Prone to wander, Lord, I feel
it Prone to leave the God I love Here's my heart, take and seal
it, seal it for thy courts above. Thank you, fellas. Y'all just
doing a bang-up job. I heard a story once of an old
man that went to hear a young preacher preach over in England. And the young man was powerful
in the pulpit, very eloquent in his message and his speech. And after the preaching, he went
back to the back of the church to shake the hand of the congregants
as they left. And there was one old saint,
an old deacon that was there, had been there many years, and
the young man said, well, brother, what did you think of the message?
And the old man said, not much. He said, well, was it the subject
matter? He said, no, you handled that
well. He said, well, was it my delivery? He said, no, you're
quite an orator. He said, well, what was it? He
said, there was no Christ in it. So there was nothing for
me. No Christ. These words of these Greeks who
came to Philip, they said, Sir, we would see Jesus. I've often thought of these words
that were spoken by some excited Greeks who had been in proximity
to the Lord's triumphant entry in Jerusalem Their motive may
have been heartfelt desire or merely the spectacle and heat
of the moment. I don't know, but they said,
sirs, we would see Jesus. Upon the consideration of this
plea, I thought that this expressed desire should be paramount in
the mind of every preacher as he looks out at the congregation
to whom he ministers. These dear ones who have had
to struggle with the world all week long and are in need of
consolation and comfort. Are they not saying to the pastor
simply and plainly, Sir, we would see Jesus? We would see Jesus. There seems to be in this day
a perverse and pervasive religion that the Son of Man, Christ Jesus
the Lord, is held in very low and base esteem. Men call Him
Lord, but deny the power thereof. and speak of Him in terms that
are in no way conducive to worship. They refer to Him as one who
is vying, even plaintively pleading, for the acceptance of His creatures.
Men speak of His ability to save as dependent on the will of man
to allow Him to do so. Religion begs men to let Christ,
to permit Him, to allow Him, to invite Him, They're talking
about the Lord of glory who holds their next heartbeat in His hand. And you beg men to let Him into
their hearts and to make Him or employ Him as the Lord of
their lives. Something desperately wrong with
that. Christ is presented as an ardent
pursuer of men's hearts, as if He craved, yea, even needed some
validation from the things that He has made from the dust of
the earth. Men call Him the man upstairs,
their good buddy in the sky, or refer to Him as the facilitator
of their earthly ambitions, their intents and desires. Yet I invite
you to search this book, and in all of Scripture there is
no such language or incident, no empirical evidence that would
make anyone come to this conclusion about Him if they read this book. Also, you will not find anyone
who comes in contact with Jesus Christ asserting their acceptance
of Him, or making any reference to the presumed power of their
own pathetic will. Over in the Revelation, the man
who wrote the book of John also wrote the Revelation of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and in the first chapter he sees Christ exalted
in a vision. And he says in chapter 1 and
verse 7 and in 18, he says, When I saw Him, When I saw Him, I
fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon
me, saying unto me, Fear not, I am the first and the last. I am He that liveth and was dead. Behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And have the keys of hell
and death. When John saw him in his glorified
estate, he did not begin to regurgitate the idiocy of some who say, I
can accept him or reject him. You don't find that kind of language
there, do you? He did not say all of a sudden,
wait a minute, I believe in whosoever will. He didn't say that. He did not spout that he was
the captain of his own salvation or his own destiny. If these
things are, as multitudes say, cardinal truths of Christianity,
why do we never find them upon the lips of those who come face
to face with Him who is the author of Christianity and the sum and
substance of all there is to believe? Why do we never find
that upon the lips of those who meet Him? Yet it's cardinal doctrine,
they say in Scripture today, in churches today. The only thing
that can be rationally discerned is that such language is evidence
that those who speak thusly have never encountered the Lord Jesus
Christ at all and have likewise never even begun to see what
they are, what they truly are. For John's response to seeing
Christ is finding out what he truly was. That's what it is. John's reaction to seeing Christ
was that He, as He is, is mirrored throughout the Word of God. John
said, When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. There are
no words to say, no offering to make, no law to obey, no thought
of the worth of work or self, and no imagination of accepting
the One before Whom He lies as a dead man. Mutated man becomes
mute when he sees the glorified Christ. When men see Christ,
they are not and cannot ever be as they were before. Seeing
Christ changes you and not some small alteration of opinion or
