I wanted to begin reading with
verse 13, verse 13 of 1 Corinthians chapter 6. meats for the belly, and the
belly for meats, but God shall destroy both it and them. Now
the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord
for the body, and God hath both raised up the Lord, and will
also raise up us by his own power. Know ye not that your bodies
are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members
of Christ, and make them members of Enharlot? God forbid. What
know ye not that he which is joined to Enharlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one
flesh. But he that is joined unto the
Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that
a man doeth is without the body. But he that commiteth fornication
sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body
is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have
of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are God's. We'd like at the very
outset, and I'll try to make my remarks as brief as possible
and cover as much ground as we can, I'd like to say some things
here about what Paul had to say in regards to the holiness of
God's people and the walk of the Lord's people. It is no small
thing for God's people to be holy. No small thing. I believe that holiness can be
summed up very quickly in the attitude of the mind of the child
of God that says, I want no will but God's will. I desire no will
but God's will. I want His way. I want to please
Him. I want to walk in that manner
and fashion that would glorify Him. I want to walk as love would
dictate that I walk and follow the Lord. We must not say that
we have faith and then fall into a pattern of life that is dishonoring
and would not glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and
Savior. Our outer life is the test for
our inner life, and we need to examine every once in a while,
what about our outer life? How are we living and conducting
ourselves? I know these Corinthians were
very loose living people. They were so, they were heathen
people and they lived in all manner of, in their temples,
all manner of sin and corruption and they practiced it openly
without any sort of hesitation. They were living in open sin
and Paul rebuked them for it. But what about our outer life?
Our outer life reveals what we are inwardly. It reveals our
hearts and our feelings inwardly toward the Lord. And let us never
be content with a faith which can live, as it were, in hell.
Let us not be content with any sort of profession. that can
allow us to live contrary to the mind of God, contrary to
the teachings of the word of God. But let us be as we can
by the grace of God given over to the mind of the Spirit and
live unto him who loved us and gave himself for us. Let us rise
to that which will, which speaks of the holiness of God and which
is in harmony with the Word of God, and that which is in harmony
with the faith of God's elect, as it is revealed in the Scripture.
That faith which will purify the soul, casting down the power
of evil, and will set up the throne-ship of Jesus Christ,
the throne of holiness, within our own spirit and within our
own soul. Now, beloved, there are three
things our text this morning is primarily, verse 19 and verse
20. I want to talk about being bought
with a price, about being bought with a price. Now, there are
three things in verse 20 that I want us to notice. He said,
for you're bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are God's. The first thing I'd
call your attention to is here a blessed fact. A blessed fact,
he says, for you're bought with a price. Now the Lord might have
laid claim upon the lives of his children by the virtue of
the fact that he's the God of creation. But the truth of the
matter is, is that God here does not say that you glorify me in
your body and in your spirit, you glorify me in your body,
it belongs to me by the fact that I created it. No, that's
not what he says. The Lord could, as we said, demand
that we obey Him by virtue of the fact that He created us and
made us what we are, body, soul, and spirit. And then he could
have demanded obedience because he's the great lawgiver. He could
have demanded that we serve him and that we perfectly conform
to his will as it's revealed and character which is revealed
in the Holy Scriptures, in the law primarily. But he did not
do that. You do not, as we think upon
these things, we do know that there are so many, many things
that God could use in order to place us under obligation to
himself. First of all, we noticed here
that he created us, and secondly, we noticed that he's the great
lawgiver, and he could make demands on us on those bases, and then
we know that God preserves us in life. We know that in Him
we live and move and have our being. It is God that sustains
us. Every breath that we breathe,
we have it as a gift from a holy God. And we're preserved and
kept in life by Him giving us this gift. We would die if God
were to withdraw His power from us. And so he could have demanded
obedience on that basis also. I'm your preserver. The Bible
says that I'm the preserver of all men, but especially I preserve
those that believe. And so God could say, Believer,
I preserve you in life. I expect that you live out your
days in honor and glory unto me. But you were made beloved
in the image of God, created in Christ Jesus, And we are bought,
it says. That is the fact. And I want
you to get your mind and heart focused on that blessed fact. Ye are bought. God's people have
been purchased. God's people have been redeemed.
