from the book of Luke, verse
26, and in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God
unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin. espoused to a man whose name
was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her
and said, Hail, thou art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. The angel came in unto her and
said, Hail, thou art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed
art thou among women. Well, it's a well-known fact,
I guess, that the Roman Catholics pay an honor to Mary hardly inferior
to that which they pay His blessed Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. As
a matter of fact, they say that she was conceived without sin,
that is, without original sin. Mary, they came to that particular
doctrine or dogma many years later than New Testament Christianity. But they finally arrived at that
understanding, and they say that she is conceived without sin.
held up by those of the Roman Catholic persuasion for the most
part as an object of worship. And as a matter of fact, they
even pray to her as a mediator between God and man. Now, I'm
telling you, and I think you know that there's not the slightest
warrant for all of this homage and honor that the Roman Catholics
pay to marry. There's no warrant for it in
the Bible, neither in the passages that I've read or about to read
or any other place in the Bible. But in all fairness, I do want
to admit this, that there has never been any woman that was
ever so highly favored and honored as Mary. One woman Think of it. One woman out of the countless
millions of women would be the means whereby God would be made
manifest in the flesh. One woman. And so I believe,
brethren, that in all fairness, that she was highly honored. She was highly honored by God
and highly favored among men because of that. but certainly
she is not to be worshipped, and certainly she was not conceived
without original sin. But I want you to remember this,
that you and I, we can have a relationship with God in Christ far superior,
I believe, and far closer and nearer than a flesh and blood
relationship. And I think that you'll agree
to that, those of you that are believers here. this evening. We'll understand that you have
a relationship with God in Christ, or even a relationship with your
brothers and sisters in Christ that is sweeter and dearer and
closer than the relationship that you have with flesh and
blood, mother and father, sons and daughters. We can have a
relationship, I believe, far closer than flesh and blood. You remember this verse of Scripture
that says, Whosoever doeth the will of God, the same is my brother,
my sister, and my mother, whoever does the will of God. There's
a lady one time who cried out in the Bible, and she said, Blessed
is the womb that bare thee. And he said, Blessed is he that
doeth the will of God. So we can't have a closer relationship
than flesh and blood. Well, I want you to see that.
Hail, thou art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed
art thou among women. And when she saw him, she saw
the angel, Angel Gabriel. She was troubled at his saying,
and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be,
or what manner of greeting this should be to her. And the angel
said unto her, Fear not, Mary. for thou hast found favor with
God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive
in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name
Jesus. He shall be great, and shall
be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God shall give unto
him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over
the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be
no end." I want to talk to you for just a little bit here this
evening from four words in verse 32. The first four words, He shall
be great. He shall be great! Well, I guess I couldn't tell out to the fullest, couldn't even
approach it really, what these four words really mean. He shall
be great. But I think that these words
here refer, at least in this context, they refer to the humanity
or to the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. For it is
asked to his humanity that he was born of Mary. This is the
context. The context has to do with the
angel announcing the conceiving of this holy thing in the womb
of Mary. So I'm sure that in the context
here, the four words have reference to the humanity or the human
nature of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it was said to her before
the birth of the Lord Jesus. Now, this is what I want you
to see. I want to be able to tell you He shall be great, and
I want to be able to tell you that He is great. But before
I tell you that, let me tell you this in order that you might
see that He is great. Now, He was not great. when he
was just a little baby and hung on his mother's breast. You couldn't
say that he was great then. Here he was, two months old,
three months old, four months old, ten months old. Here he
was, hanging on his mother's breast. He was not great then. And when he grew up and was despised
and rejected of men, he was not called great then. He was so
poor, the Bible says, that he had no place where he could lay
his head. He said, the foxes have holes
and the birds have nests. But he said, the Son of Man hath
nowhere to lay his head. Now in the esteem of the great
ones, the noble ones of that day, This is what they said of
the Lord Jesus Christ. They said, He's just an ignorant
Galilean. We know not whence He is. We do not know where He come
from. We do not know who He is. He's an ignorant Galilean. Well,
