If you will, turn back with me
now to Colossians chapter one. I've been thinking a lot lately
about our hope. And it's a present hope, we have
it in this world. It's present in my mind and in
my heart, but it's a hope laid up for us in heaven. It's not, somebody said, boy,
I hope it don't rain tomorrow. That's got no base. It's a baseless
hope. That's what Henry used to say,
I hope, I hope, I hope. Now this hope is laid up, this
hope is real, it's tangible, it's laid up for us in heaven. And it's sure. The surety of
our hope has already entered in beyond the veil. And the anchor
of our hope is Christ, who now sits at the right hand of God.
And so sure is it that it says in Ephesians chapter two, we're
seated with him. Right now, in glory, what a hope. What a hope. And I fear there's things going
on, not only with this coronavirus, but just everyday things and
the providence of God. And it's gonna come to us one
of these days. One of these days. The last time
I said this, I went in on Monday and the doctor came out shaking
his head like this for Kathy. I made this statement from the
pulpit. One of these days, the doctor's gonna come in and he's
gonna do this. It's coming. Do you have a hope? You don't have to be 80 years
old for the doctor to do that. I've seen little children over
at that cancer place dying of cancer. Little tiny children. I've seen middle-aged women with
families and children, they're dying of cancer. Do you have
a hope? What if that doctor come in this
Monday and tells you this bad news? Do you have a hope? What's
your hope? What is your hope? Well, here
Paul said he thanked God for them because of the hope which
was laid up for them in heaven. Now I fear, I do, I fear this,
being zealous for the sovereign grace of God, that I should somehow
narrow that gospel command in such a way that needy sinners
think that they're excluded. I don't want to narrow his command to believers to believe. In John chapter six, verse 40,
our Lord said, I came not to do my own will, but the will
of him that sent me, and this is the will of him that sent
me, that of all which he hath given me, I should lose nothing,
but raise it up again at the last day. And I preach that without
reservation. But I seldom read the next verse
to you, or quote the next verse. He said, and this is the will
of him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son and believeth
on him may have everlasting life. Now I'm gonna tell you something
about being a sinner. You don't know if you're God's
elect. You don't know. You don't know
that God has chosen you. The only thing you know is you're
a sinner. You're a sinner. And in order
to even begin to have such a hope is what I'm talking about. It
has to be preached to you. You have to hear. Whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord will be saved, but how are you
going to call on Him in whom you have not heard or in whom
you have not believed? And how are you going to believe
in Him of whom you have not heard? And how are you going to hear
without a preach? This is the whole point to my preaching up
here. I'm not trying to reform your
lives. I hope God in his grace does
that, but that's not my purpose. My purpose is to tell you about
Christ, tell you about the mercy that's in him, tell you about
the hope laid up for his people in glory, and how that you can
know if you're one of his elect. Wouldn't that be something? I do believe and preach the sovereign
eternal election of God's saints to salvation. You can't deny
that. You'd have to tear out half the
New Testament to deny that. And pretty much all the Old Testament.
And yes, I believe and preach the eternal predestination of
God's saints to sonship, to the adoption of children. And yes, I believe in and preach
the fall of man in the garden and the total depravity of man's
nature. And yes, I believe in and preach
the effectual calling of God's elect through the preaching of
the gospel and the powerful working of the Holy Ghost. But I don't know who's elect
either. The sinner don't know. He just knows because he's heard
that God has an elect, that doesn't make him elect. And because you believe in election
don't make you elect. All of Israel believed in election
and died and unbelieved. That doesn't make you elect.
