testament to the book of 2nd
Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians chapter 9. I'd like to read verse
15. for our text this morning. Thanks
be unto God. The Apostle Paul, speaking as
his heart overflowed, thanks be unto God for his unspeakable
gift. His unspeakable gift. Might we pray. Father, in the
name of Jesus, we come before you to ask Father, that you might
favor us today with thy presence in this meeting. I do pray, our
Father, that you might fill our hearts with praise and thanksgiving
today, that we might be mindful of our Lord Jesus Christ and
of your great gift of him to us. We praise You for what You've
done. We give thanks unto Thee for
Him who is unspeakable. Surely Thou didst, our Father,
give to us out of Your treasure, out of Your heart, the only begotten
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we thank You, Lord, that
You were willing to give Him for us and give Him unto us. And Lord, we ask this morning
that you'll bless this meeting, that the saints of God might
be refreshed, that they might be able to praise thy name, that
they might be able to offer the sacrifice of praise, that is,
the fruit of their lips giving thanks unto thy name. May they
be reminded this morning of all your mercies, of all your tenderness,
your kindness and your grace toward them, that their souls
might be filled with adoration and praise and worship of thee. We pray thee, our Father, that
you might undertake for the lost here this morning, those that
are strangers to your grace, those that never tasted and seen
that the Lord is good. I pray that they might be brought
out, Lord, of their sin, that they might be brought in, unto
the Lord Jesus Christ and into that place in the heavenlies
that they might be able to enjoy eternal life forever and ever. Oh, Father, arrest those that
are outside of your Son and draw them savingly, Lord, unto yourself. Father, I thank thee that you
have the power to save, thou art mighty to save, and you can
save unto the uttermost all that come unto God by the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so we do ask today that you'll
visit souls, draw them out and save them, our Father. And Lord,
we do ask that you might undertake for the afflicted and we pray
for them that they'll be healed if it be thy will. And Lord,
we ask for those that are cast down and those that are discouraged. We do pray for them that you'll
lift them up, Lord, and that you'll strengthen them. Lord,
you give them patience to bear up under the load. that they
might see, Lord, your hand in faithfulness coming to them and
delivering their hearts and souls. And Lord, I do pray this morning
for those that wait before you for wisdom. I do ask, Lord, that
you'll be pleased to give that wisdom to them. The scripture
says that if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth
to all men liberally, and abradeth not, and it shall be given unto
him. So Lord, grant wisdom to those
that wait for you. Instruction, Lord, be pleased
to give instruction to our hearts and lead us in the way that we
might truly walk before you and glorify Thee. We ask it in Jesus'
name, for His sake. Amen. I recognize that there is a time
the world calls Day of Thanksgiving that is coming up Pardon me just
a moment, I have to change these glasses. I got new glasses, but
I can't seem to deal with them. They bother me to look out with
them. There's a day coming up when
the people of this world will attempt to give some measure
of thanksgiving for whatever it is that they feel in their
hearts. I fear that many do not have
any understanding of what it means to really be grateful,
really to be thankful, and to really pour out their hearts
before God. Now the word thanksgiving means
to acknowledge and confess with gladness the benefits and the
mercies which God bestows either upon ourselves or upon others.
to acknowledge and confess with gladness the benefits and the
mercies which God hath bestowed upon us or upon those around
us. And I wonder this morning if
we acknowledge the fact that We've been the recipients of
the grace and mercy of our God, the goodness of our God, the
love and the patience of our God, His long-suffering, and
if we are thankful in our hearts, really thankful for what the
Lord has done. There are many verses in the
Word of God that we could read. Brother Randy read out of the
seventh chapter of the book of Revelation this morning a great
passage of Scripture, and in verse 12, The writer said, Amen. He said, Blessing and glory and
wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be unto our
God forever and ever. Amen. Truly, our God should be
praised and our praise should begin now. We should give thanks
unto our God. Colossians 2 and verse 7 says,
rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you've
been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Colossians
4 and verse 2 says, continue in prayer and watch in the same
with thanksgiving. Psalm 50 and 14 says, offer unto
God thanksgiving. and pay thy vows unto the Most
High." Psalm 69 and verse 30 says, I will praise the name
of God with a song and will magnify Him with thanksgiving. Psalm 95 and verse 2 says, let
us come before His presence with thanksgiving. and make a joyful
noise unto him with psalms. Psalm 100 in verse 4 says, Enter
in to his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise.
