Good morning. That's a good hymn. I hope the Lord will give us
the ability to understand and believe what we just sang. Christ
is the only hope for sinners. He satisfied all the demands
of God's holy law and presents Himself before the Father on
behalf of His people. He is our righteousness. We have none outside of Him.
I'm so thankful that we have a Savior that's able to satisfy
what God requires. We're going to be pretty much
in the book of Hebrews this morning during the first hour if you'd
like to find that book with me. Thank Michael and Robert for
bringing such clear gospel messages last Sunday in our absence. Thank you for your prayers. The
meeting in Cottageville went well. The folks up there send their
love. Mike and Sandy are looking forward to being with us in February.
It was a blessing. We, Trisha and I, drove up to,
well Trisha drove, I rode, to Crossville for Mary Bell's
funeral, which was yesterday. The Lord took her home Wednesday
night, if you haven't heard, and it was a real blessing. Got home about three o'clock
this morning, so I'm a little foggy in my attempts this morning. I hope you'll bear with me. But
Donnie's doing well, and I want us to pray for them and the church
up there this morning. So let's ask the Lord's blessings
on His word. Our Heavenly Father, we do thank
Thee. for sending your son to satisfy
on behalf of your people all that you require. What a great
hope and comfort we have in knowing that we have a Savior, an advocate,
one who is able to present us perfect before thy throne of
grace. We ask that as we open up our
Bibles, that You would open Your Word to our hearts and open our
hearts to You. And Lord, that what You opened
no man could shut. We pray that You would encourage
us and enable us to find our hope and all our satisfaction. in your dear son. We pray for
Donnie, and we pray for the church in Crossville, and we ask, Lord,
that you would bless them this morning in a special way as they
grieve the loss of Mary, and, Lord, that you would comfort
their hearts with hope. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. I think all the passages I have
for us this morning in our Bible study hour come from the book
of Hebrews, with the exception of the passage I want to close
with, so you'll be able to stay right there in this book. About a year and a half or so
ago, I brought a message on Wednesday night entitled, Four Things That
We Cannot Live Without. Well, I reworked that message
and now we have five things that we cannot live without. And I
told Tricia this morning, I don't know what I would do without
you. And she reminded me that no one is
expendable and that there's lots of things that we could live
without if we had to. We speak sometimes about not
being able to live without this or live without that. Truth is
that we could live without a lot of the things that provide us
comfort and joy, but there are some things that we absolutely
cannot live without. And I've tried to correlate these
spiritual truths to our physical life. One thing that you cannot
live without is you cannot live without that muscle in your chest
that we call our heart pumping blood through your body. You
can't live without it. You just can't. And the scripture
says in the book of Hebrews, without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission of sins. The second thing I want us to
look at that you cannot live without is you cannot live without
those airbags in your chest that we call lungs that draw breath
into your body and give oxygen to your cells and give life to
your being. You can't live without breathing.
And in the book of Hebrews it says, without faith it is impossible
to please God. The third thing that you can't
live without is you can't live without your immune system. Your
immune system is constantly at work fighting off the viruses
and bacteria that would kill you if you did not have a functioning
immune system. And in the book of Hebrews we
read, without chastisement we are not the children of God. The fourth thing that we cannot
live without is we cannot live without water. You'll die if
you don't have water. And the scripture says that without
holiness, without holiness, no man will see God. And the fifth
thing that we cannot live without is we can't live without rest.
You know that Sleep deprivation will kill you faster than starvation. You can actually go a lot longer
without eating than you can go without sleeping. You'll die.