who thought the Lord Jesus Christ great when He was sold For the
price of a slave, thirty pieces of silver. No one evidently thought
he was so great then, because he was sold for thirty pieces
of silver. Who thought him great when he
was covered with a bloody sweat? Who thought him great when he
was blindfolded and spat upon and led about by the Roman soldiers
and finally hung between two thieves and crowned with a crown
of thorns? Who thought him great when his
nakedness was exposed to the ugliness of this world? Well,
this very man. This very man who was despised
and rejected of men and spit upon and abused and humiliated
sits now on the right hand of God the Father. He sits now on
his Father's throne. As a man, as a man, the Lord
Jesus Christ was anointed as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. As a man, as a man, he has been
lifted up from the lowest depths of degradation and poverty and
set to the greatest heights that man could aspire and ever reach
to do what? To reign forever. The Lord Jesus Christ. You remember,
we call him the first deacon there in the book of Acts, or
the first martyr we call him, Stephen. He was martyred for
the cause and the claims of the Lord Jesus. And it was said that
Stephen said this as he had become the recipient of these stones
from these God hating, Christ rejecting Jewish people. He said, Behold, I see the heavens
opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. The
Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. As a man! As a man! He was anointed King
of Kings, Lord of Lords. As a man! He was elevated! He was lifted from the lowest
depths to the highest heights of glory that He might reign
forever. Well, I wish for the tongue of
men and the tongue of angels with which I could be able and
qualified to set forth the fullness of these four words. He shall
be great. But I know, I know that He, the
Lord Jesus Christ, is such a one that no oratory can ever reach
the height of His glory. So I'll just have to say, In simple words, from a simple
preacher, I'll have to say, He is great. He's great. He's great from every point of
view. He's great from every side that
you look upon the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is great. Great from every point of view.
And that's a large truth. And I'm not able to tackle it,
and I won't attempt to tackle that particular truth here tonight. But I just want to mention a
few things that sets forth His greatness. Number one, He shall
be great, and He is great. in the perfection of His nature. That is, He, the Lord Jesus Christ,
is Light of Light. He is very God of very God. He is peerless. He is incomparable. He is divine and therefore unique. He is, the book of Hebrews says,
He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. I am saying, brethren, that He
is great in the perfection of His nature. I am saying that
He is God manifest in the flesh. I am saying that He is a very
God of very God. I am saying that He is also man.
He is also man. He is not humanity deified. He is not Godhead humanized. He is God and He is man. The
Lord Jesus Christ Before I was born, the angel
Gabriel was sent from God with a message to a woman whose name
was Mary, and he said, Mary, he shall be great! He shall be great. He shall be
great! And he shall be called the Son
of the Most Highest. And he shall reign forever. His kingdom, there shall be no
end. This Lord Jesus Christ was great
in His perfection in that He is God and He is man. I can't explain that, but nevertheless,
that's true. And it's true, brethren, He is
all that God is, our Lord Jesus Christ. He is all that God is. I was talking to a fellow the
other day, The custom carpet there. Well, just to show you
in the province of God. I just bought a little piece
of carpet, two foot wide, four foot long
maybe. We were talking a little bit
and he said, what do you do for a living? And I said, as little as I can
get out of. That's all I do. Don't do very much. Well, he
said, I ought to know you. And I said, I don't think you
know me. I said, well, I'm a preacher. I preach out there at the Baptist
Church. He said, your name's Richardson. I said, yeah. He said, well,
you used to preach on the radio. And I said, yeah. And he said,
I used to listen to you. He said, I worked for the Reilly
Tarr and Chemical Company. And he said, I used to listen
to you. And he said, boy, he said, the manager of the Reilly
Tarr and Chemical, he said, boy, you really got to him one day
and you're preaching. He said, he was a Roman Catholic,
but he said, you really got to him. He said, his heart was moved. And I said, well, I didn't think
a single solitary soul ever heard me preach. I said, I really didn't,
but I'm glad that you did. And he said, well, what you said
was right. And one thing led to another, and he used to tell
me, he said, I used to be a Christian Missionary Alliance man, but
I moved from the Christian Missionary Alliance over to the Nazarenes.
He said, but I wonder about them Nazarenes. He said, I just wonder.
He said, what are you? He said, you're a preacher now,
You profess to have studied the Bible a little bit, and he said,
now listen, I want you to tell me, what do you think about the
doctrine of the Nazarenes, which they say, or a doctrine in the
Bible which the Nazarenes have found somewhere in the Bible
there, that teaches a second work of grace? That after you
receive the Lord Jesus Christ, then there is something more.
There's something more that you receive, something better. He
said, what do you think about that? And I said, well, I can
answer it like this. I said, can you improve on Christ?
