In Numbers chapter 10, in the
verses we've just read, it follows on the heels of the account
of the people of God in the wilderness. And we know that's a picture
of the church in the world. And the people are shown to be
utterly and completely dependent upon the Lord for salvation and
for life. walked this eleven days journey
for forty years in the wilderness, our Lord supplied them with manna
and with water every day that they were there. Had He not supplied
these things, they would have died. He also supplied them with a
cloud that hovered over the encampment
of Israel. and over the tent of testimony
according to chapter 9. And the thing about that cloud was
that the people were to wait on the Lord and were to move
when the cloud moved and stay put when the cloud did not move. It was that simple. It wasn't
a very complex thing to follow what the Lord said. Is the cloud
there? Then sit still. Look up. Is the cloud moving? Then follow
the cloud. Then follow the cloud. There
were no exceptions to this rule. No matter how long the cloud
remained or how long the duration of the movement, the people were
simply to follow the cloud. That cloud represented not only
the salvation of the people, but also the guide for their
every movement and the proclamation of their complete rest in Jesus
Christ. That blessed cloud pictured and
typified the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ as it
is revealed in the gospel by the Holy Spirit. Now, we live in a very religious
age, and religion is labor-intensive, multitasking, work-till-Jesus-comes
kind of religion. And that religion cannot understand
and will not receive the divine principle of trusting the Lord
for all things. for all things, not only salvation,
but also motivation and also rest, moving when it is time,
resting when it is time, and waiting until it is time. And
this is because the world, having not faith, cannot grasp the principle
of faith, of believing. The believer is not saved by
grace, then stimulated by the law. The same grace that saves
him is his motivation and his rest. And the concept or doctrine,
the principle of faith revealed in the Word of God is well defined
and is especially seen in that cloud that Israel follows. Then we come to verse 10, or
chapter 10. We find these most blessed words
of God. God having Moses make a trumpet,
two trumpets as a matter of fact. And these follow the teaching
of the cloud. They follow the teaching of the
cloud. Now, we don't put an overabundant emphasis on the placement of
things in Scripture. But generally speaking, where
God puts a thing in reference to something else is very important. And here God puts the making
of these trumpets directly after He gives us the record concerning
the cloud. The Lord directed Moses to make
two trumpets of silver. of silver, and they were to be
made of one piece of silver. Silver in Scripture is representative
of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. It relates to blood as
a price of redemption. And these trumpets were made
of one piece representing the singularity of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And they would be blown by the
priests for the purpose of calling the assembly to the door of the
tabernacle. and also calling the assembly
when it was time to get up and go somewhere. These trumpets
were used. Who was to be called and for
what purpose was designated by the number of trumpets that were
blown? If one trumpet was blown, the
heads of the families were to be gathered. If an alarm was
blown using both trumpets, It designated that the people were
to move out or to prepare for war. The call to gather and the
alarm were designated by a different pitch in which the trumpet was
blown. And it is important to note that
a sound of alarm, a sound of alarm was never to be used when
the assembly was called together for worship. The sound of alarm
was never used. Verse 7 says, But when the congregation
is to be gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall not
sound an alarm. Where would religion be today
without sounding an alarm? And what they call worship, they
sound an alarm. The reason that you are not to
sound an alarm is important. The sound of alarm is a sound
that designates that the people are to be active, to be ready
for any eventuality, poised for whatever might be presented to
them. The call to gather, to assemble
at the door of the tabernacle was a call to worship and did
not involve any alarm at all in any sense. Worship, beginning
at the door of the tabernacle, was to gather where just inside
was the brazen altar that spoke and pointed to the finished work
of the Lord Jesus Christ, followed by the brazen labor, or the brass
labor, where the defilement of the world was washed away. Then
on to the lampstand that pictured the Lord Jesus Christ as the
foundation, as the center post, and the lights that went out
from it all were designed to point their light toward the
lampstand and shine on Him, picturing the people of God as the light
of the world, shedding all their light on the lampstand or giving
all glory to the Lord Jesus Christ. To the table of showbread, picturing
Christ pierced for His people, the bread of life, the food for
the priesthood. To the altar of incense that
pictured the intercessory work of Christ that was conditioned
upon the finished work of Christ in that the incense of the covenant
was laid on coals taken from the brazen altar where the sacrifice
was received. And then on into the Holy of
Holies where the Ark of the Covenant declared Christ as the mercy
seat of the propitiation for our sins, His blood covering
the broken law and fully satisfying God's justice for His people.
