Balance Between Doctrine and Devotion — Ernest C. Reisinger

This time our brother Ernest Griesinger, our itinerant deacon, will lead us in the meditation of God's work. I'm one of those fellows he has a private opinion about. It's a great joy for me to see a lot of faces that I see all over the country.

There's old Tom from Canada, Bill from Roanoke. Last time I saw Brother Bolton was across Holiday Inn in Houston, Texas to have a little breakfast. I could just go down these lines and rejoice to see some of the dear friends from various places.

The only thing that grieves me is that I won't be able to spend a couple hours with each one of you as I look in your face today. But that's not my job to, just now at least. If you have your Bible, I'd like you to turn as a little springboard for the assignment that I have on this program.

I'd rather be first than be last on the program. I was last on a program once. I remember we had some of the eminent speakers. I was trying to describe my feelings of myself. I had Dr. Gray and Mr. Clowney and Don Hill and I was fourth on this program.

I kind of got shaky and I was wondering how to describe my feelings of myself. I thought, oh I know, it feels exactly like I used to feel when I played ball. I was a poor batter, I was a pitcher, and a poor batter.

And I had that same feeling when every now and again over the years the bases would be loaded and the old pitchers would be up. And I felt bad. I don't have that feeling this morning. Let the fellows come later and take care of that.

The Scriptural Foundation for Sound Doctrine and Devotion

Now, would you turn to Titus chapter 2, verse... I just want to try to tie these two thoughts together and use this text as a springboard to do it. Titus chapter 2, and I want to read verse 1 and verse 7 and 8.

And before we look to God's word, let us bow our heads in our hearts and pray that he would send his spirit to do that which he alone must do and can do. Let us pray. O Holy Ghost, sanctifier of the faithful, be pleased to come and assist us not only as we speak, but as we hear.

Give us hearts of discernment to know that which is of heaven. To know those eternal verities that thou hast ordained to change us and save us and sanctify us. And to know the chaff that comes in among those eternal verities because of our ignorance, because of our flesh.

But today, blessed spirit, and in those meetings that follow these days, be pleased to help us to know that which is of heaven. O take our shorthand, our withered hand this morning, blessed spirit, that always seems to fall short of that which we reach for by faith.

Take, O Holy Ghost, that withered hand and somehow fasten it unto the tassel of that robe from which flows virtue. And grant that that virtue that flows from him whom we love would flow out from us to those feet that beat the streets around us.

Men and women who are eternity bound, grant us these days that which will help us and encourage us to take that pure gospel to them which is able to save them by power, even thy power. Hear our prayer, for Jesus' sake, amen.

The subject that I've been assigned is a balance of doctrine and devotion. And I didn't know whether I ought to read a paper or try to speak, maybe I'll just kind of mix it up a little. But I will say, I'm not trying to put on some preaching demonstration, but I'll stay pretty close to too many notes that I have.

May I read these texts because I believe they are a good springboard for such a subject as I've been assigned. But speak thou the things which becometh sound doctrine. And then he has a word for the aged men and the aged women and the young men and the young women.

And then he has this exhortation. In all things show thyself, not only these old women and old men and young men, but in all things show thyself a pattern in good works. I believe this is devotional life, in doctrine, showing uncorrupted reverence and sincerity.

Now we can't speak sincerity, we can't only speak uncorruptedness, we must show it. My assignment, believe it or not, I wasn't even in this part of the country where it was assigned to me. But my assignment is my burden.

Combining Sound Doctrine With Christian Experience

Brethren, this morning for the Church of Jesus Christ, especially in those circles that are familiar with those doctrines of grace that we hold dear. So I say my subject is my burden this morning to combine sound doctrine with experience.

To combine the knowledge of things with the power of things. In experience, this is my burden for my own heart and life. And therefore by virtue of that must be somewhat my burden for Christ's Church and his people and his servants.

Well why this burden? Combining sound doctrine with a sound life and sound living. Why the burden? It's because I believe with all my heart that it's out of this rare combination. Rare combination. And out of this rare combination only will come what many of you long for and pray for.

And that is God to visit his Church in power and in saving sinners. It's out of this combination. This combination that alone can give true service to Christ. In worship, stewardship, and more especially in evangelism.

That is it would, out of this would come that kind of evangelism that's God centered in motive. Out of this combination would come that divinely revealed message that would follow the book where it takes us.

And when it takes us to election and predestination, we'd follow it where it takes us and no farther. Out of this combination comes a God revealed message. Not only a God centered motive, but a God revealed message.

