93-83 God Will Make a Way III

For over twenty-five years Dr. Betters preached God is the builder of broken bridges and brings beauty from ashes. But in the horror of the loss of his sixteen-year-old son, could God make a way to a place of peace and comfort? In this series preached not long after the death of his son, Dr. Betters does not shy away from asking the hard questions and sharing his own faith struggles to reconcile God’s love with His sovereignty.

The following sermon by Dr. Chuck F. Betters was preached as part of the God Will Make a Way series.

Transcript

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Welcome to In His Grip with Dr. Chuck F. Butters, produced by Mark Inc. Ministries. Each In His Grip message is designed to help you turn your hearts toward Jesus and equip you to walk by faith. Let's join Dr. Butters as he preaches the series God Will Make a Way.

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One of the things that has impressed me as I have over the years studied the book of Job is that in Job's life, he uh experienced many different testings from God that none of us would wish on our worst enemies. He lost his health and he lost his wealth. When he lost his children, all of them, in a sudden disaster, his response was, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And I say, Job, you're a bigger man than I could ever be. And as you go through that book, you will find not one word of complaint from Job. Even when his children were taken from him, when his health was taken, when his wealth was taken, when his friends betrayed him, when his wife appeared as though she was going to betray him, not one single word of complaint, which has caused some scholars to think, and this is interesting, that Job never as a person existed. That he is just an ideal. That since we cannot identify the age in which the book of Job was written, nor is there any historical data given to us within the book to identify who this person is. And since it's unreasonable to believe or to expect that anyone in their right mind could ever act the way Job acted in light of such suffering, therefore he didn't exist. And I think that's just our way of saying that we just don't have the same kind of faith that Job did. Therefore, it's easier for us to say no such person ever existed. Well, I believe he did exist because I believe that deep down inside of Job there was a real raw spot. There was a nerve which, when hit, would bring a reaction. You know, if you read very carefully the book, you will find one moment in the book where Job complains. And that was the moment when Job sensed that God was silent. When he asked God to explain, when he sensed in his heart that God was no longer listening, no longer interested, no longer there. Then Job began to complain. Then he began to ask questions like, why, Lord? What we have been trying to do in this series, which I hope will end today, God will make a way, is we've been taking a look at some of the significant milestones in the Bible. Touchstones that reveal to us God's faithfulness in performing the impossible. When he brought men to a point or to a situation where there seemed to be no significant way of escape, no way out. Where men were faced eyeball to eyeball with the prospects that unless God supernaturally intervened, they would be decimated. In fact, as we study the history of redemption, as we look at the Bible's story, and by the way, the Bible does tell a story. Even though it was written in 66 books by different authors spanning different ages, the thread of scripture from Genesis to Revelation, the thread or the history of the book is one of redemption. It's the story of the progress of God's redemptive program. That is starting with Genesis, where we define the sin of man, the lostness of man, the creation of the world, and the death that ensued, to the last book of the Bible, Revelation, where we see the coming of the new heaven and the new earth. In the between, where you have all of these books written, all of them are pointing to the same thing. God is unfolding his program of redemption, piece by piece, step by step. And I've chosen significant milestones, and I know there are many more. There are many more touchstones that we could reach, that we could touch, that would help us to understand exactly what's going on. Now we've dealt with a few of those, but in every one of those situations, God brings his people to a point where unless he intervenes, they could not escape. In other words, he brings them face to face with impossible situations and forces them to look up. First touchstone that we dealt with was the birth of Isaac. How much more impossible can you get than a woman who is past her childbearing years? Well up into her 90s, and God is still promising to make of her and her husband a nation. I am going to bless you with a nation. I am going to give you a son. Now you know the story. They took matters into their own hands. Abraham went in and had a sexual relationship with the servant lady, and out of that the whole Arab-Israeli question has yet to be settled. And yet God has promised to give to us salvation through the beginnings of one family, and that he promised in the birth of Isaac to establish a nation. Touchstone number one was the birth of Isaac and the formalization, if you will, of the covenant promise. Touchstone number two was when the law was given. When God brought his people to Mount Sinai. And there on Mount Sinai, he would codify his moral requirements, by the way, given to show us that we can't keep them. Man is sinful and unjust. Man is by nature fallen. And when fared against the backdrop of the law, we all stand guilty. But you see, that law could not be given unless God first brought his people, who were 430 years in bondage, out of that bondage, and he brought them to the point where they were pursued by Pharaoh's armies, surrounded by mountain complexes, looking straight ahead was the Red Sea. There was only one direction for them to