God's Terms of Surrender and Peace

I want you to take your Bibles
and open them to the 14th chapter of Luke, verse 33. Luke 14.33. I'm speaking on this subject,
God's terms of peace, or God's terms of surrender. In Luke 14.33,
our Lord says, So likewise, whosoever he be of you, that forsaketh
not All that he hath cannot be my disciple. Now I want us to
look squarely at what we know. Will you do that with me today?
The wise man always begins where he is. He doesn't think about
the future so much, or the past. He thinks about the present.
He begins where he is with what he has. and he is not afraid
to take inventory according to what God says. Now the scripture
tells us that, examine yourselves whether you be in the faith.
Know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you,
except you be reprobates. And then Peter said, brethren,
give diligence to make your calling and election sure. Now I want
Myself, I want all of you to carefully this morning examine
ourselves by the word of God, not by our feeling, not by experience,
not by our religious tradition, not by what we've always heard
or what we've always thought, but examine ourselves by what
God says. We must not depend on the preacher
to determine our relationship with God. We hear people say,
well, Brother So-and-so, do you think I'm saved? Do you think
I'm all right with God? And the preacher pats them on
the head and says, I thank you, I've known you all your life,
you know, and you've been such a good boy, I'm sure everything's
all right between you and God. You must not do that. You must
not depend upon the preacher to determine your relationship
with God. You must not even depend on others
to establish your spiritual relationship and your spiritual condition.
And I'll tell you this, even our own hearts cannot be trusted. That's right, the scripture says,
the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Now let us cry
with David, O God, search me. try thee, and know my thoughts,
and see if there be any wicked way in me, and, Lord, you lead
me in the way everlasting." Lord, lay bare my heart, lay bare my
soul. I don't want to be deceived.
I don't want to go to hell crying, peace, peace, when there is no
peace. May God try us by His Spirit
and by His Word, not by our tradition, mine or yours, not by our custom,
mine or yours, not by our religious heritage, mine or yours, but
by the living word of God. Now, I know some things, and
you do too. I know, first of all, there is life and there
is death. I'm starting right where I am.
Right where I am. You start where you are. I know
this. I know there's life and I know there's death. I know
that I'm living on this earth for a little while, and then
I must die. The word of God tells me life
is like a flower that's blooming today, beautiful in all of its
fragrance, and then tomorrow it's gone. Life, I know, is like
a shadow. It's here and then it flees,
like a vapor of steam for a little while. It's appointed unto men
once to die, and after that the judgment. And Job wrote, Yet
a little while, a little while, and I shall go the way from which
I shall not return. Back when I was just a very young
boy, I read a poem about an old king and his fateful fool. The fool was a jester, that's
what they called him back in the days of the courts of mighty
kings. This king had a servant that
entertained him. The servant was a clown and told
jokes and sang silly songs and made foolish remarks and entertained
the king. And one day the king called him
to him, and he said, I've got a present for you. And he presented
this jester with a gold-tipped walking cane. And he said, this
cane has an inscription on it, to the world's biggest fool.
And that's what you are. You're the world's biggest fool.
And I'll tell you, if you ever meet anybody you think's a bigger
fool than you are, you give them the cane. And the jester said,
thank you, my lord, I appreciate it. I'll cherish it, I'll carry
it all my life, and appreciate it coming from you." Well, years
passed, and one day someone came to the old jester and said, the
king is sick, very, very sick, and we don't think he's going
to live, and he wants to see you. So the jester, with his
walking cane, given him by the king, inscribed with the words,
to the world's biggest fool, went up the stone and marble
steps to the king's bedchamber, and he went in. There the old
king was, lying on the satin and silk of his beautiful bed,
dying. Jester came up and bowed, and
the old king said to him, Sir Thurow, I have called you here
to bid you good-bye. And Jester said, My lord is going
on a trip? Yes, the king said, I am. I am
going on a long, long journey. The old Jester said, And when
is my lord coming back? And the king said, well, I fear,
sir fool, I'm not coming back. Oh, my lord's going on a trip
from which he is not going to return? What preparation have
you made for the journey? And the king bowed his head and
a tear came in his eye, and he said to the fool, he said, I'm
afraid I have made no preparation at all. And the jester looked
at him and paused a moment. And then he reached over and
took his cane and handed it back to the king. And he said, my
lord, if you'll beg my pardon, this is yours. You're a bigger
fool than I am. But I know, I know this, I'm
going to die. Do you know it? And it may not
be long. And I know secondly, there's
life beyond the grave. I know that. I know it. Even
Longfellow, the poet, said life is real, life is earnest. The
grave is not its goal. Death tower to death, to dust
hour to dust return. It wasn't spoken of the soul,
I know that. Job said if a man dies, shall
he live again? Christ said so. Christ said in
my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have
told you. I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there
ye may be also." Christ said, "...he that believeth on me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live." I'm the resurrection
and the life. Paul said, "...the dead shall rise again." To be
absent from this body is to be present with the Lord. Now, you
take all you want to of this no-heaven, no-hell business,
but God's word says there's life after death. And then the third
thing I know is this. Now, you listen to me. I know
that there is salvation from sin. I'm talking about where
we are now. I'm doing away with all the tradition
and the custom and all this sort of thing. There is salvation
from sin. The scripture says in 1 John 5.11, this is the record. This is it. God hath given to
us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. And he that hath
the Son of God hath life. And he that hath not the Son
of God hath not life. There is life to be had. It's
in Christ. There is salvation to be had.
