If you have turned back in your
Bibles to the book of 1 Kings chapter 20, let us read, I want
to read beginning with verse 31 again, and read down through
the end of the chapter. Verse 31 through the end of the
chapter. And his servant said unto him,
Behold now we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel
are merciful kings, let us, I pray thee, put sackcloth on our loins
and ropes upon our heads, and go out to the king of Israel,
peradventure he will save thy life." These are the servants
of Ben-Hadad that are speaking. So they girded sackcloth on their
loins, put ropes on their heads, and came to the king of Israel
and said, Thy servant Ben-Hadad saith, I pray thee, let me live. And he said, is he yet alive? He is my brother. Now the men
diligently observed whether anything would come from him, and did
hastily catch it. And they said, thy brother Ben-Hadad? Then he said, go ye, bring him. Then Ben-Hadad came forth to
him, and he caused him to come up into the chariot. And Ben-Hadad
said unto him, The cities which my father took from thy father
I will restore, and thou shalt make streets for thee in Damascus,
as my father made in Samaria. Then said Ahab, I will send thee
away with this covenant. So he made a covenant with him
and sent him away. And a certain man of the prophets,
the sons of the prophets, said unto his neighbor, In the word
of the Lord smite me, I pray thee. And the man refused to
smite him. Then said he unto him, Because
thou hast not obeyed the voice of the Lord, behold, as soon
as thou departed from me, a lion shall slay thee. And as soon
as he was departed from him, a lion found him and slew him. Then he found another man and
said, Smite me, I pray thee. And the man smote him, so that
in smiting he wounded him. So the prophet departed and waited
for the king, by the way, and disguised himself with ashes
upon his face. And as the king passed by, he
cried unto the king, and he said, Thy servant went out into the
midst of the battle. And behold, a man turned aside
and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man. If by any
means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or
else thou shall pay a talent of silver. And as thy servant
was busy here and there, he was gone. And the king of Israel
said unto him, So shall thy judgment be, thyself has decided it. And he hasted and took the ashes
away from his face. And the king of Israel discerned
him that he was of the prophets. And he said unto him, Thus saith
the Lord. because thou hast let go out
of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction therefore
thy life shall go for his life and thy people for his people
and the king of Israel went to his house heavy and displeased
and came to Samaria. Now we read this whole story
to you in our reading this morning And we take note that Ben-Hadad
started out in the early part of this chapter and he was quite
lifted up and he was a man who felt that he was in command and
that he could easily overcome the army of Israel and that he
was surely going to devour Samaria and that his was going to be
the conquest. To him was the conquest. But
now we see that the Lord intervened. And there was a victory given
to Ahab and to the children of Israel. And then in about a year,
here comes Ben-Hadad back again. He escaped in the first battle,
but he comes back again. And the army of Israel is prepared
and they go out and they defeat again Ben-Hadad's army. And we find him in a very low
position when we get down to the end of the chapter. We see
how quickly things have changed for this man. And that to me
suggests that in life, things can change very, very quickly. From one year to the next, things
can very quickly and radically change in the lives of God's
people, in the lives of all men, as far as that matters. But now
this king now is in a very bad, precarious position, and he ought
to have been facing execution and slaughter. He was the enemy
of God Almighty and the enemy of God's people. Now Ahab and
the kings of Israel had the reputation of being merciful kings. And
so the servants of Ben-Hadad, when he was cornered, they said,
the kings of Israel are merciful kings and we'll just, we'll go
out and we'll dress in sackcloth, we'll look like that we're very
repentant for being in their land. and for attacking their
city and we wear ropes around our heads showing that we're
worthy to be executed, that we do not deserve mercy and we do
not deserve to be spared. We'll go out dressed that way
and possibly the King of Israel will have mercy upon us and spare
us all. But now as the servants, as they
went out, they were girded in this way, and they ask in verse
32, they said, Thy servant Benedad saith, I pray thee, let me live. thy servant, Ben-Hadad." Now
would Ben-Hadad, would he have said, I'm thy servant, earlier
in the first time he came against Samaria? No. He said, give me
your wives, give me your children, give me everything that's precious
and that's pleasant in your eyes, you bring it out or I'm coming
in and getting it. Now this was his attitude, but
now he's thy servant, Ben-Hadad. And then take note of something
else here. He said, I pray thee let me live.