Be thankful unto him, and bless his name. Psalm 107 verse 21
and 22. Oh that men would praise the
Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children
of men. And let them sacrifice the sacrifices
of thanksgiving and declare His works with rejoicing. In Psalm
116 and verse 17, the psalmist said further, I will offer to
thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call upon the name of
the Lord. Psalm 147 verse 7, sing unto
the Lord with thanksgiving. Sing praise upon the harp unto
our God. First Thessalonians 5 and 18
says, in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in
Christ Jesus concerning you. In everything give thanks. We ought to give thanks for everything
if we're in Christ. Because if we're in Christ, that's
God's will concerning us, because anything and everything that
falls out to us as we're in the Lord Jesus Christ, all things
are to be thanked, we're to thank God for because they all will
work together for our good and for His glory. and were to give
thanks to God for everything. Hebrews 13 and 15 says, By Him,
therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. That is the fruit of our lips
giving thanks unto His name. And then in Romans 1 and 21,
there's a verse of scripture that often has touched my heart
as I've thought upon it. And it says, because that when
they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were
thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their
foolish heart was darkened. And the next verse says, in professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools. Now, beloved, we want,
if we can, to have a spirit, and we know that God must give
it, of gratefulness and thanksgiving. We want, if we know God, we want
to glorify Him as God. We want to say blessing and honor
and thanksgiving and power unto our God forever and ever. We
want to glorify God as God. We believe Him to be a sovereign
upon a throne, and we believe that He should be adored. We
believe He should be worshiped. We believe that men and women
should truly give thanksgiving unto Him and praise unto Him. But we see that these, when they
knew God, they glorified Him not as God. They looked around
and they saw God's handiwork in creation. And nature is indeed
God's artwork. And as they looked around and
looked upon it, they were not grateful, even though the invisible
things of Him was revealed, clearly revealed, in what God had made. They did not glorify him as God
and neither were they thankful. Neither were they thankful. And
if there's anyone here this morning and you have been blessed of
God with good health, you've been blessed of God with a good
family, you've been blessed of God to have the means of life,
and God has sustained you and kept you and been merciful and
good to you and to this hour, my friend, may it never be said
of us Neither were we thankful. May it never be said, but may
in our hearts this morning God kindle a great praise toward
himself. And especially may this morning
the Lord kindle a praise in our hearts for his own beloved son. Because when I began to think
about this message and begin to think about praising God and
glorifying God, immediately my heart went to verse 15 here in
our text this morning. Because I believe if there's
anything that men ought to be praising God for, it certainly
is the Lamb of God. It certainly is the Son of God. It certainly is the only begotten
Son of God that God was pleased to give in order that our sins
would be put away and that we'd be able to stand before him in
perfection and completeness. We ought to be praising our blessed
Lord Jesus Christ. And I wish this morning that
you would listen. And listen very carefully to the message.
And I hope that before we're finished this morning, that everybody
here will be mindful and grateful that God has given His Son, and
that you'll be grateful for it, and you'll thank God for that
unspeakable gift which God has given unto us. Now in this chapter,
and we haven't read this chapter this morning, but most of you
might be familiar with it, but in this chapter from which our
text is taken, Paul is stirring up the Christians at Corinth
to be ready with liberal gifts for the poor saints at Jerusalem. And he finishes this chapter
by reminding them of a greater gift than any of them could bring. He said, thanks be unto God for
his unspeakable gift. He would say, I'm not so much
thinking now, my brethren, so much of your gift as I am of
another gift. Not so much of your gifts to
the Lord's poor people as of the Lord's great gift to you,
his poor people. because truly our Lord Jesus
Christ you remember brethren that he who was rich became poor
that we through his poverty might be rich our Lord Jesus Christ
became poor that I might be rich you see I was poor and needy
as the verse in Isaiah 41 said and I was seeking water but could
find none but God was pleased to send his only begotten son.
