If you will, turn with me to
2 Timothy chapter 4. 2 Timothy chapter 4. I'm going to concentrate primarily
on verse 2. And in chapter 3, having declared
the Holy Scriptures to be the inerrant Word of God, a book of speculation. It's not
a book of theories. It's not a book of possibilities. One preacher in California built
a reputation on that, preaching on possibilities. It's not a book of possibilities.
It's a book of certainties, absolute certainties. I remember Tim James
preached for me years ago, and he made this statement He said,
I love absolutes because with absolutes there are no alternatives. And having declared the Holy
Scriptures to be the inerrant Word of God and having stated
its purpose, here's its purpose is to make men wise unto salvation. That's what he told Timothy from
a child. Your grandmother and your mother,
they read to you the Word of God and from a child thou hast
known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto
salvation. And so having stated all these
things, the Apostle charges this young man before God. I think of this young man and
I think of myself at my own ordination service years ago up at 13th
Street Baptist Church. And this young man was charged
by the Apostle Paul before God and before the one that Bobby
just told us about, whose train fills the temple, who sits high
and lifted up. He's the Creator. He's the God-man
mediator. He's all. He's all. And this apostle charges this
young man before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall
judge the quick and the dead in His appearing and in His kingdom,
to preach the Word. See it there in verse 2? Preach
the Word. Be instant. In season. Out of season. When
you're ready and when you're not ready. Study to show thyself approved,
a workman worthy of his meat. Be instant in season, out of
season, reproved, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering
and doctrine. Preach the Word. The pulpit is not a man's private
soapbox. It's not a place to get up with
all the political issues and all the issues between men and
women and all the issues between rich and poor. It's not a soapbox. You don't stand up here and debate
and campaign for political offices. The pulpit is reserved for preaching
and preaching the Word of God. The Lord said, when they shall
say unto you, this is something the brother was preaching out
of the book of Isaiah. This is something else Isaiah
said. Or God said through him. And
he said, when they shall say unto you, seek unto them that
have familiar spirits. That is, when you hear them,
you feel like there's some common ground. You feel like this man, he can
talk to me. I've heard people say that. I
just go down there. There's something about that
man. That's familiar spirits. And he said, when they shall
say unto you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits. Those
who sounds familiar, sounds like something everybody believes. He's okay. He's not a fanatic.
Go hear him. He's not weird like that other
guy. Go hear him. Or they say unto them, seek ye
wizards that peep and mutter. This means a clever person. It doesn't mean at all what I
thought it did. I thought it was talking about wizards. But
if you look the word up, you know, even in our slang today,
we get a mechanic and boy, he can really fix, he can tell you
what's wrong with that thing and fix it. We call him a wizard
sometimes, don't we? He's just a wizard. That's really
what this word means. That's what it means. He's wise.
He's able to figure things out. And he's a man also. according to the other definition
that we have, who speaks in strange languages that we can't understand. And he likes to, like the Catholics
sometimes, to speak in Latin. And nobody in there knows what
they're saying. But it's OK, because he don't
know what he's saying either. And they like to intimidate men
by pretending to have a power that they don't have. And they
make strange sounds and so on. But here's what the Lord said,
Should not a people seek unto their God for the living to the dead, to the law and to the testimony? This is Isaiah 8.20. To the law
and to the testimony. That's the whole Old Testament,
isn't it? That's the law with all of its types and symbols
where God set forth Christ as the propitiation for our sins. And the testimony, the testimony
of the prophets, testifying of the coming Redeemer, testifying
of what He would do and what He would say and where He would
go. To the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to
this Word, whose Word? God's Word. It is because there
is no light in them. Not a little light. Didn't say
they went astray a little bit. Said there's no light in them. Because there is no light apart
from the Word of God. It's my experience dealing with
fallen men that they have little or no interest in the Word of
God and certainly no knowledge of it. I never hear one tell
me, well, it says over in Romans 4. No, they just say, well, that
don't seem right. Isn't that what they say? Ignorant
of the Word of God. They say, well, I just think.
But God said, your thoughts are not my thoughts. Well, it seems to me. Here's
another one. Us Baptists believe. I don't want to know what Baptists
believe. I want to know what you believe.
