I had Matt read those verses
because that's where I want to speak out of this morning. I
hope I got a message that will help each one here and will glorify
God. I'm not going to tell you anything
this morning you haven't already heard. I wouldn't want to do
that. First of all, I'm not deep enough
into the Word to know how to dig out things like that. We
need to keep it simple. You need to hear just a simple
word again. First of what I want to talk
about this morning is how a sinner looks unto the Lord. How we are
what we're like. How depraved we are. And to start
out doing this, I must talk about how we fell on Adam. how complete
our fall was in Adam. Our fall in Adam was beyond our
imagination of how bad it was. When we sin against God, it's
a terrible, terrible thing because God is perfection. And He receives
glory in all things. And whenever we sin against God,
we sin against His law, we sin against His character, we sin
against Him in every way. And so when we fell in the garden,
it was a complete fault. In other words, we fell so hard
and we felt we were dead in our sins. When Adam was out of the
garden and God threw him out of the garden,
I guess you might say. He cursed him and said that no
good will ever come of this. We all fell in Him. Whatever
He did in His fall, we inherited the state that He was in. And
basically, Adam was dead in his sins. Because what happens is
unless God intervenes through his whole life or through our
whole life, if we're still in our sins, We will live that way
until we die. And then all the sin that we
have done against God, we spend eternity making it right. But we can't make it right. We
cannot make it perfect. So it can never be done. So eternity,
we're spending our time paying for the sin against God. And
that's why it never ever ends. It's for eternity. So when we
leave this earth and we don't know the Lord, we will be in hell for eternity
and never get out. Everything that happens after
we leave this earth is for eternity. It never ends. So when we fell
on Adam, it was a complete fall. I mean, we were dead. There was
no hope. There was nothing whatsoever
that we could make ourselves right before God. We had absolutely
no righteousness in ourselves. We have no good in ourselves. We may think we do, but we had
none. And when we fell in Adam, we became dead in our sins. So what's a dead person do? He
does absolutely nothing. He can't do a single thing. He
cannot hear. The dead person can't hear. You know, I picked up on some
of this stuff. I'm going to back up here a little
bit. I picked up on some of this stuff. I was thinking about this
beforehand, but then we ended up having to go to a funeral
this last week. And it was one where they were
reading out of Ephesians 1 and 2. It was a you read, we read. You read, we read. There was
nothing from the heart there. And they read those scriptures
out of Ephesians. And then they come to the point
where they started talking about how that God died for everybody.
That, you know, He died for you and your sins and you're in heaven
and basically for everybody. They had no clue. what those
messages, those words were saying. Just the fact that they say in
Ephesians that by grace you are saved. What does grace mean?
They didn't know what grace meant. They didn't have any idea that
they were dead in their sins and this is the religion of the
world. It teaches you things that are
not true. But you see, the thing of it is they heard these messages,
but they were dead. They couldn't hear. They couldn't
hear what the Word was actually saying. They couldn't see they
were dead in their sins. They couldn't see Christ in those
scriptures. They couldn't talk. So they couldn't
talk to anybody or to discuss it. They couldn't feel. A dead
person can't feel. They can't feel the love that
Christ has for them. If there is, they have no feeling
and they can't move. So a dead person is in a situation
where he is absolutely helpless. And so therefore, if you're dead
in your sins, there's no way that you can move toward God.
This is so hard for people to hear. But because they're dead,
they can't hear it. And they can't understand it.
How dead are they? How far did they fall in their
sins? They just cannot understand that. But we have no ability to please
God because dead people can't do anything. So how can you do
anything to make all the sin that you are? The fact that we
think and we do things that are sinful and you can see them,
but the fact that we fell into sin, that's what we are. That's the state we're in. We're
dead in sin. And so therefore, we can do nothing.
