Galatians 1. I want to read three
verses of Scripture. Verse 12, verse 15, and verse
16. Speaking of the Gospel, Paul
says, For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught
it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. And in verses 15
and 16, he says, But when it pleased God, who separated me
from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace to reveal His
Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen, immediately
I conferred not with flesh and blood. The title of my message
this morning is, saves a sinner. When God saves a sinner. In the first 11 verses of this
chapter, as I just read a few moments ago, Paul establishes
who and what the gospel is. And he distinguishes between
the true and the false preachers and the true and the false message. And then Paul finishes this chapter
with the effect of the true gospel. What the effect of the true gospel
has on the chosen of God how he saves sinners. And using his
own conversion, using his own conversion, he declares what
takes place when God saves a sinner. And when I use the word save,
I'm referring to that appointed time when God reveals to the
elect that Christ has fully saved them. Paul employs his conversion
as a pattern and a manner and a means of every sovereign relation
of salvation wrought by God upon His elect. Holding your place
at Galatians, turn over to 1 Timothy 1. In verse 15, Paul says, This
is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptation that
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am
chief. How be it for this cause, because
he's the chief of sinners, I obtain mercy that in me first Jesus
Christ might show forth all longsuffering for a pattern to them which should
hereafter believe on him to everlasting life. Several things are important
here that the message of the gospel is a is a saying worthy
of all acceptation, and that message is plain and simple.
Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners. That's who He
came to save, and only then. Paul, I'm sure, is speaking from
his heart when he says he's the chief of sinners. Every person
born of God feels that way about themselves. But this is the Holy
Spirit inspiring Paul to write these words. So Paul is declared
by the Holy Spirit to be the chief of sinners. Why would he
do that? For the simple reason that he
might show forth all longsuffering, how he saved Paul with all longsuffering
as a pattern a pattern of those which should afterward believe
unto the Lord Jesus Christ and to the salvation of their souls.
This word pattern does not infer that everyone who meets Christ
has the exact same Damascus Road experience that Paul had. People
have different experiences when Christ reveals himself to them. One man wanted to receive his
sight and Christ said, receive your sight. Another wanted to
receive his sight and Christ spit on the earth and made mud
and put on his eyes and said, go dip seven times in the pool
of Siloam. Now, were these different experiences?
Yes. Was their salvation different?
No. Of course, those weren't actual salvations. Those were
miracles performed to picture how God saves sinners. But in
our day and time, the one who had been given sight would be
called the free sight Baptist, and the other one would form
a denomination called the mud-in-the-eye Baptist, and they would separate
themselves. This pattern infers only one
thing, that however God saved Paul is how he saves every sinner. That's what's being taught here.
Paul's conversion. And what this means is that there
are certain aspects of Paul's conversion that are true of every
incident of God saving sinners, of God giving faith. Well, first
thing that's true of everyone is that their religious career
is interrupted. I guarantee that's true of every
believer. Their religious career is interrupted. You say, well, I never went to
church. It doesn't matter whether you went to church or not. You
were born religious. You were born worshiping a God
of your imagination. You were born that way. You have
the religion of Adam, of fallen Adam. The religion that covers
your sin with fig leaf aprons, that runs and hides from God,
a religion that causes you to blame everything else but yourself
for your fall. Religion puts sin in a box, or
in a bottle, or in a movie theater, or somewhere other than where
it is. They put it in a thing rather than in themselves. can ruin you. If you drink more
than you're supposed to and you get drunk, you've sinned against
God. That's just that simple. But booze is not sinful. You are. Booze could sit on a
shelf for 10 billion years and never want sin. It's not sinful. You're sinful. We ruin the world,
Peter said, through the lusts of our flesh. The world's not
a bad place, we just use it wrong. The problem is always in us. But I'm telling you this about
if you meet Christ, your religious career is going to be interrupted.
And not only that, it's going to have to be cast by the wayside.
It's going to have to be left in the dust on the Damascus road.
