Let me say what an honor and
privilege it is to be here. And by the way, Judy and Gene,
as you know, send their love. They love you dearly also. And
it's been wonderful having them there. We're thankful for that.
And he's preaching for me tomorrow. And I think the folks are glad
sometimes when I go out of town. He is. They get to hear some
good preaching. And it's sure been a pleasure
to meet each of you. Thank you for having me. The
accommodations have been wonderful. John and Kathy, so hospitable. And each of you, so kind. Thank
you. Turn with me in your Bible to the book of Ephesians, chapter
4, if you would, please. Ephesians, chapter 4. I think all of us at one time
or another have heard someone say something like, I've read
the Bible, but I just don't understand it. I read it, but it doesn't
make sense to me. It's too complicated. I don't
know what it means. I don't know what it's talking
about. Just a couple weeks ago, I had a friend of mine who is
a fine man. He's a moral man, but he's a
lost man. And he said to me, he said, David,
he said, I read the Bible, but I just don't understand it. First
of all, the Bible is not hard to understand. It's really not. But it's impossible to understand
apart from knowing who the author is. You can't understand the
Bible without understanding something about the one who wrote it. God's Word will never be understood
apart from knowing God. Those of you who know God know
that to be so. But God never intended for His
Gospel to be complicated or hard to understand. It's not hard
to understand, it's impossible to believe apart from a divine
revelation from God. God has to divinely intervene
in order for us to ever see the truth of the scriptures. But
it's not hard to understand. Let me give you an example. The
Lord Jesus said, you have not chosen me, but I've chosen you. Now is there anything about that
you don't understand? That's a pretty simple statement,
isn't it? It's not that people don't understand
it. Election is plain and simple. The problem is people hate it.
It's not that men and women don't understand. By nature, we hate
the gospel. We hate God. In John chapter 14 verse 6, the
Lord Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and
no man cometh to the Father but by me. Now is there anything
hard to understand about that? Absolutely not. What would cause
anyone to think that they could be saved and reconciled to God
apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. According to that single verse,
but by me, he said, no man comes, no woman, no body. The problem
is not with understanding it, the real problem lies with him
believing it. Men don't misunderstand what
the Lord said, they just hated what he said. The point I'm trying
to make is this, the gospel message we preach, is a simple and singular
message that is to be believed. And it's to be believed because
it was God's. It's God's work. Throughout the
scriptures we're often reminded of the oneness of spiritual and
eternal things. Now I was just an average student
in school and I was below average in math. But there was never
a time from kindergarten on that I didn't understand one. Even my granddaughter, who's
now seven, when she was a year old, you could say, how old are
you? And she couldn't even talk, but she could hold up at one
finger. How old are you? She understood
one. Here in Ephesians 4, verse 4,
we read, there is one body, one church, and one Spirit, capital
S, meaning the Spirit of God. One Spirit, meaning the Spirit
of God, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.
How many hopes do we have? Just one. Just one. Religions divided into many denominations,
but there's only one church, there's only one body. As John
said this morning, we live in a day where there's a church
building on every corner. One denomination believes this,
another denomination believes that, a third one believes something
entirely different from the other two. And if men don't like what
God says in his word, men and women say, well, this is what
God meant. And if you don't see it my way,
then we'll just go on down the road. And we'll do our own thing. Kind of reminds me of that story
I heard one time about the fellow who was shipwrecked on an island,
had been shipwrecked for 20 years. And the Coast Guard or somebody
saw him on the side of the shore. And he's waving and all this. And they come to shore. And they said, are you the only
one here? He said, I've been here by myself
for 20 years. just waiting for someone to come. And they said,
well, I noticed some buildings back here. He said, oh, yeah. He said, this one right over
here, he said, that's my house. And he said, then the one next
to that is where I go to church. And they said, well, what's the
one next to that? He said, that's where I used to go to church. And that's, I know that's humorous,
but it's a lot of truth in it. We can't even get along with
ourselves. I know it's a popular thing today to
have no wrong or right answers. As long as you feel good about
your answer, they say. Today it's popular to say there's
no winners or losers. But that don't make it any less
so. A man and his brother can believe two different things
and they can both be wrong. But if one's right, the other
has to be wrong. The apostle tells us here that
there's one body of true believers, just one. There's one Spirit that reveals
the truth. Just one. The Spirit of God.
