I've been struggling all week
over this message this morning. I struggle all the time, sometimes more than others. I struggle within. And I fight sinful things like pride
and foolishness. selfishness and all these evil
things that haunt a man from within. And I struggle over the
text of Scripture, the subject. Where will I speak from this
morning? This is a big book. This is a
big book. And I can't read your heart.
I don't know that very thing that you need today. I don't
know that exact thing that God is going to say to you as an
individual. Only God can lay that on my heart. I have no perception whatsoever
about your needs. Somebody may call me and say
I'm having trouble with this or that, or I'm worried about
this or that. But I don't know these things.
I close my eyes sometimes in my study, and I try to project
myself sitting out there in the pew. I can see your faces in
my study. And I try to project myself out
into that seat, hungry to hear a word from God. Are you hungry? Are you hungry? I wonder how many times I've
come through the doors of the church and sat down on the pew
as a mere matter of formality. It's Sunday, the door's open,
and I'm expected to be there. Am I hungry? Do I want to hear
from God, or do I just want to play church? Are you hungry? I wonder sometimes
in my own heart, am I even slightly interested
to know what God has to say? Am I just so bent on speaking
and writing and witnessing and saying things? Am I just so bent
on those things that I'm not even slightly interested to know
what God has to say? Are you hungry? Are you weary? Are you weary from the weak surrounded
by the world and the foolishness of the world and the ignorance
and darkness of the world? Are you weary? Are you weary
from going down that same old path, same old not understanding
why you do what you do? You just do it because everybody
else does. Are you worried? I picture myself sitting there
full of doubts and fears. Do I really know God? Do I really know Him? Do I really
have a relationship with Him? Am I really one for whom He died
and for whom He intercedes in glory? Have I ever really heard the
gospel? I picture myself sitting there
full of fear and doubt, knowing something about the care of the
Lord. And I thought to myself, wouldn't
it be something if God spoke? Wouldn't it be something? I picture myself sitting out
there in the pew and put on my best face, and I put on the best
front I can conjure up, but inside it's full of doubt. Confused
about myself and my relationship with God. Confused about His
providence. Why? Why this? Why now? Why certain things are happening.
Confused about how to react. to his providence and how to
handle what God sent in my path. And fears? I can't see one second
into my future, can you? Not one second. And I fear looking inside, knowing
something about the subtlety of Satan and the weakness and
ignorance of this flesh. Our Lord told Peter, Peter was
just bragging about what he is. They might lead you, but I'm
not. I'm with you to the end. You can count on me." And our
Savior turned and told him, he said, Satan. Now you think about
that. We're not talking about some
little peanut. We're talking about Satan has desired to sift
you. He's going to take you and to
sift you up and see what falls out. Don't that make you fear, tremble
inside? He goes up and down the land
like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He just wants
to shake you and see what comes out. But our Lord said, I prayed for
you. I prayed for you. I was brought up in a good home,
and I want you to know that. My mother and my father, they
loved one another to the end. And they were good parents to
us. They loved us children. My father, I mean, I grew up
with a lot of people there in that little town. And it was
a smaller town, about 5,000 population. And everybody knew everybody
else in the town. And I knew their parents. And
I knew things. And I tell you, my father was a father. Now,
he was. And our family, when he died,
I think there were 60-some grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. And they all loved him. They
do to this day. They still talk about him. He
was a true father in every sense of the word. He was a religious
man. He read his Bible more than anybody
I ever met. I'm ashamed of my Bible reading
compared to his. He didn't even know how to read.
He was six years old when his daddy came and got him out of
school and took him over to make charcoal and worked him like
a dog. And he taught himself how to read in the Bible. That's
how he taught himself. And he'd ask questions and people
would tell him. And he learned to read. And he
read that Bible through and through and through. I've got his old
Bible and practically everything in it. It's underlined. Where
he just read it until the covers fell off. He was a good man. Journey somewhere. We run into
somebody. We were running into a fellow
one time who had a flat tire and he was broke and didn't have
any money. And there he was, him and his
family and little children in a car. Daddy gave him the money
to have it fixed and gave him a tire for a spare and sent him
on his way. He was a good man. A good man. And he lived the best he could
according to what he believed and professed. Carried me to
church every time the door was open. We went to all the revival
meetings. Every time there was a revival
anywhere near that town, we went. It was just to give me where
we were going. We went to the state camp meetings, and we went
every time the church had something, and they had all kinds of stuff.