And all this is about what God has done for His people. That's
what the tabernacle was about. It was not about what God's people
did for Him. From the first piece of furniture
till the last. All of it had to do with what
God had done for His people. It was there not to cause alarm. It was there to cause joy and
praise. As it says in verse 10, Also
in the day of your gladness, And in your solemn days, and
in the beginning of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets
over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace
offerings, that it may be unto you for a memorial before your
God. I am the Lord your God." Religion issues a call to worship,
but they do so with the sound of alarm. They call men to activity. I remember being in a church
one time and it says, Come here to worship, leave here to serve.
You know. That just made me feel so guilty
when I walked out that door. And that's what it was intended
to do. It was intended to do. Because that's a vague expression.
It's a vague expression. Worship in this day in religion
calls men to activity. It calls them to war. To move to and fro in the earth.
And they call it worship. I told Jim Byrd one time as they
were sitting in an old place in Virginia eating lunch, the
preacher says, if I can just find an issue. He had a church
with about ten people in it. He said, if I can just find an
issue, I can unite this church and I can build this thing. Well,
he did find an issue. His issue was abortion. It's
still his issue. And he's got a big church. And
people come because he sounds the alarm. He sounds the alarm. They cry alarm, alarm, exciting
the anger of the multitudes against the societal evils of abortion
and perversion and bad government and all manner of presumed malady,
and they call it worship. The trump of alarm is never to
be used to call the people to be worshipped, to worship God,
never. It might be asked that since
the cloud and the trump basically did the same thing, to tell the
people when to rest and when to move, and that both the trumpet
and the cloud picture the finished work of Christ, what was the
need of the trumpet anyway? Evidently, there is one because
the Lord said, Do it. And God is a God of order and
does all things order. And we find the placement important
here. The placement of a principal
truth, especially in the Old Testament, is very important.
The revelation of the Trump is preceded by the cloud. The cloud
is the object. It is the object. The cloud is
there. It is always there. The cloud
is always there. It is tangible, if you will,
and an immutable fact. Wherever the tribe is, wherever
the tent of testimony is, There's the cloud. You always count on
that. Look up. There's the cloud. Set your affections on things
above and not things of the earth, where Christ is, who is our life. Whether in transit or in stasis,
the cloud is there. It's always there. And that fact
never, ever changes. Never changes. This picture is
the finished work of Christ. It is not something to be accomplished. Not to be accomplished. It has
been accomplished. It has been accomplished. What
does that mean? When Jesus Christ went to the
cross, He redeemed His people. He didn't make redemption possible
or probable or a thing to happen down the road. He redeemed His
people by His blood out of every kindred nation, tongue, and people,
and made them kings and priests unto their God. Our Lord said,
He has blotted out our transgressions as a thick cloud. As a thick cloud. And whether
men perceive it or believe it, that does not matter. It has
taken me a long time to come to that place. It does not change
anything. And I hope that does not sound
cold. I desire the salvation of those whom I love, and even
some of those whom I don't love, I desire them to know the Lord
Jesus Christ. But I'm telling you this, if
they never believe, it doesn't matter. The cloud is still there. It's still there. It is the fact. It is the truth. Consider, if
you will, the various placements of the tents of this nomadic
people here. There were probably, and I think
probably a reasonable estimate of two million of the Israelites
lived in these tribes. Two million. And that camp was
a vast encampment. It was huge. That goes without
saying. What if some people were placed
at a considerable distance from the tent of testimony? Because
surely you couldn't pack them all around the tabernacle, not
with two million people. It wasn't a very big thing, this
tabernacle. It wasn't a very big thing. What
if you couldn't be close? What if your group was not Judah
to the west, but was one of those way out yonder, away from the
rest, away from the center of the congregation? What if people were inside their
tents or asleep when the cloud began to move or when the time
of worship rolled around? How would they know? In the East,
there was no clocks. And in fact, in the Muslim world,
there weren't clocks used by the Muslim people, the Islam,
until the twentieth century. Why? They told time by how often
they prayed. And that was from the mullah
in the community would say, it's time for prayers, and time for
morning prayers, and the next prayers, and the noon prayers,
and the afternoon prayers, and the evening prayers. All those
were set five times a day. They prayed, and that was their
time. They were resistant to clocks. The whole East was resistant
to that. How did the Jew tell time? Sunrise. and sunset. That was the Jews'
times of day. Sunrise and sunset. Well, how would you know when
it was time to worship? How could you even keep reference
to days? How many would respond or how
would they respond if they could not see? How would blind people know when
to worship? or when to move. The trumpet. The cloud was there. The work was done. It was finished. How will I know? The trumpet. The trumpet. We see here the
glorious wisdom of God and it all belongs to God. When they
could not see, They could hear. They could hear. How do they
know about the cloud, the unchangeable truth of the cloud? They know
it is time to worship, and they know it is time to journey, and
they know it is time to war when they hear the sound of the trumpet. The trumpet is the preaching
of the gospel and the response of faith. When a response is made to the
trumpet, then people come out of their tents. And what do they
see? The cloud. That is what they
see. They see the cloud. When the cloud is seen, it is
followed. And when a response is made to
the trumpet, then it is time for worship. Then is the cloud
seen. You see, the believer sees by
faith no other way. born of the preached Word, and
that gospel is the revelation of what Christ has done for us,
not what we need to do. Here in the Old Testament, during
the time of the covenant of works, the principle of faith is clearly
set forth. How in the world do we really
know that Christ has done what He said He did when we can't
see it through the sound of the trumpet?
