What a lost person cannot do (pt. 2)

Well, this morning is part two of the topic, What a

Lost Person Cannot Do. Curtis Pugh had thirteen things a lost person couldn't do.

It's not even original with him, because you can just probably look through the scriptures and find these things, but I at least wanted to give him credit.

And we got through the first, I think, four last week. And basically what I wanted to talk about was why

God is needed. After all, if an unbeliever can do some of these things, then why would we need

God? But if you understand that you cannot respond if you're not a Christian, you cannot do anything unless God initiates,

I think it'll change the way you think. As an unbeliever, you'll then cry out to God for mercy, and as a believer, if you have loved ones who aren't

Christians, I think instead of manipulating and coercing and trying to somehow sell your loved one this idea, instead you'll tell them the truth, and then you'll talk more to God, asking

Him to save your loved one versus trying to coerce your loved one. Is there anything wrong with preaching the gospel to them?

Absolutely not. But I believe this idea here, that if you understand inability of man, total depravity, whatever synonym you like for that, it will change the way you do evangelism.

There are two rules, this isn't on the page yet, two cardinal rules that you must never forget when it comes to evangelism.

One is you evangelize for the glory of God, you don't evangelize for how many people get saved.

Do I want people to get saved today? I do. I think the Bartlett's, I don't think, they told me that up to 17 people will be here today visiting for Michael Bartlett's baptism.

Some of them are probably Christians, and some of them are probably not. Do I want those who aren't Christians to be saved? Yes, of course.

But there's a bigger goal, and that bigger goal is I don't want them to be saved because I'm up there somehow watering down the gospel, no pun intended with the baptism, but I want to tell the truth so God would be honored, and God saves people through preaching.

Anyway, two key things. We preach for the glory of God, and we have to remember that man, in and of themselves, men and women, in and of themselves, cannot respond to the gospel.

God has to do it. God is the initiator. We are the responders. And so I thought I'd put together a little lesson called

What a Lost Person Cannot Do. So each one of these is like an exclamation point. It has to be

God. The reverse of if we can't do it, it must be God and God alone who does this.

And so the first one in review is lost people cannot properly what? They cannot properly understand

God. And we looked at Romans chapter 3 and Psalm chapter 50. What I didn't tell you last week,

Job 11 verse 7, Canst thou by searching find out God? The answer is no.

We cannot find God by searching for him. Even when it comes to seeking after God, it just cannot be done.

People have seeker services. They want people to come in and find the Lord in a seeker service, but they just don't seek.

Number two, what can a lost person not do? A lost person cannot even see spiritual things.

We looked at John chapter 3 verse 3. Unless you are born from above, you cannot see the kingdom of God.

And by the way, every one of these should be kind of a praise booster. That is to say, as there's a booster on the space shuttle, when it's up a certain amount of miles, the next booster kicks in to propel it through the orbit.

These are almost like those kind of spiritual boosters where you think, this was me.

This is my resume. I couldn't understand God. I couldn't see spiritual things, yet God saved me. And so as you realize the greatness of your salvation, so too praise should go up.

Do I sound funny? I feel like I'm sounding funny. I don't mean what I'm saying is funny, but the sound.

Is everything normal, Denise? Did I ask you? I just feel like I'm, I think

I'm a little stuffy with the allergies, but I feel like my voice, as I hear the reverb, is underwater. Even though it was a horrible place for acoustics,

I was at the convention center in Kentucky, Louisville, Kentucky, this week for Together for the Gospel. And Dr.

Moeller was there speaking, Dr. MacArthur, Piper, C .J. Mahaney, Mark Dever, and the list goes on.

And there were 5 ,300 men and women. I'd say 5 ,000 men and 300 women in this convention center singing.

And I thought this is pretty amazing that there's typically probably some kind of sales convention in there or something.

People singing about the glory of God, and it was just one piano and then these great hymns of the faith and just bellowing them out kind of like Shepherd's Conference.

And so it was a wonderful time. And then I left, and then they had an earthquake, so that was perfect timing.