God's people have been bought by the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want you to turn back in
your Bibles, if you will, to the book of 1 Peter chapter 1.
where this is spelled out so very clearly. We are bought with
a price. Now, if I happen to get my tongue
tied up a little bit this morning, you all just don't think a thing
about it, because I'm doing the very best I can. My throat has
been very, very sore this week. It's very hard for me to speak.
But here let me begin with verse 18. For as much, he says, as
you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver
and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your
fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb
without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before
the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last
times for you. So we see here that Peter's telling
us that we were not redeemed with corruptible things. The
word redeemed means to be bought back. And God's people were sold
into sin, and they were slaves of sin, if you can picture them
being sold in a slave market. We see that Jesus Christ stepped
up and he said, I'll lay down the price of their redemption. I will buy them back. And so the Lord Jesus has redeemed
us. And the Bible says it was not
with corruptible things as silver and gold. If you had went into
some of these slave markets, you could have seen the people
being bought with corruptible things, silver and gold. But
our redemption from our vain conversation, vain behavior that
we received by tradition from our fathers was with the precious
blood. Look at verse 19. We were redeemed
not with corruptible things, but with the precious blood of
Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. The Lord Jesus
Christ, he was God's lamb. The Lord Jesus was a lamb that
had no blemish. Absolutely no blemish. There
was no imperfection in the Lord Jesus. He had no sin. There was
nothing about Him that was obnoxious to God, that in any way offended
the justice of God. But Jesus was absolutely perfect,
could not be convicted of any sin. He was without sin. He was without spot. He was God's
lamb foreordained before the foundation of the world. He was,
as the Bible says, he was a lamb slain from the foundation of
the world in the mind and purpose of God. And this was for the
sheep of Christ. It was for those that the Father
would set his love upon. It was for those that would be
given to Christ, and in the covenant of grace, and the Lord Jesus,
He shed His precious blood. He's that Lamb of God that John
the Baptist talked about. John the Baptist said, Behold
the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin. the sin of the elect
world. Behold the Lamb of God. And so
Peter has set before us here this truth, this blessed fact
that we have been redeemed. Now, as we said, we were the
bond slaves of sin. I think most of us here remember
when we were in sin. when we were in sin, when we
were enslaved by sin, when sin had power over us, when we were
not able to break those chains on ourselves, we were not able
to get out from under the sin that was in our life. We were
under the just sentence of divine justice. God said, the soul that
sinneth, it must die. God said, the wages of sin is
death. And we were under the wages of
sin. We were going to receive them.
God was going to punish our transgression. It was inevitable. If we had
remained in the state that we were in, if we would have been
left under, in that condition that we were born into this world
in, we know that God would have punished our transgression, and
Christ stepped forth to become our substitute. He bared his
back to the lash that should have fallen on you. He laid his
soul beneath the sword that should have quenched its fury in your
own blood. You were redeemed at the cross. That's where you were bought.
