if you would, go back to that
portion of scripture that he read to us in the book of 2 Timothy. And I want to read to you two
verses that he read to us just now, but I want to read them
again, and that would be verses nine and 10. The last word of verse eight
is God. And then verse nine, who had
saved us and called us with an holy calling, not according to
our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which
was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is
now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ,
who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality
to light through the gospel. This evening, I want to bring
you a message that I've entitled, and it's, I think it's an appropriate
title, The Journey of Grace. That's what I want to talk to
you about, The Journey of Grace. And aside from reading these
two verses of scripture, I invite you to join me with an observation
of this journey. I want you to sit there in your
seats, and, as it were, buckle your proverbial seatbelts, and
we're gonna take a journey together. It is a journey in which I will
be the narrator, but God the Spirit is going to
be our guide. Let's take a look at salvation. You see, the salvation of folks
like us is a broad, broad subject. It spans a vast distance. The distance extends from old
eternity back before God ever made the world up until and on
past that time when God will make a new heaven and a new earth. This journey of grace, it extends
from before time ever began, and it goes on to that age when
there will be no more time at all. This is a glorious journey. I wish that God the Holy Spirit
would kind of whisk us away in our minds and in our hearts,
that those of us who are the people of God, those of us who've
been brought to rest in the Lord Jesus Christ, to believe Him
for all of our salvation, oh, that God the Spirit would enable
us to enjoy this journey. and to make meaningful observations
of this glorious journey of grace. May God the Spirit guide us. May He direct our paths. May
everything that we cover come right out of the Word of God. The Word of God that liveth and
abideth forever. So if you will, join me as we
observe this, the journey of grace. And you won't even have
to, I'm not even going to ask you to turn in your Bibles to
any other reference than just the ones that we read. So sit
back and relax, but don't get too comfortable. You might fall
asleep. But I do want you to just listen
ever so closely, as you always do, to the things that I believe
God the Spirit has for us this evening. You know, those that
the Spirit of God has wooed to the Lord Jesus, those who've
been drawn to this blessed Savior, those who have found in Him all
that you need. We have discovered an urge, an
irresistible desire to ever know more of Christ Jesus and to be
drawn nearer to him. And may the Spirit of God do
that again this evening, that He may put such a desire within
us as to honor our Savior, to honor our God in all things.
And as we set forth on this journey, I have this desire, number one,
to honor God. I want to magnify God. I want
to show you, and I want us to enter into this, that everything
God has done, is doing, and will do for us is always to the praise
of the glory of His grace. And the second thing that I desire
as I present this message to you this evening is I desire
you to enjoy God's great salvation. This is not just some mere facts
that are set before us in the Word of God, though they are
factual, but this is a salvation that we have experienced, and
we are experiencing it. It's something God has done for
us, but it's also something God is doing for us, and that which
God shall yet do for us, and we must enjoy this journey. Enjoy
God's salvation and delight yourself in the Lord. Those who are the
people of God, we have every reason to be a happy people. Not carnal happiness and not
a false joy. Not a make-believe laughter sort
of thing, but we have every reason to be happy and joyful in our
souls in the Lord. That's why the Apostle Paul says,
rejoice in the Lord, always. And again, I say rejoice. And so as we take this journey
together this evening, may you enjoy. the journey, and may you
and I enter into the wonders of God's grace that he has given
to us in Christ Jesus. Well, as we look at salvation,
as we begin our journey, we must go back to the beginning. To the beginning. When did this
salvation begin? When did it all start? What is
the origin of this gracious gift that God has given to us of the
salvation of our souls and the salvation of our bodies? When
did this salvation begin? When did this deliverance begin? Because that's what salvation
is. It is a deliverance from sin and all the effects of sin. It is God making us to be whole. That is to be spiritually well. To be spiritually healthy. We're
born sick in sin, we're diseased. This is what salvation is. It's
God making us to be whole in Christ Jesus. And someday we
will have no more of this sickness or this disease called sin. So let's go back to the beginning.