His request is you let me live. And then he said, here's Ahab
speaking. He says, is he yet alive? Is
Ben-Hadad alive? He is my brother. Now listen
to Ahab here. Ben-Hadad is not Ahab's brother
Israelite. He is Ahab's brother king. You see, he's a king and Ahab's
a king. That's the only real affinity
that they had together. There was nothing else that they
had in common. Now then, the men, they listened very carefully
because you see, they wanted to catch anything that the king
of Israel would say that would indicate how he felt toward Ben-Hadad. And so when he said, he is my
brother, they did hastily catch it. Verse 33 says, And they said,
thy brother, Ben-Hadad? Well, that's what they were wanting
to hear. They were wanting to hear something that would indicate
that he would have mercy upon Ben-Hadad. Then he said, you
go bring him. Then Ben-Hadad came forth and
he caused him to come up into the chariot. He didn't treat
him like an enemy, like an enemy that he was, an enemy deserving
of death. But he invited him up into his
chariot, and Ben-Hadad said to him, the king Ahab, and Ahab,
you know, he was a wicked king himself, an ungodly king. And here he is now, he's elated
that he's in the driver's seat. And he's running the show, and
so he said unto him, the cities, or Benedad does, he says, which
my father took from thy father, I'll restore, and you'll make
streets for thee in Damascus. There'll be called, here's a
street here that is named after you, I'll name some streets after
you and so on. Then said Ahab, Ahab drive. Ahab drive is what we'll call
it. I'll send you away, Ahab said
with this covenant. So he made a covenant with him
and sent him away, an agreement. They made an agreement. Here
is Ahab making an agreement with this ungodly Ben-Hadad, who was
an enemy of God, marked for destruction by God Almighty. God had delivered
him right into Ahab's hand, and Ahab makes an agreement with
him. Ahab's in the driver's seat, he makes the decision and says,
I'll make an agreement with you, send him away. And a certain
man of the sons of the prophets, Now this certain man the Jews
tell us is Micaiah, that prophet whom Ahab hated. Ahab hated him
because Micaiah was, every time Ahab asked him a question, Micaiah
always told him just the opposite of what he wanted to hear. Micaiah
told him what God wanted him to say. He told him what God
said. And Ahab didn't like it. He hated
it. And on one occasion, remember,
he went and got 400 other prophets to tell him what he wanted to
hear. And they told him what he wanted
to hear. And of course, you know how it
resulted. It turned out that he was slain
in battle. He was slain in battle because
he listened not to the voice of God. But here's this certain
prophet, and he said unto his neighbor, and this neighbor is
a fellow prophet. He's a fellow prophet. He said,
in the word of the Lord, you smite me. I want you to wound
me. I want you to make me look like I've been in battle. I want
you to make me look like that I had just come out of the battle. And this particular man, this particular prophet, he just
couldn't bring himself to smite his fellow prophet. But now this
was the word of the Lord. The word of the Lord said, smite
me. I pray thee, and the man refused.
Then he said unto him, Mekhi, or the prophet said, because
thou hast not obeyed the voice of the Lord. You see, the Lord's
involved in all of this. It was the Lord that intervened
and gave them the victory a year before. It was the Lord that
delivered them now into the hand of Israel, this enemy. And so
the Lord was involved in this, and the Lord is about to say
some things here unto the wicked king. He's about to pronounce
judgment upon him because he let this wicked man go. Beloved, we must be merciful
as He is merciful and not otherwise. We must only be merciful as God
is merciful. Is that enough? Would it be okay
to be as merciful as God is? When God says something, should
we stand right there? Now it's greatly believed in
our day and time that we need to alter what the Word of God
says and we need to be more merciful and charitable even than what
God Almighty is. Shall mortal man pretend to be
more just than God, more pure, more compassionate? Should we
appear to be more just, more pure, more compassionate than
what God Himself? Well Ahab here, here he is. He's the man that's being compassionate
beyond God. God said he ought to be killed,
this man ought to die. And here's Ahab being compassionate. Now we're told in our day and
time that the homosexuals and the lesbians and the deviants
and the perverts of our day, that we ought to cater to them. We ought to pass laws that would
give them particular individual rights. And that we ought to
be merciful. We ought to be merciful beyond
what the Word of God says. Beloved, what every child of
God must do is to examine the Word of God and stand with the
Word on this issue. And if there's any other issue
that rubs cross-grain with the Word of God, stand where the
Bible stands, and we must never be more merciful than God is
Himself. And over and over again, I hear
people, when they're questioned, Bible-believing people, and they
hum-ha around about saying, how does God feel about the homosexual
and the lesbian? And what should we do with them?
