Turn with me to Mark chapter
10. Mark chapter 10. And I want you to follow along with
me as I read verses 28 through 34. Mark chapter 10. Verse 28. Then Peter began to say unto
him, now this is after their confrontation with the rich young ruler, and
the Lord had told him what to do, go sell everything you have,
take up your cross and follow me, and he went away. Having thought about it, got
off to the shelf, Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have
left all. We did what the rich young rulers
couldn't do. We've left all and have followed
thee. Now in Matthew's account it said,
what shall we have therefore? Jesus answered and said, Verily
I say unto you, there's no man that hath left house, or brethren,
or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands
for my sake and the gospels, but he shall receive a hundredfold
now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers,
and children, and lands, with persecutions. and in the world to come eternal
life. But many that are first shall
be last, and the last first. And they were in the way going
up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went before them, and they were amazed,
and as they followed, they were afraid. And he took again the
12 and began to tell them what things should happen unto him. saying, behold, we go up to Jerusalem,
and the Son of Man shall be delivered unto the chief priests and unto
the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver
him to the Gentiles. And they're gonna mock him, and
shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill
him. And the third day he shall rise
again. The disciples had just watched
the most promising subject that they'd ever seen walk away empty
because he would not commit himself to the Lord Jesus Christ. But as they thought about it,
they had. They had. They had left all for
Christ. They had left fathers and mothers
and sisters and brothers and lands and jobs everything else,
and they followed him. And as I said in Matthew 19,
27, he adds a little bit to Peter's
question, you find these words, what shall we have therefore?
The rich young ruler couldn't bring himself to part with that
sacrifice, but they had, or at least in their eyes, they had.
And I wanna say something here. You cannot give anything to God. Now, if you have some thoughts,
I'm gonna give this to the Lord, you can't give anything to him.
In the first place, he don't need it. Second place, he don't
want it. He said, if I was hungry, I wouldn't
tell you. Why would I tell you? The cattle on a thousand hills
are mine. And you don't have anything that he hadn't given
you. So you just, he gives it to you and you hand it back to
him and then you put your fingers in your suspender full of what
I've done. No, you haven't done anything.
You haven't done anything. Paul told those Greek philosophers
on Mars Hill that God is not worshipped with men's hands as
though he needed anything. seeing he giveth to all life
and breath and all things. All things were made by him and
for him and he lacks nothing. But he will have the evidence
of faith made known and acknowledged by a total commitment to him. And he may never call on you
to take anything or leave anything or do anything for his sake. or the gospels, but you will
have already surrendered it when you come to him. Our Lord could have answered
Peter's statement with a sharp rebuke, but he didn't. He didn't. Rather, he answers
him with the most amazing promise that I've ever read. Whatever you have left or given
shall be given back to you a hundredfold. You think about that. A hundredfold. Well, yeah, in the world to come,
that ain't what it says. It says in this life. In this
life. I've left my home, my family,
my job, years ago, to follow the Lord. But I have a home everywhere
I go. Everywhere I go. I go to Virginia, I have a home.
I go to North Carolina, I got a home. Go to Tennessee, I got
a home. Everywhere I go, I have a home. I'm supposed to go up and fill
in for Larry Crease, and he lets me stay in his house, and he
said, you just treat this like it's yours. I said, OK. I have a home everywhere I go. I got sisters by the thousands. I got brethren by the thousands. Fathers and mothers and children. And I've never wanted for anything.
It don't matter what I give. It comes back. And it just keeps
coming and you keep giving and it keeps coming. Now I'm not
falling into this investment type preaching, don't get me
wrong here, but this is an amazing promise that our Lord makes to
his disciples. What he's telling them is, you
haven't really given me anything. I've given you everything. I've
given you everything. And we haven't given anything
that he didn't give us to start with. I don't want to mention
any names but a man who lives away from here but benefits from
the ministry here. He got an inheritance years ago
and he wrote this church a pretty sizable check and sent it to
the church. I'm very appreciative of his
gift and I know him well enough to know it was given in the right
spirit. But that's what I'm telling you.
We have what we have by inheritance. We're fellow heirs with Christ. And that's what justifies the
gifts that he gives and the returns that he gives. And it's just
out of love to him that we give back. we give back, but it's
important that we understand that what we're giving was his
to start with. In spite of our ignorance about
it, we receive a hundredfold return on everything that we've
given. Don't you find that amazing?
