Is it okay if I get comfortable? If you will, take your Bibles
and turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. God's providence is a wonderful
thing. I see this a lot when I go places,
especially away from home. And I'll have a message prepared. And everything that goes on up
to that message is in tune with that message. It's an amazing
thing, God's providence. I was listening to Brother Lindsey
back in the back. He read his scriptures and he
prayed and talked about eternal life. And then we sang about
that life. And Brother Mark read those scriptures
and that talking about this eternal life, life, life. A few weeks ago, I got a disturbing
phone call. I've been communicating with
a man I really don't remember him personally. After I finally
met him and looked at him, he did look a bit familiar. But
I used to go down with Henry when the occasion presented itself
down to Pine Bluff, Arkansas at their Bible conference. And
this man was the song leader back in those days. And he'd
been communicating with me for quite a while. And he's about
an hour and 45 minutes from our church. And he'd been talking
about coming down there. There's nowhere where he lives. But he called me the other day
and he was just weeping, weeping, weeping. And when he finally
was able to talk, he told me that his wife had been diagnosed
with COVID. and died just in a few days. And he was just broken hearted,
wanted to know if I'd come up and preach the funeral. But he
said, I don't think they're going to let us have it at the funeral
home. And they won't even let us gather at the cemetery. And
I said, well, yes, I'll come up and do that for you. So I
did. And they had some kind of little
FM transmitter or something that they used. And people sat in
their cars. It was the most impersonal funeral
I've ever been to in my life. But I was still able to preach
to them, and I preached to them out of Psalm 68, the issues from
death. Not issues of death, there are
issues of death, but this is talking about issues from death. And he says, our God, is the
God of salvation. He's the God of salvation. That's
how He reveals Himself. If God's going to reveal Himself
to you, that's how He's going to reveal Himself. He's the God
of salvation. And unto God the Lord belong
all the issues from death. And I said, what are these issues?
Well, the first issue is what What about the dead? What are
we going to do with the dead? They're all dead. And Adam all
died. What are we going to do with
the dead? You can't reason with the dead.
They're dead. You can't cause a dead man to
evolve back to life. What about the dead? That's the
first issue. What about the dead? Well, God's
purpose is to save some. of these dead sinners. But he's not gonna leave them
dead. He's gonna make them alive. And
I started thinking about that and preaching that and seemed
to have a lot of liberty with it. And I thought about that
as I thought about a message from here in 1 Corinthians 15. This is referred to by many as
the resurrection chapter of the Bible. It's without a doubt the
most quoted of any portion of scripture at funerals. If you
go to anyone's funeral, nearly you're gonna hear something out
of 1 Corinthians 15 read, either at the graveside or at the funeral
home. But though it's quoted so much
and by so many, I fear that little understands what this chapter
is saying. Little understand what this is
talking about. Most apply these truths to what
happened to people after they die. That's why they read them
so much at funeral homes. This is about people after they
die. Just the last portion of 1 Corinthians
15 has to do with those after they die. It's mostly dealing
with those who are dead in trespasses and sins and being resurrected
to life. That's what the chapter's about. Though that's the subject of
1 Corinthians 15 is life from the dead. Salvation is life from
the dead. That's what it is. And I have four things tonight
that I hope by the grace of God to teach and to learn myself. and to hold dear to my heart
and walk in the remainder of my life. And the first thing
is a shocking reality. It's a shocking thing. I had
a man came to me after that funeral and he said, I've been to a lot
of funerals, but he said, I've never heard anybody speak on
like this with a subject like this. And he said, I'm gonna
tell you something. He said, I'm thankful. He said, you answered
a lot of questions that I've been trying to deal with in the
word of God. This thing starts with a shocking
reality. In verse 22, it says, in Adam
all die. How many? All. All. Let that sink in a minute.
In Adam, all die. And all true gospel preaching
begins where the sinner is, dead in trespasses and sin. That's
why we preach the way we preach. That's why we say the things
we say. That's why we follow God's instruction and not how
we feel. Paul writing to the church at
Ephesus made this statement. He first prayed for them. that
God would enlighten them, open their eyes to see the exceeding
greatness of his power toward us were to believe according
to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ
when he raised him from the dead. Did you ever think that When
God gives faith to a person, when God saves a person, that's
what we're talking about, when God enlightens him, calls him
forth, raises him from the dead. Do you ever think about what
a miracle that is? He compares that to the resurrection
of Jesus Christ. That we might know something
of that power. That we might know it personally,
that we might experience it in our hearts and in our minds.
having been raised from the dead. That's what this chapter is about.
