Another dear friend that I've
been knowing for quite a while, Pastor Greg Amquist. He pastors
in a Grace Church in Apopka, Florida, Orlando. And then he drives Sunday afternoon
down to Sarasota and preaches down there in the evening. But I love him, appreciate him.
So, Brother Greg, you come bring the Lord's message. I appreciate your pastor and
I'm thankful for the opportunity to be here with you tonight.
Our text will be taken from the book of Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews
chapter 11. I'm so hopeful that the Lord
will allow a dying sinner to speak some words of hope to other
dying sinners. And I want to introduce this
message by asking you a question. What is the evidence of your
salvation? What is the evidence of your
salvation? What are you hanging the hopes
of your immortal soul on? One day very soon, sooner than
we think, our friends and family members will gather in a service
like this, and our lifeless bodies will be lying in a casket. The difference between the person
you are right now and the person you'll be on that day is your
mortal soul. What are you hanging the hopes
of it on? What is the evidence? That when your soul departs from
your body. That you're going to spend eternity
in glory with God. On what basis do you have hopes
for that? I was talking to a man recently
and he said, well, he said, the evidence of my salvation is that
I don't do the things I used to do. And I said, well, that's
good. You shouldn't have been doing
them anyway. Truth is, a whole lot of folks quit doing bad things
when they get sick and tired of being sick and tired, either
through religion or, I had a religious experience at 20 years old and
Much like Paul's, but different, I quit doing a lot of things
that I've never done since. But it wasn't until 20 years
later that the Lord was pleased to save my soul and make me to
be a sinner. Changing your behavior is no
reason to have hope for your salvation. God's made you to
be a sinner. You know that your sin problem
goes a whole lot deeper than your outward behavior. Everybody
can see how polluted the water is that comes out of the well,
but only those who have been taught by God the mystery of
iniquity have some understanding about how polluted the water
is that's still in the well. Only those who have been made
to be sinners by the Spirit of God understand that all that
is within them, all that is within them. Paul said, all that's in
me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. You know, the
simplest definition I know of in the scripture for sin is that
all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Let me ask
you a question. What in your life, right now,
not years ago, but right this very minute, what in your life
falls short of the glory of God? If God's made you to be a sinner,
you know that everything does. Everything does. We cannot hang
the hopes of our eternal soul on our behavior. We just can't
do it. If God's made you to be a sinner,
you know what he meant in Genesis chapter 6 when he said, I looked
down from heaven, I looked into the very recesses of men's hearts,
and I saw that every imagination of their heart was only evil
and that continually. Continually. You know something
about what Job experienced when God was pleased to reveal himself
to Job and Job's response was, behold, oh behold, I see something
I've never seen before. Behold, I am vile. If God's made you to be a sinner,
that's your testimony right now. That's not your testimony of
years gone by when you were irreligious and had no concerns for the things
of God. You know that that's your experience
right now if God's made you to be a sinner. When Isaiah saw
the Lord high and lifted up, his response was, woe is me,
for I am undone. I'm a dead man. I've seen God
in all of his glory, and he can do nothing to me but condemn
me to eternal judgment. The Lord had to take a hot coal
from off the altar and touch his lips, didn't he? The Lord
had to purge him. He had to save him. When Daniel
saw the Lord, he said, my comeliness, my beauty, my strength, the things
that I thought were good about me were turned into corruption. Is that your experience right
now? Right now? Because if you're
not a sinner, you don't need a Savior. You don't need a Savior. These are the ones whom God came
to save. won't hang the hopes of your
eternal soul on your behavior. Lots of folks change their behavior. And you know that if God's made
you to be a sinner, that in fact, in fact, I can stand before you
tonight as a dying sinner speaking to dying sinners and say to you
