and we've already read that.
You know, the word church is used in different ways in the
Bible, mainly a couple of them. First of all, the gathering of
God's people out of all of the population of the earth, and
that's the universal church. This came into existence eternally
But literally it came into existence when Adam and Eve were made knowledgeable
of the grace of God, when they were informed of the coming of
the seed of the woman, and the Lord then provided a sacrifice
for them and a covering for their nakedness, and they were made
to know the mercy and the grace of God to fallen sinners. I tell
you, our father Adam, he fell so hard that all of the rest
of us, all of his posterity fell right with him. And that's the
reason we're all sinners this morning. Me and you and all of
you who are watching is because of one man's transgression against
God. And really, the act of taking
the forbidden fruit It wasn't the first sin. The first sin
was He willed in His heart to defy the authority of God because
He wanted to be God Himself. He wanted to rule over all things
that pertain to His life. He wanted His own will to have
the final say-so. And that is a violation of the
order of God to obey him. Adam fell, but God didn't leave
him in that fallen state. This is the amazing thing about
the mercy of God. He finds us lost. He finds us
undone. He finds us spiritually dead.
But He doesn't leave us that way. He quickens us. And He makes us to know that
the way of salvation is not by our will or by our works or by
our worth. The way of salvation is by the
way of somebody. And that somebody's name is the
Lord Jesus Christ, who came and laid down His life, gave His
life a ransom for poor sinners. And He draws people together.
And the church in the Old Testament, it began really with Adam and
Eve and Abel. God brought these people to know
our Lord Jesus Christ. In John chapter 10, our Savior
said to those Pharisees who were listening to Him, and also to
some true believers who were listening to Him, He talked about
the time that there would be one one-fold and one shepherd. And what he's making reference
to is that eternal day when all of the people of God, all of
the elect of God, all of those chosen from every nation, kindred,
tribe, and tongue would be brought to know the Lord Jesus Christ
and be gathered together in one kingdom called the kingdom of
God, the kingdom of heaven. There'd be one fold, one shepherd,
the shepherd being the Lord Jesus Christ, the one large assembly. You see, lots of times today
you'll hear on the religious news about these mega churches,
right? Mega church. I'll tell you, the
church of our Lord Jesus Christ is the mega church. It consists
of people from everywhere. of all ages, beginning with Adam
and Eve, all the way through to the end of time as we know
it. God has a people. Those people have to hear the
gospel. They have to be brought to knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says, he says to these Ephesian
elders, he said, you know that when I came to you, I came preaching
repentance toward God in faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance
toward God. What is repentance? It's an about
face. It's to go in a different direction.
You did love error, now you love the truth. You did love salvation
by works, now you love salvation by grace. You did love sin with
all of its attractiveness, but now you hate sin. You're turning
from sin and you're turning to righteousness, to the things
of God. The Lord has turned us. And Paul
says, I came preaching repentance toward God to turn you by the
power of the Spirit, turn you from the worship of idols to
the worship of the true God. And he said, I came preaching
not only repentance toward God, but faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. To look to Him, to lay hold of
Him, to trust Him, to lean on Him for salvation. Don't lean
on anything you've ever done. that won't hold you up before
God. The only one who can keep you
secure and safe before a holy God is the Lord Jesus Christ. So we preach repentance toward
God in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as that message goes
forth, the Lord draws people together. And not everybody,
because everybody doesn't hear with the ears that God gives. But some do. And some people
see. And I would ask you this morning,
do you see what I'm saying? Do you see what the Lord has
for us in the Word of God in Christ Himself? Do you perceive? Do you understand? And what I
pray, and I prayed this morning that the Lord would open the
eyes of all of us that we would see our utter sinfulness and
the glories of God's grace found in the Lord Jesus Christ and
His sacrifice for sinners. And the Lord uses the very message
that I'm preaching now and many other preachers are preaching
to draw people in to this universal church. The universal church, the true
people of God, consists of people from everywhere, of all ages. As I said, from Adam and Eve
right to the last person who will be converted. Now, the word
church is also used in another way, not in a universal way,
but as a local assembly. Turn with me, you can hold your
place there in Acts 20, but turn with me to Acts chapter 7. Acts chapter 7. And I want to read just a couple
of verses. This is Stephen's message, and
you'll recognize this. It's part of his message that
I'm going to read to you. In Acts 7, 37. Acts 7, 37 and 38. This is that
Moses which said unto the children of Israel, a prophet shall the
Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me,
him shall ye hear. This is he that was in, watch
this, he was in the church in the wilderness. Did you know
there was a local church in the wilderness? There was. The Bible says it. There was
a church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him,
spoke to Moses, and the angel is Christ Himself, the angel
of the covenant, the messenger from God. He's the angel of the
