Turn with me to the book of John,
the gospel of John, chapter 3. The gospel of John, chapter 3. I want to talk to you a little
while tonight, primarily from verses 14 and 15. And here in John chapter 3, that's
where he talks about as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness. Even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but
have eternal life. Now, there's something that has
escaped me for years that I want to bring to your attention. This
is part of our Sunday school lesson. We've been going through
the book of John. And in studying these things carefully, over
time, the Lord teaches you things. And He takes that key and unlocks
that treasure and makes you see a little bit more, a little deeper
into it, a little bit more about it. And I've looked at this verse
of Scripture, and everybody knows, at least everybody in here I
hope knows, that Christ was made a curse for us. And as this serpent
pictured that and was raised up in the wilderness, even so
must Christ be raised up on that cross. What I did not see for
years is the fact that this verse begins with an and. And it's
connected to all that he's been talking to Nicodemus about in
the new birth, this raising up. of Christ as the raising up of
that serpent was in the wilderness is part of his discourse to Nicodemus
about regeneration. He's teaching regeneration here.
Regeneration. Now, Nicodemus, when he came
to Christ, if you look back here in verse 1 of chapter 3, it says
there was a man. Now, we want to rush on to the
fact that Nicodemus was a rabbi and a master in Israel. Our Lord
said, Art thou a master in Israel? And knowest not these things?
He identified him. He knew who he was. And we want
to rush on to that. We want to rush on to the fact
that he was a ruler of the Jews. We want to rush on to things,
and we don't pay attention to what the Scriptures are saying.
The first thing that's recorded here, and the Holy Spirit doesn't
use words, foolishly or needlessly. And the very first thing we're
taught here about Nicodemus was that he was a man. He was a man. And I told our folks over in
Taylor, Arkansas, the other day, you can take a man and you can
dress him up in a robe, and they did that. They had religious
gowns. And our Lord said that the Pharisees,
He said they made broad deflectories on their gowns. That was kind
of like a a serviceman that you see, and he's got all these little
special buttons and ribbons, or a boy scout or somebody. And
each one of these things signifies something of his character, something
that his accomplishments and all this type of thing. And these
Pharisees had phylacteries on their robes, and they made them
broad. And they wanted to show all their accomplishments. The
one thing I remember out of religion that stands out to me the most
They had a little board over on the wall, and it had how much
offering they gave, and how much this and that, and how much attendance
they had, and what the attendance was last year, and all that type
of thing that goes on in religion. You'll have to excuse me. My
eyes are just giving me fits today. But Nicodemus was a religious
man, and he had on his religious apparel. He had on his religious
garments. And he came to Christ, and Christ
knew who he was, and he wanted everybody to know who he was.
He was a master in Israel. He was a rabbi. He was a teacher,
reverend, doctor. I could go on and on and on with
the titles that men have today. But when you come to the Lord,
you come as a man. That's how you come. And you
can dress Him up any way you want to, and you can hang on
Him all the titles of honor and recognition, and you can call
Him reverend or bishop or doctor. or Pope or whatever else you
want to tag on his name, he's just a man before God. Now, he
might be. I'll tell you, Uzziah was somebody
in Isaiah's eyes. He wrote everything he did down
in a book until God killed him as a leper. And when he did that,
Isaiah said, I saw the Lord. I saw the Lord. And this thing
about reconciliation and redemption, this thing of salvation is a
man. coming to God. It's a man. I don't care how you dress him
up. Nicodemus came to the Lord, he
came thinking he was going to add something to what he already
had. He thought the Lord was going
to give him something in addition to what he already had. He was
going to add a little bit to what he already knew. He recognized
him as a special man. We know, Lord, a teacher comes
from God because nobody can do what you did unless God be with
you. And so he wanted to come and
kind of check him out in private and see what he could glean from
him, see what he could add to what he already had. And what our Lord did is just
stopped him. Just stopped him dead in his
tracks. Nicodemus, with all your titles and all your gowns and
all your identifications and all your renown, you got to be
born again. And he sought Christ not as a
Savior, but he came to Him as a teacher, a teacher. He came to Him to be taught.
He came to Him to add a little bit to what he already knew,
to add a little bit to his wisdom. Christ is made unto us wisdom
altogether. If we don't come, it's not Christ
plus something that's in us, it's Christ, all Christ. And Nicodemus had a lot of things,
and he went to church all the time, all the Pharisees did.