You were redeemed. You were bought back from sin
at the cross. Jesus, by His life laid down,
has bought and purchased you, body, soul, and spirit. And so we've been redeemed in
Christ. and we're His forever. Now what a blessed truth this
is. Now this price is something precious that has been paid for
us. It is His life's blood. We make
much of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. John said that
we're washed in the blood. We're washed in the blood and
the blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanses us from all sin. That the blood of Christ was
shed to buy my soul from death and hell is a wonder of compassion. That the Lord Jesus was willing
to to go to the cross and to suffer death and suffer the loss
of his life in order that I might be saved. And this would fill
angels, I think, with amazement. And it certainly overwhelms me
as I think of it, that I've been bought with a price, that there's
been a price paid, that God looked upon this poor sinner And down
through eternity, God could see that I would be and that I would
exist. He purposed my existence and
He knew exactly my state, what it would be in this world. He
knew everything about me before He ever allowed me to be conceived
in the womb and brought forth. into this world and he purposed
my redemption and was willing that his son, that the sacrifice
of his son would cover my sin and this overwhelms me. Now to
every person here present, it is either a fact or not. Either
you've been bought with a price or you've not been. It's a fact
or it's not. Now is it a fact to you? Can
you say this morning, I have been bought with a price. I feel
the claim of God upon my soul. I feel that I owe the Lord my
life's obedience. I feel that I must lay my life
down at His feet and that I must serve Him and glorify Him and
honor Him. I believe I'm obligated. I believe
that God has first claim on my life because it is a fact I have
been bought with a price. Do you believe that? I wish that
everybody here this morning would say amen. I believe that. I have
been bought by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now,
beloved, the alternative to that, and I don't think anybody here
would stand up and openly deny and say, no, preacher, you probably
couldn't get them to do it. And to say, no, I have not been
purchased by the blood of Christ. There would be nobody. You dare
not stand and say, I have not been bought with a price. But
would you dare to stand and say, I have been bought with a price? Is there a poor sinner here that
would be willing to make testimony before this congregation and
would be willing to stand and say and get the burden of guilt
off your soul and testify and say, I have been bought with
a price. And that's the belief, that's
the faith of my soul. I truly believe that Jesus Christ
laid down His life for me. Now, beloved, it's either a fact
or it isn't. I'm talking about the blessed
fact. If Jesus died for you, my friend, why don't you give
testimony to the fact that you believe it with all your heart.
This is the only hope of a son of Adam in this world. This is
the only hope of getting past the judgment and getting into
the bliss of glory. It's the only hope of a sinner
is to believe that Jesus bought you with his own precious blood. Do you believe it? Well, this
is the most important fact in all your history. Even your birth
in the flesh My friend, is not the most important fact in your
history without the second birth? Unless you're born again by the
Spirit of God. Now, if you're born again by
the Spirit of God, the fact that Jesus bought you with His blood
is the greatest fact. It's the most important fact
in all your history. And it don't make any difference
to me what you could produce and what you could share with
me this morning as being an important fact in your life, whether it
be short or long. I say the most important fact
in my life and in all my history is the fact that I was bought
by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and I experienced the
second birth. And might you say, let the day
perish that I was born if I could not establish that Jesus had
bought me and that this blessed fact was true about my soul. Oh, let the day perish wherein
I was born. May it would have been better
for me never to have been born into this world if it had not
been for this blessed fact that Jesus died to purchase the redemption
of a son of Adam and that in Christ we can have full deliverance. Now let me say also that your
connection with Calvary is the most important thing about you
now. You say, oh well preacher, there's
some things that I'd like for you to know. I'd like to share
with you some of the honors that have been bestowed upon me. I'd
like to tell you about this and that and something else. My friend,
let me tell you, your connection If you're saved, if you're a
delivered soul, I mean if your sins are under the blood, if
the Spirit of God has regenerated and made you alive in Christ,
I tell you the most important, your most important connection
is with Calvary. You say, I got a connection over
here, I got a connection over there. I know some people that
know some people, and I have some important connections in
this world. But beloved, do you have this
connection with Calvary? Do you have this connection with
Calvary? This is the most important thing
about you now. Are you under the blood? Is your
sins under the blood? Are you a believer? Is this fact
true of you that you have been delivered from your sin? If so be that this connection
is real with us, well, then we're on grounds to become the servants
of the Most High God. We're on grounds to honor and
glorify Him, become His faithful worshipers. We're on grounds
whereby we can live to His honor and live to His praise and not
worship Him a piecemeal but to worship Him every day of our
lives and all the day of our lives. And let me say that this
will be the most important fact in all your future existence.
