Greetings, friends, and welcome
to another broadcast of the Old School Primitive Baptist with
Elder Don Martin, Sr. Stay tuned for another gospel
message of God's free and sovereign grace. In 1 Corinthians chapter
1, we begin reading there, chapter 1, verse 1, Paul, called to be
an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God and Sosethnes,
our brother, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to
them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints. Now, I want to do a little expository
preaching, if God permits. And what I mean by that is you
take a portion of scripture and you take and you, in an expositional
way, you read it and you give comment on it as you go through
the text. Now, that is a contextual, expositional
means of preaching. And then there is a subjective
means of preaching where a preacher would take a subject. whether
it be on the subject of doctrine, or on the person of Christ, or
the deity of God, or the church, or whatever it be. And he takes
it, as God gets in the mind, and sets together scriptures
to try to minister in a subjectal fashion. But I want to take it
in an expositional, contextual way. what Paul says here in the
first epistle to the church of Corinth. He says, to the church
of Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, call
them to be saints. Now, there's one thing that needs
to be cleared up amongst some folks that have a mindset that
have come out of Catholicism. Now, you'd be surprised how many
folks were raised as Roman Catholics, or Catholics as they were young,
and in time have come out of it and have been convinced that
their home should be among evangelical, Baptist, people because of what
they preach and the truth that they have been led to believe.
But this business of taking and setting folks up as saints in
that religious order and recognizing them as somebody spatial and
above the nominal believer in Jesus Christ is a tradition And they begin to take and canonize
individuals that were special in their service to God and they
set them on a higher plateau and made them saints in their
traditional religion. Well, the Bible says here that
Paul, as he writes to the church at Corinth, he says, to those
that are sanctified in Christ, that word sanctified means set
apart. That's what it means when it's
translated in the original Greek. It means to be set apart. So
you that are believers in Christ Jesus, you have been set apart
by God to Christ and we have been bought with a price, the
precious blood of Christ. We are His. He is ours as well. But the Bible says that those
who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. We have been called to be saints. We are the saints of God. Everyone
that has been given a hope in Jesus Christ and has been brought
to a personal experience and relationship in believing on
Jesus Christ as one Savior have here, that believe in Christ,
come together. We are saints gathered together,
which makes up the church, the local body of believers. We are
the church, part of the church. Now, if we all, as you've heard
me say, if we all physically got up and walked outside the
door, stood out yonder by that oak tree, and this place was
empty of people that believed on Christ, there is no church
here. There is merely a building here. A building where the church meets. And they don't meet until they
come in the door and gather. And so the gathering of God's
people is a unique thing in itself because we must believe that
God gathers His church. You're here this morning because
God has gathered you here. He's caused you to have a desire
to be here. And no matter how and what your
intent was in coming here, God had brought you here for a divine
purpose and reason. For we as old Baptists believe
in God's absolute, determined, decreed, predestined purposes
in all things. And that we ain't going anywhere
that God ain't determined us to go. And so we're here this
morning by the appointed, designated time that God has allocated us
to be here. Now the Bible goes on to say,
Paul writes, he says, to those who are called to be saints,
with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ
our Lord, both theirs and ours. Grace be unto you and peace from
God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank God always
on your behalf for the grace of God which is given you by
Jesus Christ. Do you notice that the verses
here in the first three verses that I have read, that God the
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are synonymously mentioned every
time? For it says here that It says,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours, and
it says, and the grace of God and peace from God our Father
and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Wherever Paul had mentioned and
preached about Christ, the Father was always included in the content
of it in one way or another because they're inseparable. We know
that the manifest is in and through the person of the Son, Jesus
Christ, who took upon himself a body like unto ours, yet tempted
in every way, but without sin, the Bible says. Now, Paul goes
on to say, he says, I thank my God always on your behalf for
the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ. So the grace
of which we have obtained, which is the unmerited favor of God. Now, you hear most religions
in the name of Christianity talk about grace. But few mention
what really grace is about. Grace is about unmerited favor. Now what does that mean? For
something to be unmerited, is not deserved. You can't do
anything to obtain it by your own merits or your own deeds,
obligations, or duties. Grace is just purely unmerited
favor. That's what's so beautiful about
amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like
me. Listen to this, amazing unmerited
favor that saved a wretch like me. That's what it is, a merited
thing. We don't deserve it. We haven't
earned it. You don't even need to keep it.
