Let's turn to, like I said, Genesis
chapter 3. And I'm not sure how long of
a message I'll have here, so we'll go until I get done, OK?
Sounds good. OK. First thing I want to ask
you here, and I start this, if you do not know the God of the
Bible, this is a message that you need to hear. You need to
hear the message of Christ. You need to hear about the truth
of Christ. You need to hear about the God of the Bible. Because
if you have not heard this message, if you do not know God, you have
not experienced this message. I said you did not experience
this message. What I mean is that believers
know what it means to come to know Christ. And if you have
not heard this Bible, this message, if you do not believe the words
that comes out of this Bible completely, the Bible has no
error in it. It's true from the beginning
to the end. It speaks of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ.
This Bible is the Lord Jesus Christ. It is everything about
Him and there is no error in it about Him. It is not by interpretation. We do not sit down and argue
about the Bible. The Bible is about revelation.
It is revealed to you. And again, if you do not know
the Lord and the Bible, if you are not saved, if you do not
know Christ, this Word has not been revealed to you. And it
must be revealed. You have heard, you know what's
in your mind about who Christ may be. It's about the imagination
that's in your mind. Man has ideas about who God is,
and they're based on what we are, how we are, what we think. And so, if you do not know this
by word of the Bible, most likely, you don't know who He truly is.
And so, I ask you again, are you a sinner? Don't look around
and see what somebody else says or thinks about this. Ask yourself. Are you a sinner? Henry Mahan
did that in one of our messages. I said I don't remember messages.
A week ago, I probably can't tell you some of the messages
that I heard. But this is one that really hit me. I can remember
from the very beginning we gathered together. Henry came in and said,
Are you a sinner? Are there any sinners in here?
We were pretty flabbergasted. We didn't know what to say. One
person raised their hand. He said, Christ died for you.
That person knew he was a sinner and knew what that meant. Are
you a sinner? If not, you have not arrived.
You do not know Christ. If you don't know that you are
a sinner. If you are a sinner and you know
that you're a sinner, It's been revealed to you that it's so. God's revealed it to you. He
has shown you who you are and what you are. You see, when the leper had leprosy, and
when he had leprosy and it did not cover his whole body, he
still had some good skin. But when he had leprosy and it
completely covered his whole body, he was made pure because
he was completely new. He was a sinner, completely a
sinner and needed help. He needed salvation. He needed
care. But you see, when you have that
little patch, it's not, you're not sick. Little patch, it's
not affected. You think, well, I've got a little bit good in
me. Or you think, well, I don't need a physician. I don't need
that. I'm still on my own. I still
have some good in me. I can still do some good. I can
please God. But a leper who is completely
covered with leprosy comes to the fact of knowing that he has
no hope. There's nothing he can do. He
is covered from head to toe. Completely sinning. Completely
filled with sin. And a sinner is that way. You
think you still have some good in you. Still have some ability
to please God. You have not arrived. You do
not know Christ. You have never heard of the Christ
of the Bible. You do not need a Savior. You don't know your
sinner. You still have some good in you.
But you see, we're all born into sin. We are all sinners. We're sinners from head to toe.
No hope, no ability to please God. We are completely consumed
with leprosy. We're completely consumed with
sin. We're in a sin state. I've not heard many people say
that, but this is the only way I can relate to it. We are just
in this position. When we're born into sin, we
are in this position and cannot get out. Born into sin. Everybody's born into sin. Everybody. From the littlest baby all the
way up to the hundred-year-old man and older. You're born into
sin, and unless God steps in, you stay there. There's no way
to get out. You're in that state, and you
live your whole life looking and hunting for peace. No man
ever stands on his own. Well, I'm my own man. No, you're
not. Everybody has to have something to stand on. You've got some
kind of God, some kind of thing that helps you. It may be physical. It may be liquor. It may be whatever.
It may be religion. You have something that you have
to hang on to. No man stands alone. Never met
one. You can talk about an atheist.
No, he's got something. He's got something that he has
to hang on to. First of all, I always thought
of atheists, knew that there was a God, because how come he's
against him if he doesn't know he's against? So, you know, that's
how I always thought. But everyone is born into sin.
