All right, let's turn over to
John chapter 10. As the scripture come across
my mind this morning, gathered a few verses down, kind of pertaining
to to this and thought that I hope the Lord
brought my way. John chapter 10, I'm gonna start reading that verse
27. It says, my sheep hear my voice,
and I know them. They follow me. And I give unto
them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall any
man pluck them out of My hand. My Father which gave them Me
is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of
My Father's hand. I and My Father are one." Brethren, as I read these passages,
what great hope is found in here. We see the great shepherd of
the sheep making a promise that he has given eternal life to
his people, his sheep, and that that can never be lost. It's
eternal life. And it's amazing to me how there's
so much teaching that's out there that speak of being able to lose
your salvation. that you can lose eternal life.
You can gain eternal life and you can lose eternal life. I
made a statement on Facebook a week or so ago and in that
I essentially, I don't even remember my own words word for word, but
in essence I said that many doctrinal errors comes from an ignorance
or a lack of revelation from God on the eternal vital union between Christ and His people.
That eternal, vital union is at the heart of a lot of what
the gospel is all about. Whenever I look here at these
verses, I mean, it starts off and it says, my sheep. There
is a connection here, again, as we see, this is Jesus speaking,
right? Jesus is speaking. Matter of
fact, he's been speaking. He's been speaking to the Jews,
and whenever he spoke to them, they didn't believe. That was
the verse right above there. The two verses above that said,
I say more than two, I guess, verse 22, and it was at Jerusalem,
the Feast of the Dedication, and it was winter, and Jesus
walked into the temple of Solomon's port. Then came the Jews round
about him and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to
doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us
plainly." And Jesus answered them, "'I told you, and ye believed
not.'" Now, Jesus wasn't lying when He said He told them because
He had told them that He was the Christ. Now, how did He tell
them that? Well, number one, we see as He
bears out right here, the works that I do in my Father's name,
they bear witness of me. He told them through His words.
But there was a couple other times that the Jews heard that
this was the Christ whenever God spoke out of heaven at his baptism
and said, this is my beloved son. Here he him. Then there
was a time whenever God spoke out of heaven and said, this
is my beloved son, whom I'm well pleased. So God had. vocally, out of heaven, revealed
that this is His Messiah. This is His Anointed One. This
is His Son. This is His Messiah. But yet they did not
believe. They didn't believe on the words
that God had sent them. Didn't believe the prophets.
didn't believe all the types and the foreshadows of the Old
Testament. They didn't believe the very
words of God out of heaven. They didn't believe the works
that Jesus had done in front of them. And yet, Jesus says,
I have told you and you believe not. The works that I do in my
Father's name, they bear witness to me. But ye believe not. Why? Why don't they believe? Because ye are not of my sheep."
You're not of my sheep, meaning you're not part of my sheepfold. You are not part of my people.
