But it's a good, it's a real
thrill to be here with you again. It's been a long time and it's
a great privilege and a pleasure to see you again. Thank you so
much for everything you've done for me thus far. Thank the Wests
for feeding us so well and Johnny and Rhonda for putting us in
the Parker Chalet. Where did he go? There he is
right there. So I don't recognize him with
gray hair like that. He didn't have any gray hair
when I was here the first time years ago. And I had some hair. But I'm glad to be here on behalf
of Mindy also. We're happy to be here. Thank
you for having us. And I again repeat how grateful
I am to our Lord for sending you such a a pastor and a preacher. Brother John Chapman, he and
I are dear friends. We've been friends a long time,
long time. I know him well. We're close. I esteem him so highly and he
even esteems me highly. Wonderful relationship we have.
Fishing buddies. We do a lot of fishing together.
And fellow laborers in the gospel and you all are blessed of the
Lord now to have a wonderful gospel preacher. I thank the
Lord for that. Would you want to turn with me
to 1 Samuel chapter 6? Book of 1 Samuel chapter 6. Maybe you've never seen this
before. Maybe you have, but this is a wonderful gospel story in
the Old Testament. You know, all the Old Testament
speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ. You do know that, don't you?
He said that. They are they which testify of
me. That's what Christ said. To him
give all the prophets witness. They all speak of Christ. One
day he was preaching to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. They didn't
know it was him. But he was preaching to them
in Luke 24, and he began, in the books of Moses, and all the
prophets and the Psalms, and expounded unto them the things
concerning himself. That's the whole Old Testament.
Our Lord wrote these things to testify the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. They're all, and you've been
blessed here for so many years to see these different types,
haven't you? Do you love to hear the Old Testament type? Do you
love it when you, and by type I mean something that typifies
or represents the Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel. But do you
love it when you see something you've never seen before? Maybe
you've never seen them. Maybe you haven't. Look at 1
Samuel 6, and I know Brother John will be happy with this
message. He has a real He has a real burden
for you now. He texted me this morning. I
knew he would. I know he's got you in his heart
and mind right now and wants to be here, but has another commitment. But my wife made this statement
after I preached this at home. She said, I believe every pastor
would love for their church to hear this message. First Samuel
chapter 6, the Philistines had the ark and the Lord was punishing them for their abuse
of it. And they wanted to get rid of
it. Alright, so they said here down in verse 7, let's read from
verse 7 to verse 14. They said, now therefore make
a new cart and take two milk cows on which there had come
no yoke and tie the cows to the cart and bring their calves home
from them. And take the ark of the Lord
and lay it upon the cart. Put the jewels of gold which
you returned him for a trespass offering in a coffer or a box
by the side thereof. Send it away, the ark, that it
may go. And see, watch it, see if it
goeth up by the way of his own coast, that's the land of the
Lord, to Beth Shemesh. That name means house of the
sun. See if it goes to Beth Shemesh,
the house of the sun. then if it does, then he hath
done this, the Lord, God has done this great evil. But if
not, if the ark doesn't go there, then we shall know that it's
not his hand that smote us, it was a chance that happened to
us. So the men did so and they took
two milk kind or cows and tied them to the cart and shut up
their calves at home. And they laid the ark of the
Lord upon the cart. The coffer with the mice of gold,
the images of their emeralds, these were things they were trying
to appease the anger and wrath of Jehovah against them. And the kind, the cows took the
straight way. They took the straight way to
the way of Beth Shemesh, House of the Son, and went along the
highway, lowing as they went. and turned not aside to the right
hand or to the left. And the Lord of the Philistines
went after them under the border. They watched this, they observed
this. So they came to the border of Beth Shemesh. And they of
Beth Shemesh, the people, were reaping their wheat harvest in
the valley, and they lifted up their eyes and saw the ark, and
they rejoiced to see it. And the ark came into the field
of Joshua, a Beth Shemite, and it stood there, they stopped,
where there was a great stone. And they, that is the men of
Beth Shemesh, chopped up the wood of the cart, and then they
slew those cows. They offered the cows a burnt
offering unto the Lord. And the title of this message
and the subject is Two Milk Cows and a Cart. Two Milk Cows and
a Cart. He said, what in the world are
you going to get out of this preacher? Well, I hope you saw,
were already able to read between the lines. But what, let me ask you this question
first of all, and this will tell you the meaning of this story.
