Gospel—Bob Thonney
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Or it is written.
As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.
So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
Let's sing #23 of the hymn sheet.
Behold, behold the Lamb of God.
On the cross for us. He shed his precious blood on the cross.
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On the ground, on the cross.
The horizon will help the world without me crying in the heart and I'm all so tired.
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First Peter, chapter 2.
I'm sorry, first Peter chapter one and verse 18.
For as much as you know that you are not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your Father's, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.
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Who, verily, was for ordained?
Before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.
Who by him do believe in God that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God, seeing you have purified your souls, and obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.
Being born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible.
By the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.
For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower of grass.
The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth forever.
And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you.
In this portion that we've read, we see two ways God is working. One way is for us, and that's redemption. And another way is in us. That's the new birth, being born again. God works for us and God works in US.
And I'd like to focus on those two things because they're extremely.
Important. Now, before I begin here, I really want to take a little bit of time to speak about the God we're talking about, because it seems to me in the world we're living in today, the true knowledge of God is fading. And man likes to be his own God. He likes to determine what he allows.
And he says when he says what he wants to do, he says don't judge me because I have my rights.
And if we're talking about Americans under the American Constitution, yes, I agree, there's rights.
But we're not talking about that tonight. We're talking about our relationship to God. And as we read at the beginning of this meeting, every one of us must give to of account of himself, to God. That is absolute. You cannot avoid that every single human being that has ever lived on this planet, whether he is now dead.
Or whether he still lives is going to come to the point of giving account of himself to God.
What kind of a God are we talking about? You know, Scripture tells us that God is light and that God is love. I mean this, this God that has created all things by the word of his power says in the very first verse of this Bible. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
God is in plural in that in the Hebrew text.
It can be a name, can be in singular, it can be in dual.
If there's two or, it can be in plural, and in that case it's God is in the plural.
Created is singular. There you have right in the very first.
Verse of the Bible the truth that God is a Trinity.
And so later on in the chapter it said, he says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Who's talking. It's God in the plenty, in the plenitude of his person being Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And God, as we were mentioning this afternoon in the Bible study, is eternal. He never had a beginning, He always was.
This is the revelation that we have in the Scriptures.
God is infinite in many ways and his power.
We say he has all power. We call him.
Omnipotent He is, Omniscient he is.
Knows everything. He knows what you're thinking right now. I can look at you and I can make a guess at what you're thinking, but He knows it, and He's omnipresent. In other words, He's present everywhere. He's right beside you right now, and He knows everything about you. Oh, it's amazing to think of this God and the power that he has.
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You know, I just got back tomorrow. It'll be two weeks that we got back from South America, but I always thoroughly enjoy the Andes of South America. Those of you who know something about the geography of the continent know that along the western coast there are two ranges of mountains called the Inner and the Outer Andes, and they run down through.
Columbia, Ecuador.
Peru, Bolivia, down into Argentina and Chile. And in Bolivia and in Peru between those two ranges is what they call the Alta Plano, the High Plains, which is that the altitude of 12,000 feet. Sometimes it gets up to 13,000 feet. This Alta Flannel. I just love standing there and seeing the vastness of it and those huge Andes sticking up.
Way off in the distance, way above the 12,000 feet mark.
And then I stopped back and I say.
Really, this planet is really nothing in the universe that we're talking about. We are a planet that is rotating around the sun, and the sun is approximately, they tell us, a million times larger than planet Earth.
But the sun, even though it is that large, is not one of the larger stars in the universe. There are much larger stars in the universe. In fact, we are part of a group of stars. It's called the Milky Way Galaxy. And if you ever get down to the High Plains of South American, get out in the.
Country areas away from the cities at night when there is no moon.
It is amazing the display of stars because you're up above a lot of the atmosphere. You can actually see other galaxies in the distance but with the naked eye. And they tell us that the Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light years across.
As the distances are so vast that they don't talk about miles, they talk about.
Light Years The light year is the distance that light traveling at 186,000 miles per second travels in one year.
And so the light that time it takes to get across our Galaxy is 100,000 years.
Just to give you an idea of the vastness we're talking about, the light that started to cross our Galaxy when Adam was placed in this world is not a tenth of the way across yet.
That's the vastness of the Milky Way Galaxy. But listen to this. One of the books I have about the universe says they calculate now that there are approximately 250 billion more galaxies in the universe.