flipping over of the faded leaf of reformation. When you see
Christ, the first thing you do is die. That's the first thing
you do. When Jacob wrestled with Christ
through the night, Christ put his hip out of joint and his
walk was changed for all the days of his life. He received
a new name, a new identity, and nothing looked the same after
that. Everything was different. Seeing Christ does not aid you
on your way to becoming a better person. Seeing Christ kills you. The Scripture gives ample examples
of that throughout Scripture. Isaiah saw him and said, I'm
a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among unclean lips, and I'm undone. I'm finished. I'm a goner. I'm
a goner. Daniel saw him in his glory and
said, I failed and melted away in corruption. To see Christ
as He is is to be indoctrinated with two indisputable truths. The first truth is this, Christ
is sovereign. I am He that liveth evermore. People like to say Christ is
alive. No, Christ is life. He liveth. Christ is life. The first thing
you learn about him, if you ever meet him, is not that he's some
namby-pamby, silly, weak, puny thing begging your acceptance. You'll find out he's absolutely
sovereign. And the second thing you'll find
out is that you're not. You'll find out you're depraved.
You're dead. men carp and whine about election
and predestination and particular redemption, but the real doctrinal
difficulty that evades the mind of men is that they do not believe
and cannot understand that they are totally ruined, depraved,
without merit altogether, and have no ability of obtaining
any. Everyone who sees Christ knows
that He is personally and totally depraved, impotent, and is a
putrefying carcass to be despised and cast aside or buried deep
in the earth. This is not only the doctrine
but the experience of all who met the Lord Jesus Christ as
recorded in the Word of God. What does it mean to be dead?
It means to be insensible and insensitive. It means to be shut
off from the ability to communicate with all that is around you.
It means to be corrupt and cursed and damned and doomed. It means
you cannot be touched without passing your stench and your
vileness and corruption on to another. It means that you are
done in and done for and unfit and unwelcome among the living
any longer. That's why we bury our dead.
We don't set them up in the kitchen. We put them in the ground. It
means that you have got exactly what you deserved if you know
what you are. And no man can see this except
first he sees Christ. And every man who sees Christ
knows this as an indisputable fact about himself. If you see Christ, Barnard used
to say, if you meet Christ in the road, get ready for it. Get
ready for a fight. Because you're about to die.
You're about to die. This is also the true position
and posture of worship. Dead man, in the dust, at the
feet of Him who alone holds your destiny, your future, in His
sovereign hands. You see, the most alive you'll
ever be is when you're dead at the feet
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Set your affection on things
above and not on things of the earth, for you are dead, and
your life is hid with Christ in God. Back in the Revelation,
note the next word of John's description of this great divinely
appointed encounter. Verse 17 says, and, begins with
the word and. He's seen Christ. It's not but,
which suggests that what will take place next is in opposition
to what precedes. It's and, which suggests a matter
of course, a continuation of purpose as part of the parcel,
part and parcel with what has preceded. If Christ reveals Himself
to you by His Spirit through the Gospel according to the Scriptures
by faith, you will fall at His feet as dead and He will touch
you. He will touch you with His right
hand. He will lay His right hand upon
you. His right hand is salvation. It is life from the dead. It
is deliverance to never die again. This is the process. Before He clothes you, He will
strip you. Before He makes you alive, He
will kill you. Before He raises up, He will
cast you down. Before He exalts you, He will
humble you. You can count on that. That's
seen throughout the Scriptures. Check it out. When He lays His right hand of
life on you, He will speak to you through His Word. The Good Shepherd calleth His
sheep by name. He said, My sheep hear My voice,
and they follow Me, and I give to them eternal life. Now no
one can explain the intricacies of this phenomenon, this out-of-this-world
interaction. Believers do not speak Christ's
voice as audible, but every one of them without exception knows
that He spoke to them. to their hearts and to their
souls. They know the sound of his voice and their ears are
attuned to it. They cannot explain it, but to
them it is their soul's music, the sound of trumpet and the
voice of many waters. The words he has for them are
not the words they know that they deserve. They are not words
that cause them, however, to tremble in utter terror. There
are not words that sound like the judge's gavel coming down
with the sentence of death. There are not words that seem
like the sword of Damocles hovering over their neck. There are words
as sweet as honey in the honeycomb. And He laid His right hand upon
me, saying unto me, Fear not, I am the first and the last.
