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Pastor David Mitchell
Well, I'm excited about today and Bill, you walked all over the sermon today. Good job. His Sunday school lesson was even, I mean, there's an obscure passage I've got in this sermon. It was in his Sunday school lesson.
It's not one you look at all, hardly ever, and it was in a Sunday school lesson and we don't talk, we don't collude, it's just the Holy Spirit has a theme for this local church and it's really a great thing how he puts it together.
So the only difference is, Bill, you got to yours. I may not get to it today, maybe next Sunday, but it's in here. It may be today. So let's pray and we'll get started. Lord, we just thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to be part of your family business and everything going on in the world is yours, your endeavor, your great endeavor, your creation, and you watch over us in the midst of it as your own dear children, as your own babies, and you care for us more, thousands of times more than we care for our own children and grandchildren.
It's hard for us to comprehend that, but we know your scripture teaches it. And so thank you that you love us that much out of a race of humans that is totally unlovable and we were just like that too.
And you called us out of darkness into your marvelous light by your son, Jesus Christ, and by your Holy Spirit and changed our desires, caused us to be drawn to the light and Lord, we can only ask in thanksgiving.
So we ask you to teach us now in Jesus name. Amen. Well, we're in Romans chapter 10, the true gospel to the Jew and the Gentile is how I entitled it this time through. If you teach through it next time, we'll give it a different title probably.
But the great apostle Paul said he's not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It's the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believeth. Jesus said there's two requirements for salvation and you won't have it.
There'll be no one in heaven that didn't have experienced these two things. The one's the water, that's the word of God. And that's what Paul's talking about here. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God unto salvation.
You have to have the word of God. It's not just the written word, but it includes the written word. And now in our dispensation, the written word is magnified in importance. Even above God's name, his word is magnified above his name.
And then the second thing is you have to have the spirit, the water and the spirit. Without those two ingredients, there is no salvation. And Bill touched on it so well in the Sunday school hour. And some of us, even Bill said, now this can seem harsh.
He didn't use the word harsh. Forgot the word he used, but it's like that. This can seem, it's very serious when you read about this. And he was talking about how God chose some from a fallen race to be saved and he chose others not to be saved.
Most of the world doesn't even know that's in the Bible, but it is in the Bible. And he was talking about how that can sound, I wish I could remember the word he used, it was perfect, harsh, hard. But then you pointed out, but the thing we forget is the whole race was lost.
And it's because of God's love and mercy and grace that he calls some from that fallen race and saves a remnant. For his son, Jesus's sake and for his own sake and for our sakes as well. That is the plan of salvation.
But the world hates to hear it that way. The world wants to be for man to be in control of who gets saved and who doesn't. Churches to be in control. There are systems to be in control and it's not. But the world hates the true gospel.
Paul loved it. That's why he said, I'm not ashamed of it. Look at that. Two thousand years ago, if you taught the truth, people shamed you because they hate it. He said, I'm not ashamed whether they shame me or not.
I mean, I'm going to preach it till I die. And he was beheaded for it in Rome. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It is the power of God and the salvation to everyone that ever believes. No one will believe without it, but they can't believe with only it.
Because the gospel is going out to the whole world and not all believe there must be the second ingredient, that's the spirit, the water and the spirit. If the spirit doesn't come alongside a lost dead human being from a fallen race and wake them up, they'll never hear the word.
Oh, they'll hear it in their ear, but they won't hear it in their understanding without the Holy Spirit. That's called the calling. And without that, there is no regeneration with it. It is regeneration and everything else is an effect of it doesn't cause it.
And you've heard me say it and I'll say it till I die. It's a beautiful light. And I got that light from Charles Spurgeon one day when he said, you know, an effect can never be the cause of a cause. I said, wow, I know what that means.
Never thought of it that succinctly, but that was great. So to the Jew first and also the Greek. Paul always preached to the if you had a room full of people, he preached to the Jews in the room first, even though everyone's hearing it.
And then he would address the Gentiles always in that order. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith. And that is the very verse 17 that turned on Martin Luther.
Martin Luther was a Roman Catholic who who used to whip himself and beat himself because he knew he couldn't be good and he thought that's what to do. Is you just, you know, whip yourself and try to do better.
And one day he read that verse in his study and the Holy Spirit turned the light on. He was born again and he was he was gloriously saved. And what was he said, Charlotte, why me? For me, he said, right, we heard Rocky Freeman preach on that.
I forgot it was in my sermon today, but we heard Rocky Freeman. Listen, you need to go out to the website Park Meadows Church dot com and listen to every one of Dr. Freeman's message. It will change your life.
But he preached on that verse and told the story of Martin Luther. And he said and he said it in German because Martin Luther was German. Rocky preached it in German. He said for me in German, however, you say that I should have looked it up.
That would have been impressive. Or, you know, Google say this and then I could repeat it. But anyway, and then he said it in English for me, for me, for me. And he apparently Martin Luther just said that many times when when he saw this like that, Jesus did everything he did on this earth.
And before time began and on the cross, bearing the sins of all of his people, but especially for me individually. And Martin Luther got it. And he changed the world after that. God used that man to change the world and say and help bring us out of the dark ages into the Renaissance and the Reformation.
So this verse was was what was used. So the word of God is so powerful and the Holy Spirit can use it in any of us, in any of our children, grandchildren to change the world, to turn a light on and give an idea that changes the whole world.
So we were in Romans 10, one through four, and he's praying for Israel, right? And what's interesting about it is Paul speaks of his people, the Jews, and he speaks to a group of people, talks to the Jew first.
He says something remarkable. He says they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. And what he's implying there is that zeal without knowledge does not equal salvation. They had a zeal for God, but the knowledge comes from what?
The word of God. Now, they had the word of God and they were reading it as academically, but they didn't have the second feature, which is who? The spirit of God to teach them what it really meant. So they missed it.
They missed their Messiah for the most part. So they had a zeal for God, but not according according to knowledge and understanding that only the Holy Spirit can bring to us from the word of God. They didn't have that.
