Alright, Ephesians chapter 4,
we'll begin reading in verse 8. This is speaking of the Lord
Jesus, and it says, Wherefore he saith, he's quoting from the
Psalms here, When he ascended up on high, when Christ ascended
up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto
men. Verse 11, And he gave some, apostles,
and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors, and teachers,
for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ." Now, Christ Jesus
has a body. He has a body. God the Father
gave Christ a people before the foundation of the world that
he would be glorified in. This was a people that Christ
would be glorified in. That was God the Father's purpose
of giving the people to Christ was that Christ would be glorified
in them. This was being glorified in this people, in the salvation
of this people. This was the joy that was set
before Christ. We read about that in Hebrews
12. The joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising
the shame. And this was that joy that was
set before Him, being glorified in the salvation of this people. The people is the people that
He purchased with His own blood. We read that in Ephesians 1.14,
His purchased possession. He bought them. He bought them
with His blood. And each member, we're told in
Isaiah 53, is the travail of His soul. Just like a woman travails
with child. That cross was the travail of
His soul. And by the cross, He brought
these children into birth before God. being redeemed, justified
before God. They are the travail of his soul.
Each individual member of this body and each one is the reward
from God to him for his humility and for his suffering. This is
his reward that he will have each member of this body. Each
member of this body makes up the fullness of Christ. The fullness of Him. This is
one of the most assuring words you'll find in all of the scriptures.
It's the most assuring word for believers because it says in
Ephesians 1.22, God the Father gave Him to be the head over
all things to the church and that church is His body, the
fullness of Him which filleth all in all. Now that means that
Christ will not lose one member. of His body. He will not lose
one child that God gave Him, that He died for, that He purchased,
that He'll be glorified in, that He's prevailed for. He won't
lose one. God the Father gave them to Him
to be glorified in. And He shall be. He shall be. Christ satisfied divine justice
for each and every one when He died. It's why we're justified
by Christ. When He by Himself purged our
sins. That means that not one of them
can be condemned a second time to hell because that would make
God unjust. There would be double jeopardy.
Their court case has been settled and they cannot be tried again
for the same crimes. And Christ has the power and
He will see to it that each one of His children are called and
brought to faith in Christ and kept and saved by Him. He will
do that. Now each of us has a body. And
each of us has members in our body. Each one of us. And our
members, each member of our body, do somewhat contribute to the
well-being of the whole body. That's true of believers. But
let me ask you a question. Is anybody here depending on
your little finger to save you? Is anybody here depending on
your little finger to save all the members of your body? Well,
Christ is not dependent on me or you. We're the little finger.
And He's not dependent on any one of us to save His body. He's
the head. He's the head. If you had power
to keep one member of your body from being chopped off, would
you do it? Well, Christ has the power. He
has the power to keep keep even the least member of His body
from being severed from the body. And He won't allow it. He just
won't allow it. Our text teaches us that Christ
shall call and He shall save His people through the means
of gospel preaching, through gospel preaching that Christ
Himself provides. This is as much Christ's glory
as was His work on the cross. He is the head of the church's
body and He fills all in all. Now first of all, we're told
that Christ Himself is the one who provides His ministers. Verse
11 says, and He gave, and He gave, and He still does. We read
there in verse 13, He's going to keep doing this till we all
come in the unity of the faith. He's going to keep doing this
till all His sheep are called into the fold of faith. He's
going to provide preachers. Now, all prophecy is written
concerning Christ. Everything the Old Testament
wrote is concerning Him. He said, they are they which
testify of me. He expounded all the things from
Moses, all the way through the Law and the Prophets, through
the Psalms, the things concerning Himself. This book concerns Him,
the whole thing. That means everything in that
Old Testament Scripture that was prophesied, He must fulfill
it, and He shall fulfill it. Jeremiah 3.15 is one of those
prophecies. And it says, I will, I will give
you pastors according to mine heart. And they shall feed you
with knowledge and understanding. Not with lies, not with falsehood,
not with half-truths, with knowledge and understanding. Jeremiah 23,
verse 4 says, I will set up shepherds over you which shall feed them. I will set up shepherds over
them which shall feed them. Christ is the chief shepherd
and His preachers are under shepherds. And He said, I'll set up shepherds
over them which shall feed them. Now concerning this gospel age
in which we live, this was what Isaiah the prophet wrote. He
said in Isaiah 30, verse 20, Though the Lord give you the
bread of adversity and the water of affliction, Yet shall not
thy teachers be removed into a corner any more. They will
not be removed, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers, and thine
ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way,
walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn
to the left. Now that's the promise. He will provide his ministry. Christ will. And so our text
reads, He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists,
and some pastors and teachers. Now, apostles were the first
and chief office in the church. These were men who were called
by Christ, directly by Christ. And they had their doctrine directly
from Him, taught them in person, face to face. And they had power
given to them from Christ to work miracles that other men
in the church did not have, because the New Testament was being written
by these men. And so, he gave them power, not
only to preach the gospel, but to back it up with miracles.
