Our brother has been with us
now Friday and Saturday. This will end the conference
today. I hate to see it end. I've been
blessed by the messages. I hope you'll see Julie if you
would like to get them. A blessing to us. Joe and Bonnie
have been a treat to have in the house. He's got his daughter
and son-in-law with him, if you'll let them meet him. A little spitfire named Carter
running around here spent the morning running up and down the
ramp because he thought that was cool. We all enjoyed it too. Joe's a dear friend. He's helped
me through the years. He's been a teacher as well as
a friend. And I'm thankful that he's come
once again to bring the gospel message to us, but don't forget
to turn on your tree to see that orange light turn on over there. It certainly has been a blessing
to be here. I do enjoy this place and have
for many years on several levels. First time I came here was 1984,
about this time, so I guess it was 30 years ago. Me and brother
Maurice Montgomery came here and we stayed in Mike Carver's
trailer and heard some good preaching. I don't think I made it back
until 1991. Came down here with Ed Vanderbrink
and Gary VanViek. Three of us drove down here.
Then I started making a habit of it. I remember in 93, I think
it was, Ben came up with me the first time. They liked it because
I'd take them a week out of school to do it. School didn't like
it. I said, well this is important, we're taking him. He came up
here every year with me and in 2003, Mary asked if she could
come along with me. I said, sure. I didn't know bringing her here
was going to mean that she was going to move to Tennessee in
a few months, but that's exactly what came of it. She met her
now husband and I was happy. What a better place. to find
a spouse, that is for a believer to find a spouse, and where a
bunch of believers had gathered to listen to the preaching of
the gospel. The only thing I could wish different
is maybe they could remove part of the states of Kentucky and
Missouri and scoot Tennessee up there closer so it wasn't
such a long trip to see her, but they made it too. And then
Tim, a precious brother, For all the years I've known him. Helped me in ways I'm sure he
doesn't understand, doesn't know. I'm sure I don't know him. I
know him all, but it's been a blessing. Wife Debbie, all of you all.
Just everything's good. Nothing bad. Everything's good. If you will open your Bibles
to Song of Solomon, chapter 2. We'll begin reading at verse
8. The voice of my beloved, behold,
he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. My beloved
is like a roe or a young heart. Behold, he standeth behind our
wall. he looketh forth at the windows,
showing himself through the lattice. My beloved spake, and said unto
me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away, for, lo,
the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers
appear on the earth, The time of the singing of birds has come,
and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig
tree put forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender
grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away. Now last night I began the message
by saying that the gospel message is a message of objective realities. Pointed out a couple of them.
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Objective reality. There is therefore
now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. An objective,
unchangeable, unalterable reality. But the life of faith is subjective
experience. By that I don't mean that we
live on those experiences. We don't trust in them, but we have them. The life of
faith is not simply a matter of listening to doctrines being
hashed and rehashed. It is not simply reciting a creed,
however orthodox it may be, and saying, I believe in one God,
so forth and so on. The life of faith is a real and
living connection between the sinner and his savior, the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now our experience of it, or
shall I say the pleasure of the experience of it, ebbs and flows. That relationship is an objective
relationship, it never changes, but our experience of it comes
and goes. Some days we feel as though Christ
is right next to us. We almost could feel as though
if we just reach out we would actually touch him. In other
days He seems so very far away. But I will emphasize, it seems
he's so very far away. He said, I will never leave you
nor forsake you. That's a promise. And you'll
notice that's a promise that doesn't say, if you'll do such
and such, I won't leave you. He just said, I won't. But because of the nature of
this life, and the fact that we continue to live it within
this flesh, our experience of the presence and nearness and
dearness of the Lord ebbs and flows. That's why I love worship,
for there it flows. That's why I love to hear the
gospel, for in the hearing of the gospel, there is a great
sense of the presence of the Lord. But gospel life is objective
truth combined with subjective experience, and today I want
to look at the experience of Christ's call to his people. And it is summed in these words,
come away with me, my love. Once we have conjugated all our
verbs and parsed all our nouns and examined all our translations
and even referred to the original languages, once we have accurately
systematized all our doctrines and declared what we are, it
all comes down to this. Come away with me, my love. This
is something that the Lord Jesus Christ has been saying ever since
he entered the Garden of Eden that day when Adam and Eve sinned. He has been calling to his beloved
and he's been calling her to come and come away and come away
with him. The Song of Solomon is a romantic
story, and anyone who's ever been in love will recognize its
themes. When a man and a woman love each
other, they desire time alone. A couple of months ago, I was just
sitting in the living room and I said, Bonnie, next week let's
go down to the Omaha Zoo. It's about three hours away.