Paul pointed it out, said they're ignorant. And here is the real problem. They were ignorant of God's righteousness and went about to establish their own righteousness. So there's two kinds of righteousness in the world, and one is humanistic, where a group of people, churches, groups, people or individuals try to approach God, like Led Zeppelin said, by building a stairway to heaven.
That's the humanistic ways we're going to make ourselves good enough where God's going to accept us someday. And they don't understand the holiness of God. They don't understand the sin of man. So you got two misunderstandings there.
But they're trying to establish their own righteousness. That won't work. And Paul just shared it with them, maybe some of them for the first time. They'd never heard this before till the day he shared that with this group of people.
Now, I know this was literally shared in a letter, but you have to understand, I bet he preached to live groups of people many times and said these same things or something similar. So you can bet the folks around the Jews heard Paul say this sort of thing.
And we call that the wrong kind of righteousness. And we talked about that mostly last Sunday. I gave an example of it there, Romans chapter three, where God said there's none righteous, not one. There's no one that seeks after God.
Now, keep that in the back of your mind, because we're going to get to what they're just a few what I would call a difficult passages in the Bible. Not very many, because God wrote the Bible for the farmer and the child, not the Ph .D.
But there are some difficult passages and we're going to come across one in a minute. And I'm going to show you how you deal with them. But now, as we as we think about this wrong kind of righteousness, we looked at what the scripture said, Romans three, they're about none seeks God, not one.
And we went out to Isaiah last time and this is sixty four six. All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. God can't make it more clear than that. Man cannot approach a holy God for just trying to be a good man or woman.
But that's what the Jews were doing, establishing their own righteousness. Doesn't work. There's none that calls upon my name that stirs himself up and takes hold. I thought that was interesting last time to stir in the Hebrew means there's nobody that opens their own eyes and wakes up to God.
They're all blind. All humans are blind. Only the word of God in conjunction with the spirit of God can open the eyes of a blind man or woman. It is not humanistically possible to save oneself. One has to have the word of God, which came from heaven, and one has to have the spirit of God, who is from heaven and in the earth, and he's omniscient, he's everywhere in all of God's creation, but he has to come individually to a person and open their eyes and they don't see it.
They'll let no natural man, woman, boy or girl will ever stir themselves up and say, oh, I need to stir myself up and love God. Never happens. Scripture says it. It's it's what you were talking about in Sunday school is it sounds harsh that God chose to save a remnant and the others not until you realize that had he not done that, not one of them would have stirred themselves up to ever know or love God.
Not one. The whole race would have been in hell forever. So it's God's mercy and grace. Now we talked about that last time, so now let's pick it up where we left off. For Moses described the righteousness, which is of the law, that the man which does those things shall live by them.
And he's still talking to the group of Jews and says, look, if you want to like if you want to take grace that I'm going to teach you that Jesus taught me in the wilderness and you want to compare that to law, Moses as a system of salvation.
Let's talk about the law, Moses. First, if you're going to choose that one, then you have to keep every point of the law or you'll be lost. If you break any one point, you've broken the whole law. That all Jews knew that, but Paul reminded them of it right here.
You shall live by if you're going to choose the law, you got to live by it. And he's talking to a group of people, includes Pharisees, and they love to talk about it. They just don't live it very well, do they?
Hypocrites, they were. Jesus said, you're quite as sepulchers, you know, dead on the inside. But Paul reminded them. And then in James chapter two, verse 10, it says, first, whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all.
So the Jew, you had to keep all of it. If you're going to live by being good, then you've got to be completely good to make it to heaven. And that isn't going to happen. And then he spoke of the right kind of salvation right here.
Now, we're going to get more into that, but the right type of righteousness, he begins to talk about it in verse six. But this this includes what I call a difficult passage. So as you read this, ask yourself, do I know what this means?
And if not, why did I just read past and keep going last time and didn't stop and figure it out or ask the Holy Spirit to teach it to me? Why did I just why did I just move on past it? And I just it was difficult, so I didn't think about it and I still don't know what it means.
I mean, I have that happen quite often as I go through scripture, I'll find something that I read through it once and said, what does that mean? And I just didn't have time that day. So I just kept going.
You ever had that happen? Well, I bet this is one of them. Look at verse six. But the righteous righteousness, which is a faith. So now he's contrasting a salvation plan that has to do with law and being good and keeping that law.
He's contrasting that with a salvation plan that's taught by faith without the deeds of the law. He's already spoken of in Romans before we got here. Right. Remember that? It's like a great gulf between faith and works.
Paul said it's like a great gulf faith works, has nothing to do with salvation by faith. It is a it can be an effect of it, but it doesn't cause it. It has nothing to do with the cause of salvation works.
Nothing law, nothing to do with the cause. It's faith. So now he's going to talk about faith. So he's going to talk about the right kind of righteousness. And these Jews don't know anything of it. But the righteousness, which is of faith, speaketh on this wise.
All right. Now, the righteousness, that's the wrong kind in verse five speaks on this wise. OK, if you're going to keep it, you got to keep all of it and you have to live it. But the righteousness, it's a faith speaks on this wise.
It's like this. Say not this word to me, it's difficult. Say not in your heart, who shall ascend into heaven? That is to bring Christ down from above. Now, you got to ask yourself, what does that have to do with what we're talking about?
Do you just get that? I mean, is that a real revelation to you? Verse six, are you going? I was going. And frankly, I don't think I've ever been as clear on what it means as I have this this past few weeks in my life of studying this my whole life.
And I've looked at it many times because I was saved the age of 24 and I'm 66. That's a lot of time. I've read through it many times and never completely got it and wasn't that interested in it. And the Holy Spirit said, why aren't you interested in this?
He's telling you the right type of righteousness. You need to figure this out. So I think the Holy Spirit taught me what it means. So we'll see you be the judge of it. But I think I think if I'm right, then he can teach you the same same thing.
But I don't get it just right there. But you think the next verse helps? Or who shall descend into the deep, that is, to bring up Jesus again from the dead. Oh, now that brings a lot of light to it, right?
So, Saina, so now I'm going to teach you the right kind of righteousness, Paul says. Now, do you wonder why Peter said some of the things that Paul taught are difficult to understand? Peter's listening to this going, what?
