You heard that something a few
moments ago? That was just my heart beating really hard. I gotta be honest with you, I'm
quite nervous about standing here before folks that I know
know the gospel. The responsibility of God's preachers
is, first off, it's a great privilege and an honor to be here, but
it's also a great responsibility We're not playing games. Our
souls are at stake. Blessings from the Lord are at
stake. And before I get started tonight,
I want to express the condolences of the brothers and sisters at
rescue for the family, the Thacker family. I spoke with Kevin a
few moments ago, and he said one of the blessings that he's
received there, so far he hasn't come across anyone who doesn't
believe. I'm sure there'll be some. His
mother was well liked by many. But so far he's been surrounded
by likewise believers, and it's just been a real blessing for
him to be able to go through this ordeal with those who are
like-minded, knowing that our God rules everything. If He knows
every hair on our head, there's nothing, no molecule, no dust,
no flake of snow that our God is not God over. And that's a
great relief to Kevin and his family. Our condolences go out
to him. I pray the Lord will give him safe journeys coming
back. I've watched you folks on video,
YouTube. I've watched your pastors preach.
And I've got to be honest with you, this glass of water right
here, I have to do this. Oh, that's as good as it looks
too. That's why we're all here tonight. He who hath thirst, come unto
Me. And I will give you life, the
Lord says. This water we'll thirst for again, but the water that
we want to look into tonight will quench our thirst, satisfy
our souls, and nourish our souls. I'm going to ask you to turn,
if you would, with me to the 37th chapter of Ezekiel. And
while you're turning, the scripture that you read You know, I noticed
in there, and I've read that scripture many a times, I've
noticed that the Ethiopian eunuch, he said, how am I supposed to
know unless you, let me do that, let me read that again so I get
it right. It was Acts chapter 8, right? I want to make sure I get the
right words when I say that. It's a thought that just crossed my
mind. And Philip said, if thou believest
with all thine heart, thou mayest, when he was talking about being
baptized. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God. Now, Philip just preached about
Jesus. But over in Matthew 16, the Lord
asks his disciples, who do you say that I am? And after giving
some answers, like maybe one of the prophets, maybe Isaiah,
maybe Jeremiah, Peter stood up. Don't you like Peter? I just
love Peter. He reminds me so much of me. He stood up and boldly
said, well, thou art the son of the living God. And our Lord
said something very, very important to Peter right after that. He
said, blessed art thou. For flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." The
same thing Philip preached Christ. But it took the power of God
to speak to that man's heart. It took the power of God to draw
him to the water. It took the power of God to give
him the desire to do what the Lord has commanded to do. We
are commanded to do the things that the Lord has put in His
book. Nobody will do it, not without the power of God keeping
us and drawing us to that. Ezekiel chapter 37. Now I'm sure
there are probably some here who could quote every word of
this entire chapter without even looking at it. I've probably
had at least a hundred messages preached to me from this very
chapter. I myself have preached from this
chapter at least once in the last six months. But I've got
to tell you something, in this chapter of Ezekiel, this picture
God gives us, this vision that He gives Ezekiel, I believe you
could take a hundred pastors and have each one sit down and
pick one spot in any one of these verses between 1 and 14, And I'll bet they could each
one come up with a different message. There's so much good
stuff there. It's like a gold mine. It's like
a diamond mine where you just reach in and you can grab out
all kinds of precious stones. And every one of those stones
is a picture of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So what
I'd like to do this evening, let me first off get this going here real quick. Oops. I was supposed to do this before
I came up here. There it is. What I'd like to do is I'd like
to begin in verse 1 of chapter 37 of Ezekiel. And we're going
to go through to verse 12. And we're going to basically
concentrate on verses 12, 13, and 14. And I'll try not to be
too much in commentary over verses 1 through 11. But let's begin
at verse 1, chapter 37 of Ezekiel. The hand of the Lord was upon
me, and carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me
down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, and
caused me to pass by them round about. And behold, there were
very many in the open valley, and lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man,
can these bones live? And I answered, O LORD God, thou
knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy
upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the
word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto
these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and
ye shall live. and I will lay sinews upon you,
and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin,
and put breath in you, and ye shall live, and ye shall know
that I am the LORD." So I prophesied as I was commanded,
and as I prophesied there was a noise, and beheld a shaking,
and the bones came together, bone to his bone, and when I
beheld, lo, the sinews and his flesh came upon them, and the
skin covered them above, but there was no breath in them.
