I want to thank Pastor Smith
for inviting me here this morning, and the Holy Ghost for laying
my name upon His heart to provide me with one more opportunity
to preach His gospel to eternity bound sinners. Is that how you
see yourselves? And it's so whether you see it
or not. Eternity bound sin. I was told that the reason for
this conference, at least one of the reasons, was to acquaint
some of us who believe that we're called to preach the gospel of
God's sovereign grace in Christ with others of like precious
faith and to encourage fellowship between those pastors and their
churches. My response to Brother Smith
was this, fellowship is fellows in the same ship. And I can overlook a difference
in views on eschatology and church government and a lot of other
things. But we can't have fellowship
if we're not in the same ship. And that ship is the Lord Jesus
Christ. I purposely have not listened
to any of the preachers here today. Harold told me that most
of you all were on sermon audio. But I purposely didn't listen
to any of you because I don't know you. And I didn't want my
message to be cluttered up with anything I might hear. You say, that's kind of suspect,
preacher. Well, you preach a while, you'll
get suspect. I wanted to preach to you exactly
the way I preach to our folks at home. And when I'm done, if
you think I'm picking at something that I've already heard or picking
at you, you go back and talk to Rendell. Go back here and
talk to Greg Coleman. Talk to Mr. Moore back here.
Larry. Talk to one of these fellas and
they'll tell you this is exactly what I preach every day. And
if their word is not good enough, go to Free Grace Radio. Everything
I've ever preached is recorded and on the internet. By the grace of God, I want to
preach to you exactly like I would to those in Taylor, Arkansas.
Is there anybody here today who does not believe that the Bible
is the infallible Unchangeable, inerrant Word of God. Anybody
here believe it's not? Is this the basis for what we
believe? This book. This book. Or are we bound by tradition? Are we bound by what Grandma
said? Some old deacon in the church
that we were close to. Somebody one time said, God said
it, I believe it, and that settles it. No sir, that's not the way
it is. God said it, and that settled
it, whether you believe it or not. Now that's the truth. My message to you this morning,
and what I hope and pray is God's message to you, is about preachers
and preaching and the gospel they preach. All three things
are right here in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. I titled my message
from the last verse of the text in verse 11, where Paul said,
so we preached, And so, we live in a day when gospel
preaching has been relegated to the scrap heap. It means nothing. It means nothing whatsoever. And preachers are no longer considered
as ambassadors of God. They don't stand before you in
His place, beseeching you to be reconciled to God, but they
have their ministry. They're entertainers, organizers,
caretakers. They no longer have any time
to study and to pray, but most of them spend their days knocking
on doors, visiting the hospitals, and counseling
their members. Billy Graham was interviewed
years ago, and this news commentator must have had it out for him. And he said, Brother Graham,
there's a question I always wanted to ask you. He said, when you
first began your ministry, he said you preached what's called
the doctrines of grace, the Calvinistic doctrine. He said, is that correct?
And Brother Graham said, yes, yes, that's correct. That's correct.
Well, he said, you don't preach that now. Oh, no. No, he said,
I don't preach that now. Well, he said, what happened?
He said, it was ruining my ministry. Let me tell you something, if
you have a ministry, you're in trouble. You're in trouble. You hear what
I'm saying? If you have a ministry, you're
in trouble. Paul said, God put me in the
ministry. And there's only one. There's
only one. God puts them in Him. I don't have an agenda. I'm not
free to pick my issues and my messages and my goals. Paul said in Ephesians chapter
3 verse 7, he said, I was made a minister according to the gift
of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of
His power. Paul wasn't seeking to be a preacher. His business at the time was
to arrest them and persecute them. He didn't earn it. He didn't
qualify for it. He didn't choose it as a vocation,
but God put him in the ministry. I hear a lot of talk about wrestling
with the call to the ministry. You won't have to wrestle. If
God puts you in the ministry, you'll be in it. If He don't,
you won't. That's just how simple it is.
God puts men in the ministry. You can't manufacture a preacher. God puts him in the ministry. Preachers become preachers when
God puts them in the ministry. And God puts men in the ministry
and He establishes His authority in that man by His presence and
the power of the Holy Ghost which attends His preaching and His
message. Boy, I didn't get an amen on
that. God attends that man's ministry. with the presence of the sovereign
Spirit of God. Yes, He does. They don't need a name. They
don't need a degree from a seminary to establish who they are. They
don't need letters of recommendation. Paul said, I don't need letters
of recommendation to you or from you. You are my epistle. Written not in words, but written
in the fleshly tables of the heart. What's he talking about? He's talking about the presence
and power of the Holy Spirit of God, who attended the gospel
he preached. A preacher, if they don't have
any of these things, how will anybody know they're God's preacher?