You can count on that. Another thing that's true of
every conversion is that there is light. Paul was confronted
with a great bright light that shone greater than the sun. Now
you're not going to have that probably. But you're going to
have great light. Light so great that it's going
to blind you, going to blind you to the point where all you
can do is hear words and hear a voice. And the words you're
going to hear are the gospel. And the voice you're going to
hear is Jesus Christ the Lord. The light is going to be so bright,
you won't be able to see anything else. Everything else, you'll
be blinded to it. But you will hear words, and
you'll hear a voice, just as Paul did. Christ says there's coming a
day and it's already arrived when the dead shall hear the
voice of Christ and they shall live. My sheep hear my voice
and they follow me and I give unto them eternal life. Not only that. If you meet Christ, you're going
to be identified And you're going to confess to it. Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou me? Isn't it hard for thee to kick
against the pricks? What does that mean? How was
Saul persecuting Christ? Christ was in heaven. Christ
was at the right hand of the Father. He was too far away for
Paul to stick his finger in his eye, wasn't he? How was he persecuting? He was persecuting His church.
Inasmuch as you've done it to the least of these, my brethren,
you've done it also unto me. You touch one of God's elect,
and carry this in your mind. Get it down to where you live,
down to where your heart rests. You speak ill of and hurt one
of God's children, you're doing the same thing to Christ. You're
doing it to Christ because we are the body of the Lord Jesus
Christ. We're the body of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Saul, why persecutest thou me? Isn't it hard for thee
to kick against the pricks? What does that mean? Now pricks
are goads. They're put on plows for oxen.
They're sharp sticks turned inward. And if the ox goes one way or
gets out of the path and starts plowing the furrow, his leg hits
a goat and he jerks back. It's painful. Paul was an ox, separated from his mother's womb
for one purpose. Now he was going on in a life
of religious zeal, and everywhere he went he was kicking against
the pricks. And God kept him in line over until he brought
him to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he confessed what
he was. Confessed what he was. Another
thing that's going to be true, you're going to hear the gospel. You're going to hear the gospel.
What is the gospel? The gospel is of who? It's Jesus
Christ who was crucified. That's the gospel. You're going
to hear the gospel. Not only that, you're going to witness
the truth. Now we talk about witnessing in this day and age,
since we were raised up in the age of all those crazy soul winners
that were big in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. In 1954, they had a
conference in Ashland, Kentucky of all the Baptist churches together,
and they had a big witnessing campaign, and their slogan that
year was, a million more in 54 and every one a tither." That
was the slogan for their convention. They were out witnessing. And
here's what people talk about witnessing is trying to get somebody
to make a profession of faith. You know what a witness is? Somebody
who saw something. Somebody who heard something.
And what do they witness to? What they've seen and what they've
heard. Isn't that what John said in 1 John 1? We tell you what
we've seen and what we've heard and what we've handled. It's
not about getting somebody to do something. It's telling somebody
what God has done for you. You say, well, how do you get
them to make a profession? You won't. If you do, you're going
to have to keep them. You are. Witnessing the truth. What is
that? I don't know who he is, but I know I was blind and now
I see. I know that much. I know that much. So we may look at Paul's account
here and confidently say that this is how God saves sinners.
And this is the effect of God's salvation. And the reason that
this is important is because it answers all the false notions
that the enemies of the gospel put forth in the remainder of
this epistle here in Galatians when these Judaizers came in
and said, no, wait, it's not enough to believe, you have to
keep the law. Paul said, they're going to hell.
Any preacher, any other gospel than that which I preach to you,
let him go to hell. Let it be a curse. Let it be
anathema, maranatha, a curse when the Lord comes. This is the gospel standard here. The gospel standard. This is
what happens when God saves a sinner. Now if you can, for a moment,
just forget all the stuff you learned in religion. Forget about
the walking down an aisle. Forget about any other public
confession than that of baptism. for that's the first public confession
of Jesus Christ. Just forget about everything
but fix your hearts and minds upon Christ because that's where
we're going with this. How does God save a sinner? The
primary thing that happens when God saves a sinner is that no
part of that amazing miracle can be attributed to man. Verse 12 says, For I neither
received it of man, Neither was I taught it by man. Neither was
I taught it by man. We say, what, don't preachers
teach you? Yeah. But their teaching and their
position is a derived one. Your real teacher, if you're
a child of God, is God Himself. Though men are called to preach
the gospel and it pleases God through the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe, God has fixed it so that no man can
take into the account as having anything to do with salvation. Though Paul's experience was
unique in one sense, it was not in every sense. He did meet Christ
on the road to Damascus, but the scales did not fall from
his blinded eyes until Ananias, Ananias came and told him the
truth. Realize that? It was Ananias. And you look
through the Scriptures. Every time God saves a sinner,
there's a man preaching to it. And yet, it's done in such a
manner that it's not the man but the message. Not the man,
but the message. Ananias came in and told Paul.
