Well, good morning to everyone. If you would care to open your Bibles with me to Mark chapter 16, where our lesson will be from this morning. Mark chapter 16. Before we begin, let's go to our Lord together in prayer. Our Father, how thankful we are to be able to come before your throne of grace and call the God of heaven and earth our father. Our father who gives life, our father who watches over and protects and teaches his children, takes us into your house by your mercy and your grace through the blood and the obedience, the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. To be found in him to be seen in him. Father, we're so thankful. And father, it is our prayer this morning that by the power of your spirit you might be pleased. To enable us to worship you this morning. Father, I pray you deliver us from just going through the motions of religion, but father to hear.

From you to hear a word from thee. that you might apply it to our hearts, that we would believe on, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you might thrill our souls with another sight of Christ our Savior. And Father, unite our hearts together, we pray. Unite us together in love as we endeavor to strive together for the preaching of the gospel. We may not be able to spread the gospel to the whole world, to every creature, Father, we pray that you'd let us do it here in our area, in this place, in this time to serve our generation. Father, we pray for the sick and afflicted of our number. It seems like that there are so many right now. Father, we pray you'd be with them in a special way to heal, to lead, and to guide, and Father, to deliver as soon as it could be thy will. Father, all these things we ask and we give thanks to that name which is above every name, the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's for his sake and his glory we pray. Amen.

I've titled the lesson this morning, Christ's Final Instruction. This is the very final instruction he gives to his people before he ascends back to the Father. And this instruction, a lot of people tend to think it's to preachers only, but it's not. He gives us the responsibility of every one of his servants in verse 15 of Mark chapter 16.

And he said unto them, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Now, like I said, this is a commandment to every believer, not just preachers. I know preachers are the ones that actually do the preaching, but This is the responsibility of every believer, the responsibility that our Savior laid upon us, that we're to do everything that we can do so that the gospel is preached in the whole world to every creature. And like I just said in the prayer, I don't know how much we're spreading the gospel to the whole world.

I know people in different countries and different places listen to messages on sermon audio and so forth. But I know we can spread the gospel here in our community, can't we, in this tri-state area to people that we know and love. You know, I love people as frustrating as they can be sometimes. I love them. I find people very, very interesting. And the people of this area, I've just got an affection for them. I'm just one just like them, you know. I would love for them to hear the gospel.

We're to strive to find a way to preach the gospel to them, to point them to the Lord Jesus Christ, so they hear the good news of salvation in Christ. And we're to live this. This is not something the Lord told us just to do on Sundays and Wednesdays. We're to live this, to live for the glory of God in the gospel. Not just do what's comfortable for us, but to live for the glory of God.

So I'm gonna look at three or four things about this commandment that the Lord has given us here, his final instruction. And the first thing is who this commandment was given to. You know who this commandment was going to all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. It was given to weak in the faith, sinful, fearful men. Look back up at verse 14.

And afterward, he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and he upbraided them with their unbelief. They had a problem with weak faith and hardness of heart. They had a problem being so hard-hearted, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. Now, the eleven, they heard from three different people, at least three different people, they saw the Lord risen, and they refused to believe. This was a choice they made, not to believe them, that Christ had risen from the dead, even though the Lord had told them numerous times, I'm gonna be delivered to the hands of the chief priests and the Pharisees and the Gentiles, be shamefully entreated, be put to death, but the third day I'll rise again. And when it happened, they did not believe it.

Weak faith, hardness of heart, And I'm not making excuses now for their sin, but you know what? The Lord upbraided them. Now he dealt with this thing of their unbelief, but their sin was forgiven. Their sin was forgiven because of the blood of Christ's sacrifice.

And that's a good thing for us to remember. When we plead with God, we ought not be pleading with God that You know, bless me because I do so good, or I didn't mean to, or I sin less than other people. Because none of that's true. If we would plead with God, the best ground that I can find with which we should stand to plead with God is his word, is what God promised.

And he promised to forgive sin through the blood of his son. Then we ought to ask God for forgiveness for Christ's sake. on the account of his blood. And these men were weak, they were sent, now they were forgiven. But let me ask you, don't you see the Lord's wisdom in giving this commandment to these 11 men at this time? Yes, they're weak. They're weak in the faith. Yes, they're hard-hearted. Yes, they fall into various traps and wrong attitudes.