There's only one hope. There's only one calling. How
many? Just one. Just one. That being the effectual
call of the Spirit of God. Do you remember when God called
you? I only have one hope of ever
being redeemed. One hope. That's it. And that's the hope that I have
in Christ alone. That's what Paul says here in
verse 5. One Lord. There's just one. The
Lord Jesus Christ. There's another Jesus, but he's
not the true Christ. There's only one faith, and that's
the gift of faith that God gives. One baptism, he said, you remember
when the mother of James and John came to the Lord Jesus one
day, and the scripture says they desired a certain thing of the
Lord. And she requested, grant these,
my two sons, to sit the one on thy right hand and the other
on the left in thy kingdom. And the Lord said, you know not
what you ask. Are you or your sons, for that
matter, or any sinner, able to drink of the cup that I shall
drink of and be baptized with the baptism that I'm baptized
with? And our Lord here is speaking,
when He speaks of baptism here, He's speaking of His reproach. He's speaking of His sorrows,
His sufferings, His death. And He compares these things
to a bitter cup. that he alone must and would
drink. The ordinance of water baptism
by immersion beautifully represents what Christ did for his elect. We know that. Paul said, therefore
we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ
was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even
so we also should walk in newness of life, Romans 6.4. So there's
just one baptism. The child of God in Christ is
dead, and dead to sin, buried with him, the scripture says.
Buried with Him under the wrath of God and risen with Him into
life everlasting. This is the beautiful thing about
substitution. My union with Christ. Oh, I love
to think about it, don't you? To be one with Him. God's wrath and justice in the day of Noah fell on the
whole world. He repented God that he had made
man on earth. Man's heart was only on evil
continually, as we've already heard this weekend. And you know,
you think about it, the ark of Noah was immersed in God's wrath. As the water came from above
and from below, the scripture says, but those in the ark were
covered. And the ark took the punishment,
sparing all inside. God's wrath fell on Noah and
his family too. But the difference was that Christ,
the believer's ark, took the blow of God's justice and wrath. And all who were in the ark were
saved. Christ is our ark. He's our ark. Friends, there's one baptism,
there's one hope, there's one Lord. One faith. Only one place for you to put
your trust. Are you putting your trust in
Him? That's the Lord Jesus Christ.
Only one baptism. And it should come as no surprise
to you or me that according to verse 6, there is but one God
and Father of all who's above all and through all and in you
all. So we see here the simplicity of the Gospel. One God, one Lord,
one Spirit. How many? One. Turn with me to
Romans chapter 5, if you would. Romans chapter 5. Look at verse 12 with me. God
here tells us about one man. Speaking of Adam here in verse
12, Paul tells us, wherefore, as by one man sin entered into
the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all
men, for that all have sinned. Now look at the first part of
verse 17, for if by one man's offense death reigned by one,
it was Adam's one sin that gave death its reigning power over
all the sons of men. Now, I don't understand much,
but I'm telling you, I understand one, and I understand all. Don't
you? Yes, simplicity. Look at verse
19. For as by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many
be made righteous. One God made one man the representative
of all men. And when that one man sinned,
sin was imputed to all men and women, and all were alienated
from God. To stand before God, you've got
to be perfect. That one man, their federal head,
their representative, they all fell in Him. One and all. But then God gave another man.
Aren't you glad he did? And this man came to save his
people from their sin, Matthew 121. He shall save his people from
their sin, no doubt about it. And by that one man's obedience,
many are made and shall be made righteous, perfectly righteous.
For God will accept nothing else. In school, I didn't understand
algebra at all. I just didn't. I mean, it was
like a foreign language to me. But I understand one. And I understand
all. And I understand many. Why? Because that's pretty simple.
Don't let your minds be corrupted, Paul said, from the simplicity
that's in Christ. Look at verse 15 here in Romans
chapter 5. But not as the offense, so also
is the free gift. For if through the offense of
one many be dead, much more the grace of God and the gift by
grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ. Friends, that's the God-man. They're not like him. By one
man, Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many. The simplicity and singularity
of the gospel. One man, Adam, a representative
of all the human race, and one man, Jesus Christ, the representative
of all God's elect. Men and women don't miss these
blessed truths because they're too hard to understand. They
reject them because they hate these truths and they refuse
to bow to them. And it's just that simple, really.
In John chapter 6, the Lord Jesus told his followers, he said,
I'm the bread of life that cometh down from heaven. If any man
eat of this bread, he shall live forever. Then the Lord, a little
few minutes later, He said, He told them something about themselves.
He said, no man can come to me except the Father which sent
me draw him. How can any man or woman come
to Christ? Only if God draws them. Only
if God reveals Himself to them. And he said, except the Father
which sent me draw him, and I'll raise him up at the last day.
