Thank you, brother. Well, what a good, good message
we just heard. A little over a week ago, I got
a note from a friend who had heard me make a statement in
the course of a sermon. He said, seeing Mars everything
you do, he said, even when you're preaching, and I responded to
him, yes indeed, I am never more humbled, truly
humbled, than when God enables me to preach the gospel and the
power of his spirit and never more proud. You see these two men dwelling
in us, Adam and Christ, flesh and spirit, the old man and the
new. While these two men, Brother
Donnie just been talking to us about, are separate individuals
at war with one another all the time. They can never be separated
in any of our thoughts, actions, or deeds. John says everything
you do that's evil, that's of the devil. That's that old man,
born by nature. Everything you do that's righteous,
that's the new man, Christ in you, who cannot sin, he's born
of God. But the two are involved in everything
we do. so that we cannot do the things
we would and the things we hate that we do. Now I want you to
turn back to the book of Romans chapter 6 and I want you to listen carefully
to another portion of scripture as you turn it. We know, we don't guess about it, we don't
speculate about it, we know Because we've been taught of God, we've
experienced his grace, and we're experiencing his grace, and we're
being taught of him. We know because we know what
this book says. We know. If you're born of God,
this is something you just flat know. We know that all things. That's a huge statement. All
things. in heaven, earth, and hell. All things. All things in time
and all things in eternity. All things. All things done by
all creatures, angels, and demons. Man and Satan himself. All things. All things done by
the righteous and all things done by the wicked. All things
done by God. All things. All things pleasant
and painful. All things prosperous and adverse. All things we look back on with
joy and all things we look back on with horrid pain and shame. All things, all things work together,
are sovereignly manipulated by God. Well, you talk, we're just
puppets on a string. I got news for you, you're puppets
on a string, on God's string. That's exactly right. And so
is hell, and so is the devil. All things work together. Together. Don't try to separate
them and figure a match. You can't do it. You can't do
it. All things work together for
good. Just good. To them who are, to
them that love God, to them who are thee called according to
his purpose. I mean for you to understand,
looking back over these past 65 years, pushing 66, there's
so much I would blush for you to know. I blush to know myself. So much I wouldn't tell anybody
but God. Nobody else. But there's nothing I would change. Not one solitary thing. For all that I have experienced
these 65 years has brought me here to bring this message to
you. Everything. Everything. The young
man sitting here, Brother Andre Gillette, I met him at our conference
just a few weeks ago. Just got to chat for just a minute.
I had heard from him. I had heard from his brother.
He walked up and introduced himself, shook my hand. You remember what
you said to me? The fellow sitting there with
the LSU jacket on, he'll know better next time. He said, I'm the reason we invaded
Iraq. You know how come? While he was
over there, his brother started feeding him the messages he was
hearing from our pulpit. And God saved you by his grace. That's the reason we invaded
Iraq. That's one of them. You believe that? I do with all
my heart. With all my heart. 49 years ago, I started going
to church again. I was 16 years old. And I'll
tell you why I started going. There was a pretty girl there
I wanted to date. And the only way her daddy would let me come
see her is if I went to church with her. So I'd go to church
with her. And while I was attending services,
there were two men teaching Sunday school class, young adult class,
Leroy Pack and Lloyd Moore, both of them gospel preachers to this
day. And I learned the gospel of God's grace from them, Pastor
Brother Tamley Davis preaching. But I didn't pay much attention
to the facts I learned until one day, There's a fellow who
came up from Orlando, Florida by the name of Jewel Smith. I
only saw him one time in my life. I only heard him preach one time
in my life. But oh, I thank God I heard him
that day. And I never had any correspondence
with him after that. I kindly tried to keep up with him a little
bit, but never crossed paths with him. He retired and started
going around traveling. He spoke to folks about various
things, the King James Bible and so forth. And his son was
a missionary in England. Last year, not last year, just
a few months ago, I was in England preaching and I met a young man.