The preaching of the gospel. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call on Him
in whom they have not heard, in whom they have not believed?
And how shall they believe on Him in whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they
preach, except they be sinned? Faith is always the life of the
people of God. And there are six words in this
text I want us to consider this morning. There are six words
that teach us a great deal about the gospel. And the older I get,
the more confirmed I am concerning this, and the more concerned
I am concerning the matter of the declaration of the gospel
as pure and as clear as I can make it. There are six words that teach
us a great deal about the Gospel. And these six words are trumpet,
calling, assembly, ordinance, memorial, and remembered. Six words. The first word is
trumpet found in verse 2. Make thee two trumpets of silver.
of the whole peace shalt thou make them, that thou mayest use
them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the
camps." This instrument was used to make a loud sound. It's not
like Dizzy Gillespie played. This didn't have vowels on it. It was done completely by pitch
like a true bugle is played. It's done by pitch without any
vowels on it. And it was made to make a loud
sound, a clarion sound. It was not designed to play ditties. It was not designed to be pretty. It was designed to call. It was designed as a clarion
to express a distinct and understandable message. And the message was
quite plain. It was quite plain. If one trumpet blew, the princes
were called. Trumpet blown or two trumpets
blown without alarm was a call to worship. Two trumpets blown
for alarm was a cause to move or a cause to war. It wasn't
hard to understand these things. People talk about, you know,
these things are hard to understand. I hear that all the time. You know, I don't understand
the doctrine of election. You do understand it. Nobody
cannot understand it. It's so simple. It's so plain. God chose whom He would save
before the foundation of the world. How is that hard to understand? It's not. That's not the issue. I don't
understand predestination. You do. You practice it 40 or
50 times before you got here this morning. You understand
it. Everyone is a practical predestinarian. None of you got in your car this
morning and just sat there. waiting to show up at Sequoia Baptist
Church. You got in your car, you had
a route in your mind, you turned on the key, you followed the
route, and you ended up here. That's predestination, any way
you put it. That's predetermination. Determining beforehand a thing
to be done. We're all predestination, predestinaries. Every one of us, practically.
Every one of us, everything we do. Otherwise, we'd be laying
there in bed the whole time waiting for something to happen. We don't
do that. We have plans. That's predestination. Well,
I don't understand that. You do. You not only understand it, you
practice it. The Gospel is plain. It's not
complex. I grow weary of men who take
this blessed gospel and try to wring it out into little, bitty,
itsy-bitsy pieces and spend their life trying to illuminate this
little piece when the gospel is playing. This Bible does not
have hardly any more than three or four syllables to any word,
and most of those four-syllable words are places that are hard
to pronounce. It's not a theological tomb whereby
men can dig and come up with these wondrous, ethereal ideas.
Here's the Gospel. Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
came into this world to save His people from their sins. And on a cross 2,000 years ago,
He shed His blood and satisfied God's justice and put away the
sins of His people and redeemed them. He imputed His righteousness
to them and made them accepted before God completely and fully,
and nothing was left undone. Well, it's hard to understand
about that. Well, it doesn't seem I have any part in that.
