...of the Bible, the whosoever wills of the
Bible.
Now somebody came to me after service last
evening, and they didn't get my subject right.
They thought I was going to preach on
the fact that the scriptures teach that whosoever
will may come to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I said, no, no, I'm not going to
do that, for the scriptures do not talk
in that kind of language.
No, I want to say three things from
the scripture here tonight, three things that describe
the whosoever wills of the word of God.
Did you get what I said a minute
ago?
I think it is terribly important that we
not make the Bible say what it does
not say.
That's just as bad as making it say
less than it says, isn't it?
Add to the Bible.
For instance, last night, after doing my best
to confine ourselves to what the scripture actually
teaches about what they call predestination, it still
wasn't clear.
And somebody wanted to know if the Bible
actually told that God predestined some to be
damned, even though they wanted it to say.
It is amazing how Satan has crowded our
thinking and how we need to be a
little scrupulous, almost to the point of just
being too scrupulous to see to it that
we stick closely to what the Bible actually
says, not what somebody says it says, but
what the Bible actually says.
For instance, have you heard it said that
the Bible says that whosoever will may come
to Christ?
Have you ever heard that?
You have, haven't you?
But the Bible don't say that.
Now, that is the truth.
That's so what the Bible don't say.
That's so whosoever will may come to Christ.
But the Bible don't use that kind of
language.
Do you get it?
It just don't do it.
I've had people say, Brother Barnum, the Bible
says whosoever will may come.
I say, no it don't.
Well, you say, Brother Barnum, you're straining the
gnat and swallowing the camel.
I'm insisting these days that with so much
controversy and much difference of opinion, and we're
all trying to find out the truth, that
we just confine ourselves to Bible language.
If the Bible says a thing, let's say
it and be able to quote it.
But let's not coin an expression of ourselves,
a form, a pattern, a theology of ourselves,
in dealing with our own hearts or somebody
else, and make the Bible say what it
does not say.
Now, what does the Bible say?
Verse 17, this is what the Bible says.
And the spirit and the bride say come.
And let him that heareth say come.
And let him that is athirst come.
And whosoever will, let him take the water
of life fully.
Now, of course, this is the verse from
which we get what we hear down our
way a lot, the wonderful whosoever will gospel.
But this is what this passage teaches, that
is what the Bible teaches.
Tomorrow night we're going to try to show
you.
The most pessimistic text in the Bible is
he will not come unto me.
If it's left up to men, who will
come?
Nobody.
And that verse, John 5, 40, slams the
door and damns every human being this side
of heaven or hell.
Because if that's all there is to it,
nobody will come.
Nobody.
If I left home most of these 39
years and lived in a suitcase, slept on
different beds and ate different kinds of food
all these years, and had nothing else to
preach than a little emptiness of going up
and down the line with some confidence in
people, that they were nice folks and had
handled the right way, they'd respond in the
right way, I'd be a fool.
But what keeps you creeping on is that
you do not go preaching a whosoever will
gospel, but you go preaching the gospel of
God concerning his Son, the hearing of which
men and women, some of them, are given
faith to believe.
And our confidence is in God.
We go each place we go remembering that
the Spirit of God will have to tell,
even a man has sound in truth and
is sound in the warfare.
As the apostle Paul, he said, Now, don't
be afraid, Paul, going over there.
I have much people in that city.
Isn't that a wonderful expression?
I have much people over there.
Your labor will not be in vain.
There are some people over there that are
going to hear the gospel and actually be
able to hear it and close with it
and savingly believe in the one of whom
the gospel speaks.
Now, that's our encouragement.
Now, that'll do when you're not getting results,
and it'll do when you are.
And that I wouldn't take a million dollars
for.
Now, having labored the point that I'm not
talking about the whosoever will gospel tonight, I
want us to notice three things that this
verse of scripture says about the whosoever will.
Whosoever will, let him take the water of
life free.
In the first place, the whosoever wills of
the word of God are men and women
who thirst for sovereign, divine grace from God.
