I'm confident God's given me
a message for you today. I want to talk to you about the
most important thing I ever learned. The most important thing I ever
learned. Some time ago, I took a stack
of Brother Henry Mahan's old church bulletins, was reading
various articles, and I ran across an article the Lord used somewhat
to inspire this message. The article was in the 13th Street
Baptist Church Bulletin on May 19th, 2002, just a couple of
years before Brother Mahan resigned as pastor of that congregation
after preaching the gospel to them for 54 years, faithfully
declaring the gospel of God's free grace. That particular bulletin
contains several articles about preaching. And this one is entitled,
The Musing of a Pastor. I found it almost prophetic.
It was written by C. H. Spurgeon in 1878. Spurgeon
wrote for his congregation, I sometimes think if I were in heaven, I
should almost wish to visit this congregation to see whether it
will abide the test of time and prosper in the work of our Lord
when I'm gone. Will you keep to the truth? Will
you hold to the grand old doctrines of the gospel? Or will this church,
like so many, go astray from the simplicity of its faith and
set up gaudy services and false doctrine? God forbid. Sadly, as it happened with the
tabernacle after Spurgeon died, so it has happened with many
sins. When I read those words, I immediately
began to think about the tremendous influence Brother Mahan has had
on my life and ministry and the things God has taught me by his
faithful servant. And I prayed, my father, Give
me grace to hold fast that form of sound words you've taught
me in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. That which you've
committed to my trust by your spirit for the glory of your
son. I first met Brother Henry Mahan
in the fall of 1969. I was 19 years old. Shelby and
I had just been married a few months. I was still in college.
He was preaching in my hometown, Winston-Salem, North Carolina,
for Rosemont Baptist Church, where Brother Herbert Wilson
was pastor. And I, between worshiping at our own local church on Sunday
night and Wednesday night, I was only able to hear him twice because
of my work schedule. I was privileged to hear him
preach first from the book of Ruth on Christ our kinsman redeemer. The second message was a picture
of God's sovereign grace from the first three chapters of the
book of Hosea. After that, though I frequently
heard others mention his name, I didn't see Brother Mahan again
for six years. Then in April of 1976, that's
been 42 years ago, I was 26 years old at the time, I was driving to a Bible conference
down here in Lexington, and I decided to stop by Ashland for a little
while and see if I could meet this man. As I said, I'd heard
a good a bit about Brother Mahan, but mostly from people who spoke
less than favorably and admirably about him. So I wanted to go
by and visit with him and see if I might not impart to that
old man some of my great learning and wisdom. When I walked into
his office, very cordial, polite, and he was preparing a message
that he was going to preach that night to be taped for his television
broadcast. And we chatted for about two
hours. And I asked him about prophecy and church discipline
and the decrees of God and a good many other things. And Brother
Mayhem was cordial all the time that I was running off at the
mouth. Then as I started to leave, he turned his Bible around and
laid it on the front of his desk and pointed to a text of scripture.
And he said, Brother Fortin, I want you to read this. Pointing
to the third chapter of Colossians, verse 11. And I started to read
the 11th verse and he stopped me. He said, no, this right here. And he took his pen and underlined
these three words, Christ is all. And he made this statement. I stood there and looked at him
as if to say, so what? And that wise man spoke as a
prophet to my soul. He said, if you ever learned
the meaning of those three words, you'll understand the message
of this book and God just might use you to preach it. If you
ever learned the meaning of those three words, Christ is all. then you'll come to understand
the message of this book and God just might use you to preach
it. Just a few weeks later, the Lord
graciously calls me to hear what he had told me by his servant.