What makes you elect is faith in God. And I don't know who is and who
is not elect. Do you? I don't know who and who is not
predestinated to be conformed to the image of his son. I just
know that they will be. I don't know who shall and who
shall not be called out of darkness into his marvelous light. I just
know that somebody will. So I must preach and preach in
harmony with the word of God. And the word of God uses such
terms as all men. Boy, I tell you, that was good
news for me when I was a sinner. I was seeking to know something
about who this salvation's for. I could see that salvation was
purchased, that it was wrought out in Christ, that it was a
great thing in him. I just couldn't see myself in
him. And I tell you, when you read
things like all men, wow. Wow. I can fit into that, can't
you? He now commandeth, listen to
this, all men everywhere to repent. Go ye into all the world and
preach the gospel to every creature. Matthew 11, 28, he said, come
unto me, all ye that labor and heavy laden, and I'll give you
rest. I have no need to prequalify,
This act of faith, it's simply mine to command sinners to believe,
to point them to Christ. That's where the hope is. He's
our hope. Christ in you, the hope of glory. That's our hope. To preach this glorious gospel
to men and wait on God to manifest His own. That's what you do. I don't know who they are. Fact
is, most of them that I thought was, turned out they weren't.
Henry said, you got three surprises coming if you ever make it to
glory. He said, all them folks you thought
were saved, they won't be there. And some of them folks that you
thought couldn't possibly be there, will be. But he said,
the biggest surprise to you and glory will be if you're there. So this passage I have before
me concerns those who believe. Those who believe. Any man, any
woman, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, old or young,
black, white, yellow, or red, to every nation, he said, kindred,
tribe, and people under heaven, this gospel is preached unto
you, and you're commanded to believe it, to hope in it, to
cherish it and to thank God for it. It's a command, it's not an invitation. Somehow we wanna turn it around
in our generation and make it an invitation. It's not an invitation,
it's a command. It's a declaration. But though it's a command, if
God will grant you hearing ears and seeing eyes, you'll receive
it as a privilege. We say, I don't get that. I don't
get this whole thing of command and privilege. I don't see how
you get that. Well, my dad used to come in.
And he'd say, son, come and eat. It was a command, he meant it.
He didn't mean for me to sit there and keep watching whatever
I was watching on TV. He meant for me to come to the
table. But I tell you, he didn't have to beat me to get me to
the table. It's time to eat. And when he
tells men to come to Christ, it's a command, but it's a privilege.
My soul, everything God has for sinners is in Christ. Everything. Anything you could possibly want
spiritually, it's in Christ. You need righteousness. He is
righteous. Now he said, the righteousness
without the law is being preached. Without the law, without your
obedience to it, without any consideration of your obedience
to it. He obeyed it in your place. He died in your place. God put us in union with him
before the world was. You can't get in Christ, God
put us in Christ. Isn't that what that says over
there? Of him are you in Christ Jesus,
who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. How'd we get there? God put us
there. The gospel's a declaration and
a command, but its glorious gift makes it a privilege. Makes it
a privilege, and the fact that anyone will not receive and bow
to Christ is undeniable evidence of his depravity. You think of
the things that goes on in this world, and if we were gonna describe
sin, and it was all up to us to do it, that's what we do.
we'd pick something out, whatever in your mind is shockingly horrible
that goes on in the world, and we'd point that out, and we'd
say, here's sin, here's what sin is, Manson, Charles Manson,
that's sin, that's sin, this is sin, that's sin, and we'd
point to all these unforgivable crimes. You know what the Lord says?
He said, this is condemnation. Light has come into the world,
and men love darkness rather than light. That's man's unbelief. He said, when I'm gone, I'm gonna
send the Holy Spirit to you. And he's gonna do three works.
The first work is he's gonna convince you of sin. How's he
gonna do it? They believe not on God. What could be worse than that?
The Son of God appearing in this earth. This is God in human flesh. The very revelation of God. The
very person of God walking among us. The Word was made flesh and
dwelt among us. John said we saw Him, we handled
Him, we heard Him, we touched Him. But men love darkness. rather
than light. They didn't want the light of
God. They didn't want the grace of God. They want rewards. My soul, that's depravity. May the Lord be gracious to us
this morning and give us eyes and ears to hear, to see something
of the grace of God. I've got five things in verses
five and six of Colossians 1 that ought to break the heart of every
sinner and make him willing to bow to
Christ. And first of all, I want you
to see that it's an act of grace that any sinner should have any
hope before God. It's an act of grace. The first
time I mentioned election in that Armenian church I was going
to, they said, well, what about man's rights? And I said, what rights? Man doesn't have any rights.