But let me ask you, who better to preach the gospel? than a sinful man who has experienced salvation by grace, who's been washed in the blood of Christ. Who would you rather hear preach than one sinner who can tell you the glorious good news, something he's experienced, salvation in the blood of Christ by the grace of God, who he's so excited about it because he needs it. It's his only hope. It's the only hope that any son of Adam has.

And who better to tell you where to find mercy and grace than a sinner who also needs mercy and grace? And who would you rather be around? Who would you rather be in a congregation with you and worship together with you? A righteous man who's good in himself or a sinner? A sinner whose heart's been broken over his sin. A sinner who sees Christ and needs Christ You know, that nearly perfect man, or the man that thinks he's so perfect, he's tough to be around.

He's so perfect, he can't have compassion on people who are imperfect. He doesn't fall into these things, he thinks, so he can't have compassion on folks that fall into them. He can't have compassion on the ignorant. Because by golly, he knows everything and always has. That's tough to be around. Well, he never does anything wrong. And he doesn't have weak faith and trials and heartaches. And so he can't have any compassion on you when you're going through those things and suffering those things. I mean, that man's hard to listen to. And he's hard to be around, because you feel so bad. Because he's always making it a point to show you how he's up here and you're down here. That's hard to be around.

But a sinner who's been saved by grace, he can understand somebody who needs grace. A sinner that's been forgiven by the blood of Christ, God has forgiven him for Christ's sake, can have some understanding of you when you need to be forgiven. He can be forgiving. This man can be loving. Even though maybe you don't quite act like deserving it, you know, God for Christ's sake loves him. God loves him in Christ, and he don't deserve it, so he can have some understanding of somebody that needs some love, that needs to be shown some mercy, that needs to be shown some compassion.

And you know, if you want to be in that camp that picks at people and finds fault with them, do that if you want to. It's easy pickings, really. I mean, it is so easy to take Any preacher, I mean you just get any preacher, faithful preacher, I'm talking about a faithful preacher of the gospel. I'm not talking about some false prophet. A faithful preacher of the gospel, it's easy to pick at him and find fault with him instead of just listening to his message of Christ.

And the same thing can be true of a congregation. A dear pastor friend of mine told me one time that somebody came to him from another place and said, Hard for me to worship here. Your congregation's too full of sin. Which of us isn't? Which of us isn't full of sin? I can tell you this, any congregation I'm in is automatically got too much sin in it because of me. But this is, and while that can be true, You know, God's preachers, God's people, the congregations and all these different local churches are far from perfect.

But this is the way God has ordained to spread the gospel to the people that he intends to save. It's through the foolishness of preaching. God in his wisdom has ordained for one sinful man to tell other sinful men and women where they can find mercy and grace and salvation. That's the way God's chosen to do it.

And that's the responsibility he's laid on our shoulders. Then brethren, let's do it relentlessly. Let's do it relentlessly about anything that's involved in this ministry to help spread the gospel in this area to God's sheep, to God's sheep. You think about that. What a blessing it might be if God would use something from this ministry to call one of his sheep to Christ. Oh my. It's a big responsibility, but it's a great blessing too, isn't it? And here's the second thing about this.

Our Lord commanded us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature because this message of grace that we preach is the message that every son and daughter of Adam needs to hear and believe. Go into all the world, our Lord said, all over the world, every creature. You go find people in different cultures, in different languages, with different customs, with different skin colors, but wherever you find them, every creature, the gospel is what they need. Now they may have other needs too, but the common need, the greatest need for every human being, no matter where you find them, is this, they need to hear of Christ. How can they believe on him if they never hear of him? They need to believe of Christ.

All of us, I don't care where you find us, we're all lost in sin. We're all fallen in Adam. We're all without help, without hope, and without Christ in this world, and somebody's got to come and tell us we're lost, or we'll never know it. Now you talk about a blind nature, you talk about a dead sin nature. We're lost and don't know it. Somebody's gotta come and tell us we're lost. We're sinners, we've broken every commandment of God, we're rebels against God, and we don't know it.

