A gospel call goes out to all
as sinners hear the word. Sinner, fall down before Christ's
throne. Repent and trust the Lord. Repent and trust the Lord. Believe on Christ and you'll
be saved. The Word of God is true. If you believe on Jesus Christ,
His blood was shed for you. His blood was shed for you. But sinner's debt cannot be leave,
you have no will or power to trust the Son of God unless made
willing by His power, made willing by His power. May God be pleased
in sovereign grace to send his spirit down. And by the gospel wake the dead
and take you for his own. And take you for his own. Please be seated. I'd like to read from Ephesians 1
for our scripture reading tonight. It's good to see you all. Thank
you for your prayers. And Michael and Hugo, thank you. I've heard good things about
the messages here Sunday. I haven't had a chance to listen
to them yet, but I hope to do that tomorrow. I'm just very
grateful for these men. And I'm grateful for Robert in
Sarasota. We welcome our brethren over
there. He preached for us over there Sunday night. You have your Bibles open to
Ephesians chapter one, the last two verses, verse 22, verse 21,
far above all principality and power and might and dominion
and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also
in that which is to come. Speaking of the preeminence of
the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord over the living and the dead,
the creator and sustainer of all things. For God hath put
all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over
all things to the church." No one is blessed by the fact that
the Lord Jesus Christ has this preeminence given to him by God
except the church. We're the only ones blessed by
it. It's to the church. which is his body, the fullness
of him that filleth all in all. And you hath he quickened, made
alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in times 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 in
the children of disobedience. Now the word disobedience and
the word unbelief are used interchangeably. in the scriptures. So the disobedience
that we were in was our unbelief, among whom also we had our conversation
in times past in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the will
of the flesh. That's all we had. All we had
was our will. All we had was our desires and
of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as
others. The outward The pattern of our life was just like all
other unbelievers. God's elect have never been children
of wrath. But their lives, before they're
converted, look just like the children of wrath. But God, who
is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us, even
when we were dead in sins, What are the sins he's talking about?
It's the sin of unbelief. That's the sin he's talking about.
We were dead. We could not believe. Hath he quickened us together
with Christ by grace are you saved and hath raised us up together
and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So God did all this. God's elect
were in Christ. When he lived out his righteousness,
God's elect were in Christ. When he suffered the wrath of
God for the sins of his people, God's people were in Christ.
When he ascended back into glory, he went back as the word of God,
not void, but with the names of those for whom he lived and
died, and all of God's elect are in Christ now. They're in
Christ now. We're in the heavenlies. It's
not as if we were there. Don't think about it like that.
We are there. In the person of our substitute,
we're there. It's as if we were here. This isn't gonna last long. But what we've got in Christ
and the heavenlies is eternal. That in the ages to come, he
might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness
toward us through Christ Jesus for all eternity. Right now we
look through the eyes of faith, then it'll be our experience.
It will be our experience. For by grace are you saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of
works, not of works, not of works, not of works, lest any man should
boast. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we rejoice
in the declaration that you've given us in your word about the
preeminence and the sufficiency the all fullness of the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is our life and who is our salvation. You've
said that when he is lifted up, that you would draw us to him. We asked Lord that you would
bless your word with the power of your Holy Spirit, that Christ
to be exalted, that our hearts will be drawn in faith to him.
