To Him who found us dead in sin
and planted holy life within. To Him that taught our feet the
way from endless night to endless day. To Him that brought our
righteousness and sanctified us by His grace. To Him that brought us back to
God through the Red Sea of His own blood. him who suffered on
the tree blessings and praise and glory be to cleanse from
every sinful stain worthy the land Be seated. Good morning. Thanks, brother,
for singing for the first hour. We love hearing your voice. On
Wednesday night, you reminded us that the Lord speaks to his
people only. As I was reading ahead, I saw
in Acts 22 where Paul gives his account of his conversion. And it says that the men were
with him, saw the light, didn't hear the voice. Would you turn
with me to Deuteronomy chapter 32. Give ear, O ye heavens, and I
will speak, and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine
shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as
a small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon
the grass, because I will publish the name of the Lord, ascribe
ye greatness unto our God. He is the rock. His work is perfect. For all his days are judgment,
a God of truth and without iniquity. Just and right is he. They have
corrupted themselves. Their spot is not the spot of
his children. They are perverse and crooked
generation. Do ye thus requite the Lord,
O foolish people and unwise? Is not he thy father that hath
brought thee, or bought thee? Hath he not made thee and established
thee? Remember the days of old. Consider
the years of many generations. Ask thy father, and he will show
thee. Thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the Most High
divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated
the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according
to the number of the children of Israel. And this is the verse
I wanted to pick out. For the Lord's portion is his
people. Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in the desert land
and in the waste, howling wilderness. He led him about, he instructed
him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you
for the mercy that you give us. Lord, we know that we don't reverence
you as we ought. We ask, Lord, that you would
make us willing in the day of your power, that we would hear
your word, that we would confess with our tongue that Jesus Christ
is Lord. We thank you, Father, that you've
provided a salvation that's perfect in every way. We ask, Lord, that
you be with us, that we would understand that salvation and
our need for it. We ask, Lord, that you be with
Caleb and Bobby. We thank you, Lord, that you sent them there.
We ask that they would be a blessing unto your people there and that
you would give Caleb strength as he preaches to those. We ask,
Lord, for the men and that you've stood up wherever they be to
speak your word, that you would give them power and strength
to send your spirit, that we would hear your word. For these
things we ask in Christ's name, amen. Let's stand and sing the first
hymn in the hardback hymnal, O Worship the King. O worship the King, all glorious
above, and gratefully sing his power and his love. Our shield and defender, the
Ancient of Days, pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise. O tell of his might, O sing of
his grace, Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space. His chariots of wrath, the deep
thunder clouds form, And dark is his path on the wings of the
storm. Thy bountiful care, what tongue
can recite? It breathes in the air. shines in the light. It streams from the hills, it
descends to the plain, and sweetly distills in the dew and the ? Man of dust and feeble as frail
? ? In thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail ? ? Thy mercy's
how tender, how firm to the end ? Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer,
and Friend. Be seated. Let's open our Bibles together
to Acts chapter 19. Acts 19. And we'll begin reading
at verse 17. And I've titled this message,
Curious Arts. Curious Arts. Verse 17, and this
was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling in Ephesus,
and fear fell on them all. And the name of the Lord Jesus
was magnified. Now, Wednesday night, we looked
at the seven sons of Sceva and how they were exorcist by trade, and they have
now a god that they cannot control. And all the false gospels and religions of
Ephesus are being exposed by the truth. And the scripture
says, and there was great fear and the word, the name of the
Lord Jesus was magnified. And many that believed came and
confessed and showed their deeds. Many of them also, which used
curious arts, brought their books together and burned them before
all men. And they counted the price of
them and found it 50,000 pieces of silver. So mightily grew the
word of God and prevailed. Now from my brief study on 50,000
pieces of silver, I understand that a piece of silver was an
average day's wage, and so translated this would be about 10 million
dollars of the burning of books. A great expression of burning
of your bridges in the past. What I want to say from this
passage of scripture this morning is, first of all, that salvation
is free. The grace of God is free in its
origin. In election, God freely chose
a people according to his own will and purpose. He did not
look down through the quarters of time and see who would choose
him and choose them based on something that he foreknew they
would do. No, he loved them with an everlasting
love and chose them sovereignly in the covenant of grace before
time ever began. That's free. Nothing we did to
influence that, nothing we can do to change that. Redemption
was free. The only part that we played
in the cross of Christ was that our sin was in his body on that
tree and brought the fury and wrath of God's justice down from
heaven. Otherwise, all the work of redemption
was a work that he did. We made no contribution. We didn't
earn it. We didn't deserve it. We didn't
pay for it. It's free. The work of regeneration
is a free work of grace when God, like Saul of Tarsus, stops
us on the road of our own destruction, knocks us off our high horses,
shines the light of the gospel down from heaven into our hearts
in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, and makes us willing
in the day of his power. We didn't do anything to earn
that. We're just like Saul of Tarsus. He called himself a pattern
of salvation. He was in rebellion against God
when the Lord stopped him. And so it is with each one of
us. No man seeketh after God at any time. God seeks after
us. And when he, in the day of his
power, when it pleases him, he makes us willing. That's free.