What do you believe? Let me show you something in
the Scriptures. Back in the book of Job. Job was a man of God. He was a righteous, devoted,
loving child of God. He was one all along. God said there's nobody like
him. Nobody like Job. And he gave Satan permission
to take everything he had away from him except his life. Don't take his life. And so he did. He took his riches,
his children, his title, his reputation, even his health. And finally, I believe he even
took away his wife because his wife said, why don't you just
curse God and die? And this happened so fast. while one man was telling him
what happened, another showed up to tell him what happened
next. And then another showed up before he could finish talking,
telling him what happened next. It happened in a flash. And it happened so fast that
Job's friends believed him to be cursed of God, that Job had
done something, said something. And God was retaliating. God
was cursing His beloved servant. And so these sorry comforters
came out to Him trying to get Him to confess His sins. And
they'd tell Him some things, and then Job would say some things
back. And then they'd say some things to Job, and Job would
say some... And it goes all the way through the book of Job like
that. Finally, God spoke. Job 38.1. The Lord answered Job
out of the whirlwind and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel
by words without knowledge? Isn't that what preachers are
doing today? Boy, I don't want to be guilty
of that. When you try to preach with no
understanding, you're darkening the counsel of God. You're darkening God's message.
You're darkening God's light. If our gospel be hid, it's hid
to the lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the
minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious
gospel of Christ should shine unto them. He said, Who is this
that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now
thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee, and you answer
me. Now here's where I'm going with
this. Where was you when I laid the foundations of the earth? What do you know about it? You
talk to a man who probably hadn't read the Bible since he was in
Sunday school, and then a man quoted it to him, and he didn't
even look it up. And you're standing there talking
to him, and he'll start giving you his opinion on the Word of
God. Where were you? You see what God's saying? What
do you know about it? You can't even tell me about
the migration of the wild ashes and the foul of the air. You
can't tell me why the ocean don't just break loose and flood the
world. What do you know about anything? You don't know. Well,
who does? God does. Isn't that what he's
saying here to Timothy? The only thing you know about
this is what I taught you. That's what Paul told him. You
stick there. You stay there. You be established in those things
that I've taught you. Because you know who I am and
you know who sent me. And you know where I got my information.
I got it from the Word of God. And this man was a writer of
the Word of God. Brethren, you and I know nothing
apart from the Word of God Do we? And this man preaching to you
this morning, I can't tell you anything apart from the Word
of God. Apart from the Word of God. I
was shocked as a young man. I went down. It was time for
me to settle down. It was time for me to do what
I was always taught to do, go down and join the church and
become a part of the the ministry of that church, that local ministry
in that community, and so I did. And I went down there, and I
didn't understand a thing they were telling me. Of course, neither
did they. But I wanted to be a part of it.
And I decided I'm going to put my hand to the plow. I'm going
to do this thing. I'm going to get out here. And
boy, here I was. And they had a revival meeting.
And I was just on fire. And I went out there. went up
to my brother-in-law's cabin, and his brother was there visiting.
And I'll never forget it. He had a pair of cut-off jeans
on it, and he had a long-neck blue-ribbon beard in his hand,
and he was sitting there on the couch. And I said, I just come
up to invite you to come down to church. He said, why? Well, nobody ever
asked me that before. I didn't know what to say. I
was trying to think fast on my feet, and I said, We're having
a revival. He said, so? What's that mean? I said, well,
we've got an evangelist down there. He said, well, what's
he preach? I said, he preaches the gospel. This fellow looked up at me,
he said, you wouldn't know the gospel if you met it in the middle
of the road. And I said, what do you mean
I don't know the gospel? Well, if you know the gospel,
what is it? And for the first time in my
life, I realized I didn't know the gospel. So I said, well,
you've kind of taken me by surprise. I said, I'm going to go home
and read my Bible. Oh, he said, you need to read
your Bible. It's a good thing. God's people need to read their
Bible. Boy, I was so mad when I left there. I decided I was
going to go home and open this book. And he had said some things
about God's absolute sovereignty. And unbeknownst to me, this man,
of course, he just did it for argument's sake, but he listened
to Ralph Barnard and Henry Mahan for years. And his doctrine was
good. His attitude and spirit wasn't,
but his doctrine was good, and he mentioned some things to me.
And I went home and started reading the Word of God, and here's things
that these pastors... I mean, I went to church four
or five times a week. We'd even go to the mission churches.