Hebrews 2 says, God bearing them witness with signs and wonders.
He did that. That it might be manifest these
men were from God. Now, that office doesn't exist,
those powers don't exist anymore. If you hear somebody talking
about they have power to heal and power to speak in languages
they've never learned before, that's what tongues is. If you
hear somebody saying that, it's not so. Those gifts don't exist. And then he gave prophets. These
had a particular gift to interpret Scripture, to interpret the Old
Testament Scripture, particularly prophecy. And they had a gift
to tell future things. Agabus was a prophet. We read
about him in Acts 11. And then Christ gave evangelists.
Now he's still giving these. These are traveling missionaries.
Tuesday night, 7.30, right here, Cody Groover. He's an evangelist. He's a missionary. We're going
to hear from one of Christ's missionaries. He gave pastors
and teachers. Every pastor is a teacher of
the scriptures. But not all teachers in the church
are pastors. Pastors are the shepherds of
the flock. Teachers are those Christ provides
gifts that can teach and preach the gospel who help the pastor.
Christ gives those. He gives the gifts that they
have and He gives them. He provides them. Now, why does
He do it? Well, secondly, we're told Christ gives His ministers,
verse 12, for the perfecting of the saints. For the perfecting
of the saints. This doesn't mean that believers
will grow to be perfect. That's not what it means. Paul
was an old believer when he said, I'm the chief of sinners. We're
not going to grow to be perfect in ourselves. We're sinners.
That's what we are. The old man is what it is and
will be what it is until we go back to the dust. Christ creates
a new man within us. And in that new man, we're created
in righteousness and holiness, but not in the old man. The old
man's sin. What it means here is, Paul said,
whom we preach. We preach Christ, warning every
man, teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every
man perfect in Christ Jesus. That is where our perfection
is, in Christ Jesus. The word perfecting means restoring. It means restoring. It means
setting a dislocated joint. Bones get all out of joint. It
means setting those bones back together like a surgeon sets
a dislocated shoulder. Now, each member of Christ's
body, every one of these children that Christ came to be glorified
in, we became dislocated from the body when we sinned in Adam
in the garden. We all went out of the way. We
became dislocated in ourselves from the body. It's Christ's
job to restore the members, to bring them back together. All
God's elect, all Christ's redeemed, every one of us in our lost and
dead condition is the valley of dry bones. That's what we
are. Turn over to Ezekiel 37. The
Lord used this to illustrate just what I'm declaring to you
now. And I want you to see this. It'll
help you. It's exactly what we're declaring.
It's exactly what our gospel is and exactly how Christ works
through the gospel. He says here in Ezekiel 37.1,
The hand of the Lord was upon me, and He carried me out in
the Spirit of the Lord, and He set me down in the midst of the
valley, which was full of dry bones. And He caused me to pass
by them round about, and behold, there were very many in the open
valley, and lo, they were very dry. You get the picture, so
white, parched, dead, dry, very, very dry bones. And he said unto
me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord
God, thou knowest. And again he said unto me, prophesy."