At that time, I'd been preaching the gospel for more than eight
years. I started preaching when I was 17 years old. I was about
four and a half years into the pastorate at lookout. And during
those earliest years of my ministry, I was a strict Calvinist, a thoroughgoing
convinced Baptist. My doctrine was exactly the same
then as it is now. My doctrine was precise and orthodox. I gave myself relentlessly to
study and to preach it, but something was missing. My ministry lacked life and fire. I had everything, everything,
except a message. Eternity bound sinners must hear. Then the Lord laid me flat on
my back in the hospital for 21 days. The doctors told me I had
cancer. It was already in the advanced
stages, and they didn't expect me to survive but just a little
while. Immediately, I began to evaluate my life and my work,
thinking that it might soon come to an end in the very near future. After honest, heart-searching
evaluation before God, I had to conclude that those first
eight years of preaching had amounted to very little, if indeed
anything. I couldn't see how my labor could
have profited anyone in any way spiritually. Now if you don't think that's
crushing, you can imagine how crushing it was. I'd been spinning
my wheels in the sand And my heart was crushed with conviction
and I sunk in despair. My doctrinal orthodoxy gave me
no comfort. But then God graciously burned
these words into my heart and soul as with a hot iron. It's the most important thing
I've ever learned. Christ is all. Never before or since have I
taken a vow to God. I don't recommend that you do.
But in that hospital bed, I solemnly vowed to the Lord my God that
if in his good providence he might be pleased to allow me
to preach again, and if he'd give me grace to do so, I would
never preach anything else. except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I haven't been turned away from
that vow these 42 years, and God helping me, I shall not be. I have nothing else to preach
to men except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I am determined
by the grace of God every time I stand before a congregation,
be the congregation one or two or three or many, I am determined,
whether it's on Sunday morning or Sunday night, Tuesday night,
or wherever I go in this world, never to preach anything but
Christ. Christ, all of Christ, as fully
as I possibly can. Christ is all. Sooner or later, you're gonna
learn that. Sooner or later, every preacher
is going to learn that. Either in grace or in judgment,
but learn it we will. Christ is all. Three very short
one-syllable words, but words of such great wealth and meaning
that they cannot be fully expounded. Those three words are the essence
and the substance of all true Christianity. I preach dozens
of messages from this text of scripture to you. and I probably
will do so again if I live another few months. And I have preached
messages using basically the same outline I'm going to use
today. I had worked this week preparing
a message for you from Romans 13, eight through 10 on a debt
you can never pay, but Lord willing, we'll come back to Romans 13
next week. I just kept these things, God just kept bringing
them to my heart and mind. As I told you in the opening
of the service this morning, we had very good meetings in
Hamilton, Brother Miller and the congregation there and I
just hit it off very well. And Brother Miller and I had
dinner together every day, spend a little bit of time together.
And one day we were chatting just a little bit about preaching.
I try to do that when I'm with preachers. And I said to him,
there is a great need for a book on homiletics. a book on preparing
sermons. Spurgeon's lectures to my students
and Martin Lloyd-Jones preaching and preachers are both excellent
books on preaching and on being a pastor and being a man who
speaks for God and every preacher ought to read them. But they
do not deal really very explicitly with preparing messages. and
there's a real need for a book that deals with preparing messages.
