Gospel—S. Bambauer
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We'll start this evening.
With him #2.
Cheers Jesus, gently calling.
Ye with care.
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McDonald's.
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Welcome. Come.
Oh my God, I think that's a great question, please.
Can I have anything?
To do with anything you're blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
You know, well, I don't know anything that you got all over the place.
OK.
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Verse 2 with its love and light. God is love and God is light. We are not able to define or fully comprehend either love or light, but God manifests himself in light.
And in love to us and we can embrace him. Let's pray.
Our God and Father.
Thy being is transcendent and beyond our grasp, and yet thou hast come near.
In the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And declared thy heart, and declared thy love and light to us in that blessed person. And now this evening, as we take up the Scriptures, thy precious word.
00:05:12
To get instruction for us in these things, we pray that the Word of God would drive home to the heart and to the conscience, and that thy Spirit would reach out and to penetrate the wall of the flesh and the will. We ask these things now, our God and Father, in complete dependence upon thee, in the name of our Savior and thy Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
The Word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit joint and Marilyn's discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Forever, O God, thy Word is settled in heaven.
Forever. The Word of God is eternal.
The Word of God is transcendent. Oh God, thy word, the Word of God is unchanging. It's settled in heaven. We have then, one source of eternal, transcendent, unchanging truth at our disposal in our hand, the Word of God.
The word of God I have hidden my heart, that I might not sin against thee.
Being born again, not of corruptible seed.
But of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. What a tool.
We have no use coming here with the newspaper.
Or with a philosophy book.
Or even a history book. Or a math book. Or a science book.
The point at hand is the salvation of the soul.
Bing born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. So where do you start?
I said it's transcended. I announced the time before I started. Gave you a right to the second.
It's not a wind up. It could lose time, it could gain time. This would directly connect it to satellite and get it at Costco for 50 bucks.
It's handy to have you know exactly what time it is. I'll know right when to end.
I've got right here in my hand, and so do you in your lap, the word of God.
Thought we might go through it from the beginning to the end.
Very briefly cover a few high points.
To see what we can clean.
So if we're going to start at the beginning, that's Genesis chapter one and verse one.
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, or heavens and the earth.
That is a sublime statement.
An overarching statement as to the origin of all things.
In the beginning, whenever that was God.
Created the heavens and the earth and all that's in them.
He created them, heavens and the earth.
You will hear other stories.
Origin stories, perhaps at the university among your friends. I remember talking to one person, Patty and I head over for dinner one night back in Pensacola, and I began to talk to him about the Lord. He lived next door. He was a student going through the flight program. He said he didn't believe in God. I said well.
How do you propose everything came into being?
You said it's always been here and that's pretty much a scientific perspective, or at least had been. This was over 25 years ago that we had this conversation.
Since then, The Big Bang Theory has come into some popularity and level of acceptance in the scientific community.
They propose that perhaps in the neighborhood of 12 million years ago.
There was an explosion and here we are 12 billion years later for the universe, about 6 billion years, maybe 5 or 6 billion years for the Earth after it spun off, settled down, got itself situated, adjusted itself so that anthropically that is in all the.
00:10:05
Facets.
Of the Earth, its distance from the sun, its rotation around the axis, it's.
Its circuit around the sun.
The third one out. All of these things fit together perfectly to sustain life as we know it on this planet and nowhere else.
Well.
This is complex.
If they thought then that.
Through The Big Bang there was some extreme explosion of energy and matter. Beginning from a point of singularity where all the laws of nature breakdown. There was nothing there. It had a lot of the metaphysical naturalist, that is, those people who analyzed the whole show and from a godless perspective.
Said that metaphysically, that is the grand story of all physics.
Is purely naturalistic.
The Big Bang Theory came as a bit of a surprise to them and they weren't really in a hurry to accept it because they understood the ramifications that you don't get something from nothing.
And it's still true.
So you usually saw at that time a pair of parallel skid marks in the sand and that was the heels of these agnostics and atheists being drug up to this particular.
View of origin.
They have to deal with it, not to worry. If you want to be an atheist, you can find some reason for it. It doesn't have to make sense, You can go for it. A person isn't an atheist.
Because of the evidence, a person is an atheist because he doesn't want control, he doesn't want accountability.
He doesn't want to have to answer to God.
So the the convenient way out is the atheistic paradigm, way of thinking of things, way of describing it.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Well.
