It's always a blessing, blessing,
blessing, blessing to be with the Lord's people, to be numbered
with the saints, to be numbered among the living. You know, if God uses a man at
all, It's just because he chooses
to do so, it's not because he has any gifts or abilities of
his own, that's for sure. You don't have, you know, when
Paul says, you know, he chose the foolish to confound the wise,
I tell you what, he's certainly done that with me. Certainly
done that with me. I sure love all of you. I love
Todd and these dear preachers. I spend a lot of time with them.
We've had a wonderful time, Shirley and I have. I'm going to read
the first 11 verses here of Acts 15. And certain men, which came down
from Judea, taught the brethren and said, except you be circumcised
after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved. Now here's some
fellow says, there's only one way to be saved. Only one way. You got to be circumcised after
the manner of Moses. And when therefore Paul and Barnabas
had no small dissension and dispustation with them, they determined that
Paul and Barnabas and certain of them should go up to Jerusalem
unto the apostles and elders about this question. What question? How's a man going to be saved?
And being brought on their way by the church, They passed through
Phoenicia and Samaria declaring the conversion of the Gentiles.
And oh, when anybody is converted, anybody is saved by the grace
of God, that causes great joy unto all the brethren. Oh, when
somebody comes forth and confesses their faith in Christ, it just
makes you happy. It makes you rejoice. And when they were come
to Jerusalem, they were received of the church and of the apostles
and elders. And this is what they talked
about. They declared all things that God had done with them.
God has to do the work. But there rose up again certain
of the sect of the Pharisees, which believed, saying that it
was needful to circumcise them and to command them to keep the
law of Moses. Here we go again. You can't be
saved unless this happens to you. And the apostles and elders
came together to consider this matter of how a man's going to
be saved by circumcision, the law of Moses, or by some other
method, some other means. And when there had been much
disputing, verse 7, Peter rose up and said unto them, Men and
brethren, you know how that a good while ago God made choice among
us. God made the choice. God's the
one that decides. God's the one that makes the
choice. He made a choice. And it says this, that a good
while ago that the Gentiles by my mouth, now listen to this
now, should hear the word of the gospel and believe, not circumcision,
not Moses, not the law, but should hear the word of the gospel.
The word of the gospel. The gospel comes in words. We
use words, but it's God's words. It's God's gospel. And he goes
on to say, and they believe. They didn't do anything, believe.
And God, which knows the hearts, bless his name that he does,
bear them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did
unto us. And listen to this, and put no
difference between us and them, the Gentiles, purifying their
hearts by faith. Now therefore, why in the world
would you tempt God, and that's what it's called, tempting God,
to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our
fathers or we were able to bear? Now listen, but we believe through
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we shall be saved even as
they, even as they. Now, my subject this morning,
title of my message is what I want to describe what a believer is,
the description of a believer. Description of a believer. Todd
said he likes to get assurance when a preacher preaches. Well,
I hope I can give you some assurance today. A description of a believer. How would you describe a believer? How would you describe him? One
thing a believer does, we as God's people, We use terms that
other people don't use. Now, they'll use the word grace,
but we use terms. We use the word sovereign. We
describe God as sovereign. That means that He reigns. That
just means that He reigns, that God is God. He's not a pretender. He's not something that can be
manipulated. He's not someone who has to decide
to do something. He does what He does. He acts
like God. He acts like God, and I like
for Him to be God. I want Him to be God. I wouldn't
change Him in any way at all. I don't care who was saved or
who was damned. It makes no difference. We're
not going to change what God says about Himself. We're not
going to do that. And when we use this wonderful
term, particular redemption, I love the fact that when Christ
said, I lay down my life for the sheep, the sheep, I lay down
my life for my people. I died for the elect. One fellow
told me one time, all you talk about is God's people, God's
people, God's people. I said, that's what he calls
them. He says, my people, which are called by my name. And that's
what he talks about his people. He laid down his life for his
sheep, those that were given to him. We love those terms. And then we use the word depravity.
Now what in the world does depravity mean? Well, that means a man's
ruined. That means he's ruined from the
top of his head to the sole of his foot. He may not be as bad
as somebody else, but in the sight of God, he's as bad off
as he can possibly be. That's what depravity means.
