Now if you have turned in your
Bibles to the book of Luke chapter 8, I want to go through a few
of these verses until we get down to the end of the verses
that we read earlier down to verse 19 through 21. And then
we will attempt to bring some thoughts that the Lord has impressed
upon our hearts to you on those verses in particular. But in
the way of exposition, let us begin this morning here in verse
1 of the 8th chapter of the book of Luke. And it came to pass,
Afterward that he, that is the Lord Jesus, went throughout every
city and village preaching and showing the glad tidings of the
kingdom of God and the twelve disciples were with him. Our
Lord's ministry on earth was a very short ministry. But it was a very full ministry,
and he accomplished so many, many things in his ministry. He went about doing good. And
in this text in particular, we're told that he preached and that
he showed the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. What a wonderful
thing it is to be in the kingdom of God, to be under the rule,
to be under the sovereign rule of our blessed Lord. We often
pray that God will rule and overrule, and the scripture teaches us
that we ought to pray Thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven. And we believe that in the kingdom
of God, that is the sphere in which God rules. And I believe
those of you that know Christ, those of you that have been saved
and then born of the Spirit of God, that the Spirit of the Lord
doth rule in your life. And my friend, you're never so
free as you are when you're most His, when you most belong to
the Lord Jesus Christ. You're most free and liberated
when your knee is most bent unto his sovereign goodwill and purpose. We need a new master if we're
lost. We need a new master. We need
one to whom we can come one to whom we can bow to, one to whom
we can trust in. And in the kingdom of God, the
great glad tidings of the kingdom of God is that the Lord's people,
under the rule, sovereign lordship of Jesus Christ, they have a
good master. Now those that are lost, those
that are in sin, those that are bound by the chains of sin, those
that are lost, I say, they have a master. But that master is
the devil. And what their father wills for
them to do, they do. They follow him. They walk in
the spirit of disobedience. They walk under the authority
and power of Him who is the God of this world. The God that inhabits
every lost person and brings them under His dominion that
they might sin away their days and die in their sin and be lost
and perish forever. Now then it says that the twelve
were with him. And then in verse 2 it says,
And there were certain women which had been healed of evil
spirits and infirmities. And Mary called Magdalene, out
of whom went seven devils, and Joanna, and Susanna, and many
others which ministered unto him of their substance." Now,
these women had been moved upon by the grace and power of God,
and they had been delivered. They had been saved. They had
been brought out of sin's darkness, and they'd been delivered from
evil spirits. In Mary Magdalene, there were
seven devils that was driven out. by the power of Christ out
of this woman. Now these women were grateful
for the mercies that they had received at our Lord's hand. They were very grateful, as all
God's living family are grateful, that the Lord has saved them,
that the Lord has laid hold of them, that the Lord has done
great things for them. They're glad because God's hand
hath been upon them. But these women, they had many
trials and hard usage, which any Jewish woman who thought
for herself about the things of God would probably have to
undergo in that day. But here's some women that were
used of God and blessed of God to be useful to our Lord Jesus
Christ, and they supported Him out of their substance. They
cleaved to the Lord Jesus Christ, and they did not give way even
unto the end. They cleaved to Christ. They
stayed on Christ. They worshiped Him right to the
very end. Brother, sister, let me say to
you this morning that it was not a woman, it was not a woman
who sold our Lord for 30 pieces of silver. It was not a woman
that forsook our Lord and fled when he was in the garden of
Gethsemane. It was not a woman who denied
our Lord three times before the cock crew. Now we need to understand
that the grace of God is mighty and it's powerful and God can
do a work in a woman just as he does in a man. Now they were
women who wailed and lamented when Jesus was led forth to be
crucified. We don't read where any of the
12 wailed and lamented when our Lord Jesus was being led away
to be crucified on Calvary's Mount. No, they were women who
stood by the cross at the last. And it was some of these women,
because it says there were many others. many others. And so there
were a host and band of women that sustained our Lord and was
a blessing to him throughout his life. And they were women
who were the first to visit the grave. You remember on resurrection
morning, visit that grave where the Lord lay. And so these women
were used of God and blessed of God. And there was a great
host in verse 4 says there were much people that were gathered
together and will come to him out of every city and he spake
by parable unto them. And then he gives the parable
here of the sower. And it's a very simple story
how he tells us that the seed is the word of God in verse 11.
