It's a blessing and a privilege
to be here with you. I appreciate Pastor Fortner asking
me to come. If you would, please turn with
me to Isaiah chapter 1. I bumped into Brother Rupert in
the food line last night, and he asked me something like, is
your gun loaded? And I don't know if he realized
how appropriate that analogy is. When I used to go hunting
as a boy, don't hunt much anymore, but I don't know if other hunters
do this, but I would check my gun about every five minutes
to see if it was loaded. I didn't want to have a deer
come by or a quail jump up and not have anything in my gun.
I know it's there. I just checked it five minutes
ago, but I had to check it again and keep checking it. I've been
doing that all weekend with my sermon. It's sitting right in
there on the desk in the hotel room. I know it's there. But
what if the maid stole it or something? I've got to check
it again. Is it still there? And I'll go
back to it and change it a little bit. You know, no sermon is ever
finished. Make a few extra notes on the
side and then I'll check it again five minutes after that, make
sure it's still there. And not just if this is still around,
but in here we're checking it all the time, aren't we? I don't
dream a whole lot, but of the nightmares that I've had in my
life, more than half of them have something to do with getting
behind the pulpit and not having anything to say. There is no
worse fear for a preacher. And so we do come with fear and
trembling. And yet with boldness, Paul said,
I come with fear and trembling. And yet he said, I came to you
with boldness too. How's that? How can you do both? Well, if
we get to looking at the vessel, we'll tremble. We'll be afraid. I have no confidence by God's
grace in my flesh, but I have no doubt about the gospel that
I preach. No doubt. In Isaiah 1 18, let's look at
this particular verse and then we'll back up a bit in that chapter. Isaiah 118, come. It's a very commonplace and unremarkable
word, isn't it? We use it many times a day, calling
our children or someone else. But when you realize who spoke
it here, and to whom he was speaking. It's remarkable, and wonderful,
and gracious, and surprising. Come. Who is speaking here? We don't have to wonder about
that. Look at verse 2. Hear, O heavens, and give ear,
O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and brought
up children and they have rebelled against Me." And to whom does
he say come? This is God Almighty speaking.
Whatever He says ought to get our attention. Whether in blessing
or cursing, if God speaks, there in Matthew 5 it says that the
Lord Jesus Christ sat down And His disciples came and gathered
themselves around Him. And I love these words, it says,
and He opened His mouth. It could have just said, He said,
blessed are the poor in spirit. But it says He opened His mouth.
When the Son of God opens His mouth, it's an event. It's something
worth taking notice of. It's cause to give our full attention. And God speaks and says, come.
Who's he talking to? Verse four. Ah, sinful nation,
a people laden, heavy with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children
that are corruptors. They have forsaken the Lord.
They have provoked the Holy One of Israel under anger. They are
going away backward. In verse 18, where we have this
word, come, he says, come now and let us reason together, saith
the Lord. What are we going to talk about?
Your sins? Your sins must be dealt with.
When he spoke with the woman at the well, before he revealed
herself to him, what did she say? Go get your husband. And she said, I have no husband.
He said, you've spoken rightly. The man that you're living with
is not your husband. He said, you're sin. So what
he says in verse 18 has to do with all that's said before that.
So let's look at it. Sins are mentioned, but not just
sins. As we're reading this, think
about what he said about sins in verse 18. The glorious proposition
is set forth that those sins will be made as white as snow.
However dark they are, however red, however horrible, however
terrible before God, they'll be made as white as snow. If
that's going to mean anything to you, first, you've got to
know what your sins are. And these pastors that have been
teaching this weekend, they've been telling us, defining sin,
telling us what our sin as well as our sins are. You know the
difference, don't you? Sins are what we do. Sin is what
we are. We have sins because we are sin. God said here we're heavy with
it. He said in another place, we drink it like water. And we'll see a description here
in this chapter. God proclaims to these Israelites,
His people. Look at verse one again. Verse
one, the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amos, which he saw concerning
Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and
Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Hear, O heavens, and give ear,
O earth, for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought
up children, and they have rebelled against Me." That's what Adam
did in the garden. It wasn't about just how good
that fruit looked. It was about who's going to be
God. And it still is. It's you or Him. They have rebelled
against Me. The ox knoweth his owner, and
the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know My people. doth not consider." Did he just
say that a dumb animal is smarter than we are? I'm pretty sure
that's what he said. Was it Job that said we're born
into this world, man would be wise, would be wise, thinks that
he's wise, wants to be wise, but he's born into this world
like a wild ass's colt. What did the Lord Jesus say to
Saul? Is it hard for you to kick against the pricks? Do you know
what that word pricks means there? Have you ever looked that up?