and that we truly would find him to be our all in all, that
we would be enabled by your spirit to worship in truth. We ask it
in Christ's name. Amen. Number 3 55 from the hardback. 3 3 55 from
the hardback. From every stormy wind that blows,
From every swelling tide of woes, There is a calm, a sure retreat,
Tis found beneath the mercy seat. There is a place where Jesus
sheds the oil of gladness on our heads, a place than all besides
more sweet. It is the blood-bought mercy
seat. There is a scene where spirits
blend, where friend holds fellowship with friend. Though sundered
far by faith, they meet around the common mercy seat. Ah, how whither could we flee
for aid When tempted, desolate, dismayed? Or how the hosts of
hell defeat At suffering saints no mercy seat? Ah, there on eagle wings we soar,
and sin and sense molest no more. And heaven comes down our souls
to greet, while glory crowns the mercy seat. Please be seated. Will you open your Bibles with
me to 1 Timothy chapter 1? 1 Timothy chapter 1. I think some time back I preached
a message probably titled the same thing that I'm titling this
message, A Pattern of Salvation. A Pattern of Salvation. But I
hope the Lord will open our hearts to some truths about Paul's conversion
and Paul's salvation being a pattern. for you and for me, and that
we will find hope and comfort in knowing that our experience
is the same as his. I want to ask, answer three questions
from verses 13 through 16. What was Paul saved from? What
are you saved from? How was the Apostle Paul saved? And how are you saved? And finally, what was the result
of the Apostle Paul's salvation? And what is the result of your
salvation, of my salvation? Those three questions will give
us a pattern that we can judge our own salvation by. What was
the Apostle Paul saved from? I'm always concerned about testimonies
that I hear from people when they talk about all the horrible
things they used to do before they were converted, and now
that they're saved, they don't do those things anymore. The Apostle Paul's testimony
is nothing like that. He says, Concerning the law,
I was blameless. He wasn't engaged in a lot of
outward degradation. He wasn't doing those things. Truth is that a lot of folks
have quit doing bad things. They get sick and tired of being
sick and tired and they either use a 12-step program or they
use their own discipline or they get religious and they correct
their lives. So, what are we saved from? What are we saved from? We're
saved from the same thing the Apostle Paul was saved from.
Look what he says in verse 13, who was before a blasphemer and
a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained mercy because I did
it in ignorance. He was ignorant of who God was. He was ignorant of the righteousness
of God. He, like he portrays in Romans
chapter 10, was himself going about. He had a zeal for God
and he was going about to establish his own righteousness. He was
saved, the same way you're saved, the same way I'm saved, from
unbelief. from unbelief. Don't look at
what you used to do and what you do now and try to find comfort
for salvation. If God's made you to be a sinner,
you know there's nothing you've ever quit doing in your heart. There's no assurance of salvation
in that. I've made this statement before
and I hope to never make it again. and I hope that you'll never
make it again. But for the grace of God, there
go I. You ever heard that? You know,
a lot of people think that's scripture. It's not scripture. The man who popularized that
statement, as a matter of fact, was an enemy of the gospel. John
Wesley is the one who popularized that statement. Walking down
through the downtown streets of London, he saw a bum lying
in the gutter and made that statement, but for the grace of God, there
go I. In fact, that statement has an appearance of humility,
but in fact, it's saying exactly the same thing that the Pharisee
said when he went to the temple to pray and said, Father, I thank
Thee that I'm not like other men. Isn't it? Same statement. We don't need to be looking at
people in their sin and say, but for the grace of God, there
go I. What we need to be seeing is that I'm worse than that.
I'm worse than that. That's what Paul was ignorant
of. He could not see his sin for what it was. He was trusting
in his own righteousness. He thought that he was better
than other men. And he probably would have made
that statement, but for the grace of God, there go I. Oh, what
a self-righteous statement that is. May God stop us from ever
uttering it again. A sinner can't say it. He can't say it. Not in truth. Paul was an unbeliever. That's
what he was saved from. He was saved from the darkness
of sin. How did he say in Ephesians chapter
2? You who were dead in your trespasses
and sins, God has quickened together with Christ Jesus. That's what
I was saved from. I was saved from my inability
to believe. I could not believe. I couldn't
trust Christ. All I could trust was my own
righteousness. I could not see that what the
Lord Jesus Christ did in fulfilling the demands of God's law was
my only hope for righteousness before God. I could not see that
there was nothing that I could contribute to merit favor with
God. I couldn't see that. I thought
that surely there's some contribution I can make. Surely there's a
prayer I can pray. Surely there's something I can
quit doing or something I can start doing. And that is what
Paul would say from, the just shall live by faith. Without faith, it is impossible
to please God. For they that cometh to him must
believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them who
diligently seek him." Seek him. Seek his righteousness. That's where we are. And that's
what we're saved from. Did not the Lord Jesus Christ
say that when the Spirit of God comes, he will convict the world
of sin? of righteousness and of judgment. Of sin, why? Because they believe
not on me. Not of sin because they're involved
in some horrible lifestyle. May God deliver us from that.
