Z Z Z Just as that thief hung on the
tree Z Z Next to Christ the surety Z Z Oh, Lord, remember us Oh, Lord,
remember us And as Stephen was being stoned
And God stood up there at his throne Oh, Lord, remember us
Oh, Lord, remember us. Some will stand before the throne,
but some will stand in Christ alone. Oh, Lord, remember us. As you've said, and we believe,
all who ask, they shall receive. Oh, Lord, remember us. Oh, Lord, remember us. Cause some will stand before
the throne But some will stand in Christ alone Oh Lord, remember
us Oh Lord, remember us ? When you come back with trumpet
sound ? And all the saints rise from the ground ? Oh Lord, remember
us ? Oh Lord, remember us ? Cause some will stand before the throne
? But some will stand in Christ alone Oh Lord, remember us. Oh Lord, remember us. Oh Lord, remember us. Oh Lord, remember us. I was hoping Gabe was going to
sing that song while we were here. That's such a blessing. I love that song, and he sings
it so well. I won't take a lot of time to
tell y'all how wonderful this has been, because there's no
way I could really say everything about it. And it's been a kind
of a homecoming for us. It's been just a wonderful conference. I've enjoyed Gabe's preaching
so much. The Lord's blessed him to honor
our Savior. And that's what we came for,
by his grace, to honor him. I'm just gonna read one or two
verses of scripture to Galatians 6.14, if you wanna
turn there, but I'm just gonna read one verse. Galatians 6.14, but God forbid, But God forbid that I should
glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the
world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. We preach the cross. That's our message. The cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ. First Corinthians 118, for the
preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness,
but unto us which are saved, it's the power of God. You notice
it doesn't say the preaching of the cross is to them that
have a different opinion, foolishness. It's them that perish. It's life
or death, the gospel, the gospel. We preach the cross because The Prince of Life died there
for his sheep and paid all their sin debt before
God. Unto us which are saved, not
unto us which are smarter than other people, not unto us which
have the right doctrine figured out, but to us which are saved. The
reason that the cross is precious to you, the reason that you believe and
can say with Paul, we preach Christ and Him crucified, we
believe Christ and Him crucified, is because God saved you. God
saved you. That's salvation. That's you
being hopeless and helpless without God or without His Son or without
hope in this world, and God just plumps saving you, and now you
look to the cross. It's the power of God to us,
the power of God. Do we need God's power to save
this morning? Do we need God to exert His power
to save those that we love that don't know him. We need his power. We don't need them to get smart
and figure it out. We need God's power. The gospel of Christ crucified
is that power to save. Is that how we think of it? that
what we do here, this is God exerting his power to save sinners. This is how he does it, by the
preaching of the cross. Do we need his power to comfort,
to increase our faith, to give us that peace which passeth all
understanding? It's by the preaching of the
cross that he does that. If any message, this is a good,
I think, rule of thumb, if any message preached could not be
titled Christ Crucified, If that title wouldn't make any sense
at all with connection to the message, then that message should
never be preached. You could have called that Christ
Crucified, and it would have fit just right, wouldn't it?
It would have fit just right. If I was going to preach, for
example, total depravity, people say, well, you all preach
Calvinism down there. No. We preach the cross. If my subject was going to be
total depravity this morning, what would I preach? Could I
remind you of maybe King David and his terrible pride? He walked
as king. his lust and his deadly covetousness
in taking Bathsheba and sending her husband to his death so that
he could have that man's wife. Could I tell you about that?
And would you understand something about sin? Well, you could say,
well, that's horrible. Who would do that? Well, I got
news for you. You. The answer is you and me. But you're not going to understand
sin by that. We would never know the horror
of that unless we saw from God's word what it costs for Nathan
to be able to say to David, God hath put away thy sin. You gotta
read that far. You've gotta hear that and wonder,
how can God do that? How can God put away David's
sin? Well, we have that answer in
the gospel, don't we? Hebrews 9.26, but now once in
the end of the world hath Christ appeared to put away sin. How did he do it? By the sacrifice
of himself. Now, if you get a hold of that,
you'll know what depravity is. I could talk about what a thankless
and shameless wretch Gomer was to take Hosea's good things and
to lead him on just to benefit from his kindness and love and
then to break his heart, break his heart in two with her unfaithfulness,
knowing all along that she didn't love him. She just used him.