I'm not the man to write such a book, but if I were to do so,
there are three things I would emphasize in the book. I hope
a lot of preachers hear this sermon. These three things I
try to emphasize to preachers all the time. The first comes
from Roland Hill, the famous preacher from London who lived
many, many years ago. He said, no sermon ought ever
to be preached which does not contain the three R's, ruined
by the fall, redemption by the blood, and regeneration by the
Holy Ghost. If the sermon doesn't contain
those three things, it shouldn't be preached. But I wasn't preaching
on those things. Well, you should have been. Those
three things all the time. The second thing is what's declared
in our text. Christ is all. All the message
of this book, all to be preached. Christ is the foundation of all
true doctrine, the motive for all godliness. Christ is the
message of all true preaching and the object of all true worship. And third, Preach every sermon
with urgency, presuming that the folks to whom
you're preaching are just a heartbeat out of hell. God give me grace to preach like
that. Christ is all. That's the most
important thing I've ever learned. In what sense does God the Holy
Ghost mean for us to understand those three words? How far are
we to take them? In all things concerning our
souls, or the knowledge of God, or the understanding of His Word,
in all things relating to salvation, eternity, and the glory of God,
Christ is all. Now let me come at that three
or four ways. First, understand this. Christ is all in all the
purpose, counsels, decrees, and works of the triune God. Everything. In all his counsels, in all his
works, in all his decrees, Christ is all. There was a time when
this earth had no being. A time when there was no time,
no world, no universe, no angels, no men. A time when the triune
God dwelt alone in his own ineffable glory, Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost. And where was Christ then? The
scripture says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God. Even then Christ was with the
Father, one with the Father, loved of the Father, set up and
accepted by the triune Jehovah as our covenant surety and our
sin atoning sacrifice in whom God's elect were accepted. accepted in the beloved and blessed
of God Almighty with all spiritual blessings even before the world
was. The scriptures are explicitly
clear. All the blessings of God's salvation
were given to us in Christ before the world began. All the blessings
of grace were given to all God's elect in Christ before the world
began. We were redeemed, justified,
sanctified, glorified, accepted, and blessed. Yes, saved in Jesus
Christ before the world was. The works were finished from
the foundation of the world. would to God this generation
to find out something about that. All the work of God's grace is
a work done from eternity. What we see God bringing to pass
in time in our day-by-day experience is but the outworking of that
which God Almighty accomplished in eternity. Then time began
and there came a time when the earth was created In the beginning
God made the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void
and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The earth became
chaotic and where was Christ then? The sun, the moon, the
stars, the sea, the land and all their inhabitants. were called
into being and made out of chaos and confusion. And man was formed
out of the dust of the ground. And what does the book of God
say concerning that? All things were made by him and
without him was not anything made that was made. Everything
that is, has been, or shall be, must be traced back to God our
Savior Jesus Christ from the beginning. He created all things. All things were created by Him
and for Him. He is the head of all things
as our sovereign creator. That means that Jesus Christ,
the God, our Redeemer, who is the God-man, our Redeemer, is
God, our creator. And then there came a time when
sin entered into the world. Adam and Eve ate of that forbidden
fruit and fell. What a calamity. the holy pair lost their creature
holiness in which they were formed. And when they sinned against
God, they forfeited friendship and favor of God and became guilty,
helpless, corrupt, doomed, dead sinners before God. Sin separated
man from God and God from man. And where was Christ then? The
Lord Jesus Christ in that very day when Adam sinned was revealed
to our trembling parents as the only hope of salvation. Turn
back to Genesis chapter three. Genesis chapter three. The very day that Adam fell in
the garden, Adam and Eve were told that the woman's seed would
bruise the serpent's head. that a savior born of a woman
would crush the serpent's head and thereby obtains eternal salvation
for helpless sinners. Christ was held up in the garden
on the very day of the fall as God's salvation. The Lord God
promised redemption and then he portrayed it. Look at Genesis
3.15. God says, I will put enmity between
thee and the woman. between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head and
thou shalt bruise his heel. Look at verse 21. Then the Lord
God stripped Adam and Eve of their fig leaves and unto Adam
also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins
and clothed them. He said, I'm going to send a
man who is God through the womb of a virgin without the aid of
a man. And that man will crush the serpent's
head and accomplish redemption. Let me show you how I'm gonna
do it. And then he killed innocent victim and took the skins of
the victim and by his own hand made coats for Adam and Eve to
cover their nakedness. In chapter four of Genesis, Adam
knew his wife Eve and she bare a son. And she said, look, I've
got the man. The Lord has fulfilled his promise.
And she thought Cain was he. But that was the hope that every
woman in Israel who believed God had until the day that Mary
brought forth her only begotten son and laid him in a manger.
