Well, well, well.
Today we want to talk about the patience
and long-suffering of God.
The worst sin that a preacher or a
church can ever commit is to misrepresent the
character of God and present a God other
than the God of the Bible.
And we have a tendency to go to
one of two extremes.
We either emphasize the love and grace of
God and then we soon lose the doctrine
of sin and the doctrine of hail, or
else we go to the other extreme and
talk about the wrath of God, the judgment
of God, and we soon lose the love
of God and the forgiveness of God.
I want to look at two verses of
Scripture this morning, or this afternoon, and these
two verses both use the word long-suffering
and talk about the long-suffering of God.
And the amazing thing is that the one
verse is talking about the long-suffering of
God to the none elect, and the other
is talking about the long-suffering of God
to the elect.
And so the thesis of our sermon today
is that God is long-suffering to all
men without exception.
He is just as long-suffering with Pharaoh
as he is with Saul of Tarsus, but
he is long-suffering to some men for
an entirely different reason than he is long
-suffering to other men.
But the point is we're supposed to preach
him as he reveals himself in the Scriptures
and he certainly reveals himself as a God
who is patient and long-suffering with sinners
and with saints.
The two verses, I'll read them.
You needn't look them up because we'll come
back to them in a minute.
It's 2 Peter 3, 9.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise
as some men sound slackness, but is long
-suffering to usward, and I take that to
be Christians, not willing that any, that would
be any of us, should perish, but that
all without exception of us should come to
repentance.
And every Arminian knows that verse is in
the Bible.
He sometimes doesn't know where the reference is
and you have to help him with that,
but he knows the text.
And so the next time somebody quotes that
to you, say, well, that's an interesting verse
and I believe it, but there's another verse
that also talks about the long-suffering of
God.
Romans 9.22, what if God, willing to
show his wrath and make his power known,
endured with much long-suffering, same word, the
vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.
And that's not usward, that's the reprobate, the
unbeliever, the Christ rejecter, he will be under
the wrath of God.
Now the King James translates the word long
-suffering and also with the word patience.
And in Hebrews chapter six, verse 12, it
says that I do not want you to
become lazy, but to imitate those who through
faith and patience or long-suffering will inherit
the kingdom of God.
And here the whole idea of our perseverance
in patience and long-suffering determination, no matter
what the odds are, no matter what the
difficulties are, that we press on, we pay
any price in order to reach the gates
of heaven itself.
God's patience or his long-suffering is a
power or ability in God that enables him
to endure everything that's necessary to accomplish all
that he has planned and purposed.
God's long-suffering is tied up with both
his sovereign power as well as his sovereign
purposes.
Nothing will make God act contrary to his
own ultimate goal.
God will never go off half-cocked.
And we're to realize and bless God that
this is true because this is the ground
of our salvation and it's the ground of
our security in Jesus Christ.
And this is why Peter says we are
to account or to bear in mind, to
remember the long-suffering of God because it
is our salvation.
You aren't very long-suffering.
And I would only have to talk to
your wife for a few minutes and I
would discover that.
And if she wouldn't tell me, your kids
sure will.
We're not very good at patience and long
-suffering.
We very easily allow our emotions to control
us and to have us make wrong decisions.
This is very difficult for you and I
to get angry or upset and frustrated and
throw up our hands when the way gets
tough and say, I don't need this hassle
and quit.
And a lot of worthwhile goals are never
realized simply because we're not long-suffering.
We're not patient and not so with God.
God never loses his resolve.
And when God purposes something, nothing, even the
death of his son is not too high
a price for him to pay to accomplish
his purposes for his own glory.
In Psalm 103, verse eight and nine, it
says, the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow
to anger, abiding in love.
He'll not always accuse, nor will he harbor
his anger forever.
He's slow to anger, but he will let
loose his anger.
But when will he do that?
When he gets frustrated, when he's tried everything
and it's failed, when it just seems like
there's nothing left to do, when the situation
seems so hopeless, when he's at his wit's
end?
No, none of those things are true.