What does the gospel mean to you? Now by the gospel, I mean the
story of the Lord Jesus Christ, the truth. as it is in the Lord
Jesus Christ. The gospel of your salvation,
the gospel of God's sovereign electing mercy and grace and
salvation that's in Jesus Christ. The redemption that's in Jesus
Christ. The gospel is a person. The gospel is the Lord Jesus
Christ. Who He is, what He did, who He did it for. The good news
of an eternally predestined and successfully accomplished
salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. That salvation
is by Christ and Him alone, by His righteousness imputed to
His people and His blood shed for the remission of their sin.
And the Holy Ghost comes in time to the elect people of God, given
to Christ in a covenant before the world began, given to Christ. And he comes through the preaching
of the gospel like I'm trying to do now, like Rupert did, like
John does every Sunday. And he opens blind eyes, opens
deaf ears, gives a new heart, gives life where there was none
by a look to Christ and Him alone. Christ and Him crucified. Jesus
Christ is salvation. Neither is there salvation in
any other, for there's none other name under heaven given among
men whereby we must be saved. Jesus Christ is salvation. Now
when I say the gospel, I mean Christ. I mean who He is and
what He did and who He did it for. And the fact that He did
it. There is no gospel, there is no good news if Jesus Christ
tried to save people and He didn't do it. But the good news is that
He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. That He put away
all the sins of all of His people once and forever on Calvary's
tree. And they're saved. Now I can close my Bible right
now and we can go home and you would have been blessed. That's
the gospel. It's a person. And as I said,
the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the gospel, this
is how He gives life. God doesn't offer life, He gives
life. He bestows life. He calls people forth from death
unto life, from darkness to light by the preaching of the gospel.
This is the gospel call. This is the shepherd's voice.
This is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believe
it. And you don't believe of your own, it's the grace of God.
It's the gift of God. Repentance is not of you, it's
the gift of God. What does this gospel mean to
you? Some of you nodding your head, you love this gospel, you
can't get enough of it. But what does it mean to you?
Does it mean more than anything? Is Christ all? He is, or He isn't? Can't be. People say this all the time.
Christ is a big part of my life. Then that person doesn't know
Jesus Christ. Paul wrote, Christ our life.
When Christ our life shall appear, then, he said, shall we appear
with Him in glory. He said, one thing of our desire
and that's what I seek after. It's like a marriage, it's a
husband and a wife, a true marriage, made in heaven, joining His people
to Christ, and they're in love with Him, and they wanna be with
Him. That's why they come to worship, they come to hear about
Him, they come to see His glory, they come to hear His voice,
they come to sing His praises, they come to see His pictures.
What does the gospel mean to you? Would you lay down your life
for it? Every one of God's people do Our Lord said if any man loved
father or mother son or daughter More than me It can't be my son That's what this story's about
Two old milk calves Two old milk cows were bearing this burden
of the Ark, the Ark of God, the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark
of the Lord, which represents the Lord Jesus Christ, which
represents the gospel. And in the end, and I'm telling
you the end from the beginning, they laid down their lives for
Him. The ark is not a thing. This
box, the ark means a box, means a receptacle, means a vessel,
ark. It's not a thing. It represents
a person. It represents the Lord Jesus
Christ. You know this, don't you? You've heard this, some
of you've heard this before. I've heard this a thousand times.
I'm not exaggerating. I'm a preacher's kid. I've heard
1,568,000 messages, Billy. I didn't hear all of them, but
I sat under them as a preacher's kid. And my father was a faithful
gospel preacher and he preached the scriptures from cover to
cover. The ark was, go to Exodus 25
with me. The ark of the covenant was ordained
by God. The architect was God. Ordained
by God as the way to worship God. You know, it had a tabernacle,
later a temple, a high priest, and the ark where the blood sacrifice
was, the blood of that lamb was poured out on that ark, you know.
