Often after Mike sings a special,
I think, well, I've prepared my heart to preach. Now, I've
prepared my heart to listen. Our speaker tonight, Pastor Joe
Terrell from Rock Valley, Iowa. He's pastor of the Grace Community
Church in Rock Valley. He's on his way to preach at
the conference in Lexington. And I've been thinking to myself,
what if I get Joe to come here and preach on Sunday? But he's
preaching in Lexington Sunday. I thought, well, that would have
been selfish. Anyway, let him stay and enjoy the conference.
But then I heard he's in town last night. And I thought to
myself, I wonder if it's too late to call Joe. I was in Mexico
one year. I was not scheduled to preach
that evening. We were at one of the Pueblos there. And Mike
Walker preached. And after he preached, the pastor
asked me to get up and address the congregation. What did he
want me to do? I don't know. Cody said something
to the congregation in Spanish. And then he turned and told us.
I told him, these men are always ready to preach. And I thought,
speak for yourself, brother. But Joe, on the other hand, he's
ready. I knew he would be. And we're
just so thankful he's here. For those of you who don't know
Brother Joe, he spent some time here in Ashland years ago, went
to Brother Henry's preacher school. And we always like when one of
us, you're just one of us, when they come home. We're just delighted
you're here, and pray God bless you richly as you come to preach
to us. And before he comes, let me tell
you this. I wrote myself a note and didn't
look at it. I mentioned this in prayer. Danny's
father is very ill. He's in intensive care, and we
don't know him. He's 91 years old, so we don't
know how this is going to go for him, but let's keep him in
your prayers if you will. It's all right. Joe, you come
and preach the message for us. Yeah, last night I was sitting
in a motel. I'm back in this area, so I should say I was sitting
in the motel. And I got a text that says, will
you preach for us? Figured it must be Frank, but
my phone did not say Frank. It just gave a phone number.
And I said, well, is this Frank? And he said, yeah. I said, OK,
I'll preach for you. And then it wasn't five minutes
later. Another phone number texted me and said, do you know your
title and text? I thought, well. I said, no,
not yet. Who is this? He said, it's Mike
Bartram. I said, OK. And I said, I'll
think about it and let you know. And I thought to myself, well,
Mike must have become the tape guy or something. And he just
wants to know ahead of time. So I thought, it's no big deal.
I can tell him when I get there. And I got a couple more texts
today wondering about it, you know. And finally, and I told
him, I said, well, I'm kind of a last minute guy. And he wrote
back and he had a picture of tonight's program. And he said,
well, this works? I said, well, sure. Then I realized
he wanted to know what I was preaching on so he could pick
a suitable hymn. And I'm getting where you got to explain things
to me. And I'll tell you one thing. I have lived in Iowa far
too long to be driving these roads at night. In Iowa, you
can fall asleep at the wheel and take a nice little nap and
wake up, and you'd still be on the road unless your car's out
of alignment. Would you turn your Bibles to
Philippians chapter 3? It is good to be here among you. I spent six delightful years listening to Brother Mahan preach,
becoming introduced to other faithful men do a little bit
of preaching myself. I already had a Bible degree
under my belt, and I don't despise that. I learned some good material. Had one fellow teach me sovereign
grace without intending to, which shows you that the Lord is sovereign
in all things, but had some good professors. I don't despise that,
but those years I spent in Ashland, I learned what it was to preach
Christ. And that was some of the most
precious years. Well, being newlyweds, as any
one of you that have ever been wed knows that newlyweds is,
well, that's a, I wouldn't say difficult time, but you just
got a job, you're trying to make ends meet, you're trying to find
out what it's like to live with somebody else and all that. Despite
all those difficulties that can go with being young adults, we
found those years, Bonnie and I did, must be some of those
precious years. Of course, to listen to Brother Mayhem preach,
and then to know the people that we knew. So now I've come back,
and it was actually four years ago was the last time I was in
this area, and I preached for you on a Sunday morning then.