Then said he unto me, prophesy unto the wind, prophesize, son
of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord, Come from
the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that
they may live. So I prophesied, as he commanded
to me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood
upon their feet, an exceeding great army. Then he said unto
me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel, Behold,
they say our bones are dried and our hope is lost, we are
cut off for our parts. Now I'm going to hold up there
for just a moment. Actually, no, we're going to continue on.
We're going to go to verse 12. Therefore, because they said
that, therefore prophesy and say unto them, and here's what
I want you to catch tonight. Thus saith the Lord God, Behold,
O my people." I'd like to title tonight's message, O My People,
or you could actually even call it this, Then Ye Shall Know. And we'll
get to that in a moment. You'll see why I say you can
call it that or either or. Thus saith the Lord. That's what
God's preachers do. I'm not here tonight to tell
you what I think personally about anything in this book, but I'm
here to tell you tonight, thus saith the Lord. Too many people
stand in pulpits that look just like this and say, well, thus
saith the Lord, yeah, but... And then you can add whatever
you wanted to that. There are those who believe in progressive
sanctification. You've got to get better. You
have to show your salvation through the way you act. And to a certain
degree, they have a truth to that, but they leave out the
major truth, and the major truth is grace. The people of God, when we have
the Lord Jesus Christ revealed to our hearts The first thing
that is revealed to us of our condition. And that's what this
is doing right here in the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel is seeing
the world for what it was. It's exactly the way you and
I were before we ever heard the prophesying of Scriptures. The
declaring of who Jesus Christ is, God Almighty. The very one
who humbled himself, left his glory in heaven, came to this
earth for the reason of saving. His name is Jesus, for he shall
save his people. There's no question about that.
There's no question about what he came here for. It's perfectly
clear in all the scripture. Christ declared it the whole
time he walked this earth in ministry. He told the unbelieving
Jews, the self-righteous Pharisees, I told you who I was, and the
things that I did proved who I was, and you still couldn't
see it. Why? Because you're not my sheep. Oh, to be one of my people. I've said this many times before,
but God, when he opens the eyes of one of his lost children, the first thing we see is that
we were blind. The first thing he has to show
us is that we need a physician. The first thing he
has to show us is that we have nothing. We are completely depraved. There is nothing in us of any
good that we can offer unto God in any way. Our Lord comes to
a certain people. In fact, in Deuteronomy 7, verses
6-8, we read this, For thou art an holy people unto the Lord.
Are you sure that's talking about me? I know what's inside of this
heart as best as anyone can know their heart. That doesn't sound,
let me start that again. For thou art a holy people under
the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath chosen
thee to be special, to be a special people unto himself above all
people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not
set his love upon you nor choose you because you were more than
a number or any other people, but for ye were the fewest of
all people. But because the Lord loved you,
And because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto
your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and
redeemed you out of the house of the bondman from the hand
of Pharaoh the king of Egypt." In Deuteronomy we read it this
way, For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the
Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself above all
the nations that are upon the earth. In 2nd Corinthians 6.16 we read
it this way, In what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?
For ye, these very ones that he calls, O my people, here in
Ezekiel, he says this to them, For ye are the temple of the living God.
As God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them, and
I will be their God, and they shall be my people. We're talking
about election, the doctrine of election. Now, most of you
are probably pretty familiar with what some call to be the
five points of Calvinism. I'm here to tell you tonight,
five points of Calvinism is not going to save you. But when God saves you, you will
believe all five of those points. You see, those five points are
brought out all the way from the beginning of Scripture. It
wasn't when John Calvin walked this earth that those five points
were originated. They were originated right here
in Genesis. When Adam fell, he took the whole mankind, all of
God's mankind that would ever walk this earth fell in him. I said this to a bunch of people
last Saturday. I had my first funeral that I
had to preach. And the gentleman that had passed had a lot of
friends. And they all had patches on the
back of their leather jackets. In fact, they showed up, most
of them, on their motorcycles that day. And when I told them,
I said, who taught you to lie? I didn't get one answer from
any one of them. My mom. My dad. Folks, we come into this world
dead in trespasses and sin is what God says. Nobody had to
teach John Reeves how to lie. Figured out just well by my own
nature. There's a phrase that I just
love to hear in scripture, but God. We all have walked the very path
that these bones represent, and that is death. The first point of so-called
points of Calvinism is totally depraved. That's the problem
with mankind. We think, we don't understand. We come into this world not understanding
what it is to mean totally depraved. We think, you know, because I
can build something or because I can fix something or because
I can do something here, how can you tell me I'm depraved?