It is free grace that keeps us from falling every day. We are
prone to wander every day. Our flesh would rebel against
the things of God and the Spirit of God keeps bringing us back
again and again and again. We learn that it's free. When the Lord sends his angels
and gathers up his people and brings them into glory, That'll
be by His free grace. We will not have done anything
to deserve that. It'll all be based on the accomplished
work of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross. Salvation
is free. Cost Him everything. Cost me
and you nothing. Yet, salvation, though it be
free, cost you everything. Everything. Someone said to me one time,
well, the reason they didn't come to Christ is because they
had too much to give up. I said, no. They didn't have
any more to give up than anybody else had to give up. God brings
you to faith in Christ. Everything's on the line. Cost
you everything. Renouncing of old loyalties and
practices while bowing willingly to the full submission of a new true sovereign. That's salvation. That's what we're seeing here. Turning to God from idols to
serve the true and living God. being delivered from the taskmasters
of Egypt, only to be taken into the wilderness to worship God
and to depend upon him for our daily sustenance. See, faith,
faith is everything. It lays everything on the line. It costs you nothing and it costs
you everything. at the same time, counting all
things but loss. Isn't that what Paul said? Those things that I thought were
gain to me, I counted them all loss. For what? For the excellency
of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, my Lord. I love the story of
Abigail, who was freed from that cherished man, Nabal, that hard
man, who treated her harshly. And yet, when she comes to David,
she bows before him. And now she has a loving husband
who she's in complete submission to. That's the picture of salvation. The Lord delivers us from the
tyranny of sin and Satan and makes us willing servants of
a benevolent sovereign who loves us and and we're we lay everything
on the line that's what these that's what they these believed
and they came and they brought 10 million dollars worth of books
and they burnt them That's salvation, being freely
brought out of darkness into his marvelous light, willingly laying down our lives as his servants. Notice in verse 17, A God greater than the gods that
were being worshiped has now manifest himself in Ephesus. And the scripture says that the
vagabond Jews were exposed for what they are, false prophets,
and that great fear fell upon the people of Ephesus. when they
heard of the name of Christ. Look at verse 18, and many that
believed came. Believing always results in coming. Always results in coming. It always results in publicly
confessing. A person who's unwilling to confess
Christ publicly in baptism and confess him, as he's not a believer. Here's what our Lord does when
he makes us willing. He makes us willing to confess
him. The many that believed came and
they confessed. Now this word confess means to
speak the same thing. It's the same word that's used
in 1 John 1, verse 9, when the Bible says, if we confess our
sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and
cleanse us of all of our unrighteousness. It's to speak the same thing
back to God that he speaks to us, that we're sinners in need
of a savior, that we have no righteousness whatsoever, that
we're completely dependent upon Christ for all our acceptance
before God. That's what we're confessing.
And these people, when they heard and they saw the power of God,
they came and they confessed and they showed their deeds.
You see that? That doesn't mean that they showed
the good works that came as a result of their confession. They confessed
that their deeds were evil. This is like the woman who came
before the Lord with the issue of blood. And when the Lord asked
who touched me, And the disciples said, Lord, what do you mean
who touched you? Everybody's touching you here. No, no virtue
has gone out from me. Someone has touched me in faith.
And the woman was exposed and the scripture says, and she told
him all the truth. She told him all the truth, everything
about herself. Lord, I've got an issue of blood.
I'm unclean. I'm not even supposed to be out
in public. Look at me. I'm a mess. She told
him all the truth. That's what these people did.