Now, hope, hope. We use that word in our day to
mean something you kind of wish would happen. I hope someday
to be a millionaire. I don't anymore, giving up on
that one. But you know, I hope to be a
millionaire. And it doesn't, when you say something like that,
it really doesn't mean anything except that that's what you want
to happen. But that's not what hope meant. Originally, it's
not what the word normally means in scripture, the word that's
translated hope in the New Testament. Anyway, it didn't mean just something
you wish happens or desire will someday come to pass. It was
a confident expectation. It's something you figured is
going to happen. It could refer to what that which
you hoped for, or it could refer to that which you hoped in. Now
for us who believe, that's one and the same thing. We hope for
Christ and we hope in Christ. What we hope for is to be with
Him and to be like Him. And what is the foundation of
that hope? Well, it's Christ Himself. So
with us, it is not a matter of going to church and trying to
learn the doctrines and trying to do the things that our church
says we're supposed to do. with this kind of hope that maybe
in the end we will be saved. We are not waiting to find out
if we shall be saved. We are simply waiting to experience
the fullness of the salvation that has already been begun.
So we have a hope in Christ. Peter says that we've been born
again unto a living hope And Paul says that we have a good
hope through grace. But with some people, their hope
is no more than wishful thinking. Wishful thinking. The foundation of hope in many
is nothing more than sinking sails. Now, they may have a hope
of which they are very confident. There are many who say they are
certain that they shall go to heaven when they die. You know,
I've even become suspect of that particular phraseology. Now,
I'm not one of these who's going to become, wants to be a nitpicker
on the way people describe things, but I hear people say, are you
sure you're going to heaven? And I feel like saying, I'm not
particularly concerned about that. Heaven is not my goal. And I do not find in the scriptures
that it describes our destiny in those terms. When the Bible
describes salvation, it's not describing where we will be.
It's describing what we will be. And there's a big difference
there. Eventually, everybody's going
to heaven. What do you mean by that? It's appointed unto man once
to die and after that to judgment. Where do you think that happens?
Everybody's going to heaven. That is, they are going to God's
throne. Heaven is thy throne, says the
scripture. Everybody's going to meet God.
It's not going to be a pleasant experience for everyone. The foundation of the believer's
hope is a firm foundation, a foundation that has been declared in the
scriptures. Let's read what Paul says in Philippians chapter 3,
beginning in verse 8. Yea, doubtless, I count all things
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus,
my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do
count them but done that I may win Christ. Now, what is Paul
saying here? Well, he is given his pedigree
and that pedigree that he gave was once the foundation of his
hope. You know, Saul, when the Lord saved him, that's not when
Saul began to think that he was going to heaven. He thought that
before the Lord saved him. And he was probably as confident
of that reality as anybody sitting here this morning or this evening.
And of course, he was wrong. in the,
that is, so far as his condition at that time was concerned, he
was wrong. He wasn't headed that way, other
than in the divine purpose of God. He was on a road, he was
on the broad road that leads to destruction. And he had these
things in which he hoped, and what does he say about them?
I count them loss. Now, any of you that do any accounting,
you know that you have Assets and you have liabilities. And
what Paul is saying, that which I once counted an asset, I now
count a liability. I see that that pedigree that
I had, far from being a help to me, was a hindrance to me.
And I count them loss. Something to go in the debit
column, not the credit column. And he said, I've suffered the
loss of all things. Now, I remember from my youth,
everybody likes, you know, testimonies. And I was raised in essentially
a free will church across the river in Huntington. And if you had a good testimony,
people liked to hear it, you know. And so folks would often
talk about what they gave up to be a Christian. The more they gave up, the more
impressed we were with the person who gave it up. And then we would think, oh,
what a spiritual person they must be in order to give it up. But notice what Paul says. I've
suffered the loss of all things. Paul had the esteem of his peers,
because among those of his age and his profession, he was at
the top of the heap. He said, I was ahead of them
all. He had the fear of many. There were believers that feared
Paul. And in the flesh, that was a legitimate fear because
he wanted to kill him. He was powerful. He was significant,
influential. But now he's nothing. Now he's
nothing. You might say, oh, look at all
that Paul gave up for Christ. I do count them but dung. Now
we normally think of dung simply in terms of manure, but words
actually means all the stuff you throw out. They had in Jerusalem
what they called the dung gate. And it was essentially, it was
just a gate they took the garbage out of. And that's all he's talking
about here. I count them to be worthless
things." When he lost all things, he did not say to himself, oh,
woe is me, look at what I'm losing. He was taken out to trash. And
when was the last time you ever saw anybody haul the trash to
the curb crying about having to leave it there? It's just
not in, you know, we don't treat trash that way. Paul said, I
count them, they're just trash. I lost them, but in losing them,
I gain. You know, there are some things
if you get rid of it, you're better off than you were having
it. And that's the way it was with
Paul. And so he says, I count them just the garbage that I
may win Christ. And when you think about it now.