They had Young People's Association. They had a choir. I had to be
in all of it. Every time the door was open,
he took us down. But in all of our going and in all of our doing
and all of our participating, I never one time ever heard the
gospel. The gospel. And until you hear
the gospel, you can't hear from God. Go into all the world and preach
the gospel. He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved. He that believeth not, what shall
be damned. And we look way out there for
that damnation, don't we? He said this is condemnation,
his judgment. Light came into the world. Men
love darkness rather than light. He that believeth not the wrath
of God abideth on him. Oh, we always want to see things
way out in the distant, don't we? I'll tell you what the gospel
does. It brings them right up close. That's what it does. It
takes those things that are way out yonder that we don't want
to think about and talk about and meditate on, and it brings
them right up here. In your face. In your face. Come with me over here to Isaiah
chapter 1. I was inviting people to come
out to a revival meeting. I'd married by then, and we had
one child. I went down and joined this little
church. It was called an Enterprise Baptist. Just a little independent.
Well, it wasn't really independent. They had kind of an association,
but it was a very small denomination. I think mostly right there in
Kentucky and West Virginia. And all in the world it was,
was a country Southern Baptist church, if you want to know what
they believed. And I went down and joined that thing, and I
started working with the young people, and I played the guitar
back in those days a little bit, sang, I went everywhere and would
sing and help out in these revivals and help out in whatever churches
that were around there. I went up to my brother-in-law's
house and his brother had come to visit with him. His brother
was an alcoholic. He was nothing but a drunk. But
all his life that man had sat around and listened to men preach.
Now, I'm convinced the only reason he did it was because he knew
He began to learn that there was something more in the Scriptures
than what men are preaching. And he began to see something
about the foolishness of it. And he just liked to put them
on the spot. He didn't really believe these things. He didn't
rejoice in Christ or any such thing. And it's amazing to me
how somebody can come to know that much truth and still be
lost. But he was. And there he sat in his blue
jeans and his old filthy shirt. I can see him as well right now
as I saw him at that time in that old log cabin. Had his foot
all propped up on the chair. Chuck, I said, won't you come
go to church with us? He said, why? Why? Nobody ever asked me why. I never asked myself why. Why? I didn't know what to say. I scrambled around trying to
find an answer, and finally I come up with this. We've got an evangelist
down here. I want you to come here and preach.
Why? What's he saying? I know what he's saying. I thought
up the first religious answer that conjured up in my head that
popped in there, and I said, well, we want you to come here
to the gospel. He said, you wouldn't know the gospel if you met it
in the middle of the road. And I just sat there. I bet you
my mouth was open that far. I didn't know what to say. And
I got mad. I got mad. Now, I just told you
how I was raised. I'm telling you. I was at church.
We read our Bibles. We did all these things. I heard
countless preachers. Twenty-five, thirty years. Countless
preachers. And I couldn't sit before this
sinner and tell him what the gospel was. And the reason I
couldn't tell him was because I didn't know it. All I heard was from men. Just
men. Just men. Never heard from God. Our Lord told those disciples,
He said, All power is given unto me in heaven and earth. Now you
go and preach this gospel. They're just men too. But what they have behind them
is a power that's able to reach into their hearts and reveal
truth. A power. And that power is in
the Holy Spirit of God. It's not in the man. It's not
in the man. Listen to what this prophet of
God says over here in Isaiah 1. He is talking here about a
nation of people that God came to in the prophet Moses and established
a tabernacle and ordained sacrifices and He ordained a priesthood
and He ordained all these things, these ceremonies, these new moons
and these Sabbath days and the calling of the assembly together
and the once-a-year atonement And all these things, these holy
days and Sabbath days, all these things were ordained of God.
God gave it to them, instructed them exactly as how to do it
in his law. Now listen, here is what the
prophet asked the nation of Israel. To what purpose is the multitude
of your sacrifices unto me? Why do you do what you do? Why? Saith the Lord, I am full
of burnt offerings of rams, and of the fat of fed beasts, and
I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of
he goats. When you come to appear before me, is this what we're
doing this morning? Ain't that what they was doing?