Last thing I read about man is he kicked him out of the garden
and put an angel there with flaming swords to guard the way. Because
man, he'd just turn around and come back in, wouldn't he? Sure
he would. And he didn't say anything to
Adam when he left. When he booted him out, he didn't
say anything at all about, now if you're willing, you can come
back in. No, he never said that. Didn't
say that. Fact is, Adam didn't come to
him, he came to Adam. It's an act of grace that any
sinner should have a hope before God. In verse three of our text,
Paul gives thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, since hearing of their faith in Christ and their love
for one another. We're all cursed. Did you know
that? We're born under the curse. We're born sinners. We're blind,
dead. Oh, horrible terms he uses to
describe the nature of man. You, hath he quickened, who were
dead in trespasses and sin. Man runs around and talks about
hope like it's hanging on a Christmas tree. All you gotta do is go
pick it. He's sitting right there on the
shelf, all you gotta do is reach up and get it. You don't have any right to it.
He said in John chapter one, in the gospel of John chapter
one, he's talking about this witness of John, and this is
what John said about Christ. He came into the world, and the
world was made by him, but the world didn't want anything to
do with him. And then he came unto his own. He came unto that
nation, his own people. He came unto his own. You might even say he came as
a man, just like them. He came unto his own, and his
own received him not. But some did. And to as many
as received him, it says to them gave he the power to become the
sons of God. It wasn't because they had a
right to it. That word power, it means right. To them who received Him, to
them gave He the right to become sons of God. It gave
you the right, the right to hear, the privilege to hear. And I
asked Brother Don one time, I said, does that word power, does that
mean right or does that mean ability? He said, yes. It means
both. It means both. But right now,
I want you to see that we don't have a right to this thing. Our right is in Christ. Now how do we know if we have
that right? In his providence, he allows
you to hear. Isn't that something? All these people out here, I
don't even know if you even think about this, but I think about
it 24-7. All these people out here, millions and millions and
millions of people, and all of them got their own agenda, all
of them got their own goals in life, and they're going this
way, they're like a bunch of ants, and they're just going
and marrying and giving in marriage and on and on, just like it was
before the flood came, exactly that way. How come I got to here? How come God singled out this
sinner How come he allowed me to hear
one of his premier ministers sit down under him and be fed
by God? Do a work in my heart to receive
it, to believe it, to cherish it. Why me? There's only one
answer. The grace of God. The grace of
God. I'm telling you, this thing ain't,
it's not wide open in the respect that everybody out there is going
to hear. But I want them to, don't you? Because nothing's going to happen
until they do. You know that it says that the
natural mind is enmity against God. That word has to do with
hostility. It's hostile toward God. He's not subject to the law of
God. And you can take that in its
broadest sense. Sometimes when he's talking about
the word of God, he's talking about every word that proceeds
out of the mouth of God. He's talking about all his commands.
And that's the way I believe it's meant there in Romans where
it says that. It's enmity against God. It's
not subject to the commandments of God. It's not subject to the
authority of God. Neither indeed can it be. He has to give you a new mind. A
man being Christ, he's a new creature. He's a new creation.
He gave him, he said, this world, they don't know how to judge
or discern things. He said, but we have the mind
of Christ. How'd you get the mind of Christ?
He gave it to you. Gave it to you. Enable you to
discern. Oh my. In Nehemiah 9, the Lord describes
a mental attitude of the rebel. He says, they acted proudly and
hearkened not unto my commandment, but sinned against thy judgments
and withdrew the shoulder. You ever got mad and done that?
A friend trying to talk to you and puts his hand on your shoulder,
jerk that shoulder away from him, huh? That's what he's talking
about. That's man in his natural state.
Chucks his shoulder away from God. Zechariah 7, it said... He said this to those who pretended
to be servants of God. Verse 11, Zechariah 7, but they
refused to hearken and pulled away the shoulder and stopped
their ears that they should not hear. And you all remember Stephen's
sermon. And when he come down to the
end of it, he said, you uncircumcised in heart and
ears, you do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did,
so do you. Which one of your fathers didn't
persecute the prophets? They all did. They all did. And you walk around proud, proud
as you can be of your heritage, and every one of them, they were
profit killers, God despisers. And this just tiny little taste
of the fallen nature of man. Oh, what an act of grace that
God should give any sinner A hope. Huh? Here he is, he's down there,
he's spitting in the face of God, standing out there. If there's
a God, strike me dead. And all this kind of nonsense.