I can figure that out. And then we go about our lives
doing the things that we think we're supposed to be doing because
that's what our nature is. It takes God to show a man's
heart or a woman's heart that we are dead from birth, spiritually
dead. It takes God to give life, just
as he told that woman at the well, come unto me and I will
give you life. That water you drink, you'll
thirst for again, but I give living water. He told Nicodemus, you've got
to be born again. That means you're dead. Lazarus, we were talking about
this. Was it last night we stayed up
that late? Yeah, it was, wasn't it? Yeah. By the way, I just,
I have to tell you folks, you two folks have been just
so gracious to me and I want to thank you so much. I want
everybody to know just how wonderful it has been to be here and visit
with you. We stayed up till midnight talking last night. Some scripture
stuff and some, worldly stuff, but we talked and we just visited
and got to know each other real carefully. One of the subjects
that came up was Lazarus. I was talking about Nicodemus,
wasn't I, a moment ago. I think I got ahead of myself.
Yep, thank you. This is what happens when you get old. Tim raises his hand. Yeah, I
know. So Nicodemus, the Lord told him, said, you got to be
born again. He goes, well, what do you mean?
I got to go back into my mother's womb? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Our
heart, not this one that pumps the blood, not this one that
was banging so hard a few moments ago because of nervousness, but
the heart of the soul. Our very thoughts, our deepest
inner parts, There is no life there until the Lord Jesus Christ
puts life in us. Lazarus is a perfect picture
of that. I was sharing with Corey last
night. Lazarus came from the tomb completely
wrapped. Read that carefully next time
you have a moment, too, and you'll see that he was wrapped in all
of his clothing, and the Lord Jesus had to tell him to be loosed.
Well, that's a picture of you and I when the Lord calls us
out of darkness. We don't come to the Lord. We
don't make a decision to come to him. We don't get smart one
day and get up and walk down the aisle and say a prayer or
get into the borders of baptism because, you know, I just, I'm
tired of living the way I used to live. It's time for me to
change over and get a new leaf. We will not get a new leaf. We
will not change over. I know because I was one of those.
I know what I was before the Lord called me, and I was dead.
I ask you, do you know that you were dead before the Lord called
you with His Word? Dead men can't do anything. They
can't make a decision. They can't exercise their free
will. They can't say a prayer. They can't go under the baptism.
They can't worship on Saturday. Whatever you want to put in there.
Dead men don't do anything. It takes God to command somebody
to unwrap us from our dead clothes. That's what the Lord was doing
with the Ethiopian eunuch. Philip was preaching Christ.
I've been in churches where they preach all kinds of things. I
went to a church one time with a guy that I rode with because
my church is tired of hearing this story. You guys never heard
this, so I can tell it. It'd be like Brandy's story. I was riding motorcycles with
a guy, and he'd come to our church. And he says, OK, now you come
to mine. I've come to yours. Now you've got to come to mine.
Oh, I never invited him back to my church. We got there, and
they were doing their so-called worship, the worship that I had
grown up with, the worship that I saw most churches had. And
that was just a big party of everybody's feeling good, waving
their hands. There was some guy dancing across,
back and forth on the stage. I had to ask him, I said, what
in the world is that guy doing up there? And he goes, oh, he's
filled with spirit. He's speaking tongues. And then
some other guy crawled down the aisle, you know, and he's sitting
there next to me. He left after a minute or two,
but I had to step away from the aisle. What's going on with that? They talked for an hour and a
half about how wonderful it was for the children to raise enough
money for an ambulance for some small town down in Mexico. That's
a wonderful thing. There's nothing wrong with that,
but that's not the message. that God uses to save his people.