Paul was blind for several days. Couldn't see that light. He was
just listening for somebody to say something. Listening for
a voice. Ananias came in and said, Paul, God's chosen you to see the Just
One and be a witness of Him. to preach
His name. God chose you for that reason.
Opened the eyes of the blind. He's chose you for that reason.
And his scales fell off his eyes. And he saw. Paul, however, had
treated his salvation to Christ alone. He said, Christ saved
me. And in this text, he said, Christ
done it. And Christ done it all. Christ done it all. The first
element And so this primary element of the fact that you have nothing
to do with it, the first element is so because gospel salvation
is a revelation of Jesus Christ. It's a revelation. What does
that mean? Until it's revealed, you don't
get it. Unless it's revealed, you'll never have it. That's
what it means. Barnard used to get in so much trouble in old
Southern Baptist churches when he'd preach because he'd say
salvation is a revelation. And it is. What's it a revelation
of? That you can be something? No.
That you can do something? No. That if you do something,
you'll be something? No. What is it a revelation of? Christ has saved you. If you
hear it, that's what you're going to hear. You believed after you heard
the word of truth, the good news of your salvation. of your salvation. Christ was Paul's Savior, and
He made that clear. The next element of gospel salvation,
how God saves sinners, is that it is for sinners. What is a sinner? Now, I know
we've been raised to think certain things, you know. There's a sinner. Well, it ain't no church member,
you know. This fella don't go to church. That's the center. The fellow that does get drunk,
that's the center. I told you this story many times.
That old man came up on my porch. He was 70 years old. This was
back, I hadn't been here that long. And he came knocking on
the porch and I opened the door and I said, hold up, isn't that
a handsome man? You know how some of those old fellows, they
just carry kind of a human beauty about them? And they did. He
was handsome. He was tanned and had gray hair. He was kind of
short but broad and powerful and he looked at me and he said,
you the pastor here? And I said, yes, I am. He said,
well, I'm going to tell you something. I knew right away I was in trouble.
What are you going to tell me? He said, I'm 70 years old. I've
never drank a beer, smoked a cigarette, or went to a movie show. And
I said, well, that's good. But after he left, I got to thinking,
this is what I wanted to say. You ever do that? Boy, I wish
I'd have said that. I wish I'd have said, wish it
had come to my mind, just a little slow at the moment. I wish it
had come to my mind. I wish I'd have just looked him right in the
eye and said, well, man, you missed three of the best things
that's ever been in this world. I just wanted to say that to
him. What was he saying? I'm a good man. Therefore, God
saved me. I'm not like other men. That's
pharisaical, isn't it? That's pharisaical. This salvation
is for sinners. I was taught it by the revelation
of Jesus Christ. And this revelation is according
to the good pleasure of God. If you have the gospel revealed
to you, it's because God revealed it to you. Not me. I preach the
gospel to every creature. I tell everybody about Jesus
Christ. It's my job. It's why I'm here. But my words
don't make anything happen. And I can't make anything happen.
And don't think I'm not tempted. Every preacher is. Every preacher
would like to preach to a full congregation. Every preacher
would. And there have been moments when
I've been sitting in my study and said, well, what if I did this? And slapped
myself upside the head, shut up before you get started. What
if I did that? There ain't but one thing to
do and that's preach the gospel to every creature. I don't know how this
works. I'm still amazed by it. I've
been doing it for a long time now. But God takes what is spoken,
that Word, and it's a seed, a semen carrying life, and implants it
in His people, and life springs forth. They hear the voice of
Christ. He calls them by name. And every
one of them are sinners. You know what a sinner is? A
sinner is somebody who wants to kill God. Not somebody who goes to the
movie show. Somebody who wants to rip God from His throne and
set Himself in their place. The carnal mind is enmity against
God. You know what that means? What
do you do to your enemy? You kill them. You want them
dead? You want them out of the picture.