Pastor of the Kensington Place Baptist Church in the heart of
London, England. Name is Jared Smith, the grandson
of the fellow from whom God proclaimed the gospel to my soul. I'm going
to go back and preach for him now. God arranges everything according
to his purpose, everything. for the saving of his elect and
our everlasting good. And before we read our text,
I want to get one point to you. This is one point. I've got a
message with one point, and I'm going to just come at it from
every direction I can. Oh, what great reason sinners
saved by God's grace have to give thanks to God and live for
him. Oh, what great reason, save sinners
have, to give thanks to God and live for Him. Romans 6, verse
17. But God be thanked. That's my subject. But God be
thanked that ye were the servants of sin. But ye have obeyed from
the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Be sure
you don't miss the little word that opens the text, but That
connects what Paul is saying here in verse 17 with everything
he has just told us about all we have experienced in God's
saving grace, all that we confess in believers' baptism, all that
Christ accomplished for us in redemption, all that God the
Holy Ghost has wrought in us and is working in us by his grace
in regeneration and sanctification. and all the blessed assurance
we have of everlasting salvation by the grace of God in Christ
Jesus. We have been redeemed. Redeemed,
how I love to proclaim it. Redeemed by the blood of the
Lamb, redeemed through His infinite mercy, His child and forever
I am. We've been saved by the grace
of God. We are dead, listen to the language
of Scripture, We are dead indeed. We are dead indeed unto sin. Our brother has just told us,
sin very much lives in us, but bless God, we don't live in sin.
We live in the spirit. We're dead to sin, dead to its
guilt, dead to its condemnation, dead to its consequences, dead
to its sentence, dead to sin. Blessed is the man to whom God
will not impute sin. We're now alive unto God. Here I am, alive unto God. living in Christ Jesus Christ
is our life and we live in him after assuring us of these things
the Apostle Paul writes by divine inspiration and he says to you
and me if you're born of God now this is to you If you believe,
oh, if God has just now opened heaven and dropped grace and
life into your soul, and right now you've begun to believe,
this is God's word to you. But God be thanked that ye were
the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form
of doctrine which was delivered you. Oh. What great reason saved
sinners have to give thanks to God and live in this world for
His glory. Let me read to you a brief comment
by Robert Hawker on this text of Scripture. It summarizes what
I want to declare to you. For myself, if I know anything
of my own heart, I hope that I can truly say I hate sin. I would not willingly and willfully
commit a single sin for the world. Yea, I loathe myself in my own
sight for sin, the sin of my poor fallen nature. Sin becomes
more bitter to me as Christ becomes more precious but with all this
with all this I say I would rather be a sinner saved and Saved in
such a way as I am saved by the blood and righteousness of the
Lord Jesus Christ Than to have never known sin Neither known Christ as my savior. Look at the text again. But God
be thanked that ye were the servants of sin. The words of this text
stand in our translation exactly accurate. The English translation
says exactly what the Greek text says. Not one word can be added,
not one word can be omitted without injury to the text and without
changing the meaning of the text. You mean God the Holy Spirit
tells us here that we're to thank God that once we were in drudgery
to Satan and to sin doing the works of the devil. Let's see. But God, be thanked that you
were the servants of sin. Now, almost every commentary,
in fact, every commentary I have read on this text of scripture,
except Mr. Hawker, make the words to read
like this. God be thanked that though you
were the servants of sin, that is not what it says, pastor.