Number three in review, you can't even know your own heart. If you're an unbeliever, you can't even know the depth of depravity in your own heart.

Your heart has fallen because of Adam's fall and your own sin. And so we have to realize whether we're talking to an unbeliever or we ourselves are unbelievers, that the heart is deceitful, desperately wicked, and we looked at Jeremiah 17 in some detail.

Number four, and lastly in review, unbelievers cannot properly direct their own paths.

They cannot properly direct their own paths. Jeremiah 10 .23 and Proverbs 14 .12

we looked at. In other words, if they can't direct their own paths, they need someone to direct their paths, like Christ Jesus through his word.

So now we'll come to some new ones. What a lost person cannot do to increase the praise of a

Christian and also help us stick to the word. See, even now I sound funny. I don't know if it's the...

Pardon me? A little feminine. It does say battery, so if somebody could go in the...

I hope that's it too. Better now than the service. Although it's interesting, even with technological things and all the money we spend, you go to Together for the

Gospel and somebody gets up to speak in front of 5 ,000 other people and there's some microphone problem. So it happens to everybody.

That speaker's out? It's out right now? Interesting.

Where's Charlie? Would somebody go get Charlie for me, please?

I think he's up in the... He should be in the prayer room.

Well, we have a green light now, but I don't know if that's going to do any good. Doesn't sound like it. Can't be the battery.

I used to work for Duracell Batteries for four years, and so we know it's a copper top.

We used to have a competition with Energizer, and so we'd go into these retail stores,

Long's Drug Stores and other stores, and the sales rep from Energizer would ship in their brand new displays and everything, and we were on Regenerate, and we wanted to just sell batteries, and so it's amazing when you see those big green compressing machines for cardboard and other things.

If you put an Energizer brand new display in those things sideways, it just is an amazing sight to watch that thing just be crushed before it's even used.

I'll just leave it on. I don't know what I'd do without Charlie, besides sleep extra.

Just kidding. John 8, 47, King James, He that is of God heareth

God's word, yet therefore hear them not because you are not of God. You can put that into an English, modern

English translation. Who has ESV? I'm curious to what ESV says.

No ESVs. Oh, ESV. Barbara, would you mind reading that? John 8, 47.

Can you imagine? The reason why you can't hear and understand the Scripture is because you're not of God.

I don't want to make the Holy Spirit into something that's just trite or some kind of trifle, but I think of decoder rings.

And when an unbeliever tries to read this book without a decoder ring, does it make much sense? Oh, surely some of it can make sense.

Jesus died on a cross. He was raised from the dead. But it does not make total sense to them because they can't understand it.

They don't have the decoder ring. They don't have the Spirit of God. And one thing about it is when you see a brand new

Christian, they basically tell you that the Scriptures have come alive. They've seen things they've never seen before.

They can't believe it. It's now an open book. And when things used to be kind of the old screen, what was the old computer screen like?

What did we call the old computer screen a long, long time ago? It displayed itself in monochrome.

And then all of a sudden now, it's just kind of HDTV type of look and you think, yes,

I saw the words, but I didn't really see them. That is to say, I could read them. I understand English, but I didn't understand the depth of these things.

Of course, you know 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14. The unsaved natural man cannot understand the things of the

Spirit. One, their foolishness. And two, they're spiritually appraised. Number seven.

Number seven. Lost people cannot cause themselves to be born in the family of God.

There's a great little book called The Plan of Salvation by B .B. Warfield. Fifty pages. You need to read that book.

The Plan of Salvation, B .B. Warfield. And he talks about how people try to save themselves. If you're driving a mobile by yourself or you're able to drive a mobile, what kind of mobile do they call that?

An automobile. And so when you try to save yourself, you'll hear theologians talk about auto salvation.

Not O -T -T -O, like my wife's dog's name years ago, but A -U -T -O.

Self. Self salvation. How do you save yourself? And in one sense, you can't blame people for trying to do it, because if they have any sense at all, they'll recognize that they're sinful and they're not perfect and they do things that are wrong.

