I suspect that you put your marker
in 2 Thessalonians, but that's not where I'm going to preach
from. Turn with me to 2 Timothy chapter 1. These two portions of Scripture
go together, but the one in 2 Thessalonians, if you'll take your time and
give it some study, give it some thought, What he's talking about? The deception that's in this
world. That which blinds men's minds
to the gospel. That's what Paul said. He said,
If my gospel be hid, it's hid to the lost, in whom the God
of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not,
lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine
unto them. Blinded. Deceived. Strong delusion. Wonders and
signs done. Magnificent cathedrals. All the
things that appeal to the flesh going on all around you. Hospitals,
schools, huge organizations and denominations. All these things
to blind you, to deceive you. And because men won't receive
that love of the truth, they'd rather go to those things. Their
flesh tends to those things. These are the things that exercise
that appetite of the flesh, that appeal to the flesh. And so they
go that way. And for this cause, it says,
God shall send them strong delusion. Now, God doesn't have to delude
you. All God has to do to send you
delusion is withhold His hand. Only he that now letteth will
let, He said, until he be taken out of the way. All God has to
do to send you strong delusion is turn you over to yourself.
You're already deluded. You're born that way. Born that
way. Born in darkness. Now, just hold
your marker here in 2 Timothy 1. I want to talk to you for
just a little bit before we get into this. This scripture, I'm
going to be preaching down here in verse 9. That's where I'm
going to be basing my comments on. And you don't need to preach
verse 9. All you need to do is read it. It preaches itself. Just like that verse I just read
to you over in 2 Corinthians. It preaches itself. There's nothing
to argue with. There's nothing to debate about
in it. It just tells you the truth. But Wednesday evening
in our Bible study in here, I brought a message and I titled this message,
A Hope Made of Gopher Wood. The Lord came to Noah and He
said, Make thee an ark of gopher wood. Now, I've always thought
that meant like you might substitute the word sycamore or oak or willow
tree or whatever. I thought He was talking about
the species of trees. That's not what that word gopher
meant. The word literally means axe, A-X-E, axe. And that word
was taken from another word which means cut off. And so what he
was telling Noah was that this This gopher wood was wood to
be shaped and cut down with an axe. It was to be made to a specific
size and design. It wasn't to be gathered up loosely
like whatever rubble he could find, whatever down trees he
could find, and bind them together any way he can and design it
any way he could. But God had a specific design
in mind and an end in view. And He said, you're going to
take your axe And you're going to take this wood, and I'm going
to reveal it to you, what I want. I'm going to reveal the pattern
of this thing, of this vessel to you. And you're going to take
each piece, and you're going to hue on it, and chip on it,
and whittle on it, and ax on it, until it's exactly like what
I showed you. And you're going to give it to
the people that's gathered here before you, that you're preaching
to, and they're going to take it, and they're going to, under
your instruction, they're going to take it and put it all together. And it didn't come overnight.
Now, they had in mind what was going on. God said He was going
to destroy this thing with a flood of water. And so they knew that
there was going to be some kind of a vessel, but they didn't
see it in its clarity for 120 years. And as those years progressed,
their vision of this vessel became clearer and clearer. He put the
ribs on it and the main beam and all those things on there
and began to put the boards down the side and the window in the
top and the door in the side. And they started to really see
this thing clearly. And at the end of the time, without
coercion, Noah didn't have to go wrestle them down and drag
them into the ark. But over 120 years of listening
to this man preach, this righteous man of God, preaching the righteousness
of Christ, Talking to them about Christ, showing them this vessel.