Whatever happens to you, I don't know what's going to happen to
you. In the future, I have no way of knowing. And just like
you have no way of knowing what's going to happen over that next
rise, when you, in the rises of life, when you go over the
hills of life, what's going to happen and what's going to befall
you, you have no way of knowing. But this fact, this blessed fact
I'm talking about, this fact of Jesus dying and purchasing
us with his own blood, him having bought us with a price, My friend,
this is the most important fact in all your future existence,
and I'm talking about not only in this life, I'm talking about
in the life to come. What do they sing about in glory,
my friend? What are you going to sing about
when you get to heaven? Is not the anthem of heaven, thou wilt
slay and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood? Redeeming love
is the theme of heaven. That's what we're going to be
singing about. That's what we're going to be talking about when
we get to heaven. Now when you get to heaven, your
most important memory will not be that you were wealthy or poor
in this life and that you just got sick and died, but the most
important memory is that you were bought with a price. And
that throughout eternity is going to fill your soul with glory
and amazement. I was bought with a price. Somebody said, why are you here?
I was bought with a price. How did you get here? I was bought
with a price and I've been washed in the blood of the Lamb, slain
from the foundation of the world. I'm clean through the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now then, I think that we around
here looking at mountains all the time, we're taken up with
some of the high peaks of the mountains. But let me tell you
something this morning. That there, when I get to glory,
the highest mountain that I'm going to think about is Mount
Calvary. That's the highest mountain as far as I'm concerned. As a
poor sinner, the highest mountain in the world is that Mount Calvary
where my Lord Jesus Christ laid down His life and where He suffered
death in my room and stood in place. Now then, in the second
place, that's the first point of the text, is this blessed
fact that we've been bought with a price. Now it's very simple.
It's not a profound message in the sense that of homiletical
arrangement and suggestion, but it is profound in the sense of
the material and the truth that is being set forth. In the second
place, I want you to notice the plain consequences that arises
from the blessed fact. In other words, if God has claim
on you, body, soul, and spirit, because Jesus bought you with
a price of His blood, then there's some consequence that arises
from this, and I want you to listen to me. First of all, it
is clear as a negative that you're not your own. that you're not
your own. Now you recognize that if you
were bought, that you're not your own, that you do not belong
to yourself, that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost,
which is in you, which you have of God, and you're not your own.
That's the last, that's verse 19. Ye are not your own. means that you do not belong
to yourself, that you have indeed been purchased. It's a great privilege not to
be your own, like a ship deserted by its crew. Can you picture
a boat out on the ocean? And mysteriously, the crew is
gone, and here is this boat out drifting aimlessly on the waters
of the ocean, and it's deserted. Well, beloved, listen, and not
to be your own is a great privilege. To be owned by God. I remember reading in Psalm 84
in verse 10, where David said, I'd rather be a doorkeeper in
the house of my God. than to dwell in the tents of
the wicked." And what he meant by that was, I'd rather be tied
to a post in the temple of God than to be loose to walk in sin
and dwell in sin in the temple, in the tents of the wicked. I'd
rather have my ear bored with an awl to the door saying I love
my master. I want to be owned. It's a privilege
to be owned and not to be your own. Not just to belong to yourself. How thankful you and I should
be that we're not derelict today, that we're not our own, that
we're not left on the wild wastes of chance to be tossed to and
fro by circumstances, but there's a hand upon our helm. We have on board a pilot who
owns us. We have somebody who has a hold
of our life. And that is God Almighty. He
owns us and He has a hold of our lives. We're in His hand.
Jesus said, I give unto my sheep eternal life, they'll never perish,
neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which
gave to me is greater than all, and no man can pluck them out
of His hand. We're in the hands of the Lord.
And the Lord owns His people. And those that He owns, He protects. He preserves our going in and
our coming out. The Lord is the protector and
the preserver. We talked a little bit about
that earlier. But we have this pilot who owns
us. David said this God is our God
and He shall be our guide even unto death. He'll be our guide.