It is by the grace of God that we have a relationship with Him. It's by His loving kindness and
mercy, which is everlasting mercy to those of the elect family
of God. He goes on to say in verse 5, that in everything ye
are enriched by him in all utterance and in all knowledge, even as
the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that ye come behind
and know it. waiting for the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you unto the end,
that ye may be blameless in that day of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Now, what is this day of our Lord Jesus Christ? That is a
day of which God alone has determined that His Son, Jesus, is coming
back to this time world and earth and take and gather His church
together and take them to immortal glory. That is going to be the
day of the Lord. And the Bible says that God shall
confirm you. That word confirm means to make
you firm, steadfast, and make you persevere. We believe, as
old Baptists, of the perseverance of the saints
of God. Now what that means is, we believe
that the whom them that God has sought out and saves in this
time world by his loving kindness and his grace, that they shall
persevere. In other words, they shall continue
on along the Christian walk and they shall not fall away. For the Bible says that all that
the Father hath given me shall come to me, and I shall in no
wise lose none. You can't get lost once you have
been saved by the mercy, the grace, and the love and kindness
of Jesus Christ. You can't lose it. And we've
got some folks that teach you can. You can be saved today,
you can go out and do something that's sinful and wrong, unless
you repent of it, and you die in that situation, you've lost
your salvation, and hell will be your eternal place. That is
a lie of the devil. for whom God has sought to seek
and save. They are eternally, I remind
you, eternally and everlastingly kept by the grace, the love and
the mercy of God Almighty. And so that is another good news
gospel message that comes from the Word of God towards God's
people. That we are saints and we shall be confirmed until the
day of Jesus Christ. Verse 9. God is faithful, by
whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ
our Lord. God is faithful. God is faithful
to do that which He's promised to do. He's promised to seek
sinners. He said, the Bible says that
Jesus said, I've come to seek and to save sinners. The Bible
says also that when the angel of God had spoken to Joseph at
the time that Mary was going to be conceived of the Holy Spirit
of God and bear forth from her womb that baby Jesus as a human-born
mortal and God take upon the flesh of men, the Bible says
that his name shall be called Jesus for he shall save his people
from their sins. Now he didn't say, the angel,
he didn't say, now his name shall be called Jesus and he's going
to try to save his people from their sin. He didn't say that.
He didn't say his name shall be called Jesus and he's going
to make an opportunity for whosoever wants to trust him to get their
self right with God and be saved, did he? He said that his name
shall be called Jesus and he shall Save His people from their
sins. Now, has He ever failed at anything
that He said He was going to do? No! Because the Bible says
God is immutable. In other words, He changes not. The Bible says Jesus Christ is
the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Bible says it here. I'm reading to you in verse 9.
God is faithful. Another place, Paul writes in
one of his epistles, he says, faithful is he that has promised
that shall also do it. In other words, everything that
God has promised is in through the person of Jesus Christ to
usward, the saints of God, called and elect, chosen, appointed
heirs of God's grace. God is going to be faithful to
do all that he promised he was going to do. He's going to keep
us, as I said earlier, we're going to persevere. Although
we may wander around, as the songwriter put it, he said, oh,
I'm prone to wander and leave the Lord I love. Yes, at times
we are prone to wander, and we do do things that are not as
those that are holy people. We do do things that are simple,
that we don't get by with them. Because whom the Lord loveth,
he chastens. and He will correct us. He will
cause, He will reprove us. He will instruct us in righteousness,
and sometimes it's kind of hard to pay when He takes us to the
woodshed in His chastising work of grace. But He loves us, and
that's why He changes it. Why do you correct or discipline
a child when they do things that are wrong or disrespectful? Why? Because you love them. You don't
want them to grow up to be ornery characters without this no respect. You don't want them to grow up
to be children that are disobedient. The Bible says that Paul writes
in another one of his epistles in Ephesians. He says to the
children, children obey your parents for this is pleasing,
this is right and to the Lord. And so, therefore, the children
aren't going to obey their parents. And when they don't, there's
a price to pay. Sometimes it's by a hickory stick. And my daddy
used a nice little leather belt about two and a half inches wide
that I used to hear come flipping off of his belt loops. And, boy,
when I'd take it, that's when the pucker syndrome set in, Brother
Clyde. And, buddy, when it set in, I
knew something was coming. And then he'd light the backside
of me up to where it'd glow in the dark. But I'll tell you what,
that's what God does to me. those children of his that don't
obey him in time. That's right. Amen, brother.
Now in verse 10, Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and
that there be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly
joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. He's
saying to these brethren and sisters in the church at Corinth,
he says, look, y'all need to be speaking the same thing. Y'all
need to be coming together in union and in harmony. Paul spoke
in every one of his about 13 epistles that he wrote in the
New Testament about discord, unharmony, heresies, false doctrine,
false teachers, false prophets and things, and warned the church
about it. That we ought to walk in love
one towards another. And that's how the Bible says
Jesus said that they shall know you are my disciples because
ye have love one for the other. And that's how that we are identified
as God's people, because we love one another. Now a person says,
well, you know, I don't love brother so-and-so. I have an
ought against him. I say, well, you need to make
the ought straight. Because, you know, when Jesus
said this, this is serious. He says, for if ye forgive not
others, then your heavenly Father shall not forgive you. Now, this
is not saying that the Heavenly Father is going to change His
love towards those whom He seeks and saves. But what it does indicate
is that a person who has an ought against another one, to the point
of where they hate them, and bitterness is in their heart,
and there is no forgiveness in their heart and their mind towards
this individual, them for years. This could go
on. He said, This ought not be named
among those that be of the elect of God in the church of Jesus
Christ. For ye must forgive others of
their trespasses, even as God has