The calling of the assembly came, and they all got together. And
Isaiah stood up to speak. Isn't that what he's talking
about? When you come to appear before me, is that not what we attempt to
do when we gather in our various places of worship? Have we ever even given a thought
as to what we're doing and before whom we're gathering? When you come to appear before
me, who hath required this at your hands to tread my courts?" Do we understand when we gather
together to worship God that we're treading on His courts? We're coming into His presence. I'm going to tell you something,
that's the difference between false professions and receiving
the gospel into the heart. It's the presence of God. God
comes in, not just a bunch of words, not just a bunch of ideas
and feelings. God comes in. Our Lord said when
the strong man comes in, he'll overcome that old man. He'll take him down and take
away from him what's rightfully his. Oh, he said, look here, verse
13, "...bring no more vain oblations, incenses..." Now wait a minute,
he ordained these things, didn't he? But what did he ordain them for? They were pictures of Christ
and figures of Christ. The law was a schoolmaster to
bring us to Christ, teach us who Christ was, lay that foundation
for all that He would do. Figures, that's what Paul called
them, figures for the time being present. Shadows of good things
to come. Bring no more vain oblations. An oblation is a vain thing when
you bring it and don't understand why you brought it. We stand
up to sing and don't know what we sung. I bet I could ask you
this morning, you couldn't quote me a verse from the hymns we
sung this morning. Bring no more vain oblations,
incenses, and abomination unto me. The new moons, the Sabbaths,
the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with them. It is iniquity,
even your solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed
feasts, my soul hateth. There are trouble unto me, and
I am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your
hands, I will hide my eyes. Yea, when you make many prayers,"
he said, Your hands are full of blood. Now, listen to what he says.
He said, Come. Come. You see it down there in
verse 18? Come now. Let us reason together. This is where reason begins.
Reasoning with God. I've reasoned all my life with
men and never really understood it. I used to sit there and think,
well, you just subdued them. You don't get it. You just don't
get it. Everybody else in here gets it.
Everybody else in here is fine. Why are you having so much problems?
You're just too dumb to really understand. You can't enter into
it. Just go on and do what you're supposed to do and quit worrying
about it. Huh? Do you know why you do what you
do? You will when you come and reason
with God. See, our reasoning has to begin
in the character of God. That's what the gospel tells
you. The gospel is a demonstration of who God is. We don't know
who God is. Over there in 1 John 1, John
the Baptist, here's what he told them. He said, No man has seen
God at any time. He that is in the bosom of the
Father, He hath declared Him. Christ declared Him. How did
He declare Him? He declared Him by appearing
on this earth as a substitute. He declared Him as becoming a
servant under the law. Why should He go under the law?
He's God. He's perfect in nature. Why does
He need to go under the law? Because He represents a people,
and they don't have a righteousness. And they can't accomplish a righteousness. Here's the kind of righteousness
they've got right here. Vain oblations. That's what they've
got. Ignorance, darkness, non-belief,
religious refuges. And I just read to you, God,
it's a trouble to me. He said, you raise up your hands
and act like you're worshiping God. You ain't worshiping God.
You're worshiping you. Yeah, that's exactly what we
do. We all get together in the power of the flesh, and we worship
one another. Don't kill me. I've been in the
services. I know what I'm talking about. We used to have what they
called a testimonial service, and everybody got up and told
what they did for God. That's vain oblations. That's
what that is. And we'd get up and we'd hold
up our hands, you know, when we do this, when they're singing
this song. He said, when you raise up your
hands, he said, I don't even want to see it. I don't even
want to see it. And he said, and you stand up and pray in
the street corners and in the restaurants and in all these
places to be seen of men. He said, I ain't hearing it.
I ain't hearing it. And I'll tell you this, even
in this place, sometimes we bow our heads and we try to pray,
He just ain't there, and we go ahead and say the words anyway.
He ain't hearing them. He ain't hearing them. I just
read to you over in Romans 8, he said, we don't even know what
to pray for. We're ignorant, sinful men. That's what we are. And if you ever have a hope,
that hope Paul talked about, that hope that you can't see,
God's going to have to show it to you. You read all you want
and study all you want and listen all you want until God speaks,
you're going to stay right there in your ignorance. And I'll tell
you this, there's a last time you're going to hear, too. Oh,
yes, there is. He said, I called and you refused.
I talked your path with the gospel and it was preached. And you
heard it. And you refused it. Now, he says,
I'm going to laugh when your calamity comes. And it's coming. Oh, yes, it is. It's coming.