You've got to rest. And Hebrews chapter 4 says, without
rest in Christ, there's no hope of righteousness. These spiritual truths are more
necessary for life than are the physical correlations that we
just made. Truth is, our sister Mary Bell's
heart quit beating last Wednesday night. She quit breathing. She had no need for water anymore. Her immune system completely
shut down and she passed from this world. But the spiritual truths cause
us to know that though she be dead in the flesh, she's alive. She's alive. so as necessary
as these physical things are for our physical life in this
world much much more necessary are the spiritual truths that
they illustrate you can not live without the shedding of blood. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
9 Hebrews chapter 9 and look at
verse 22. by the law are purged with blood. Now you know the book of Hebrews
compares the old covenant with the new and draws parallels between
those pictures that were made by God through the types and
shadows and ceremonies of the old covenant to that which was
fulfilled and made better in Christ in the new covenant. In
the Old Covenant, most things were purged or cleansed or made
sanctified by the sprinkling of blood. Some of the things
that were used in worship in the Old Testament were cleansed
by water, and so that's the reason why it says, and almost all things
are, by the law, purged by blood, and without the shedding of blood
is no remission. There's no remission of our sins
without the shedding of blood. Peter said in 1 Peter 1, verse
2, that we are the elect according to the foreknowledge of God our
Father, sanctified by the Spirit and by the obedience and the
sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Our sins are remitted. There's no putting away of our
sins. There's no covering of our sins without the shedding
of blood. You cannot live before God without
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. When God gave the children of
Israel His law from Mount Sinai, and Moses brought the law down
and told the children of Israel what they were to do, and they
all said, we'll do it. We'll obey God, we'll do everything
he told us to do. And the scripture says, Moses
right then took a lamb and slew it, and took the blood of that
lamb and put it in a basin, and dipped hyssop into the basin,
and sprinkled the people with the blood of the lamb, saying
to them, you liars, you can't do this. You can't keep the law
of God. And without the obedience and
the sprinkling of the blood of the Lamb of the Lord Jesus Christ,
you'll never be able to present yourself acceptable before God. You'll never find acceptance
with God. Adam's nakedness was covered
only after the Lord slew a lamb there in that garden. and took
the fleece of that lamb and covered his nakedness. So it is with
us. The robe of the Lord Jesus Christ
came to us through His death on Calvary's cross. And without
the shedding of His blood, there is no remission of sins. It's
the only thing that hides our sins from God. And if our sin,
if God sees, we just sang about it. If God sees one of our sins,
He's not going to forgive it. He's not going to forgive it.
It's got to be hid from His sight. It's got to be put out of the
way. It's got to be covered before the eyes of God and the only
thing that'll do that is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You cannot live without your heart physically and you cannot
live spiritually without the shedding of the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ. God said to Moses when that deaf
angel was going to come through that night, he said you take
this lamb and you slay it and take its blood and put it on
the doorpost and the lintel of the house Stay in the house Stay
behind that blood don't come out from behind that blood Don't
stick your hand out the window Don't do like, you know, we have
big storms coming. What do we do? We go to the window
and pull the drapes back and we see the trees. Oh, you know
and find out what's going on out there. No No, don't even
do that When I see the blood When I see the blood I'll pass
by you. I Not when I see your good intentions. Not when I see
your decisions. Not when I see your faith. When I see the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ, I will pass by you. God had no regard for Cain's
offering, the scripture says. Why? Because he brought the works
of his hands. Abel's offering, on the other
hand, was acceptable before God, because it was the firstling
of His flock. He took a lamb, and He slew the
lamb, and He shed blood. And God says, without the shedding
of blood, there is no remission of sin. There's no hope of salvation. There's no hope of eternal life,
apart from the shedding of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what He did on Calvary's cross. And it's the only offering
that God's pleased with. He's not pleased with our offerings.
He's not pleased with our good intentions. He's not pleased
with our commitments. He's pleased with Christ. This
is my beloved Son in Him. I am well pleased. Without the shedding of blood,
there's no remission of sin. And the one thing I know for
certain about you and about me is that we're sinners. And that
sin is an offense to God. And every bit of it has to be
put away. And what the Lord Jesus Christ
did on Calvary's cross satisfied that. Not one drop of His blood
was wasted. He didn't hang on Calvary's cross
in order to make an offering of salvation to those who would
make it work by something that they do or by a decision that
they make. He accomplished the salvation
of his people. Had Aaron not offered blood sacrifices
in the wilderness, the children of Israel would have been consumed
in their rebellion against God. A complete removal of all our
sin, the washing away of all of our sin, is accomplished in
the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews chapter 11 verse
6, 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
those who diligently seek Him. Oh, if we don't have faith, if
we don't have faith We have no hope of life. You can't live
without faith. You can't live without faith.