It means preach. He said, preach upon these bones
and say unto them. Now listen to this. The Lord
said, say this to these dry, dead bones. O ye dry bones, hear
the word of the Lord. You're going to go tell dry bones
to hear? Their dead dry bones. This is
what the Lord told them to say. Say, Here ye dry bones, the word
of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto
these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and
you shall live. God said, I will and you shall.
I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live.
And I will lay sinews upon you. I was just thinking of this.
You know, you talk about the Spirit of Grace working in the
heart, the calling of the Holy Spirit being irresistible. And
He does this work and a man can't resist it. I'll give you a good
illustration right here. A man stops breathing. He completely stops breathing.
His heart stops beating. And they electrocute that man,
they shock that man, and they give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Does that man have any will in him to stop himself from breathing? No, he's going to start breathing.
He can't resist it. He's going to start breathing.
That's what he said, I'll cause breath to enter into you, and
you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you,
and I'll bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin,
and put breath in you, and you shall live. And you shall know
that I am the Lord. Now that's our gospel. That's
our gospel. You see, I go and I say, I sit
here and I preach and I say, hear you dry bones. And then
I tell you what God says He's going to do. That's our message. That's our message. And now watch
this, verse 7. So I prophesied as I was commanded.
And as I prophesied, I preached, there was a noise. And behold,
a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. That's
what this word perfecting means, restoring the bones, setting
the bones. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh
came upon them, and the skin covered them, but there was no
breath in them. Then said he unto me... You know,
the Lord, He's going to assemble His people to hear the gospel.
And a lot of people come to hear the gospel, and they're dead.
They're still dead. Who brought them? Christ brought
them. He brought them. But now, look, He's going to
give them life, too. Watch. Verse 9, "...then said he unto
me, Prophesy unto the wind." This is the second part of the
ministry. Pray for God to bless the Word. Pray for the Holy Spirit
to bless the Word. Remember Peter said, we'll give
ourselves to the Word and prayer. To preaching the Gospel and praying
God. This is what he said, preach
this Word to them and then pray God bless the Word. Look, "...Prophesy,
son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God." Come
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain
that they may live. So I prophesied as He commanded
me. And the breath came into them, and they lived. And they
stood upon their feet an exceeding great army. And then He said
unto me, Son of man, These bones are the whole house of Israel.
They represent all my people, my elect from among the Jew and
the Gentile. Behold, they say our bones are
dried and our hope is lost. We're cut off for our parts. They say there's no hope for
us. We're lost. We're dry bones. We can't be
assembled. We can't be saved. Therefore,
preach and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O
my people, my people, I will open your graves. That's what
we are. We're dead men walking. We're
walking around in our graves. God said, I will open your graves,
and I will cause you to come up out of your graves, and I'll
bring you into the land of Israel, into His heavenly Jerusalem,
His church, and you shall know that I am the Lord when I've
opened your graves. This is when you're going to
know God is really God. Why do I preach what I preach? Men will
say this is the most foolish thing I've ever heard in my life.
Why in the world would a man dedicate his life to preaching
this? I've experienced it. That's why. And you won't believe
it until you've experienced it. You'll go on and say this is
just foolishness and you'll die and go to hell that way. Unless
God has mercy on you. Yet you are at the mercy of God,
like it or not. Every man is. Every man is. He
says, And when I have opened your graves, O my people, and
when I have brought you up out of your graves, and when I shall
put My Spirit in you, you shall live. And I shall place you in
your own land. Then you shall know that I, the
Lord, have spoken and performed it, saith the Lord. You see,
the preacher has no power to do this. I don't blame folks
for not wanting to come to church. I don't blame them for that.
Churches, preachers are the main ones to blame. Preachers have
exercised a so-called authority they don't have. They can't affect
this work. They can't make men. They can
clean up the outside of the cup with rules and regulations and
morals and things like that. But they can't give a man a new
heart. They can't put breath in him, spiritual life in him.
