We're going to finish up chapter 10 of Don Fortner's book titled, Basic Bible Doctrine. And one of the most basic teachings, that's what doctrine means, a teaching. What does the Bible teach? These are the basic things that we learn from looking into God's Word, the basic teachings. And one of the most even though he's getting to it in chapter 10, is the Son of God our Savior. And that's the title for this chapter. And he takes his thoughts from Matthew 1, verse 21, where it says, and she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. He shall. There's no question about it. He's the Son of God, and he is our Savior, and much more.

Don begins with this, he says, there's one word in the Bible which is itself forms an entire library in this one word. One word which is the sum and the substance of the entire Bible from cover to cover. One word which compromises all truth in the scriptures and that word is crushed. God's people say amen. When chosen, redeemed sinners are brought out of darkness into light by the irresistible, regenerating grace and power of God the Holy Spirit, when Christ is revealed in the chosen vessels of mercy, when they become savingly acquainted with the divine word, they are made wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. I see the lips. Everybody's saying the same thing. We know who that is. We know who our wisdom is. We know where our wisdom is, don't we? It's in the Savior, the Lord Jesus.

Well, that's what Titus 3.15 says as well. We are led by the Spirit of life. We are led by the Spirit in life through faith, through believing in the Lord Jesus. Not trusting, not believing, not all those other things that we might do in our flesh, but in Him alone as our only righteousness. We see what Paul describes when he's writing to the Colossians. He says, all the riches of the full Everything that you can understand all the riches of what God gives you an understanding of to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge

Folks when we grow in grace You know the world loves to take that verse and say see Bible's teaching you Roger religions of the world. We'll teach. Christ is offering this. You need to accept it. You need to do this. You need to do that. No. God's people know that we can never do any of that. We look to Christ for everything, folks. That's what makes Him our Savior. See? Well, I'm getting away from my notes there. And if I do, I won't have enough time. So I better get back there.

The first, and the first, this is our third one. The first one we looked at, why did Christ come? And we looked at different things there. He came to save his people from their sins, as it says in Matthew 1.21. Then we looked at, who is this Jesus? And we considered these verses, Matthew 24, verse 24 and 23. That didn't go right, but here, it's Matthew 24. There shall arise false Christ and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that if it were possible, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. So when men come to you and say, lo, here is Christ, or there is Christ, your Lord warns you and I to believe not. Believe what this says about Christ. Don't believe the man in the pulpit. I've said this more than once, folks, I'm just a man in the flesh. I'm capable of error as any man is. I ask for your forgiveness in so many things. Lord, help me. Lord, keep me to His Word and His Word alone, not to mix in my own with what He has said, but just to speak about what God is through His Word. who He is through His Word.

This Son of God, this Lord Jesus, when the Bible speaks of Him as the Son of God, it's declaring to you and I that Jesus Christ is God's eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity, in every way equal with God the Father and God the Spirit. We who believe are the sons of God by adoption, as it tells us in John chapter 1, verses 1-3. All the attributes of divinity belong to Him. If Jesus Christ is not God, if He is anything less than the Almighty, then we have no Savior.

This Jesus, who is God Almighty, is our substitute. The key to understanding the book of God is to understand the gospel, the teaching of substitution. When I say that Jesus Christ is the sinner's substitute, I mean that He stood before God as a substitute for His people. before the world began as the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, as we read in Revelation 13 verse 8.

Be sure you understand this, writes Don, if Jesus Christ is indeed God, and He is, then all that He has undertaken to do, as our substitute, must be effectually and completely accomplished by His own strong right arm. And who is that? Christ. Those whom He came to redeem are redeemed. Those whom He undertook to justify are justified. whom He undertook to save, they must be saved. As it is written, He shall save His people from the sin. And then we looked at Isaiah 42.4, where it says, He shall not fail.

This Jesus, the Christ of the Bible, who is Almighty God, is the Savior of His people. Christ alone is our Savior. He is our complete salvation. This Christ is the effectual Savior of His people.