You say, where do I get this faith from? God's got to give
it to you. God's got to give it to you. He's going to make
you to be a mercy beggar in the receiving of faith. This is not
something you reach down into your heart and find. It's not
something you pull up from your will. For by grace are you saved
through faith, and that faith is not of your own. It's a gift
of God. He's got to give us faith. And
it'll be the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ that we
have faith in. We won't have faith in our faith. The object of our faith who accomplished
our salvation Faith is the umbilical cord that connects the child
of God to God. We have an anchor which is sure
and steadfast. We find that in the book of Hebrews.
Faith is the chain that connects us to that anchor. God has to
give us faith to trust Christ. The umbilical cord doesn't give
life. It's only a conduit of life. The chain doesn't hold
the ship. It's the anchor that holds the
ship. The chain just connects the ship to the anchor. And so
it is with faith. Our faith is in the supply of
our life. It's in the anchor which is set,
sure, and steadfast. It's in Christ. Paul said in
Galatians chapter 2 verse 20, I am crucified with Christ. When the Lord Jesus Christ died
on Calvary's cross, the hope of my salvation is that I died
with him. So that I have fellowship with
his suffering. And that his shed blood satisfied
the demands of God. We're gonna observe baptism this
morning. And our profession of faith is
to be buried with Christ in baptism. to be crucified with Christ.
Paul went on in Galatians 2.20 to say, Nevertheless, I live.
Yet it's not I, but it's Christ that liveth in me, so that the
life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me. Faith has all of its hope, not
in its faith. When the Lord said, O ye of little
faith, I fit that category a lot. But He also said, if you have
faith as small as a mustard seed. You see, it's not the quantity
of your faith. It's the object of your faith.
The object of your faith. Is Christ your only hope of life? Is He the one that you're looking
to, resting in and relying upon as your life before God? For
without faith, it's impossible to please God. They that cometh
to Him must believe that He is. And He's the rewarder of those
who diligently seek Him. Faith is the character of a little
child, isn't it? It's not the characteristic of
a strong man. And people talk about, well,
he's a great man of faith. Faith is humility. Faith is submission. Unless you become his little
child, you're not in the kingdom of God. It's trusting. It's relying upon Christ, who
is the one in whom we hope. In Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1
says that faith is the substance of things hoped for. It's the
evidence of things not seen. Who has this faith? to as many as were ordained to
eternal life believed. All those that God has chosen
in the covenant of grace and ordained according to his purpose
in election will believe. They'll believe. Lord, would you have mercy upon
my soul. It's not of him that willeth,
nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. The
Lord's going to make you a mercy beggar in your receiving of faith. He's not going to let us glory. Here's the difference between
the gospel and the false gospel. They're glorying in having taken
their first step. You gotta make a decision. You
gotta do your part. God loves everybody. Christ died
for everybody. God wants everybody to be saved. Now you gotta make
it work. And that's just, it robs Christ
of His glory. It's not faith. It's not faith. Faith is the gift of God. Of
His own will begat He us. with the word of truth. No faith
apart from the gospel. Been corresponding with a man
out in Texas the last couple of weeks and he's a staunch Calvinist. Believes in the five points of
Calvinism. Preaches them. I thought with
some clarity and so I was hopeful that, well, it's turned out to
be what I was afraid of. It wasn't really sovereign grace
he believed in, it was superior grace. For in fact, God's using
Billy Graham and other Armenian preachers in order to save people
according to what he believes. That's not what we're talking
about. This is God's sovereign grace. It's the only kind of grace there
is. Far from his sovereignty, there is no grace. So, the first thing you can't
live without is you can't live without the shedding of blood.
The second thing you can't live without is you can't live without
faith. You just can't. You can't live without breathing.
And that's what faith is. It's breathing in the life-giving
oxygen of grace. And you can't live without chastisement. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
12. Those who have a compromised
immune system are always, always sickly. Those who have no immune
system have to live their lives in a plastic bubble. Why? Because the world that we live
in is full of things that would attack our body. They're full
of germs, full of viruses, full of bacteria. And we're in need
of an immune system. We're in need of white blood
cells that quietly work every day, killing off those things
that would kill us. When the body gets sick and has
a fever, it's burning off those things. That's part of the immune
system, isn't it? When you eat something that's
poisonous and you end up vomiting, that's your body's immune system.
