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. So from the King James
Version of the Bible, is what I have been weaned on and are
still studying as the Word of God. I know that there's a new
international version that's coming out, the American Standard
Version of the Bible, there's the New English, there's the
Living Bible, which is a paraphrase, I've heard just this week and
in two years that the new international version of the Bible is coming
out with a revised edition in two years that's going to furthermore,
as far as I'm concerned, deplete the originality and the inspiration
of the meanings of the scriptures, as far as I'm concerned. Because
I am persuaded that the further back you can go to the authenticity
of the translation, the better off you are in getting the purity
of the text. Because more of man's logic that
gets involved in trying to figure out inspired writings the more
polluted it becomes. And that's a fact. Just like
song books in many of the missionary churches and denominations that
we know of. A lot of their song books have
changed over the years to where it's hard to find songs in there
that mention about the blood. Some of the songs, they're upbeat. They're praise songs. They want to bring on a jubilant,
joyful atmosphere in a church which I believe we ought to be
joyful. But at the same time, the Bible
says that let God's people, in the assembly of the saints, be
with reverence and godly fear before God. I've seen some ministries
on television, which I know all of you probably have, that does
not demonstrate reverence and godly fear in the way that they
take and have their order of worship. It becomes an entertainment,
jump and jive, kind of a dancing party. Now you know, the children
of Israel, It's where a lot of this stuff here, they draw from
scripture about, well, David danced before the Lord. Yes,
David did, because he was rejoicing in God's grace and mercy and
love, and his triumphant deliverance from, say, enemies that he was
able to triumph over by the power of God. And he danced before
the Lord, but that did not give the precedence that were to take
and go dancing in the church house every time we have a meeting,
like some do. And when the children of Israel
began to dance and make merry, and they ended up taking a strong
drink of wine in their merriment times, usually it was only the
time of rebellion against God. Remember when Moses went up to
the mount. He was gone 40 days. He left
the children of Israel with Aaron, his brother. He said, I'm going
to go and I'm going to see and I'm going to visit in the presence
of God is my desire. And he went up and went up to
Mount Sinai. And he went up and that's where
he was given the Ten Commandments and he came down. from that mount
40 days later and what had happened was the children of Israel in
just 40 days after God had brought them from Egypt in bondage as
slaves brought them through them years of wilderness journey and
provided everything that they needed not everything they wanted
but everything they needed here Moses goes up to Mount Sinai
and just in a matter of days they have taken and begin to
have a party time And they took all of their gold and their jewelry
and they melted it all down and built themselves a what? A golden
calf. We have got golden calves everywhere
today in this religious world that people worship. They have
built themselves great monument meeting houses that are nothing
but just merely little kingdoms here on earth that man can glory
in. But anyway, the children of Israel took this golden calf
of all this molten gold and had the goldsmiths and silversmiths
of the day build this big gold calf as an idol of another god, a pagan
god, as this golden calf was their representative of a deity. And they began to sing and be
jubilant and make merry, and had nothing but a big party.
And here comes Moses down from Mount Sinai, and he begins to
say, what's going on? What's all the noise I hear?
And it was all this merriment and all this stuff going on around
the inhabitants of Israel, as the children of God were making
merry and having fun and dancing and merriment. And here was this
golden calf. Moses came down there, and if
you recall the Bible, he took the tables of stone, and the
commandments were written on them. He cast them down, and
they broke into pieces. He was irate. He said to Aaron,
he said, Aaron, I've left you with these people, and now look
what has happened here. And Aaron looks at him and says,
the people, the people, the people did this. Aaron, I left you in
charge. Don't blame it on the people.
I left you there as their pastor, their leader, their undershepherd.
I left you there as the bishop of their souls to watch over
and to keep the camp in order. Don't blame it on the people.