Apostle Peter, what? Say not in your heart who shall ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down from above. And don't say who shall descend into the deep, that is, to bring Christ again from the dead.
And every time I read that, I thought the deep meant hell. When you think it means that doesn't mean hell. You know, I'll show you how I know that, but doesn't mean hell. But still, I mean, wow, what is that saying?
So he goes and says, but what sayeth it? And I think Paul understands, OK, they're not getting this right, not funny. OK, so now he tries to give us a little bit more like. The word is nigh thee, the word of God is close to you.
All right. Even in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith which we preach. I still don't get it, do you? But it's a great clue, and I'll show you why. There's a little paper that Brother Otis and I put together years ago called the Ten Commandments of Proper Bible Interpretation.
And what I would like to do is show you how to use two of those points this morning when you come across a passage like that. All right, so the number four, the fourth of the Ten Commandments was let the Bible interpret the Bible.
So what you have to do is what I like to do is, number one, if I'm in the New Testament, I see something that totally makes no sense. I will first try to look and see, are they quoting something from the Old Testament?
Because often they do. Now, they usually paraphrase it. It won't be word for word, but you can do a word search on some of the words in there and see if anything in the Old Testament pops up. We didn't used to have that.
We can do that now. All right. So that's one clue. But so we'll see if there's other scripture that will shed light on this difficult passage. So what you're looking for is you're looking for a simple passage that's very clear that ties in with this difficult passage and let it shine light on the difficult passage.
All right. And then rule number six, use the clear to interpret the difficult and never vice versa. So you would never want to start with this and use this to interpret something else in the scripture because you'll come up with a cult group when you do that.
That's where they come from. They will take some obscure thing in the Bible, make it be the main thing. And and start a whole group and never understand doesn't fit with the rest of scripture the way interpreted that.
So you never want to start with the difficult and try to prove the simple or change the simple and clear to fit the difficult. You do it the other way around. Does that make sense? So you find clear passages that you do understand what they mean and you use that to help you have light on this.
That's the proper way. So I'm going to use those two. And let's see. Let's see if it works. OK, so this is a kind of like turns in from a sermon to a Bible study, which nearly all my sermons do that. OK, now let's look at this one in Luke 16.
OK, now, you know what we're trying to figure out. Number one, what does he mean? This is to bring Christ down from above. You know, who's going to go up to heaven now? We're talking about the correct kind of righteousness and how to obtain it.
And he says, who's going to go up to heaven and bring someone down here? All right. And then he says, well, who's going to go down into the deep and bring them up here to show us what this, you know, to show us the correct kind of righteousness?
Are we supposed to do that? You know, but the righteousness of which his face speaks on this, should we do that? He's asking, is that the right approach to figure out the right way of righteousness? And then he gives us a clue when he says, what does the Bible say in the Old Testament?
The word is nigh thee. So that gave me a clue. He's quoting scripture there from the Old Testament. And if I can find that, it's going to really help. All right. So that's kind of what I looked at. What say if it when he said that little phrase, I'm thinking, you know what?
He's talking to a bunch of Jews about a book they understand, which is the Old Testament. So I bet we can find it. But he talks about the word is near to you, even in your mouth, even in your heart. I bet that's something like that in the Old Testament.
Let's go look and see if it sheds light on what this means. Before I got out to that, though, actually in my study, it was actually after I went out. The first thing I did was I went and found that passage and read it and I'm going to show it to you in a minute.
It gave me really almost complete understanding of what this means. But but it made me think of a passage or two in the New Testament that spoke directly to it that I wouldn't have found if I hadn't gone to the Old Testament to let it tell me what that means.
Does that make sense? I don't know why in the sermon I put it the other way around, because I'm about to show you the New Testament, but I didn't find this one next one. This one, I didn't find this next.
I found it after I went to the Old Testament and it showed me what that passage meant. Then I was able to find this. So the Lord gave me this one. So this really helps a lot. There was a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.
It's not bad to be rich unless when you're rich, you think you're better than anyone else and you think that money is going to save you and make your life better than anything else. If you understand that money is a tool, it won't hurt you.
This person didn't understand that. Then there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate full of sores. So. Does God, do you think God promises that all of his people will be rich like some TV preachers preach?
What do you think about that? Because we're going to see which one of these two made it to heaven and which one didn't. So here's a man who was a beggar and he was ill and he had sores all over his body and he was gross and no one wanted to touch him or be nearing and he had no help from anyone and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table.
Moreover, the dogs came and licked this man's sores. Is he in a low estate? And then it came to pass that he died. The disease he had killed him or hunger killed him. Something did. And listen to this now, if your faith ever wanes, if you ever wonder, well, like when I close my eyes and actually take my last breath, what's that going to be like?
They don't have that thought. Well, look what happened to this poor man who two seconds ago was as low a state as you can get on the earth. And now all of a sudden angels are carrying him through whatever dimension they go through into Abraham's bosom, which is paradise before Christ put his blood.
It wasn't heaven, but it was paradise, I believe, in the center of the earth somewhere in a great gulf between that and the hell part of that place. So this was the heaven part. It's where the Jews that died before Christ gave his blood were kept in paradise.
They call it Abraham's bosom. They call it paradise. Some places it's shoal, but shoal can also mean the hell part, but it can also mean the Abraham's bosom part. This is where they took him. So the angels escorted him immediately to this place.
He was never alone. Once he closed his eyes and took his last breath, he was never alone. He was immediately taken up by angels, angelic beings in Abraham's bosom, and then the rich man died and was buried.
And notice it doesn't mention anything about angels. That's creepy. Aren't you glad you're saved? Listen, if you have nothing, if the world takes everything you have away. You're still going to get the angels when you die.
You're still going to wake up in God's presence. And many, many, the huge majority of earth dwellers will not. And in hell, he lifted up his eyes. Does it say anything about a safe passage to hell or angels took you there?
It just says he'd lift up his eyes and he was in hell. He was in fire. He was in torments. Now he could see Abraham afar off. Now, Abraham, was he in hell? This is the Abraham, the friend of God. No, he wasn't.