Part of it getting rid of that which would otherwise... We've
got to have it, don't we? We've just got to have it. Well, there's an immune system
that's much more important to the soul than your immune system
is to your body. And it's right here in Hebrews
chapter 12, verse 8. But if we be without chastisement,
whereof all of God's children, that's the implication here in
the context, all of God's children are chastised. You don't go next
door and chastise your next door neighbor's children. You don't
do it, do you? You just don't. You'd be arrested
or you'd have problems with your neighbors. Something bad would
happen if you did that. You chastise your own children,
though, don't you? Why? Because you love them. And
the Lord says here, if you'd be without chastisement, as all
of God's children are, you're bastards. You're not children. You're born illegitimately. We instruct our children, we
discipline our children, we correct our children, we chastise our
children. And so the Lord does for His children. Those who spare
the rod hate their children. And the Lord doesn't hate His
children. He loves them. And He doesn't spare the rod,
does He? Sometimes he has to use very difficult corrective
measures in order to chastise us. But it's just like our immune
system. Sometimes we get violently ill,
but that doesn't mean the immune system is not always at work. The majority of the time that
the Lord is chastising us, He's just quietly correcting us by
His Spirit and with His Word. And I pray that right now, if
you're not going through a violent correction of God, that you are
experiencing that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,
and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly
furnished unto all good works. This is what he does, doesn't
he? This is how God continually works in us, causing us to will
and to do His good pleasure. It's necessary. Without this
chastisement, there's no life. Without this chastisement, we
are not God's children. Fourthly, Hebrews chapter 12,
Verse 14, follow peace with all men and
holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. Now the first thing I want to
say about holiness is that holiness is an absolute. It is an absolute. God knows nothing of degrees
of holiness. Either you're holy or you're
not holy. Either you're sanctified or you're
not sanctified. Either you're a saint or you're
not a saint. Either you are set apart in Christ,
perfect before God, in the person of your substitute, or you're
not. And without holiness, you'll
not see God. You've got to be made perfect
in Christ. But of him, 1 Corinthians 1,
verse 30, are you in Christ Jesus, who is made for us, unto us,
our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification. That's holiness. and our redemption. These things are absolutes. They're
perfect. You either have them or you don't
have them. They don't come in degrees. You don't get degrees
of righteousness. You don't get degrees of redemption. You don't get degrees of sanctification. You don't have degrees of wisdom
before God. Christ is the infinite perfection
of these things. without holiness without being
found in him the Lord said in Matthew chapter 5 blessed of
God are the pure in heart for they shall see God you gotta
have a pure heart a pure heart Well, you say, Breacher,
I thought the heart was desperately wicked and that no man can know
it, and all my thoughts and imaginations before God were evil before Him,
and that continually, yeah? Yeah. That is our old man. But that's not our new man. That's
not our new man. That's not the mind of Christ.
That's not the new nature. The new nature is perfect before
God. Holy before God. Sanctified in
Christ Jesus. It's the new man that we have
life in, not the old man. The old man is going to be left
behind. That's the body of death. The new man is holy. Holy in
Christ. David said in Psalm 24 verse
3, Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord, and who shall
stand in his holy place? Who's going to stand in the presence
of God? How are you and I going to be able to stand in the very
presence of a holy God? That's what David's saying. And
he answers that question. He that hath clean hands and
a pure heart who has not lifted his soul into vanity nor sworn deceitfully. He's the
one that's going to be able to stand before God. He's the only
one that's going to be able to stand before God. Who's the only man
who's got clean hands? Who's the only man that's got
a pure heart? Who's the only man that's never sworn deceitfully? or never lifted up an imagination
in vanity. Who's the only man? You know
who it is. It's the God-man. It's the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is our advocate before God. And without Him,
we have no holiness. That's why this doctrine of progressive
sanctification is so evil. It's so evil, all it does is
take you back to the law. And the strength of sin is the
law. You go back to the law and all
that's going to do is inspire sin. The only power over sin
that you and I have is grace. And that grace is in the finished
work of the Lord Jesus Christ as our righteousness, as our
holiness before God. We don't measure ourselves by
the law. We don't compare ourselves to ourselves. We don't compare
ourselves to one another. Don't you hate being around religious
people for that reason? They're so self-righteous and
pretentious and trying to prove who's more righteous than another
and who's more holy than another. It is sickening to a child of
God. It's sickening. It's hypocrisy. In me, Paul said, that is in
my flesh dwelleth no good thing. All my righteousness, all my
holiness, all of my sanctification, all of my justification, all
of my redemption, Christ is all and he's in all. He's my only
hope before God. You're not gonna stand before
God without holiness. It is impossible. It is impossible. to know God, to please God, to
see God. No man will see God without holiness. And the fifth thing that we cannot
live without. I'm experiencing a little bit
of that this morning, and I only lost a few hours sleep last night. How do you feel when you, I mean,
when I was younger, I could go a whole night without sleeping.