They showed their deeds for what they were they confessed their
sin now confessing your sin doesn't mean that you make a list of
your sins and confess all the bad stuff that you've done that's
not possible plus your sin goes much deeper than that sin we
do what we do because we are let me ask you a question if
you sterilized a person's body Doctor, you can answer. Everybody
can answer this. You tell me exactly. You sterilize the person's
body and put them up in a perfectly sterilized room and came back a week later. Would
they stink? You know they would. You see, you don't insulate yourself
from sin by, you know, by figuring out a way to, you know, to live
in an isolated place in the world where you're not going to be
exposed to. The sin problem that we have is within, just like
the stink that comes out of your body. It's from within. That's
the problem. And so when we confess our sins,
when we, when we show our deeds, we are agreeing with God that
my sin problem is not my circumstances and it's not somebody else. It's
me. I'm the problem. And if we haven't
done that, then I doubt the Lord has shown us anything of his
grace and glory because that's the sinner's confession. That's
what they did. Now Ephesus was the epicenter
of the occult in the ancient world. You can go to the old
Ephesus today and the large portion of the Temple of Diana. that
pagan goddess that was worshipped by the Greeks and the Romans.
And by the way, they didn't call them, they didn't call the gods of
Greece, Greek mythology. They did not believe them to
be mythological. They believed them to be real.
We call them Greek mythology, but they believed them to be
real. They worshipped these gods. And And the library of Ephesus
is still there. Books were very, very rare and
expensive, and yet they had an extensive library in Ephesus
where they had all these curious arts, all these books on the
occult and on pagan worship. Let us not be so short-sighted
that we think that those blatant pagan practices are any different
than what is culturally acceptable in America as Christianity. It is the same. Nothing has changed. Oh, there's extensive libraries
and great temples to false gods on every corner of our towns
and cities. Nothing has changed. Men are
still practicing curious arts. You don't have to go to Casadega
to find the soothsayers and the palm readers and the witches
and warlocks. No, men, the devil presents himself
as an angel of light and as a minister of righteousness, and he's standing
right at this very hour and speaking from pulpits in churches all
over this land. Nothing's changed. We are the
epicenter of the occult. And to find those who will burn
their books is a rare thing. Now, you know what the word ergon
means. It is the word from which we
get our word ergonomics. It's the Greek word for works
or work. If you buy a chair that's ergonomically
designed, it's designed to work with the shape of your body.
And the preposition epi is of, for, or concerning. Now, the
reason I'm telling you this is because the term curious arts
that you see here in your text is one word in the original language.
It's the word epi-ergos. out of, from, or concerning works. You don't have to be going down
to the temple of Diana to have a works gospel. Turn with me to Galatians chapter
four. What I'm trying to say this morning
is that the pagan worship of a false god in a false gospel,
popularly known in our culture as Christianity, is no different
than is no different from the works gospel that is and has
been practiced all over the world in every generation. It goes
all the way back to the garden when Adam sewed together fig
leaves in order to try to cover his nakedness before God. You
see it at the Tower of Babel, when the men, when they had brick
for stone and slime for mortar, and they tried to build a tower
to reach up into heaven. It's epi-ergos, it is concerning
works, it is curious arts. That's all it is, just curious
arts. And it's demonic? If you can
call it Christianity and it's as demonic as Islam and Hinduism
and worship of Diana and Greek mythology, and it's all the same.
There's two religions in the world, and there's never ever
been anything more than two religions. There's the religion of God's
free grace in the accomplished work of the Lord Jesus Christ,
where salvation is done. And there's the religion of man's
works, where he's got to make some contribution. in order to
find favor with God. He's got to do something. He's
got to, he's got to find some curious art, some epi ergo, some,
something concerning his work. And he'll make a work out of
faith, or he'll make a work out of not working. You know, but
man's gonna have to glory in something. He's not, you see,
one gospel gives to the Lord Jesus Christ all the glory and
all the praise and all the credit for the salvation of his people.
And the other gospel, the curious arts gospel, robs Christ of his
glory and takes it to man. He's gonna find something to
glory in. You see that, don't you? There's
only two messages of salvation in all the world, and there's
only two that's ever been in all the world. It's the message
of done, and it's the message of do. It's just that simple. Nothing's changed. We could call
this Ephesus. We could call the library of
the First Baptist Church, the library of Ephesus full of occultic
books. We could, you know, you believe that, don't you?