He says, I'm all over it with the people. You ever notice when
man's always called him to deliver and he always blames it on somebody
else? Adam said, oh this woman that thou gavest me, she caused
me to eat thereof. Well, he had to blame it on somebody
because he didn't want to take the responsibility of it. But
Adam was fault when he took that apple. That forbidden fruit they
were not supposed to eat. He did it willfully because He
wanted, He did not want to be separated from whatever she had
to experience because He loved her for one day. And in God's
divine purpose, He did it because it was ordained of God that He
be the dead or head of the depraved nature of all mankind. Now you
say, now wait, are you saying that God And his divine decree
had ordained it, and Adam took that up. Well, yes, I am. Folks,
it could not be in any other way. If Jesus Christ was in the
mind of God, determined to seek and save a people before the
foundation of the world in God's decreed design, then there had
to be a fall to take place and bleed for them. Right? So therefore there had to come
the state of depravity upon mankind through the one man. It's just
by one man came sin upon all of mankind throughout the ages
of time. by one man, Adam. It wasn't Eve. Eve was a means by which he was
enticed into partaking of it as well, but yet he was the responsible
head. He was the one that was first
formed from the dust of the earth. It was Adam made in the image in the marital bond. They're
a helpmeet and a helpmate. There is one, the Bible says,
and do you realize that the Bible says, I believe it's in Genesis
chapter 5, that God had looked down and said, and called Adam,
and he called them, them, plural, Adam and Eve, he called them
Adam. He looked upon Adam and Eve as
one. God looked upon Adam and Eve as one. They were joined
together in one. And that is the perfect picture
of marriage. When a man and a woman leave
their mother and their father and they come together and they
make a vow to each other, a commitment, and they're joined together in
holy matrimony, I say holy matrimony, when they're brought together
in a commitment of love one to another, giving themselves one
to another, they become as one flesh. And that is the picture. intimacy of a man and a woman,
they become one flesh. Two become one. That is the ideal
of God. But look today. We see people,
marriage is not a big deal. If it works fine, if it don't,
oh well. Then there's people that don't
even get married, they just live together. And they live together four or
five years, and then there's the child that's brought about. thought about a wedlock. And
then all of a sudden, one or the other gets fed up and says,
well, hey, look, man, I'm tired of this. This doesn't work for
me. And he packs up and leaves, or she packs up and leaves him.
And there's a child. You know, it used to be years
ago. It's a sad thing. It used to be years ago. I remember
when I was a teenager, it was kind of a funny thing. It used to be said that one of
the most was Father's Day. People used
to laugh about that. It ain't funny no more. It's
one of the most confusing days in Whitetown, folks. It's one
of the most confusing days in the society of the American public. Father's Day. Who's your father? Some folks don't know who their
father is. I don't have to sit here and
go on about disembedled and personal claims, but we all have families
who have children and grandchildren who are examples of this society
we live in. I had my youngest daughter, had
a child out of wedlock at 21 years old, and then was killed
at 24. And his daddy, who had a birth
certificate, went and took the child out of school because now
he wants to raise her. Huh? Who's my daddy? Who's my mama? I don't know.
I mean, she's gone. And it's a messed up deal. And
we all have circumstances like that. But let me not dwell on
those things. We know that we're in the end
times. We know that in the end times, Paul said that the times
will be perilous. There will be those who are not
lovers of their own kind. There will be those who are abusers
of mankind. There will be those without natural
affection. How many mothers have went across to Howard Franklin,
they throw out a baby out of a car. And then some mother,
or take a couple children in times of despair and depression, take the car and
let it roll down a boat ramp out into a lake and let the children
drown. We hear these things on and on.