That is not what it says. The text reads, God be thanked
that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from
the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. When I was 25, 26 years old, Doctors told me that I had cancer. It's in the fourth stage. And they were going to give me
some treatments that were almost experimental back in those days
called Cobalt and chemotherapy. And they said, these might be
the consequences. And you know what they did? they
gave me massive dosages of chemotherapy that themselves might be deadly to heal me of the disease that
will sure be deadly God often uses evil to accomplish
good for his people that's the wrong choice of words God always
uses all evil to accomplish the everlasting good of his elect. Always. Always. You see, God
really does rule this world. He really does rule this world. Everything and everybody. All
right. So the first thing to learn from
this is that the holy God, by infinite wisdom and grace, has
made our sin and our misery the occasion of our greatest possible
blessedness. Oh, what great reason we have
to give thanks to God and live for his glory. Let no one misunderstand my words. I offer no excuse for any man's
sin. And God is my witness. God is
my witness. I do not excuse my own sin. We don't by any means attempt
to escape our responsibility for sin. and we do not charge
God with sin. God cannot be tempted with evil,
neither tempteth he any man. But our great God is so infinitely
wise, so infinitely gracious, that he turns our greatest misery
into our greatest good, and sovereignly overrules All the evil in us and done by
us. For our everlasting blessedness
in his dear son. If that don't ring your bell,
your clacker's broke. Everything. Jonathan Edwards
made this statement. divine wisdom found out a way
whereby the sinner might not only escape being miserable,
but that he should be happier than before he sinned, yea, than
he would have been if he had never sinned. By the redemptive
work of Christ, the sins of God's elect are turned into means of
accomplishing greater happiness joy and everlasting glory than
we could ever have known had we never sinned. Where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound. And I am saying this, God in
infinite wisdom ordained our fall in our father Adam and overrules
our abounding sin so that our eternal happiness might be ever
secured by the superabundance of his matchless free grace in
Christ Jesus. Here's the second thing. Sinful man is brought into a
nearer union with God in the person of Christ, our substitute.
than we could ever have enjoyed had we not known sin. Had we
never sinned, Christ would not be our surety. Christ would not
be our substitute. Christ would not be our redeemer. Christ would not be our savior. But now, because of our fall
in our father Adam, God, has assumed our nature in the person
of his son. He passed the fallen angels by
and we came into this world. He took not on him the nature
of angels, but it took hold on the seed of Abraham, took hold
on his covenant people to save his people. The word was made
flesh and dwelt among us. God became one of us, making
us one with him. so that now we're members of
his body, the church. Members of his body. In Ephesians 5, the apostle Paul
gives detailed instruction about how we ought to live in our homes.
And it's good counsel. Husbands ought to love their
wives like Christ loved the church, gave himself for it. That's the
way you love your wife. Anything else ain't the love
of a husband for his wife. That's the way you ought to love
them. And wives are to be submissive to their husbands. And if you're
not submissive to your husband, you're not a wife. You're just
a woman who married to a fella. That's exactly right. Well, that's
not politically correct. I intended it not to be politically
correct. That's good instruction. Children
are to obey their parents. That's good instruction. And
if they don't obey, bust their butts. That's exactly right.
Bust them hard. You can't say that. Well, I intended
to say that because I know folks don't like that. But that's just
good instruction. You wear them out. Make them
mind you. But that's not the intention of the passage. Paul
said, When Adam said, for this cause shall a man leave his father
and his mother and shall be joined unto his wife and they too shall
be one flesh. He said, now that's a great mystery.
