Turn with me to Psalm 98. Let's pray together. Father, as we call upon you this evening, Lord, have mercy. Help us, I pray, speak through Your Word, for Christ's sake. Amen. Psalm 98 verse 1 says this, Oh, sing unto the Lord a new
song, for he hath done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy arm
hath gotten him the victory. The Lord hath made known his
salvation. His righteousness hath He openly
showed in the sight of the heathen. He hath remembered His mercy
and His truth toward the house of Israel. All the ends of the
earth have seen the salvation of our God. I've got a set of notes sitting
in front of me and I may preach them Sunday. I may preach this set of notes
right here. That set of notes right there. I may preach it
Sunday. But I feel greatly impressed and I'm scared to death But I
feel greatly impressed to just share with you this evening what great things the Lord has
done for me. I'm going to share with you how
I got here. how I got to this pulpit right
here. I was attending a Southern Baptist
Church in Pineville, Louisiana, and this was probably in the
mid, maybe 75, 76. And there was a, the pastor of
that church was a free will preacher. And we were going to have a revival. We always had revivals, you know,
you had a revival every year. At least one. And he invited
a man, and I don't even know if this guy is even still living.
His name was R.F. Gates. I can remember that. And he was a preacher out of
Shreveport, Louisiana. And he, the pastor, invited him
to come and preach. And he came five nights and he
preached each night, five nights, each night on one of the doctrines
of five points of Calvinism. And that message intrigued me. I just absolutely I was intrigued. There was another fellow or two
that was kind of in that same boat, I guess, and I was just,
it was different. I'd never heard that before. That wasn't the time the Lord
was pleased to call me out of darkness. I can look back now
and see that. It was just different, Frank. I'd never heard that before. And over that period of that
week, I just absolutely kept wanting to talk about it. It
was just different. It was different. And it made
a lot of people really, really mad. I remember, in time, I was invited
to come to this other little church down in south central
Louisiana. It was a southern Baptist church,
free will, just free will church, that's all it was. And I kept The whole time I was there, I'd
think about that, those doctrines, you know, those five points,
and I can remember, I even, I saw them. I could see that in Scripture. But still, I had no heart for
it. It wasn't, I mean, I wasn't going
to split a church over it. But it was different. My mother invited me one time
while I was pastoring there to come over and hear a preacher
that was visiting there in Kitchens Creek there in Central Louisiana
where Darwin Pruitt was and Milton Howard is there now and it was
Henry. Now this has been a few years
now, it's gone by and I've gone back and forth and I look and
there was things that just perplexed me about it. And all during this
time, there were some that would come and go and leave and didn't
want to talk about it and got mad about it. We had friends,
we had dear friends. Ed and Vivian Whittle, we had
dear friends that just, we cut off eventually, even talking
about it. But in time, I went and I heard
Brother Henry. And it just, the message was
just alive. And there was some period, somewhere
right in there, the Lord began to deal with me. And it was more
than just a different doctrine. It was now alive. It was real. This was truth. And it was solid. And it was consistent with Scripture. That message that honored the
Lord. And I knew, I knew. The Lord revealed Himself to
me during that time. And I wanted to have Brother
Henry come and preach. And my former pastor, I was talking
to him about it one day. And I brought it up. I wanted
to talk to him. I wanted to talk about Ephesians
1 and 2 Thessalonians 2. I wanted to talk about these
precious, precious doctrines of grace and the truth of Christ. And he made this statement to
me. Never forget this. He said, Marvin,
if you don't leave that alone, you're going to open up a can
of worms that you'll never be able to close. And he was right,
Carl. He was right. He was right. So I invited Brother Henry to
come. And he came five nights, just like R. F. Gates did. But
there was a difference in that message. That message, when he
preached, The Spirit of God bore witness to my heart, this is
the truth. This is the truth. God Almighty
just solidified to me the reality of my need for Christ that He's
all in all, and He's all together lovely, and it wasn't just going
to church anymore. Going through the motions, it
was real. And as I began to look at the
Scriptures, it wasn't very long after that
that I heard about a meeting that they wanted to have. We
had one. And I'm telling you, it came to a head real quick
and real, I mean, hot and heated. To the point that I told them,
I said, I've got to go. I've got to go. This is all I
want to do. I'm going to leave. I'm leaving. I'm going to take
my wife and my kids. I'm leaving. But before I leave, I'm going
to make this statement. If there's anybody here that
disagrees with what I'm about to say, that's what I told them
that night. I said, you better tell me right now. I said, I'm
leaving because you will not receive the love of the truth.