How do you ever take that all in? I mean, we think we're so great.
Come on, take a look at the universe. There's somebody out there that is majorly more grand than we are. It's God, the God that is interested in you, the God that is light, and the God that is love. You know what? He knows every single thing about you. And you know what? He still loves you.
You guys, some of you knew me like some people do. You might not like me quite as much.
But God loves me even though he knows every single detail about me. Isn't that amazingly wonderful, This God, how did he make that universe? It says in Psalm 33, by the word of the Lord, where the heavens made.
He spake and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast. Isn't that amazing to think of the of the power released by the word of the Lord? He spoke it into existence.
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In his ways he put man in this world and we know the story of how man got into sin. He sinned. He did what God told him not to do.
That's the world we live in, and sin wrecks things we were hearing last night about how awful sin is. It wrecks people, it wrecks families. It wrecks nations.
And yet people don't seem to recognize people like to justify their sin.
I saw in the news, I don't know if it was today or yesterday, of a Church of England Bishop who defends his being gay.
He says that's who I am. I say you are just exactly right. You are a Sinner just like the rest of us.
But God, defend your sin. Repent of it.
Somebody is going to come up and say I like to murder people, you should let me have my rights to murder people. Are you going to allow that too? I don't know. People have just lost their moral bearings and it's awful where this country is headed. I should say this world is headed because it's not only in this country.
This problem but God.
Is not mocked.
Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. You cannot get away from the fact that sin brings death.
It's an awful thing, but it's the truth of the word of God and it's the truth in the world we live in. When God made man in the beginning, Adam the 1St man lived up to 930 years old.
Whatever happened to us?
Well, sin wrecks things, wrecks your health, it wrecks your life, it wrecks families. Again, I say it's an awful thing and God takes sin seriously. There's no way he's going to countenance it because he loves you too much to countenance it and to let that run without any brakes on it.
Is not love. People say oh if God is a God of love, he won't judge people.
Come on, He will judge because he loves. He's not going to allow sin and it's destroying effects to continue without any end in this world. And that's where we come to our portion here in verse 18 of this chapter we read it talks about being redeemed, not with corruptible things as silver and gold.
But with the precious blood of Christ, you know who?
It is that went and paid the price of our redemption. It was the same God who created the whole universe. He came into this world as a little baby. He was born to a woman who was a virgin because it was important that he be without sin if he was going to answer to God for your sins and mine.
And he grew up in his life.
He never sinned, absolutely never sinned. He is the one that came to the end of his 33 1/2 years and he was called into the presence of the chief priests, the religious authorities of those days. You know what they did to him. One of those chief priests that tells about it in Matthew's Gospel came up and spit square in his face.
I mean, I've had people spit at me, but I've never had anybody come up and spit right in my face.
Awful insult. What happened? You know he had the power to completely dissolve the whole universe at that moment. He stood there and took it.
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Why? Because there was no other way for you and I to be saved than for him to take it.
And he went to the cross. You know, the story that I love to tell about it because it's such a tremendously wonderful.
Thing to think about the creator of the universe being the one that went to that cross to hang there to rescue a rebel center like myself.
They stretched out his hands. They nailed him to his the cross. His head was crowned with thorns. His face was disfigured. His back was bleeding with the Roman scourge.
And there he hung.
You know, the physical suffering is hard to imagine. I can't imagine it, but.
It was not only the physical suffering, there was the suffering of his soul, the reproach that broke his heart. You know, it's hard enough to suffer physically, but a broken heart is even worse to suffer. He said. They said if he said he's the Son of God, let God deliver him.
Be delighted in him.
Did God deliver him?
God just let him hang.
And at 12 noon.
The sun got dark and for three hours.
Complete silence.
On that hill, Calvary, outside of Jerusalem.
What happened in those three hours? The question of sin had to be settled before God, and according to God's righteous standards cannot be according to any human standard.
And then those three hours, God laid on him the iniquity of us all.
And God emptied his righteous judgment on the head of his own.
You love it, son.
For three hours, suffering that judgment.
Without any complaint, at the end of those three hours we have on the record of Scripture, he cried. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? God forsaken in the most awful moment of me? Why did he do that? You know why? Because he didn't want to forsake you in the lake of fire forever.
That was the only way it could happen.
God's righteous character had to be vindicated when Jesus paid the price.