Okay, God's the one that designed this ark, and it's all a picture
of the Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, who is the ark, the vessel
of mercy, the way we worship God, the truth of God, the life
of God through His death. Here in Exodus 25, you've seen
this, but verse 10, maybe somebody hadn't. It says, make an arc
of shittum wood. And he gave the exact dimensions
of it. Verse 11, overlay it with gold,
put a crown of gold around it. And then down in verse 17, say,
make a mercy seat of pure gold. That's a lid, a covering. Make
it of certain dimension. And he said in verse 20, the
cherubims, they were to make these golden angel, angelic creatures,
stretching their wings, covering the mercy seat, that is looking
over the mercy seat, their faces one to another toward the mercy
seat. All right, what is all that? This is all a picture of
the Lord Jesus Christ. That shittum wood, we don't,
we don't, you don't have that around here, but you have locusts,
don't you? You have locusts. You men make posts, you make
your fence posts out of locusts. We do too. It's impervious to
decay. It's impervious to insects. It will not rot. It will not
corrupt with it. You can plant it in the ground
sometime. Have you ever done this, Bill? You plant one and later
years alone it'll sprout. It's almost like it ever lives
or something. It's just dense, hard wood. It will not rot. It
will not decay. That's the humanity of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He was made flesh. God, now it
was covered with gold. That's His deity. God was manifest
in the flesh. A body hast thou prepared me,
it was said of Christ. He was made flesh, but without
sin. He had no sin. He would not seek
corruption ever. He had no sin. Why? Because he's gonna be our covenant
head. He is our substitute. He is our representative. He's
the one, the lamb without spot and without blemish, who's gonna
lay down his life, a perfect sacrifice, who's gonna be made
sin for his people, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. And he's gold, it's gold. His
ark of the Lord was covered with gold. That's his deity. That's
his glory. They had this mercy seat. Mercy
seat. They called it a seat, but nobody
ever sat on it. They didn't. They weren't supposed
to sit on it. But it's a mercy seat. We call like the county
seat. No. the judgment seat. When you go to the county seat,
you might stand before the judgment seat of the judge. That is, that's
where everything meets. That's where all the purposes
and the wills and the judgments are made upon the guilty or whatever,
whatever transaction. All right, this judgment seat,
God said, is where I'll meet you. It's where I'm gonna meet
you. between the cherubs on the mercy
seat, now that God will either meet with us in judgment against
our sin, and we're all guilty, or else through the blood of
a substitute poured out on that mercy seat. Are you with me?
That mercy seat was for one purpose, to pour blood on it. Nobody ever
sat on it. It was to pour blood on it. The
mercy seat was, as it were, a covering of that golden vessel. Covering. Now, what was in the
ark? Do you know what was in the ark? Earlier, in the beginning,
there was the Aaron's rod that budded, there was a pot of manna,
and then the law, the Word of God. All right, but here in this
story, in the end, had one thing in it, and that was the word
of God, the law of God, the word, the books of Moses. Do you remember
when Moses, God through Moses, gave the law? And while he was
writing it down, the people down were breaking it. Remember that?
Before he came down from the mountain, the people were breaking
it. And when Moses came down, he took the law, the Ten Commandments,
and dashed it on the ground and broke it as a symbol that they
had broken every single law that God had given before it was given. And that's man. All have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. You cannot be saved by keeping
the law. The law cannot save you, it can
only condemn you. By the law is one thing, the
knowledge of sin. And the law is spiritual, Paul
wrote. It looks on the heart. It must be perfect. And we're
not. Okay? All right, God will either
meet with us in judgment against our sin or through a substitute.
Christ came, the ark of God, the vessel of mercy. Christ came,
the covenant head, the man sent from God, our Messiah, our mediator,
our redeemer, our savior. He kept the law like that ark
that God had said to Moses, put another copy of the law in that
ark and put a lid on it. It's not going to be broken again. And it's going to be sealed.