Same thing happened back in the garden. God killed that lamb. Then He pointed to that coming
Redeemer. He said, you will understand the lamb as the vision gets clear
about the coming Redeemer. You will understand clearly about
the lamb. The same thing was going on here in the days of
Noah. As this ark began to take shape, all of the details fall
in order, they began to see more clearly. and be more and more
convinced of the sufficiency of this ark until finally, one
day, without coercion, without threatening, without doing anything,
they freely walked, willingly, up the ramp into the ark and
waited patiently on God to shut the door. Now that's what I'm
trying to do here. I'm trying to preach to you On
Wednesday nights and Sunday school and Sunday morning, I'm trying
to take these pieces, these doctrines of Christ, out of the Word of
God. And I'm trying to present them to you as God reveals them
to me, as clearly as I know how. I chip on them and whittle on
them and study on them until I can see them as clearly as
I know how to see them. And I give them to you. And I
tell you what they're all about. These things are to lead you
to Christ. These things are to be understood
in Christ. These things are to be understood
with the end in view. And as you put them together,
if the Lord be gracious to you and allow you to do it, as you
put them together, you're going to get a clearer and clearer
and clearer picture of Christ. Until one day you see Him in
all of His details. One day you see God's glory in
His face. And without anybody having an
altar call, without anybody twisting your arm or telling you a sad
story about a dog or anything else, no other kind of lies and
intimidation, you're going to freely walk in through the door. He's the door. You're going to
walk through the door and you're going to wait on God to shut
you in. That's what I'm trying to do. That's what I'm trying
to do in this church. That's why I'm here, what by
the grace of God I'm laboring to do. And as the minister of
God, I set these things before you, all these pieces of the
glorious person and work of Christ and of God's everlasting purpose
and grace in sending Him into this world. And by the revelation
of God's Spirit, the plain testimony of this book, I warn you of this. This world is under the judgment
of God. I'm going to tell you something
that you probably never thought about. You probably had in mind
that the world was waiting for the condemnation of God to come.
That's what you thought. Noah was building this ark and
they were all waiting on the condemnation. The world was already
condemned. Before He even gave him the design
of it, He told him what He was going to do. It was already condemned. It was already under the wrath
of God. You see, Noah found grace in
the eyes of the Lord. Actually, let me look it up here
in Genesis chapter 6. I'll read it for you. In verse 5 he said, And God saw
that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I have destroyed
man whom I have created from the face of the earth. Both man
and beast and creeping thing and fowls of the air, for it
repenteth me that I have made them. But, he said, but, Noah
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. In the midst of this judgment
and condemnation and wrath and delusion and darkness and ignorance,
Noah found grace. Why? How did he find it and nobody
else? How did he find it? God showed
it to him. He brought it where he could
find it. He put it out here where he could see it. That's how you find grace. You
don't find grace in your living room watching the ball game. You go to where grace can be
found, where grace can be seen, where grace can be heard. You
go. What makes you go? I don't know.
I don't understand all the workings of God in Providence. But I just
know He works it. And somewhere, somehow, He brings
folks to hear. And when they hear and they know,
they know to come back. His children didn't come one
time and then go on back with the world and then run down when
the Ark was done and jumped in. Those children stayed there every
day. Shem, Ham and Jeb. He'd hand
them them sticks and them and his wife and Noah's wife, they'd
take those things over, stand them up, work on this thing,
fashion it in. They knew all about it. It was
formed. Formed in them. That's the way faith is. I can't
separate the work of God from your work. You have to believe,
and yet when you do, He said that this faith is not of worship. It's of God. Well, I thought
I believed. You did. But why? Why did you believe? How did
you believe? God enabled you to believe. You
see what I'm saying? I can't separate what they did
from the work of God. I just know Paul said this, for
it's God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His
good pleasure. That's what was going on when
they assembled this ark. That's what's going on here this
morning. That's what's going on. By the revelation of God's Spirit
and the plain testimony of this book, I warn you of the impending
doom of this world. It's cursed of God. And even
now in its early stages, It's giving evidence of the wrath
of God that abides on it. Listen to this in 2 Peter 3.
He said, but the heavens and the earth which are now, that's
right now, by the same Word, the same Word that kept the earth
out of the water, same Word that preserved that world right up
to the day of the flood, By the same word are kept in store,
reserved under fire against that day of judgment and perdition
of ungodly men. He did not loose the great fountains
of the deep, nor cause his clouds to burst forth immediately, but
was, as Peter goes on to say, longsuffering to us for not willing
that any should perish, but that all should come to repent. The
only reason God didn't wipe that whole outfit out was because
He had an elect people among them. That's the truth. That's the truth. Why don't God
just fold the doors up today? Because He has a people. Christ
purchased them, bought them with a price. God purposed to redeem
them. And they're going to be redeemed.
