When Brother, oh he can be turned
to Philippians 3. We will get there. When I received
the email that had the schedule for this conference on it, I
noticed that I was last. And immediately began wondering
whether that is, would be an example of having saved the best
for last. or have him come to the bitter
end. And we'll just see how that works
out. Our brethren that preach for
us, and I so highly esteem them, I can see why God has called
them. I can see in each one of them
evidences of that grace which God has put on them. Brother
Fortner, if there ever was, one of the sons of, I think it's
Boanerges, it's the sons of Funder, that'd be him. Marvin there, sweet-natured and
talented man. It's a last compliment you're
going to get from me. He came to preach for us in 2002,
and he spent a weekend of verbal abuse from me. I don't know what
it is. And he actually agreed to come back. He's coming back
here in June, and I've already got started. But I see that in
him and his brother Parks with his ability
of analysis and this kind of thing. And I wonder why in the
world did God make me a preacher? When I was thought I'd been called
in the ministry at 18 years old, a senior in high school, I thought
I had something to offer. I thought, you know, there's
a scarcity of good preachers, I could be one. You don't have to laugh quite
that loud. Yeah, there you go. That was
1973, and now 33 years later, I am at a loss to know why God
would even let me speak his name. And as I consider it, and I imagine
maybe my brethren would say the same of themselves, I don't know.
But if there is any reason that I can discern why God made me
a preacher is because I'm likely the most corrupt man ever to
be allowed to say the name of Christ and not die for it. Most unstable of all the preachers,
gospel preachers that I know. I've told people, you know, Paul
said he was the apostle to the Gentiles, and Peter was the apostle
to the Jews, and I realize the apostolic office is closed, but
if I were an apostle, I would have to fashion myself as the
apostle to the weak and the failing. The apostle to those who cannot
understand why they're not in hell. And if that can be a help to
you, this morning, that one such as I can stand in a place where
the gospel is preached and no lightning bolts strike, and if that can give you some
encouragement that there is salvation even for one such as you, then
maybe we'll know why God has called me to preach. Paul says in chapter 3, verse
12, not as though I had already attained,
either were already perfect. But I follow after. I stretch
out. I'm reaching out, he says. If that I may apprehend, now
it might be better read so that I may apprehend." Paul was not
in any doubt that in time to come he would apprehend, he would
lay hold of that. So that I might apprehend, lay
hold of that for which also I am laid hold of by Jesus Christ. Now salvation as we know, I assume
most of you know it, is an eternal thing. And I don't merely mean
by that that once it begins it never quits. Eternity speaks
not of an unending succession of moments. Eternity is timelessness. We use phrases, we do the best
we can to describe eternal salvation, but we are creatures bound in
time, and our language is completely encompassed in the concept of
time. Therefore, the best we can do in trying to describe
eternity is, like Paul says, we were chosen in him before
the foundation of the world. But that is a linguistic oxymoron. That is, you can't talk about
before the creation of the world, because until God created the
world, there was no such thing as time, and the word before
had no significance. Nor do we perceive eternity as
something that there was an eternity of old and there shall be an
eternity in the future. We may speak that way, because
that's the only way in which we can think of stuff, but eternity
is not a before and an after. Eternity is an always. And never. Because it is absolute timelessness
of God's existence. He's the only one that exists
there. And our salvation is in Him. And it is done and yet to
be. It's in eternity. God knows that. And as far as his existence is
concerned, where he dwells in that light to which no man can
approach, salvation is as done as done can be. But that's not
where we live. I don't live in eternity. I may
live forever, but I'll never live in eternity. I will forever,
just like all human beings. will exist in an endless succession
of moments of time, but I'll never live where God does in
that eternity of timelessness. Salvation, which is in the timeless
eternity of God's purpose, finds expression in the moment-by-moment
experiences of those whom he chose. It finds expression in
time in that the Lord Jesus Christ came at some identifiable time.
We may not know exactly what time it was he was born in the
world. We got a kind of a rough estimate of it, but it was a
time. In due time, God sent his Son
into the world. And also, this matter of salvation
actually happens to people. We must be careful that we never
get so wrapped up in the sovereignty of God and the eternity of our
salvation that we think it never really happens. It happens. And here we have before us a
description of that timeless purpose of the sovereign God
interjecting itself, intervening and nabbing one of God's own.
in laying hold of one of God's people. Now, the life of faith
is a life of looking backward and looking forward. Now, we
don't look back to what we've done. That's a waste of time.