Life from the dead. But you say, well, I'm not dead. I have a mind. I can think. I still walk around. I can breathe. I can make decisions. I can reason about things. That's
true, but he's not talking about physical death yet. He's still
talking about spiritual death. He's talking about spiritual
death and legal death. And he says, you hath he quickened
who were dead in trespasses and sins. You were dead. Is that who we preach to? People
come in here to visit and they bring their relatives and bring
their friends and bring some associates or people they work
with and they come in here. When you're preaching to them,
Lindsey, you're preaching to the dead. Preaching to the dead. But folks don't know they're
dead. He's talking about spiritual death. Now watch this, you had
the quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins. Well, what's
that mean? He's gonna tell you. Verse two,
Ephesians chapter two. Wherein, that is in this state
of spiritual death, ye walked according to the course of this
world. That's why you didn't think it
was strange. You're just doing what everybody else did. You're
just doing what was natural. You're just going about life
as usual. Everybody does the same thing. Everybody reasons the same way. I've been talking to sinners
for 40 years. They all reason the same way. They reason about
having free will and all this kind of nonsense. You walked according to the course
of this world, now listen, according to the prince of the power of
the air, the spirit, which now worketh in the children of disobedience. Among whom also we all had our
behavior in times past, in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling
the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Now listen, that
we're by nature children of wrath, even as others. How are we children
of wrath? By nature. Oh, but you say, I don't feel
dead. Why would you? It's all you've
ever known. Is that right? We don't feel anything unusual
because that's all we've ever known. We come forth from the
womb speaking lies. We've never known anything else
but death. Why would we feel like we're
dead? Been traveling along on the same
course as every other son of Adam. You've been practicing
false religion. We say, I never went to church.
You still practice false religion. You did it in your reasoning.
You did it in your decisions. You still practiced it. Every son of Adam, every daughter
of Adam, we walk according to the prince of the power of the
air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
And I'm not just talking about your denomination, I'm talking
about the basic principles that deceived men and women operate
on. The idea of having a free will. I used to think that way. Somebody
began to talk to me about the sovereignty of God and these
things, and I said, now wait a minute, wait a minute. Man
has a free will. He said he does? Where's it say that? Well, that's what I was told.
That's how I always reasoned. I reasoned about religion and
salvation and all that from this principle, that man has a free
will. Man has a mind. He can reason
these things, can't he? No, there's none that understandeth.
You see what I'm saying? We're full of these principles. That's the prince of the power
of the air. That's how he works through religion.
He instills these principles even in our children. We have some idea before conversion
that we know something about good and evil. You know, Satan told a woman,
said, God don't want you to eat that fruit because the day you
eat it, then you're going to be like God. You're going to
know good from evil. But what he didn't tell her was,
knowing the good, you wouldn't be able to do it. And knowing
the evil, you wouldn't be able to avoid it. He didn't tell her
that part. And we operate on these principles. We operate on the principle that
salvation is simply God erasing our sins. I had a man at a church. He was an evangelist, and he
was preaching to us, and he had a blackboard up here, and he
said, this is salvation. He said, you transgressed the
law, and he put a mark, and he said, you did this, and he put
another mark, and you didn't love God with all your heart,
and he put another mark. He said, here's salvation. He
got that eraser and erased that on that board. That ain't salvation. But that's the way we operated,
that's the way we thought, and that's what Paul's talking about.