And bless God, out of this combination will come some God honoring methods as well. Not this Hollywood evangelism that's pregnant our nation for the last 50 or 60 years. Out of it will come some God honoring methods.

I say out of this combination, why? Because what is Christian experience? Old Bishop Rowe said you can talk about experience, zeal all you care to. But if it has no doctrinal roots, he said it's like cut flowers stuck in the ground.

They'll soon wither away. That's why we insist on doctrinal roots. What is Christian experience? Is there anything less than doctrinal truths applied by the Holy Ghost to our affections? Is that Christian experience?

Doctrinal truths of God applied to our hearts and lives by the Holy Ghost. That's Christian experience. Now, as we look around us, at least as I look around, I don't know what you see when you look. I remember Dr. Van Til, when he addressed the graduating preachers this year at the seminary, he told them they better look around them to see what kind of a world this is they're going to preach in.

And he gave a vivid description of all that. Now, I think if we want to do anything, we ought to look around. As I look around, thinking in terms of this combination that I'm speaking of, doctrine and devotion, I don't see any large scale of it.

I see extremes. But there's one group of men that seems to me, above all others, to have had a measure of this combination. One group of men, above all others, as I read church history, and that's a group that, though they're despised, misrepresented, ridiculed in our college classrooms today, yet they live on.

The Puritans as a Model of Doctrine and Piety

That's the Puritans. We who know them and know their doctrines highly esteem them. We long to emulate them in piety and devotion if we know them. However, many who would long to emulate them in experience are ignorant of their doctrines that produce such zeal and experience.

I mean those men like Bunyan. Those men like Baxter. Aline, who was described as being greedy for soul. I mean George Whitefield, probably the greatest evangelist since the day of St. Paul. I mean John Owen, the prince of Puritan theologians.

I mean those men who died at the stake, like Bishop Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. Some of these men. Men in that great period of 1600s. They seem to have a combination of it. Not only those men of the 1600s, but I see it in the men who follow them.

The men who dip their souls in the same stream of divine truth. I see the same thing. Therefore I see it in Bishop Lyle. Therefore I see it in John Brown, that great Presbyterian that taught Greek exegesis.

I see it in Charles Adams Spurgeon. Because they dip their minds and their beings in that same stream of Bible divinely revealed truth. As those men that they long to emulate. Now in our day we have two kinds of groups that would esteem these men.

That I mentioned and others. I just mentioned a few that sticks out to me. And that I'm more familiar with. But there are two groups in our day that would raise them up and esteem them. There are those who would want their piety.

And they hold them out to us in their experiences of zeal and evangelism. And are totally ignorant of the doctrines that they believe. I had one of the national known Bible teachers. He's booked up for about two years ahead.

Stay in my home for a week. And I used to hear him say from the platform time and again. Spurgeon was the greatest preacher. Spurgeon, Spurgeon, Spurgeon. And so one night he was staying in my home for a week.

And I said, Stacey, you don't believe what Spurgeon believed. I said, you say he's a great preacher and you love his sermons. But I said, you don't believe what Spurgeon believed. Well he wanted to take me to task.

I said, I'll tell you what you do tomorrow morning. I want to give you two sermons. And I gave him Spurgeon's sermon on Luke 19, 10. The Mission of the Son of Man. And I gave him another one of Spurgeon's sermons on a text found in Hebrews.

The Blood of the Everlasting Covenant. And he did me dirty. He marked up my book and wanted to kill up Spurgeon. I've never heard him say Spurgeon was a great preacher since. He may have said it and I didn't hear him.

But I haven't heard it. I say, he owes out Spurgeon, but he doesn't believe what Spurgeon believes. Ah, but there's another group that I meet. And they rattle and bring the changes on the doctrines of grace.

And rattle tulip like a toy. Like a baby's rattle. And know nothing about the devotion and the piety and the zeal and evangelism. And they're straight as a gun down on their doctrines and just as empty.

I say, this is a blessed title that was given to me. And I believe it's only those Puritans that somehow, and the men who've fallen in their stream because they've dipped it in the same book. And they're willing to follow the book where it leads them.

If it leads them to hard text, they say, I'll go here and no farther. Maybe I would have said something about those doctrines. I don't mean any doctrine. And I don't want to be vague this morning. I don't want to be vague when I talk about those doctrines.