And then we use this term Armenian. What does Armenian mean? That's
the opposite of what we believe. What's an Armenian? Just the
opposite. A fellow asked me, what's the
difference between me and you? And I said, everything. We don't
believe in free will. All our will will do is, my will,
all it ever done for me is cause me to sin. God, we pray all the
time, God please don't leave me to myself. God please don't
leave me to myself. And we want to, when we use these
terms, and free grace, I love the term free grace because that
tells you that it has no conditions upon it. It's freely given. And
I love that term. And we use these terms and we
deal with these things and describe a believer because we don't want
men's blood upon our hands. We don't never know what's going
to happen to a person after they've been in service. I don't, there's
so many people here I don't know. So we don't know what's going
to happen to a person when they leave a service. So you know
you want to be honest with me and you don't want a man to leave
the service and drop dead and you preached something besides
the gospel of the free grace of God. And you know we want
to keep, and the thing is we want to preach the truth. God's
glory is revealed in His truth. He's never glorified in a lie
or any kind of compromise at all. And another reason why we
want to describe a believer and tell the truth is because of
the worth of a soul. the worth of a soul, the importance
of caring for your own soul. If a man won't care for his soul,
I'll care for his soul. My children don't care for their
souls, but I care for them. They won't pray for themselves,
so I'm going to pray for them. They won't come hear the gospel,
so I've only got one thing I can do is pray for them and care
for their souls. If a man don't care for his soul here today,
you've got a preacher up here preaching to you that cares for
your soul. We care for men's souls. That's why we preach the
gospel. You see, a man's soul, what he is, when God made man
out of the dust of the earth, he was an inanimate object. He
was standing there just like a statue, and he had nothing
but just standing there as clay until God walked up to him and
breathed into him the breath of life, and that's when he became
a living soul. And He's an eternal soul. Once
He comes into existence, He's going to always exist. He's going
to exist always. He's either going to enjoy exquisite
bliss with God throughout eternity, He's going to enjoy God and delight
in God throughout all eternity, or He's going to have exquisite
misery and blackness and darkness forever and ever. So that's why. And oh, what a terrible, terrible
rebuke to those who don't care and aren't concerned with their
soul. They care about the body. They dress the body. They take
such care to dress it up and don't care about the nakedness
of their soul before God. And they'll feed the flesh and
starve the soul. And oh, we don't want to do that.
But let me give you a description of a believer. You know, it's
said here that God made the choice. And they went and declared what
God had done with them. Here's the first thing, the way
I'd describe a believer. First thing I'd say about him
is that he's seen God. He's seen God. And I'll tell
you something else, once he saw Him, and God's been pleased to
let him see Him, and reveal Himself to him, he's not like they thought
he was at all. He's not like they thought he
was. You know, when we was in religion, doing all the things,
and everybody's got their view of God. Everybody's got an opinion
about God. But God said, you thought I was
altogether someone like yourself. But God's not like us at all.
He is not like us in any way, shape, form, or fashion. You
know, there's people that says He is. They always say, my God's
a God of love. No, no, no, that's not the way
it is. God is love. He's not a God of
love. If there's any love, God's the
one that's got it. But I'm telling you what, that
believer has seen God. And what I mean by that is that
they saw him first and foremost as a God of predestination. He's
a God that declared the end from the beginning, and from ancient
times of things that are not yet done, saying, all my counsel
shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. That's why He said,
He don't under God are all His works from the beginning of the
creation. And that's why God predestinates
everything that happens. I was driving to meet another
day and just one leaf, one leaf blew off of a tree and went right
by the car. And I immediately thought, God sent that leaf at
that time just for me to think about Him. That, I mean, if He
says He numbers the hairs of our head, there's not a dust
particle in the face of this earth that God doesn't cause
it. Have you ever sat in the light and seen all them dust
in there? That's God. He puts all that dust there.
He controls, I mean, down to the minutest details. He predestinates
it. He's got my heartbeats numbered.
He's got my hairs numbered. He's got my breasts numbered.