And that is the question often asked by talk show hosts and
others. What should we do with these
people? And of course, if anybody suggests
that God has given them up to being a reprobate and that God
is against their lifestyle and holds them accountable for their
lifestyle, then you're a bigot. You're a bigot, but we cannot
be more merciful than God is lest we turn out to be an Ahab. We've got to stand where the
scripture stands, okay? Now then, this prophet has asked
a fellow prophet, you smite me because I want to look like I'm
wounded. And this prophet said, I won't do it. And so he said,
because you've not obeyed the voice of the Lord, God's speaking
here. And he said, because you won't
do this, as soon as you depart from me, you're going to meet
a lion and that lion's going to kill you. That lion's going
to take you out of this world. You ought to listen to what God
says. When God speaks, he's to be listened to. Then he found
another man and he said, you smite me, I pray thee. And the
man smote him so that in smiting him, he wounded him. And as the
Jewish historians will tell you that he apparently inflicted
a head wound of some kind where he was bleeding. And he looked
like he'd been wounded in battle. And so the prophet departed,
and he waited for the king by the way, and he disguised himself
with ashes upon his face. So he just looked like a regular
soldier, came off the battlefield. And as the king passed by, this
prophet, he said to this king, he said, thy servant, now you
listen to this parable, and you listen to it very closely. He
said, Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle, and
behold, a man turned aside, a commander, or some leader in the military,
and he brought a man unto me. And he said, You keep this man.
He's your prisoner. He's our prisoner. You keep him.
And if by any means he be missing. If he comes up missing, then
you're going to pay for this with your life, or else there's
going to be a large sum of money that you're going to have to
pay if you let this fella go. Okay, now this is the prophet
now disguised like an ordinary man out of the battle, and as
the servant was busy here and there, here's the man, he makes
a confession. As he was busy here and there,
he was gone. This fella escaped. This fella
got away. Past recall. Couldn't catch him. No way. He was gone. And the king of Israel said unto
him, so shall thy judgment be. Thyself has decided it. You've
decided it out of your own mouth. You're the one that's passed
judgment upon yourself. He didn't realize that what he
was doing was passing judgment on himself. Here's King Ahab
and he hastened. Here the prophet took the ashes
away from his face. And the king of Israel discerned
him that he was of the prophets. The king of Israel knew this
Micaiah. He knew it. And so then it's
all out. And he said to him, thus saith
the Lord, because you let go out of your hand a man whom I
appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall be for
his life, thy people for his people. And the king of Israel
went to his house heavy and displeased and came to Samaria. Now then
that's the story that we have here today. Now what I want to
do is that I want to speak on verse 39 and 40 at just this
parable. I want to talk about this parable
and you may ask now we know that Ahab in chapter 22 was killed
in the first Kings chapter 22 he was killed and the dogs licked
his blood that was washed in the pool of Samaria, the chariot
was washed out. You know, there was a certain
man who drew a bow at a venture and the king of Israel was disguised
so that nobody would know who he was and yet God killed him
by this man who drew a bow at a venture and just let the air
fly and it went right into the joints of the harness of his
armor and killed him. And so the king of Israel is
dead and forgotten by many. But this parable yet lives. The Word of God yet abides. The Word of God is no spent shell. The Word of God has a living
message to it. And you may wonder, what on earth
do we have to do with this particular parable? What have we got to
do with it? What's it got to do with you and I? Throughout
the history of the church, this parable has been used. I've never used it before. I've
never used it as a text before. But this parable has been used
to illustrate how that man has been given an obligation by Almighty
God, and that obligation be to honor Him, to love Him, to serve
Him, to glorify Him with His life, and that man being busy
He offers this excuse. I'm busy. I'm not able to live
for God. I'm not able to glorify God.