Exactly. You understand. Have you ever
told anybody the gospel? And they say, well, you know,
you're saying I'm not saved. Why are they saying that? Because
they believe they have something to do with it. It doesn't make
sense to them that they can't have something to do with it.
Don't doubt they understand it's that they do. The sound was clear, and plain,
and loud, and loud. The trumpet in Scriptures are
created with the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ. He shall come
with the sound of a trumpet. A trumpet shall sound. We'll
look tonight at seven angels trumpeting judgment. to this
world because of the persecution they have rendered to the church.
The response to the sound, to this voice, is that those who
are dead in Christ rise from the dead, it says in I Corinthians
chapter 15. At the sound of a trumpet, the
dead in Christ shall rise. And this, of course, addresses
what happens to those who are in Christ, though they be dead
in trespasses and sins. They were in Christ when they
went to Calvary, when they hear the voice of Christ through the
preaching of the gospel, when that comfort is blown. It says,
ìThe time is coming and is now when men shall hear the voice
of Christ, and those who are in their graves shall rise.î
It is not talking about the resurrection and the last day. That is talking
about when you heard the gospel. You were raised together with
the Lord Jesus Christ, it says in Ephesians chapter 2, the result
of the trump. What was the result of the trump?
The people followed the cloud. That's what it says. The result
of the trump was that the people followed the cloud. The fixed
thing. The thing that never changes.
They didn't follow whim. They looked up. They saw their
protection. their shelter, and they followed. And listen to me, that's what
will always happen when the elect of God hear the trump. Our Lord
said, My sheep hear My voice. They follow Me. They follow Me. In describing the followers of
the Lamb, in the Revelation, it said all these followers of
the Lamb were virgins. pure and holy. All of them were
redeemed out of men, out of mankind. They followed the Lamb. When
the heathen first saw people like the disciples and others
being interested only in Jesus Christ and not the Jewish laws
nor the heathen practices, you know what they said? They said,
those are Christians. Then it wasn't a term of appreciation. It just meant those folks follow
Christ. All they talk about is Christ.
Because you see, when the trump sounds, what do you do? You look
up. Where's the cloud? Is it moving? Is it staying in
one place? That's what the trump did. It
said, look, see the cloud. See the cloud. When the trump
is sounded, the trump of the gospel, that's what do we say?
Look. See the Lord Jesus Christ. The second word we look at is
the calling. In verse 2 it says this, Thou mayest use them for
the calling of the assembly. The purpose of the trumpet was
to call. To call. The trumpet blown by the priesthood
was a call. And the root of the word calling
is to proclaim. The calling of the gospel is
the proclamation of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Whether to worship, Or to journey, the trump was a proclamation,
and the gospel is the means by which God calls His elect. It's the only means He uses.
That's why we preach the gospel. That's why we don't use inventions
of men or traditions of men. They don't mean anything. They're
useless, rubbish, and have no value. We trust Christ, and we
preach Him. Because that's the only thing
that will help people. When the men of God in the early
days of the church, and if you want to get to know what pure
preaching is, you get back there in Acts, you'll find out. All
they did was preach Christ. They went from town to town preaching
Christ. Preaching Christ. Men are called
by the gospel. How does that work? Like I said,
kind of like electricity, real well. It works good. It works
good. Why mess with it? Men mess with
it because they don't have the Gospel to start with. You have
the Gospel to start with, you have confidence in the Gospel.
And the Gospel will do its work. It always does its work. It always
does its work. Today it's doing its work. What
does it work? It will make some men look at
Christ and savor Him as life, and others look at Christ and
savor Him as death. But it will always do what it's
supposed to do. We're handling the Word of God
with our hands. We are speaking forth that which
is the power of God unto salvation unto everyone that believes.
And God calls His people. His elect by His gospel. That's what Paul said to the
Thessalonians in chapter 2 and verse 13 and 14. He said, Brother,
we're bound to give thanks always to God for you, beloved of the
Lord, because God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation
through sanctification of the Spirit and belief in the truth,
whereunto He called you by our gospel. Why do we send missionaries? Why do we support Walter Gruber?
Why do we support Ken Wyman? Why do we support me to go out
and preach the gospel? Why do we want them to get out
there? So we can put it on our bulletin board that we support
missionaries? Why do we do it? Because we know that out of every
kindred, nation, tongue, and people, God is going to call
His people. And how is He going to call them? By the gospel. So we don't support missionaries
who don't preach the gospel. Well, that's a waste of time.