As soon as they are, brother, the rain is going to fall. The
rain is going to fall. Peter said, count these days,
this long suffering of God as salvation. And I tell you this, this long
suffering of God in salvation ought to be evidence to us of
His willingness to save. You couldn't convince Noah that
God wasn't willing to save him. And you won't convince any man
to whom the Lord reveals Himself that God's not willing to save.
He is willing to save. He's more willing to save than
you are to be saved. Your will has to be changed.
He said, my people shall be made willing in the day of my power. They have to be made willing.
They don't have a will to seek God. Read your Bible. There are none that seeketh after
God. No, not one. Ain't that what
he says? I can't count the times I've
heard old folks stand up. We used to have testimonies in
church I went to. And they stand up and testify,
I can remember the day and the hour I made my decision. Can
you? My people shall be made, Willie.
And I tell you this, when he brings you down and you come
to know a little bit of something about that awful state of man,
something about your ruin, your personal ruin, Your unwillingness. Your lack of love for the truth.
God said He's going to send strong delusion to them that wouldn't
receive a love of the truth. Do I have a love of the truth? Do I love to open this book and
read it? Do I love to hear it proclaimed
and preached? Or do I come to church and say,
oh no, they've got two speakers instead of one? I had a fellow one time ask me,
he said, what do you all do up there at them Bible conferences?
And I said, well, we have five speakers. I said, we got three
in the morning and two at night. Five speakers! They receive not
the love of the truth. When a man loves the truth, he'll
listen to five speakers. He'll listen to eight. He'll
listen to them go home and put tapes in and listen to them.
He loves the truth. And I tell you this, there's
nothing more assuring to a believer than God's eternal purpose to
save. If it's in my hands, if it's
in my will, if it's according to my design, it's subject to
failure, defeat, and ignorance. But boy, if it's in His, I can
rest. I can rest. Now that's what them
folks saw. They sat there and put them pieces.
They said, look at this. This thing, You know, I never
knew that. I saw this, but I didn't realize
it did this. Look, it all fits. From Genesis
to Revelation, it all fits together. And here's this body. Here's
this vessel. I'm convinced God's in this thing. God gave Him this thing for us. I'm convinced of it. Let's go
in. What's keeping us out here? Let's
go in. God said, come you and all you
have. Come on. That's all He said. He said,
and they went in. Now that's how it works. That's
just how simple it is. He says, come on. Ain't that
what I tell you every time I get up here? Come to Christ. Go in. What's keeping you out? There
ain't nothing out here but condemnation and wrath and darkness and sorrow
and ignorance. That's all it is. I don't care
what you do. Solomon said he tried all of
it. Everything that was out there. Everything that appealed to the
flesh, he tried it. And he said it was all vanity.
There's nothing out there. You know why he went in? Because
he was convinced of it. When God said, I'm going to judge,
he said, I'm going to kill all flesh. Everything that's alive,
that's got the breath in it, I'm going to kill it. It's going
to die. So let's don't stay out here. Let's go in here. Let's
go in here. Come to Christ. And oh, I tell
you, when you're convinced of what you are, you'll find comfort
in the eternal purpose of grace. You'll find comfort in it. That
God has been from the beginning. I know what happened in time,
man fell. I know what happened in time.
Man roamed around in darkness. Man was deceived. Man walks according
to the prince of the power of the air. He goes down the course
of this world. I know what happened in time,
but what took place before time? Before he did all this, God said,
I'm going to save a people for the glory of my name. That's
what He said. And all this can't frustrate
it. All this can't change it. It
can't add one jot or tittle. It can't take away from it. Everything
that God determined to do, He's going to do. He's going to do. I tell you, if you can get a
hold of that, you can have some peace. He's going to do it. It ain't
me doing it. It's Him. It's Him. What you'll do is spend the rest
of your life worrying about what part that you had in it you want
to get rid of it. He gathered up all this junk
that he thought was righteousness, and then he spent the rest of
his life throwing it on the dung heap, getting rid of it. I've got no doubt in my mind
that this world and everything in it is condemned of God. Four
times in Genesis chapter 6, the Lord tells Noah of the condition
and condemnation of this world. It's history. He said, the end
of all flesh is come before me. The end of it. What's the end?