He's got my steps numbered. He's got my life predestinated
from the day I was born till the day I leave here and go be
with Him. And I'd get up every day and say, it's the Lord's
day. It's the Lord's day. And not only has He got a predestination,
and we've seen Him that way, love Him that way. What about
my will? What about my power? What about
it? God, He's the God of power. He's
God who's got all might. Power. Oh, I've heard once, I've
heard twice, say that all power belongs under God. Man wants
to talk about, I've got this power, I've got that power, I've
got power to do this, I've got power to do that. Ain't nobody
got any power except God give it to him. The powers that be
are ordained of God. You know who our president was
going to be before any of us knew? The one that God said he
was going to be. And he didn't decide on November
the 8th either. Did he? Oh, bless his name. That just
about makes you want to holler, don't it? Oh, listen now, and
I'll tell you what. You know, listen. We are in such a desperate condition. Our hearts are so hard. Our minds
are so rebellious. Our necks are so stiff that it
takes an impotent power to break the heart, to bend the neck,
and to take the mind and make it submissive. It takes a miracle
of God Himself God said, I'll take out the stony heart. And
what He said, I'll put in a heart there that can feel, a heart
that can be touched, a heart that can be moved, a heart that
can feel, a heart that can love, a heart that can know God. He
said, I'll give you that heart. And not only that, I'll give
you a spirit. I'll put a spirit in you. And
it takes power. Salvation is a supernatural act
of God, of His almighty power. And God, when He sends His power,
I mean His power is going to do its work. He can come as just
a puff, or He can come as a mighty Russian wind, but He's the only
one that can take that heart and break it. and give you a
heart that can be touched. He's the only one that can move
your heart and make it lift up to Him. The only one that can
do that. And then He's a God of purpose.
We've seen God. He's a God of purpose. This is
how God taught me the Gospel. When I seen that word purpose. When I first went to Tennessee,
they called me the holiness preacher. Because I was a bench-jumping,
tongue-speaking Pentecostal until God saved me. But I got in such
terrible shape, got in such terrible shape, because the people I was
preaching to, Greg, they'd be all right for six months and
they'd go right back to the world. And I was preaching how you're
supposed to live and you're going to be holy lives and all this
kind. You've got to be holy, holy, holy. And all do all this
stuff. And then they'd go right back
to the world. And I said, well, what's wrong with my message?
I'm preaching one thing and they do something else. And I started, oh, I started
praying, God, please, please have mercy on me and teach me.
Teach me. And this is the way I prayed.
This is the way I prayed. God's my witness. I said, Lord,
is salvation something you do or something we do? Or do we
do it together? Is holiness something we can
produce or something you have to give us? And I was setting
up in the woods, up behind my house, way up in the woods. Went
up there squirrel hunting. I had on a little old vest and
everywhere I went I had a Bible with me. I kept the Bible everywhere
I sat down. I read the scriptures all the
time. And I was sitting down up there and I had a little old
paperback Bible. Reaching to my back and I pulled
it out and opened it up and I was sitting up there. And 2 Timothy
1.9. Oh, bless the Lord. 2 Timothy
1.9, just like a light shined on it. It was just like a light
shined on it. And God right then and there,
He did something for me that I never got over. And this is
what that verse says, God who hath saved us, not according
to our works, but according to his own purpose, purpose and
grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world
ever began. I never, from then on, I read
the Bible in light of the word purpose. God don't, God don't,
things don't happen by chance. Don't happen by chance. Oh my,
and then he's not only a God of purpose, but he's a God of
promise. And the positive side of the promise is, is that he'll
do good. He'll bless and meets the needs.
of all of those who believe He's promised, but the other side
of it is that also He's promised what He's going to do to those
who won't believe. Won't believe. And let me tell
you, it's okay, that's the first thing about a believer, description
of a believer. Not only has he seen God, but
he's seen himself in light of God and His holiness. You can't see God and it not
profoundly affect your attitude about yourself and what you know
about yourself. When you see yourself in light
of God and His holiness, you realize right then and there
how guilty, how sinful, how wretched, how miserable, how naked, what
a loathsome person you are. And you don't know. You don't
see your sinfulness until you start seeking the Lord. You won't
see your sinfulness until you first see the Lord. Huh? Is that not right? Let me show
you something in Isaiah 5. Look with me in Isaiah 5. You know, that's the thing about
it. People think holiness is riding around in a buggy with
a horse in front of your buggy and wearing black pants and white
shirts and a black hat. That's not holiness. You that
desire to be holy, don't you hear what the law saith? You
know what holiness is? Holiness is a state of being.