When will God let his wrath loose when
he's accomplished everything he purposed to do?
And not a moment before that.
And Peter tells us, and Romans tells us,
that we're to praise him that he has
this awesome power.
And the great lesson for us as a
people of God is that he's going to
succeed in what he's purposed to do.
And one of the things he's purposed to
do is conform you to the image of
Christ.
And all the devils in hell and all
of your own sin is not going to
stop him from doing what he purposed to
do, one way or the other.
He will bear patiently with Pharaoh, even though
he abuses his patience, until he has accomplished
everything he purposed to accomplish through Pharaoh.
And he will likewise put up with his
elect and all of their rebellion until the
day of his power, and he opens their
hearts with the gospel.
God doesn't change.
His resolve, his purposes aren't ever frustrated.
You and I are not like that.
You and I establish relationships, and sometimes we're
sorry we ever established them, especially if they
lead to the ultimate relationship of marriage.
And sometimes we say to a person, if
I would have known this about you, we
would have never become friends, or we would
have never become husband and wife.
In other words, we learn something new that
makes us change our whole basis of attitude
towards the other person.
I don't know if you ever thought about
it, but that can't happen with God.
There's nothing new that God can find out
about you.
Every rotten, stinking thing that you ever did,
wanted to do, or was afraid to do,
he already knew when he chose you, so
there's nothing that would ever give him a
basis for changing his mind.
We're not like that.
Now, the awesome implication of this to the
saint is, it's a great encouragement and a
basis of assurance and hope.
In Hosea chapter 11 verse 9, I will
not execute the fierceness of my anger.
I will not return to destroy Ephraim, for
I am God and not man, the Holy
One in the midst of thee, and I
will not enter into the city.
I will not return and destroy Ephraim.
Did they deserve to be destroyed?
Absolutely.
Could God have destroyed them in a moment?
Absolutely.
Why didn't he?
He's too powerful.
He's too great.
That would have frustrated his purposes, because he
had purposes of grace for Ephraim.
And he says, I'm not like men.
I don't change my mind.
What I purpose to do, I'm willing to
pay the price to accomplish it.
What's that?
Why does he not execute his wrath right
now in an ungodly world?
Well, because a lot of his elect would
be lost.
The only reason our Lord hasn't returned is
because all of the elect is not gathered
in.
And our Lord will not come back until
every pharaoh has come on the scene and
played out his part, and every elect sheep
is safe in the fold.
And then, and not till then, is at
the end.
You and I lose our temper so easily,
and we get frustrated.
We allow circumstances to control how we think
and act.
Do you ever sit down with a teenager
at the kitchen table and say, now we're
going to have a rational conversation.
And in about 10 minutes, somebody's pounding on
the table in utter frustration, you stupid jerk,
you don't have a brain in your head.
And it isn't the teenager.
What happened?
You blew your cool.
What happened?
You acted like a man, not like God.
So much for our long suffering.
Proverbs 16, 32, better a patient man than
a warrior, a man who controls his temper
than one who takes a whole city.
A man who can control his emotions and
temper is greater, stronger than he who can
capture a whole city.
Note again the idea of the greatness of
power is manifested in the ability to control
oneself to reach their goal.
The more one controls his emotions and anger,
the greater that person is.
In Malachi 3, 6, it spells this out
pretty clearly.
I am the Lord.
I change not.
Therefore, you sons of Jacob are not consumed.
Do you see the stress on the therefore?
I am the Lord.
I change not.
And because I am the Lord and because
I don't change, therefore, you're not consumed.
And if I wasn't like that, you would
be consumed.
In a moment.
Again, the stress is on this idea of
the ability to be slow to anger.
Did the sons of Jacob deserve to be
consumed?
Yes.
Over and over again.
Why didn't God consume them?
Because he had purposes of grace.
He had purposes of mercy.
Simply because God doesn't act like a man.
He acts like God.
We change with the weather.
Our emotions have opened down like a thermometer,
but not so with God.
There's nothing out there that has any effect
on God's purposes or God's actions or God's
attitudes because of who he is.