I'd sit up on a feed bag and listen to that man preach. Nobody
in all them years ever mentioned God's absolute sovereignty. Never
read a scripture that said anything about His sovereignty. I was
shocked out of my shoes when I read Daniel chapter 4. When I read Romans chapter 9. Started to see something about
these things. I didn't have any connection
between those things and the salvation of a sinner, but I
was shocked to learn these things were in the Word of God. And
the more I read, the more shocked I got. Then I found out election
is in the Scriptures. What in the world is election? And I was seeking desperately
to find answers to these things. And I was asking the elders in
our church, and none of them knew anything about it. The oldest
one there, he told me, he said, well, now the secret things belong
unto the Lord. I said, yeah, but he told John
what the secret things put his pen up. He wrote these things. These aren't secret. He didn't
write secret things. I said, I read in here where
the Word of God is profitable for doctrine, everything in it. And he said, well, I'm just telling
you, he said, the secret things belong, don't start messing with
that old predestination stuff. Finally, one of the elders in
my church, He was just sitting back, and he listened, kind of
like somebody might have been doing when Job was talking to
his friends. But he was just listening. He listened to me,
listened to them, listened to me. Finally, he said, there's
a guy on Sunday morning who preaches these things all the time. I
said, on primetime Sunday morning on television? I said, there
ain't nobody. Yeah, he said, there is. His
name's Henry Mahan. The next Sunday, I stayed home.
Nine o'clock, I turned TV on. There's Henry Mayhem. He went
right down the line on these things. I told my wife, I said,
I'm going up to his church tonight. So I drove 50 miles up the river,
went to his church, heard the gospel for the first time in
my life. And that's where I camped out
and stayed. We have the Word of God. And
this Word is given by inspiration of God, and it alone is profitable
for doctrine. It doesn't matter what you think.
It doesn't matter what your daddy said. It matters what God said. Let God be true in every man's
life. And the man who has it and understands
it and preaches it is thoroughly furnished. That's what Paul said.
You're thoroughly furnished unto all good works. You have everything
you need. You have everything you need.
Everything you need knows, right here in this book. So what does His Word say? What
does this book declare? What does it testify to me? Well,
the book of God is a book of redemption. Not a science book. It's not a book of genealogies,
although both are stated in there. That's not why it was written.
It's a book of redemption. It's a book of reconciliation.
It's a book of salvation in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. Acts
10.43, listen to this. Here's how the apostles preached
the Word of God. They said to him, give all the
prophets witness. Well, what did they say? that
through his name, whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission
of sins. You say, well, I read the Old
Testament, it's just a mystery. That's what it says. That's what
it says. So you still think about them
graphs that men draw. You've seen them, they draw these
graphs. I just look at them anymore and shake my head. I don't know
what in the world they're doing. Where's it going with all this
stuff? And they'll say, well, go back to Daniel chapter 7 and
I'll show you. And you go back to Daniel chapter
7, it has nothing to do with what he had on that ground. To him give all the prophets
witness that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall
receive remission of sins. Listen to this, Acts 13, 38.
Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through
this man Through this man, what man? The man Christ Jesus. Through this man is preached
unto you the forgiveness of sins and by him all that believe are
justified from all things from which you could not be justified
by the law of Moses. But the Jews wouldn't have it.
They heard that word preached by God's ambassador and they
threw it away. And they spoke evil of all that
Paul and Barnabas had preached. Now listen to what Paul said,
Acts 13, verse 46. Then Paul and Barnabas waxed
bold and they said it was necessary that the Word of God, that's what we're interested
in, that the Word of God should first have been spoken to you,
but seeing you put it from you. What did they put from them?
The Word of God. What do they cling to? Tradition. The popular vote. The majority. Seeing you put it from you and
judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life. Lo, we turn
to the Gentiles. Now listen to this. What do the
Gentiles hear? For so hath the Lord commanded
us, saying, I have sent thee to be a light of the Gentiles,
that thou shouldest be for salvation. under the ends of the earth.
That's Psalm 2.8. He put His Holy King on His heel.
Gave Him the heathen. And when the Gentiles heard this,
what did they hear? They heard from the Word of God
that they were connected to this. It wasn't just the Jews. They found out in the Word of
God that they had a personal concern with this thing of Jesus
Christ. I can't give it to you. You can't
get it yourself. But God can show you in His Word. And when the Gentiles heard this,
they were glad. Now watch this. And they glorified
the Word of the Lord. And as many as were ordained
to eternal life believed. Now it's one thing to hear a
man and it's another thing to hear that same man as he's enabled
of God to speak to your heart out of His Word. And then for
God to lay in your heart a foundation of a good hope. A good hope. in Christ. Well, what does this
book say about Christ and His redemption? Well, it says time
and again that Christ was chosen, ordained, appointed to all His
eternal offices before the world began. Before there was an earth,
there was a Savior. Before you was talking about
those that milky way stretching sky to sky. I used to see that
down in Yucatan, Mexico when I'd go down there and visit with
Walter Grover. But you can see so many more. There was none
of those things, but there was a Savior. Well, what are you saying? I'm
saying the Savior created the world. And Paul preached that
it was created by Him. Now listen. for Him. What's going on in creation?