He was pleased to become poor, that I, through his poverty,
might become rich, thanks being to God for his unspeakable gift. Now, beloved, nothing can so
excite God's people to give as a remembrance of what God has
been pleased to give them. Paul here delivers a master stroke,
I believe, of argument for Christian liberality. Freely you have received,
freely give. Beloved, giving is a grace. Gospel
graces are the best stimulant for gospel motives. In other words, we should tell
men and women what God has done, what God has been very freely,
what God has freely given, His gifts. unto the children of men. And if that won't stimulate your
heart to do what you ought to do toward the Lord, then I don't
know what, we certainly will use no other means. It's wrong
to appeal to believers by reasons drawn from the law of works.
because they're not under it. Children, beloved, are not to
be ruled. Children are not to be ruled
as being under the law, and they're not to be ruled as oxen. They're
to be taught and trained by hearts of love and nurtured by those
who love them. No, the arguments or appeal must
be made from the law of love under which Men are living, those
that are in Christ, those that know Him, those that are truly
the children of God. God has loved us with an infinite
love, and this love is a force within us. The love of Christ,
Paul said, constrains us. Now nothing can move a man to
complete consecration before God like the fact that God so
loved us that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish but have everlasting life. I say
it's a motive for one to consecrate himself unto God. See what God
has done and then give yourself in response to him. Now the gospel
is founded upon giving and Its very spirit is the spirit of
giving, buying and selling, beloved or unknown, in spiritual things,
unless we buy without money and without price. Payment is for
the law. Under the law, under the gospel,
we might say, everything is a gift. Under the gospel, everything
is a gift. Romans 6 and 23 says, for the
wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Ephesians 2 verse 8 and 9, very
familiar verses, says, for by grace are you saved through faith,
and that not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. And in John 4 and verse 10, Jesus
answered and said unto her, that is the woman at the well, If
thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,
Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would
have given thee living water. God gives us His Son. He gives us eternal life in and
through Him. He gives us grace and glory in
His face. Yes, when He gives us Christ,
He gives us all that He has for sinners. Do you believe that?
I believe that when God gave us Christ, He gave us all that
He had for poor, lost sinners. Christ is a gift, dear people.
Don't forget it. consider the dignity of his person
for just a moment. How is it conceivable that we
could have deserved that such a person as he should come here
and live and die for the likes of us? How could we deserve that
the Son of God, Heaven's best, that He would come here and live
and die in our room instead in place? He's the Prince of Life. He's the Lord of Glory. He's
equal with the Father. He's King of Kings and Lord of
Lords. He's very God of very God. And
when I see Him giving Himself up, And for sinners slain, I
think, how could we have deserved such a sacrifice as this? Well, we couldn't have Christ
any other way but by a gift, brother, sister. We could have
Christ no other way but that he be given unto us. No way could we have deserved
that Christ should become a man, that Christ should live in poverty,
that he should die in shame for us. It had to be, I say, it had
to be a gift, a gift from God to us. Now note, moved by this,
we give ourselves back to the Lord and his people and his cause. That's what I was talking about
earlier. We must be moved by gospel motives and by gospel
spirit and principle. And so we give ourselves back
to the Lord. We give ourselves back unto the
Lord. And that's what it means for
us to serve God, is to give ourselves over to the Lord. My son, give
me thine heart. Bow your will to my will. Submit
yourself to me, and submit your way unto my word and to your
truth. It is the glory of the Son, S-U-N,
that it gives light and heat to our world. So it is God's
glory that he gives mercy and peace to the sons of men. And
moreover, as the sun is the author of reflected heat and is all
the more valued because of its beams that can be reflected,
so is God glorified by that part of his goodness which we're able
to impart unto others. He gives to us We give thanks
to Him, and we give to others, and they in turn thank God for
the kindness which He has inspired in us. You see, we serve the
Lord because of what He's done for us and in us. So a round
of thanksgiving to God is created by the spirit of giving, which
first of all displayed itself in the unspeakable gift of God. We're as cups filled at the spring,