That's a great mystery. But I ain't talking about a man
and his wife. You and that lady just got married. I don't care
if you live to be 100 or 300, you'll never be one flesh. It
ain't gonna happen. Thank God she's never gonna look
like you. It ain't gonna happen. It ain't gonna happen. It ain't
gonna happen. What you talking about? I'm talking about Christ
in the church. Now listen to me. We are bone
of his bone, flesh of his flesh, soul of his soul, heart of his
heart. Really and truly one with Christ. More really and truly one with
Christ than this hand is one with this hand. I can cut this
hand off and the hand's still gonna stand there. Not gonna
lose my hand just cause I lost my hand. More really and truly
one with Christ than I'm one with that lady right there. More
really and truly one with Christ than any union you can imagine
except for one and we can't get our hands around that. The union
of God the Father with God the Son and God the Son with his
Father. Oh, Christ is our brother and
our husband. And more than that, he's our
head. And we have now been made the
sons of God in Christ Jesus. Our temporary separation from
God by sin. has been made the means of our
eternal union with God in his son. Isn't that amazing? Turn
to John 17, let me show you. John chapter 17. Listen to our Lord's high priestly
prayer. Until you get to verse 20. He'd
been praying for his disciples who were with him in the world
while he walked on this earth. When you get to verse 20, he
starts to pray for, for, for Louie and Lester and Don. Now
he's praying for us. Listen to what he says. Neither
pray I for these alone. but for them also which shall
believe on me through their word. I'm sending these disciples out,
they're gonna tell the world what I've done. And all through
the ages, there's folks gonna hear their word, and they're
gonna believe on me through the word they hear. That they all
may be one. Now watch this. As thou father
art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. Now watch the next word. that
the world may believe that thou hast sent me. When I get done,
everybody who's ever been to go and understand I'm the Christ
of God, they're gonna say I'm Lord to the glory of God. Read
on. And the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them. I've already given this glory
to them who shall believe on me through the word of these
who have believed on me. The glory thou gavest me, I've
given them, that they may be one, sort of like we are one. Know what I'm saying? Even as
we are one. Read on. I in them, and thou
in me, that they may be made perfect in one. Now watch this
next line. That the world may know that
thou hast sent me and he adds another word when I get done
with everything when the son of God Jehovah's righteous servant
lifts his hand to heaven and presents his kingdom to the father
and says it's done it's done then the whole world Everybody
in heaven, earth and hell, every angel, every demon and Satan
will be made to know. And every man who'd been laughing
at us all these years, they will know that thou hast loved them
as thou hast loved me. And it couldn't have been, Brother
Larry, if we hadn't fallen in our father Adam. Could not have
been. Here's another thing. Man, by
reason of his sin, now, being saved by God's free grace, has
a fuller knowledge of God, his glory, his grace, his justice,
his holiness, his truth, and his love than we could ever have
possessed had we never sinned. We see the glory of God only
one place. We see his handiwork in creation.
A little bit, the leaves are gonna start to turn. Maybe by
the time we start to drive home, we're gonna see some pretty leaves
up around the mountains. Leaves to, oh man, the handiwork of
God. The handiwork of God. We have
some understanding of the way things work in the world, man's
lives and things involved in me standing here right now. Oh,
the handiwork of God. We see his wisdom and his power,
his Godhead. His laws written on a conscious
mind by nature so that we have some knowledge of who and what
God is. But nobody knows the glory of God except as they see
it in the face of our crucified Redeemer. The only place you
see the glory of God, all his wisdom and mercy, all his justice
and truth, all his love and grace, all his goodness and all his
glory shines forth only in the crucified Redeemer. Now, now,
I see God as God. I see him sovereign. giving mercy
to whom he will give mercy, having compassion on whom he will have
compassion, hardening whom he will, and by no means clearing
the guilty, while at the same time forgiving iniquity, transgression,
and sin. Well, that's a contradiction.
It is if you don't know God. It's a contradiction. Everybody
in the world, the whole religious world. I'm reminded of a story
about Pope somebody saw taking census down in Mississippi. He
said, if you're Baptist what do you do with that picture of
the Pope? Hang on a while, he said, Pope?
He said, man I didn't know that Pope, I thought that was Harry
Truman in Masonic uniform. You see that fool running around
and the whole world of fools chasing after him. The whole
world of fools chasing after him. Shelby and I were watching
the other night on the news. What do they call that old man?
We're talking about an old man, he has to be helped around more
than I do. They called him His Holiness. They called him Holy Father.