Every believing woman in Israel hoped she might be the woman
by whom Messiah, the King, the Redeemer would come into the
earth. That's the reason Tamar sacrificed what she did. She
had hope of being that woman through whom Messiah would come
into the world. From that day to this, there
has never been any name whereby sinners enter into heaven but
Christ. He is that one to whom all who
are saved look. He's the one to whom Adam looked
in the garden, and he's the one to whom we look now. When our
Lord Jesus finally came into the world and Mary and Joseph
brought him into the temple, Simeon was there expecting Christ
to appear anytime. And he saw him, and he took him
in his arms and held him up and said, Lord, now let thy servant
depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. There came a time when the world
seemed to be sunk and buried in rebellion, in sin, engrossed
in thick darkness, imprisoned in idolatry, utterly ignorant
of God, just as it is today. After 4,000 years, the nations
of the earth knew not God who made them. The Egyptian, the
Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, the Roman empires had done nothing
but spread superstition and idolatry. Isn't it amazing the more advanced
men and women become academically, intellectually, scientifically,
the more superstitious and idolatrous they become? So it is to this
day. Poets, historians, and philosophers
throughout history with all their intellectual powers that they
have no knowledge of God and that man is utterly corrupt.
The world by wisdom knew not God except for a few despised
Jews in a small corner of the earth the whole world was dead
in ignorance and superstition and sin. And where was Christ
then? What did he do then? He stepped
out of heaven. He left the glory he had from
all eternity with the Father and came down into this world
to obtain salvation for poor sinners by the sacrifice of himself. No, he did not come here to set
up a kingdom over in Israel. He came here as the king, to
die as the king, to save his people with the authority of
the king. He took our nature into union
with himself. He did the will of God that we
could never do. He suffered on the cross all
the horrid wrath of God, which we ought to have suffered. He
brought in everlasting righteousness for us. He redeemed us from the
curse of the law. He opened a fountain for cleansing
from sin and uncleanness. He died for our sins, rose again
and ascended to God's right hand and there sat down with satisfaction
from henceforth expecting that his enemies be made his footstool.
And there he sits today with the reins of the universe in
his hands, ruling the universe to give eternal life to the people
given to him in covenant mercy before the world began, for whom
he shed his precious blood. There is a time coming when our
God shall make all things new. Creation will not always grow
as it does now. being burdened. Sin will soon
be cast out of the world. Wickedness shall be no more. Satan shall be cast into the
lake of fire. There is a day coming called
the time of the restitution of all things. There shall be a
new heaven and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness. And the
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover
the sea. In that day, when God makes all
things new, the slime of the serpent shall be eradicated from
God's creation. When I wrote that down, Mark,
I thought there's no way I can express that like it ought to
be. The slime of the serpent will be completely eradicated
from God's creation, and he will prove to have done no harm. in any place in all God's kingdom. But only to have been an instrument
by which God Almighty accomplished His will for the glory of His
name. And where will Christ be then?
What will He do? He will return to the earth.
As Enoch prophesied, before the days of the flood, when he walked
with God, he said, He's coming with ten thousands of his saints.
People had the silly, ignorant idea that in the Old Testament,
folks didn't know about Christ and redemption and the gospel.
