Galatians chapter 6 and verse 14, title this message, The Glory or the
Glories of the Cross. But God forbid, the apostle writes
by the inspiration of God, God forbid that I should glory. save
or accept in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the
world is crucified unto me, the world's dead to me, and I unto
the world. I'm dead to the world. The world's
dead to me and I'm dead to the world. God forbid that I should
glory in myself, that I should glory in my knowledge, that I
should glory in my credentials. I should glory in my own righteousness.
God forbid. Don't let me do it. This was
almost in the form of a prayer when he says, God forbid. Lord,
don't let me glory in myself. You're the only one that's worthy
of honor and glory and praise and majesty. Just you, not me. Not the world. Just you, you
alone. You're the glorious one. You're
the high and exalted one. You're the one that's lifted
up. You're the one I want to preach. You're the one I want
to declare. You're the one I want to brag
on and exalt and uphold. Oh, you're the one I want to
set forth to the people. God help me to preach Christ
and not glorying myself. I'm nothing but a speck of dust.
I'm nothing. Oh, I don't have any righteousness
of my own. I don't have any worth. I don't
have any merit. I'm just a poor sinner. I'm just
a beggar telling another beggar where to get a good meal. Somebody
phrased it like that once. Oh, if you don't know the Lord
Jesus Christ this morning, I pray that you, by His grace, I pray
that you'd know Him before this service is over. If you don't
have a desire for Him, I prayed He'd give you desires. That's
the only way you're going to get one is if He gives it to
you. It's the only way I'm going to
have one. I can't give it to you. I can't give it to myself.
But oh, if He's pleased to, what a blessed, blessed day this will
be in my life and yours if we can, by His grace, get a glimpse
of the Lord Jesus Christ. I can't say enough about Him.
I can't brag on Him enough. When I've said everything I can
say, I still fall way, way short of His glory, of His beauty. Oh, the writer said, He's altogether
lovely. There's no deficiency in Him.
There's no taint of sin or there's no blemish in Him. He's perfect,
perfect in every aspect. Once you see Him, oh, you'll
agree. And oh, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ. I want to give you a few definitions
to begin with here. To glory in someone or something
is to enjoy or derive great pride and pleasure, satisfaction from
that object or person. And oh, I enjoy the Lord Jesus
Christ, don't you? I enjoy. I enjoy when a preacher
stands up and his name falls from his lips. Oh, that's bread
for the hungry. That's a cold drink for a thirsty
man to hear of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, this is what the
desire of the heart is. He said He'd give me the desire
of my heart, and then He gives me a heart with a desire. Oh, such grace, such beauty,
such glory. To esteem very highly, to esteem
very highly, the credit great worth to, to honor, to praise,
and to the extreme, to worship, to bow down and worship. Oh,
I worship, I've got a God, don't you? I worship the true and living
God by His grace. I can do nothing but fall at
His footstool, fall before Him. Oh, and to hear men rant and
rave about who they are and what they've done and what they can
do, I have no stomach for it. I have no heart for it. The Lord
Jesus Christ, He's the one that's done it all. He is all. When
the apostle wrote in Colossians chapter 1, verse 11, he said
he'd come to this conclusion. He said, Christ is all. Christ
is all, He's all there is. Paul the Apostle, he said, he
summed it up this way, he said, I dare not preach anything among
you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And when we're done
today and we leave this house, I pray that before God, you can
say, and God can witness that I've spoken of Him very highly. And then I'll weep. I always
do, Terry, when I leave. I weep because I've not spoke
highly enough of Him. Oh, He's so wondrous. To worship Him, to bow down and
fall down before Him in truth and honesty and the humility
that the heart should have, only He can give. Oh, to worship Him
in spirit. and in truth. And that don't
mean jumping benches and hollering and screaming and speaking in
some kind of gibberish. That means speaking of Him in
words that can be understood. To tell of His great name in
plain, understandable language. To tell who He is. He's God. He's God. And beside Him, there's
none other. Oh, to worship Him. The cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ
is not the wood upon which He was affixed. That wood is rotted
and gone. But all He that hung upon it,
He is not. Oh, I tell you what, it was not
possible that death should hold Him. It was not possible that
He would decay. It was not possible that he would
perish because he is himself life, and he gave his very life
for his people. Neither is any singular work
in and of itself. The cross of the Lord Jesus Christ
is not any singular work in and of itself. The glory of the cross
is the person of Christ himself in all he is and all he's done
and all he's doing, which gives virtue to his work that he accomplished.