And the seed has been sown upon four different kinds of ground,
and the only good ground is mentioned in verse 8. And another fell
on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit a hundredfold.
And when he had said these things, he cried, he cried, listen to
what he cried, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. There
is one good ground, and that good ground is the ground which
our Lord prepares for the seed of the Word of God to enter in.
And our Lord must prepare that ground. There is none righteous,
no, not one. There are none who by nature
has what can be called good ground. It's only as our Lord prepares
the ground that the seed Will fall in and will grow and bring
forth a hundredfold now notice in verse 10 He said unto you
it is given to know we speaking to the disciples here. He says
unto you it is given to know Now, beloved, this is a word
of sovereignty. It's a word of sovereignty. It's
a word of sovereign grace. Unto you it is given to know.
The disciples had nothing in and of themselves that they could
boast of and say, we were a very keen mind and intellect. and
we grasped the story of the gospel before others around us did,
no, it was by revelation that the gospel was made known to
them. And any man or woman boy or girl who knows Christ savingly,
who knows the gospel of free grace in their hearts and has
the hope, the everlasting, the eternal hope of the gospel in
their breast, are those whom God has given to believe. No one believes unless it is
given unto them to believe. And so these folks here, or these
apostles, it is told them that it was given unto them to know
the mysteries of the kingdom of God. But to others, he said,
we speak in parables that seeing they might not see. and hearing
they might not understand. We know that's very mysterious.
You would think that the Lord would have every man to see and
that he would have every soul to hear the gospel and to bring
forth fruit a hundredfold. But beloved, God is a God of
purpose. And one of the things that you
learn if you become a serious student of the Word of God is
that the God of the Bible is a God of purpose. He has a purpose
of His own. And God will have a family. And He has chosen those that
will be in His family ere the foundation of the world was laid.
And God has sovereignly elected them, chosen them, and by the
grace of God in time he comes to them because it is given unto
them to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God and Christ
is revealed unto their hearts. God has a purpose. I'll tell
you God can do anything he wants to do. The Word of God says there
is nothing too hard for the Lord, nothing too hard for the Lord.
And the Bible says that God has given Christ power over all flesh
that he might give eternal life to as many as the Father has
given to him. So Jesus said, All power is given
unto me in heaven and earth. There isn't anything he cannot
do. But the purpose of God determines what God does. And God has a
purpose. And those that he saves, he don't
save them by accident. He saves them on purpose. And
those of you that know the truth of the word of God would have
to say amen, if not openly, down in your heart, you know it's
the truth. God saves on purpose. He doesn't save by accident.
And one of the things we like to ask those who do not believe
in sovereign grace and electing love is how did you manage to
get saved? How did you manage to come to
know the Lord? Was it by accident or was it
on purpose? And then most generally you back
them into the corner and they have to say, well, it was on
purpose. God did it on purpose or I would have never been saved.
But remember this, the Savior has power and he's able to save
unto the uttermost all that come unto God by him, seeing that
he ever liveth to make intercession for them. He's that one that
was dead, now is alive and is alive forevermore. He's alive
and he has all power and can give repentance and remission
of sin. Now as we go on here, he explains
this parable unto these disciples. unto the twelve. And then he
comes in verse 16 and says, No man, when he hath lighted a candle,
covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed, but setteth
it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light.
Now after one has received the word of God into a heart that
has been prepared by the Lord, and they've come to know the
Lord, then those people have the light of God in them. Jesus
Christ is the light of the world. Believers have the light in them. They are children of light. They're not of the night, they're
of the day. They are children of light. Now, beloved, these
that have been saved They're not to cover their light. In other words, they're not to
obscure the light. The light is not put under a
bed. It's not covered with a vessel. That light is to be set on a
candlestick. And this candlestick here, I
believe, is a local body of believers. This life is to be set on a candlestick. It's to be put into a church,
into a body of believers, where they can be useful and where
they can give off a light to all those that enter in. that
all may see, that all may see what the Lord has done in their
life. They're to attend a fellowship,
and to be among God's living family, among God's people, and
to hear the word of God, and to share what God has done to
them. And then he says in verse 17,
for nothing is secret, If you are that good ground that the
Lord has prepared, and the seed of the Word of God has dropped
into it, and it's bringing forth fruit, beloved, it'll get out
on you. You may try to hide it. You may
say, well, I'm not going to say anything. I believe the Lord
saved me, but I'll just keep it quiet. It'll get out on you.