I'd never been there. She'd been there with kids before, but I
personally had never gone. I kind of thought I'd like to
have a day away, do something and see something I hadn't seen.
But you know what really drove it? Bonnie lets you and me go
to the zoo. Not because I want to see exotic
animals. Not because I want to go to Omaha.
Because I want to go somewhere where you're the only person
I know. That's one way, that's how you're
alone right in the middle of people. That zoo was full of
people. I didn't know any one of them
except her. And I liked that day. I enjoyed
that day. That's the nature of intimacy. A restricted sharing. That's
what essentially intimacy is. We want to be alone with those
we love. We want to enter into a relationship
with them that we do not share with anyone else. In doing wedding ceremonies,
one of the points I've made in speaking of the love of Christ
for His church, and I've said it is a special love, a restricted
love, and I've said things like, Imagine if the bride here, and
I'll just use my daughter and her husband as an example. I
said, Mary, just imagine what it would be if you asked Brian,
Brian do you love me? And he said, why of course I
do, I love all women. Wouldn't that love kind of lose
its attractiveness right at that point? There is a specialness
of the love of Christ for his church. People talk about the
universal love of Christ. Well, if there is one, if there
is such a thing, it seems to have very little value because
it doesn't accomplish anything. There is a love that he has for
his church, and while we may declare and rightly declare how
much we love to be with him, here is the wonder of it all,
everything that he's done, is so that He could be with us. Call us to Himself. The night before He goes to the
cross, knowing full well what will transpire the next day,
and He begins to pray. And we don't hear Him pray, Father,
make this easy. He didn't say, Lord, give me
an anesthesia. As I go through this, he said,
Father, I would that those that you have given me would be with
me where I am, that they may behold my glory. We pray for Christ's presence
when we worship, and well we should for what's the use of
worship if He's not here? Christ prayed for our presence.
Come away with me, my love. This story and the principles
of love which are in it are an account of the love that exists
between Christ and his church. Do you realize that is the essential
relationship between Christ and his church? It's love. That's
why we don't go out and begin our so-called gospel preaching
with, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Do you realize
you have no right to tell anyone that someone else loves them?
Really? You're not allowed to declare
someone else's love unless they sent you on a mission to do so.
No one has a right to tell you that I love you. Why? That's
got to come from me to have any meaning at all. And so we don't tell people that
God loves them. We preach the gospel, and in
the preaching of the gospel, God tells His people He loves
them. The same message has fallen on
all kinds of ears, but it's not a message of love to all of them.
We preach the objective truths of the gospel. of who Christ
is and what he's done and why it had to be done. We tell all
that and God joins himself with the preaching in such a way that
it falls upon the ears of his people and it is to them a declaration
of his love. It is to everyone else a declaration
of foolishness and weakness and obnoxious bothersomeness. It is a savor of life unto some
but it's a savor of death to everybody else. And it is the
same message. I can freely say, if you are
in Christ, God loves you. If you belong to Christ, Christ
loves you. I can say that kind of stuff, but I've got to say
it with the if. Because I don't know your heart.