The fool has said in his heart, no God for me. No God for me. That's what a
sinner is. If you just think you're a sinner
because you did a whole lot of things like smoking and chewing
and fooling around with folks who do, that's not being a sinner.
Being a sinner is wanting to kill God. That's your crime. In the day you eat of that fruit,
you shall surely die. Oh no, Satan says, eat that fruit
and you will be God. It says, like God, but the word
used by Satan is Elohim. The all-powerful God. You eat this fruit of the knowledge
of good and evil, you will be God. And they can't be two gods. Sin A sinner is one who hates
God, despises the mention of God, wants God out of business,
and wants himself on the throne. And it's only those kind of people
that Christ came to save. Only those kind of people. And
if God reveals that to you, it'll be by His work of revelation. Christ said, I thank Thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for Thou has revealed these things,
or Thou has hid these things from the wise and the prudent,
and has revealed them unto babes. Now what happens if God hides
the Gospel from you? You'll never see it. Since He
does that, don't He want to save everybody? If He does, everybody's
going to get saved. God does what He wants. If He hides it from you, you'll
never see it. You may hang around it. You may belong to a church
where the man whom God has appointed up there preaches it. You may
sit in the pews for 25, 30, 40 years, hear the Gospel every
day, but if God has hid it from you, you'll sit there and you
may amen, you may agree theologically, you may do all those things.
But unless God opens your heart, unless God shines that light
in your eyes, and reveals Jesus Christ unto you, you're going
to stay just like you are and you're going to hell off a church
pew with a Bible in your hand singing amazing grace, how sweet
to say. That's a sad thing. But it's
a glorious thing because no man ever deserves to know Christ.
So it's by grace if God reveals Him to you. God reveals Him to
you. It is the faith once delivered
to the saints and received by grace through faith, this gospel.
It is spiritual knowledge of Christ implanted in the heart
of every one of God's elect. He said in Hebrews 10, this is
the covenant I will make with him. I will write my law. If you're not talking about the
Ten Commandments, you read the book of Hebrews, you know he's not talking about
the Ten Commandments. He's talking about the book.
I'll write my words in your heart and in your mind, and your sins
and iniquities I will remember no more." What does that mean
he writes his words? When the Holy Spirit takes the Word of
God and comes to you, you understand the Word of God. It's in you. And when you hear it, you don't
decide whether you're going to take a theological stand on that
position. When you hear it, you say, oh,
that's right. Thank God for that. I bow to
that. Because it's been revealed. It's
been revealed. This revelation comes from being
taught of God. And they shall all be taught
of God. Therefore, everyone that's heard and learned of the Father
comes to Jesus Christ. If God teaches it, you'll come
to Christ. John 6.45. This fact leads the salvation
of men wholly in the hands of and according to the will of
God, which he said back in verse 4 of Galatians chapter 1, who
gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this
present evil world. And that present evil world is
not talking about the world in general. It's talking about the
evil world where men try to come in and get you to go back under
the law of salvation. Law for salvation. This present
evil world according or based on God's will, according to the
will of God the Father. How are you saved? You're saved
by God's will. Not your will. Your will is a puppet to your
nature. And not even a good puppet to that. The next thing that
shows forth the salvation of the elect, how God saves a sinner,
is not only that it's for sinners. Not only is it for sinners. It
is by sovereign grace. Sovereign Grace. We use that term, people have
asked me, why do you say sovereign? Why do you put sovereign before
grace? Because the grace that people talk about is not sovereign
grace. That's why. People talk about grace all the
time, but they don't talk about it as being a sovereign, sovereignly
given thing from God. They talk about grace, talk about
graciousness, God being gracious. They sing Amazing Grace. There's
a show on TV called Intervention where they take these drug addicts
and they intervene and try to get them to straighten out their
lives. And the theme song for that is Amazing Grace. They call
it a folk hymn. They call it a folk song. Joni
Mitchell had it on one of her albums and it sounded good. She
sang it pretty. People talk about Amazing Grace.