My people have been given to believe. My people know me. My
people hear my voice, as we'll see here in a minute. My sheep
hear my voice. This is a personal relationship
that the shepherd has with his sheep, that Christ has with his
offspring, his children. We see this as a personal nature
and we see that it is a relationship that is distinguished from those
who don't believe. You have believers and you have
unbelievers. And as we mentioned earlier before
we came on the live stream and everything, as long as someone
is not believing who this Jesus is and how this Jesus has performed
salvation and what the true gospel is all about in its sovereign
grace aspect, Because I truly believe that sovereign grace
is what drives salvation. Sovereign grace, if you don't
preach sovereign grace, you are not preaching the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. Because the Gospel is unmerited
favor. The Gospel is free gift. The Gospel, as the Bible says,
whenever we receive the Spirit of God, He gives us the knowledge
of those things that are freely given to us The Gospel speaks
of salvation that was already done on our behalf, that already
began before the world began, because we received all the blessings
in Christ Jesus. There's that relationship. There's
that eternal and vital union. That's why I say you cannot know
the Gospel fully and understand it completely and appreciate
it to its depths. Of course, we can't dig to the
bottoms and the depths of this, But without that understanding
of eternal, vital union, that brethren, this salvation is so
secure, so firm, so the promises of God
are yea and amen in Christ Jesus. This thing is so wrapped up in
Christ that there is no way that this life could ever be given
away, that it could ever be given up, that it could ever be lost
or taken away. because it was rooted and grounded
in the very fabric of eternal life. This salvation is a fruit
and a stem from the love of God which flows from the life of
God Himself. And that eternal life is Christ
Jesus. The Bible says that He is life,
that He is eternal life, that in Him is life. Christ Jesus
is the one who is life. There is no life outside of Christ
Jesus. Everything that flows from natural
life and everything that flows from spiritual life comes from
Jesus Christ. He is life. And that life, the
Bible says, is eternal life. And so from that life, springs
forth all the fruits and characteristics of that life. So God's love,
God's wrath, God's justice, God's mercy, God's omniscience, God's
omnipresence, every character that God has flows and stems
from the life that is in God. And Christ is that life. Christ
is the embodiment of all that life that God is. And in that
life, the Bible tells us, that in Him we have life. Our life comes from Him. Now,
I'm not talking about this fleshly life. I'm not talking about this
Adamic life. This Adamic life, although Christ
also was the generator of that life as He created Adam and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life and He became a living
soul, And he began to be animated and he began to walk around and
move and be able to exercise and do whatever it was that God
had him to do. That man was given life by Christ
Jesus. But I'm not talking about that
kind of life. I am talking about that eternal life, that spiritual
life that comes from above, that is born of God. That life that
comes from the original seed, which is Christ Jesus Himself.
It's the life of God, and the children of God are the progenies,
are the seeds that come from Him. That's eternal, vital union.
We have an eternal, vital unity in Christ Jesus before the foundation
of the world. Therefore, we become His sheep
before we are ever manifested as sheep. We were always His
sheep. And so He says here, My sheep
hear My voice. Why? Because they are His. and
they are distinguished from the ones who do not believe. Jesus is making a distinction
here. There are those who believe, there are those who don't believe.
The ones who believe, they believe because they are my sheep. They
don't become sheep because they believe. Just in the seed illustration,
the only way that another seed comes from an original seed is
because its life is derived from the original seed. There isn't
any way that another seed can get into a seed and become life
and come out of that seed. That doesn't ever happen. Okay? It doesn't ever happen. If I
take one of the acorns that falls from this oak tree out here and
inside that is all the life of every tree that will ever come
from that I can't take another acorn and shove it into that
and then that acorn come to life and sprout out and become another
acorn because I put it inside that acorn. That doesn't happen.
No, the life was already there. The life of that acorn was already
there and that life derived from the life of the very first one.
The spiritual man, the inner man, that man that is born from
above, that comes from above is a spiritual life that was
born of the Spirit. That which is flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit
is Spirit. That's two distinct men. There
is a fleshly man. There is a spiritual man. That
which is born of the Spirit is derived from the Spirit and it
gets its life source, life, from the original Spirit who is God. God is a Spirit. So we are His children. We are His life. Not in this
fleshly man. This fleshly man becomes adopted. We are adopted sons of God in
this fleshly body. But the inward man is a true
child of God because his spiritual life is derived from our parent,
our head, which is Christ Jesus. And you see that example in Genesis
when Adam had his wife in him. had His seed in Him, and all
those that would ever come from Adam, every one of them was in
Him before they was ever manifested. Their life was there. Our fleshly
man has existed as long as Adam has. The life that is in this
flesh, that is. Flesh life is as old as Adam's
life. Our spiritual life is as old
as Christ's life. And Christ's life is eternal.