They attended synagogue whenever it was open. And he read his
Bible, and he taught the scriptures, and he studied, and he read the
old prophets, and he paid tithes, and he observed all the holy
days. and all these things, but he didn't know God. He didn't
know God. And our Lord stopped him. He
just stopped him dead in his tracks, and he said, Nicodemus,
you must be born again. Well, there's a funny thing there.
Nicodemus said, how can these things be? This was the first
time in this man's life that he actually heard something he
didn't understand. I went to church all my life.
I understood when they said, come down to the front, I understood
exactly what they were saying. When they said, confess your
sins, I knew exactly what they were talking about. When they
said, do this, do that, do the other, I knew what they were
talking about. Boy, the first time I heard the gospel, I said,
what in the world are they talking about? He said, The natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God, because there is foolishness
unto it. They're foolish. Well, how can
that be? He said it was foolishness to
it. And his answer declared that. You're saying I've got to crawl
back in my mother's womb. Now, he knew better than that.
He knew better than that. But it was foolishness to it.
There's foolishness to it. And everything about the gospel
when it comes to natural man, it's foolishness. It's just foolishness.
I've got some folks that's been coming for a good long time now,
and I had one on this side sit the second pew back, and I had
another one sit over here the second pew back, and this one
over here getting mad to the point of throwing their Bible
down on the pew. Just mad. Just throw that Bible
down on the pew. This one over here was gripping
the pews until you could see the white part of his knuckles.
God had a hold of him. That's the difference. That's
the difference. And that's what he's talking
about in these verses. He's talking about regeneration.
He's talking about God getting a hold of you. God has to get
a hold of you, Nicodemus. You can't come on your own. You
can't come in your own ability. You can't come seeking to learn. How are you going to teach a
dead man? The Lord of Glory didn't even try to teach Nicodemus.
He just stopped him in his tracks. He said, you must be born again.
There's no point in trying to teach a dead man. You can't teach
him anything. He can mimic. He can mimic. Just like a minor bird, you sit
there and say the same thing enough, he can tell you what
you said back. But it has no effect on him. It doesn't enter
into his heart. It takes God to carry that message
into the heart. This is what our Lord is talking
to him about. In order for him to perceive
anything that had to do with the kingdom of God, he must be
born again. Now, my question is this. Do
you believe that? Do you believe that? Because you're not going to get
any further until you do. You're not going to get any further.
You must. It's not an option. You must,
he said, be born again. You must be. Has God ever brought
you to the place where you lost touch with the Word of God? Where His Word began to take
on an air of deity about it? When has Word become something
more than just dead letters and just laws and rules? You go down the
road and here's a stop sign that says, S-T-O-P. Stop. You know
what it means. Go on. That's how folks take
the Word of God. They see what it means, sometimes
they obey it, sometimes they don't, and they go on. The Word
of God has to come alive. It has to take on an air of deity
about it. It has to get a hold of you.
All of a sudden, these things are so. There are no ifs, ands,
and buts about it. You don't go home and you say,
well, you reckon those things are really so? Not when God gets
a hold of you, you won't. All of a sudden, this Word is
so. Everything in it is so. I've got to meet with this God,
and He's a sovereign God. How do you know that? Because
this is what He says. It says that. And this man over
here is looking at it, make excuses and talk about it. And that's
what they began to tell me when I began to ask them about it
on them Arminian circles. They wanted to know, well, that
don't really mean that. And I said, well, that's what
it says. That's what it says. Those are secret things there.
Those secret things belong unto the Lord. Well, I said, everything
in there must be secret because I'm seeing it on every page.
Every page. Every verse. Every book. It's
not just in Romans. It's in Matthew, Mark, Luke,
John, Isaiah, go on and on and on. It's everywhere. He's sovereign. I'm God. Beside me, there is
none other. I declare the end from the beginning
and from ancient times, the things that are not yet done, saying
my counsel shall stand and I'll do all my pleasure. Have you
ever been there? Have you ever been there? Has this book ever come alive
to you? Just jumped off the page? Oh,
I tell you, I went to church every day of my life. Every time
the door was open, we was over to mission churches in downtown
Mansfield, and they'd sit me up on the old feed sack and let
me listen to them preach the winos, and we'd go to all the
revival meetings and the state camp meetings and all that stuff.