I do not love God with all my heart, all my mind, all my soul,
my strength. And it's because I'm busy. And
he's here and there. And the first thing you know,
his opportunities are gone. They're neglected and they're
gone. Gone forever. Never can he call them back. And it's an unalterable fact. that once you have spent your
life, it is spent, and there is no way that you can ever get
it back. Now then, I want to deal with
this a little bit. This is the way this parable
has been used to benefit the church of the Lord Jesus Christ
all these years. So we too have received a charge
and we have neglected the charge that the Lord has given us. We've
had time and we've had opportunity within our keeping and they're
gone. those opportunities, many of
them are gone from us. And let us search and see whether
or not this be so in our individual lives. I don't want to accuse
anybody here of anything that they're not guilty of, but I
want us to think a little bit. It's been some time since there
has been anything really got a hold of me like this has to
challenge my heart before the Lord. And I want you to think
with me just for a little while this morning. And I believe that
this will be helpful to every one of us. May the Lord save
us, every one of us, from a course of life that will cost us eventually
a thousand regrets. from a course of life that's
gonna cost us a thousand regrets. Do you believe that Ahab lived
to regret letting old Ben-Hadad go? Letting him escape? I believe
he lived to regret it and I believe when he was dying in that chariot
and his blood running out in that chariot that he was regretting
all the time ever letting that old Ben-Hadad escape. Now first
of all then when you think of the obligation and that's what
the text does it places an obligation upon this man. There was a man
brought a man and said you keep this man. You keep this man and
you keep this man and if he comes up missing you're going to be
the one that's going to be responsible for him being gone. Now then,
that's His obligation. Our obligation in Exodus 20 in
verse 3 it says, Thou shalt have no other God before Me. Love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength. That is
the obligation that God Almighty has placed upon us, to serve
and to honor and glorify Him. And every man is bound to serve
his Creator and to live for His glory in this world. Now this
is as clear as the noonday sun throughout the Scriptures. It's
clear that man has this obligation upon him, that he's created by
God and he's to live for the glory of God. But most men, they
forget God. And their obligations to Him
never seems to cross their minds. There are people living in this
world today that use the same language as Pharaoh of old. Who is the Lord? That I should
obey Him, that I should serve Him. Who is the Lord? Well, will
a man rob God? The Scripture asks. But alas,
thousands of lives are one life-long robbery of the Almighty. It's a disregard of the claims
that's founded upon the eternal justice of God. Men will rob
God of the glory. They'll rob God of the service
that is due unto Him. Men are bound to serve God because
we derive our very being from Him, don't you see? We derive
our very being from Him. Yet there are men that, as we
said, that it never crosses their minds the obligation that they
have, the time that God has allotted them, the opportunity that God
has given them to serve Him and to live for Him and to honor
Him and to glorify Him and to seek Him and to seek the life
that He will give. God's not hiding from anybody.
And men will not do that. There are men and women who live
in this world, and they rob God of that service that is due Him. Now, as we said, in Him, the
Bible says, Acts 17 and 28, we're bound to serve God because in
Him we live and move and have our being. How do we live? We live in Him. We live because
He gives breath. Every breath that men breathe,
they receive it individually. Every last breath is received
individually as a gift from Almighty God. Did you ever think about
that? Well, surely our existence, which originated by God, should
be spent to His honor, and the being which hourly depends upon
Him should be used. life, that debt. It's all we
do because the life that is in men is daily, hourly, minute,
every minute being maintained by divine power. God is constantly
maintaining men's lives. Men do not live independent of
Almighty God. Let them think what they want
to, saying they can do what they will with their lives. And I
know that there are some men living in this world today, I
mean they don't live to the purpose of God as much as a rat lives
to the purpose of God. There are men that you could
cut out of a brown piece of paper, the very figure of a man. that
would be more glorifying to God than some of the perverts and
child molesters and homosexuals and lesbians that walk the streets
of our cities in our day. Is that right? Men are not living. Listen, the scum that is in the
world today, there are people that get up in the morning and
the first thing they ask themselves is, what can I do today to amuse
myself? They're not interested in glorifying
God, doing His will, finding some way to serve the living
God that gives them the breath of life. They're not interested
in it. All they're interested in is
themselves. Well, their lives are going to
be gone. Slip away and it's going to be gone. And they're going
to be held accountable for their lives before God. Now it was
for this end that the Lord made us, and for nothing short of
this, that we might glorify God and that we might enjoy Him forever. This is the chief end of man. This is his obligation. Glorify
God and enjoy Him forever. Well, will a man keep a horse? Will a man keep a cow? If it's
never of any benefit to him whatsoever, will he do that? Well, absolutely
not. And I think it's just this simple
that God has made us that we may glorify Him. And if we do
not honor Him, we miss the very end and the object of our being. We miss it. I mean, it's gone. I mean, we've lived in vain.