He looked at it, he saw that it was good. That's Genesis chapter one and verse one. Now, if we go to the end of the book of Genesis, you know, in the third chapter.
Man is introduced.
And he is to populate the earth.
And they did. But before they did anything, they disobeyed God.
And passed that same inclination on to their posterity. We call that the sin nature.
If you think that you are pure enough to stand before God.
In all that you have done or thought or think you will do, you're deceiving yourself and misrepresenting God. Because God is holy. God is love, but He's also light, and the light exposes everything.
Man will head for the darkness with his deeds, but God sees him there.
And fleshes him out there and will.
And all of those things will be brought back up.
As judgment soul, the gospel this evening, what to do?
What will you do with your sins?
If you perform enough good works, will you outwork your bad works and get maybe a level on the scale where you can negotiate with God over your good works that he should admit you?
God is holy and no sin comes into His presence.
The book of Genesis starts on such a fine note.
And we see God and his purposes.
To form a stage for man with whom he could have communion, with whom he met in the cool of the day.
When we come to the end of Genesis.
And Joseph died being 110 years old, and they embalmed him and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
It starts with such a fine scene in the Garden of Eden and ends in a coffin in Egypt. For the wages of sin is death, and all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death.
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Death. Death, no exception. Each one of us subject to that.
Well, the Scriptures tell us God's mind, and they tell it bluntly, with accuracy, yet tenderness and love and provision.
We've gotten clear through Genesis already.
We might go then to the middle verse of the Bible.
In songs.
118.
And let's see if we're making any progress.
Psalms 118, verse 8.
It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.
Is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in Princess, Man in his inventions, man with his legislators, his Princess.
We're thankful for government.
Bad government is better than no government at all.
Anarchy we wouldn't survive.
That is the desperate condition of our nature. Man cannot survive in anarchy. There has to be a government with a police force. There has to be a government with the military. There has to be a government to set the standards for the society.
And that's why it says that we are to obey the powers that be and we are to pray for the powers that be. That's what we're told to do, and we ought to be doing it.
There is no use appealing.
To a world council, to a United Nations, a League of Nations, an organization of countries to get together, to collaborate, to pursue a policy of peace. It's been tried.
But man is not a governable person.
That's the way we are. Loose cannons, every one of us.
So where there is no use.
Trusting and putting our confidence in man or in government to settle the whole issue so that we can live happily ever after without God.
We've got.
X number of thousands of years of history tucked under our belt. Man has been at war with man, neighbor against neighbor, nation against nation, over and over and over again.
How many wars has this country itself fought?
How many of them were an absolute necessity? Why do we do this?
Not Why do they do this? Why do we do this?
This is what lurks in our own heart.
Violence and corruption.
Is what typifies the show.
And it's not just this country, and it's not just Europe.
It's the whole world.
Well.
We'll go to the end of the Old Testament.
There we read.
I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
Another warning, another provision, because the great and dreadful day of the Lord is coming, and that's judgment.
This is a fact of life.
I had a roommate when I was carrier based in the Navy during Vietnam and his name was Ward, and Ward was from Glendive, Montana, Solo country town up there in eastern Montana. He was a country boy.
We got along real well.
We still correspond a bit. He lives down in Escondido area.
00:20:06
We were roommates over in the war in Vietnam. That's the war they had for my generation.
You younger ones get the Gulf War. You older ones had Korea. You really older ones had World War 2.
Everybody gets a shot at it.
Ward and I were sitting in the red in our our uh stateroom and the carrier USS Constellation.
And I said, ward, God is a fact of life and we have to deal with that.
He looked at me with this kind of puzzled look.
And you said?
Yeah.
He did, Lord got saved, doesn't take much bring him into the presence of God.
Hard wasn't antagonistic to it.
That thought went into his mind, burrowed down in his soul, came out with the response, yeah, He goes to a church down there in Escondido. It's a fundamental church. Patty and I had gone there before we were gathered. He's gone on with the Lord for these last 30 years or so since I had that conversation with him.
The pilot that I flew with.
Jeff Bradley. He lives down in Rancho Bernardo somewhere between.
Escondido in San Diego.
We flew together a lot, so we got to know each other pretty well.
He went to UUCLA or UC Berkeley, I've forgotten which. He called it the Little Red Schoolhouse.
And we would have conversations.