Every single thing that God has purposed, he
will accomplish and nothing, nobody will make him
change his mind.
Now let's draw a couple of truths from
this.
First of all, God clearly reveals himself in
the scriptures as this kind of a God,
a patient God, a long suffering God who
entreats sinners to repent and believe in Isaiah
chapter 66.
I have spread out my hands all the
day onto a rebellious people and the stretching
out of the hand, whether it's like this
or whether it's like this, this is picturing
God as, can I use the word pleading
with sinners to repent and believe?
And that's the way we're supposed to preach
him.
If we understand, I think correctly.
However, the moment we say that we got
to be careful because there's a lot of
people totally misunderstand the patience and long suffering
of God.
This doesn't mean that some think that God
is weak.
He's on the sidelines and all he can
do is plead with men, but that's all
he can do.
He can do nothing else.
That's not what this means at all.
And then there's some who think this means
that man has a free will and God
can't do anything until he gets a man
to consent with his will and man's will
is stronger than God's will.
That's nonsense.
That's not what the patience and long suffering
of God is all about.
There's other people who say, well, God has
no hands, but your hands, no feet, but
your feet.
I had a friend, Pharaoh Griswold, some of
you knew him.
He was home for six weeks sick and
every week he listened to a couple of
different TV broadcasts, see what was on the
air.
After about the third week, he told his
wife, he said, shut that off.
He said, those people have a wheelchair God.
And if we preach God as if he
is in a wheelchair, no hands, no feet,
nothing.
We're not representing him correctly at all.
We're misusing his patience and his long suffering.
And then there's those who say, well, God's
done all he can do and now all
he can do is plead.
I'm glad that's a lie.
If you've got lost loved ones, I bet
you're glad that's a lie.
You don't plead with God when you pray
and say, I know you've done all you
can do and I hope my daughter one
of these days has enough sense and wakes
up to realize it.
No, you don't pray like that.
You plead with God to manifest his power
in opening her heart with the truth of
the gospel of the grace of God.
Then there's others who feel like he's like
Esau.
Esau intended to kill his brother, wanted to
kill his brother, but he just couldn't get
the opportunity until his father died.
He says, ah, now I have the opportunity.
God's not like that.
God has every opportunity anytime, any day, any
place, any person to end his life and
bring him into judgment.
There's others feel that God is just too
loving to, to punish.
And they take these entreaties of God as
an illustration.
And if you believe that, then you pretty
soon won't have any doctrine of hail or
any doctrine of the punishment of sin.
God chastises his people and it was pretty
tough sometimes as a father.
My mother had a broken pie board that
she used on us.
She was very educationally minded.
She believed in applying the board of education
to the seat of knowledge.
It worked very well.
We have to mention one more group that
misunderstand the patience of God.
That's a hyper-Calvinist.
And I hate to say it, but there's
probably some sitting here right now.
You may even be squirming a bit.
I hope you are.
And these people, they deny the whole idea
that God freely pleads with sinners.
They somehow think that's minimizing his dignity.
It is amazing to realize that the King
of Kings, Lord of Lord condescends to entreat
sinners.
That's amazing.
But he does.
And these people, in order to protect God,
they try to deny that there is any
kind of a proclamation or a freedom of
the gospel preaching to the lost.
And in order to protect the sovereignty of
God, they wind up butchering up the sovereignty
of God as well as the proclamation of
the gospel, both of them.
We have to preach both sides of truth
in the scriptures.
And the older I get, and I'm 82,
the more I see truth has two sides
on almost every situation.
And it certainly does in this idea of
the absolute, unconditional electing grace of God, as
well as the free, uninhibited gospel to whosoever
will let him come.
And people say to me, Mr. Riesinger, how
do you get those two things together?
And I look at them and say, how
do you get them apart?
Jesus put them together in one verse.
All the Father giveth me shall come to
me.
That's election.
No empty chairs in heaven catching cobwebs.
Every person that God chose, he's going to
bring, they're going to believe.
That's only half of the verse.