I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And have the keys of death
and hell. Fear not. Be not afraid. Oh, how many times this blessed
book says this. I wonder why it says it so much.
Because we're so cotton-picking afraid. So much can cause us
to fear and fall apart, come apart at the seams. We ain't
nothing to us. We like to think ourselves bold
and brave and kind of pull ourselves up by the bootstrap people, but
we're not. The least little thing can drive us into utter despair. The least trial and the greatest
trial, all can do that. It can make us realize that everything
is outside our control and we can't control anything and nothing
is more exasperating for the proud human being than to realize
he can't do anything. That's why our Lord says hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds of times in this book, fear not. Be not afraid. That's what He
speaks to the heart of His people. It is I. Fear not. It is I. I am bone of your bone
and flesh of your flesh. His words are the voice of freedom
that will lay our fears and wipe away our deadness and invigorate
us to glorious life. His words are words of comfort
and joy, glad tidings of good things. When He speaks, He speaks
to that which He has made us to have an interest in. People
talk about the Bible. I saw the other day that some
state, I don't know if it was Washington or something, their
Supreme Court had allowed a man, had allowed a group of atheists
to have license plates that said, I am God. And then people were
in an uproar about it. I'm not. If he wants to put that
on his license plate, he bought the blame thing. He paid for
it. He put what he wants to on it. But I know he's not, and
so does he. So does he. The Bible is not
for everyone. It's not for everyone. It's for
God's people. It is written to Israel, the
Israel of God. It is written to the believer.
It is written to the church, to the elect of God, to the chosen. It is written to those whom God
has created an interest for Christ in. And they get it. They like it. They want more
of it. You can't tell them enough about
it. He describes himself. This is
what a dead man needs, you see. This is what one made alive by
the Spirit must possess and will possess. I am the first and the
last. I said before, I am Omega, the
beginning and the end. Omega, Alpha and Omega. Remember
the story of Sadie, the cleaning lady, who was the cleaning lady
in the Washington Cathedral. That's a fine building. Beautiful,
beautiful building. There was a preacher preaching
one Sunday. They don't have no jackal eggs like me up there
preaching. They have doctors of theology up there preaching.
Fine, brilliant men. Great orators. And he was waxing
eloquent that day, or as Donnie Bell likes to say, he was waxing
elephants that day. He said this statement, and Sadie
was sitting up in the balcony because she wasn't welcomed down
with the rest of the people. She was listening to the old
man preach, and he was doing a good job. He said, Jesus said,
I am the first and the last. I am Alpha and Omega. I am the
beginning and the end. And old Sadie just stood up in
the balcony and said, and everything in between. That's right. I'm the first and
the last. There you have it, you see. That's
our banner of love over us. He is all and in all. He is everything. There is none
beside Him and none like unto Him. He is the beginning. And
He is my beginning and my end, my first and my last breath. My first and my last love. He
is my resurrection and my life. His blessed words to us are the
words of substitution. I was alive, I'm alive, and I
was dead. I was dead. What good news for
dead men, the one who lays his hand upon us, died, satisfied
the claims of God's law and justice, and lives forever to intercede
for us. In His death, He conquered death.
In His death, He executed the sinners upon Himself that was
due us. He was made sin for us, and He knew no sin, and we were
made the very righteousness of God in Him. This is how He reveals
Himself to us as our glorious, living, vital substitute and
Savior, because He lives. I shall live also. I shall live also. And we would see Jesus. Father,
bless us for understanding. We pray in Christ.