And so they realize with that, combined with their own conscience, I realize I've got a conscience that God has given me and I don't do the right things.

So they try to save themselves. Give me some illustrations on how people try to save themselves spiritually.

What do they do? John? Okay. You mean going to church doesn't make you a

Christian? Okay, good. Okay, all kinds of good works.

I went to go visit Karen and brought her a meal and God's pleased with that and I think

I get to go to heaven. Is it a good thing to do that? Well, it's not a good thing to do it and then think that, but it's a good thing to do.

I wish I had a blackboard up here. I would write four quadrants in a square and I would write good, good, good, bad, bad, good, and bad, bad.

Stolen right from R .C. Sproul. Good, bad, good, good, bad, bad, bad, good.

Whatever order you want. What's good, good? What kind of work is good, good? The first one described what kind of work it is.

Is it something that is a good thing to do? Is it loving your neighbor? In the bottom, what kind of heart it comes from?

Good meaning regenerate, a believer, born again. So born again people can do good things and they can love

God and love their neighbor. We call that a good, good thing. What is a bad, good thing?

When we sin and we do something wrong, a regenerate heart still has a sin hangover, if you will, and we can do bad things.

So that's called a bad, good. Well, what would be a bad, bad thing? That's very bad.

I feel like I'm teaching the Sparkies or something. Bad, bad is what?

Criminal things, ungodly things, anti -biblical things done from an unbelieving heart.

And then, the trickiest of them all, is the good, bad. What's a good, bad?

An unbeliever doing something good. That's right.

From the society's perspective, something good, helping someone, driving the senior citizen bus, giving to the poor, and the list goes on and on.

But it comes from a bad heart. It's not good. Without faith in Christ, it is what? Impossible to please

God. So there's all these kind of things that are out there, but one thing for sure is, you cannot make yourself a

Christian. John 1, verse 13. Let's go there. We always throw out verse 12, but verse 13 is important as well.

What can we not do if we're not a Christian? We can't make ourselves one. John Bunyan tried for,

I think, eight or nine months. You need to read his spiritual biography, and he painstakingly tried to deal with trying to make himself a

Christian. Could not do it. John 1, verse 13.

Follows verse 12. Somebody read for me verse 12, please. And tell me what is the last bit of ink you see at the end of verse 12.

Okay, good. Was there a punctuation point at the end of verse 12, Daniel? A comma.

What does a comma tell you? Keep going.

That's exactly right. Now, do unbelievers receive the Lord when

God saves them? I think the answer is yes, but you have to ask this question. Who's the one who is giving?

And the giver is found in verse 13, a continuation of a thought in verse 12. Who were born?

We're not talking about real birth. We're talking about spiritual birth that he will talk about again to Nicodemus.

Not of blood, nor of the will of flesh. May I highlight? You are not saved by your own will.

May I make it even stronger? You are not saved by your own free will. Your will does not save you.

Nothing about you saves you. Nor the will of man, but of God.

And if you put the words in to an interpretive reading, which we're born not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but we're born of God.

God is the one that bears us. I think of Romans chapter 9, where God will have compassion on whom

He will have compassion. So it is then not the one that wills or the one that runs, but on God who shows or has what?

Mercy. Let's turn just a minute to John chapter 3.

I think this will be insightful. You know all this. You're the ones here for Sunday school. I think you know these things.

But if you are reminded that the people that are next door to you who aren't Christians, who act kindly, who have blood running through their veins, and smile, and help you rake your yard, and all that stuff.

If they're not a Christian, they can't save themselves. And you can't save them either. And if they die, they're not going to go to heaven if they're not a

Christian. And so what is our only hope? To pray for them and to preach the gospel to them.

That's the only hope. John chapter 3. It's a great book to talk about Jesus Christ being

God. And we jump right into verse 4, because we looked at the earlier verses last week. Nicodemus said to Jesus, How can a man be born when he is old?

He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born. Can he?