In Genesis chapter 3, and I'm not going to read all this, this
is about Adam and Eve in the garden. How that she was tempted
by the serpent to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil. He tempted her and it was so
simple because the Lord said don't eat of this apple because
if you do You'll learn about good and evil, and that's not
what you're doing. This is what I don't want you
to do. And the devil says, no, he says you'll die. And the devil
says, no, you won't die. What's religion say today? Salvation is strictly of the
Lord. We say we have no really true free will. Religion says,
yeah, you do. And here we go. We follow it. We don't have any good in us.
We know that. Religion says, yeah, you do. Reform. And you
believe it and you follow it. The devil did the same thing
to Eve. And she just went right along with it. And then drug
all of Adam into it too. Well, when it was all over with,
they both saw that they were naked and they were afraid. Never
knew nakedness, never knew afraid, never knew all this before. So
they covered themselves and God says, where are you? Where are
you at? We're hiding because we're naked.
How do you know you're naked? You ate of the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, didn't you? So he took care of them, covered
them and all that. Pushed them out of the garden.
When he did that, they left paradise. Everything that had to do with
God, they left paradise. They destroyed that. They went
away. It was pushed out of it. And there was turbulence. There
was no way he could get back in. They were in sin. They were sent out and they were
born in sin. That's what it was. They were
in sin. No way to get back. You can't get back in that garden.
It's blocked. This is paradise, but you can't
go there. You're out here. And now you're going to work.
You're going to toil. You're going to raise your food.
You're going to have babies. The woman's going to be submissive
to the man. All these things are going to
happen to you because you disobeyed God. And you can't come back. So where are you going to go? You're in your sin. You can't
get out. You hate God now. He kicked you
out of the garden. You're enmity with God. So where
are you going to go? Live your life and live your
life and live your life and go on and on and on in your sin. verse 15, he says, I will put
enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her
seed, and it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise this
ear. And to the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow
and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth
children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall
rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because
thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten
of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not
eat of it. Cursed is the ground for thy
sake, and sorrow. Shalt thou eat of it in all the
days of thy life, and thorns and thistles will grow up, thorns
and thistles in their fields and in their life and in their
world, all the problems and troubles that come along with that, they'll
be there. You're not going to have peace
and you're not going to be in paradise anymore. You'll work
for your food, and you'll kill the dirt, and you'll be dusty
and dirty, and I'm just paraphrasing. Then he says over here in verse
22, And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become as one of
us to know good and evil. And now, lest he put forth his
hand and take also the tree of life and eat and live forever.
Therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of
Eden to till the ground from whence he was. So he drove out
the man. See, this sin was against God.
He can't look upon sin. God cannot look upon sin. And
he placed at the east end of the garden of Edom cherubims
and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of
the tree of life. And so Adam and Eve was out in
the world in sin. Now, what happens to us? Adam
and Eve is our father now. We're born into sin. We're in
flesh. Everything we do We do according
to the flesh. And who feeds the flesh? Satan. He feeds the flesh. He tempted
Eve. He fed her flesh. He wanted her
to take up that apple and it satisfied her flesh and she followed
him. Now we follow Adam. We follow
Satan. He's our father. We're enmity
with God. We were kicked out of paradise.
We really don't want anything to do with God. We're His enemy.
We want everything that has to do with the flesh. Call sin to be upon all men declared
by God. That we will be all these sinners.
Everyone of us. Oh no, I'm a good person. That
baby's so beautiful. That son has grown up to be so
handsome. He's a sinner. We're all sinners. We're all Our offensive unto
God. We were shut out of the garden
and the way was blocked and we couldn't go back. So Romans verse
chapter 23 if you mind turning there. I've got a new Bible, it's hard
to turn the pages. I'm like David was last week. I'm sorry, Romans 3. I'm going
to run out of chapters real fast. It says in Romans 3, 23, For all
have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That means
all of us. I just need that one verse. All
of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is
nothing we can do. We became morally depraved, incapable
of doing any good in God's eyes. We have come short of the glory
of God in everything we do. There is nothing within us, in
this flesh, in this body, that we can do to cause God to desire
us. Our offense against God is so
severe. He is so perfect. He is so holy. He is so righteous. that we can't
even understand how holy and righteous He is. Our sin is against
Him, and there is nothing we can do to gain His favor, to
cause Him to look upon us in favor. Nothing. We're depraved. We're morally corrupt. Everything we do is wrong. We're
wicked, incapable of doing any good thing. You think about that. We may be good neighbors, We
may be good workers, good citizens. We may be good spouses. In this
world, we look really, really good. We do good things every
day, and we feed the sick, the hungry. We heal the sick. We
do all these things. We do these things, and in the
world, they look good. They look really good. We do
help our neighbors. But here's where the issue is. God looks upon the heart. We
look beautiful. We look good. These people out
here are all going to these big churches, and they're doing good.
