Holy, holy, holy. Hymn number
70. Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty. Early in the morning our song
shall rise to Thee. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and
mighty, God in three Persons, blessed Trinity. Casting down their golden crowns
around the glassy sea. of him and say of him falling
down before thee, which words and art and evermore shall be. For the eye of sinful men Thy
glory may not see. Only Thou art holy. There is none beside Thee. ? Love and purity ? Holy, holy,
holy ? Lord God almighty ? All my work shall praise thy name
? In earth and sky and sea ? Holy, holy ? Merciful and mighty
? God in three persons ? Blessed Trinity After Scripture reading
and prayer, we'll sing number 334. Be thou my vision. If you have
your Bibles, turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 1. I'm going to take my text today from
verses 23 through 25. I'm going to read from verse
18. 1 Peter chapter 1. For as much as ye know, We 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, who verily was foreordained before
the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last
days for you. Who by him do believe in God
that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory? that your
faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your
souls in obeying the truth through the spirit unto unfeigned love
of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure
heart, fervently being born again, not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth
forever. For all flesh is as grass, and
all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth,
and the flower thereof falleth away. But the word of the Lord
endureth forever. And this is the word which by
the gospel is preached unto you. Let us pray. Our Father, it is
in the name of Jesus Christ, of whom this passage and all
others speak in Scripture, that we approach unto your throne.
We do so boldly, not because there is anything about us that
is worthy of confidence, but because of the finished work
of Jesus Christ which accomplished our redemption and indeed redeemed
us with his own blood, his precious blood, his spotless blood. That
perfect death that satisfied your laws and demands and justice
propitiated you for all of us. We do thank you and praise you
for it. In that name we come to ask you
and pour out our hearts to you this morning. We pray for those
who are sick, those who are going through trials and tribulations.
Thou knowest every case. We ask, Lord, you'd be with them.
For the sick, we ask you to heal them. For the broken, we ask
you to fix them. Lord, we ask these things in
the name of Christ. And Lord, we ask this morning
that as we gather here, you might cause us in our hearts to worship
you. to see your worthiness, to know
your majesty and your greatness, to fall down on our faces in
the dust where we belong, and know that we are privileged to
lift our eyes to see him who's worthy of all praise and honor.
We know, Father, that he did come by your predetermined counsel
and foreknowledge of God, and we took him with wicked hands
and slayed him, but it was all according to your ordained purpose.
We thank you, Father, that we don't know anything about providence
save what has been revealed to us and what has already taken
place. And we are thankful, Father, that we know that what we don't
know is working for our good and for your glory. Help us to
worship you and to be thankful and full of praise in our hearts
this day. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Hymn number 334,
Be Thou My Vision. Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. Naught be all else to me, save
that Thou My best thought by day or by
night. Waking or sleeping, thy presence
my light. Be thou my wisdom and thou my
true word. ? And Thou with me, Lord ? Thou
my great Father ? I Thy true Son ? Thou in me dwelling ? And
I with Thee one ? Riches I heed not ? Nor man's empty prayer Inheritance now and always Thou
and Thou only First in my heart High King of Heaven My treasure
Thou art ? My King of Heaven, my victory won ? May I reach
Him, joy, O bright heaven's sun ? Heart of my own heart, whatever
will be He'll be my vision, O ruler of
all. Let's have Steve and Stan to
receive the altar this morning, please. Let us pray. Father, again we
approach in the name of Christ, that blessed name, that wondrous
name. the only name under heaven given
among men whereby we must be saved. That name is upon the
lips and hearts of all your children. For he is that unspeakable gift
that you have given to them. And with him you have freely
given them all things. You have predestinated them to
be called, to be conformed to the image of your son, to be
justified and glorified. And where these things are so
great in wonder, we are full of wonder at them. But we know
that what we have, we have because of mercy. For we deserve no such
thing. What we deserve is an eternal
hell separated from you because we are, by nature, sinners. By
nature, children of wrath, even as others. But you have saved
us. and called us with a holy calling
not according to our works but according to your own purpose
and grace which was given us in Jesus Christ before the world
began. Let us return unto thee that which is yours and do it
in the name of Christ with joy in our hearts. We pray in Christ's
name. Amen. so You. about your attention back to
first Peter chapter one one thing anybody with any common
sense knows understood anything about motility and movement requires
this thing called life you ain't got life you ain't going nowhere
and if you do have life you are going to be motile you're going
to move you're going to speak if your voice box is working right. What's required is life. That life we know is Jesus Christ. If it's spiritual life or life
from God and it precedes everything that has to do with our experience
of grace. precedes faith. You can't believe
you ain't alive. It precedes repentance. You can't repent if you're not
alive. But it doesn't precede redemption. Redemption precedes
it because redemption happened 2,000 years ago on Calvary's
tree when the Lord finished the work of salvation, when he offered
himself unto God and was accepted by God in the perfect sacrifice.