That's the goal. That's as far as it can go. That's as far as the flesh that
can deteriorate. It's come before me. When did
it come before him? When he looked out and saw their
immorality and violence and all? No, it come before him just like
that in the garden. When Adam shook his fist in the
face of God and said, I'll do what I will, when I will, to
whom I will. I will. God saw the end of it. He judged it. He knew where it
was headed. And so He gave him a promise
of redemption right there in the garden. He didn't wait until
Noah. This wasn't a new hope that He
brought to Noah. This was the old hope that He
gave back in the garden. Passed down from generation to
generation to generation. The end of all flesh has come
before me. Wickedness of man was great in
the earth. Behold, I bring a flood of waters
upon the earth to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath
of life from under heaven, and everything in earth shall die." And I think in the minds of men,
we kind of imagine the world evolving and changing, and somehow
its judgment might be avoided, or somehow its judgment might
be prolonged. I tell you, the end of all flesh
come before God in the garden. It's condemned. The wrath of
God abides on this world right now. Turn with me to John chapter
3. I'm going by what I hear. I'm going by what they say. And
I think sometimes men and women believe that Jesus Christ come
into this world to reform it. Somehow he's going to reform
it. He's going to give a better example, which he did. And that
he's going to give you a clearer understanding, which he did.
And then somehow by that he's going to be an inspiration that
causes a reformation and the world's going to turn. It's going
to turn. And then God's going to turn.
Only problem is God don't turn. That's the problem. James said, with the Father of
lights, there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. He
is not going to turn. He said it. But I think many women think
so. But that was not then, and it
is not now, the purpose of God. Listen to this in John 3, verse
17. For God sent not His Son into
the world to condemn the world. but that the world through him
might be saved." That is, none other name among men whereby
we must be saved. There's one Savior, just like
there was one ark. There's one way out of this mess
we're in, just like there was one ark. There's only one way
that you can stay in favor and fellowship with God. That ark. Christ is that ark. You see what
he's saying here? He didn't come to condemn it.
He came to save it. One mediator between God and
me and the man Christ Jesus. Verse 18, He that believeth on
him is not condemned. But he that believeth not, uh-oh,
he's condemned already. That's why he didn't believe.
That's why he didn't believe. He's condemned already. And here's
the evidence of it. because he hath not believed
in the name of the only begotten Son of God." Well, this is condemnation,
verse 19. Here's the proof. Here's the
proof of the judgment. Here's the proof of the wrath,
right here. Light has come into the world, perfect light. And
men love darkness rather than light. And then the awful truth is summed
up there in John chapter 3 over in verse 36. He that believeth
on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the
Son shall not see life. Will not see it. Will not perceive
it. Will not believe it. Will not
bow to it or acknowledge it. Why? Because the wrath of God
abideth on him. We're not waiting for the judgment
of God. Actually, I'll tell you what
judgment's going to be about. Judgment has more to do with
the believer than it does with the unbeliever. God is going
to gather together His elect and all the dead, and He's going
to bring them all up here, angels and principalities, power, Satan
and all his angels, everything up here before His throne. He's
going to set His people over here and He's going to justify
their salvation. That's what this judgment's about.
He's going to justify why they're saved and they're condemned. And that's what Paul's talking
about over there in the Corinthians when he talks about fear before
God. Because he said, we're all going
to be set before the judgment seat of Christ. Every last one
of us. We are going to stand there and God is going to justify
His justification of His believers. He is going to justify how He
saved them and what it cost to save them, what it cost to redeem
them. He is going to justify their condemnation because He
sent this gospel before them and they wouldn't have it. He
is going to justify it. He is going to justify it with
His light of creation and the light of conscience that He puts
in every man and the light of this gospel that some hear and
won't have. It had more to do with the believer
than the non-believer. Christ didn't have to come into
this world to condemn the world. The world was condemned already.