It's in Christ. This is the record. He that believeth
on the Son of God hath life. He that believeth not the Son
shall not see life. Verily I say unto you, he that
heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting
life. Salvation is not in personal
piety. not by works of righteousness
which we have done. That's what Scripture says. Salvation
is not in the law, but the deeds of the law shall no flesh be
justified. Isn't that what it says? Are
we going to go by the word of God? Salvation is not in doctrines,
memorizing doctrines. Our Lord said to the Pharisees,
search the scriptures, that is, you do search the scriptures.
In them you think you have life. In the doctrines, in the orthodoxy,
in the fundamental teaching, life is in Christ and the scriptures
testify of me. There's a lot of difference.
Salvation is not in ceremony. Our Lord said, read the first
chapter of Isaiah. He said, I'm sick of your burnt
offerings. I'm sick of your lifting your hands in prayer. I'm sick
of your vain oblations. I'm sick of your solemn assemblies.
You come, let's reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet,
I'll make them white as snow. This salvation from sin, it's
to be had. God's giving it. It's to be had
by mercy and grace. It's to be had through Christ.
And this salvation from sin is in Jesus Christ, by the faith
of Jesus Christ, through a vital union with Jesus Christ. But
here's the question. Am I in Christ? Oh, but you're
a preacher. That doesn't make any difference.
That doesn't make any difference. There are crooks all over this
country claiming to be preachers. Oh, but preacher, I'm a Sunday
school teacher. That doesn't make any difference. Judas was
an apostle. Ananias and Sapphira were charter members of the First
Church. Demas was a companion of the Apostle Paul. Simon Magus
was a personal disciple of Peter and all the rest of them. They
didn't know the Lord. And there will be multitudes.
Christ said, many will say unto me in that day, Lord, we preached
in your name and prophesied and cast out devils. I'm not interested
in presumption. I'm not interested in profession.
I'm interested in knowing Christ. And you'd better be, too. I'm
warning you. If you want to lie in that valley
of presumption and pull the covers that are too short up to your
chin and lie on a bed that's too narrow and too short, you're
welcome to it. I'm not willing. And I'm asking
the question this morning, am I in Christ? That's where salvation
is. Now, throughout the ages, and
you know this is so, throughout the ages, men have tried to reduce
this salvation, they tried to reduce this faith in Christ,
they tried to reduce this union with Christ to various acts of
the flesh and decisions of the mind. For example, Israel What
about keeping their Sabbath days? What about observing their rituals?
What about keeping their holy days? What about observing their
ceremonies? What about offering their sacrifices
and all these things with their hands and with their feet and
with their lips? But Christ said, you don't know me or my Father. You call me Lord with your lips,
but your hearts are far from me. They were going through all
the motions of religion, but didn't know the Lord. The Romanists
came along and established an earthly church and ordained priests
and established laws and rules and made the kingdom of heaven
synonymous with the church, and it's not. Our Lord talks about
the church and says that the church, the kingdom of God, is
like a field where a man sowed good wheat and the enemy sowed
tares, and they grew up together. And at the end of time, the Lord
came and gathered up the wheat and burned the tares. salvation is not synonymous with
church membership. And the Armenians and the Pelagians
came along and established rules of morality and rules of righteousness
by which men could work their way into the kingdom of God.