Every day, every day, every day, not one time ever heard anything
to do with the gospel of God's sovereign grace. Not in all them
years. And all of a sudden, boom, it just jumped off the page at
me. Here it is. Here it is. And it
wasn't something I could just close the book and forget about.
I tried to do that. That didn't work either. These
things become so, and they're lobs in the heart, and you can't
shake them loose. The Word of God is barbed. Once
it gets in there and hooks, it ain't coming out. It ain't coming
out. God ever brought you there to
see your sins? Oh, sins. Sins upon sins and
sins and more sins, all written down on the books of God. Just
accounts, transgressions piled up enough to send angels to hell. Just sin upon sin. That's how it begins. So you
see this and you see that and you see something and you begin
to look and it begins to grow. It begins to grow and you begin
to see, man, there's just mountains of sin back here. Mountains of
sin. And all of a sudden, you begin
to see those sins a little closer and a little closer. And all
of a sudden, you begin to see you're a sinner. And that's why
you sin. And you can't quit sinning. Wait
till the reality of that sets in. You can't quit sinning. Your
thoughts about quitting sin is sin. Your thoughts about worship
is sin. Everything in you is sin. You
try to sing a hymn and it's sin. And God presses that home. You sin because you're a sinner.
That's why you sin. And then all of a sudden it lodges
in your heart that all a sinner can do is sin. Huh? You ever been there? All a sinner
can do. That's what the Lord was introducing
Nicodemus to. to who he really was and to who
he was. All a sinner can do is sin. You
can dress him up and give him fancy titles and teach him things
and train him up. You can do all kinds of things.
He can sacrifice his living. He can keep every Sabbath, keep
the Ten Commandments as well as he can and still be a sinner.
And all that a sinner can do is sin. Have you ever been there? The widow is in their affliction.
Feed the hungry. Give shelter to the homeless.
Participate in every rally of reform up and down the land.
And still you're a sinner. And all a sinner can do is sin. We was having, in this little
church, we just began to see a few things. Not very much,
but just a few things. The Lord began to disturb me
a little bit in my heart. I still hadn't heard the gospel,
but he began to show me some things in the Word of God. And
I was working with the young people in that church and I got
them all out. We had this big car wash. Well, it was a little
church about this size, maybe a few more people. And so we
were expecting four or five or six cars, you know, and I got
all kids out there and we, I tell you, they must have went out
and went up and down the land calling people to come out. I
never seen so many cars in my life. They showed up there and
we washed cars for twelve and a half hours. I mean, we washed
cars. Right through lunch, right up to about 5 o'clock that evening,
we finished them up. And we came in the house and
sat down and my brother-in-law and I was talking about this
thing of sovereign grace. Sovereign grace. And all your
works, nothing. Just nothing. And my wife was
sitting there and her hair was wet and it was hanging down in
her eyes and she looked over at me and she said, do you mean
we did all that for nothing? I said, yeah, that's what I mean.
We did all that for nothing. All that a sinner can do, let
that sink in, is sin. That's all I can do. I can go
to church. I can do all these things. And
I recommend that you come here. And I recommend that you hear
and that you read the Bible and that you listen to these messages.
Listen to the gospel. If you ever opened your heart,
that's how you're going to do it. It's going to be through
the gospel. But until he does, all you can
do is sin because you're a sinner. Ain't that what this book teaches?
All you can do is sin. Why? If he knew who them folks
was that he was sitting with over there, he wouldn't be over
there. He said, don't you think I come into this world to call
righteous? I come to call sinners to repentance. God deals with
sinners. That's what this thing of regeneration,
that's where it begins. It begins with a focus on you. Oh, I know we love to talk about
Adam's sin, but it ain't Adam's sin that comes in regeneration.