He came to save. You see, that's what our text
is all about. That's why I'm spending this
time telling you these things. This is about the eternal purpose
of God. We have a hope. If we just have
Adam and the curse, we've got nothing. We're just left to ourselves. You know what, we're just going
to go up and down the road until we see some sign somewhere and
it catches our eye. I think I'll go in there, you
know. You go in there and the folks are friendly and they shake
your hand and they invite you over and they have a dinner every
now and then. They have activities for your
kids and they honor you on Mother's Day and Father's Day and all
that. I think we'll just go over there. I think we'll just go
over there. Or somebody's going to go down here and they're going
to find this big church with the stained glass windows and
the candlelight and all those things that kind of kind of gender
a false sense of worship, and they feel good about themselves,
and the preacher gets up and brags on them for a little while,
they're just going to be satisfied! That's condemnation. Satisfied! In love with that darkness. They
love this darkness rather than light. That's condemnation. That's judgment. We're not waiting
on judgment. Judgment's already here. Go home
and call your nephew or your aunt or somebody, somebody close
to you now, somebody that knows you, and try to tell them about
Christ and listen to what they tell you. I'm telling you that
the wrath of God abides on them right now. And it's a miracle
of grace when a man comes into the presence of this gospel and
God gets a hold of that heart and just wrings it out and puts
a new heart in him and brings him to Christ. It's a miracle
of grace. You can't do it. Now you go home
and clench your teeth and grit your teeth and clench your fists
and you can't believe. You throw that Bible down and
go watch some TV show. I think John Wayne's on. I think
I'll go watch him for a while. I get tired reading this book.
You won't get tired when he gives you a heart for it. Oh, it's food. I got no idea where
I'm at in this message. Let me just get over here to
it. What I'm trying to tell you is this. This text is not meant
to frustrate. It's meant to encourage. Folks
get angry. What do you mean? You mean folks
don't have a chance? Yeah, they had a chance back
in Adam. Why would you want a chance? You couldn't hold a candle to
Adam. He didn't make it. What makes you think you can?
He was a perfect man in a perfect environment and he failed. You're
in an imperfect environment. You're in a sinful environment
with a sinful nature. What's the point? What's the
point? As in Adam and Eve all die. How
do I know that? Death passed from this one to that one to
that one to that one. That's what it says over in Romans
5. How do I know that? Because all sins. All sins. They wouldn't sin if they weren't
sinners. This text is not meant to frustrate. It's meant to encourage
lost souls and suffering saints to remember that God has purpose
to save. When a soul is brought by the
power of God's Spirit to see his utter ruin and the total
corruption of all flesh, the only comfort his soul will find
that can satisfy its needs and wants is the eternal purpose
of God to save sinners for the glory of His name. You're going
to hope in Him. Your hope is going to be in Him.
And Paul tells this young preacher, here he is, he's over here in
prison. Some believe when he wrote this book of 2 Timothy,
because of his language a little later on, that Paul's time was
just about over. He was about ready to be offered
up. And he wrote this young boy,
and he said, don't be ashamed of me. I'm a prisoner, but I'm
a prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ. Rome don't hold no chains
on me. I'm a prisoner of the Lord Jesus
Christ. I've been put here for these sufferings for this gospel,
to promote this gospel. And he says, Be thou a partaker. Down here in verse 8, Be thou
a partaker. Be thou a partaker of the afflictions
of the gospel according to the power of God who has saved us
and called us with a holy calling not according to our works but
according to His own purpose and grace which was given us
in Christ Jesus before the world began. I'm quoting now from 2
Timothy down here where our text is in verses 8 and 9. But he
says in verse 10, But it is now made manifest This eternal purpose
of grace, this holy calling, all of these things of God, this
eternal purpose of God, these things are now made manifest
by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ who has abolished
death and has brought to life, life and immortality. He has
brought it all to light through the gospel. And the ruin of man by something
in time cannot defeat or frustrate the purpose of God to save."
Everything in this text, I want you to look at it carefully,
everything in this text took place in eternity. Everything. In eternity. He says, first of
all, that God hath saved us. Don't you get tired of folks
talking about when they got saved? That's like petting a dog the
wrong direction. I just don't want to do that
to a boy. I'll tell you when you got saved, you got saved
if you are saved when God saved you in eternity. That's when
you got saved. He hath saved us. Ain't that
what that says? He hath saved us. He saved us
in a council of peace by which an everlasting covenant of grace
was made on our behalf. David come to die. This is the
king. This is that boy that was taken
from obscurity and raised up to sit on the throne of Israel.
