You know, I almost feel like
I'm denying Garrett the opportunity to stand up. Because, you know,
he does that to me all the time, because I forget all the time.
So I feel like I'm kind of denying him of that pleasure, maybe. Just kidding with you, Garrett.
I just happen to remember twice in one day, and that's a pretty
big rarity, isn't it? I'd like to bring a message before
you this morning that Henry Manhattan preached back in 1987. Now, I
don't know where he was when he preached that message, but
as I was considering what to preach this morning, I was rambling
through some of his, and this pilot just jumped out at me.
It's Christ, the divider of men, and he takes his thoughts from
Luke 12, 51, where it says, suppose ye that I am come to give peace
on earth. Do you think I have come, the
Lord Jesus says, to bring peace on earth? Isn't that what the
world cries out when they see the little baby? what they think on Christmas
Day. Peace and good cheer to all men.
Our Lord says next, I tell you nay. Our Lord Jesus Christ says, I
tell you nay. But rather, division. That's God himself speaking.
That's not man's interpretation of something. It's not something
that we've said, well, this means this. No. Let God speak to your
heart and tell you what it means. Suppose ye that I come to give
peace on earth, I tell you nay, but rather division. You know,
the Apostle Paul said this, he says, if I please men, in other
words, if it's my goal or my object to get along with the
people and tickle their ears and please them, then I am not
a servant of Christ. That's what Paul said. Yes, I
agree. My object, he said, goes on to
say, is to glorify God and to preach the word of God as long
as God will let me live and open doors for me to enter and preach
that gospel. I'm sorry, Mahan wrote that.
I want to tell you the truth about God, the truth about sin,
the truth about salvation, the truth about our Lord Jesus Christ,
and the truth about this thing called faith. This morning, I want to bring
before you this subject, Christ, the divider of men. Many in the
world today preach about the love of Jesus, and that's all.
They do not bring the whole counsel of God before men. They want
to preach about the love of Jesus. For God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son. They want to preach about the
love of Jesus, but they don't want to preach about judgment. You see, there are two sides
to the story. There is a love that God has.
And everything outside of that love will be judged. And our Lord and Savior is the
one who decides who is that love and whom He will In Luke 12.51, our Lord is speaking
and He says, Do you suppose that I have come to give peace on
this earth? I tell you, no. I came to bring division. I came
not to bring peace to the earth, but a sword. A division. That's our Lord speaking to each
and every one of us. You have to include the whole
counsel of God with anything you preach. That's what election
is. Election is the whole counsel
of God. I have chosen this vessel under honor, and I have chosen
this one under dishonor. Jacob have I loved, Esau have
I hated. And that does not mean that God
loved Esau a little less. That's what the world would like
you to believe. They want you to think that Esau was just a
little bit less than Jacob and, you know, Ask them. I've had
them tell them that very thing. They even went into the dictionaries
and changed it. But if you look at it, in the
dictionary it says, inserted as a definition. Lest love. It was inserted at a later date. Some people got power over the
so-called churches of the world and got in there and changed
some of the definitions. In John 7.43 it says this, so
there was a division among the Jews because of Him. Our Lord Jesus brought division
in between the very people that were His. He divided the people. In John
10, 19, there is a division, there was a split, and there
was a separation among the Jews for his saying, he said this,
he says, he has a devil. Or they said this, he has a devil,
he is mad. Why do you listen to him? That was God's people speaking
about him. Why do you listen to this one?
This one who claims to be God? You see, when our Lord walked
this earth in human flesh, He was despised. He was a holy man,
holier than anything. He was holiest of holies. He was a holy man, God in human
flesh. He knew no sin, He had no sin,
He did no sin, yet He was rejected and despised and hated of men.