By nature, we're children of wrath, even as others. We operate
our whole life, our practice, our walk, everything about it
is based on things that are untrue. You can't make a decision, you
can't reason with a person who's operating without a basis, without
a true foundation. How many times does it say that
in the book of Proverbs? There's a way that seemeth right
unto a man, but the end thereof is destruction. To be dead in trespasses and
sins is to be born with a nature of sin. And everything you think
and everything you do and everything you decide is opposite of truth. A fella came to me one time and
he said, What do y'all preach down there at your church? And
I said, well, just take everything that you believe and take the
very opposite and you'll be really close. I told him. Haven't you
found that to be true when you witness to folks? It's the very
opposite. The carnal mind, the scripture
said, is enmity against God. It's hostility. It's not hostile
toward the religion of the world. But it's hostile when you start
talking about God and who he is and what he demands and what
he says. When you start talking about
his son and why he died and all these things, then that hostility
comes out. Just try to talk to any center
about man's depravity or God's absolute sovereignty. Predestination,
election, irresistible calling, any of those great truths, just
try to talk to him about them, you'll find out. The carnal mind
is enmity against God. But you say they have Bibles.
They have the Word of God, they read from the Word of God. But
the Bible said the natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God, he don't want them. He'll take parts from the
Bible. I love what Brother Mahan told
me one time. He said, you can't take bits and pieces of the Bible.
You take it all or you don't take any. He said, I'll give
you a good example. If you're gonna quote parts of
scriptures, Judas went out and hanged himself. Go ye and do
likewise. You can make the scriptures say
anything if you wanna pull bits and pieces. Man's dead. He's spiritually
dead. And that's why you can't reason
with the sinner. You can't reason him to salvation. That's why you can't motivate
him to a right decision. That's why we as men and women
are so dependent upon God in the ministry. Because with man,
it's impossible. That's what Mark prayed while
ago. We know that. It's an absolute impossibility.
I don't have any power to raise the dead. Now if it's just a
matter of persuasion, maybe I can come up with something. But if
it's a matter of raising somebody from the dead, that's beyond
me. That's beyond me. Henry said he went down to preach
at the church in Louisville years ago. And he said as he was staying
in a hotel several stories, he said the pastor come over and
get him, got him to, they were going out to eat or something
and then going to the service. And Henry said we got on the
elevator and he said just about the time the door was gonna close,
a drunk kind of got in between it and stopped the door and he
got on and he was just, couldn't hardly stand up, he was just
really drunk. And Henry said he looked at me
and he said, I know you. He said, you preach on TV. He
said, you preach those collected ones. He said, I sure hope I'm
a collected one. And then he turned around and
he looked at the pastor and he said, I know you too. He said, you saved me two years
ago. The pastor looked at him, he
said, looks like some of my work. That's what kind of power we
have. We don't have any power. That power's in him. The best
we can do is to preach his gospel as best we can. But in the end,
be you a Henry Mahan or a Darwin Pruitt, at the end, it's all
in his hands. because he alone can raise the
dead. In Adam, all died. That's a shocking truth to men
and women. It's shocking. It was shocking to me. All right,
here's the next thing. How do dead sinners come to acquire
true saving faith? They're dead. And none that understand
it, none that seeketh after God, they're all gone out of the way,
the way of peace they've not known. There is no fear of God
before their eyes. How are these dead sinners going
to come to real saving faith? How is that possible? How is
that done? By the means which God has ordained. Paul settles this issue in the
very first chapter of this epistle. If you'll take your time and
And read through 1 Corinthians, you'll see in the very first
chapter in verse 21, he said, for after that in the wisdom
of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. And then he
sums up the, The rest of this unbelieving world like this,
he said, for the Jews, the religious folks who don't know God, they
require a sign. They have to have a sign. They
have to feel saved. We're never told to feel saved,
are we? I've never read it anywhere in here. To be saved is to know God. To
have eternal life is to know God. To believe is to trust Christ. Rest our souls in God. But religious folks who don't
know God, they require a sign. And the Greeks, those highly
educated wise men, the philosophers, they seek after wisdom. You have
to explain it to them. Well, I use this at home because
this is what a fellow did with me, 1 Corinthians 5.21. He said,
made, you have to go back to when the word first appeared
to understand what made meant. And I said, well, I have a set
of OEDs. That's recognized as the best
dictionary there is. And I said, I traced that word
all the way back to the 1600s when the Bible was written, when
this King James Version was written. I searched it all the way back
to there. They give you examples of it
being used in common language and advertisements and so on
and so forth, and then they'll show it to you as it appears
in the scriptures. And I said, you know what I found out? That
word made means made. The Greeks, they seek after wisdom.