If you, now I don't care what you are this morning, but if
you do not love the Lord your God in your heart, then my friend,
your soul is poor and you're degraded. If you don't love the
Lord in your heart, if you're not a child of God, if you don't
trust Him, if you're not honoring God and serving Him, then your
soul is poor and it's degraded. If you, and you may be looked
at as a hero, And you may be put on a high pedestal by a whole
lot of people, but if you have not lived for God, you have lived
in vain, my friend. You've lived in vain if you haven't
lived for the glory of God. Now then, as an error which falls
short of the mark, and here's the way one old writer put it,
as a fig tree which yields no figs, as a fire that only smokes
and puts out no heat, as a cloud without rain, a well without
water, is a man who has not served the Lord, he's wasted his life.
He's wasted his life. This obligation has been placed
upon him. He had the obligation put right
into his hands, and it's gone. It's gone. His life is gone.
Now the Lord has an undivided right to us. Is that clear? He
has a right to us because He created us. He has a right to
every motion of our body, to every faculty of our mind, and
every capacity of our entire nature for it is He that made
us and not we ourselves. God has a right to expect us
to do what he told us to do. Now, if this be true, and it
certainly is true, it is especially true of God's children, of blood-bought
children. It is especially true of them
that they owe their all unto God. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter
6. 1 Corinthians chapter 6. And I want to read here Just
a few verses right at the end of this chapter. But let's look
at verse 13 first. This is a verse here that caught
my eye that very seldom is ever read. And I want you to look
at it. 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. but the body is
for the Lord and the Lord for the body in verse 19 what know
ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which
is in you which ye have of God and you're not your own For you
are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and
in your spirit, which are God's. We're God's by creation and we're
God's by the new birth. We're God's by His choice of
us. We're gods by the fact that he set his love upon us from
old time and then put his spirit within us, claiming us, making
us his own. And then in 2 Corinthians we
look in chapter 5 at 2 verses 14 and 15. knowing that he which raised
up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus and shall
present us with you. Wait a minute, I'm in the wrong
chapter. I'm in chapter 4. It's chapter 5, verse 14 and 15. For
the love of Christ constraineth us Because we thus judge that
if one died for all, that is, if one died for all his people,
then we were all dead. All God's people were dead in
sin. And that he died for all of his
people, that they which live, and those that he died for are
they which will live. They will live through his death.
should not henceforth, get this, live unto themselves, that's
verse 15, 2nd Corinthians 5, but unto him which died for them
and rose again. So God's people have then this
particular obligation placed upon them emphatically that they
are to live unto him who died for them and rose again. Now
the scripture abounds with this plain truth that we are not our
own but that we belong to God. He, with all he has, that is
a child of God, With all that he has, he with all that he has,
God has a claim upon it. He has first claim upon it. Well the next thing in the text,
we had this obligation first of all, and the next thing that
we have here is the confession of this soldier. And the confession
is the very confession that you and I have to make today about
many of the days that we've lived already in this world, many of
the opportunities that we had, many of the situations we found
ourselves in, and we were not up to what we ought to have been,
and that is, he was gone. He was gone. That was his confession.
I had this man. He was under my charge. I was
told you keep him and if he gets away you're going to pay for
it with your life. And the confession was he is
gone. He is gone. Now how many of us
have to confess this, that under obligation to God we've not fulfilled
these obligations? Many of these obligations we've
not fulfilled. It may be said of many of the opportunities
that we had to glorify God in our lives, up to this point this
morning, it is gone. It's over. I don't have those
opportunities anymore. I did have them, but they're
gone now. Well, let me try to explain this
a little bit. First of all, we've lost many
of the opportunities for serving God which arises in various periods
of our lives. First of all, the boys and the
girls, most of them went downstairs. We got a few of them up with
us this morning. You listen here to what I have to say. You boys
and girls, I hope that you'll not have to say when time comes,
when you leave being a child, going into young manhood, womanhood,
that you'll not have to say, I cannot praise God with a girl's
voice or with a boy's tongue because it's over. I'm no longer
just a girl, no longer just a boy. It's over. My childhood is over. The day is gone. I could have
served God, but I lived in folly and in rebellion against God,
and I didn't have a heart for it. I didn't have any desire
to read the Bible, didn't have any appetite for the things of
the Spirit of God. I wanted nothing to do with God
and His Word and His truth. I wanted nothing to do with it.