I can't do that anymore. I've got to have my sleep. You just get, you will die quicker
from sleep deprivation than you will from starvation. You can
go 30 days without eating. You can't go three days without
sleeping. You'll die. Your body will shut down and
it will die if it doesn't go to sleep. They use sleep deprivation
to, you know, as a form of torture. You keep a man awake a couple
days and he'll tell you whatever he wants, you know, just in order
to be able to go to sleep. Without rest, you'll die. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
4. Verse 9, There remaineth therefore
a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his
rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from
his. Quit trying. Quit working. Don't put your hand to the tabernacle. Don't do it. Don't try to help God out. It robs Christ of His glory.
He's done it all. Cease from your labors. Rest in Christ. I love what happened when the
children of Israel in the wilderness, God gave them the Sabbath laws.
Now, let me say this before I use this illustration. Most people
violate the Sabbath in their attempt to keep the Sabbath.
They think, well, I'm going to go to church on Sunday and I'm
going to do this and I'm not going to do that. And what they're
doing as works is actually violating the whole concept of the Sabbath.
They found a man picking up sticks on the Sabbath, didn't they?
They brought him before Moses. And Moses, I mean, just picking
up some sticks to make a fire to cook a meal. God said, don't
do it. And they brought him before Moses,
and Moses went before the Lord, and the Lord said, kill him!
Kill him! If you lay your hand to the sacrifice,
if you don't put all of your hope in Christ, if you don't
rest in the finished work and the shed blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ alone as all of your righteousness, you will die in your sins. Verse 11, let us labor. Is there a labor? In the believer's
walk, is there a labor? Yeah, there is a labor. You know
what the labor is? The labor is to quit laboring.
Because our natural tendency is to try to do something. I got to fix something. I got
to change something. I got to put my hand to something.
I got to do better. I got to stop this and start
that. I got to fix it. That's just our tendency, isn't
it? That's what we do. And the labor is to not labor. Labor to enter into His rest,
to trust Christ. Now I hear somebody saying, boy,
you're gonna lead people into sin, you start preaching like
that. I remind you what Brother Walter Gruber said. Somebody
told Walter, they said, Walter, if I believed what you believe,
I'd just sin all I wanted. And Walter said, oh, I sin a
lot more than that. I sin a lot more than that. Grace doesn't lead to sin. It's
the only power there is against sin. It leads to Christ. Let us labor
therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after
the same example of unbelief. In short, I told you I was going
to close with a verse of scripture outside of Hebrews. Ephesians
chapter 2 verse 12. In short, you cannot live without
Christ. You just can't. There's no life
outside of Christ. Listen to what God says in Hebrews
2.12. At that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenant of promise,
having no hope and without God in this world. If you're without Christ, you're
without God. If you're without God, you're without hope. You
have no life. You're going to die. And if you die in that condition,
you will remain separated from God for all eternity. Without the shedding of blood,
there's no remission of sin. Without faith, it's impossible
to please God. Without holiness, no man will
see God. Without chastisement, you're
not a child of God. Without rest, You'll not know
his righteousness. Without Christ, you'll be without
God. Now those are things you and
I cannot live without. We can't. All right, let's take a break.