It's a great hymn, especially
after that message we just heard. It's found on number 205. Number
205. If y'all could please stand. Once
for all. Free from the law, oh, happy
condition, Jesus did bled and there is remission. Cursed by the law and bruised
by the fall, grace has redeemed us once for all. Once for all, O sinner, receive
it. Once for all, O brother, believe
it. Clink to the cross, the burden
will fall. Christ hath redeemed us once
for all. Now are we free, there's no condemnation. Jesus provides a perfect salvation. Come unto me, oh, hear His sweet
call. Come and He saves us once for
all. Once for all, O sinner, receive
it. Once for all, O brother, believe
it. Plains across the burden will
fall. Christ hath redeemed us once
for all. Children of God, O glorious calling,
surely His grace will keep us from falling. Passing from death
to life at His call, blessed salvation once for all. Once for all, O sinner, receive
it. Once for all, O brother, believe
it. Cling to the cross, the burden
will fall. Christ hath redeemed us once
for all. For our scripture reading, would
you please turn to the book of Philippians, chapter 2. Book of Philippians, chapter
2. We're going to begin reading at verse 1. The mind of Christ. Verse 1. If there be, therefore, any consolation,
any comfort in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship
of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies. Fulfill ye my joy,
that you be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord,
of one mind. And I am so thankful, brethren,
that we have the mind of Christ We have the love here in this
local assembly, and you cannot find any of this anywhere in
the world but here. Let nothing be done through strife
or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other
better than themselves. Look not every man on his own
things, but every man also on the things of others. The only
way we are going to be able to do that is in verse 5 and 6. And let this mind be in you,
verse 5, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form
of God, thought it not robbery to be equal to God, but made
himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant
and was made in the likeness of men. and being found in fashion
as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross. The Lord Jesus Christ's perfect
faithfulness to the Father, and when he bore my sins on his body
on the tree, all the sins of my past, all the sins this morning,
and all the sins tomorrow, it became His sin. He owned that
sin. Wherefore, verse 9, God has also,
for God also has highly exalted Him and given Him a name which
is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow of things in heaven and things in earth, and things
under the earth, either you're bowing right now in Christ or
one day you will bow in Adam on that judgment day. And that
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory
of God the Father. Wherefore, my beloved, as you
have always obeyed, always heard, not as in my presence only, But
now, much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling." What does it mean to work out? It means
to look to the Lord Jesus Christ for all your salvation, resting
in Him, crying out to Him, and waiting for Him in eager expectation. For it is God, and here's my
prayer this morning. Verse 13, for it is God which
worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Pray he would do that this morning. Lord, we come into thy presence
in the name of thy dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, asking
Lord by your Holy Spirit that you would cause us, Lord, to
will and to do your good pleasure in lifting him up. As you already
have, Lord, you have exalted him the highest. And, Lord, we
desire right now to do that in worshiping him, giving him all
the glory, all the praise. Lord, we want to confess, Lord,
that he is Lord to your glory. Lord, would you remind us once
again this morning through the preaching of your word that he
is all and in all. And we ask that you'd be pleased
to bless us now for Christ's sake. Amen. We're going to sing the hymnal
now. There's a blue handout. We're going to sing number 11.
Number 11. You can remain seated. Number
11. It's not that I did choose thee,
Lord, that that would not be. This heart would still refuse
thee. hast thou not chosen me? Thou from the sin that stained
me hast cleansed and set me free. Of old thou hast ordained me
that I should live to thee. Your love had no beginning, no
cause in me was found. That you should choose to save
me, a sinner strongly bound. But grace not earned or sought,
for was purpose for my soul. For me salvation wrought, for
Christ paid the dreadful toll. T'was sovereign mercy called
me and taught my opening mind. The world had else enthralled
me, to heavenly glories blind. My heart owns none before Thee,
for Thy rich grace I thirst. Thank you, Burt. Cheryl, would you open
your Bibles with me to Genesis chapter 11, Genesis Chapter 11. I don't remember ever bringing
a message from this very, very familiar story, but in looking
over it the last couple of weeks, I am more and more convinced
that no truer words were spoken than when Solomon said, there
is no new thing under the sun. When I look at the world in which
you and I live, and when I look at the church and the gospel
of God's free grace in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ,
I see the Tower of Babel. I see Babel and God's work of
grace in calling out His people and giving them one language.
