Four Questions

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Gospel—D. Lamb
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To start out our meeting tonight.
By singing.
Hymn #29A ruler once came to Jesus by night to ask him the way of salvation and light.
The mastermind answer in words.
True and plain, he must be born again.
Let's sing #29 with seven brothers, raise a tune.
9.
319.
349-3851, 344-0859, 5000000000000000004.
Three.
Nsnoise.
The line that I'm going to get on the line. Can you give me a chance and see if you can if you call again?
Nsnoise, California. Nsnoise.
I am going to read one verse from the.
Story that this song came from.
It's a verse that most of us learned when we were five or six years old.
I'm going to read it because I don't know.
How much longer we have before the Lord comes, and if He comes before I had an opportunity to tell you the way of salvation, I wanna make sure that's covered. I'm also gonna read it because as I look out with so many faces here, I'm having a hard time remembering what my own name is.
The verse I'd like to read his, uh, third chapter of John and the 16th verse. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Let's pray.
Our God and Father.
Each one here tonight needs everlasting life. We are thankful.
That many here have.
So we fear in a group this size, there are those that are still a stranger to Thy grace, those who still are on the Broad Rd. Rd. that leads to hell. And so we pray that those hearts might be touched in a special way as we open Thy word, and they might come to know Thy Son the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.
00:05:06
No, I'm as bored of their lives.
We ask this as we pray in His name.
I want to read.
Four questions from the Word of God they will spend some time talking about.
Apologizing to those in Vancouver, WA and heard these four questions couple weeks ago.
But I'm sure they won't mind hearing them one more time. First one.
15 Second Samuel, 9th chapter.
In the story of Mephibosheth.
The service is was a grandson of a king.
The son of a man who David loved.
And David sent to fetch him.
And to get.
The contacts will read from the seventh verse. David said unto him, Fear not.
For I will surely show the kindness for Jonathan thy father's sake.
And we'll Restore the all the land of Saul thy father, And shall thou shall eat.
And my table continually.
And he bowed his head and said, What is thy servant?
That thou should look upon such a dead dog as I am.
The Fibre is fair and trembling before David.
Didn't know.
Why he was there?
You didn't know why David would give him sure so much kindness.
I suppose you could boil Mephibosheth question down into one word, that word being why.
I want to talk a little about that word. Why tonight?
But additionally, I'd like to read again from the third chapter of John for another question.
Says there in the third verse, And Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
Nicodemus said unto him, How can a man be born when he is old?
Nicodemus question. Sincere one I believe.
And he said, how can a man be born again?
With the Lord's mercy, I'd like to address that subject also tonight.
Go on down a few verses.
You read there were, Mephibosheth said in the ninth verse. How can these things be?
Over in the 14th chapter of John.
14th chapter of John.
And the fifth verse. And Thomas said unto him, Lord.
We know not whether thou goest.
How can we know the way?
I'd like to talk a little bit tonight about how.
We can know that way. And then if you look in the 16th chapter of Acts, one final question.
Very familiar portion.
16th chapter of Acts.
In the 30th verse, the Philippian jailer after an earthquake had shocked his world.
Earthquake opened the doors of the prisons. He feared that the prisoners would be released. He drew a sword to kill himself. It was stopped by Paul and Silas. They said we're all here.
00:10:13
And he came to them fair and trembling with his question. The 30th verse.
What must I do to be saved?
I talk, I could talk a little tonight about that question, maybe it's your question, but what should I do to be saved?
You see?
Every individual here is here in one of two positions.
Here saved, redeemed by the blood of Christ, on your way to glory.
To be with the Lord Jesus and beyond, and to experience for eternity all the privileges of being in his very family, God's very family.
All the royal privilege of being a son of God, there are those things that we have heard about.
You've heard about the streets of gold. We've heard about immediate and continual.
Access to the Lord Jesus Christ. We've talked about the praising and the singing.
But there are so many things.
That we can't even imagine. So we had that today, this afternoon. There are so many things that we just, our minds aren't able to comprehend. And they're all blessings that are waiting there for those who are redeemed by the blood of Christ. So there are people in that group.
And then there are those.
They're on their way to hell.
To be with the devil and his angels.
There are those.
Things we've read about.
Those things we've we've heard about.
Their eternal lake of fire.
The punishment of a perfect Memory, remembering the time when you rejected the Lord Jesus Christ.
But there are more.