It's a state of being. When our Lord Jesus Christ, he
prayed in John 17, he says, Father, sanctify me that I might sanctify
them. Now, did our Lord Jesus Christ
need to be made holy? When He says, sanctify me that
I may sanctify them? No, what He is saying, set me
apart to the cross, set me apart to death so that I can sanctify,
make holy, my people. And holiness is a state of being.
God said, Be ye holy as I am holy. How in the world are we
going to be as holy as God? If all it takes is us dressing
a certain way and wearing our hair a certain way, and using
certain conversations and going to places and not going to places.
Any of us can do that. But how in the world are we going
to be as holy as God? Ain't but one way we can be as
holy as God, and that's for God to declare us to be holy and
make us holy and regard us as holy. And the only place He can
do that is in His blessed Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. With His
spotless garments on, I'm as holy as God's own Son. So you go on and try to be as
holy as you can be. But I ain't gonna try. I'm already
as holy as I'm gonna be. I'm as holy as I'm ever gonna
be. I ain't gonna get no more holy
than I am. I'm not gonna get no more righteous
than I am. I hope I get more gracious. I hope I get more loving. I hope I get kinder. I hope I
get sweeter. I hope I get more compassionate. But I ain't going to get more
holy or more righteous. No, I'm not going to do that.
Now look here in Isaiah 5. I want you to see this. Look
here in verse 8. Look what it says. This is Isaiah
now. He said, Woe unto them that join
house to house. Look down in verse 11. He says,
Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning. Now look down
here in verse 20. No, verse 18. Woe unto them that
draw iniquity. Verse 20, Woe unto them that
call evil good and good evil. And all he just goes, whoa, whoa,
whoa, five different woes there. Then look over in Isaiah six. Look what he said in verse five. Then he said, I, woe is me. Everybody he said five woes on
everybody else. He was woeing everybody else.
Everybody, woe to you, woe to you, woe to you, woe to you,
woe to you. Oh, you sorry bunch. Everybody
was woe, and then all of a sudden, what happened? He saw the Lord.
He saw the Lord. He saw people drinking, said,
woe to you. He saw people in sin, he said, woe to you. He
saw people building houses by houses, and he said, woe to you.
Woe, woe, woe, and then he saw the Lord. He saw the Lord high. And if you ever see the Lord,
that's where you're going to see. High! And he saw Him lifted up. That's the only place you can
ever see Him. And he saw His glory. And he backed up. He went way up. And he said,
Oh, Lord. He said, Oh, Lord, woe is me. Woe is me. I'm the one that's
undone. My lips, the things that come
out of my lips are not even clean. Because there's nothing in my
heart that can cause them to come out clean. And he says,
woe is me, I'm undone. And I tell you what, until you
become undone, you ain't even a believer yet. That's what happens.
You come undone. I'm telling you, you owe your
guilt and your condemnation. You're like Job. I heard about
you with the hearing of the ear. I see you. I see you now. I see
you. Oh Lord, I see you. And I'm going to repent. I'm going to get in dust. And
I'm going to get in ashes. I've spoken once. I've spoken
twice. Now I'm going to put my hand
over my mouth. I'm going to put my hand over my mouth. And I'll
tell you something else about a believer. He is absolutely
done with himself. Our Lord said, except a man deny
himself, he can't be my disciple. I used to hear fundamentalist
preachers saying, you know, deny yourself your Pepsi, but deny
yourself buying Pepsi for a week so you can help a missionary.
Use that money to help a missionary. That's what they took deny yourself
to mean. But you know what deny yourself means? you. Deny your own righteousness.
Deny your ability. Deny that you have any strength.
Deny that you can do anything. Deny you. Deny you. In the sight of God, you have
to say, nothing, nothing, nothing. Who are you? Nobody. What do
you know? Nothing. What do you have? Nothing
but what Christ gave me. What do I know? Nothing but what
He taught me. What do you have? Nothing but what He gave me.