And him that cometh to me, I don't
care who he is, where he is, what
he is, him that cometh to me, I
will in no wise cast out.
How dare you try to separate those things?
How dare you preach election without preaching whosoever
will let him come?
And how can you preach whosoever will let
him come without preaching the assurance of the
doctrine of election?
They're both true.
John Flavel is one of my favorite Puritans.
And he describes this, and I got a
lot of the sermon from that sermon of
his.
I don't have anything original except original sin.
That's the only thing.
John Flavel has a great sermon on this
text in Romans, and also Robert Murray McShane
has a great sermon on Romans 922.
God is willing to show his wrath.
Both of them are well, well worth reading.
And Flavel says, longsuffering is an ability or
power in God not only to delay the
execution of his wrath for a time towards
some, but to delay it in order to
show grace in the salvation of others.
That's it.
We have to see that God is patient
and longsuffering with all men without exception.
However, he holds his wrath from some who
will nonetheless later on experience it, because this
is part of his purpose and necessary to
his overall goal.
One of the things is the space and
time together, his elect.
But God was just as patient with Pharaoh.
For this purpose have I raised thee up.
And Pharaoh, with all of his faith, tears,
and repentance and everything else, when is God
going to judge him for the hardness of
his heart and for his rebellion and his
refusal to leave the people of God go?
Well, he's not going to do it until
God's done every miracle and taught every lesson
that he purposed to teach through Pharaoh.
And then, and not till then, is Pharaoh
going to push the children of Israel out
of Egypt with all their back pay.
And then, and not till then, not a
second before, is God going to drown Pharaoh
and his army in the Red Sea.
And God will be glorified in his patience
just as much with Pharaoh as he is
with Saul of Tarsus.
How was God's patience and long-suffering manifested
in his dealings with Pharaoh?
Well, all of the things that God taught,
all the lessons that Israel needed to learn
through those different plagues, he did.
But Saul of Tarsus is also an illustration
of the same truth.
What a wicked man he was.
God will put up with all of Saul's
hatred, his persecution of Christians, his deliberate, willful
rebellion against the truth until he opens his
heart with the gospel.
If you would have been God and you
would have watched Saul of Tarsus help stone
Stephen to death, you would have said and
I would have said, enough is enough, election
or no election, nobody's going to do that
to my people.
And we'd have fixed his clock.
And why didn't God do that?
Because he purposed to make the worst antagonist
the church ever had to be the greatest
preacher of the gospel the church ever had.
And he wasn't going to let anything interfere
with his purposes.
That's what Paul hardly means when he says,
and now for the rest of the story.
And you read all of these things and
you, and you get one side and the
rest of the story is hidden in the
sovereign electing purposes of God.
So in both these cases, Pharaoh and Saul
of Tarsus, we see an exhibition of God's
awesome power to withhold his anger in order
to accomplish his sovereign purposes.
And we're to praise him.
And we're to thank him that he is
just such a God in Proverbs, the text
we quoted, let me quote it again.
He that slowed to anger is better than
the mighty.
He that ruleth his spirit than he that
taketh a city.
And of course, who's the mightiest of all,
well, the one who can most rule his
spirit and who can totally control his spirit.
God himself.
We get depressed, we get moody, we get
tired and we quit.
God never gets depressed.
He never gets moody, never gets disappointed with
other people, never takes Prozac, never has a
bad hair day.
Not so with you and me.
And one of the results of that inability
in us is found in Proverbs 25, 28.
And this shows the result in the life
of a person who can't control his emotions.
He that hath no rule over his own
spirit is like a city that's broken down
and without walls.
And a city where the walls are broken
down and the gates are burned, they're an
open prey to every single attack of any
kind.
And the man or the woman who can't
control their emotions and they can't control their
feelings, they can be carrot-sticked into anything.
They can be pushed, they can be blown
up just by the circumstances.
And they're an easy prey.
They can't cope with persecution, they can't cope
with disappointment.
They're an easy prey.
Such a person is a constant victim of
circumstances.
