Good morning. Our hope and prayer
is that the Lord will be pleased to meet with us again this morning
like he did last night. What a blessed meeting that was. Terri Petrowski was taken to
the hospital last night. She's been very frail for several
years now, hasn't been able to come to services. And it looks
as if she's had a stroke. And she's in Florida Hospital
at Princeton. So I want to remember to pray
for her and ask you to pray for Mary Ann and Rich and Jerry as
they stand at her bedside. Psalm 147 says, praise ye the
Lord, for it is good to sing praises unto our God, for it
is pleasant and praise is comely. In another place, the Lord said,
I inhabit the praise of my people. When our hearts are joined together
in worship, he is present. And that's what we want to do
right now. So Tom's going to come lead us to number 47 in
the Saltback Tendril. A Covenant, Ordered, and Sure. One of my favorite hymns. So
let's stand together. Tom, you come please. Would you open your Bibles with
me to Isaiah chapter 28. Isaiah chapter 28. I meant to announce this last
night. Our folks know about it, but
those of you who are visiting don't, maybe. We have a brother
in our fellowship that is very allergic to perfume, and he's
not able to be in the same room If there's folks wearing perfume,
so if you could just I know it's too late now But maybe tomorrow
morning just forego that and and it'll be good for him, okay?
Get a shower, but don't wear perfume All right, Isaiah chapter 28
and we'll begin reading at verse 9 and verse 9 I Whom shall he teach knowledge,
and whom shall he make to understand doctrine, truth, the gospel? Them that are weaned from milk
and drawn from the breast, lest you become as a little child,
you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. He teaches babies
the gospel, dependent children. For precept must be upon precept,
precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line upon line,
here a little, there a little, little by little, God teaches
his children. He grows us in his grace every
time we come together, every time his word is opened, different
passages of scripture, he compares the spiritual to the spiritual
and teaches us about Christ. For with stammering lips and
another tongue, Will he speak to this people, to whom he said,
this is the rest? Now the preacher, it's not the
eloquence of the preacher, it's the truth of God's word. To whom
he said, this is the rest, wherewith he may call the weary to rest,
and this is the refreshing. All what rest there is in Christ,
the one who's finished all the work of salvation for his people.
Yet they would not hear. To them, the scriptures were
nothing more. The word of the Lord was unto
them who would not hear, nothing more than precept upon precept,
precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a
little, there a little, that they might go and fall backwards
and be broken and snared and taken. Our Lord said, you search
the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life.
A lot of people know the Bible, study the Bible, pride themselves
in their memorization of the Bible, and they don't know Christ.
To them, the Bible is nothing more than just a set of theological
doctrines. Wherefore, hear the word of the
Lord, ye scornful men that rule this people which is in Jerusalem.
Because you have said, we have made a covenant with death. We
made the covenant. We made a decision. We accepted
Jesus. We prayed the prayer. We let
God, we let Christ come into our hearts. We made a covenant
with death. And with hell, are we at agreement?
And here's what the Lord says, when the overflowing scourge
shall pass through, it shall, they said, when the overflowing
scourge shall pass through, it shall not come upon us. For we
have made lies our refuge, and under falsehoods have we hid
ourselves. Therefore thus saith the Lord
God, behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried
stone, one that's been tried and proven faithful, a precious a precious cornerstone, a sure
foundation. And he that believeth shall not
make haste. He won't try to earn his way
into heaven, he'll just sit and rest in Christ. Judgment also
will I lay at the line, and righteousness to the plummet. And the hail
shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the water shall overflow
the hiding place. and your covenant with death
shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not
stand. When the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then you
should be trodden down by it." Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we ask,
Lord, that you would expose any lies, any falsehoods that we
would be prone in our flesh to hold to, that you would use your word
and use these men by the power of your spirit, Lord, that you
would take the precepts of your word and cause us to find our
rest in Christ. that precious cornerstone, tridestone,
sure foundation. Lord, that we would not find
hope anywhere outside of Him. We do pray for Terry and we pray
for the doctors that minister to her and ask Lord that you'd
give them the knowledge and wisdom they need to treat her well.