They're really doing good. Car broke down on the side of
the road, we fix their tires. We just open the doors for people.
We say thank you. We do all these wonderful things.
But you see, God looks upon the heart. What is the motive that's
in your heart? That gets us every time. Why
do we do what we do? We can do all the wonderful,
funny, wonderful things, but the motive in our heart destroys
everything. Our heart's evil. We're wicked. Everything we do is corrupt. We're selfish. We're full of
pride. We want something out of everything we do. That's the
way we are. You know, I don't do that. I'm
just as pure. I do this. I help my neighbor. I mow his grass. I carry in the
little lady's groceries. I help her cross the street even
though she don't want to go. All these things I do. You know,
I just, I'm a good person. Why do you do these things? God
saw me do it. And he's going to think I did
good. I'm going to get something out of that. I did a star in
my crown. My neighbor on Moley's Grass,
one day I want a new car, his pickup truck. He'll probably
let me have it. What's the motive? Was it unselfish? Did you freely
do it? No, you want something out of
everything. You want to be noticed. You want
to feel good about yourself. You want your pride fed. I'm
saying you. I'm included in this more than
most of you probably. I want something out of it. I
love attention. Which I don't. But I do. I like attention. To a certain
extent. I don't like somebody not noticing. I want to be noticed when I fix
my neighbor's fence or whatever I do. I want to be noticed for
that. Why? Sin. I'm full of pride. Christ
didn't do everything. He did it like that. He did it
freely. Giving. Not us. Not us. We're sinners. Are you a sinner? Sin is what
we are. We're not just actions that come
from sin. We are sin ourselves. That's why God can't look upon
us. He can't look upon sins. He hates the workers of iniquity. He's angry with the wicked every
day. Oh, God loves everybody. No, He hates the workers of iniquity. The Word says so. That's what
it says. He cannot look upon us in our
state. Modern religion teaches us that
we fell in Adam, but they ignore this fall and they concentrate
on our actions. Don't go to the bar and get drunk.
Don't be wandering around the street, cussing and getting road
rage. Don't be doing all these things.
Come and worship at our church. Come through prayer meetings. Come and we're going to have
a big singing. Let's all get a feeling good.
Come and do all these things. But don't you do those things.
Don't you get road rage. You better be a good mom and
dad. All these sorts of things. It's the actions that come out
of us, our sin state, out of what we are, that the world looks
at and they concentrate on and they try to get you to do different.
They give us enough free will to overcome our sin state by
reforming our actions. They want you to reform They
don't preach you a God of the Bible, because most of the time,
and probably all the time, if he's altered the message, he
doesn't know who he is. All he knows about the Word,
it's not been revealed to him, so he's going through here and
he sees the Ten Commandments, and you're not supposed to do
these things. Or he might pick out a ceremony that you're supposed
to do. Dress like a priest. Or let's
do some sort of thing like that. And so, he's altered who Christ
is. And he puts a little leaven in
there. A little bit. You may be hearing a message.
I went to St. Louis one day and we heard this
message on the radio and we were so excited. There's a church
in St. Louis. I mean, down to the line
he had it made. Until he got to being. And he
stuck in that little bit of leaven. And he offered an invitation.
And He says, you come up here and give yourself to Christ.
You come up here and give yourself to Christ. If you love Christ and He's dealing
with you and working in your heart and reveals Himself to
you, there's nothing for you to gain up here. I can't do anything
for you. No preacher can do anything for
you up here. You just stay right where you are. It's between you
and God and you deal it out with Him. You stay right there. There's nothing up here. You
don't need an invitation. It's about this between them.
Between you and Him. But they'll say, come on up here.