May the Lord restrain our flesh to keep us from acting out those
things that are always in our hearts. But that's not the problem
that we have. The problem that we have is our
inability to believe. We can't believe. We don't believe. Faith is the only evidence of
salvation. And that's what Paul didn't have.
He did not have faith in Christ. He was a blasphemer. He blasphemed
God by setting himself up on the throne of God. That's what
we all do. That's what we all do. We all think, we come into
this world thinking that somehow we can obligate God. Somehow
we can produce something that's going to merit God's favor. And that's what he says, I was
a blasphemer. I was a persecutor. I spoke against
the church. And the things that, by your
words you shall be justified and by your words you shall be
condemned. A tree is known by its fruit. Now how can you being
evil speak good things? And so the things that we used
to say about God, that's what the Lord saved us from. We don't
say those things anymore. We don't believe them. I was
a blasphemer. I was injurious. I did injury
to the gospel. By the things I said about God,
the things I believed about myself, that's what God saved me from.
Have you ever looked at the testimonies of conversion or thought about
the testimonies of conversion in the scriptures? You know,
the prodigal, you say, well, he wasted his life in a riotous
living. Well, first of all, we don't
know what all that riotous living was, but it wasn't until he gave
himself to the feeding of swine that he came to himself. You
know what he did? The prodigal son got religious. He joined himself to a church.
He taught Sunday school class. And he was feeding other pigs
and was never able to be satisfied with the food that he was giving
them. He wasn't saved out of his riotous living, he was saved
out of religion. You know, the blind. The Lord
saves blind Bartimaeus. He saves the halt and the lame
and the prison keepers and the eunuchs
and all those have spiritual implications about unbelief. That's what we're saved from.
If God causes you to be able to trust Christ for all your
salvation, that's faith. That's the work of salvation.
That's the work of the Spirit of God. He will convict the world
of sin because they believe not on me, of righteousness, of righteousness
because I go to the Father. We believe now that all the blessings
of God are in the heavenlies in Christ. We believe that. We believe that we have an advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. We know that
we have no righteousness in and of ourselves. Man at his very
best state is altogether vanity, and if that's true of anybody,
it's true of me. It's true of you. We're just vanity. What
are we gonna offer God? The Lord Jesus Christ must offer
himself on our behalf, and we must be found in him, not having
our own righteousness, which is of the law, but that righteousness
which is by the faith of Jesus Christ, Righteousness because
I go to my father. Oh We're we're just trusting
that the Lord Jesus Christ is going to present himself on our
behalf To the father that's faith. We didn't believe that before
We do not believe that before Well, we used to we used to ask
question Well, you know if you get to heaven and God asked you
why shall I let you in what would you say? You know, we would say
because I believed on Christ and the emphasis was on I. Because
I made a decision. Because I accepted Jesus as my
personal savior. We wouldn't even dare say that
now. No. We would look to the Lord Jesus
Christ with tears in our eyes if God was to ask us such a question
and plead with him from the heart to answer it for us. That's faith. That's what Paul
was saved from. He wasn't saved from a life of
degradation. All these testimonies that you
hear people give, and then they act like they're better now than
they were then. I never had a problem with sin
until I met the Savior. And the more I see of Him now,
the more sin becomes an issue for me. Who was before a blasphemer?