We pray for Marianne and for Rich and for Jerry and ask, Lord,
that you would draw near to them and comfort their hearts now
in this time of trial. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Let's stand together again. We'll sing the hymn that's You can be turning in your Bibles
to 1 Peter chapter 2. I agree with Greg that the Lord
richly blessed us last night. I enjoyed our brother's preaching. I'll probably, for the rest of
my life, say, Brother David. I never thought about that, you
know, Brother David. Those saints of old, they're
our brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ. But one thing
I have learned over the years is that yesterday's grace will
not supply today's need. And as much as we may rejoice
in what the Lord did among us last night, we need Him to do
it again this morning. May God be pleased to anoint
his word to our good. Our brother read the Old Testament
scripture from which Peter draws his thoughts here in chapter
2 of 1st Peter. Verse 6 says, Wherefore, also
it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief
cornerstone, elect, precious, and he that believeth on him
shall not be confounded. Unto you, therefore, which believe,
he is precious. But unto them which be disobedient,
the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made
the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense,
even to them which stumble at the word being disobedient, whereunto
also they were appointed. Now, Peter is comparing Christ building his church to building a temple. And of
course, he would have been referring to ancient construction practices. Anything of substance was built
of stone. And to begin any building project
such as that, such as building the temple, seeing that they
did not have concrete, they didn't dig a trench like we do and pour
concrete and make a footer, a foundation, out of liquid stone that later
turns hard. They didn't have the technology.
What they would do was find the largest rock they could, and
that they could move. I understand, I saw a show about
the temple in Jerusalem, Herod's Temple, which would have been
the temple of this day. And they saw the foundation stones,
they can see them, the first stones laid. And they said that
there is one, I can't remember, 60 some feet long, In the neighborhood,
I think 80 some tons. How they move that thing, I have
no idea. It would be a remarkable task
to move it now. And they did it without cranes,
such as we have, but they got it. The idea was, start with
a massive stone as a foundation on which everything else will
rest. And they would lay that stone
at the corner of the building. It would be the chief cornerstone. And from that stone would be
taken all the dimensions of the building. The rest of the building
is defined by that stone. It is 40 feet this way, 80 feet
that way, or whatever the dimensions would be, and so forth. All the
measurements taken from that stone, and in a sense, therefore,
that stone defined the rest of the building. And the rest of the building
rested on it. It was the chief cornerstone. Needless to say, when they would
try to find such a stone, They looked for certain characteristics
in that stone. You wouldn't get one made out
of sandstone. You don't want a foundation made
out of that. You would find stone which had
a record behind it. That kind of stone had a record
of being strong and durable. And you put it there, and you
build your building. Now the Lord Jesus Christ said
to Peter, and this has been misused by probably the largest so-called
Christian denomination in the world, you are Peter, and on this rock
I will build my church. And of course the word Peter
means stone, but actually it means small stone. More along
the line, pebble. gravel The Lord distinguished
he says your pebble and on this Massive rock and the rock he
was speaking of was the rock of who he is He says I will build
my church now the first stone in the Church of God is Jesus
Christ And the rest of us are built upon that stone as living
stones. The whole building that God is
raising up takes all its measurements from that first stone that God
laid down. And all the church rests upon
that stone that God laid down, that chief cornerstone, Jesus
Christ. Christ is building His church
on Himself. And there is no surer foundation
than Him. So much so that it can be said,
He that believes on Him, He that rests upon Him, He that is defined
by Christ and is resting upon Christ. Our brother read it from
Isaiah and said, He'll not make haste. Here it says, He'll not
be confounded. But here's the picture you get. If people are alarmed, what do
they do? You give the alarm. If right
now someone were to pull the fire alarm, if there's one in
here, or just shout, the place is on fire, what would happen?