The more we think about what we have done, then the more we're
either going to go into despair or God dishonoring self-righteousness. There just is no use in us meditating
on what we have done. But we do look back to this.
We who have believed do look back to what God has done to
this point to bring us to this point. Now, if you believe, there
was a time you came to believe. That is, there was a time you
started believing. You were not born to this world believing
God. And there's nothing that anybody in this world could do
to make you believe God. There are instruments which God
has put in the hands of His preachers which instruments God will use
to bring about faith in His people. But even though these instruments
have been put in my hand, I can't use them to that end. Faith comes
by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, by the message of
Christ, and I can declare that to you. But that will not make
you believe, because that tool is really not put in my hand,
it's in God's hand. I can stand up here and I can
preach the truth to you for ten minutes or five hours. Don't
worry, we're not going five hours. But if I did, it would not be
effective to bringing about the faith of anybody here, nor even
encouraging it, if God was not the one that was at work to do
it. The truth is His tool, not mine. But if you believe God, there
was a time you started believing. And that time is characterized
by an arrest. Paul says, Christ laid hold of
me. Brother Maurice last night spoke
of God's intervening, intervening sovereignty. That's what this
is. He intervenes, thank God. There's not a heart here that
believes God, that was not at one time assaulted and invaded
by God. People go to that scripture,
behold I stand at the door and knock, and they misapply it. Acting as though Jesus has got
his robe pulled up tight around him and he's, can I come in? My friend, if that's what he
does, you will forever bolt the door against him and he will
never come in. But then you need not worry about
that either, because the Jesus that merely knocks at the door
can no more send you to hell than he can come through your
door. When God determines to save one
of his people, there is no door that's a match for him. There
is no lock that he cannot pick or overcome. There is nothing
which can stop the sovereign grace. And there was nothing
that is going to be able to withstand the violent love of the Lord
Jesus Christ for his people. He said, that one's mine, and
I will have it. First time I laid eyes on Bonnie,
I was much more impressed than she was when she laid eyes on
me. People say, do you believe in
love at first sight? I sure do. I was smitten with her, and I
exercised every power and trick, I knew, to get that woman. Now there was no guarantee that
I would because my power is limited, my charms are certainly limited,
and I'm not all that tricky. Now you know why I believe in
Sovereign Grace, I got Bonnie. There had to be some divine intervention
there too. But the Lord Jesus Christ is
not lacking in power. The Lord Jesus Christ is not
lacking in charm. And I don't mean charm in the
way of that smarmy stuff. Believe it or not, our word charm
comes from the Greek word for grace. That woman in the Song
of Solomon, she says, you want to know why I'll look for him
all night long? Let me tell you of the charms
of the one I love. The Lord Jesus Christ can get
his people, all he's got to do is open their eyes so they can
see him. And the Lord Jesus Christ is not lacking in any bit of
wisdom in how to approach us, and how to arrest us, and how
to bring us to Him. If He were lacking in any of
these things, I guarantee you, not a one of us would be saved. We preach a doctrine called Irresistible
Grace, but that's a terrible name for it, because it is a
grace that we resist with all our wisdom and with all our might
Maybe we should call it overwhelming grace. It's just that the determination
of the Lord to save us is stronger than our determination to be
lost. Paul says, Christ laid hold of
me, and I want to, if I can, for a few minutes here, to preach
up the grace of God. I mean to preach it in such a
way, well, it would make you wonder if I've lost my mind. You see, the grace of God, and
you and I believe it, and I thank God that we do, but I'll guarantee
you this, the grace of God is more gracious than we think it
is. We speak of free grace, but I'll
guarantee you it's freer than we perceive it to be. Sometimes we're afraid. No matter
what we say, no matter what doctrine we preach, sometimes we're just
kind of afraid if we preach up grace too much, folks are going
to abuse it. Folks are going to abuse it no matter how we're
preaching. We might as well just lay it out there as it actually
is. Now I want you to notice this, that
when the Lord Jesus Christ reached out and took a hold of the Apostle
Paul, it was an act of unimaginable grace. In fact, I've been working
on a message in my mind. Scandalous grace. Scandalous
grace. This world has a grace in which
there is no scandal to it. It has a grace which lays hold
of the worthy. It has a salvation that's bestowed
upon those who in the eyes of men seem worthy to have it. But
God's grace is entirely different. He, without permission, without
any warrant, simply from his own will, reaches out and grabs
the nastiest and most defiled people that have walked the face
of the earth, and draws them to himself, and cuddles them
up, so to speak, and says, they're mine. And the world is scandalized
by that. They're scandalized that they