He can be manipulated into almost anything.
Not so with God.
You ever hear anybody say, I know how
to get his goat.
You can't do that with God because he
ain't got no goat.
I know how to push his buttons.
He ain't got no buttons to push.
God did not get depressed and discouraged when
Adam sinned in the garden of Eden.
I'd love to hear Armenians describe the fall
of Adam.
They're looking over the gates of the walls
of heaven and the serpent comes into the
garden.
Oh man, here's bad news.
I hope Adam is not, oh look, wait,
oh Adam, don't listen to, oh he did
it.
What are we going to do now?
And they have a big council meeting in
heaven, you know, and all these ideas.
And somebody comes up with this wonderful idea,
let's send Jesus.
Great idea.
My dear friend, that was all purposed.
The lamb slain before the foundation of the
world.
God did not get depressed and discouraged when
they persecuted and killed the prophets.
Even the cross was not too high a
price to pay for God to fulfill his
sovereign electing purposes of grace.
I love that passage in Acts 4 when
all that they were gathered together, the Jews
and about a whole bunch of them were
gathered together.
And you remember what it said?
To do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel
determined before to be done.
There was never a day that was choreographed
to the detail as much as that day
that Jesus died on the cross.
There was no one event that was ever
controlled with every single step and every player
as much as the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
That was the fulfillment of his purposes.
Calvary was neither a surprise nor an event
that could have been avoided.
And it was not a day of defeat,
it was the greatest day of victory on
God's calendar.
At the highest price that anybody ever paid
to accomplish any purpose.
You remember when Israel sinned and God was
going to wipe them off the face of
the earth?
And Moses pleaded for their salvation.
And you remember how he pleaded?
What would a heathen say?
Why would I say God is not powerful
at all?
He brought them out and he couldn't take
care of them.
Look at his failure.
And then Moses uttered these words.
I beseech thee let the power of my
Lord be great according as thou hast spoken
saying the Lord is long-suffering and of
great mercy forgiving iniquity.
Show how powerful you are by forgiving them.
That's good.
You know it doesn't take much spiritual guts
to get angry and nasty.
It doesn't take any courage to hold a
grudge.
Alan Redpath told us a story where he
had a fight with his wife at breakfast
and it was pretty bad and they quit
talking to each other.
And during the day he really got convicted
that he had provoked the argument.
And he knew he had to ask his
wife to forgive him.
But his 11-year-old son was at
the kitchen table and he knew he had
to ask his wife to forgive him in
front of his son.
And he thought what in the world would
he think of me as his father apologizing
to his mother?
What would he think of me as a
man?
And that night at the supper table he
told his wife he was sorry that he
provoked the argument.
And he was trying to look out of
the And that night when the son kneeled
down beside his bed with his daddy to
say his evening prayers, his son prayed and
said, Lord help me grow up and be
big and strong like my daddy.
Especially like he was when he asked mommy
to forgive him.
See that takes greatness.
That takes power man.
I mean that takes spiritual power.
Takes no spiritual power to hold a grudge,
get mad, lash out and say no, no,
no, that's easy.
But forgiveness is powerful.
By the way Moses was known as a
man for his meekness.
But even he got mad.
I'm glad we're in safer hands than Moses.
We're all safe.
And you remember in the book of the
Revelation those saints are waiting and even they
don't have enough patience because they're saying how
long do we got to wait before we
see you fix their clock?
Even the glorified saints.
Glorified saints in heaven aren't fully sanctified.
All of these things we mentioned, they're the
implications of this to a believer.
He's in the hands of a powerful sovereign
unchanging God.
And he's just as secure as the purposes
of God.
And his purposes and his power are tied
up together.
But we also need to in preaching this,
we need to say a word to the
people who are lost.
To the people who reject Jesus Christ as
their Lord and their Savior.
And that's where 2 Peter chapter 3 comes
in.
And the moment we talk about election or
sovereignty then this is the passage that everybody
wants to turn to.
2 Peter chapter 3 verse 9.
And when we look at this chapter the
first thing we ask the three questions that
we're supposed to ask.