He knows better than that. He knows that can't happen. He doesn't understand the depth and the knowledge that goes into spiritual rebirth.

But he knows you just can't crawl back into your mother's womb. I saw something the other day, and it was a woman.

She was 21 inches tall. And this particular woman had a certain kind of disease.

And her husband is a seminary student, a

Christian seminary student. And they have one daughter, and that daughter has the same disease as the mother.

And she got pregnant again, the mother did. And they said, you know, you have to have an abortion, because you're going to die.

The baby's going to grow, and it's going to push your lungs up and your heart and everything else. And it's going to suffocate you, and you're going to die, so you should abort the baby.

Well, the husband and wife didn't abort the baby, and she had the baby, and the baby doesn't have the disease that the mother has.

And I just kept thinking, anybody see that? Nobody saw that. I just kept thinking, here's this baby that's basically as big as the mom.

The baby was 19 inches long, and the mom's 21 inches long. How did that happen? And I think in Nicodemus' words, he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?

How can he get that 19 inch baby back into the mother? There's no possible way. And then if you were

Jesus, what would you say to that? Since I'm not Jesus, I would never say what he says in verse 5.

You know what I would tell Nicodemus? Believe. Stop doing what you're doing.

I don't know what I'd tell him. I'd tell him to come to church and hear the Gospel. Read your Bible. I don't know, there are probably good things

I would tell him, and there are probably bad things I would tell him. Some biblical things I would tell him, and maybe some unbiblical things if I wasn't careful.

But I would never tell him this. How many people would ever say this to a person who's asking spiritual questions about eternal life?

I'd like to know, and what does Jesus say? I mean, it is just shocking.

And to make it doubly shocking, he says, amen, amen, truly, truly, verily, verily, I say to you, and you better pay attention when

Jesus says that, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, when you think of the

Old Testament, you should be thinking about Ezekiel 36 and spiritual cleansing and how water is used figuratively of spiritual cleansing.

Nicodemus was a teacher of the Bible, wasn't he? Jesus called him THE teacher.

He knew Ezekiel. And Jesus says, unless one is born of water and Spirit, unless one has been cleansed spiritually, he cannot enter the

Kingdom of God. Now that is just shocking to me. He just continues to educate.

He doesn't say, well, you know, I'm just going to have to close the deal now. Strike while it's hot. I mean, we used to have a thing in sales when

I was in sales that if you get a customer to say, okay, I'll sign, quit selling!

Because you're going to unsell yourself right out of that deal. If he says, I'm signing, or she says, I'm signing, quit everything.

Close your sales book, and just say, you know, right there on the dotted line, when would you like that delivered? Monday or Thursday? He wants

Nicodemus to know. I'm not saying Jesus is selling. God forbid. He says in verse 6, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the

Spirit is Spirit. Do not be amazed when I say to you, you must be born again. And then here comes the atomic bomb.

Maybe the first thing he said was Hiroshima, and now comes Nagasaki. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from, and from where it is going.

So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. What's he saying? You can only see the evidence, but the wind does what?

Whatever it wants. And so what's he trying to say about the God who saves? It's all

God. What else? Save who He wants to save?

What about timing? When He wants to save? In the place that He wants to save?

The group He wants to save? Everything He wants to do. God is sovereign. And so Jesus said, you know, as you know, the

Old Testament talks about spiritual cleansing, and that has to happen. And by the way, God will do that whenever He pleases, in the manner

He pleases, and He'll do whatever He pleases at His own good pleasure. I don't talk that way to people.

I try to get them saved. I want them saved as soon as possible. That is amazing to me, the sovereignty of God.

Well, the big point is, it has nothing to do with the person, because a lost person cannot make themselves born into the family of God.

Should that give us comfort as Christians, or how should we respond to that as Christians? You know what

I like? I like it when I least expect it, somebody's going to say to me, you know what, I used to think you were a real loser, and I used to think this and that and all that, and you're some kind of freak, azoid person who's gone overboard.

