Jesus, lover of mine. That's
something, isn't it? Chapter 17 of the book of Matthew. Chapter 17. It says, After six days, verse
1, Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John, his brother, and bringeth
them up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before
them, changed, and his face did shine as the sun. and his raiment was white as
the light. And behold, there appeared unto
them Moses and Elias talking with him. Then answered Peter and said unto Jesus, Lord, it
is good for us to be here. If thou wilt, Let us make here
three tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses,
and one for Elias. And while he did speak, behold,
a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the
cloud which said, This is my beloved Son, In whom I am well
pleased, hear ye Him." That's what I want to talk about for
a little bit. This is my beloved Son. In whom I am well pleased. And in particular, these last
three words. Hear ye Him. Incline your ear. hear Him, hear what He has got
to say. Well, it was the voice of the
Father from heaven that spoke here concerning His beloved Son. That ought to be enough to create
some interest in our hearts as to what He commanded us to do. If it was the Father speaking
from heaven, concerning his only beloved son, the lily of the
valley, the bright morning star. It is a testimony of his person. It is God's testimony, God the
Father's testimony of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. This
is my beloved son, hear ye him. It is a notification of his office,
prophet, priest, and king. Only potentate, Lord of lords,
king of kings. This my beloved son, this here
is, notifying you, this my beloved son, hear ye him. It's an announcement
of his authority. Has all authority. God gave him
all authority in heaven and earth. Everything that moves and wiggles,
he has authority over. Gave him authority to teach,
to legislate, but now, He's gone. He's gone up from us. He's not preaching in the streets
no more. He's gone. He went to heaven. He went back
to the Father. He entered in, the Bible says,
into the excellent glory. That's where he's at, in the
excellent glory. He's at the right hand of God
the Father. He's on the throne. He's the
king. He's our intercessor. But even though He's gone and
He's there, even now He speaks to us. He
speaks to us through the written Word. He's there, but He speaks
to us here through the written Word. His sayings and His will are
handed down to us infallibly. That is, the Spirit of God moves
upon the writers of the book, and they are infallible by the
Spirit. There is no mistake. There is
no error. It is all truth. It comes from
God Himself, God the Father. So He speaks to us now, and the
question is, why should we hear Him? Why should we hear Him? He said,
This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear ye Him. Why should we hear Him? Now,
this might serve for a sufficient answer if this is the only answer
I could find, and it's this. We should hear Him because God
has commanded us to hear Him. If that's the only reason, our
answer, that ought to be enough right there. Because God has
commanded us to hear Him. He said, This my beloved Son,
hear ye Him. It's not an invitation to hear
Him. He's just not saying, well, now, if you feel like hearing
Him, if you're of a mind to hear Him, or if you ever get in that
situation that you feel like a few words of consolation or
comfort might be of help to you. You ought to look up my Son and
look up some of His sayings and hear Him. But He commands us. And I think that this is binding
on every member of Adam's race. I think that command is binding
right there. Every man of Adam's race is charged
by God to hear his Son, his beloved Son. This injunction comes from the
Father, God the Father. God the Father, over all and
above all, comes from our Maker. It comes from Him, who in Him we live and move and
have our being. It comes from Him. It comes from
the Father. Over and over here in the Scriptures,
we are told that we ought to hear Him. We ought to hearken
unto the Son, listen to Him, seek, and you shall find, be
alert, be attentive, to give respect to the Messenger. And this is the Messenger here,
the Son. I think every messenger, every messenger sent from God,
we ought to give him our respectful attention. I feel like I'm a
messenger from God. I feel like God called me and
put me in the ministry. I don't think I put myself in
the ministry. I think that would have been the last place that
I would have felt like I wanted to spend my life is in the ministry.
I think, I feel like, Of course, I could be deceived. But I feel
like God has put me in the ministry. And Him putting me in the ministry,
I think I'm a messenger then from God. And I deserve, not because of
me, but because of who I represent, I deserve the respectful attention
of those that hear me. See? Every messenger, I think. How much more the greatest of
all messengers, though, Bob? How much more the greatest of
all messengers deserves our respectful attention? You see, he's the
messenger of the covenant. He's the Messiah. He's the sent
one. He's the apostle and high priest
of our profession. He's none other than God Himself.
He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. He's the God-man. But our Father
in Heaven Himself said, this is my Son, appointed, anointed,
commissioned by the Father to speak to us, to make known unto
us the mind of God and the will of God and the purpose of God.