The Sovereignty of God in Salvation

I listed the men who believe those doctrines. Those doctrines are the foundation of this zeal and piety and experience. We mean those doctrines that sets forth a God who saves. Those doctrines revealed in his words that reveal the three great acts of the Trinity for recovering poor, helpless, lost man.

I mean nothing less than election by the Father, redemption by the Son, and calling by the Spirit. I don't mean anything less than that. All these directed at the same people, securing their salvation, not this wicked idea that splits up the Trinity, that has the objects of redemption, all mankind, and the calling of those who, and the calling of those who hear, and the elective of those who hear and respond.

No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about those doctrines that make salvation depend on the work of God. Those doctrines which give all glory to saving a sinner to God, not dividing that glory between God and man.

Those doctrines which we see in a Creator as the source, as the means, as the end of everything, both in nature and in grace. Those doctrines which say, in essence, history itself is nothing less than the working out of God's predetermined plan.

I mean those doctrines which say, and set forth a God who is sovereign in creation, and is presently sovereign over creation, and likewise sovereign in redemption, both in planning it and perfecting it.

That's the kind of doctrines I'm talking about. Those doctrines who set forth a Redeemer, who really redeems people, who saves by power. As I mentioned before, a Trinity working together for just that thing, the salvation of sinners.

God planned it, the Son achieved it, and the Holy Spirit communicates it. Nothing less than that. God saves sinners. And we cannot weaken, and this is the problem, dear brethren, with those who believe them half-heartedly.

We cannot weaken this great truth that God saves sinners by disrupting the unity of the work of a Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man. Jonah had it straight. We could learn a lot from Jonah, just one verse.

Jonah 2, verse 9. Salvation is of the Lord. That's what he said. Salvation is of the Lord, past, present, and future. Salvation is of the Lord. I mean those doctrines who trace the source of every spiritual blessing, faith included, back to the great transaction between God and His Son, carried out on Calvary's hill.

That's what I mean. I don't want to be vague about this discourse. I mean that the Spirit's gift is not just enlightening men, but also regenerating. It includes the regenerating work of God in men, taking away their stony heart, giving them a heart of flesh, renewing their wills by His almighty power, determining them and causing them to come, not against their will, not against their will, but to come freely being made willing by His grace, expressed in such text as Psalm 65, verse 4.

Oh, blessed text. Listen. Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causes to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts. We shall be satisfied with thy goodness of thy house, even thy holy temple.

That's what I'm talking about. And in that sense, God's grace proves irresistible because it destroys the power to resist. I copied a stanza or two down of one of Top Lady's songs that expresses it. What thou, I cannot break my chains, or ever throw off my load.

The things impossible to men are possible to God. Who, who shall in thy presence stand, or matchless, oh, matchless omnipotence, unfold the grasp of thy right hand and pluck the sinner then. And he goes on in the third stanza.

Faith to be healed thy fame would have, oh, might it now be given. Thou canst, thou canst the sinner save and make me meet for heaven. Wesley expressed it, Charles. Wesley's hymns are better than John Wesley's theology.

Wesley expressed it this way. Long my imprisoned spirits lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eye diffused the quickening way. I woke, the dungeon famed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free.

I rose, went forth, and followed thee. Now, my dear brethren, this morning we do not suppose to the world that the covenant of grace, that God's decision, rather, to save a man by a decree leaves a man passive and inert.

No, no, we don't mean that. It is the opposite that takes place. The covenant of grace does not kill man. It does not regard him as a tin can or a piece of wood. But it takes possession of the man. It lays hold of his whole being with all of his facilities, power, soul, and body for time and eternity.

It does not annihilate his powers, but it removes his powerlessness. That's what grace does. It doesn't destroy the will, but it frees it from sin. It does not stifle or obliterate his conscience, but it sets them free from darkness.

It regenerates, recreates man in his entirety, and renewing him by grace causes him to love and consecrate himself to God freely. That's what grace does. It's power in the blood, power in the gospel. All these doctrines that show the cross as revealing God's power to save, not his impotence.

The cross does not demonstrate God's impotence. God's plan was frustrated. The cross is not a place where God's impotence is manifest, but his powers manifest. The cross was not just a place to make salvation possible, but actually to secure the salvation of sinners.

We see that very truth expressed in the great prophetic passage, Isaiah 53, verse 11, where it says, He shall see the travail of his soul and be satisfied. Old William Comper knew it when he wrote, There is a fountain filled with blood, and he put in that third stanza, Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood shall never lose its power, till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more.