These are signs of the times, folks. We didn't hear about these
things 40 years ago, 50 years ago going on like this. And while I'm on the subject
about talking about our society and how bad it has become, If I'm not mistaken, it is something
like 85 million babies have been aborted in this country. 85 million! This whole country's got 350-something
million in its population. Eighty-five million have been
aborted in the last, I don't know how many years. That was,
dear thunder, probably, I'd say probably 40 years. Do you realize, we talk about
problems in our society, economically we see it as well, but do you
realize, now listen to this just a moment and I'm not going to
labor the point. Do you realize that 85 million
babies make up a generation of people that would have worked
in the workplace for the pride and paid social security for
you and me that ain't even going to be here? And then we wonder
why we've got problems? It's all because of sin! And
we're paying the price for it because we're a nation that's
turned our back on the God that was the founding principle in
our belief and in our love and in our adoration of the people. Now, let me preach on. In Galatians,
let me get to the text here. I don't want Copeland starting
to yell at me. She said, I hope you got a sore
throat. And I said, oh Lord, help me. I might get one if I
don't shut up. The Bible says, Paul writes to
the church in Galatia, and he says this. He says in verse 15
of chapter 1, that when it pleased God, who separated me from my
mother's womb. Do you know that every one of
us here today were separated from our mother's womb at a time
that pleased God? That it was ordained of God?
That your path is determined of God and your steps are ordered
of God? That's what the Bible teaches. He says, when it pleased God
who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace. He said, when God separated me
from my mother's womb and then in time He called me by His grace,
which is unmerited favor. I don't care how you want to
label it or define it, you cannot get away from the fact that and do anything to obtain it. Unmerited favor is what grace
is. And we have Grace Baptist Church
here, we have this over here, Grace Assembly of God. Do they really know what grace
is? It's a word in most people's minds that they don't even think
about. Amazing grace, how sweet to sound, how many can sing at
the heart of every single thing about what grace is. It's unmerited
favor. Every one of us that are here
this morning have an interest in the name of God. That have
a belief in Jesus Christ are here because of unmerited favor
been given unto us by the Lord God Almighty. And has caused
us to have this interest and desire. The Apostle Paul says
that when this grace was given to me and he called me by this
grace, he said to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach
him among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and
blood. What I'm saying to you this morning
is, and what I'm leaning towards the text here is, is that when
Paul, the chosen vessel of God, ordained of God, who was a Jew,
He was a learned man and a Pharisee in the Jews' religion because
the Pharisee and a scribe were teachers. They were called the
masters among the people in the Jews' religion. He was a zealot for Judaism.
But he says, when God by His grace called me to reveal His
Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen, I didn't
go and confer with men. In other words, he went to Jerusalem
after his conversion on the Damascus road, but you know what? 99%
of the folks that knew about Paul And Paul was there and bound
up many a Christian and took him to prison. Paul was there
when many of them were martyred for the sake of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. But in when God's determined
time, he calls him by his grace, and you remember They were on a mission. They had letters in their hands
from the scribes and other high leaders and the chief priests
to go take these Christians and put them in chains and bonds
and take them to prison and do what they did. He said, who is it? And then
he says, Lord. It was a supernatural divine
call of God that the brightness of Christ's glory was revealed
to Paul and slew him on the ground and made him blind. And he knew
it was the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, who is it, Lord? He
said, for it is Jesus. Why did thou persecutest thou
me? And Saul says, how am I persecuting
you? that everyone who takes and persecutes
or takes and treats one of God's little children, that it might
as well be such a dreadful thing that they take a tiny millstone
around their neck and cast it into the sea. That's how serious
it is when you start dealing with God's children. who are Christ's people. Every
one of the martyrs in times past that has ever died to death for
the sake of Jesus Christ, those who killed them, let me tell
you something, their death will be two-fold worse than any other. They'll be condemned with the