This is the psalmist by which was penned the Psalms. This was
a prophet of God. This was that sweet psalmist
of Israel. And he come to die. And these
were his last words. Now, this man had been through
a lot. And he had some things he could glory in. I think I'd
find myself there and remember an old Goliath out that valley
with that sling. Standing there, a little ruddy
boy in his teens. Here's this big man, eight, nine
feet tall, big armor and all that stuff. David couldn't even
pick up King Saul's sword. He's standing out there in that
valley and he said, you come to me in your own power and in
your own strength. And he said, I'll come to you
in the name of the Lord. He whizzed that sling around and let her
fly. That big giant hit the ground. I'd probably lay down my death
bed and thought about that. Boy, you know, the Lord guided
that stone. Not David. I'll tell you what, David saw
his ruin. He saw the evil of his heart. He saw his life filled with unbelief. He never saw himself as somebody.
He always saw himself a vessel of wrath that God reached down
in this cesspool of iniquity according to his purpose and
grace and raised him up. That's how he sought himself.
And his last words was, although it be not so with my house, yet
hath he made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things
and sure. This is all my hope, he said.
This is all my salvation. All of it. That what God has
intended to do, He's going to do. That was his hope. God has saved us. He saved us
by appointing for Himself a guarantor of this covenant, a surety who
would stand for everything God required in the covenant. He
saved us when He appointed Christ as the one mediator of the covenant,
dispensing God's covenant blessings and ministering all the things
for men that pertain unto God. And God has saved us by an eternal
election. When He put us in an everlasting
union with Christ, He chose us in Him. Boy, that's hard to get
hold of, ain't it? In Him. When He appeared, I appeared. When He died, I died. When God
raised Him up, He raised me up. What belongs to us belongs to
Him. What belongs to Him belongs to us. We are His bride. We are
the heir of all His name implied. Every benefit, every blessing
is ours by divine election. God has saved us by an eternal
predestination to adoption. Whom He did foreknow, them He
also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son. And
they are going to be conformed. They are going to be sons. It's a fixed decree and therefore
an unchangeable purpose of will that every man, woman, boy and
girl that was given to Him by the Father should be His sons,
His daughters for eternity. And they're going to be. By an
eternal adoption in Christ, we've been chosen to be heirs of God,
joint heirs with Christ. We pray, Our Father, Our Father,
You can't pray that until you receive the adoption. Then you
can pray that. Then you can pray that. He saved
us by purchase redemption and a perfect obedience. I tell folks
all the time, they're all worried about election or universal redemption. All you've got to do is figure
out what happened at the cross. Did He do what He said He'd come
to do? If He did, Then He came to redeem
a people. And if He paid that redemption,
if He redeemed them, they're redeemed. They're redeemed. Paul said,
I do not frustrate the grace of God, and I don't either. He
saved us by a purchase redemption and a perfect obedience. He saved
us by an ascension into glory, receiving the full consolation
of His sufferings and death, seated at the right hand of God,
expecting until His enemies be made His footstool. He ain't
sitting up there with another lamb in a pen examining it so
He can take it down and crucify it again. When He comes a second
time, Paul said it would be without sin unto salvation. He's sitting down. He's not worried. People got the Father up there
just looking down over the banisters of heaven. Boy, I hope he believes. Sat down at the right hand of
God victorious. All power, he said, is given
unto me. Now you go preach. I'm going
to sit down. I'm going to sit down. And all
that the Father has given me is going to come to me. There's
no doubt about it, John. They're not going to stand over
there. They're going to come when they hear. And they're going
to hear when He draws them. Are you drawn? Why are you here? Why are you here? Huh? Well, I just got up this morning
and thought I'd just go to church. That's what you thought. That's
what I thought one day, too. God got a holy heart. He said, no man can come unto
me except my Father draw him. And when he does, no man is going
to pluck him out of my hand. Not just that, nobody is going
to pluck him out of my Father's hand. He saved us with a purpose, an
everlasting purpose of providence that worketh all things together
for our good and His glory. He has saved us. And He called
us with a holy calling. Now, this calling, He's not talking
about that effectual calling of hearing the gospel here. This
holy calling has to do with that sanctification of the Father.