This is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not one of
those things folks hang around their necks. That's nothing but
idolatry. Oh, we don't need a piece of wood or a piece of jewelry
hanging on our neck or a picture hanging on our wall of Wild Bill
Hickok. We need faith to see Christ. We need faith to see Christ,
and that's what He graciously gives. The cross of the Lord
Jesus Christ is the Lord Jesus Christ from beginning to end.
He said, I'm the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning and the end, the
first and the last, and all in between. He's Christ from beginning
to end, and He's Christ to His people. The Lord Jesus Christ
and His cross is His incarnation. His suffering, His death, His
fulfilling of the law, His resurrection, glory. In Revelation 180, He
said, I'm the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning, the ending. Saith
the Lord, which is, which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
That's who I am. He's the Almighty. He's the Almighty
God. That's how Isaiah wrote of it.
He's wonderful, that's His name. He's Counselor, that's His name.
He's Everlasting Father, that's His name. He's the Prince of
Peace. He's wonderful, that's who He is. That's who He is. To the glory of the cross is
to the glory of Christ. Who alone is glorious? The glory
of God adorns His work and redemption. Every aspect of His incarnation
has to do with His redemptive work. His birth, His life, His
death, His resurrection. That's His redemptive work. That's
His cross. He became a man of sorrow and
acquainted with grief. He took our sin upon Him. He
took His people's sin actually upon Him. He was made sin for
us. He bore our sin in His own body,
the Scripture says, on the cross. His incarnation, His perfection
in the flesh. Somebody said, well, I'm not
perfect. That's putting it mildly, isn't
it? We're everything that is not perfect. The Lord Jesus Christ
is perfect. in the flesh, His vicarious death,
His resurrection, and His reign as God's man. God forbid that
I should glory in another. God forbid. All folks, glory
in preachers. And I know the preacher that
preaches the truth, we should esteem them highly for the work's
sake, for the office, for the calling, for the truthfulness
that God has given them, for sending them to us. But, oh,
we shouldn't esteem them above the Lord Jesus Christ. If a man
ever stands before me and tells me the truth, it's because of
God. It's not because of him. It's
because God revealed the truth to him, called him to the ministry,
and revealed Christ in him. Let me give you a few scriptures.
In Zechariah 2.5, For I, saith the Lord, this is what the Lord
said, will be unto her a wall of fire round about to the church,
to the believers. I'll be a wall of fire round
about. This is figurative, not literal fire, but a protective
fire and a glory, glorious fire, life round about her. And I will
be the glory in the midst of her. Wherever you find God's
church, You'll find Him in the midst. He's in the midst of His
church. And His people glory in Him.
They brag on Him. They're proud of Him. They enjoy
Him. They tell of Him with great excitement. They're ready to honor Him. They're
ready to put themselves down and exalt Him. 1 Corinthians 1.31, as it
is written, He that glorieth. Do you glory? We all glory in
something, don't we? We're gloriers. We're worshipers. We all worship something. But He that glorieth, Let Him
glory in the Lord. Let Him glory in the Lord. That's
what His children do. 2 Corinthians 4, 6, For God who
commanded the light to shine out of darkness. The light to
shine out of darkness. Where is the darkest place on
this planet, would you reckon? A friend of mine once, I might
have told you this story. My dad showed us where a cave
was. Way back in the woods. It had been obscure for years.