could bring to him a woman caught in adultery. I've always wondered,
how'd those men know where to find her? But they did. And they brought
her and threw her down in the dust in front of him. And they
said, Moses says this woman ought to be stoned. What do you say? And he wrote in the dirt, and
I don't know what he wrote, but it embarrassed him. It embarrassed
him, and he scandalized him. Because he sent those worthy
men away. And he reached down, and spiritually
speaking, he laid hold of that woman. and drew her to himself. And she who was worthy to be
stoned, the Lord never denied that. She who was worthy to spend
everlasting years in the torments of God's wrath. He, the one man
who had no sin and had the right to cast the first stone. He said,
well, where do all these people want to condemn you? She looked
at him and said, I? I ain't here. He said, well,
I'm not going to condemn you either. scandalous grace. I want you to know this morning,
you gathered here, we all do this, you're hiding. You're hiding
what you are. Maybe there's some wisdom in
that. We're so scandalous we couldn't
take each other if we really knew what each other was. But
we put on airs, we pretend, we act like we're something we're
not. We set ourselves up as good religious people. We set ourselves
up as faithful, sovereign, graced Baptists. But the truth of the
matter is, inside these hearts is such rottenness, inside these
minds is such corruption, that if the ground would open up and
swallow every last one of us into hell, God would have done
the right thing. But we pretend. We're afraid. I am. I wouldn't
dare tell you what I am. I wouldn't dare let you know.
the depths of what goes on in me. I couldn't dare tell you the
things that have been done by me when nobody else was looking,
or at least I thought nobody was. And I, brethren, I am not talking
about my pre-conversion life. Don't you worry of ex-sinners?
I was a sinner until God found me. Well, I've been a sinner
ever since. Have you? And I don't mean one of these
abstract theological centers, I mean a real center. Notice who God reaches out and
grabs. It was read to us yesterday, look
back here, 1 Corinthians 6. Know ye not," this is verse 9,
"'know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom
of God?' That's right, preacher. Them sinners is going to hell. You preach it, brother. Oh, not them fornicators, not them idolaters, not them
adulterers, nor feminine nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor
extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you are washed, you are sanctified. You are justified in the name
of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. Now, there
may be some of you here on one of the benefits of preaching
to a congregation and you don't know all of them. You can address
them all as sinners. And I don't know what's in your
heart. I don't know what has been your spiritual experience
to this point. I don't have to. The Lord God
knows. And I'll bet you there's some
of you here that say, I'm in that list. In fact, I'm in that
list several times. Some of you might say, I'm in
that list all the time. It's as though Paul was thinking
of me when he wrote that. And I can feel it in my heart,
preacher, that I will not inherit the kingdom of God. I'm not fit
for it. If God brought me into His kingdom,
I'd ruin it. I'd pollute it. And yet, out of that very kind of people,
the sovereign, omnipotent arm of the Lord Jesus Christ reached
out and grabbed them by the scruff of the neck and pulled them into
the kingdom of God. If these kind of people, if there's
not a way for these kind of people to get in the kingdom of God,
then there will be no people in the kingdom of God. And if these kind of people,
if there's not a way that they can get in the kingdom of God,
Bob, I can't get in. I know that. So he goes on and
he says, some of you, this is what some of you are, but you've
been washed. You're sanctified. But you're justified in the name
of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. God intervened
here. Paul sets forth what the natural
course of events would be. See, there is a natural way. You know, the natural thoughts
of man are not altogether wrong when it comes to spiritual things. Paul says, in describing the
great wickedness of man, and he says, and they realize that
those who do such things are worthy of death, but they go
right on doing them, and having a big whoop-de-doo time with
everybody else that does them. Men know that. That's why so
much of religion is an attempt to stop doing these things. Because
they think if they can get it stopped, If they can quit being
fornicators and adulterers and covetous and thieves and all
that, if they can quit doing that, they can get in the kingdom
of God. Is there anybody here trying to quit? They say one of the strongest
addictions in all the world is smoking, you know, and people
trying to quit smoking, and it's tough. And I'll tell you, anybody
that gets her done, it says, I'm not saying it's a turn of
the world, I'm just saying that's a tough thing to do. From what I understand,
I'll tell you there's a worse addiction than that. I am addicted to sin. And there's no 12-step program
that can get me out of it. There's no counselors that can
show me what to do to stop sinning. I have, probably like many of
you, given every effort extended myself to my full potential in
stopping sin. I've been trying that since I
was a kid. I was in church and I thought this was a way to be
a good boy. Stop sinning. I've been trying to stop sinning.