You see that. It's true. Nothing's changed. Temples of Diana are on every
street corner. Look at Galatians chapter four
and we'll begin reading at verse 21. Tell me, you that desire
to be under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written
that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid and the other
by a free woman." Ishmael, what did Abraham do
with Hagar? to bring... Abraham and Sarah couldn't have
a child. So they said, you know, God's made us a promise, but
he's not able to keep that promise unless we help him out. So you
go into Hagar and we'll have a child by Hagar. And that was
an agreement between Abraham and Sarah. You see the picture
there, don't you? Yeah, God's promised to save
his people, but he can't do it by himself. We've got to do our
part. We've got to do something to
make Christ come down from above or something to bring him up
from below. We've got to do something to make what he did work for
us. One is of the bondwoman, a slave. That's what Hagar was. And one
was of the free woman, but He who was of the bond woman was
born after the flesh, but he's of the free woman was by promise. Isaac. Oh, Abraham's a hundred
years old. Sarah's 90 years old. Get a hold
of that. A 90 year old woman giving birth to a child. That's
a miracle. And yet the Lord ordained it
just for that, to show us the new birth. It's a miracle. You're not gonna make any contribution
to that. Which things are an allegory? The Lord is telling us these
things serve as a type or as a picture. They are allegorically
speaking of the new birth in Christ or the two covenants. These are the two covenants,
the one from Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage. What did
we read? What did we see in Judges chapter
five in the first hour this morning? How Mount Sinai melted. The mountains melted at the presence
of Christ. He's the only one that kept the
law. He's the end of the law for righteousness. Any religious
opinion that wants to say that you've got to do something in
order to earn favor with God, you would not understand what
the law says. If you're going to be under the
law for the hope of salvation, you're obligated to keep the
whole law, and not just in outward appearances. Paul said concerning
the law, I was blameless. But what he was saying was none
of my peers could look at my life and accuse me of being a
lawbreaker. How many of us could say that?
I mean, this guy was upstanding. And then he goes on to say, but.
When the law came, sin revived and I died. When I saw the law
for what it really meant, the law was speaking to this inward
man, not just the outward appearances that other people see, but the
stink that comes from within. That's what the law revealed
and sin revived. I saw myself as a sinner for
the first time and I died. I died. There's two covenants. There's the covenant of works.
Here he is. Covenant of Sinai. Look at verse 25. And this Hagar
is Mount Sinai in Arabia and answereth to Jerusalem, which
now is and is bondage with their children. But the Jerusalem,
which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. Oh, if God requires us to do
anything to be saved, we have every reason to be afraid. Because you don't know if you've
done enough and you don't know if you did it right. If salvation
requires anything from us, we're in bondage to the law. We're
always measuring ourselves by the law. We're being motivated
by the law. We're comparing ourselves to
others by the law. The law kills. The letter of the law kills.
Spirit is the one that gives life. Go back with me to our text. Paul said to Timothy, he saved
us and he called us. I brought this out recently and
I think one of the men mentioned this during the conference last
weekend. He saved us and then he called
us. When did he save us? Did he save
you when you decided to believe? When you prayed your prayer,
or when you made your decision, or when you showed yourself to
be an outwardly moral person? Is that when he saved you? When
you walked the aisle or got back? No, he saved us, then he called
us. When were you saved? You were
saved in the covenant of grace before time ever began when Christ
entered into that covenant relationship with his heavenly father and
became the surety of his people. That's when we were saved. We
were saved back on Calvary's cross when the Lord Jesus Christ
fulfilled all the requirements of that covenant and offered
himself to his father for the sins of his people. That's when
we were saved. Yes, our new birth is our calling
and our salvation was accomplished before we were called. And all
those whom he saved, he calls. So he saved us and he called
us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to
his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began. Before the world began. Oh, I
want to be crystal clear on this before I get to my second point,
which I'll try to cover quickly. Salvation is a free gift. It's
a free gift of God. Hebrews chapter nine, will you
turn with me there, please? Hebrews chapter nine. These Ephesians, they believed,
they came, they confessed, They showed their evil deeds. And then they took their books
and they burnt $10 million worth of books. Verse 13 of Hebrews chapter eight,
chapter nine. for if the blood of bulls and
of goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled the unclean sanctified