great wrath of God's anger upon them in time. The Apostle Paul
says, I did not go up to Jerusalem and I did not seek the wisdom
of men. He says, I went down to Arabia. I went to Arabia. So where did he go? He went to
Arabia. He went out into the desert of Arabia. He spent three
years out there, taught by no man, but only had the Hebrew
early writings of the scriptures. He had the Torah, and he had
also other writings, no doubt possibly of Isaiah himself of
the early prophets. And the Bible says that he was
not taught a man out there. Christ throughout the Old Testament
and he was revealed that how Christ is the fulfillment of
all things that were prophesied by all the prophets of old throughout
the entire Old Testament of God were now fulfilled in Christ's
coming and his revelation. And the Bible says, he goes on
and he says, then after three years I went up to Jerusalem
to see Peter and I bowed with him fifteen days. actual work of God's grace and
loving mercy. And the Bible says he goes up
to Jerusalem, he abides with Peter up there, and then he went
out and began to preach Christ everywhere he went. And with
great influence. The Bible says in the book of
Acts that God had prepared the hearts of men and women in every
place that he went, every city and every region he went to hear hearts to receive it. That's
the bottom line. You can't persuade someone to
be a Christian by human logic and by trying to what you would
call win them to Christ. You won't find that terminology
in the New Testament. Let me go win somebody for Jesus. Now I know that it's a well-meaning
evangelical middle 1800s, late 1700s and
1800s when there was a great awakening, but they took the
workings of God and began to imply and add to the means and
methods of men, and that's where all this modernism, free willism,
decisional regeneration, make your decision, it's all up to
you now, business coming from. was the fact that God has a people,
and he's seeking them out and saving them, he's prepared them
to hear the gospel, and there's going to be someone who will
preach that they will be blessed to receive it. That's always
been God's means and methods of doing things. But now, all
you see on television, sad to say, is now it's all up to you. Christ has come and made it available. He opened the door of opportunity,
and now it's up to you. Where do you read that at in
the Bible? If somebody will tell me where
you read that God has made salvation available, and now it's up to
you, somebody please teach me. But I tried to preach that kind
of message for three years after my conversion and I was a failure. And all the brothers that I fellowshiped
with and was involved with at the time also were disillusioned
and failures because their churches weren't growing as fast as they
thought they should because they couldn't persuade people to believe
good enough. And the guys that were the most
flamboyant, and the guys that were the most eloquent, and the
most good looking guys, and the guys that had the most profound
eloquent speaking abilities had the biggest churches. Because
they were persuaders of men. They just kept on with the little
flock that loved to hear the things they were told. Whereas
in the big assemblies they were there trying to get people, bring
your friends in tomorrow. Whoever brings the most in next
week we're going to have prizes. I remember I went to a church.
I was a member of this church early on. that they had a bus
ministry with about 15 buses, and that most of the kids that
they brought into those church Sunday schools were the arduous
bunch of little rutt-rats I've ever seen in my life. That church
house and its facility, and all the rooms therein where they
had Sunday schools, went from a nice looking facility It was nothing but a child care
center. The teachers couldn't teach them
anything from the scriptures because the kids wouldn't behave
long enough. And that was when the big deal
was about whoever has the biggest Sunday school is the greatest
church movement in the nation. And Hiles Anderson, Jack Hiles
up in Hammond, Indiana, Independent Baptist. I mean, I knew it. I
heard him preach. He had 83 buses running as far
as 90 miles, one way, to pick up children and bring them to
Sunday school. You don't hear about it anymore. That was a
big deal in the 60s and 70s. The biggest Sunday school bus.
They had a guy, a full-time mechanical group of guys working on buses
all week long to keep them running and maintain them. To bring kids
in there to tear up God's house. Now I believe in being compassionate
towards other people, but I don't believe in providing a babysitting
service for children that don't care. and have been trained not
to care. They needed to go out and bust
into the adults. They needed to go in there and
hope I have a mother and daddy and bring them in there and let
them hear a little bit about what the gospel is. And then
maybe the kids would be influenced if the mom and daddy got changed.