Trees grown up all over where you went in and he had to look
and search and finally he found it. And we had flashlights. Dad wouldn't go in it, but me
and my friend did. We went in this cave. We got
way back in it and went about three miles through the earth
and come out on the side of a mountain up over the river. We'd been
there about an hour and a half and we decided we'd turn the
lights out to see how dark it was. And I ain't never seen nothing
as dark. I mean, that was dark. I can't
explain it, how dark it was. And it's kind of scary. I'm thinking,
boy, I hope we don't drop these flashlights. Hope they come back
on. But that's not the darkest place
on this earth. The darkest place on this earth is your old, cold,
hard, How great is that darkness? Dark. No life. Dark as death. Dark as hell. Dark as all of
the evils that you can think of. That's this natural heart. That's the heart we're born with.
But God commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined
in our hearts. The gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Word of God, the life of Christ, the knowledge
of Him, He who is life has shined in our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God forbid that I should glory
in another. God forbid. He is that light. He is that light, and light simply
means this, it's not some The thing that appears, and we see
with these natural eyes or in a vision or something, that light
is the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. That light is knowing
Him. That light is knowing the truth. That light is the life of the
Lord Jesus Christ. In Ephesians 3.21, unto Him be
glory in the church by Jesus Christ. Who is the glory of the
church? It's the head. The head's the
glory of the body, isn't it? That's right. When you get ready
to come to the meeting house or you get ready to go somewhere
and you want to look the best you can, what do you focus most
on? If you don't know, break your
mirrors when you go home. You look in the mirror. You look
in your face. You look at your hair. You look at your face. all that stuff on, but I'll not
go through the list. And I'm glad to thank God for
it. I'm not condemning it. I'm thankful for it. And, but
anyway, I'm getting off track. But that's what, that's what
we look at. That's what we look at. We look at the head. We look at, because we speak
through the mouth, we look with our eyes. This is, this is, we're
identified by our face. And this is the glory of our
body. That's where it's at in our face.
The glory of the church is the Lord Jesus Christ. God forbid
that I should glory except in my head the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the head of church. I'm
not the head of the church. You're not the head of the church. The
Pope's not the head of the church. There ain't no man ahead of the
church. The Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the church, the
body. In Jeremiah 9.24, but let him that glorieth glory in this,
that he understands and knows me. He said glory in this, that he
understands me and knows me, that I am the Lord which exercise
lovingkindness and judgment and righteousness in the earth. For
in these things I delight, saith the Lord. He delights in lovingkindness. He delights in mercy. He delights
in grace. He delights in His people because
He's made them His people. He delights in His Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And His Son delights in us because
we're in Him. And we're in God. We're His body. And He's our head. And He said,
He let Him that glorify us in this that He understands. Do
you understand? That there's no one worthy of glory and honor
and praise except the Lord Jesus Christ. There just really isn't. Now I believe it's a good thing
to compliment others. I say this again, I always try
to justify myself in this because there's nothing wrong with saying
you look good today. There's nothing wrong with saying that
was a good message, I enjoyed it. As long as you understand
that what we have or what we've done, what we are, God gets the
glory for it. If there's anything good to be
said, if you ever tell me I preached a good message, you understand
this. If I did, and honestly and sincerely you hear it, and
God puts it in your heart and it's a blessing to you, it's
Him that's done it, it's not me. Understand that. Do you get that? I ain't never
done nothing good. Do you hear me? I ain't never
done nothing good. Everything I've done is full of faults and
failures and self and just awful. If God ever speaks to your heart
by a message that I preached, it's Him that's done it. It's
not me. It's not me. Glory in Him. Glory in Him. But it's like I
said, it's never wrong, as long as we understand what we're saying.
As long as we understand what we're saying. I thank God for
you, Paul said. But notice how he said, I thank
God for you. I thank Him for you. With glory
in Him, all men, religious and irreligious, apart from Christ
manifesting His glory to them, with glory in themselves. Now,
I'll tell you what, folks. I'm just going to insert this.
This is not my notes. We're all going to die really
soon. And I keep saying this. Someday it's going to happen.