You're young now, but you're going to get old. And one of
these days, you're going to face the tomb. And you're going to
have to be put in one of them boxes, just like this fellow's
funeral I preached to you the other day. They're going to lay
him out in a little box. And everybody's going to gather around
there and get as solemn as they can. And they're going to feel
sorry for a little while, and then they're going to go on back
doing what they did. But you're in the box. And the next thing
you're going to see is God as He is. As He is. That's what the gospel does.
The gospel tells you who God is. You know, I was thinking the
other day, I was talking about these things and preaching to
the congregation here. I thought about all these people
involved in the crucifixion of Christ, and how they all got
together. People hated each other. Every
one of them, hand in hand, arms around each other. Jews and Gentiles,
Jews and Romans, a conquered people and the people
who conquered them, and they all got together. And then two
of the leaders, Herod and Pontius Pilate, couldn't stand one another,
but they were right together on this. And then they did all
these things that they did. And you know what the apostles
said they did? They did what God's counsel and
God's hand determined before to be done. That's what they
did. That's God. That's God. We don't know God
as a sovereign today. He just does what we let Him
do. He does what we let Him do. The
prophet said this, by the Holy Spirit of God, he said, Come,
let us reason together, saith the Lord. Come, reason with me
in my true character, and let me show you who you are. My father was a good man, I'm
telling you, compared to other men. I'd put him on pedestal.
But he was a maggot before God. And that's what we are. Think
about who Jacob was. Israel. This is the man of whom
the nation was named, Israel. You know what he called himself?
A worm. You go look it up in the original
and see what it means. It means wiggling maggot. Thou worm, Jacob. We are all together, he said,
as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy
rags before God. on your best day, you all together
are unclean. Unclean. Well, that's not how
we reason, is it? Huh? We don't reason that way. We reason, well, you know, a
man's a free moral agent. A fellow asked me that one time,
and I told him, I said, no, I don't believe that. I don't believe
he's free or moral even once. Huh? He's bound. I'm bound in my nature. I can
do anything my nature will let me do. But my nature won't let
me seek God. You see what I'm saying? We've
got to reason these things in the light of who God is. Come
let us reason together, he says. And I look at the life of Christ,
He came and He bowed to the law of God and He walked as a man
under the law. Why did He do that? Because God
required a perfect obedience. And I can't produce it. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believes. Everyone that
believes. He might not be the end of you, but you don't believe.
I'm going to take God's Word over. Let God be true and ever
man a liar. Look with me over here in 1 John
chapter 5. And this is where this thing
starts. It starts with a man. That's
where it begins. Now, I'm not talking about the
pervenient grace of God that goes before you. You start going
back before and seeing when God got interested, you'll go all
the way back to eternity. That's where the Lamb was slain
back there. He's the Lamb slain before the foundation of the
world. He was slain in the purpose of God when God set Him aside
and put a people in Him for His glory. He slayed Him right there.
Right there. Now, He'd be slain in time. But
in the mind and purpose of God, he was the Lamb slain before
the foundation of the world. And you know why? There was a
book John talked about over there in Revelation chapter 5. And
he who sat on the throne had the book, and it was sealed.
And nobody was worthy to unloose the seals. What are the seals? Well, there were seven of them.
That speaks of the perfections of God. Whatever it was that
was contained in this book, I believe it was all the counsels and will
of God, the purpose of God was in this book. And none was worthy
to take the book in the light of God's perfections and open
the seals. Couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. Who is going to manifest perfect
righteousness? You? Me? Him. Him alone. We use this big word all the
time, propitiation. Do you know what that means?
It means to totally, completely, 100% restore. That's what it means. Propitiate.
Who's going to propitiate the name of God? Who's going to take the name
of God that was offended in the garden and raise it back up in
its perfection? Who's going to do that? Can you
do that? Let me show you something over
here in Romans chapter 3. Romans the third chapter. All through this 3rd chapter,
he quotes that psalm that I used in Sunday School lesson this
morning, Psalm 14. None good, none righteous, none
that seeketh after God. He uses all these things. Then
he comes down. But in verse 21, he says, Now
the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being
witnessed by the law and the prophets through the pictures,
the types, the symbols. Even the righteousness of God
which is by faith, or faithfulness, of Jesus Christ unto all and
upon all them that believe, for there is no difference. For all
have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God," now listen, "... whom God hath set forth
to be a propitiation through faith in his name." God set him
forth to propitiate his name. to restore his name to full honor. He's going to be the justifier
of men, but he's going to be just when he does it. He's not going to compromise
any part of his character for another. He's not going to compromise
his justice so he can be merciful. You see what I'm saying? He's
not going to show you grace at the expense of his holiness.