Now you do the best you can and God will take you to heaven when
he dies. That's not what God's word says. Now you keep the law
and you keep the Sabbath day and And you don't kill anybody,
and don't commit adultery, and don't drink liquor, and don't
go to the picture show, and you'll go to heaven when you die. They've
established the rules of morality and call it salvation. They've
reduced this union with Christ, this faith in Christ, to acts
and deeds and works that men do. And the fatalists came along,
and the antinomians, and they preached inability to the point
that men were born for heaven or born for hell, no matter what
you did or what you didn't do. That's not so. And today, what
is it? Today, the evangelists and the
fundamentalists have reduced this glorious, great, miraculous
miracle of the new birth, of salvation, to walking down an
aisle and shaking a preacher's hand and joining a church, and
they call that salvation. They're coming by the multitude,
they're coming by the hundreds, they're coming by the thousands,
and they're walking down an aisle and they're shaking. The old
Israelites observed their ceremonies but didn't know God. And the
Romanists kept their holy days and didn't know God. And the
Pelagians went about all their works and good deeds and morality
and never met God. And the Anthononians sat in a
rocking chair and waited for the lightning to strike and didn't
know God. And today people are listening
to a preacher say a few words and read a poem and sing a few
songs and give an invitation, and down the aisle they go and
talk about that being salvation. But scriptures like these, you
get your Bible, scriptures like these come forth to destroy that
concept of salvation. to destroy these deeds and decisions
that we call eternal life. Scriptures like these, listen,
Matthew 10.37, he that loveth father or mother more than me
is not worthy of me. He that loveth son or daughter
more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not up
his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of He didn't
say, he that shaketh not the preacher's hand, he that walketh
not down the aisle, he that is not sprinkled or confirmed or
catechized or immersed, he says, he that taketh not up his cross
and followeth after me is not worthy of me. Scriptures like
these come forth to destroy this concept of carnal and spiritual
Christianity. We've got about, in the average
church today, the average good-sized church, you'll have 700 members.
About 300 of them attend church. About 100 of them come to prayer
meetings. Only about 50 of them read the Bible and support the
church. And you know what they say? Well, those 50 are spiritual
people. The other 650 are carnal Christians. Hold on now. You wait a minute.
Listen to Luke 9.62. No man. having put his hand to the plow
and looks back, is fit for the kingdom of God. That's God's
terms of peace. Now, we can lay down our terms,
but these are God's terms. Scriptures like these come forth
to destroy this concept of nominal church members being saved. Listen
to this, Luke 14.33, Whosoever he be of you, that forsaketh
not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple. And listen here
to 1 John 4, 7 and 8. Brethren, let us love one another,
for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God, and
knoweth God, and he that loveth not is a carnal Christian. Uh-uh. He that loveth not, well,
he'll lose his reward, but he'll go to heaven. Uh-uh. He that
loveth not, that's what we say, that's what God knoweth not God,
for God is love." That's God's terms of peace. That's the reason
I say let us examine ourselves. I know all of the different routes
that are being prescribed, I know all of the different roads that
are being drawn on the map, but I know this word sets forth a
way of life that is straight and narrow. A way of life in
which Christ is the King, Christ is the Lord. Christ is the Master,
in which the Holy Spirit comes when he reveals that salvation
and that mercy, and makes a man in Christ a new creature. Old
things pass away and all things become new. Now, you might substitute
these man-made terms of religion, if you want to, and call it salvation,
and you might be like the prophets of old who cried, peace, when
there was no peace. And it's been going on for centuries.