that I'm worse now than I was then. I believe that about myself. I believe, God has made me to
believe that I am the chief of all sinners. There's no one in
this world that needs God's grace more than I do. Is that your
experience? Is that your experience? You say, well, the evidence of
my salvation is that I love God. I can say that I do too, sometimes. Oftentimes, I have to confess
that my heart and my love grows very cold. I love the gospel, yet I can
go a long time without thinking about the thing that I say I
love. I love God's people, and yet Well, the best example I
can give you is from the scriptures when the Lord Jesus Christ said,
you've heard it said that if you commit murder, you are in
danger of judgment. But I say unto you, if you have
anger against your brother without a cause, you are in danger of
judgment. See, God's looking at the heart,
isn't he? I've been married to my wife,
there's nobody in this world I love more than her for 43 years
and yet I have to confess to you that over those 43 years
I've murdered her many, many times. I've had anger in my heart towards
her without a cause. Without a cause. I'm a sinner. A dead dog mercy begging sinner
in need of a savior. So I can't say, well, my love,
I can say this about my love. Maybe it's taken me 60 years
to come to understand this, but I can tell you that when I consider
the consistency and the sincerity of my love, whether it be for
God or for anybody, I have to come to conclude that there's
only one person in this world that I love sincerely and consistently. It's the first person I look
at in the mirror when I wake up in the morning. Every experience in my life,
I consider it from my own perspective. I am head over heels in love
with myself. And therein lies the reason why
I loathe myself. The world says, well, you need
to love yourself more. That is our problem. Don't hang the hopes
of your immortal soul on the sincerity of your love because
if God's made you to be a sinner, you know the person you love
the most is yourself. So if we can't look to our love,
we can't look to our works, we can't look to our obedience,
what is the evidence? When God's pleased, to bring
my life to an end, to bring your life to an end. What hope do
you have right now that your immortal soul, and when God says
He's gonna make the mortal immortal and the corruptible incorruptible,
He's talking about our flesh. The truth is that the soul that
you possess right now is already immortal. It's going to live
on forever somewhere. What is the hope? What is the
evidence that you're saved? You have your Bibles open to
Hebrews chapter 11, God gives us an answer to that question.
It's a very simple answer. To the natural man, faith is
never enough. Faith is never enough to the
natural man. To the spiritual man, faith is
all he's got. If God's made you a sinner, if
he saved your immortal soul, you know that the only difference
between what you are now and what you were before is faith. That's the only difference. Everything
else is pretty much the same as it's always been. The only
thing you've got now that you didn't have before is you have
God-given faith. Hebrews 11, verse 1, now, faith
is the substance. It is the ground upon which we
stand. It is the confidence that we
have. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for. It is the evidence of things
not seen. Eye has not seen, nor has ear
heard, nor does it enter into the imagination of man, the things
that God has prepared for us. We can't imagine how glorious
heaven is going to be. It does not, it does not, what
we shall be, when He shall appear, we're going to be made like Him. We can't imagine it. We can't
see it, except through the eyes of faith. And what faith sees
in Christ is more clear than what our physical eyes see in
this world. Faith. Now don't make a work out of
faith. Don't make a, plenty of folks
do that. Well, I'll just make a decision to believe, and if
I'll just bolster my faith and strengthen my faith, then I'll
have more confidence. Don't make a work out of faith.
Faith's a gift of God. For by grace are you saved through
faith. And that not of yourself, it
is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And
Paul put it like this in Philippians chapter one. For unto you it
is given on behalf of Christ to believe on him. It's given on behalf of the Lord
Jesus Christ to believe upon him. The righteousness of God. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
that righteousness. He is the end of the law for
righteousness to everyone that believeth. Men go about trying
to establish their own righteousness, ignorant of God's righteousness.