Total Depravity, Election, and Effectual Grace

Oh, may I be more specific about it. I'm talking about those doctrines that set forth the condition of man, total depravity. Man's not sick and needs a little lift. He's dead and needs life. He's blind and can't see.

He's deaf and can't hear. And only God can raise the dead and give sight to the blind and take the wax from people's ears. Only God. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about that unconditional election.

Particular redemption, if you like. That God had a purpose in Christ. My old southern friend says election is the doctrine that buttresses the gospel. And I believe it with all my heart. I'm talking about unconditional election, particular redemption, limited atonement, if you like.

The covenant between the father and the son. The father gave some people to his son. My sheep hear my voice. Jesus said in John 10, you don't hear me because you're not my sheep. The father gave the son some playmates.

Some sheep. He didn't make him a shepherd to have no sheep. There's some sheep. And they'll come to know him by preaching and by prayer. I'm talking about that grace that's irresistible as I've described it now because it releases man.

It comes to the sinner and convicts him of his sin. The Holy Ghost, the work of the Spirit in salvation, it comes to him and convicts him and convinces him. Yea, bless God, it converts him. I'm talking about that kind of grace.

I'm talking about those doctrines that God by his Spirit would preserve his people. That same sheep that he saved. It's not the father looking at one group and the son died for another group and the Spirit applying it to another group.

It's all the same people. The one that the father planned, the one that the son purchased, and the one that the Spirit applied. It's all the same people. Blessed is he. Well, these doctrines drove the Puritans.

Evangelism, Repentance, and Faith

They'll drive us to proclaim. These doctrines will drive you to proclaim that all men are sinners. They're not just sick, they're dead. It'll drive us to complain that Jesus Christ, God's Son, is a perfect, able, and willing Savior for sinners.

Even the worst, yea, described by Paul, the chiefest. It'll cause us to proclaim that the Father and the Son has promised that all who know themselves to be such sinners and put their faith in Christ as Savior and Lord shall be received into favor and not cast out.

It'll cause us to proclaim that God made repentance and faith, not this idea, just trust Jesus, trust Jesus. When Paul went from door to door, Acts chapter 20, verse 21, he said he testified repentance toward God and faith for our Lord Jesus Christ.

It'll cause us to proclaim that God has made repentance and faith a duty requiring every man who hears the gospel to fully cast his soul upon Christ and the promises as an all-sufficient Savior. And again I say, ready, able, and willing to save all that come to God by Him.

These doctrines are the doctrines that demanded that the Puritans and that demand us to display Christ. Explaining man's need of Christ. One, explaining Christ's sufficiency for that need is stated and explaining His offer of Himself in the promises to be a Savior to all who truly turn to Him.

Coming to Him does not just make a little decision. Coming to Him in this sense, my dear, is resting upon Him. Turning from sin and self-effort to the question that maybe asks us, what do we say to men?

What do we say to the question, what must I do to be saved? If we have no other answer than Paul's answer, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But what does that mean? Ah, it means more than some hot-shot evangelist telling a deathbed story to get you a few tears to roll down your cheeks about mother or some dead aunt or somebody else dragging you down a flock and they run up to you with a Bible and say, you know you're a sinner?

Yes. You know that early Christ died for sinners? Yes. You know that God commanded His love toward us and that we were yet sinners? Yes, I know that. You believe that? Yes. Then you're saved. You send them on to hell?

No. Believing is a little more than that. It is knowing yourself to be a sinner and it is knowing that Christ died to save sinners, but it's also abandoning all self-righteousness, self-confidence, self-effort, casting yourself wholly upon Him for pardon and peace and exchanging that all-natural enmity and rebellion against God for a spirit of grateful submission to His will.

That's all embodied in that. Oh, you say, well, how did the Puritans go about this? You say they combined doctrine and devotion? How did they go about this? A man to believe on Christ, repenting, if his natural ability to do these things didn't seem to be so.

Oh, you know what they told him? I'll tell you what they told him. Look to Christ. Look to Christ. Seek Him. Cry for Christ, just as you are. Cast yourself in His mercy. That's what they told him. Ask Him to give you a new heart.

That's what they told him. May I read to you something from Pilgrim's Progress? My patron saint, John Bunyan. This is the case where they were in this enchanted ground and they were a little lonely. And they said, well, let's have a little conversation.

Tell us how you got in the way. And so Christian is asking hopeful to tell him his testimony. Now, you know that hopeful was saved through faithful's martyrdom in Vanity Fair. And so when he asked him to share his testimony, I've copied down his testimony.