Anything that you give up. And in return, you win Christ. It's garbage. It's garbage. He said, I may win Christ, and
then verse nine, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of
Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. Now, I want to look at several
points from verse nine, this scripture or to this sermon,
I've entitled it, found in him. There is a day coming when everyone
will be found. Everyone. Right now, and I got
to chuckle about it a little bit, many in our popular culture,
in the various power positions of politics, entertainment, and
whatnot, are being found. being found for what they were,
for what most of us knew they were all along. Of all the surprises
in this whole thing, I'm just surprised people are surprised.
But you know, they act like, we didn't know this was going,
come on. You know, this has been going on way back, as long as
there have been people. Since Adam and Eve fell, this
kind of stuff's going on. But they act like it's a big
thing. But the point is, these guys that are being found out,
They're being found out in the sense that their public face
was that they were opposed to this kind of stuff. That they
were the virtuous ones. That they were the leaders in,
you know, equal rights for women and all this kind of stuff. And
come to find out, they were just horrid towards many of them. Now, there's coming a day when
every last individual in this world that has ever been is going
to be found, is going to be discovered. And these guys that are being
found out now, a lot of them are losing a lot, and they probably
feel absolutely horrible about what they're losing, but that's
nothing compared to what's going to happen on that day. God is
going to come to this world And he is going to, as Paul described
it to those philosophers in Athens, he is going to judge the world
in righteousness. And to do that, he's going to
find everybody. Those that are in the graves,
he will raise them. Those that are not yet in their
graves, they will still appear before him likewise. And they
will be judged not by fallible men, not by men who may do the
wink, wink, nudge, nudge stuff because you happen to be in the
same circle of power as them and so they're going to cover
for you. They're not going to be judged by a faulty law system. But they will stand, I keep saying
they, let's forget they and remember we. We shall stand before Him
whose ways are perfect, whose knowledge is without limit, whose
justice is impeccable, whose sentence is irresistible. Now that's a little different
than what goes on in this world. There's nobody who's just going
to be called on to resign in that day. That's not going to
come. An apology. no matter how profuse it is,
will mean nothing in that day. God is coming and he's going
to find everyone. He's going to find the high and
the mighty. He's going to find the low and
powerless. He is going to find the pagan.
He's going to find the professed Christian. He is going to find
the very corrupt of this world whose ways even disgust us. And he's going to find us. All will be found. I will be
found. You will be found. And I see
there's some young people here. And I know what it's like to
be a young person in church. I spent my youth in church. And
sometimes it seems like I spent my entire youth in church. That's how I felt about it. And
I was considered a good church boy. But I know what it's like.
I'm sitting there, the preacher's preaching, and my mind is anywhere
but where he's talking. But listen to me for just a minute.
Someday, God is coming. He knows what day it is. I don't
know. When he comes, he's going to find you. You. He'll find the old. He's going
to find the young. You. Every last one of you here. will
be found by God. There is no hiding place that
God can't uncover, though men will seek it on that day. And
we must not remove the power of this statement by putting
this day way off in the future somewhere. My dad used to like
to tell a story about a fellow that was listening to one of
these science lecturers. And he started to doze off just
as the guy said, well, our sun will probably blow up in about
12 billion years or something like that. And the guy was about
half asleep and he misheard it, woke up and he said, what'd you
say? Or excuse me, he said, yeah,
what'd you say? And he said, I said, the sun
will blow up in about 12 billion years. And the guy goes, I thought
you said 12,000. Folks, People are all worried about
when Christ comes back. If He doesn't come the next 20 or 30
years, it's not going to be involved in me. Because if He doesn't
come for me in 20 or 30 years, I'll be going to Him. It's a
point when a man wants to die, and after that, the judgment.