and from us the thirsty drink, and praise the fountain. They
praise the fountain. They don't praise us. They praise
the fountain who is God. Now Christ is the gift. Christ
is the gift that Paul is talking about here. He says, thanks be
unto God for his unspeakable gift. Now, Christ is the gift
and he is unspeakable. He is unspeakable and I want
you to think a little bit with me about that word because he
is unspeakable in so many, many ways. To begin with, no man can
doctrinally lay down the whole meaning of the gift of Jesus
Christ to men. The church has produced many
scholars, many divines, and imminent theologians, and they've been
much help to the living family of God, to the church through
the ages. Yet you put them all together,
and they've never been able to unfold unto us the entire meaning
of the gift of the Son of God to men. I sure do like to hear
them try. But I'll tell you, this gift
of God is unspeakable. Oh, the depths. Men have not
been able to fathom the abyss of the mystery. The God of heaven
and glory invading this world in a body of flesh, taking upon
himself a robe of our inferior clay. The sustainer of the universe
taking nourishment from a woman's breast. Can you imagine? Can
you explain all of that? Now, the God who made all the
H20 that there is in the universe, crying out on the cross, I thirst,
I thirst, explain it, I can't. Mystery of mysteries. This God
has come down to earth as a gift to men. We preach that the gift
of Christ has been simply a display of God's goodwill to the race. But is that all there is to it?
Is that all there is? I say no. We preach him as a
declaration of God's opposition to moral evil. But is that the
end of the mystery? No, absolutely not. Some preach
on the general aspect of Christ's death. they think they have reached
the bottom. Have they reached it? I say no. We preach Christ's special relationship
to his own people, and we lay great emphasis upon the fact
of substitution on the behalf of of the Lord's people, how
that Jesus Christ, how that he was treated like we ought to
have been treated, that we might be treated like he should have
been treated, how that God laid upon him all of our sin, and
how he was numbered with the transgressors, that we might
be delivered and called saints of God, that we might be the
Lord's living people. But I feel that we still fail
to express the unspeakable. Now we're apt to think that when
we have laid down his doctrine clearly and distinctly and have
admitted all that others have said and that we have believed
and taught all that be known concerning the gift of Jesus
Christ, amen, that we've reached the bottom and that we truly
have spoken of him that is unspeakable but is not so. Be sure of this,
that the depth of this mystery is unfathomable. When Paul says,
thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift, he means that the depth
is unfathomable. It is an idea. Listen, let me
say this. It is idle, idle to attempt a
definition of infinity. and therefore vain to hope to
declare how wide, how high, how deep, how broad is the wonder
of gift, this wondrous gift of God to the sons of men. Now this
gift is unspeakable, I think, for another reason. No man can
ever set forth the manner of this gift. The way, the method
of the giving are unknown, perhaps unknowable, and therefore it
is unspeakable. Do you understand and could you
possibly explain the manner of the Father giving the only begotten
Son to us? You know, the Bible says He spared
not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. How could
God give the Son to die when He was one with God? He said, I and my Father are
one. Did He not say that? Well, believe me, saith he, in
another verse, that I am in the Father and the Father in me. The Bible says that in him dwelt
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Jesus told Thomas, he
said, when you've seen me, you've seen the Father. There isn't
any other God to see, and the only God that you and I'll ever
see, ever see, throughout eternity, is the Lamb of God, the Son of
God, the Beloved, the Only Begotten of the Father. He's God, and
all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in the Lord Jesus
Christ. He's the only person of the Godhead
that we will ever see, ever. And so believe me, Jesus said,
I'm in the Father and the Father in me. Shall any man explain
this? Nobody can explain this. Or if
he could explain the mystery, can he tell us what it cost the
Father to give his Son? Can a mother tell us how it pains
her heart to part with her child? Can any father tell us the anguish
of losing his only son, his only begotten son? What must it be
to give up your well-beloved son to be despised, to be spit
upon, to be maltreated and murdered? No, we do not know what it is.
It is unspeakable that God should give the gift of his Son. You
that have been bereaved of your dearest, you know the pain which
tears at the heart, but you cannot express your loss to others.