They want to approach this thing from man's wisdom. But Paul said,
we preach Christ crucified. Under the Jews, it's a stumbling
block, and under the Greeks, it's foolishness. But unto them
which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of
God and the wisdom of God. And he begins chapter 15 with
a clear distinction as to whom he was talking to and how they
came to this hope. I don't know of anything any
clearer on the necessity of gospel preaching than 1 Corinthians
15. He said, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto
you which you also received, and wherein you stand, and by
which also you'll be saved, if you keep in memory what I preached
unto you, otherwise you've believed in vain. That's pretty clear,
isn't it? For I delivered unto you, first
of all, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our
sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried and rose again
the third day according to the Scriptures, His life, death,
burial, and resurrection is not left to dead sinners to discern. It's a matter of preservation
by divine inspiration. It's not a matter of the Baptist
interpretation or the Methodist persuasion or the Catholic declaration. It's a matter of God's testimony
concerning his son. for which God has called and
equipped and empowered and sent men to preach and to teach. We say that's foolishness. That's
what he said you'd say it was. The preaching of the cross to
them who are perishing is foolishness. It always was. You may not have
to hear a preacher. That's what God said. I didn't
say it. I didn't make it up. The Baptist
didn't make it up. It's what God said. That's what
he said. As our Lord ascended into glory,
it said he gave gifts unto men. What'd he give them? In Ephesians
4.11, it says he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists,
And some passed their teachers. Who gave them? God did. Why? Why, we just pass out Bibles
and tell folks to figure it out for themselves, can't we? They're
able to do that, ain't they? No, they ain't. From the beginning of time, nearly,
the scriptures have been available to men, and before they were
available, they had men declaring the word of God to men, the will
of God, and so forth. Never been a time that men and
women hadn't been without a testimony from God. But they wouldn't receive it,
they didn't understand it. The very first couple who came
to worship God didn't understand it. Cain didn't understand it,
and you know Adam told him the same thing that he told Abel. But Cain, the way he, the way
Cain interpreted that, I need to get all my vegetables out
of my garden. I'll get these big giant carrots. I grew some
broccoli this year. It had heads on it like that.
It was the prettiest broccoli. That's what Cain did. He brought
it and he set it all out there. He was so proud of that. And
I just picture the Lord coming by and he's looking at everybody's
thing. He comes to that and he just
passes by. Had no regard to it. None whatsoever. Oh my soul,
you talking about upset. It's a matter of God's testimony
concerning his son. And he sent, he gave gifts to
the church, he gave gifts to this world. Apostles and prophets,
that's who wrote this book, were built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief
cornerstone. and pastor, teachers, evangelists,
to what end? For the perfecting of the saints,
for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body
of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of
the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man. A preacher's just such a thing
as a perfect man. Yep, his name's Jesus Christ. And if Christ be in you, you're
a perfect man. That's what we're laboring to
preach. Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the
knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man. Now listen, unto
the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Peter tells us in 1 Peter 1,
23 and 25 that the preaching of the gospel through the testimony
Holy Scripture is the seed of regeneration. That's what it
is. Not gonna be life without a seed.
So how did sinners come to acquire true saving faith? Through the
preaching of the gospel. I don't understand it. I didn't
invent it. I'm just telling you what God
said. He listened to this, our Lord
said, there's coming a day, he said, and now is when the dead
shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall
live. What you say, he was talking
about that young maid, he was talking about Lazarus. No, no,
he's talking about dead sinners here in the gospel, that's what
he's talking about. No, he's talking about the resurrection
of the dead at the last day. No, he goes on to say something
else about them. He said, in that day, he said,
don't marvel at what I just told you, because in that day, all
that are in the graves is gonna hear my voice, and they're gonna
come forth, every last one of them. They acquire faith through the
preaching of the gospel. He that heareth my word and believeth
on him that sent me hath everlasting life and shall not come into
condemnation but is passed from death unto life. Preacher, you saying that you
speak for God? No, God said that. I didn't say
it, he did. He sent out those preachers. He sent them on two occasions. He sent hundreds of them out.
Sent them out. And he said, he that heareth
you, heareth me. Isn't that what he said? He that
heareth you, heareth me. If God sends a man, God's talking
to you through that man, through his word, and through the Holy
Ghost. what the scripture tells us about
men coming to true saving faith. All right, so what's the basis
of our hope? What's the basis of our rest?