So that life that we have from above, that He says, I give unto
them eternal life, the way He gives us eternal life is not
because we believed on Him, not because we said a prayer, not
because we repented. He doesn't give us eternal life
because we become a Baptist, or we join the church, or we
give some money, or we turned our life around. God doesn't
give us eternal life because of anything we do. He gives unto
us eternal life through the vital union. Our eternal life flows
from a life source of eternal nature, the original Spirit of
God, who is God, by the way. God is Spirit. Christ is the
manifestation of that spiritual God, that Spirit that is God. He is the manifestation of God. He is God made flesh. He is God
in flesh. He is Emmanuel, God with us. the face of the Godhead, dwelling
bodily. Whatever verses you want to gather
around on that, that's Him. Okay? That Spirit of God that
is life brings forth all of its children and their eternal life
is given to them not because of anything that they have done,
but it's because they have been born of God. These children right
here have all my DNA, not because they accepted me as their father,
They don't derive their life source because they signed up
to be my kid or because I went down and got a birth certificate
and filled out their name. No, why do they have life? Because
their life source is derived from me. They are my children and they
bear the fruits of my life. We were just looking a while
ago and we were showing the pictures of me and my dad and how much
we look alike. Why do I look like my dad? Because
I belong to my dad. I come from him. He is me multiplied. Or I am him multiplied. I am
him multiplied. I am his child. We are the children of God, not
by acceptation, not by adoption, even though we are adopted children,
The eternal life that we are talking about is a life source
that was before the world began and existed. The Bible said that
our life was hid in Christ Jesus, hidden God. It's always been
there. Just as the life of the seed
is hid within that seed and is not made manifest until hundreds
of thousands of years later maybe. That tree pops up down the line
somewhere. Well, that tree right there,
guess what? It came out of one of the original trees. Well,
where did the original tree come from? Well, whenever God began
to create everything, He created everything that there was and
put within them its life, and then He said that everything
will reproduce after its own kind. That principle is where
we get eternal value. We are His sheep. Not by acceptation,
as I said, but because we are derived from His life. My sheep
hear My voice. My sheep believe. Why? Because
they're My sheep. That's the fruit of eternal life. Eternal life produces faith in
Christ Jesus. Eternal life produces belief
upon Him. Eternal life produces repentance
unto the works of Christ Jesus alone as their only hope. Repentance brings forth a change
of mind that the natural man has that self-righteousness is
how I'm going to get there and how I'm going to be accepted
and what I do and what I don't do. Repentance that flows from
eternal life brings us into the understanding that we can never
do anything right and that Christ has done it all for us. These
are the fruits. that life brings forth, just
as that tree right out there, the fruit of that life of that
tree brought forth bark on the outside of that stem, it brought
forth branches, it brought forth twigs, it brought forth leaves,
it brought forth acorns. Everything that comes out of
that tree came because of the internal source of life that
began wherever that first acorn came from, or that first tree
came from. Brethren, we have eternal life
and we are His. This is a personal nature. When
Jesus said, My sheep hear My voice, He was talking about an
eternal, vital union. He was talking about a relationship
that goes beyond these followers that have just come and begin
to hear His voice and begin to just walk with Him. The reason
they heard His voice and began to walk with Him is because of
an already pre-existence in Him in eternal life. That's why they
heard Him. Why? Because they are of Him. My sheep is a personal relationship. It's a personal thing. Now notice
here. They are His. There's no doubt
that they are His. In John chapter 17, look if you
would, verse 2, Jesus praying to the Father here,
He says, As thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He
should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given Him.
They're His. They're His specific people.
Eternal life is given to how many? As many as have been given
to Him. Who has been given to Him? All
those who are in Him. All those who are in Christ Jesus
were given to Him by God. God put them there. As a matter
of fact, if you look down in verse 6, it says, I have manifested
thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world. Thine
they were. They were gods. And they were
given to Christ as the mediator, as the Messiah, as the anointed
one of God, as the substitute, as the surety in that capacity,
in that office. Because Christ is God. He was
always God. He's never been nothing less
than God. But yet in that office of surety as the Messiah, the
Christ, God gave them Even though they were already in Him, although
their life existence was already in Him, He gave them in their
personages, in their persons, to Christ as their surety that
He would be responsible for when they come and fall in Adam. So
He had a responsibility for them. My sheep hear My voice. I give unto them eternal life.