Your grief often is said to be inexpressible. Who shall tell
us what the father felt when he did, as it were, cast the
glory of the well-beloved to the dogs by sending him among
the wicked husbandmen who said, this is the heir. Let us seize
him. Let us kill him. Who shall tell
us what the eternal felt when the brightness of his glory,
the express image of his person, was bound like a felon? accused
like a criminal, mocked as an imposter, and scourged as a transgressor,
rejected as vile and slain as a lawbreaker, one worthy of death,
one worthy of hanging on a tree. Truly, it pleased Jehovah to
bruise him, yet put him to grief. but not without great self-denial
on the part of his father, not without the heart of the father
being wrenched by this sacrifice, this giving of his only begotten
son. All the agony. You remember Abraham
when he would slay Isaac. It was just a faint type of what
it cost the father when he gave up his well-beloved son. The poet said, much we talk of
Jesus' love, but how little understood of his suffering so intense. angels have no perfect sense. It is unspeakable from the standpoint
that none can describe the blessings which come to us through the
gift of Christ. Unspeakable because there's not
a man alive who can stand up and to describe the blessedness
that have come upon fallen sinners through the gift of God's Son. Think of what we've been delivered
from. Think of what you've been delivered from, what you were
by nature, and what you would have continued to have been had
it not been for the grace of God that interposed in your life. And if it had not been for this
gift given, having been made real to your heart, where would
you be today? All my brothers and sisters were
fallen already, but the full results of the fall will never
be seen on earth. People look around and they say,
boy, you can tell this is a fallen world. And you can. And we go
down and we drive through certain places in the large cities in
America, and it's evident men are fallen. And it's evident
that sin abounds. It's evident that this world,
in a sense, is under the management of that devil from hell. It's evident sin all around us. But I'll tell you something,
that the full results of the fall will never be seen on earth
alone, regardless of how tragic the scenes of this world are.
My friend, never. The results of sin will only
be observed in the dark regions of hell where souls are in torment
and agony and where they're under the lash of God and shall be
under the lash of God for all eternity. You think sin is bad? My friend, see those withering
souls in hell, see them off there sitting by themselves tormented
with the pain of memory, tormented with duty neglected, tormented
with opportunities that they never took when they were in
this world, tormented that they rejected the only way of salvation
in the Lord Jesus Christ, tormented for all eternity. They would
not have him when he was here, they would not have him to rule
over them, but now they're in hell. And I want to tell you
something, my friend, listen to me. We might have been there now.
I might have been there now. All of us could have been in
hell now if it hadn't have been for the Lord Jesus Christ and
some will yet, and to think of it, to think of it burdens my
soul and my heart and grieves me inwardly to think that there
would be one of you that will finally go off into that place
where the worm dies not and the fire is not quenched, where God
unleashes the fury of his wrath forever and ever. Oh, my warning
to you is flee the wrath to come. Flee it! And flee to the mercy
seat. Flee to Christ. Flee to the Son
of God. Flee to this gift, this one that
was given by God. Come to Him. Oh beloved, if we
have not Jesus Christ as our own dwelling in our hearts, we're
going to this awful place. And day after day, forever and
ever, all we shall see around us is scenes of the results of
sin, S-I-N. And if you want to escape all
of that, then you must be in Christ when you die. Don't die
in your sins. Flee from the wrath to come unto
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, yes, and the saints who
are in heaven, upon whom the eternal light of God has already
risen, never to set would have been now in outer darkness and
weeping and wailing and gnashing of their teeth had it not been
for this unspeakable gift that God has given in grace. Now the distance between the
unfathomable depth of deserved woe, and the height of unutterable
infinite grace and glory. Angels' wings cannot measure. The angels will not fly back
from one place to the other. Angels' wings will not carry
them from one place to the other. It is impossible to tell the
height and the depth. of this unspeakable gift of God,
but when we begin to think about what we were, and what we could
be, and where we could be now, and where we're going to be by
the grace of God, how wonderful it is. And brother, that's why
this gift is unspeakable. The great things that have fallen
out unto men, because God gave His Son. Furthermore, the gift
of God is unspeakable because the effect it produces upon the
emotions is so great that speech fails. Let me illustrate this
if I can. We don't always have the ability
to express what we feel. We pray for our grateful heart.