It's your sins. Sin, S-I-N, comes from Adam. That's the nature of it. S-I-N-S,
they all belong to us. And that's what we do because
that's what we are. That's what we are. Oh, I used
to... You know, it's Adam's sin. We're
condemned in Adam because we inherit his nature. But God's
not going to condemn you because of something Adam did. He's going
to condemn you for your sins. It's your sins that you're going
to stand and give account for. Your sins. And we sin because
we're sinners. And there's nothing we can do
about it. Nothing we can do about it. I had a guy come and told
me the other day that, he said, you know, you said in your message
that you see yourself worse now than you was. He said, I don't
know if I agree with that or not. I said, well, are you a
better sinner now than you was then? You're just one kind of
sinner, ain't you? That's the only kind I can find
in here. You don't have to break every law in the book because
all this law hangs on loving the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, soul, mind, and strength. If you violate anything, you
violated the whole law. Huh? Now, tell the truth. You don't
love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. I wish
I did. I wish I did. But my righteousness is in one
who did. That's my righteousness. That's
my hope. It's all together in Him. Regeneration is the spirit
of the living God lighting the torch of Christ's righteousness
and shining it in your heart. That's what He does. This world,
it's deceived. And the reason it's deceived
is because Satan just goes up and down the land. He's a minister
of righteousness, self-righteousness. And he goes up and down the law,
the land, deceiving, deceiving, deceiving. Folks look at me like
I'm from another planet when I talk about the spirit of Antichrist
being on every corner. It's on every corner. They're looking for some man
to be born down the road somewhere and this is going to be the Antichrist.
The Antichrist has been around a long time. The Antichrist is
in every church on every corner. You can read about it over in
Proverbs. Her house is on every corner, every corner, waiting
for whoever passes by, enticing, come on in, come on in, come
on in. Oh, I tell you, it's not the
sins of the world or the fall of Adam or the damned in hell,
it's your sins that Christ reveals to you in regeneration, your
sins, your sins. You know, I don't know why there's
comforts in numbers, but there's a time when we just, as long
as I've got some people here on my side, you know, and I'm
not alone, I get a little glean, look, God separates you from
everybody. Sets you over here by yourself
and shows you what a rebel you are. And I'll tell you how I
know when He does that. Paul knew when he did it. And
I know how he does it and when he does it. Because that man
will shut up. He won't have anything else to
say. He'll shut up. He'll shut up. As long as that
man's out there. I can preach a message and y'all run out in
the parking lot sometimes. And I hear him out there jabbering
around. And eventually it'll get back to me. Somebody said
this or somebody said that about sin or about what else said.
It was a little too rough, a little too harsh, a little too this,
a little too that. God ever gets a hold of him,
that man shuts up. You got to ask him a direct question
to get something out of him. I'll tell you why. Because he's
down here, way down here looking up. And everybody else up here
looking down. And he just don't feel like he
ought to say anything. He knows if he opens his mouth,
ain't nothing going to come out but sin. So he just closes his
mouth. He just closes his mouth. I had
no yellow GTO when I was a kid. 1966 GTO. Some of you in here
about the right age to remember that. It was a little sports
car. It was canary yellow. I'll never
forget that car. One of the first sports cars
I ever owned. I just thought it was something.
But it had bad oil rings on it. And I tell you, you drive that
car, if you put your foot on that accelerator, everybody behind
you disappeared in a fog of smoke. And I used to take that car and
I'd go out early and I'd sit out there at the Dairy Queen
where the girls came and I'd just have my car all shined up
and sitting over on the side where it wasn't running. And
it looked pretty cool, and I was good to go as long as nobody
wanted to go anywhere. But when you started that thing
up and started down the road, I'm telling you, all you could
leave was a trail of pollution. And that's exactly... We look
good on the outside, don't we? Huh? We can dress up, get hair
cut, you know, get rid of some of them hippie clothes and stuff,
and we look pretty good. We look pretty good. Shine our
shoes up, you know. Learn to talk better than we
used to. Try to guard against letting them words slip out every
now and then. And we're in pretty good shape.
We're in pretty good shape until we start to move. Open that mouth. Raise them hands. Think a thought. Start that engine up. Boy, there's
nothing but pollution. That's all it is. It's pollution.
Pollution. Isaiah said, We are all as an
unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses All of them are filthy rags. And you know that's where God
finds His bride? Over there, where is it, in Ezekiel
16, where He talks about that baby cast out? How'd He find
her? In her pollution, didn't He?