We blasphemed God. We used the name of the Lord
our God in vain. We spoke lies about him and we
believed lies about him. We did it in ignorance. We did
it ignorantly in unbelief. You see that? We did it ignorantly
in unbelief. We thought we were doing the
right thing. We had a zeal for God, but we didn't know. We didn't
know. Now we do. The Lord saved us
from that sin. The sin that doth so easily beset
us. The sin of unbelief. And he's
given us faith to trust Christ. I was looking at this book today. Five Views on Sanctification. That's the title of the book.
the Wesleyan view, the Reformed view, the Pentecostal view, the
Keswick view, and the Augustinian dispensational view. And I kind
of surveyed all of them. And I'd like to add a chapter
to this book. God's view. God's view. Every single one
of these views are based on something that a man does. in order to
improve his position with God. That's what we're safe from.
That's what we're safe from. Paul says in verse 16, you see
that? For a pattern to them which hereafter believe on him to life
everlasting. So Paul's saying that his conversion,
his salvation is a pattern. So we can judge our salvation
by his salvation. And somebody wrote an article
and sent it to me and, well, somebody else wrote it and someone
else sent it to me. And it was just talking about
how works is the proof of our faith. And that we have to, we
only believe what we do. I find no comfort in that. I
find no hope in that. If that's true, I don't have
any, I don't, I'm not saved. I'm not saved. I was an unbeliever, just an
unbeliever. I know somebody's gonna hear
preaching like this and they're gonna say, well, that's antinomian
preaching. I would just agree with Martin Luther who said,
if you've never been accused of being an antinomian, you haven't
preached the gospel. We're not advocating sin. We're
not condoning it. We're not excusing it. We're
not justifying it or rationalizing it. We hate our sin. We're explaining
it. We're explaining it. If God's
made you to be a sinner, you know that you're as much a sinner
now as you've ever been, more so, more so. There's no comfort to a sinner in a message that would have
us look anywhere but to Christ. anywhere but to Christ, and that's
what faith does. Faith hangs all its hopes on
the Lord Jesus Christ, on His glorious person, and on His accomplished
work. And that's what we're saved from. We could not believe. We could
not believe, and now, now we can't not believe. We just can't. You were always trying. We're
always being drawn away, we're always being distracted, but
we can't not believe. Why? Because the Lord saved us.
He saved us from that ignorance of unbelief, where we blasphemed
God, where we did injury to the gospel, and persecuted the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We did it. Every bit of it. A message that doesn't cause
you to find all your hope in the Lord Jesus Christ alone is
not a message of comfort. It's not a message of hope. If
the preacher in any way causes you to look inward to try to
find some hope of salvation, And let me say this, I hear a
lot of preaching and I watch believers sometimes who think
that because a man's supposed to be a gospel preacher, that
if he preaches a message, they're supposed to rejoice in it, even
though they got no comfort out of it. And they think, well,
maybe there was something there I didn't see. If you don't get
comfort from a message, there's one of two problems. Problem
number one is that you were just checked out. You didn't hear
it. And the problem number two is that Christ wasn't preached.
So if you're not comforted by a message, don't go around acting
like you are. Just, you know, just... Look at verse 14. How was Paul
saved? What was he saved from? The ignorance
of unbelief. That's what he's saved from.
That's what you're saved from. That's what I'm saved from. The
ignorance of unbelief. We're not ignorant anymore. We
know what we are. We know who he is. We know what
he's accomplished. We know that the Father's pleased
with him. We know that he's all and in all and is the only hope
of salvation that we have. We know that. If God's giving
you faith, that's what faith does. Faith hangs all its hopes
on the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's got no
place else to go. No place else. Lord, where are
we gonna go? You alone have the words of eternal
life. We know and are sure that thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God. We've got no place
else to go. So that's what we're saved from. How are we saved? Look at verse 14. And the grace
of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love, which is
in Christ Jesus. You say, well, don't believers
love Christ? Yes, we do. Most of the time. Don't we love the gospel? Yes. Except when we don't. Don't we love God's people? Don't
we love God's word? Yes. Except when we don't. Our love is so fickled, isn't
it? It's so fickled. I'm ashamed, I shared this in
Crossville, and I want to preface this by telling you that I'm
ashamed to admit this, but it's true. And I tell you in hopes
that maybe it'll be an encouragement to somebody. When the Lord said, you have
heard that it was said of old, that if you murder, You're guilty
of hellfire. You're guilty of judgment. But
I say unto you that if you have ought against your brother without
a cause, you're guilty of judgment. And then the next illustration
he gave, you have heard that it was said of old that if you
take your neighbor's wife, you're guilty of adultery, but I say
unto you that if you look upon a woman lustfully, you've already
committed adultery in your heart. Now, the confession that I need
to make to you is that the one person that I love more than
anybody else in this world, I cannot tell you in 43 years
how many times I've murdered her and cheated on her. What's that say about my love? We can't trust our love. We say
we love when we do, except when we don't. And the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ was abundant toward me. in the love and faith that is
in Christ Jesus. It's his love for us. His love's
perfect, his faith is perfect. That's how we're saved. We're
not saved by our love for God, we're saved by his love for us.
