1st Corinthians chapter 1. I want us to look at verse 18.
I'd just like to read this verse and then introduce to you the
subject of the morning. But verse 18 of 1st Corinthians
chapter 1. For the preaching of the cross
is to them that perish foolishness But unto us which are saved,
it is the power of God. The other day when I returned
home, I had a note in the mail from a fellow out in California. And I, at the time that I looked
at the note, I couldn't for the life of me figure out who it,
you can wait just a moment, who it was, the gospel of His grace. Now, we notice here in verse
18, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, For the preaching of the cross
is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it
is the power of God, the message of the cross, or the preachment
of the cross. What do we learn from the cross?
Well, we learn something as we begin to study the Word of God,
who was there, who was at the cross, and what took place at
the cross, and how it happened that that great event on that
day took place, that our Lord Jesus Christ died on that cross. Now, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus
is the children's bread. It is the children's bread. God's
people enjoy the gospel. Those that are believers, those
that have a hope, those that are prisoners of the hope of
the gospel, they love the gospel. The gospel is dear to them. They
appreciate it. They're encouraged by it. and
their lives are strengthened by the gospel, and they continue
as they listen to the gospel week after week, month after
month, they continue to look back, away from themselves, back
into the Lord Jesus, who is the gospel. They look to Him. Now,
do you love the gospel? Well today, my friend, if you
do, I believe you're saved. I believe you're a child of God
if you love the message of the cross. If you love the message
of the cross of our Lord Jesus, then I believe you can truly
lay hold to the fact that you are indeed in Christ and that
your sins are forgiven, they're put away, and that you're saved.
Now the Bible says in 1 Timothy 3 and 16 that great is the mystery
of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. Our Lord Jesus Christ came down
from heaven, and He was the manifestation of the Almighty God. And we know
that the Lord Jesus Christ, that He was seen in the world, that
He was believed on in the world, and we know that the Lord Jesus
died, that He was buried, and that He rose from the dead. that
He rose from the dead, and that the Father received Him back
into glory, and that He's seated there today. He's a living Christ. He's a living Christ, and He's
seated at the right hand of God. And we rejoice to know this Christ. And in 2 Corinthians chapter
5, we read where that we are ambassadors for Christ. as though
God did beseech you by us we pray you in God's stead be you
reconciled to God for He was made to be sin for us He knew
no sin but that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him
and so beloved we preach the message of the cross to you that
you might be reconciled unto God that you might see that God
who was the offended party whenever man sinned and fell and broke
his law, that God being the offended party, that God sends out the
message of reconciliation. There's a message and that message
is in the preaching of the cross. It is in the message that we
hear or receive from the cross. Now we're under orders having
been sent of God, having been called of God, and commissioned
of God, we're under orders only to preach one message if the
world goes on, and if it stands for a million years, we have
one message, one message, that is the message of the cross.
Paul said, I determined, make no difference what people wanted
to hear, make no difference what I could have preached, I determined
to preach Christ and Him crucified, the message of the gospel. Now
when we survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory
died, what is it that I see? What do I see when I look at
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ? Well, first of all, I'd like
to say that we look at the cross, and I believe if we've got eyes
to see it, given to us by the Holy Spirit, and given to us
to see it as it's revealed in the Bible, that we see the message
of the sinfulness of man. Now the penalty of the broken
law nailed our Lord Jesus Christ to the cross. When our Lord Jesus
hung on that cross, he was in the clutches of God's holy law. It was the law of God that took
our Savior to the cross and demanded death the death of Him. It was the law of God. It was
the fact that we had broken the law. The scripture says in Galatians
3 and 10, that cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things
that are written in the book of the law. Cursed is everyone
that continues not in the law. And then the Lord Jesus, it says,
was made a curse for us. Cursed is everyone that hangeth
on a tree. And our Lord Jesus was hung on
a tree and He died there on that cross because He was being cursed,
because He was our representative, because He was the representative
of sinners. He was numbered, the Bible says,
with transgressors. The Lord Jesus took upon himself
our sin and our guilt and because of God's immaculate holiness,
the Lord Jesus had to die because he represented me. He was standing
in my stead and standing in my place as a sinner. He was made
a curse for us and there's no hope. There is no hope outside
of the the fact that Jesus Christ was made a curse for us because
we're all under the curse today if Jesus did not become a curse
and was not made one by God the Father in our place, in our room. Now we need somebody who can