It's the very message we just read about that Philip did. He
preached Jesus. That's our job. My job is to
stand before the people that God has given me to hear this
word and the word is Christ in him crucified. It's grace. It's more grace. As I was telling
Brother Cass last night, one of the best messages I ever heard
from Steve Doyle was a message titled, Grace, Grace, Grace. In Hebrews 8.10, the Lord says
this, through the writer of the Hebrews, he says, for this is
the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after
those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their mind,
I will write them in their hearts and I will be to them a God and
they shall be to me a people. The five points. We've seen total
depravity. We've looked at Lazarus. That's
irresistible grace. Look over with me for just a
moment at that. Would you turn over to John chapter
11? Actually, mark your page in Ezekiel. We'll come back to
that. But go over to John chapter 11 real quick, and we'll just
look at that with me together. It's just such a wonderful picture. I've heard it put like this. You go into a
dark room. Can't see anything in front.
Have you ever been in a cave where you put your hand in front of
your face and you can't see anything at all? That's the way we were before the Lord
opened our eyes. We couldn't see anything. Then all of a sudden
the Lord turned the light on and we saw it all. That's exactly
what we see here in John chapter 11. I'm getting there. I know it's somewhere right through
here. Beginning at verse 41, then they
took away the stone. They had already buried Lazarus.
As the Lord Jesus had approached the grave site, the tomb, Mary
had gone to Him and ran to Him. Oh, don't go there now, Lord,
He stinketh. He's dead. And then they took away the stone
from the place where the dead was laid, and Jesus lifted up
His eyes and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me.
And I knew that thou hearest me always, but because of the
people which stand by, I said it." Now remember, we talked
a moment ago about the Pharisees who said, will you prove to us? How long do you make us to doubt?
Will you prove to us that you're the Christ, that you're the Messiah?
And he said, I did. Well, they were standing around.
They know about this. Everybody knew about Lazarus being raised
from the dead. When somebody dies, and they're buried, and
all of a sudden they're up walking again, it doesn't take long for
that kind of word to get around. And I said, that they may believe
that thou hast sent me. And when he thus had spoken,
he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead
came forth bound, see what I was telling you about? Bound, hand
and foot, with grave clothes. You can imagine that. Just picture
it in your mind. Here's Lazarus. He's still wrapped up. He had
no other choice but to float. Am I right about that? They usually
bound him all the way, foot and everything. So he had to just
float out of that tomb right before the Lord Jesus. I heard
this once from a pastor. He said, you know, the power
of God spoke right there. And because it was the power
of God, if he had not used that name, Lazarus, Every grave would
have opened up. That's how much power God has.
All power in heaven and earth and under the earth. Loose, the
Lord said. Jesus said it unto them, the
latter part of verse 44, Loose him and let him go. And that,
we see, is a picture of the way God calls each and every one
of his children. In Psalms, David, he portrays
it this way. In chapter 40, verse 2, he says,
he, speaking of the Lord, speaking of God Almighty, brought me up
also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay. That's
the kind of clay that if you step in, it takes your shoe off.
In fact, it's usually pretty hard to get your foot out of
it. But this is what he did after
that. "...and set my feet upon a rock,
and established my goings, all the way my Savior leads me."
There may be some of you sitting there thinking tonight, ooh,
what a lucky coincidence. We sang that song and it goes
right along with what John was going to read in Scripture. You
know, there are no coincidences with God, folks. If you believe in a God and coincidences
or luck or any of that other stuff, your God is not a God
at all and doesn't even deserve to be called God. One of the
things that impressed me most and brought me to say, I want
to go hear about that one again, when the Lord Jesus opened my
ears and I heard the voice of Christ calling me from Scriptures,
is that I heard about a God who's not waiting for me to do anything. but a God who makes things happen
because He is God. It's the first time I'd ever
heard about one who actually deserved to be called God. So, now we've looked at total
depravement, unconditional election. Turn
with me now, if you would, to No, that was Irresistible Grace
with Lazarus. I got a little ahead of myself
there. Turn with me now, if you would, to Romans chapter 9. Again,
we're going to continue to... We'll come back to Ezekiel eventually,
but we'll go to Romans chapter 9, if you would. The Lord God calls them, O My
people. Who are these people that God
calls Mine? They're the ones that the Father
gaveth the Son before the world ever began. You see, Jesus was
actually known as the Lamb slain before the foundation of the
world, right? You know why. Because God Almighty, God the
Son, God the Spirit made a covenant with each other that God the
Father was going to give God the Son of people, God the Son
was going to go and redeem those people, purchase them with His
own blood, and God the Spirit was going to come by after it
and call them to life, give them life so that they would hear
that Word, the Word preached. Here in Romans chapter 9, Look with me, if you would, at
verse 9. For this is the word of promise,
at this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son. And not
only this, but when Rebekah also had conceived by one, even by
her father Isaac." And then in verse 11, we see something that
the world hates to see. The world hates to see this.