You used to be fun. You're not anymore. You used to party with us. You don't anymore. You used to run with us in dissipation like 1

Peter 4 says, and you don't anymore. But you know, I was reading my Bible and I was struck with the gravity of, if I don't repent and believe in Jesus Christ, I'm going to hell and God save me.

Out of nowhere. Do we want our loved ones saved today? But we have to acquiesce to the will of God who may want our loved ones saved tomorrow, the next day, 50 years down the line, or maybe never.

I like it that God just does what he wants, when he wants. True or false?

Baptism establishes a new relationship with God. Through Christian baptism, we have our sin forgiven, become heirs of eternal life, and can remain his children forever.

Amazing grace. Lutheran baptism book called,

Why Baptize Infants, 1981, Augsburg. I'll never forget what

I heard John MacArthur say this morning. He said, people come up to me all the time and say, Are Roman Catholics Christian?

He said, I have a better question for you. Are Protestants Christian? Are Evangelicals Christian?

He said, the best question of all is, Are you a Christian? That's the question. It's not some kind of denomination.

It is, are you a Christian? I believe there are some Catholics who are born again, and I believe there are some Baptists who aren't.

But if you believe that somehow, baptism can undo these things, like the curse, like your own heart, then you would be mistaken.

True or false? By baptism, all sins are forgiven. Original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin.

So I don't care if it's the Protestants, I just bashed the Lutherans. I don't think it was bashing, I'm just trying to tell you the truth.

Why is truth -telling bashing these days? That was from the Catholic Catechism, page 321.

How about this one? True or false? You come down the aisle in response to an altar call, say a short prayer, memorize a verse, shake my hand, and you're assuredly saved.

I mean, what's the difference, Lutheran? How about this? You say you believe in Christ, and are assured you're a

Christian because you speak in tongues. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

So many of those things are self -salvation. We cannot save ourselves. Alright, I can't do part three,

Whitney's coming. And I've got to stick with two parts. How many parts did you do on Revelation, Lewis?

Okay, well, I don't feel so bad. Okay, number eight. Here's a big one.

Lost people cannot produce repentance. Must they repent? Has God commanded all men everywhere to repent,

Acts 1730? Of course. But if we look at 2 Timothy 2, verse 25, we will see that it is

God who must grant repentance. Yes, you preach repentance, but you know the whole time that you're preaching to the dead.

Yesterday, I grabbed the seminary students, and there were 15 or 16 of them, and I said, all right, it's 10 o 'clock.

We're going to take a break. Here's the Google map, and I want you to follow me. We drove down the street about half a mile, pulled up to the cemetery.

All right, everybody get out. And I want you, you, you, and you to preach, to read

Acts chapter 2, 14 to 26. I want you to read Acts chapter 13, Peter's sermon.

I want you to read Stephen's sermon. And I made them stand in front of the tombstones with their Bible and preach to the tombstones.

They didn't really want to do it. And one guy comes up to me, and he said, well, I said, where's your

Bible? And he said, well, I don't know.

But I thought, you know, there's a way to hammer, and there's a way to coerce and kind of persuade properly.

And so I said, well, why wouldn't you want to do it? He said, well, I'm just not a good public speaker or anything.

I said, join the club. But you're preaching to the dead. It doesn't matter.

This is part of your class grade. This is part of your grade. All you have to do is read.

And I said, I want you to realize that if you're preaching to unbelievers, this is who they are unless God intervenes.

And when you're preaching to believers even, unless the Holy Spirit illumines your words in the minds of the people, you're preaching to the tombstones.

And I want you to realize that every person you see in your pew is going to die one day and stand before God, and the only thing you can give them is the word of God that saves.

And so we're all going to take our turn, stand up on this little tombstone. And there was one that I picked, and it said, rest in peace underneath it.

In the old days, they used to put Bible verses on tombstones. Now they put things like a picture of a walrus or something.

And I said, I don't know what they do. I don't understand. So I made them look at it, and I said, see that rest in peace?

If that person was not born again, he's not resting in peace. Why? He's sadly in hell now waiting for the lake of fire.