The unbroken law is sealed forever in Jesus Christ. He's the keeper
of the law. Are you with me? He's the keeper
of the law. And yet because we broke the
law, we have to die. The soul that sins must surely
die. And Christ died. Either we die for breaking the
law or Christ died. And Christ died for His people,
shed His blood, and that blood sealed that unbroken loss, sealed
it up forever, kept before God Almighty. Kept in Christ. He is that vessel of mercy, that
seat, that judgment seat where God meets with us in mercy. He's called a mercy seat. If
anybody ever sat on it, that might have been Christ, Doug.
Maybe you did. Maybe he went to the holy place,
the holy of holies, after he offered this one sacrifice and
he says he sat down. Where did he sit? I know he sat
at the right hand of God. But he may have sat right on
that mercy seat. That's him, isn't it? This arm. And the angels, it said the angels,
one angel was this way and one angel was that way, and their
wings touched each other. It says they would look down
upon that ark at each other. You know what Peter said in 1
Peter 1, 12? He said, these are the things that the angels desire
to look into. Religion all over the places.
Men are standing up today preaching who knows what. Moral messages,
little sermonettes, about man's morality or man's faith or man's
works and all that. I said, abomination to God. This
is what God demands. This is what this book speaks
of. This is what God demands that preachers pray. This is
what the angels desire to look into. And this is what sinners
need, to hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing else. Nothing else. Nothing more, nothing
less. This is the gospel of the glory
of God, which things the angels desire to look into. I've heard
this many times, and I'm getting just as excited right now as
the day I heard it. And after that ark was finished,
you know, they never just called it the ark. God never just called
it the Ark from then on, never, ever. It was always the Ark of
God, the Ark of the Lord, the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark
of the Covenant of the Lord God. Never just called it a box. And
we don't call Him just Jesus. We don't call Him just a man.
After He did this work, after the work was complete, we call
Him, Behold, the Lord Jesus Christ. with reverence, with fear, with
respect, don't we? Let religion talk about the man
Jesus. We're going to talk about the
Lord Jesus Christ. Because the work is finished.
Where am I? Oh, the mercy seat, the ark,
the cows. Chapter three, go back to chapter
three. In chapter three, It says in verse three, now you
know the story of Samuel, the young boy, Eli, the priest, the
old man. Eli had two sons, Hophni and
Phinehas. Remember, they were priests, but they were bad ones,
false ones. Look at verse three. It says,
the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the
ark of God was. The lamp went out. The lamp went
out. You know what the purpose of
that lamp was? There was a light, one light in the temple, and
it was the lamp with oil, olive oil. It was the job of the priests. It was the job of those preachers,
if you will, to keep the lamp burning. Their one job was to
keep this lamp burning. Why? So the high priest could
see to take the sacrifice into the Holy of Holies and offer
the blood on the mercy seat. That's one purpose. The light
in the temple was one purpose. So the sacrifice could be seen. And it went out. Hopped in Phineas, let it go
out. They were bad men, they weren't true men. And that's
religion today. Our Lord said, many false prophets
shall arise and deceive many. John said 2,000 years ago, even
now there are many antichrists. And what, you see, David said,
the word of God is a lamp under our feet and a light under our
path. The entrance of thy word giveth light. What light? What
do we need to see? The light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the gospel light. the truth as it is in the Lord
Jesus Christ. This book is a lamp, is a light
to show Christ. And a man's preaching the Bible,
a man's preaching the Word when he's preaching Christ. And this is the preacher's sole
purpose, isn't it? To hold forth the light of the
knowledge of the glory of Christ. But if the Word's not being preached,
and as I said earlier, religion today, they're preaching Bible.
You ask somebody, what does your preacher preach? He says, he
preaches the Bible. They all say that. But if he's not preaching
Christ and Him crucified, he's not preaching the Bible. Christ
is called what? The Word. He is the Word. If you don't
preach the Word from the Word, you're not preaching the Word.
He's the Word. You have a pastor now that... He's seen the light, if you will.