There are things that we our minds can't even imagine. There are those blessings for those who are the Lords and there's judgments for those that aren't like there read you a few lines of him we start started out our meetings with today.
Is in a little flock and I'll just read you a couple verses of it. There is 27.
In appendix.
Sony so very nice to God it could not near be.
And for the person of his son.
I am as near as he. Maybe you can comprehend that, maybe you can understand that, but I think I'll be home to glory before I can.
As a blessing for those who are redeemed and set apart, as opposed to the punishments of hell.
For those who do not respond.
The love of Christ. You see, if you were to be in that place of great torment and punishment for eternity, you would have rejected.
The Son of God.
He would have rejected the love of God. He would have rejected the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. God does not take.
This rejection lightly remember.
In Matthew 21.
Let's turn to that.
His first 33.
Hear another parable. There was a certain householder in which planted a vineyard, and hedged it about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out the husband, and went into a far country.
And when the time of the fruit grew near, he sent his servant to the husbandman, that they might receive the fruits of it, and the husband, and took his servants, and be one, and killed another, and stoned another. And again he said other servants more than the 1St, and they did likewise, but at last, but last of all.
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He sent unto them his son instead they will reverence.
My son.
But when the husband saw the son, they said unto themselves, This is the air. Come, let us kill him, let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.
To reject the invitation of God is not a light thing, it is a serious thing.
These men in this parable rejected the son of the of the householder.
If you reject the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God.
He has nothing for you but those punishments. Be read about.
Don't reject.
The Word of God. Which brings me really to that first question, the fibrecious question. Why?
God's plan, His purpose, and His desire.
Is that C is to love his creation, to love you, to love me?
To love every man. Man was created as an Object of God's love.
Man was created.
As a bride for his son.
Man was created to be part of the body of Christ.
The reason for this meeting tonight is that man has sinned and separated himself from God and from those purposes.
Way back in the Garden of Eden.
Adam and Eve.
Doubted God. They disbelieved God.
And they disobeyed God.
Becoming the first center.
Every human being since then has had the same problem.
They, uh, every human being what, everyone in this room, among these, in this room, who can say they haven't doubted God, They haven't disbelieved God, They haven't disobeyed God.
That's it.
Just like Adam and Eve, it separated them from God. A flaming sword had to be placed on the gate to the Garden of Eden, so they could not come into God's presence.
First Peter one says.
For it is written, Be ye holy as I am holy.
That's a problem. God is holy.
There can be no.
Sin in his presence, no sin at all.
Says God is holy.
John Sean 15 S This is the message I you have heard from him. I declare unto you that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
2nd Corinthians 5 says God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us who knew no sin, God.
Yes, absolutely holy, no exceptions at all. So God, sin, your sin, my sin.
00:20:06
Separated us from God.
So God.
In answer to my fibrecious questions, God created man to be.
An Object of his love.
He created man to be a bride for his Son. He created man to be a body for the Lord Jesus Christ.
But sin came in.
And that was separated man from God.
One thing that is important to understand completely.
Is that got man's failure, your failure and my failure Adam's failure? You fail, Man's failure does not.
Alter the plans of God.
He still loves every man.
Even though he lost his and he loves every man.
He still wants to share his heavenly home. He wants to be with man, His creation says in John 14. There few verses or more we just read it says there in John 14.
I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I come again to receive you.
Unto myself and where I am.
There you may be also.
Yes, the plan of God, and that plan is not altered by sin of mankind.
So, Nicodemus said.
How can these things be? Nicodemus said.
How can a man be born again?
You see, God requires.
The sacrifice for sin in your case, in my case, in Adams, in his case, that's death.
God requires a sacrifice for sin. Turn in your Bibles back.
To Exodus 12.
You all know the story that's behind the these verses in Exodus 12.
God was on. I was getting ready to take his people out of Egypt.
The type of the world out of the world. He was getting ready to take his people out, but there had to be sacrifice.
And it says.
There in the 5th 1St your lamb shall be without blemish. A male of the first year is shall he shall take it out from the land, from the sheep, and from the goats, and you shall keep it until the 14th day of the self esteem month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
Your lamb shall be without spot.
Without blemish.
My business.
Is breeding livestock. My business is finding the very best genetics and breeding them to accomplish the purpose.
It says here.
To your lamb shall be without spot and blemish. How many lambs do you suppose there was that night in Egypt?
You know, must have been over well. Over 100,000 lamps died that night in Egypt.
