touched me When He lays His right hand on
you, He'll speak to you. He'll speak to you. The Good
Shepherd calleth His sheep by name. His sheep hear His voice,
and they follow Him. No one can explain this phenomenon.
It is a wonder. It is a thing that makes us worship.
Believers do not speak of Christ's voice as audible, but every one
of them, without exception, knows that He spoke to them. They know
the sound of His voice, and their ears are attuned to it. They cannot explain it, but to
them it's their soul's music, the sound of the trumpet, the
voice of many waters, the lyric of their poet. The words he has
for them are not the words they know that they deserve. They
are not words that cause him to tremble in utter terror. They're
not words that sound like the judge's gavel coming down with
the sentence of death. They're words as sweet as honey
and the honeycomb. and he laid his right hand on
me saying unto me fear not I am the first and the last fear not be not
afraid it is I I am bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh
he said to Thomas his words are the voice of freedom that will
lay all our fears and wipe away the deadness and invigorate us
to glorious life His words are words of comfort and joy, glad
tidings of good things. When he speaks, he speaks to
that which he has made us have an interest in. He's made us
thirsty. He tells us of the water of life.
He's made us hungry and given us the bread of life. He describes
it himself. He said, I was dead, but I'm
alive. I was dead, but I'm alive. This is what a dead man needs.
This is what one made alive by the Spirit needs. I am the first
and the last. He is all and in all. There is
none beside Him and none like unto Him. He is my beginning
and my end, my first and my last breath, my first and my last
love. He is the resurrection and life. His blessed words to us are words
of substitution. I was dead, but I'm alive again.
I live and I was dead. What good news for dead men that
the one who lays his hand upon us and says, fear not, I'm the
first and the last, died, satisfied the claims of law and lives forevermore. In his death, he conquered death.
In his death, he bore the sentence that was due us. He was made
sin for us and we were made the righteousness of God in Him.
This is how He reveals Himself to us as our glorious, living,
vital substitute. Because He lives, we live also.
Save to the uttermost then to come to God by Him before He
ever lives to make intercession for them. He ever lives to make
intercession for them. He is our substitute. Fear not. Fear not. I'm the first and the
last. I was dead when I'm alive and I hold the keys to death
and to hell. Oh to see Him. Father bless us
to our understanding we pray in Christ's name.