Before the flood, Enoch prophesied that Christ is coming with 10,000
of his saints. There's a day coming. when men
shall be judged. The sea shall give up the dead
which are in it. Death and hell shall deliver
up the dead which are in them. All that sleep in the graves
shall awake and come forth and shall be judged according to
their works. Turn over to Revelation chapter
20. I want you to see it. And where will Christ be then?
The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto
the Son. The Lord Jesus Christ himself
is God before whom all men shall be judged, by whom all men shall
be judged. Many of them that sleep in the
dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and
some to shame and everlasting contempt. I had some correspondence
just this week with a fellow who'd been listening to me on
the message on Free Grace Radio for some time, truck driver,
and he seemed a little upset with the idea of everlasting
judgment, everlasting damnation. The scriptures are crystal clear. Look at Revelation 20, verse
11. I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it from whose
face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found
no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and
great, stand before God, and the books were opened, and another
book was opened, which is the book of life. Oh, thank God for
that book. And the dead were judged out
of those things which are written in the books according to their
worth. according to their works. That
means that you and I will be judged in that great day on the
basis of absolute justice, truth, and equity according to that
which we have done. I try to say it this way and
it's not accurate, either what we have done personally or what
we've done representatively. But now listen to me. What we've
done representatively, we personally did. We were one with Christ
in his obedience, one with Christ in his death. And the dead shall
be judged either out of the books containing all the record of
all their transgressions in thought, in word, in deed, and in heart,
judged with everlasting contempt. judged according to the works
written in the book of life which we have done in the person of
our Redeemer the Lord Jesus Christ by which righteousness is established
and justice is satisfied and God Almighty smiles upon us with
complete approval. And the sea gave up the dead
which were in it and death and hell delivered up the dead which
were in them and they were judged every man according to their
works. And death and hell were cast
into the lake of fire. This is the second death. This
is the second death. This is the second death. If
you're without Christ, that sentence ought to shake your soul horribly. Second death. It's everlasting
separation from God in everlasting damnation. Suffering the everlasting
wrath of God. Fire that can't be quenched. Gnawing worms that never die. You believe literal fire in hell? There's something a heapsight
worse than that. fire that can't be quenched. Worms will never
die. A constant, ever-increasing,
aggravated, guilty conscience, screaming guilt, guilt, guilt,
guilt. Tormented in darkness, with multitudes
no man can number, and totally alone, with no sympathy and nobody
to care. Gathered before him shall be
all nations, and when we appear before the judgment seat of Christ,
all will be judged by him. Blessed be his name in that great
day. My soul shall rejoice to confess
Christ is all All my righteousness all my redemption all my salvation
all my hope all my life all my desire all my plea all my confidence
in the eternal purpose of the counsels, the decrees, and all
the works of God, Christ is all. God does nothing but by the mediation
of Christ. The triune Jehovah never speaks
but by Christ. He never works but by Christ,
and he cannot be approached but by Christ. this book you've got in your
hands. Pick it up a minute, will you? Just pick it up and thumb
the pages, just like that. This book. In the book of God, Christ is
all. This book is not a Baptist book, a church
book, a Calvinist book, an Arminian book, a prophecy book, a law
book, a rule book, a morals book, a book of supernatural tales,
a book of history. David Coleman, these last couple
of years, not one of those things would have been of any profit
to you, would it? No matter how truthfully preached. Not one of them. What is? This whole book is about Christ. God, my savior. He who loved
me and gave himself for me. He who chose me as his own in
everlasting love. And tells me about all his glory
and all his work. in redemption, grace, and providence. All his work in bringing me to
everlasting glory, all his purpose, all his intent, in all that he
does, the book is about our Savior. Look at Acts chapter 10, one
text, Acts chapter 10, verse 43. Be sure you get it. to Him, give all the prophets
witness, that through His name, whosoever believeth in Him shall
receive remission of sins." You mean, Brother Don, that God intends
for us to understand that everything written from Genesis 1 to Malachi
4 is a witness of Jesus Christ telling us that whosoever believeth
in him shall receive remission of sins? No, I didn't tell you
that. God told you that. Acts 10 verse
43. That's what the book's all about.
It's all about Christ. I recall when I'm years ago,
Will, when I was just a little boy, I was just two or three
years old, maybe four. two or three years old. He came
over to study one day. I was studying, getting ready
to preach one Sunday morning, and I had my Bible open, and he said, Poppy,
is that where Jesus lives? And I said, well, son, in a way,
yes, that's where he lives. You can't know him but by this
book, and the book's all about him. And any preaching that doesn't
talk about him ain't worth preaching. Any sermon that doesn't talk
about Him is not worth hearing. The book is all about Him. In
the New Testament Gospels, we hear our Lord Jesus speaking
on the earth, walking through the world. revealing his person
as the God-man, the Messiah, the Christ of God, our Redeemer,
by the wonders he performed, and thereby portraying the redemption
and the salvation he would bring by that redemption he would accomplish
at Jerusalem. In the book of Acts, we have
the preaching of the early church, the preaching of the apostles,
the work of God carrying the gospel through the earth. Wherever men and women were scattered
by persecution or scattered by need, wherever they were scattered,
you'd find some folks here and a little group over there and
a little group over there, and they went everywhere preaching
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's what the book of Acts
is all about. It tells us how God builds his church and saves
his people through the preaching of the gospel. And the epistles
are but the explanation of God the Holy Spirit, given by the
apostles' writings of the doing and dying of Jesus Christ, our
Redeemer. In every part of both Testaments,
old and new, Christ is revealed, dimly and distinctly at the beginning,
More and more clearly and plainly in the middle, fully and completely
at the end. But everywhere the book speaks
of Christ. His sacrifice, his death in the
place of sinners, his kingdom, his future glory. Those are the
things we must bring to the book to have light and understanding.