And you know what the result has been? I have sins now I didn't
have then. And I haven't lost any of them
I had then. And by her brother Scott Richardson
said one time, he said, I'm not preaching to you now, I'm telling
you the truth. I'm not just trying to sound humble. I'm not just
trying to say words that will sound good in your ears and get
you to say amen. It's the truth of the matter. And if you've
got the least bit of honesty in you, I believe you'll say
pretty much the same. Christ Jesus reached down to
me when he reached way on down to me. I was lost and undone
without God or His Son. When He reached down His hand,
not just to me, for me. God didn't say, I'll reach down
this far, now you reach up and grab my hand. No sir. Scandalous grace. He reaches
down and He grabs ahold of people like this. Folks that the world
won't have. Folks that the world thinks is nothing. Folks that
the world thinks is worse than nothing. There was a bunch of
Pharisees there on the day of crucifixion, and boy were they
a righteous bunch. There were disciples there on
the day of crucifixion. But on that day, our Lord in
infinite sovereign grace looked to His right and saved a man
being rightly executed for his crimes. The Lord God not only receives
men of all sorts and of the most vile and wicked characters, long before they come to Him
and He receives them, He reaches out and grabs them. Because no
one ever came to Christ until sovereign grace stopped him running
from Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ, he says,
fornicators will not enter the kingdom of heaven, but that one
will. Idolaters, go into hell, but
not that one. Perverts, they're going to burn,
but not that one. Warned you, scribes, pharisees,
hypocrites, your judgment will be greater. But not that one. And a man on his way to Damascus,
full of hypocrisy, eat up with corruption, but boy on the outside
he was good. Hating God. Because he can't
get a hold of God, he's going to get a hold of God's people. If any man ever deserved to go
to hell, he did. God reached right out there and
grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. He said, that's as
far as I'm letting you get from me, because you're mine. And while you're worthy of the
greater condemnation, you shall receive none. While you all burn in everlasting
flames, There shall not be so much as the smell of smoke upon
you. I have redeemed you. You're mine. Squirm and wiggle and fight and
cuss all you want. You ain't getting away. Can you think of anybody that
God's grace wouldn't save? Can you think of anybody so wretched that God's grace is not up to
their salvation? And my friend, you don't know
the grace of God, and you don't know yourself. Is my ear deaf, says the Lord?
Is my arm shortened up and weakened that I cannot say? I preach up the grace of God
like this, friends, because if the grace of God is not like
that, I'm done. I'm lost. I am condemned. I am without
hope and without God in this world. But I plan to make it
worse. You think that's scandalous?
Hang on. He arrests these people. He reaches out and grabs them.
And while he makes a remarkable change in them, which we'll spend
a couple of minutes looking at, while he makes a remarkable change
in them, what you will find is all of that wickedness that he
had when he found them and got a hold of them is still there. Are there any here this morning that you made some profession
of faith at one time and indeed maybe you did believe? But you're going on in your mind,
you say, I can't believe that someone who believes would be
like me. I can't believe that someone
who has been a recipient of the grace of God would be so corrupt
as me. I actually thought that when
I believed and came to Christ, didn't it say He'd wash me? And
yet I find all that filth still in me. Didn't he say I'd be sanctified?