In Adam all die. Even so, in Christ shall all
be made alive. All be made alive. The sinner
contributes absolutely nothing to his salvation, nothing whatsoever. to his salvation. It's all of
God, and it's all of grace, and it's all through and by the Lord
Jesus Christ. In Colossians 118, it said, he
is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning. Now listen, the firstborn from
the dead. In Christ shall all be made alive. On what basis? On the basis that
God raised him from the dead. His resurrection from the dead
and his ascension into glory and his sitting at the right
hand of God as our guarantor is what guarantees that God in
the fullness of time is gonna send a preacher to you. He's
gonna connect you somehow, someway together. There was no church
in the wilderness, but God sent a man out there anyway. And there's
nobody lived out there, but there was a eunuch traveling through.
And here I can just vision this preacher, and he's looking, and
he's looking for this offer. He knows God sent him. And he's
looking, and he's looking. All of a sudden, he spies a chariot.
And here's a man with a big old scroll about that big. And he's
opening that thing up, and he come up beside there and looked
over, and this man's reading out of the book of Isaiah. And
he said, hey, bud, do you understand what you're reading? He said,
how can I, except some man tell me what it says? Huh? He knew more than most of this
world. How can I? I tell you, we don't understand.
We come together and we worship, and I know we're flesh, and the
best of men are just men at best. I understand that. But I'm telling
you, we need to think about it, what a privilege it is when God
gathers us together and His gospel's preached. Unless I'm misunderstanding
the Scriptures, even the angels are quiet when the gospel's being
preached, and they're looking on. And they're hearing what
you're saying, and they're looking at the people. What a privilege
it is. My soul, look at the world. They're
dead. All of them, they're dead. They're
out here jumping up and down tonight and worshiping a baby
that they don't know anything about. They don't know why he
was born or why he's here, what he was gonna do, where he was
gonna go. They don't know anything at all
about him. And they're just out here singing and just having
the biggest time ever was. But God's got some. He's got
a remnant. And he calls them to life and
he teaches them all about his son. And this is what it's all
about. Salvation's in Christ. It's in
Christ. Scripture said he was delivered
for our offenses and raised again for our justification. I was
reading a man the other day that I had a little bit of confidence
in until I started reading and he said, no, a man ain't justified
until he believes. I beg your pardon. He was justified
way back in eternity past when, according to that covenant of
grace, our Lord Jesus Christ was appointed as our substitute, as his mediator. You reckon God
just took a chance on Christ? I just rolled the dice. I hope
he can do this. Boy, it's a lot to ask, but come
on. We justified way back there.
When he talks about it in Hebrews 9, he said, but Christ, he ain't
like that old priest. That was just symbolic language.
He said when Christ died, by his own blood, he entered in
one time into heaven itself and obtained what kind of redemption? Eternal redemption for us. That redemption purpose way back
yonder. that redemption that he accomplished
on the cross, that redemption that's being preached. I'll tell
you what's saving faith in, it's God letting you in on it. That's
what faith is. God just lets you in on your
justification. You say, preacher, can you make
good on that? I can. Let me show you something over
here. I'm gonna get off my subject
and I won't be able to find my way back. In Ephesians chapter two, he ends this statement about
sin, saying, and you, we all, we're by nature the children
of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy,
for that great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were
dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. We say
he's talking about faith, no. No, he's talking about quickening
us together with Christ, because listen how he continues. And
hath raised us up together with Christ, and seated us in the
heavenlies in Christ. Why? Why? Why did he do all that? We're just as ignorant of it
as we can be. That in the ages to come, He
might show the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness
toward us through Christ Jesus for by grace are you saved through
faith. It's God letting you in on it,
on what He already did. He justified us in the resurrection
of Christ. And there's so many of these
scriptures that tells us that. In Hebrews chapter one it says,
when he had by himself purged our sins, how did my, it wasn't
God erasing my sins, my sins were purged alone by the Lord
Jesus Christ. And then he sat down on the majesty
on high. He tells us in Romans three,
being justified freely by his grace through the redemption
which is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in his blood to declare his righteousness in
the remission of our sins, that he might be just and justifier
of all them that believe. There is no life apart from Christ. He said, I am the way, I am the
truth. Now listen, I am the life. Are you alive from the dead?