And Romans 6 says that we are dead in our sins. And so therefore,
there's nothing that we can do to help ourselves. And we didn't
even know we were dead in our sins, but we were dead. We had
no idea that we were. We were walking this world. People
are walking this world. They don't know that they're
not capable of pleasing God or doing anything, that they're
dead. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure they could go on if
they knew that they were dead. But Lazarus is a perfect example
of our condition. You think about what the Scriptures
were saying about Lazarus being dead. And the thing of it is,
is we, as believers, don't even know how bad it is until God
reveals it to us. Until He comes along and reveals
Himself to us. When we see how perfect He is,
and the condition we're in, we can see how terrible we are.
But until Christ comes along and shows us, we don't see it.
We are dead. But Lazarus is the perfect condition.
We learn of this condition by the Holy Spirit revealing Himself
to us and showing us our condition. So we were on our way to eternal
damnation and didn't have no idea. People are living their
lives, going about their days, playing their ball games, visiting
with their families, going to church, going to all these places,
and they have no idea the condition they're in. And it would probably
kill them if they did. outside of the hope which we
would find in Christ. But the thing of it is, the question
I want to ask is to each and every one of you, do you have
any good in you? People who don't know Christ
think they do. They do good things. They have
good thoughts. They help their neighbors. They
do all kinds of good things. They help people with giving
them food and whatever else. Next question was, does God love
you because you are a good person? Because my neighbors are good
people. They're wonderful people. But they don't know who Christ
is. They don't know the truth of who Christ is. Are you pleased
with yourself? Are you satisfied with yourself? A believer is never satisfied
with himself. But an unbeliever is. They struggle,
but they're looking for something. Everybody has to have a God,
and they're looking for something. But most of them are pleased
with themselves. But the thing of it is, if you answer any of
these questions, yes, if this is the case, you may not have
seen your need of Christ. You may not have seen it. You
may not know just how bad you are. You may not know how bad
you need Christ. But you see, we're like Lazarus.
We're dead in our sins. And the thing of it is, how dead can you say Lazarus
was? I mean, here he is in his grave.
And here we are, dead just like Lazarus. Lazarus was there four
days. I mean, he was in a situation
where here he's in a grave with a rock in front of it, in His
grave clothes and already wasting away four days. I mean, just
in and of Himself, there is no hope. And everybody knew there
was no hope. But Christ has that hope. But it's important that we see
and hear that disciples were saying something that Christ
first said, well, He's asleep. And that's the important thing
because Christ directed him and said, well, he's dead. You see,
if he was asleep, there's things that he could do. He could wake
up. He could do some good things.
He could go about maybe pleasing people, pleasing God, maybe if
he could move. But you see, he can't. He was
totally dead. I can't express so much more
than the fact that when you are dead, that you don't move. And we are dead in our sins.
So before we come to know the Lord, we were in the very same
condition Lazarus was in. Now think about this. We couldn't
hear. We were walking around here in
this world. We were going places and doing
things and going to other churches and doing all these things. But
we couldn't hear. We didn't hear the Gospel in
what we were hearing. No matter where we went to hear
the cherub preaching, we didn't hear the Gospel. So we couldn't
hear of who He is. We couldn't see Him in the preaching
or in the Word. We couldn't talk to Him. We couldn't
feel the love He has. We couldn't move toward Him.
We had no ability whatsoever to please God. That's us. We
were talking about Lazarus. We're talking about us now. That's
the condition we were in. So we ourselves are a perfect
example of Lazarus. We were walking around here dead.
Walking dead is what we were. Think about Lazarus when he was
laying there and then think about yourself as you live in your
life. Lazarus didn't even know Christ was coming for him, for
him particularly. He didn't know Christ was on
the way. He was laying in that grave. He was dead. He couldn't
think, feel, see, or do anything. He didn't know Christ was on
his way. He was dead. Christ didn't come for the community.