Somebody's gotta come tell us. And God sent a savior into this world to save his people from their sin. Not to try to save them, not to make an attempt at it, Not to save as many people as we'll decide to accept him. God sent a savior into this world to save his people from their sin. Now somebody has got to tell us who he is so we'll believe him. Somebody's got to tell us what he's done so we'll trust him. Somebody's got to tell us about Christ or we'll never know him.

Now you think what a gracious commandment that this is. I know it's a great responsibility. It's a great burden. All the Old Testament prophets talked about the burden of the word of the Lord, the burden of preaching the word of God to eternal souls of hell-bound men and women. What a burden.

But isn't this a gracious commandment? What everybody in the whole world needs is the gospel of Christ, and our God is so gracious, he commanded us to go preach it Everywhere. Isn't that gracious? Here's the third thing. Don't miss this, what the Lord says. He says preach the gospel. Preach it.

God's preachers and the church in general, we're not to work together for social reform. I understand how much reform our society needs, but that's not our job. That's not the job of the church. We ought to care about our society. We ought to care about people that are in need and all these things. But the job of the church is not to reform society. The job of the church is not to take the law of God and beat people about the head and neck with it and try to get them to act right.

That's not what the Lord told us to do. He didn't say make up some rules to live by. He didn't say, well, I understand that Christ has come, the Old Testament law has been put away. I'm going to come up with some new rules that you've got to follow. God doesn't send his preachers out to control people, to get them to act right and get them to do all these things. He didn't send his preachers out. He doesn't send his church out so that people can have a better life on earth. He sent us to preach Christ, to preach Christ, to glorify Christ. And if somebody hears it, God makes somebody hear it and believe it.

I promise you this, they'll tell you that made my life better. That made everything about me. That made my understanding of the whole world around me better. But their greatest joy is going to be faith in Christ because somebody dared to glorify Christ so that they'd see him in his glory and believe on him. Now, I know this. This is something I know, I mean, just as sure as I'm standing here, as much as I know anything, I know this.

I know that God's gonna save all of His elect. Before time began, the Father chose a people to save. He put them in His Son to save. His Son came and suffered and died for them and put their sin away, made them righteous by His sacrifice for them. And God's gonna save every last one of them. Not one of them's gonna wind up in hell. They're all gonna hear of Christ. all believe him, all be brought to glory with Christ, to see him as he is.

I know that. Then Frank, why bother preaching? Why make such an issue of this thing of preaching? Because God is not going to save anybody apart from the hearing of the gospel. Could he? Could God just strike you with lightning and give you faith? Could God just come speak to you like he did Abraham? Sure he could. Sure he could. I mean, there's nothing that God cannot do. But he won't do it, because he's not pleased to do it. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. So we need to take this seriously, don't we? This thing of preaching, and we better make sure when we preach. We preach the gospel. The gospel. A definite article.

There's just one gospel. It's the gospel that's all about Christ and nothing about me. You know the gospel's not about you and me. The gospel's not even about how can I be saved. The gospel's about Christ. It's the gospel of God concerning his son, Jesus Christ. That's who the gospel's all about. The gospel tells us that salvation is by grace without our works. The salvation is by faith in Christ alone.

And you can say I'm being too narrow, you can fuss and fight about it and try to open the gate wider than God's opened it, but the Lord said it's a narrow gate. It's straight, it's narrow. And this is the one and only message that God will use to save anybody.

God's never gonna use a false gospel. He's never gonna use a lie to get somebody to trust in Christ. How can you trust in Christ if somebody's lying about who he is, not telling you who he is? He might be telling you about another Jesus, but you trust that other Jesus, there's no salvation in him, is there? It's got to be the truth, who the Lord Jesus Christ is.

Look at Ephesians chapter two. Paul says this is what happened for the believers in Ephesus, salvation came from hearing the truth. I said Ephesians 2, so Ephesians 1, verse 13. In whom you also trusted, when after that you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom Not in what, notice, the gospel's all about Christ.

In whom, also after that you believe you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise. Those Ephesian believers believed after they heard the word of truth. And when they believed, they believed on Christ. They didn't just believe a set of doctrines, did they? They believed on Christ.

Same thing with the church at Thessalonica. Second Thessalonians two, verse 13, Paul says, we're bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, Because God has, from the beginning, chosen you to salvation through. See, election is not salvation. It's through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth, of the truth. Belief of the truth of who Christ is, who God is, and how God saves sinners. And like I say, I know that God's gonna save all of his elect. I know he is.