Isaiah predicted it hundreds of years before when he wrote
this in Isaiah 53, verses 2 and 3. There is no beauty that we
should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of
men. He is a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. And these
very Jews who spat upon Him saw that. They had the scrolls before
them. They knew Paul. Before he became Paul and he
was Saul of Tarsus, he knew the Scriptures perfectly, probably
better than that Pope that sits over there in Rome. Yet they did not see what was
written in Isaiah. Everybody who was anybody turned
thumbs down on Jesus Christ. All the theologians, all the
scholars, all the rulers, all the people turned thumbs down
on Him. He said to His disciples in John 15, if the world hate
you, you know it hated Me before it hated you. That's what our Lord said to
His disciples. That's what He says to you and I. If the world hates
us for our declaration of His sovereignty, of His rule, of
who He is, Know this, that they hated Him first, so much so that
they hung Him on His tree. Here is perfect holiness. Here
is the very righteousness of God. Here is the truth embodied,
the fullness of God in Him. Here is Jesus Christ Himself
standing on this earth, and they cursed Him, and they called Him
a devil. The Gadareans demanded that he
leave their shores and never come back. Why? Because he cast
the devil out of a man, and they went into the pigs. They took
money out of their pockets. They spat in his face, and they
tried to throw him off of a cliff. And finally, they hired false
witnesses against him at a mock trial. They convicted him without
a cause, they crucified him between two thieves, and ridiculed him
until he had died. You know, there are some in today's
world who would say, wouldn't the Lord fare better today? Aren't
we a more civilized people than they were back then? In Matthew 23.30, our Lord dealt
with that very subject. He was talking to the religious
people when he was on this earth. And he says to them, now you
say if we had lived in the days of our father, in the days of
Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Isaiah, we would not have persecuted
the prophets. That's what they would say. We would not have
been partakers of them in the shedding of the blood of the
prophets. We would have loved Moses. We would have loved Isaiah.
We would have loved Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. We would
have loved Nehemiah. That's what they would have said.
That's what they were saying. Don't be deceived. Our Lord told
them, you are the sons of those that killed the prophets and
you or your fathers are guilty of the very blood of the prophets
from righteous Abel to the last one who will ever die. Don't be deceived by moments
of recognition, monuments of recognition given to the preachers
of the past. It's simply one's generation
trying to cover up the crimes of another generation. The natural
man is always the same. His mind is enmity against God. Do you know what that means?
We cannot perceive the kingdom of heaven. We cannot see it,
because our nature is against it. We come into this world dead
in sin and trespasses. It takes the power of the living
God to give life to one that they might see the Kingdom of
Heaven. It's not your free will that
gets it. It's not your works that gets it. It's not coming
to the baptismal. It's not any of that. It's our
Lord and Savior. You see, this is the way men
operate. This is the way the religious world operates. They
say, they ask, would Jesus Christ fare better today? I can tell
you this, no. Sin is the same today as it was
yesterday. Christ is the same and men are
the same. Nature has not changed. Consider the way men operate.
When Moses was here on the earth, they hated him. They did. The Israelites hated him. What
do you mean bringing us out here into the middle of this desert?
We're going to die out here. Where's our meat? Where's our
herbs? Where's this? Where's that? What are you doing
to us bringing us out here? They hated Moses. They did their best to take the
leadership away from him while they bragged about Abraham. But
see, Abraham was dead. It's easy to brag on somebody
when they're dead. And then Moses died, and the
Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, and they hated him, and
they bragged on Moses. You're not Moses. If Moses was here,
we would love him. You're not Moses. When the Lord
Jesus was crucified and was ascended to heaven, they hated the apostles
and they bragged on who Christ was. Our Jesus loves everybody. When the apostles died and the
reformers were here, like Calvin and Luther, they loved the apostles
and they hated the reformers. They made martyrs of the apostle
Peter. After he was dead, they built
a church and they named it for him over there in Rome. Isn't
that always the way it is? This is where the Apostle Peter
was at one time. Look at the wonders that we've
done in his name. Yeah, it is a beautiful church. I don't deny that. So is the
Christian Cathedral. Jesus Christ is not preached
in any one of those places. And they'll all burn up just
like everything else will. They got St. Jude, St. Peter,
St. John, St. Paul. They have all these great monstrosities
built in the names of the men, and their daddies killed them.