It happens every day. Someday we're going to stand
before God. Now, if you're counting on what you've not done or what
you have done or both to get you into heaven, you're going
straight to hell. I'm telling you that right now,
being honest with you. That's what the scripture says. You ain't
going to heaven. Nothing you've ever done would
merit being in the presence of God. Me or you, either one. And all the things we have not
done is so bad that other people's done. We ain't done them. We're
pretty good folks because we ain't done what all these other
people's done. And we go there and we plead what we've not done.
We ain't going in. We're not going to go in the
presence of God. We're not going to heaven because of what we've
not done. Because if God had not restrained us, we'd have
done it. All you ladies would be prostitutes and all of us
would be child abusers or worse. Anything we got the potential
to do anything that anybody else would do. And I know we think
sometimes, I wouldn't ever do that. You'd do it in a heartbeat
if God didn't restrain you. And you don't even know he's
restraining you. I don't either, most of the time. And if I've
not done it, I've thought about it. I'm just being honest. Somebody said, when you're preaching,
that's time to be honest. Time to be honest all the time, isn't
it? But I'm going to do my dead little
best to tell you the truth. We ain't fit to go to heaven. And
if we do, if we do go, To Him be the glory. To God be the glory. That's what our lesson is this
morning. God forbid that I should glory
in another. There's a group that's going
to stand before God, and I think this is representative of all
men that's self-righteous, that look to themselves for salvation,
and what to do or what to don't do. In Matthew, I believe it's
either chapter 7 or chapter 14, There's a group of people that's
going to stand before God, and this is represented in a picture
of all self-righteousness. And they're going to say, we've
preached in your name. They're preachers. There are
going to be plenty of preachers in hell. Plenty of them. That's where the false prophet
is going. We've preached in your name. We've given in your name.
You know, some folks think they're going to go to heaven because
they give a lot of money. That's right, they actually do. That's
what they're comforting themselves, and that's their assurance, because
they give a lot of money. They think they're going because
they've not killed anybody, or because they've been good to
their family. You know what? We look at some old man or woman
in a wheelchair, you know, just all dried up and frail. We think, well, they're going
to heaven. Not that they don't glory in the Lord. He's not going
to have mercy on somebody because they're old in a wheelchair or
they're sick. No. They're going to hell like
everybody else when they die if they don't know Christ. Oh. He that glories, let him glory
in the Lord. Let him glory in the Lord. All religious and irreligious
apart from Christ manifesting His glory to them will glory
in themselves, in their supposed righteousness, in their knowledge,
in their own little specific personal inbred gods which they've
conjured up with their wicked imaginations. Everybody's got
their own little gods they worship. It all boils down to worshiping
ourselves. He sure wouldn't put me in hell. I'm pretty good.
I'm good to my wife, good to my kids, good to my neighbors.
Go to church every once in a while and ain't got nothing else to
do. You know, I give a little money. You know, sometimes I Double up on it even. Have a
windfall during the week. That's good. Be good to your
wife and kids and your husband and your neighbors and give.
That's all right. But that ain't going to get you
into heaven. That don't get you into the good graces of God. That'll send
you to hell quicker than anything else if you trust in it. That's
right. The Lord said to that bus, depart
from me. I never knew you, you that work iniquity. All those
good things you've done in my sight are works of unrighteousness,
because they wasn't done to the glory of God. They wasn't done
with faith in Christ. God forbid that I should glory
except in Christ. God forbid. And this flesh has
a tendency to lean upon itself, to trust in itself, to glory
in itself. It has that tendency. It's its very nature. It's its
very nature. All false religions intricately
weave themselves into their so-called gospel. Somehow or another, and
I'm trying by God's grace to take every pain this morning
to disannul that, to expose that. And I may do it anyway. I hope
I don't. But this gospel of the glory
of God, the glory of Christ, is not a so-called gospel. This
is the gospel. Paul said, God forbid that I
should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. This
so-called gospel that's interwoven with man's doing and his religion
ultimately robs God and Christ of His glory and gives glory
to themselves. With the church I was raised
up in, it was a Baptist church, fundamental, premillennial. It
had a bunch of names. I can't think of all of them.