It means goads. It's what you use on a wild animal
when it rebels against you to bring it into submission. You
talk about humiliation. That's what God does with us. They have more regard. for me
than you do, the ox. He knows where his food comes
from. You thought you worked for that, you know. You thought
that that was something you provided for you and your family, no.
God put it on the table. And that all of their solemn
meetings, look at verse 4, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity,
a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors and have
forsaken the Lord. Forsaken They have provoked the
Holy One of Israel unto anger and are going away backward.
Why should you be stricken anymore? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick and the
whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot, even
under the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises
and putrefying sores And they have not been closed, neither
bound up, neither mollified with ointment. Spiritual leprosy,
repulsive and repugnant. Verse seven, your country is
desolate. Your cities are burned with fire.
Your land, strangers devour it in your presence. And it is desolate
as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left
as a cottage in a vineyard. as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,
as a besieged city." Who is that? In verse 8 there, that's the
Lord's elect among this nation of evildoers. They're evildoers
too. He doesn't distinguish them in
any way as far as them being better than the rest of them.
But the true elect of God are in that nation, a small remnant
huddled in the corner as a cottage in a vineyard as a lodge in a
garden of cucumbers just a little group of people gathered together and this in verse 9 and this
is he's describing these ones in verse 8 again it says except
the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant a very
small remnant We should have been as Sodom, and we should
have been like unto Gomorrah. Think about that for a second.
Here's Sodom and Gomorrah. What are they like? Well, wicked,
vile before God, openly blasphemous and evil. And God brought swift
judgment down upon them. He burned them up in a moment.
He said enough and he destroyed them. And then you have Israel
over here. And the prophet here says they're
exactly the same with one difference. God did something to make a difference. Unless God had caused that little
cottage in a vineyard to be formed inside of the nation of Israel,
it would have been just like Sodom and Gomorrah. In every
way, in the evil before and in the destruction that their evil
deserved. In every way, they'd have been
exactly like Sodom and Gomorrah, except God did something. The only times that you hear
God speaking in language like this, with such repugnance and
vilification and disgust and anger, is when he's talking about
man-made, organized, free will, self-righteous works religion. And that's what we're going to
see coming up. Look at verse 10. Hear the word
of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom. Give ears unto the law of our
God, ye people of Gomorrah. Oh wait, I thought he was talking
to Israel. He still is. He's calling them what they are.
I wonder if you went around calling
religious people, Hitler, or Charles Manson and saying you're
just exactly like Charles, and there isn't any difference between
you and the most horrible, notable criminals in this world. You
probably wouldn't be very popular down there at the First Baptist
or wherever if you went around saying that. It'd be the truth
from God. To what purpose is the multitude
of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord? I am full of the burnt
offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts, and I delight
not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs or of he-goats. Isn't
it the Lord that said, offer these animals, bring these sacrifices
unto me? Christless, outward form of self-righteous,
freewill works religion is not just worthless, God said. He
said it makes me sick. How do you make God sick? By
coming to church and leaving Christ out of the worship. By praying and the honor going
to you instead of Christ. By doing something good for somebody
and you getting the credit for it instead of the Lord Jesus
Christ being glorified in it. That's how you make God sick. And he spoke this way toward
this type of religion and those who propagated it when he spoke
to the scribes and the pharisees in the new testament he used
this kind of language didn't he oh scribes pharisees you hypocrites
the poison of snakes is under your lip you generation of snakes in verse twelve when you come
to appear before me who hath required this at your hand to
tread in my courts well Lord, you told us to assemble together.
Not without a mediator. Not without a high priest, you
don't. Not without the Lord Jesus Christ. Where two or three are
gathered in My name. That's where He'll come and commune
with us. Not just gathering and saying, Jesus and God and hell
or heaven. Come in His name. worshiping
Him, acknowledging Him, believing on Him. And God said, I'll bless
you there. 13, bring no more vain oblations.
The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot
away with. It is iniquity. Coming to church
is iniquity. Without Christ it is. Without
faith in Him. without the honoring and glorifying
of Him, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed
feasts, my soul hateth. They are trouble unto me. I'm
weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your
hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. That's a bad place
to be, isn't it? Yea, when you make many prayers,
I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.
wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings
before mine eyes cease to do evil." Well, all we got to do
is just do better then. That's what they've been doing,
is trying to please God by what they do. How does a sinner then
wash and make himself clean? Well, an angel asked John when
he saw the revelation from God, said, who are these that are
arrayed in white? in beautiful fine white linen. And John said,
You know. And the angel said, These are
they who have washed their robes and made them white. How did
they do that? In the blood of the Lamb. In
the blood of the Lamb. Learn to do well. Seek judgment.
Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless. Plead for
the widow. These are all things that they're unable to do. You
can't make yourself clean. Job said, if I wash myself with
snow water and make myself never so clean, God will throw me in
the ditch and my own clothes will abhor me. God's not fooled
by that. He doesn't just look on the outside
of the cup. He looks on the inside. We've
got to be cleaner than that. Who shall stand in his holy hill?
He that hath clean hands. Everything we do has got to be
pure. Not 99 and 44 100 percent pure. Pure. To God, pure. And a pure heart. Not only what we do, but all
of our thoughts, all of our motives, all of our emotions, all of our
desire. Everything. Pure before God. We can't do that. I've had several
people tell me in my lifetime that God would never ask a sinner
to do something he couldn't do. What I discovered in the Word
of God, that God has never, as far as I know, somebody correct
me if I'm wrong, I don't believe God has ever asked a sinner to
do anything that he could do. And besides, he doesn't ask,
does he? He commands. And when he commands,
he gives the power. He said to that man with the
withered hand, stretch forth thy hand. That's the one thing
I can't do. I can swim even. I've learned
how to swim with just one arm. Tell me to swim the river. I
can do that. Jump up and down a hundred times.
Go to this far away city and back. But stretch forth my hand? That's the one thing I can't
do. stretch forth thy hand. Lazarus,
come forth. God would never ask a sinner
to do something that he couldn't do. This is God here that says, come. I could have said, Lazarus, come
forth. Anybody can give an invitation to a dead man to come forth,
can't they? But if I say, Lazarus, come forth,
all you're going to hear is crickets chirping after I say that. Nothing's
going to happen. But God says, come forth, and
He says it to those who are vile in His sight. That's the marvel
of this. Why would He say, come to such as I? Why would He bid
me come? That's what Peter wanted to know,
wasn't it? Lord, bid me come to you on the water. If He bids
me come, I'm coming, aren't you? O Lamb of God, I come out of
my bondage, sorrow, and night into Thy freedom, gladness, and
light. O Lamb of God, I come if He bids
me come. But even after this word of rebuke
The language here is much deeper and says much more than I can
express to you this morning. Our sin. So many of these men
have done such a better job of setting forth before you the
wickedness of our sinfulness. But even after this word of rebuke
and condemnation, he says this glorious, gracious word to all
who will hear it. Come. Come. How can and why would the Holy
God, who is of purer eyes than to behold evil, much less have
communion with a worm like me, say come to such a want? Why would He say come? And how
can He? Well, let's answer the second part
of that first. Why would He? Why would He do that? We have
the very answer to that question in Jeremiah 31.3. Let me read
it to you. The Lord hath appeared of old
unto me saying, yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness
have I drawn thee. Why have you said come to me?
Because I loved you. All through the Word of God,
there are identified a particular people. In our text there, they
were in verse 9, weren't they? This nation of Israel as a whole,
evil, vile, wretched, and all of them were, including the remnant,
but among that great vile nation is a remnant of little vile people. A little cottage in a garden of cucumbers. They are His sheep in John chapter
10. In John 17, they are those that
my Father gave me. Don't you love how many times
He says that in that chapter? We're His prized possession from
His Father. His elect ones, more than any
other name given to us through the Word of God, we're called
His elect ones. But if you're asking why, and
we are this morning, It begins here. I have loved. I have loved. You know, you can't
separate election from the love of God. There in Romans chapter 9, it
says that the purpose of election might stand. God said something.
That the purpose of God, according to election, might stand. He
said, Jacob have I chosen. That's true, isn't it? That's
not what it says. We're talking about the purpose
of God according to his choosing, according to election. How did
he elect me? Jacob have I loved. That's what sets me apart from
everybody else. There's the elect and the rest.