Listen to this over in 1 John 4, verse 6. Isn't it just this? What complicates things in the
ministry is all these preconceived notions that antichrist religion
has put into the minds and hearts of men. That's what complicates
things. The things in the ministry of
God are very simple. Very simple. Listen to this.
John said, we are of God. He that knoweth God, heareth
us. Huh? He that knoweth not God, heareth
not us. That's pretty simple, isn't it? Nearby know we the spirit of
truth and the spirit of error. God's preachers serve the living
God. The sovereign God, just like
you just talked about a few minutes ago. The sovereign God. They're dependent on Him to supply
all their needs in Christ Jesus. Somebody calls you to preach.
Well, how much can the folks down there afford to pay? Is
that really the issue? How much freedom can I have? What kind of authority will you
let me have? They're dependent on Him. They're
dependent on the sovereign God to arrange His providence. I'll tell you this, you put yourself
in the ministry, and you go fiddling around with God's providence
and promoting yourself, you'll be the sorriest man who ever
lived. You'll go to your grave wrestling over whether or not
God called you to the ministry. God arranges His providence around
His preachers. They're totally dependent on
Him to preserve them. They're God's preachers. Our
Lord sent out some preachers and He said, I don't even want
you to take an extra Coke with you. Don't pack up two Cokes,
just take one. That's all you're going to need.
Now, you go get a cooler and a wagon and you get some food?
No. No, you don't take anything with
you. I'll take care of all your needs. They're God's preachers. And
let me tell you this, preaching is the means ordained of God
whereby faith and repentance are born in the soul and by which
saving faith is given and sustained. Folks like to run over there
to Romans chapter 10 and they say, see here, faith cometh by
hearing, hearing by the Word of God. You better read those
verses that come just before that. That was the summation of what
Paul had to say about preaching and preachers. He said, how are
you going to call on an unrevealed God? How are you going to believe
on this God that you've never heard of? How are you going to
believe on Him? Well, I just believe in the Lord. Oh, no you
don't. You can't call on Him in whom
you have not believed, and you can't believe in Him of whom
you have not heard. And the Holy Spirit of God asked
this question, how shall you hear without a preacher? Dead in trespasses and sin. How are you going to hear? He took Ezekiel out there in
the desert and he said, now what do you see? I don't know what
he saw before he went out there. But when he got him out there,
he said, now what do you see? He said, all I see is bones.
That's all I see. Dead, dry bones. And I tell you,
if you ever see things that way, All these ideas about putting
yourself in the ministry and qualifying for the ministry and
doing this and doing that and arranging things and playing
softly and turning the lights down and all that nonsense. That
goes right out the window. God said, can these bones live? Can they? Oh Lord God, thou knowest. Preach to them. Huh? Preach to them! He didn't know what to say, did
he? Preach to them. What am I going
to tell them? Thus saith the Lord. That's what
you're going to tell them. You don't have a message. I have
the message. And when I give it to you, that's
what you preach to the bones. And so he did. Preaching is the means ordained
of God whereby faith and repentance is born in the soul, and by which
saving faith is given and sustained. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians,
and here's what he told them. 2 Thessalonians, I think it's
2.13. He said, I thank God for you,
brethren. Now, if you want to know what
the rest of the outfit believed, you read the first part of chapter
2 of 2 Thessalonians. talking about that spirit of
antichrist that swallowed them up and took from them the love
of the truth, and for which God sent them strong delusion to
believe a lie and be damned. But he said, I thank God for
you, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation
through sanctification of spirit and belief of the truth, whereunto
He calls you by our gospel. Now, he tells us in 1 Corinthians
1, verse 21, that it pleased God through the foolishness of
preaching to save them that believe. That's what pleased the sovereign
God. He's sovereign. He's in His holy
temple. What pleases Him? Well, here's one of the things
that pleased Him. It pleased God through the foolishness of
preaching to save them that believe. And He tells us that this preaching
to them who are perishing. Oh, you say it says to them that
perish. No, it means to them who are
perishing. It focuses. You mean I have to
listen to a man? That's exactly what I mean. You
mean I have to hear from God through him? That's exactly what
I mean. That old Ethiopian eunuch, he
had everything that religion told him to get. He had a Bible.