That mattered. We had some that didn't matter, but we had some that mattered.
And Jeff got saved and his wife got saved.
And they went to Berkeley and they got saved.
God is able.
I wasn't.
Clever.
It's just a word like God is, and we have to do with that.
And it sunk in.
And we have to do with it on his terms and we've got his terms. He's spoken to us. We don't have to make up the rules as we go along. It's not every man for himself.
Otherwise we wouldn't be having these meetings here. We have to have a reference point, the transcendent reference point when we're dealing with God. If he hasn't spoken, we're sunk. We don't know anything.
Well, what about man?
God sends the Prophet, He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
Blake, the Old Testament.
He gave them law.
They're in Exodus chapter 6. For Deuteronomy 6 you gave them Law 10 commandments. This do and live.
Marked out of special people for those particular instructions.
Weren't up to it. Favored people. God visited them. He led them. He guided them with the cloud by day, in the fire by night.
You would think.
That they would have obeyed for their own blessing.
We come to the end of the Old Testament.
And now God is going to send the promised Messiah to his own, and he came unto his own.
But his own received him not.
So as many as have received them to them gives you the power to become the children of God in relationship with God as children.
Not some.
Lone place within the veil, as the hymn goes, but in all the intimacy.
As children.
The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
The second man, the last Adam, Matthew chapter one and verse one, beginning immediately with the introduction of the one in whom now there is hope and restoration and a presentation back to God of all those things which He took not away, restoring all back to the Father in perfection.
00:25:25
Well.
Now because.
The man in whom God can have confidence.
The man who came to do his will.
Actually the Son of God who came and became a man.
To do the will of God.
Did it perfectly.
But was cast out.
Look at Matthew chapter 27.
I used to ask as a boy.
I grew up in a system that I don't think had a clear gospel.
What if they did? I didn't get it.
And I remember coming under conviction and exercise as a lad.
But it's not until I got into quite a bit of mischief and had to pay the price for that, because sewing involves reaping.
Reaping in tears.
That I came to Christ.
Years later.
One of the fellows that was the pastor at that at that time, years later.
At the little church where mom and Dad took us on Sunday, if uh, uh, the weather wasn't good enough to go snow skiing or water skiing in the summer, they would take us down there.
And there was a certain amount of conviction when you're brought into the presence of God. But without deliverance, with a clear gospel, you don't quite know what to do with it, and you're always in anguish. How am I doing?
It was just honest enough to know I wasn't doing very good and just dishonest enough not to pursue it and get to the bottom of it.
Years later.
I got saved when I was probably about 23, not too long before I met Patti.
There and going through flight school in Pensacola, got down on my knees one night.
After studies. Rigorous studies.
And I asked the Lord if He might have a help meet for me.
There was another fella in the, uh, class that I perceived to be a believer. I said, hey, Lee, where are you going to church now? Uh, we, we finished OCS and they would let us off on Sundays before that they would March us down to the Chapel and a Chapel had a podium like this that swiveled and on one of it was the Star of David. On the other side was a, a Catholic emblem and over here was a Protestant.
Side and they turn it depending on who was coming to the service at what time.
And.
The Protestant fellow there and on cruise, if you wanted to find him when we were in port, he would probably be bellied up to the bar having a drink. That was the first cruise. In the second cruise we had a different chaplain, but if you wanted to find them, you would probably find them in port, bellied up to the bar, having a drink. It's the same song, second verse, so we're pretty much on our own.
Well.
This fellow Lee.
That was in the same class program. I perceived him to be a believer and I said, Lee, where are you going to church? We were there in Pensacola at the time going through the flight program. He said I'm from Seattle. I went to school at Whitworth. I'm a Presbyterian. Uh, I'll go to the Presbyterian Church. I said, OK, I'll go with you.
So we went to the one down about five blocks from the Navy base gate there. It's the closest one.
And that's where I met Patty, and she'd been sitting in the pews there, saved as a young child. They preached a good gospel there. This was a conservative Presbyterian Church. It's one that didn't go in the modern route. So I was fortunate.
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Lee, where are you going? To church? What a vulnerable question. I didn't know.
And I heard the gospel there.
And I met Patty there, and she was sitting there growing up in high school and junior, sophomore or so, one of seven children all lined up there, alphabetical from left to right, top to bottom, according to size and the Pew about third back and listening to the preacher preach. And she's pondering, she's right in the middle of the family. She says, why do I go to school? And I have friends that are believers, and they're over there at the Baptist and they're over there at the UFC and so on.
