The Bible Baptist Church, located
at 2015 Beulah Road in Madisonville, Kentucky, would like to invite
you to listen to a message of the sovereign grace of God in
the Lord Jesus Christ by their pastor, David Edmondson. In Romans 10, verse 16, the Apostle
Paul writes, but they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah
saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? Now, Paul here did
not write, but they have not all believed the gospel, though
that is true. He said, but they have not all
obeyed the gospel. You see, to obey the gospel is
to believe the gospel, and to believe the gospel is to obey
the gospel. Yet, not all have obeyed or believed. And I believe this is one of
the plainest proves of man's depravity. If God has devised
a way to save sinners, a way by which he can be just and still
justify the ungodly, and he has, you would suppose that the moment
that any sinner heard this good news, that God would forgive
sin, put sin away by the sacrifice of himself, that they would immediately
bow, believe, and obey, and call upon the Lord Jesus, the only
one who can save. But they have not all obeyed,
believed, and called upon Christ. Now here's our problem. We've
all offended God. we are all in a state of condemnation. Wouldn't you think that the very
moment that the God of all grace mentioned the possibility of
forgiveness, that the condemned sinner who had offended him would
have sought forgiveness at his hand? But they have not all obeyed
the gospel. Mankind has made the gospel something
that man can accept or reject, making it no more than an offer. The majority of people today
simply believe that if a sinner just does the best they can do,
that God will usher them right on into the pearly gates of heaven
and to their mansions of glory. But the gospel is not an offer. It's a command. Salvation is
not something that God has made possible. The gospel comes to
men with the force of a command. Not all will be saved because
they have not all obeyed the gospel. Now you cannot speak
of obeying something which has not the authority of a command. The scripture says, but now God
commandeth all men everywhere to repent. This is a command
to be obeyed, for it was God who commanded it. You cannot
reject the gospel without incurring the guilt of disobedience to
a divine command. If you reject Christ and His
gospel, you are being disobedient to God Himself. And the command
to men and women alike is to believe the gospel And if it's
not believed, it has the death penalty attached to our disobedience. The scripture says, he that believeth
not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name
of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation
that light is coming to the world and men love darkness rather
than light because Their deeds were evil. God commands, listen
to this command, hear ye deaf and see you blind. And this is
why the deaf hear and the blind see, because God has commanded
chosen men and women to do so. And with the command comes the
power to obey. That's the great and glorious
thing of the gospel. is that God takes those who are
unwilling and makes them willing in the day of His power. Believe,
and thou shalt live. That's not the voice of a man
inviting another man to do something. That's the command of God to
a sinner. And the command was and is always
the same. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved. They were not invited to believe.
They were commanded to believe. In Matthew 11, verse 28, our
Lord is speaking and he says, come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon
you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and
ye shall find rest unto your souls. Now, does that sound like
an invitation to you? Come is a command. Take is a command. You know, when my father told
me to come when I was younger, it wasn't an invitation to do
so. And when my mother said, take
your dirty shoes off, young man, she wasn't inviting me to do
so. Is the Lord inviting all to come to Him? If that is so,
then coming to Christ is the work of man who chooses to come,
and salvation is no more than an invitation that can be accepted
or rejected. But that's not the case at all.
God says, come or you will die. or you will never rest. The Lord
had just prayed to his father in verses 25 and 26, and said,
I thank thee, O father, Lord of heaven and earth, because
thou has hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has
revealed them unto babes. Even so, father, for it seemed
good in thy sight. Now, is it even remotely possible
that the Lord would thank God for hiding the truth from some
and revealing it to others that He might then turn around and
beg men and women to come to Him for life? After concluding
his prayer to his father, the Lord goes on to say in verse
27, all things are delivered unto me of my father, and no
man knoweth the son but the father, and neither knoweth any man the
father save or except the son, and he to whomsoever the son
will reveal him. The Lord makes it abundantly
clear that it's God's will to hide spiritual truths from the
wise and reveal the same truths unto babes. Would the Lord, who
carries out the will of the Father, then turn around and tell everyone
to whom He preaches that He and His Father desire and invite
everyone to come and be saved? Well, that would be absurd and
ridiculous. Verse 28 tells us who the Lord
is speaking to. He says, come unto me, all ye
that labor and are heavy laden, and that means heavy laden with
sin, and I will give you rest. The gospel is for sinners. That's
who Christ came to seek and to save. He came into the world
to save sinners. He came to save those who labor
and are heavy laden, burdened with sin. Are you burdened with
sin? Come unto the Lord. It's a command.