bridge the gap between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of
man. Somebody that can bridge the
gap. Well, beloved, the Lord Jesus is the one that bridged
that gap. And as I look at the cross, I
see him dying as a sinner. I see him dying as one who is
guilty. I see him dying as one that the
vengeance of God has seized and laid hold upon. I see him suffering
like a worm and like a sinner. I see that clearly, and I say
to myself, the gap has been bridged between a holy God and this poor
sinner. The gap has been bridged. The
Lord Jesus has paid my debt, and he satisfied divine justice,
and he took upon himself my guilt, my shame, and he paid the price. Now man is a lawbreaker, and
this translates out to the fact that man is a sinner, and this
was proof approved when the Lord Jesus Christ hung on the cross. He was suffering there as a sinner. Isaiah 53 verse 5 and 6 teaches
that our guilt was laid on Him, that all of our sin met together
on Him, and I don't have any chance this morning As I stand
here before you, having known something of the teaching of
the Word of God for a number of years, I don't have any chance
of staying out of hell if it was not so, because I know that
if my sin was not laid on Him, and if He didn't pay for it,
I don't have any other way of getting rid of it. I don't have
any other way of satisfying a holy God. I don't have any other way
of blotting out the transgressions that are on the books of God
if the Lord Jesus Christ, if my sin wasn't laid on Him, I
think my sins occasioned His death. I don't know how you feel
about it, but it was my sin that occasioned His death. It was
the sin of His people as it was laid upon Him that occasioned
His death. Did you ever blame yourself for
the death of the Son of God? Did you ever feel any guilt?
And did you ever feel yourself, in yourself, that it was your
sin and your transgression that nailed the Son of God to the
cross. It took, listen to me now, the
agony of the shed blood to forgive my sin. The agony of the shed
blood. Now men go to hell, I believe,
for two reasons. Number one, they go to hell for
what we did in Adam. We all was in Adam when he fell. And what he did, we did. We were
represented by our federal representative. That was Adam. And whatever he
did, we were in him. And so therefore, we was as guilty
as he. And then what we did ourselves
when we came into this world. You know, the Bible says we came
into this world speaking lies. The Bible says that in sin did
our mother conceive us. The Bible teaches that we were
born in sin and that we went astray from our mother's womb. And all through our lives, until
our conversion, we know that sin and its guilt building up,
building up, building up. And we know that until the Lord
blotted out our sin and put it away, Until that time, sin was
being charged, imputed unto us. And then it was taken away, and
from that time, there has been no sin charged to me. All my sin was charged to our
Lord Jesus Christ. and He paid our sin debt in the
full. So therefore, I believe the first
message of the cross is the fact of our sinnerhood, the fact of
man's sinfulness, the fact of man's depravity, and the fact
that man is lost apart from the Lord Jesus. And then I see, I
think also, a message of the holiness of God. Now, this is
so very important. God is holy. The Bible says that
God is holy. Do you believe that the law of
God will stand in its awful majesty? That the law of God will stand
as it is written? I believe that it will. I believe
it will. Do you believe that all transgressions
big and little, will receive a just recompense of reward. Do you believe that God will
punish sin? Do you believe that? Well, my
friend, if you don't believe that the answers to these questions
are yes, then you look at the cross. Look at the cross. Well,
as you look at Calvary, we see God dot the I's, as one old preacher
said, and cross the T's of His holy law. When we see the Lord
Jesus hanging there on the cross, the cross thunders more terribly
than Sinai against sin, and the cross says that God must. that God must and that God will
punish sin. And that no individual can escape
the punishment of their sin apart from them being in and found
in a substitute. And that substitute being Jesus
Christ. That substitute being He that
hung on a cross. You can't escape, my friend.
There's no way. There's no way. The bloodhounds
of God are upon your trail. You cannot escape. God will punish
sin. He'll punish your big sins. He'll
punish your little sins. And that's what the cross says.
Whenever the Lord Jesus suffered on that cross, it says God hates
sin. It says God will punish sin.
It says that God will exact full payment for sin from you or from
your representative. and the representative of the
Lord's people is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now next I think it points
to the provision of God. It points to the provision of
God as we see the cross and hear the message of the cross. The
provision of God is for the salvation, the justification of sinful man. Now there is hope for you if
you be the worst or best sinner out of hell this morning, if
you come through the cross to the Lord, if you come through
the cross, through Christ, to God. The Bible says that there
in Hebrews chapter 7 verse 25, that he is able to save to the
uttermost all that come unto God by him, seeing that he ever
liveth to make intercession for them. And the old song says,
I must needs go home by the way of the cross. There's no other
way but this. I shall never get sight of the
gates of life if the way of the cross I miss. The way of the
cross leads home. The way of the cross leads home.