I could tell you about that and that would be an example of sin. You could look at that and say,
well, that's horrible, that's sin, and you might even have
light enough from God to say, look how terrible we are, and
not just how terrible she was. But you know, when you're really
gonna understand something of the depravity of the human heart
is when you read a little further, and see how that Gomer Even after Gomer showed her true
colors and had taken advantage of Hosea and played him and tore
his heart out, he went and loved her yet and bought her to himself. That's Christ. He loved us yet,
yet, yet. And it said he bought her to
himself. Let me read it to you in Hosea 3, 2. So I bought her
to me for 15 pieces of silver and for an omer of barley and
a half omer of barley. And I said unto her, thou shalt
abide for me many days. Thou shalt not play the harlot.
Thou shalt not be for another man. And so will I also be for
thee. How much is 15 pieces of silver,
an omer of barley, and a half omer of barley? How much is that? What's that
worth? It's what it took. It's what it took. It was what
it took. When you know how much that is
in spiritual terms, what it took to redeem us from the auction
block of sin and redeem our souls unto God, then we'll know something
about how depraved and hopeless and helpless we are before God
by nature. The Lord Jesus Christ paid what
it took to redeem our very souls, the very precious blood of God's
lamb. First Peter 118, for as much
as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things,
as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by
tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of
Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. When we understand something
about that, we'll see total depravity. Don't make total depravity some
cold doctrine with all the T's crossed and all the I's dotted,
and I agree with that. It's the preaching of the cross.
You're never gonna know what depravity is until you look to
Calvary. Ye who think of sin but lightly,
nor suppose the evil great, here may view its nature rightly,
here its guilt may estimate, mark the sacrifice appointed.
See who bears the awful load, "'Tis the Christ, the Lord's
anointed, "'Son of man and Son of God.'" When we preach the
total depravity of man, we have to show the impotence and evil
of man's will because religious man magnifies man's will and
imagines that salvation is a decision made of man's free will. So to
speak of total depravity, we have to show the truth about
that. God plainly declares in Romans 9, 16, so then it is not
of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
showeth mercy. But when and how better is the
utter depravity of the will of man put on display than at the
cross? You remember what it says about
it? Luke 23, 25, and he, Pilate, released unto them those who
cried crucify him, Him that for sedition and murder was cast
into prison, that's Barabbas, whom they had desired, but he
delivered Jesus to their will. If you want to see the depravity
of the will of man, the impotence, the horrible evil of our will,
far from being the solution to your problem with God, your free
will is what you've got to be saved from. This is the condemnation that
light was coming to this world, Christ. And we loved our darkness
rather than Christ. That's the condemnation. And
that's our will. There is the will of man given
in its full expression, the will of man is most fully expressed
in taking the son of God with wicked hands and torturing him. beating him, spitting on him,
mocking him, nailing him to a cross in open shame, and laughing while
he bled out. That's the will that he was released
unto. The will of man is not the answer.
The will of man is the problem. If I was going to preach a message,
And the subject was going to be the unconditional election
of God. What would my text be? Would we go to Romans chapter
9? And would I quote and talk about how God said, I will have
mercy on whom I will have mercy? Well, I don't see how I could
avoid that if I'm talking about unconditional election to you.
We would go there. We would talk about that. that
salvation is according to God's will. He chose his people from
before the foundation of the world. I don't see us avoiding
that, but what is mercy? God said, I'll have mercy on
whoever. What is mercy? And is there any for me? Is there
any mercy for this wretched sinner? Well, there's no question at
all from the scriptures, clear as a bell, undeniable, plain
as can be, that God chose, picked out, elected a people, specific
people to salvation from the foundation of the world before
they were ever born or had ever done any good or evil, God picked
some and not others. But on what basis? Second Thessalonians 2.13, we're
bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved
of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you
to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the
truth. If a sinner is saved, we're gonna thank God for that.