What do you mean God loved somebody and God hated somebody? How can
you say that? I'm not telling you that, I'm
telling you what God said. Thus saith the Lord. For the
children being not yet born, speaking of the two twins, Jacob
and Esau. For the children not yet being
born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose
of God, according to election, might stand, not of works, but
of him that calleth. I can understand, I can understand
really well why God hated Esau, but it boggles my mind at how
God loved Jacob. Jacob is a picture of John Reeves. Jacob was not a nice fellow.
He deceived his own dad. Esau was just hungry. I act way more like Jacob than
anything else. I bring this point out the strongest
through my messages for this reason, folks. When a child of God has been
shown and enlightened of what we truly are before a thrice
holy God, a God who is so holy He cannot even look upon us. How can we get that in our minds? God could not even look upon
me because I'm sin. And I deserve His wrath just
as much as any person that has ever walked this earth. Grace. For by grace are we saved
through faith, not of ourselves. A gift of God, not of works,
lest man should boast. Ephesians 2. Saved by grace. It's by God's grace that we don't
deserve, that we don't get what we deserve. And when we've been enlightened,
it's like a blind man. How do you explain to a blind
man what the color blue is? You can't. I can't tell an unregenerate
person these things. They're not going to understand
it unless God speaks to their heart. They're not going to understand
it. It's like me trying to explain blue to a blind guy, but once
that guy has been cured and miraculously given sight, all of a sudden,
oh, the light is on. I see the furniture in the room. I see blue. Oh. That doesn't change what I know
I deserved. He pulled me up out of the miry
clay and he set my feet upon a rock. And that rock is Jesus
Christ. Right after he said, Blessed
art thou Peter, Simon Varjona, for flesh and blood have not
revealed the center of thee." What did he say next? He goes,
upon this rock. Now, don't misunderstand that. The Catholics have taken that
and said, that's why Peter is the rock of our church. That's
why Peter, St. Peter's Square, is the hub of
all Catholicism. And it has nothing to do with
Peter. It has to do with Peter's answer. It wasn't about Peter. It was about what Peter answered.
Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God. That's the rock. And it takes God Almighty to
put us on that rock. I didn't want to get up on that
rock. In fact, I ran from that rock. Don't you dare tell me
that guy up there is ruling over me. I know what I'm doing. I see a lot of heads doing this.
You guys were all right there, same place, weren't you? Yeah.
Every child of God is in that very same boat. A true child
of God will not forget. Now, we might forget, but God
won't let us forget for very long what it is He brought us
out of. The moment we start getting puffed
up, and I am so thankful for this, I am so thankful that the
Lord brings across my way a trial or a tribulation, Something to
disturb me, something to bring me to my feet. I read it, I've
shared this with some of the folks up there at rescue. My
sister wrote something that just blessed my heart. She goes, I
was praying that the Lord might take us back to what we were
before this virus hit us, before all the stuff that started happening
in our political realm. And then she said, but you know
something? I've been on my knees praying
to my Lord more since this all has come about than I was before
then. This is why Paul says, I glory. I glory in my tribulations. Because these very tribulations
are the Lord loving me and putting me on my knees to come to Him
again and say, Father, help me. This is the battle that we fight
every day in our flesh I used this example with Cass, I said,
you know, you get Tiger Woods out there, or you get out there
and play the game of golf, and you hit that ball, those of you
who play, you know what I mean, you hit that ball, you go down,
right down the middle of the fairway, wow, I could be like
Tiger Woods. And then the Lord takes us and
humbles us right after that, and we hit five or six off into
the weeds, and oh, no. I've done that. I've hit it down
the middle and, nope, I'm not going to get all braggy about
that. Thank you, Lord, and left it at that. I still hit it off
in the weed six times afterwards, but I still, you know what I'm
saying, gave God the glory because it was Him. Let's look at John chapter 10
for just a moment. I talked a moment ago about the
Pharisees who came to the Lord and said, Why makest thou to
doubt? You'll find that in the 10th
chapter of John. In verse 23, And Jesus walked
in the temple of Solomon's porch, Then came the Jews round about
him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt, if
thou be the Christ? Tell us plainly. And Jesus answered
them, He says, 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." And here, this is important. This is important.