He went to the feast. He sat and he watched all the
rhetoric, he watched all the ceremonies, he watched all the
tradition, he looked at the dress, he saw everything that went on,
and he went home and he was still reading the same Bible he was
reading when he went over there, and he was just as ignorant coming
back as he was when he went. And God sent him a preacher out
in the middle of... I tell you, maybe God made an
exception with me because we ain't have no preachers down
here. You reckon God didn't know that? He sent that man. He sent Philip. You go out here. He took him
out of a revival and sent him out here in the wilderness. Didn't
even tell him who he was going to preach to or how or nothing.
You go out here. And he went. And he started running alongside
that chariot. And he said, do you understand what you're reading?
What did he tell him? How can I except some man explain
it to me, tell it to me, declare it to me? How am I ever going
to understand? Preaching. To them that perish,
that's foolishness. That's foolishness. And the sovereign
Spirit of the living God, He asked, how shall you hear without
a preacher? How are you going to hear? And
how shall he preach except he be sent? Boy, we can make a lot of noise,
I tell you that. But you can't preach without
God. My friend, Merle Hart from up
in Danville, Kentucky, I worked for him for years. He's a trim
carpenter. And he had this little Toyota
pickup back when they made the real little ones. And that thing
was powerful. We loaded that thing down where
the front end was always up in the air like this. And that thing,
he could get right out in the traffic and go. And he got ready
to buy him a new truck, and he saw those little Ford Ranger
2s or whatever they were called, those little Fords. And it was
about half the price of that Toyota, so he bought him one
now. And he said, boy, I really like
this thing. He said, it's powerful. And this
was the first day after he bought it. We loaded it all up with
tools and we got over in Lexington traffic. And he was revving that
thing up, revving it up, and pretty soon he let out on the
clutch and it took one leap and died. That's what preachers without
God do. They get all revved up. Get all
revved up in a big way and jump a little piece and stall out
and die. You can't preach without God. How's He gonna preach? He don't
know who to preach to. He don't know what to preach.
He don't even know what preaching is. How's He gonna preach except
He be sent? He be sent. I heard the other night, homosexuality
is an abomination to God. And certainly that is true. I
agree 100%. But there's a worse sin than
that. There's a worse sin than that.
What could be worse than being a sodomite? To hear a gospel
preacher. Are you listening? To hear a
gospel preacher with indifference, without obedience, and without
a contrite heart. Now where in the world did you
get that from? I got that out of the book of
Matthew. Our Lord said to His preachers, those that He sent
out to preach, in Matthew chapter 10 verse 14, whosoever shall
not receive your message, now that ain't what He said, Whosoever
shall not receive you, that's what he said, nor hear the words, your words. Oh, you want to pile some responsibility
on the preacher, let him read that. They won't receive you and they
won't hear your words. When you depart out of that house,
or out of that city, you shake the dust off your feet, are you
listening? Verily I say unto you, it will
be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the
day of judgment than for that city. What'd they do? They wouldn't hear it. They wouldn't hear it. Preaching
and preachers are no longer considered as a necessary means. They're optional. They're optional. They're optional according as
chance and circumstance might dictate. I had a young fellow
came to listen to me and we got crossways on this very point.
One Sunday he came to me after the message and he said, preacher,
I've got a hypothetical situation. Nobody ever does that to you. I've got a hypothetical situation. He said, we're out here hunting. And he said, we're kind of spread
out here and we're walking through here deer hunting. He said, I
hear the bushes rustle and I look and I see this big brown patch
and I throw my rifle up and I shoot, but I've shot my friend. And
he knows I'm a Christian. And he's not. And he knows he's
dying. And he begins to cry out. He's gut shot. He's going to
die. There ain't no question about it. And he cries out to
me. He said, I'm not saved. I don't know the Lord. He said,
you mean the Lord won't let me preach to that man? And I said,
before I answer your question, I'm going to ask you something.
Does God save men on purpose or by accident? Now come on. It's one or the
other. Does the sovereign God, the eternal
God, the all-knowing God, does He save men on purpose or by
accident? I said there used to be a sign
where I bought my lumber at the contractor's desk at this big
lumber company. And I said, when you walk in,
there's a big sign there that said, negligence on your part
does not constitute an emergency on my part. And that's the way
it is with God. He tells us over in Proverbs,
I called and you wouldn't listen. I sent my preacher and you wouldn't
hear him. Now I laugh at your calamity.