We're not saved by our faith in Christ, we're saved by his
faithfulness. You know, when the scripture
says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,
We know that the truth is that when we are able to believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, as we sang in that hymn you led, Tom,
a little while ago, that we've already been saved. But the Lord's
expressing it to us in our limitations of time, isn't he? He's telling
us, believe on the Lord Jesus. You know, I got to thinking about
Adam's sin, the fall. And here's the problem with a
lot of preaching today. If you're wrong on the fall,
you're wrong on it all. And it's not just the Armenians
that are wrong on the fall. There's a lot of folks that are
wrong on the fall, how desperately fallen we are, how sinful we
are. And Adam, when Eve held out that
fruit to Adam, and I know the scripture says, in the day in
which you eat of the fruit, you shall surely die. That tree was in the midst of
the garden, and that fruit, I'm sure, whatever it was, was very
unique. And Adam and Eve saw it every
day. They knew exactly what that fruit looked like, and they steered
away from that tree. Until Eve was tempted of Satan
to take of the fruit and take it to Adam, and when Adam saw
Eve coming to her with that fruit in her hand, he knew exactly
what it was. Did he see him when he took a
bite out of it? See, that was just the manifestation
of his sin, wasn't it? He sinned in his heart. As soon
as he saw her without any, and he lusted after that fruit in
the same way she did. He took it from her. This matter of sin is a heart
issue. And if we're wrong on the fall, we're going to be wrong
on it all. We are fallen creatures. And
the Lord Jesus Christ is the only one who loved God perfectly
and who believed God and trusted Him perfectly. He's the only
one that ever did it. He's the only one God's pleased
with, isn't He? How was Paul saved? What was he saved from?
He was saved from unbelief. How was he saved? By the free
grace of God. Now I know that's a redundancy
to say free grace, but that's what we have to say. God's free
grace. It's not of works, lest any man
should boast. If it's of grace, it can no longer
be of works, otherwise grace is not grace. You can't, a little
bit of leaven leavens the whole lump, doesn't it? Just a little
bit, just a little bit of work. Just get me to look away from
Christ and try to find hope for my salvation anywhere else. I
want you and I to be shut up to Christ. I don't want us to
have any place else to go. That's what faith does. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
was exceeding abundant. I love the way the Holy Spirit
expresses that. He doesn't say it was just sufficient.
It was exceeding abundant. It was more than we could imagine. And it's what we needed. It's
what we needed. It's what we needed to breathe
life into our dead hearts and to open the eyes of our understanding
and to enable us to trust Christ. This is the only evidence of
salvation that there is. Paul says, my conversion is a
pattern for yours. He wasn't a drunk and a thief. He said, well, now don't do those
things anymore. No. No, he was a blasphemer. And whether you had a problem
with whatever your problems were, whatever they still are, outside
of Christ, we're all blasphemers. And when the Lord saves us, He
enables us to give to Christ all the glory for our salvation. Verse 15, this is a faithful
saying. This is a faithful saying. This
is exactly what we're talking about. This is a faithful saying
and worthy of all acceptation. It's a saying, it's a word from
God that's worthy to be accepted by all and it's worthy to be
accepted in its entirety. What is the saying? Christ Jesus
came to save sinners. Sinners. Of whom I am chief. I am chief. What was the result? What was he saved from? Unbelief.