I remember sitting in church as a boy, maybe seven years old,
six or seven. And once again, as I told young
people, my mind was just wandering around. And I was only about
half awake and it suddenly hit me, someday I'm going to die. Now I may be, have been a weird
little boy to be thinking that at six or seven years old, but
I did. Thankfully, about 20 years later, I was sitting in church
in Ashland and Brother Mayhem was preaching and my mind was
wandering and dozing. That's just my nature. He said
something else and it broke through the fog of my mind. He said,
if Christ paid my debt, I don't owe it. And that is stuck in
my mind so powerfully, but I do know those two things. Someday
I'm going to die and if Christ paid my debt, I don't owe it.
But anyway, he is going to find everyone. And we must not rob
the power or this truth of its power by putting it off because
it will not be long. I'll be honest with you, I thought
it was going to take longer to get old. But here I am. Here I am. I look at pictures
of when I lived here in Ashland. I moved to Ashland in 1981, in
January of 81. That's not when I started going
to church, here, but my wife and I moved here and I look at
pictures and I had dark brown hair and it covered all of my
head. It was shaggy. I weighed probably
140 pounds. I weigh more now. And I look at myself and what
happened to that guy? My wife and I just celebrated
our 40th anniversary. I remember when I thought 40
years was just old age to be. My marriage is old. My high school
diploma is old this year. My college degree got old because
I graduated college 40 years ago. You young people, I know
it seems like it's taking so long to grow up. But once you
get there, you're going to find out that the first 25 years,
you ever ride a roller coaster? The first 25 years is like going
up that first hill. You cover that 25 years and you're
trying to get up there. The next 25 years is like the
other side of it. You cover the same distance,
but it doesn't seem to take nearly so long. But it's not going to
be that long. That's what I'm trying to say.
It's not going to be that long. You are going to stand before
God one way or another. God's coming to you or you're
going to him. That's serious business. Why do you think that today's
popular religion all wrapped up with what's going on right
now. Because they don't have anything valuable to tell people
about what's going to happen later on. People say, I got a
faith I can live by. Well, good. You need a faith
you can die by. Because living's not guaranteed,
dying is. Paul did not found his hope on
the belief that he would escape judgment, that on that day he
would not be found. He didn't think that. And the
hope of the believer is not that in the day of judgment he will
not be found, but that when judgment finds him, it will find him in
Christ. You see, the question's not if
you'll be found. The question is where will you
be found. It's absolutely amazing to me
the places people try to hide from God. You would think even human intelligence
would tell them that this isn't going to work. Nonetheless, they hide in various
places, but God will find them. Now,
Paul's hope was pure simplicity. Paul's hope for a future did
not arise from some complex system. Let me give you a little exhortation
here. Leave it outside the theme of
what I'm talking about. As you grow in grace and knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ, be sure that you're not growing
in complexity. Paul said, I fear lest you be
corrupted from your simplicity in Christ. Now, simple doesn't
mean easy. The actual meaning of simple
is of one thing. That's what simple means. Complex,
more than one thing. But we seem to think sometimes
the deeper we can delve into things and the more complex our
thoughts can become about them and the more intricate and maze
like our theology becomes, the more we are learning and the
more spiritual we are becoming. No, we're getting confused. There's
nothing in the gospel to confuse anybody. It's pure simplicity. Paul said,
my home is a person. It's a person. Now, there's much
that can be learned about this person in growing grace and knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's much you can learn about
him. I assume we're going to learn about him for eternity. As a man, there's a limit of
what to know about him, but not as God. But while we may come to a fuller
understanding of who he is, and his character, we never get beyond
this point. Christ is my hiding place. I liken it to this. You get sick. The doctor says, I got a pill.
It'll take care of you. You're only going to need one. You take it, you'll get better.
So you go to the pharmacy, you pick it up, you go home. Now
let me ask you something. You say, you know, before I can
take this pill, I got to understand how it works. You go off and start to learn
some biochemistry, and then some organic chemistry, and go to
pharmacy school and everything before you take that pill. It's
a little work, and it goes. And if you did get all of that
education, and there'd be nothing wrong with doing it, it wouldn't
be wise to wait until after you had it before you took the pill.