Who are the elect? Jacob have I loved. That's who. Now the other part of the question,
how can he say come to us? We know that he's willing, but
how can he? The short, simple answer is Christ. And we'll try to expound upon
that some. And may God bless this. I can have nightmares and I can
tremble and try to prepare and bring this. If God doesn't bless
this to our hearts right now, it's all vain. We depend upon
Him every moment. 1 Peter 3.18, For Christ also
hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust. Well, there's me, the unjust,
as I was described there in Isaiah 1. He's the just one. He's the
one that can stand in that holy hill, having clean hands and
a pure heart, and bless God when He stands there, He stands there
for me as my representative. When he hung on that cross, the
just, he did it for the unjust. Why? That he might bring us to
God. Come, come. If he did that for
me and God says, come, what are you going to do? Where else are
you going to go? Now let's look at more of the
Word of God concerning coming to God and pray that He'll teach
us just simply and clearly how our sins can be made as white
as snow, how they will be. What is it to come and how do
we do it? First of all, understand this.
When God says come to you, it's not just an appeal to the sinner
to do something, and then he sits back and waits to see what
will happen. That's not what's going on here. When this same
Lord Jesus Christ who says come, and that's who that is, that's
Christ in Isaiah 118 that says come, let us reason together. He's the counselor, isn't he?
His name shall be called the mighty God, the counselor, the
prince of peace. And he comes and says, let's
counsel. And he's not calling you to get your opinion on things.
He says, my thoughts are not your thoughts. The counseling
is this. God's going to teach you. And
by his grace, you're going to hear and bow. But what a gracious
word. Come and let us reason together,
saith the Lord. But this same Lord Jesus Christ
in the beginning said, let there be light. And he was not appealing
to the light to turn on. Was he? And Paul said in 2 Corinthians
4, 6 that he spoke with that same creation power to my dark
heart and gave the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of his son Jesus Christ. Is that not what he said?
Paul is teaching there that he came to me, darkness without
form and void in my heart and said, let there be light. And
there was light. He wasn't appealing to me to
do something. when He said, Lazarus, come forth. That's not an invitation
for Lazarus to come from the grave. If the Son of God bids you come,
if the King of glory summons you, then come you shall. My
sheep hear my voice and they follow Me. And you notice He didn't say
your sins may be as white as snow, but they shall. He came
to make them white and He calls you to Him to show you that they
are. Maybe you're saying, well, preacher,
I've heard a lot of good messages. I've seen people go away mad
and resist. Don't people refuse the Gospel
call? Yes. But right now, we're not talking
about the preacher saying, come. We're talking about God saying,
come. Although we do say, come. We pray you, in Christ's stead,
be ye reconciled to God. But if you hear His voice, then
you're coming. When He says it, you're already
white. He's just calling you to come and find out about it.
How is it that the sinner comes to God? Well, it's not complicated,
is it? It's really not. John 14, 6,
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. If you're going to come to God,
you've got to know the way. Adam lost the way. Sinners don't
know the way. They think the way is for them
to do more. The more you do, the more wicked you are before
God. In order to come to God, you've
got to know the truth. You shall know the truth, and
the truth will do what for you? It will set you free. This is
life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. And in order to come to
Him, you've got to be alive. You can't come dead. It's going
to have to bring you to life. I am the way, the truth, and
the life. And no man comes. No man cometh unto the Father
but by me. That's the word of the Lord Jesus
Christ. In other words, let me say this.
You must do business with the very one that you crucified."
That was Peter's message in the book of Acts. In chapters 2,
3, and 4, he preached this message. You killed the Prince of Life,
and if you're going to be saved, you're going to have to come
to Him and bow to Him for salvation. You murdered the Son of God,
and there's none other name under heaven given among men whereby
you must be saved. You're going to have to come
to the one that you nailed to the cross and spit in His face
and say, Mercy, Lord, mercy. Hebrews 7.25, Wherefore He is
able, the Lord Jesus, to save them to the uttermost that come
unto God by Him. That's how you come. You come
by the Lord Jesus Christ. Honor the Son even as you honor
the Father. He that honoreth not the Son
honoreth not the Father. And come to the Lord Jesus Christ.
He said, Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden. I'll give you rest. You think
He can give it to you? Come, come and I'll give you
rest. And here in Hebrews 7, let's
talk about this. He said, Wherefore he is able
to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing
he ever liveth to make intercession for them. He's talking about
Christ as our high priest, and he's not really talking about
the ones that he's writing to coming anywhere. physically,
what he's saying there is that Christ is making intercession
for you as your High Priest, and when Christ goes into the
presence of God, into that Holy of Holies not made with hands,
that's you coming to God by Him. Is that clear? When He went to
God, we went to God. Our representative came there
with somewhat to offer, and he went there as our High Priest.