On the cross, his righteous character was fully vindicated so that he is not compromised when he extends forgiveness of sins to the guilty Sinner. There is no other way that a person could be saved after he died because he gave up his life, said it is finished, and he bowed his head and died.
A soldier came with a spear and.
Put it into his side, and out flowed blood and water. You know the Lord Jesus had many wounds in his body, on his back, on his head, His hands, His feet.
Scripture never speaks of any of the blood that came out of those wounds. It only speaks of the blood that came out of one wound, the wound in his side. Why? Because that showed there was no more life in that battered body.
He gave it up for you and me. He loves us that much.
We are not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold. We think of silver and gold as non corruptible, but they are corruptible in comparison with the value of the precious blood of Christ.
Some of you may have heard of a Inca ruler in South America. His name was Atawalpa.
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In Peru.
And when the Spanish came in.
At the Wawa gave orders not to attack the Spanish because they were mounted on horses and he thought they were some kind of demigod. So he let them come in and they conquered the Inca empire quite easily.
But they took Atawapa captive and Atawalpa and communicating with the Spaniards.
Offered a ransom if they would let him go.
It's quite a large room. I don't know exactly the dimensions of the room he was in.
And he was quite a large man and he reached up on the wall up to the point he could reach on the wall. He said to the Spanish, I will fill this room once with gold and twice with silver if you let me go. Well, they were interested in that kind of thing. And so they said, OK.
And he gave the commandment to his subjects in Peru to do that, to bring gold and silver.
And they did it. They filled it once with gold and twice with silver. You know what happened after that?
They strangled him to death.
It wasn't enough rents.
You know what it took to ransom your soul and mine?
Look at him.
Dead on that cross, the blood flowing from his side. That's what it took to ransom me. Do you understand the gratitude I feel in my heart to him for pain, My redemption with His precious blood.
Tremendous. It'll Lord help us. We're believers.
Never to forget the awfulness of the cost that was paid.
With the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb, without blemish, without spot.
Dull blemishes on that lamb. No spots. He was foreordained before the foundation of the world.
Manifest in these last times for you. Yes, this was God's eternal purpose to redeem lost mankind.
Way back before there was any creation in existence.
Only God, in the fullness of His purpose and his eternal counsels and his eternal counsels, he knew what mankind was going to do. And there the ver the blessed Son of God, in the bosom of the Father, said, Father, I will go, I will accomplish. So He was ordained for, ordained before the foundation of the world.
But manifest in these last times for you.
Then it says in verse 21, who by him do believe in God that raised him up from the dead.
And gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God.
His death did not end at the third day. They came to the tomb, and they found that the Angel of the Lord had pushed that stone that covered the mouth of the tomb to one side. He did not push it to one side to let Jesus out. He pushed it to one side to let everybody see that Jesus was no longer there.
He had risen, He had left those grave clothes, He had vacated them. He rose again in the power of an endless life. Wonderful, wonderful truth. That's the life that he offers Each true believer in the Lord Jesus is called eternal life. It's a life that is incorruptible, immortal. That's the life I now possess because of my faith in.
Jesus, wonderful, wonderful truth.
I have a life that can never, ever die. Oh yes, this body might die, but the life I have in this body is a life that can never die. That's the truth of the word of God. So he was raised again and now we come down to verse 23, says Dean.
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Born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. Again I say redemption. What we spoke of, first of all, is something that God has done for us. Whether you accept it or not, it's done and it's done for us.
But there's something else that is necessary if you're going to enjoy salvation.
It's new birth, it's being born again, Jesus said to Nicodemus, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye be born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.
It's extremely important at this point of being born again. What does it mean to be born again? Some people think it is just kind of turning over a new life, new leaf in your life and.
Start straighten yourself up. That's not it at all.
It's God communicating by His word a new life to those that hear. Today we were talking about how it says a number of times in the Gospels. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Book of Revelation that says. He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear.
And I understand if you don't like listening to me. I don't have a problem if you wanna walk out on me.
But I want to ask you.
When God speaks, please listen for the good of your own soul. Listen because it's true. That means through His Word that He communicates new life to me. It is so amazingly wonderful to see it happen sometimes in souls.
Just got the word since I'm back from South America from my sister in Argentina who has her son.
In Chile and he has a business of.
Uh, deep sea diving on the coast of Chile. Quite interesting.