Here it is. Look at chapter 11 beginning
at verse 1. And the whole earth was of one
language and one speech. This is the same exact language
that Adam spoke when he walked with God in the garden. What
language it was, we don't know. But they all spoke the same language.
And the previous chapter tells us that a man by the name of
Nimrod, who was the great grandson of Noah, the grandson of Ham,
is the one who led the people to come together and to build
a city and a name for themselves. Nimrod's name later was changed
to Baal and the city was changed to Babel. The whole earth was of one language
and of one speech, and it came to pass as they journeyed from
the east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar. You can
look up that word, it's the same as Babylon or Babel. This is
the city of Babylon that is spoken of all throughout the scriptures.
This past Wednesday night we looked at how the children of
Israel were taking, in Jeremiah chapter 29, to Babylon to live
for 70 years. And picturing the fact that God's
people live in Babylon. And the life that we are given
in this world on an average is three score and ten. The life
of a man is seventy years. And so the Lord has put us in
Babylon. That's where we live. This is
the beginning of Babylon. That theme of Babylon is carried
all throughout the word of God right to the book of Revelation
when Babylon is seen as the great whore that has perverted the
gospel. That's what this is all about.
This story is all about man-made religion. And there is nothing
new under the sun when it comes to what man has devised for himself
as to who God is and how it is that he can be saved. All men
by nature know that there's a God. Men are incurably religious. They come into this world with
a knowledge of God imprinted on their heart. And yet, left
to themselves, they will pervert the truth of who God is. And
they will distort what it is this God requires in order for
them to be saved. And so thus we have the proliferation
of man-made religion in the world. That's what this city of Babel
and the Tower of Babel is all about. This is the beginning
of it. This is the beginning of it. It carries all the way
through until the Lord Jesus Christ comes, the trump of God
sounds, and the dead in Christ are raised, and those of us which
are alive meet Him together in the air, and He sends fire onto
this earth and destroys the Babylon of this world. This is the beginning
of it. This is the beginning of it.
They all spoke one language and one speech. We'll deal with that
in a few moments. And it came to pass, verse 2,
as they journeyed from the east that they found a plain in the
land of Shinar and they dwelt there and they said one to another,
come. That's what go to is. Here's
man saying to one another. Now I need the spirit and the
bride to say to me, come. not come together and let us
build for ourselves a city and a tower reaches up into heaven,
but come to Christ. The contrast between what man
does and what God does is declared so clearly and so starkly here
in this story. Let us make brick and build and
burn them thoroughly and they had brick for stone and slime
had they for mortar. So here they build this city.
They don't have stones, so they take what they have. They've
got clay, and they formed with their own hands bricks out of
that clay, and they burned them in the oven, and they stacked
them together, and they built a city. And in the middle of
that city, there's a temple, a tower to worship God. And it's all built with brick,
and it's all held together with slime. with slime. It's the same word that's translated
pitch. You remember Noah? When he built
the ark, he pitched it within and without. He completely coated
the works of his hands with pitch so that when you saw that ark,
you didn't see anything Moses did, or Noah did. All you saw
was the pitch. All you saw was the tar. All
you saw was the slime, which works very good as a water repellent,
but not so good as mortar. It's the same pitch that Moses'
mother put on the bulrushes when she made the little ark for Noah
when she put him into the water. She pitched it within and without
to protect him from the water. The word translated means atonement. A covering. That's what it means. It's a covering. It's the atoning
work of the Lord Jesus Christ that keeps out the flood of God's
wrath and provides protection and safety for Noah and his family. We've got to have the covering. God said, when I see the blood,
I will pass by you. The shed blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ is the only thing that hides our sins from the view
of God. It is the work that Christ accomplished
on Calvary's cross. What do we have here? They have
brick for stone. They don't have stone. Now the
Lord was very clear when he told the children of Israel how they
were to build an altar to make their sacrifice. He said, don't
put tools to the stones. Build it out of stone, unhewn
stone, stack up the stones, and put the sacrifice on the altar. And make that sacrifice. As soon
as you put your hand to it, you've defiled it. And unlike the temple
that we find here in Babel, The altars that God instructed
the children of Israel to make were not to have steps on it.