Your life will be changed. I mean old things will pass away,
all things will become new. There'll be people around you,
they'll see, they'll be able to tell that God has wrought
a work in your life and that you're different. They'll be
able to tell that. It'll get out on you, I say,
and it shall be made manifest. It'll be made manifest. There's
really no secret disciples of our Lord. If the Lord has done
a work in your heart, I'll tell you the grace of God is visible.
In the book of Acts, it speaks about how that the apostles could
see the grace of God. And beloved, you can always see
God's grace in the life of one who has been converted. And so
he goes on to say, neither anything hid that shall not be known.
Are you a disciple of Christ? Are you a believer? Do you know
the Lord Jesus Christ? I say to you, it will get out
on you. It must get out on you. Because
those that are the Lord's must own Him, and they're not ashamed
of Him. They will witness that they know
Him. They'll witness by the mouth
that they know Him. They'll testify, they'll confess
that they know the Lord. And not only that, but they'll
follow their Lord in believer's baptism. And they will identify
themselves with the Lord Jesus Christ in baptism. They will
walk with God and will manifest it. I say that it will be known
and it will come abroad. But what's wrong with that? Are
you ashamed of your blessed Lord? Are you ashamed of it? If you're
a child of God, truly born of the Spirit of God, you're not
ashamed of Christ. You're not ashamed of it, because
of what He's done, the glorious things that He's done for you,
and how that He put you in, how He put you on a rock, and that
rock is solid, and that you have bottomed on the grace of God,
the true grace of God, and you're truly the Lord's child. Now then, He says in verse 18,
take heed therefore, how you hear. Take heed how you hear
the Word of God. It's a glorious thing to see
God's people and to see others meet together to hear the Word
of God. It's a very pleasurable thing
for the Lord's living family to sit and hear the Word of God. But over and over in the scriptures,
we're told that those who have the privilege of hearing the
word of God, that there are great responsibilities that come with
that hearing. There's responsibilities that
come with the privilege. And our Lord says here, take
heed how you hear. Take heed how you hear, for whosoever
hath to him shall be given. You have the grace of God, the
true grace of God, well then there shall be more given as
you hear the word. You say, I'd like to grow up
and to be one that is mature in the faith. I'd like to live
to the glory and honor and praise of my dear Redeemer and my Lord. I would like to be able to show
forth a precious Jesus in my life. My friend, take heed how
you hear. take heed how you hear the word
of God, and whosoever hath not from him shall be taken even
that which is him that hath." And so you're listening to the
word of God, and you seem to be religious. You seem to have
a little bit, some kind of a hope. It'd be a false hope, but I say
to you that that false hope shall be taken from you. It really
does not amount to anything, your hope is empty, and what
you seem to have, you may sometimes enter in to the conversation
that the Lord's true and living family has, but really you have
nothing. You have nothing, and you know
you're bankrupt. This morning, oh, you say, well,
I go to church pretty regular, preacher, and I do once in a
while, I read the Bible, but my friend, do you really, are
you really, do you really possess the true Christ? Do you know
him and is he in your heart? My friend, whatever you think
you have, it's going to be taken away from you. So take heed how
you hear. Then came, in verse 19, to him
his mother and his brethren and could not come at him for the
press. There was many, many people around him, and his mother and
his brothers, his half-brothers, they could not get to him. And
it was told him by certain which said, your mother and your brothers
are standing without, and they want to see you, telling Jesus
that. And he answered and said unto
them, I want you to listen to what he said, verse 21, my mother
and my brethren are these which hear the word of God and do it.
So Jesus here equates those who hear the word of God and keep
it with his own personal relatives after the flesh. He said, these,
my mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of
God and do it. There was a lady one time who
came to Jesus and said, blessed is the womb that bare thee and
the paps which thou did suck. And Jesus said, yea, rather blessed
are they that hear the word of God and keep it. Now, beloved,
this morning I've worked my way through this. I want to bring,
I want to deal with different kinds of hearers to show the
difference that there is between those who hear wrongly and those
who hear so as to gain a blessing, to hear so as to become one of
the Lord's, and hear to profit. And I want to try to give you
a few cases to show you what it means to wrongly hear the
Word of God and to show you what it means to rightly hear the
Word of the Lord. And I invite every one of you
this morning to lend your ears to me to hear the Word of God
this morning. Now if you're in a habit of loaning
out things, don't loan anybody your ears this morning. Keep
them because I want you to use them to hear the Word of God.