Everything I've said is in these scriptures. It's real. And nobody
opposed me. And I left. I left. I left that
church. Still there, still there up to
date, but no truth, no truth. I went back and I stayed in,
moved to Franklin. Moved to Franklin after that
and began to meet these different men. All the time I met some
that were there and some left and some stayed. And it was by
the grace of God that Almighty God kept me during that time
and taught me. And I sat and I listened and
the truth of God's sovereign grace was made more and more
real to me. growing and learning and how
I needed to grow, how I needed to learn. And I needed to hear. And in time, I began to pastor
a little church there in Franklin. And the Lord was pleased to bless
it. And people were taught. We were all taught. I stayed there in that place
for ten years. Providence of God would have
it. My wife passed away one year later. She passed away November
25, 2000. And one year later, I was here,
one year later, at Butch's funeral, one year later. And Brother Scott
sat right here and he said, why don't you come take this pulpit? And I thought to myself, that's
the most far-fetched thing I could have ever... I was scared to
death of him. I had so much respect for him. Man, I had a lump in my throat
just telling him that I couldn't do it. I said, Brother Scott,
I appreciate that so very much. But I said, there's no possible
way that I would ever, not ever, have you sitting in that pew
right there and me preaching. Not me. Somebody else maybe,
but not me. in the process of time, my past cross with Linda and
then a group of you men, you know, Glenn, different ones,
some of them was here. And I met with them in the fellowship
hall and they talked to me about it one time, never brought it
up again, never called me nothing, nothing. During that period of time, Glenda
and I was married and moved to Franklin, and people would ask
me, you know, because they knew I'd talk to the men here, and
they asked me, said, well, what do you think? I said, I don't
think anything. I don't think one thing. I don't want to go
and I don't want to not go. I don't have any inclination
whatsoever. And about four months, I think,
four months passed. And I mean it came to a point
to where I began to think about here, about being here. I told Glenda, I said, I'm going
to call Scott. And she said, well, I'll tell
you what, you call him if you want to. But she said, don't
ask me my opinion. Because she said, I don't have
anything to do with this. He said, what if you tell me? She
said, that's what we'll do. But don't ask me what I want
to do. I said, fair enough. So I called Scott. And I said,
Brother Scott, I said, I need to know something. I said, I
want to know what? Do you think about me coming
here? And he said, well, I only have
one question for you. He said, what do you believe
the Lord wants you to do? And I said, I believe I'm supposed
to go to Katie. And he said, that's all I wanted to know.
I said, you okay with that? And he said, oh, absolutely.
He said, if that's what the Lord wants you to do, he said, that's
what I want too. I said, okay. So I called Henry. I said, Brother Henry, I said,
I just wanted to call you. I said, talk to you about me
going to Katie. He said, hold on, hold on. He
said, I only have one question for you. I said, okay. He said,
did you talk to Scott? I said, yes sir, I did. He said,
what'd Scott say? I told him. He said, I don't
have any other questions for you. And I said, okay. Well, I called the lady down
the street. And I said, Jody, I have a house here. I said,
I think I'm going to move to West Virginia. I said, I want
to know if you'd help me sell my house. And 48 hours later,
we sold it. And closing was, I mean, just right
now, right now. And I moved. We moved. We moved here. And today is July the 20th. And 13 years ago today, July
the 20th, 2003, I preached my first message here as pastor. I've been here 13 years today.
And I looked at this scripture right here, Psalm 98. Oh, sing
unto the Lord a new song. For he hath done marvelous things. Let me tell you how I got here.
His right hand and his holy arm, his power according to his holiness,
had gotten him the victory. There were people that I knew
back from the beginning, that I think were just as ignorantly
intrigued with what I heard, they heard it the same time I
heard it. And I can tell you that there's
some that heard it when I heard it, and they're not here anymore. There's a lot of people that
I crossed paths with when I was coming up, and you have too.
And they're not here anymore. They may still be alive, but
they're not here. The Lord hath made known His
salvation. And all of God's people, all
of God's elect are going to be taught of God. His righteousness hath He openly
showed in the sight of the heathen. Let me tell you who I am. And you too. I don't believe
there's any Jewish by descent, Jewish national Jews here. This is us. We're the Gentiles. He's made known. openly showed in the sight of
the heathen, Gentiles, out of every nation and kindred and
tribe and tongue, God's got a people. And He's going to have them.
The Lord Jesus Christ said, He said, other sheep I have. He was talking to some Jews. He said, they're not of this
fold. And I'm going to call them. And they're going to come. And I'm going to keep them. And
through all of the cloud and the confusion Accusations and
threats. You're going to do something.
You're going to ruin this. That's a hated, despised doctrine. But that's not what the Lord
taught me. The Lord hath made known His
salvation. And I know this. Salvation is
of the Lord. And he hath remembered his mercy
and his truth toward the house of Israel. And all the ends of
the earth have seen the salvation of our God." Everyone that the
Lord has everlastingly loved, in time He calls and He keeps
and He settles. And he settles, and he settles. I was sitting here tonight when
Gary was leading that last song, and my heart was just racing
because I'm thinking, I could just read my set of notes, Mark,
and I've got a set of notes. That would be the simplest thing.
I've got a set of notes. I'm here tonight by the grace
of God. And the Lord has done marvelous
things that He would set His affection on anybody and give
anybody a heart for Him and call them out of darkness Somebody said, when did He call
you out of darkness? When it pleased Him? I kind of
remember sort of when during that time. But I'm telling you,
I know this. There was a point when I went
from darkness to light, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I'll be
honest with you. But I can look back now, and
I can think back on how the Lord kept me and put me in this pulpit. and has kept me by His mercy
and grace and compassion. And everything along the way,
everything that happened, everything that transpired, was all according
to His good pleasure and His will. And every bit of it, even
though I don't see it all, worked together for good. Them that love God. Them who
are the called according to His purpose. Well, I'm going to tell you right
now that I thank God that we're here tonight. I thank God that
He was pleased to keep me when so many, so many left and left
because they wanted to. I know that. But Almighty God
who would not leave me to myself and brought me to this place,
I've got a good hope. By the grace of God, He'll keep
me to the end and not forsake me and not leave me. I pray that
for you. I pray that for your kids and
your grandkids I pray God have mercy on us. I pray that this little word
of testimony has been honoring to Him. I pray that the Lord
be lifted up and praised for that which He's been pleased
to do. I've got a set of notes. I may
preach them on Sunday, but tonight I just couldn't. Brother Gary, why don't you come
up and lead us in the closing?