Why? Because the life flows from Me. They are My spiritual-born progeny. They are My spiritual-born children.
Therefore, the life that comes from Me flows through them. What
life is in Me is in them. I in them and they in Me. We are one just as Him and the
Father are one. I know that sometimes boggles
my mind. It scrambles my eggs a lot. I can't understand it.
But yet the Bible says that it's true. Hebrews 2 is another place
that we see Christ claiming that we are His.
Verse 12 says, I will declare Thy name
unto My brethren in the midst of the church while I sing praise
unto Thee and again, I will put My trust in Him and again, Behold,
I and the children which God hath given me." So brethren, we are His sheep.
We are His children. We are His eternal generation. We come from Him. And it's an
eternal thing. It's a union. Now who is this
then? He knows them. Right? Who is this then? Well, it's
the children that God had given Him. But look back at John chapter
10 there, where we was at. Excuse me. But go to verse 14. Not only is it just a lie for
us, in this life, in fleshly Adam, right? We was just talking
about the relationship and how I was born and I grew up
and I never met my dad until I was graduating from high school. I had a great relationship with
my real dad and all my family on that side now and everything,
but I'd never met my real dad up until I was graduating from,
the day that I graduated from high school. I had the life of
my dad in me, but I didn't know him. I knew of him, but I didn't know
him. And he didn't know me. He may
have knew of me, but he didn't know me. But it's not like this with Christ. Christ knows His sheep, and His
sheep know Him. Look what it says here. I am the Good Shepherd, and I
know my sheep. Brethren, it isn't just that
we belong to Him, that we are children of Him, but it says
that He has an intimate knowledge of us. He knows us. I am the good shepherd and I
know my sheep. Listen, I don't even know myself. We were just
talking about this a while ago. There's a lot of times that I
doubt myself. I doubt myself whether I'm one
of his sometimes. I definitely know that I'm a
sinner. I don't even know my own self. We talked about it
last week. Our heart is deceitful, wicked above all things and who
can know it? We don't even know our own selves
most of the time. But just think, God knows us. He just doesn't, we're just not
His children and He has given us life. You know, you hear about
it all the time. Men who, you know, sleep around
and they may have 10 or 15 children. They don't know where all they
are and who they are, you know. They're just out there spreading
their seed wherever they might be able to bet down with somebody.
They spread their seed. They don't know their kids or
anybody. They may have kids out there they don't even know of.
But brethren, listen, it's not so with our Lord. Our Lord knows
every one of His children. He says, I am the Good Shepherd
and I know my sheep and am known of mine. That's why I don't believe
in conditional time salvation that says there may be sheep
that get to heaven Never coming to know Jesus Christ because
the Bible says that I am known of Mine. Now that's His promise. That's His words. Not mine. Not
old school Baptist. Not absolute predestinarian.
That's Christ's words saying that. Look back, if you would, at verse
3 there in John 10. It says, To Him the porter openeth and
the sheep hear his voice, and he called his own sheep. Look
at there. He doesn't just herd them in
a group and say, sheep, come on. See, I can go out and I can
herd sheep, and I can call for a herd of sheep to come in and
feed. We have a friend, Tom Armstrong,
and he has goats and everything, not to mix up the metaphors here,
He has goats that he raises. And they were gone on vacation
a few weeks ago, and he asked if we would go out and feed his
goats for him. And he has a little barn here
that's got some hay, and we walk there and dump it over the fence.
But whenever we went out there, we'd grab that hay, and we'd
do it over the fence. You can holler at them goats.
And those goats, they may be all out in the field, and all
of a sudden, whoop, they'll come and run. You don't have to call
them by name. You just tell them, hey, goats! Here they all come. Well, see, there isn't nothing
intimate about that. They're just a bunch of goats.