We're talking about, O My people. Who are those that the Lord God
addresses here? O My people. You believe not, because you
are not of My sheep. As I said unto you, My sheep
hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me." Have you heard the Word of God? I don't mean with these ears
here, folks. A lot of people hear it with these ears right
here. I heard it with these ears all my life. From the time I was born until
the time 2012, I was around pastors, preachers,
my stepfather and my real father. My stepfather, I can say for
sure, was a sovereign grace preacher. I've heard him preach. But I didn't hear him preach
until after he had passed. He left this earth on 2012, the
day after 9-11. 2001, 9-12. I'll get the date right there. And then about December, I think
it was, my brother came to me with a cassette tape and I listened
to my dad, the one I called dad, Calvin Samuel Ellis. And he preached
sovereign grace. But up until that point, I had
never heard. I had never heard with the ears of the heart. We
have to be given ears of the heart. They're deaf. We're deaf. We can't walk because we're lame. We can't talk because we're dumb. And we can't hear because we're
deaf until the Lord comes and gives life to one of His children.
My sheep, He says, not might hear My voice if they make a
decision for Me, not might hear My voice if they come to the
waters of baptism, but My sheep hear My voice, and I know them,
and they follow Me." No ifs there. No ifs there. We were talking
last night about eschatolicism. What's that word again? Eschatology,
thank you. End times. Cass gave me such
a wonderful answer. He goes, I know exactly. Sorry,
I hope I'm not embarrassing you by saying this. This is a great
answer. I had not heard this yet, and
I'm going to go with it from now on, to be honest with you.
He said, I know exactly when the Lord's going to return. In
the last day. That's it. Some people can predict a time
here, or a time there, or whatever, and everyone who's predicted
so far has been wrong, but he's absolutely right. When the last
child of God has heard the voice of Jesus through preaching of
his word, turn over to, if you would, to... It's Romans 10. Through the preaching of His
Word, when the last child of God, the very last one that He
says, O My people, has been called out of darkness, and here's how
they'll be called out of darkness, through the preaching of His
Word, For the scripture saith, whosoever believeth on him, verse
11, shall not be ashamed, for there is no difference between
the Jew and the Greek. For the same Lord over all is
rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call
upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But hear this, how
then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
And how shall they believe in him in whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they
preach except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful
are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring
glad tidings of good things." That man in his chariot, the
Ethiopian eunuch, he had to hear the Word of God preached. And
when he did, the Lord used the words of Philip. As Philip preached
Christ, the Lord applied it to the heart, to the new heart,
the heart of flesh that He gave that man. He cut out the old
stony heart that said, I will not have this one to rule over
me. And He gave him a heart who comes to Him willingly. Have you come to God willingly? If you have, you know why? It's because of grace. It wasn't anything you did. And
God had His grace upon you, not for anything that you have done
since either. It's because of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The One who went to the cross and shed His blood for us. The
very One who walked this earth perfectly. He who knew no sin. Can you comprehend that? I don't
think our finite little minds can understand that completely
at all, but Christ Jesus knew no sin. He was tempted as we
are, yet He knew no sin. He was made sin. This comes to the grace that
brings my message around to the main point. He who knew no sin became sin
for us. You talk about something deep.