What are we doing today? We're bragging on the reformers,
and they're killing the preachers that preach the truth. Everywhere,
everybody brags on Spurgeon. You go to any church, and you
read about Spurgeon. Be careful about what you read
about Spurgeon on the internet. A lot of what they say is his has
been rewritten. Just as they have rewritten what
God has said in scriptures. The same thing went on with John
Calvin and Martin Luther in Germany. It took the divine providence
of God to keep people from killing Luther. He was taken from place
to place, and he was hid there and here and yonder to keep from
killing him. And now Lutheranism is the national
religion of Germany. And he's dead. Do you know that Calvinism and
Arminianism really isn't theirs? We call it Calvinism, but those
are points that were in the Bible from the beginning of time. Calvin
just called it what it is. Total depravity of man, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible
grace, perseverance of the saints. It's all there in the beginning
God. Right? It's all there. What caused the extreme hatred
for Christ? What made men despise Him, reject
Him, hate Him so much that they would nail Him to a cross? What did He do? that they hated
Him so much for? What did He say that caused the
hatred to rise up in their nostrils and to have their fists to be
clenched? What made them drive nails into His hands and feet?
What made them mock, jeer, spit upon Him and laugh at Him while
He died on the cross? What did He say? What did He
do? Let's look at some passages of Scripture and see, shall we?
Turn to the 10th chapter of John. John chapter 10. Let's first take a look at John
10, verse 31. Our Lord Jesus was speaking. And it says, And then they took
up stones again to stone him. Do you know what it means to
stone a man? Can you get a picture in your mind what it is to end somebody's
life with a mob and a pile of stones. They're not picking up
little pebbles, folks, throwing them at somebody, and watching
it bounce off. They're picking up stones. There's so much hatred built up inside of a human being
that they would grab a rock and smash the body of a person with
it. That's what it means to take
up stones. That's what it meant in those days to stone a man
or a woman. How inhumane is it for us to
stick a needle in somebody and put them to death for killing
20 people? How inhumane is it for us to
take somebody and hang them for raping a child? They took up stones. They were
going to stone their Creator. Jesus Christ was standing before
these deeply religious, devout, orthodox, moral people. And they
took up stones to stone Him. They were going to kill Him.
Why? What had He done? What had He said? Let's go back
a verse or two and see. Look at John 10 verse 30, and
he says, I and my father are one. Then they took up stones to stone
him. He said, I and my father are
one. I and the Heavenly Father and
the Living Father are one. I am equal with God. I am God
in human flesh. When you have seen Me, He says,
you have seen the Father. Have you seen Him in essence?
Have you seen Him in power? Have you seen Him in purpose,
in will and in glory, equal with the Father? Is that the way you
look at Jesus? He said to them, many good works
have I done among you, for which of these do you stone me? And
they said, we're not stoning you for good works. Oh no, we
like your good works. Thank you for healing my nephew.
That was great. I was so worried about that.
But don't you dare call yourself God. But he was, and he is. He is God in the flesh. He proved
that to Peter. Didn't we look at that today
in today's Bible study? What did he do for Peter? He
allowed Peter to walk on water. What man could do that? They said, we're not stoning
you for good works. We have no objections to the good works.
In fact, we believe in good works. for that's the way we like it.
That's what we hope to have when we go to heaven, our good works. What we object to you is this,
this blasphemy because you are a man and you make yourself to
be God. I ask you today, I ask you who
are sitting right here today, is Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
Jesus the Son of Mary, is He your God? Is He Almighty God
to you? I'm not talking about a God. I'm talking about the messenger
of God. I'm talking about the ambassador
of God. I'm asking you frankly and poignantly,
is He God Almighty? Was He the one who actually came
to this earth in human flesh? Is that what He is saying, I
and my Father are one? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
yet one God? The Lord our God is one God,
and they cannot operate purpose or will or work apart from one
another, for they are one. When you have seen the Son, you
have seen the Father. That's what the Lord Jesus said.
God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. In the
beginning was the Word, Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was
with God, and Jesus Christ was God. Jesus Christ was made flesh
and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only
begotten of the Father, full of grace and full of truth. Paul said this to the elders
at Ephesus, feed the church of God which He purchased with His
own blood. Whose blood? God's blood. That's why there is no condemnation
to them who are in Christ Jesus today. Because the blood of God
was shed for our sins. Perfectly done. It is finished. He claimed all the attributes
of God while he walked this earth. You know what an attribute is?
An attribute is a character. A character that is a quality,
and these qualities belong to God. Well, what are the qualities
that belong to God? Well, we have external existence.