That's 100,000 lambs that were found and watched for four days and found to be without spot and without blemish. Maybe some don't understand this, but that in itself is a miracle from God.
00:25:00
The fact that there were all those lambs without spot blemish. I work with a with a livestock judge from the San Joaquin Valley, internationally known as Brett. His judge livestock from all throughout the state to Australia.
Into England and elsewhere, and I talked to him about this verse.
I says how do you tell when you're looking at a sheep, a group of sheep or a group of cattle? They, they all look good to me.
I said, how do you look at them and know whether one should be set up and the other one put down? And he said, Don, he just looked for the blemishes.
And I said, what if there isn't any blemishes? My man, who knows more about breeding livestock than anybody I know who said this?
Don There's always a blemish.
See, that's the effect of sin. There's always a blemish. There's a blemish on the creation of God.
So I believe that night for there to be that many Lambs available.
In Egypt.
It was because.
God prepared of himself.
God allowed that so that there could be an adequate sacrifice, so that they could take the blood from an unspotted lamb. And one is the picture.
Of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
That last verse we read is something has always touched me. The last part of that verse says in the whole A congregation of Israel shall kill it that evening.
Return to those 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands of lambs in the singular.
That pronoun is singular.
It's singular for a reason.
Just talking about one lamp, it's a bit a picture of 1 lamb. I wanna turn over to John the 1St chapter of John and have a look at that picture.
John 1.
1St 29 Familiar verse.
I'll read it to you as soon as I get to it.
John 129 And the next day John sees Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. I wish that I could understand the magnitude of that one word, Behold.
John looked at Jesus and he saw everything that was typical of those lambs in Egypt, a lamb without spot and blemish. He looked at one who could not, did not, would not sin.
He looked at one that was perfectly clean. He looked at one that, while he was mad, he was God.
He was the gift of God to a lost and perishing world. And John recognized that as he looked at him that day and he said, behold.
Look.
Just one.
This one who can meet the just requirements of God. This one who can make a sacrifice for sin, a sacrifice that can and will be accepted by a holy and a righteous God. This one, there was no other. John looked at him and said, Behold, I.
Cannot grasp that. Behold.
Maybe someday we'll, as we're in glory, we'll ask John to try and explain a little of that first. Behold the Lamb of God, the one who could.
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The one who did?
You see, we have nothing to offer.
We are dirty ourselves. We are contaminated by sin. There is nothing we have to offer. We are not clean to come before God and sacrifice in in our sins. We are not clean. We're in our sins before we are saved. You have nothing.
We can't. We can't click on ourselves because we aren't clean. We can't bring anything because if it was clean, it would be dirty by the time we got there. We would contaminate it ourselves.
We are nothing. We have nothing.
And that's a little how.
Those children of Israel failed in Egypt.
The God says I will provide a sacrifice that is sufficient.
And God says.
I will provide a sacrifice for you.
And he did that in the person.
Of his Son, His Son met the holy requirement of sin.
He met the holy requirement to be God's sacrifice for sin. No other did. No other would.
No other.
Cam.
So.
When Moshe says what?
Must I do? How can these things be?
They can be, the Lord just told Nicodemus, didn't he? Told Nicodemus, he says.
Your you need to be born again. You need to have a life that's not based on flesh and blood.
Nicodemus misunderstood that. He asked the question. He got the answer. The answer was he nee, you already have inflation bones, right? The one you need is a spiritual life. You need a life that is spirit.
You need a life that is clean. You need a life that can be in the presence of God.
Which brings me.
To the final question, I really wanna talk about tonight.
That question.
Has to do with the 16th chapter of Acts. And what must I do to be saved?
You know, I wanna talk about what we must do to be saved very clearly, so that if there's one here tonight that doesn't know, they can, uh, you know, I remember years ago.
Sitting in a.
Young People's meeting and an old brother who had been laboring amongst the Lord's people for many, many years came to that young people's meeting that night in Spokane, and he was so excited. He was just bubbling with an excitement. An old man bubbling with his side. As a as a teenager, I was really quite impressed.
And he said he is. He just got off the phone with his brother, with his son. His son had just preached the gospel someplace in the Midwest, I don't know where.
And he said three children came up after the gospel meeting and were saved. They asked for help even before God and confessing their sins and asking Jesus to waste their sins away. Three of them. And he said, my, I haven't had any. I've been preaching for 40 years. I've never had an experience like that. How did you accomplish that?