And he's gonna do it through the preaching of the gospel. You know, if we preach the gospel, if we preach the gospel, God's gospel, we cannot fail. We often feel defeated. We often feel like that we failed, but God's word will not return unto him void. There's not a preacher worth his salt that will ever tell you that he's ever one time in his life preached and gone home satisfied. Not one. But despite the fact that we don't have the capacity to glorify Christ as much as he ought to be glorified, God still uses it. He still blesses it to the salvation of his people because it's the gospel, it's the word, it's Christ. Now I want you to listen to a few scriptures How did the scriptures describe the gospel? Where did it preach the gospel to every creature? Matthew 4 verse 23 says it's the gospel of the kingdom. We preach the gospel of a kingdom.

Now if there's a kingdom, there's a king, isn't there? We preach the sovereign savior, the king of heaven and earth who saves whom he will, when he will. He's the king. Salvation is up to him. Mercy is his to give. or his to withhold. And that's not mean, that's not ever saying, that is never saying you can't be saved if you want to. Since this is the gospel of the kingdom, this is what's telling you, mean you to do. We better come beg the king for mercy. We better come beg the king. It's the gospel of the kingdom, sovereign grace.

Mark 1.1 says the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the son of God. That's the gospel. And Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4 that the gospel is the glorious gospel of Christ.

The glorious gospel that, can you think of anything more glorious than the son of God whom we have sinned against coming to take our sin into his own body on the tree and suffering everything that sin deserves so that you and me can go free. That's so glorious. That's just, There's no words. There's no words that's so glorious.

Paul said in Romans 1.1, this is the gospel of God.

This is not the gospel that men have made up. It's not Calvinism. It's the gospel of God. Calvin just found five things in the scriptures that are true about salvation. But this is not a gospel that's according to man, something that men have made up. It's the gospel of God. It's the gospel that tells who God is. It's a gospel that tells how God sees all sinful men and women, and how God is pleased to save his people out of that fallen lump of Adam's humanity, his fallen race. It's the gospel of God.

Romans 1 verse 16 says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. The only thing that will break our stony hearts, that will break through our blind eyes and our deaf ears and reach the heart and give a new heart and give life and faith in Christ, the only thing powerful enough to do that is the gospel of God. This gospel of God is unto salvation.

It's so that sinners can be saved. Ephesians 1 verse 3 says it's the gospel of your salvation. Now, isn't it one thing to talk about the salvation of sinners in general? But listen, this is the gospel of your salvation. This is the gospel of my salvation. And every believer certainly is not a preacher, but every believer can tell you this. I know how God saved me. This is the gospel of my salvation. This is the gospel that God used to reveal salvation in Christ to me. It's the gospel of your salvation. Romans 10 verse 15 says it's the gospel of peace.

The gospel of peace that declares how can God, the holy God, who is angry with sinners every day, who must punish every sin with death, how can that God be at peace with a sinner like me? How is that possible? Only one way. through the blood of Christ. He made peace for us through the blood of Christ.

How is it that a sinner who's born with a nature that is opposed to God, who will not and cannot come to Christ, who cannot quit trusting in his own rags of righteousness, how can that sinner ever be at peace with God? God tells him, I will not accept the best that you can do. I will not. And that makes, that makes the flesh angry. How can the flesh ever be at peace with God? The blood of Christ. When the blood of Christ is applied to our hearts, that's the new birth. The blood of Christ applied to our hearts makes us surrender, makes us stack our arms and surrender to Christ, and there's peace. There's no more warfare. How is it that we can be at peace with each other?

I don't know if maybe other than the Civil War, there's ever been a more divisive time in our country. People just look for reasons to be divisive. And you don't agree with me on just on one little thing, then, you know, you're my enemy forever. How can we avoid that here? People with different ideas, different backgrounds, different, you know, whatever. Many differences in the flesh, none in the spirit, none in the gospel, but in the flesh.

How can we have peace with each other? The gospel of Christ. If you and me are both always looking to Christ, we'll always be at peace with each other. Peace leaves when we start looking at other stuff. But if it's the gospel of Christ, we'll be at peace. We'll be at peace. Seek peace and pursue it. What gives you the motivation to do that? That Christ made peace for me. with God by the blood of His cross, then I want to be a peaceable person. Where I can, I want to be a peaceable person.