That is what Christ said before Abraham was, I am, he said. And
the only one who ever used the words I am in those days is God
Almighty. And Christ used it again and
again and again and again. In fact, one time he used it
and everybody fell backwards. There is His creating power where
it says all things were made by Him. So what are the qualities
that belong to God? He has all power to give life.
He's the only one who has power to give life, and that is the
Lord Jesus Christ. He said the Son will quicken
whom He will. These are the attributes of holiness.
There are none holy but God. And that's what He said. Yet
Jesus Christ said, which of you convinces me of sin? I always
do things that please the Father. There was no sin in Him. He was
perfect in every way. He had to be. For He is God in
the flesh. He could be nothing less. Well,
what about omnipotence? What does that mean? All power
and authority is given unto Me in heaven and earth. All power. He's omnipotent. The winds beckon
to His call. That little thing Kathy and I
saw last night coming home, that rainbow that was going straight
up and down, it wasn't curved, and the beautiful clouds that
it was based against, and the sun shining over here on this
side over here, that was done by the power of God. Well, let's not get too carried
away. What about the very air that we're breathing right now?
Isn't that by the power of God also? And our Lord Jesus Christ
has all power. He's omnipotent. What about omniscience? He knows all things. He said,
I am God. He knew their thoughts. Why do you question this? Is what he said to those unbelieving
Jews. Because he thought their thoughts. He knew what they were thinking.
He knows what you and I are thinking right now. And he knows that
if it wasn't by his power, we'd be thinking about all the things
of the world that would attract us, just as the world is today. But yet, right now, right here,
we're thinking about him. because of him and by his power. All right? Look at the fourth
chapter of Luke. Folks, I've got to take this jacket off. I'm
sorry. It's getting cold. We're going to have to test out
that air conditioner. Last week they said it was too cold in
here. I'm thinking about testing out that air conditioner next
week for sure. Let's take a look at Luke chapter
4, verse 28 and 29. This is on the Sabbath day. And
when these ritualistic, legalistic, so-called righteous Jews had
met together to worship in the synagogue, they had turned into
a lynch mob. It says in Luke 4, verse 28-29,
all that were in the synagogue, or in other words, the church
building, and when they had heard these things, in other words,
when they had heard His message, they were filled with what? Wrath! They were filled with wrath and
they led When they had heard these things, they were filled
with wrath, and they led him to the cliff on which their city
was built, that they might cast him off headlong." What in the
world had he said to build up so much wrath? Here's a bunch
of folks who on the Sabbath day had gone to the synagogue to
hear the Word of God read, and hear a man preach And he said
just about 8 or 10 things and they took him out and were going
to kill him. They were going to murder him. They were going
to cast him off of a hill and down on the rocks below. What
did he do to deserve it? These people were organized religionists.
And it was a Sabbath day. And I'll tell you what he said.
He stood before them and he opened the Bible to Isaiah 61 and he
read the Masonic prophecy where it says, the Spirit of the Lord
is upon me. He hath anointed me to preach
the gospel to the poor, to give sight to the blind, deliverance
to the captive, set at liberty to them that are bound to preach
the acceptable year of the Lord." That's what he stood before him
and read. This is the Masonic prophecy
and the promise of the Word. And then he turned to them and
he said, this day, this prophecy is fulfilled in your ears. He was! He was the God of all
heaven! Standing there preaching to him!