And because of that, Paul said, in these days that we live in
now, he said, you know what people are going to say? That truth
is going to be evil spoken of. When they hear the truth of God,
which I'm telling you now, They're going to count it just like the
rest of the garbage out there and say, it's all just foolishness
to me. Because they've been whipped
and beat and used and bruised and their pockets have been emptied
from harlotting no good sorry preachers. The preacher can't
do this. He can't. Christ sets the members
in his body through the word he speaks affectionately in the
heart, through the Holy Spirit, through his preacher preaching,
thus saith the Lord. The scripture says, now hath
God set the members, every one of them, in the body as it hath
pleased him. Now, if we will repair our bodily
health, we get sick and we're going to repair our bodily health.
Where do we go? We go to the doctor. And when
we go to the doctor, we hear what the doctor says, and we
do what the doctor says. We follow the doctor's orders.
And we don't expect that we're going to get well necessarily
on the first trip to the doctor. We got to go back again, and
we go back again, and we go back again, and we keep doing what
the doctor tells us to do. The great physician is the Lord
Jesus Christ. And this is the means He has
ordained for the saving of His people, the preaching of the
gospel. And He says, hear, hear, hear, hear, hear. Well, I can't
hear. He says, tell them, hear, hear. Keep coming and keep hearing.
Keep coming and keep hearing. If you can assemble as a dry
bone, it's because He's going to bring you together. And if
you can believe, it's because He's going to put life in you.
This is His work to do. As many as are ordained to eternal
life shall believe. They shall. Alright, here's the
third thing. He tells us Christ gives His
ministers for the work of the ministry. Verse 12 says, for
the work of the ministry. What's the work of the ministry?
The work of the ministry. First of all is to preach the
gospel to the lost. Turn to 2 Timothy 2. 2 Timothy
2 verse 10. Some men say, well if you believe
people are elected unto salvation, why do you even preach? Why don't
you just preach to the elect? We would if we knew who they
were, but we don't know who they are. There may be some sitting
here today that are lost and don't know God from a hole in
the ground, but they might be elect. And if they are, and if
this is the season of His love, you're going to hear the gospel
today. I mean hear it in the heart that He's made new. So
we preach the gospel for the elect's sake. We don't know who
they are. 2 Timothy 2.10. Paul said, therefore
I endure all things for the elect's sake. You know, preaching is
not pleasant. It's not all roses. There's a lot of things you have
to endure. He said, and I endure these for the elect's sake. Why? That they may also obtain the
salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. We
preach. This is the work of the ministry.
We preach to the lost. that the elect of God may obtain
eternal salvation in Christ. Now secondly, the work is to
oversee the church. Look at 1 Peter 5. 1 Peter 5. 1 Peter 5 and look at verse 1. Peter says, the elders which
are among you. He's speaking here to the preachers.
The elders which are among you I exhort. who am also an elder,
and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker
of the glory that shall be revealed. Feed the flock of God which is
among you, feed the flock of God which is among you, taking
the oversight. Just do it. Just take the oversight
of them. Look over them, look over them,
feed them. Look over them, feed them. Taking
the oversight, not by constraint, not because you think you're
going to get something. by doing it, not because you've got to
be forced to do it, but willingly. Not for filthy lucre, not for
a vain reward, not for money, not for all the things that prestige
and glory and the things that men go into the ministry for,
make it a vocation, an occupation. He said, but of a ready mind.
Neither as being lords over God's heritage. There's one Lord. There's one Master. And I'm not
that Master. I'm not that Lord. I can't affect
any of this. I can't make any of this happen.