Add a little bit to it. They'll give you just enough
free will to overcome your situation in sin. And it's just a little
bit of this, a little bit of that to give you control. But
you see, God doesn't recognize our good. He doesn't recognize
you coming up here and doing that. He doesn't recognize your
baby being sprinkled. He doesn't recognize you being
baptized if you do it before you come to know Him. Baby sprinkling,
baptism, no salvation. That's a picture of salvation.
That's not salvation. These things are not of God and
God drawing you unto Him. It has nothing to do with your
salvation. They give you just enough free
will to make you feel like you're good and that you're doing something. That's sin. And the preacher
don't know God, so he feeds that sin and causes you to feel really
good about yourself. And what's that gave you? Pride,
arrogance, makes you feel good. And I'm going out on the street
and I'm going to save everybody else I can. That's what it amounts
to. I'm going to do it. But you see, the problem with
this is that God demands perfection. I mean perfect, just like Himself. My motives have to be pure, and
our actions, reformed actions, they don't do it. He demands
absolute purity. Now think about that. What is
absolute purity? I can't put it in words. Outside
of the fact that He is holy. That's better than any of us
can ever touch. He's righteous. Everything He does is right. He's perfect. He is God over
the universe. He's in control of all things.
He created all things. He is God. So what are you going
to do with God? You go before a king in a country,
and you don't do it right, chop his head off. That's a king that
has that power. What power do you think God has?
He's over that king. So you think, if you're in your
sin, and you think you have not done unto Christ, you think that
you have something to do with this. Modern religion says obey the
law, but our depravity keeps us from doing this. And so, you
know, we can't satisfy God. We're depraved. That's what depravity
is. We can't do it. And you know,
In that state, when they say obey the law, and the law says
you can't do this or you can't do that, don't you hate to be
told what to do? That's your sin. That's your
flesh. Don't tell me what to do. Can
you obey the law perfectly? God did. Well, then how come
you're saying don't tell me what to do? That's the way we are. That's exactly where we are.
But you see, We walked according to the Prince of the Power of
the Air. We all did that. If you're a believer here, we
all did that. Now I'm not telling you anything
probably you don't know already. That's preaching. We preach.
We tell back what we've already heard. That's the way that is.
Turn to Ephesians chapter 2. Verses 1 to 3. Now this tells
us that we were there before. It says, And you hath equipped
them who were dead in trespasses and sin. We were dead in sin. We were talking earlier about
being dead in sin. We are sin. And he says that where in time
past you walked according to the course of this world, according
to the prince of the power of the air, the spirits of doubt
worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our
conversation in time past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling
the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature
the children of wrath, even as others. That's what we are. That's what we were. If you're
here this morning and don't know the Lord, that's where you are.
You don't have a free will. You don't. Your father is Satan,
and he's feeding your flesh, and he's just sticking that little
stick out in front of that dog's nose, and you're just following
right along. He's just following along. He's the one that's enticing
you, feeding your flesh, making you feel good. Give me a card.
Take me away from church. Let's play golf this morning.
Let's go anything that keeps you away from God. That's what
he's doing. Let's go to church where they
make me feel good. And so we were there. He says,
these are the ones that he has quickened, who has revealed himself,
who has made himself a believer. He said, we, if you're a believer
here this morning, in time past did the very same thing. We were
right where lost sinners were. We did exactly the same thing
and Satan led us along just the same old way. We all had our conversations
in time past in the lusts of our flesh. Do you feel them? The desires of
the flesh and of the mind And our nature, our sin nature, the
children of wrath, even as others. We were all there. All of us
were born in the sin. And so, therefore, we walked
in this situation. We had no free will. We were
controlled by Satan. He satisfied our flesh. Preachers
today don't know God and say, reform. God will make you successful. Reform. Do different. You can
do that. If you reform, you listen to
TV. If you reform, you'll get money. You'll be rewarded for being
good. You'll get big homes. You'll be rewarded for being
a good person. You'll get advancements in your
jobs. You'll be a great parent. Just
reform. Act religious. You'll be reformed. But you see, Like I told you
earlier, they want to touch things. They want to see you reform in
a manner that they can see what's happening. They want you to touch
it. And the thing of it is, as we were talking earlier about coming to know Christ, many,
many times you look at us and we don't look like we're believers.