But there's nothing wrong with after you take the pill, if you
want to learn all those details, fine. But understand this, you'll
learn all those details and it will not make you any better
than if you never learned them. Paul said, I want to be found
in Him. And that's as far as he needed
to go with it. I'm not saying he didn't know more, but I'm
just saying knowing that's enough. I'm thankful for the mother that
God gave me. She never was a big one on abstract
theology. She figured that the only reason
anything was written in the Bible was that you might take action
on it. It wasn't for, you know, the ivory tower sitting around
pondering stuff. And really that's kind of what
James meant when he said that faith without deeds is nothing. Reading the Bible, learning something,
and then not taking action on it is worthless. So her idea
of the gospel was really quite simple. And she never put it
in these words, but in thinking about the things my mother taught
me through all year, her theology boiled down to this. I am a sinner
in need of a savior. That's the first point. Second
point is Jesus Christ is the savior I need. Now, brethren,
you don't have to understand it any more than that to benefit
from it. There's more to learn. But that's
the basic knowledge right there. Paul said, my hope is to be found
in Him. My hope's not to be found in a ceremony. My hope's not
to be found in the church. I remember when I was a kid,
you know, the church I went to said you can't go to the theater.
Well, they said theater, movies. You can't go to movies. You ask
them why, and they'd say, well, it might ruin your testimony.
And I said, why? They said, well, they don't know
what you're watching in there. And I said, that was back when,
you know, each movie house just had one picture showing. And
my thought was, can't they read the marquee? You know, Mickey
Mouse, that kind of gives it away there. But that was their
attitude about it. And then they would say this,
but if the Lord comes, would you want Him to find you there? Well, I'll tell you where I wouldn't
find it. In Christ. In Christ. Paul says that his hope, which
would be found in Christ, which meant that Paul's hope was all
about Christ and nothing about Paul. You think about that. It's all about Christ, nothing
about Paul. Paul, if you can understand this,
Paul was not even saying, I hope that God finds me being in Christ,
as though the act of being in there or getting in there is
the issue. It's not. The issue is Christ
himself. He is a place of safety, even
in the time of judgment. Some look inside themselves for
a reason, for hope. But our hope comes entirely from
outside ourselves. Some look inside for particular
feelings. I had someone tell me I could
feel the Holy Spirit. And I was in a particularly smart
alecky mood. I said, what does he feel like? Think about it. What does he
feel like? Now, I don't despise emotions.
There's nothing wrong with it. But I know that emotions are
of the flesh. They can be dissected. the pagan worshipping an utterly
false god can feel just as warm and accepted and saved as the
most honest believer there ever was. So while we may enjoy, when we
listen to the gospel, those wonderful emotions that might wash over
us, I'm not hoping Well, my hope
is not that when the Lord comes, I'm going to be in the middle
of one of those emotional experiences that he'll take note of. It's
not in my repentance. That is, my hope is not in how
bad I feel about myself and how much I am determined not to do
it. Now, once again, the church I was raised in was very big
on making you feel bad about sin. And I suppose on the surface,
there's nothing wrong with that. Sin's a bad thing. And a lot
of work went into trying not to. And I still feel bad about
sin. And I still try not to. I don't
want to give you my success rate. We'll just not make that public. I'll say this. I'll make this
much public. I have not overcome one sin yet.
I read that Benjamin Franklin made a list of 13 virtues. And
if there was any American founder that needed to do that, it was
Benjamin Franklin. But anyway, 13 virtues. And he was going to work a month
on each one. He thought if he worked a month on it, he'd get
that thing under control and move on to the next. And here's what
he wrote. He said, after a month of intense effort on one, I found
I could get that under control. But I noticed the moment I moved
on to the next one, the first one came back. For what I've read about him,
he evidently gave up. But here is the thing. Repentance. All
the invitations I sat through. Feeling horrible. Feeling I needed
to rededicate my life or commit my life to this or to that. And
any good speaker can work that in people. I'm not saying that
all of them are being purposely deceptive. They may be just as
deceived as they are deceiving. because it looks to them like
the real thing. Tears, coming forward, promises, vows. I'd rather never make a vow to God. You know why? It's only going to increase the
amount of times you break a vow. If you don't make a vow, you
can't break it. I used to, and this was again
part of my youth, I promised God, I'm not going to do this
anymore. I'm not going to do that anymore. I even promised back
in, this was probably about April of 1964. And you all from that
time period may remember that meant about two months into Beatlemania
that the Beatles had showed up on Ed Sullivan in February. So I'm nine years old. I remember
I got a picture of this in my mind and I'm helping mom weed
some flowers or something, you know, and I'd already heard the
preacher's bad mouth on the Beatles. So I promised God I'd never listen
to the Beatles music again. I was nine. I hope God takes
that into account. I've listened to a lot of Beatles
music. They're of no value. Attempts
at righteousness, will you hide in that? Religious zeal. Paul
said, I was zealous more than anybody else. Paul utterly rejected any form
of righteousness to be found in himself. Now, when we say
righteousness here, we don't just mean righteousness in terms
of keeping the law, though that's one kind of righteousness men
try to produce. But the way that Paul's using
the word righteousness here, certainly the way we can apply
it, is anything that a man does, thinking that by doing it, God
is going to be pleased with him. And everybody, everybody, has
a righteousness. It may consist of nothing more
than, well, at least I never killed anybody. Man says that,
you know what his righteousness is? That he hasn't killed anybody.