The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. Do you get that? Not from faith,
for faith. God doesn't reward you with the
revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ because you decided to
have faith. The righteousness of God is revealed
to the heart from the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ to the
faith that He puts in our hearts. Paul said, I'm crucified with
Christ. I am. When the Lord Jesus Christ offered
Himself up as the sin-bearer, as the substitute for God's elect. When God took all the sins of
all of God's people and put them in His body upon that tree and
satisfied His divine justice upon our substitute. All that He bore the sins for
died in Him. Paul said, I'm crucified with
Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but the life that
I now live in the flesh, in this body, I live by the faith of
the Son of God who loved me and died for me. Faith's a gift of
God. It's God's faith. It's Christ's
faith. Oh, what did that father say
who brought his child to the Lord? The disciples couldn't
heal him. And he said, Lord, if you can
do anything, what'd the Lord say? If you can believe, all
things are possible to them who believe. And what did the man
cry? He cried, he said, oh Lord, I do believe. Help thou mine
unbelief. Lord, I've got this unbelieving
flesh that refuses to bow. This body of death that I carry
about with me, Who shall deliver me from it? Faith is never enough for the
natural man. It is the only thing the spiritual
man has to hang the hopes of his immortal soul on. It's all we've got. It's all
we've got. We've got nothing else. It's the substance. You see that
in verse 1 of Hebrews chapter 11? Faith is the substance. It's the confidence. In Hebrews
chapter 3 verse 14 it says, For we are made partakers of Christ
if we hold the beginning of our confidence. Our confidence. is in Christ. He is our confidence. Who He is and what He's accomplished
on behalf of His people. He's the only one that was tempted
in all ways that we are and yet He's without sin. He's touched
with the feelings of our infirmities in Hebrews chapter 4 and if you
read that in the context, He's not talking about the afflictions
that we suffer in the flesh. He's talking about the infirmity
of our sin That's our greatest infirmity. If God's made you
to be a sinner, you know that you are your own worst enemy. We're not pointing our fingers
at the world. We're not saying, oh, that corrupt world out there. Lord, I'm the problem. Have mercy upon me, the publican
said. The sinner. Which one went down
to his house justified? The publican that would not so
much as look up and smote himself upon the breast or the Pharisee
who prayed unto himself and said, Father, I thank thee that I'm
not like other men. Faith in Christ is resting all
of your hopes on him. It's believing that He's all
and that He is in all. He is the brightness of His glory
and the express image of the person. That word person, somebody
read it? You read it at the beginning
of the service tonight. Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3. That
word person in that verse is the same word translated substance. The person of the Lord Jesus
Christ is the substance of our salvation. He upholds all things by the
word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins and
sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. God said,
I'll not allow my word to return unto me void. And we take great
comfort in that when we preach the gospel because we know that
the Lord is going to apply that effectually to the hearts of
his people. And what great hope we have in that. But the Lord
Jesus Christ Himself is the Word of God. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word
became flesh, and He dwelt among us. And we beheld His glory as
of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and full of truth.
And when the Word of God ascended back into glory, He took with
Him the names of those for whom He lived and died, and presented
them before the Father. And He ever lives to make intercession
for them. If any man sin, And that little
preposition, if, in 1 John chapter 3, really it's better translated,
since. It's not, well, you might sin
or you might not sin. But since every man does sin,
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous
one. Oh, what hope. What hope. It's all we've got, faith. What
is faith? Is it pulling yourself up? In
religion, people promote themselves as being men of faith. The Lord
Jesus Christ defined it like this. He said, lest you become
as a little child, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven,
for such is the kingdom of heaven. What can a child do? What can
a child do? A child can do two things. He
can cry, he can mess himself up. That scripture, by the way,
that speaks of a little child, it's not that, you know, I know
the artists have portrayed that as being, you know, six, seven,
eight, 10-year-old kids running around the Lord. No, that was
a mother bringing an infant to the Lord Jesus Christ, a baby
that the disciples tried to keep away. Lest you become like that,
There's faith. Crying. You can't feed yourself. You can't do anything for yourself.
Completely dependent upon Him for all the hope of your salvation. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for. Faith is the evidence of things
not seen. It's all we've got. And it comes
from God, it's a gift from God, enabling us to trust Christ with
our immortal souls. Where else we gonna go? I hear so much preaching today
that sounds like that salvation is nothing more than a means
to an end, and the end is serving God. You know, God's in need
of people on this world to serve Him. And so he saves us in order,
you know, save to serve. You could title a lot of messages
that way, save to serve. And the emphasis on the preaching
is on service. What comfort is there in that
for a sinner's soul? A dying sinner who knows that
he's mortal in his flesh and that he has an immortal soul
in his breast? What comfort is there in that?
God's people will serve. I'm not worried about God's people
serving. The Lord saves your soul. He's going to make you
His servant. Salvation is the end. It's not
a means to an end. It's everything. It's everything. What does it profit a man if
he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? What will a man give in exchange
for his soul? What's he gonna do? In just a
few more years, all this is gonna be gone for you and for me. Maybe not that long. I don't
know. But it's not long. It's not long. All the accomplishments of this
life. and all the things we accumulate, and all the things we use to
impress one another with, are not going to matter one whit,
not one whit. You're gonna stand in the presence
of a holy God, a God that Hebrews chapter four says, a God with
whom we must do. How are you gonna do with a God
that's holy? A God that's not like you at all. A God that says
the stars and the moon are not pure in my sight. A God who says
that the angels are charged with folly by God. They never sinned. They've never done the things.