He'll be the one. In this life, God's people humbly
submit, bow themselves down to God, and ask that he might rule
and overrule in all of their affairs in this life. They submit
themselves unto God day by day, bowing to his lordship, knowing
they're not their own. We do not live henceforth, Paul
said, any longer unto ourselves, but unto him who died and rose
again. He said, the love of God provokes me. I do not live any
longer myself, I live unto him who died and rose again. We are
not our own. If you take the sheep out on
the mountainside, facing all that the lost sheep faces, It
belongs to the shepherd who will not willingly lose his property. The Lord will go out there and
get that sheep because it's his property. He purchased his people. He bought his sheep and the Lord
will protect and preserve them. And thank God we're not our own.
Now in the light of this, my body is not my own. That's what
I'm driving at. My very body is not my own. I
have no right to injure myself. I have no right to do anything
this body that would destroy it. I have no right to develop
habits that are going to destroy my body. I am to do everything
in my power, my ability, use as much common sense that God
has given me to in some way or another keep myself the best
I can so that my body, being the temple of the Holy Ghost,
can be used to the honor and praise and glory of the one who
bought me, the one who purchased my redemption. For this body
is borrowed. It is borrowed. It is borrowed
from the Lord. It belongs to God. The body,
we read, meets for the belly and the belly for meats. But
God shall destroy both it and them. And God hath both raised
up the Lord and will raise up us by his own power. And these
bodies are the members of Christ. and they belong to Him. They're
members of Christ and they've been purchased and they're borrowed.
See to it that you develop no habits, that you do not become
an alcoholic, a drug addict, a dope head. See to it that you
do not get involved in anything that is going to shorten your
life, humanly speaking, but that your life will be preserved and
kept. Now I do not want to get into this to any degree other
than to say that I am against cremation. I believe the body
is for the Lord. And I do know and believe that
the body will be reduced to ashes one way or the other. However,
I do believe that for the dignity of the body which God has made,
that that body should be buried in a scriptural Passion and that
the body should be placed into the ground and God in his way
That he reduced that body to dust as he has purpose to do
it and God has set in the motions in the body that which will reduce
the body to dust and And I am against cremation to a lot of
people and I suppose a lot of good people. But I think that
one of the ways in which the heathen, how that they paid tribute
to their false gods was by burning bodies and by burning even babies
and sacrificing babies upon altars. And I'm against all of that.
I believe the body is for the Lord. Even though I know that
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, Yet this
body is for the Lord. It belongs to him. And he purchased
us body, soul, and spirit. He purchased us to be a temple
of the Holy Ghost. Now we have no right to exercise
any capricious government over ourselves. His will must be my
will. His will must be my will. Somebody said, I can do as I
please. I can do as I please. My friend, you cannot do as you
please if Jesus Christ has bought you with a price. You say, well,
it's my life, I'll live it as I please. Well, then you go on
and live it as you please, but it won't be long before you will
be wailing and lamenting the fact that you have destroyed
your life. And you have no, listen to me,
the smartest, the wisest, the most intelligent thing you could
do is bow your knee to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and say, Father,
I want no will of my own. And the quicker you could come
to getting on your knees before God and saying, Lord, I abandon
my will entirely and completely into your hand. I want no will.
And Lord, if you place in my hand my life and my decisions
and put it in my hands, I'll turn right around and give it
back to you. I do not want to rule. I do not want to run my
life. I want my life under the leadership
and guidance of the Holy Spirit. I want you to own me and I want
your will done in my life and I'll wait upon you for that will
to be done. I'll wait upon you for that will
to be done. No right to serve ourselves.