And he thinks that's going to, that's going to go with God.
You know what I mean? God will say, well, yeah, you're right.
You never killed anybody. Come on in. No. Paul said, I had a righteousness
from within myself. And to the eyes of all men, it
looked good. And it looked good to me. And
then I met God. And it became the garbage that
I hauled out to the curb, anxious for it to be gone. Found something
better. Found something better. Two pictures
of being found in Christ. We use these terms, like being
in Christ, and they need to be described, but this is one of
those I would have a hard time describing it just like a theological
statement. But the scriptures give us two
very good pictures of it. The first one is Noah's Ark.
First one I think of because I mean this is literally being
in something. On that day, God said, I'm going to come to Egypt
and execute judgment. And listen to the way God put
it. He said, I'm going to pass through Egypt and take the firstborn
of every household in Egypt. The thing you need to note is
he did not say, I'm going to take the firstborn of every Egyptian.
If he had said that, the Jews would have been safe. No, the
Jews were included in the condemnation. So he said, I'm coming through.
And this is a picture of final judgment, Egypt standing for
the whole world. And God was going to come through
Egypt and he was going to find every firstborn and kill them. I made a mistake, I already slid
from Noah's Ark to Passover. Did you realize that? So let's
just finish up with Passover, then we'll go back to Noah's
Ark. He said, I'm going to come through
Egypt to Moses, and I'm going to kill everybody, all the firstborn
and all the household. And he said, but here's what
you all do. You take your lamb, and you kill it, and you put
the blood on the door. and you get in the house, and
I come through Egypt, when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. And so inside those houses, you
can imagine what it was like. Of course, inside the house,
there was only one in any danger, and that's the first point. And you can imagine him sitting
in there, And we're much quicker to believe judgment than we are
salvation. We've got an inner sense that
judgment's coming. You can imagine that first part. Now his hope was in two things. That God keeps his word. that
he's in a house with blood on the door. But here's the thing,
while he's inside, he can't see the blood. He sees it only by
faith. It wasn't him who put it there,
it was his dad. See, the person saved by the blood is not the
same as the person who put the blood on the door. Remember being
told that, you need to put the blood on the door of your house.
No. That house is a picture of Christ. And by putting the blood
on it, it's a picture of Christ and him crucified. That firstborn would be there
in the house. And you know what? It didn't matter whether he was
trembling with fear. It didn't matter if he was as
calm as today. The safety was not in his understanding
or the strength of his faith. It was in the blood on the door.
And God always has respect for the blood. God will not go where blood has
been shed. You notice there that there is
an aspect of our salvation that has nothing to do with power.
Because it was not the strength of the house, it was the blood
of the covenant. Now back to Noah, and I'll try
to stick with him a little bit. God told Noah he was going to
destroy the world. by a flood. But what a good picture
of finding everyone, because there's nowhere you can go to
hide from water. I mean, if the water goes over the highest mountains,
you're done. God told Noah to build an ark
to take his family inside that ark. And Noah stands. Actually,
there are so many pictures of Jesus Christ in the story of
Noah. The ark is Christ. Noah is Christ. Noah is also
a sinner inside of Christ. But here's the thing. The judgment
came. The judgment came just as God
said it would. And Noah and his family did not
escape judgment. They survived it. Why? Because they were in the
ark. And the ark survived it. Here's where we see that strength
and power does have something to do with it. Because all those
waves intended for Noah, sinful Noah, all of them still came. But there was some strong wood
between Noah and those waves. And the waves hit the boat and
shook the boat. And the boat endured that judgment. Therefore, Noah and his family
survived that judgment. But when our Lord Jesus Christ
hung down on Calvary, there were things going on that no one has
ever seen. Interesting enough, the only
one that had any clue what was going on was a thief who was
also hanging on the cross. But the disciples didn't know.