For the Lord said, as soon as you make, and these altars would
have. If you've been to Mexico, they've sort of been very similar
to those pyramids that they have all over the place in Mexico.
They've got steps going up to it, and they make the sacrifice
on the top of this altar. And they would have been very
popular all over the world. Here the Lord said, don't make
steps on your altar. As soon as you make steps on
it, you're going to expose your nakedness. In other words, don't
make salvation something that requires you to do something
in order to be saved. And that's the popular view of
salvation today. Well, you know, I gotta do step
one, step two, step three. The 12 steps may work, in helping
you break an addiction. And if they do, fine. But no
steps are going to save your soul. None whatsoever. And as soon as you make steps
up to the presence of God, all you do is expose your nakedness
before God. Don't put your hand to it. Don't
fashion bricks. You remember what the children
of Israel were in slavery down in Egypt? What were they doing?
What were they making? They were making bricks. And
they could never measure up. As soon as they got close to
meeting the quota that the taskmasters required of them, what'd they
do? They took away their straw. They increased the quota. They
made it harder and harder. That's the law. That's the law. It's never satisfied. The rigors
of the law always become more and more difficult. And man tries
to fashion it with his hands, and then what's he trying to
put it together with? We've got to have the atonement.
We've got to have the atonement. We've got to have the slime.
We've got to have the pitch. We've got to have the tar. And
like I said, it might work good to pitch an ark and to keep it
watertight, but it sure doesn't work very good as mortar, does
it? As soon as tar gets hot, what's it do? It melts and the
whole city falls apart. Man, by nature, believes that
he's got to have the work of Christ to hold together what
He has done. It's called law and grace. It's the mixture of the work
of God with the work of man. And if it's not all of grace,
then it's of works. But here's what this is a picture
of. It's so typical today in religion. Everybody's doing it. Oh yeah, we believe in Jesus.
We believe in Jesus. You know, we've got to do our
part. We've got to make a decision. We've got to build a city for
ourselves. We've got to build a name for
ourselves. We've got to build steps up to the altar. We've
got to put our hand to the stones when we build the altar. We've got to make it look good.
And just like when Uzzah reached up to steady the ark, God killed
him on the spot. Why? Because he put his hand
to it. Don't put your hand to the atoning work of the Lord
Jesus Christ. It stands alone. Don't use pitch
to mortar together the bricks that you've made with your hands. It doesn't work. In the whole, they were all of
one language, they were all of one speech. In other words, the
word language here is words, they all speak exactly the same
words, and the word speech is meaning. So not only did they
speak the same language, but they understood exactly what
each other was saying. They understood the meaning of
the message. And the truth is that the message
in man-made religion today is just like it was in the day that
Nimrod tried to build Babel. Everybody's talking the same
language and everybody's saying the same thing. The only difference between one
religion and another is how to make the bricks. How to make the bricks. What
size are the bricks going to be? What color are the bricks
going to be? How heavy are the bricks going
to be? That's the only difference. Man trying to put bricks together
with the atonement. The problem is, and listen to
this very carefully, the religious man is so proud of his brick
making that even when he hears the truth of the gospel, and
it calls into question his works, and he begins to doubt and to
wonder if maybe his brick making is not right. Left to himself, in spite of
his doubts, he's so proud that he would rather go to hell than
admit that he's wrong. That's true. I've talked to plenty
of folks. They'll hear the gospel, they'll
say, well, you know, maybe there's something to what you're saying.