And that's what we do. You find a fellow bragging about
himself, oh my goodness. It's an awful fellow to brag
about himself. Oh, he's done with himself. Look in 2 Corinthians
1 with me. You know this business of holiness. We're at this again. You know, Simon Peter, when he
was in that boat, somebody read that yesterday. I believe it
was you who read that yesterday. When he said, launch out into
the deep. And he said, Lord, we've toiled
all night. We've worked. We know fishing. We know what
it is to fish for a living. And we've toiled all night. And
I just don't see any sense in fishing anymore today. arguing with the Lord what he
was doing. And they rolled out there and he said, launch out
into the deep and just as quick as he caught fish, you know what,
the first thing he said, why in the world was I thinking to
talk to the Lord and tell him anything? And that's why he said,
Lord, depart from me. I'm a sinful man. When you think
you're going to tell God something, And you're going to complain
to God and think to tell Him anything that this is the way
it should be and I know this and I don't know that. Listen,
that's when you'll say, Lord, please depart from me. I'm so
sinful to think that I would ever even thought that, believe
that, felt that. Lord, just go ahead. Just leave
me alone. Leave me to my sin. But look
what it says here in 2nd Corinthians 1. Look what he said in verse 8.
For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which
came to us in Asia. Let me say this right before
I move on. Old Scott Richardson used to say believers in one
of three places at any given time. He's either in trouble,
he's coming out of trouble, or he's going into trouble. And I don't want you to be ignorant
concerning the trouble. And look what he says, that we
were pressed above measure, and listen to this, above strength,
insomuch that we despaired of life. We're going to die here.
We're going to die. We're going to die. But look
what he says, but we had the sentence of death in ourselves. Oh, if we could write across
our hearts and our chest in the sight of God, death. You know,
what are we going to do? We have the sentence of death
in ourselves. And this is the reason that we should not trust
in ourselves. Why should we trust in ourselves?
What's there to trust? I don't trust me. And look what he goes on to say.
But we trust in God, which raises the dead. And listen to this.
Bruce preached on this, who delivered us. saved us from so great a
death, the death of sins, the eternal death, second death,
and doeth deliver us, has saved us, will save us, does save us,
and whom we trust that he will yet save us. I mean, I've been
saved more times, Christian, I can't tell you how many times
I've been saved in my life. I've been saved right now. Being saved right now, saved
from making a fool out of myself and making a fool out of Christ.
Because a lot of fellows are doing that today. But he's done
with himself. Any thoughts of goodness, any
thoughts of righteousness, any thoughts of his will, any thoughts
of his own strength is gone. His mouth is stopped. He's quit. When he opens his mouth, he wants
to say the right thing. He wants to honor God. He wants
to tell the truth on God. He wants to tell the truth on
the Scriptures. He wants to be honest with himself. His mouth
is stopped and he justifies God. He sees the necessity of somebody
else bearing my sins, bearing my guilt, taking my place. And he's so afraid of himself.
He is so afraid of himself. And there's only one person that
He can trust, one person He can trust, and that's the Lord Jesus
Christ. He trusts Him with the most precious
possession He has, and that's His soul. And if He had 10,000
of them, He could trust Him with every one of them, couldn't He?
And I tell you, beloved, everything that we're looking at this morning,
every person you're sitting beside, every one of us, Everything,
this building and the people we sit inside, every relationship
is temporal. Temporal. Some of you sitting
here, this time next year your wife won't be with you, your
child won't be with you, your husband won't be with you. Everything's temporal. The one
thing you'll never ever lose, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's a
friend that sticketh closer than a brother. He's a brother born
for adversity. And let him do what he will.
If he wants to come and take you, take your loved one, take
one of your children, they belong to him. And we'll just reach
up and kiss the hand of his blessed providence and say, Lord, my
time will come too. I'll get to go one of these days
myself. And that'll be all right. Oh, bless his name. What a wonderful
Savior is Jesus our Lord. What a wonderful Savior to me.
He holdeth me up and I shall not be moved. He giveth me strength
as my day. Well, here's my third point about
description of the believer. He's seen God and he's seen himself.