But anyway, we had testimony meetings. Preacher said, anybody
got anything to say? And boy, did folks have something
to say. That's like opening the door
of that airplane that was sunk. Water just flowed. Trying to think of her name.
You wouldn't know her. I'd tell you her name if I could
think of it. Pearl Threat, that's who it was. Pearl Threat. She
sat right over there. Pearl Threat would get up and
it was a given. Every time she'd stand up to testify, she'd say,
I read the Bible through 33 times. And I pray so many hours a day. And I do this and I do that.
You just know Pearl is going to heaven. Who wouldn't go to
heaven and read the Bible 33 times? Surely. Surely that person
would go to heaven. And you know what? I was honorary
Paul Barrett at our pastor, the pastor of the church where I
was raised and where Pearl went. And I stood by the casket of
Stanley Craven's pastor. His daughter stood beside me,
Dr. Allred's wife. She put her arm
around me and she said, if anybody goes to heaven, daddy will. Do you know what she was saying?
He's going to heaven because of all that he's done. Because
of all of his preaching and all the years he's worked for the
Lord. That's the reason daddy's going
to heaven. And I stood right there and thought. I didn't say
nothing. I just began to learn the gospel and began to learn
that we wasn't anything. And then this lady stood there.
Her husband wasn't a Sunday school teacher. Her daddy wasn't a pastor.
And she stood there and said, if anybody goes to heaven, it's
going to be daddy because of what he done. I had a, humanly
speaking, I had a wonderful mother. She was. She was just better
than any of y'all's mother. I mean, I loved y'all's mother,
but mine's the best. You know, she was just so meek
and so kind and so naive. And just, she never argued, she
never complained. And I'm being truthful, Mary,
I tell you. But she couldn't get in heaven on the merit of
her kind disposition or love for her family and her children.
She couldn't. That's not, no. Oh, no. We'll not give her the
glory. She's my mother and I loved her.
We can't give her the glory, can we? Huh? Can we? If she's
in glory, when I get there, if I see my mother, do you know
what she's going to say? Maybe not in these words, but
do you know what she's going to testify to? Glory and honor
to the Lamb that was slain and redeem me by His own blood. That's who we glory in. No one else. No one else. Men love to promote and applaud
the flesh. Men love to recognize, promote,
and entertain themselves in the name of God. The Apostle said,
Lord, save me from this, and that's what I'm saying this morning.
Lord, save me and you from this. God forbid that I should glory,
saving the cross for the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul was a great
preacher, wasn't he? I guess next to the Lord Jesus
Christ we'd say he was one of the greatest preachers ever lived. But you know what he said? He
said, Christ sent me not to baptize. And he wasn't saying that I'm
not supposed to baptize anyone, but he said that's not the reason
that he sent me. He sent me to preach the gospel,
to preach Christ, not with wisdom of words. You know, I could stand up here
and try to explain to you the difference in what is labsarianism,
sublabsarianism, and you wouldn't You and I wouldn't know, and
you wouldn't know either after it got through. I'd be as confused
as you are. Many think, well, I think I know what it is, but
what good would it do? Huh? Wisdom of words. Make folks
think you know something. Make them think you're smart.
Talk plain. Talk simple. Easy to understand. Do you understand me? Do you
understand what I'm saying? Do you understand what the Gospel
says? Do you understand, at least intellectually, what I'm saying?
Glory in the Lord alone, not in yourself. You're not worth
it. You don't deserve it. He does. That's what I'm saying. Don't
make me glory in anyone else. A lot of folks have all their
hope and trust in the preacher. Then the preacher dies. They don't know what to do. They
don't know what to do. The preacher's gone and that's
it for them. I've seen it happen. All her
hope was in the preacher. Don't hope in me. It's only by the grace of God
that I know him. And I can tell you the truth.