It's written in the prophets, and they shall be all taught
of God. All the world? No. All his people,
all his elect. All those that he chose before
the foundation of the world. And everybody said, this is a
hard saying. That word hard means harsh, severe. No, it's not. No, it's not. What he was saying was, I am
salvation. I am salvation. You cannot save
yourself. Salvation is of the Lord. You
know what follows that in Scripture? I love to say this. Period. Salvation is of the Lord. Period. It's then that we read those
sad words from that time many of his disciples went back and
walked no more with him. Oh, they understood him. I guarantee
you they understood him. They were offended. They hated
what he said. And when you tell men and women
that they can't do anything to save themselves, they'll get
upset. They'll get offended. Our Lord
looked at His closest friends that day and He said, will you
go away also? Peter said, Lord, to whom will
we go? Thou hast the words to eternal life. Do you see that
Christ is the Word? Do you see that Christ has eternal
life and that Christ is eternal life? That would be a better
way of saying it. Let's go a step further into this singleness
and simplicity. Paul told Timothy, he said, for
there's one God and one mediator between God and men. How many?
One. Just one. One mediator between
God and men, the man Christ Jesus. How many gods are there? Just
one. How many mediators? Just one. Just one, the man Christ
Jesus. What did this mediator do? The
scripture tells us. He offered one sacrifice for
sin. Just one. That's all it took.
When it's God, that's all it takes. The writer of Hebrews said in
chapter 10 verse 12 of the book of Hebrews, but this man, after
he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on
the right hand of God and then he said, for by one offering
he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Why did
this one man offer this one sacrifice for sin? You answer that and
you've preached the gospel. The answer, that he might die
the just for the unjust. That he might be both a just
God and a just Savior. A just God and a Savior. For
as God is your Savior. I remember one time Cody Groover
telling me, Cody's with the Lord now, but he was a young girl,
he's a missionary in Mexico, I'm sure you remember Cody. He
said a young girl came up to him and said, I'd like to be
baptized. And he was concerned about her
age. She was very young, 10, 11 years
old. And he said, well, honey, why
do you want to be baptized? And she said, pastor, the Lord
has shown me that Jesus Christ is God. He put her in the water. You
see, if you see that, God's revealed something to you. Here in Romans chapter 5, look
at Romans chapter 6 verse 9. Knowing that Christ being raised
from the dead dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over
him. For in that he died, he died
unto sin once. How many times? Once. But in that he liveth, he liveth
unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. How are we going to be alive
unto God? Through Christ. That's the only way. God's love
is in Christ. God's mercy and God's grace to
us is only in Christ. Now that doesn't mean that you
and I will never sin again. That means that sin is dead unto
you and that you're dead unto sin. That rich young ruler came
to the Lord Jesus and he said, Lord, good master, what good
thing must I do to be saved? See, with him it was all about
being good. I had a man tell me not long ago
that he believed that He had done the best that he could,
that he had always tried to treat people right, and that he thought
he would have a place in heaven because of that. But friends,
the gospel is not about being good. The gospel is about being
perfect. And how are we going to do that?
That rich young ruler said, good master, what good thing must
I do to be saved? Excuse me just for a second,
friends. I have pushed the wrong button.
That's a bad thing. Excuse me just a second. No matter how much men and women
try to reform themselves, they'll always be lacking. That's what
the Lord told that young man. He said, there's one thing that
thou likest. One thing that you like. No matter how much men and women
try to reform themselves, they'll always be lacking. We've been
weighed in the balances, and we've been found what? We've
been found wanting. Wanting. If we claim to have kept and
done all these things like this young man did, God will always
meet us with the one thing that we lack. This young man's lack
was his unwillingness to part with his riches in order to follow
Christ and will always be lacking that which God requires the most. That being perfect obedience,
that being perfect righteousness. Perfect. I'm convinced we don't
know a lot about perfection, do we? And that's only accomplished
by perfect obedience. And perfect obedience can only
be accomplished by a perfect substitute. Let me ask you a
question. Can a dead man stand trial for
breaking the law? No, a dead man can make no restitution
for justice. He's dead. The law can no longer
hold God's elect accountable for breaking the law. Why? Because Christ died in their
place. Christ died in their state. And He took their sin. And they
died. We died in the sin. Dear believer, the law of sin
and death has no more claim on you than it did Christ himself.
Oh, I wish we could get a hold of that, don't you? I wish we
could. God's law's been satisfied. God's
justice has been paid. Christ fulfilled the law and
now we're dead unto it. The child of God's been redeemed.
That means their sin is paid and put away. And the one God, the very one
that we have offended is satisfied. That's good news. That's gospel
news. Did you know that there's only
one thing needful? Just one. Martha said, Lord,
I'm working my fingers to the bone. My sister Mary is sitting
there at your feet. She's not doing anything. She
won't help me. Remember what the Lord said,
Martha, Martha, Oh, you're careful and you're troubled about many
things. Boy, that's a picture of us,
isn't it? We're careful and we're troubled about many things. But
he said this, one thing is needful, just one thing. And Mary had
chosen that good part, that good portion, which shall never be
taken away from her. What we need is a perfect righteousness
before God. And did you know, I know you
do, there's only one way to get it. Just one way to have it. Mary chose the good part. Have
you chosen the good part? The good portion? That's Christ. That's the Lord Jesus. Sitting at the feet of Christ.