He hates God. He don't want to hear his gospel.
He'll plug his ears, he'll grit his teeth. He don't want to hear
anything God has to say to him. And yet, and yet, God's merciful
to sinners. Only one reason why anybody fight
against the election of God's saints, and that is because he
or she thinks they have some right to eternal life, that God's
cheating them. Secondly, I want you to see what
a marvelous thing this hope is as it's associated with heaven
itself. Brethren, it talks about Satan's
fall in the scriptures. And what it says is he thought
in his heart, that's as far as his knee in God. God cast him
out of heaven forever. His fall was immediate. It was
fixed. He was put in chains of darkness,
reserved under the judgment of that day. Both he and a third
of the heavenly hosts were cast out of heaven altogether, never
to have any opportunity of grace, any opportunity of mercy, no
calling, no salvation, no one appointed on their behalf. They
were locked in chains of darkness under the judgment of that great
day. That's heaven. And here we are, sinners. And
we have a hope laid up where? In heaven. Don't you find that
marvelous? It'd be one thing if he just
gave us some hope of not being destroyed and just left us in
this earth, but that's not it. He's gonna take us into glory.
We have a hope laid up in heaven. This is the very habitation of
God. I have no concept of what heaven
is. I've had sin all my life. Sin
in my mind, sin in my heart, sin. Everywhere I look, sin.
Every word I speak has sin in it. Every prayer I've ever prayed
has sin in it. Sin, sin, sin. It's all around
you. It's in you. Oh, wretched man that I am, Paul
cried. Not that I used to be, that I
am. We have no concept of what it
would be to live in a place with no sin. Not only none in you,
but none in your mind and none in anybody around you. No sin. Our hope is laid up in such a
place. I have no concept of what it
would be to have no sin, and yet this is the hope Paul describes
in this text. And then thirdly, let me point
out what's come to me to be a very comforting thought. This hope
is laid up for us. Turn with me to 1 Peter chapter
1. I used to hear preachers talk years ago in those Arminian circles
where I traveled. They used to talk about their
good deeds of sending up material into glory to build their eternal
home. Can you imagine? Let me tell you something. Christ
alone entered into glory, and he did so to mediate the peace
between God and men. And before he ascended into glory,
he said this. In my father's house, just hold
your place there. I'm quoting something a little
different to you. In my father's house are many mansions. If it
were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place
for you. If he builds me something out
of my good deeds, it's gonna be a shanty. But if he builds me something
based on Christ, it has to be a mansion. He's the son of God. Everything he did was perfect. I go to prepare a place for you,
and if I go and prepare a place for you, I'm gonna come again.
And I'm gonna receive you unto myself, that where I am there
you may be also. Now look with me here at 1 Peter
chapter one. Begin reading up here in verse
three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again
unto a lively hope, a living hope, by the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible,
undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for
you. who are kept by the power of
God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last
day. My mother used to can fruit and
vegetables for the hard winters up in northern Ohio. And she'd
put these things into jars and put them in that old steam canner
and she'd take them out and you'd hear them lids pop, pop, pop. That meant they were sealed. You know what she called that?