And I'll mock when your fear comes. Oh, you seek me early
then. You cry out then, but I won't answer you. Why? Because this is how God saves
sinners. Do you believe that? If you believe the Word of God,
you believe. Preachers today are the bud of
every joke. They're forced to run for their
office like politicians. They're under the thumb of the
deacon boards and presbyteries and denominational influence
and laws. Let me just say this and I'll
move on. These kind of preachers are not
God's preachers. You couldn't intimidate one of
God's preachers. You see that man over there that's
got ulcers and taking meds? God's preachers don't have ulcers,
they give them. That's right, they give them. I tell you, you ever figure this
thing out, God ever reveals this in your heart. And you'll listen like you've
never listened before. I'll tell you, God brought this
sinner down and He showed him who he was.
And He showed me who he was. And I went down and found a church
and I sat there and I hung on every word that man said. And God was pleased to let me
hear him. That's how God saves sinners. That man who believes, preaches,
and serves the sovereign God cannot be intimidated, coerced,
or forced into anything. I told our folks where I'm at
right now. I said, y'all gather together
and voted to have me down. That's the last vote we're going
to take until you vote me out. We're not voting on anything. God sent me here to oversee these
people and that's what I'm going to do. That's what I'm going to do. I don't try to lord it over anybody. But I'll tell you this, every
time Israel took a vote, God cursed them. Every time. Every
time the majority rule was taken, it was opposite the will of God.
Every time. Why do we have to talk about
all this? Paul was a preacher. He was a preacher. Now with that
in mind, let me read you my text. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 1. Moreover, brethren, I declare
unto you the gospel, the gospel which I preached unto you. How'd
they get it? He preached to them. That's how they got it. But God sent him and he preached
to them, which also you received, and wherein you stand, by which
also you are saved, if you keep in memory what I preached unto
you, unless you believe in vain." So the men and women hear, and
the seed falls by the wayside. Pretty soon the fowls come and
pick it up. Some of it falls on stony places
and springs up, but it's got no root. And sometimes it falls
among the thorns and it's choked out. That's what it means to
believe in vain. You try to mix what you think
you know with what God's declaring to you from His Word. To hear with the ears, but not
with the heart. To profess with the mouth, but
not from the heart. To confess with the lips, but
not from the heart. God looks on the heart. David? You're going to pick David? Men look on the outward countenance.
God looks on the heart. God's elect, here's God's preachers,
and their preaching is attended with the power and presence of
the Holy Ghost, and their words are made effectual in the hearts
of those who hear. That's how this thing works. Alright, what do God's preachers
preach? What makes their ministry to
differ from the multitude? What sets them apart from all
other pretenders of religion? What is it that this man has
to say that so radically sets him apart from the rest of the
world? What do God's preachers preach? Well, first of all, God's preachers
preach a person. The gospel is not a what, the
gospel is a who. It's a who. Paul said, when it
pleased God to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him
among the heathen. That's when I quit talking to
flesh and blood. That's when I quit consulting
this world. And He revealed Christ in me. They preach the glorious person
and work of Jesus Christ. They see in Him the whole counsel
of God. There's a fellow we've been preaching
to for a long time. A friend of mine was preaching
to him. He'd been listening to him for
quite a while. And finally they were in a conversation and he
said, he was telling him the same thing he just told him from
the pulpit, you know, look to Christ, look to Christ. He that
hath the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son of God
hath not life. And he said, all right, all right. He said, I get it, I get it.
Now let's move on. And he said, no, you don't get
it. If you got it, you wouldn't want to move on. What does Paul, what did he tell
those Colossians? He said, if you have received
Christ Jesus the Lord, So walk ye in him. Rooted, built up,
established in the faith. Beware, beware now of worldly
philosophy. Those rudimentary principles
of the world, those basic rudimentary, you know what he's talking about
there? Free will. That's what he's talking about. Ah, man got a free will. You
mean you don't believe man is a free moral agent? He's not
free and he certainly ain't moral. Now we might find some common
ground on the agency, but free and moral ain't a part of it.
It's just not a part of it. What sets them apart from all
these pretenders of religion? J.C. Rouse said this. A very
respected writer and commentator. He said that 1 Corinthians chapter
1 verse 30 was one of the most comprehensive verses of Scripture
in the Bible. You want to turn over there.