This is his testimony. Hopeful is recounting Christian, how he became a Christian. And I want to read it verbatim so you get the point as to what we tell sinners. You'll see that this is a little different than what we tell them today.

Hear it. Hopeful recounting Christian, how he became a Christian. Hopeful. I made my objections against my believing for that I thought I was not willing to see. He was not willing to save me. Christian.

And what did faithful say to you then? Notice this. Our evangelists and our personal workers course ought to include this instruction. What did faithful say to you then? That's what he said to a sinner.

He bid me go to him and see. Then I said it was presumption, but he said no, for I was invited to come. Then he gave me a book of Jesus, his indicting to encourage me more freely to come. And he said concerning that book that every jot and tittle thereof stood firmer than heaven and earth.

Then I asked him, what must I do when I come? Oh, just take this little course. No, he didn't say that. And he said, and he told me, I must entreat him upon my knees with all my heart and soul, the Father to reveal him to me.

Then I asked him further, and how I must make my supplication to him. How do I make my supplication to him? And he said, let me go. Thou shalt find him on a mercy seat where he sits all year long to give pardon and forgiveness to them that come.

I told him that I knew not what to say when I came. And he said unto me, this, to this effect, God, be merciful to me a sinner and make me to know and believe in Jesus Christ. For I see that if his righteousness had not been, or if I have not faith in that righteousness, I am utterly cast away.

Lord, I have heard that thou art a merciful God and hast ordained that thy son Jesus Christ should be a Savior of the world. And moreover, thou art willing to bestow him upon such poor sinners as I am.

And I am a sinner indeed. Lord, take therefore this opportunity and magnify thy grace in the salvation of my soul. That doesn't sound like somebody trying to strike a bargain with Jesus, did it? Or somebody huffing him off, did it?

This is a sinner that's bankrupt. He needs help. If God doesn't do anything for him, he's gone. He says, Lord, take therefore this opportunity to magnify thy grace in the salvation of my soul through Jesus Christ.

Amen. Christian, and did you do as you were bidden? Hopeful, yes. Over and over and over. Christian, and did the Father reveal the Son to you? Hopeful. No, not at the first. He wasn't in our revival meetings, was he?

Not at the first. Nor the second. Nor the third. Nor the fourth. Nor the fifth. Nor the sixth time neither. So I continued praying until the Father showed me the Son. That's what our churches need. Our people that sit in our pews.

They need the Father by the Spirit to show them the Son. And it feels like most churches I get in, you've just got a whole church full of people that have never seen the Son. They're playing church and don't know anything about what I'm talking about because they never heard it in this fashion.

They say, oh, this is not something new. No, sir. So that's what we tell sinners. Now, we say to sinners like the songwriters, let not conscience make you linger nor your fitness fondly dream all the fitness he requires is to feel your need of him.

That's all. That's it. Now, I spend a time on the doctrine. Just be patient with me here, brother. That's only part of this message. I know a lot of people that know that are pretty straight on that. But they don't know anything about that pure devotion.

Personal Religion and the Reality of Devotion

And these things that I say under this head under the next two heads, devotion and discipleship, I don't say it in some unthoughtful, scolding, sensuous way. I say it more out of a painful acquaintance with my own heart and not to scold my brother.

I say what I have to say now more out of a painful acquaintance with my own heart in the area of personal religion and devotion. When Paul left the elders at Ephesus, he said the same thing he said to Titus.

Acts chapter 20, verse 8. Take heed to thyself. That's personal religion. That's devotion. Take heed to thyself. When he spoke to Timothy, the young preacher, he says, take heed to thyself and to the doctrine.

That's kind of pretty guided. That's putting it together. The Bible puts it together, dear. The Bible puts it together. That church in Revelation, that church at Sardis, they were described as having a name, living a name, but they were dead in experience.

That's what it is to have all doctrine and no experience. Dead. They had the name. I know a lot of people that can ring the changes on the doctrines of grace, and they haven't witnessed anybody in the last ten years.

And I'm not God. I don't know if they've cried out to him in prayer, but it seems like if they would, they'd put a little feet on him once in a while and be concerned about a sinner or two. They got the name, but they're dead.

What's your experience today, dear? Most of you, I believe, would believe the doctrines of grace. That's probably why you're here. That's not the question. That's part of it. That's don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

But what's your experience in grace today? What's the power of things? Well, the power of things in our life, that's devotion. And I'll tell you, it's an awful thing to preach and witness an unreal Christ.