Scientists are studying. Children are going to college
trying to learn. Everybody's looking into it. They're studying
the ocean and studying the sky and going into outer space and
doing this and doing that. They're all trying to figure
out what's going on in the world. The salvation of sinners. That's
what's going on in the world. And the world ain't going nowhere
until he saves every one of them. Every one of them. And when the
last one's saved, he'll wrap it up. He'll wrap it up. That's what it says. At the very
beginning of this letter to Timothy, Paul said, God hath saved us. You ever hear people talking
about getting saved? Just anymore it's kind of funny to me I know
it ain't a funny thing, but it just seems funny to me to hear
him say that anymore. There was a time when it seemed
perfectly logical. I got saved. I had a fella came
in our church one night. He's a logger. And he come in,
and boy, he was nervous as a cat. And he got here too early. Somebody
gave him the wrong service time. And he got here early, and he
was just pacing back and forth, in and out. And he come up, introduced
himself, and he said, I'm a sinner. And I said, well, it's good that
you know that. And oh, he said, I'm a vile sinner. He said, you don't know what
I'm saying. I said, well, I've got a pretty
good idea of what you're saying. And finally he said, he was sitting
there on the front pew and he just jumped up and he said, here's
what we're going to do. All y'all are going to gather
around me and we're going to pray and I'm going to make a
profession of faith and then I'm going to be baptized. And
I said, no, that's not what we're going to do. What we're going
to do is you're going to sit down there on that front pew
and you're going to shut up. And I'm going to preach the gospel
to you and maybe the Lord will save you. Maybe the Lord will
open your heart and reveal Himself to you. But if He don't, ain't
nothing I can do about it. And ain't nothing He can do about
it. All you can do is hear. Faith cometh by hearing. It don't
come in your closet. It don't come out yonder on the
lake. It don't come up on the mountainside. It comes through
hearing. And if you'll look that up in
Romans chapter 8 and go back just a few verses, he'll tell
you, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be
saved. But how are you going to call on Him 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
that preacher? And how on earth is he going to preach if I don't
send him? But if I do, if I send him and
I speak through him and I do something for you, You're going
to look at that old preacher, that old hillbilly from Arkansas,
and you're going to say, boy, he got the prettiest feet I ever
seen. God brought him here for me. Isn't that something? Isn't that
what Paul said? Therefore, he said, faith cometh
by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. And that's what Paul
wrote Timothy right off the bat. He said, God saved us. And then He called us. Oh, I
thought He called you first and then saved you. No. He saved
you first and then He called you. Not according to our works,
but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us
in Christ Jesus before the world began. Think about that. The book of God said Christ is
a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. I was teaching
that in my Sunday school class the other day, and I said, I
was reading a man, I forget who it was, one of the old writers,
and he said, well, Melchizedek wasn't really Christ. He said
Christ was made after the order of Melchizedek. And I said, well,
it says in Hebrews 7 that Melchizedek was like unto the Son of God,
and that's what he told me. He wasn't a son of God, he was
like unto the Son of God. And I said, let me ask you something.