And so on and so on.
Why is this but no answer?
So all her brothers and sisters are saved and still are, but they didn't ask those questions.
Didn't occur to him.
That was before I met her Lord. Would you have a help meet for me? I don't know if it's down the road.
That the Lord would bring the truth of the ground, the gathering before me. There is one body.
That He would settle me as to absolute truth in every category. It's not up for grabs. It's not a personal choice. It's not a preference issue. Neither is salvation. There is one Savior. There is one body. He brings us out. He brings us in to the company of believers. That's the way it should be.
Well.
We've gotten to Matthew, the introduction of the Lord, the last Adam, the 2nd man.
The Savior of sinners.
Come down to Revelation chapter 22.
We come to the end of the book.
Only took us 34 minutes.
The end of the book. How does it end? You ever go to a book and read the last page to see how it's going to end?
He which testified these things say surely I come quickly is not through.
With His purposes here, it's going to restore this and present it back to the Father in perfection. He's the one who restored that which He took, not away.
The man we read about back there in Genesis chapter 3 might say drop the ball.
Fumble it was never able to pick it up again.
God clothed him with coats of skins. It's a picture.
That we would be clothed with the righteousness of God in Christ.
He which testifies these things saith, Surely I come quickly. The answer is Even so come Lord Jesus.
The response is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Patty likes that verse. You all.
I like it too.
It's all of us that belong to him.
Otherwise, no.
Judgement.
Well, there is a trip in between.
MMM. But let me, before I tackle that, go to Matthew 27.
And I'm going to read from verse 39.
On down a few verses.
The Lord Jesus came into the world.
And went out by way of a cross.
Man put him there. God allowed it.
He died there for our sins.
He died for all that all may come.
But he died for the sins of many.
You're.
The category of the all he died for you. I can say that.
If you come to Him, you will have your sins forgiven, otherwise no, and you'll stand before God, an answer to Him for you every sin that you have ever done, and He has a record of it. And some of them may even surprise you because you probably don't keep a record of them. You would just as soon sweep them under the rug and hope nobody notices.
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Unless you belong to Him and then you're sensitive enough to confess them, and He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all righteousness. He isn't all the way home, Savior.
How can he save us?
I was in my early 20s once and I was designated to go down to Marysville from Chico, about 30 miles, and pick up a guest speaker for a banquet.
And my dad wanted me to do that, so I did. And this fellow was going to he's a believer. He's a retired Army general, I think. And so I drove down and picked him up and it's about a 40 minute drive back.
And he asked me. I knew it was coming. I was just cringing. No, it was knowing it was coming. Steve, are you saved?
I didn't want to get into that conversation, but I knew it was coming. I said no. I was about 22 at the time, 2122. Well, why not?
Well, I said, why is it that the Lord Jesus?
Came here and died. What does that mean? Why didn't he stay here? If we wanted to know what he had in mind for us and what we're to do, why, we could ask him. But he's not here.
What does it mean Jesus died for me? I didn't know the answer to that question.
Can you imagine that I did not know the answer to that question at 21 years old?
Having been raised in that little well, I won't mention the name of the denomination is just down the road from where I live.
So he explained to me.
That Jesus died to pay the penalty of sin. I said, oh, it was new to me. Imagine that.
How many people here 8/10/12 years old and know that already and I didn't at that age?
To me it was you wrap both hands around the Lord Jesus and hang on as long as you can, as hard as you can, and if you make it to the end, you'll be all right.
I know that's what they believe because the fellow, by the time I'm 35, I've moved back there. He used to come over and play tennis. He was the pastor down the road where I was brought up.
And I wanted to know why I didn't get it. Am I that dense? Well, possibly so.
But we finished a set of tennis and I said Ray, Ray is probably that time my 30s and he was probably at least 2025 years older than I am, said Ray. If somebody were to ask you what must I do to be saved, how would you answer him?
Yeah, see, he represented that little system there.
Went to their schooling and so on he goes.
If you abide to the end, you'll be saved.
That would be the answer I would get. That's what he said.
Well, I knew myself just well enough when I was in my early 20s that I wasn't up for that. But that's the gist of it. That's what I got when I was growing up and I wasn't hanging on and embracing very well.