Now how we learn about and how we come to believe it
and embrace it rests in the fact that we must have life. We've
got to be alive to do it. Dead men don't believe. Dead
men don't repent. A lot of people have had arguments
over the years of how far ahead of repentance and faith does
life come. have a lot of good old primitive
friends who like to argue about things like that you know well
we had life you don't know whether you had life or not and then
you believe no that's not what the word says our Lord made some
specific things in his ministry to his people to his disciples
in John chapter 6 for instance he says you must eat my flesh
and drink my blood for you to have life you must do that and then he
said but I'm not going to be around for you to eat my flesh
and drink my blood John chapter 6 and he said my words they are
spirit and they are life that's what he said and then a few verses
later several disciples left him because this is a hard saying
for him to say and he looked at his disciples and said well
you leave also Simon Peter said, to whom shall we go? Thou hast
the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that
thou art the Son of God, the Christ, the Son of God. Now in
this passage of Scripture that I just read to you from 1 Peter
chapter 1, the words of this passage are
a continuation of a principle declared in verse 22 Verse 22, it says, Seeing you
purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit
unto unflamed love for the brethren, see that you love one another
with a pure heart, fervently, with a pure heart, fervently.
They have a pure heart. Our Lord said in 1 John chapter
3 that the Lord's people, realizing they are actually sons of God,
in wonderful news that they are actually sons of God, purify
themselves because they are pure or purify themselves even as
they are pure. The believer has purified his
soul through obedience to the truth. What is obedience to the
truth? Obedience to the truth is faith
in Jesus Christ. It is believing Christ. He's been born again. That's
what this says. You purify yourself and love
one another with a pure heart firmly, being. So this love we have for the brethren
and for the Lord Jesus Christ fervently and the pure hearts
we have is because we have been something. We are being born
again. We've been born again. You see,
nothing happens without life. or before there is life. That
is an absolute. So how do we purify our hearts?
Being born again. That's how it takes place. How
do we love one another fervently? Being born again. That's how
it takes place. That's an essential thing. Nothing
happens without life. Every spiritual act must have
a source of action, a motility, an ability to act, and that source,
that ability is life. his life, and that life comes
from what? Being born. That's where it comes
from. Being born into the spiritual
realm. Peter said in the first part
of this chapter, in verse 3, he said, Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant
mercy hath begotten us, hath begotten us again unto a lively
hope, a living hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
He's begotten us. He's birthed us. He's born us.
We're called children by adoption and children by the new birth. The believer is a believer because
he's been born again. That's why he's a believer. And
the instrument employed, and this is the important thing,
and it really settles all the other arguments concerning this,
the instrument employed in this new birth is what you're holding
in your hand. How does that work? I don't know.
I've never figured it out. It's a wonder and an amazing
thing, but the Lord said, this is it. My words, they are spirit
and they are life. That's what he said. So if you
have life this morning in Jesus Christ, it's somehow attached
to this. and nothing else. It don't drop
on you like a hammer while you're walking down the road. It happens
through this thing, this wonderful book. Peter in these last verses
of this chapter is explaining this truth in a comparative way.
He uses things that are corrupt and things that are not corrupt.
His comparisons are rather contrasted between the natural and spiritual,
between the flesh and the spirit, in which each one of these produce
that's what he says, being born again in verse 23 not of corruptible
seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth
and abideth forever so he's talking about corrupt seed and incorruptible
seed and using the word in that context in the context of a seed
natural life cannot bring forth the new birth because it's corruptible
seed It is incapable and void of capacity
and inclination to do so. What we are naturally born with,
that is the way we are born into this world, has nothing to do
with spiritual things. It has nothing to do with spiritual
things, and it never will have anything to do with spiritual
things. The flesh and the spirit are always contrary to one another.