But our message never changes because we know who we love.
We're still in the flesh. We struggle. But we know who
we love. But you see, modern religion
can't touch that. They don't understand the spiritual
part. So they say, this is what it looks like to be a believer.
You do this and you'll be rewarded and God will love you and he
will grace you and bless you and their blessings are not in
spiritual things, they're blessings in things. And they think they're
doing good. But God says, we're in sin. This
is not good. Churches today, they measure
success by how many come in. So, you talk to somebody and
say, oh, come to our church. We've got 2,000 people coming
to our church. We have to have four servants
a morning. We have singings. And we have
all these things. And you feel so good. Oh, you
feel so good. Come worship with us. It's so
wonderful. That's what they do. I've got
a neighbor who does it. Just drives you crazy. But God says we're dead in our
sins. We are dead. So God's law can never be satisfied
by man outside of Christ. And he is continually killed
or punished forever in hell. The price of sin against God
is never paid. God demands the law to be obeyed
perfectly. And we can't deliver. Sin has
to be punished. And we're sinners. And we never
come to know the Lord. We, in our flesh, can never pay
the price for our sin. Never. It can never be completely
paid for. Ever. For eternity, our sins
can never be paid for. Why is it that it says that you
will, in hell, you'll suffer for eternity? You're punished
for eternity? That's because in the flesh,
your sins are never paid for. You can never get it done. There
will never be an end to it because you can never get it done. I don't care how good you were
on this earth, how religious you think you are, you can never
get that sin paid for in God's eyes. So you spend eternity in
agony and suffering Because that's what God demands for sin against
Him. He's so perfect, and He's so
righteous, and He's so holy. He's God. And He cannot look
upon sin, and He will not look upon sin, and He will punish
sin. Now you say, well, it wasn't
my fault I was born into this situation. No, it wasn't. But
you own your sin. You're responsible for it. You're
guilty. Not by the actions. It's the fact that you were born
in sin. Well, that's not fair. You're going to tell God it's
not fair? God says that's the way it is. And so you're born
in sin and these sins can never ever be paid for. That's why
you're in hell for eternity. So then the preacher says, Change,
reform, do what you got to do to get straightened out. Turn
to John chapter 11. We're going to talk about Lazarus here. You
know, we talk about being in our sins, and we're dead in our
sins. Everybody's heard about Lazarus being preached before.
I'm not telling you anything new. Somewhere along the line,
preachers always preached about Lazarus. But it's a perfect example
of what we are like in our sin. What we're like before God. You
see, here, Lazarus was dead and was in his grave, and they sent
a message to Christ to come to heal him or to raise him, but
he didn't come right away. It says in the verses earlier
that there's a reason he didn't come was for others to know and
to see that it happened. This was a teaching situation
so we may learn. Mary says to him that if you'd
come more quickly you could have saved him or you could have raised
him. But anyway, they are going to Lazarus' grave. Now here's
Lazarus in the grave. Verse 38 says, Jesus therefore
again groaning in himself, coming to the grave, it was a cave and
a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that
was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh, for
he hath been dead for four days. Jesus saith unto her, said I
not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldst see the
glory of God? Then they took away the stone
from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up
His eyes and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me. And I knew that Thou hast heard
me always. But because of the people which
stand by, I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent
me. This is all for us, too. This is going to teach us about
what we're like, what we are. And when He with us had spoken,
He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead
came forth bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face
was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said unto him, Loose him,
and let him go. Here's Lazarus. Here's us. That tomb is our sin
state. That tomb is what we are, where
we are before we come to know Christ. We are surrounded and
confined in that tomb. We can't get out. It's dark in
there. There's no place that we can't
get out. We're in that tomb. We're in this life, and it's
dark in this life. And we can't see anything. And
we can't do anything for ourselves. We're in that tomb. We're entombed
in our sins. And the thing of it is, in God's
eyes, we stink. What did Mary say? We've been
buried dead four days. Lord, he stinks. He stinks. You stink. I stink. In the eyes of God, we're dead. We're dead in sin. We've been
dead for a long time. We can't move. We can't do anything.