Telling him, today is the day of the Lord! Today is the day
of salvation! Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved! And he looked out there at a
bunch of religious people and they thought, that they were
the chosen people of God, and they were the elect of God, and
that they were the kingdom of God, and they thought they were
the Jews of Abraham's seed, and God owed them something. And
they thought that God was obligated to them, that they were all fixed
upon the heaven and the kingdom of God. And our Lord said this,
there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, but none
of them were fed. Did you hear that? Our Lord is declaring election. He's declaring, I will have mercy
on whom I will have mercy. What do you mean you won't have
mercy on me? That's where the anger comes in. How dare you
not have mercy? You know there's going to be
gnashing of teeth in hell. You know why? Because there's going
to be a lot of people doing that very thing. Why? What do you mean? Look at all the stuff that I
did. And there's going to be those that are on the right saying,
not us, Lord. Not us, but thou. Thou name be
above all names. There were many widows in Israel
in the days of Elijah, but none of them were fed but one who
was a widow in Sidion, a Gentile city, not even A Jewish one,
but a dog. When they heard these things,
they were filled with wrath. It was gnashing of teeth. God
will save some and those whom He will. God owes mercy to no
man. God owes grace to no man. Grace
is undeserved, unmerited favor. That's why we see it as being
so great, because we know what we deserve. We know what we merit. But God is gracious to some,
and thank God He is gracious to me. Praise my Lord, for He
is merciful to me, a sinner, like the beggar in the corner. He said to them, just because
you're Abraham's seed does not mean that you are God's child.
It doesn't mean that God's obligated to you. It is because you have
done certain works and have ancestries or a certain heritage or go to
a certain church. He said, in fact, there were
many lepers in the land of Israel in the days of Elijah, but none
of them were healed. None but one. And he also was
a Gentile. That gives me hope because I'm
a Gentile. But it can also give a Jew hope
too. All nations. All tongues. All tribes. We all have a hope. But that
hope can only be in the Lord Jesus Christ and only in the
Lord. God said, I will be merciful to whom I will be merciful to.
I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious. So then it is not
of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
showeth mercy. What he's saying is that no man
deserves the mercy of God because of who he is, or what he claims,
or what he has given, or what he has done. Salvation is of
the Lord, and of the Lord alone. Salvation is a gift of God, and
he will give it to whom he will. He said, what shall we say to
these things? If God be for us, who can be
against us? When he said that, God will show
mercy to whom he will, they got so angry, they filled with wrath,
they had hatred, that they would have murdered him right there
on the spot. They knew what he was saying. It was right there
in their scrolls. They could read it for themselves. It was right there in the book.
They knew the story that there were no widows in Israel. They
were fed, but the one of Sidion, for the prophet Elijah, told
them so. God sent him down there to say
that very thing. Yet when our Lord preached it,
they tried to murder him. There was division over what
he had said. We face the same thing in this
very day. We preach that God is absolute,
immutable, and infinitely sovereign. Religious people will gnash their
teeth at that. We say, here it is in the Word
of God. We preach God's elective grace and say, there it is. And
I say it a dozen times in the Word. But they don't believe
it. And they won't have it. Look at our pews. Bill and I
were talking about this earlier. We're a small group. There's a thousand churches within
two miles of this place. OK, maybe not that many, but
you know what I mean. There's a lot. And some of them
are filled with thousands of people in them. Just go down
here to Rancho. Go down here to Folsom. Some
of them have two services a morning. We do too, but we call one Bible
study and the other service. But their churches, their congregations
just show up for one service and say, OK, I'm good. I'll see
you next Sunday. We're preaching the truth of
Christ right here in this very book, in this very building. Yet God is pleased to bring a
few in. But thank you. Thank you, Lord,
for the few that He brings in. As I was sharing with Bill, we
have a new roof on the other building. We have a new air conditioner
on this one. Our parking lot won't be permanently damaged
because it was sealed. God is providing for us folks
in wonderful ways. Absolutely wonderful ways. He's provided a preacher for
you. One who will stand before you
and as long as God gives me the power and the ability to do so,
I will preach Christ in Christ alone. One man read Romans 9 unto a
friend and he said, do you believe that? And the guy said, not like the
way you read it. Folks, there's only one way to
read it. Men hate a sovereign God. They don't hate grace. They hate sovereign grace. They don't hate the works of
Jesus. They love the works of Jesus. But they hate the fact
that Jesus is God, ruler over men. John 8.59 also says, Then they
took up stones to cast at Him again. They were forever trying to kill
Him, this Jesus Christ. It was because He was trying
to heal blind people. This is how He heals blind men
and women. We preach Christ in Him crucified.