Probably we would all get up and make haste, wouldn't we? And not in an orderly fashion.
We'd be confounded. We'd be running, we'd be pushing,
we'd be trying to bust out the windows, get out the doors, whatever.
But the one who trusts in Christ need never make haste, need never
run wild. Why? Because no matter what anybody
hollers, no matter what alarm goes off, everything's okay. Isaiah also said, say ye to the
righteous. Well, God said to Isaiah, say
ye to the righteous, it shall be well with them. Whatever happens,
it's going to be okay for them. The world may explode, and I
guess one day it will. But don't worry, ye righteous,
it's going to be okay for you. I know that right now many of
us are very concerned about the direction that this nation is
taking. It's sad to see, isn't it? Ye righteous, It'll be okay for
you. It may be that everybody will
go bankrupt. It'll be okay for you. You'll have your food until
you don't need food anymore. You'll have a place to live.
You'll have clothes on your back. It'll be alright even as God
judges this nation. You may feel some of the effects
of that, but it'll be okay for you. However, as God begins the building
of his church and begins to lay that stone in Zion to build that
temple, those who should have been anxious for the work to
begin who should have seen that stone and said, wow, what a great
foundation stone God is starting with. What did they say instead? We'll not have this man to rule
over us. He isn't going to be chief cornerstone.
After all, I'm running for chief cornerstone. They rejected him. God laid a
stone in Zion and they said, we're not going to have anything
to do with the temple built on that stone. We've got our own
stones and we'll build our own temple. Now faith is the vital union
between God and sinners that accesses for us all the blessings
that are in Christ. You look at chapter 1 verse 5,
he says, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto
salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Now brethren,
we are believers in the sovereign grace of God and we make much
of the fact that all salvation is of God and we should because
salvation is of the Lord. But here's the problem, we take
facts like that, truth like that and begin to apply human reasoning
to them And sometimes we come up with things that are just
plain wrong. And there are people who say, well, salvation is of
the Lord. God has chosen who is going to save. Christ died
for him. And they act as though it is of no consequence whether
or not they ever believe. And we have seen then the other
side that makes faith into everything, and we get worried that we're
going to end up on that side of the pendulum, where faith
is just this decision, and anybody can make it. You know, the free
willism, and we're afraid of free willism, and so we put faith
on the back burner. But let me tell you what God
said about faith. Without faith, it is impossible
to please God. God say what you will without
faith you are not pleasing to God and if you aren't pleasing
to God you ain't getting nothing good faith that's God given and faith
is the expression of God's life in the soul but still without
faith Impossible to please God. Faith is that which connects
us to God and all his blessings in Christ Jesus. But if you're
like me, here's what a statement like that will make you start
thinking. Well then, do I believe? Do I have the right kind of faith? Well, we are so legalistic. that
if the scriptures say anything about something we do, we automatically
try to define that in terms of particular ways of doing it and
then judge ourselves and everybody else about whether they're doing
it right. The trouble is when we do that,
particularly with this matter of faith, We overthrow the concept of faith
altogether. Because faith doesn't look at
itself. Faith does not look at the believer.