Isn't it? But we support them if they do
because they go out with the trumpet and they call for the
calling of the assembly. The third word is assembly. It's
also found in verse 2. Calling of the assembly. The
trumpet is used to call the assembly. The Greek word for church, ekklesia,
It means a called-out assembly, a called-out assembly. That's
what the church is, a group of people called out to assemble
together to worship the Lord. Now, there is the church aggregate,
which is the body of Jesus Christ made up of everyone who has ever
been saved, everyone whom Christ died for, everyone whom He redeemed.
But there's also the local assembly. That's us. There's a local assembly. We're part of that great assembly
called out into Christ. But we're the church, part of
the church. We're our part. We're God's church
here as represented in Scripture. How were you called out? Most of the people who are here
in this church, All of them who are members of
the body of Christ came one way. They heard the gospel. And many
of them were resistant to it when they first heard it. They
had never heard anything like that. They said, that can't be
it. Many of them said, well, we'll
go see what this fellow says. Others said, well, you know,
he's a pretty good teacher, but he's not much of a preacher because
I didn't holler and scream and talk in strange language and
huff and puff. What is that? How were they called? You can't blame me for it. I
didn't do it. It's not my fault. The trumpet was sounded. I've
never even invited anybody to come to this church. I've invited
folks to come worship with us. But I know this, the only way
God builds His church is through the gospel. It's an assembly.
It's a called-out assembly. The gospel, the trump of God,
is made to call out the church of God. The trump, when it is
sounded in the wilderness, was not intended for the surrounding
nations, the infidels, the pagans. It was for the calling of the
assembly. And we preach the gospel to every creature, but we do
so to call out the assembly. the elect, the church of the
living God. The word assembly can be best defined as gathered
congregation. Look at verse 7. And when the
congregation is to be gathered, this is the purpose of the trump,
is to call out and gather the congregation. And who do they
gather to? Unto him shall the gathering
of the people be, it says in Genesis chapter 49. The fourth word is ordinance.
Ordinance is found in verse 8. The sons of Abram, the priests,
shall blow with the trumpets, and they shall be to you for
an ordinance forever throughout your generations. Ordinance.
Generally speaking, most folks hold that there are two ordinances
given to the church. One is baptism. One, the one being baptized,
confesses his union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection.
The other is the Lord table in which the partaker confesses
that the work of Christ in his death and life are the singular
cause of their acceptance before God. Something else may be considered
as a third ordinance given to the church, the preaching of
the gospel. And all of them do the same thing.
All of them do the same thing. It is the command of the Lord
to preach the gospel in him. Didn't He give that to His church?
Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel, teaching them,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit. It is an ordinance because there is no other means
by which God will call His people, no other means at all. Paul said,
I didn't volunteer for this job. Necessity is laid upon me. Woe is me if I preach not the
gospel. if I preach not the Gospel. It's the only thing to be preached.
Paul told young Timothy, go into the world and preach the Gospel.
Be instant, in season and out of season. Preach to every creature,
because there's coming a day when men will gather to themselves
teachers having itching ears and will not be able to endure
sound doctrine. You go preach. When it feels
right and when it don't, when it looks like somebody hears
and when it don't, be instant, in season, out of season, you
go preach. Preach the Gospel. Why? Because you see, it's through
the preaching of the Word, through the preaching of the Gospel,
that's the only way people understand the Word of God. The Gospel enlightens
the Word, illuminates the Word. We don't go to the Word to preach
the Gospel. We go to the Gospel to preach the Word, and that's
what Peter said in 1 Peter chapter 2. You are born again. Not a
corruptible seed, but incorruptible seed, even the Word of God, which
liveth and abideth forever. All flesh is grass, and it just
withers away, but the Word of God abideth forever. And this
is the Gospel, or this is the Word of God, which by the Gospel
is preached unto you. A person who looks at this book
and does not preach Christ is not preaching this book. He is
preaching something, but it is not this book. If you say there's
more to preach than Christ, you don't know Christ. You don't
know Him, because there is no more to preach than Christ. All
of it is about Christ. This trumpet, this trumpet is
an ordinance. I say, you do it. You do it. That's what an ordinance means.
You just do it. The fifth word is memorial, found in verse 10.
in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and
in the beginnings of your month, you shall blow with the trumpets
over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifice of your peace
offerings, that they may be unto you a memorial before your God."
A memorial. Just as the ordinance of baptism
of the Lord s table of memorials, so is the preaching of the gospel.