He's not going to do it. He's not going to wink at your
sins. and compromise his righteousness. He's going to propitiate his
name. He's going to establish his name in the earth. And how
is he going to do it? In Christ. In his obedience and
in his death, he's going to do it. Well, how do I know he did
that? God raised him from the dead. He raised him from the dead.
And let me show you this right on down here just a little bit.
He said, verse 25, "...whom God has set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for
the remission of sins that are past." Now, he's not talking
about your past sins. He's talking about Old Testament
saints. Which one of your sins was past when Christ died? They
were all future, weren't they? He is talking about Old Testament
sins, sins of these Old Testament believers before the coming of
Christ. God set him forth in type and
symbol and picture, and some of them saw him and received
him and rejoiced in him. Abraham rejoiced to see my day,
and he saw it and was glad. Moses endured his seeing Him
who is invisible. He is talking here about Old
Testament saints. And then listen to this, verse 26, to declare,
I say it this time, his righteousness, that he might be just, and the
justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Of course, boasting
then, out the window. Out the window. I can't boast
in anything. He did it all. He did it all. Over here in 1 John 5 it says,
verse 9, it says, "...if we receive the witness of men, And you will if you ever come
to reason with God. If we receive the witness of
men, the witness of God is greater.
It's greater. That witness of God comes with
the witness of men, and it's greater. It's greater. It's greater than him. All of
a sudden, I don't know how to explain this to you, but I do
know this. When God in sovereign grace comes
to a believer through a preacher of the gospel, sometime during
that message, that man ceases to be a man, and you quit hearing
what he got to say, and you start hearing from God. That's what God is talking about.
If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater.
And it overcomes his words, and it overcomes his person, and
it overcomes his weakness. It overcomes his ignorance. And
it goes straight into the heart. Straight into the heart. And
he that believeth on the Son, he got the witness in himself.
That's where God takes it. Puts it in him. In him he can't
get rid of it, can you, Jesse? Huh? You can go home doubt and
pride and snivel and fear and do whatever you want to do. You
can't shake it. You can't get rid of it. God
builds a fire in your heart. He baptizes with the Holy Ghost
and fire. Look at those old disciples with
their heads hanging down and Christ done went to the cross
and they don't give up everything. And now here they are, everything
shot, everything gone. Everything they ever hoped for,
gone. And he comes along, and he doesn't
reveal himself, who he is. He just comes along, begins to
question him a little bit, and he said, Oh, fools and slow of
heart to believe all that the prophets spoke of him. And beginning
at Moses, he went through the law, went through the sacrifices,
went through the tabernacle, and then he moved on to the prophets,
and he went through Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the prophets,
and the Psalms concerning those concerning himself, those things
which concern him coming into this world, who he was and why
he came and what he did and where he went. And then he disappeared
out of sight. And they looked at each other
and they said, didn't our hearts burn within us? How come their
hearts burnt? Because he built a fire in there,
that's why. I've got no disillusions men
coming in here and me being able to convince them of anything,
I just hope and pray that God will build a fire in your heart.
If He does, you'll get an interest. And you get an interest, you'll
seek Him. And you seek Him, you'll find
out who He is. And when you find out who He
is, you'll find out who you are. And then you'll cry and you'll
beg and you'll pray, God save me or I'll perish. And He'll
reveal Christ to you. And nobody will have to play
29 verses just as I am trying to get you up to the front. You'll
just fall down and grab his feet. Start kissing his feet. You won't
hate the preacher anymore. That man first told me that I
hated his guts. I couldn't stand him. He made
me so mad. And I found out the truth how
thankful I was. I know what men think the gospel
is. They think it's accepting Jesus as their personal Savior.