Now if I did know your heart, I could declare with some authority,
based on what the scriptures say, God loves you. But I don't
tell anybody God loves them. That's God's job. But I do know
this. Christ loves His church. Loves
so much He gave Himself in every way that the word gave could
be imagined. He gave himself for her, in her
behalf and so that he could have her. Now imagine that. We talk about Christ's sacrifice
as the payment of a debt and that it was. But someone could
go down to the bank and pay your debt and have no interest in
any relationship with you. And it would be nice and we would
thank Him for it and thank highly of Him. Christ paid our debt
for this reason so He could have something to do with us. So that
we could be with Him. Notice the love that exists between
Christ and His church in verse 2. Psalm of Solomon chapter 2. Here the Lord speaks of His church
and says, As the lily among the thorns, so is My love among the
daughters. Now here we are, we're a little,
just a little group here. There's a whole lot of people
in the world. Do you know what he calls them? Thorns. Do you know what he calls his
church? Lilies. Not blunt thorns, not even a
rose that has both the flower and the thorn. lilies, beautiful, white, pure
lilies. Say, why does he call me that?
Because he made you that. And that's how he sees you. Years
ago, back in Ashland, Kentucky, I remember hearing one of the
young women of the church sing a song, Sonja Lewis. When he sees me, he sees the
blood of the Lamb. He sees me as worthy and not
as I am. We go before our Lord in prayer
and we are so torn down with our sense of sin and guilt and
we feel bad about what we've done and I guess we should and
we say, oh Lord, I am such a wretch. Spiritually speaking, I'm such
an ugly thing and the Lord says, you're a lily. You are a lily
among the thorns. And what does she say of him?
Verse 3. As the apple tree among the trees
of the woods, so is my beloved among the suns. Now one of the
things I miss about living in Iowa is a forest. The only natural
growing trees in Iowa are the ones along the river. Pretty
much any other tree you see, somebody planted it or it came
from another tree that somebody planted. Because it's prairie.
But I grew up in West Virginia, I know forests. And forests,
they're nice trees out there. When I lived in Virginia, it
was mostly pine trees. In West Virginia, mostly deciduous
trees of some kind. You know, in a forest there's
very few fruit trees. There's maples, oaks, sycamores,
buckeyes, that's what these ones I remember, poplars. I don't
think I ever did run into an apple tree out in the forest.
Can you imagine what that'd be like, particularly for a hungry
man, walking through a forest, you know, who's going to eat
a pine cone? Who wants to grab a handful of acorns? I suppose
you could, but I nibbled on one when I was a kid, they're kind
of bitter. Imagine what it'd be like to run into an apple
tree. So is our Lord. Among all those who have set
themselves forward as gods and as saviors, or who are set forth
as gods and saviors by the false prophets of this world, they
may look strong, they may look interesting, and they may look
pretty, but they have nothing of any value. He said, I sat
down in his shadow with great delight. Believers in the presence of
their Lord are happy. They are happy to be there. There's
nowhere else they would rather be. And I like this. Notice this.
I sat down. We sit down in the presence of
Christ. Our labors are over around Him.