And all his mouth about his holiness and his righteousness and his
strength and his goodness is stopped. He's shut up. He's shut
up bragging about himself. He's going to just talk about
Christ. And here's the third thing about a description. He's
a new creature. He's a new creation. And God
made him that way. God made choice by us through
the gospel. He's made a new creature not
by his own power of his own will. And what is a new creature? Well,
the new birth, if I understand it right, is God bringing into
existence a man who never existed before. And I know people that
make fun of that, but here's the thing about it. What nature,
what happens to us that our hearts, what nature do we commune with
God about? What nature are you listening
to the Gospel with today and rejoicing in the Gospel? What
nature causes you to delight in the Word of God? What nature
in you causes you to pray to God? What nature in you makes
you understand the Scriptures when you lived a whole life and
you didn't know anything about it? What happened to you that
changed you and happened to you that you went from not knowing
anything to now all you want is Christ? What happened to that? It's that new nature God gave
you. It's a new nature. It don't have
nothing to do with the flesh. No, it's a new nature. And I'll
tell you, here's how the way this new nature works. The first thing he does is he
puts love in your heart that never was there before. The love
of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. We know we've
passed from death unto life. Why? Because we love the brethren. And then, oh, He changes our
attitude, changes our desires, our wills, our affections. And
this inward man, He gives us this new heart. He gives us a
new head. He gives us a new understanding.
He unwinds our understanding. He gives us a new head. Most
of us need a new one. But He gives us a new mind. Yeah,
He gives us a new mind, a new mind. A mind to know Him, a mind
to obey Him, a mind to bow down to Him, a mind to seek Him, a
mind to delight in Him, a mind to never give, to deny ourselves. He gives us new hope. And one
of these days He's going to take us to a new home. Huh? And I tell you this about it,
and I'm going to hush, but what God does when He makes a new
creature, a new believer, a Christian, a saint of God, He wants everything
out in the open before God. He ain't got nothing that He
wants to keep hid. Now, I know that. I know that. I mean, He's just
as, He's open. He knows that God sees Him. He
knows that God knows His thoughts are far off. And he just lays
himself open before God. If he does something he's not
supposed to do, you know what he does? He said, Lord, you saw me. He was there. You heard my voice. You heard
my thoughts. You saw what I said. You heard
what I thought. You saw what I did. Lord, here
I am. You want all things open and
naked before Him. You don't want nothing hid from
Him. No. No, no. And before that, you
wanted everything hid. You didn't want nobody to know
nothing. Now, before God, you just say, Lord, here I am. Here I am. It's like old Simon Peter.
The Lord said to him, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I do. Do
you love me? Yes, Lord. Do you love me? Lord, you're the one who knows.
I'm not going to say it again. You're the one that knows. If
you know, you wouldn't be asking me that. So Lord, you know. You know. You know. And oh, beloved,
I'll tell you this much about us. We're not perfect in this flesh. But it's in our hearts to be
that way. Paul said, the will is present
with me. But how to perform I know not
how. And we've not apprehended, but
I tell you one thing we're doing, we're pressing toward that mark.
We're pressing on. And we, you know what our prize
is going to be? The Lord Jesus Christ. He's our
prize now, and when we cross the finish line, He's our prize. That's the prize you get. That's the prize. What prize
are you going to get? I'm going to get Him. When I
cross the finish line, what prize are you going to have? The Lord
Jesus Christ. I'm going to quit. I don't want
to, but I'm going to. I tell you, you, our Lord Jesus
Christ, there's just not enough we can say about Him. There's
not enough we can talk about how much we need Him. There's
not enough we can say of what He's done for us. There's not
enough we can say to tell what He means to us. There's just
not words to describe it. There's just not abilities to
do it. There's just not words. There's just not words. But our
hearts, our hearts are just so desperately, desperately for
Him. And He gives us just a little
taste of what we got to look forward to here. Ain't that right? Oh, I ought to sing a song. But I'm not going to. I've done sung my song. I've
done sung it. It was in tune. Was it in tune? I've sung my song. Oh, thank
you. I tell you, I just, oh. The Lord
Jesus Christ, He's everything. He's just everything.