It's a herd of goats, and I'm feeding them. And I'm just throwing
some hay over there. And, hey, if you want to come
and eat, you can. If you don't want to come and
eat, hey, I don't care. Here's your stuff. But see, that's
not how it is either with the Lord. The Lord says, not only
do I know them, but they are known of me. He said, and I call
them, but He says, I call them by name. It isn't just some indiscriminate,
ethereal cloud of faceless people that he has died for and that
whenever they believe, those little names and faces begin
to pop up in the cloud. They are individuals that he
has had in him before the foundation of the world. As a matter of
fact, if you think about the metaphor and you look back at
the type and the foreshadow of Adam, the Bible says that he
called their name Adam. They were already called a name
before they ever became manifest in him. They were called Adam. We were already called by name
before we ever were manifested. He knew us by name. He says,
and He calleth His own sheep by name, and here it is, and
He leadeth them out. He doesn't call for them to come.
Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I
will give you rest. How does the Arminian portray
that? Jesus, up on a hill, wishing everybody would be saved, looking
out across the world, saying, if you'd only come to me, I will
save you. I'm calling, I'm calling. Softly
and tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me. See on the portals, He's waiting
and watching, watching for you and for me. That's the most unbiblical
song that's ever been written, I think, almost. At least high
on the list, maybe. Jesus is sitting here indiscriminately
calling all those who will come unto me. No, it says right here,
our Lord, our Savior, the Jesus of Scripture knows his sheep. He knows them by name. He calls
them, but he doesn't just indiscriminately call them. He leads them out. He leads them out. And he put forth his own sheep,
and he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, and they
know his voice. And a stranger will they not
follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of
strangers." One more before we move on from
that thought. Look at Revelation 13. Verse 7, it says, And it was
given unto him to make war with the saints. It's speaking of
Satan here. To make war with the saints and
to overcome them. And power was given him over all kindreds and
tongues and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth
shall worship him whose names were not written in the book
of life of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.
Now the reason I wanted to go to this passage is to show you
that number one, Christ had a people and their names were written
before the foundation of the world, not before they accepted
Him or softly and tenderly He called them and they by their
own will came to Him. Their name, there's not a new
name written down in glory. It's an old name that Christ
has given us before the foundation of the world. And it was written
in the Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation of the world.
That's how much He knows us. That's how much we are secure
in Him. That's why we can't lose eternal
life. Because eternal life is the very
essence of life flow in the spiritual child of God. That life is something
that cannot be given away because it is the very essence of who
we are in the inner man. That inner man cannot change. He cannot get worse. He cannot
get better. He cannot do anything. He is
who he is. He is the spiritual child of
God and the spiritual life that is in that person, that man,
that inner man, that spiritual life is the very life of God. He put forth His own sheep. They
know His voice, but a stranger They will not follow. Listen, there are all kinds of
false preachers and false teachers out there that are hirelings
that are out there telling things about salvation, about Christ,
about God, and about how things are. And listen, it's very alluring
to the natural man. But whenever the child of grace
has been given revelation of the light, been given revelation
of Christ Jesus, whenever God has given them to know spiritual
things and has quickened them in the inner man, and has given
them to know the truth, of God and the truth of salvation. Listen,
whenever they hear that, they do not listen to them hirelings
anymore. That's why you see every one
of us, we have basically the same testimony. At one time,
I followed after this or I followed after that. I know Brother Larry
has talked about it. He's been in a little more things
than I've been into. He jumped around to a lot of
different trains of religion and thoughts over the course
of his life. I came from being something indoctrinated
all my entire life in a system of thought and doctrine and everything,
but it wasn't until Christ quickened me and gave me understanding
and gave me revelation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now,
whenever I hear what the hirelings and what the false teachers and
the false gospels of this world put forth, I cannot hear it and
follow it and love it and desire it and seek after it and fellowship
under it and hold hands and commune with it in an ecumenical way
because I have a Shepherd who loves me and has given His life
for me and has called me by my name. Not as a herd, but these
Arminians are calling people as a herd. Jesus is calling us
by our names. He says, My sheep hear My voice
and I know them, and they follow Me. And He says, I give unto
them eternal life. We just read in John chapter
17, the Bible says that He has been given power over all flesh
to give eternal life to as many as God has given Him. Now some
think that eternal life is something that we get at some point in
this lifetime. But if you'll look, And I kind
of checked myself this morning. I searched where eternal life
is found in the scriptures. And in every place that eternal
life is found, it speaks of an already existence of that life. It's not that something that
I will get if, or that it is something that is future. Now
there is a future aspect to eternal life, brethren, that we have
not yet experienced. So don't get me wrong on that, but yet
eternal life itself is a present thing that all of us have if
we are a child of grace. And see, that's where, and I'm
probably going to get in a lot of trouble with a lot of people
for what I'm about to say, but the truth is the truth. This
is why there's all this argument going around about justification.