Christ came for Lazarus. Particularly Lazarus. He didn't come for all the rest
of them. His point when he got there was
just to take care of Lazarus. Even though Mary and them was
suffering with the loss of Lazarus, he was still there. He comforted
them, but he was still there for Lazarus. He came just for Lazarus. You
know, the thing of it is, we didn't know of God's election
and the work of Christ before we come to hear the gospel. We
didn't know that, like Lazarus, we read it and we heard it. Matter
of fact, at that funeral, they read about it also. We didn't
know that God elected a people and that Christ took them and
said that I will save them and not lose a one. He paid the price
for their sins. He obeyed the law. Everything
that God desired and demanded of someone who was lost in their
sins. We didn't know that. You see,
Lazarus wasn't looking for Christ either. He didn't know that.
We didn't know that He was coming. So therefore, as far as Him being
elected and know that we're one of Christ, we didn't know that.
Matter of fact, we'd hear that in the messages at other churches
and we didn't know what that meant. Weren't we blind? When we were dead, we were so
blind and so out of the way. But there's no way that we could
have a concept of who Christ was. We weren't looking for Christ. And Lazarus, he was doing what
he could do. Nothing. That's important. He couldn't do anything. That's
all Lazarus could do is nothing. Christ was coming to him. And
when we talked about the election, Christ came for Lazarus alone
because God, before the foundation of the world, elected Lazarus.
And Christ came to die for those that God gave Him. And so therefore,
He didn't know He was elect, but Christ did and He came strictly
for Him. He traveled all that extra distance
just for Lazarus. Lazarus was His. Lazarus was
one of His sheep. Lazarus was one that He loved. It's kind of like Paul on his
horse. That's another message that I
just think is one of the most beautiful pictures of salvation
in the Word. Paul going along, riding on his
horse. Doing what he thought he ought
to be doing. Weren't we doing that? Doing everything. He was
doing things for God. He was killing Christians. He
had a group of people with him. He had a following. He was on
a horse and he was going to do his duty. And all of a sudden,
just like that, he was knocked off his horse. And that was it. Just all of
a sudden, He was living His life and going along like He was doing
what He was supposed to do. We were doing the same thing.
Just living our life and not knowing. Just going about our
business. But you see, Christ has compassion
for His sheep. And His sheep must be saved.
And so it shows in here also that when Christ, He prayed to
the Father, the prayer that was answered because it went with
the Father's plan and glory. He prayed like we studied in
Bible class. He prayed according to God's
will. And His prayer was for Lazarus. And His love was for
Lazarus. This went the way it did because,
like I said, Jesus could have made it so that he would never
have died. And it just went ahead with life and Lazarus would not
have died. But you see, Lazarus had to die.
It was in God's predestinated plan. Not only that, he died
the way he did and this situation happened the way it did so that
we could learn also. It was written in the Word for
all eternity for us to hear and see how God saves sinners. To
see the compassion that Christ has for His sheep. When He groaned
unto the Lord, His prayers were unto the Father for Lazarus and
for His love that He showed there. The love that He showed for His
sheep being Lazarus. He does that for us. But you see, His prayers were
answered also because He prayed according to God's will. Before
the foundation of the world, God set this out to be the way
it is. And because it turns out the
way it is, His prayers were answered according to God's will. And
those prayers were answered that the Son prayed. It shows His
humanity also of Christ, His caring, His love for His sheep.
the heartbreak that he felt because one person feels that for others
that we love, and so therefore it showed the compassion of Christ
for him. But the thing of it is, this
is all going according to God's will. Christ did this because
it was a teaching time also. He was set up to be that way. And we think that we have something
to do that would help Christ to gain His favor. We don't have
it at all in us. We're dead. But you see, Christ
has the power also, being Lord, to save people according to His
will and His way. He has the power to do so. When
He told them to roll the rock away from the door, they did it. They obeyed. He
didn't need them to roll the rock away. He could have just
said it and the rock would have obeyed. But He told them to roll
the rock away from the door. He commanded them to do this.
