Well, good afternoon. That was
a good meal. Very good. Appreciate that. This afternoon here, I
want to kind of give you an understanding
of the first message the Lord gave me. I failed to preach. Before, it was about 2008. I
believe the Lord really put it on my heart to preach. And before
that, I had a lot of my dad's notes. I mean, I had boxes up
and I'd read them and go through them and I felt You know, I would
bring messages out of those notes and it was a very good learning
period for me because there's people that go to seminary and
there's people that they learn and I was able to learn from
my father's notes. That's where I learned a lot
of things and how to put a sermon together and make things and
then read the notes off and I could do pretty well with that. But
it wasn't until about 08. And I remember the time I was
sitting there reading through some notes of my father's, and
I just felt the burden on my heart that this was something
that I had to do, that I just couldn't pick out of these
notes anymore. The Lord was going to have to
give me a message. I remember one day I was driving
to work, and through that week I was supposed to preach on that
Sunday. And I remember driving to work and it was very foggy
out. I remember a time back when I
was about 17, 18 years old, and I was going to go hunting with
my brother. Well, it was very foggy that
morning, and I remember he pulled up in the driveway. It was probably
about 4 o'clock in the morning. Him and a guy by the name of
Ed Higgins. And we were going to go up in the mountains to
go hunting. And I got in the truck with him and we left, and
man, it was foggy. You couldn't hardly see anything.
And we drove all the way up there to the mountains. It took a long
time. We got up there, it was light when we got there. But
it was so foggy, you couldn't see anything. You could step
away from the truck a ways and you can hardly see the truck.
And Ed Higgins, this guy that had been up there a lot, he told
me, he said, just go up in there. The fog will lift. You'll be
all right. And the mountains are there. You can't see them,
but they're there. Just go on up in there and then
just sit down somewhere and wait. It'll lift. So I remember I got
up in the mountains there and I was sitting there waiting for
that fog to lift. It never lifted. It was that that was the strangest
day. It was there the whole entire day. And I remember I got up
and he had told me there was a road down a mile or so down
the mountain side there. And I was supposed to hit the
road and come out to the truck. I remember I took off and I was
walking. I kept thinking to myself, you
know, this has been so easy if I just had a compass, if I had
a compass that I could have took my bearing when I went in there.
And it doesn't matter if I could see if I had a compass. then
I would be able to get out of here, all right. And I remember,
just by the grace of God, I made it to that road and I was able
to get down to the truck again. But my brother ended up getting
lost. He walked clear up to the top of the mountain so he could
see over there. And he finally got up so high,
he couldn't even tell he was going up. It was so foggy. He walked
all the way up the top and looked over the fog and decided he had
to go back down again. So, but anyway, I felt like I
had to have a compass. And I remember when I was driving
to work that day, I said, there's something there. The Lord was
trying to show me something. He was trying to teach me something. It came to me that in every verse
of scripture in this Bible, It points us to two things. And
this morning, I know a compass points in all different directions,
but we're going to deal this afternoon here with north and
south. That's what we're going to deal
with. North on our compass of truth. And this is, I feel like
the Lord gave me this. The first message I ever preached
was this. It's called the compass of truth.
And I believe that every verse in this Bible, it points to two
things. Number one, it points, we'll deal with north first.
north on our compass of truth, and that is God. It points us
to a holy, righteous, sovereign God. It points us to a God who
is sovereign in all things. In everything, He is sovereign. I mean, we need to see that.
We need to understand that. A God who is life. A God who
is truth. A God that everything He says
is absolute truth. And that's what this north on
our compass of truth. It's perfection. It's holiness.
It's righteousness. It's all these things He is light. You know, it's the Bible says
he's light and in him dwelleth. No darkness whatsoever This is
north on this compass of truth. He's everything Alpha and Omega
the beginning and the ending he's everything he's sovereign
of all things including the will of men Yes, he's sovereign even
over the will of men He is. He is right in all that He does.
The Lord God Almighty, He answers to no man, none whatsoever. No matter what religion is saying
out here, God answers to no man. He is sovereign over all things.