I want you to listen to me a moment. Men have tried, they've tried,
but they cannot substitute walking an hour for regeneration. It
can't be done. Our Lord said you must be born
again. Our Lord said you must be born of the Spirit and of
the water. Our Lord told us as many as received
him were born not of the will of the flesh, not of the will
of man, they were born of God. To be saved, a man has to receive
a new nature. He has to be regenerated by the
Holy Spirit and made in Christ a new creature. And that's a
heart work, that's a supernatural work. And you cannot substitute
walking in an isle for that miracle of grace. It took a miracle to
put the sun in space, it took a miracle to hang the stars in
place, and when God saved our souls, and made us whole, it
took a miracle of love and grace, a miracle only God can perform. The one who said, let there be
light in original creation, is the one who said, let there be
light in spiritual creation. I'll tell you this, men have
tried, but they cannot substitute education for revelation. It
can't be done. The scripture says, I hath not
seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered the heart of
man the things that God has prepared for them that love him, but he
hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. You can't substitute
education for revelation. And we preachers may get in the
pulpit and put these glorious, blessed truths in the plainest
language, but there will be foolishness to a natural man. unless the
Holy Spirit gives him eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart
to understand. That's the reason you and I both
need to cry to God, oh God give us insight into thy word, give
us illumination, give us understanding, give us like you did Paul, a
revelation of the mystery of the gospel. The preaching of
the cross is to them that are perishing foolishness. You can't
substitute education for revelation. When we get in the pulpit, we
need not to rely upon our ability to illustrate, we need to rely
upon the ability of the Holy Spirit to illuminate. And then men have tried, but
they cannot substitute a decision for Christ for living faith. It can't be done. Saving faith
is not head work alone. It's not just a decision of my
mind, it's a work in my heart. It's heart faith. At Pentecost,
they were pricked in their hearts. The scripture says, keep thy
heart, for out of it are the issues of life. To believe on
Christ is to love Christ with the heart. If any man love not
our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed when Jesus comes. If thou shalt confess with thy
mouth Jesus to be Lord, and believe in thine heart God hath raised
him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." And you can't substitute
a decision for heart faith. You can make all the decisions
you want to in your mind, in your head, but till your heart
is broken over your sins, till your heart is broken over your
guilt, till your heart reaches out in affection and embraces
Christ, you remain in darkness. You may be a religious man in
darkness, you may be an unbeliever in darkness, but you'll still
be in darkness. And then men have tried, but
they cannot. Now you listen to me. Men have
tried, but they cannot substitute outward morality for inward sanctification. Now they're still trying it.
But our Lord said in Matthew 15, now you listen. It's not
that which goeth into the mouth that defileth a man. That's not
what's defiling you. It's that which cometh out of
the mouth. Those things which come out of
the mouth come from the heart. And these are the things that
defile, for out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, murders,
adulteries, fornication, blasphemy. These are the things that defile.
Those religious people in our Lord's day, he said to them,
you know what you've done? You've cleaned up the outside
of the cup and neglected the inside. You're like a whited
sepulchre, a grave. You appear beautiful unto men
on the outside, but on the inside you're full of dead men's bones.
That's what you've done. You've cleaned up the outside. And on the inside you're full
of extortion and excess and envy and jealousy and lust and hatred
and malice and all these things. And that's the reason in your
churches people are so pious on the outside. They are so holy
on the outside. They are so careful not to do
anything that would offend the laws and rules of the church,
but on the inside, bigotry hatred, gossip, envy, all of the wicked,
filthy sin, and that's what defiles. And you cannot substitute outward
morality for inward sanctification. God has to do it. The love of
God must be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, the
fruit of the Spirit. Now the works of the flesh are
these, and it names murder and malice and blasphemy and and
adultery and fornication. These are the works of the flesh.
Those are the products of the flesh. But what's verse 22 of
Galatians 5? The fruit of the Spirit are these. Love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
patience, meekness, gentleness, tenderness, kindness. Those are
the fruits of the Spirit. You don't produce that. When
God comes in you to dwell, when he becomes your sanctification,
he produces those things. And then men have tried, but
they can't do it. They cannot substitute church
membership for union with Christ. It can't be done. Judas was an
apostle. He was a preacher. He was a church
member. So was Ananias and Sapphira, Demas, Simon Magus, all of these
people, but they were not in Christ. They were in the church,
but they were not in Christ. Salvation's a divine union with
a living person. Paul wrote, Christ in you, that's
the hope of glory. I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless
I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which
I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God
who loved me and gave himself for me. He's in here. And consequently
I love his word. And you can say with me, if Christ
dwells in you, I love his house, I love his word, I love his people.
I love his gospel. I love to sing his praise. I
want to live for his glory. God, forgive me of my sins. Increase
my faith. Help me to walk with Christ day
by day. And then last of all, men have
tried, but they cannot divide the office of Christ. Now, this
is a terrible thing that's been brought upon our generation.
Preachers are standing up preaching that you can have Jesus Christ
as your Savior from And then later on, if it's convenient,
no hurry about it, but if it's convenient, if you don't have
anything else to do, you can receive him as your Lord. That's
not so. The Bible doesn't know anything
about a doormat named Jesus. It knows something about a Lord,
Jesus Christ. And even your preachers don't
call him Lord, they call him Jesus. The Holy Spirit calls
him the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus Christ. And you
can't divide his offices. He's prophet, priest, and king.
Join us next week at this same time. Until then, Henry Mahan,
bidding you a very pleasant, good day.

God's Terms of Surrender and Peace

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God's Terms of Surrender and Peace

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