Faith looks at the object, Christ. Of course, the more important
the consequences of some action are, the more careful we are to get
it right. And there cannot, therefore,
be anything more important than believing God. For there are
eternal consequences upon it. But this very carefulness can
make the whole examination process all the more difficult. Paul
says examine yourselves to see if you be of the faith. And therefore,
we start examining. And the examination becomes not
simply, well, do I believe God? But we start to define faith
in such minute detail that in the end, nobody believes
well enough, good enough, or right enough. Come up with subtle nuances,
carefully proscribed words. I remember this. This was years
ago. that a controversy arose over
whether or not Christ has obtained salvation or merely secured it. I remember hearing that and I'm
going, what? Well, if He obtained it, that
means you already got it, but if it's just secured, that's
something you're going to get later. And my thought was, well,
is it Christ that did it? Yeah. And in the end, am I saved? Yeah. Then what's all the fuss
about? But men love to get a hold of things like that and what
they do every time they think they've learned something, they
raise the bar that high. And you ain't saved until you
got as high as they are. Oh, I say they do it, we do it. We so carefully define what we
will acknowledge as faith. It eventually comes to where
we must wonder whether or not we have faith or we take the
more selfish, self-righteous line of thought and come to the
conclusions we're the only ones that have faith. Theological tests, moral standards,
love, these things are important. I'm not saying there's no significance
to them. But the proof of faith does not
come from a direct examination of faith itself. And brethren,
if it does, you're going to fail. When it says examine yourselves
to see if you be of the faith, it was not so much him saying,
look at your faith and see if it's good enough. Because I will
tell you right now, it's not. It is not good enough. The very
fact that you are in turmoil of your heart about it proves
it's not good enough. Because if it is a matter of
how good our faith is, if it must be good enough to please
God, then it must be perfect because God cannot be pleased
by anything that is not perfect. If faith is the issue, by that
I mean the purity of our faith, the knowledgeability of our faith
and all this, if this is the standard, we are all going to
fail because none of us are perfect. In fact, faith is not so much about facts as
it is about a person. Now, be careful to understand
what I said. I'm not acting as though facts
are of no significance. I said it's not so much about
facts as it is about a person. But we get wrapped up in the
facts, we tend to, and forget that the only significance that
the facts have is that they are about a person. The facts in
and of themselves are not the important issue. The important
issue is the person whom they describe. Yet it is not necessary
that I know everything about Christ in order to believe him.
Let me give you an example here. Two men get sick. One is just
a common everyday person. The other is a pharmaceutical
research scientist. And they both go to the same
doctor and the doctor diagnoses them both with the same thing
and prescribes both of them the same medicine. The common man
just looks at the prescription. He doesn't know what it is. He
doesn't understand biochemistry. He may not even know the word
biochemistry. The research scientist, he looks
at it and says, oh yeah, I worked on the research about this. I
know how it works. They both go to the same pharmacist,
both get the same pills, and they both take the same medicine. Now I ask you, will the result
in those two men be different? No. For it is not their understanding
of the medicine that saves them, it's the medicine. Now that pharmacist,
pharmaceutical research scientist, as he takes that medicine, his
understanding may give him more confidence that it's going to
work because he understands how it works. The other fellow's
got to say, I just got to take it on the word of the doctor.
But either way, it works. Paul said, I know whom I have
believed. And he said, and am persuaded
that he is able. That's what he had to know about
Christ. That he is able to keep to the uttermost them that come
to God by him. Three things that make up faith.
Knowledge, but it's knowledge of a person. Persuasion. And it's persuasion about that
person and his abilities, not mine. And then commitment. And I don't
mean commitment like you're committing to a cause. This is commitment
like you take your money to the bank and you commit it to their
care because you don't have a safe at your house good enough to
keep thieves away. You assume that the bank does. Knowledge of the person. persuasion
of his abilities, and commitment to what he can do. That's faith. The proof of faith is in one's
attitude towards the Lord Jesus Christ. The proof of faith is
not in its strength. The proof of faith is not in
how much it has been informed about everything. The proof of
faith is this, what is a person's attitude towards the Lord Jesus
Christ? God laid in Zion a chief cornerstone,
and whether or not people were built upon that stone, or crushed
by that stone, was known by their reaction to that stone. And there
were some who said, we'll have none of this. Verse 7, unto you
therefore which believe though, he is precious. Do you want to know whether or
not you believe the gospel? Now you can rack your brain and
try to determine whether or not you fully understand the doctrines
of the gospel. But if you do that, you're probably
going to come up short in your own estimation, or worse yet,
come to believe that you do understand it all. But here's the test I say to
which you should put yourself. What do I think of the Lord Jesus
Christ? When I hear Him declared, does
it make me mad or does it make me glad? When the preacher tells
me of Christ and Him crucified, do I rejoice or do I put a big
question mark there? When I hear of the glories of
the Lord Jesus Christ, does my heart melt for Him, or
does it harden, and do I clench my teeth? Because I'll tell you
one thing, if you're hearing the gospel, one of those two
things is happening. Your heart is melting, or your
jaw is clenching, one or the other. You see the gospel is
one of those things about which a person cannot be indifferent. Now he may never hear it and
therefore he makes no reaction to it at all. But if he ever
hears the gospel, if it penetrates, goes through his ears and at
least into his brain so that he understands what's being said,
he will not be indifferent about it. Because the things it says
are too powerful to not care. One of the most important reasons
for you to regularly hear the gospel is that it will reveal
to you what you think about the Lord Jesus Christ. What does
the scripture say? For the Word of God is sharp. It's powerful. It's living. It's
sharper than any two-edged sword. Let me give you this little thing.