But what's he saying? He's holy. He's holy. And the only thing that he's
satisfied with is a holiness that is measured up to his holiness. And there's only one. He's called
the Christ, the son of the living God. I was talking to a dear
Jewish lady the other day, and my wife and I were talking to
her, and she said, well, I have a lot of Jewish friends who pretend
to be kosher. She said, but I've read the law
of God. And she said, I know what they do and how they live,
and they're not really kosher, they're just trying to impress
one another. She made this statement, she said, no one can keep God's
law. That's what she said to us. And
I said, only one. And she said, yes, you're right.
The only difference between you and me is that you think he's
already come and I'm still waiting on him. She said to me the same thing
that woman at the well said to the Lord Jesus Christ in John
chapter 4. What'd that woman say? We know that when Messiah
comes, he'll lead us into all truth. No Jew has ever considered
the Christ to be a failure. Now when he comes, he's going
to accomplish what he was sent to do. What was that accomplishment? The salvation of his people.
Do you believe that? Abraham believed God. Look at
the next verse in our text. For by it the elders obtained
a good report. Now who's the father of the faithful?
Who's the elder of the elders? Abraham. And Abraham's listening
here. And Abraham believed God. And
it was accounted to him for righteousness. What did Abraham believe? He
believed that what he had promised he was able to perform. That's
what he believed. And there's no mention in Hebrews
chapter 11 about Hagar and Ishmael. There's no mention in Hebrews
chapter 11 about Abraham giving Sarah to Pharaoh to go into her
to save his own skin. There's no mention in Hebrews
chapter 11 about all the inconsistencies of Abraham's life. But he believed that what God
had promised, he was able to perform. What did God promise? He promised to save his people.
He promised to save his people. Can you believe that? Can you
believe that? If you can, it's because you're
saved. And that's your hope. I had a
man ask me, I was telling him about the gospel, and he said,
he said, if I believed what you just told me, he said, I'd lose
all my faith. And I said, yes, and you'd count
it as done. And he said, well, what makes
you think you're one of God's elect? And I said, because I
believe the gospel. That's the only reason that I
have. I can't find anything in my life that would give me any
rest or any hope that I'm a child of God except faith. I believe
the gospel and I can't not believe it. And if you can stop believing,
you never did. And if you can leave, if you can leave, you will. Faith comes by hearing. Hearing
comes by the Word of God. Oh, it is the evidence. It is
the substance. It is the hope. How do I know
if I have faith? Well, the scripture says, with
the heart man believeth unto righteousness. How do we know
what's in the heart? And with the mouth confession is made
unto salvation. So what say ye about Christ? That's the evidence That's the
evidence. Here's what the Lord said in
Matthew chapter 12. He said, make a tree good and its fruit
will be good. Make a tree corrupt and its fruit
will be corrupt. You will know a tree by its fruit. I've been in man-made, self-righteous,
freewill religion. And that verse right there was
used by the self-righteous to do a lot of fruit inspecting. Oh, we compared ourselves to
ourselves, thought we were getting better. We compared ourselves
to one another and thought we were better. And we went around,
were willing to excommunicate someone who didn't show the proper
amount of fruit. Is that what that verse is talking
about? Listen to the rest of it. Oh, ye generation of vipers,
and that's what I was. How can you, being evil, speak
good things? There's the fruit. The fruit
of your lips. That's your fruit. What do you
say about Christ? For out of the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh. With the heart man believeth
unto righteousness, the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
So how do I know if I have faith? It's about what I say. What'd
I say about Christ? What'd I say about God's gospel?
What'd I say about myself? Am I a sinner? I mean a really
dead dog, dying sinner. A man that can produce no righteousness. All my righteousnesses are as
filthy rags to God. I have but one that's righteous
before God. A good man, out of the treasure
in his heart, bringeth forth good things. And an evil man,
this is the rest of this same passage we're talking about.
And an evil man, out of the treasure in his heart, brings forth evil
things. For by thy words, thy shall be
justified, and by thy words, thy shall be condemned. Man says, God loves everybody.
Christ died for everybody. God wants everybody to be saved.
Man's got a free will. The Bible is a rule book for
Christian living. God takes you back to the law
in order to teach you how to live a Christian life. He's not only lying on God, but
he's making a confession that will be used against him for
his judgment. So what think ye of Christ? Whose
son is he? Oh, he's the son of David. Well,
then why did David say that the Lord, God the Father, said unto
my Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, sit ye here at my right hand
until I make thine enemies thy footstool. Oh, we were at enmity
with God. And faith, faith, and faith alone
brings us into union with Christ. It's the gift that God gives
us. He is the Son of God. You believe that? People are
quick to say, well, yes, He's Lord, and then they talk about
making Him Lord. Well, that makes a lot of sense.