Whoso is athirst, let him come.
Whoso is athirst.
That's the first thing about a whosoever will.
I tell you who will take of the
water of life freely, the fellow that's thirsty
for the work of God's divine grace in
his heart and in his soul.
The invitation is to thirst the people.
The instruction to thirst the people is to
take.
But the invitation to thirst the people is
to come to the Lord Jesus, to come
to the fountain of sovereign grace.
Now, this grace that I'm talking about now,
this water that men are to take freely,
we're not left up to our own conjecture
as to what it is.
The first two verses of this last chapter
of the Bible tell us that this thirst
for sovereign grace, for the water of life,
that this water of life is defined in
verses 1 and 2, that it flows from
the throne of God.
He showed me verse 1.
A pure river of water of life, clear
as crystal.
Where does it come from?
Proceeding out of the throne of God and
of the Lamb.
That's where God's grace comes from, from his
wonderful throne.
The throne of God and the water hung
on a cross.
Here is a river full of water, and
the water is full of life, and it
flows from the throne of God.
Yet they're scared for a break, and then
a break, and a keep-on-breaking of
this water that flows in a river out
of the very throne of God, whoso with
thirst let him come.
Here is the water of life.
It's flowing.
It's deep as the heart of God.
It's wide as the arms of the cross.
That's plenty of it to spare.
The scriptures will say that God, who is
our, our, sweet, rich in mercy.
You probably wouldn't exhaust it if you drank
of it every day.
That's plenty to spare.
It's for the healing of the nations, this
water of life.
That's what the grace of God is pictured
as being here.
Here it is.
It's proceeding out of the throne of God
and of the Lamb.
In the midst of the street of it,
on either side of the river, there is
a tree of life which bears twelve manner
of fruits, and yieldeth her fruit every month,
and the leaves of the tree were for
the healing of the nations.
This water of life, then, that people are
bidden to take if they're willing.
And who's willing?
People who are thirsty.
This river, thank God, not just a stream,
I've tried to exhaust some of the meaning
of Paul's expression, but God, who is rich
in mercy.
But God, who is rich in mercy.
What a wealthy he is.
Plenty and to spare.
He's this rich, there's just one verse of
scripture that this little preacher knows about to
kind of define how rich God is.
I'll tell you one thing the Bible says,
he's this rich.
He's rich unto all who call on him.
If every human being in the world, from
Adam down to right now, would call on
God and ask for this water that flows
from the throne, he still has plenty of
water to spare.
It wouldn't exhaust.
He's rich unto any and all who call
on him.
God's throne from which sovereign grace flows.
Now, we need to camp here just a
little while.
You thirsty?
All right.
You thirsty enough to be willing?
You still want a harvester?
Or if the water was offered to you,
you ready to take it?
Ask the whosoever will.
They're thirsty.
Whosoever thirsts.
Now, we must be planted beside this river
of life, in this life.
Here's where the rub comes.
Our roots must be put down into that
stream like trees in an arid land, thirsty
for water.
And that must happen in the here and
the now.
I tried to show you last night that
the reason the doctrine of teaching of predestination
is so false and so hated and so
caricatured is not that men are ignorant of
the heart of it, but they actually know.
They won't admit that they understand what it
means.
They hate it.
They try to get rid of it because
it's the heart of the gospel and it
means that salvation is a thing of holiness
and that man's being saved in proportion as
the character of Christ is being reproduced in
him.
Now, with the present temper in the churches
in our north and south, we can't possibly
have a gospel that leads to men's holiness.
That just won't square with what we want
today, and so these truths are so hated.
I have come to believe they're hated because
men do understand them.
They say all manner of foolish things about
them, but they've been exposed to them.
They understand that salvation is the making of
a man holy.
That's exactly what it is.
We can't have this Sunday morning stuff we
call Christianity America and keep these doctrines so
that's all now.
You can't have what we have down south,
and you know better up here, called Christianity,
giving things up lip service to a doctrine
that talks about what salvation is.