Who or what is like unto the Son of God? That same prophet
Isaiah, the Lord, the Lord spoke. And he said, Who will you liken
me to? There's none like me. Who's like unto the Son of God? No, the only one like the Son
of God is the Son of God. And Melchizedek was a priest
forever, like unto the Son of God. He was the Son of God. And
God swore him in with an oath. And his priesthood is from everlasting. He didn't have a father or a
mother. He didn't have a beginning of days or an end of days. Who
could take that on himself except Christ? He's a priest forever. And because
He continueth ever, He's able to save to the uttermost those
who come unto God by Him. You see what I'm saying here
in the Word of God? Christ, all His eternal appointments
as the Mediator, as the Savior, as the surety of the everlasting
covenant of grace, all these appointments of God, He received
them before there's ever a man, before there's ever a garden. The book of God said there's
only one manifestation of God, and that is the appearing of
Jesus of Nazareth and the redemptive work that He accomplished. In
John 1.18 it says, No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which
is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. The Word
was made flesh and dwelt among us. Show us the Father and we'll
be satisfied. Have you been so long time with
me and you don't know the Father? If you've seen me, you've seen
the Father. Men tell me, they say, well,
you don't know anything about the Holy Ghost. Sure I do. And everything
I know about Him, I know in Christ. God's revealed in Christ. This
is God come into the flesh. In John 3, verse 32, I was just
reading it in the Bible that's open up here. It says, What he
hath seen and heard, that he testifieth, and no man receiveth
his testimony. He that receiveth his testimony
hath said to his seal that God is true. And in 1 John 5, verse
20, it said, And we know that the Son of God hath come, and
given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true.
Brothers, you don't know Christ, you don't know God. My Jesus wouldn't do like that.
Well, your Jesus ain't God. It's just that simple. We know that the Son of God has
come and given to us an understanding that we may know Him that's true
and we're in Him that's true. This is the true God and eternal
life. And then, fourthly, the message
of this book, the testimony of the living God, is that God has
given to a people, I don't know who they are, but He's given to a people eternal
life, and this life is in His Son. People tell me, well, ain't you
got something else to talk about? The only thing you ever talk
about is Christ in Him's life. He that hath the
Son hath life. He that hath not the Son of God
hath not life. I'm interested in life. I've
already experienced death. I'm interested in life, eternal
life. I hope there's nobody here today
still at odds with God's eternal election of His saints. to deny God's election of His
saints, you'd have to throw away half your Bible. You wouldn't
have much left. The Father blessed us with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according.
You go through there, you'll find that word six or seven times
in that first chapter of Ephesians alone. According, according,
according. And all these blessings Through
His eternal appointments, through those offices that God assigned
to Him and ordained Him for, God blessed us in Him before
the foundation of the world, according as He's chosen us in
Him before the foundation of the world. The wish to be holy
and without blame before Him, being loved. Being loved. In Christ, you've always been
loved. There was a time when God didn't love you. Paul said there's a remnant at
this present time according to the election of grace. And Christ
said this, all that the Father giveth me shall come to me. Is
that election? Sounds like it to me. And him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out. I come down from heaven not to
do my own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this
is the Father's will which has sent me, that of all which he
hath given me I should lose nothing. Raise it up again at the last
day. And I love this one. He said,
Thou shalt call His name Jesus. Point that little badge. Thou
shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save whose people? His people from their sin. See, all this walking down aisles
and signing pledge cards and speaking in tongues and all this
junk, that's what it is, it's just junk, is for naught. The real question is, how do
I know my election? How do I know it? Only one way
to know it. All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me, come to Christ. That's how you know it. That's
how you know it. I'll tell you something about
the Word of God. It'll shed a lot of light on them commentaries.
It will. I love looking at the writings
of these old faithful pastors, but don't read them as inerrant.
They're not. Somebody told Clay Curtis, he
preached and He sat down, and one of the old deacons run up
to him, and he said, you know John Gill don't believe that,
don't you? He said, I just told you what God said. Who's word
we going to take, John Gill's or God's? And that's where it
is. I love John Gill. I read a lot
of John Gill. John Gill was a faithful pastor.
But John Gill's not in there. This is the record, 1 John 5,
11, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is
in His Son. In His Son. He that hath the
Son hath life. And then fifthly, God's testimony
declares that faith in Christ is the only way you can know
your election of God. They probably didn't know it,
but Paul told the Thessalonians, he said, I know your election
of God. How do you know that, Paul? My
gospel didn't come unto you in word only. It come in power and
it come in the Holy Ghost. Now listen, you become followers
of us and the Lord. I become a follower of Henry
Mahan because I knew God sent him. I knew he had God's gospel
and God's word and I followed him. I followed Him, and that's
what Paul told these people. You become followers of us and
the Lord. You received our message. You
received this gospel that God preached to you through us. You say, don't that give a man
a big head? It didn't give Paul one. He said, I'm not sufficient
of myself to think anything of myself. My sufficiency is of
God. But I'm going to tell you something.