But here's how they talk about grace. It's a grand offer from
God. Isn't that sweet? It's almost
precious. Or as we say in the South, precious.
It's almost precious. An offer. God has His hands out
with grace available if you just want it. I want you to come and
get it. I want you to come down front.
I want you to make a decision for Jesus. I want you to do this.
It's here. It's here for you. That's how
religion presents grace. Not how the Bible presents grace.
If God shows grace, you've been graced. You've been graced. Salvation is by sovereign, and
that means sovereignly dispensed, upon whom God sovereignly has
chosen to give it to. Salvation is of the Lord. Jonah was in the belly of a whale. at the bottom of the sea. Seaweed wrapped around his head. And he did two or three things. He got it right. He said, I'll
pay all my vows. Where is he? He's still in the
whale's belly, isn't he? I'll pray unto the Lord. I'll
pray to the Lord in the temple. Where is he? He's still in the
belly of the whale. I'll straighten up and fly right.
I'll even go preach repentance to the Inunovites. They don't
deserve to repent, but I'll preach to them anyway. Where is he?
He's still in the belly of the whale. He even gets his theology
right. He says, okay. Salvation is of
the Lord. You can't get righter in theology
than that right there. Where is he? Still in the belly
of the whale. How in the world does he get
out? God tells that fish, spit him out. That's sovereign grace. You can do all those religious
things. You can pay your vows. You can pray. You can promise
to serve God. You can even get your theology
right. And let me tell you, unless God commands hell to spit you
out, you're going to stay there. Unless God comes into Satan's
stronghold and binds him because he's a stronger one than Satan
and takes his fall, you're going to stay in that palace in peace
under Satan. An act of sovereign grace. Listen to how Paul puts it in
verse 15. But when it pleased God. And that's when it's going
to happen. whenever it pleases God. When
Paul is inspired to use the word but, he is stating that his career
of hatred and vengeance against the church would have continued
but for the pleasure of God. Verse 13 and 14, you have heard
of my conversation in times past in the Jews religion, how that
beyond measure I persecuted the church and I wasted it and profited
in the Jews religion above many of my equals of my own, being
more exceedingly zealous for the tradition of my fathers,
but when it pleased God, when it pleased God. With the use
of the word when, the purpose of God is brought to light. When
suggests that this act of God took place at the appointed time
or that it was the next thing destined to happen in the course
of Paul's existence. He was separated from his mother's
womb like God said to Jeremiah, I have called thee from thy mother's
womb to be a prophet unto the nations. I didn't know I was
a preacher. until God revealed to me and
gave me a desire to preach the gospel. I had no idea. But I
was separated from my mother's womb to preach the gospel. I
was. Maybe that's why my mother named
me Timothy Nolan. Timothy means honor to God. Nolan means noble. I'm neither
one of those things. My last name really more describes
me. James is a derivative of the
Hebrew name Jacob, who was a supplanter and a tricker and a mama's boy
and an all-around snake. So that more describes me than
what mama named me. But nonetheless, I was a preacher
before I was born. I had no idea. My mama did ask
me what I wanted to be when I was four years old, and I said, I
want to be a preacher. She says, well, what do you need to be
a preacher? I said, a pipe and a wallet. And by today's definition, that's
not far from the truth. When God, at the appointed time,
moved in on Paul, It was by His sovereign grace. What follows
is that Paul was called by grace and by grace alone. And this
call was on purpose. It was not a call to service.
It was not a call to the missionary field. The purpose of this call
was to reveal God's Son in him. That's what it says. But when
it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and
called me by His grace to reveal His Son in me." I love that. I love that. The Gospel is not
about anything about what you can do, or what you need to do,
or what's going to happen to you. When the Gospel comes to
you, when God who separated you from your mother's womb, when
God has called you by His grace, when God reveals His Son in you,
it is for this purpose. to reveal that Christ is in you.
You say, well, how does that work?