Now this morning, we're going to look Who are those people the Bible says Christ shall save? Those people he came to save were his people long before he came to save them. The angel said he shall save his people. He did not say he shall save those who shall be his people. He shall save his people. Whosoever his people are, they were his people before he saved them. They were His people before He came to save them.

Listen to these words from Psalm 110, verse 3. Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power. Or here, listen to these words from John 10, verse 16. Or other sheep, He says, I have, which are not of this fold, speaking of those in the future, those who are still yet to come into the world, those for whom He said, He sent His only begotten Son. He loved the world so much that He sent His only begotten Son. That's all of those that were given to Him by the Father throughout all time.

Folks, we don't know when the end of the world is coming. I think it's coming soon, but who knows? It could go for another 2,000 years. One day to the Lord is 1,000 years to you and I. That's what Scriptures tell us. You know, my hope in this is that my children might be saved. There's still hope for them today because there's still breath in mankind. God has not returned. When he returns, that's it. The last one has been saved. But today, there's still hope for all of those that we love.

All natural. All men naturally think that Christ came to save everyone in the world. All men think that Christ died for everyone in the world. That is not the doctrine, not the teaching of the Scriptures. What does the Word of God say? This is our standard, the Bible. If a man does not speak according to the words of Holy Scripture, it is because there is no light in him. Those who declare that Christ died to save everybody in the world do not have one ray of spiritual light in them. To teach such a doctrine is to deny the very deity of Christ himself.

I realize that many object to such dogmatism. Many who would not hesitate to say that those liberals are complete heretics his perfect holiness, his precarious atonement, his resurrection from the dead, object vehemently to the same thing about those who deny the glorious efficacy of his atonement. Don says, I make no apology for such a declaration. And I say amen.

Christ's sin-atoning work is the very heart of the gospel, the good news. To deny the efficacy, the efficiency of his sacrifice is to deny that he is God. He cannot be God if he fails to do what he came to do. As we read in Isaiah 42, 4, if his love can be changed to wrath, if his blood does not fully satisfy divine justice and affectionately redeem every sinner for whom it was shed, then His Word would not be truth.

Turn over to Isaiah 53 if you would. Let's see what it says there in the Scriptures about that very thing. Isaiah 53. Beginning at verse 9. We're talking about the efficacy of the death and the life of our Lord and Savior, who is our Savior. to deny the power of God in His death and in His walk on this earth is to deny Christ Himself.

Look here, verse 9-12,

And He made His grave with the wicked and with the rich in His death, because He had done no violence, neither was there any deceit in His mouth, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He hath put Him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the travail, the suffering. Oh, did our Lord suffer. He shall see that suffering of his soul and shall be satisfied by his knowledge, shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoiled with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

Look over Romans chapter 3. Talking about the efficiency, the effectual efficiency of our Lord Jesus Christ in what He did for us. Look at Romans chapter 3, verse 24. Romans 3, verse 24. We read, for all have sinned, it comes short, I'm sorry, beginning at verse 24, not 23. being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth. God Himself, God the Father, has sent His Son forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.

Ah, I love the way scriptures are so consistent about this. It's over and over and over, Mike. It's all about our faith in Him, in what He's done. He's everything to us. Verse 25, whom God has set forth to be appreciation and remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God, to declare, verse 26, I say at this time, His righteousness that He might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

Listen to these words of Hebrews 9 verse 12. Neither by the blood of goats or cats, but by his own blood he entered once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.

How about this one from Malachi 3.6? Our Lord says, I am the Lord. I change not. Therefore, Ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that good news?

The Son of God did not come to save all mankind. He came to save His people, His peculiar people. Well, who are His people? They are His seed, as we just read in Isaiah 53, verses 10 through 12. They are His sheep, as we read in John. Turn over to John chapter 10. We'll look at three verses over there in John chapter 10. They are his sheep is what he calls them. And in John chapter 10, the first place he mentions that over there is in verse 11. Look at verse 11 of John chapter 10. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for who? For the sheep. Not the goats.