The light of Christ. That's all you're hearing in
it. That's all you're hearing. The light went out. Oh, my. Romans 1 talks about this generation,
this day. It says there, Their foolish
hearts are darkened. Darkened. Change the truth of
God into a lie, therefore their foolish hearts are darkened.
Oh my. What was the last plague in Egypt? And this world, Egypt has always
represented this world. And God's people are being brought
out of this world. They're not of this world. What was the last
plague before God killed every one of the firstborn in Egypt?
What was it? Anybody know? Darkness. Darkness. He said it was so dark
you could feel it. Can't you feel it? Hmm? Isaiah 8 says they look to the
earth and all they see is darkness and dimness and anguish of spirit,
vexation. This world is in turmoil. Why? Gospel's not being prayed. Christ
is not being prayed. Then Isaiah 9 says in verse 2,
but some people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. That's Christ, the gospel. We're
so blessed. You're so blessed. You're blessed
to be hearing this message this morning. Could be somewhere we're
sitting in darkness even as others. Oh my, what a blessing. What about this cart, preacher? I'm getting to it. Okay, I am. Look at verse, chapter, go over
to chapter five, chapter five. You know that Israel, did you
see it? Yeah, let's see. No, chapter four, look at chapter
four. Israel was supposed to be the
people of God, weren't they? Israel, and this nation is full
of people that call themselves Christian. Israel, they are not all Israel,
they're of Israel. Neither is he a Jew that's one
outwardly. Back then, everyone in Israel wasn't a child of God,
but there was a remnant, according to the election of grace, right?
It's the same today. Same today. And Israel was playing
with this ark. They were toying with this ark.
They thought that it would save them from anything. It! Look at chapter 4, verse 3. Now, the Philistines were smiting
Israel. And the people came into the
camp, verse three, chapter four, the elders of Israel. These are
leaders, these are religious leaders. And they said, why is
the Lord smitten us today before the Philistine? Let us fetch
the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us, that
when it cometh among us, it will save us out of our enemy. It. Becky, do you hear any of them
saying, oh, may the Lord God have mercy upon us. Lord, save
us or we perish. No, let's say let's get to Ark
and it will save us. No, it won't. We're not redeemed
with corruptible things such as silver and gold. This building's
not gonna save you, is it? This building's coming down.
There won't be one stone left standing on another, one brick.
Someday. We're not saved by things. We're
not saved by creeds. We're not saved by doctrine.
We're saved by the Lord. We're saved by the mercy of God.
We're saved by calling on the Lord. Lord, save us or we perish. And people all over get in trouble,
don't they? And they get religion. I knew a man who never came,
as we'd say, never darkened a church house door. And one day he was
sitting playing cards with his friends. sitting playing cards
and his best friend right beside him just fell over dead. Instantly. It scared him to death. He was
in church the next day. And he was there the next time,
and the next time, and the next time, until a few weeks after
the funeral. Then the funeral's over, and
the scare's over, and he's gone. get in trouble, get sick, or
somebody dies. And like cows, you know, they
all look up and say, oh, my. And then after a little while,
they go right back down to grazing. Never given God a thought. It
won't save us. Salvation's up in the Lord. Religion
won't save us. And God killed 30,000 Israelites
for messing with that ark. And this gospel that I'm preaching,
that John preaches, is serious business. It's not a thing to
be toyed with. It's not a thing to be messed with. They say,
try Jesus. I've got one daughter, and I
don't throw her out there to 10 men and say, y'all try her
out if you don't like her, send her back. If I'm gonna give my daughter,
if that's what it's gonna take to save them, but it's gonna
accomplish what I sent her to do. You don't try, Jesus. Ah, boy. That's religion today,
isn't it? Try it out. If that doesn't work
for you, it's okay. God loves you anyway. No, he
didn't. He's angry. He killed 30,000. Later on, the men of Beth Shemesh,
started toying, they looked in it. And God killed 50,000 more
of them for just looking into it. You don't mess with this. You don't toy with it, the truth.