We have no right because you've been redeemed just like a slave
that was bought by a particular master. That individual could
not go out and begin to serve himself and start a little business
on his own. He couldn't do that. He was owned
by this master and he had to serve that master. He had to
serve him. He had no right to serve himself. And our object must not be our
own ease, our own comfort, our own honor, our own wealth. If
our aim arises no higher than our personal advantage in this
life, then we're false to the fact that we've been bought with
a price. If all we're interested in is
our own life's ease, our comfort. Somebody said, you know, I really
would like to be a little more comfortable. Well, maybe it'd
be all right to be a little bit more comfortable if it wouldn't
make us forget God. If it wouldn't make us forget
the fact that we've been bought with a price. And then our honor.
Oh, how important our honor is unto us. How important it is
that everybody knows who we are and knows why it is that things
turned out like they have in our lives. How important it is
that we get our honor. Well, my friend, what little
bit of honor we could get in this life is absolutely, totally
worthless. And what we need to be concerned
about is our God being honored in our lives. Is He being honored? I mean, have we like a grain
of wheat fallen into the ground and died? that he might bring
forth much fruit in our lives. What about our submission to
God? Well, or then this business of
wealth. Somebody says, I sure hate to
live poor. Well, if it was the will of God for you to live poor,
I guess you'd be, it'd be all right with you, wouldn't it?
If it was the will of God, the Bible says that he will withhold
no good thing from them that walk uprightly. That's what the
Bible says. Now there's a matter of faith
here. that God said, now, I withhold no good thing from them that
walk uprightly. Now it would be wrong for us
to desire something that's evil in the first place. And in the
second place, the Lord said, I will not withhold any good
thing from you. And so why don't you just rest
your situation about your wealth in the hands of the Lord and
believe that God can provide for you. Be diligent. Be diligent. Be about the business that you're
to be about, but leave the matter of your wealth in the hands of
the Lord and wait on the Lord. While some people are desperately
trying to become rich, they wind up missing the opportunity which
God would give them to have what he purposes in his providence
that they have. And discontentment is a terrible
thing. And it all rises out of the fact that we don't understand
God's claim on our life. We need to trust God, that's
what we need to do. And we need to wait on the Lord.
And we need to believe that whatever God has purposed for our life,
that He'll most surely give it. He that spared not His own Son,
but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also through
Him freely give us all things? Paul the Apostle said, but my
God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory
by Christ Jesus. You know, I believe the God of
the Bible is a giving God. I believe he is. I believe he's
a giving God. I just believe that, you know,
I had an uncle down in Southern Indiana that passed away this
last summer, and he had a trash route for a hobby. That's right,
he had a trash route for a hobby. And this trash route was in an
area of Bloomington, Indiana where the college professors
and the wealthy people lived. And he had certain customers
there that for years he had picked up their trash. And anytime they
were to remodel, anytime they were to change furniture, anytime
that they were to do anything that they were going to discard
items, these people being wealthy, he would be the recipient of
those articles. They were set out for him, set
out for Mr. Sparks to pick up on his route. And he had a room that was full
of treasures where he had picked them up on his trash route. I
mean, good stuff. And when David, my son, moved
to Indiana, he didn't take anything much as far as furniture. Gonna
set up a little apartment. So Uncle Donnie said, come down,
bring your truck and come down. And so he knew right where to
take him. He took him to this house. I was with him. And took
him there, and there sat a real nice daybed. Folds out into a
bed, and a nice couch, nice Zenith television, and all kinds of
furniture, which was free. Good stuff. Because the people
that were giving it away were wealthy. Now, beloved, listen.
I believe that God is a giver. God is a giver. And I'm mightily
interested when God's going to give something away. I'm mightily
interested in it. Oh, I'd like to be there when
God's going to give something away. And I just believe that
the Lord will withhold no good thing from them that have bowed
to His Lordship. And God's going to give some
things away. And you just keep bowing before this God. Paul
said, but our God shall supply all your need according to His
riches. in glory by Christ Jesus, through
Christ Jesus. God's people have access to the
treasures of heaven. And that rejoices my heart. Giving. Giving. God's gonna give. God's gonna give. God's gonna
give. You see, it's not like we serve
a God that's got nothing and that's got no ability to give.