And then the more they think about it, Their pride will not
allow them to admit that they're wrong, and they will hold on
to their bricks to the very last breath. Turn with me to Romans chapter
10, please. Romans chapter 10. Verse 1, Brethren, my heart's
desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be
saved, for I bear them record. I'm here to testify, they have
a zeal of God. They're very zealous. They're
very committed. But their zeal is not according
to knowledge, for they, being ignorant of God's righteousness
and going about to establish their own righteousness, have
not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For
Christ, he's the one we submit ourselves to, is the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone that believe it. Here's the world,
incurably religious, going about making bricks, trying to hold
the bricks together with slime, using the atonement. Oh yeah,
we believe in Jesus, but we gotta have him to help us hold together
what we've done. ignorant of the righteousness
of God. For Moses described that the righteousness which is of
the law, that the man which doeth these things shall live by them.
You want to be saved by what you're going to do? You're going
to have to build the whole city out of bricks. And you're going
to have to make those bricks so perfect, they're going to
stand together by themselves without the slime. And they're
going to reach all the way up to heaven. It's not possible. Moses said, if you're gonna be
saved by the law, you gotta live by the law. But the righteousness, verse
six, which is of faith, speaketh on this wise, say not in thine
heart, who shall ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ
down from above. What can I do to bring Christ
down to save me? What can I do to make his ascension
work for me? Don't say it. Don't even think
it. Perish the thought. You're mixing bricks with slime. Or, who shall descend down into
the deep? That is, to bring Christ up from
the dead. What can I do to make the sacrificial death of the
Lord Jesus Christ work for me? What contribution can I make?
Don't even think it. The answer is none. Lord, what work can we work that
we might inherit the kingdom of God? What did the Lord Jesus
Christ say? This is the work of God that
you believe on Him whom He has sent. If the work of God is done
effectually in our hearts, all our hope will be in the atoning
work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and like that ark, Whatever we've
put our hand to is gonna be covered up. It's gonna be covered up. But what saith it? The word is
nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thine heart. That is the
word of faith which we preach. I believe that Jesus Christ is
the Son of God. Do you believe that? That's the
word of faith. It's believing the gospel. It's
hearing the gospel of God's free grace in the finished work of
the Lord Jesus Christ and saying, Amen. Christ is my only hope. I can't make bricks. I can't
use brick for stone. I need stone. And I can't make
stone. You can make bricks, but you
can't make stone. You can make fake stone. You've
seen some of that stuff, haven't you? Nothing like real stone,
is it? But if thou shalt confess with
thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God
has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. God raised
Christ from the dead because Christ succeeded in what He came
to do. He put away the sins of His people,
He satisfied the demands of God's righteousness and God's justice,
and God was obligated to raise Him from the dead. And you and
I didn't have anything to do with that. That was a work that
was done between God the Father and God the Son. Say not in your
heart, what can I do to bring Him up from the dead? God's already
done it. Don't mix bricks with slime.
The work of Christ stands alone. Don't put your hand to it. You're
going to defile it. Don't make steps on your altar.
You're going to expose your nakedness. This is the religion of the world. Galatians chapter 4, the scripture
speaks of that child that Abraham and Sarah brought into the world
through Hagar as the child of the flesh, which could not inherit
the promises of God. What is it that Abraham and Sarah
were trying to do? What were they trying to do?
They just, you know, God's made us a promise and it's not yet
been fulfilled. God needs our help. God needs
our help. So Sarah goes to Abraham and
says, take my handmaiden, Agar, and we'll have a child, and that'll
be the child of the promise. And for the next 12 years, Abraham
raised that child. That boy was the pride of his
life until Isaac, the miracle child, came. Sarah's long past childbearing
years, Abraham's 100 years old, and God miraculously enables
her to have a child. Isaac's the child of promise.
He gets all the inheritance. And God says to Abraham, put
out the bondwoman and her child. Put them out. Abraham, he loved
Ishmael. But he had to put him out, for
they shall not receive the inheritance of the promise. It can only come
through the miracle. It can only come through our
Isaac. Don't bring anything to the table
of salvation. That's what they were doing in
Genesis chapter 11. Turn to me to Isaiah chapter
65. Isaiah chapter 65. I love this
passage. Read it with me. Isaiah 65 verse
1, I am sought of them that ask not for me. I am found of them
that sought me not. How's that going to be? Only
if he seeks me? And if He does, you'll seek Him.