And so the only way you rest in peace is if somebody had to come along who couldn't talk, who couldn't read, who wasn't a very good evangelist, who was just a brand new

Christian and didn't know what justification was with all the details, who didn't understand double imputation, and said, you know,

I know God has changed my life, and I was a sinner, and here's this Jesus. Let me tell you about Jesus. And God justifies that person.

And according to Romans chapter 5, part of the effects of justification is peace with God. So it matters not that you can't read.

None of us can. But it's the assignment. You've got to read. Why wouldn't you? The only reason you won't read is because it's your vanity because you want to look good.

You've got to read. He went to his car and got his Bible and read. I was so happy. I gave him a

D for being slow. When you're preaching, you're asking people to repent.

There's the tombstone. Repent. Believe. Can they do it? So why do you still preach it?

Because God tells you to do it. Why do you pray? If God already knows what you're going to pray for,

God's going to answer only the way He wants to, for your own good and for His glory, then why pray? Because God tells you to pray.

And here, if you look at 2 Timothy 2, verse 25, isn't this good to tell a pastor in the pastoral epistles that God is the one that grants repentance?

I want to be persuasive, but I don't want to manipulate. I know I have a sales background, and I can get people to do things that I want them to do, but I don't want that.

Number nine, it's the same thing. Lost people cannot come to Christ. John 6 .44

and 65. I better just read this. We're running out of time. No man can come to Me, except the

Father which has sent Me draw him. People can't come to Christ unless the

Father draws him. So would it be a good idea to pray that God might draw your loved one to Himself?

That's a good prayer to pray. I'd like to know this question. Can a steel factory in Pittsburgh produce cotton?

No. Can an Ethiopian change his skin?

Can a leopard change his spots? Can someone who is by nature evil do something good?

God has to do it all. Number ten, a lost person cannot believe on Christ. This is the flip side of repentance.

Philippians 1, verse 29, For unto you it is given to believe on Him. Belief is a gift.

We are told to tell people to believe. Believe, believe, believe, and the whole time we know it's a gift.

And then lastly, we alluded to this earlier, lost people cannot please God. Lost people cannot please

God. There's nothing they can do to please God, because if you dishonor

His Son, how can anything else that you do be good? So you say, well, you know what? I come to the presence of the

King in this great throne room, and there sits the King, and there sits His Son, the Prince, and you come up and you shine the shoes of the

King, and you give Him some grapes, and you kind of fan Him with the plumes of the big peacock feathers, and you go get some special kind of lemonade, and you're serving, and you're doing all these things, and every time the

King just looks over there, you take your hand, and you make a fist, and with the back hand you smack the

King's Son in the face. Would the King be happy? God has said it all starts with bowing your knee to Christ Jesus, my

Son, and honoring Him, and as you give honor to the Son, the Father receives honor.

Hebrews 11, 6, And without faith it is impossible to please God, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek

Him. Every one of these cannots should force us to realize that Jesus must come to the rescue.

It should drive our minds to think salvation is from and of the Lord, Jonah said, and Jonah was right.

If it wasn't for God, we'd all be going to hell. We were worthy of eternal punishment, and this was our resume.

I was just sent an email, I'm supposed to send my CV to South Africa for the brochure.

I could probably just send this. Before I was saved, this is what it was.

And who are we? We are people that have received. That's it. And because of Christ, we can do every one of these.

We can properly understand God. We can properly understand our own hearts. We can come to Christ. We can believe.

We can repent. So I want to drive you with these 11 to trust in God alone for your family's salvation, for your friend's salvation, for your kid's salvation.

It's not your apologetical skills or special evangelistic style. I want you to look at these 11 and say,

I am so glad I'm a Christian. I couldn't extract myself from myself. God was at war with me, and now

I'm His friend because of what God has done. I also want you to see from these things that maybe if you call yourself a

Christian, you might not really be. Drive you to the cross. And lastly,

I want you to pray more for your friends and family instead of always thinking,

I've got to preach, preach, preach. And of course, you know I love preaching the Gospel. They must hear a message about Christ, Romans 10, 17.