But this man could see him. So doesn't that tell you something about what Shoal was like before Jesus died on the cross and took his blood to heaven? What was it like? There were two places in the same general place, a great gulf between.
And here you have this lost man in this place and Abraham, and he can see him from a distance. Right? I mean, that's what it describes. He can see him. He can even scream out and Abraham could hear him, apparently.
And so he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and he sees Abraham afar off. And Lazarus, the poor man that had just died, is fellowshipping with Abraham. No human would have anything to do with this man.
Ten seconds before this. Isn't that something? Fellowship, fellowshiping with Abraham and no one would give him food to eat or anything because of the sores and the dogs licked his sore. Now he's fellowshipping with Abraham.
And the rich man who had died and gone to the hellish, the hell part, the Hades is what we call it, he cried and said, father, Abraham, so what does that tell you about this rich man? Was he Jew or Gentile?
He's a Jew. Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus, because like in the life he just left, Lazarus was like a servant. So let him come and serve me and do what I need him to do. And Abraham is about to say, doesn't work that way here.
A lot of interesting information in this. Have mercy on me, said Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am tormented in these flames. Do you think hell is literally fire?
Uh, apparently Jesus thought so. So unless he's wrong, then it's real fire. But Abraham said, son, remember that thou in your lifetime received many good things and likewise Lazarus got only evil, but now he is comforted and you are tormented.
He's not here to serve you. And beside all this between us and you is a great golf fix. The same word in the Greek that's between when Paul said, you got faith and you got works and works has nothing to do with salvation.
It's a great golf. It says faith without works. The word without in the Greek is the same word as the word golf in verse 26. So the thing which would pass from here to you cannot, neither can they pass to us.
That would come from there. So this great golf, you could like the people in Hades cannot get to heaven and the people in heaven cannot go to Hades. It's all set by God, the father. It's all in place and it's in order and it's how it is.
Then he said, well, I pray in the here's part where we start to gain some understanding on our difficult passage because we're having so much fun with this passage, we may forget the real passage we're studying.
So I don't really think I was called to preach. I was called to write books, 300 pages, each 600 pages each. And then he said, I pray thee, therefore, father, that thou would send him to my father's house back on the earth.
Now, now start paying attention. He wants Abraham to make the servant Lazarus in his mind to go back to the earth and warn his brothers, don't come here. Wow. Try a five brethren that he may testify to them.
Lest they also come into this place of torment. So what did he ask Abraham to do? He asked Abraham to send someone up from below to the earth to witness. That's what Paul in our difficult passage was saying.
Don't do that. Right. Think about it. He said, that's to bring someone from below up to bring Christ up from below. You know, only here it wasn't Christ, but it's the same concept is I want you to send someone from here back to the earth to warn my brother so they'll get saved.
Paul's saying it doesn't work like that and we'll see why in a minute. All right. So Abraham said to him, they have Moses and the prophets. What is that? How did they have Moses and the prophets who were already dead by that time?
How did they have them? They had the word of God. They had. And listen to this, not just the word of God. Orally sit down from father to son, the written word of God. So in context, this is talking about this book right here, specifically the Old Testament part of this book right here, just like it is here now.
And he said, no, I'm not going to send Lazarus back to the earth to witness to your brothers. They have this right now. They can read it. Wow. Well, that's kind of abrupt, wasn't it? Let them hear. Let them hear the word of God.
They don't need somebody to rise from the dead and come tell them, hey, you know, you buried me. Here I am. I'm the dude that had the sores and you guys wouldn't give me any money. Remember me? Yeah. Well, here I am.
I died and you saw me buried. Here I am. I'm telling you, you need to accept Jesus Christ, your personal Lord and Savior. You're going to hell. And that was not allowed because they said, you've got that book right there.
Let them hear that. So that's God's plan. That's what Paul is saying. This is how God does it. It's the word of God. And he said, nay, Father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
He thought his plan of salvation is better than God's, didn't he? Doesn't every humanistic group in the world think that? Oh, if we just add a little awesome music, let that be 45 minutes and 10 minute sermonette, and then a bunch of food and stuff.
I do like the food part. Then we'll build a huge church. You know, we'll need the word of God to be part of it. And we'll pretend we're praising in the Bible. It's kind of interesting to me in the Bible when they had real revivals, always they would stand up and just read the Bible to the crowd for a day or two or three.
Real exciting, right? You want to try that now? I'll just keep going. I got more slides after this, which is all day. We'll just do scripture, only scripture, nothing entertaining about it. Just read God's word.
And that went on for a long time. Then all of a sudden, they bust out in praise and glory and music. And it always came after the preaching. And the preaching was just reading. Boy, it's changed, hasn't it?
Now preaching is theatrical. Now it's got poems. It's got stories. It's got video. It's got everything. And Paul preached. It was just word of God, okay? When they preached in the Old Testament, word of God, and then praise and glory.
God came down. They shouted, danced. All the stuff you see people faking, which they put on the front end of the service to hear 20-minute sermonette, it's not how it works. So what does that tell you?
It's counterfeit. And I love great music. In fact, I like to go out and watch them because I just listen to their music. And I love the music. All right. But anyway, you see my point. See, man's way doesn't work.
God's way is how we ought to do it. And he said, look, you know, if you'll just do it my way and send a dead person back. My brothers will all get saved. Look at the answer. And he said to him, if they hear not the word of God, if they hear not the written word of God, Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded that one rose from the dead.
Now, someone had already risen from the dead or was about to, right? But if you look at it from our viewpoint, we already have one that rose from the dead. Jesus wouldn't tell people about that all day long.
But you know what? If they if they don't get it from this, they're not going to get it. If they don't have ears to hear this book, they're not going to get to heaven because there is no stairway to heaven.
There's no humanistic way to get there. Something mystical and mysterious and glorious and powerful has to wake you up and open your ears and your eyes to this book or it's not happening. And that's what this story tells us.
So very clearly, Romans 10, five says for Moses described the righteousness, which is the law that the man that does those has to live by all of them. So if you're going to choose law, it's got to be that way.
So now let's look at this passage in Deuteronomy. And this is where I went to find something that would shed light, a simpler passage, shed light on the difficult passage. Start reading through this and they go, you really think that's simple?