Christ is the key that opens the treasure chest. You can't
understand the book otherwise. Back 200 years ago, folks had
known about the Egyptian hieroglyphics for years. They'd go look at
those things, wonder what that means. Wonder what that means.
But nobody understood until in 1799, somebody discovered a slab
of rock. They called it the Rosetta Stone.
And it explained the Egyptian hieroglyphics. So now, in the
light of that Rosetta Stone, folks can look at hieroglyphics
and say, this is exactly what it's saying. I know exactly what
it's saying. This book means it's a sealed book, like that
written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, with no Rosetta Stone, until
Christ is brought to the book. Well, that's talking about my
Redeemer. That's what it's all about. It's about Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. That's all it's about. That's
all it's about. All the tabernacle, all its furnishings,
all its sacrifices, all the holy days, all the Sabbath days, all
the miraculous things recorded in history, they all speak of
Christ. When you read the Old Testament and the New, And in
the Old Testament history, you read about just wondrous things. I mean, I use the word unbelievable. That's the wrong word. We believe
it. We believe it because it's in the book. But otherwise, if
you don't believe Christ, it's unbelievable. Just won't be unbelievable
things. You mean the sun stood still?
How do you explain that? I don't know. I don't know. You mean to tell me that God
had one man to build a boat big enough to house all the animals
of the earth, and a man, his wife, and his sons, and their
wives, and all of them in the ark, and provided food for them,
they could live in that thing, and it could bear all the wrath
of a universal flood that destroyed every living thing on the earth? Surely you don't believe that
Noah's ark story. Well, sure I do, I believe God.
I believe God. You don't really believe a man
could stand, take a basket with some bread, a few pieces of fish,
and just pass them out. Just pass them out. Five loaves
and two fish. Just pass them out. And just
keep passing them out until it's fed 20,000 people. And then take up baskets full
of remaining. Take those out and distribute
them tomorrow. You don't believe that, do you?
Of course I do. I know that man's God. All those
miraculous things are pictures of our Redeemer, His grace, His
salvation, and His provision. All of them. When you read the
Old Testament history, and you read about the bondage of Israel,
and then their judges, and their bondage, and their judges, and
their bondage, and their judges. They're straying, and they're
being called. They're straying, and they're being called. They're
sinning, and they're being forgiven. All of those things are not just
pictures of things that happened, or things that happened that
God decided, well, that would be a pretty good picture of grace.