and that day is gone. I hope that will not be so. And
as far as young men and women, it's a glorious thing to be able
to give Jesus Christ our very best day. To live for Him in
the prime of life. I mean when a man's head is clear,
when his heart, when his heart is, when he has the strength
to seek the Lord and call upon God and to search Him out And
oh, if young men and young women would recognize the obligation
that is placed upon them, we've been talking about here this
morning, and understand that very shortly, it'll be over. It'll be over. And there's a
great and glorious opportunity for a young woman, young man,
to search and to seek the Lord. Now then, Do we have to look
back and say, it's wasted, it's gone, clean gone forever. My
opportunity to serve the Lord, to seek Him when I was in my
best state, when I was in my strength. People say, well I'll
just wait till I get old. Let me tell you something, it's
not going to get easier when you get older. And all you're
going to do is to regret the neglected opportunities of when
you were a child and when you was a young man or a young woman. Just regret it. It's over. It's gone. There's no way that
you can get it back. Now then we come to another period
of life when we become heads of households and have children
and these children are lent to us of the Lord. They're sent
into our households by the Lord and a young tree can be bent
and are we, listen is it too late? The children which the
Lord has put under our roof They were our responsibility. They
were not somebody else's responsibility. I mean, the school teacher certainly
has a responsibility to exercise. Certainly that's true. But beloved,
the responsibility for children are to the people that God has
given those children and entrusted those children to. It's the parents
that have the responsibility for those children. And now,
my friend, is the opportunity gone from your grasp? Is the
opportunity gone? Is there no longer? Do you have
that? Are you still able to bend that
tree? Are you still able to sit down
with that child and talk to that child and show that child, teach
that child? Listen, maybe right now your
son is maybe a father himself. Or maybe your daughter is a mother
herself and the day is gone. The opportunity is over. You
can't have any influence anymore. You can speak and talk but it
doesn't matter like it would have mattered at one time if
you would have been there, if you would have given the voice,
if you would have given the word, if you would have done what you
ought to have done. No, it is gone. It is past recall. There is nothing you can do about
it. Your sin, my friend, is facing
you, and only God Almighty can wipe away that sin and put it
away. But it's there. It's gone. The
opportunity is gone. And then there's another form
of regret that I think arises out of the changes of our circumstances. Many times the Lord's pleased
to give a man a measure of success in the world. He blesses him.
Providence blesses him and he has some means. And then there
comes a turn of Providence. And now the man is poor. And
when he had it, As he looks back upon it, he said, I did not use
it for the glory of God. I did not. I was an unfaithful
steward and wasted my master's goods. And it's gone. It's gone. And there ain't no way you're
going to get it back. It's gone. I mean, it's gone forever. And
you can't get it. There's no way. How are you going
to go back and get it? You can't get it anymore. Another
man may have had a good mind. And he may have had good health.
But when he had a good mind and good health, he was seeking something
else. He wasn't living for the glory
of God. He wouldn't live for the glory of God five minutes.
He was too interested in doing something else with his life.
He wasn't interested in the Lord and His cause. and therefore
he spent his health. And how many people have I talked
to who had literally wasted and through alcohol and various bad
habits had destroyed good health and ruined themselves? Gone. It's gone. Nothing left. You're just a hollow shell. That's all you are. It's all
gone. Your health is gone. You say,
well I don't know where all that went to, Preacher. I don't know
where that money went to. I don't know where this went
to. I don't know where that went to. I don't know where my health
is gone. I don't know. But you see, when it's gone,
then it is gone. Hear me. The time, the means,
the influence which has not been employed in the service of the
Master. When it's over, it's gone, it's
forever gone. Now just think about that a little
bit. You think about it. When it's
over, it's gone. If it hadn't been spent for the
glory of God, if it hadn't been spent in the service of the Lord,
if it hadn't been spent with God's blessing upon it, then
it's gone. And it's gone forever. Alright,
now if a believer If a child of God, I'm talking to a believer
here this morning, if there's a child of God here and you've
got a hair upon your head that is not consecrated fully to the
Lord Jesus Christ, there is a sense in which you are a traitor to
Him, to Him who loved you out of your sin. You ought to be
fully, 100% consecrated to the Lord of Glory. Given up to Him
entirely. And yet there are thousands of
professors of religion whose consecration to God is not an
inch deep. Not an inch deep. You can scratch
all their consecration off with your fingernail. They don't have
any. They're not consecrated to God. I mean, the first little
thing that happens, they're ready to throw in the sponge, the towel. They're interested in themselves
and less everything going well for them. If God ever crosses
them in anything, they'll become rebels from there on out. They're
not submissive to God. They're not consecrated to Him.