OK, great. But it is clear. It's it's not simple. It's because it's complex in the sense there's a lot of stuff it talks about, but it's very plainly written. Does that make sense? So it is it is going to be able to shed light on the difficult passage in Romans.
So Deuteronomy 30, verse one, it says that it shall come to pass when all of these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse which I have set before thee. Now, God's talking to his people, Israel, right?
And he's given them the law through Moses and he says all the blessings and the curse, which I said before, in other words, if you'll obey me and love me with all your heart, then other nations will serve you.
You'll own all this land. You know, you'll have the blessings. You'll have my presence. You'll be saved spiritually. But on the other hand, if you worship other gods and you do that and you don't obey me, you're going to be taken into captivity.
You're going to lose the land. You're going to lose your freedom and I'm going to be mad at you. Right. So he's just putting this in a nutshell here. The blessings and the curse, which I have said before, they now shall call them to mind when you have already been scattered out into all those nations.
So God's foreknowledge says, look, you're going to obey me. I'm sorry. You're going to disobey me. Once I put you in a promised land, everything's perfect. That's when you'll stop praying. Now, is that human nature or what?
Once you get where you've got enough money and everything's covered and you're not worrying month to month, then you'll stop praying. Isn't that it? Once you have no trouble, you won't seek me very much.
And I know that because that's human nature. It's a sad state of affairs, but it's so true. Picture the grandchild who comes up and you're so happy to see him and hug him and they run right past you to play with the other grandchildren and the uncles like Matthew, like Matthew Mitchell, the one they all love the most.
Picture that. How does that make the grandpa feel? Who said that? Worthless. Like, wow, worthless. I love that. So this is what we do to God. This is that. Why do you think God gives us grandchildren, our wives or husbands or any of the family?
It's all to teach us what God feels like. He has feelings. If you don't believe it, see how many times he mentions wrath. But anyway, so thou shalt call them among all nations where the Lord thy God has driven.
So now they've already disobeyed. They've already been destroyed as a nation and scattered into the Gentile nations. And he said, well, you know, when that happens, you're going to remember the promises of God.
You're going to remember what I said was good and what I said evil. You're going to remember that and you're going to start praying. And I'm going to bring you back to your land. Isn't that wonderful?
It's all pictures for us of our life as a Christian on this earth and shall run unto the Lord thy God instead of away from him, because now we're in trouble. Now we have nothing. Why do you think the Bible says in the tribulation period that the church shall make herself white?
Because all of her toys are taken away. She has nothing. She has nothing but the Lord. The world hates the church. The world will kill you if they find you. You have nothing but God and you will run to God.
I will run to God. It's all a cleansing process. This has happened to Israel many times as a picture for us. So they shall return unto the Lord thy God and shall obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, you and your little ones, your children, with all your heart and with all your soul.
So God will come to mind and they will run to God. And look what God does in verse three, that then the Lord thy God will turn your captivity. That means take you out of captivity. Turn it the other direction.
You'll go towards freedom. Turn your captivity and have compassion on you and will return and gather you from all the nations, whether the Lord God scattered you. And if any of yours be driven out unto the uttermost part of heaven, from thence will God gather you.
And from thence will he fetch you. In other words, it doesn't matter what the world does to you. I'm going to find you and I'm going to bring you back to me. Isn't that beautiful? Chapter 30, verse five says, and the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which the father's possessed and that the holy land, the promised land is a picture of victorious Christian living, not so much of salvation, but of victorious Christian living for the person who saved and then went into a wilderness for whatever reason.
That's us. You go into a wilderness, right? When you come back out and you're in the promised land where you have that joy returns and you're close to the Lord and you're thankful for the things you do have.
That's what this is picturing in our lives. And he will bring you into the land that your father's possessed and you will possess it and he will do the good and multiply the above your fathers. And the Lord thy God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your children.
That's a picture of born again in this. I made that word up, but I like it. That's a picture of that. The heart being changed by God from a hard, rocky type heart to a heart of flesh that's soft and malleable in God's hands.
And he'll do that not only for you, but for your children to love and cause them. See, this is something God does to us to change our want to, to change our desires and cause us to love God more than the other idols we had been worshiping.
And even to hate the idols. We've all had seasons of that when we hate the sin in our life and we're drawn away from it by the Lord and he's close to us again for a season. And we think, you know, this is how I want to live all the time, right?
Well, it's available to us at all times. So God will change your heart. God will change the heart of your children and God will change the heart and with all thy soul and cause you to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul.
That you may live. And you know what God is saying there, like Jesus said that I came that you might have life and you might have it abundantly. You can live like a dead man even being saved or dead woman.
If you're walking in the flesh, the world, flesh, the devil, you're letting all that stuff burden you down. It's not really life that God intended you to have. But when we're filled with the spirit and we see the good things and we're close to the Lord, that's true life, powerful life.
That's the life we're supposed to have. And that's what it says here that you may live. And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon your enemies now that he just took you out of. He'll put that on your enemies because he only used them to chase and you bring you back to him.
He does not love the enemies. He just it's a tool in his hand. He's sovereign God. He uses these nations to punish his nation and bring them back to him. And then he destroys that nation. Look at Egypt today.
Look at Babylon's gone. Persia's gone. Israel's still there. And now shall return and obey the voice of the Lord and do all of his commandments, which I commanded you this day. And the Lord thy God will make you plenteous in every work of your hand.
It always included not just the spiritual blessing, but physical blessings, too. And that's what preachers say is not true today. They're wrong. It is true. God will bless you, but it's always conditional.
It's always talking about wealth is conditional blessing. There are many things God lists in scripture you have to do in order for God to bless you with it, such as get skill sets, understanding, gain skill sets in certain forms of business, walk closer to the Lord, be diligent, all these different things he lists.
But when we do that, we'll find that there is a way that God can make us plenteous. And look how he says, but in blessing the work of your hands. So you have to have skill sets in whatever endeavor you're doing.
But if you're diligent and you get the skill sets and you work at that, God will then bless your work. And that's where the wealth comes from. It won't happen to anybody just because they have skill sets.