Well, the Philistines said in chapter six of chapter five,
they said, we gotta get rid of this thing. This, the ark, they
took the ark. The light went out. You know
the story? They took the ark. They took it to... Philistia
and set it in their temple with Dagon. You remember? Set it up
in the temple with Dagon. You remember what happened that
night? Dagon fell over on his face before the Ark. Then does
the scripture say, every knee will bow and every tongue will
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the
Father. You know what Dagon was? You know what his image was? A fish. What do you see on the back of
people's cars? Then, they propped him up. They propped their God
up. He can't save him. They can't save him. They propped
him up. Okay, oh my, he's falling over. They propped him up. Came
back in the next morning, and his head was cut off! And his
arms! In other words, their God had
no hands with their hands and no feet with their feet. That's not our God, is it, Johnny? Our God is God. Our Christ is
Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ is Lord,
not because we make Him Lord, but because God made Him Lord.
And all gods fall before Him, even Satan. Satan does his bidding. Yes, sir, he can't do a thing
without Christ. Well, these Philistines, they were being, they were being,
they were in trouble because of this ark. They said, we've
got to get rid of it. How can we get rid of this thing? You
know, that's what modern man thinks. If we can get rid of
religion, they think religion is a problem. And it is. False
religion is the problem, but not the truth. Problem is we've
got too much false religion, not enough truth. That is the
problem. But they say if we can just get, they say today, if
we just get rid of Bibles, get rid of the Ten Commandments,
get rid of all this, we just annihilate religion from our
society, we'll all be just fine. Is that the case with the Philistine?
No, God killed them all eventually. They said, what are we gonna
do? So they said, let's get, now chapter six, I finally got
to it. Chapter six, now it won't be
long, you gotta see this. They said, here's what we'll
do, verse seven, let's take a new cart, take two milk cows, never
had a yoke on them, and tie those cows to that cart, and bring
their cows, their calves home from them, their baby calves,
nursing calves, and take the ark of the Lord and lay it on
that cart and send it away and see what happens to that ark,
and see where they go. And if those two cows pulling
that ark go all the way to where the people of God are, go straight
up the highway to that place, God did this. But if they don't,
if they turn around and go back to their babies, God's not in
it. He's not in it. It's something
else happened to us. There is no God. Are you with me? You say, let's take two cows,
two mothers, two nursing mothers. You have some mothers in here.
You have sons. These are nursing babies. Take
these two calves, take two cows, milk cows, nursing mothers, never
had a yoke on them, never been yoked. Tie them to this cart, put this
ark of the Lord on this cart, tie them to this ark and let
them go and see what happens. Take away their babies. take
their babies away from them, take them home, and see what
these mothers do. And if they take this ark straight
to the people of God, God did this, and if not, ain't nothing
to it. Now our Lord said, if any man,
woman, loved father or mother, son or daughter more than me,
can't be my disciple. Christ said, take my yoke upon
you and learn of me. I am meek and lowly at heart,
and you'll find rest for your soul. Now here's what God does
to every single person He saved. There's no exception. Mothers,
fathers, young people, whoever it is. Here's what He does. He
takes an unridden, unyoked, unbroken, wild-ass's colt. And he comes
in the power of the gospel that I've been preaching to you, of
Christ. And he takes that gospel and puts the gospel yoke on them,
the yoke of Christ. Christ said, my yoke is easy,
my burden is light. The law is heavy, but the yoke
of Christ is easy and light. He takes someone who was a wild
ass as colt, never been in bondage like Ephraim of old. Ephraim
was never, unaccustomed to the yoke. And God put on him this
yoke of ownership. And the Lord Jesus Christ through
the gospel comes and ties us to this gospel, this church is
as it were, this place, this place. This little fold, sheet
fold, is a place where the ark of God is, a place where the
gospel of God is. This is where he's given up for
the gospel to be preached. And he's tied us to it. He's
tied us to it. This is the tie that binds us.