But after you preach for a while, I think it's just time to beseech the Lord to save the people. If they want to hear the

Gospel, fine. If they don't, start praying. Alright, any questions before we wrap it up?

Yes, Daniel. Well, basically, what kind of reverence should we have for the

Word? Should there be any reverence at all? It sounds like you guys worship the

Bible to me. I think you're bibliologists. You just said we should have reverence for the

Bible. I think you must worship the Bible, you Protestants. Remember when

David says he lifts his hands to the Lord? To the Lord's Word?

Not to the Lord, but to the commandments which David loves? It's amazing. I think

God's Word is inexorably linked to His person and nature. How do you know about God?

This is the only thing we know. God reveals. You stand on a mountain on top of Everest, and you think, you know what,

I've never heard anything about the Bible, and I'm just going to get to know God. Can you know some? What would you think on the top of Everest about God if you never read one page of the

Bible? This is pretty amazing. This is awesome. There's not much air up here.

There's lots of things you would think. But you would understand power, and creation, and wisdom.

You would understand those things, and that's right from Romans chapter 1. And that's enough to damn somebody, but it's not enough to save.

You're accountable before God. You can't stand before God and say, I didn't think you existed because there wasn't enough evidence.

I don't believe there's such a thing as an atheist. I believe there's immoral atheists who basically say,

I like to call myself atheist because it's a lot easier to sin and sleep at night. There's a

Bible word for those people, and they're called Sadducees. They don't believe in any resurrection, because it kind of puts a damper on parties at night when you realize they're going to have to answer to God for this.

So, we know enough to damn ourselves, but not enough to save ourselves, so God has to come and reveal

His truth, specifically about Christ and sin and salvation, whether that's Old Testament pictures of Passover.

What's today, by the way? Yesterday. Passover started for us today. Sundown last night.

Okay, that's right. Wasn't Easter like three months ago? What is going on with our calendar?

Are we on the Gregorian calendar, or what are we doing? So, we know enough to be accountable, yet we don't know enough to understand

God and to understand His Son, so God reveals Himself to us in this Word. So, I think it is our duty, it is our glory, it is our privilege to tell other people about Christ Jesus and what's in here.

But I believe there's a day that when people basically want to spit on this, they want to throw it away, they want to degrade

Christ Jesus. I used to preach to my friend, his name was Joel, and he would begin to say blasphemous things about Jesus.

The worst possible things you could imagine that I would never, ever repeat. Finally, I said, you know what?

Every one of those words you say, Joel, is going to damn you forever unless you bow to me, bow to me to this

King. And you better be thanking God that this is a King who grants clemency to traitors like you.

And He's a God who saves, but one day you're going to die, and then you're going to be in big trouble. And so,

I just stopped preaching to him. Well, he ended up getting cancer all through his body. He did read the

Lee Strobel book on Case for Christ. I don't think it's a great book, but it has Bible things in there. And he made a profession at the end of his life.

I don't know if it was true or not. I sure hope it is. But there's a time, I think, when people no longer should receive the grace that's found in the

Scriptures from you. And you should just say, you know, I've done my best. If they're antagonistic, but they still want to listen.

If they were, you know, I don't really believe you, but we can talk about it. If they think, you know, I think you're full of it because you say all these things, but we'll continue the conversation.

I think that's all time to keep going. But when it's, you know what, I despise you and your God, and don't ever tell me about Him again.

And I think everything opposite about Jesus. He's not wise. He's stupid. He's not a forgiving

God who's perfect. He was a sinner himself. Mary was a whore, and she was impregnated by someone else, et cetera, et cetera.

When those things start, and those aren't even the bad ones yet. Those are bad, but not as bad as they get. I just think, you know,

I'm not going to throw this pearl. Was it easy to get a pearl back in those days? They say that some leaders of Rome went to Britain just to steal all the pearls, because all the pearls that would be outside of England later on past the

Bible day, it took a lot to get a pearl. What did you think about a pig? Pet pigs around, you know, like they have now, those special kind of pigs.