We pray for the spirit of thanksgiving. We pray that we might be able.
to express our gratitude unto God before we leave this world.
You know, that's a great part of worship. We read all of the
verses at the outset of our meeting this morning. This is a part
of worship, that we'd be able to tell back to God what He's
revealed to us about Himself, and we'd be able to thank Him
and praise Him for all of His goodness unto us. But a lot of
times we don't have the ability, we don't have the power of speech,
we don't have the ableness to be able to speak. Even what our
hearts feel, we're not able to do it. And oh, we read and we
read and we read, and once in a while we read something that
strikes us and we commit it to memory because it helps us to
express ourselves. And one of the greatest difficulties
that I had as a young preacher is to be able to put into words,
to have a vocabulary, to be able to put into words what it was
I felt in my soul about the things of God. I just didn't have the
vocabulary. I didn't have the tongue, you
see, of a ready writer. I didn't have the ability to
set forth the things I wanted to set forth. Power to speak
of the love of Christ is not always to be taken as an evidence
of true religion, nor is the absence of that power a matter
that should alarm us. You say, I just cannot speak
of the that which is unspeakable. I heard of a woman who testified
that she believed the Lord saved her, and the deacons, they went
to her and visited her, and she wished to join the church to
be baptized, and they were not satisfied with what she could
say. They just said, well, we just can't get enough from what
you're saying to determine whether you really have known the Lord. So they got up and ready to leave.
the house, and she burst out in tears and says, I cannot say
what I would like to say about him, but I would be willing to
die for him. And beloved, that was enough.
That was enough. And many, many times we cannot
speak of the unspeakable, but we can feel in our hearts that
we'd lay down our lives, that we would die for the Lord Jesus
Christ. Many are like that, and in a
sense, all the people of God are that way. We could die for
Christ easier than to tell fully out a sense of the love that
we feel in our hearts for Him. The songwriter said, if we with
ink the ocean fill, and with the skies were parchment made,
and every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade,
to write the love of God would drain the ocean dry, nor could
the world contain the scroll, though stretched from sky to
sky. Surely, beloved, God's love for
us expressed in the person of His Son, this gift is unspeakable
indeed. He is a gift unspeakable. Heaven
cannot match Him. How can earth ever describe Him? When this gift is best expressed,
even when the Spirit of God helps men to speak upon it, they yet
feel that they failed, that they failed. When men sing like angels,
when they write like apostles, when they preach like old Charles
Haddon Spurgeon. They've not been able to express
what they felt, what they inwardly know they ought to have felt
in connection with such a great theme as this. Now then, I'll
come into a close. Unspeakable, I say, is this gift. As a gift unspeakable, Christ
calls forth praise to God from us. The gift of Christ makes
us view God with thankfulness. Makes us view God with thankfulness. And that's my whole purpose and
intent, you see, is to make you grateful for what God did in
sending his son. Never fall into the mistaken
notion that our Lord Jesus Christ came into this world to make
God loving. That wasn't the reason he came.
Jesus Christ came into the world because God was loving. And in love to us, I'm trying
to make you grateful to God for sending this gift. I'm telling
you, Jesus came because the Father was loving. And in love to us,
he gave Christ. The Bible says here in his love,
Not that we love God, but that God loved us and gave his son
to be a satisfaction for our sin. The poet said, "'Twas not
to make Jehovah's love toward the sinner flame that Jesus from
his throne above a suffering man became. "'Twas not the death
which he endured nor all the pains he bore that God's eternal
love procured, for God was love before." God's unspeakable gift
is not the cause of his love then, but it is the fruit. It
is the fruit of his love. God gave you son and we adore
the giver and we bless his name. Bless his name. Bless his name. We ought to express that thankfulness
and the Apostle Paul did in our text. Thanks be unto God for
his unspeakable gift. Paul expressed Thanks for the
Lord. Praising God, beloved, is never
out of season, and it's never, never out of place. Oh, you say,
oh, there's some places maybe where you shouldn't praise the
Lord. Don't worry about that, my friend. Don't worry about
that. Very few people ever err on the side of praising God in
some place where you oughtn't to be praised. Nobody I know
of ever erred that way. And I'm sure I didn't. Now we
are most orderly and proper people, I know. I know that we are. We wouldn't be caught praising
God anywhere else but in a church building, and some of you may
not be willing to do it even there. Praise the Lord even there. We can know people you know.