The God of the Scriptures, He is omnipotent. He's omnipotent. He's all-powerful.
He is. He is omniscient. He is all-knowing. And I mean all-knowing. He knows
everything. He is omniscient. He is all-knowing. He knows the beginning from the
end. His sovereign will has predestinated all things. It has. And this
is north on our compass of truth. Perfection, holiness, and all
these things, they add up to what God is. They do. He is the truth and the life
and the way. On our compass of truth, He is due north. Due north.
He's perfect. Follow Him and there can be no
error. No error whatsoever. If you have your bearing set
on the true God of the scriptures, if you have your bearing set
on him, there is no error there. None. Well, every scripture in
this Bible points us to something else. And I was thinking when
you're holding that compass and you've got it pointed north and
that you got your bearing on God, perfection, holiness, righteousness,
beauty, majesty. You look at that compass and
there's needles pointing north, but there's also a little point
of that needle is pointing back somewhere. And it's pointing
south. And now south on our compass
of truth, it's pointing back at us, is what it's pointing
at. And south on our compass of truth is the total opposite
of north. The total opposite. We are wickedness. We are sinfulness. We are depravity. We're the opposite
of God. He is life. That's north. Life
is north. We are death. That's south. He is truth. Perfection. Truth. And we're lies. That's
what we are. We're nothing but lies. He's
righteous. Perfection. Holiness. We're sinners.
We're south. Sinners. He's light. We're darkness.
He is everything. We're nothing. Nothing. He is
love. We're hate. That's what we are. He is glory. We're hell. That's
what we are. He is merciful and we're full
of greed and lust. You know what the Bible says
about us? That's what we are. He is true north and we're due
south. We are polar opposites of him. And if any verse of scripture
that we go into in light of this compass of truth, if we go into
it, We can understand that verse, I believe. We have to go into
it with that understanding that he is perfection, holiness, righteousness. We're sinfulness, wickedness,
depravity, everything that he is, we're not. And if we go into
it, we can understand the verse of scripture in the Bible. We
can. They can only be truly understood and revealed by the Holy Spirit
to the heart, though. You can sit in a Calvinistic church all
your life. You can't. That doesn't make
you a believer in the doctrines of grace. It doesn't. That has
to be revealed to you. You have to understand that after
it's revealed to you by the Holy Spirit. That's the only way you're
going to understand it. And there are people that sit
in Armenian churches. There are. And I believe that there are
some saved that sit in Armenian churches. They will be pulled
out. They will be drawn out, I believe. I believe they'll
see the error of it. But the Holy Spirit's going to
have to do the work. He's going to have to be the one that shows
them this compass of truth and puts it in their heart that they
can understand that God, who he is, and man, what he is. It's only the Holy Spirit that
does that. But if God gives us the light and we can fully understand
and comprehend these two great truths, Bill and Scripture, I
believe the Bible will come alive to us. I think it will. These
verses of scripture, you know, we talked about the message you
just had here. Talked about that. Choose you
this day. If we understand the you and
we understand the whom, and we go into that with a compass of
truth, that verse is going to, we're going to know what it means.
We're going to understand that a dead, rotten, vile, wretched
sinner is not going to choose God unless God first chooses
him. It's impossible. It's impossible
for a dead man to make himself alive. It takes a sovereign,
holy, righteous God to make a dead man alive. And that's what we
understand. That's what we see in light of
this compass of truth. Well, I remember back when I
first brought this message and I was explaining this. to the
kids and we were sitting there having a Bible study one evening
there at the house. And I told the kids, I said,
let's pick a verse and let's go through this verse and let's
examine it in light of the compass of truth, in light of this truth
that we see here. And so one of the kids said,
well, let's look at Romans 8, 29, Romans 8, 29. That's a good
one. That's a good one. For whom he
did foreknow. Let's turn over there. Romans
8. Verse twenty nine. I believe this verse right here
is very misunderstood. In modern day religion. Is a lot of misinterpretation
of this of this verse right here. The Bible says, for whom he did
foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image
of his son. That he might be the firstborn among many brothers. The first thing we need to understand
is the whom. For whom? If we come into this verse in
the wrong light, if we understand this verse and whom to mean somebody
that's not really that bad. Somebody that's not dead to him,
somebody that's not all the way dead, somebody that's just halfway
decent. OK, we're going to be, I was
thinking this week, we're going to be like Bugs Bunny. Remember,
he hops up out of that hole and he's got his beach board in his
hand and his surfboard and he's got his sunglasses on and he's
got his swimsuit on and all this suntan lotion in his hand. He
pops out, there's snow on his head. Remember what he said?