The reason they happened, was by the order of providence to
show us the hand of God in redemption and grace. Let me give you one
beautiful picture. We normally refer to the altar,
the mercy seats and that nature. That ark I mentioned a moment
ago. That ark is Christ our salvation. The ark was prepared for just
eight souls. And when the eight souls were
brought into the ark, God brought the men and God shut the door. And everything they needed was
in the ark. Everything. And then God poured
out His wrath. And all of them passed through
the judgment of God. All the fury of God's wrath. poured down from heaven and broke
up from beneath and beat upon that ark. And Noah and his wife
and his sons and their wives all suffered the furious wrath
of God until the waters of God's wrath were subsided from the
earth. And Noah walked out of the ark
with his wife and his sons and their daughters. That's what
happened at Calvary. God put us in his Son. And God
shut us up in his Son. And God poured out all the fury
of his just wrath against us in his Son. And the flood of
God's wrath poured down from heaven and broke up from beneath
until we had suffered all the fury of God's wrath in the ark,
Christ Jesus the Lord. He is our salvation, just as
that ark was Noah's salvation. Everything in the book speaks
about the Lord Jesus Christ. It's all about redemption and
justification, righteousness and sanctification in Jesus Christ,
our Lord, in God's salvation. in the salvation
of our souls, Christ is all. That's the third thing, all. Let me just refer you to that
one text of scripture again, I quote here so often. Of him are ye in Christ Jesus,
who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification,
and redemption. That according as it is written,
he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. We were chosen in
Christ. We were redeemed by Christ. We're
accepted in Christ. We're blessed in Christ. We live
in Christ. Christ is our salvation. All of it. All of it, we contribute
nothing. Now, I warn you, I warn you,
you hear fellas preach and teach them Scripture and they talk
grace and they talk about predestination and election, but now you've
got to. Lindsay, when a fella tells you
you've got to, just plug your ears up. Don't listen, don't
pay attention. He's lying to you, you've got
to. No, if you do something, you're
gonna be lost. If something depends on you,
you're going to hell. You got to, you got to believe
on the son of God and that he alone can do for you, giving
you life and faith in him by the power of his spirit. Christ
is our salvation, all our salvation. all our hope. But the scripture
tells us in Ephesians 1 that the Father planted and the Son
purchased it and the Spirit performed it. That's right. That's exactly
what the scripture tells us. And the Father planted in His
Son and the Son accomplished it by His blood and the Spirit
performs it by revealing the Son in us and putting Christ
in you so that our salvation in its totality the accomplishment
of Jesus Christ, our Mediator, our Redeemer, the God-man. One
thing more, and I'll be done. Christ will be all in heaven. Christ is heaven's glory. I don't know much about that
because I've not been there yet, so I can't tell you much about
it. The best I can do is what I did in this book here. How
can mortal souls describe things unseen in an unknown world? This much I know about heaven's
glory. Christ is all. Christ is all. In heaven's eternal
glory, like me and going to Solomon's temple, when they came to that
temple, they saw this huge brazen altar. It was as wide as the
temple itself. So you couldn't get in the temple
without seeing it. And that which men and women
will focus their eyes upon in eternity is Jesus Christ, him
crucified, the lamb as it had been slain. standing, rising
up out of the midst of the throne so that every eye sees him. And
we rejoice in him and sing in unison, worthy is the Lamb that
was slain. For Christ is all in glory. He is the Son. Day and night,
the light of heaven's glory. Shelby and I were chatting about
this, either going or coming, I can't remember which. We chatted
about such things when we were driving more than any other time,
I reckon. But she was asking about, what do you reckon it's
gonna be like in heaven? What are we gonna do? Matches, that's what, coming
home, coming home from somewhere just the other day, and drive
by some old section of town, somewhere, wherever we were,
old section, old houses, and she's, no, we weren't, yeah,
we were driving right down Lexington Avenue right here in Danville,
and we were coming into town, she, those old big houses, and
she said, look, we'll have matches in Florida. What does that mean?
What does that mean? I don't know, I don't. I know
this gold won't be worth anything. And silver won't matter. And
rank and station won't be there. And somehow in that blessed state
called eternity, we will serve the Lord Jesus Christ day and
night without sin. without weariness, without fatigue,
without fault, without failure, no murmuring, no complaining,
in perfect unison. And we'll see his face. And when
we see him, we'll be like him. For we shall see him as he is. Christ is all. That's the most
important, most blessed, most wonderful thing I ever learned. If Christ is all, then Christ
is all to be preached, all to be praised, all to be worshipped,
all to be promoted, all to be served, all to be known, all
to be chosen, all to be wanted, all to be desired, all to be had. If you have Him,
you have everything. If you miss Him, hell's your
portion and you have nothing. Amen.