I find that absolutely amazing. And then listen to this, our
Lord takes them outside on the road on his way to the cross
and he tells them again what lies ahead. He must suffer and
die and be raised from the dead. And I want to start here. The
Bible says that we're heirs of God. We're heirs of God. How'd we get to be heirs of God?
God made us heirs. He predestinated us under the
adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to
the good pleasure of his will. He made us heirs. In Ephesians 111 it says, in
Christ we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according
to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel
of his own will. That's how come we obtained this
inheritance. We had been no different than
anybody else in this world, except for that. God intervened. And because we're sons, he says,
God has sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a
servant, but a son. And if a son, then you're an
heir of God through Christ. And an heir, listen to this,
he receives things that are rightfully his, but not by his own works,
the works of another. If you receive an inheritance
from somebody in your family, it's rightfully yours. That document
says it goes to you. There's a legal document. Luke Whitehead. But not by your works, but according to the good pleasure
of whosever will left you that inheritance. And this is the
way it is with the Lord. We're heirs of God. So what we have is really ours,
but it's not by our hand, and so we can give it, but we can
never really take credit for it. You see what I'm saying? And then secondly, let's look
at the gift. That's the title of our study
this morning, The Gift and the Giver. So let's look at the gift. Paul said to the Corinthians,
all things are yours. What has God given to us? If
we're heirs of God, I mean, really, heirs of God. No pretense, no
decisionism, no sign and pledge cards. God has actually made
us heirs and sent his spirit into our heart and we cry Abba,
Father. And we find out that we're actually
heirs of God. What is it that he's given to
his heirs? Well, the scripture says he hath
given all things. Corinthians was in there arguing
about over who they were born again under, whose ministry,
whose preaching, as though that meant something. The Lord said, or Paul said,
don't you know? Don't you know that all things
are yours whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or death
or things present or things to come? All things are yours and
you are Christ and Christ is God. All things. I don't know why, I guess because
we're carnal. But we seem to be able to grasp
the big things. We can grasp the salvations of
the Lord. We can grasp that redemption
is in Christ. We can see all that. But when
it comes down to the little everyday things, we have difficulty in
that, don't we? And yet God is in every little
thing. That's what Paul's telling them.
All things are yours. They're yours. It doesn't matter what you're
talking about. You're talking about things present, talking about things
to come, talking about the world, talking about preachers, talking
about the ministry, it's yours. If it wasn't yours, you'd never
heard it to start with. And there's nothing that God
will hold back from his heirs except it be something which
could cause that heir some harm. How do I know that? Because he
spared not his own son. How shall they not also with
him freely give us all things? If God didn't hold back his son,
what's he gonna hold back, a hamburger? Gonna hold back a job? He's not
gonna hold back anything unless that thing is about to do you
harm. Then he'll withhold. God, our Heavenly Father, has
given us all things through His Son, Jesus Christ, everything
in this world, and eternal life in the world to come. Says we're
kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to
be revealed in the last day. He says in the book of Peter,
in time past you were not a people, but you're now the people of
God. And the rulers of this world,
though they're fierce and deadly, are not a terror to the heirs
of God, they're actually ministers of God to thee for good. If we didn't have policemen and
patrolmen and armies and all of this stuff, if there was no
government out here, you couldn't live in this world.