When the Bible uses the phrase, Word of God, it's not talking
about itself. The Bible doesn't call itself
the Word of God, it calls itself the Holy Scriptures. The phrase
Word of God in the Bible means either Christ himself or the
message concerning Christ. The Word of God, the Gospel,
penetrates the heart. It's a living message. And it
cannot leave the heart untouched. And it will reveal to a man what's
really there. Is that not what we were talking
about last night at the cross? Which is the message of the gospel.
The cross is the light that reveals a man for what he is. And that's either going to make
a man mad or make him look to Christ, one or the other. It
reveals God as he is, which is either going to make a man mad
or make him repent. It reveals Christ as he is and
that's going to make a man even matter or believe. But the one thing the gospel
will not do is leave a man alone and leave him untouched and unmoved. Now you're here this morning
and many of you here were here last night and Gabe and I both
preached the gospel. How did that affect you? I'm not saying, you know, well,
I heard all the points. When Christ was set forth to
you, what went on in your heart? Was He precious to you or contemptible? Are you among those that rejected
this stone? Now you may pretend to us that
you're a proven of it. Because we can all learn the
right words to say, can't we? We can learn the right doctrines
to recite. We can learn all the religious
phrases that goes with being sovereign grace baptist and tell
them to other people and you can fool me on this thing. But
you cannot fool God. And you dare not fool yourself.
Brother Mahan used to say, honest people don't go to hell. All
be honest. What does the declaration of
Christ as He is, what does that do in your heart when you hear
it? Do you love it? Do you say, yes,
that's my Christ? And to you which believe, He
is precious. He is precious to believers for
the very things that he is contemptible to everybody else. One of the things I've experienced
in my own spiritual pilgrimage or journey or whatever is the
right word there, is that the things which were at one time
most difficult for me to acknowledge and accept as true are now those
things most glorious and dear to me. For example, of those five doctrines
called Calvinism or the doctrines of grace, if someone tells you
they're a four-point Calvinist, you know which one it is. They
don't believe. Really. It's always the one concerning
Christ. Have you ever noticed that? It's always about Him,
isn't it? The issue's always him. And if
a person is going through those doctrines and as the phrase goes,
he's coming to the doctrines of grace, that'll be the last
one he comes to. And sometimes people do go through
a process like that, but here's what I noticed in my own experience
with this. That was the doctrine I most
resisted. and is now the doctrine I find
most glorious of all of them. Now, you can't do without any
of them. The gospel won't work without
any of them. But that one that can cause me
to rejoice more than any other is what we were looking at last.
It is finished. He got it done. And everyone
for whom He got it done They are redeemed. They are His. Their sins are gone from Heaven's
record. It's just done. It's the one
I most rejoice to hear and the one that makes me the angriest
when I hear people preach against it. Really, and that is the one that
they're going to get mad about. If you preach it, they'll get
mad about it and preach against it. They can tolerate the others. They can find a way to get along
with you on all the others. It just seems that that one is
a dividing line. They will not have a successful
Savior. And here's why I think it is.