It's making men and women to be conformed
to the image of God's dear son.
And what I'm talking about tonight is thirst.
Thirst for sovereign grace.
What does that mean?
Thirst.
Intense need.
There'd be anything on earth, doctors will tell
us, as intense as a man's desire for
water when he's thirsty.
It's the most intense of all of the
needs of the human body.
You can do without food and a thousand
other things, but you've got to have water.
You've got to have water.
And I've never experienced it, and I doubt
you have.
Only one time I had tomane poison, and
they wouldn't give me any water for a
day or two.
And I convince you, if God saved me
now, I would have sold my soul for
a drink of water.
I would have.
If I'd have had a chance, I'd have
bought a glass of water with my eternal
soul.
That's how intense it was.
Now, you get intense about this business of
wanting divine grace to flow from God into
your soul.
Of wanting those things that can only come
to you as a gift from the hand
of him who does so utterly in grace.
Forgiveness is here.
You've either got to work it out, or
it must be given to you to become
intense and desire in this life the forgiveness
of sins and the planting of the germ
of holiness within you.
Whosoever thirsts, whosoever thirsts, let him come.
Let him come.
Not all men, or not whosoever wills of
this type, are they.
You see?
For all men not thirsty for God's grace
to do for them.
And nobody would want God's grace to do
anything for them until they were acutely sensitive
of their ill-deserved and their ability to
work out their own salvation.
All men are not whosoever wills.
Now, the invitation, of course.
Whosoever thirsts, it's just as wide as you
want to make it.
Are you that stiff?
Well, it's big enough to take you in.
You're not that stiff, it leaves you out,
but by your choice.
By your choice.
Is that fair?
Whosoever thirsts, I will not widen it any
more than that.
I challenge you, there isn't an invitation in
the Bible that's any wider than that.
You hungry?
There's bread for hungry people.
You're not hungry?
No bread offered you, but you make the
decision yourself.
You say, I don't need forgiveness.
I don't want to be holy.
I don't desire the work of God's grace.
And the Son of Dead sure do that.
And the Son of Dead sure does that.
And you invite yourself out.
You say, excuse me, please.
You're not talking to me.
But if by God's grace you say that's
talking to you, I'm thirsty.
I have a keen sense of my need.
I'd love to be planted by the side
of this river with the privilege of drinking
it.
Come unto me, says the Lord, if you're
thirsty.
And do what?
Drink.
Just keep on drinking.
And just keep on drinking.
Now, if men were invited to money, or
the love of sin, or the enticements of
the world, it would be a different story.
But not all are whosoever wills when invited
to partake of God's grace.
And so we insist that before men will
thirst for God's divine work in their soul,
two things ought to happen.
First, they have to have a desire.
It's got to come from somewhere.
I invite you to work it up yourself
if you think you can.
If you think you can, I invite you
to prostrate yourself before God's truth and cry
out at God to open your heart and
the eyes of your understanding.
Give to your ear a hearing.
Act to the gospel that you might attend
on the things of eternity in your soul.
Either a man can do it himself or
he needs somebody to give him that which
he cannot do.
And up till now, nobody's ever been able
to change his spots and change his nature.
And unless God works the work of divine
grace in your soul, you'll never be thirsty
for God's grace to come your way.
And that's the reason I say that salvation
is in the way of seeking, seeking him
until he does for you what only God
can do.
A desire must be worked in you.
You can't do it yourself.
You can cry out at God to do
it in you.
And a trust in that grace.
Men do not thirst for God's power in
their life as long as they trust in
their own.
And you will never, now hear me, you
will never turn yourself over to Christ until
you've got confidence in him, in his power.
You haven't got any, but that's still your
hypothesis.
Faith is a confidence.
Faith is confidence.
Faith is what?
Confidence.
If I turn myself over to Christ, will
everything be all right?
Faith says yes.
Faith is confidence.
Yes sir.
I don't have any power.
He has.
I can't do it.
He can.
Faith is confidence.
Who are they?
Whosoever will.
Number one, they're the ones who thirst.