That's where she's at. Polluted in her own blood. And
He said, while you was in your blood, I said unto you, live,
live. And God convinces of sin, you
shut your mouth. You know, folks still rattling
around. As long as they're just rattling around, they just rattle,
rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle. I listen to them all the time. It gets to be humorous after
a while, don't it? Because you know what's going
on. You know what's going on. And they just rattle around,
rattle around about this and that and whether or not it's
sinful or that's sinful or whether or not sanctification is progressive
or all at once. And I hear them out there talking
this stuff back and forth, back and forth. All of a sudden, God
gets a hold of one of them. Man, that mouth goes shut. Don't
hear no more out of him. He avoids the crowd. He'll say
hi, or as soon as they start talking religion, he just walks
away, goes over and gets in the car and goes home. God shut his
mouth. Shut his mouth. He says over there in Romans
chapter 3, he said the poison of ass is under our lips. That's where it's at, under our
lips. Every time we open our mouth, poison comes out. Our
throat is an open sepulcher. Our tongues spew out deceit. Our mouth is full of cursing
and bitterness. Destruction and misery are in
our ways. There is no fear of God before
our eyes. We just pollute everywhere we
go because we're sinners. We're sinners. And we know, he
said, the apostle said, we know this, that the only way a man
can ever know by the spirit of truth is that that spirit of
truth get a hold of us and convince us that what this law says, it
says to those under the law, that every mouth may be stopped. Now that's what's going to happen
when God gets a hold of you. He's going to close that mouth.
And you're going to sit there guilty before God. Guilty. Nothing left to say. Nothing
left to hold on to, nothing left to hope in, nothing left to glory
in, nothing left to argue about. I'm a sinner, and all a sinner
can do is sin. That's all he can do. Except the man be born again,
he cannot perceive that. He cannot perceive the kingdom
of God. Except he be born of water and
of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Except
there be a divine intervention, you'll leave this world the same
way you come into it, speaking lies. That's exactly right. A fellow asked me one time, how
do you get born again? You can't get born again. The
wind blows where it lifts you. That's what our Lord told us.
You can't tell where it comes from, and you can't tell where
it's going next. You can't entice him down. You can't obligate
him. You can't force him in any way.
He blows where he wants to blow. That's what that scripture means. You hear the sound thereof, but
you can't tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. And then
Nicodemus said something that began to make a little sense,
a good sign. He said, I don't understand what
you're talking about. I love it when folks tell me
that. I don't understand. And I'd say that was the first
time in his life he ever said it. It was past his reasoning,
past his human logic. And our Lord said, if I told
you earthly things and you believe not, then you believe not. And here's the problem. You believe
not. That's what sin does. It exposes
itself, and the Spirit exposes it in our unbelief. We believe
not. I wrote an article here the other
day and I said, you can pile, folks come in and I just pile
the mercies of God and the grace of God and the promises of God
up, just make mountains around them. And they just avoid it,
refuse it, won't have anything to do with it. But when God gets
a hold of it and moves on that heart, all you've got to do is
hang out a little thread. Pow! They'd grab a hold of it
like it was all together salvation. God coming into the heart. Unbelief, unbelief. Everything
in creation is made for and was created for the purpose of God
in redemption. And he said, if I told you earthly
things. I'm telling you, there's a whole
message right there. Do you realize that there's no reason for all
these relationships in this world except to communicate the redemption
that God has purposed? That's the only reason that there's
a Father and a Son, a Father with children. That's the only
reason there's a husband and a wife. It's the only reason
that we have friendship with one another. The only reason
for everything in creation, not just the relationships, but everything.
Everything. All things were made by Him and
for Him. For Him. These relationships,
this is how God communicates. If it wasn't for these things,
he told Nicodemus, he said, if I told you these things and you
believe not, what are you going to do if I tell you in spiritual
language what you're going to do? Paul came back and Paul saw
those things. He said, I wouldn't know where
to start. They ain't even lawful to utter. I don't even know.
He wouldn't know where to begin. And he went back to doing just
what the Lord did. He just used these earthly relationships
and titles and all these things to communicate this gospel. Earthly
things, he said. Over here in John 3, verse 13,
he says this, he said, And no man hath ascended up to heaven,
but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is
in heaven. Anybody want to handle that? I know I read that thing 35 times
on the way over. Anybody want to try to handle
that? Anybody want to tell me how the
Word can be made flesh and dwell among us and at the same time
sit on the throne of glory? Anybody want to explain how He
could leave heaven but still be there and return back to where
He never left? Because that's what He's declaring
here. And he declares it before that over in John chapter 1.
He tells them the same thing. But here's what I want you to
see. He takes this regeneration and he applies it. And he says,
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must
the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son, Whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son
into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
him might be saved." And this is the reality of the new birth.