When did all of this start? Well, it started with God. It started with his own purpose
of grace. When God, for his own glory,
determined that he would save a vast number of Adam's as yet
unfallen race. God determined that he would
create. God determined that he would
make this world. And he determined he would have
this world to be inhabited. God determined that among all
of the inhabitants of this world who would live throughout whatever
number of ages and years that he has ordained that this earth
will last, God picked out a people to be his own. Now he owns all
men by virtue of creation. But there are some people who
live in this world, who have lived, who are living, who shall
yet live, who are God's people in a special way, in a unique
way. These are said to be chosen unto
salvation before the foundation of the world. In fact, the very
text that I read to you indicates to us in no uncertain terms that
this purpose and grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the
world began. So our journey takes us back,
back, way back before God ever created anything. Before He spake
and it was done. Before God ever said, let there
be light, and light was. This matter of our salvation
goes back to that eternity when only God existed in the glory
of His triune person. There was no other. He had not
yet made anything. And he dwelt with the glory of
himself in the satisfaction of who he is. And for his own glory
to magnify himself, he purposed, he would make a world, he would
inhabit that world. And out of the inhabitants of
that world, he chose a people unto salvation. Now, his choice of a people unto
salvation, that is a doctrine that cannot be contested. And anyone who is honest in dealing
with the word of God must admit that there was an election of
grace. There was a people that God set His heart upon, and He
chose those people unto salvation. I don't know who they are, and
you don't know who they are, therefore we preach to everybody,
you come to Christ Jesus, there's salvation for the sinful. There's
a remedy for our disease. And I'll tell you, if you do
come to Christ Jesus in earnestness, in true belief, in true faith,
out of your neediness, out of your emptiness, drawing from
the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ, I will tell you the reason
that you have come to Him is because God chose you unto salvation
before He ever made the world. That's where the journey begins. Now, Let me say something about
this choice. It wasn't a random choice. When we think of a random choice,
here's several things here. We go eeny, meeny, miny, moe. You go like that. Okay, all right,
I'll choose this one. That's not the way election was.
Not at all. Nor was it a choice without feeling. And I use that word kind of actually
stumbling around for a better word, but I don't know a better
word to use. Because I know God doesn't have
feelings and emotions like we do. But for lack of a better
way of expressing this, it wasn't a choice without feeling, that
is, it wasn't a cold and hard or graceless and loveless choice. It was a choice made in love.
It was a choice made because God loved the people. You hear
the word of God now. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who had blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he had
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated
us. unto the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ unto himself. Don't miss that word love. This is a choice made in love.
God's sovereign will and purpose ordained that a multitude, which
no man can number, would be saved, would enjoy his
salvation, would be made whole, though they would become diseased
and sick in sin through the fall of Adam, through a personal transgression
as well, yet God ordained they would be saved, they would be
made whole through the doing and the dying of the Lord Jesus
Christ. This is a choice made in love.
And this is evidenced by the fact that the Lord said to Jeremiah,
I have loved thee with, what kind of love? An everlasting
love. A love without beginning. Therefore
in loving kindness, I've drawn you unto myself. And then let me say something
else. It was not a choice of the worthy. That is, it wasn't
a choice that God made based upon the works that He would
foresee that these who would be the recipients of His grace
would perform. In fact, our text here in verse
nine deals with that. Who hath saved us and called
us with an holy calling, not according to our works. Not according
to our works. The choice of certain persons
to be the recipients of the grace and mercy of God was not based,
therefore, in any way upon what God foresaw that they would do. It's not according to our works. When I was in Bible college years
ago, late 60, 69, 70, 71, 72, till I got excommunicated from
Bible college for believing the gospel. But we had professors
who said, now this is what God did. God looked down through
the halls of time. He saw who would believe him.
And who would be more receptive to his gospel. And therefore,
upon the basis of what God foresaw that certain persons would do,
he chose them unto salvation. And of course, my objection to
the professors who taught that was this. Well, if God foresaw
that some would believe, that means election unto salvation
is altogether unnecessary. That renders it unnecessary. But you see there in Romans chapter
eight, it doesn't say what God foresaw, but whom he foreknew. Whom he foreknew, not what he
foreknew, but whom he foreknew. And foreknowledge, the foreknowledge
of God is a foreordination in love. That's what foreknowledge
is. This is a choice wholly determined
by the goodwill and purpose of God, and it was a choice of love. And we can rightfully say of
this salvation, love is behind it all. The love of God. This choice of a particular number
unto salvation was a choice that involved all three persons of
the Trinity, but especially the second person. That is the Son
of God. Because the Father gave to him
these elect as a gift. And our Lord Jesus, especially
in the Gospel of John, he frequently used this kind of language, all
that the Father giveth me, they shall come to me. In his high
priestly prayer of John chapter 17, several times he refers to
those whom the father gave him. He received them as a gift. And to these whom the father
has entrusted to his care, The Lord Jesus has received them,
and in receiving them as a gift from God, he bears full responsibility
for their everlasting safety and preservation. They cannot
perish. They cannot be condemned. Otherwise, the second person
of the Trinity will lose his glory. because the Father gave
these to him for safekeeping. I give them to you, bring them
all home. And the Lord Jesus became what
the Bible calls the surety, the surety of God's elect. He pledged himself, he pledged
his own honor, his own glory to bringing them all to God,
to washing them in his blood and rubbing them in his righteousness
and preserving them and keeping them safe until he takes them
at last to glory and he presents them to the Father, a holy people
and a blameless people. Christ bears that responsibility. He had a special place in this
election of some sinners unto salvation. Well, let's go a little further
in our journey. And so we take the wings of the
morning. We fly now into time. And we see that at the time appointed
by God. He made a man. Man's name's Adam. He was a representative man.