Our sisters often given him the gospel. I've met him too, and spoken something of the gospel to him that you know how it is. Often with young people, they listen a little bit, OK, OK, they go off.
The other day he had a client that came to do some diving.
And later on in the evening, after his time there, he called this young man up and says I'd like to come over tomorrow morning to talk to you.
And so he came over the next morning and said to this young man, his name is Arturo.
Arturo, I want you to know I'm a very successful businessman. I have everything I could possibly want. But you know what? That is not going to ever satisfy your heart and your soul. What you need is Jesus. And he reached over and he took him by the hand, and he prayed for him.
Arturo is a changed man now. Not through any.
Persuasive effort, but simply the word of God penetrated his heart. To me, it is the most beautiful thing to see.
You know, it's not something that's forced sometimes. Give the illustrations so people can understand a little better. We have a nature, like it says here in verse 23, that is corruptible. We are born into this world by corruptible seed. That's why I've got Gray hairs on my head. That's why my knee hurts sometimes.
That's why sometimes I get a cough or a cold.
Because I'm corruptible.
And you know, when young people are young, it's just like it says here, that all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. I see you young people. Wow. Good looking people. Good looking young guys. Pretty girls too. How long is that gonna last? Put on 50 years. And what are you gonna look like then?
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I think it's gonna be quite a bit different.
That I must say I I can't believe I'm up to where I am right now.
You know, they're a little girl that said she was 7 here this morning in the Sunday school. I was seven when I asked the Lord to save me.
That was 65 years ago.
And you know, I never regretted doing that. But when you accept the Lord, I mean truly accept Him, not just an outward conformity.
There is something that takes place.
A person is born again by the word of God. The word gets in. That's what does it.
Tell you another story that happened in Bolivia years ago. There was a man, maybe I've told this story before, but it was impressive to me who I got to know at his mechanic shop he used to repair my Jeep, my Toyota Land Cruiser, and.
One day I said to him, umm, I settled accounts with you, Alfonso.
But just remember, we have an account to settle with God.
And he said to me, oh, we're pretty good people, Roberto, he called me. We're pretty good people. We're not that bad. I said, well, you can talk for yourself, but you can't talk for me. I'm not a good person. I've been pretty bad.
Well, I'm not that good either, he said. And so I left him a New Testament to read. And he said, you know, sometime after he said that book, you left me. I, I can't understand. That doesn't make any sense to me. Why don't you come over to my house?
And explain it to me. So one evening we went over there and I decided we start with John's gospel. And we got down to verse 4 where it says in him was life and the life was the light of men.
So I said to him, Alfonso, what is light? You know, He never answered me. He just looked at me the longest time. But it seemed to me that that moment the word entered into his heart. I don't know for sure because we don't really know that when God makes His word penetrate, but it was sometime after that.
When I visited his shop again, he said, You know that book you gave me?
I understand it now, it makes sense now. What happened?
He was born again by the word of God. Oh, it's so precious, this that lives and abides forever. Everything down here is temporary.
I was gonna give you an illustration of, uh, an animal that we all know pretty well.
A pig. You know what a pig likes?
A pig is enjoys himself if he can wallow in the mud, especially if it's a nice hot, nice hot day. There he is wallowing them out. Why does he do that?
That's his nature.
And so when the mother pig has her little piglets, try to teach them not to go to the mud.
You gonna do anything? Is it gonna have any effect? Absolutely no effect. Why? Because that's the nature. They were born with that nature, and they're gonna go wallow in the mud.
Let's pull one of those pigs out of the mud and let's brush them down real good and.
Get them all nice and clean. Besides that, we're going to tie them up and tie them to this post over here so he doesn't go out into the mud anymore. Have we changed that pig?
We changed him on the outside, but we haven't changed him in the inside. And when he gets loose, right back to the mud again. You know, people are born with a sin nature. Every one of us are born with a nature that wants to sin. God says don't do it, said I want to do it. God says do it and he said no, I don't want to.
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Contrary to God, that's the nature we have. That's called the sin nature.
So this pig is gonna go back to the mud, and this man, even though he might dress up with a nice white shirt and tie and nice jacket, it's all outward. When he gets the chance, it's gonna be back to the sin again, whatever way it is expressed in that particular person.