It's a solemn thing, beloved, but the message of the gospel
must pass through your ears if it ever is going to be brought
home powerfully, savingly to your heart. It's got to come
through your ears. And so this morning, take heed
how you hear. Well, number one, there are some
who get no good out of the hearing of the gospel because their hearing
is soon followed by forgetting. Soon followed by forgetting. Now in James chapter 1 we read
these words. But be ye doers of the word,
and not hearers only deceiving your own self. For if any be
a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man
beholding his natural face in a glass. For he beholdeth himself,
and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man
he was. And so if a man looks into the
word of God and he hears the word of God, he sees the truth
about himself. Just like when you look into
the mirror, can't argue with the mirror, can you? You just
cannot argue the mirror. It just tells you the facts.
You look into the word of God, it'll tell you the truth. And
if you just go out and forget what manner of man you was, then
my friend, you heard the word, but you did not remember the
word of God. Now, it is the truth that people
hear many, many times. They come and hear the truth.
And they pay little attention to it at that time. Sometimes they pay a little bit
of attention, but they pay very little attention. And it's only
for a time that they listen. To them, hearing is confined
to just the time the sermon is being preached. To some, the
short of the sermon the better they like it, because what little
attention they give to it, to them it's great work. When the
sermon is over, it's done with as far as they're concerned.
As far as they're concerned, it's over and done. In an hour,
they might remember that they were in the church, but That's
all they remember. They don't remember anything
about what they heard. It's a temporary thing with them. They hear the message, the service
is over, the lights are turned off, and the door is shut, and
they leave behind everything. I say, I mean everything, they
leave it behind. They forget immediately what
it was that they heard. Now it is not so with the profitable
here. That's the wrong way to listen,
my friend, is for you to listen and then forget immediately what
you heard. Now we know and recognize that
there are people that have the ability to pay attention longer
than other people have. But I want to point this out
to you this morning that we need to work at remembering what we
hear. I think it would be a very good
practice by you parents on your way home from church, especially
those of you that travel a good distance, for you to every once
in a while say, let's have some quiet in the car, and I want
to ask you, what was it the preacher talked about this morning? What
text did he use? What was he talking about? And
I believe that this would be a very good practice for you
to see whether or not they remember, and it might even help you, put
you on the spot to remember yourself what it was that the preacher
was talking about. Recently we had a pizza meal
for the young people over to Hodges' home. And a year ago,
we had had a meeting where I had brought a message out of a certain
book in the Old Testament. And I asked the young people,
I asked them, can anyone remember what book it was in the Old Testament
one year ago that we brought the lesson out of? Well, there
was one or two that said something and they were wrong. But then
Stephen Napstead spoke up and said it was the Book of Ruth.
the Book of Ruth, right on. Now you see, we need to practice
that kind of hearing. We need to practice it and practice
it so that we're not forgetful hearers of the Word of God, that
we remember what the Word of God says. And I commended him
for that, that he was able, after one year, to still tell me. And
there are sermons that I've heard men of God preach that I could
tell them what they preached on at a certain time because
to me we must, we must remember what was preached or it does
us no good. Now then, it is not so with the
profitable here. The profitable here does not,
he does not forget what he says. He says to himself, that which
I'm about to hear today is God's Word. That which I'm about to
hear, I'm going into the church, I'm going to sit down, and I'm
about to hear the Word of God. Don't anybody be distracted by
the women going down, they're going to get the dinner ready,
and we're going to go ahead and finish our message, and so you
just concentrate, if you can, upon the Word of God. And say,
my soul take heed how you hear. that you might retain the message
and lay it by in store. It is said in the holy word of
God, hear and your soul shall live. My soul, you're listening
to a gospel which is the wonder of the ages. You're hearing of
mysteries which angels desire to look into. You're hearing
the story of God. sending his own son in the likeness
of sinful flesh that he might redeem men from going down into
the pit. Now my soul here for eternity. Ask God when you come in and
take a seat that there might be an impression made upon you
for eternity, an impression that will last in life, that will
last in death, that will be seen at the day of judgment to be
a saving impression, enduring, sanctifying impression. And pray
that in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And oh beloved
that men felt that to come to hear the gospel that it was truly
what it is. And not, you know, some people
think that coming to hear the gospel is like going to hear
an auctioneer auctioneer off an estate. Doesn't mean any more
to them than that. Or like going to a lecture to
listen to some scientist talk about years ago, or looking at
the stars, they feel that that's what it is. But these, all these
things, beloved, will pass away. But the gospel and your relationship
to God will last forever. Now if there was a lecture this
evening on how you could become a millionaire in a couple of