He's a man who stood on behalf of all the human race. All who
would ever live were in the loins of Adam. There we were. He was
our legal representative to a holy God. And as Adam behaved toward God,
so did we. But Adam failed. Adam transgressed
God's law. Adam didn't do what God told
him to do. And therefore he bore the consequence,
an awful consequence, an awful punishment. He died. But wait, though he died, he did not die
by himself, because in Adam's death, we all died. Romans 5 and verse 12 says that. For by one man, sin entered into
the world, and death by sin. And so death passed upon all
men, all of us, for we all sinned in Adam. He was our federal head. That's a good expression to learn. He was our representative before
God. And as I said, when he behaved
himself before God, so did we. But when he misbehaved, when he fell, Oh, His fall, the
sound of it is still being heard today in our own depravity, in
our own sinfulness, in our own rebellion, in our own unthankful
spirit. That depravity is still very
much alive even in all of us who are the people of God tonight.
And the reason there's a war going on within us, where the
flesh is against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh,
the flesh is against God, and here's the reason, we fell in
Adam. We fell in him. You see, had
there been no fall, there would have been no need of a salvation.
So that brings me to say this, and I am unashamedly a predestinarian. And I believe if you read the
word of God with some understanding, you have to be. Therefore, I must say this, this
matter of S-I-N, it had a Very important position in God's purpose
of grace. It did not come in without the
will of God. He could have kept it out of
his creation. He could have kept Lucifer from
falling, or when he did fall, he could have obliterated him.
He could have kept Adam from falling. He could have made Adam
in such a way that it would have been absolutely impossible for
him to disobey. But God didn't because you see,
it is against that black backdrop of the sinfulness, the transgression
of Adam and all of his race and the sinfulness of all the chosen
race that grace is magnified and God is glorified. The fall of Adam, it did not
ruin the purpose of God. It worked into the purpose of
God to glorify him. Thirdly, let's continue our journey. And as we continue our journey,
we see that 4,000 years after Adam was made and after he fell,
And we'll take a fast journey now, 4,000 years. We'll just
cover it really fast. God sent forth his son into the
world. He was made under the law in
order to redeem them that were under the law. The entrance of
the Lord Jesus into this world to live and die for sinners,
it was not because of the other. hands of God for salvation had
failed. There never was any salvation
by obedience to the law. There never was any salvation
by obedience to God's commands. There never was any real salvation
under the sacrifices of the Old Testament. They were pictures.
That's what they were, right? Emblems. That's what they were.
The only way of salvation is the way that God himself ordained. Through the life and death, the
obedience unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of God's
great love for us in order to save us from our sins and from
ourselves and from Satan and from the wrath of God, our all-glorious
Savior came into this world. and he joined himself to our
humanity. He had to because the wages of
sin is death and God who is spirit, that's what the scripture says,
God is spirit and a spirit can't die. But death is the wages of
sin. Therefore, if our wages are to
be paid, One who is worthy of being our substitute, one who
meets all the demands of a holy God must come into this world
and he must join himself to our humanity. And in that body, as
a man, he must obey the law of God, thereby proving he's worthy
to be the sacrifice. And then he died. that Lamb of God, He gave His
life in order to save His people from their sins. This is what
God ordained. This is the way God ordained
by His grace before He ever made the world. That's why the scripture
says that Christ was the Lamb slain from before the foundation
of the world. We read in 1 Peter 1, our brother
read 1 Peter 1 to us back in the study a little bit ago. It talks about the precious blood
of Christ. who was a lamb without spot and
without blemish, who was foreordained before the foundation of the
world. That wasn't something that just happened on the spare
of the moment. No, this was something that God
put into motion before he ever made the world. The lamb would
die. A suitable substitute would lay
down his life in order to save his people. That's why Christ
came. He died under the wrath of God
so that God might be just and justifier. He died under the
wrath of God as our substitute to put away our sins. And I know,
and as we continue our journey, I'll bring out the fact that
the Lord by His Spirit deals with us about sin. And He convicts
us and He shows us we need a Savior. And the only Savior who can meet
our need is the Lord Jesus Christ. But listen, when we believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, that faith does not put sin away. The blood
did that. The blood of the Son of God.