He came to speak to us. We ought to listen to Him, find
out. Our great and gracious, sovereign
God has sent Him to make known who He is, and that we might find out who
we are. I read to you over there in the book of Romans, The Book
of Romans, where was that? Chapter 8? Chapter 8. Turn that with me
again, just for a second or two here. I want to remind you of something. It says here, and I commented
on it, To be carnally minded is death,
but to be spiritually minded is life and peace, because the
carnal mind is enmity against God. Now, I thought about this
as I was trying to come up with something that I thought would
be of some interest and glorify God and would be instructive
to you and I. And so, as I say that He came
then, the Lord Jesus, manifest the will, purpose, and
mind of God, and in doing so, we'll find out who we are. We'll
discover who we are. It'll come by the work of the
Spirit. Now, the word that God uses to
describe us, or to tell us what we are by nature, is the word,
enmity. It's enemies. By nature, we're all enemies
of God. Now, we can only find that out
by hearing the sayings and the will and the mind and the purpose
of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. If we won't listen to
Him, we're never going to find it out. And He tells us here that we
are by nature enemies. That's what we are by nature.
Now, enemies to whom? Who are we enemies to? Pat and
I was enemies, and we could get over that, couldn't we? Pat would
say, well, you want to be mad at me, and you're an enemy of
mine? Well, that's all right with me. I'll go my way, you
go your way, and we could get along. But it's not enemies to
whom, it's not enemies to another person, it's enemies to God. That's the word that He uses
to describe our nature by state, what we are. Well, listen, we
are enemies to God, enemies to that great and glorious God and
that ever-living God to whom we live and move and have our
being. We are, by nature, enemies to that God, the God of heaven
and earth, that God that called us into existence, that God who
gives us being. That God upon whom we depend
upon for every breath we draw. We're enemies against God who
gives us the air that we breathe. And if He would shut us off for
just a minute or two, we'd be finished, wouldn't we? Now we're
enemies against Him. Our nature, that's our state,
by nature, enemies of God. What an awful state must we be
in to be called, not only be called, but we actually are in
reality enemies of God. Oh, to be enemies to such a glorious,
merciful, kind, compassionate, ever-loving, ever-holy, immutable,
faithful, merciful God, to be an enemy against such a God. There could not be a more dreadful
word written than that in the Bible
concerning us, enemies of God. That's what we are. If a man
finds that out, if a man finds out what he is, he's an enemy
of God, he's never done anything in his life to please God, and
he can't please God in this state that he's hostile against Him.
Well, the devil said, well, how many of us here, all of us, I
suspect, one time or the other, said in our subconscious, I wish
there was no God. I wish there was no God. We said, I'd have to answer to
Him. I wish I could do what I want to do. The fool said in his heart,
no God for me. He didn't say there is no God.
He knew better than that. You and I didn't know no better
than that. The fool knew more than we did. We wished there was no God. We
wished there was no one that would hold us accountable. But
there is one that holds us accountable. The fool said in his heart, ìNo
God for me!î Thatís what he said, ìNo God for me! I wish there
wasnít any God!î We said the same thing. Now listen, God could
crush us with a frown. He could crush us like I walk
on a bug, like I walk on a slow-moving ant going across the sidewalk,
Crush it. He could do that with a frown.
He could send us off to hell by a look. Just send us off and
put us in hell and put the seal on hell and forget about us and
leave us go. Enemies of God. And He could
do it justly so because that's what we deserve. We don't deserve
no kindness. We don't deserve no mercy. We're
God's enemies. We got to have a miracle performed
in our hearts and in our souls to bring us to love the God that
we hate. Enemies. We're enemies of God. We were born enemies. Did you
know that? Did you know that a toad is born
a toad? A snake is born a snake? And
we're born enemies of God. Enemies of God. Not only enemies
of God, but it says, enmity, which has to do with the nature. It doesn't mean here that man
is opposed to God. It doesn't mean that man is rebellious
against God. It means he's in total rebellion
against God. against God's person, against
God's Son, against God's Holy Spirit, and against the very
existence of God. Our nature is that way. That's
the reason we've got to be quickened by the Spirit. We've got to be
regenerated. We've got to be born again in
order to love the God that He was once our greatest enemy.
So, well, you can read the rest of that yourself, but here in
the book of Matthew, He said, Here ye Him. Here ye Him. Now, I told you why we should
listen to Him. Why should we listen to Him?