1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 30. Now listen to this. But of him, who's that talking
about? That's talking about God. Are
ye in Christ Jesus? Well, first of all, how does
a man get in Christ? God puts him there. I take it so. Who of God is made unto us wisdom. I was listening to the brother
talking about the sovereignty of God, and I'm not picking at
you one iota. But you know how I learned the
sovereignty of God? I read this book. That's all
you have to do. That Scripture he quoted out
of Isaiah, he declares the end from the beginning and from ancient
times of things that are not yet done, saying my counsel shall
stand and I'll do all your plight. That's Scripture over in Daniel
where he spoke to Nebuchadnezzar, and when he returned Nebuchadnezzar
back to his own reasoning and taught him some things out there,
taught him what a beast he was. Oh, he said, now, he said, unto
him, he reigneth in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants
of the earth, and none can stay his hand or say unto him what
doeth that. He reigneth. This is the sovereign
God. But the more you learn of the sovereignty of God, the worse
shape you're going to be in. Until God sends you a preacher. And that preacher preaches to
you how that sovereignty is engaged in the Son of God who came into
this world as a man, a representative man. lived in your stead under
that law to provide you with a righteousness that you didn't
have a prayer of producing yourself. And then went to the cross and
satisfied divine justice on your behalf and took away your sins. And then God declares His acceptance. and the sufficiency of your Savior
when He raised Him from the grave and seated Him at His own right
hand. Huh? You see sovereignty in that
light, He'll give you some hope. Who shall separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus the Lord? Things present,
things to come, I don't care what it is, it ain't nothing.
Who is He that condemneth? It's God that justifies. Who's
going to blot my name out? Christ died. If you see God's sovereignty in
that light, it will do you some good. They see Him in the whole counsel
of God. The whole counsel of God. And
one of the most deceptive things that Satan tries to sneak into
the church is to receive the good news of Christ and then
move on. Paul said, don't do it. Stay
right where you're at. Stay right where you're at. For
in Him, in Him, Colossians 2 verse 9, in Him dwelleth, dwelleth,
didn't come there for a minute or two, didn't come there to
visit, in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And you're complete. If you have
Christ, you have everything God has for sinners. Everything God
has. Do you believe that? Huh? Do you believe that? Oh, I don't
pray enough. I know you don't. I don't either. But my salvation is not based
on my prayer. My salvation is based on Him. Some of the old saints of God,
if you read their biographies, went out of this world, lost
their minds. They didn't know who they was.
Foaming at the mouth. Didn't know their own children.
I've got a man in our church right now who has dementia real
bad. Sometimes you just don't know
who he is. Don't know where he is. But for
40 years, he'd been in there listening to the Gospel. And
his hope is in Him. It ain't in himself. within himself. A very dear pastor friend of
mine up in West Virginia before he died, this woman had been
listening to him for quite a while. She was getting upset, just really
upset. Her husband quit coming, he just
quit coming. He said, She got frustrated at
him one night and she said, Brother Scott, all you want to do is
preach Christ, Christ, Christ. That's all you ever preach. And
he was just almost in shock when he looked at her, but when he
come to himself, he said, Would you put that on my tombstone? Just write that on my tombstone.
Scott Richards. Here lies Scott Richardson. All
he ever preached was Christ. Christ. Christ. He's the pearl. He's the pearl. All these gifts of God. Did you
ever read Ephesians 1 slow? Huh? I ain't talking about that
duty you've got to do every morning, you know, when you get up and
read. All right, I'm done with that. Now I can move on. Read
it slowly. He said, Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with how
many blessings? All spiritual blessings. Every one of them. In Christ. In Christ. Richard, you think there's a
danger out here somewhere? One God's elect not going to
hear? Not at Kennings. Not at Kennings. I think those Pharisees were
rednecks. I know a lot about rednecks, but they got mad. And they stomped up before the
Son of God and they said, if thou be the Christ, kill us plainly. He said, I told you. I told you. But you believe not because you're
not my sheep. Over in the book of Acts, Paul
went out there to preach. Half Jews, half Gentiles. Over
in Antioch. He brought the message. There
were just a few of them there. By next Sunday, the whole city
was out to hear it. You think that didn't make those
bunch of Pharisees mad? They wouldn't have anything to
do with it. Paul said, well, since you've decided to take
the gifts of God and the grace of God and the mercy of God and
lay it aside, I'll preach to the Gentiles. They said they were glad. Boy,
I was when he preached to me. I was glad. I'll clap. And it said, as many as was ordained
to eternal life, believe. Is that not what it said? Are we on the same page? Preaching, preachers and the
gospel they preach. They preach Christ. I wouldn't
walk across the road to argue with you over a lecture. I wouldn't
go anywhere and debate it with anybody. Preachers don't debate,
they declare. I read it to you in my text.