The Lord is not redeeming anybody else today. Redemption happened
2,000 years ago. We were eternally justified by
the grace of God and saved by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. When the Spirit of God deals
with us, then we're brought to realize all that he did. He did to satisfy God and he
did it when he died upon the cross of Calvary. He died to
put away our sins. He buried him in the depths of
the deepest sea. And the scripture says in 1 Peter
3, 18, he died to bring us to God. What do you think, he will
fail to do that? That's why he died. Is there
any possibility that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the second person
of the glorious Trinity, is there any possibility that he will
not bring all of his people safely home to God? There's no possibility
that he can fail. In fact, Isaiah used those exact
words. He shall not fail. He shall not
fail. He's God. He died to bring us
to God. He died to deliver us from this
present evil world. He died to redeem us from all
iniquity. And in our journey, And I advise
you, I admonish you to take this journey in your mind and in your
hearts quite frequently. In your journey, always spend
some extra time at the cross. Always spend some extra time
at that sacrifice that God offered in order to satisfy his own law
and justice. But for the sake of time, we
must continue our journey. We continue our journey and we
see that salvation has to be made known to us and it has to
be applied by the grace of God. God has so ordered things in
this purpose of grace. that the gospel message, the
good news of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, it
must be made known to us. We must be confronted with the
gospel. There are a lot of false gospels
out there, as Joe mentioned in his prayer, but one true gospel,
and we've got to be confronted with that message of how God
can be just and justify the ungodly. through the substitutionary sacrifice,
through the satisfaction of the Son of God, and the Spirit of
grace. Here we are going on the broad
road, it would appear, to destruction. And the Spirit of God suddenly,
He pushes us out of the mob to deal with us individually. And He shows us who God is. You see, the only way we're going
to get an accurate view of ourselves is in the light of God's absolute
holiness. And when you see who God is,
and how far, far, far, far short you are of measuring up to righteousness
which He demands, That's when you'll seek first the kingdom
of God and his righteousness. And you'll find out that that
righteousness is only to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. The
spirit of God must do this work. In the language of our text of
scripture here, he has saved us and called us. He's called
us with a holy calling. It's a holy God who calls us
and he calls us to holiness. And in the day when God implants
within us life and love and faith, in the day when the Lord Jesus
Christ indwells us, in the day when the life of God is put within
the soul, we then have a life that will never die. It will never die. And God the
Spirit has got to do this work. It is God who worketh in you
to will and to do of his good pleasure. And again, we read
in Philippians 1, he who hath begun a good work in you will
finish it to the day of Jesus Christ. And now we must continue our
journey to see that this salvation of God's involves the never-ending
protection and preservation and oversight of us by the God who
is always present with us by His Spirit. So all along life's
pilgrimage, all along our personal journey, the Lord abides with us. And
he says, I'll never leave you and I'll never forsake you. He is the shepherd who leads
the way. The Lord is my shepherd is what
David said with boldness and confidence in Psalm 23. And look there, look there back
behind us. Who do you see? Goodness and
mercy. Goodness and mercy shall follow
me how long? All the days of my life. Oh, that's preservation there. He keeps us. This is all part
of the salvation, you know. I spoke briefly with a man a
few weeks ago. And he said, does your church
believe in eternal security? I told him I was a Baptist and
I thought it was kind of a foolish question to ask if we believe
in eternal security. But I said, well, if God saves,
he saves forever. That which God does, he does
forever. Nothing can be added to it and
nothing can be taken away from it. He preserves us. No wonder the Lord, He consistently
and He constantly says to His people, fear not, I am with you. That's the reason
I read that passage in Isaiah to begin with. Fear not, I'm
with you. In our Bible class this morning, and those of you
who were not in attendance, I'll tell you something I shared with
them. When the women, the two women came to the tomb of our
Savior, there was a bright angel in its brilliance. He had a brightness
about him like lightning. And the keepers of the tomb,
the soldiers, They just shook with fear. But the angel said
to the Marys, to the women, fear not ye. And we need to understand when
the angel said ye, he's talking to specific people. He wasn't talking. The angel
wasn't speaking to the soldiers. They had every reason to be afraid. They didn't know God. They didn't
have a savior. They didn't have a mediator.