Don't glory in me. Glory in Christ. The glory of
someone is that which distinguishes him from all others and is exclusive
to that one in beauty and preeminence. The glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is one among all. He is the one rose among the
thorns. He is the one. Look out on the
field of briars and thorns and weeds and nettles and rocks and
roots. That's worthless. And you see
out in the middle of that field, one rose. Beautiful. Beautiful. That's Him. He's the
fairest of 10,000. He is glorious. Outstanding.
Outstanding. We can by no means exhaust this
subject. What did Paul glory in? What
did he desire to glory in? He said, God forbid except I
glory in the cross of Christ. In Christ Himself. in the person
of Christ, who He is. Who is the Lord Jesus Christ?
Now listen, the Lord Jesus Christ, there's no other like Him. Who
is He? What's He like? Exactly who is
He? Tell me who He is. The Lord asked
this question, He said, who do men say that I am? What's folks
saying about me? He knew, but He wanted to bring
this to their attention. And he looked at Peter and he
said, who do you say I am? He said, dark to Christ, the son
of the living God. This is in Christ himself. He
is God manifest in the flesh. He's the God man. He's 100% God
and 100% man. Somebody say, explain that. I
can't. I'm not going to even attempt to. But He is. He's the 100% man
and 100% God. He's the God-man. He glories
in His person. His virtuous character is the
God-man, the perfection of His godly faculties in the flesh.
This is a perfect man. He suffered from sinners. He
did no sin. In Him is no sin. He's the sinless,
harmless Son of God. In Luke 2, 11-14, for unto you
this, born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ
the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto
you, you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in
a manger. And suddenly there was with an angel a multitude
of the heavenly host praising God and saying, now this is what
they were saying, glory to God. That's what they say. And that's
what I'm saying, what Paul is saying. Glory to God. God forbid
that I should glory in another. Glory to God for His Son. Glory
to God for the Son of God who condescended, who came in the
flesh and worked out a righteousness for me that I couldn't work out,
that put away my sin that I couldn't put away. Glory to God. John 1.14, the
Word was made flesh and dwell among us, and we beheld His glory. We beheld His glory. God forbid
that I should go in another. Great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifest in the flesh. This is who He is. He's the God-man. Explain it, I can't. I just believe
it. By God's grace, I believe it.
For great is the Lord, 1 Chronicles 16.25. and greatly to be praised. Do you esteem the Lord to be
great? Is He great? You say, yes, He is. He's great. I think He's great. But do you
esteem Him to be as great as He deserves to be esteemed? You'll
say, no, I don't. But I desire to. God forbid that
I should glory. He also is to be esteemed and
praised above all gods, above all gods. Psalms 48, 1, great
is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God,
in the mountain of his holiness. You know, folks, we, we, those
that know Christ, I think we're possibly going to be surprised.
I mean, we see through a glass dimly. But then we see face to
face. But there's a multitude of folks,
and I hope you're not one of them. I hope I'm not one of them,
that will be greatly surprised when they see God face to face. Who we'll see is the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's who we're going to see. And Isaiah 12, 6, cry out and
shout, the inhabitants of Zion, for great is the Holy One of
Israel in the midst of her. Every one of God's preachers
today, every one of them, is giving God the glory. Every one
of them. Those that do not are not God's
preachers. That's just so. I'm not saying everyone doesn't
preach like me. I hope they don't preach like
me. I'm a poor specimen of a preacher. But everyone that preaches his
gospel has the same thoughts as the
Apostle did, as I do. God forbid that I should glory
in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. God's preachers are not
standing before their congregation today telling folks how good
they are. They're telling folks how good
God is. That's right. Observe Him, the Holy One, the
Immaculate One, the Spotless One, the Undefiled One, One separate
from sinners. In Christ, perfect obedience
to God's demands. That's what we glory. That's
the cross of Christ. Christ's perfect obedience to God's demands.
God's demands, perfection. And Christ performed that perfection. He fulfilled that perfection.