He said, I think I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. And that's
the way we're going to be. You come popping out of this
verse and you think you got the whom all messed up, then you're
going to obviously have the for whom he part of it messed up.
You're going to have the he that's going to be all off. And this
verse isn't going to make any sense whatsoever. It's going
to mean something totally different than what it truthfully means.
All right, let's look at it in light of the compass of truth.
What does this foreknowledge of God consist of in the eyes
of modern day religion? What does it consist of? Let's
look at that first. How does this foreknowledge of God work
in your typical Armenian church? How does it work? Well, I believe
if you just want to find out what modern day religion is,
if you want to find the answers to a particular subject on Armenianism,
really all we have to do is just ask our kids the question. That's
all you got to do. Really, just ask your kids. And
I guarantee you 99% of the time, they're going to give you an
Armenian answer. They will. You ask them what the foreknowledge
of God is, in how God foreknew his people. Ninety nine percent
of the time, they're going to say that God looked into the
future and he saw what man was going to do, and therefore he
chose them according to what they were going to do. That's
what they're going to do. That only makes sense to our
children. It does. Apart from the compass
of truth, apart from the truth being revealed in your heart.
That's the only way that makes sense. When a teacher, when you
go to school, the teacher doesn't pick out the kids at the beginning
of the year they're going to give A's to, and just give them
out because that was their decision. You've got to earn those grades,
right? You've got to earn those A's. You've got to. And that's
the way our children look at this. It only makes sense. It
does. Well, until he reveals himself
to them, and until he has revealed himself to us and showed us these
things, That only makes sense. You have to earn these things.
You have to earn it. Well, that's not the truth. That's not the
truth. We are all Armenian before the
Lord reveals himself to us. We all were. We all were. Listen,
this is the world's view of this verse, and it's the world's view
of salvation as a whole. God's sitting up on a mountain
somewhere. You know, you always hear about
that old white-haired man that's very knowledgeable, and he's
up there, and we're going to search him for truth. You know, that's
the world's view of God. And he's this one that is all
knowing and he knows everything. He's up on this mountainside
and he's got preachers down at the base of this mountain. OK,
and there's a whole bunch of people out the bottom of this
valley down there. And these preachers are saying
to these people, and even though that old man up there, he knows
and he has foreknown and he has foreseen all these things, his
hands are tied. He can't do anything about all
these people down in the valley until they make a decision to
come up there to him. He can't do anything about it.
So he's got preachers down there and they're saying, go, go, go
to him, go to him. And there's people down there
on the bottom of this valley. That's modern day religion. It is. If
you listen to them long enough, you'll figure this out. You'll
see it. They're sitting down there and they're looking and
they're listening to the message and they're saying, well, I don't
want to go. Some of them do. And then there's others that
say, hey, you know, if I try real hard and I know there's
going to be rivers to cross and valleys to go, you know, creeks
to wade and stuff, but I think I can make it. If God is my co-pilot,
you've seen those bumper stickers. If he's my co-pilot, I can make
it. I can make it. If you need to
be halfway, I'll make it. I'll make it. That's modern day religion. It is. Their compass is going
like this, isn't it? It's all off. It's all up. These
people are all mingling around down there. All right. They say, I think they go off
and they're singing that song. I'm pressing on the upward way,
right? New heights I'm gaining every
day. They're going, they're on their way. They are. All right. Let's examine this scripture
in light of the compass of truth. In light of the truth. If your
compass goes straight up and down. If we got north and we
got south right on our compass of truth, let's look at this
verse. Well, first of all, God is not up on some mountain somewhere.