Is that not how you were healed? Is that not how you came to know
the Lord Jesus Christ? Some man stood before you and
preached the truth? that our God is God of everything? Not some panty-waist little wannabe,
but the ruler of all things. Is that not what you heard when
the Lord opened your heart to see His truth? And they tried to kill Him for
healing blind people. I hear folks today, all over
the television, preachers getting all excited and saying, He can
still heal! Come down here and let me lay
my hands on you, He can still heal you! And of course He can. And He still does. But what He
says in His Word is where the issue is. They'll neglect to
see That part that Christ heals, yes, but He is also the one who
hardens. He brings division. They're paying attention to His
miracles, to His healings, but they're not paying attention
to His gospel. The issue is not what He did,
the issue is what He said. And that's the way it is with
these people. They didn't care about how many good works he
did, or how many people he fed, or how many people he raised
from the dead. They didn't care about how many
crippled people were healed. That wasn't the issue. It's what
he said. They took up stones to stone
him. What in the world had he done?
Here are these religious people again trying to stone the Lord
Jesus Christ right here in the synagogue. In John 8.59, this
was a temple. It was a temple where people
come to hear the Word of God. And they were going to kill Him
right there inside. They were going to murder Him. It's because
He rejected their doctrine. and their fatherhood of God.
They said God is our father and Christ said He is not. The devil
is your father. That's what He said to those
religious people. This is what we can say to those religions
that don't preach the truth. The devil is their father. You
know what the devil is? He's the master of deceit. He called them sinners. He called
them children of wrath. They said, God is the father
of all men. We are the people of God, and this is the father
of all men. And then they said that they were all children of
God, and Christ said, no, you're not. They said, we are not born of
fornication. We have one father, even God.
And Jesus said unto them, and this is why they got mad at him.
He says, if God were your father, you would love me. But you are
your father of the father of the devil, and the lust of your
father you will do. He is a liar from the beginning
and he is a murderer. And he that heareth God's word
is of God. You hear them not because you
are not of God. That sounds like somebody, some
backwoods, some fanatical preacher, wouldn't you say? This is Christ the Lord speaking
these words, folks. Not me, not some backwood preacher. This is Christ the Lord talking.
He said, as many as received Him, to them gave He the right
to become the children of God. My friends, men and women who
live in the unbelief and unrebellion are not children of God. God
is not their Father. They do not enjoy the love or
the favor of God. And I know there are some who
may be listening, these recordings go out all over, who may be cringing
when they hear me say those things. In fact, they may even be getting
angry about it. That's exactly what these religious
people did. There was gnashing of teeth.
How dare you take my free will away from me? It wasn't a preacher talking
to him, it was the Son of God talking to him, and they rejected
him. He said to them, you are your father of the devil. He
that believeth not on the Son of God, the wrath of God abideth
on him. Preachers are going around telling
everybody, good news, America, God loves you. That's like going
to Sodom and saying, hey, good news, folks, God loves you. Oh,
sorry about that. Here comes the rain of fire. Theirs was not a word of truth
in it. God's love is in Christ the Lord. He doesn't love you,
Donner, because of anything you have done. He loves you because
of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And only because of Him. If it wasn't for Him, He would
look at us just as He does the world and say, OK, I'm destroying
it. But yet He took what He is going to destroy the world with
and He laid it all upon His Son for our sake. And therefore we are as white
as He is. He who knew no sin was made sin
that we would be righteous in Him. He said in Psalms 711, God
is angry with the wicked every day. God's love is in Christ. This is the Lord speaking. You
measure these things by what I'm saying. I'm reading you Scriptures
from the Word of God. And this is why people were divided. For reading Scriptures. All of
the Scriptures. The whole counsel of God. It
says, I did not come to send peace on this earth. No, I came
to bring division. Division over what? It was a
division over His Gospel. Everybody can get together around
healing. Everybody can get together around emotional, sentimental
meetings. That's what the feeling good thing is in the church of
the world today. It's easy to get around a wildfire
and watch it burn. The only place to meet is at
the tabernacle of Christ at the foot of Jesus and His truth. The Word says, From that time, many of his disciples
walked no more with him. He said, I am the bread of life.
I am the water of life. I am the truth. He that cometh
to me cometh to God, and he that knoweth not the Son knoweth not
the Father. Our Lord and Savior, the divider
of men. Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it
a wonderful blessing that he loves us? Oh, that you would hear him and
his words. Stand with me, if you would,
please, and turn to page 359.