You can't make Him Lord. Charlie's like I heard you say
one time, too late, God's already done it. He's Lord over the living
and the dead. He's the Son of God. He's the
fullness of the Godhead bodily. And the only hope that we have
is to be found in Him. Not having our own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that righteousness which is by the
faith of Jesus Christ. That's who He is, Donnie. He's
God. And we are complete in Him. So that as He is, so are we. That's what faith does. It unites
one to Christ and puts us in union with Him. Again, you're not gonna drum
this up. Faith comes by hearing. If God's pleased to give you
faith, he'll give it to you as you hear about the Lord Jesus
Christ, who he is. Oh, he's sovereign. He's sovereign. He gives eternal life to as many
as the Father has given him. It is not of him that willeth,
nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. He's sovereign in salvation.
He chooses whomsoever He wills. He hath done whatsoever He wills.
No man can stay His hand. No man can say unto Him, what
doest thou? He reigns sovereign over the armies of heaven and
all the inhabitants of the earth. He's Lord. Oh, and faith just bows to that.
It doesn't talk foolishly about making Him Lord. It just bows
to Him being Lord. Faith believes that the Lord
Jesus Christ is immutable. Immutable. I am the same yesterday,
today, and forever. What God purposed in eternity
past and what He's ordained to last for eternity future cannot
be changed by the events of time. It cannot be. We live in this
little bubble of time. God lives outside of time. The
scientists talk about a parallel universe. As you know, there
actually are parallel universes. There's the one we live in. There's
the one God lives in. There's the eternal and there's
the temporal. Our God's immutable. The Lord
Jesus Christ changes not. And that's the only reason you
sons of Jacob are not consumed. Why? Because I purposed it in
eternity past. I accomplished it in time. And what I started, I'm gonna
finish. That's who he is. Faith just believes that. Faith
can't not believe it. Why? Because God said it. Faith
can't not believe it. Faith believes that He's holy.
He's other than I am. He's not like me in any way. You thought that I was altogether
as yourself, but you were wrong. You just fashioned an image,
an idol, in fact. We're born into this world with
the idol factory of our darkened imagination already in operation. And we begin fashioning these
idols of God from very young. And the Lord said, and what we
do is we make him to be like us. Why? Because we're setting
ourselves up on the throne of God. It's what we're doing. It's what all men do. And God
said, you thought that I was altogether as thyself, but you
were wrong. I'm not like you at all, I'm
holy. And that's what Isaiah saw, the seraphim hovering over
the throne of God, crying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of
hosts. Heaven and earth is filled with his glory. Do you believe
that? Do you believe what God has said?
It's the only hope you have for your soul. You can't hang the hopes of your
salvation on your love, or on your behavior, or on your sincerity,
because if you're a sinner, you know that all those things are
frail. But He's not. He's omnipotent. He's all-powerful, so that it
is not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord. He's the Christ. He's the Messiah. He was sent of God for the purpose
of saving His people, and there's no way He could fail. He's not
discouraged. He cannot fail until he brings
judgment to the isles. Oh, he's going to accomplish
the salvation. Well, he has. He accomplished
it even before time started. Get a hold of that. He's the
lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. The
covenant of grace was established by God in eternity. That's why David said, although
it be not so with my house. Yet, yet, here's my hope. He has made with me an everlasting
covenant ordered in all things and sure, sure, all that was
necessary to ratify that covenant, everything that was necessary
to accomplish the necessary elements of that covenant, the Lord Jesus
Christ did it. He did it all. And what did David
say? This is all my salvation. This is all my desire. And the last phrase of that verse
says, though he make it not to grow. You know what that means? Two things. It means the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ has never grown by one person from
eternity past. God chose a people, wrote their
names in the Lamb's Book of Life before Adam was ever created,
and the church has been exactly the same size ever since. It's
not getting any smaller or any bigger. And in eternity future,
it's going to be exactly the same size as it was back then.
You know what else it means? David's looking at his life.