They called him the Good Shepherd. They called him the Prince of
Peace. I'm talking about all in less than 10 minutes. They
called him the head of the church. What? And they're talking about
a fella drenched in drag. Can you imagine? Can you imagine
such a thing? The whole world going bedbug crazy with religion. And this is utterly confusing
to them. How can God forgive sin completely, freely, absolutely,
forever forgive sin? and yet refused to forgive sin. Only when he punishes sin and
his own darling son to the full satisfaction of justice now,
we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Is that
right, darling? That's the only place you see
it. Not only that, in his death, in his death, only in the sacrifice
of Christ, Is it possible for a sinner to know the love of
God? Now you were taught to sing Jesus
loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so since you were
about that high. But it was a lie. Mama and Daddy shouldn't have
taught you that. Shouldn't have taught you that. You don't have
any reason to have a faint possible glimmer of a hope of a thought
that Jesus loves you unless you believe him. The love of God
is seen and known only in Christ crucified as my Redeemer. And when God gives you eyes to
behold His Son, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts
by His Spirit to give it to us. Now, I know God Almighty loves
me, loves me. God, in all the fullness of His
being, loves me. And I know that in His Son. This shall be the theme of heavenly
praise to our Redeemer forever. Thou hast loved us and redeemed
us to our God out of every nation and kindred and tribe and tongue. And Brother Donny, we could not
sing that song of praise had we never known sin. The angels
of God can't join in. The angels of God can't join
in. Bess said to me a little while ago, I sure wish Herman
could be here to hear what we're going to hear this weekend. And
I said to him, Bess, I suspect maybe he listens to you. And
I really do. I really do. I have every reason
to suspect that God's saints in glory are somewhat aware,
I wouldn't say fully, somewhat aware of what God's doing with
his people on this earth. Hebrews 12 presents them as a
company of great witnesses urging us on in our race. Come on, finish,
pick up your feet, run hard now! The finish line is near at hand,
and they urge us on. But I know this. The angels of
God meet with this congregation. Every time you meet together
and your pastor stands here and you sing God's praise and read
his word and you pray and you preach the gospel and they listen
to you. Because Larry, they want to hear
what saved sinners know they can never know. They can never know redeeming
love. They can never know saving grace. They can never know forgiveness. God preserved them in their first
estate, but they never know what it is to be lifted from the fall. Here's another thing. Our redemption
from sin, our redemption from death by Christ Jesus causes
us to have a love for God that we could not otherwise have. One day, one day the love will
be brought to perfection. But even now, the love of Christ
that constrains us, the love of Christ that pulls us along,
the love of Christ that tugs our hearts this way, the love
of Christ that pulls us after him, the love of Christ that
effectually forces us to follow our Redeemer. That love is something
Adam could not know in innocence, and the angels cannot know today. Great forgiveness produces great
love. Great forgiveness is the greatest
possible motive for love, devotion, and praise, consecration to God. I call on you, my brothers and
sisters, to give yourselves wholly to Christ. Oh, God, give me grace
to give myself holy to Christ, entirely, lock, stock, and barrel. It's the only thing on this earth
that makes good sense. You're not your own. You've been
bought with a price. You're not your own. You've been
bought with a price. So glorify God in your body and
in your spirits, which are God's. When you go home, I encourage
you to read the last part of Luke 7 that Brother Donnie referred
us to a few minutes ago. I promise you, you'll never read
it the same again. Our Lord said to Simon, this
man gave one fellow two dollars and forgave the other two million
dollars. Frankly, forgave them both. Which one gonna love him
most? And the fellow said, well, just
makes sense to me, the one who's forgiven most. And the Lord said,
you've rightly said. And he looked at this woman. And folks seem
to think that saying, that sinners who have been saved from the
kind of life I had, love the Lord more than sinners
who've been saved from a life of moral uprightness. Nothing
like that's taught anywhere in scripture. God picked me up from
the dung heap of humanity, and that's just my wife. I had three
sisters. Two of my sisters and me, we
got whipped every day for something. And they missed a lot. They didn't
catch us near as often as they caught us. And then I've got
my older sister, the one like you, Pat. She never did anything
wrong yet. And that's just my wife, just
like her. But God saved her. You mean that means Don loves
the Lord more than Shelby does? Don knows better. That's what
I'm talking about. Adam could never have loved the
Lord, his Redeemer, in innocence. And the angels of heaven could
never love the Lord as their Redeemer, but save sinners do. And he looked at that woman and
said, your face made you whole, go on home, go in peace. Go in
peace. Here's another thing. Fallen
man, saved by grace, has a greater, more sensible dependence upon
God than we could otherwise have.