He met God's demands. The laws obeyed in Christ. We
glory in God's perfect obedience, in Christ's perfect obedience
to God. In Romans 5, 19, it says, by the obedience of one, shall
many be made righteous. Not by my obedience, but by his
obedience. Christ himself said, I have glorified
thee on the earth. Speaking to the father, I have
finished the work which he gave me to do. We've never finished
anything he gave us to do. But the Lord Jesus Christ finished
everything God gave Him to do. And we glory in His finished
work. When He said it's finished, we
say glory to God. Ain't that right? Glory to God. He finished it. All glory to
Him. We glory in Christ's cross death.
That's His cross. He died. justice satisfied in
Christ. God's law demanded we die for
our sin. The Lord Jesus Christ came and
died as our substitute and our sin offering. Being found in
fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross. For Christ also has suffered
for sins once, the just for the unjust. I'm the unjust, he's
the just. that He might bring us to God.
We didn't bring ourselves to God, He brought us to God. We
glory in His bringing us to God. We glory in His cross death,
His suffering for our sin, being put to death in the flesh, but
quickened by the Spirit. We glory in His righteous reign,
in His glorious reign where He is now. And if the Lord ever
reveals this to us, reveals this to you, I know we talk and give
our opinions and everything, but this will give us some ease. Ease of mind and heart and trouble.
You know, we get troubled about things and over-anxious sometimes. I do. I wish I didn't, but I
do. But I'm always brought back to this place by God's grace.
This world belongs to God. It belongs to Christ. And everything
in it. Everything in it, all of the
governments of this world, all the powers, all the dictators,
all the terrorist groups, Hamas, everything belongs to him. All
of it does. Obama, he belongs to him. He's God's president. He put
him in office. Say, who elected President Obama? I'll tell you exactly who elected
him. God did. He may be like Pharaoh. He may put him in there
and destroy him. He may make a great president out of him.
I don't know. God knows. But he's there for a purpose.
God put him in. This will put our mind at rest and our hearts
and our souls if we know the Lord Jesus Christ and glory in
Him. There ain't nothing that wiggles on this planet that God
doesn't order. Sometime go out and you see a
leaf blowing through there. Now, you say this is being extreme.
I am extreme. I believe in the extreme God.
I believe in the extreme Christ. He orders the very path of that
leaf and where it falls. I go out and rake it up among
the 10,000 other leaves, set them on fire. Who did that? Well, I did it, but God did it.
Yeah, He did it. I believe that. You know, the
frost that forms in the fall of the year for the harvest,
the blade of grass that springs up in the early spring, the bud
that appears on the apple tree, the fruit that hangs there that's
ripe and falls, God did that. The baby that gives its first
cry when it comes into the world, God did that. And as I lay down
on my deathbed and life leaves me, God did that. You see, either He's God, all
God, and God alone. I'm talking about Christ, talking
about God, the Godhead, or He's no God at all. And I thought
this morning, I didn't think much about it. I never do. It's
Sunday morning and they don't nobody call me and ask me what
I'm going to do on Sunday morning. Seems like God made up my mind
for me. I get ready to come to church. I thought this morning,
I thought this, you know, I've got to get ready and I'll go.
But I'm not here because I decided to come. I'm here because he
decided for me to come. This was his decision. And it
would be troublesome to me. Knowing what I know now, if I
got up some Sunday morning and just for no reason, I mean some
selfish reason, I don't think I'll go to church today. Don't
think I'll go hear the gospel. Don't believe I'll go worship.
Just don't feel too good today. Think I'll just lay in bed. Why? Why? That would give me, that
would disturb me. But at the same time, it's not,
I gloried Him, not myself. Not myself. It's not with the
will of the flesh. It's not with the will of man. It's with the will of God. Oh,
isn't He great? Isn't He wonderful? I want to
know more about Him. I want to know more about Him,
don't you? I want a glory. in Him and His cross, who He
is and what He's doing. Well, I'll leave that thought
with you. May God bless His Word to our
hearts.