We sat down in the shadow, in His presence. The noonday sun
doesn't sap our strength. with great delight and his fruit
was sweet to my taste." Oh, how wonderful it is to no
longer be among those for whom worship is a burdensome and bitter
duty to be performed. To whom the name of Christ is
worn is an obligation Something they feel they must do so that
at the end of life they get their mansion. That life in Christ is the price
you pay for the blessedness of heaven. They don't realize that
life in Christ is the blessing. And heaven is only heaven because
he's there. And that heaven without him would
be a hell to a believer. Christ loves his church, the
church loves Christ. So much so that Paul said, if
any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, there's a curse on him. And indeed there is. What a cursed
existence to live not loving the one who made you. Not loving
the one who feeds you and gives you every breath you take and
is responsible for every beat of your heart. She says here in verse 10, my beloved spake, the church
and every believer in it loves the word of Christ. You find
me somebody that doesn't like gospel, gospel preaching, I'll
show you a man that doesn't know Christ. You show me someone who has no
interest in hearing the preaching of the gospel, I'll show you
somebody who has no interest in Christ. My beloved spoke. We love the Word of God. And
by the Word of God, understand this, we use that Word of God
as a synonym for the Bible. And there's nothing wrong with
that. But the Bible never calls itself the Word of God. The Bible
has its own name for itself, the Holy Scriptures. When the
Bible talks about the Word, and as the Word of God, the Word
of Life, the Word of Christ, all these things are the message
of Christ and His Gospel. You see, a man can preach the
Bible and never preach the Word of God. A man can read the Bible
and never understand the Word of God. The Pharisees did. The
Word of God is first and foremost a person. In the beginning was
the Word. And if we're going to speak about
any kind of message and call it the Word of God, it's got
to be a message about Him who is the Word of God. So if it
is not Christ and Him crucified, it doesn't matter how much Bible
you quoted or exposited, if it's not Christ that you preach, it's
not the Word of God that you preach. My beloved spoke, and
His Word is delightful to my ears. Our spiritual life began
when Christ spoke to our hearts. It didn't begin when the preacher
spoke. I'm so glad God has some preachers in this world. But
not a one of them spoke and gave me life. Not a one of them. I have heard some wonderful messages,
but I'll tell you why they're wonderful. Because in them Christ
spoke to me. We may like the style of one
preacher, one gospel preacher over another. You know, that's
a fleshly thing, and I don't mean to say it's a bad thing,
it's just a natural thing. If a person speaks in a way,
in the way that we listen, we like that. However, there are
some who speak in a way that's not real easy for us to listen. It's not that we have a fault
with his message, it's just not the style that we easily listen
to. That doesn't mean one preacher is better than another. It just
means in our flesh we have natural preferences. But you know something? I've listened to a lot of gospel
preachers. And yes, there are those, for
lack of a better word, I would have to call my favorites. But
I have listened to all kinds of styles and I have heard the
voice of my beloved in every one of them. I have listened
to men so lively and animated their preaching I thought they
were going to jump over the pulpit, and they almost did. And I enjoyed
it, and I heard the voice of my beloved in it. And I've heard
men who if they were preaching anything else but the gospel,
I certainly would have fallen asleep. But I heard the voice
of my beloved in what they said. And it's his voice that gave
me life. And since then it's his word,
his voice that has been our greatest delight, is our strength from
day to day. Why are we surprised that the
same word which gave us life is the word that sustains our
lives? And no wonder, for look at his
word to us. Verse 4. He brought me to the
banqueting house, strictly speaking that means the house of wine.
Why is that? That wine is his blood, shed
for us. We live on it. Ceremonially,
when we take of the Lord's table, certainly that's not enough of
anything to live on, but it's only a symbol. We live on the
broken body and the shed blood of Christ. a banqueting house,
a house of wine, and his banner over me was love. Now I don't know enough about
the customs of this day to speak with any real authority, but
here's what I imagined in my mind. A king gives a feast, and
at the head table are all his cabinet members, all his advisors,
And over each one of them is a banner which tells you what
he is. He's the secretary of defense,
secretary of the treasury, grand vizier, or whatever, all these. Right next to the king, at his
right hand, sits a woman. It's his wife. And the banner over her is love. You know, he may have a lot of
respect for all those men scattered each side of him. He may honor
them. He may pay them well. And after
a fashion, he may love them. But that's not the banner over
any of them. And if you want to know what
difference that makes, I was listening to or watching the
news this morning, and I guess those barbarians over there,
have beheaded another man. This time he's from England,
and the Prime Minister of England is outraged as well as he should