And God is glorified by our dependence on Him. We know by painful, abundant
experience that we have no hope except Christ. and God's free
grace in him. Do you know that? Do you know
that? No. But Christ and God's free
grace in him. Turn back to Genesis chapter
2 and I'll wrap this up. Genesis chapter 2. The Lord God
created a garden called the Garden of Eden. And he brought everything to
Adam. And he said, Adam, this is all
yours. This whole thing belongs to you, everything. And he brought
all the animals to him. He said, Adam, what do you call
that? Well, I'll call that a mountain lion. What do you call that?
I'll call that a bingo tiger. What do you call that little
one? I'll call that a house cat. He named everything. Oh, what a
man he must have been. Somehow that's a little different
from that fellow they found in Africa a couple weeks ago. Oh,
what a man he must have been. What a magnificent man he must
have been. And God said to Adam, this is
all yours. Every tree, every animal, every fish, every bird,
every blade of grass, it's all yours except this one tree. This
one tree stands before you as a symbol of my right as God. Don't you eat of this tree. Look
at verse 17, Genesis 2. But of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. Now what's next
word? For in the day that thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt surely die. And one day Satan beguiled Eve,
and Eve gave the fruit to Adam and he did exactly what God before
ever he made the tree ordained that he should do for he was
a type of another Adam who was to come Christ Jesus our Lord
and Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree and this is how Satan
beguiled Eve said the Lord's deceiving you He knows in the
day you eat thereof, your eyes will be opened and you'll know
good and evil. Well, he was a liar from the
beginning, but the liar often told the truth. Eve ate the fruit
of the tree and Adam ate the fruit of the tree and their eyes
were darkened and all they knew was evil. They couldn't know
good. Except you'd be born again, you
can't know good. except to be born again you can't
see the kingdom of God except to be born again you can't enter
into the kingdom of God but God ordained that as they ate the
fruit of the tree by the coming of his darling son and the accomplishment
of redemption by his son and the gift of his grace in his
son we would be made to know what the angels of God can't
possibly know good and evil. And you can't know evil until
you know good. You can't know evil until you
know good. Do you know what the word God
is? G-O-D is just an abbreviation of the word G-O-O-D, good. God in Christ shows himself good
to his people. Now Paul speaks of obedience
in verse 17 as well. What's he talking about? He's
talking about the obedience of faith in Christ Jesus. the obedience of faith. You've received that form of
doctrine delivered you. You've obeyed that form of doctrine
delivered you. Now let me ask you, will you
trust God's darling Sod? Will you believe on the Son of
God and have life everlasting? Or will you continue in your
self-righteous arrogance and pride and obstinate unbelief? Shove God out of the way. God,
leave me alone. God, get out of my way until
you go to hell. Which will it be? I know this. The wages, that which you earn
by sin, is death. And I can't imagine the death
awaiting you. Whatever you think hell is, you
haven't come close to getting a grip on it yet. The wages of
sin is death, but the gift of God. Oh God, open heaven and drop
this gift in the hearts of poor dead sinners. The gift of God
is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And as much
as we study and think about, meditate on, and thank God for
and sing about that life, that life called the glory that God
the Father gave to God the Son, that glory he's given us, I have not seen nor heard and
it's never yet entered in to the heart or the imagination
or the mind of the most sanctified soul on this earth what God has
prepared for them to love him believe on his son And the gift
of God is yours. Eternal life in his song. Amen.