And our Bible study, which by the way, for those of you who attend our Bible study on Friday night, we'll be returning to that Bible study this Friday night. So I appreciate you allowing me a little time off for the last few weeks where Kathy and I were doing some traveling and so on. But we've been studying that very thing. My sheep, there's a difference between the sheep and the goats. He very clearly says over in Matthew chapter 25, I think it is, the sheep will be on one end and the goats will be on the left. The sheep will be the ones, he says, come, enter into the glory of heaven, to those, not exact words, but to that figure. And he tells them, come. And then he says to his goats, what does he say to them? Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity, for I have never known thee.

Look at another verse. Look over at verse 15. Again, John chapter 10, verse 15. As the Father knoweth me, even so I know the Father, and I laid down what? I can't wait to read the opening verses for service. I've got to hold back. I want to read them right now. But they've got to go with the message. Pay attention when you hear the message at the 11 o'clock service. There's the very first verse I open up with. You're going to love it. My sheep, he says, I laid down my life for the sheep.

Here, one more if you would. Look over at verse 26 of that very same chapter. Turn the page in my case. He tells some unbelieving Jews, some Jews who stood before him and said, How long do you cause us to doubt? How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. And he says in verse 25, I told you, and you believed not. The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me, but ye believe not, because ye are not my sheep. As I said unto you, my sheep, hear my voice."

You know, that was, when I remember the first time, Pastor Gene just really hammered on that. And I was sitting there, I don't remember where I was. I think I was sitting behind Juanita Gutina. Remember her? Boy, she could whistle. Woo! She could whistle up a storm. She used to turn around to me before I even started leading the singing. She goes, you need to be up there leading the singing. I went, no, you're crazy, woman. Turn around. Don't try to put that on me. Look what happened. One thing led to another, and here we are today. I was right behind her, and I remember Pastor Gene just hammering on that very thing. My sheep hear my voice. And I thought to myself, wait a minute. I think I hear His voice. Not audibly, not in my ear, but in my heart. I'm hearing His voice. He's calling me His sheep. Oh, what a great thing.

Who are the people of God? They are His sheep, as we just read. They are His chosen bride of the church. Turn over to Ephesians chapter 5. His chosen bride. Ephesians. Went too far, Johnny. There we go. Verse 5. Look at verse 25. Who are His people? They are His chosen bride. The church of God. The called out. That's what the church means. Those who are called out. Called to come together and worship Him.

Ephesians chapter 5 verse 25. Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it that He might sanctify Set it apart, make it holy, and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. This is getting good, folks. Who are the people of God? They are His elect. Look over at chapter 1 of Ephesians. Look at verses 3 through 7 of chapter 1. We're going to read a little bit of that today for our message as well. Look at verses 3 through 7.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Teaser! Teaser to you! There goes a Mohannin carrot out there! Title of my message next is going to be titled, is, is, In Christ. According. Verse 4. as He hath chosen us in Him, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him.

And then I always like to add, you know, the original words, the original writings of Holy Scriptures didn't have commas and those kinds of things in it. And this separation here, it just never sat right with me, being separated. I'm changing the commas on there, I'm not changing his word any, I'm just changing how it flows together. He says, according as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him, in love, having predestinated us, he predestinated us in love. We were chosen in Christ out of love. in having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will.

You see how that doesn't take anything away, changing that comma, changing the beginning or the ending of that sentence. It's still according to the good pleasure of his will. Verse 6, to the praise, to the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made The Beloved, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.

So who are His people? His people are those whom God the Father chose in His Son before the foundation of the world, whom He has loved with an everlasting love, as we read in Jeremiah. whom he predestinated unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, as stated over in Romans chapter 29, or chapter 8, verse 29-32, where we read these words, for whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Moreover, whom he did predestinate, then he also called, and whom he called, then he also justified, whom he justified, then he also glorified. What shall we say, then, to these things, if God be for us, who or what can be against us?" He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us, for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?

These are the people for whom the Son of God lived, died, and rose again. Those who teach that He came to save all men, that He lived, died, and rose again for all men, They blaspheme God and the teaching that they preach. Their doctrine makes the love of God useless, helpless, a fickle passion. The justice of God, a mockery, and the immutability of God, a meaningless notion.

We're going to have a Part D.