They knew nothing about the gospel of grace. He's speaking to God's
dear saints, those precious women. And the messenger says, fear
not ye. And would to God that As we are
on our journey now looking at this salvation of God, would
the God that the Spirit of the Lord would whisper into our hearts,
fear not ye. Don't you be afraid. Don't you
be afraid. I was up at the infusion center
Friday and I was talking to one of the nurses who was infusing
me. And she was talking about how
bad condition the world is in. Well, there's no question about
that. But I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. I don't know
what's gonna happen, but there's no need for the people of God
to be afraid. Because no evil shall come to
us, only good. No evil, nothing shall harm us. Oh, they may harm the body, certainly
that's a possibility. And disease will, or some kind
of sickness will harm this body, but nothing can harm us. So don't
be afraid. What is there to be afraid of? And then as we continue our journey
Observing God's wonderful salvation, we find that the day is marked
out already when we must die. Our soul must be separated from
our bodies, but the same God who ordained our salvation, who
saved us, who called us, he'll take us home unto himself. Sire,
Lord Jesus, here were these anxious disciples in John chapter 14. He says, don't let your heart
be troubled. believe in God, believe also
in me, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare
a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto me. And that may very well be through
death. It may be his second coming that
some of us which are alive will be alive when he comes back.
But it has happened so far that he comes by way of death. but
he says, you'll be with me where I am. You'll be with me where
I am. Death will remove us from this
present evil world and we'll take our flight to the Savior.
Absent from the body, present with the Lord. And in that day, picture the
scene. Here's a poor beggar, but he's
saved by the grace of God. His name was Lazarus. The rich
man had no compassion on him, wouldn't give him anything to
eat. But he is one of God's children, poor as could be. The end of his life was drawing
near. Oh, I can hear the master say,
it's time to bring him home. And the angels of God Already
protecting Lazarus, they gathered around him. And the Lord said,
bring him now. And just like that, those angels,
they took him right away into the presence of the Lord Jesus. And that's what's gonna happen
to us. Yes. Whenever God is ordained, that's
what's gonna happen to God's people. But let me finish this message
because our journey is not to an end yet. Stick with me just
a little bit longer. Listen to the narrator. As we
finish this observation of this journey, one of these days, Our Lord is
going to raise these vile bodies that are going to die. And he's gonna change our bodies
like into the glorious body of the Lord Jesus. And that's when
corruption shall put on incorruption and mortality shall put on immortality. And if I understand, there's
a great mystery about glorification. But if I understand glorification
correctly, for us, it's in two stages. When we die, the soul
is glorified, but not the body. The body is going to the grave.
The body is going to decompose. It's going to seek corruption.
But when our Lord Jesus comes back, and there's gonna be a
shout, and the graves are gonna give up the dead. And our bodies
will instantly be changed, likened to his glorious body. Then the
body will be glorified, joined together with a glorified soul.
And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Oh, what a day that will be.
And in that glorious day, Christ will present us to the Father
before wandering worlds, worlds filled with great wonder and
amazement. He will present us in the beauty
of perfect holiness. It's His holiness. In the beauty
of glorious righteousness, it's His righteousness. And He will
say, Behold, I and the children that thou hast given unto me. And we'll spend eternity with
the Savior. And perhaps he will say then,
as he said in John 17, those that thou gavest me, I
have lost none. Here they are. Here they are. To the praise of the glory of
your grace. Well, our observation of the
journey of grace now comes to an end. But our actual journey
still continues. And I thought of an old song
today. Some reason or other, words of
songs kind of stick in my mind. My Lord, I'm on my journey. I'm on my journey home. And we
are, aren't we? We're on our journey home. We'll
see him soon. And oh, what a glorious day that
will be. Until then, we pray as did those
disciples on the road to Emmaus. Abide with me. Stay with me,
Lord. And I know he has promised that
he will. He said, I'll never leave you
and I'll never forsake you, but we still pray, Lord, abide with
us. And that's our final song, 75.