Paul said the Galatians are. They're always contrary to one
another, so we can't do what we would. There's always this
struggle going on between the flesh and the spirit in the life
of the child of God. But our Lord, back in John chapter
3, met with a very religious man. A man I believe became, by God's
grace, a believer. But he had struggles with it
all his life. His name was Nicodemus. Now he was a man who was a Pharisee. A ruler of the Jews. That means
he studied the scriptures. He probably had his own scribe
to write down the scriptures so he could take them home and
read them. They weren't up in the scroll in the temple. He
was a brilliant man, a smart man, and he knew some things
about God. And all of a sudden on the scene came this man named
Jesus from Nazareth. And he was able to do things
that nobody else was ever able to do. Not since Elijah raised
up the dead. This was a miracle worker. Not
like, you see, he didn't hold a big conference and take up
an offering like they do nowadays, these miracle workers. He was
a miracle worker who actually worked miracles. If somebody
was sick, he healed them. If somebody was dead three times,
he raised the dead to life. And it got around that he was
doing that. He turned water into wine. That was the first miracle.
And this Pharisee was saying, well, this guy, I've read the
scriptures, this guy must be from God. Only God can do these
kinds of things, or somebody from God. So he came to Jesus
Christ, but he didn't do it in the daytime, he did it at night.
He did it at night because he was afraid of what the others
might say, that he was hanging around with this miracle worker.
So he came to the Lord Jesus Christ, and he said, Rabbi, Teacher,
we know that you're a man of God, a man
from God, because no man can do these miracles except you
do them. And our Lord said something very interesting to it. He says,
you cannot see that, perceive it, understand it, you cannot,
unless you're born from above. Unless you're born again. You can't see that. So he said,
you think you see that, but you don't see that. He said, man
cannot perceive or understand anything spiritual unless they're
born from above. A new birth. The birth is from
God. That means the one who is born
is passive. Lindsay's about ready to have
a baby. I mean really ready to have a baby. She's in serious
babiness. That baby's going to be born
into this world. You know he's not going to do
a thing? He's not going to do anything. You're going to do
something. Your body's going to finally
say, I've had enough of this. And you're going to thrust him
out into this universe. He's going to be totally passive.
Not only that, he didn't have anything to do with his conception.
Did he? Did he somehow mysteriously contact
you from the ether world and say, I want to be born. Of course
not. What happened? Your husband and
wife got together, he produced bromatozoa, she produced ovum,
and they got together. He produced a million of them
and they swam and they swam along little streams and one got through.
One little rascal. And then this wonder happened
that nobody's able to explain. There it was. They can't explain
it when it starts. They can't explain it when it
ends. It's just an amazing thing. We go to funerals and see people
laying in caskets and there they are. The body that we have loved
and adored and hugged and kissed has all the equipment it had
before. Everything's there. Eyes, nose, ears, feet, hands,
heart, lungs, liver, the whole shootin' matches there. What's
missing? something that we can't put our
finger on, that we can't define, that we can't see, that we can't
touch, that we can't embrace. Life is missing. God says, for
you to understand, He said this to the religious leader, for
you to begin to grasp, to understand what a man from God is, you must
have life. And Nicodemus didn't get it. He said, what are you saying?
You're saying I gotta go back in my mother's womb and be born
again? He said, is that what he said? Do I enter back in my
mother's womb? He said, no. He said, you don't
understand. Told you he didn't understand.
Just showed me he didn't understand. Later he says, you being a master
of Israel don't know these things? You don't understand. It's like the wind. It blows
where it wants to and we don't know where it's going or where
it's coming from. We can feel it, it's there. We know it's
wind. He said, the spirit's like that.
It goes where it wants to, or he goes where he wants to, and
we don't know where he's coming from or where he's going, but
he always goes where he's going, and he always gets the job done
that's supposed to be done. Nicodemus was uttered, he said,
I don't get it. He said, I know you don't. I know you don't. You must be born again. I think
it was Billy Graham or one of those guys wrote a book on how
to be born again. The Bible doesn't say how to
be born again. Nowhere in scripture will you
find a list of things that you must do to be born again. The whole concept is stupid.