What he needs is a complete change of nature. We could take that pig. It's impossible, but we're gonna say it's possible. We're gonna do an operation and put him out, and we're gonna operate and we're gonna put into that pig, uh, sheep's nature. You know, a sheep likes the green grass and where it's nice and clean.
And if it doesn't watch it, it might fall into the mud if it's not, if it gets too close to the mud hole.
But even in the mud, you're gonna see that sheep is not happy. That's not its nature to be wallowing in the mud. So we're gonna put this sheep nature into this pig now we're going to close them up and we're gonna bring them back to consciousness. Let them go. Now, is it gonna go off to the mud? No. Why not?
Because he has a different nature.
And it's important that you understand it's not somebody standing over you religiously saying, hey, if you step out of line, I'm going to whack you. That's not it.
It's God giving a new life that wants to please him, that wants to do what's right, that delights in the law of God after the inward man, wonderful truth of the new birth. This is what God wants to do for you. That's the work he does in US. The one work is what He does for us. Redemption.
But this is the work that He does in us. The new birth, the word of the Lord endureth forever. I'm going to read that verse 24 again. All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of men as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof felleth away, but the word of the Lord.
Endureth forever, and this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you.
It's not so much what I have to say about this word. It's the word itself. In fact, sometimes I think what I say might be a hindrance. Maybe it's a help, but it could be a hindrance too. It's the word itself that has to get into your soul. That's why I say if you want to ignore me, that's all right.
But please, I plead with you, don't ignore what God has to say.
God wants to give you a brand new life, a life that wants to please Him. And I live now not because of some brother or sister keeping track of where I go or what I do.
But because I have a life that wants to please him, Oh, it's wonderful liberty to be a Christian.
Sense of the word. So that's the gospel that we preach, the work of God for us in redemption, the work of God in US in communicating new life through His precious Word. I want to encourage those of you who are Christians.
What our brother ended his meeting his Sunday school with this morning.
To encourage you to read the scriptures. You know, sometimes people say I just don't have very much faith.
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How can I get more faith?
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. If you want more faith.
Listen to God's Word and I.
I can't encourage you enough. I remember a young brother in another area that it was evident he really, truly had experienced the new birth. And you know, he was so hungry for the scriptures, he would be sitting on his bed for an hour, sometimes an hour and a half reading the word of God. I went by sometimes.
His bedroom and I saw him in there. Nobody was in there forcing him. Hey, you got to read the Bible.
Nobody. It was the hunger he had in his own soul. Oh, the blessing that it is when that takes place. So I encourage you young people, older ones, to to take time to read the scriptures. You know how much time it takes to read a chapter.
It doesn't really take that much time. 5 minutes, a longer chapter. When it's a shorter chapter, two or three minutes. Is that too much time for you? Come on, you take more time eating your breakfast, your lunch and your dinner than that. And your soul is far, far more important than your body.
I ask you to take time to feed your soul.
You're gonna find it a tremendous blessing just to get the book open and to read it.
Just wanted to say before we close our meeting this evening that we are living in serious times. Our country is going downhill, morally speaking, very evident in so many areas and it's a matter of time when I expect there will be total collapse in this country.
Because there's no respect for God.
Or for the moral issues that we have in the Word of God.
We could talk about other areas like economics, which is in pretty bad shape, but we won't do that. But God speaks of upcoming time when we are going to stand and give an account to God that is without exception, people who are.
Who die and are buried are going to be raised from the dead.
Every.
Single cemetery on planet Earth is going to be completely emptied of all its bones.
Because they're going to be raised to give an account to God. There is ultimate accountability with God.
People seem to get away with things.
You know, we go to a prison to preach the gospel on Saturdays, and it's interesting to hear some of those men and.
They are pretty astute, some of them, what they do.
But sometimes they get off with stuff. But ultimately nobody gets off with anything, Anything. You're going to have to give an account to every act you have ever done, every word you have ever spoken, every thought you have ever entertained. You will stand before God to give an account. That's the truth of the Scripture. The books will be opened.
And the dead, it says, are judged by those things written in the books.
It's gonna be a terrifying experience for people who don't know the Lord is their savior.
I plead with you tonight, if you are still not settled in your soul, as to where you stand with God, to stop and to think and to repent of your sins and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh, how important it is. Judgment is coming on this world and there is no other escape but in the precious blood of Christ, the one who died for our eternal redemption.