If they're a Christian, I mean, they have to have that blessing of it, too. So he'll bless the work of your hand and the fruit of your body and the fruit of your cattle and the fruit of the land for good.
For the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good. And he rejoiced just like he did over your fathers. If you shall hearken unto the voice of the Lord, thy God to keep his commandments and his statutes, which are written in this book, the word of God comes back to the word of God.
And if thou turn unto the Lord, thy God with all your heart and with all your soul, these things will happen. Now, this is the passage we're looking at where it said, the word is nigh to thee, even in your right hand.
Don't go up to heaven and bring Christ down. Don't go to the deep and bring him up. The word is nigh unto thee. Remember in Romans 10, the next passage here in our Deuteronomy starts with verse 11. And this is what Paul was quoting.
For this commandment, which I commanded this day is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. He's talking about the word of God. Now here you have to weigh and understand the difference between the law because we're in the Old Testament here in Deuteronomy talking about keep my commandments and then you'll be blessed if you break them.
You know, you'll be cursed and you'll go into captivity. That's not how salvation works, but it is how our joy in our life works. All right. But now for them, it was a works type system. But what's really interesting is if you study it in the New Testament, what it says about their life and you go back and you read carefully the Old Testament, you'll really find that even though you had this underlying law that God put there for a purpose, which was to show us that we're not perfect and we can't save ourselves.
It's the true purpose. Even to them, they had to be saved by faith. It said Abraham believed God. That's faith. And he counted it to him as righteousness. That was all throughout. That was before the law.
Abraham was before the law, and it was throughout the time of law. You always had to have faith. The law never saved anybody, but it should sure get them in trouble if they didn't obey it. Right. Because their life on the physical earth was, you know, affected by whether they obeyed God or not.
So think of it more in terms of obeying what God says to do or not, because Jesus changed that under grace. He said, here's my law. Love God with all your heart, your mind and your soul and love your neighbors yourself.
And if you do those, you've kept the whole law. So Jesus changed all that. It's not like we got to know all points of this law that they did. We just walk with the Lord, hold his hand and walk with him day by day.
That's what he commanded us to do. And when we don't do that, we're cursed in a sense, not with hell, but our life won't go well on this earth. So it still kind of works the same way. But here's what he's telling these folks is he said, you know, my word is not far from you.
It's not far from any human being on this earth. It is not in heaven. This is perfect parallel to what Paul was saying in chapter 10. It sounded so difficult in verses six, five, six and seven, actually six and seven.
My word is not in heaven that you should say, well, who's going to go up there and get it and bring it back to us so that we can hear it. You see, do you see the parallel? So Paul said, look, don't don't say, well, let's go up to heaven.
That's to bring Christ down from heaven. You don't need to bring Christ down for heaven. You've got Christ's word right here. And Jesus said, my words, their spirit and their life. And he said, after I leave, you're going to understand this better than you do when I'm here because I'm going to send the Holy Spirit.
So now you got the water and the spirit. So you don't need to bring Jesus down here to make salvation easier. It won't make it easier. They crucified him. They rejected him. That won't make it easier.
If people won't see the word of God and behold it and behold Jesus in it and hear it, they won't be saved. But it's near to him. It's on every shelf. It's on every coffee table, especially in America, but all over Western Europe, mostly now in Africa and all over the places you have pockets of Christians everywhere with Bibles everywhere translated into their own languages.
It's near to you. You don't need to say who's going to go up to heaven and bring something back to us. And that'll help people get saved. Neither is it beyond the sea. That's how I knew when Paul said below, it didn't really mean hell.
It was a picture of the depths of the ocean. It just means what it means. You can't bring anything from anywhere in the universe and bring it back here and cause that to save somebody just because they see that it's not going to cause them to have faith because faith is a gift from God and the Holy Spirit gives you Jesus's faith and you can't work that up.
No natural being can do that. So none of that would work. And that's what he's saying. Neither is it beyond the sea that thou should say who shall go over the sea for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it and believe and be saved.
It doesn't work that way. But the word, the written word of God is very near unto you, which means everybody. It's in your mouth. It's in your heart. And you can do it because you've heard it. It's there so that you may do it.
He said it doesn't say you can do it. He said so that you may do it. You may choose. I've given you life and I've given you death. Choose life. You have the word of God on the radio. You got it on the TV.
You got it on the internet. The whole world has it on the internet now. I've sent my prophets. I've sent my missionaries through all the ages before the internet. And you had it. The scripture says the word of God went out to all the world, even in the first century.
It had already gone to Africa when they got when our missionaries went to Africa. There were churches already there because of the Ethiopian eunuch. They got saved out there and baptized. So the word is very near to everyone in the world.
It's in their mouth. It's in their mind. Their heart has heard it. All they need to do is do it. So what does do it mean? It means believe. And guess what? A natural man can't do that. He just can't do it.
He has not. He does not have that within himself to do it, but he's still responsible for it. And if God in his mercy and his grace hadn't reached down to save a few humans, no human would be saved. But he sends his spirit.
He already sent his word to everybody. That's called the universal calling. And who knows if the Holy Spirit works in the heart of the goats? I don't know. I mean, if they do, it just pushes them farther from God if he does.
But the point is, there's no excuse. The word has gone out in the whole of the world. See, I have set before you this day life and good and death and evil. And that I command thee this day to love the Lord.
Now, this goes kind of to Jesus's great commandment. This is the great commandment. And Jesus got it from Deuteronomy. By the way, as the man, the man, Jesus quoted it from Deuteronomy. And that I command thee this day to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, to keep his commandments and his statutes and the judgments that thou mayest live and multiply.
And the Lord thy God shall bless thee in the land wherever you go to possess it. So that's part of the Abrahamic covenant. And there it's repeated again. But if in your heart you turn away so that thou will not hear, but shall be drawn away and worship other gods and serve them.
I denounce unto you this day that you shall surely perish. And that you shall not prolong your days on the land, whether thou pass it over Jordan to go and possess it. So you lose your spiritual life, but you also lose things you could have had in this world because you rejected the Lord and his word.