How was he saved? By God's grace. What's the result
of his salvation? What's the result of it? He became a sinner. You're not
a sinner until you're saved. You're not. You're not a sinner
until you're saved. You can't be. A sinner's a person
that can do nothing but sin. You didn't fit that category
before the Lord saved you. Did you? You could do something. Are you a sinner? Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
11, verse three. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 3. Through faith, we understand
that the worlds were framed by the word of God. The Lord Jesus Christ said, let
there be light, and there was, and nothing that was made, everything
that was made was made by him. He created all things for his
glory. He's the creator and sustainer of all life, physical and spiritual. Now the fundamentalist will read
this verse and they will think only in the physical realm and
they will fight tooth and toenail against the evolutionist. But that's not what this is talking
about. It's not talking about that.
Why would the Lord put this verse in the midst of a long passage
having to do with faith? By faith, we understand that
the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that the things
which are seen were not made by the things which do appear.
That means that you cannot prove the physical by the physical. You can't, we're spending billions
upon billions of dollars going out in the far reaches of the
solar system and however far we can go trying to find the
origins of life. And we're drilling holes in the
poles and everything trying to find some organism. God says
you're not going to prove the physical by the physical. It's
a waste of time, it's a waste of money. to try to prove creation
by something that you find physically in creation. But a lot of fundamentalists
are doing just the opposite. There's a whole big movement
of creationists who are trying to prove the physical by the
physical. They're trying to prove that
all these physical things were created by by evidences that
they find in creation. God says you're not going to
prove that, you're not going to prove the things which are
seen are not going to be proved by the things which do appear.
Only by faith can you look at this world and see that God created
it. And he created it with such perfect
order. Why? Why is that? He's not talking
about the evolution is evolutionist or the creationist. He's giving
us an illustration of salvation. You're not going to prove your
salvation by that which doth appear. That's the point. Don't look
for some evidence in your life to prove that which was made. You're not going to prove that
you're a believer made in Christ Jesus by that which doth appear. It will do one of two things.
If you try to prove your salvation by that which doth appear, you'll
either turn into a liar or you're gonna be so overwhelmed with
discouragement because what doth appear doesn't prove that we're in Christ. Only faith, you see? You've got
to see something that you can't see with the physical eye. You've got to see something that
you can't look in your motives and in your heart and in your
activities. You and I have never ever had
a pure motive in anything we've ever done. Ever. Ever. We want to be sincere, we want
to have good motives, but we can't. We just can't. I'm ashamed to tell you I can't
stand up here and preach the gospel with a pure motive. I
can't do it. I've tried. I try every time
I get up here. I try to be as sincere and forget
about myself as much. I can't do it. I have come to
realize I just, I can't get over it. I can't get out of my own
way. And you can't get out of your
way. What was Paul safe from? unbelief
How was he saved by the grace of God and what was the result
of his salvation? He became a sinner He became
a sinner Our Heavenly Father we ask that
you would bless your word to the hearts of your children and
comfort us In finding all our hope in Christ For it's in his
name. We pray amen 1 21 in the soft back terminal. Let's
stand together. Yeah. That's not a familiar tune, but
let's try it. Grace, how good, how kind, how free. Grace, this wandering sinner
found. Grace has cleansed and set me
free. Grace poured out from Jesus'
wounds. Grace divides the way of life. Grace brought our Emmanuel down. Grace imputes His righteous life
to God's loved and chosen sons. Grace caused Christ, our holy
Lord, To assume our sin and shame. In our place condemned He stood,
Paid our debt, our souls redeemed. Thank you, Lord, for grace divine,
given to such worthless worms. Through your grace, your glory
shines. We, for grace, your praise return. th th