I said, can you improve on the Lord Jesus Christ? I said, if
you've got Jesus Christ, I said, you've got all there is to get. You can't get no more. I said,
did you ever think about that? He said, I never thought about
that. I said, that's just like a fellow asked me, he said, do
you believe that when we die we're going to have rewards in
heaven? And I said, well, I don't know whether I believe it or
not, but I said, I'll try to answer your question this way.
I said, what more can you have, what more can you want than Christ?
If you have Christ, is there anything else inferior to Christ? Or anything else superior to
Christ? Nothing. If you've got Christ,
you've got everything, haven't you? If you got Christ, what
would a second work of grace do that you haven't already got?
What would it do? No such thing as a second work
of grace. Well, they said, well, what they
said is that you just keep grinding this thing
out and the first thing you know, That sin is burnt completely
out of you and you don't have no sinful nature. And he said,
I was talking to the preacher and I asked him, I said, Preacher,
if that's so, if we have this sinful nature burnt out of us,
won't we be just like God? And he said he wouldn't give
me an answer. And I said, well, the reason why I wouldn't give
you an answer is because he professes and a whole lot of his members
profess to believe that they've received the second work of grace
and their human, this sinful nature has been eradicated and
burned out of them, but they're not acting and looking and talking
and living like God. That's really neat he didn't
say that. They're not, brethren. There's no such a thing as a
doctrine like that. Not in the Bible. Maybe somewhere
else, but you can't find it in the Bible. He is all that God
is. And if you've got Him, you've
got all that God is. Can I say it any plainer than
that? If you've got Him, Christ, you've got all that God is. Because
He is all that God is. He's not inferior to God. He
thought it not robbery to be equal with God. Our Lord Jesus
Christ, He's all that God is. And all that man is as God created
him. He is God and He is man. All
that God is and all that man is as God created him in the
Garden of Eden. Our Lord Jesus Christ is. He
shall be great. I said He's great in the perfection
of His nature. He is truly God as if He were
not man, and yet as completely and perfectly man as if He were
not God. I don't understand that. I don't
understand it. But that is what the Scriptures
teach. And I believe it. I bow to it. Just think about
this for a little bit. Just let this be as a dainty
morsel that rolls around your tongue. And before you digest
it, just leave it roll around your tongue and taste the sweetness
of it. Think about it. A perfect manhood
without spot or stain of original or actual sin. That's what he
is. That's who he is. out a spot
or stain of original or actual sin. A perfect man. And yet, as much God as if He
was never man. That's who He is. The Lord Jesus Christ. Well,
He's a great Savior. A great Savior. I could talk
about how great He was in His life by example that He has left
to us. Went about doing what? Went about
doing good. Doing good, the good that our
Lord Jesus Christ did. Oh, I could talk about His gentleness
and His kindness. I could talk about his obedience,
how great he was in obedience, but I haven't got all that time.
Just let me say that he's a great Savior, a great Savior, the Lord
Jesus. It was a great ruin in which
he come to restore. You and I were ruined. Ruined
by the fall. Ruined and bruised by the fall. Remember, I told you this. There's
only two men, actual mature, full men, and that was the first
Adam and the second Adam. We stand in one of the two of
them right now. We either stand in the first
Adam or we stand in the second Adam. Now, we all at one time
stood in the first Adam. And that's how the ruin came
about. He rebelled as our representative. You remember I told you here
the other day that we came from his loins. God created Adam out
of the dust of the earth. And after Adam rebelled against
God, we came from his loins. We came from fallen Adam. That's
where we come from. And we're ruined. We're ruined.