And one of the keys to me in verse 17 is to the far right over there where it says, you will not hear. How many times in Jesus say he who has ears to hear may he hear. And right there is what pulls together all of salvation right there, because the commands are there for the Old Testament saying that Jesus's message is there for the New Testament, all the whole world.
Here I am. I'm the bread. Eat, eat me. Partake of the bread. My blood is the wine. Drink the wine and you'll be saved. Whosoever desires the water of life, I will give it freely. It's there. Everyone has been given the answer and all they have to have is their ears turned on where they can hear it with understanding.
That's happened to everyone in this room. But it hasn't happened to all your friends. It hasn't happened to everyone you know. And, you know, if the thing is, I don't really know everyone in this room.
So I shouldn't say it's happened to everyone in this room. But I'll tell you what has happened is everyone in this room has heard the word. And if you find yourself saved today, it's because the Holy Spirit just all of a sudden put a desire in your heart for Jesus that you never had before.
And if that once that desire is put there, you're already saved. So that's why bringing somebody down from heaven or up from beneath and having witnessed to you that I was dead and God saved me. God really exists.
It won't save anybody because the Holy Spirit has to put the belief in your heart. He has to put the ear that will hear and believe in your heart. And that's how salvation works. And there's something interesting here.
I'm going to save part of this for later, but I got a lot here. Let me switch. Let me get to where I want to go, because I got something I want to close with. And we're beyond closing. I understand that.
But let me see. I need God to give me eyes that can see. That is a little bitty print. All right. In Romans 10, verse four, which was before the two verses, we were looking at six and seven before he even got to that difficult passage where he was talking about, here's how righteousness works and that stuff.
We had to go find out what it means. What it basically meant was you have the word of God. That's how it works. You've been given that you don't have to go up to heaven. You don't have to go down beneath and bring it up.
You have the word of God. The question is, can you hear it? And so in verse four, he says, look, you go about establish your own righteousness. That won't work for Jesus Christ himself is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes.
So he brings it back to you have to have faith and faith is a gift and God has to give it to you. But I want you to see this and then I'll be done for today. This is Charles Spurgeon, and he's got a little book he wrote.
It's got a little devotions for every day of the year, and Charlotte likes to read it every morning and I'll come in there and she'll read it to me. And this was called predestination and calling by Charles Spurgeon, and he quoted the verse in 830, which we've already studied Romans 830.
Moreover, whom he did predestinate them, he also called and he's really talking about the calling part because that's what Paul was talking about in chapter 10 that we looked at today. It doesn't matter if someone comes up from hell or the ocean or wherever and comes down from heaven and tells you Jesus is the answer that won't happen unless you have ears that hear that won't happen unless God gives you the faith because it's a gift.
It's not something you can work up. And so that happens through a thing called the calling, and that's why he's quoting that verse and he's focusing on that part of salvation, the calling. I want you to see what he says.
This is so sweet. Charles Spurgeon was not a seminary, never went to college, never went to seminary. He was self read, but they said by the time he was 21 years old, he was the best read man in England.
So he had studied philosophy, he'd studied a little bit of medicine, he'd studied grammar, studied literature, he studied logic. Brilliant man, but he's not bound up in anyone's theological box. So every once in a while he would say something that didn't fit what the Calvinist of his day believed, the hardline Calvinist, or he might say something that, you know, the Armenians got mad about.
He didn't care. He just wanted you to hear what God's word said. That's all that mattered was God's word. Nothing theological, nothing seminarian. God's word says this. You don't like it. It's not my fault.
I didn't write it. That was Spurgeon's attitude. Look what he says here, because I'll promise you that some of the hardline Calvinists didn't like this, but this is part of scripture. And if it's part of scripture, it's true.
So let's take a look here. The testimony of sense may be false. In other words, your senses like what you see, hear, smell, and feel your feelings may be false. You may feel like you're saved and not be saved.
You may feel like you're not saved, but you really are. That's he's saying, you know, your senses can fool you. What you feel can fool you. The testimony of sense may be false, but the testimony of the spirit must be true.
The Holy Spirit will never lie. We have the witness of the spirit within bearing witness with our spirits that we are born of God. So if you are born again today, the Holy Spirit tells your spirit, you're saved and you're kept and you're the Lord's and he did all the work you didn't do any of anyway.
So the fact that you send last week did not remove your salvation because you didn't do good to get it. It's all grace and it's all a gift and he did all the work to save you. You're saved. And the Holy Spirit has to remind us of that from time to time.
The word of God reminds that all the time throughout all, especially the New Testament. So that's what he's saying. But then he goes on. He says there is such a thing on Earth as an infallible insurance of our election.
The fact that God chose me to be his own and I'm his child. I'm at that point in my life. I remember one time when Charlotte and I were much, much younger, probably before we had any kids. I'm sure it was for any kids.
We were driving along in the car and she looked at me and she said, I'm just not sure like you're sure and something like that. And from the I would say later in life and sometimes when that happens, you see the stark difference between when you were lost and when you're saved and you never forget that and you don't doubt your salvation because the light is so bright compared to the darkness.
And that was my experience. Charlotte was saved in Sunday school as a little bitty girl. She didn't even remember the exact day or maybe the place, probably the Sunday school teacher, but she didn't remember what was said and done.
So she just wasn't sure. Anybody had that experience with yourself or one of your kids or whatever? Then there are these hard line groups that if you can't tell me when and where, then you're not saved.
Well, they're stupid. They're stupid. The best way to live is to get saved at such a young age. You don't remember it. That's the best way to live. You're saved from so much sin and temptation and harshness of life.
That's the best way. So don't ever give someone a hard time because they can't remember when they got saved. Charlotte, I just said, well, look, just pray and share your heart with God and be honest with him.
And she said something like, well, Lord, I think I was saved when I was a kid, but I know I love you now and I want you in my heart. And she never doubted it from that moment. So you can get to the place where you have an infallible assurance of your salvation, where you don't doubt your salvation.
But not every Christian is there. It doesn't mean they're not saved because there's a difference between eternal security, which is something God promises that you have, whether you believe it or not, and assurance, which is something that we can lose when we sin a lot.