Lord who spoke to Moses in the Mount Sinai and with our fathers
who received the lively oracles to give to us. Now, let me tell
you something, I don't know if you've thought about this way
or not, but in the Old Testament, from Genesis to the book of Malachi,
the visible church of God, the visible church of God was a national
political body. It was a physical family. You
know, it consisted of all of the descendants of Abraham. That was the church in the wilderness
that wandered for 40 years. It was the seed of Abraham. It
was the society of the Jews. Their pastor was man by the name
of Moses. He pastored a mega church. But
within that megachurch, and this is true of every local assembly
of any size whatsoever, within a local congregation, there are
believers, there are those who trust the Lord Jesus Christ,
there are those whom God has saved by His free grace, there
are those who love the blood of the Son of God, they love
redeeming mercy, they love the things of God, there are those
who believe and there are those who don't believe. in a visible
church. I suspect that's true of this
local church. Not everyone who attends here
is really one of the blood-bought children of God. Though most of us profess that,
we profess to know God. But in any gathering of people
of any size, there are those who believe and those who believe
not. There are those who are committed to the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ and those who are not. Well now, let's take
it way back to the church in the wilderness. There were those
who believed God, Moses believed God, Aaron believed God, Others
believed God, but there were those also that rebelled against
the message of God's grace. They refused to receive that
message which Moses preached. And Moses preached the gospel
through types and patterns and pictures. The gospels preached
through the offerings that were offered, that is the blood sacrifices. Every morning the gospel was
preached to this church in the wilderness through the morning
sacrifice of a lamb and the evening sacrifice of a lamb. God kept
a lamb before them all the time. There was the Passover. The Passover
was instituted in Egypt. And once they were given the
instructions at Mount Sinai, they continued to participate
in and observe the Passover, which pictured Jesus Christ,
God's Passover. God passes over sinners with
His mercy and with His grace because of the Son of God and
Him laying down His life in the stead of the guilty. He's the
Lamb of God. Now some believe this message.
I hope you do. I hope you know something about
repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
if you don't know anything about repentance toward God and faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ, I pray that the Spirit of God will teach
you right now. There's no hope of salvation
in any other. That's what we read, Peter said
in Acts 4.12, neither is there salvation in any other, for there's
none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must
be saved. Salvation is not in this local
church, that salvation is not in this preacher, salvation is
not in our membership, salvation is not in the waters of baptism,
salvation is in Christ only. Christ only. Oh, God the Spirit
may teach you that. So in the church in the wilderness,
it was a mixed multitude. Some loved the gospel. Some, when they went out in the
morning and they saw that morning lamb being offered, They bowed
their heads and they said, oh Lord, I long for the day when
the Lamb of God will come and do in reality what this Lamb's
death only pictures. God's Lamb had to die. The seed
of the woman, they knew Him as that. They knew the seed of the
woman was coming. And when the morning lamb was
offered and the evening lamb was offered, they had this confidence. And I hope you have this confidence.
Here it is. God will receive what God has
ordained. God ordained the lamb of God
to come. God ordained that he die. He
didn't die according to the will of men. He died according to
the will of God. In fact, Revelation 13, 8 says
that he was the lamb who was slain before the foundation of
the world. He was the one appointed. And
all of the sins of all of God's people of all ages, he bore in
his own body on the tree and died under the wrath of God.
You see that? Do you see the necessity of his
death? Sin, when it's finished, bringeth
forth death. God sent somebody to do something
about the death part. And God sent somebody to do something
about the sin part. Do something about sin. Put them
away. Wash them away. And so, in the church in the
wilderness, They had the sacrifices that
they offered according to the purpose and the will of God.
But here's the main point I want to drive home to you. In the
Old Testament, the visible church, this is a visible church here,
not the building. I'm talking about the people.
This is a visible church. Well, imagine in excess of over
a million people, in the wilderness, that was the visible church in
the wilderness. You got that? That's what the
scripture says, the church in the wilderness. And Moses preached to them and
Aaron preached for them and to them. And as time went on, God
sent prophets and they preached. And we know that their message
was our Lord Jesus Christ. Because the Savior said in many
times, but in Luke chapter 24, he talked about the prophets.
They all spake of me, he said. And the Lord led them like a
shepherd leads a flock. In fact, Psalm 77 verse 20 says,
Thou leadest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses
and Aaron. So that's the church in the wilderness. Now keep in mind, and I've already
said this, the church in the wilderness consisted of believers
and unbelievers. But all true believers constitute
the Lord's flock. The Lord's flock. So in the Old
Testament, the church was a nation. It was a whole nation. A physical
family comprised of men and women and boys and girls joined together
by flesh and blood. These are the offspring of Abraham.