They're not His children. They're just professors of religion. Now hear me out. What will we
say when we come to die? What will we say? Well, you'll
say this, I'm sure my life is gone. My days are used up. Time is spent. I don't have any
more time. It's over and people that have
been sick, desperately ill, close to the grave, will tell you that
you think about that when you get there. You think about it. How have I spent my life? How
have I lived my days? Well, the confession will be,
woe is me. My life is lost. What a dreadful
thing to have been born and to live and wasted my life. Wasted it. What a dreadful, dreadful
thing. The confession of many is, it's
gone. He's gone. It's over, done, finished. Well, third thing, the excuse
that this servant offered. His excuse was, we find up here
in verse 40, and thy servant was busy here and there. And
thy servant was busy here and there. Well, that sounds like
a good excuse, does it not? That a man was busy. He was busy. Why do us to do, to look after
these things about loving God, serving God, obeying the Lord,
doing His will? Well, this is no excuse, first
of all, because a soldier has no business to have any business
but that which his commander has given to him and assigned.
You say, well, preacher, how can a man run a business and
live for the glory of God. It don't take five minutes longer
a day for a man to run a business for the glory of God than it
does for him just to run it for himself. It doesn't take five
minutes longer a day. All a man must do, listen, is
to consecrate himself unto God. The sole duty of this man was
to watch his prisoner. And your one great business here
below is to glorify God. Consecrate all that you do by
doing it unto Him. Do it unto the Lord. Unto God. Do it to Him. You got something
going you don't want God to have any part in? You say, well I'm
trying to get ahead, dear preacher. Do you believe that the providence
of God is controlling this thing or are you running the show?
You're trying, listen, there are people that live all their
life in scheme. All their lives trying to get
someplace where the providence of God will not place them. They're trying to get something
that nobody can put their hand on. They want it and they're
going to get it whether God Almighty is in it or whether He isn't.
You're wasting your time, my friend. Your life's going to
be gone and you're out here trying to catch them bubbles. Your life's going to be spent
trying to catch a bubble. Gone. Gone. And your excuse is,
I've been busy. I've been trying to catch the
ball. I've been busy. Listen, now being busy is no
excuse for being ungodly and it's no excuse for living outside,
as it were, the teachings of the Word of God and living under
the submission to Jesus Christ. It's no excuse for that. This
man confessed that he had ability and that he had strength, that
he wasn't an invalid. I was busy here and there. I
had some strength. I was busy. I was doing something. I wasn't in bed flat on my back.
I wasn't sick. I was busy here and there. But
the son of Adam will never turn that strength, that natural strength
which God has given him, he'll never turn and serve God with
all of his might and all of his strength. He won't do that. No
sir, he'll get out to hoard some money. Get out to do this. Get out to do that. Get out to
serve himself. He gets real busy. You're not
interested in God. Now some of you have been busy
all your life. And as we said before, what have you accomplished?
What is it that you've really accomplished? You've served yourself
and slipped through your hand. It's gone. Now you listen to
me. You listen to me as a believer
this morning, as a child of God. This is very important that you
get what I'm going to say right here. Have I professed to be
bought with the blood that flowed from the veins of the Lord Jesus
Christ and not to be my own, have I lived as if I were not
my own? That is the question that every
child of God here this morning ought to ask themselves. Have
I lived as if I were not my own? I profess to be filled with the
Spirit of God by being regenerated by God's Spirit. I live like
one who has been born again. Do I live like one who has been
born of God's Spirit, born from heaven, born from above, one
who possesses the Spirit of God in my soul? The body is the temple
of the Holy Ghost. Do I live that way? If I have been baptized upon
the perfection of my faith, I gave myself up to be buried in the
water professing that I was dead to the world, am I dead to the
world? Am I dead to the world? Or am
I alive to the world just as much as I was before I made a
profession? Are you dead to it? A child of
God is dead to the world. I said that I was going to live
in newness of life as one that was raised from the dead. Have
I so lived? Have I lived like one who had
been raised from the dead? Listen, a man who has died and
been raised from the dead, would he not live? Would he not feel
compelled if he come back to life to live? For God Almighty
who had raised him up from the dead, that's exactly the picture
of every sinner who experiences conversion and the new birth.
He's raised from the dead and he's back from the dead and he's
alive with the life of God in him. Have I so lived? That's the question. Now what's
my excuse? Well, I'm busy here and there.