It is sweet to know as I onward go The way of the cross leads
home. Beloved, the provision of God
was made or was revealed at the cross. Well, what is it? The
occasion of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ is rooted
in sin, and the end of it is found in the salvation from sin. The very incarnation, the occasion
itself, is rooted in sin. Why did God become a baby? And why was He born in a manger?
Why did God invade this world in a body of flesh? It was because
the reason was rooted in sin, and the end was found in the
salvation of sin. Now this throws, I think, an
intense emphasis on the nature of the work which the incarnated
Son of God came to perform. What, after all, are you looking
for in the Lord Jesus Christ? I wonder this morning as I preach
to you, surely all of you have a high esteem for the Lord Jesus
Christ. But I ask you this morning, what
are you looking for in the Lord Jesus? I said the cross was a
message of the provision of God for the souls of his people.
Are we looking simply for a teacher? Are we looking for an example?
Are we looking for a revealer of God? An unveiling of some
mystery of the spiritual world? What are we looking for when
we look to Christ? Are we looking for one who will
show us the life beyond the grave or Are we looking for a protector,
a strong governor on whose arm we can rest? Are we looking for
a tower of strength for our support and our safety in this world?
Is this all that we're looking for when we look to the Lord
Jesus Christ? No, beloved, we're looking to
Christ for a ransom from sin. for a redeemer, an expiation,
a reconciler with God. That's what I'm looking to God
for. I'm looking to God, to Christ as one who paid the ransom. One who paid the ransom. A ransom
has been found. and the Lord Jesus is that ransom
from sin. He's the Redeemer. He's the one
to satisfy God. He's the one to reconcile me
unto God. Christ is the foundation stone
of our hope. The Bible says in Colossians
that He is our hope. He's the foundation stone. So
when we're looking to the cross, we look to the provision of the
cross, and we look to see what it was that our Lord Jesus Christ
did. Upon Christ depends the usefulness
of the gospel, and we must recognize that. Upon Christ depends the
usefulness of the gospel. Now, beloved, you'll never be
interested not one bit in what I'm saying to you this morning
until you face up to what we have already said in this message
about your sinfulness and God's holiness. But once you become
aware of the sinfulness of man and the holiness of God, then
you'll get mightily interested in the provisions of the death
of Christ, the reason for his incarnation, the reason for his
death on the cross. You'll get mightily interested
because it's your only way out of the dilemma that you're in.
It's the only way to escape hell. It's the only way to ever be
joined with Christ in eternal glory. Well, on the cross, the
Lord Jesus Christ then has answered to the justice of God for all
my sin. There he gave, and he gave, and
he gave, till he became poor unto death. that we, through
His poverty, might be rich. It was there that our Lord Jesus
Christ gave and gave and gave. Now don't you love the Lord Jesus
this morning for what He did on that cross? Don't you love
Him? Well, then we have a word here in our text. We have a word,
and this word is the word of the perishing reprobate. What
do they say about the cross? Well, it says the preaching of
the cross is to them that perish, it's foolishness. It's foolishness. Now listen a little bit to me
as I talk to you a little bit about these folks that say that
the gospel that I've just been preaching to you is a bunch of
foolishness. Now they call the message of the cross foolishness,
and the reason is found in 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 14. Look at verse
14. It says, But the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness
unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned. Now it makes it clear to us here
that the reason why that the reprobate And the unbeliever
says that the gospel or the message of the cross is foolishness is
because this doctrine of the cross is not the offspring of
reason, but it's the gift of revelation. Only a man, as God
is pleased to reveal the gospel to him, only then will he understand
it and appreciate it, and all others will stand and scoff at
the gospel. All the thinkers of the ages
continue to think, but they never yet invented the plan of salvation
or a plan of salvation. As salvation, as it being a thought,
it originated with God and could have originated nowhere else,
the message of the gospel. It couldn't have originated anywhere
else. It originated with our great God. And the message of
the gospel is his banquet that he sets before his people. It is God telling men something
by the Spirit which they could not have known otherwise. Now
if you know the gospel this morning, if you could say truthfully,
I know the message of the gospel. I understand it. I appreciate
it. I love it. It has affected my
life, my soul. It has changed my soul, my life. It has affected me and I believe
the gospel. And my friend, that's because
God has made it known to you, God's revealed it to you. You
could not understand it any other way. You could not have received