be. And he's talked about what's
going to be done about it, as well he should talk about it,
and then follow up with some doing about it. What do you think would happen
if that had been the Prime Minister's wife that they killed. He might have to try to restrain
himself some and act the part of Prime Minister with dignity
and bearing, but I will tell you in his heart would be an
insatiable bloodlust. And if it were in his power to
do so, He would walk through that region, killing and slaughtering
until he found the one that touched his wife. Do you know that's
the way the Lord sees this world? I preached through the book of
Revelation back in 2008, and I was startled to find on at
least two occasions, as all these judgments are being announced,
it is declared that those judgments are falling upon the world. because
they dared to touch God's beloved, the church. They are answering
for their persecutions of the church. Now God judges for all manner
of ungodliness, but that book which so terrifies the world,
the book of Revelation, its message is this, the Lord
Jesus Christ saying to his church, I will avenge your blood. I will
rescue you by destroying everyone else. They dared raise a hand
against my beloved over whom I had stretched the banner of
love, and they're going to find out what hate is. Our Lord's love for his church
is violent, just like your love for your spouse or for your child
is violent. It will be expressed in violence
against anyone that dares touch them. Is that not humbling? To think that the living God
has such a love for you, he's going to destroy the world because
they touched you. You say, and that's another reason
Paul said leave room for the wrath of God. Somebody wrongs
you, don't do anything about it. The Lord will take care of
it. He'll take care of it in grace or judgment, but it will
be taken care of. Vengeance will be His. He will repay. In the presence of all creation,
Christ sets forth the church and spreads a banner over her
seat, emblazoned with the word, Love. They will know that I have
loved you, He said. Now you think, and I'm sure this
is involved in what God's going to do, we think, well, God's
going to make the whole world recognize that He was right.
Yes, they will. He will. And the whole world's
going to be made to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. Yes,
they will. You know what else they're going
to be forced to acknowledge? That God loved His church. They won't be able to escape
the truth of it. Because in the end we will stand glorified in
his presence, and the rest of the world will still be wretched
in his presence. We will be blessed with every
possible blessing that can be given to this creature called
a human. And they will be deprived of any kind of good that can
be given to them. It will be clear on that day
that indeed God loved Jacob. than hated Esau. He says to his beloved, arise,
Christ comes to us in our spiritual death and gives us life and sadly
as he comes back time again he often finds us in spiritual slumber.
And so the first thing he says is wake up. He said to his disciples on the
night of betrayal, sit you here while I go and pray yonder. And
he went and prayed for a while and he came back in there all
asleep and he said, wake up, wake up. But notice this, he didn't kick
her awake. Even our Lord gives them a mild
rebuke and he says, could you not watch with me for one hour?
And then you can almost hear that love come in there and say,
well, the spirit was willing, but the flesh was mean. He says,
I understand guys. You'd have prayed with me all
day, but it's late, and your flesh overcame the desire of
your spirit to watch with me." Oh, how precious our Lord, how
tender He is to us. He makes excuses for our failures. He says the time has come. God's
got a timetable, and when the time comes, the things scheduled
happen. We get out our day planners and
we write them down. I see people write stuff in pen.
I say, man, you better write that in pencil. I don't even have a day planner,
not because of any spiritual understanding I have of how things
happen, it's just I'm not that organized. But I know this, I
make a lot of plans that never happen. God's never made a plan
that didn't happen. Christ came into the world. In
due time, Christ died for the ungodly, and Paul said, and we
have pleased God. When God had scheduled it, Christ
was made known to Paul, and Paul was sent to make Christ known
to a lot of his sheep. When it is over, all the difficult
times are done. For the believer, there comes
an end to every difficulty. For the unbeliever, there comes
an end to every pleasure until there is no pleasure. For the
believer, there's an end to every difficulty until there are no
difficulties. The spring has come. Positive
enjoyments. Speaks of the flowers, all the
beauty of Christ and all that's connected with him. There's singing
as joy. He speaks there of the voice.
It says in the King James, the voice of the turtle. You know
he's not talking about a box turtle or anything. They don't
make noises as far as I know of. In every other place except
one in the Bible where that word appears, it's the turtle dove. Spring has come. My wife and
I, we like to sit in the screened-in porch on our back deck. Sit out
there in the morning. Spring comes and those birds
start chattering back and forth. We got some morning doves. And
you hear them making that sound. And you know what it is? The
sound of love is what it is. It's the males are courting.