It was a great ruin when we stood on our iron feet and rebelled
against the Most High God and told God that we'll do what we
want to do. We don't think everything that
you said about us is true. We don't think that you're as
holy as you say you are. And we think that we'll just
make it on our own. Well, we've got some ideas about
this. That's what we said. That's what we said in Adam,
in the first Adam. We rebelled against God and we're
ruined. The virus of this terrible disease
of rebellion entered into our bloodstream. And we became saturated
from the crown of our head to the soles of our feet with one
mass of corruption and pollution and rebellion against God. Hated
the very name of God in our hearts. And our Lord Jesus Christ came
to recover, to recover that which was lost in the first Adam. He
came to recover us. He came to pay that which was
our due. I'll tell you, brethren, the devils laughed. The devils
and the demons laughed and triumphed when they saw God's handiwork
spoiled. When they seen the sin and rebellion
in men and angels, they laughed. They laughed. Oh, what great
sin covered us. If that's so, brethren, it took
a great Savior to pay what was our due. And our Lord Jesus Christ
did. Do you remember when Aaron the
high priest, who is a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ, do
you remember when he offered the bullock? When he offered
the goat? When he offered the ram? When
he offered the lamb? He offered them unto God, but
no result came from those offerings. Why? because the blood of bullocks
and the blood of goats and the blood of heifers can never take
away sin. They can never provide a perfect
conscience because they are not perfect sacrifices. But our great
Savior came and offered Himself up unto God without spot and
without wrinkle, that we might have what? That we might have
a great pardon from our great guilt. A great Savior dying in
a great sinner's stead in order that we might have a great pardon
from a great guilt. My soul. a great pardon. And the Bible
says that God hath put away our sin. He put away our sin through
the Lord Jesus Christ who paid for our sin in His own body. And it's said that our sin, which
is so great, and our Savior, which is so great, that God cast
this great sin behind His back. And it says that He will do what
He cannot do. He'll not remember our sins and
iniquities no more. He said He'll do what He can't
do. I'll not remember their sins and iniquity anymore. So great
He ever lives. Our Lord Jesus Christ now who
died in our place. died in our place and bore in
his own person that which God's justice and law demanded from
us, he gladly and willingly and cheerfully offered himself as
a sacrifice unto God, and he received in his own person that
which was due me, the wrath of God being poured out upon sin. He did that in my stead, in my
place, in my room. He bore my iniquities, our Lord
Jesus Christ. And I did more than that. He
bore them. He shall be great. He bore our
sins. He bore our judgment. What else did He do? He made
us accepted before God by His doing and His
dying and His intercessory work on God's right hand right now. If the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ, if the intercessory work of the Lord Jesus Christ doth
not avail right now, then that which He did on the cross is
of no account. Let me show you something. If
you'll turn with me to the book of Exodus. Let's turn over there
real quick to chapter 20. What is it? Chapter 28 of the
book of Exodus. I want you to see something here.
Some of you, I suspect, are like myself. You're harassed. You're harassed many times by
doubts and fears. As to your spiritual condition,
sometimes you wonder. You say, well, am I his or am
I not? Do I really belong to Him? If
I belong to God, would I have such thoughts as I have? If I've
really been born again as I think I have, can I really think like
I've been thinking? And you're harassed by doubts
and fears. and you turn and begin, in retrospect,
examine yourself, and you look in your cold, lifeless, black,
wandering heart, and you can't find any relief there. None to
be found there. You can find no assurance by
looking in your heart. No, you can look there from now
to doomsday. You cannot find any assurance
there. Look, if you will. Uncover. Uncover. Investigate. Examine
every thought and every motive behind every thought. And I'll
guarantee you, you'll never find no assurance there. That's not
where it's to be found. That's not where it's to be found.
Assurance is to be found by looking at the object of your heart. Let me show you something here.
In this 28th chapter, of the book of Leviticus, verse 38.
He describes to us here the clothing that Aaron the high priest and
his sons shall wear. And in particular, he describes
Aaron's clothes, his breeches, his girdle, his coat, and the
collars and the pomegranates and the tassels on his skirt. And he describes the ephod and
the breastplate. He describes all of that. He talks about the glittering
jewels, the bright, bright luster of these jewels. And he has jewels
inscribed in his breastplate here. And there are various diamonds,
and not only diamonds, but onyx stone, and rubies, and beryls,
and precious stones, and they glitter, they glitter, and they
luster. And only God can see them, because
He goes into the holies of holies once a year to make an offering. for the sins of the people that
he represents. He goes in there as a representative
of the people. He represents all the people.
Can you see that? Aaron represents all the people.
And he goes in there once a year. And the reason he's got them
bells on his skirt and those pomegranates. He can't stop when
he's in there. If he stops, the people are listening
out here. And if they don't hear those
bells ringing, they know he's stopped and they know that guy
will die. They know that that guy will die because he's not
doing the work that the high priest was designed to do. And
he'll die. Well anyhow, as he goes in there
and he has all these Jews, twelve of them, one for each tribe.
And he goes in there and he and God, God alone. And God sees
these are representative of the people that he represents. And
they shine. They shine like the stars. Oh,
what a brilliant luster these stones give forth. And God is
pleased with them. The world outside, they can't
see it. They can't see anything about
you. They can see your faults and your failures. Easy to find
them. And I'll tell you they can see
them. They'll tell you about your shortcomings real quick.