No, he's not. He's up in the heavenlies. He
is. God is above us. You know, that's
our problem, isn't it? Sometimes we think of God too
much like ourselves. Nuh-uh. God's holy, righteous,
perfect, sovereign. And he reigns in the heavens.
He's up there in the heavenlies. That's where he is. He's up there.
And we're down on this earth. But there's even a worse picture
of where we're at. We're down in this giant chasm that's thousands
and thousands and thousands of feet deep. And there are giant
granite walls that stretch up and up and up and up and up.
There's no way you're going to climb them. No way. And what
makes matters even worse is at the bottom of this chasm, down
there at the bottom, very bottom, there's a mass of humanity and
they're all dead to God. All dead to God. All right. The
Bible says, and you would be quick and who were dead and trespasses
in sin. South on a compass of truth is
death. Death. Okay. He is life. We're dead. We're all down there
at the bottom of this chasm and we're dead. All right. Down there
in the world of depravity, world of sin, world of wickedness. All right. Now, this compass
is going straight up and down, isn't it? It is. Perfection,
holiness, righteousness, beauty. All these things. Wickedness,
depravity. No way. Dead. Dead to God. There's our compass. Okay? Straight
up and down. Well, let's look at this verse.
For whom He did foreknow. Alright? Before the foundation
of the world, God chose the people. Not seeing any good in them.
He didn't see any good in them. How could He? How could He have
saw any good in them? In light of this truth. In light
of this compass of truth, do you see any good south from the
compass of truth? Is there? No, there isn't. He
chose his people out of the sinful, wretched, dead mass of humanity. That's where he chose them from.
That's where he got them from. If he found you, that's where
he found you. If he chose you, that's where
he chose you. If he loves you, That's where
he loves you. Right out of there. Right out
of there. That's where he got you. That's the way our compass
has to point. He does. He's north. We're south.
He's perfection, holiness, righteousness. We're wickedness. Depravity.
He's life. We're death. And because he chose
his people before the foundation of the world, he foreknew his
people. He foreknew his people. He foreknew
his people because he chose them. That's how he foreknew. Remember
that verse? He engraved our names on the
palm of his hand. He chose us and therefore he
foreknew us. He looked down at this vile,
wretched mass of humanity and he picked you out. He picked
you into something. He picked you out. He picked
me out. Well, you know, that just doesn't fit in with our
free enterprise capitalistic thinking, does it? That just
doesn't go with it. It doesn't. I always thought
you get what you pay for. You know, I always thought that
was the way it was. You have to earn it. Well, if your compass
is pointing in the right direction, you'll understand that God does
not have mercy upon the sinner. If God doesn't have mercy upon
him, he will get what he's earned. He will. The wages of sin is
death. That's what we deserve. That's
what we deserve. He doesn't run a system of fairness
to the sinner. He runs a system of grace. Grace. Isn't that wonderful? Grace.
A system of mercy. That's what he'd run. But wait,
there's more. It says for whom he did foreknow, he did also
predestinate. to be conformed to the image
of his son. He made a way. God made a way
for sinful man to be reconciled with a perfectly holy God. That South, he made a way for
it to go north. He made a way. He did. Sinful
man. Christ became a man. Christ became
a human being. God placed his only begotten
son His dear son down in this pit of flesh we talked about.
Down there in that chasm, he placed his dear son down there.