I'm just going to speculate, but I think it's based on some
understanding of humanity. If He was the one that was successful,
I can't take any credit for the success. If He got it all done,
there's no room for me to do something and say, look what
I did. So they've got to make it general
so they can say, I am the one that made the distinction between
me and the lost. And they can look at all the
other things as simply God helping them. But isn't it something? A successful Christ. Which is
all, in truth, that's all that limited atonement is about. It's about a successful Savior.
A successful Christ is nauseating, is contemptible to the unbelieving. They love that sandstone crumbling
Jesus who did all he could and now it's up to you. They love
Him and they build their sorry temple on that rock and you know
what happens? It crumbles because the foundation
underneath crumbles out from under it. We who believe count Christ precious
on those very points that the world counts him contemptible. You see, the men of Christ's
day did not despise him because they misunderstood him. They
despised him because they knew exactly what he was saying. You being a man, make yourself
to be God. God did not say, wait fellas,
you misunderstood me. Everybody calm down. He says He's King. Jesus didn't
say, well, if you make me Lord. They knew exactly what He was
saying. And that's what made them mad. And the more they understood,
the madder they got. And even those who for a long
time followed Him, the more He revealed of who He is and what
He came to do, the more of them that left. When He set forth in John chapter
6 and He got real clear about who He was and what He came to
do and the significance of all that, when He got done it says,
and from this time forward many of His disciples no longer followed
Him. Why? It just got too real. Too real. We find Him precious
if we believe. And we find Him precious for
this, It says, verse 6, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone. Here's one thing that every believer
loves about the Lord Jesus Christ. He's chief. Now Paul said I'm
chief, but he didn't say I'm chief of the stones, he said
I'm chief of the sinners. But when it comes to the stones
of God's household, we are delighted with the fact that the Lord Jesus
Christ is the chief cornerstone. We don't want to be part of a
temple that has any other chief cornerstone but that one. We
look to that stone, we rest upon that stone, we love that stone. We like it. that God set him
forward as the preeminent one. Do you know that every believer
is delighted with the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ? When
it is written that in all things He might have preeminence, the
believer says, Amen! Yes! Put Him out there in front! That's why we probably get a
little disturbed when we hear the names of men too often. There's only one name we're interested
in. It's the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the chief
cornerstone. We love that He is high and lifted
up. We love it and count Him precious. And by the way, that word precious
does not carry the significance that we normally think of it.
We see a little baby and we say, well isn't that precious? That's
not what it means. The word actually comes from
the word for honor. And in keeping with the picture
that Peter is drawing, when they would bring one of those stones
and say, this one's going to be the chief cornerstone, well,
the chief builders, the master builders, they would look it
over and see if it passed muster, if it was good enough, and declare
it precious. Yeah, this is good. And that's
what it's saying. We look at him, and we say, this
is good. I see in this stone everything
that's necessary for a chief cornerstone in a building. We
see in Christ everything that is necessary for the salvation
of sinners like us. He's a stone, strong, weighty,
immovable. I'd be much easier to move a
big block of styrofoam. It's light. But you dare not build a house
on top of it or a temple. All following Christ, believing
Christ is difficult. It will bring you difficulties
in this world. Count on it. When you believe, that doesn't
mean the struggle is over. It means it just got started
in earnest. But better you should struggle
in this world on that stone than find an easy way and at the end
have your house crumble. We like this about him. He's
elect. So often we speak of election
and we start at the wrong end. You know what the important part
of the doctrine of election is? Behold, mine elect. Is he talking about us? No, he's
talking about Christ. Now we have a doctrine called
unconditional election. But that's only in reference
to us. Jesus Christ was not unconditionally elected. He was conditionally