years, Some of you would probably go, and some of you might even
pay to hear that lecture. I heard the other day about a
certain fellow who was a very wealthy man, and they investigated
him and found out that he never made a dime. by investing his
own money in the stock market, because he lost every dime he
ever invested, but the way he become a millionaire was selling
his lectures to people, so they would come and listen to him
to find out all of his ways of earning money, and they investigated
it. He never made a dime himself. And oh, how foolish we are when
it comes to the Word of God, my friend. We're teaching the
way to heaven, and the way to please God, and the way to get
sin pardoned, and the heart renewed, and doing it without money and
without price. It is the good news of the gospel,
and it's so precious. that men and women ought to be
glad to hear it and never forget it. The Bible says you buy the
truth and sell it not. Buy the truth and sell it not. Now the second kind of hearer
then, the first is the man who is an unprofitable hearer is
one who hears the preacher and then he forgets everything that
he heard. Now the second is this, there
are some whose hearing is the hearing of man and not listening
to the voice of God. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 2
and verse 13, I want to read here a verse of scripture. Paul
says, For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because
when ye received the word of God, which ye heard of us, ye
received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the
word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe. So Paul commends these Thessalonians
because they received the word of God when they heard him, they
received it not as his word, but as the word of the living
God. And my friend, that's so very,
very important that we understand that. Now if you attend where
the preacher does not believe that the word of God is inspired,
You know, the Bible says that all Scripture is given by inspiration
of God and is profitable for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness, that the man of God might grow
up, be thoroughly furnished unto every good work. But if the preacher
you listen to does not believe that the Bible is the inspired
Word of God, he has no claim on your attention. If what he
preaches has not, thus saith the Lord to back it up. You have
as much right to require him to listen to you as he has to
expect you to listen to him. He has no authority, no more. My opinion or yours is not worth
the snap of the finger. It's not worth the snap of the
finger, my friend. My opinion or your opinion about
eternal matters. about the salvation of the soul,
about the truth of how men and women come into right standing
with God. Our opinions do not count. It's thus saith the Lord
that we must hear. But if a man's message is taken
from God's Word, thus saith the Lord, and the Lord has sent him
in the power of the Holy Spirit, and has given him his anointing,
to deliver his gospel as the gospel of God and not the gospel
of men, then you must give earnest and diligent heed to the thing
that you hear, lest by any means you should let these things slip. We are nothing of ourselves,
nothing. But if we deliver God's message,
that message is everything. And I can say to you with deep
solemnity, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? If this be what God really speaks
to you, then woe unto you if you will not hear it. But incline
your ear and come unto me and hear the word of God says and
your soul shall live. It makes all the difference in
the world, whether you're hearing from God or hearing only a man.
It makes all the difference in the world, my friend. Now you
surely understand the difference. If you hear the sermon as the
word of man, then it shall be the word of man to you, and it'll
do you no good. It won't do you any good, because
it came from the man. But if you hear it as the Word
of God, if you search your Bibles to see whether these things are
so, and if finding them to be God's Word, you receive them
and tremble at them and do honor to them as coming from God, then
they're able to save your souls, and they will save your soul. Now this may not seem to some
of you a very great point. But it is truly essential that
we listen as receiving the word from God and not from a man. The voice that we hear it from
may be the voice of a man. but the word is from the living
God. And we must not hear in vain,
and we will hear in vain, if we just say, well, the preacher's
message was this. Well, where did he get his message?
Did he get it from the word of God? If he got it from the word
of God, then we better pay attention to it. And if we'll listen with
profit, we'll look at it as being from God, that is, if we can
find it in the book. But if it's not in the book,
then it isn't worth our listening to. Thirdly, there are some who
will hear what pleases them, but they'll not hear that which
tries them. Now, there are some people who
like good sound doctrine. They say, preacher, that's delicious. That's delicious. I just enjoyed
that soul food this morning. It was so good. It was so precious. They say, amen, preacher, that's
good preaching. No duty, nothing practical, no
precept, no, no, no. But if you give them a precept,
if you give them a duty, if you give them something practical
from the Word of God, ugh, he says or they say, I do not like
that you know, I don't like that. They don't want to hear anything
about their obligation and their responsibilities toward God. They want to be a world in the
center and still claim to be a Christian. They don't want
anybody talking to them about how that they ought to live outwardly
in this world. They don't want to be tried and
searched by the Word of God. And there's the legalist, and
he wants law. That's all he wants. And he wants
duty. That's all he wants. He wants
to be told what to do to live in this world and to please God.