Well, we ought to listen to Him because He's the greatest of
all messengers. He's God Himself. I said that
He came in the form of sinful flesh. We ought to listen to
Him. What's he got to say? Well, he
says this. He says, Come unto me, all ye
that labor and are heavy laden, I'll give you rest. I'll deliver
you. I'll set you free. I'll give
you heaven for your home. I'll give you hope that will
enable you to continue on. I'll take care of your present,
and I'll take care of your future. I'll give you an inheritance
in heaven. See? That's what the Son of God,
that's what He came for. He came to save sinners like
you and me, who are by nature in my day, against God. He came to do that. If we don't
listen to Him, who will we listen to? Who will you lend an ear
to if you don't lend an ear to Him? He came to save sinners. If you're
a sinner, He came to save you. If you're a sinner and you know
you're a sinner, well, then you're a candidate for God's salvation. You're a candidate for the mercy
of God if you don't deserve mercy. If you deserve mercy, well, then
you'll just go on and go to hell. If you deserve it, But if you
don't deserve it, and you know you don't deserve it, and you
know you ought to have been in hell a long time ago, like I
know I ought to have been, well, then you stand on that platform
of who you are by nature a sinner without hope and helpless and
hopeless in yourself to do anything about it, then there's mercy
for you. Mercy for you. But as long as
you've got something in your hand to offer God, He don't want any
of that. The Lord Jesus Christ came to be the perfect Savior.
to make a complete atonement, a full atonement for all your
sins and misgivings. Come to do that. Hear ye Him. If you don't hear
Him, who are you going to hear? Now, see, He comes to be the
Savior. That's His business, to save sinners. Now, He came
and provided a perfect salvation. for all who will receive Him,
any and all, any member of Adam's fallen race that needs a Savior
to save him from his sins. The Lord Jesus Christ welcomes
him with open arms if he is a sinner, if he knows what he is. Our Lord
said, Come, and I'll give you rest. I'll give you rest. Well,
if we don't listen to Him, who are we going to listen to? Now,
He came. That's what He came to do. He
didn't come to settle petty disputes. Well, you remember they came
to our Lord one time, some of the Pharisees, and they said,
Well, my brother died, and I married his wife. No. They said, My brother died,
and I had another brother, and he married his wife. And he died.
And another brother, he married his wife and he died. Now he
said, when this thing is all over, whose wife is she going
to be? Our Lord didn't come to settle petty disputes and local
temporal problems and affairs and matters pertaining to this
world. He didn't come to do that. He
came to seek and to save. That was His business, to save
people, not to settle. petty disputes, and he came with
the perfect salvation. To save any sinner that desires
to be saved. Any. It doesn't make any difference
to him if he's a sinner. If he knows how helpless and hopeless
he is, he can't save himself, then he's a candidate. Hear him. Hear what he says. Come unto
me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. I'll give you rest. Rest for your soul. I heard it. I heard it years
ago. I came then, and I came the day
after, and the day after, and the day after, and I came yesterday,
and I came today, and by the grace of God, I'll come tomorrow.
Just keep coming. Just keep coming. Just keep coming
until the last breath I have, and I'll be with Him. I won't
have to come. I'll be with Him. See what I'm saying? This is
a great salvation, isn't it? Great salvation. That's in our
God. Folks, worried about what God
did before the foundation of the world? I ain't worried about
what God did before the foundation of the world. You don't know who's the elect
and who's not the elect until you come to Him. When you come
to Him, you'll find out. You'll find out until you get
to Him. But all right, I'm going to quit
there. Hear ye him, this my beloved
Son, whom I am well pleased, hear ye him. And the disciples
heard it, and they fell on their face, and were so afraid. And when they had lifted up their
eyes, they saw an old man save Jesus only." Well, that's who
we see, isn't it? Jesus only. Let's stand and we'll
be dismissed. Jesus only. Father in Heaven, thank You for
Him. Oh, who You sent, Father, to
fulfill Thy will and purpose, to accomplish salvation for His
people. Oh, we thank You, Father, that
we have hope that we're in that number. Lord, we've come with all of
our sins and our shame and our guilt. We trust in Him. We own Him, Father, as our Redeemer. May everybody understand my voice. Oh Lord, own Him. Own Him. Come to Him. Cling to Him. And count Him to
be worthy to be their Savior. For it is in His name and for
His glory we pray. Amen.