Well, how do I know He's seeking me? Because you have a desire
to know Christ. You have a desire for righteousness
that you can't provide. You would not have that desire
if He didn't seek you. You would not believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ if He didn't do a work of grace in your heart.
I am sought of them who sought me not. I said, behold me, behold me
unto a nation that was not called by my name. I have spread out
my hands all the day unto a rebellious people who walketh not in a way
that is not good, that was not good after their own thoughts.
There is a way that seemeth right unto man. What did Nimrod think? Well, we've got to build us a
city. We've got to make for ourselves a name. We've got to fashion
some bricks and burn them in fire and hold them together with
slime. That seems like the right thing to do. We all speak one
language, so let's do this so that we can stay together and
not be scattered abroad. They were doing it in disobedience.
God had already instructed in the previous chapter that God
had already instructed Ham, Japheth, and Shem in the direction they
were supposed to go. He had already told them which
direction to go and to be scattered and to multiply and fulfill the
earth, and they disobeyed God. They all stayed together. And
so the Lord's got to scatter them. Doesn't that sound familiar? The disciples were told that
when the Spirit of God comes, that they were to go into Jerusalem
and Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the world,
and they didn't do it, did they? They all stayed right there together,
huddled together in Jerusalem. And the Lord had to send a persecution
in order to scatter them out into the world. God's gonna get
his way. He's gonna get his way. A people that provoketh me to
anger continually to my face, that sacrificeth in gardens and
burneth incense upon altars of bricks. You remember Aaron, the
high priest, a servant of Moses? He had two sons, Nadab and Abihu. And they were priests, and they
were working in the temple, and God had already given Moses very
strict instructions on how the incense was supposed to be made.
He gave them a formula, gave them a recipe for the incense.
It's right there in the Scriptures. And the Lord said, don't deviate
from this recipe. when you burn incense. And that
incense that was placed on a staff and held up was a picture of
the atoning work and the prayers and the intercession of the Lord
Jesus Christ, who cannot be changed. He's the same yesterday, today
and forever. He changes not. And the scripture says that Nadab
and Abihu offered to God, here's what it says, a strange fire.
In other words, they offered up an incense that wasn't according
to the prescription that God had given them and fire came
down out of the altar and consumed them both right there on the
spot. Well, we can improve on this. You ever get a recipe and
you're making a recipe and you think, well, I can add a little
bit here or take away a little bit there and I'll make this recipe
better. And that's what Nadab and Abihu thought. We'll just
make it a little bit better. They didn't stick to the exact
formula that God gave them, and God killed them for it. Mixing
brick with slime. Oh, don't do it. Salvation's
of the Lord. He's done it all. He's done it
perfectly. He doesn't need our help. They built altars of brick. Look at verse 4 in Isaiah chapter
65. Which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments, which
eat swine's flesh, and broth of abominable things in their
vessels, which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me,
for I am holier than thou. Isn't that the attitude of religion? You know, I've achieved a level
of sanctification that you haven't gotten to yet. I'm holier than you are. We just,
Bert just read from Philippians that believers esteem one another
more highly than themselves. Do you know of anyone in this
whole world that's a bigger sinner than you are? Do you know of
anyone in this whole world that's in need of grace more than you
are? And every child of God says,
nope, I don't. I am the chief of all sinners
and here's the good news. Here's the good news. This is
a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. Christ Jesus
came to save sinners of whom I am chief. Oh, our brick making. Our brick
making. won't be held together with the
atonement. The slime will either completely
cover you and everything about you or it will melt under the
fire of God's wrath and your city is going to come tumbling
down. Look with me. Go back with me
to our text. Verse 3, And they said one to
another, Come, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And
they had brick for stone, and slime they had for mortar. And
they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose
top unto heaven. And let us make us a name, lest
we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. Now here's the difference. The children of Abraham are looking
for a city whose builder and maker is God. The children of
Abraham are looking for that new Jerusalem which cometh down
from heaven. We're not trying to build a name
for ourselves. We're not trying to build a city. We're not trying
to work our way to heaven. We're looking for the God who
comes down and visits sinners where they are and has built
for us himself a name. He gets all the glory. There's nothing new under the
sun. This is what man-made religion is all about. This is what denominationalism
is all about. This is what big edifices and
big programs are all about. Men building a name for themselves
and trying to reach up into heaven. Verse 5. They didn't want to be scattered
among the whole earth, which is exactly what the Lord told
them to do. And the Lord came down to see the city and the
tower which the children of men built. Now here's the truth. God sees every brick you and
I have ever made. Every brick that you and I have
ever made, He knows about it. He knows how imperfect it is.