So I just gave it up.
Until the Lord grabbed me by the lapel and had to start shaking me a bit to get my attention.
And then gave me the opportunity to hear a clear gospel. It's important. Christ died for our sins. You have a substitute at hand. He is available. He died for all. All may come.
He died for the sins of many. I've already mentioned this. If you don't receive Christ as Savior, you will die in your sins. That's what it says. Now I know a popular gospel goes around saying that he died and bore the sins of every man, woman, and child that ever lived at that occasion on Calvary's tree.
But that's not what Scripture says.
Indeed, he died for all.
And all may come.
You don't have to be Jewish.
Black and yellow, red and white, all are precious in his sight.
And there is no distinction.
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I want to look at Matthew 27 just a moment.
I said I would read you a few verses there.
I'll start at verse 39, Matthew 27. And they pass by. They that pass by reviled him, wagging their heads.
And saying, Thou that destroyeth the temple and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.
Likewise also the chief priests, mocking him with the scribes and elders, said He saved others himself. He cannot save if he be the King of Israel. Let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.
I want you to look at a verse in Nehemiah.
Chapter 6 Verse.
Three.
I'll read from verse two. Nehemiah 62 Sand ballot and Geshin sent unto me, saying, Come, let us meet together in some one of the villages in the plain of Ono. But they thought to do me mischief, and I sent messengers under them, saying, I am going doing a great work so that I cannot come down.
Why should the work cease?
Whilst I leave it and come down to you.
Again, our chapter in Matthew 27.
Let him now come down from the cross was their cry, and we will believe him. He trusted in God. Let him deliver him now, if he will have him, for he said, I am the Son of God. The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth. Now from the 6th.
Power. There was darkness over the land unto the 9th hour, and now we are getting the work of atonement.
In these hours of darkness and about the 9th hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice saying Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani. I don't think that was a cry for intelligence. That is to say, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He knew, He submitted, He went.
Willingly to the cross to redeem us. That was a cry of anguish.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He was forsaken of his God when He took our place on the cross to redeem us from our sins as God placed those sins upon Him.
And he bore them stripe upon stripe. Every single one.
We have a substitute.
We have a savior.
Come to the end again.
He which testified these things saith, Surely I come quickly, Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. It's He is in all the way home, Savior, a Savior to the uttermost.
I wasn't taught that as a youth.
Where I was, that is a most comforting truth of Scripture. Them that cometh to me I shall in no wise cast out. He loses none of his sheep. The doctrine of the truth of the security of the believer is, that the Lord does not lose any of his sheep.
Now you may come or you may not come. The lot is cast into your lap. The whole disposing of the matter is of the Lord. He is sovereign, but you are responsible. And the whole lot is now cast into your lap. And you cannot plead ignorance. You cannot plead innocence.
To whom much is committed, much is required. When I think of the gospel that went out last night, if you're still not saved, if you're still lost, if you're still digging in your heels, I don't know what I can say this evening.
I am not in competition with the gospel that went out last night. I am not trying to match with this is just another gospel going forth as scheduled.
With a.
Fella just on his knees asking the Lord for the words.
That they would reach home to the heart and to the conscience.
00:45:01
Bringing you up into the very presence of God and eternal issues.
God is.
And we have to deal with it.
And we have to deal with it on his terms.
Shall we sing #27?
And I'll read a few of them. My God, I have found the thrice blessed ground where life and where joy and true comfort abound.
Just found in the blood of him who once stood my refuge and safety, my surety with God. He bore on the tree the sentence from me.
Not for the other guy. Well, he did, but he bore it for me. And now both the surety and the debtor are free. Will begin at verse four of hymn #27.
All right, I'm explaining.
Your own? Yeah, that's fine. But I'm going to be uh-huh. Uh huh, man.
I'm like the boy.
And they're by myself. My father's not on the game. Can't find him. I'm not gonna hear you again before he's in the end of the evening when you're alive.
Umm.
Hallelujah.
Be with you all, Amen. So be it. Our God and Father, what a savior we have. What a privilege to bring him forth. An introduction to each one here. We know that many here have received them already. We pray for the young ones. Anyone that's come in never heard this before. Father, the eternal word, thy truth, thy provision, that they would wrap both arms.
The blessed Savior make him their own. We ask it Father, my precious name, Lord Jesus, Amen.