And he's saying, I don't see any growth. I'm worse today than
I was yesterday. I'm just getting worse. I'm getting
worse. I'm not growing. We don't look for growth and
grace in our lives. Tell you what growth and grace
is, the way up is down. That's what growth and grace
is. Growth in grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ is seeing
more and more of your sin and more and more of your need for
a Savior. The trees of righteousness, which
are the plantings of the Lord, grow just like a tree. They grow
just like a tree. That tree's not gonna grow up
unless the roots are growing down. Isn't that our experience? He's the alpha and the omega,
the beginning and the end, the first and the last. He's the
author and the finisher of our faith. Believest thou this? The Lord asked the disciples,
whom do men say that I am? Well, you know, some say you're
Elijah, some say you're John the Baptist, one of the prophets.
Everybody's got an opinion. Whom do you say that I am? Who
do you say that he is? What did Peter say? It was one
of those rare times in Peter's life where he actually said something
good. He didn't stick his foot in his mouth. Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God. the anointed one of God, the
all-powerful one, the successful Savior, my only hope for salvation,
you're it. Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona. Flesh and blood didn't reveal
this unto you. My Father which is in heaven
made it known unto you. Has he made that known unto you?
Can you say with the disciples, Lord, we've got no place to go.
We didn't choose you, you chose us. We believe that thou art the
Christ. And you're the only ones that
have the words of eternal life. Do you believe yourself to be
a sinner? I love that definition Todd gave this morning. A sinner
is a person that can do nothing but sin. And you can't look down
your nose at anybody. You can't look at the homosexuals
and the abortionists and say, well, they're worse than me.
You believe yourself to be worse than them. You believe that. If you're a sinner, you're not
looking out in the world and thinking, boy, I'm glad I'm not
like that. If you are, you're praying the prayer of the Pharisee.
Father, I thank thee that I'm not like other men. You believe yourself to be a
sinner. Do you believe that the sovereign God of creation has
the sovereign right to elect a people according to his own
purpose, his own will? He didn't look down through the
quarters of time and see who would choose him and say, well,
I'll have that one. No, he sovereignly elected those
whomsoever he will, and he placed them in Christ before the foundation
of the world. Do you believe that? This is
the gospel. Do you believe that when the
Lord Jesus Christ came into this world, born of a woman, born
under the law, to redeem them that are cursed by the law, born
in the likeness of sinful flesh, that He fulfilled all righteousness,
that He's the only man that ever lived that was able to touch
God without being destroyed and at the same time touch man without
being defiled? He's your intercessor. He's the
man in heaven between you and God. through whom you must go
in order to stand in the presence of God. He's the end of the law
for righteousness. And when he bowed his mighty
head on Calvary's cross and said, it is finished, that he was declaring
everything that God requires from you, I did it. I did it,
everything. The sword of God's justice was
sheathed into the heart of the Son of God, and God was pleased. He wet his sword with the blood
of Christ, and he said, when I see the blood, when I see the
blood, I'll pass by you. And not one drop of his blood
was wasted. He died effectually for the elect
of God, those chosen by God in the covenant of grace. Do you believe that when God's
pleased, the God who separated you from your mother's womb,
when He's pleased to reveal Christ in you, that you're not going
to have a choice about it. It's going to be irresistible.
I mean, He's going to fetch you like David fetched Mephibosheth,
and you're not going to have a word to say about it. All you're
going to say is, amen, hallelujah, thank you, Lord. He's going to
make you willing. Irresistible grace. Do you believe
that the only hope you have of getting into glory is for Him
to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before
His throne with great joy? Do you believe that? Or do you
believe somehow you just try a little harder to hang on? We talk about returning to Christ. I've done that a hundred times
today. I mean, I'm just a perpetual
backslider. And the Lord's constantly calling me back to Himself. And
if He didn't do it, I would leave. I know I would. He's got to keep
me on a leash. Do you believe that about yourself?
That you're not able to keep yourself in the faith if He doesn't
keep you? That's the gospel. Faith is the only substance of
things hoped for. It is the only evidence of things
not seen. By your words, you shall be justified,
and by your words, you shall be condemned. You say, well,
you know, I don't know the Scriptures that well, and I can't speak
all that about Christ. Let me ask you if you can say
this word. Can you speak this word? Can
you say about what God has said? And that's all I've tried to
do is just as a dying center, tell dying centers what God has
said, who Christ is and what he's done to save his people.
Can you speak this word? Amen. Can you say that? Pastor. All we trust is one another.