I can't even make you come here. I can't make you come here. Much
less make you hear. Much less make you believe. So
why do I want to try to Lord over you? I can't do that. And
he says, but being examples to the flock. Here's what I can
do. Here's what I can do. I can trust God. I can believe
God. And I can do as God has commanded
me and just preach His Word to you. And in that, I can be an
example to you. To wait on God. To trust that
God will do it. What I do when my brother or
my sister is out of the way and they are not acting like they
ought to act and they are about to forsake the gospel. I know. I'm going to follow the example
of my pastor. I'm going to preach the gospel to them. I'm going
to tell them the truth of Christ. And I'm going to pray to God
to save them. And I'm going to wait on God
to do it. Verse 4, he says, And when the chief shepherd shall
appear, when the chief shepherd shall appear, you shall receive
a crown of glory. That's our crown. Glory with
Christ. Glory with Christ. That's all we all want. Glory
with Christ. Here's the third thing it is.
It's to teach all things Christ has commanded. I'll just give
you this in Matthew 28 verse 19. He said, Go therefore into
all the nations. He said, All power in heaven
and earth is mine. He says, Go therefore into all
the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost. Teaching them. This is what comes
before the baptizing. Teaching them. Teaching them
to observe all things. Whatsoever I have commanded you,
and lo, I'll be with you always. Christ's preachers don't have
any private doctrine. Preachers will say this. Preachers
will say, you know, what you preach, I don't preach that from
the pulpit. Now, I may say it to sinners
individually. Once believers who he knows are
not going to be offended by it, he may talk about the doctrine
of election too. But he says, I'm not going to
get up and talk about that in front of everybody because if he does, it will be
offensive. and mentally, and he'll lose
his money, and he'll lose his house, and he'll lose his car,
and he'll lose the church, and he'll lose all the marketing
crap that he's using to get people to come to the church. And he
said, That's why I don't do it. But God's preachers don't have
private doctrine. We don't have doctrine we tell
to some people, not to others. We preach the same thing to everybody.
Christ said, say everything I've said. Christ commands us. Look
at Matthew 15. Christ commands us to teach that
sin's in the heart. Sin's a heart matter. It's the
very nature that's corrupt in a man. This is the problem that
men aren't being taught. They're not being taught. They're
depraved completely, totally, thoroughly. They're not being
told they're dry bones. They're not being told they can
do nothing. Men are being told this. And so men think that salvation
is cleaning up the outside of the cup, turning over a new leaf,
getting some morality about you, watching Andy Griffith and learning
some good morals and learning how to live. Your mom and your
daddy, I hope, taught you that. And I think Scripture says we
know that in our heart by nature. You know stealing somebody else's
chicken is wrong by nature. That's why you hide when you
do it. But look, this is what Christ said to teach. Matthew
15, 8. The people, these people were teaching men. They were
teachers. They were teaching sinners to live moral. They were
teaching men what men teach today. And Christ was offended by what
they left out. It's not the moral living that's
wrong. It's what they left out. Look here, Matthew 15, 8. He
said, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and
they honor me with their lips. But their heart is far from me.
In vain they worship me. teaching for doctrines the commandments
of men. They're teaching man-made commandments
as my doctrine. And he called the multitude and
he said unto them, Hear and understand, not that which goes into the
mouth defiles a man, but that which comes out of the mouth,
that defiles a man. And then came his disciples and
said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended after
they heard this saying? These preachers got offended
at you. These preachers have been to seminary. They know how
to preach now. And Christ said, Every plant
which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.
They shall be rooted up, he said, and let them alone. What? He didn't say go in there
and try to proselyte them. He said don't go in there and
try to convert them. Leave them alone. They be blind leaders
of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind,
both shall fall into the ditch. And then answered Peter and said
unto him, Declare unto us this parable. And Jesus said, Are
you also yet without understanding? Do not ye yet understand that
whatsoever enters in at the mouth, it goes in the belly, and it
goes out in the drought? But those things which proceed
out of the mouth come from the heart. They come from the heart. And they defile the man. You
see, the source of the defilement is the heart. For out of the
heart proceed evil thoughts, and murders, and adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things
which defile a man. But to eat with unwashing hands,
they don't defile a man. And that's what men are being
taught. Don't drink this. Oh boy, don't eat, don't drink,
don't chew, and don't hang around with girls that do. That's what
folks are being taught. That's not what defiles a man.