If you have to do something, that means you're alive to start
with. So if you have to do something to be born and you're already
alive, why do you have to do anything? It's a stupid idea. It's a stupid idea. But it never
says how to be born again. It just says in order for you
to grasp the things of God, you must be born again. God's got
to give you birth. God's got to do it. What we are
naturally born with, that is we are born into this world,
has nothing to do with spiritual life. Nothing whatsoever. This
is impossible to understand apart from the new birth. So unless
and until that great miracle of grace occurs, many inventions
will arise that men will use to simulate spirituality. The chiefest among these is religion,
which in the language of men is synonymous with the spirituality,
and in the language of scripture is akin to superstition. But
the fact remains that no matter the invention, if it is born
of the flesh, the carnal nature, it is not and cannot ever be
spiritual. All things spiritual wait for
life. Spiritual life. And we know according
to scripture that Christ is that life. How does that work? Don't
ask me things that scripture don't tell me. Because I just
don't know. being born again is receiving
Christ. It is the indwelling of His Spirit
and that in a particular way by the Word of God. That is how
it happens. It does not happen outside that
realm. To show that the purifying of
the soul is not achieved in the flesh, Simon Peter uses a natural
thing to teach us spiritual truth. It takes us to the beginning
of every life, the seed or semen. That's what this word seed is.
It's a symbolic language. It's not designed to undergo
the scrutiny of science. Peter is merely taking the reader
to a principle of conception to show that as in natural conception,
the life conceived has no part in the production of that life.
Has no part in it. Though the physicality of the
process is understood to some degree, the strange element of
life remains shrouded in mystery. And so it is a spiritual realm,
but it remains even more so in a mystery because the process
is completely invisible. Do I have spiritual life? If
I do, you can't see it. And if you have it, I can't see
it. You know if you have it, and I know if I have it, but
I don't know if you have it, and you don't know if I have it. Why?
Because it's invisible. It's invisible. And it's decidedly
outside the realm of human participation and cooperation. The symbolism,
however, is clear. Peter makes it very clear that
we're born of incorruptible seed, incorruptible seed, as opposed to corruptible seed. That's the difference. The believer
has been born again and that birth cannot be attributed to
anything he acquired in his natural birth. He was not born again by corruptible
seed. His conception and subsequent
birth was accomplished by incorruptible or spiritual seed. That is what
he said. If you are born of the Spirit,
it is because you have been born of incorruptible seed. His conception and subsequent
birth was accomplished by incorruptible spiritual seed, and that incorruptible
seed is defined, that we have defined in Scripture right here. Paul, in another reference to
the seed, declared that the seed was Christ in Galatians chapter
3 and verse 16. Peter says here that that seed
is this, the Word of God. Boy, we handle some amazing things,
don't we? when we tell people about the gospel, boy, we're
handling some wondrous things. Now, we don't have anything to
do with it. This does, and like I said, I can't explain how it
does. Peter says here that the seed
is the Word of God. That's the incorruptible seed. Paul and Peter are not in differing
views. Christ is the Word of God. Paul
was speaking of the seed of promise given to Abraham, which was given
in opposition to the seed that Abraham had produced in the power
of his own flesh. Abraham's flesh produced Ishmael. Abraham, when
he could not produce anything, God produced through him and
Sarah Isaac, who is the seed of promise. That seed of promise
was typically Isaac, substantially the Lord Jesus Christ. When Abraham
believed God concerning this supernatural incorruptible seed,
it was accounted to him for righteousness. Genesis 15. Paul declares that
this promise of the gospel, or declares this promise to be the
gospel which Abraham believed in Romans chapter 4. Abraham
believed the gospel and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
He again repeats the same thing when God preached the gospel
to Abraham in Galatians chapter 3 and verse 8. He believed and
it was accounted to him for righteousness. So when Peter says that the incorruptible
seed is the word of God, he does not differ from Paul. Christ
and the gospel are the same thing. Christ is the word. Sometimes
if you can and you have a concordance and want to have a good study,
look up the use of the word as it is, the written word, and
look it up as it's in reference to Christ as the living word. And you'll find that the adjectives
used to describe the most are almost always the same. You'll
find that's true of the living and the written word. I don't
know how that works. But when you hear this word with morning in ears, you hear
the voice of Christ. My words, they are spirit and
they are life. What a wondrous thing. When Peter says that the incorruptible
seed is the Word of God, he means just that. It is Christ. It is
Christ. In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in
the beginning with God. to show another difference between
the corruptible and incorruptible seed. Peter states that the incorruptible
seed, the Word of God, is living. That's what he said. Being born
again, not a corruptible seed, but incorruptible by the Word
of God, which liveth, which liveth and abideth forever. The Word of God is living. My words, they are spirit and
they are life. The comparison is simple. If it comes from nature,
No matter what it is, it will not last. It will fade away. Like the grass of the field or
the blooming flower, they remain but for a season and then they
fall away. Nothing visible or tangible will last. Look around. None of us are going to last.