That's what they're doing. Trying to attract the attention
of one of those females. The cooing of doves is heard
in our land. The voice of the Lord's romantic
call to His bride. And he said, it's heard, the
voice of the turtle dove is heard in the land, or in our land. Our land. The world's got it's
land, it's right here. And it's all they'll ever get
and God's gonna burn it all up someday. But there is a land,
a heavenly one, a spiritual one. It is the land of the gospel.
It is the land of God's truth in Christ. That's our land. It's Emmanuel's land. And there's romance there. There's
tender love there. And see what he calls us. Here's
something to stump you. Arise, verse 10. My love, my
fair one. Now I've never, to my estimation,
been a good looking guy. I look in the mirror and it's
always a disappointment. I always hope for better than
what I see. And it's not getting any better,
you know. Spiritually, we think of ourselves
as so ugly. Christ looks at us and says,
My fair one. We look at Him and we say, Oh,
there's none like Him. He's one among ten thousand.
He's altogether lovely. And brethren, He is. Is there
anything about Christ you don't like? Is there anything about
him you do not find in perfection? And not only each individual
part of him is perfect and shining in glory, you put them all together,
and the symmetry of them all together is even more beautiful
than any one of them taken individually. You know, some of us, you'll
hear them say, well, they got pretty eyes. And you know what they
mean by that? The rest of them, not so much.
You know, that's why they mention the eyes, they're trying to be
so nice. Everything about the Lord is
beautiful if individually seen and they all fit together in
proper proportion. That's what the woman in Song
of Solomon said. He's all together loving. You put all those parts
together. Those eyes, that hair, the arms, the legs. Perfect man. And he looks at
us and we want to do this. And he says, my fair one, No spot, no fault, no disfigurement. Not in his eyes. And who else's
eyes matter? I guess I would like it that
everyone thought I was a good looking person. But as long as Bonnie does, everything's
okay. At least good looking enough
to stay around. If I have her approval, what
do I care what anybody else thinks? And if I have the approval of
Christ, what care have I for what anyone else thinks? His
call is threefold. Come away. Come. Our Lord's call is never go.
I hear people say, here's the call of God, go into all the
world. Well, sort of. But you notice
this, he said to them on that day, you shall be witnesses unto
me in Judea and Samaria, even to the outermost parts of the
earth. And what was the next word? And lo, I am with you always. The Lord never sends his people
away from him. And even when they wander, he
wanders with them. He's not wandering, he knows
exactly where he is. But He's with them. Even when
they can't see Him, He sees them. Even when they forget Him, He
never forgets them. Come, He says. We think that
we do our Lord such a wonderful honor when we come groveling
into the throne of grace and act as though we have no place
there. The Bible says come boldly in the throne of grace. It's
our Savior calls us there. And He calls us there not to
humiliate us. He calls us there not to chew
us out, but to declare His love for us. For it says that we may
find mercy to help us in our time of need. We are weak. We need strength. And what do
the Scriptures say our strength is? The joy of the Lord shall
be your strength. And where does that joy come
from? The declaration of His love and
grace to us. He says, come, and he says, come
away. Coming to Christ always involves going away from something
else. And that's why he's got to call us, because we get so
attracted to so many other things. We can't help it. Tomorrow morning,
many if not all of you will go to a job. And it's the right
thing to do. You ought to work if you can. But boy, it's so easy to get
caught up in it too, isn't it? It's so easy to think, not that
you work to live, but that you live to work. And to think that
your job is what you are to be devoted to. And Christ must say,
come away. Don't let go of that for a while.