But they had it backwards. They went in and tried to convert
the kids. How many little children, let me ask you, how many little
children do you know? Your own grandchildren. And if you was to confront them
and say, do you want to go to heaven in a glorious place that
God has provided for people, you know, one day, if you was
to die, how many at six years old would say, do you know? I
don't, I've never met one. But the theory is you get them
young enough to make a profession of faith and get them baptized
in there and get their name on a roll, man, we're building a
big church for Jesus. Oh, what a sham ministry we have
become under the name of evangelicals in this nation. I'll tell you what, it's not
a popular thing to go to a little rural church where there is 25
at the most and sometimes less than that people meet together. that wants to just sing out of
a simple old song book of words that have meaning to them and
have some substance to the soul and heart of man. And to hear
the gospel preached by a gifted brother and you don't get up
and do it for a living. I heard this past week from a
professing christian brother at a sporting goods store down
there in Sumter County told me that the youth pastor in a first
baptist church in a small city in Sumter was making $65,000
a year. What in the world? I would say 95% of the people
in this county don't make half of that salary that are working
people. And here's a man that maybe tiddles
around three days a week in the church and puts together a few
programs. He makes $65,000 a year. I said, this is criminal. This
is criminal. But I'll tell you what, I've
been down that road. and the money and the wanting
to build the big buildings and do all this and say we're doing
Jesus' work. But I've got news for you. You don't help Jesus do anything.
If Christ don't bring it to pass and cause it to be worked out
in us, it'll never get accomplished. We don't help Jesus. You won't
find that in the Bible where it says, help God. We are the
needy. We are the helpless. We need
Christ. We need His loving mercy. We
need His strength and Holy Ghost power within us. To not only
to will, but to do His good pleasure. We need Christ who has begun
a good work and a sister. Paul said that he went, and he
went up, after three years he met with Peter. And you know
something, another thing, is that so many folks think that
when you become a Christian that you're automatically supposed
to know everything about the Bible in just a matter of a couple
months, or even a couple years. Do you realize that I've been
reading this book for 37 years, and that I read it and see things that God continually reveals
things to us in his timetable that it would be for the best
interest of our ministry and for the understanding of Revelation. We never will exhaust it. There are many that have lived
and died that have not known many of the mysteries of God
in his Revelation, in his love letter to his church. We are
all at different stages of maturity. If we were all here within 5
years of each other, hypothetically saying, we would still all be
at different ages of spiritual maturity. Whether someone is
a new babe in Christ, one is maybe a pre-schooler in Christ,
one may be an elementary student in Christ, one is a middle school,
here's one in high school. to share with the church. You
see, we're all at different stages of maturity. And that's one thing
that a preacher needs to realize. That he's not preaching to folks
who have the identical mindset of himself. He's preaching to
folks who are all at different stages of maturity. that he might
preach the word of God as it is written in the Bible, and
that's why I believe it's important to bring a Bible and to follow
what the preacher's saying, that you might know as the truth of
the matter, That's how come we've got into
such error in Christianity today. People have taken a preacher's
speculated ideas and their assumptions on scriptural things and they
have just swallowed them hook, line, and sinker. We need to
know that thus saith the Lord, God is what is being preached. That when the Bible says that
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, that's what
it means. Not some have sinned, all have
sinned. And the gift of God is eternal
life for Jesus Christ our Lord. That's the gift of God. It's not something you earn. And then you hear people say,
yes God has given a gift, but you have to receive it. That's
not scripturally sound. You won't find it in the Bible
that God has given folks a gift, but it's up to them to receive
it. Let me tell you something. The Bible says that eternal life. The Bible says
as many as are ordained to life eternal believe. It's a matter
of whether they have been ordained to life or whether or not they're
going to believe or not. I don't know who the elect of
God are. The Bible talks about the elect of God in here. It
says according to, I'll read it to you in the first chapter
of Ephesians. It says in verse 4, according as He, God, hath
chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world. Now listen to me.