to the purifying of the flesh. So I'm about the old Testament
ceremony where the priest would take the blood of bulls and goats
and sprinkle over the people to the sanctifying of their flesh. It was a, it was a, an ordinance
that God made to picture, once again, as an allegory or as a
picture, as a type of what the Lord Jesus Christ would accomplish
when he shed his precious blood on Calvary's cross. But if that,
in the Old Testament, satisfied God to the sanctifying of the
flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through
the eternal spirit, offered himself without spot to God? Don't miss that. What will you hear in curious
arts religion? What will you hear in a works
gospel? Here's what you'll hear. Jesus
Christ offered himself to man on Calvary's cross. And it's
your responsibility to accept him or reject him. And if you'll
accept him, then you can make what he did effectual and work
for you. Jesus Christ was not offering
himself to us. God Almighty is holy and just. He required a just sacrifice
for the sins of the people that he chose in the covenant of grace
before time ever began. And the Lord Jesus Christ was
making himself an offering to his father to satisfy his holy
justice. Without spot, he made himself
an offering to God. And if he did that, then he will
purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living and
true God. I want to close this message
by making a distinction between dead works and good works. Because that's what these people
in Ephesus did. They did a good work. When they
showed their deeds and they burnt their books, and the scripture
says, go back with me to our text. In Acts chapter 19, in verse
20, so mightily grew the word of God and prevailed. Yes, salvation is free. And yes, salvation
will cost you everything. A dead work, which the Lord purges
our conscience of, are those things that we thought we were
doing to earn favor with God. God says that's a dead work.
anything, anything whatsoever that we would do to take away
from the Lord Jesus Christ the full accomplishment of salvation,
to rob him of his glory, and every curious art religion of
this world does it. They all do it. Epi ergos, concerning
works. If you'll do this, you'll keep
this law, do this, then you can See, it's all the same. And yet the scripture speaks
much about the believer's good works. One of the verses that
we're very familiar with, Ephesians chapter two, beginning at verse
eight, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of
yourself. The faith is not even of you.
God has to has to breathe life into our dead souls before we
can have faith. Faith is not the cause of our
salvation, it is the result of it. It's the result of it. You're not offering your faith
to God. The Lord gives us faith, for
by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourself.
It is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And
you know what the next verse says? And we are his workmanship
created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which, which
he hath ordained that we should walk in them. When God brings you freely to
faith in Christ, our heart's desire is to serve
Him, to worship Him, to put everything on the line for Him. He works in us, causing us to
will and to do of His good pleasure. put all our books on the fire. We're not talking about literal
books. We're talking about a big investment here. We're talking
about laying everything on the line. We're talking about burning
all our... You see, coming to Christ is
not only renouncing our past epi ergos, our past false religion
works gospel, our past curious arts, It is also looking ahead
to our new Savior and our God to whom we are willing servants,
willing servants. I love what the scripture says
about the household of Stephanos, addicted themselves to the ministry
of the saints. You see, that's the believer's
desire. A man boasts, a couple, this
happened several times over the years. A man tells me how many
times he's read the Bible. Yeah, I've read through the Bible.
I'm a deacon in a certain church and I've read through the Bible
so many times. And I think, well, I'm sorry. I'm sure that was
a dead work. Does that make reading the Bible
wrong? Does that make our desire to
study, to show ourselves approved, a workman that needeth not be
ashamed? Does that make it wrong? Does not make meditating on the
word of God? No, no. But reading the Bible can be
a dead work or it can be a good work. And if it's a good work,
I'm sure that you're gonna be ashamed of how little you do
it. And you're not gonna be telling everybody how much you do it.
And I'm sure you're gonna be ashamed of how little you understand
it and how far short you fall to following it. You see what
I'm saying? We're still going, we're still
reading the scripture, we're still praying, we're still going
to church, but we're not looking to those things as the hope of
our salvation. We're unprofitable servants.
We're gonna stand before the Lord and he's gonna say, he's
gonna say, well done, you good and faithful servant. I was hungry
and you fed me and I was naked and you gave me, you clothed
me and I was a stranger and you took me in and I was in prison
and you came and visited me. And what did the believers say?
Lord, when do we do those things? Well, you see, when it's a good
work, you don't go around taking notice of what you're doing.