the message of the gospel and understand the provision of it
any other way, except God made it known to you. It's like Peter,
when the Lord was speaking to him. He said, Blessed art thou,
Simon, son of Berjona. He said, flesh and blood didn't
reveal to you what you just said. Peter had just said, Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God. and said it in the Spirit,
and by the Spirit. And Paul later said that no man
can call Jesus Lord except by the Spirit. Nobody can say Jesus
Lord truthfully except by the Spirit. And so when Simon said,
when he said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, then
Jesus said, Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Barjona, because
flesh and blood didn't reveal that to you you couldn't get
that out of a book and you can't get that by study that comes
by revelation from God that you know who Jesus is and knew what
he did on that cross now then because anything the next reason
I offer to you first reason is it's because it's by revelation
it's by the Spirit's work And these reprobates don't have that
work in them. There's no work of grace in their
lives. And so therefore they say the
gospel is foolishness. And the next reason is because
anything which proves a man to be a fool will at once strike
men as being very foolish. Now you think about that a little
bit. The gospel proves this lost world to be a fool. It does. The most foolish thing that a
man can do is live out his days in this world and never humbly,
meekly seek to know who Jesus Christ is. That's the most foolish
thing you could do, is to live out your days without begging
the God of heaven, the God of revelation, the God of scripture
to reveal to you who Jesus is. That's the most foolish thing
you could do. The most foolish thing in this
world you could do is keep on living day by day in God's world,
enjoying the benefits of God's world and God's providence and
not be seeking him in faith believing on his son just keep calling
him a liar day after day saying God is a liar he said that life's
in his son but I don't believe it and I won't receive it that's
making God a liar and you're calling him a liar every day
you live in your unbelief and I tell you that's a foolish thing
to do well They say, that is the reprobate, how on earth could
eternal life be found in one who was born as a babe in a manger
and one who came, they say, as we preach, they say, well you
say that he came down from heaven. Well the scripture says that
Jesus is the bread of God who came down from heaven. You know
what the Bible says? He came down from heaven. and
I'm going to keep telling folks that Jesus came down from heaven. I'm going to keep telling you
that he came down from above. I'm going to tell you that he
was born of a virgin, that God gave, that God took a body in
the womb of the Virgin Mary. I'm going to tell you that God
became a baby. I'm going to tell you that. And
you say, you're a fool preacher. I'll tell you that God became
a baby. Somebody said, you know, I'm
pretty proud. I'm a proud person and I don't like to ever for
anything to ever indicate that I was you know a little bit foolish
or a little bit off or that something was wrong with me I don't want
anything to ever happen but you know one proud person I was talking
to here a while back and they were just you know they were
just I could just tell that they were just full of pride and I
said well do you know God became a baby God became a baby maybe
it would do you well just to humble yourself humble yourself
a little bit. Well, God became a baby and so
the reprobate says, they say, well, I don't believe that kind
of stuff. That God became a baby and grew
up and then died on a cross and was buried and then, of all things,
you say that he was raised from the dead. That he was raised
from the dead. Well, you see, you have to have
the revelation of the Spirit of God in your heart to believe
that. and thank God for the working of the spirit among the children
of men, that God as a people that he called from all eternity,
that he chose from all eternity, and that he is working the faith
of the gospel in their hearts. Praise his dear and holy name. God is working that faith in
the heart. You see how impossible to believe.
It would be impossible to believe apart from the revelation. It's
not the offspring of reason. That faith doesn't grow on a
human dunghill. It grows only out of the revelation
of God in the heart. Now then, the third reason I
offer is because it treats on a subject for which they have
no use, they have no care. Most of the unbelievers in this
world, if you were able to show them
how to make an unlimited amount of profit, in some business deal
in this world, they'd be real interested. They'd be real interested. You'd get everybody's attention.
If you could just show them some way to make money in a hurry,
they'd all be interested. But when the sermon that you
preach is only about the word of God and eternity and the soul
and the blood of Jesus, this gang turns their head And they
said, this is utter foolishness. We've got no time for it. So
they don't care about the gospel and they don't care about their
own soul. Now they call the gospel foolishness
because they look after the main chants and care more for the
body than they do their soul. They don't care about their soul.