And that's us coming to God by Him. Of course, we come to Him
by faith, but understand this too. Christ is our coming to
God, even. He went to the Father on our
behalf, with our interests at heart, and having accomplished
the eternal redemption for us. He went not with the blood of
bulls and of goats. He said, I don't have any pleasure
in them, but with his own precious blood he entered into that holy
place not made with hands, having obtained eternal redemption for
us." That's us coming to God in Christ. My great high priest represents
me and brings me to God. Hebrews 9.11, but Christ being
come and high priest of good things to come by a greater and
more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is to say, Not
of this building, neither by the blood of goats and calves,
but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place."
Once. Once. Having obtained eternal
redemption for us. That's redemption without beginning
or end. How can that be? Because He's
without beginning or end. Nothing the eternal Christ does
can be merely temporal. He's the eternal Son of God. So your experience of coming
to Him involves faith and repentance and all of the gifts that He
gives. He said to Timothy, teach those that oppose themselves.
If peradventure, God will grant them repentance. And that's our
preaching. When we preach, we're not trying
to get sinners to do something for God. We're saying peradventure,
God will do something for you. There aren't any peradventures
with God. There are with us for now, aren't there? We don't know
what God's going to do, so we say prayer adventure. I know
this. If he wants to, he can. If he can. And if he wants to,
I know how he'll do it because he's revealed that he'll do it
by the preaching of the gospel. So faith and repentance. That's
coming to him, but understand that we come to God in Christ,
by Christ. To come anywhere, you have to
leave somewhere else, don't you? When Adam sinned in the beginning
in the garden, God could have tossed him in hell right then
and been right, wouldn't He? He'd have been right to do it.
But He didn't do that. He would not do that. He could not do that. He can't
put one of His loved ones in hell. What he did instead was
ask a simple and profound question. Adam, where are you? And if you can answer that question, then you know where you've got
to come from in order to get to Christ. Fallen, dead, vile,
a wannabe God, self-righteous, my own idol. But God spoke in mercy and said,
and called Adam to himself. God cannot put in hell one of
his loved ones. In fact, if God loves you, and something somebody said this
week made me think of this, and I wrote it down in my notes. If God loves you, You will never
ever be punished for one of your sins. Never. You never have been
and you never will be. People say, oh boy, I've done
some bad things, you know, and that's why, that's why, you know,
I've been punished all my life. You don't know what punishment
is yet. We don't have any idea what punishment
is. You look to Calvary, that's where
it was. But even then, we don't know
what it was, do we? And we never will, by His grace.
We never will. Not for one sin. But where are we coming from?
Our Lord put it this way, Matthew 16, 24, Then said Jesus unto
His disciples, If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself. You're going to come to Him?
Leave yourself behind. Paul said, All my heritage, all
my good works, All my religious standing, everything that meant
anything to me, it's on the dung heap now by His grace and I press
toward Him. Is that where it is? Let Him
deny Himself. You got to come from self and
go to Him. Self in the sense of trusting
anything that you've done to recommend you to God and casting
all of your hopes and owning him as your righteousness and
as your sin offering before God. You're either trusting right
now as you sit there this morning, you're either trusting yourself
or you're trusting Christ. Who are you trusting? In Luke
18 9, he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves
that they were righteous. And that's either you or you're
one of his elect. To come to Christ is to leave
yourself in the sense of imagining that there is anything that you
can do that is pleasing to God and will recommend you to God. Who are you trusting and who
do you serve? Who do you live for? Paul said in 2 Corinthians
5, the love of Christ constraineth us. For we thus judge that if
Christ died for us, that we ought not henceforth to live unto ourselves,
but unto him which died for us and rose again. To come to God
is a covenant privilege. I don't know a lot about this,
but I wanted to quote you some scripture. Genesis 6, 17. Behold,
even I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all
flesh wherein is the breath of life from under heaven and everything
that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I establish
my covenant And thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy sons
and thy wife and thy sons' wives with thee. I'm going to establish
my covenant with you, and you're coming. That's what the Lord
Jesus said, didn't he? All that the Father giveth me
shall come. When did he give them to him?
In the covenant of grace before the world began. It has something
to do with the covenant, doesn't it? Coming to the Lord Jesus
Christ. There's a lot of preachers around this world saying, come,
come, come to everyone and everything but Christ. Come to the church.
Come down an aisle. Come to the front. Come to some
doctrine or other. If you come to a Jesus who's
done all that He can do and left everything up to you, He can't
save you. He can't make your sins white. Some just say, come, come, come
to some Jesus and never describe who He is, never identify Him. If you come to the One who shed
His blood to save those who were in hell when He shed it, you
won't find any satisfaction there, and neither will God. And shed
it for the millions who have perished in spite of it. Your
sins can never be washed white by that blood. If you come down
an aisle, you won't find anything there but self-righteous false
assurance in the flesh. If you come of your own imagined
free will, then you're trusting yourself and not Christ. And
many will bid you come this way into these which cannot save.