I don't feel very holy, I'll tell you that. Makes me wonder. Has anything
ever happened to me at all? I lie in bed at night. I'm going
to be more honest than a preacher ought to be. I lie in bed at
night. sometimes terrified that I don't belong to God. Because
at night I can sure see me pretty clear in the dark. It gets so bad, brethren, I lay
there and wonder whether or not there's a God. And I lay there and wonder, have
I been wrong all along? Maybe the liberals are right.
Jesus was just another man. I've heard people say, and they
may be telling the truth, but ever since God called me, I've
never doubted my salvation. Friends, I am so different from
that. It is only in brief moments that
I ever have any confidence that I belong to God. And most of those moments are
spent behind the pulpit. Most of the rest of the time,
it's so easy for me to see me, and so difficult for me to see
Christ, that I wonder if any work of
grace has ever been done at all. God's grace is so scandalous that He can save a man, a covetous
man. He can reach down and grab him. And wash him. And sanctify him. And justify him. And that man
will struggle with covetousness the rest of his life. He can take a drunk. And he can wash him. And sanctify
him. And justify him. And let me tell
you something about him. You might find him drunk someday.
You just might. He may struggle with that the
rest of his life. You may find the fornicator whom God has saved
in the wrong bed. You know, there's no Bathsheba
in my background. But I'll tell you why. I've never
been the king. I've never had a throne to sit
on, and from the perch of that throne look out my window and
see some tart, and think I could get away with it. My name is
Joseph, and you might think I have the virtue of Joseph of Egypt.
There's only one reason. I never served at Potiphar's
house, and I never met Potiphar's wife. You know, I've heard people say,
God will save a man and take away his propensity to this,
that, and the other. It's funny, I just don't hear
much of them say, well, you'll no longer be covetous. And I'll
tell you why they don't say that. Because the men saying it are
terribly covetous. It would be hard for them to say that you
can't be covetous and then ask you to send that check, you know.
That seed faith that always somehow or another ends up being planted
in their garden. I'll tell you something. Do you know why the
Scriptures warn believers against all these kinds of sins? Because
believers are fully capable of doing any of them. And they're
fully capable of the worst sin of all. Peter, preacher of the
gospel, graced of God to be the first one to give the full declaration
of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ on the day of Pentecost.
The first one to officially take the gospel of the Gentiles. This
man knew that God was no respecter of persons. This man knew that
Jesus Christ is Lord of all, and that in Christ there is neither
Jew nor Gentile. And he goes down to Antioch,
and he's having a good time with the brethren there. And somebody
put on a smoker and put some pork in there. And he said, that
tastes good. And then James showed up. And old Peter went right back
where he started. And he crossed the room, trembling under the gaze of James, shrinking away from the freedom
of the gospel and withdrawing from the Gentiles. And I'll tell you this, David
with Bathsheba did not act so corruptly as did Peter on that
day. Scandalous grace. I've recently been listening
to a fellow that's written what I consider terrific music. And
he wrote one song, five stanzas, One of them just brings me to
tears. He's speaking in the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, I am my beloved's and
my beloved's mine. You bring all your history. I'll
bring the bread and wine. We'll have us a party where all
the drinks are on me. And as surely as the sun shall
rise, You will be set free. Oh, what grace in that arresting
action of the Lord Jesus Christ. You do wrong and a policeman
will arrest you, and he will arrest you to incarcerate you. But if you belong to Christ Jesus,
he will arrest you to set you free. The policeman will arrest you
to bring you before the judge, that you might be condemned for
your actions and appropriately punished. Jesus Christ in His
gracious arrest will arrest you, that you might be preserved from
that day before the judge, and that you'll never answer for
your sins, so that your sins will never be imputed to you.
Does anybody like the sound of that? All me. Arresting grace. He said Christ laid hold of me.
If he hadn't laid hold of me I would have been lost. And even
if he's laid hold of me, Paul says in Romans 7, even though
he's laid hold of me I still act like I'm lost. I'm still
the same wretched man in myself, and my flesh still dwells no
good thing. Hadn't been any improvement gone
on there. But God did make a change in Saul when he arrested him.
He says in verse 7, we're back in Philippians 3, But what things
were gained to me, those I counted lost for Christ. Now there's
a change. It's tough to make a man take those things in which
he once gloried, to take those things that he thought was good
about him, Things that he thought were helping him and improving
his situation with God, to have him take all those positives
and put them over in the lost column. But that's exactly what the grace
of God made Paul do. He said, I count them lost. I
realize now. And this is something that happens
in grace. Of course, we still fight with this too, you know.