Nothing can interfere, but obey Him so nothing can interfere
with the saving of His elect. That rock was in the way, but
not in God's way. That rock was moved out of the
way so He could get to Lazarus. Lazarus was His, and Lazarus
was His elect. The thing of it is, Lazarus being
dead, moved only when God commanded him. The Holy Spirit causes us
to move toward God. Lazarus didn't move until He
told him to come forward. How did He say that? I think
it was come forward. But anyway, Lazarus didn't move until God
commanded him. He was still laying there. Didn't
even know God was at the door. Had no idea. The rock was rolled
away. You know, you think about this. Think about our life. I want
to back up here a little bit. Think about our life. For every
one of us, where we started out from. Started out at home, you grew
up in your community, you moved wherever you did. So many of
us, all these different roads we took came to this point right
here. And wherever it was that you
come to know the Lord, He just brought you through all these
times, all the sin you committed, all the struggling you did, all
the looking for hope, all the things that you were going through.
You were traveling through the world. And just like Paul on
his horse, you were not looking for anything. You thought you
were doing everything as the way you're supposed to do it.
And then one day, when the time was full for you, Christ knocked
you off your horse. And that's where he's at with
Lazarus. And the power for him to be able to do what he did
to a dead person. You were dead. You could not
understand this Gospel. You could not understand who
Christ truly was in any way, shape, or form. We were so full
of ourselves that we thought we had good in us, that we could
help ourselves and work our way under God. We thought we could
do all those things. We were pretty good people. Until
Christ opened that door and showed us who He is. You see, we were enemies of God.
We were enmity to God. He merciful calls us about our
condition, into our condition. He shows us who we are. Being
enemies of God. We didn't know we were enemies
of God. But we were totally separated from Him. Our thoughts, our feelings
toward Him, we hated Him. We wanted the God that we wanted.
We wanted to be able to do things to cause Him to look to us and
love us and save us. We wanted to do the work. But
you see, He showed us our condition. And the thing of it is, when
He shows us our condition, how dead we truly are, then we realize,
man, I have no hope. There's nothing I can do. I'm
lost. There's no place to go. But you
see, He opened the door. And when He did that, through
the Holy Spirit, He opened the door in our heart and showed
us the light of who He is. And when we see that light, He
says, Lazarus, come forward. We move toward Him because we
move toward the light. He showed us who He was. We saw
how that hope was the only way we have unto salvation. He gave
us a love and a faith for Him. And then, we became alive. We've
seen Christ. Like Lazarus, he was in that
grave. He couldn't move forward without seeing the light. Christ
commanded him to come forward. And the thing of it is, the only
one way out of that grave one way out of that grave through
that door where Christ was. No other way. He was sealed in
there and could not get out of His condition in any way, shape,
or form. Only through the light of Christ.
We're the same way. We can only get out of our condition
by the work of Christ. And you see, when we move toward
the light, through the Holy Spirit, God causes us to love the light. And He causes us to be able to
see. And we can see Him illuminated. We can see who He is, what He
is, the character of Christ, the Lord, the sovereign God.
We can see who He is. And you see that when we see
Him, He's so perfect. And we see our condition, which
is so bad, we go nowhere else except toward Him. And He's drawing
us. He's pulling us to Him. He's
revealing Himself to us. He's making us willing in the
day of His power. And we come to Him. Lazarus,
come this way. Let loose. Unwrap Him. Take the
napkin off His face. Take the grave clothes off. And
unwrap Him. He's set free. We're set free. When we see Christ, when we're
His and He gives us faith, we're set free. We're no more bound
under the law. We're no more bound under our
sin. We are free. And since we're
in Christ, we are totally and completely without sin in the
eyes of God. We can now see we're not dead
anymore. We can hear we're not dead anymore. We can hear the message. We can
feel we have love. We can feel love. We can follow
Him. We're not dead anymore. We can
move and we can speak. We are free when we come to know
the Lord. We are set free like Lazarus
was. And the thing of it is, when
you go over... Let's see, I think it's... I didn't write the notes down.