So why give something great to those who are just going to basically spit on it? And so then

I just won't after a while. But God can still save. Last little story. There was a man who was in England, and he heard a message by John Flavel, a great

Puritan preacher, and he moved to America. Sixty years later, he was sitting on the beaches down in Rhode Island, and he remembered a sermon that John Flavel preached to him, and God saved him that day sitting on the beach.

I long for heaven when I get to see all the people saved by all the different miraculous ways.

And maybe the Lord will even have used me to save someone, not me to effectuate that, but me to be the vessel.

I just like to think of a big PCP pipe. PCP pipe, that's wrong. PVC pipe.

Boy, you can tell what used to happen in my life. I never smoked PCP. That was only by the grace of God.

It's just a pipe, and so I'm a conduit. Here's the truth. It goes through the conduit to the other person.

But I'm just the conduit. By the way, I'm broken. I'm fractured. I'm fissured. I'm all twisted all around, and how does that get through me to get over there?

I'm constantly amazed. You think if you have to be biblical to preach, shouldn't you have to preach in Hebrew and Greek?

Shouldn't you have to have the words exactly memorized in the King James Version before people get saved? You can just say things like,

God saves sinners. You're a sinner. Just things that aren't even quotes from the

Bible, but it's the gospel truth, and God uses that to save. All right, I'm rambling. Last question.

I've got two minutes. Here's my assignment for you.

Let's see who's bold enough to take it. I'd like you to go to a cemetery this week.

And if you can't get out of the car because your leg hurts or back hurts or something, just drive up, roll down your window with your

Bible, and look at those tombstones, and I want you to read John Chapter 10 out loud. Out loud.

You have to read it out loud. Kind of reminds me of the days when we'd go hunting in Nebraska, and my grandpa's foot was sawed off in a car accident, and he couldn't really shoot, so he just put the 12 -gauge out of the car window.

Bang. Drive -by. That was illegal, by the way, but Hank was a good old guy.

Matter of fact, it was just to show you what unbelievers can even do. There was a car accident on the bridge with my grandfather and my grandmother.

They were probably about 45 years old, and it was crushed, and there were other cars coming, and so Grandpa Quick got out of the car and pried the door open to rescue my grandmother out and move her to the side before there were more accidents.

And then he looked down, and his foot was held on by a piece of skin because it was sheared all the way off.

And this was back in the days where they couldn't really put feet back on very well, so they tried, and his foot was always kind of like messed up the rest of his life, and he'd walk and limp, and I thought, you know what?

Even unbelievers, because of God and his image and his likeness placed on people, will love their wives at the risk of themselves.

But anyway, here's the assignment. Go to the cemetery. If you can't get out, don't get out.

But if you can get out, I want you to just go find yourself some tombstones, stand out there with a Bible, and read out loud

John chapter 10. I want you to think about life, I want you to think about death, and I want you to think about God's word and what he did for you, and how when your body's in that grave, you know where your spirit's going to be.

I think we're afraid of cemeteries. Of course, we've had some recent deaths, and maybe some of you might not be as comfortable doing that.

But for most of us, that should be the assignment. I dare you. It'll be the best quiet time of your week,

I guarantee it. All right, let's pray. Lord, seal the truth to our heart that we are recipients of divine grace.

You were active, we were passive. You initiated, we responded. You receive 100 % of the glory for our salvation, and we receive nothing.

And Lord, we would recognize that that's the theme in heaven today. Worthy is the lamb that was slain.

We realize that because of all that, we're not better, we're not smarter, we're not wiser.

We don't have some kind of inclusivized truth that we're the only ones that know, and we're the only church.

We are just debtors of grace. And Lord, thank you that you would let us serve you. Thank you that there's hope.

I even think of my brother Bruce and his wife Karen. Not only do you grant us the greatest gift of salvation, but you also care for your people like a tender shepherd.