The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink. The Kingdom of God
is giving a new heart, being made a new creature by Christ
the Lord. And Christ told Nicodemus, that
which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of
the Spirit is spirit. You can't do this. Christ has
to do it. He said, you must be born again.
And Christ commands us to teach this, Matthew 5. Look here, Matthew
5. He commands us to preach that
Christ alone came to fulfill the law because we must have
Christ for our righteousness. He said, verse 17, Think not
that I came to destroy the law of the prophets. I came not to
destroy, but to fulfill. To fulfill. It doesn't say there,
I came to fill them up just a little ways so you can fill them up
the rest of the way. That's not what it says. It says,
I came to fill the law full. And He says, "...for verily I
say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle,
one dot, and one crossing of the tee, shall in no wise pass
from the law till all be fulfilled." God's righteous. He demands His
law be magnified and honored. And we couldn't do this. This
is why Christ came. He came to do it. I will be pleased
with His righteousness. He shall magnify and honor the
law. He says, Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least
commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the
least in the kingdom of heaven. All the saints in heaven are
going to be describing men that are in hell who taught false
doctrine, they're going to be describing them as the least,
the very least. Because they will be. Because
here's what they do, they teach men that you can keep the law.
And to teach that a man can keep the law, here's what you have
to do, this necessity, you have to bring the law down to a level
that a man can keep it. Brother Henry used to say, I
can jump over a barn. if you let me build the barn.
And that's what men are doing. They're building a law for themselves.
They're teaching commandments of men saying you can keep this.
They were teaching murders just outward in the act. Murders in
the heart. They were teaching adultery just
outward in the act. Christ said if you so much as
look on a woman, you've committed adultery. You mean it's that
bad? Can you control your thoughts?
How about your dreams? He broke it. You may not break
the law in my dreams. You break the law in your dreams.
At night when you're sleeping. That's right. Christ came. He said this, But whosoever shall
do and teach, the same shall be called great in the kingdom
of God. How are you going to do the law and teach the law?
If we can't do the law, how are we going to do it and teach it?
We're going to do that one way we can. Believing on Christ. I'm going to believe on Christ
myself, and I'm going to teach you to believe on Christ. That's
how we establish the whole law of God. Because Christ did it.
Christ kept it. For I say unto you that except
your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes
and the Pharisees, you shall in no case enter the kingdom
of heaven. And I've heard men preach that and say, so see there,
you've got to work harder and be better than the Pharisees.
That ain't what Christ is saying. He's saying, He's the one that
exceeds. He's the righteousness that exceeds.
We've got to have Him. We've got to have Him. And Christ
said He came to do this work for His sheep. I won't have you
turn there, but in John 10, 15, He said, I laid down my life
for the sheep. for the sheep. And he said, and
other sheep I have that are not just in this fold in Israel,
and they're going to be brought, and there's going to be one fold
and one shepherd. And Jesus was in the temple in Solomon's porch,
and some men came to Him, and they said what men always say,
they blame God. Why do you keep making us to
doubt? Why don't you tell us plainly who you are? And Christ
said, I've told you plainly. And He said, the works that I
do bear witness of who I am. And He said this, He looked him
right in the face and he said, you believe not because you are
not of my sheep. He looked him right in the face
and he said, not everybody is my sheep. You're not. You're not. He said, my sheep
hear my voice. And I know them, and they follow
me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish,
neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which
gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck
them out of my Father's hand." Well, that's not fair that he's
going to keep some out of heaven. He's not keeping anybody out
of heaven. He's not keeping anybody out of heaven that wants to go
to heaven. Will one day come to me and he was all upset because
he said, Daddy, Emma won't let me in her room. She's locking
me out of her room. And I said, Will, do you want
to go in her room? There's nothing in there but a bunch of girls
stuff. And he said, Well, no, I don't want to go in there,
but I don't want to be told I can't go in there. That's what folks
think the doctrine of election is, that we're telling you you
can't go in. No, the doctrine of election opens up glory because
without it, without Christ doing the work, there would be no entrance
at all. You see, those that are not believing
on Christ, they don't want to believe on Christ. They don't
want to go to heaven. They don't want to have anything to do with
God, period. The natural man's enmity against God. He hates
God. He says, don't turn on that message. I don't want to hear it. Don't
put out them bulletins in front of me. I don't want to hear it.