People been around us for years, never heard us say a word about
the Lord Jesus Christ. There are people dying and go
to hell, our kinfolk, dying and go to hell. They're going to
live eternally in that awful, awful, dreadful place where the
wrath of God's gonna be poured out upon men and women. And we
haven't said anything. We haven't said anything. Oh,
we haven't said a word to them. We haven't warned them. We haven't
told them what their future holds. We haven't told them about this
gift. And then too, I'm talking about the fact that we ought
to be thanking God, praising God for Christ. No hallelujahs
or amens, very few of them in the service either. Maybe you're
saving them for a better sermon. Maybe you're saving them for
a better preacher. But I want to tell you this. There's no
preacher alive ever take a better text and there's no preacher
alive that'll ever preach a better gospel than this preacher. You
got any hallelujahs in you? You got any amens in you? You
got any blessed gods in you? What are you waiting for, my
friend? What are you waiting for? It's time to praise the
Lord. It's time to give glory to God
for this unspeakable gift that God has given unto his people. We are so dreadfully proper And
besides that, we're dreadfully cold as well. Our hearts are
cold. A little love for Christ would
go a long way, would it not? Warming up our hearts. It'd go
a long way in thawing out the icicles of our hearts. A little
love for the Lord Jesus Christ, cultivate a grateful spirit.
When you think of what a gift you have in Christ, you sit down
and you say, I've got this gift. God's given this gift. What's
my response? What's been my response? How
do I feel about it today? How grateful am I now? Am I grateful
to God? Well, you begin to pray that
God give you a heart that feels praise the Lord for Christ. Praise
the Lord for Christ. Could I get somebody to say,
praise the Lord for Christ? Well, praise the Lord for Christ,
I'll say it for you. Some of you, I believe, would
clear your titles to mansions in the skies if you, my friend,
would just praise God more for what He's done for you in giving
this gift. Some of you have no assurance.
Some of you don't know whether you're saved or whether you're
lost. begin to praise God, begin to give Him adoration, begin
to worship at His footstool, begin to bow before Him, begin
to lift up your voice in hallelujahs and singing unto the Lord God
Almighty and praise Him and praise Him and I'll tell you the fog
will dissipate The mist will go away and you begin to feel
that you're one with Christ and that he's yours and that you
belong to him and that truly this gift was to you. God sent
him to you and you begin, it'll all be clear. It'll be clearer
and clearer until you say, I can read my title clear to mansions
in the skies. I know he went to prepare a place
for me and I know he's coming back for me, for me. I know that
he is. I know that he is. All right.
An expression of thankfulness for God's unspeakable gift would
make ourselves all the surer, all the surer of our relationship
with him. The poet said again, come soldiers,
can't you rise and tell the wonders of Emmanuel? Yes, bless the Lord,
we can rise and tell the wonders of Emmanuel. All glory to the
Lamb of God who purchased us with atoning blood. We shall
soon pass. We shall soon pass. We shall
soon make that last journey. We shall pass over Jordan's flood
and join the saved in glory and gather around with that great
multitude that the brother read about in Revelation 7 this morning. and give glory and blessing and
honor and thanksgiving hallelujah the greatest thanksgiving we
will ever observe we shall give it over there on that shore we
show glory in the Lord our God praise God you know the doxology
says from whom all blessings flow Praise Him all creatures
here below. Praise Him above, ye heavenly
hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost. May the Lord be pleased to give
us the ability to think upon and to be grateful for that unspeakable
gift that Paul mentions in verse 15, 2 Corinthians chapter 9. And if you'll thank God for Christ,
you'll begin to study more about what his life really meant, about
what his coming really meant. And it'll be, I believe, unto
your salvation. May God bless you. Mike's gonna
come and lead us in a hymn.