Do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Because he's life. If you don't have Christ, you
don't have life. He's life. Long before we were born by an
eternal union in which our God made us one, we just heard Mark
read about it from the pulpit up here, making us one with him. one in our representative and
substitute. We died in him, we buried in
him, we raised in him, we're seated in glory in him. And he
came to us and showed us that. And that, when he gets done telling
us that, by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves, it's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man
should boast. For, for, we're his workmanship. He did that. He did that. And that brings me to my last
point. What is the power behind these things? Paul addressed
this in chapter three of his second epistle to the Corinthians.
And there were some there that perhaps questioned his calling.
I don't know what brought this about. Maybe he looked at his
past and drew a question mark. I've been questioned on more
than one occasion for the same thing. I was standing in line
to eat down here one day, and there was a young man visiting
here during the conference, and he said, Preacher, there's something
I want to ask you. And I said, well, go ahead. He
said, how do you justify your past? I said, same way you justify
yours. I'm a sinner saved by grace.
Is that how your past summed up? I'm a sinner. Saved by grace. Listen to what Paul said. Do
we begin again to commend ourselves, or need we papers? Do we need
letters? Do we need letters of commendation
to you or from you? He said, you're our epistle,
written in our hearts, known and read of all men, written
not with pen and ink. Not written on paper, but with
the spirit of the living God written in your heart. And he
said, such trust have we through Christ to Godward. Not that we're sufficient of
anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God. God, he said, has made us able
ministers of the New Testament. What's a man have to do to be
qualified to preach? God has to make him an able minister
of the New Testament. Because the power behind this
thing is God. It's not me. It's not my office
even. But it's God. And he manifests this power through
the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in this way,
the Spirit giveth life. You read that scripture over
in John chapter one. I really like that passage. He
said he came unto the world and the world received him not. And
he came to his own, his own people, his own nation. His own received
him not. But some received him. Why did
they and the whole rest of the world didn't? Why? Because to
you gave he power to become the sons of God even to them that
believe on his name which were born. They were raised from the
dead. They were given life from the
dead. Preaching Christ is the business
of the church and the reason there gathered together and preserved
in this world is to preach Christ. That's the only reason for our
being here. We're not being made one bit
better than we are in Christ. We're perfect in Him. Perfect in Him. The only thing
standing between us and eternity is the purpose of God to call
out His elect through the preaching of the gospel. That's why the
church is here. That's the business of the church,
the one and only business of the church. Men are spiritually
dead. And God's purpose to save some
of these dead men and raise them to life everlasting. He does
it through Christ, he does it through the preaching of the
gospel, and he does it by the spirit of the living God. I had
a fella, I don't even know if y'all know what this is, but
he was attending Cowboy Church. You got any of them around here?
Cowboy Church. I still don't know what it is.
But anyway, he was a friend of one of the members, friend of
Gene's in fact, and he came into church one Sunday and he sat
there and he just looked at me and he'd turn around and he'd
look at Gene and he'd look back up at me and he'd turn around
and look at Gene. But he came back. And this time he brought a Bible.
And when I'd say turn to 2 Corinthians 2, he'd turn to 2 Corinthians
2. He wanted to read it. And he kept doing that. And I
noticed after he'd been there about two months, I looked over
at him one Sunday, and the big tears were just flowing out of
his eyes. He was just, he was drinking
in the gospel like it was the best meal he ever tasted. He
ever tasted. What happened? God gave him hearing
ears, seeing eyes, a heart, gave him a new heart, a heart to embrace
Christ, to embrace his gospel. God gave him life. That's what
1 Corinthians 15's all about. It's about life from the dead.
And if God gives you life from the dead here, you've passed
from death unto life. You don't have to worry about
that next death. You don't have to worry about that at all. He
that believeth on me, he said, will never die. Whatever that
death is, you'll never experience it. To be absent from this body,
Paul said, is to be present with the Lord. Just that fast, just
that quick in his presence. Almost makes you want to die,
don't it? That's what Paul said. He said, if I had my brothers,
I'd just go on and be with the Lord. But he said, it's more
needful for me to stay here and preach. He understood God's purpose. All right, thank you.