Some dare not say come at all, lest a goat get into the sheep
pasture somehow or other. I'm not worried about that. I'll tell you this, the Spirit
and the bride say come. And they say, let him that's
thirsty come and take the water of life freely. And they shall
be as white as snow, he said. Your sins will be as white as
snow. How can sins be white? We've
sinned. God must punish sin. According
to the strict and uncompromising law of God, the sinner cannot
go unpunished. And sinners will not go unpunished.
Your sins The ones I just spoke to a while ago, I said, you'll
never ever be punished for any of your sins. But somebody will.
He did. The chastisement of our peace
was upon Him. And by His stripes we are healed.
And now in Christ Jesus, we who sometime were afar off are made
nigh by the blood of Christ. We've come. We're made nigh by
the blood of Christ. Because of Christ and in Christ,
God can and has been violent and unrestrained in the pouring
out of his wrath against my sin. You've received of the Lord's
hand double for all your iniquities. At the same time, he's been completely
merciful to me, bestowing every reward and blessing upon me that's
his to give in Christ Jesus. How? Christ redeemed us from
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. White as snow. This is righteousness. And it
shall be well with the righteous. The sinner that doeth good, is
he the one that's white as snow? Who is righteous? The sinner
that's doing the best he can? That's an oxymoron. A sinner
sins. That's why we're called a sinner.
That's all we do. The sinner that chooses God?
Well, the only problem with that is God looked down to see if
there were any that did understand and seek after Him, and there
were none. So you can eliminate that one. It's not of Him that willeth.
No man can come unto Me. Who then is righteous? Whose
sins are white as snow? Turn to Colossians 1.19, and
I'll be through. I just want to show you passage. Colossians 1.19. Somebody was saying earlier how
a verse or a word jumped out at him, and you all know how
that is. And this is something that the
Lord has impressed upon me, this passage of Scripture. Colossians
1.19, For it pleased the Father that in Christ should all fullness
dwell. and having made peace through
the blood of His cross by Him to reconcile all things unto
Himself. By Him, I say, whether they be
things in earth or things in heaven. Those who are dumber
than an ox and have shaken their fist in the face of God committed,
broken every part of his law a thousand times over and rebelled
against him and despised him to reconcile them by his blood. And you that were sometime or
at one time alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works,
yet now hath he reconciled you who were his enemies You who
were Sodom and Gomorrah. How did He do it? In the body
of His flesh, through death. How did He make my sins white
as snow? He died for me. According to
the Scriptures, He died for those sins. According to the Scriptures. I love the way John said it in
Revelation. Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins
in His own precious blood. Could anything be plainer than
that? My sins are gone. Why? He washed them. How did
He do it? In His precious blood. In the body of His flesh through
death. And what was the result of it?
What did He accomplish by dying for my sins? To present you Could he be talking about those
same ones that he spoke of in the early verses of chapter one
of Isaiah? Holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight. That's how. They shall be as
white Let's know, if Christ made peace for you, as it says here,
by the blood of His cross, and hath reconciled you to God in
the body of His flesh through death, that you, with the expressed
purpose that you might be holy and unblameable and unreprovable
in His sight, then I'd say you're righteous, wouldn't you? If Christ died for you, It is
enough that Jesus died and that he died for me. It is enough. I need no other argument. I need
no other plea. Well, how do I know then if I'm
one for whom he died? All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me. That's a pretty good way to know,
isn't it? All of those ones for whom he shed his precious blood
who were elect from eternity, who are the remnant according
to the election of grace, who are in that little garden of
cucumbers, his elect, his sheep, his chosen, they come to him,
all of them. Have you come to him? Then you're
one of them. And I'll tell you what else,
him that cometh to me, if you haven't come to him, come to
him, and he won't cast you out. I will in no wise cast For I
came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will
of Him that sent me. And this is the Father's will
that sent me. That of all which He hath given
me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the
last day. And this is the will of Him that sent me, that everyone
which seeth the Son and believeth on Him may have everlasting life. And I will raise Him up. at the last day. Come. Come now. If not now, when? There is nothing but now, is
there? Today is the day of salvation. Come now and let us reason together,
saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be made as wool. Though they shall be as white
as snow, and though they be red like crimson, they shall be His
will. Amen.