If you've been chosen by God, if you've been chosen by God
in Christ before the foundation of the world, what did you have
to do with it? And when you come to an understanding
of your need for a Savior, and that you're a sinner beyond the
ability to reconcile yourself before a holy God, and you come
to that state, and you see that Christ is your only antidote
for your sinful condition, that is because you were ordained
to see yourself as a weak and needy sinner, and Christ is your
only hope. You were ordained to that end
and you were caused by God's grace, a merited favor, to believe
it. That's the gospel. That's the
good news. It's not good news for me to
go around telling somebody, I made the decision. That ain't good
news. That's just me saying, oh, I
made the better decision than this little trunk over here in
the gutter. I chose to believe in Jesus. There will be no man
standing before God that will ever boast about why he believes
in Christ. He will be there. They went up to the temple to
pray. One of them was a Pharisee. One of them was a teacher of
the law of God. He was a Jew. The other was a heathen. He was a non-Jew, just a heathen
man. And they went up to the temple
to pray. And the Pharisee goes up and says, with flamboyant
words, Oh God, I'm glad that I'm able to approach Thee, and
I have given alms, and I have given this, and I've done this
for Thee, and all this. And it says, and God hears not
his prayer. And yet the heathen man that
went up to the temple to pray, The Lord hears a contrite and
repentful spirit that he calls us to come about within his elect
children in time. Yes, the Bible says, according
as He has chosen us and Him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy without blame before Him and love. Listen
to this now. This is verse 5, chapter 1 of
the Ephesians. One of the strongest verses in
the scriptures in regarding the divine purposes of God in His
sovereign operation of grace. Having predestinated us and to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ himself
according to what? Our desires, our decision, our
wills, according to the good pleasure of His will. He's predestinated us, it says, and to the adoption Who is my father? God is. Why? How do I know that? Because
he adopted me. He took me in. He became my daddy. My mom and dad were divorced
when I was eight years old. Yeah, I came from a single parent
home. My mom raised me and my brother, who's five years older
than I am. That woman, it's a wonder she
has a sound mind today, but you know what, we went and had a
90-year-old celebration for my mama over in Davenport about
a month ago. That was in July 27th. It was
her 90th birthday. And God, in His infinite mercy at
27 years old, after being married 7 years and having another family,
living the life of a rebel, doing all the things of the world and
being happy about doing them, God got my attention and came
and rescued me from Dearly beloved, I didn't have
nothing to do with that. I didn't make a decision. I wasn't
in a church house under the plea of a preacher to come forward.
I wasn't in a place to where somebody would sit here and make
a commitment and say the sinner's prayer with me and you can know
you're saved tonight. I wasn't in all that. I was in
my home and a friend of mine had given me a little Bible book
a couple months before who was in the hospital. He was in critical
condition. me about his testimony. And he
gave me this little Bible book and I took it home and threw
it on the table. Just like that. And it was there for about two
or three weeks and one night I was home by myself and I took
that little book. It wasn't up on TV. And my wife
at the time was at a Tupperware party. I can remember it like
it was yesterday but it was like. And I sit there in my family
room in my home in St. Petersburg and I just opened
up that little Gideon Bible. In the front of it, it had verses
in there, and it started off saying that all have sinned and
come short of the glory of God. Nobody was praising the name,
other than the Word of God, that God had directed me to, to pick
up and to look at. It said all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God, but the gift of God's eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord. And I began to read a couple
of the little verses in the front of it, All of a sudden I just,
I closed the book and I sat it down and I began to cry. Now
here I was a man who was satisfied with my life and I didn't need
no religion. I had been in a church since
I was 11 years old. All of a sudden I began to weep
and I was overwhelmed. As a rebel towards my mother,
disrespectful, the things I did wrong and the crime that I was
involved in and different stuff as a young man. And then the Bible revealed to
me that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord. I dropped down to my knees and
I said, for the first time in my life did I address God, whom
I had not known before. I said, oh God? I said, if you
are who you say you are, And that this Jesus will forgive
me, I asked Him, Lord, forgive me of all my sin. And it was
just like there was a 300 pound sack of potatoes lifted off my
back. And I just felt, I felt a lifting up of my soul and spirit
as I began to be released from the burden of sin. And I wept
and I said, my Father, Now, I didn't hear no bells and
whistles. I didn't see no angelic visions.
It was just merely a simple operation of God's grace by His Spirit
operating on my heart, causing me to behold His Son, Jesus Christ,
as my only Savior. Now, everybody's experience is
different. It's like I told you. We're all at different ages of
maturity in the Christian life, we believe. But, nevertheless,
the Bible says you must be born again. You've got to have an
experience I wanted to make money. I didn't
have any money. I quit, dropped out of school.