Come away. And it's always come away with
me. He calls us to Himself. He does
not say, leave free willism and become sovereign grace. Well
friends, I love free and sovereign grace. But free and sovereign
grace as a doctrinal system will make a poor shelter for your
souls. And it will not make you feel loved or be loving. It's
Christ that will do that. He does not say, leave that Roman
beast of a church and come into the Baptist congregation. Which, by the way, for the most
part, is just a smaller beast. Smaller, kinder, gentler beast,
most of the time. He says, come away with me. There are four distinct occasions
in which the Lord says this to his people. There may be more,
but this is the four I've got written down. Four experiences
of a believer in which the Lord says to him, come away with me.
First of all, when he first opens his eyes and calls him to himself
in salvation. The Lord Jesus comes to his people
one by one and says to each one personally, my fair one, fair
one, come away with me. He never has to bribe. He doesn't have to sell them.
He just says come away. He doesn't have to sing. multiple
verses of a slow and sentimental hymn, he speaks and they follow. He says the winter is past, the
winter of your spiritual death is over. He says the rains are
gone, and I see that at least in this circumstance as a picture
of that work of the Holy Spirit in conviction, necessary but
not particularly pleasant. Now if you've ever lived a winter
in Iowa, Spring rains look like a good thing, because at least
the water is liquid, doesn't involve shoveling, and you can
wear a smaller coat. But it eventually becomes tiresome,
even the rain. Oh, I want to see the sunshine.
It's cold and it's damp, but you know something, it's necessary.
If you want any fruit, you've got to have some rain. And if
a man is ever to be brought to Christ and made to hear the sound
of the voice of Christ's love for him, he must first be reigned
on by the Spirit of God and that work of conviction and of tearing
down that which has been falsely built up. But the Lord said,
okay, that's done now. Come away. I have made a shambles
of all that you had. Now come away with me. It comes at the appointed time.
The winter of unbelief is over. The rain from heaven has finished
its work. It's now time for life, fruit,
joy, and love. Christ's call is the call to
life. Those with terminal illness,
believers with terminal illnesses, they believe that it is death
that stalks them. It is not. It is life. Sometimes when a person is under
the conviction of the Spirit of God, he thinks he's going
to die. It's not death that's coming, it's life. The call is promised by his love,
or prompted by his love. It is he that declares his love.
You will search the scriptures in vain to find one case of the
apostles ever preaching to an indiscriminate audience, God
loves you. He writes letters to the church
and tells the church that God loves them, and he got authority
to do that because God declared his love for the church. But
they never did it to anybody else. The apostles set forth
Jesus Christ, and if the Lord loved those in an indiscriminate
audience, if he loved any of them, that declaration of Christ
was a declaration of love in their ears. So at the new birth,
Christ says to his people, come away with me, my love. Here's
another time. the worship meetings of God's
church. You ever wake up Sunday morning,
oh man, it's Sunday, I guess I better go to church. That's
the flesh talking and the flesh is never going to be able to
see church as anything other than that. Something it's got to do.
Do you realize that in the weekly assemblies of the church of the
Lord Jesus, the church, the Lord says to his church, now come
away. Come away with me. Let's spend
some time together. The winter of the week is over.