I hate God. I hate God. That's what the natural
man says in his heart while he's talking about blessed this and
blessed that and have a blessed day. This is what Christ... We preach
this because... Why do we preach that Christ
laid down His life for the sheep? Because it means Christ laid
down His life for particular people and He accomplished the
salvation of... It makes Christ to be the successful
Savior. We don't put it in man's hands
and say, you got to make His death a success by your work. No, we tell you, Christ did it.
Christ did it. And He's going to take this message
and these dry bones that hate Him and won't listen and won't
hear it, He's going to breathe life into them and they're going
to believe. And then they're going to know, this is my God. He's
done this. And lastly, He said He gave His
ministers for the edifying of the body of Christ. This is what
we're doing. We're not trying to scatter sheep.
We're trying to edify Christ's body. And He said, Comfort ye,
comfort ye my people. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem.
Tell them that their warfare is accomplished. The Lord has
accomplished the warfare for his people. This is my gospel.
It's finished. The work's done. The work's finished.
Religion, false religion, is do-do religion. Paul called it
done, and it is. It's do-do religion. They say,
do this, do that, do this, do that, do that. You always got
to be doing. My message is, it's done. Christ has finished the
work. It's done. And that's a precious
pearl right there. That's a wonderful message. It's
done. He said, I've rewarded them double
for all their The rain comes down from heaven. That's where
it comes from. And it goes into the river, and
it goes out, and it waters everything, and then it goes back from whence
it came. We're edifying Christ's body. Where do we get the word, the
rain? It comes from Christ. It comes down, and it goes into
His people, and that's how it edifies His body, and by that
it returns right back to Christ. just like the rain, and it won't
return to him void. Paul said, we've got to preach
Christ and preach Him only, because He's the head of the body. He's
the beginning, He's the firstborn from the dead, that in all things
He might have the preeminence, in all things, because it pleased
the Father that in Him all fullness dwell. He's the fullness, and
God is pleased that He have all the preeminence. Why do you preach
Christ all the time? God is pleased that He have all the preeminence.
And he said, and this is why I've been called. This is why
I bear suffering. For the body's sake. For the elect's sake. This
is why I'm doing it. And he said, for in Him dwells
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And you're complete in
Him. Have you heard that message before? Have you ever heard that message?
Have you ever heard the Pope preach this? Have you ever heard
that one who calls himself the co-mediator with Christ preach
this? You won't hear him preach this.
You ever hear a preacher who calls himself a Baptist preacher?
A great Southern Baptist preacher. You ever hear him preach salvation
is entirely of the Lord? Not of the Lord plus you doing
something. All of the Lord. The fullness of the Godhead bodily.
And that word complete. They're the same word. Christ
is the fullness of the Godhead bodily and you're complete in
Him. Believers are as complete as Christ is the fullness of
the Godhead bodily. It don't get more complete than
that. And we can just lay back and rest, serve Him if we want
to, enjoy Him. Tell others about Him and trust
Him to deliver us to glory. Oh man, what if you were in the
prime of your life and all of a sudden somebody came to you
and they said, you can quit your job today. I'll provide everything
for you. I'll pay all your bills. I'll
pay off your house. I'll pay your mortgage. I'll pay everything
for you. And you can do the work you want
to do from then on. I bet everybody would take them
up on that. And yet we won't do it when God says it. He'll
make His people willing in the day of His power. Amen.