elected. He was chosen by God as Savior
because he meets all the conditions necessary for salvation. He pleased
God. Nobody else did. It says that we are unconditionally
elected, but the fact is we are elected in Him. He elected us with Him. But we
weren't the ones meeting the conditions. But we delight that
this is the one God chose. Do you remember one of the things
the leaders of that day said when some fellow It was kind
of acting like he was going to believe in Christ. And they said
to him, well, are any of the leaders trusting him? Have any
of the leaders put their seal of approval on him? What difference
does that make? God put his seal of approval
on him. God set him forth as a foundation
stone. We like it that he's Lord. Oh,
they hated his Lordship. They said, we'll have no king
but Caesar. Can you imagine how much they
must have hated Christ for them as Jews to confess a loyalty
to that filthy Gentile king? Oh, hatred for Christ will make
you love some weird stuff. We love it. that He is high and
exalted and seated on a throne. The most beautiful vision that
you and I would ever have is the Lamb of God as the Lion of
the tribe of Judah ruling and reigning all things. I remember
as I was growing up in religion, you know, they talk about someday
Christ is going to be Lord. One day I found out He already
is. And they would say, you make
Christ Lord of your life. And then I found out Peter said
God already made him Lord. He sits on a universal throne
and he doesn't ask anybody permission to be there. And we love it. Do you love the
absolute sovereign rule of Christ Jesus? Or do you want to be the
one in charge? we love this about him he's God
they said you being a man make yourself God and they held him
in contempt and we say you and we say you being God made yourself
man and we love him we're amazed that he would do it we're mystified
how he could do it But we are filled with love and count Him
precious that He would do it. They were offended and held in
contempt the manner of His saving work. They wanted a Savior that
came in on a white horse and ran all the Romans out in a victorious
battle of which, of course, they would play an important role.
They didn't have any interest in a dying substitute. They didn't think they needed
one of those. They thought they had that battle well in hand.
They didn't realize that the Goliath which must be faced was
not the Romans, it was not the filthy uncircumcised Gentiles,
it was their own filthy uncircumcised hearts and the sin that was going
to send them to hell, which they could do nothing about. Therefore,
they did not understand why Christ was dying, and they said, He
saved others, He can't save Himself. Well, of course not! Because
if He saves Himself, He can't save anybody else. He saves us
by not saving Himself. Now He could have saved Himself.
It was within His power to do it. You think that the One that made
the worlds could not have stopped the crucifixion? Do you think
that that one who is altogether pleasing to the Father could
not have said, Father, I've decided I'm not going to do this? And
the Father would have said, No, you got to. He wouldn't have
said that. He would have said, Okay, son,
whatever you say. He had the authority, he had
the power to stop it. He didn't because if he stopped,
we'd die. So we look at that cross, we
say, oh, what a precious, precious Savior. What He did, He did for
me. To you, therefore, which believe,
He is precious. Is He precious to you? You may
be confused about a lot of things, and as Brother, I think it was
Brother Ralph Barnard said, you know, well, Join the club. Don't feel like the Lone Ranger.
We're all confused. But we're not confused about
this. He's the chief cornerstone. And we're just a bunch of rocks
sitting on top of him. He holds us. We don't hold him.
God's pleased with him. And he is pleased with us only
in him. But that's good enough for me.
Good enough for me. Alright, Lord bless you. Thank you, Joe. And thank the
Lord for that word. What a blessing. Let's stand
together. at the tomb of Lazarus in John
chapter 11. Martha said unto him, I know
that he, speaking of Lazarus, shall rise again in the resurrection
of the last day. And Jesus said unto her, I am
the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though
he were dead, yet he shall live. And whosoever liveth and believeth
in me shall never die. believest thou this?" And she
said unto him, Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the
Son of God, which should come into the world. Tom, you come, please, and we're
going to sing number one in the blue handout. If you'll look
there in the pew, if you need to be dismissed, please do that
quickly and quietly, and we'll continue. so