You're ashamed of how little you do do. You're ashamed of
how little you do. Isn't that true? And if it's
a, if it's a dead work, you're going to go around boasting in
it and looking to it as the hope of your salvation. Titus chapter two, verse 14 says,
he gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity. He gave himself for us, not to
us, but for us that he may redeem us from all iniquity. Tell them
their warfare is accomplished. Tell them their iniquity has
been cleansed. It's been put away. That's what
he did. He fought the war of sin and
death and hell and Satan and he won, he got the victory. And
the rest of that verse says, and purified unto himself a peculiar
people, zealous for good works. Zealous for good works. Now,
I wanted at the beginning of this message to emphasize as
clearly as I could the freedom of salvation and how God doesn't
count anything that we do for our righteousness. And I wanted to also say that
though salvation is free, it'll cost you everything. It'll cost
you everything. but you'll be a willing servant. You'll be delivered from the
tyranny of a taskmaster that puts you under the law and cause
you to be afraid, to bow in willingly to a benevolent king who loves
you and who you love and you want everything to be to his
glory. Titus chapter three, verse eight
says, they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain
good works for these are good and profitable unto men. In other words, your good works
are not going to earn you favor with God, but they're going to
be profitable to men and they're going to give the glory to God. Second Corinthians chapter 9
verse 8 says, God is able to make all grace abound toward
you, that you always, having all sufficiency in all things,
may abound in every good work. These are two sides to the same
coin. It's not It's not one or the
other, it's both. It's both. Freely saved and yet
gladly willing to burn all our bridges and lay everything on
the line for the Lord Jesus Christ. I'll close with 2 Samuel chapter
24. Will you turn there with me,
please? 2 Samuel chapter 24. We often
read, you heard me quote many times from 2 Samuel chapter 23,
David's last words. These be David's last words.
You remember in 2 Samuel 23, although my house be not so with
God. Well, those were recorded as his last words. And then we
have another chapter. where David tells Joab to go
out and number the army of Israel. David's on his deathbed and he
wants to die with some sense of accomplishment. He wants to
die with knowing how many men he has in his army to fight for
him. And Joab says to him, don't do
that. You're robbing God of his glory.
The battle's not yours, it's the Lord. And for you to take
this to yourself at the end of your life, it's a shameful thing. And it was a shameful thing.
But David insisted and Joab went out and counted, brought the
number back to David. And as soon as Joab gave him
the number, the spirit of God smoked David's heart and told
David that He was going to chastise him. And there was going to be
great affliction that was going to come upon Israel. They gave
him three choices. And he said, you can run from
your enemy for three months, or you can have a famine for
three years, or I can send a plague for three days. And David said,
I'll send the plague, let's get this over with. and God sent
a plague and 70,000 Israelites were killed. And David now is
going to offer his worship to God for his mercy and for his
grace. That's the story of 2 Samuel
chapter 24. And David in verse 24, Verse 21, well, I'm sorry, we have to back
up to verse 18. Verse 20, and Arorna looked and
saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Arorna
went out and bowed himself before the king on his face upon the
ground. And Arorna said, wherefore is
my Lord the king come to his servant? And David said, to buy
the threshing floor of thee to build an altar unto the Lord
that the plague may be stayed from the people. So Arorna owned
a threshing floor. and David wanted to build an
altar there to make sacrifice, a blood sacrifice to God that
the plague might stop. And Arorna, here's the point
that we're going to see here, verse 22. And Arorna said unto
David, let my Lord the king take and offer up what seemeth good
unto him. Behold, here be oxen for the burnt sacrifice and the
threshing instruments and other instruments of the oxen for wood.
All these things did Arorna as a king give unto a kin to the
king. And Arorna said unto the king,
the Lord thy God accept thee. He said, you can have it. You
take the threshing floor, take my oxen, take all the instruments,
build a fire. I'm giving it to you. Verse 24. And the king said unto Arorna,
nay, no, but I will surely buy it of thee at a price. Neither will I offer, burn offerings
unto the Lord my God, of that which doth cost me nothing. I'm not gonna offer anything
to my God. It didn't cost me anything. These believers in Ephesus laid
$10 million on the line picturing that they were putting
their whole lives in the hands of their new God. Salvation's free. You can't buy
it. The Lord gives it to you. He'll own everything you've got
and everything you are. Amen? And you'll be glad he does. Our Heavenly Father, bless your
word. Make us willing servants. Thank
you for your love and your. Work of redemption. Lord, might the love of Christ. Move our hearts. Bow to you in
worship and praise ports in Christ name we ask it. Amen. 474, let's stand together, 474.