And here's what the new birth is all about. It's about seeing
the Son of God lifted up to reconcile dying sinners. Now, that's what
it's all about. And he takes this thing of the
serpents in the wilderness. You go back to Numbers and read
the account, back in Numbers chapter 21. You can go back and
read that account after a while when you get home. But everything
had to do with those that were bitten. Huh? You ever been bitten? These folks
died. Now things was hard for them
because they didn't know God. They didn't love God. They had no communication with
God. They stuck out there with God's
ambassador. There ain't no roads or road
signs or anything in that wilderness. Here they went up over rocks
and everything. It's my understanding there was
a little over two million of them with their cattle and children
and all these things, and they're going through this old, rough
wilderness. And they're just climbing over
rocks, and the way was hard. Everywhere they went, the waters
was bitter, and God would have to sweeten them. Go here and
go there. Their heart was still back in
Egypt thinking about them flesh pots and cucumbers and leeks
and all those things that they ate back there. And this way
was too hard for them. They didn't like it. And they
grumbled and mumbled and groaned about it. And God sent down serpents. He sent down serpents. And they began to bite the people.
And much people died. That's what it said. Much of
them. They just started falling over. They start falling over.
And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, now these folks, one hour before this, would have
fought you in the middle of the road over elections. Huh? They throwed their hands up and
they said, well, come on. Come on, I'll take you on. This book
teaches election. God elected a people. I'm the seed of Abraham. He'd
have fought with you until you died. Until that snake bit him
and he laid on the ground. And laying there dying with that
poison going through his veins and burning. Burning these fiery
serpents and that venom entered into him and he's dying and he
sees himself separated from God and he doesn't want to talk about
election anymore. He don't want to talk to God
anymore. He just wants to talk to Moses. You go talk to God.
You go talk to God. You ever been there? You ever
been bitten? I tell you what, you don't want
to talk about doctrine anymore. You're going to start seeking
mercy. They wanted mercy is what they wanted. They wanted help. They wanted reconciliation. God
was angry, and they were dying, and they knew it. And they wanted
reconciliation. They wanted peace with God. They
wanted to hear from God. And they went to Moses, and they
said, Pray unto God for us. And he did. And God said, Make
a serpent, a brazen serpent, and put it on a pole. Raise it
up. Raise it up. And he said, Behold,
when you get it raised up, He said, everyone that is bitten,
when he looks. That guy wasn't bitten, he ain't
gonna look. He don't care. But that man's bitten, he's gonna
look. He's gonna look. Now, I'm gonna
tell you something. These serpents been raining down since the garden.
They're all around you. They're biting folks and folks
are dying all around you. You just don't see them. You
just don't see them. Holy Spirit conviction is what
opens your eyes and opens your heart to see that you're dying. You're dying. He's going to bring
you into the reality of sin. And He's going to bring you into
the reality of who God is. That you stand before Him. You're
going to have to deal with Him. That He does what He will. He
holds you accountable. And you're going to seek mercy
when He does. You're going to cry out for mercy. And I'll tell
you what he's going to do. He's going to send you to his
man, just like he did to Israel to Moses. He shut Israel up to
Moses. And Moses went and prayed to
God, and God gave him the remedy. And our Lord tells Nicodemus,
here's the remedy. Here's the remedy. Christ be
lifted up. Just like that brazen serpent.
Christ be lifted up. And in regeneration, these people
are brought to see their sins and to see who God is, to see
His righteousness and see His judgment satisfied. And they're
going to fall down, and they're going to cry for mercy, and they're
going to look. They're going to look. And if you go back and
read that account, here's what you're going to find out. We're talking about two million
people, so we're talking about a huge area. He didn't say anything
about being able to decipher all the details of the circuit.
He just said, He that looketh. He didn't say anything about
that you had to look for it any certain time. He said, He that
looketh. He that looketh. You know, of all the things that
a sinner is unable to do, the one thing he can do is look.
He can look. He can look. That's the gospel. The gospel
raises up Christ. Here's your righteousness. Here's
your reconciliation. Here's the judgment of God satisfied. Here He is up here on the pole. Here's your curse up here, dying
for you in your room instead. Here's the curse. Here's what
you do. Look. And I'll tell you what you're
going to find out when you look. That's all you ever want to do,
is look. Because when you look, you're
going to find everything you need in Him. What a passage of Scripture over
there in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. He says, But of God, of God,
is He made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. You look to Christ, and you keep
on looking to Christ, and these all died in the faith. That's
what it says on down from where you read, Waltho, these all died
in the faith. If I be lifted up, just like
that serpent in the wilderness, he that believeth on me, he that
believeth on me.