We're not gonna congratulate the sinner, we're gonna thank
God. But how did God choose sinners? On what basis did he choose one
and not another? That might be a very impertinent
question had not God given us the answer to it. You might say,
well, that's God's business, but he showed us on what basis
he did. Why me and not my brother? Why
Jacob and not Esau? For the children being not yet
born, neither having done any good or evil that the purpose
of God according to election might stand, not of works, but
of him that calleth. It was said unto her, the elder
shall serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob have I loved. That's the election. It's not
eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Jacob have I loved and Esau have
I hated. God's election is God's love
and God's love is Christ crucified. Don't make that something to
argue about. That's the gospel that we preach. That's the preaching of the cross.
It's the power of God that saves sinners. We preach limited atonement. And when we do, we preach the
cross. We preach that when Christ died
on Calvary, he redeemed all those whom God loved and chose in eternity. He bore all of their sins in
his own body on that tree. He bore the wrath of God for
them because he loved them. The wrath of God for all of their
sins and he put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. He put
it away. Again, he didn't offer to, he
didn't make forgiveness available. He shed his precious blood for
them and that's the forgiveness of sin. He obtained eternal redemption
for those whom he sanctified with that precious blood. The
direct and certain result of Christ bearing and putting away
our sin by dying for our sins, according to the scriptures,
is that we have no sin. Him dying for me and my sins
doesn't mean I have a choice. It means I have no sin. We're free from God's wrath,
free from the law, oh, happy condition, sinless in the sight
of God, redeemed from the curse of the law, Christ being made
a curse for us, and we stand holy and without blame before
God in love. And let me say this about our
sin now. There's two kinds of sin. You're gonna say, Chris, what
in the world are you talking about? There's two kinds of sin. There's the ones that you call
sin. There's the ones that you're ashamed of. Anybody got any sin
that they're ashamed of? But there's another kind of sin.
The sin that you call righteousness. The ones that you're proud of.
And especially for unbelievers. The sins that they call righteousness.
Well, I've gone to church. Yeah, but you went to a church
that blasphemes God. It's not a church. It's a social
club that blasphemes God. Well, I read my Bible. Yeah,
but you search the scriptures because in them you think you
have life, but you won't come to Christ that you might have
life. The Lord said even the plowing
of the wicked is sin. How can plowing a field be evil? If you do it for yourself, without
a thought for God, without thanking God for that land, for the seed,
for the plow, for the ability, the strength to do it, the sunshine,
the rain, for everything. That's what I was trying to say.
I don't know if I said it very well. Last night, I think, or yesterday
morning, you don't know anything if you don't know Christ. You
say, well, I know how to plow a field. Really? He said it's
sin. If your plowing your field is
evil, do you know how to plow? but by Christ crucified, which
is the very definition of love. We try to hide one kind of sin, but we flaunt
the other one. We brag about the other one.
We're proud of it, and best I can tell from the word, there's nothing
God hates any more than that. All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned every one to his
own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Both cans. This is what Christ accomplished
by his sin-atoning death. He redeemed all that the Father
gave him in the eternal covenant of grace, and this is the only
hope for a totally depraved sinner. If you truly believe the doctrine
of total depravity, then you've got to believe the doctrine of
unconditional election. Because if I'm totally depraved,
if I'm hopeless and helpless, If I'm gonna be saved, God's
gonna have to do it. Salvation's gonna have to be
of the Lord. The only way that a totally depraved sinner
can be saved is by God loving him. choosing him and Christ
washing him from his sins in his precious blood. A totally
depraved sinner doesn't need an available salvation. He needs
to be saved. He doesn't need a chance. He
needs a savior. If you wanna see what sin is,
look to the cross. If you wanna see sin put away,
look to the cross. If you wanna experience the exceeding
sinfulness of sin, look to Calvary. If you wanna see how God can
be just and justify the ungodly, look to the cross. Find somebody
that's preaching the cross and drink it up, drink it up. God forbid that we should glory
in anything or anyone else save the Christ of God, who by the
triumph of his cross has saved to the uttermost a countless
multitude of the most wretched sinners that ever walked God's
earth. Do we preach the cross when we speak of the irresistible
grace of God? What did he say he would do if
he's lifted up? The irresistible call of God
is simply the imparting of life, spiritual life, to a dead sinner. If you ever see Christ, you're
coming to Christ. And as long as you're dead in
sin, you can't. When the Lord Jesus cries, Lazarus,
come forth, would you say that was an irresistible call of his
grace? Did Lazarus have a decision to
make that day? How does that happen? With the
command goes the power to obey it. And what is that power? That's what we read while ago.