He did. And he became sin for those ones
that God foreknew. He became sin for them. He did
not everyone. He didn't become sin for everyone. The truth points to an effectual
sacrifice, doesn't it? Isn't that what the truth points
to? It doesn't point to a failed
savior. That's not what the truth points to. If Christ died for
everyone, and if any of his elect are in hell, that doesn't work. It doesn't work. That points
to a failed savior, doesn't it? No, that's not truth. That's
not truth. He has accomplished everything. He is perfect in
what he's accomplished. Perfect. He became sin for his
people. The Bible says the soul that
sinneth, it shall surely die. It shall surely die. God said,
I will in no wise clear the guilty. I'm not going to clear him. I'm
not going to clear him. Won't do it. God demanded perfection. He had to have it. He demanded
it. He demands holiness. He demands
a spotless sacrifice. His law will be honored. It has
to be satisfied. It has got to be satisfied. In
light of the truth, God is just God. Holy, perfect, righteous. That's north. And His justice
has to be satisfied. His holiness has to be matched.
God cannot look upon sin. He is light, and in him can dwell
no darkness whatsoever. None. No darkness will enter
into his presence. No sin will come into his presence.
None. God demanded for us what we in
no way could pay. We couldn't pay. We can't. We're
down there in that bottom of that pit down there. There ain't
no way you're going to get out of it. No way. But Christ came,
and Christ lived, and Christ died. And now Christ sits beside
his father making intercession for us. He does. Christ paid
the debt. Christ paid the debt. He broke
the, we broke the law. The whip should have been laid
upon our back, but it wasn't. It was laid on his, right? It
was laid on his. But instead, the wrath of the
father was turned on Christ for his people, for his people. God turned his back on his son
for his people. for His chosen people. He was
wounded for our transgression. He was bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes
we're healed. We're healed by Him. And there
you are, down there in the bottom of that giant chasm. There you
are. And the Holy Spirit comes, and it touches a heart down there.
We're not looking up. Uh-uh. We're not. These people
down there are dead. We were dead before the Holy
Spirit came to us. We weren't looking for God. He came looking
for us. And he sent his spirit down there
in that pit. Down there in that pit. And he
touched us. He touches our heart. He makes us alive to who God
is. That's what happens. We see him as he is. He shows
us. He shows who he is. You remember
Isaiah there? I told you I was going to talk
about that a little bit. Remember Isaiah there? He said, I saw the Lord
high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. He said he
saw that perfection. He saw north on the compass of
truth, and then he saw south. He said, what was it? Well, remember
what Job said? He said, I've heard of thee all
my life with the hearing of the ears. I've sit and I've listened. I've heard of you. But now mine
eyes see a thing. What did he see? He saw north. He saw north on the compass of
truth, and then he saw south. He said, I abhor myself. Oh, I'm a sinner. I'm wicked. I'm depraved, wicked, vile, wretched
sinner. I need something. I've got to
have it. And there you are down there in the bottom of that pit.
The Holy Spirit comes and He shows you who you are. He shows
you who you are. Remember that pilgrim in Pilgrim's
Progress? Remember that? He left that city
and he had that pack on his back. And he felt like that pack was
going to drag him right down in the bottom, and he said, there's
no way. I'm going to make it. No way. And that's the way we
were down there in that pit. He showed us our wickedness.
He showed us our depravity. He showed us what we are. We're
down there. He showed us that we dwell in
the midst of an unclean people, and we have lips of unclean people.
That's us. That's us. He showed us that. And then what do we do? What
happens? Well, we're looking for something then, right? We're
looking for something. We're looking for the answer.
And you see off in the corner, you see this great congregation
off in the corner. And you go over there and you're
thinking, maybe I can get this pack removed. Maybe I can do
something about this burden that's on my back. You walk over there
to that great congregation that's over there in the corner and
the preacher's saying, just climb. Just climb. Go. Go. You feel that pack's on your
back You look at these people over there trying to climb up
those giant chasm walls, those walls of granite. They're just
clinging to the mud on the side of there and they're working
their way up. They're not making no progress. And you say to yourself,
there's no way. There's no way I'm going to climb
up there. You see? You see up there? There's
no way I'm going to get up there. No way. You say, I've got to
have something else. I've got to have something else.
And you go walking off. Brother Glenn, he's talking about
being in a church, preached Arminianism. That's the way you're going to
feel. You're going to feel, there's no way. You see your sin and
sitting in an Arminian church, no way. No way. This isn't for
me. I've got to find something else.