But they don't know. that you have one that stands
before God. You've got a high priest that
represents you, and he stands before God on his breastplate. He's full of jewels that shine
with brilliance. But that ain't all. That ain't
all. This fellow's got a miter on
his head. A miter. And God said, now you take and
put on that miter, listen, it says in verse 36, and thou shalt
make a plate. of pure gold, and grave upon
it like the engravings of a signet. Holy in us to the Lord. You are to take this plate of
gold, solid gold, that is up here on your forehead, and engrave
on that, Holy in us unto the Lord. Now listen to the next
verse. Well, let me say, I am saying
that our Lord Jesus Christ, He shall be great. I said that.
He shall be great in regard to the perfection of His nature.
He'll be great in His substitutionary work. He'll be great in His intercessory
work. He ever lives to make intercession
for poor sinners. He ever lives to represent those
for whom He died. Just as Aaron represented the
people here in Old Testament days when he went into the presence
of God, even the Lord Jesus Christ represents His people. He's their
representative. We stand in Him. We're like He
is. Now listen, with that in mind,
listen to this. And it, what's he talking about? He's talking about that plate
of pure gold, verse 38. And it shall be, not maybe, not
I hope that's where they'll place it. It shall be upon Aaron's
forehead. that Aaron may bear the iniquity
of the holy things which the children of Israel shall howl
in their holy gifts. And it shall be always, always
upon the high priest's forehead when he goes into the presence
of God to make atonement for the people that he represents,
sin. It shall always be upon his forehead
that they, the people that he represents, may be accepted before
the Lord. Do you see what I'm talking about,
Pat? Huh? Oh, you look within. You say,
well, I need some assurance. My poor, cold, wandering heart
is harassed by doubts and fears. I'm looking within, trying to
find some assurance. You can't find it there. You're
looking in the wrong place. You've got to look yonder to
Him who's the object of your heart, who died for you. Say
the Lord Jesus, well, who lives for you? He lives for me on God's
right hand, and He pleads for me. Well, do you have any righteousness? None that I claim to. None that
I own myself. Well, then how can you ever expect
to enter into the glories of the world to come if you haven't?
He's my righteousness. He is my righteousness. I stand
in Him. He represents me. And holiness
unto the Lord, my holiness is inscribed on that pure plate
of gold, and it is on the forehead of my Savior continually. That
is what it teaches, brother. I am not making something out
of nothing. I am just telling you the truth
here. Oh, we are represented by and accepted in the Beloved. We are represented by the Lord
Jesus Christ and accepted before God in the Lord Jesus Christ
and His holiness is our holiness. If you had to depend upon your
holiness to satisfy the demands of God's law, you wouldn't last
20 seconds. This wouldn't do it. This wouldn't
do it. Oh no. His holiness is my holiness. If His holiness is not my holiness,
then I'm lost. I'm lost as a goose. I'm a gone
Jesse, that's all there are to it. And I'll tell you this, the
more deeply we become acquainted with our own personal vileness,
and the more we enter into this humiliating truth that in us
dwelleth, dwelleth, liveth, dwelleth no good thing! We often leave that thing, no
good in us. We say, no good in us, but the
Scriptures say that there is no good thing in us, not anything
that is good in us. And I say the more that we become
acquainted with ourselves, And the more we enter into this humiliating
truth, the more that we'll bless God for this soul-sustaining
truth which is inscribed upon this golden plate, holding us
to the Lord. I'm telling you, Fred, He's a
great Savior. He's a great Savior. Not only did He pay for my sins,
everything that the law of God demanded, He paid for. He paid
for it. He paid my due. I paid for his
sin. I paid everything. I didn't make
a down payment. I paid in full. I paid all that was due. My holiness. My holiness. My holiness is His
holiness. I represent Him. He's in me. As I stand, as I sit or stand
on the right hand of God or sit on my Father's throne, He sits
with me. He sits with me. And God views me in Him. God
doesn't look on me like I am now. He couldn't. I'm full of
sin, deceit, and hypocrisy. At my very best state, I'm what? Make-believe. I'm vanity. It looks on Him. You say, well,
if I believed that, I'd sin all I wanted. Well, I do. Just one
time is a little too much for me. I don't want to sin. Do you? You want to sin deliberately,
premeditate, plan, plan some sin? No, I don't want to do that. Sin is what fastened my Savior
to the cross. Sin is what caused my Savior
to say, My soul is exceeding sorrowful and heavy even unto
death. And He said, God, my Father,
If it's possible, if it's possible in the realm of redemption, if
it's possible, let this cup pass over me. Nevertheless, not my