Chapter 12, verse 2, it says, There they made him a supper
for Christ, and Martha served, but Lazarus was one of them that
sat at the table with him. We sit at the table of Christ
for eternity. I said everything after we leave
this earth is for eternity. We sit with Him. in peace and
rest and love. And He looked nothing to no one
or anything but Him. We are with Him for eternity. We are just so perfect like Christ
as if we looked into the mirror to see ourselves, we could just
say, well, we see Christ because we are just like Him. Perfect. Not on this earth. No, no, we're
working to walk on this earth. Not with all the struggles and
things we've got inside of us. But in the eyes of God, we look
just like Him. Isn't that amazing? You know,
there's so much in here that just seems like, eh, it can't
be. It can't be. How can that possibly
be? This sounds like a fairy tale
almost. How could that be? You see, the thing of it is,
when God saves you, He gives you faith. And when He gives
you faith, you believe that everything He says is true without a doubt. And you see His message and truth.
You see things in there that you never saw before. Because
you see, He's opened up through your heart, He's opened up your
mind, and your hearing, and your seeing, and you can see the true
Lord in the Scriptures that others can't see. and that everything
He does is for us. Everything. And because He's
done everything for us, when it comes to our salvation, there
is not a single thing in this world, in this universe, in any
world, that can get in the way of our salvation and being with
Him. Because He's done the work. Only Him. We didn't add a single
thing to it. Not a single thing to it. And
we can't brag that we've done anything. We can't brag that
we belong to Him. Why would you? Why would you
brag about something like that when by His grace He saved us?
Gave us faith and made it so that we know Him. He did all
that. That fair isn't anything to be
more humbling than that could be. I can't imagine what it would
be. So the thing of it is, Lord,
just to remember how sinful we are and be so thankful, so thankful
that we were God's elect, that He's chose us, that He calls
us, that He's done all the work. He has the power to bring the
dead to life. Matt, would you pray for us? It is the perfect condition of
awareness, of sin, of ego, of anything. And yet, you step forward
and ask us to come forward. And we do. And then on top of
that, we loosen the bonds. We ask that we be just like you. We come because you call us. Let us ask for mercy. Let us ask that we be your Savior. Amen. We'll have the Lord's Supper. so so Shall we pray? Our Heavenly Father,
we come here today to hear Your message this time, and as we
do this little ceremony, it shows us that You said to do this in
remembrance of You. Lord, that's why we come to worship,
because this world takes control of our minds and consumes us,
and we think of so many things that we want and do in this world,
and our hearts end up being heading in that direction. We come here,
Lord, as our safety. And when we come here, we want
to hear about You and remember You and be reminded of You and
who You are and Your Lordship, Your holiness, Your righteousness,
all these things. And it seems as though that when
we see that You're in control of all things, we let go of the
world and rest, and just rest in You. Sometimes we have to
be reminded just how holy and righteous, how sovereign, Lord,
that You are. Lord, we just thank You for this
time. In Jesus' name, Amen. It says, Take, eat. This is my body. This is my blood of the New Testament.
which is shared for many. Open your hymnals We'll stand as we sing number
236, Amazing Grace, number 236. Amazing grace, how sweet the
sound That saved a wretch like me I once was lost, but now am
found Was blind, but now I see was grace. To fear and grace my fears relieved,
How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believed. Through many dangers, toils and
snares, I have already come. His grace hath brought me safe
thus far, And grace will lead me home. When we've been there
ten thousand years Bright shining as the sun We've no less days
to sing God's praise Than when we'd first begun Oh, yeah, let's pray. Heavenly
Father, we ask now at this time that we would consider what ceremony
we had just undertaken. It is not just flour and water. It is not just grapes made into
wine. And they are pictures, Lord. That bread is your body. And
that body was broken. And it wasn't because of anything
Christ had done. And the blood that poured out
was not because He had cut Himself. Someone pierced His side. Lord,
that body was broken for us. That blood was for us. And those
are precious. Lord, we should not be We should
not consider these things shallowly. They are very important,
they are very precious to us. And Lord, we ask that you would
impress that upon our hearts. And we ask now that as we go
and have our meal, Lord, that you would bless that food to
our body. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Would you leave it running? No.
Hit stop. Red one? No, this one. That's
stop. Well, you didn't