Revelation 14 verse 6 says this is the everlasting gospel. It's eternal. This is the gospel that was before time began. Before God ever said let there be light, long before God ever created Adam from the dust of the ground, there was There was a gospel, a gospel of salvation in Christ, the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If God loves you now, he has loved you from all of eternity because he's always seen you, sinful as you are, washed in the blood of Christ. He's always only seen you in Christ.

This is the everlasting gospel and it'll never change. I don't care how much technology and advances that men make in sciences and all these different areas, this gospel will never change. And it's the gospel you and me will be singing about when we gather around the throne of Christ in glory. It'll be this same gospel. We'll do it without sin, but it's gonna be the same gospel. And nobody's ever gonna be saved without hearing this gospel. So you and me had best get busy preaching it, don't you think? Then here's the third thing. We're going to preach this gospel and some will believe. I know the elect will believe, but some will not.

Sadly, verse 16, he that believeth in his baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. Now there is no salvation without believing Christ. If you would be saved, you must believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm not suddenly start giving you work that you can do in order to be saved, because you can't. You cannot believe on Christ unless the Holy Spirit is pleased to give you the gift of faith in Christ. Now, you can't make yourself believe on Christ. You can't give yourself faith, but you know what you can do? You can beg God to give it to you. You can do that. You can beg God to give it to you. And it's serious business now. Serious business.

If we don't believe, God's going to condemn us. He's going to send us to hell, and it's our fault. It's not God's fault for not choosing me. It's not the Son's fault for not dying for me. It's not the Holy Spirit's fault for not giving me life. It's my fault because I refuse to believe on Christ.

But if I believe Him, and the Lord says here, and is baptized, now I'm going to skip over that, and maybe we'll I intend, Lord willing, to come back to that next week. But just let me say this about baptism. Baptism doesn't save anybody. But this is the Lord's commandment, that anybody who believes on Him confesses Him in believer's baptism. It's a confession.

This is how God saved me. His death, His burial, and His resurrection, and we're commanded to believe on Him. Now again, our Lord's commandments are not grievous, are they? What a joy to be able to publicly confess, I trust Christ. God did a work in me before I realized he was doing it. He saved me by his death. He took my sin and his own body on the tree and put it away by his death. And I know he put it away by his death because he was raised again. After he was buried, he was raised again for my justification.

And we'll, Lord willing, come back to that and spend some more time on that next week. But let me give you this quickly in closing. You know, there's some evidences of salvation. Look here at verse 17. And these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name shall they cast out devils, and they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. And they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. Now these miracles were given to the early church to prove that the Lord was with them.

And we don't need these miracles today. If you want to know if God's with somebody, if he's preaching the truth, if he's sent from God to preach, just match his message to the word. If you find that he's saying what the word says, you know that he's been sent from God. And we don't need these miracles today.

But every believer here, And wouldn't you think, man, I'd like to see somebody raise the dead, or be bit by a poisonous snake and not die, and be able to lay hands on somebody and heal them, and speak in tongues and all these things. That'd just turn into a sideshow, wouldn't it? But every person who believes Christ, you've seen something more amazing than these things we just read about.

Sinners are delivered from the power of the old serpent Satan. No longer can he deceive them. They're going to look to Christ and Christ alone. Deadly false gospels. They're not going to deceive you anymore. You're not going to swallow that anymore and be condemned.

You've seen something better than the laying on of hands and healing someone from some sort of physical disease. You've had your soul healed. through the gospel of Christ, through his blood, through his righteousness. And you know what? And I'm gonna get into this more in the message, too. You speak in tongues. Do you know every believer speaks in tongues?

Used to be you couldn't speak of Christ, you could only speak of yourself. You couldn't speak of his glory, you could only speak of your credit. You could only speak of earthly things. Now, you speak of Christ. Now, you speak a language that's strange to the flesh. You speak of grace, you speak of mercy, you speak of forgiveness, you speak of Christ. That is much more amazing than somebody coming in here speaking in a language that they never learned, is it? You speak the language of grace. Because what's in the heart is always gonna be reflected, at least to some degree, not as much as we'd like, but to some degree, in our attitude and conduct. All right, well, I hope the Lord will bless that too.