As a Christian, we can start feeling lost. We can wonder if we ever got saved, especially if you're a new Christian and you hadn't walked with the Lord for a long time. But there is a way to get to a point in your life where you don't doubt your salvation.
That's what spurred saying this very true. Look what else he says. Let a man once get that when you ever get to the place where you just know that you know that you're saved and you know why you're saved.
You know how kind of how it worked. It's all the work of God. Nothing you did. It's all grace, a free gift you'd never deserved. And like Luther said, for me, for me, he died for me. And you get that when you once get that spurred and said, and it will anoint this man's head that understands this or this woman that understands this with fresh oil.
It will clothe him or her with the white garment of praise and put the song of the angel into his mouth. Happy, happy man or woman who is fully assured of his interest in the covenant of grace in the blood of the atonement and in the glories of heaven.
See, he understands what it is that saved him. Such men there are here in this very day in church. And I can say the same thing about you. He was talking about his congregations. There are people like that in this very group, but not everyone's like that.
Let those people rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. What would some of you give if you could arrive at this place of assurance? Now he's talking to a much bigger crowd, but think about it.
You could be in a room. This small could be people who sometimes have doubts about their salvation. What would it be like to never doubt that again is what Spurgeon is asking, said it is possible. And look what he says.
Mark this. If you anxiously desire to know, you may know. Now he's talking to lost people in the crowd, too. And a crowd as big as what Spurgeon because Spurgeon was like the World Series. He was the entertainment of the day.
They didn't have football, baseball, and all that junk. They went to hear preaching. And a man like this is like huge entertainment for the family. So there were tons of lost people in the crowd, too, along with church people and godly saints and every kind of thing there is.
In that room when he preached. So now he begins to address those who are not saved yet. But I want you to hear what he says. And I've got I won't mention the name here, but I got a family listening to me today that sent me an email.
And I'm sorry I didn't answer it yet. Been out of town on a business trip and no excuse, but I didn't answer it yet. But this is going to give you some of the answer is asked. How can we properly preach the gospel today when we know God's chosen who he's going to and we know who's not?
He knows who's not. How do you even present the gospel? And I'm going to answer that. And there is a proper way to do it. But look, look what Spurgeon says here. Talking to some lost people in the crowd, he says, mark my word.
If you anxiously desire to know God. You may know him. Now, why would a Calvinist as Spurgeon was say that? Because it's true. Scripture says that if your heart pants to read its title clear, know is to know if it's saved or not, it shall do so before long.
If you want to know if God will save you, you'll know before long, because if you're even concerned about these things, how many times you heard me say it? It's just that he says it's so much nicer. He heard me say it a million times.
If you're even concerned about your soul, if you wonder about heaven and hell, if you worry when you sin, goats don't do that. So you might be a lost sheep, but a sheep always gets saved before he dies, because the Bible says so.
Jesus doesn't lose any of them. And that's what he's saying in a much more eloquent way. Let them rejoice in the Lord always is Mark. You can know if you want to know if your heart pants to read what your clear title is.
You can you will know before long. No man ever desired Christ in his heart with a living and longing desire. Who did not find him sooner or later? Isn't that beautiful to hear when we hear so much sovereignty of God stuff in this church, because we so little of it in the world, we tend to want them to hear that because they need to hear it.
There is election. There is the choosing. There is. I knew you before the foundation of the world, and there is depart from me. I never knew you. All of that's true. So how do we deal with people that we don't know if they're saved or not?
Here's how you deal with it. You tell them, look, if you if you have a desire to know about Jesus, you'll know. If you want him, keep seeking him, you'll find him. No man ever desired Christ in his heart with a living and longing or a true desire.
Who did not find him sooner or later? If you have a desire, it sounds like Otis talking. If you have a desire, God has given it to you. That's the calling. He got this from the Romans passage, Romans 10.
If you have a desire, God has given it to you. If you pant and cry and groan after Christ, even this is his gift. Bless him for it. Thank him for the little grace that you do have and ask him for greater grace.
He has given you hope. Ask for faith. And when he gives you faith, ask for assurance. And when you get assurance, ask for full assurance. And when you have obtained full assurance, ask for enjoyment. I like that.
Ask for just joy in life, because at that point, you'll have it. And that has nothing to do with circumstances. And when you have enjoyment, ask for glory itself. And he shall surely give it to you in his own appointed season.
Is that beautiful? And then he gives you this stuff for meditation down here, Charles Spurgeon. What an amazing, wonderful man of God. All right, so we're out of time. Next time, I'll go in and actually show you some scripture that backs up what Charles Spurgeon said right there, because now we're done talking about the wrong kind of righteousness, and we're beginning to talk about the correct kind of righteousness.
And the first thing we saw today is you don't get the correct kind by saying you need someone to, you know, some dead person that was saved to come back to life and tell your friends, and then they'll be saved.
You don't need that. What you need is this, the water, and you need the spirit. So pray for them that the Holy Spirit will come to them and open their eyes and ears, because without that, they'll never be saved.
And then, as Spurgeon said, hey, if you already have an inkling of a desire to know about these things, if you already have something in your heart that knows your sin is wrong, and that life isn't where it's at, and you're in hell, and you don't want that, you want to know the Lord, that's because God gave you that desire.
And that doesn't happen to goats. It only happens to sheep. Isn't that wonderful? All right. So let's stand and have a word of prayer together. Wow. That's the longest sermon I ever preached. No, you say, no, I didn't.
For one of them. All right, Lord, thank you so much for your word. And we just thank you for your Holy Spirit who enlightens our mind and sheds light on the word of God and teaches us the deep things of God and things even from your mind and brings them to our minds.
And Lord, thank you for the equipment you give us and how you equip us every day and every time we come together like this, and you equip us to be the light and the salt of the earth and our children, too, and our grandchildren.
Bless them. Give them extra added strength because the days that they're about to go into, we've gone through the best days of America, most likely, and they're going to go into the difficult times. And so give them strength and faith.
And Lord, thank you that you've given us faith and let us see your face today. And we ask you to go with us in our time of fellowship. Bless the food we're about to have in Jesus name. Amen.