Well, you wouldn't know it unless He wasn't. Think about it. Christ is life. Life precedes
all things. And when you hear the Gospel,
if you hear it, if God reveals it to you, there's already the
Spirit in you receiving it. How does that work? Fine, it
works good. What's so good that I can't put
my hands and my fingerprints on it? He said, God called me by His
grace to reveal His Son in me. His Son in me. And that word
in is correct. Life in the believer is Christ
in the believer. The Gospel is a revelation of
that to the believer. That revelation is also for a
purpose, and that purpose is simple, that I might tell somebody
about it. that I might preach the gospel
among the heathen, Paul said. And though this call was particularly
to the ministry for him as an apostle, every believer is a
minister of the gospel. Every believer. Some have a pulpit
ministry. But every believer is a minister of the gospel.
Why did God save you? He called you to reveal Christ
in you. So you'd go out and tell somebody else about Christ. I
like the old adage, preaching the gospel is one beggar telling
another beggar where the bread is. That's what it is. That's what it is. The next thing
set forth in the salvation of God's people, how God saves sinners. is that when a person is saved
by God, He does not look to men for assurance or proof of the
reality of His salvation. He says this, "...to reveal His
Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen immediately,
I conferred not with flesh and blood." And that's wise. It really is, especially if you've
been religion all your life. Because you confer with your
flesh and blood, they'll flat try to talk you out of what you've
just been revealed. And if they can't talk it out
of it, you ain't been revealed. But they'll flat try. They'll try. Paul said, I conferred not with
flesh and blood. He didn't seek the counsel of the other apostles.
He said that. He did not wait for orders or
letters as he did with the Sanhedrin when he went out to persecute
the church. He did not go before the presbytery for the laying
on of the hands or immediately roll in some seminary so he could
learn how to be a preacher. Preachers don't learn how to
be preachers. Preachers are made. They're not taught. They're not
taught. I've had young men say, I want
to be a preacher. What seminary should I go to? Don't go to seminary.
Don't go to seminary. They'll ruin you. You say, well
that's terrible. I'm telling you the truth. Who
is the man whom God has called to the highest position on the
face of this earth? The preacher of the gospel. There is no higher
position. And you're going to some school for some guy who's
never filled a pulpit, who's never been with a congregation
of people, who's never loved them and been married to them
and cared for them and wept over them to tell you how to be a
preacher. Seminaries are men's inventions. And the reason is because at
one time, sadly to say, Preaching was a professional job that moms
and dads decided to put their kids in from birth. They said,
we're going to make him a preacher. So they sent him to all the proper
schools for education to be a preacher. Paul wasn't educated as a preacher
of the gospel by seminary. He was educated in the law under
the feet of Gamaliel. That was his seminary and that
did him a lot of good. He said, I count that as what? manure,
dung. I've told you that story about
that lady that ran the Waynesville Hardware when I used to write
checks and I had the name Sequoia Baptist Church on the checks.
Maybe I thought they'd take it and wouldn't be afraid it'd bounce,
so I put the name Sequoia Baptist Church on my checks, you know,
it was there. And she saw it, she says, oh, you're a preacher.
I said, yes, ma'am. She said, did you go to seminary? No, she said, where did you go
to seminary? I said, I didn't go to seminary. She said, what
do you think, it affected your ministry? I said, yes ma'am,
I believe it helped. And I do. I do. Seminars are the breeding
ground for infidels. They turn out men who believe
they're preachers of the gospel and they come in and do every
blasted thing but preach the gospel. They're taught how to
build churches, how to build Sunday school, how to have a
mission program, how to get people to give money. But nothing about
preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said, I didn't
confer with flesh and blood. I didn't check out with the apostles.
I didn't do anything. I went out and preached the gospel. That's what I'm supposed to do.
That's what I've been called to do. He struck out with the gospel.
Gospel salvation frees the believer from the opinions and the input
of men. It does. He's dead to the world,
and the world is dead to Him. Listen to the words of verses
17 through 20 as Paul speaks. He said, Neither went I up to
Jerusalem, or to them which were apostles before me. But I went
to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. And after three
years I went to Jerusalem to see Peter for fifteen days. But
none of the apostles saw I saved James and John. Now the things
which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not. I'm not
lying to you. I didn't go up there to get credentials.