They're the ones who thirst.
Whosoever wills.
In the second place, they're the ones who
take.
They're the ones who take.
Whosoever will, let him take the water of
life freely.
Thirst the people.
When offered water, what do they do?
They'll take it.
All the alibis are gone.
They'll take it.
They thirst it.
There's water.
They take it.
They don't sit and watch the stream go
by.
They take it.
Let him take it.
He's invited to take.
He's commanded to take.
And the whosoever wills do, brother.
Thirst the people.
Take water.
When it's asked for the taking.
The second thing the Bible says about the
whosoever wills, they're the folks that take of
the grace of God.
You know, there's an active principle in that
faith which lines us up or unites us
with or relates us to the throne of
God from which this grace fall, or proclaim.
What is it?
Hear it.
It's a calling upon the name of the
Lord.
It's a calling upon the name of the
Lord.
That's what is the active part of saving
faith.
The whosoever wills of the Bible are not
the folks who end their strength, you know.
They do part of it and God does
the other, like we've heard.
But they're the thirsty ones and they're thirsty
enough to take.
They lay hold.
Now, I've been preaching for 39 years and
I still don't know how to handle the
great paradoxes of the Bible so I don't
try to.
I know this.
That faith is the great vital act of
the soul in action of thee and all
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I know that it's a gift of God
but I also know that it's your act
and there comes a time if you keep
out of hell and if you gain some
assurance of hell when there's a great vital
act of your very own you reach out
and do what this text states.
You take.
You're explaining that?
No, I can't explain it.
I can't explain it.
But I will tell you this, that God's
not going to act for you.
He enables you but he will not save
for you.
You're going to have to reach out and
lay hold of Christ.
Is that all right?
Yes.
But whosoever will to the Bible let him
reach out and begin that thing that I
call the active principle of saving faith.
What is it?
It's a calling upon the name of the
Lord.
Now I'm not talking so much about what
we call a mourner's bench.
I have no particular objection.
I don't want to get in a straitjacket.
The only thing with me is I go
to a place and it's different everywhere you
go.
I go to different sections of the country.
I go to different atmospheres.
There's a way we do things here and
that's what's going to act with me.
As long as you don't tell me I've
got to do it that way.
In other words, I can see how God
would bless you and your dumbness if he
does me some.
Just so you don't say that's the only
way he works.
See what I mean?
Huh?
That's the only way he works.
And by the way, you can't get saved
unless you do it this way.
Now we just manage.
We just manage.
We just...
So I'm not talking about as such.
Although it's a lot better than nothing.
It's better than nothing.
I tell you what, I'm talking about a
mourner's bench in your heart.
I'm talking about an expression that describes the
child of God in his birth and in
his daily growth and walk.
It's a calling on the name of the
Lord.
It's not a once-for-all proposition.
I'm as certain as I'm alive and will
speak the truth now.
Everything in relation to your response to and
commitment to Jesus Christ needs to be done
over again tomorrow.
Every commitment.
You need to do it again tomorrow.
Every act of the Christian life must be
daily.
The Bible knows nothing.
The Bible repents for yesterday without today or
believing yesterday and not believing today and clinging
to Christ yesterday but not clinging to him
today.
Every expression in the New Testament where people
are said to have eternal life or everlasting
life is in connection with a word that's
in the present participle case.
It's he that believeth, he that continueth, he
that abideth, he that obeyeth, and so forth
and so on.
It's a proposition of today.
I made this statement.
I think I'm right.
You can have no assurance that you're a
child of God if you have to go
back to yesterday for evidence.
You don't have evidence today.
You don't have assurance today.
Is that all right?
Do you believe in it now?
Well, I did yesterday.
How about now?
You're believing yesterday.
How about today?
It's a present proposition.
It's a present tense proposition.
You must be up to date in it.
Every commitment needs to be recommitted.
Every vow needs to be revowed.
Repentance needs to be repeated.
Prayers need to be repeated.
Faith needs to be continuous.
What am I talking about?