He says to his father, I just told him how to be safe.
And so that's what I wanna do tonight, is to.
Talk to you a little bit about this last example.
This, uh, Philippian jailer.
Start out in the 25th verse of the 16th chapter of Acts.
And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prisons were shaken, and immediately all the doors were open.
00:35:18
And everyone's fans were loosed, and the keeper of the prison awakening out of sleep, seeing the prison doors open, he drew his sword and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had fled. But Paul, with a loud voice, cried out. Do thyself no harm. We are all here.
And he called for a light, and sprang in came trembling.
Fell down at the feet of Paul and Silas and brought them out. Says, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
I'm wondering tonight as I look out in the audience, if your foundations have been shaken.
I can't do that.
I can talk about the one who can, and hopefully we have done that to some extent tonight. The Lord Jesus can shake.
Your foundations.
It's a sad thing, you know, a sad thing to come to a gospel meeting to replace.
Like we are tonight and not be touched.
If you're in your stems.
You know, if you're not saved, if you're, if you haven't yet, put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you're not shaken by what we've been talking about. I feel very sorry for you.
You need to get in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ mask by.
Why was a nice shaking?
Did Philippian Jailer that night was shaking?
There was an earthquake, something that got himself directed only as God directed. The prison doors were open.
The the bands were loose, but nobody was gone. It was a it was a shaking. It was made to touch the heart of this this trailer.
And it did exactly that.
Because you sit here tonight, if you're here in your sins, let me ask you very clearly and very plainly.
Have you been shaking?
It's a serious thing to be touched by the hand of God, offering you an opportunity to be convicted of your sins, an opportunity to be saved by the work of his son on the cross of Calvary and not react to it. This man reacted to it. He came and he fell down and he speeded these men. He says, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
It's an interesting thing you said, isn't it?
I don't know if he could hear the.
The singing and the prayers from the inner prison are not.
But he saw in these men someone who knew a way to be saved. He wasn't thinking any more of his life. He wasn't thinking any more of his job. He was thinking.
Of how to be, how to satisfy the requirements of a righteous God.
And their answer?
Is the one I give you tonight, he said. What must I do to be saved?
And they said, believe.
Can be boiled down to that one word. Can it believe? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And thou shalt be saved.
Please, the Philippian jailer recognized.
His need, He recognized he was a Sinner for a holy and a righteous God. He saw that clearly. Have you seen that?
Have you seen yourself as a Sinner before? A holy and a righteous God?
00:40:00
Hi send.
A bit of time working with a bunch of people who have just come out of the prison system, state prison system, trying work with them, with the gospel. Many of them profess to be saved. We work with them on how to get back into life and those kind of things. But I'm impressed as I as I go with these guys to court cases and I see the prisoners that come before the judge.
How many they are that have what you call that prison swagger.
They're manacled, sheet manacled together. There's a chain goes up that that ties into their handcuffs, so they're cuffed and manigold. They can but shuffle in and stand before the judge, but they do it.
In Pride.
They do it with the prison swagger.
They're standing before the judge for crimes they've committed, the one who has the opportunity to send them to prison or to set them free, and they're proud of who they are and what they've done.
Don't be proud of who you are and what you've done. If you're here and you're sinners tonight, don't make that fatal error.
This man fell down on his face.
That's the proper place before they are holding a righteous God that has the power.
To send you to a life of punishment for a life of blessing.
So that night, the prisoner said, prisoner acknowledged he believed that he was.
For Sitter.
He believed that he had nothing to offer.
He was willing believed.
Then Jesus died on the cross.
And bowed before that one.
He confessed.
And it was saved.
Will you do that tonight?
I want to pray in a minute here. Closing this meeting.
Anyone whose heart has been touched by the Spirit of God, tonight I'm asking you as we pray, have a word with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Tell him the life of life, of Glebe and jade, or you're a Sinner and want to be saved. Ask him to waste your sins away so that you can be holy, so you can be prepared.
To be one that God shares his house with.
Become the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Part of the body.
Of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let's pray.
Our God and Father, we are so thankful.
But as we come here tonight, even those who are lost still have an opportunity.
To accept thy Son of Lord Jesus Christ for what he's done.
Anybody else?
And so we pray tonight that parts might be touched. We pray to for.
The sunny school time in the morning before thy knock. We're left here.
For the little ones that their hearts might be touched also. We ask these things in Jesus name, Amen.