He knows how much work went into it. He knows how defiled it is. God came down. And in Genesis
chapter 6 it says that God looked down from heaven into the hearts
of men, same men, and he saw that every imagination of their
thoughts was only evil and that continually. That's the way God
sees our hearts. An open sepulcher looking down
our throats and seeing nothing but death. And we think we're
gonna make bricks and put them together with slime? We think
that we're gonna do something to make the atoning work of Christ
work for us? We think we're gonna say in our
hearts, what can I do to bring Christ down from up and above?
Or what can I do to bring Him down? Oh, don't even think that
way. The atonement stands by itself. Christ gets all the glory. He
built the city. The foundations of that city
Well, you read about them in Revelation, there's 12 of them.
There's 12 gates, all of one pearl. What a glorious city He
has built. Verse 6, And the Lord said, Behold,
The people is one, and they have all one language, and this they
begin to do, and now nothing will restrain them, restrain
from them, which they have imagined to do. I've got so much I want
to say about this, but the time is limited. Let me just say,
this is God's grace. I'm thankful that we live in
a country that is religiously divided. It is God's mercy that we live
in a pluralistic society. For when the church of the Lord
Jesus Christ has been subject to one language and one speech,
that one language and that one speech sought to kill him. If
you and I met today in a Muslim country that was all, we'd be
persecuted. We wouldn't have the freedom
that we have. When the church lived under the rule of the Catholic
Church, well, you read about the Inquisitions and all the
evils and the people that were murdered under... God's showing mercy towards His
people here. by dividing the people and giving
them a different language and different speech so that we can
now live in the world in some semblance of peace. He's restraining the evil of
man. When man comes together And in
one language and one thought, all he's gonna do is become more
and more evil. And the Lord's restraining his evil by diversifying
him. You know, the same thing's true
in your home. If you and your wife or you and
your husband were exactly the same, your weaknesses would be
accentuated. The Lord restrains our evil by
making us different. The opposites do attract, but
it's a good thing. It's a good thing. I mean, I've
known. Well, we'll go into that. It's just, you know, I don't
have any patience for political correctness, but this thing of
diversity was caused by God in order to water down and restrain
our evil. So God says, come, let us. God the Father, who elected a
people according to his own will and purpose before time ever
began. God the Son, who is the Lamb slain before the foundation
of the world and came and successfully accomplished the salvation of
all of God's elect. And God the Holy Spirit, who
entered into that covenant of grace and said, I'll regenerate
them. I'll open their hearts so that
no man can shut it. I'll take out their heart of
stone and put in a heart of flesh. I'll give them ears to hear and
eyes to see. And they will be saved. And now
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, this
glorious triune, three person, one Godhead, says to themselves,
let us go down. Let us go down. And there confound
their language that they may not understand one another's
speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon
the face of the earth, and they left off to build the city. Therefore
is the name called Babel, confusion of speech. And that's all man-made
religion is. It's confusion of speech. They
say God's all powerful. Find me a religious person who
doesn't believe that God is omnipotent. God's omnipotent. He possesses
all power. That's the essential nature of
Godhead. Until he comes up against man's
free will. Now he loses his omnipotence. Now man takes over the throne
of God. Confusion of speech? What sense
is there in that? You tell me somebody who doesn't
believe in the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who doesn't
say, God loves everybody. Oh, He loves everybody. He so
loved the world. And yet he's gonna take most
of the folks that he loves with all of his heart and cast them
into a devil's hell and consume them for all eternity with the
fires of his wrath? What kind of love is that? It's
confusion of speech. It doesn't make sense. There's
no way to reconcile that. Christ died for everybody and
he is God. But you know what? He really
didn't succeed in what he came to do. He made an offer of salvation,
but it's up to you to make it work for you. What kind of God is that? It's
confusion of speech. You're not saved by works, you're
saved by grace, and yet they put you right back up under the
law. Confusion of God scattered the people. Here's what 2 Thessalonians
chapter 2 says, because they had no love for the truth, God
sent them the lie. The lie. And they believed it. And that's to our mercy. If there was not a proliferation
of lies in the world, if there was one language and one speech
and all men were in agreement, We wouldn't be able to live here. They'd kill every one of us.