One of the three things that Scripture says
about the whosoever wills of the Bible is
they take.
They take.
Whosoever will, let him take of the water
of life.
Praise.
What's taking?
I don't know, but what the best Bible
language for it is a calling on the
name of the Lord.
Now, this continuous calling Now, hear me, as
I make a hard statement.
This continuous calling characterized those who really believe
in sovereign grace.
The secret, unceasing calling out of the resources
of one heart is the mark of a
child of God.
Did you get it?
This unceasing, this continuous inside, in the secrets
of your heart calling on, calling on, calling
on the name of the Lord.
That's the mark of a child of God
and the lack of it is the mark
of a man who believes but his faith
is the same kind that James spoke of.
It's a dead faith.
It produces no work.
For the believing child of God begins his
work by a calling unceasingly on the name
of the Lord.
Now, by now, I've taught it all my
life.
We take the expression Romans 10, 13, Whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved.
And so they said, Brother Bond, that means
this.
You get folks to come down the aisle
and get down on their knees and get
them to say, Lord, save me!
For Jesus' sake, amen.
And they began to hear salvation.
But that isn't what this scripture is talking
about.
This is an incessant, this is a lifelong,
this is an unceasing, this is continual calling
upon, reaching out to, leaning upon, confidence in,
surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I know what I'm doing.
Whosoever shall call, whosoever shall call, that marks
him.
He's a caller.
That's the mark of a child of God.
He's going to be full of people.
They got down on their knees, said a
little prayer.
Somebody said, Now let's get it.
You're not saved by prayer, but you're not
saved apart from it.
For blessed God, this sovereign grace I'm talking
about, will bring you prostrate before the Lord
on your face, calling on the name of
the Lord.
Let me repeat it.
You're not saved by prayer, you're saved by
faith, but you're not saved apart from prayer.
Brother, this thing will get serious.
There's a calling on the name of the
Lord.
Somebody says, get down on your knees, Mr.
Spurgeon.
I've rarely ever prayed on his knees.
Right.
He never prayed with his eyes closed.
Maybe sometime in the pulpit.
He didn't do that.
He lived a life, as far as we
can find out, just sort of a state
of prayer.
He was always calling on the name of
the Lord.
Now, while you're working, and you're not conscious
for the deep things that go on in
your life, or in your subconscious, the child
of God, he was calling on the name
of the Lord all the time.
Washing dishes, not conscious of it, calling on
the name of the Lord.
Prayer and calling, calling on the name of
the Lord.
Whoso shall call, that is the active principle
of a faith that thinks of the Lord
day by day.
The whosoever wills, the fellow that takes.
And then the last place, the third thing
about the whosoever wills of the Bible, not
only are they thirsty, not only do they
take.
I want to press that just a little
more before I get off of it.
Oh, they don't wait on anything.
They don't wait for deeper conviction or deeper
this or deeper that.
They're thirsty enough and watered off the tap.
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall
be comforted.
A mourning that doesn't lead to being comforted
of Christ is not Holy Spirit repentance.
There's a comfort that follows New Testament Bible
mourning, grieving over sin and seeking of the
Lord.
Seek ye of the Lord, while I may
be found.
In the days I shall seek me, with
all thine heart I shall surely be found
with thee.
Here's the Bible language.
But in the last place, the third thing
about the whosoever wills of the Bible, they
take the grace of God freely.
Freely.
I think maybe that could mean two things
abundantly.
Not just a sip, not Sunday morning proposition,
not a thing apart from life, not a
thing as a convenience of a church, of
a town, or to have a chamber of
commerce in the Quranic court, in the school,
in the church.
That's atmosphere.
That's Americanism now.
Not just as an appendage on life and
things that are really important, but they take
it with a great grasp.
They don't spare.
They take it freely.
They take the grace of God abundantly, more
than our necessary food.
We thirst and take a sovereign grace calling
on the name of the Lord.
Then I think it could mean without price.
Then let the thirst come, and whosoever will.
Who are those that will?