When God taught me the gospel, I struck out with it. I went
out with it. You see, when God saves a sinner,
that person needs nothing but Christ. Everything else in the
world he can survive without. He can even survive without his
own life, because he's got life eternal. But he can't live without
Christ. For me to live, is Christ, to die is gain. The next element
of the gospel salvation is this, that the believer does not seek
acceptance of the brethren except on one single premise. I like
to have fellowship with people who love the gospel, but that's
the only time we'll have fellowship. Now we may be friends, and I
have a lot of friends who don't know Christ, and I try to be
friendly to folks who don't know Christ. I have a lot of preacher
friends I know who have no interest in Christ, but we never talk
about the gospel because they're going to get mad at me. We just
don't do it. They're going to get mad at me.
They know not to talk about it, because they know I'm going to tell them
what the truth is. We have to be friends with this
world. Paul said that when he was writing the Corinthians,
when he said for the brethren not to take part in adultery,
he said it had nothing to do with adulterers or fornicators.
He said, not altogether. He said, you can't live in this
world without dealing with folks who have pernicious and awful
jobs. That's just life. He said, it's
wrong for a brother to partake of it. Wrong for a brother to
partake of it. But my basis of fellowship, of fellowship,
Christ is God's fellow. We are in Christ. We fellowship
with God in Christ. You know what fellowship is? I like to read Shakespeare. I
like his sonnets. I like his plays. I like his
prose. I like the way that old rascal
thought. He was just an amazing thinker. And I enjoy reading
him. There are fellowship of Shakespearean scholars. all over England and some in
America. What does that mean to be a fellowship, to be a fellow
in a fellowship of scholars? It means you've got to know what
you're talking about. You've got to know Shakespeare
from A to Z. I could never be in that group.
I like him, but I'm not crazy about him that way. But if you're
going to have fellowship with me and I'm going to have fellowship
with you, You're going to have no Christ as He is in this book.
That's the basis of our fellowship. That don't mean I don't love
you or won't love you. I have kinfolk whom I love dearly,
would give my life for, who have no interest in the gospel. There
is familial love. There is not fellowship. Because they don't know nothing
about the subject. Paul said this in verse 23, But they had
only heard that He which persecuted us in times past now preaches
the faith which was once destroyed. These people in Judea, they had
experienced Saul of Tarsus' wrath. And that's all they knew about
it. But they received Him on this basis. He now preaches the
faith. The faith which once He destroyed. That was the basis of fellowship.
That which is the singular place of fellowship is the gospel.
The thing that caused the churches to receive Paul was that they
heard that he preached Christ. And though his former life is
considered, it is only in the light of the fact that he has
been changed by Christ and attributes that change only to Christ. Finally,
when God saves a sinner, that sinner that tributes all
glory to Christ. All of it. Last verse, and they
glorified God in me. They didn't glorify Paul because
it was God who had saved Paul. So they glorified God in Paul. That is, God that had wrought
the change. When God saves a sinner, the church recognizes it. When
God saves a sinner, the church gives glory to God and not to
the church or to the system. When God saves a sinner, the
church does not run to the rule book or set up a council to grill
the believer as to his qualifications for membership. They simply glorify
God. They glorify God. Over and over
again, when our Lord brought that lamb back, that he went
out searching for. He said, there's more joy in
heaven over one sinner that repenteth than all the angels in heaven.
More joy. That's what church is. To God
be the glory. We've seen God save some people.
Seen God bring some people to faith in Jesus Christ. I remember
when Jonathan told me He wanted to confess the Lord in baptism.
How behind him everybody got and glorified God. Ashford, we all glorified God. We're not
going to glorify you. And these people didn't glorify
Paul. But we'll glorify the God who saved you just like you will
too. And that's the language of Scripture. That's the language
of Scripture. Let me show you one verse and we'll quit and
go have something to eat. Psalm 29. Psalm 29 is about the
glory of God. And it says something about the
assembly of saints in Psalm 29. In Psalm 29, verse 9, the voice
of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, that is, He is in control
of all things, all that opens the matrix of His mind. He discovereth
the force, the voice of God does. And look what it says, and in
His temple, Doth everyone speak of His glory? That's what they
do in Israel. That's what they do in the church
of the living God. They glorify God. That's what
happens when God saves a sinner. Father, bless us to understand
and pray in Christ's name. Amen.