A God that can't put something into your hands. That's not the
way it is. We're serving the God of glory
and the God of heaven, a God who was able to give that which
his own justice demanded in order to save the people that he set
his love upon from the foundation of the world has got to be a
rich God. And God gave his son, his own
son, the Lord Jesus. And I quoted the verse, let me
do it again. He that spared not his own son, but delivered him
up for us all, how shall it not also through him freely give
us all things? And so then the plain consequences
of it is, is that we're not our own. that we're not our own,
but we belong to God. Now the positive side of this,
and let me just emphasize this, we've already touched on it,
we won't spend much more time on it, but I want to emphasize
this. Our body and our spirit are God's. This is a very high honor to
you that God so owns you that He not only is going to indwell
you in this life, but that you're going to arise again at the first
resurrection. God's gonna raise you up. He
owns that body. And when He put His Holy Spirit
in you, when you were regenerated, when you become a child of God,
That Holy Spirit was an earnest, a down payment, showing that
God owns your body and that on the resurrection He's going to
claim it. He's going to raise it from the dead. The Spirit
of God. Every body that is put into the
grave in which the Spirit of God dwelt in time is going to
come forth in the first resurrection. Now beloved, there is no mortgage
or lien upon us. When the scripture says that
Christ died for us and that he bought us with his own blood,
it means that he did not leave us in hock. The mortgage and
the lien has been paid and has been satisfied, and sin shall
not lord it over us, and we're not debtors to the flesh to live
after it. You do not have to live and bow
yourself down to sin. You have been delivered. God
has delivered you. Now we all have the sin nature
and there's not a one of us here that can breathe without sinning. But as far as sin lording over
us, it has no right to say you owe me. You don't owe sin anything. Nothing. The mortgage has been
paid, the lien is canceled, and you don't owe sin anything. We're not debtors to the flesh
to live after the flesh. And anytime we willingly submit
ourselves to the mind of the flesh, it's something that we
willfully do. It's not that we are bound to
do it, that God has left us in a position where we have to do
it. We've been delivered from that. Now then, this natural
conclusion, he says that we're to glorify God. We're to glorify
God. Well, how are we going to glorify
God? Well, we've been bought with a price, we're not our own,
we belong to the Lord, and we're going to serve Him. We glorify
God, I believe, in the purity of our lives, in the purity of
our doctor. The Bible says that we should
have good works in our life in order that men might glorify
the Lord, that they might glorify God because of that. I believe that there's a way
that God's people can live that is honoring to God. that would
be glorifying to Him. I beg God constantly for deliverance. I think you're doing the same.
If you're a child of God, there are many things that seem to
have a hold of us, hold us down, keep us from living maybe like
we'd like to. And we beg God for deliverance
all the time. And the Bible says whether we
eat or drink, we ought to do all to the glory of God, have
a singleness of purpose about our lives. Whether you eat, whether
you drink, whatsoever you do, do it to the glory of God. In
our zeal for the Lord, I think we can glorify God. We worked
hard for sin, didn't we? I mean, we were the willing horses
in the service of Satan. We'd just get in there and pull
and tug and we'd get on the boat and we'd oar. I mean, we'd pull
on them oars when we were in sin. We would live and we worked
hard. in sin. Now then, how about our
zeal for the Lord? I mean, is our zeal what it ought
to be? Enthusiasm for the things of God. Are we interested in
spreading the gospel of God's free grace? Are we interested
in getting out the message of God's grace, speaking, talking,
carrying testimony of the Lord's mercy to those around us? Are
we giving over to it? Do we have a zeal for singing
the praises of God? Do we have a zeal for worship?