Well, the thirsty ones.
What do they do?
They take.
They take freely.
They take without price.
You know, this water of life costs in
two different senses.
It costs the Son of God.
I always hesitate.
I don't know how to talk about this.
I wouldn't be a sentimentalist or be maudlin.
I've never been able to talk about the
sufferings of Jesus Christ on the cross but
one time in my ministry.
I've never been able to teach it.
I don't know.
You're in mystery.
I would not appeal to our senses that
I could get people to cry if I
told them about how the little girl sobbed
her heart out because her little dolly got
run over by the car or the little
dog got its leg broken.
I would not approach the sufferings of Christ
from that standpoint.
I don't have to.
One time in my whole ministry I was
able to talk about the sufferings of Christ
on the cross in a God-honoring way.
One time in 39 years.
Although I'm not able to talk about it,
I make a mess when I try.
It costs the Son of God the agony
of separation from God.
No man can even quote rightly, much less
enter in to the terrible terrible agony of
that cry My God my God, why hast
thou forsaken me because the Son of God
this river of water of life flowed from
the throne of God was opened up out
of the wounded side of the Lord of
God.
And there is a sense in which it
costs the person who receives it not as
a price to purchase it for it's without
money or without price but in another sense
it costs you all that you have and
all you are to receive it.
You do not buy a wife and yet
in time you forsake all to gain one.
You cannot purchase a drink of this life
-giving water as a price to be paid.
But I'm very badly fooled if the New
Testament don't teach that in the obtaining of
this water you have to lose your own
life.
And from here on out you're not your
own.
You've been bought with a price.
Everything you are and everything you have is
not yours.
It's His.
In that sense with all the warnings that
the Lord faithfully gives to men and women
of something of what was involved in setting
out to walk with the Lord it can
be said that while you cannot buy with
a price the obtaining of it will cost
you everything you have.
These are the three things that the Bible
says about the whosoever wills of this day
or any other day.
They're thirsty people.
Men and women by God's grace have been
brought to see the truth a little bit
about themselves and our need for God's grace
to do for them what they cannot do
for themselves.
They come and take and to take freely
at the cost of the life laid down
of the Son of God and at the
cost in that sense of all they have
and are.
Are you one of the whosoever will deeply,
deeply sensitive of your need of divine grace?
Take.
Lay hold.
Freely.
Largely.
Abundantly.
At the cost of everything.
And if you've not already done so find
out how this congregation does.
I do not know their method but request
permission to walk an aisle or meet with
somebody or do something.
When that has been accomplished say, I wish
this church to baptize me.
Why do you want me baptized?
Because it's the seal and the sign of
my faith.
Thursday I came and took freely.
Freely.
And the work's done.
And I want the world to have my
confession of what God's done for me.
The New Testament says the way we make
our public profession of faith is in the
act of baptism.
There ought to be people searching our churches
out in any way you have.
God help us not to be happy if
the Lord's day passes and somebody doesn't come.
And say, I want this church to baptize
me.
What do you want me baptized for?
Well, bless God.
I owe it all to Him that He
made me thirsty.
I got to where I wasn't so happy
to be in rebellion.
I got to where some sense of the
fact that I'm dying.
And now it's on to the side, the
other side of death, there's judgment.
And I became somewhat sensible of the fact
that I couldn't remedy the situation myself.
Being thirsty, I heeded the invitation.
Whose soul's the father?
Let him come.
Come where?
To this great river of life.
That's Christ, of course.
It flowed from the throne of God.
And I took praise God I took to
Him be the glory I took freely.
Now I can sing hallelujah to God.
I've believed on the Son.
I'm saved by the blood of the crucified
ones.
And I want to put on His uniform
and wear the sign and seal of that
covenant and tell the world there's a trophy
of the sovereign grace of God almighty through
the blood of Jesus Christ.
You do that for the glory of God
and the safety of your soul.
May the Lord do that for somebody here
tonight.
If that needs to be done, let us
stand.
Do you have a word, Brother Pastor?