we're all going to the long haul for long I can see these already
hairs upon our heads nothing last don't lay hold of
this world so much so that God has to break your fingers and
make you let it go hold it lightly and loosely because it's going
away it's going away that's what scripture says the very best
that the flesh can produce the very best that the flesh can
produce, the very best, is soon to pass off the scene and be
remembered no more. The very best. That corruptible
seed has nothing to do, nothing to do with the new birth. Whatever springs from that corruptible
seed is corrupt, and that's all it'll ever be, and it will not
endure. The contrast is that the Word
of God The incorruptible seed is eternal life. It goes on forever. It liveth and abideth. How long? Forever! Forever! Whatever springs from this seed
also endures forever. For the Lord has given His people
eternal life through His Word. He that is born from above is
born of God, which were born, not of corruptible seed, but
incorruptible which were born not of bloods, not of the will
of men, but of the will of God, according to 1 John chapter 1.
And so those will never perish. Those whom Christ has called,
how? Through this Word, by the preaching
of the Gospel through this Word. How does that work? Like I said,
I don't know. It's not mine to know, it's mine
to just preach the Word and see what happens. The result belongs
to God. we know is the Bible. It's the
Holy Writ. It's this tome that's been around
for 3,500 years. That'll be around when we're
gone. And I'm thankful for that. Aren't you? There's something
in this world that lasts forever. This. This. The scriptures are that incorruptible seed.
but not in a general sense. Well, the scriptures aren't general,
they're specific and particular. We know that the word of God
is particular to Jesus Christ. Every line, every semicolon,
every comma, every period, every word, every adjective, every
adverb, every verb, and every noun, some way relates to Jesus
Christ, His work, and His people. There is no doubt about that
in scripture. There is no doubt that this is the interpretation
of the Word of God in the early church. That's what they talked
about. That's what they talked about.
In fact, when two of those disciples, when they saw Jesus and told
another disciple, says, come, let's come see. Is this not who
Moses talked about? What? In the Word of God? Men may take the Bible and preach
from it. Men do. You have people all over the
world doing it today and come up with just about any and every
scenario that you can imagine. They use it as a motto book,
as a self-help guide. They use it as all sorts of things,
but the Word of God is one thing. And that's where it's absolutely
necessary to understand. Some people take the language
that belongs to the church concerning the sharing of goods and wealth
and try to make it a governmental policy. Say, oh, let's, we think
we should legislate that and make everybody have the same
thing. That was the work of the church and early church in Acts
chapter two, not governmental policy. They try to make a voluntary
act a matter of legal requirement. I found this, you can't legislate
charity. You really can't. In truth, there's only one way
to preach the word of God. I spent a long time to get here. It's a heck of an introduction
for a one paragraph finish, I'll tell you that. In truth, there's
only one way to preach the word of God. Only one. The only way
to preach the word of God is to preach the gospel. good news
the published glad tidings that's the only way to do it so I can
preach the world without preaching the gospel no you can't you cannot we're born again of incorruptible
seed even the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever as
far as you're concerned you're just grass you're just a flyer
of the field you're here and you're gone But the word of God
abideth forever. Now look at verse 25. But the
word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word. What are
the next four words? Which by the gospel is preached
unto you. That is how it works. This is
how the word of God is the word of God preached. It is preached
by the gospel. What is the gospel? It is the
good news that God has glorified Himself in the salvation of His
people by the shed blood of Jesus Christ and all for whom Christ
died shall be saved, shall have eternal life. Every one of His
sheep shall hear His voice and they shall follow Him and He
shall give to them eternal life. This is the good news that God
has come into this world and taken on human flesh and found
in the likeness of sinful flesh he's destroyed sin in the flesh
by his death this is the good news this is the gospel and you
can't preach Genesis 1-1 or Revelation 22 without preaching the gospel
if you're preaching any other way you're not preaching the
word that is the incorruptible seed that gives life to God's
people The only way to preach the word is to preach the gospel
of Christ. Any other way of preaching is
false, is twisted, dishonest, and handles the word deceitfully
and will pass away and will endure with all other corruptible things.