and about regeneration, what people are calling regeneration.
There are those who believe that people are regenerated by the
preaching of the Gospel. They're saved by the preaching
of the Gospel. And that they are justified at
the point when they're regenerated. And they're calling regeneration
the point where eternal life begins. Well, brethren, the inner
man that is born of God, while it may enter into the vessel
at a certain time in this life or whether we were born that
way, that argument is still there. There's questions and good things
and bad things I could say about both sides. But the very fact
remains that eternal life is eternal life. It didn't begin
whenever I believed. The man that is born from above
came and began to dwell in this vessel But that man that came
to dwell in this vessel already existed. That life was eternal. So, whenever he talks about eternal
life, it's always in the present. It's always as if we already
have. For God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish, but have existing already eternal life. The believing ones have eternal
life. Why? Because they are believing.
They wouldn't be believing if they didn't have eternal life. So, do a word search of eternal
life. Go look and see. You'll be surprised,
as I was, that in every place, unless it's speaking about that
future a consummation where the body
is resurrected and in corruption. But that inner man, that life
that is in us, that life that comes from God, born from above,
has always been. It's always existed. And that
life didn't just start when we did something. The child of grace
has always had that. And there's that distinction
between the outer man and the inner man. And that's why people
have such part-time understanding the eternal nature of salvation
and that we cannot lose it. He says, and I give unto them
eternal lives and they shall never perish. Now wait a minute, Mike. The
Bible is very clear. It is appointed unto man once
to die and after that to judgment. The Bible says that This life
here is going to return back to dust. So what are you saying? They will never perish. Well there again, we have the
distinction between the fleshly man and the spiritual man. The natural man and the spiritual
man. The spiritual man cannot die
because it is eternal life. It will never perish. And the
only ones that have eternal life are the ones that were given
to Him by the Father. The reprobate, the vessels of dishonor, the
non-elect, have never had or never will have eternal life
because they were not in Christ Jesus from the foundation of
the world. So that spiritual life does not flow into another
seed, as I mentioned earlier. It doesn't flow. The seed of
the acorn doesn't flow into the seed of the magnolia tree. Magnolia trees produce magnolia
trees. Oak trees produce oak trees.
The natural man produces natural men. The spiritual man produces
spiritual men. That which is born of flesh produces
flesh. That which is born of the Spirit
produces spiritual children. So this life can never be lost.
I give unto them eternal life. They shall never perish. Who
is the one that shall never perish? It's that inward man. The inner
man will never perish. He will continue on forever. He says, they shall never perish,
neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. There's no way
that we can be taken out of God's hand. Look what he says. He says,
My Father which gave them Me is greater than all. So here
he's saying that there is none above God. No one's more powerful.
God is God Almighty, right? He has all power. He says, none
can pluck them out of His hand. And then He makes this statement,
I and my Father are one. What's He saying there? He's
basically saying that you are in my hands. You are my children.