The church of the Old Testament was the nation of Israel. But
when we get to the New Testament, things change. Things are different. In the New Testament, what we
call the local church, that's when it was born. Go back to
John chapter one. Let me show you this. And I really
believe this is, This is the beginning of the church right
here, of what we call the church age
of the New Testament. This is where the New Testament
church was born. It was conceived in the purpose
of God, in old eternity. But here I believe is the, I
might put it this way, the forerunner of the church that was founded
in the book of Acts, the second chapter. The preacher is John the Baptist. Look at John chapter 1 and verse
29. The next day John, that's John
the Baptist, seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. He bears
the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After
me cometh a man which is preferred before me, for he was before
me, and I knew him not. But that he should be made manifest
to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water. John, bear
record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a
dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not, but that
he sent me to baptize with water. The same said to me, upon whom
thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same
as he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw him, and
bear record that this is the Son of God. Now keep reading. Again, the next day after John
stood and two of his disciples and looking upon Jesus as he
walked, John is sticking to the same message. He doesn't change
his message. Our message never changes. Our message is the Lamb of God,
the Son of God, salvation in Him. It never changes. And looking
upon Jesus as He walked, He said to His disciples, these men who sat at His feet,
these men who followed Him, these men who learned from Him, He
said to them, behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples
heard him speak and they followed Jesus. And there's a little church
right there. That's a little church. Because
you got two people. who have heard the preaching
of the gospel. See, you've got to hear the preaching
of the gospel. You've got to hear the preaching
of the Lamb of God. You've got to hear the preaching
of Christ and Him crucified. This is the Lamb. And John's preaching this day
the same message he preached yesterday. And maybe some others
said, isn't that the same sermon he preached yesterday? Yeah,
it's the same message. Because that's the message that's
got to be drilled home to the heart by the power of the Spirit.
And he told these two disciples, behold the Lamb of God. And they
looked, watch it, They heard Him speak. They heard what He
was saying. You see, this is how conversion
comes about. Someone preaches of Christ, the
blessed Lamb of God. And that someone says, come to
Christ. This is Him right here. This
is the one of whom the Old Testament speaks. This is the one who's
revealed as the only savior of sinners. You see, the first time when
John said, behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world, it doesn't say that they hurt him. But the second time they did
hear. And I don't know how many times
you'll hear the gospel. But one of these days, God willing,
one of these days, the Lord willing, someone will preach the gospel
to you and all of a sudden you'll hear. Faith comes by hearing and hearing
by the word of God. You'll hear. And then you know
what you'll do? You'll follow Christ. And there's
the Savior. and he has two disciples, two
men following him. And this is a very small church. But oh, what a church. Think of who their pastor is.
Their preacher was John the Baptist. Oh, he was prophesied in the
Old Testament to be the man who would be the forerunner of our
Lord Jesus Christ. And they heard John, they followed
John, they listened to John, they were disciples of John,
but when they really heard what he was saying, behold the Lamb
of God, if you ever hear what I'm saying by the power of the
Spirit of God, you will follow Christ the Lord. That's the way
it works. And that's the way things work
throughout the New Testament. A preacher preaches. What's his
message? Well, his message really isn't
a what, it's a who. Who's he preaching? He's preaching
the Lamb of God. And then the Lord, all of a sudden,
it's like he turns the volume up in your heart, and then you
hear, and then you follow. You see, you won't hear, you
won't truly hear the gospel because I get loud or because I'm trying,
and I don't do this. I'm not trying to coerce you.
That won't do any good. Or beg you to come down the aisle.
I talked to some folks this week about, you know, we don't do
that. And people say, you don't give people a chance to be saved.
And I said, well, salvation's not about chance. It's on purpose. It's God's purpose. And as the
word of God goes forth, I water it with the tears of prayer. Because the Lord's the one that's
got to do the work, right? I remember when, many, many years
ago, when our son David was, he was in a private school, and
it was religious, and we knew that. But I went to his teacher
in the first grade, and I said, I said, what are your goals? And she said, my goal is to get
every student saved before they get out of this class. I said,
hang on just a second. I said, who saves sinners? She said, oh, God saves sinners.
I said, well, then we'll just leave it to the Lord if he's
going to save our little David. I said, I don't want you to put
any pressure on him. I don't want you to try to be
a soul winner. You teach him reading and writing
and arithmetic. I'll teach him of the things
of God and pray that the Holy Spirit will teach it to his heart.
You see, I can teach you if you listen. I can teach you about
the things of God, but I can't make you hear. I can't make you
hear. And I say to the Sunday school
teachers, absolutely teach the word of God, but you can't make
the students hear. Oh, maybe they can hear with
these ears, but you can't make them hear with spiritual ears.