The power, the cross is the power of God unto salvation, unto us
coming out of the grave. Our Lord said in John 6, 44,
no man can come to me. But I'm glad that's not a period
right there after that. Except the Father which has sent
me, draw him, and I'll raise him up at the last day. How are
we drawn? By the power of God. To whom
are we drawn? No man cometh unto me. except the Father draw him. What's
the result? Eternal life. I'll raise you
up at the last day. But how is it that we're drawn
to Christ? And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all unto me. And this, he said, signifying
what death he should die. We preach the cross. It's Christ
crucified that sinners can't resist. The irresistible command
is look and live. Look to Christ on the cross. Look where? As Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness. Look at that one who was made
in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. And he was lifted
up between heaven and earth. God raised him up on a cross
and it pleased the Lord to crush him. That's what that word bruise
means. It means to crush his only begotten
son. And even so must the son of man
be lifted up like that serpent when Moses said, look and live
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal
life. When we preach irresistible grace,
we preach the cross. God, by the power of his Holy
Spirit, gives life and faith in Christ. He takes the things
of Christ, John 16, 13 through 15, and shows them to us. That's
what the Holy Spirit does. If you ever, by the almighty
call and power of God, and by the faith that he gives, get
a glimpse of the cross and see who died there, and why he died
there, and what he accomplished when he died there, and see the
glory of God in his face. God who commanded the light,
the one who in divine power said, let there be light, and there
was light. Paul said, that's what happened
in my heart. That's what happened in here.
God Almighty said, let there be light, and there was. And
you know what he said he saw by that light? The face of Jesus
Christ. the glory of God in his son's
face. When God said, let there be light,
what were the chances that there would be light? What do you reckon the odds were
on that? Paul said, that same God spoke
to my wretched, black, sin-cursed heart. and he shined the light of his
glory upon me in the face of his son. The perseverance of the saints,
what does that have to do with the cross? Everything. What is the purpose of the saint,
the perseverance of the saints? How would you define it? Well,
I believe God defined it for us right here, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of
our faith. Is that perseverance? He's the one that originated
the faith in my heart, and he's the one that will bring it to
fruition when faith turns to sight. And all the way in between,
He's the originator, he's the finisher, and he's the object
looking unto Jesus. Who for the joy that was set
before him endured the cross. We're not looking at Jesus in
the manger. Thank God he was made flesh and
dwelt among us. But we're looking to Christ crucified.
the one who for the joy that was set before him endured the
cross, despising the shame, thinking the shame a small thing. It wasn't a small thing, but
he counted it a small thing to suffer shame for me, for my sin. And he sat down at the right
hand of the throne of God. That's my perseverance, Christ
crucified. Gave me faith, sustains my faith
all the way to the end. The perseverance of the saints
is looking unto Jesus, and when are you gonna stop doing that? If he's the finisher, you're
not gonna stop doing that. We never stop looking because
he authored our faith and he will finish it. He that hath
begun a good work in you, he didn't just wind the clock now
and let you go. He began the work and he'll perform
it. He'll perform it. He'll have
to, won't he? I'm glad that my perseverance
doesn't depend on me. I persevere because I am preserved
by him. First Peter 1.5, we're kept by
the power of God through faith, that faith he gave, that faith
he sustains, unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. We don't know how saved we are
yet, but one of these days we're going to. Kept by the power of
God through faith, and where does that faith look? My faith
looks up to thee. Thou Lamb of Calvary, Savior Divine, looking unto the
Lord Jesus Christ, the Alpha and Omega of our faith, who for
the joy that was set before Him endured the cross. We preach
the cross. By the grace of God, we do. And God forbid that we should
glory in anything that we've done or ever will do. But may
we ever glory in Christ Jesus and what he did for us, and have no confidence in this
flesh. Amen.