So what does that mean? We're dead in our sins? First
of all, like I said, we stink. We're rotting. Everything we
do is bad. It's against God. It's black
and it's terrible. We can't move. We're dead. Come to Christ. Come up here
and confess your sins. Go be a good religious person.
We can't do it. We're dead. We can't do anything
for ourselves. We can't do it. We can't move. We can't move in a direction
of God. We can't go there. We don't have
the ability. I keep saying we can't. Can't
means ability. We don't have the ability to
go to God. We can't move. Lazarus was dead.
It couldn't move. He was there just doing His thing.
We can't hear. Christ is a sovereign God. He chose the people for the foundation
of the world. He elected a people. He came
and saved those people. We're one with Him. What? What
are you talking about? Tell you what God has been telling
me. I like this other one. We can't
hear about Him. We think we've got free will.
We've got religion. We can do all these things. What
are you talking about? I can't hear that. What's that
mean? We can't hear. We don't know what that means.
We can't see. The light's right there, but
we can't see the light. You see, Christ was right there,
outside of that tomb. He was standing right there.
The light was outside of that tomb. The light is out here. He's everywhere. Christ is the
light. He's even in the trees and the
rocks and all the things that have been formed. Christ is out
here. His message is out here. The light is out here. But we
can't see it. We're in sin. We can't see that
light. We can't come to the light because
we can't see it. We can't hear it because we're
in sin. We can't hear it. We're dead.
We don't even know that light is there. We're going about ourselves
in sin. But you see, Christ said, roll
away the stone. Roll away the stone. Now, He
could have spoken and that stone would have rolled away, but He
used a simple means many times, like the preaching of the Word
that delivered His message. He used a simple means. Roll
away the stone. Well, Christ rolls away the stone. And all of a sudden, there's
a light. But you see, Lazarus still can't
see it. But it's there. But Christ says
to him, let's just say, come forth, roll away the stone, lift
up his eyes and thank the Father. And when he thus spoke, he cried
with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. He revealed himself unto
Lazarus. His light was there. And Lazarus
obeyed and came to the light. And he said, set him free. And
he unwrapped his grave clothes. And Lazarus was made whole. And
he was with Christ. And they said later on at the
Lord's Supper, or when they had supper at Mary and Margaret's
and they all sat at the table, were served, Lazarus was sitting
at the table with Christ. Lazarus was Christ. He was no
longer dead in that grave. He was saved by Christ. Lazarus
didn't come to Christ. He had no ability to come to
Christ. He was dead. He was drawn unto Christ. So
you see, Christ has to save us. He has to be the one to call
us to come forth, because in ourselves, You've heard for years
that we're dead in our sins. We are dead in our sins. We cannot
do anything about it. Don't let anybody tell you that
you can have anything to do with your salvation or coming to Christ. Today, he draws us through the
power of preaching. Paul says he delivers his message
with power. That power that's added to the
message of Christ is the Holy Spirit. And that Holy Spirit
has the power to reveal Christ unto you. You'll never see Him
unless that Spirit reveals Him to you. And He'll reveal Him
to the elect. The ones that God chose before
the foundation of the world that Christ came to die for. Are you
one of the elect? We don't know. And you don't
know. You don't know. The amazing thing
is, as advanced we are, that God saves anybody. But He does
come and save His elect. So, how is He saved? Through
the power of preaching. The truth in the Word. You have
to hear the truth. And through that truth, He draws
you. Through the power of the Holy
Spirit. Revealing it to your heart. Causing you to see that
light and to love that light. John 6, verse 37. When He reveals Himself to you,
He says, All that the Father giveth
Me shall come to Me, and him that cometh to Me I will no wise
cast out. That's all of His leg. That's
all of His children. For I have come down from heaven,
not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
And this is the will which earth has sent me, that of all which
he hath given me I should do nothing but raise it up again
at the last day. And this is the will of him that
sent me, that everyone which seeth the sun and believeth on
him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the
last day. So you see, through the power of preaching, through
the work of the Holy Spirit, you see Christ. He says, those
are the ones that the Father gave me, and I will save every
one of them, and none will be lost, and I will raise them up
at the last day. There's another promise. You
know Christ? That's a promise. You see, when we see Christ,
there's another thing that happens. I said before, are you a sinner?