Paul said it this way. Look over Galatians chapter 1.
Galatians chapter 1. Some people say that those who
stand for this kind of teaching are hard men. We ain't as hard
as Paul was. He said of those who would preach
any other gospel that they ought to be castrated, that's pretty
hard. That's pretty difficult. That's severe, wouldn't you say?
He said, I wish they were cut off. He didn't mean just banned
from society. The word there is castrated.
But he says in Galatians chapter 1 and verse 8, but though we
that is himself if tomorrow Paul the Apostle begins to preach
something else other than the gospel he falls into the category
of these that don't preach the gospel for though we or an angel
from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which
we have preached unto you let him be accursed anathema maranatha
let him be accursed when the Lord comes and just in case you
didn't get it the first time as we said before so say I now
again if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that which
ye have received let him be accursed now that's plain language That's
plain language. And in our text, verse 25 proclaims
that the word of God is preached when the gospel is preached,
and that gospel brings new birth and brings faith. James said he's begotten us with
the word of truth. What is truth? Christ said, I'm
the way, the truth, and the life. No man come to me except the
Father which has sent me to draw him. How does it work? I've used this
analogy many times. It's like the fellow that said,
how does electricity work? Another fellow says, really well.
And that's how the gospel works. Other than that, I can't explain
the mechanics of it. But I know this, the gospel,
God calls a man to stand up and preach the gospel. He's nothing. He'll pass off the scene like
every other thing and some other person will stand up in his place.
The preacher is nothing. His office is important simply
because he's been assigned the task to give account for men's
souls through the preaching of the gospel. That's it. I'm nothing.
I'm nobody. You'll soon find that out if
you outlive me. Because you'll put me under that
stone on Yellow Hill there for long. I'll be gone. Will the
gospel be gone? No, it'll be fine. But God uses that means. And
I think because there's no way possible that people could actually
look at a preacher of the gospel and say, he's responsible for
my salvation. Yes, that guy must be standing
up there because of the grace of God. Has to be by grace because
he ain't nothing to it. God sends that preacher and he preaches. He preaches
the gospel and the gospel goes out there and always does its
job. To some it's a savor of life
unto life. To others it is the savor of
death unto death. The preacher is not sufficient
for these things. Only the gospel is. And that gospel gives life. And when a person has life from
God, he has faith from God. With the life comes the faith.
With the life comes the repentance. With the life comes the love.
You've purified your souls. Love one another fervently. Being
born again. Having been born again. This
is what the born again people do. It's this word. How can they believe? How can
men believe? I know people think it's simple.
I've been a believer 45, 46, I don't know how many years,
several years. I still have difficulty believing.
How can a man believe? You can't. Unless you're born
again. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call on him
whom they've not believed? and how shall they believe in
him of whom they've not heard and how shall they hear without
a preacher and how shall they preach except they be sent where
it is written who hath believed I report and to whom is the arm
of the Lord or the doctrine of the Lord revealed Israel has not obeyed the gospel
why because they didn't what they knew, faith was not
added to. The preached gospel is the bringer
of life. I don't know how it works, but
I know it works. But here's the thing. If you're not spiritually
alive, you can't believe this. And if you're spiritually alive,
you can't believe anything else. Because with life comes faith. And faith has a singular object.
It trusts. Jesus Christ for all of salvation. Being born again, not of corruptible
seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth
and abideth forever. For all flesh is grass, and all
the glory of man is the flower of grass. The grass withereth,
the flower thereof fadeth away. But the word of the Lord endureth
forever, This is the word which by the gospel is preached unto
you. Father, bless us to understand
it. We pray in Christ's name.