I quit and I never went from probably the eighth grade on.
I got a GED in the 70s, big deal. The only reason I got that was
because if I wanted to get a job with the municipality or the
government, I got a GED and get before in a group of people, and communicate to them, I could
have never done it. God had transformed my life and
he had called me, shortly thereafter, into the ministry. He gave me
the desire and a burning I mean I come down on them all
and it took me about three years to cool off. It took Paul three
years to go to Arabia to learn what he needed to do. can change another heart or cause
a man's mind to believe the truth. It is divinely given by God.
It is to those who have been predestinated to receive it and
have been adopted into the family of God even before the foundation
of the world. That's what's so glorious about
the old, old story of Jesus and His glory and the gospel and
the doctrine from their incarnation from back
in the 1400s when the Huguenots and those others that were against
Catholicism took a stand against those things and preached a sermon And that's why I am among them
and preaching because that is the truth of the matter. We don't
help God do anything. We are needy people and in need
of God's help for everything. And that's the gospel. That's
the truth of the matter. And it says that He didn't only
predestinate us to be the children of God, but He adopted us unto
Himself for the good pleasure of His glory, and to the praise
and glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted among
the beloved. We've been made accepted among
the beloved of God by Christ. People say, well, no, they believe
in this predestination business. I just read to you that where
we've been predestinated and adopted in the family of God
before the foundation of the world. Now, you try to refute
that. Anybody that wants to take me
aside and try to persuade me that means something different
than what it says, I'll be glad to listen to you. I've been looking
at different verses. of what they say. That's one
of many that tell me that God is the author and finisher of
our faith. That Jesus Christ is the one
who seeks and saves. That man is totally a recipient
of salvation and has nothing to do with obtaining it. He doesn't
receive it as a gift whenever he feels like it. He is not able
to make in his own free will, so called, to choose Christ upon
his own timing, because our free will is bound by sins to parity,
and our will is so bound it cannot make a decision to believe on
Christ. You see, that's where they've
gone awry on this free willism. A man's got a free will, oh does
he? Man's will is free, okay, but
it's free to sin. It's bound by sin. Unless the
will of man is let loose by the bondage of grace, he is never
going to be willing to believe on Christ. But when he's made
witness to this, the Bible says that in that day, my people shall
be willing, saith the Lord. In that day, when it is God's
determined time for you to believe on Christ, you shall be made
willing to believe on Him, and not a single time sooner. You
can believe all you want to. I have seen people, and you know
as well as I do, that have went and made the Every week they make the same
decision. Every time there's an invitation
they come up to the altar. What's the problem here? You
don't get staged every time there's an invitation. There's a problem
because they have made a decision and yet they know that something's
wrong because they're not able to live what they've decided
for. But when Christ decides for you, he will work in you
to will, and try to find repentance and
work up remorse to try to find this experience with Christ. It's a one-time deal. You come. You come and you experience salvation,
rich and free by God's grace, and you enjoy the sweetness of
it. a continual experience over and
over and over again. It's a one-time experience where
you're translating the Kingdom of God to your son. And these
old things are passed away, they don't always become new. Oh,
what a glorious thing. Salvation of the Lord. And I'm
glad it is. Because if it was But he's called the weak and
the poor. He's called them, and he's expressed
in them this grace of loving kindness, whereas no place to
glory. You see, if it was up to our
strength, our will, our decision to become Christians, we have
something to glory in. We can take some credit for it.
There is no credit to be taken for the salvation that is given Now, it's all to glory be to
God and our Savior. Pray with me, please. My God and my Father, I pray,
O Lord, that thy word, thy word will be taken and given in our
minds and hearts. Cause it, O God, to be in the fellowship hall. All these things we thank you
in Jesus' wonderful name. Amen. Amen. May we sing a song as we stand
together. is a charming sound to me. Because
I think of it as unmerited favor is a charming sound. Undeserving
favor of God is a charming thing to me.