Because you don't have that ability to give them spiritual ears to
hear or spiritual eyes to see. But we know who does. And so John just preached. And
this is what preachers do, we just preach. I can't give you
ears to hear. I can say the words, but I can't cause you to hear.
But these two disciples, they heard Him speak. That's amazing,
to really hear. To hear in the heart, to hear
with understanding, to hear then with a longing to hear more. And they followed Jesus. And they went to him and Jesus
said to them, what seek you? What are you looking for? They
said unto him, Rabbi, which is to say being interpreted, master,
where dwellest thou? And he said unto them, come and
see. They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him. Oh, that God would give understanding.
So you see, here is a little flock. And I've said this before,
I know there's some who are watching, and maybe it's just, maybe one
person or two people, maybe a whole family, maybe a small group of
people. I tell you what, if the Lord is with you, that's the
most important thing. Might just be you. But if the Lord is with you,
you have the very Son of God with you. So you see, the New
Testament church, quite different from the Old
Testament church, or the church in the wilderness, We don't,
this doesn't consist of a people of one nation, one society. We're a spiritual society. We're
a spiritual family, a spiritual body. We're a group of people,
this local church is a group of people who have been drawn
by the power of the Spirit to believe, to love, to follow the
Lord Jesus Christ and His teachings. It's a spiritual society. And just as John the Baptist
preached preached with energy, pointing
people to the Lamb of God. That's what every preacher of
the Gospel does. We just point people to the Lamb. And God uses the Word that we
preach. And when He draws people in,
To really hear of Christ and Him crucified. To hear this deity. Then you can say, I'm part of
the Lord's flock. And you see over here in Acts
chapter 20, Paul, he talks about the flock. What is a flock? It's a bunch of sheep. Sheep. We're the Lord's sheep gathered out of the world. We
hear the same gospel of grace of Christ. We have a common belief. There's
one way to God and Christ is the way and I'm in the way. I'm
on the way. We have a common goal, the glory
of God. This is not a national church
as in the Old Testament. This is a spiritual church, a
spiritual family. We're a local assembly with a
flock of God. This church belongs to God. It's
not my church. It's not your church. This is not a denominational
church. We answer to nobody but God.
We have other churches that we're delighted to fellowship with,
but nobody owns this church but the Lord. It's the Lord's church. It's the flock of God. And this assembly is made up
of the Lord's sheep, who are called by the Lord and protected
by the Lord. Every one of His sheep in His
flock are kept safe forever. tell you a story. Israel was at war with the Philistines. And over here on this mountain,
the Israelites, and over here were the Philistines. And the
Philistines, they had a giant who was their spokesman. He challenged
Israel, would y'all have any real men come and fight me? He was only like, what, nine
feet, nine inches tall, something like that. He'd be a pretty good
center on a basketball team. Big guy. They challenged. He challenged them. Send me a
man. They're scared to death. David took some food to his three,
the oldest three of his brothers. They were in the army. And his
daddy, Jesse, their daddy, said, David, take them some food. So
he took them some food. And David heard the challenge.
Send me a man. David said, well, I'll go. What's
the matter with the rest of y'all? Is there not a cause? I'll go.
And his brother said, you're too young. You're too little.
Saul said, you're not a soldier. David said, I'll tell you this.
I watched my father's flock, and one time a lion came, and
a bear. I run away. In fact, I snatched
a little lamb out of the mouth of the lion, and I grabbed him
by his beard, threw him aside, and I even tell you something,
we're the Lord's flock. And there's a lion out here seeking
whom he may devour. But another lion keeps him in
check. He's the lion of the tribe of
Judah. He's the shepherd of the flock. He protects the sheep. Well, who is he? He's the Lamb
of God. And what it says here in our
text, and I don't have time to go into this very much, he purchased
the flock with his own blood. He's the Redeemer. Feed the church
of God, which he purchased with his own blood. And as a side
note, the one who died on the cross, this is the Spirit of
God's way of reminding us he was God. God in the flesh. His death was a legal purchase.
His death was a successful purchase. He died for the flock. You know anything about hearing
the word of God? Does it kind of resonate in your
heart? Have you been made to rejoice
a little bit this morning? This is my shepherd. I'm one
of the sheep in his flock. And Satan, though he is so powerful,
he cannot destroy me. Because David's son and David's
Lord always watches over every one of his sheep, all of the
flock. Somebody bought us a little sign
one time for our house. The bird house, where the flock
gathers. Well, this is the Lord's house
and this is where the local flock gathers to hear the word concerning
the Lamb of God who took our sins away. Well, let's sing a
closing.