I'll have time to go to church twice on Sunday. I don't have
time to go to a prayer meeting. I wouldn't have time if you were
to have one. I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. Oh, my friend, we have slipped
a couple of notches. We have slipped more than a couple
of notches. And we need to examine ourselves
this morning. I'm busy. I'm busy. The question is, Have you been
true to your profession? Or is it a lie? Are you really
truly the Lord's child? Does he own you? Do you belong
to him? Is this true? Now to serve God
is the only thing worth living for, is that right? Is there anybody here that would
disagree with that? To serve God is the only thing worth living
for? And when we're on our deathbeds, we're gonna be more sure of that
than we are today. Is that true also? That's true
also. We're going to be more sure of
it than we are today. We will never regret serving God on our
deathbed. Just the opposite will be true.
Mark it down. This preacher here knows a little
bit about what he's talking about. When you're on your deathbed,
your regrets is going to be that you didn't do it. That you did
not. That you didn't use your strength.
That you didn't use what God put in your hands. That you didn't
use your time. I'm here this morning, I've been
in the way ever since I was 16 years old, and I'm 60, heading
on 61, I know something about what I'm talking about. I've
lived every one of those days, and I know something about these
things that I'm trying to press upon you this morning. And you
listen to me, the last thing is this, the fourth thing, that
we're faced with this unalterable fact, It's unalterable. And I want to use it just this
way, to press this thing upon you so that you would never forget
it as long as you live. While I was busy, here and there,
he was gone. It's gone. It's gone. Now, the
question, I'm going to deal with this just a little bit here.
I know we've already talked a little bit about it, but listen to me.
Couldn't you catch him? No. No, he's gone. Is there no making up for past
neglect? I mean isn't there something?
No, no, it's clear gone, it's past recall, it's gone. I want
you all to remember this statement that I'm about to make right
now. If any portion of this life has not been spent in the service
of God, to glorify God, it's gone. It's gone. Time past is gone. You can never
have it back again. Not even the very last minute,
which has just went by right here in this service, you can't
get it back. It's gone. That's the point that
I'm trying to put into your heart this morning. It's gone. It's
gone. Omnipotence itself could not,
cannot give it back to you. We sometimes say, I just wish
that I could live my life over again. I just wish I could live
it over again. Well, why say that? Why say that
you cannot live it over again? It's gone. It's gone. You can't live it over again.
There's no way you can. There's been many a time when
I thought, boy, I was sure done that different. If I was going
to have to do that again, I'd have done that different. I'd
have paid a little bit more attention to what was going on. I'd have
been this. I'd have done that. I'd have
been some things different if I had it to do over again. But
you don't have it to do over again. You cannot live it again. You can't live it again. You
cannot live it over again. It's gone. Whatever omnipotent
grace may do, it cannot alter your past life. It can't do it. Whatever the grace of God is
capable of doing, it cannot change what happened yesterday. It cannot
change what happened back through the years. Your past life, it's
going to be eternally what you have made it. And there ain't
no way back. It's gone. It's gone. Benidad's
gone. He's gone. He slipped out of
your hands. And you can't get him back. He's gone. You cannot
alter the past, though you should sigh from here to eternity. Oh,
that I took advantage of that opportunity. Oh, that I had been
more self-denying. Oh, that I had walked in the
light that I had as a believer, as a Christian. Oh, that I would
have just, if I would have just gotten a hold of this thing and
got down to business, if I'd just been serious, Well, Preacher, you're talking
like maybe some of us are going to die tomorrow. Well, we may
die today. That's the serious thing about
this. This thing may wind up for some
of us right away, only God knows. what another week will bring.
I've known people that were alive healthy on Monday and before
Friday they were in the grave, my friend. And they were healthy
people. Healthier maybe than most of
us here this morning. Gone. I mean life can end just
like that. And you cannot recall an act,
nor unsay a word, nor revoke a negligence. You can't do it. Once it's spent, it's spent. It's gone. It's over. How am
I going to conclude this this morning? How can I conclude? Well, let's conclude it like
this. Let us everyone, and I do not
think that there's a person here this morning that can say I have
nothing to confess along these lines Talking about negligences,
there's none that can be laid at my door. I don't have anything
to confess whatsoever. Well, beloved, listen, you're
a different person than I am. You're a different person altogether
than what I am. Because, listen now, I think
the way that this has to be handled, there's disobedience. There's
sin, there's rebellion in our lives. Practically open rebellion
in every one of our lives every day. And every one of us, we
must go to Christ who can forgive the guilt of the past. Thank
God the Lord Jesus Christ can and does wipe