And he can get unreal awful fast if you don't keep short accounts with God. Christ can get unreal awful fast. I say this again, I repeat, by some acquaintance with my own heart. Christ can get unreal awful fast.

And how awful it is to preach and to witness an unreal Christ. Devotion gives the power and the unction to our commission. In our Lord's prayer, John 17, he not only prayed that they would be set, but he prayed that they would be sanctified.

That's devotion. And I say to you with all the passion of my heart this morning, and all the pathos of my soul, if I cannot persuade myself to be holy, how in God's name will I have success to persuade anybody else to be holy?

Take heed to thyself. We must taste and see that the Lord is good. And we must taste before we can tell efficaciously, powerfully. We must bear this message of grace upon our hearts like blessed John, that which we've seen and heard declare we unto you.

Reality is what I'm talking about. That's what devotion is. Reality. A thousand wonderful sermons on holiness will not cover a cold, carnal, careless life. Get around some of these people for a while, and you'll see that very thing.

Oh, they've got wonderful sermons on holiness, but they've got a cold, carnal, careless life. And I say a holy sermon will only live an hour, but a holy life is a perpetual sermon. A holy life is a perpetual sermon.

Baxter said to the ministers of his day, or in his little book to the Reformed pastors, I think it was, a minister's life is the life of his ministry. You got that? A minister's life, that's devotion, is the life of his ministry.

We deacons need to say it in another way. A deacon's life is the life of his deacon. Is that right? A Christian's life is the life of his Christianity. Devotional life, personal religion. It's strongly brought out, I think, in what may be, or appear to be, the best church of that Revelation church, of those churches, where Jesus Christ commends them, a church at Ephesus, where he commends them for their service in those first four verses.

He commends them for their service. They worked, labored. He commends them for their sacrifice. They did it sacrificially. He commands them for their suffering. They suffered for the name of Christ, all in four verses.

And not only that, he even commends them for their separation. They were ecclesiastically separated. They were separated from the deeds of the Nicolaitans. So he commends them for their ecclesiastical separation.

Boy, they had it. They had it! Ah, but he said, your devotion. Thou hast left thy first love. And you can chase all the commentaries you want. I'll beat you there. And you know what it means? I'll tell you just what it says.

Isn't it strange? That the Bible does mean what it says. That's exactly what it means. I've chased commentaries up and down my shelf to try to get some great message on what it means to lose your love.

And that's just what it means. You just cooled off a bit. Devotion, that's what it means. Now, you say, well, that's fine. Lack of love. Well, you can have the doctrines, but only God the Spirit can make them warm, give us love, care for sinners, care for his people, care for his church.

A Quiet Heart and a Passion for Souls

What equipment does this take? Oh, not very much. A quiet place, that's not so hard to find. A quiet hour, we can usually squeeze that in. But a quiet heart, that's a little harder. That's a little more difficult.

That's what it takes. That's all your devotional life takes, my dear man. Just those three things. Of course, your book. A quiet place, yes. A quiet hour, a quiet heart. You see, some people in my circles, in your circles, I told the Ministers Institute this last week, and I'll repeat it again.

A lot of my Reformed brethren are straight on the second part of Romans 9. They're quite clear on Romans 9, He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. Jacob will have all that he saw, I hate it. And they got that straight.

But I don't know how is it that they've never read the first three verses of Romans chapter 9. May I read them to you? May I read you? Because Paul had this combination of doctrine and devotion. May I read them for you?

Out of the 1901 Bible, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not. My conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. Why did he have great sorrow and unceasing pain in his heart?

Why did he have it? For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ, for my brother and my kinsman according to the flesh, listen to me preacher, deacon, I'm quite aware that we cannot, it's not within our reach to save a soul.

It's not within our power to save a soul, but let me tell you something. If souls are your object and you are separated from your desired object, you will not be separated from your desired object without some pain.

And don't you tell me you have the desired object and you know the doctrines of grace if there isn't a measure of pain. That's what Romans 9, 1 to 3 is. It paints, if salvation is without my reach and my power, but I'm pained.

That's devotion. I got pain in my heart. Rachel, give me children or I die. The object of affection was a path to reach children, but she still had the pain. She had the pain in her heart. That's the other half of the coin.

Eh? Did you ever try to comfort a lover that was jilted when some girl had for the object of her love some schoolmate and that was severed or vice versa? Did you ever try to comfort them? I'll tell you the object of their love was past their reach and power and when they were severed from it, it was not without pain.