What's He been talking about? You're my sheep. You're my children. You've been given to me. You're
my possession. You're my generation. You are
my offspring. And he says, no one can take
you out of my father's hand. Therefore, nobody can take you
out of my hand. There are some that may say,
well, you might not be able to know Jesus and you might not
ever be a part of the church or you might not ever be a part
of the people of God here on earth because you might not ever
hear the gospel. You might not ever come into
the knowledge of your salvation. You might not be cognitive of
your salvation in Christ Jesus because you have eternal salvation,
you will, but here on earth, Your time salvation, you may
never come to know that. And therefore, you don't know
who you are in Christ. You don't know what Christ has
done on your behalf. But you're in the Father's hands.
Well, listen, you can't be in the Father's hands and not be
in Christ's hands. Because Him and the Father are one. Him and
the Father are the same. There is no distinction. He is
the Everlasting Father. All of the Godhead dwells in
Christ. Christ is the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ. The Word of God is
Christ. All that God is is in Christ
Jesus. Therefore, all that God does,
all that God wills, all that God has manifested in His providence
is through Christ Jesus. He is the Head of all things.
He's been given to me over all things. And so He's saying, here, listen.
If you're in My hands, you are in God's hands. And you can't
be plucked out of God's hands. So if you're My sheep, there's
no way that you can be unsheeped. If you are My children, there's
no way that you can be unchilded. However you want to say it. I
cannot cease to be my father's son. Listen, I can begin to hate
my father. I can disown my father and say,
I don't want to have anything to do with you. I ain't ever
going to talk to you. Don't tell me anything. Don't
ever speak to me. Don't give me anything. I don't
want anything of yours. I have nothing to do with you.
Matter of fact, I'm going to go down. I'm going to change
my name. My name is no longer Michael Smith. I'm going to call
my name, you know, Bart Simpson. I'm going to change my name.
I don't want anything to do with you. I can do that all day long,
but you know what? That can't make me not His child.
I am His child as long as I live. I have His life in me. I have His DNA in me. So that's
what Christ is saying. As the spiritual children of
God, we cannot be plucked away from that. That cannot be changed. We cannot decide for or against. We cannot be removed. Nothing
can separate us. Why? Because I am the Father
of one. I am God. Nobody can remove my children
from me. Nobody can remove my life that I have given to them. They can no more be someone else's
child. They can be Adam's child in the
flesh, but as it pertains to the Spirit, they can't be anybody
else's child. and that can't be removed. Though
the flesh perisheth, and daily it does, brethren, the flesh
dies daily, it's perishing every day, but the inward man is renewed.
Every day we wake up, though this fleshly man continues on. He will continue on to be Adam's
seed until the day he dies and goes back to the dust from whence
he was made. But yet that inner man is renewed
every day. And when this flesh is put off,
this inward man will continue on because it does not perish. And that's because we are his
sheep. All right. Does anybody have
anything you'd like to add to that? Comments or questions? Repressions
or rebukes? A wonderful Savior is Jesus my
Lord, a wonderful Savior to me. He hideth my soul in the left
and the right, where rivers of mercy I see. We thank You for Your grace and
Your mercy in Christ Jesus. We thank You, Father, for all
that You are and for all that You've done. We're so grateful
for the life and the eternal, vital union that we have in Your
Son. We thank You that You've given
us grace to know these things. You've hid these things from
the wise and the prudent, but yet You have revealed them in
the babes. Lord, we don't deserve that. We surely don't boast in
it, but Lord, we are thankful and grateful for every morsel
of bread that you give your children. Lord, we are grateful for the
salvation in Christ Jesus, for the justification for the life
that we have that flows from him. Lord, we are grateful for
all that you are and all that you do on our behalf and for
this very meeting today, gathering your people together that we
might fellowship in the bonds of peace and in the fellowship
of the gospel. And Lord, we just pray that today
that you might Comfort your children with these
things that you've given us out of your Word. Lord, be with them
as they go their way. Keep us in the faith. Grow us in the grace and the
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, I pray that you just
might be glorified in all that we do and say, for it's in your
name that we pray.