Oh, don't you get spiritually weary through the week? I mean,
because there's things we've got to do. And we live in a world
that stands in opposition to our Lord, and we're trying to
commune with Him even through the week, but we've got to live
among those who have no love, no care for Him, and it's easy
for our flesh to go that direction and drag us with it. And we've got to be called back. And he says, come away with me,
my love. I do not lay upon the members
of Grace Community Church any legal obligation to come to church. You know why? Because if they
cannot hear the voice of their beloved calling them, the voice
of me calling them isn't going to do any good. And if they do
not hear the call to worship as a call of love and delight
and rest and shade, I don't blame them for not coming. Come away with me. Come away
from the winter of the world. Come away from that rain. Come in where it's spring. Come listen to the gospel where
the fruit of the Spirit is revealed in abundance. Come to the gospel
where the romantic cooling of the Lord Jesus Christ are heard
to his people. Thirdly, when the believer dies, the Lord
Jesus is saying, come away with me. I look at this little group,
and I've known some of you for a lot of years, and I can tell
it's been a lot of years. And it will not be long before
that body of yours gives up. And we cannot help but have a
little bit of fear about that. For one thing, we've never done
that before. And nobody that has has ever been able to come
back and tell us what happened. Don't believe those beyond and
back stories. They may have come back, but
they didn't go beyond. I don't know where they went. The only
one that ever went beyond and came back said he couldn't tell
you what he heard, much less what he saw. So don't believe
anybody that tells you what heaven's like. They haven't been there. We have no one to tell us what
it's like to die. But our Lord Jesus said this,
He that believes in me will never die. And he that lives and believes
in me though he die, yet shall he live. And when it comes time
for your body to quit and for your experience of this existence
to be over, there will not be some dangerous passage for you
to go through with devils and demons all around ready to snatch
you away and drag you into perdition. The Lord Jesus Christ will appear
to you in that hour and say, come away with me, my love. Winter's over. Oh, we cling to
this life. Brethren, it's winter. There's
no life here. This is a walking death. That's
all it is. I know there are certain joys
in it. I'm not going to be so cynical as to say that there's
nothing to enjoy here. But we enjoy it for a brief time
and we're gone. And the longer we live, the less we can enjoy. The winter's over. The rain.
The winter of utter unbelief in this world is gone. And then
even that rainy season of living here as believers in this kind
of rain. Rain is a signal of better things to come. It's a
preparation for life. As I say, it can get pretty dreary.
The Lord said, I've got the reins done, the preparation. The time of life in this flesh
under grace has fulfilled its purpose. Now it's time for nothing,
nothing but pleasure, nothing but the good things. Do you realize
that the death of your body will be nothing more than the removal
of everything that has frustrated you up to this point? Paul said,
O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body
of death? When they came into his cell,
they said, alright, it's time. It's time, Caesar said, you got
to go. Paul said, I don't know literally,
but this is what I did. Woo hoo! I'm out of here! I'm
done! I've finished my course. All that's left? at crown righteousness. In a little while, I'll be with
him and I'll be like him. Do you realize that that is the
essential blessedness? In those two things, to be with
him and to be like him. He comes to us and indeed it
may be a rough road for us to get to this point, We may go
through some horrible extended illness. On the way there we
may go through many trials and troubles and our hearts be bowed
down with care. We may lay on a bed and be gasping
for breath. But when that moment comes, our
Lord Jesus says, now my fair one, come away. Leave this all
behind. Leave behind the hospital bed.
Leave behind the IV. Leave behind the weeping relatives. Leave behind the struggle with
sin, and doubt, and unbelief, and come away with me. I've got
some place to show you that's wonderful. It'll just be you
and me, and it'll be love. And then lastly, there is a generation
of believers that shall never die. For in their lifetime, the heavens
will open, and the archangel will shout, and the Lord Jesus
shall say, come away with me. It's all over. The world's going to hear something
else. They constantly talked about
the coming of the Lord in terms of terror. And I tell you, it's
going to be terrifying to some. But it will be the arrival of
our Beloved. And it will be Him saying to
us, come away. You can leave now. You don't
have to stay in that mess anymore. Come away with me, my love, my
fair one. My darling, from the time, or maybe we should
say from the non-time, that God purposed all things, in eternity
in time, He has been saying through His Son, come away with me, my
love. Everything that has happened
to you has been for this purpose, to bring you to Him. in every
providence, large and small, pleasant and unpleasant, Christ
has said, come away with me, my love. And when that experience
is fulfilled, you will wonder why you ever found fault with
his providence. You will say, That's why. And not a loss that you experience
will be counted loss anymore. But as Paul says, I count them,
the things that I once counted gain, I count them loss for this
excellency to know Him, to be with Him, to be found in Him,
to come away with Him, His beloved. May the Lord bless your hearts. Oh, amazing grace, how sweet
the sound That saved a wretch like me I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see. Sometimes when you hear the gospel,
you feel like you're almost there. I was almost there as well. God
bless you. Thank you.