And if you tell him that Christ please God and the only way we
can please him is to be in him, he don't like that, he grinds
his teeth and he runs off in a rage. Because you can preach
too much Jesus for a lot of legalists in a hurry and they're not interested.
in hearing it. Now there are some folks who
like a sermon when it just brushes their fur the right way. If the preacher will just curry
them in the right way, they love it and they like it. Oh, they
say, that's the preacher for us. But the true Christian says
to himself, I do not ask to be pleased. I do not ask to be pleased. Give me the man who will tell
me the truth about myself. Give me the man that will tell
me the truth about God. That's the man that I want to
hear. Do you want a doctor that will
lie to you and tell you you're all right? He just says take
a few days off and you're going to be fine, all the while knowing
that you have a deadly and incurable disease? He's not worth his salt
and you know it. And you want a preacher that'll
lie to you and tell you things that are not so? Well, preachers,
true preachers, are not sent to please men. We're not sent
to tickle the itching ears of men, but to drive the sword of
God's Spirit into the hearts of men, for he says, therefore
have I hewed them by the prophets. I have slain them by the words
of my mouth. Now friends of mine, God's true
preachers did not come to fiddle while you dance. Give me not
the man who will make me feel good in my sins, but give me
the man who will command me to repent and to turn around and
to follow the Lord. Give me not the man who sends
me home thinking well of myself, but the man who whatever I think
of him makes me think badly of myself and brings me to my knees
to seek mercy through Jesus Christ my Savior. Ah, beloved, this
point reveals a great difference among hearers, does it not? That
there are some people, I mean, they got certain select things
they want to hear, and if their preacher gets off of that, they're
not interested in hearing them anymore. But you need to hear
from God, my friend, and you need an honest man to preach
to you, and to tell you what this book says, and to face you,
and to make you face up to the claims of God. up on your life. Well, fourthly, and we're hurrying
on here to an end, there's another class of people, namely those
who always want to hear something new. Now, there's a sort of people
who always turn up. when there's something new going
on. I call them celestial gypsies. They put up their tents where
there's some new doctrine. They're constantly moving around
and skipping and hopping around. And in six months or less, they'll
be somewhere else. They're worthless. They're worthless
because They have never learned the lesson that you've got to
put your roots down someplace if you're going to become stable,
and if you're going to grow up and bear fruit unto the glory
of God. They first hear this, and then
they hear that, and then they hear the other, and they always
like the new toy best. And as a baby, there are babies
to begin with, and they remain babies to the very end of the
chapter. But no, no, no, my friend, give
me the truth that I knew as a boy that made me wise unto salvation
and let me feed on it still. You remember the true Israelites
in the wilderness was as well fed on the man after forty years.
as they was at the very first. It is the mixed multitude that
wants the quail and something else, but the heir of Canaan,
the true Israelite, is satisfied to eat the bread that came down
from heaven. He wants nothing better because
there is nothing better than the true bread of God. His prayer
is, Lord, evermore give us this bread. Well, if we are spirit-filled,
we would know that the old gospel is better, would we not? And
having tasted that, we would keep it to the very end, the
old gospel. There's a song that says, I was
in an old-fashioned meeting, in an old-fashioned place, where
some old-fashioned people had some old-fashioned grace. And
as an old-fashioned sinner, I began to pray, and God heard me and
saved me in the old-fashioned way. The old-fashioned gospel,
my friend, is the best. Now the last thing I have to
say is this, that there are some persons who do not hear the prophet
because they do not and have not, as of yet, believed on the
Lord Jesus Christ. Now there are three things necessary
to rightly hearing the gospel. The number one thing is faith.