Who is speaking and to whom are they
speaking and what are they speaking about?
And in this case when we read 2
Peter we see that Peter is speaking to
believers.
And the subject of his discussion is the
second coming of Christ.
And there are scoffers who are mocking the
second coming of Christ.
And they're saying where is the promise of
his coming?
Things just go on and on and nothing
has happened.
And they're ridiculing the doctrine of the second
coming.
Specifically as God has promised it.
And Peter tells them that they are not
to be concerned.
Verse 8 he says, Beloved, be not ignorant
of this one thing.
One day is with the Lord as a
thousand years and a thousand years of one
day.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise.
What promise is that?
This isn't a promise to the lost person.
This is a promise of the second coming
of Christ made with the people of God.
And he says the Lord is not slack
concerning this promise to send his son back
as some men count slackness.
That's the scoffers.
The us word doesn't imprude the scoffers.
That's a separate situation.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise
as some men count slackness but is longsuffering
to us.
We're not willing that any and on the
end of your tongue you have the words
of us.
But that all, all who, all of us,
all of us who have this promise.
Peter's reminding them that God keeps his promise.
He will send his son.
But he won't send his son until his
purposes are totally fulfilled.
But look at Romans chapter 9 because here
we have another instance of the long suffering
of God.
Romans chapter 9 beginning at verse 18.
Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will
have mercy and whom he will he hardeneth.
Now you know what you do with that
verse?
You just bow your head and shut up.
That's tough.
These liberals are always tearing chapters out of
the Jonah and Genesis.
Man if I was going to tear a
chapter out it would be Romans 9.
That would be the first on my list
because everything in me as a creature rebels
against Romans 9.
Is that right?
That's why we bow our heads and worship.
Thou wilt say to me why does he
yet find fault?
Who has resisted his will?
Nay, but O man who art thou that
replies against God.
Shall the thing formed say to him that
formed it why hast thou made me thus?
Hath not the potter power over the clay
of the same lump to make one vessel
unto honor and another unto dishonor?
Now that verse can have two understandings among
people.
And to me you have to understand what
that lump is.
If that lump is mankind as considered uncreated
then God creates one lump to send it
to hell and one lump to send it
to heaven.
And you have the order of the decrees
in the mind of God.
I'm going to have a heaven and a
hell.
I've got to have some people to go
here so I can create some people for
this purpose just to send them there.
I don't think that's what it means.
I think the lump of sin is mankind
considered in sin.
And what if God as he views the
sons of Adam all in sin chooses some
sinners to be saved.
Not chooses some men to be created in
order to send them to hell but chooses
some sinners who are already on their way
to hell to salvation.
Hath not the potter power over the clay
of the same lump of sin to make
one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?
What if God, and here's the text, what
if God willing to show his wrath and
make his power known endured with much longsuffering
the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?
Do you see what the text is saying?
What if God willing to show his wrath
endured with much longsuffering?
That's the exhibition of his power.
His ability to withhold his wrath is an
exhibition of how powerful he is.
And what if God does that?
Whose business is that but his?
And that he might make known the riches
of his glory on the vessels of mercy
which he hath for prepared unto glory even
us, sinners that we be, Gentiles that we
are, whom he hath called not of the
Jews only but also of the Gentiles.
So he's talking about the same longsuffering of
God.
One of the worst things that anybody can
ever do is to misuse the longsuffering of
God.
And you hear people, and you talk to
people, well, I've made it okay so far.
Sure you have.
But only because of the kindness and patience
of God.
Anybody says that to me, I think of
the story of the guy who jumped off
the Empire State Building as he went past
the 50th floor, he said, so far so
good.
That's the way the sinner is, so far
so good.
But it's only because of the kindness of
God.
In Romans 2 you have this exhortation, Romans
2 verse 4, or do you show contempt
for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and
patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you
to repentance.
And if you use it to lead yourself
into more sin and self-assurance in sin,
you're a fool of fools.