People say, well, you'd be dumb with self-righteousness. Well,
I ain't. I find self-righteousness still at work in me, and time
and time again, the Lord Jesus Christ has got to arrest me and
remind me of this, that all these things I keep trying to build
up and that I think are so good. Why, He's a nice guy. People
tell me that. I know better, but they tell
me that anyway because I can put on pretty good. And I squirrel away that little
bit of nice guy stuff. I think, well, it's all right. Well, I'll go for a while without
falling to my pet sins. I'm doing pretty good. Maybe
I finally got a hold of something now. Then I fall face down, doing
the same old things I always did. Tough to remember to count all
those things lost. But look what Paul says, yea, doubtless, verse
8, And I count all things but loss for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered
the loss of all things, and do count them but dung that I may
win Christ. That word dung covers everything
that anybody would throw away. It was their garbage. It was
the offal from whenever they would, I said offal, that's not,
it's the guts. Whenever they would butcher an
animal, you know, the parts they weren't allowed to eat and didn't
want to eat either. They just, you know, you throw them out
to the dump, that's what he's talking about there. And I like Paul
says, all these things I once counted gain, I've called them
loss, in fact they're nothing but garbage, fit only to be taken
out. I'm weary of hearing people talk
about what they gave up for Christ. Well, I gave up my riches to
serve the Lord. Let me ask you this, when garbage day comes,
You collect the garbage out of your house and put it in a big
garbage can set out by the curb. Do you ever cry about it or whine
that it's being taken away? Oh my, there's that moldy piece
of bread. We left her out too long and
it's in there and I've got to take it out to the curb now. I don't know if I can bear up
with this. Y'all don't know what I've given up. Paul said, I gave it up, and
I'm glad to be rid of it, for it was stinking up the house. We'd give up things and then
count ourselves to be better than someone else that didn't
give up as much as we did. Well, who in the world ever bragged
about how much garbage they had? I got two sacks of garbage, look
at the neighbor over there, he's only got one. Oh my. And he says, I press on,
I'm reaching out, verse 12, to lay hold of that for which Christ
laid hold of me. Now when Christ lays hold of
one of his people, he lays hold of them for a purpose. So long
as we're in this life, we're not going get a hold of it. The
purpose for which He laid hold of us has not happened yet. That's
why Paul says, I do not count myself as having apprehended.
I haven't laid hold of it yet. But the Lord Jesus Christ and
His sovereign purpose laid hold of me, and He laid hold of me
for a purpose, and here's what it is. Back in verse 8, that
I may win Christ. In some respects we've We can
say maybe we got that. But then verse 9, Be found in
him. There'll come a time when God's going to look for you.
God's going to come at the end of the world and He's going to
look for everybody. And He's going to find them. He will find you. You may
have hidden behind fig leaves. You may have hidden in one of
those ships he's talking about there. You may have hidden it.
Well, wherever you are, God's going to find you. So Paul did
not say that I may win Christ and God never found me. He just
said that I may win Christ and when that day comes that I'll
be found in Him. You know, the flood came and
it found everybody. But it found Noah in the ark.
And so everything was okay. God's going to come. He's going
to find you. Where's He going to find you? Well, you're going
to find me in a sovereign grace Baptist church. Well, you're
going to hell then. You are. He's going to find me
in the pulpit of a sovereign grace church. Then you're going
to hell. I may be found in him, not having mine own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of
Christ, the righteousness which is of God and by faith. That
tells us anything. It tells us this, you can't have
both kinds of righteousness. You got to make a choice. Oh,
I thought you believed in sovereign grace. You didn't believe in
free will. I don't believe in free will, but I do believe everybody
makes choices. And you got to choose which righteousness
you want. One you make or one God makes. And Paul said, I made that choice.
I know which one I want. I've seen mine. It's not good.
Or everybody else thinks it is, but I saw it from the inside.
It ain't so good. And here's what else God made
us for, or what Christ apprehended us for, laid hold of us, verse
10, that I may know Him. Our world is so corrupted, any
thoughts of sex, that we're embarrassed to talk about it. But Paul is using that word.