They'd hunt us down and kill us, every single one of us. There is still one language. There is still one language and
one speech. among God's people. It's the
language of grace. Zephaniah chapter 3 verse 9 says,
Then I will turn my people to a pure language, that they may
call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him with one speech,
one consent. Isn't it glorious? God's people speak one language.
And they all mean the same thing. We talk about grace. We're not
talking about grace and works. We're talking about grace. We
talk about sovereignty of God. We're not talking about a God
who can't get it done. We're talking about a God that's
sovereign. And we talk about man being dead in his trespasses
and sins. We're not talking about a man
who can still wiggle his little finger. We're talking about a
man who's dead. We speak the same language. And
yet when you try to tell those who speak another language the
gospel, they look at you like, what are you talking about? What
are you talking about? And then the next words out of
their mouth are so contradictory and confusing to everything you
just said. They can't hear it. They cannot hear. and you wouldn't
be able to hear and I wouldn't be able to hear if the Lord didn't
give us ears to hear. One language, one speech, what
is that one language? I quoted this verse a few moments
ago, Hebrews chapter 1, God who at sundry times and in divers
manners spake unto our fathers by the prophets hath in these
last days spoken unto us and the word The little preposition
by is in our English translation, but it's really the word in.
He has spoken to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one speech. He's the one speech. And we're
not using his atoning work to hold together bricks that we've
made. He gets all the glory. And He's
done it all by Himself. And God's people love it that
way. And they have no ifs, ands, or
buts about it because they speak the same language and the same
speech. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, We ask, Lord, that your sweet
and precious and powerful Holy Spirit would bring to our memory
the things that you've taught us and cause us to find our rest,
our hope and all our salvation in thy dear son. For it's in
his name we ask it. Amen. Brother Bert, the hymn
on the back of your bulletin. Let's stand together. How vast, how full, how free
the mercy of our God. Proclaim the blessed news around
and spread it all abroad. How full it does remove The stain
of every sin, And makes us as white and pure As though no sin
had been. Poor guilty sinner come, Christ
stands to comfort thee. Come, cast thyself upon His love,
so vast, so full, so free. I'm glad salvation's free. I'm glad salvation's free. Salvation's free for you and
me. I'm glad salvation's free. I am too, aren't you? Brian Belarose
is very, very sick. He's in the hospital at Orange
City. It's the Fish Memorial, Florida
Hospital on Saxon Boulevard just off I-4 in Orange City. And I
assured him that we would be in prayer for him. He's not been well for a while.
He's not going to get better until the Lord does a miracle
for him. Anyway, let's have a word of
prayer for Brian. Our Heavenly Father, You've told us that if any of
us be sick that we should come and ask for Your mercy. Lord,
we thank you for Brian, for the testimony of faith that you put
in his heart. Thank you for Pam, for little
Charlie, for the encouragement that they've been to our fellowship.
Our heavenly father, we pray that you would show mercy towards
them. Pray that you would give those
that minister medicine to them the wisdom to know what to do. We pray, Lord, that you would
give to Brian and Pam a sense of your presence that would comfort
their hearts in this trial. We ask, Lord, that it be thy
will that you would provide for him a work of healing, restore
his life and his health to us. thankful for the hope that you
put in his heart to see you as you are and to be made like you.
Lord, pray that you would increase that, that faith for all of us. But we ask it in Christ's name.
Amen. Thank you very much.