You couldn't live in this world. Oh, the gift of God, his dear
son, the unspeakable gift, the gift of salvation, the gift of
redemption, the gift of substitution, the gift of sanctification,
preservation, the just giving himself to the unjust to bring
us to God. When I think about the gift of
God and how inclusive it is of all things, the gift of the Holy Ghost, without
which I would never see nor hear, no heart would ever be able to
perceive the things that God had prepared for them that love
him, but he's revealed among us by spirit. The gift of the word of God, we was, talking over supper last
night, and I was trying to make this point. When I sit down and
talk to somebody, you have to have a basis. I don't care if
I'm teaching you English or teaching you shop or whatever, I got to
have some basis to say, here's what it says. I got to come back
to that. Without this book, we don't have
a basis. But with this book, I have a
basis whether men will receive it or not. But I have a basis. Now, if they won't receive it,
I'm done talking. You want to sit out and argue
opinions, you can. But myself, I wouldn't walk across
the street. But if you want to sit and look
at the basis and listen to what the basis says, I'll sit with
you all night. We have the gift of the word
of God and the gift of the gospel of Christ. My soul, you think about what
it is, the gift of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the
power of God unto salvation. And he's not only allowed you
to hear it, but he calls you to rejoice in it and to understand
it, to perceive it, to receive it. to lay hold on it. How precious is that? That's
a gift. He's given us the gift of faith
and the gift of repentance and the gift of regeneration. Paul said, what have you gotten
that you haven't received? And if you've received it, why
do you act like you haven't? Everything that comes to a believer
comes as the free gift of God according to God's sovereign
grace. And then lastly, let's look at the giver. It says, and
Jesus went before them, and they were amazed. They were amazed. Not just looking at his person,
but listening to what he was telling them. They were amazed,
and as they followed, the farther they went, they were afraid. Why? because he began again to
tell them what lie ahead. The Son of Man, Jehovah's Servant,
is going up to Jerusalem and there God is gonna turn him over
to the chief priest and the rulers and they're gonna condemn him
to death and deliver him to the Gentiles to be crucified. He's the reason for these great
and precious gifts that are coming. to his brethren, and he bought
them the right to receive him. And the scripture said, every
good gift and perfect gift cometh from above, cometh down from
the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness. God no changes
mine. He's gonna give his people all
things. Paul said, blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with
all spiritual blessings. All spiritual blessings. And
it's God who is the ultimate source of these gifts. He gave
his son. He just keeps telling us in the
book of 1 John and all through the book of John and all the
other epistles, he just keeps telling us that the Father gave
us his son. Gave us his son. And he gave him to be spit on
and mocked and murdered on the cross. In the book of Isaiah,
the prophet said, we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God,
and afflicted. When we looked at his death,
we saw no cause of death in him, but we esteemed him. We looked at what was going on,
and we said, this is of God. God is smiting him. He's stricken, smitten of God,
and afflicted. It pleased the Lord to bruise
him. You remember the Jews on one
occasion, because he told them that a lot of the blessings of
God were going to the Gentiles and not the Jews, and all these
men here who were just absolutely certain that they were heirs
of God didn't know God, and they got angry at him and took him
out and was gonna throw him over the brow of the hill, and it
said he turned and passed right through their midst, for his
time was not yet, and they couldn't touch him. Well, who enabled them to touch
him? Tells you over in Acts chapter four. They did what God's hand
and God's counsel determined before to be done. It pleased the Lord to bruise
him. He hath put him to grief. He made his soul an offering
for sin. The giver has given all. And
the very evidence of his love and willingness to give is the
gift of his son. God spoke to Abraham from heaven.
He told him, take your son, Isaac, his only son. Take him up on
the mountain. Offer him up. And little 15, they figure he
was about 15, and he was packing the wood and everything. He said,
I see the wood, and I see the fire, and I see the night, but
worse Where's the lamb? You can't worship God without
a sacrifice. Where's the lamb? He said, Lord
will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. And he did. He did. But Abraham was faithful. He went up there and he drew
back that knife. He was getting ready to slay
his son. And his son was willing to be
slain. That old man Abraham couldn't have tied his son, that 15-year-old
boy, up. He was willing. And he lay there,
and God saw the knife, and he saw Abraham's heart and mind,
and he said, now I know that you fear God, seeing thou hast
not withheld thy son, thine only son. Well, how do I know that
God loves me? Where is the evidence of God's
love to me? How do I know that? How do I know that he's willing
to give me the things that I so desperately need to be saved?
Because he spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all.
The gift and the giver. Who's the giver? God is. God
is. Paul said to Timothy, he said,
God has saved all my soul. What a difference. I run around for years saying
I got saved. But I didn't get saved. I got
deluded. I got deceived, but I didn't
get saved. And then I found out one day
that God saved me. Now there's a difference. If
you don't know the difference, you don't know the gospel. I'm
telling you there's a difference between getting saved and working
things out for yourself and God saving your soul. You'll know
from that day on, God saved me. And that's what Paul told Timothy. You're young, you got a lot to
go through, but know this, God has saved us. And then he called
us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to
his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began. And ain't you glad it was? That's
what made it sure, the surety. That's what made it sure. That's
the only reason I preach. My soul, if I didn't think God
was preserving these things, doing these things, I wouldn't
waste my time. Wouldn't waste my time. But see,
that's what spurred Paul on. Once he found out God was in
this thing, doing this thing, that God had ordained this thing,
that God was the giver, now he's ready to preach. Now he's ready
to sacrifice. Now he's willing to lay down
his life. Now you're willing to go where nobody else would
ever go. Apostle Paul, because God is
the giver and the gift is his son. And through his son, he's
given us all things. All things are yours. All right,
thank you.