Bowing and receiving every word. That's the good part, isn't it?
Christ is the sum and the substance of the Word of God. That's what
Mary heard. For the Law, the Prophets, and
the Psalms are all concerning Him. Christ is that portion that
can never be taken away. Christ is that one thing needful. Do you have a need for Him? There's
a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are
the ways of death. There's only one way. So many
are telling sinners today that there are many ways. And if you
go this way, well, that's all right. And if you want to go
that way, that's OK, too. Take whatever road you like.
They all end up at the same place. No, I'm afraid they don't. No, they don't. That's not what
God says. God says there's only one way.
John was baptizing in the river Jordan and he looked up and he
saw the Lord Jesus come in and he said unto all that could hear
him, he said, Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the
sins of the world. We need to pay attention to the
words in Scripture. He said, Behold THE Lamb of God. See, there's only one. Only one Savior. Only one Lamb
that can take away sin. There's only one thing that I
know, friends. Yes, it's true. We see through
a glass darkly, don't we? We preach in part because we
know in part. The religious Pharisees asked
that young man that had been blind from his birth. Do you
remember him, John chapter 9? He'd been blind from his birth.
And the Lord Jesus gave him his sight. And they just kept asking
him over and over again how he was made to see. And he answered,
he said, a man that is called Jesus made clay. And he anointed
my eyes. And they asked, where is he?
He said, I don't know where he is. So they called his parents. And they said, is this your son?
They said, yeah, this is our son. They said, was he born blind? They said, yes, he was born blind.
They said, how does he see? They said, we don't know how
he sees. We don't know much, do we? We know this is our son. We know
that he was born blind, but how he sees, we don't know that.
You know what it's taken me 64 years to know? that we don't know much. The
Pharisees turned back to that young man who could now see for
the first time in his life. And they said, give God the praise,
we know this man is a sinner. And I can just, I've pictured
this so many times in my mind, I can just see that young fella
with tears coming out of those eyes that for the first time
could see. He said, I don't know if he's
a sinner or not. But this one thing I do know,
I was blind, but now I see. Friends, I don't know much. No,
I don't. But I tell you for certain, one
thing I do know, I was blind, now I see. I was blind to His grace, blind
to His mercy, blind to His love, blind to His holiness, blind
to my sin. I was even blind to my blindness. I thought I could see, but now
I see. I really do. Like the Apostle
Paul, all God's people will tell you that they haven't arrived.
They haven't attained or apprehended. But there is one thing that we
must do. We've got to forget those things
which are behind us. And press and reach toward those
things which are before. Well, isn't that two things?
Not really. You can't look at what's in front of you if you're
looking at what's behind you. My father used to put out an
amazing garden. I mean it was a thing of beauty,
I thought. Sizable garden too, it was envy to the average gardener. And so well kept, the rows just,
rows of planting, you know, just straight as an arrow, kept it
cleaned and tended to, and one day The neighbor came over and
he said, Mr. Emerson, he said, how do you
keep those rows of your garden so straight? And he said, well,
he said, it's pretty simple, really. He said, I drive a stake
in the ground where I want the garden to end, and then I start
my tiller where I want it to begin, and I take off towards
that stake. And he said, I never take my
eyes off of it. I don't look back. I don't look
to the left. I don't look to the right. I
don't look down. I just look at that stake at
the end. Brothers and sisters, that's what we've got to do.
We've got to keep our eyes on Christ. We must drive the stake
of the gospel in solid ground and keep our eyes on Him and
press forward. We can't look back. There's nothing
that we can change back there. My dad's neighbor was amazed
at the simplicity and the singleness of his method. Are you amazed
at the simplicity and the singleness of the gospel of Christ? There's one body, one spirit,
one hope, one calling, one Lord, One faith. One baptism. One thing needful. One man. One mediator. One thing that
we know. One thing that we must do. One
way. One gospel. One message. Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. That's the message. Only one
message. Recently someone asked a man
in our church, said, What did your preacher preach on this
Sunday? He said the same thing he preaches on every Sunday.
And the person was kind of shocked. And they said, the same message
every Sunday? There's only one message. Just
one message. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Can't say it any simpler than
that. If you're here this evening without
Christ, oh, I pray that God will reveal himself to you. There's
only one who can save you from your sin, just one. And his name
is Jesus, and he shall save his people from their sin. This world
in which we live is full of uncertainty, but just because we are in this
world doesn't mean that we're of it. The realm in which we dwell is
a sure one. And the Lord Jesus said, if thou
shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe
in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou
shalt be saved. You shall be. May God enable
you to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one and the only. substitute, sacrifice, savior,
and surety for his people. May God be pleased to add his
blessings to the preaching of his word. Thank you so much.