It's not an invitation. This is a call and a command
to every sin-cursed sinner, Jew and Gentile alike. And a command
has a consequence from the one who commands it. And in this
case, it's God. An invitation simply requests
you to do something. But disobeying a command from
God has great consequence. Ignoring an invitation does it.
I've been invited to many things in my life, and I was able to
attend some, and some I wasn't. But I was never punished or condemned
for not keeping an invitation. But I was chastised and punished
many times for not heeding the command of my parents. And what
makes this way of thinking and believing so dangerous is this. If our salvation is based upon
you and I accepting an invitation, then it is naturally thought
and believed that the acceptance of that invitation is the cause,
result, and reason for us being saved. It's claiming that God
made salvation possible for all, for everyone, but only those
who accept His invitation will be saved. I've never been to
a funeral of an unbelieving lost man or woman that was not made
to be saved. And what I mean by that is that
they were made to be saved by the preacher because most of
them at one time went to a church, Most of them at one time made
a decision, accepted God's invitation. At one time, they exercised their
will, accepted the invitation to be baptized, and were invited
to become a member of that church. However, if the gospel is a command,
and it is, and if that command is obeyed and believed, then
God saves them. But if they don't obey, the consequence
is dreadful. Sin was man's choice, and it
was committed against God willfully and wickedly. Adam had a free
will, and he chose to sin. And we have no right to sin against
our Holy Creator. And when Adam sinned against
God, he, as man's federal head and representative, all men in
him died. And we have no will. The gospel
comes to the elect sinner that they may be reconciled to God,
and we should have never been God's enemy. We are commanded
to believe this gospel. If we trust in Christ, we'll
be saved. And what God requires us to do,
we cannot do apart from His divine intervention and giving of life. So if we say that we cannot trust
Christ, we make God out to be a liar, and our condemnation
is no one's fault but our own. It's God's right to be believed. It's God's right to be obeyed. It's God's right to be trusted. Like Moses lifted up the brazen
serpent in the wilderness, we lift up Christ and cry to our
hearers, look and live. This was not an invitation to
look. If you didn't look, you died.
The Savior is commanding you to look in order to live. And
when God Himself sets forth Christ as the only propitiation for
sin, will you turn your back and reject so great salvation? Now hear me, if a sinner is to
live, the gospel demands their obedience because it carries
the authority of God with it. and all who come to Christ on
their own merits will, in the end, expect the glory and credit
for coming. The gospel was this. God punished
Christ instead of me, and therefore, being a just God, He cannot punish
me too. That'd be punishing the same
offense twice, which a righteous God could never do. Now, you
may say, well, I'm not fit to come to Christ. All the fitness
that God requires is that you feel your need of Him. Strength
and personal fitness is a hindrance. It's your weakness that is required,
not your strength. You may say, I have nothing good
about me. Your goodness doesn't stand in
the way. It's your sin that Christ died
to put away. So, it is without any goodness,
without any fitness, it's our unholiness and our boundness
that commands us to come. So, if you're laboring and are
heavy laden over your sin, come to Christ. and he'll give you
rest. That is a command and a promise. God is not a man that he should
lie or the son of man that he should repent. What God says,
he means, and he means what he says. So will you believe? You're commanded to do so. You're
commanded to come to God without moving a muscle. Come to Him
where you are, come to Him just as you are, and you will be saved. You have been listening to a
message by David Edmondson, the pastor of Bible Baptist Church
in Madisonville, Kentucky. If you would like a copy of this
message or to hear other messages of God's free, sovereign grace
in Christ, you can write to our mailing address at P.O. Box 652
Madisonville, Kentucky 42431 or log on to our website at FreeGraceRadio.com. If you would like to come and
worship with us, we meet at 2015 Beulah Road, Madisonville, Kentucky
and our service times are Sunday morning Bible study at 10 o'clock
a.m. Worship services begin at 11 o'clock a.m. Wednesday evening
services at 7 o'clock p.m. Please tune in again next Sunday
morning at 10 o'clock a.m. for another message of God's
free and sovereign grace in the Lord Jesus Christ.