And you're here this morning and say, well, I'm just interested
in preaching and getting through this world the best I can. You're foolish. You're foolish. You ought to be interested in
getting through the world, but you don't have to get through
this world. But I'll tell you this, you have to face God. And
you're going to meet God one of these days, and you better
get concerned about your soul. But let me warn you that a blind
man is no judge of colors. that a deaf man is no judge of
sound. And a man who has never been
quickened by the Spirit of God into spiritual life is no judge
of spiritual matters. And if you're going to talk to
somebody, don't talk to a skeptic and don't listen to the counsel
of the ungodly when it comes to spiritual things. You want
to know something about spiritual things, hunt you out a dear child
of God. Somebody who has believed on
the Lord Jesus Christ. Somebody who's been quickened
out of death into life. Somebody who's passed from death
into life. And somebody who knows the Lord.
And they can tell you something about the gospel. Don't listen
to all these reprobates and these philosophers who tell you that
the gospel is a bunch of foolishness. Those that believe not in our
Lord Jesus Christ are drifting towards an eternity of misery. And yet, while they perish, they
condemn the very means of rescue. They're drifting toward a miserable
eternity. You today, if you're outside
of Christ, one day closer, one hour closer to the everlasting
prediction and judgment, hellfire, one hour closer, drifting, drifting,
ever drifting. Old Brother Barnard used to say,
a yard, you're just a yard short of hell. And how true that is,
just a yard short. of hell. Now listen to me now. Fancy a drowning man mocking
at a lifeboat. Fancy that. Well that's just
exactly what the fool says about the gospel. He mocks the gospel. Imagine a diseased man ridiculing
the only medicine in the world that will heal him. Imagine that.
Well, that's these philosophers and that's these foolish people
that say that the gospel is utter foolishness. Now then, let's
just look a little bit at the word of those who believe. What do they say of the cross?
Well, they call it the power of God. They say, well, it's
the power of God. Now listen to what it says here. But unto us which are saved,
It is the power of God. Paul said, I'm not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God. It's the
dynamite of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, unto
the Jew first and also unto the Greek. The gospel is the power
of God. Well, that's what we say. Now,
beloved, listen to me. The phenomenon of conversion
is a fact. It is a fact, brother and sister,
men and women are changed and the whole manner of their life
is altered by a simple faith in the gospel of the cross. This is true. Now, we are delivered
by the power of God. The word of the cross has delivered
many of us here this morning. It has delivered us from the
love of sin It's not that we don't sin anymore, but that sin
cannot lord it over one of God's children, and God's people have
had a principle of holiness implanted in them that makes it impossible
for them to love sin. Now we may fall into sin but
we mourn over that sin and we hate that sin and we hate ourselves
for committing that sin and all of this because life has come
into us, spiritual life Life from God has come into us, and
if that life from God was not in you, you wouldn't hate it,
and you wouldn't even know there was anything going on. There
wouldn't be no conflict in you. There wouldn't be any battle
raging. There wouldn't be any strife in you. Wouldn't be if
it was not for this principle of life. Now we're also free
from the dread which once held us in bondage and made us tremble
before God. But now we love Him and we take
delight in Him. He's our Master and we're reconciled
to Him. And He's reconciled to us. Nothing
between my soul and the Savior. No need for me to cow down. He said, you just come boldly
to the throne of grace. Make your request known. You
come boldly. Everything's been taken care of. There isn't anything. The gap has been bridged. No
problem. Come on! Come on, come now, let
us reason together. Though your sin be as scarlet,
they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool. Come now, come now, come now. Come to the waters and drink.
Come now! Come now, is the message of the
gospel. Now we're also delivered, thank
God, from the power of Satan and his design to take us to
hell with him when he goes. I believe Satan's gonna spend
eternity in hell. I don't know whether you believe
that or not, but probably most of you do believe it. But listen
to me, we've been delivered from Satan's design. He had a design
on you, and some of you here today, you ought to fear before
God. Oh, might you fear before God.