Paul said, I declared the gospel to you. But what if they get mad? Let
them go. Let them go. What if the church
split? Let her split. What if my family kicks me out?
It'll be the best thing that ever happened to you. He's the bread. He's the bread. He's the water
of life. He's the way, the truth, and
the life. He's the Good Shepherd. He's the Great I Am. John chapter 5 verse 20. He said,
we know, 1 John chapter 5 verse 20, He said, we know that the
Son of God has come and given to us an understanding that we
may know Him that's true. How do I know God's sovereign?
Because I've seen what His Son did. I've seen all the nations
and Israel and Antichrist and everybody gathered together,
and when they all did exactly what they wanted to do, they
did what God's hand and God's counsel determined before to
be done. And that's what's going to be done here this morning.
Same thing. Same thing. I get asked occasionally, well,
how did the gospel fare? It always fares the same way. Paul said, my gospel is yea and
amen. Now sometimes it's a saver of
death under death to that man who hears it and refuses it.
All it does is aggravate him. Makes him angry. Watch the superstitious
religious folks down there bound down to a man. I'll tell you this, if you ever
see God's preacher, As God's preacher, you listen in a different
way. You listen in a different way.
You go to this book and you say, wow, that's exactly what that
says. That's exactly what that says. I was reading a text out of 2
Corinthians 5.21 one time, talking to a man about substitution. That's the ministry. He said,
to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Him,
not imputing their trespasses unto Him. For God hath made Him
to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him. And he said, the Bible never
says that Christ was made sin. I said, well, sure it does. Where? I said, 2 Corinthians 5.21. It don't say that. I said, well,
I think I got a Bible in my truck. And I went over and got it. Now,
I wasn't even talking to this guy. This was just a religious
guy standing by the wayside listening to what I was telling to another
fellow. So I read it to him. And he grabbed the Bible out
of my hand. He looked. He said, that's that old King
James Version. I said, I just happen to have
an OED. Anybody in here know what that
is? That's an Oxford English Dictionary. It'll take the word
at present, and it'll keep going back in time, and it'll establish
what that word means, not by Bible words, but through common
usage, like advertisement. And that's local newspapers. And it's going to show you what
that word meant in the 1600s. And I said, you know what I found
out? M-A-D-E, made, means the same
thing right now it did back then. But it hadn't changed one iota. The problem ain't in the old
Bible. The problem's in the old man.
Made means made. That's what it means. Well, how
was God made sin? I couldn't tell you. I'm still
wrestling over how you become a man. If I can get past that, I'm not
going to have any trouble with this. I just believe it so. I just believe it so. He treated
Him on that cross as me. As me. And I'm not talking about
me in mercy, but me in sin. And He poured out His wrath on
him. He satisfied His justice on him. Back during those big fires they
had out in California, I was telling a story there about
a young man and his son. And evidently when that Santa
Ana wind kicks up and those fires begin to burn, that brush, I
forget the name of it, but the brush out there has a sap in
it. When it's hot, it's like hot
motor oil. It just explodes. And those little
bushes about this big will have flames 40 feet in the air. And
it's just super hot and it runs and this guy was running and
running and running and finally he run around here and the fire
was almost on. And the little boy was just out
of his mind. And finally the daddy took him
and they run out there into that place that had already been burnt.
And he stopped running. And the son said, Daddy, why'd
we stop? He said, because the fire can't burn twice in the
same place. That's what it means to preach
Christ. To preach Christ. No man knoweth
the Father save the Son. And He to whom the Son will reveal
it. No man cometh unto the Father, He said, but by Me." Maybe we ought to start preaching
Him. What do you think? Huh? Lay these other toys down. Just lay them down. Come over
here and start preaching Christ. Here is your sanctification.
Here is your wisdom. Here is your righteousness. Here
is your redemption. And you know what I'm waiting
for? I'm waiting for Him. Everybody's trying to figure
out when He's coming back. I could care less. I want to
know Him who's coming. And I want you to know it. And I've been as plain as I know
how to be with you this morning. I know it'll probably go sideways
with some of you, but it's so anyway. But I'll tell you what I don't
want. I don't want in that day of judgment for you to stand
before God and put your finger toward me and say, He didn't
tell me the truth. I told you. I told you the truth. Bow down to Him. Bow down to
Him. Look to Him. Follow Him.