will, but thy will be done. Oh no, I don't plan no sin. I've got enough without planning
it. Oh no. Well, you see what I'm
talking about? When we see this, that golden
plate, we see the Lord Jesus on God's right hand. make an
intercession for us, our righteousness, our holiness, the more we're
going to bless God for this soul-sustaining truth. Listen, it shall be always,
that's what I like, it shall be always upon His forehead that
they may be accepted before the Lord. That's the only way you
can be accepted. through the Lord Jesus Christ. He's great, isn't He? Isn't He
wonderful? Listen now, I said here that
sometimes we turn our hearts inward and we're harassed by
these doubts and fears and ups and downs in regard to our spiritual
condition. And we have a constant tendency
to look there in order to find some insurance. Why do we do
that? Why do we look to ourselves? We look to God to save us. And
then we start looking to ourselves to keep ourselves saved. Boy,
that's inconsistent. Why do we do that? Why do we
do that? We say, God has saved us in Jesus
Christ. We said that He alone is my Savior. And then we turn right around
and deny that and say, well, I've got to keep myself saved
now. So I just wonder if there's anything about me that will give
me some assurance, that will warrant a little bit of assurance
in my life. And we begin to look in. How many times did I pray
today? How many times did I read the Bible? How many times did
I talk to someone about Jesus? Did I go to church last Sunday?
Or, didn't I go to church? Or, did I do this? Or, did I
do that? Or, did I cuss? Or, did I do this? You don't
have to name them things that I mention. You can find a whole
lot of others you don't have to mention, see. Can't find no
assurance there. Never find it there. But listen.
Oh, can you fix your eye? Can you fix your soul? upon the
object of your affection? Can you fix your soul tonight
and fix your eye upon that golden plate and read that inscription
one more time? One more time, Fred. Holiness
to the Lord. When you despondent, when you
blue, and when you wonder if you belong to Him or not, if
you can fix your eye and rest your eye upon that golden plate,
if you can see Him. He represents somebody. He's
on God's right hand representing somebody. It may be that He's
representing you. I believe He's representing me.
He's representing poor sinners. And I'm a poor sinner, so I qualify. Well, listen. Lastly, I'll say this then real
quick. I want you to see how great that our Lord Jesus Christ
will be in men's eyes when He sits upon the throne and holds
the scale of justice in His hands. How great our Lord Jesus Christ
will be in judgment when He has the scale of justice in His hands
and He is about to mete out that which is due men. for the deeds done in the body,
whether they be good or whether they be bad. And I tell you,
he'll be great then because there'll not be a single solitary soul
that will deny his Godhead then. He will have no adversaries or
enemies then. Oh, no. When the earth is reeling,
and when the sky is crumbling, and when the stars are falling,
and when the sun is as black as pitch, and when the moon is
clothed with the blackness of hair, and the ground is shaken under
the feet, our Lord Jesus Christ will not have any enemies there.
And I think that I hear a cry. I think I hear a series of cries
at that time. It sounds like this. It says,
O mountains, hide us! O mountains, hide us! And I hear
another cry. It says, Rocks, fall upon us
and cover us up! He'll cover us up and hide us
from the wrath of Him who sits before the throne. He'll be great in that judgment. But let me tell you, the mountains will not hide anybody,
and neither will the rocks fall on anybody and hide them from
the wrath of the Lord. He's great. He's great in any
point of view that you look at Him. He's great in His birth. He's great in His life. He's
great in His death. He's great in His resurrection.
He's great in judgment. And He filleth. He filleth the
eternity up with Himself. He is so great that the angels
and cherubims of God constantly sing unto His name, glory, glory,
glory, Lord God Almighty. Omnipotent. He reigneth! He reigneth forever. He's great,
Bob. He's great. He's great. Oh, my
soul. How can you listen to what I've
said this evening and remain callous and cold and your heart
wander? How can you do that? Ah, no man
in his right mind can do it. It must be insane. A man that
can listen to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and just turn
his back and flip his foot and go his way and not have any impressions
whatsoever, good impressions, he must be out of his mind. He
must be mad. He must be insane. I know he's
a fool. I know he's a fool. Oh God, help you if you're here
tonight under the sound of my voice. God help you that God
may come down where you are and arrest you. Get your attention.
Get your attention. Cross your path. Make your weakness
and frailty known to you and reveal unto you that great Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Great Savior. All right. Pray now.