So you look around and you see this little congregation off
in the corner. little congregation, and you walk over there and you
listen to what that preacher's saying. You know what he's saying?
He's saying, look. Look. And you say, is that all? Yeah, just look. Look for what?
Look. Christ. Look. Look unto me, all
ye that labor in every way. Look unto me, all ye that enter
the earth and be saved. For I am God and there is none
else. Just look. That's all you gotta do. And
the moment you look, that hand of mercy, stretching down to
where you are. You didn't get up there. He came
down to where you are. He touched you. Sovereign word. Sovereign word came to you. Said
live. And that pack fell off. Fell
off. Isn't that wonderful? That's
where he found us. That's where he found us. Oh,
you see the difference? You see the difference between
the two? There's a big difference. There is a huge difference. You'll
go off saying instead of that, I'm pressing on the upper way.
You know what you're going to go off saying? And my heart was
despaired neath Jehovah's dread frown and low in the pit where
my sin dragged me down. I cried to the Lord. That's north. I cried to the Lord from the
deep miry clay. who tenderly brought me out to
golden day. Right? He brought me out of the
miry clay. He set my feet on that rock to
stay. That rock is Christ. And he set
my feet on him. He set my feet on the rock to
stay. Oh, he puts a song, and I can see it. There's songs in
a lot of your faces this morning. I can see gladness on your face.
If you've got it on your face, it's because he put it there.
And he puts a song in my soul today, a song of praise. That's our song. We're not going
to glory in ourselves. Uh-uh. No flesh will boast in
his sight. None. But he puts a song in our
heart today, a song of praise. Hallelujah. That's what these
men saw, wasn't it? That's what Isaiah saw. He saw
north and he saw south. And when we come into these verses
of Scripture, and the Lord just opened that to me, and I mean,
every verse of Scripture now I look at, I just look at it
in light of that verse, in light of the compass of truth. How
does it, what does this say about God? Well, perfect, sovereign,
righteous, holy, just. Everything I'm not, He is. And in Christ, I'm everything
that He is. That's the truth, isn't it? That's
the Gospel. The Bible just comes alive. It
comes alive to you. I pray that we can all see this. It's only the Holy Spirit that's
going to open the eyes of the dead sinner. It is. Only the
Holy Spirit can do this. I fear we don't remember. You
know, we we sit and we talk to people and that don't see the
truth. And I fear sometimes we don't
remember what we were before the Holy Spirit showed us this
compass, before he put it in our heart. Our compass, listen,
there's a lot of people out here and we were the same way. They
see themselves off. kind of in the Southwest somewhere,
you know, Arizona, Southern California. Not really dead, but sort of
dead, you know. But listen, the compass needle
doesn't bend in the middle. It doesn't. If your view of man
is over here somewhere, your view of God is going to be off
somewhere else. It's got to be man is dead. That man is a sinner. He's a wretched, depraved, defiled
sinner. That's what he is. And when we
see that, Then we're going to see God. We're going to see Him.
See Him as He is. Oh, that we might see Him. That
we might see Him. Little ones, did you just hear
me today? Oh, I hope you didn't. Oh, I hope you didn't. Let's
have a word of prayer. Dear God and Heavenly Father, Oh, dear Lord, that you would
reveal yourself. Oh, dear Lord, what did you see in us, Lord? Oh, you saw only wickedness and
depravity and sin, but yet you spoke the words of life to our
hearts. Dear God, would you not do that
to one of these here today? The only reason for grace is
grace, dear God. Lord, have mercy upon them. Lord,
help us to be a witness. Help us to be a testimony of
your grace, your mercy, and your truth, Lord. Lord, open our mouths
that we might speak, that we would not shy from the gospel,
dear God, of your redeeming grace. Lord, help us. Lord, save these
young ones here. Save those that do not know you
in this place. Lord, bless Brother Bruce as
he speaks to these people. Bless and fill his mouth with
words of life. Lord, do this. Have mercy on
us, Lord, we pray. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for
this day. In your dear Son's name we ask
these things. Amen. Thank you.