That because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant
heart, you're storing up wrath against yourself for
the day of God's wrath, for his righteous
judgment will be revealed.
You're like a hog being fattened for the
slaughter.
That's an awful thought.
One of the things I don't like to
preach, and I mean it, don't like to
preach, is the truth that a man who
goes to hell glorifies God just as much
as a man who goes to heaven.
And if you perish, God loses nothing.
And if you go to heaven, God gains
nothing.
God is not the winner or the loser.
It's the sinner who loses everything, or gains
everything.
And to use the patience and long-suffering
of God as an excuse to go on
in sin is to be a fool of
fools.
The man who goes to hell glorifies the
righteousness of God, and the man who goes
to heaven glorifies the righteousness of God.
One glorifies the righteousness of his mercy and
his love and his grace, and the other
magnifies the righteousness of his wrath and his
justice.
And God is glorified just as much in
either case.
And he's patient and long-suffering just as
much with the one as he is with
the other.
God is willing to show his wrath in
his time, on his terms, for his reasons,
but he will not ever be provoked in
any way, shape, or form into showing his
wrath in any way that will interfere with
any of his purposes.
He can deliberately withhold his wrath for a
long time.
He can do that.
I can't.
Neither can you.
Aren't you glad you're not God?
Aren't you glad I'm not God?
Oh my.
God was patient with Saul of Tarsus in
the days of his ignorance.
He put up with all that he did,
and then one day opened his heart with
the gospel.
In 2 Peter 3.15 we read, But
the day you were born, you were a
sinner.
I mean the day you were born, you
were a sinner, and God could have cut
your water off right then and right there.
But he didn't.
Why?
He had purposes and grace.
You may have had more than one close
call with death.
I've had two that I thought for sure
I came that close to being hit with
a train.
Just a cold sweat.
And it had an effect on me.
I mean for almost a whole day.
And how did we shrug it off?
I don't know if you've ever thought about
it, but I'm sure there are people in
hell right now that lived a lot better
lives than some of you did.
Why are they in hell?
And you're sitting here singing the hymns of
thine.
Some of you, I'm one of them, mocked
the gospel.
I mean mocked and made fun of Christians.
I mean we hated them and told them
so when they tried to witness the gospel
to us.
Why did God put up with that?
Some of you, some of you dared God.
I mean almost shook your fist in the
face of heaven.
And why didn't God say, I'm sick of
you.
I'm sick of you.
Why didn't he?
Could have, should have, but didn't and never
will if you're one of the election of
grace.
Some of you mocked the law, ridiculed the
gospel, yet you were spared.
People in hell tonight, not half as wicked
as some of you were.
There are many in hell who never had
much truth.
There are people in hell tonight who never
heard the gospel and you heard it day
in and day out in a Christian home
for 20 years.
Couldn't wait for the time when you get
out from under it.
And why didn't God fix your clock?
Think about it and rejoice.
I mean think about it and praise Him
that He's such a great God.
Well the people we weep for are the
people who have the wrath of God over
their heads and never feel it.
And if there are any of you here
today, children of Christian parents, we weep for
you and pray for you because you don't
weep and pray for yourself when you ought
to.
Because we love you.
And because we long to see you experience
the grace and the mercy of God.
I am the Lord, I change not.
Therefore, you sons of Jacob are not consumed.
Let's pray.
Our Father, we thank you for the privilege
of hearing the gospel.
And even more important, hearing it with our
hearts by the power of your Spirit.
When we look back on our life before
we were saved and since we've saved, we've
never found a single reason that you would
ever want to love us.
But we've found multitudes of reasons why you
should justly despise us and punish us.
But you haven't and you won't.
Only because of Jesus Christ, your Son, and
because of His saving work on the cross,
and because of your eternal, unchanging, sovereign, electing
grace.
And we love you and we worship you.
And we praise you for being such a
God as you are.
Accept our thanks and our worship.
And help us to preach you and to
witness you as you really are.
As you really reveal yourself to be.
For Christ's sake.
Amen.
Do you want me to say thanks for
the food?
Or are you going to come up?