She called that laying aside. Huh? Laying up. Laying up the stuff for the winter. Laying it up. Our hope laid up. It's already sealed. Huh? He gave us the Holy Spirit of
promise whereby you're sealed unto that day. or sealed with the Holy Spirit
of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the
redemption of the purchased possession. And Jude says we're sanctified
by God the Father, that is, he set us apart, and we're preserved
in Jesus Christ. And then we're called. Isn't
that something? That's a comforting thought to
me that a poor sinner has a hope laid up by God. in heaven for him. And the very
faith, the very faith in him is the gift of God. And the very thing, the perseverance
of that saint, he's kept by the power of God through faith. It's
the power of God that keeps him believing. Isn't that something? A hope laid up, guaranteed by
the Son of God in whom we're seated in glory. And then fourthly,
if you grant me just a little leeway here in the text, I think
there will be an anxious question. How can this hope be found? Can
a sinner know that he has such a hope? Yes, he can. He can know it,
and here's how he knows it. Colossians 1, last part of verse
5. Whereof you heard before in the word of the truth of the
gospel. Scriptures are abundantly clear
that faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the word of God. I
quoted those scriptures to you, please God, through the foolishness
of preaching. And I cannot speak for the false
professors, but in Romans 1 16 it plainly says that the gospel
is the power of God unto salvation. To some, no, to everyone that
believe it. Everyone. For therein is the
righteousness of God revealed. And the gospel's not a creed,
the gospel is a person It's the person of Jesus Christ, and to
believe is to believe on him, resting your soul upon him, resting
your future upon him, resting your health upon him. I've never ceased to be amazed
how this world, when we have something like what's going on
right now, how they think they can fix it. You do this and we
can fix it. You can't fix it. It's not yours
to fix. You're not the one who gave it.
You're not the one in control of it. God is. Is there something out there
that's just random, that's just happening, or is this controlled
by God? I was talking to David Edmondson
just a few short weeks ago on this very thing, and I told him,
I said, you know, God sent all them plagues down to Egypt. None of them fell in Goshen.
none of them. How come? How come? Because Pharaoh wasn't
in control of those things, Moses wasn't in control of those things,
God was. And he sent it where he purposed
it to go. That's exactly right. Oh, this thing is in a person.
and we believe on him and we rest upon him and we rest our
lives and for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Oh, I'm afraid
you're gonna die. You know what our response ought
to be? Yippee! That's right. We ought to rejoice, my soul. Act like it's a prison sentence.
Oh no. Huh? To die is gain. Isn't it? To believe is to believe on Him.
And to believe is to believe in Him. In His Godhead and in
His appointments and in His offices and in His accomplishments. and
in his present work and glory. He's my hope. He's my hope, and
my hope is laid up, laid up in heaven for me. To believe is
to bow to the testimony of God concerning his son. I'm gonna
tell you something, you beware of any man or woman with some
individual or private interpretation or revelation of God. You just
turn away from them. We say that's rude, be rude,
turn away from them. Walk away. Isaiah said to the
law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this
word, it's because there's no light in them. They can't speak
according to this word, they have to make one up. God told
me to build this big old statue and for everybody in the United
States to send me a check for $5,000. I've heard these prime
time prophets say such things. I love that on the way up to
Michigan, I used to go up there and preach to a little group
and on the way up there, there's this church and it has a big
lake in front of it and they have a bosom of Christ and he's
waist deep in that lake. And he's got his hands up toward
heaven like this, and he's standing out in that lake, that big old
statue. Lightning hit that thing and blew it to smithereens. I
went up there. I looked over and saw that thing,
and, well, I won't even tell you what it looked like. But
there it sit. It had no hands, no arms, no
head, just a bust standing there in the water. Oh, my soul. The gospel of Christ is eternal. And I'm not going to waste my
time arguing with some intellectual over eternal justification. Is
your God eternal? Is His Son eternal? Is He not
the Lamb slain? And if He was slain before the
foundation of the world, I would justify it before the foundation
of the world. Yeah, but you take away the The certainty of his
death, the necessity of his death. No, I'm establishing it. All these Old Testament saints,
you think they were saved because God didn't accept that justification
back then? Christ hadn't died yet. I've got nothing original to
say. I have the testimony of God concerning his son. And the word of God says he came
into this world to save sinners, that he died for his sheep, that
he's our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,
that he's a high priest, able, able high priest, to save to
the uttermost all those who come unto God by him. What are you saying, preacher?
I'm saying come unto God by him. That's what I'm saying, come
on. What's holding you back? What are you waiting on? You
think this world gonna get better? You think you're gonna get better?
Come to Christ. Come to Christ. Any man come unto me, any man
believe on me, he passed from death unto life. That's what
it says. Believe on him. And if God grants you the ability
to do it, you can look at that hope and
marvel in that hope that's laid up for you in glory. May God enable you to do it for
his sake. Thank you.