In a sense like that. That knowledge between a man
and his wife. A wife to a man. Intimacy. There ain't nothing wrong with
it. We can mess it up, but God created it. There ain't nothing
wrong with it. And here's what Paul says. I want to know Him. I want to enter in. to the bedchamber
of my Lord. As part of His bride, I want
to know Him as nobody else does. I don't want to just hear about
Him. I'd love to hear about Him, but that's not all I want. I
don't just want a picture of Him, though I like the pictures. I want Him. I don't want to be just in the
crowd I want to know Him. And my friend,
that's why He laid hold of us, that we may know Him. If I were to be so arrogant as to say that I wanted someone, I thought it
would be worthwhile for someone to know me, that would be pretty
arrogant. It's not arrogant for Christ. He laid hold of us that
we may know Him. Knowing full well that's the
greatest blessing of all. that I may know Him and the power
of His resurrection. I'm going to have to hurry up.
People say the power of His resurrection is the power to do things. No,
it's not. I want resurrection power. I don't. I'll probably blow something
up if you give me that kind of power. He said, but I want to
know that power. That is, I want to know what
it meant and what does it mean. It says in Ephesians chapter
1 that God by His power raised Jesus Christ from the dead and
raised him on high and set him at his right hand, and he said,
that same power is at work in you. And Paul says, I want everything
that the power of God accomplished in Jesus Christ to be accomplished
in me. I want to be raised from the
dead. I want to be seated with God in the heavenly places. I
want to be far above all principalities and powers so that they can never
touch me or trouble me again. that I may know the fellowship
of his sufferings." That word fellowship means to have something
in common with. You and I are of a fellowship
if we are in Christ Jesus. If Christ has laid hold upon
us, we are in a fellowship because we all have something in common,
the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. There may be a lot of
things about us that's different. We may have different politics.
We're of different genders. We're of different... Societies and cultures, different
levels of intel and all that. That's one thing we've got in
common. We are a fellowship of the sufferings of Christ. Paul says, I want to be in that
fellowship. Be made conformable unto his death. What does that mean? To suffer like
Christ did? No. to be made like Christ in His
death. How was Christ made in His death? Well, it says He died
unto sin once, but now He lives unto God. Paul said, I want that.
I want to be dead to sin. It says that Jesus Christ has
been accepted by the Father, and that's been testified to
by the resurrection of the dead. And Paul says, I want to be like
that. I want to be just like Christ is in His death. I want
to be accepted by the Father. I want to be without sin. That's
what I was made for. That is, that's what I was laid
hold of for. Then he goes, if by any means I might attain to
the resurrection of the dead, verse 11, is Paul saying, well,
I'm trying everything. I've got that little Jewish thing
going over here. You know, the Hebrew of Hebrews.
I've got that. And even though I never let anybody
see it, I went down there. I've been to Rome. You know,
and while nobody's looking, I offered me a sacrifice or two to them
idols going there. And I'm going to do this Christian
thing, too, so that if by some means I've got all the bases
covered, if anybody can attain to the resurrection of the dead,
if there's any way, I will, because I've tried everything. That's
not what he's saying. Here's what he's saying. I've tried the righteousness
of my own right, of my own. I've tried that route, it won't
work. And I've seen, even though I never participated in, I've
seen what all those Roman religions will do for you. That ain't gonna
work. There's only one way, Paul says, that a man like me can
attain to the resurrection of the dead. It's by the Living
One laying hold of me. by the scruff of the neck, saying,
You're mine. You're mine. And I ain't going
to let you go. I will not let you die. You may
run from me, but I can run faster than you do. You may wrestle
against me, just like Jacob did, and Jacob wrestled against him,
and it said Jacob prevailed. You know why Jacob prevailed?
Because the angel let him. Because as soon as the angel
was done with it, he just reached up and it was over. He could
have done that any time during the night. And you may wrestle
and you may think from time to time you're going to get the
upper hand. It ain't going to happen unless you belong there.
You can be like Gomer's wife and you can play the harlot.
The husband's still going to get you. And at any cost, he'll
pay it. If you're his. At any expenditure of power.
He'll do it, if you're his, because there is no lover like the Lord
Jesus Christ. And he'll scandalize the world
to save his people. Well, I'm done.