Satan has a design on you. Satan, you know what? The Lord
Jesus said to Peter, said, Satan hath desired you. He desired
you, Peter. He desires you. He wants to sift
you as wheat. Satan has a design on your life. He wants to take you to hell
with him. Now if you want to escape being
taken to hell with Satan and by Satan and you know the dark
angels of hell they come right to the deathbed and they take
the soul off to eternal hell. They do of a lost man. When somebody
lost dies, the black angels of hell are right there, right in
the room, and they take that soul and take it off to hell. Thank God for believers. The
angels of God are there to escort their soul off. into the paradise
of God, into the bliss and blessing of God for all eternity. But
you think of it this morning, think of it, the design of the
devil. But God's people have been delivered by the power of
God from the design of the devil to take us to hell with him when
he goes. And then I think we've been delivered
by the power of God from self, from self. and from the world
and from all things that would enthrall us here in this world,
we've been delivered somewhat from that, somewhat from self. Oh, I trust it so. You know,
there are times when I wonder, when I wonder if I'll ever get
out of this thing, if I'll ever make it through this world, be
delivered from self, self but only by the power of God will
you ever be delivered from yourself. May the Lord have mercy upon
us. We feel somewhat that heaven has been born in us and by the
word of the cross through the Holy Spirit we feel that there
has been a work take place and that we are saved and that we
want to serve the Lord. We want to glorify God. We want
to honor Him. We want to do the will of God.
We feel that we do. We feel the Lord has by His power. And so the Word of the Cross
to us is the power of God. It's the power of God. Now the
power with which God created and sustains the world is no
greater than the power with which he made us new men in Christ,
and by which he sustains his people under trial, and even
the raising of the dead will be no greater display of the
power of God than the raising of dead souls out of their spiritual
graves." Isn't that a good statement? It's a good statement indeed.
Well, let us conclude here, brethren. I want to say that the Church to whom the Great
Commission is given, we must believe in the power of the cross
to continue our ministry. We must believe in it. We must
believe in the power of the cross, the power of the word of the
cross, to continue to believe in the conversion of those around
us. We must believe in it. We cannot
say of any man that he cannot be saved. We cannot save any
man that he cannot be saved believing, as we do, in the power of the
Word of the Cross. God is able to save the most
wretched, the blackest sinner out of hell, God is able to save
him. And we've got to believe that. We must believe it if we're
going to keep preaching. We've got to believe in the power
of the word of the cross. The blood of Jesus is omnipotent. the blood of Jesus Christ. I
want to read a scripture and then we'll close. This is found
in Zechariah chapter 9. If you have your Bible and want
to turn to it, the book of Zechariah chapter 9. I want to read verse
11 and 12. I say to you today that the blood
of Jesus is omnipotent and the church must believe in the power
of the word of the cross to continue its ministry. Listen to these
verses. As for thee also, by the blood
of thy covenant, I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the
pit wherein is no water. Turn ye to the stronghold, ye
prisoners of hope. Even today do I declare that
I will render double unto thee. These verses here, great challenge
to my soul. The Lord said, by the blood of
the covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit
wherein is no water. In the east it was customary,
many times they would dig a big pit and put a prisoner in that
pit, be no water in it, to sustain life. Just put them in the pit. And the walls were so dug that
they could not scale the walls, they couldn't get out. that is
the picture of men lost in sin dead in sin in the pit and He
can't get out and there's no water in that pit no satisfaction
in that pit no soul satisfaction in that pit and the blood of
the covenant by the blood of the covenant I have sent forth
these prisoners out of the pit the Lord said I've delivered
them out and by the blood of the covenant and the word is
turn you to the stronghold those of you that are out keep turning
back to the Lord turning back to Christ keep looking away from
yourself and looking to the one that delivered you ye prisoners
of hope And I feel like a prisoner of hope today. I do. I'm shut
up to it. I'm shut up to it. I'm locked
in to the hope of the gospel. Aren't you? I'm locked in. I'm
in Christ. I'm hidden in Christ. And that's where I am. And that's
where I am. And I'm a prisoner of the hope
of the gospel. And then listen to this. Even
today do I declare that I will render double unto thee. And so whatever that means, I'll
take it. I'll take it. I'll be glad to
get double of the blessings of God any day of the week. Blessings
that the blood has bought for me. He said, I'll give you double. I'll give you double. We gotta
believe in the power of the word of the cross. Believe in it.
Well, brethren, that's the message this morning. That's what the
Lord laid on my heart, and I hope that the Lord will use it in
all of our hearts to strengthen us and to make us a blessing. And do continue in prayer for
those that we mentioned earlier and ask the Lord to lead us and
guide us and direct us. Those that we run in contact,
met with, and contacted while we were gone, all send their
love to you, Brother Walker, down in in South Carolina and
others. Reg Larson, who some of you remember,
he lives in Kabul, Missouri. Mike and Bonnie spent a night
at their house. He came to the wedding and he said to send his
love and regard back to the church here. Teresa's been, I guess,
went through a very hard battle, some