The trumpets were for a memorial. And when we preach Christ, we
are memorializing our God and the glorious work of salvation
performed by the triune Godhead on behalf of all the elect. Paul, when he wrote to the Ephesians
concerning what God had done, he employed the word blessed
in reference to God. And the original word means to
memorialize or to eulogize. Blessed. be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in Christ, according as He has chosen us in Him before
the foundation of the world, that we should behold Him without
blame, before Him in love, having predestinated us to the adoption
of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself, to the praise of the
glory of His grace, where it is He made us accepted in the
Beloved. Eulogize. That is a memorial to God. That
is what we do. We preach the gospel. We memorialize
God. We say, Look what He did for
us. The gospel is a memorial of what
God has done. To God be the glory. Why? Great things He hath done. The sixth and final word is remembered. And that's found in verse 9.
If you go to war in your land against the enemy that oppress
you, then you shall blow an alarm with the trumpet, And ye shall be remembered before
the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies. The
word is in reference to God remembering, not you. You shall be remembered
before God. Whenever you see this word in
reference to God, God remembering, it teaches us that God remembers
His covenant. God deals with you in a covenant
relationship. God is a covenant God. He's never
done anything without a covenant. The blowing of the trumpet, the
preaching of the gospel causes God to remember. That's what
it says. You blow that trumpet, God will remember you. God will
remember you. His covenant, He will remember
and save His people from their enemies because in the preaching
of the gospel, the preaching of the gospel is a declaration
of the covenant of grace. established by God from all eternity,
a covenant. And a covenant doesn't change.
A covenant doesn't change. God doesn't change. So it's incumbent
upon us as we live in this world as God's children to declare
what He's done for us. When I say preach the gospel,
I'm not talking about sit down and have theological discussions.
I grow weary of such things. The longer I live. Kind of like
what Shakespeare said in one of his plays when he said, Hang
the votations, man. Tell me what you know. Tell me what you know. What do
you know? Know what God's done for me.
What's He going to do tomorrow? I have no idea. What's He doing
right now? I don't know. But I know what He's done. And
that's the proclamation of the gospel. Great things He had done.
How do I know that? Because when the trumpet is blown,
nothing new occurs. You just look up and there is
the cloud that has always been there. That is the indisputable,
indestructible fact of Christ's finished work. There it is. And
so we point men to that. It is incumbent upon us to preach
the gospel, to blow the trumpet in a clear and plain manner that
we may not be misunderstood. I want to preach in a way that
men don't misunderstand me. Barney, you say, I want to preach
in a way so if you go out of here an unbeliever, you'll know
what you don't believe. You'll know what you don't believe.
And that's what I want to do. If you leave here this morning
an unbeliever, I want you to know what you don't believe.
And the only way I can do that is to be as clear and as plain
as humanly possible in the preaching of the gospel. Paul said this
in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, verse 7. He said, And even things without
life-giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction
in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? That is to be a distinction.
That is to be a distinctive sound. For if a trumpet give an uncertain
sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle? If you don't give it a distinct
sound. So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words
easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? If
you don't, it's like speaking to the air. You'll be like one
that speaks to the air. Is the gospel hard to understand?
No, it's just hard to swallow. Hard to deal with. because the
gospel shuts you down and honors God and glorifies His holy name. There is nothing in the Bible
that is hard to understand if you see the key of knowledge.
The key of knowledge is when you open up the Bible and read
Genesis 1 and when you go all the way through it, all the prophets,
the Psalms, the Proverbs, all the way through the prophets,
all the way through the Gospels all the way through the epistles
until you get to the final revelation of God. Here's the key. And it's not hard. It's not hard. Christ is the key of knowledge. He's the key of knowledge. So
when folks ask you, what's your hope? Don't go into a bunch of
rigmarole. We say, well, you know, I'm Calvinistic.
I believe in the five boards of Calvinism. Totally, perfectly,
unconditionally, electionally, limited, atonement, irresistible
grace, and perseverance, preservation of the saints. I believe those
things. So what? What has Christ done for you? Because that they'll understand.
And that they can't debate about. Christ, by His blood, made things
right. between me and my God forever. And I didn't have anything to
do with it. We have a wonderful gospel to preach. Wonderful. Father, bless us to our understanding.
May we sound a clear sound, easy to understand, for the glory
of Christ. We pray in His precious name.
Amen.