How do you know you're a sinner? Joe and I talked about this the
other night. We talked about this the other
night. We know through the revelation of the Spirit that our sin and
depravity and how bad it is against God. And we see how bad our sin
and how bad we are in our sin when we see a straight line.
Do you know when you do a carpenter work or something, or you see
a wall, and there's a perfectly straight line. And then there's
a line beside it that's crooked. Well, until you put that straight
line up there, you don't realize that line's crooked. But then
when you put that straight line up there and you see Christ,
you realize, I'm not anything like that. But I need that. I have to be that way in order
to have me go before God, to stand before God on Judgment
Day, to have eternal life. I've got to be like that. But
you don't know beforehand that you're that way. You have to
know your sin. You learn your sin that you are
a sinner when you see Christ. He shows you how bad you are
and how bad you have a need, and then you go and search for
Him. We know our helplessness and
how bad we need a Savior. We see our need for a Savior,
a perfect Savior that stands in our place before God and be
accepted in our stead. So you see, when we have Christ,
like I talked about earlier this morning in Bible study, we become
one with Him. We're one with Him. Everything
He has, we inherit. We're part of Him. We're perfect
in Him. And when our sins are paid for,
when He died on the cross, they disappear. God doesn't know them. He doesn't see them. And so when
you come to know Christ, and you stand before Him on the God
of Judgment Day, you're as pure as Christ. Even right now, you're
as pure as Christ. Because you see, this was done
in time. But it's all very prepared and settled before the foundation
of the world. And you say, well, how come all this has to go through
the middle? That's the way God works. I'm not going to go there and
answer that. I wonder, but I'm not going to
answer that because I don't know. So you're so imperative that
you hear the truth of the gospel. There is not a partial truth
that will save you. hear the truth and maybe go over
here and worship a little bit and pick out the good parts and
that sort of thing. No. That will make you sick. You have to hear the truth of
the gospel. And if you don't know the Lord,
this is where you must be. You have to hear the gospel.
Or in a gospel preaching church. There is a difference and the
difference is extremely important. The truth is... There's two religions
in the world. There's Cain and there's Abel. One is the works, and one is
about the grace of God. Cain is everywhere. Abel's here. The Gospel. It says, Jacob hath
a love, and Esau hath a hated. That's an example of election.
They were born to sin. But God loved Jacob. And hated
Abel. Oh, I didn't hate him. Hated
Abel. He said so. He has it all set
out. And this is His plan. When it's
all over with, He reveals Himself to His elect, to those He loves.
So, I hope I've got this clear to you, what I'm saying here.
But I'm going to ask you again. Have you seen your sin? Have
you seen your sin? God only saves sinners. Are you
full of leptrosy? Or do you have a little patch
of good skin? Are you a sinner? God saves only sinners. Do you need a physician? Or are
you just well enough that you can manage on your own? Or do
you need a physician, a savior? Do you know your helplessness
and need for salvation? Do you know that you have no
hope of pleasing God, that He has to do all of it? You need
Him as your savior. And the thing of it is, if you
don't know this, you won't come to Christ. You won't come. He'll
reveal it to you. And the day may come that you
will know Him and come to Him. In Ephesians chapter 1. Let's
go back there. And then I'll finish up here. Ephesians chapter 1. We're going
to read 2 to 14. Grace be to you and peace from
God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the
God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Bless this with
all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as
He has chosen us, listen to these words, chosen us in Him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without
blame before Him in love. He having predestinated us unto
the adoption of children by Jesus Christ Himself according to the
good pleasure of His will. You ask why He does what He does?
According to the good pleasure of His will. To the praise of the glory of
His grace wherein He hath made us accepted in the blood. in
whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of
sins according to the riches of his grace, wherein hath bounded
us toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto
us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he
hath proposed in himself, that in a dispensation of the fullness
of time he might gather together in one all things in Christ,
both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him,
in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated
according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after
the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise
of his glory who first trusted in Christ, to whom he also trusted,
after that he heard the word of truth, the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation, in whom after that ye believe
ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise which is the
earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased
possession unto the praise of His glory. That's what I tried
to tell you this morning. It's all wrapped up in that.
If you realize your need, He will make you willing to come
to this Savior. You were elected or chosen before
the foundation of the world Christ died for you. That's all I have.