These two cows, they were separate before. This cow is over here
with her baby, that baby was her life. This cow over here
with that baby, that baby was her life. They didn't know each
other. But what God did was join them together, these two old
cows. Yoke them together. This is the tie that binds. Isn't it? This is the gospel
tie that binds us together. Some of us didn't know each other
for years, and now we do. What binds us? This gospel. What
are we doing? What are we doing here? We're
pulling an ark. We're pulling a cart. We got
this burden. It's not a heavy burden, but
this wonderful burden is called the gospel. We're taking it out. Now this has happened so many
times and will continue to happen that Christ said, I've come to
set man at variance against his father and a mother against her
daughter. And a man's enemy should be those
of his own household, husbands and wives. Separation over what? The gospel. Who loves Christ? Who knows Christ? Those that
have this burden of the gospel and will leave their blood pen
for it. I knew a man years ago who was
married, had a child, young man. Years and years ago, this is
50 years ago. The Lord taught him the truth through Henry Mahan's
preaching. He heard the gospel, the Lord
saved his soul. He had one son, a newborn son. The Lord revealed
the gospel to him, but not his wife. She hated it. She hated it. He wanted her to
love it. He wanted her to come and hear
this gospel. She finally wouldn't do it. She wouldn't go anymore.
And one morning, this actually happened, one morning he was
getting ready to go to, one Lord's Day, getting ready to go hear
the gospel of Christ, His love, His first love. And she stood
in the door with that baby. She stood in the door. And she
said, you don't have to go to that church today. And she said, if you do, I won't
be here when you get back. I'm going to take our son and
I'm gone. And he said, I don't have to go worship the
Lord. I do because I want to. But today,
I have to. You've drawn a line in the sand.
You've said you or him. And I'm going, and Doug, she
left, and he didn't see that boy for years. These two cows took this cart,
and it says in verse 12, it says, they were lowing by the way.
They went the straight way, all the way to the house of the son,
people of God, and they were lowing by the way. What were
they doing? Lowing. You ever heard a cow taking from
its calf? Sure you have. Oh, when our Lord
was going up Calvary's hill, he says he was carrying his cross
and the women were weeping. He said, don't weep for me. Don't
weep for me. Don't feel sorry for me. He said,
but do this, do this. Weep for yourselves and weep
for your children. Those cows were saying, oh, come
with us. Oh, come with us. Mama, don't
leave me. I got to go to Christ, but you
come with us. Is that the way you feel? What
do you want for your children? What do you want for your children?
Career or Christ? And they went the straight way.
Said they didn't turn to the right, didn't turn to the left.
They went straight up there. And you know what you can see
from this? There was no hand. There was
no one leading them. There was no one leading them. Oh yes there
was. No man was leading them, Ed.
No man was leading them. I'll tell you who was leading
them. God was. This thing was of the Lord. And
those Philistines said, that's got to be of the Lord. No mother's going to leave her
young for a box. And don't you know on the way
up there, Johnny, that box was covered with blood from years
of blood on it, brown box, and the people on the way, don't
you know the people on the way were saying, what is that all about? Where are they going? They say,
you pass this place, pass that place, come to this one place.
Where are they going? What's in that place? The gospel. And when those cows came to that
house of Beth Shema, it says the people saw it coming. The
people that knew what this ark was all about, they saw it and
they rejoiced. And it says when the cows came
to that place, you know how they knew where to stop? You know
how they knew where to stop? It says there was a big stone
right there. A big rock, Billy, a big rock. And they said, this is it. Christ
is that rock. Christ is that stone of stumbling
and rock of fence. And they came to that ark and
they stopped right there and said, this is where we're going
to stay forever. And they did. You know what happened
to them? They died. They were sacrificed. They laid
down their lives for that ark that they were carrying. And
I believe that's gonna happen to some of you. Brother Ed, it's
not long, is it? Doug, you're 75, that's five
more years than you promised. And one of these days, they're
gonna put you in an ark, in a coffin. But bless God, I believe by His
sovereign mercy and grace, He's chosen you to be like one of
these milk cows, to carry this gospel burden and lay down your
life. Would you lay down your life
for this gospel? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Christ is life. It's not religion. This is life. Oh, may the Lord bless you. You want to sing a hymn in closing? Okay. May the Lord bless you.
Bless his word. Enjoyed being with you.