Mary didn't know. They're just standing there wondering,
how did everything go awry like this? And God executed a judgment there
that no one knew about except the Lord Jesus Christ, who is
enduring it. But when he was enduring it,
every one of God's elect was in it. And judgment came, and judgment
found them, and judgment poured out eternal wrath on them. But between them and the wrath
was Christ. He bore it to the thaw. And now when God comes again
in judgment to deal with everybody, to deal with the world in judgment,
when he comes, it's going to be like on that day of the flood.
And I tell you, You and I have never faced the kind of judgment
that is coming on this world, because no matter what we think
might happen to the world, we think there's a way to deal with
it. There won't be a way to deal
with this. It's the end of all. When God come, where are we going
to find you? I pray in Sovereign Grace Baptist
Church. Sorry, you don't want to be found
in Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. I know the people that go there.
I know the preachers. That's not a good hope. There's an advantage. Just like
the Jews had an advantage in having the scriptures, having
the temple and all that, you young people, you've got an advantage
that you hear the gospel being preached. But I want you to know
right now, hearing the gospel, not saying things, believing
it. Hearing about Christ is not the same thing as being in Christ. In that day. Three quick little
points. Why is being found in Christ
a good hope? Because everything God has for
sinners is in Christ. When Noah got in that ark, you
know what else was in there? Food. Food, a place to sleep,
a place to stay dry. Everything Noah and his family
and all those animals need was right there inside that ark.
Why is being in Christ a good hope? There's no sin in Christ.
The Bible says there in him is no sin. You say, well, Noah and his family
went in the ark. There was sure sin in the ark then, not in God's
eyes. There's no sin in there. There's nothing inside that ark. It needed to be destroyed. And then also being in Christ
is a good hope because in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile,
bond or friend, male or female, young or old, cultured or not,
sophisticated or not, educated or imbecile. None of that matters. There is nothing about you that
will get you in that argument. And there's nothing about you
that will keep you out of it. Because, as they say, it's not
about you. It's about Christ. But God, are
we in Christ Jesus? So what do I do if I'm not in
Christ? Well, that's pretty simple, too.
Paul, he says, he that comes to me, I will in no one. You say, well, what about that
part? All that the Father gives to
me will come to me. That's just a statement of fact. And you
can't, that was not given to you to act on. We don't act on
simple statements of fact in the scriptures. We act upon the
promises. And the promise is this. He that
comes to me, I will in no wise cast out. You say, well, how
are you going to reconcile that with the elect of God? What if
one of the non-elect comes? That ain't going to happen. Don't
worry about it. God's got it under control. But how do I know I'm elect?
You don't have to know you're elect. Yet, if you're a sinner,
if you're a sinner in need of a savior, and it's Christ, do
you see Christ as the savior you need? Well, then go to him
and ask for his salvation. Call upon the Lord. Those who put their trust in
him, He'll never be disappointed. He'll never be put to shame. God added a blessing to his word. Thank you, Joe. That was outstanding. Thank you so much. Well, it's
been good. Let's bow. Father, how we thank you for
allowing us to be here this evening. How we thank you that you've
given us this great gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank
you that you allowed our brother to preach it in such clarity
and power this evening. Father, we beg of thee that you
not let us just hear the gospel with these fleshly ears, but
you'd apply your word to our hearts. Cause us to seek Christ. Call us to call on Him for mercy. Cause us to need Him so that
we run to Him and find in Him everything you require and everything
that we need. How we thank you for your mercy
and your grace to sinners in our Lord Jesus Christ. Cause
His name to be glorified, magnified in our hearts through the preaching
of your Father, we pray you'd bless Joe as he continues his
travels, continue to bless him in preaching, watch over him,
keep him in your goodness and your mercy. All these things
we ask and we give thanks in that name which is above every
name, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.