More and more, the older I get, the more zeal I have towards
a pure worship service. I'm not interested in what a
lot of religious people call worship service, where they come
together and for the first 15 or 20 minutes, all they do is
give announcements and introduce Brother Darby's sister who's
come with him from here, there, and yon. Or Deacon Zumwalt is
back this morning. He's had this operation. He's
been away. And for 15 or 20 minutes, they
go on and on. And then there's announcements. We've got to give all these announcements.
People have got bulletins right in their hands and gives all
this. But we've got to insult their intelligence by reading
the bulletin to them and spend about another 15 or 20 minutes.
And then we're going to sing a few ditties, and we'll sing
them, and first thing you know, the preacher, he gets up and
he's got five minutes, and he reads just a little bit of something
out of some particular magazine or something, and it's over with
and done, and everybody's looking at their watches and time to
go, oh, that's not worship. That's not worship. Worship!
is to come together to honor and glorify God, not Deacon Zumwalt
and not Mr. Darby's sister or anybody else. It's to glorify God, to honor
God, to praise God, to exalt God. And the longer I live and
the more I feel the claim of God upon my life that Christ
died for me and bought me, I feel that I want a pure worship service,
that I want to spend that time to the glory of God, to the singing
of good hymns, as we do here in this place, and to the reading
of the Word of God, as we've been hearing it read in the Book
of Revelation. and preaching of the Word of
God that honors Christ, exalts Him, gives Him all the glory,
strips man of everything which he could glorify himself and
honor God and exalt the sovereign God of the Bible. This is our
purpose. This is what this is about. And
I don't want to hear from anybody saying, well, you people just,
you're just stuck in a rut. Well, we're stuck in a rut and
we're going to dig the rut deeper if we can. We're gonna live,
this is gonna, we believe in worshiping the God of the Bible
and praising our God and giving him glory. Now when a man sets
himself as one owned of God, I think it's true that he causes
a degree of curiosity. Does he not? Does he not? If a man is owned by God and
he lives in the light of the fact that he's been bought with
a price, He's a, people get curious. Say, I just wonder about that
guy. Why does he live the way he does? Well, he lives the way
he does because he's been bought with a price he's not his own.
He belongs to God. He belongs to Christ. And so
he lives that way and people are going to say, I don't understand
you. No, the Bible says that a spiritual man is understood
of no man. He understands the mind of Christ
himself, but he's understood of no man. Nobody can figure
him out. Say, I don't know just what makes
you tick. Well, a spiritual man, you can't understand exactly
what makes him tick. But it's the fact that he feels
like he don't belong to himself. He feels like he's got to live
for the glory of Christ, for the honor of Christ. He's got
to do it. And let the young people snicker,
and let the folks down at the job, let them say what they want
to. I've been bought with a price. I've been bought with a price.
I glorify God, my body and my spirit, which are His. I walk
with Him. I'll do His will. I'll wait on
Him. I'll have my ear bored with the awl to His door. I love my
God, my Master, and I'll serve Him. I belong to Him. I wonder
if some of you have been thinking about what I challenged you with
while ago, about this blessed fact, and about whether or not
you could testify to the fact that, yes, Yes, I believe He
died for me. I believe I have been bought
by the blood of the Lord Jesus. Now in people that believe that
and have been saved by believing it, there's something in them
and you could not talk them out of it. You couldn't talk them
out of it. Now I'm not here to talk anybody
into it either. If the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ has bought your soul, you know it. You feel it in your
heart. Don't you feel it right now? Don't you feel it that the
blood of Jesus has washed you from your sin, and that you've
been, that you're owned by God, that this thing is bigger than
you are, bigger than the preacher, bigger than your mom and daddy,
that the Lord has done something for you. Do you feel that? Do
you know that in your own heart? If you do, if you do, that you're
the person I'm looking for to stand up and say, I think the
Lord's done something for me, preacher. I believe that Jesus
died in my room and stayed in place, He suffered my hell for
me. He bought me back from the slave
market of sin. I belong to Christ and I want
to serve him and glorify him. Let's have a song, Mike.