Faith. We must believe the testimony
that God has given in His Word of His Son. We must believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ if we're going to be saved. The second
thing is reverence. reverence for the Word of God
that brings the testimony of the Gospel. We need to bow in
reverence to the Word of God. We need to listen to God's Word
like we would listen to nothing else. We need to give ourselves
lock, stock, and barrel to the hearing of the Word of God and
hearing of the truth of the Scriptures. And then thirdly, prayer. We
need to pray. The Bible says, whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Shall be saved. Well, how can they call on him
whom they've not heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? And how shall he preach except
to be sent? But my friend, whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now then, You
have not accepted the Christ that has been preached. How could
you, sitting here this morning, say, Preacher, I think I've heard
the prophet. No, you've not heard the prophet until you believe
on the Christ of the Scriptures, the Christ that has been preached.
You've heard about faith, but you've not believed God. How
can you say, I heard the preacher? You didn't hear the preacher
at all. You didn't hear from God in the preaching. Or you
would have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. You've heard about
repentance, but have you repented? Well, in Acts 17.30, it tells
us that God has commanded all men everywhere to repent. Have
you repented? Have you turned? Have you changed
your mind about yourself? And about God? And about His
word? About His truth? Oh, how we need
to do that. Especially how we need to change
our minds about ourselves. We think we're somebody, but
we're a lost sinner before God. We're in need of the mercy and
grace and love of our God. We need Christ! And until we
know Him in our hearts, we've missed the sum and substance
of the message of the gospel. And so we need to repent. We
need to think again about God, who He is, the holy, the thrice
holy God that inhabiteth eternity, a God who will not wink at sin,
a God who will punish sin, a God who nailed His own Son to the
cross in order that we might be delivered from His wrath,
in order that we might have everlasting life. And so we need to change
our mind about God. He's not going to accept you,
my friend. He will not. You say, I'll do the best I can.
It won't be good enough. God demands perfection. There's
only one that was perfect, and that was the Son of God Himself.
And only as we stand in Him do we have the perfection that God
demands of us. Now then, you've heard about
repentance. What do you come here for? What
do you come here for? You heard the gospel. and you
never make any practical use of what you hear. You come here
for, what do you come here? Why do you come? And listen,
it is without money and without price. It's like a person going
to a store and he goes back every day. And he goes in, he looks
around, he walks all over the store and picks up merchandise
and looks at it, sets it back down, goes out, next day he's
back in the store again, going through the store, looking around,
picking up merchandise, and directly after about a month of that,
People began to say, well, what's that fellow doing in here every
day examining our merchandise and walking out and doesn't buy
anything? Well, I'm here to tell you today
that if you're that kind of a person, you're hearing the Word of God.
You just keep coming and coming and coming, and you hear and
you hear and you hear. But you never buy without money
and without price. There's no price to be paid. Jesus paid it all, paid it long
ago. And you, my friend, are not getting
any good out of what you're hearing. Whosoever will, let him take
the water of life freely. Come and take the Savior, if
you can, and He's yours. Trust Him, and you are saved. Now, you've heard it right, if
you found Christ. And if you haven't found Christ,
if you haven't got to Him, if you haven't bonded on Him, then
you have not heard a right. You've heard for nothing in all
that you heard all the days you've been coming to this place. If
you have not found Him, you might as well have been listening to
someone give a lecture on how to shine shoes as to be here
listening to me. Because, let me tell you, the
very staple of our preaching is, He that believeth on the
Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son
shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved. What are you doing here, my friend?
What are you doing? Keep it on, keep it on, keep
it on. Coming in, coming in, and coming
in. But you never buy without money and without price. Salvation
is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. May God, by His Holy
Spirit, enable you this morning to lay hold of the message of
the Gospel, to hear and to take heed how you hear and examine
yourself. Have I heard, have I heard with
profit the Word of God this morning? Has it affected my life? Has
it affected me? Has it saved my soul? My friend, I trust this morning
that the Lord will use His Word and will bring home to your heart
these blessed truths, and that fruit, that you're one of those
that God has prepared, and that it's good ground, and that the
seed will fall in, and that it'll bear a hundredfold. Oh, how wonderful
that would be to see the mighty work of God as we could see it
clearly in these women that we mentioned early in the message.
How marvelous God had worked in their life and how that they
supported our Lord out of their substance because of their gratefulness
for what God had done for them. And I hope this morning there's
somebody here whose heart has been pricked and who says, I've
just been wasting my time I have not been reverencing God's Word
like all too. And I need to listen to what
God says and quit paying attention to the preacher as he stammers
and stutters around. Oh, he makes a lot of blunders
maybe and errors in his grammar and this and that. You better
be listening to hear from the Living God. It's only as you
hear from God that you'll be saved, my friend. May God use
His Word to that end.