It's saying back there in Romans chapter 8 where He talks about
being called. What he's talking about there
is a name. He's named you. He's given you
his name. He's taken something common and
ordinary, something that doesn't amount to a hill of beans like
those vessels in the temple. Just a goblet, just something
made by a man's hand. He makes it and sets it over
here. It's just something that's common and ordinary. But he sets
it over here and he said, it's my goblet now. You don't touch it no more. I
sanctified it. That's what he does with his
people. In eternity, he sets you aside, Russell. If you're
a believer, he sets you aside. It's a holy calling. He sets
something common and ordinary apart for divine use. You're
a vessel of mercy, he said, aforeprepared unto glory. And he sets you apart. Paul said, no, you're not. You're
the temple of God that the Holy Spirit abides in you. You defile that temple, God will
destroy you. Why? Because He set it aside. It's His. It's His. He called us to be sons. Called us as vessels of clay
to be filled with His treasure. Called to be justified in Christ
to magnify the glory of His justice and His grace. Called to be the
backdrop in which to display all of the glory of His purpose
redemption. Called with a holy calling. And
this calling is not according to our works, Paul said, but
it's according to His own purpose and grace which was given us
in Christ Jesus before the world began. Noah found grace because
there was grace. John said, He appeared, the Word
was made flesh and dwelt among Him, and we beheld His glory,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth. And He said, And grace, He said,
for grace. There is grace now because there
was grace then. There will be grace tomorrow, God willing,
because there was grace then. And I can preach grace to you
this morning because there is grace in Him. There is no grace in this world.
This world is condemned of God. It is by this purpose and grace
that you are here this morning. By this purpose and grace that
this message of grace is laid on my heart. This whole thing
is of God. That Ark of Noah, which was a
picture of Christ, it had no helm, it had no rudder, it had
no steering wheel, it had no sails to power it. These men
went on and Noah was glad. I guarantee you when the great
fountains of the deep burst forth and those clouds begin to come
down and pour and that Ark begin to rock and to reel and lift
up off that ground, I guarantee you Noah was glad there wasn't
a helm. He just laid back. And he said,
this is God's vessel. It's going where God purposed
it to go. And I'm just going to lay here
and rest. That's what I'm telling you about Christ. When you've
committed yourself, when you go through the door and you stand
in Him, this grace wherein we stand, Paul said, we stand in
Him and God shuts us in, seals us with that Holy Spirit of promise,
and you rest in Him. You just lay back in the straw
and rest. I'm not worried about where I'm
going. He's going to take me where the Ark is purposed to
go. I don't need to steer it. He can do just fine. You know,
there's a story old Henry used to tell about this sea captain.
And he was retired, and he got out on this big ocean liner,
and he took his granddaughter with him, or his daughter, little
daughter with him. And he got out there on that
sea and it come up on these big tempests and man it was rocking
and reeling that ship and that young captain up there was going
to take his place. He was scared. And he called
down there and the old man went up. He'd been through many of
these tempests. He went up there and he got a
hold of the wheel. And the steward come and woke up the little girl
and said, you know, you might want to come with us over here.
I know you're going to get scared. And she said, who's at the wheel?
He said, well, your daddy's up there. Well, he said, if Papa's
at the wheel, she said, I'll just go back to bed. You see what I'm telling you?
Come to Christ. And when you come to Him and
stand in Him, rest. You don't have to stir anything.
You don't have to do anything. It's already done. It's done
in Him. All you have to do is rest. We
just weary ourselves to death trying to do stuff that God didn't
tell us to do. Rest in Him. Who hath saved us and called
us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to
His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began, which is now made manifest by the appearing
of our Savior Jesus Christ, with abolished death and have brought
life and immortality to light through the gospel, whereunto,"
he said, "'I am appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher
of the Gentiles, for the which cause I suffer these things.'"
And sitting there in his handcuffs and leggings and bleeding in
that old damp Roman prison, I want you to listen to what he said.
"'Nevertheless, I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed. And I am persuaded that he is
able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that
day. Now, therefore, hold fast the
form of sound words which thou hast heard of me in faith and
love which is in Christ.