You talk about a pool that goes deep into the water. That's deep. God Almighty became sin, the
very thing He hates, the very thing He can't be in the presence
of, which is why He had to become flesh. It's why He had to leave
heaven and humble Himself as a servant. I still can't comprehend
that Christ washed the feet. The very One who created those
feet perfectly for the apostles, He got down on His knees and
washed them. But even more than that, He shed His blood for us. And He took every single one
of our sins upon Him. See, this is the message of Christ
and Him crucified. It is God loved a people. Oh, my people, He says. That's you. If you belong to
the Lord Jesus Christ, that's you. I know. Amen. Isn't that wonderful? I don't deserve a bit of this. I'm no better than anybody else
that's ever walked this earth. In fact, in my own mind, I'm
worse than anybody. Paul thinks himself to be the
chief. He's wrong. I am. I deserve God's wrath more than
anybody that ever walked this earth. Which makes His love for
me, His grace for me, His mercy to us even more magnified. Does it swell up a little emotion
in you when you think about how much the Lord loves you? I'm not talking about this God
who loves everybody that everybody wants to talk about. What a worthless
God who loves everybody and can't save anybody. I'm talking about
the God with all power in heaven and earth loving me In John chapter 17, the Lord
says this. Let's just turn over there real
quick. And I'm not ashamed to say that in my mind, this is
the Lord's Prayer. This is the Scripture that shows
my Lord and Savior getting down on His knees, lifting His eyes into heaven,
as it says in verse 1, and crying, Father, the hour has come. Glorify
Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee, as Thou hast given
Him power, speaking of Christ, over all flesh, that He should
give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him. And this
is eternal life, that they might know Thee, the only true God
and Jesus Christ. Do you know God in the face of
the Lord Jesus Christ? I mean, do you know Him with
your heart? My question this evening is,
O my people, who are the people that he's talking about? Who
are the ones that God is crying out to, O my people? Am I one
of those? Am I a child of God? John 3.16, whosoever believeth. That's the requirement. Ephesians
2.8, for by grace are you saved through faith. It is not of yourselves,
it's a gift. Faith and believing, that's what
believing is. It's a gift. And now, O Father, verse 5, glorify
Thou me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with
Thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto
the men which thou hast given me out of the world. Thine they
were, and thou gavest them me, and they have kept thy word.
Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given
me are of thee." This is talking about those who hear the voice
of Jesus, and then he says, "...for I have given unto them," in verse
8, "...the words which thou hast given me, and they have received
them, and have known surely that I came out of thee, and that
they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but
for them which thou hast given me, O, to be one that the Lord
Jesus Christ has prayed for." Which brings me to my final point.
Turn to Turn over to 1 Peter if you would. And while you're turning there,
let me read from that very same chapter we were just in, the
17th chapter of John, verse 12. While I was with them in the
world, I kept them in Thy name. those that thou gavest me I have
kept and none of them is lost but the son of perdition that
the scriptures might be fulfilled. Here in first Peter chapter 1
verse 3 Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy
hath begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible
and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven
for you." And now this is what I want you to see. Perseverance. One of the five points of so-called
Calvinism, perseverance. Keep on keeping on is what a
famous pastor once said to me. Actually, he says it to me every
time I call him, which is usually five days a week. Keep on keeping
on, how? Those who are kept, verse five,
by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed
in the last time. Now, go back to our text, if
you would, in Ezekiel, and I'll bring this to a close. O my people, it says in verse
12, read along with me, I, says the Lord, I, says God Almighty,
the Lord God says this, I will open your graves. That's what
he did for Lazarus. He opened the grave. And by the
power of God, he was given life. That's what happened to you and
I. He says, I will open your graves and cause you to come
out of your graves. You can't go back to it. You're
not dead anymore. You live in Christ, walk accordingly in Christ. and cause you to come up out
of your graves and bring you into the land of Israel, verse
13, and you shall know... Does it say you shall might know? You might doubt? Folks, we can
doubt what we see in this flesh. But don't ever doubt God. If
you're doubting God, then you need to think about which God
you know. The God of Scriptures does not make mistakes. This
virus that is going through our world is not a mistake. Those
men who crashed into the towers in New York, that was not a mistake.
God Almighty ruled on every account of that. Why do I know? Because I know
He's Lord of all. And ye shall know that I am the
Lord. When I have opened your graves,
O My people, and brought you up out of your graves, and shall
put My Spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place
you in your own land, then shall you know that I the Lord have
spoken it and performed it, saith the Lord." What is so wonderful
about grace Let me tell you. Come unto Me, all you who are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Are you coming unto
the Lord Jesus Christ? Grace means we lay everything
down, folks. Everything I can think, everything I can do, I have to lay it all down. I have
to lay it all down before my Savior who is Lord of everything. That's what it is to know, to
know for sure that I am one of those people. It's not what I'm
doing in my flesh that tells me I'm a child of God. It's who
I believe in. It's who you believe in. Don't
fall into that trap, that trap that men want to put upon the
people, say, oh, you've got to do this, and you've got to start
doing this, and you've got to start doing that. That's just the yoke.
That's the burden of the yoke that the cow puts around their
neck and pulls and everything. That's working. Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved. Amen.