I want you to think about what that implies. You're a wiggling
maggot in the sight of God. I already read to you the things
that we think are so great that we do. He said there's an abomination
in His sight. All our righteousnesses, our
best things, our best prayers, our best deeds, our best obedience,
they're just filthy rags. Just filthy rags. And then we're
going to reject or accept the Lord of glory? Now come on. That's foolishness. Foolishness. I know what men
think the gospel is. They think it's moral reform. We're going to get folks straightened
up. Turn over a new leaf. We're going to make disciples
out of them. I'll tell you what you're going to make. You're
going to make apostolate just like yourself. And when you've
made Him, our Lord said He's going to be two-fold more of
the child of hell than you are. That's all you can make, and
that's all I can make. He can make disciples. How does
He do it? Through the gospel. Through the
gospel. There is no universal atonement.
That's something men sat around and dreamed up because they couldn't
find any way to connect them with the promises of God. And
they sat around and said, well, what are we going to do? What
are we going to do? How do we know if we're lit?
So they look, and they look, and they look, and they find
a little scripture over here like John 3, 16, and they build a church
on it and talk about God loves everybody and Christ died for
everybody. Why don't you think about that
for just a minute? Because he said, Jacob have I loved, Esau
have I hated. That's what he said. That's what
God said. And you know when he said it?
You learn about it over in Romans chapter 9. I'll tell you when
he said it. He said it to Rebekah, who had
twins in her stomach before they was ever born, having neither
done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election
might stand. To establish this thing of who
has salvation and who can give it and who can withhold it. It
was said to her, the elder is going to serve the younger because
Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. He did it before they
were born. He's God. We just don't know
who God is. We run around in the ignorance
and deception of religion. All of our life we've run around
in it. And you're going to go out and meet God in it. Why? Why? Come on. Let's reason together, saith
the Lord. I want you to reason with me.
I want you to go home and open this book up and reason with
God. Reason with Him. I don't know where we got this
idea of this universal business. That high priest of Israel, the
whole nation of Israel wasn't but just a picture of religion
and a picture of the people of God. And here's Israel down there. They've got a high priest and
they write the twelve tribes of Israel, write their names
right here and put them right here over his heart. And then
they take those names and they sketch them in and they put them
on his shoulder that he might bear them up before the Lord,
that he might bear them up on his heart and bear them up before
the Lord. And that high priest goes in
there and makes atonement for Israel. God didn't have anything
to say to the Amorites, Hittites, Jebusites, or any of the otherites. And that's what this thing of
the gospel is all about. I mean, we've read this Scripture
a thousand times, but I'm going to read it to you one more time.
Maybe God will give you an understanding of it. Over here in the Thessalonians,
2 Thessalonians. Now, this is the people that
Paul said, I know your election of God, and here's how I know
it. The gospel came to you in power. That's how I know who God is.
I can't connect myself to God. He's got to connect me to Him.
And the way He does it is through the hearing of the gospel. He
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. There ain't no
other way to get connected with God. He has to do the connecting.
You're the branches. I'm divine. You've got to be
grafted in. You can't graft yourself. Now listen to this. He goes through
this chapter and he talks about this judgment of God on men that
just insist on hanging on to these religious lies and refuge.
And he says he gives them over to believe a lie and be damned.
But now watch what he says here in verse 13. But he said, We
are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved
of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you
to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit, He's going to
take your spirit and He's going to set you apart from the world
in this respect. He's going to give you an understanding. Why you? Why you? Why me? Through sanctification of the
spirit and belief of the truth, whereunto He called you by our
gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what gospel preaching is all about. It's just God calling
out His elect. Who are His elect? Everyone that
believes. Those things seem poles apart,
don't they? But they're not. Ain't nobody else going to believe. Those scribes and Pharisees,
they carried a Bible and quoted the Bible, and they came up to
the Lord, and they said, If I be the Christ, tell us plainly.
He said, I told you. And you believe not, because
you are not of My sheep. His sheep, He said, My sheep
hear My voice. I don't have to fear. I can stand
up and preach to anybody. I don't know who His elect are,
but I do know this, every single one of them is going to fall
down and believe on Him. Every single one of them is going to
be changed in their heart. Every single one of them is going
to walk in holiness and righteousness before God. Every single one
of them is going to love Him. Every single one of them is going
to persevere in faith. They went out from us, but they
weren't of us. If they had been of us, they
wouldn't have went out from us. Every last one of them. I don't
have to fear. God knows His sheep, and His sheep hear His voice.
Oh, God give you the Spirit. Christ to hear you.