There's no gray area here. Either God sent me, or I'm Antichrist. There's nothing in between. And if God sent me, that's what
makes the difference in here. If God sent me. And if Antichrist
is in me, and that spirit of Antichrist and that spirit of
error then what you're doing this morning is an abomination
before God listening to me. That's just how serious this
thing is. Well, how do you know that? I know that by the Word
of God. By the Word of God. Somebody said one time, they
said, you grace preachers believe God's people are going to be
saved no matter what. This one don't. I don't believe
that at all. He said, God hath from the beginning
chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit
and belief of the truth, whereunto he called you by our gospel.
Now that's what he told those Catholics. I believe in the means
that God has ordained, and He's ordained His means the same as
He ordained His Son and the same as He sent His Holy Spirit into
this world. These means are ordained of God.
He didn't leave it into the hands of men. I mean, think about this. The Gideons passed out Bibles
and tracts and stuff for you. The Great Commission was not,
go ye into all the world and pass out pamphlets. That's not
what it is. He told them, go ye into all
the world and preach the gospel. Well, you say, are you trying
to limit God? No. I'm not trying to limit God
at all. God is the one who ordained the
man. In the wisdom of God, the world
by wisdom knew not God. Isn't that what it says? But to please God through the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. I don't have to listen to no
preacher. Then you can forget about being saved. You can forget about it, because
you're not going to be saved until you do. My friend, the God of purpose,
it says, worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. And in the book of James, it
says, of his own will begat he us with the word of truth. Now
what it says? Now it says you take heed how
you hear. You readjust your ears, you readjust
your posture, and you think about it a little bit more than what
you do. The problem is we're living in
a world that's so filled with antichrist religion that men
are ignorant of the Word of God and therefore ignorant of the
will of God and the Son of God. And then one more thing, and
I'll quit. In 1 Corinthians 1.21, 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. Men and women go off to seminary.
I've got friends who've done it, people I've known and worked
with. And they go off to seminary,
and they're dedicated, some of them are. They're willing, they're
devoted to the ministry, they study hard, they get their degrees,
and they go out and they pastor sometimes large congregations.
But they don't know God. They don't know God. They don't
know the will of God, they don't know the Son of God, they don't
know anything about God. They might be brilliant men,
could have been doctors and lawyers and scientists, But they cannot,
by wisdom, come to know God. A fellow told me one time he
was mad. I was telling him some things
out of Scripture. He got mad. He said, I'm going to go home
this weekend and read my Bible. I don't think you can read it
in a weekend and come away with anything, do you? But he said,
I'll come back and we'll talk. I'll come back. He didn't know God. He didn't
know anything about God. But you can't sit down, open
this book, and come to know God. The Jews had this book. They
studied this book. They transcribed this book. They
knew where every comma, every period, if anything was out of
place, they wouldn't put it out. They'd take it back there and
put it on the shelf. It's a mistake. That don't go
there. That word don't go there. This word don't go there. They
knew the Word of God frontwards and backwards, but they didn't
know God. What was the problem with Gentiles?
They were worshipping idols. They were worshipping fish and
bugs and dung and everything else. But Paul said on Romans
3, He said, were the Jews better for what they had? Are they better
than us? No. How come? Because you are all
under sin. As it is written, there is none
righteous. Now listen, there are none that understandeth,
there are none that seeketh after God, and there are none good. I believe in nones, don't you?
There are four of them right there. None. You'll know the Word of God when
God uses the means that He's ordained to teach you the Word.
And when He's taught you the Word, then you'll read it, and
you'll glean from it, and it'll be a treasure field to you. Be
a treasure field. You see what Paul's telling Timothy?
Preach the Word! Preach the Word. Commit it to memory. Be instant,
in season, out of season. Be ready always, he said, to
give an account for the hope that's in you. And what I hope to do both at
home and here, if the Lord will allow me, is to preach Christ
as He's been set forth in His Word. In His Word. If you can come to me after service
and show me something in the Word of God that I'm not preaching,
I'll quit and start preaching that. But you're going to have to show
me. Most of you heard about the actor
George Clooney. He's starred in several movies,
different places. But most of you don't know that
his daddy was a newsman in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was on for years and
years. And at graduation at the University
of Kentucky, at the commencement, he was asked to give the commencement
for the graduation. And urging the students to keep
an open mind, he made this statement, and I wrote it down. They put
it in the newspaper. It's not what you don't know
that will hurt you. It's what you know that just
ain't so. I tell you, I said it one time,
I know this. And it hurt me. But I come to
say I didn't know. I didn't know. It's what you
know that just ain't so.