look, and that was up. And God brought them to that point where he split the Red Sea. And as he marches them through and away from Egypt, and as he marches them through the wilderness on their trek to Mount Sinai, he repeatedly would tell them, You have not passed this way before. This is new for you. You have not gone this way before. I have to show you how to get through this situation. You're not equipped to do this kind of battle. So he marches them on a long journey around certain enemies because had he marched them between two points, that is a straight line. Had he marched them directly through, they would have been swallowed up in war. They didn't understand that at the time. They didn't know why God was taking them on the long journey around rather than the straight line through. They didn't know why God brought them to the point of desperation at the Red Sea. They didn't have all the program, they didn't see all the puzzle parts. It all hadn't been brought before them yet. Have you ever trekked a journey for the first time with fear? You know, I think fear is one of the hallmarks of passing through a journey that you've never traveled before. I gotta tell you from first hand experience, we've not passed this way before in our family. We had never lost a child. We had no idea. And I can't tell you how many people have walked up to us or have talked with us, and you know one of the first things that come out of their mouths, and I appreciate them saying this, they say, We have no idea how you feel. And you want to know something? Unless they've lost the child, they're absolutely right, they don't. You can only go so far, and then you have to back off because if you go any further, it's too frightening. We've not walked this way before. So people ask us how we're doing. Well, I'll tell you, we've not passed this way before, so how we're doing depends on what kind of a day we're having, depends on what kind of a mood we're in, depends on what God has taught us that day and how much of it we've learned or believed, how much of it we've absorbed, how much of it has gotten through. Some of it depends on how other members of the family are doing, etc. It's a long, arduous, difficult journey. We've not passed this way before. But one thing we've hung tenaciously to is that our God has. He has passed this way before. And although we're going into this blind and maybe even to a degree deaf, we are moving with somebody's hand holding tenaciously to us who has passed that way before. Even good friends, and we've met so many of them recently who have also lost a loved one. Each situation is different, each one is different, and even in those respects, they cannot understand fully what we're going through, like we can't understand fully what they're going through. But there is one who has entered into the fellowship of our suffering. Now, if that's true of us, it's also true of you. When you trek a journey you've never passed before, remember the Israelites standing by the Red Sea. Remember that for 430 years they accustomed themselves to life in Egypt, and then suddenly God brings them to a point where they had no other direction to look but up, and they did, but not without murmuring and complaining, and not without the faith of their leader. He said, Stand back and watch the glory of God. The splitting of the Red Sea, touchstone number two, touchstone number three is the rise of the Davidic dynasty, the coming of David into kingship. Remember what we told you about the story of Ruth and Boaz, that seemingly insignificant little book in the Bible called Ruth? The whole purpose of that book is to show you that in the marriage of Ruth, who by the way was a Gentile, marrying Boaz, in that whole relationship of Ruth and Boaz, you have the birth of the grandfather of David, and thus the Davidic line is established. Well, why is that so important? Because God is going to bring us to another impossible situation. He is going to tell us that the program of redemption is going to come out of a specific line, the line of David. The king of Jesus, the King Jesus is going to come out of the Davidic dynasty. And so the Davidic dynasty has to be established. Well, now how was that Davidic dynasty established? In an absolutely impossible situation. Here is little David face to face with Goliath. Face to face with the enemy of Israel. And you know that wonderful story that we tell our children in Sunday school. It's such a powerful, powerful story of the faithfulness of God. It wasn't the slingshot that killed him. It wasn't the stone that he chose. It wasn't the skill of David. It was the direct, intervening power of the Holy Spirit who took a little stone and made it into a missile and put it right through the brain of Goliath. You see, because God was going to establish his kingdom. And Saul was man's choice. David was God's choice. Saul was an evil king. David was the apple of God's eye. And through that Davidic dynasty, through the coming of David, would one day Messiah be born. And that program of redemption and all the promise that goes with it, all the messianic hope that goes with it that God would establish his kingdom on earth with David's dynasty forever and forever. That promise of faithfulness was shattered when Israel was brought into exile. The lowest point in Israel's history. And that's the fourth touchstone. The nation divided, ten tribes in one part of the country, two tribes in another part of the country, the lowest point in Israel's history. Then and there God raised up the prophets before, during, and after the exile to warn them of the coming exile, to preach to them repentance in the exile, and to warn them and to learn from the past after the exile, promise after promise after promise. Read the book of Isaiah. What a wonderful book of promise we have there. Written during a time when the nation was about to enter into exile, the lowest point in Israel's history. The glory days of Solomon were gone. Israel was in virtual captivity, disobeying God, judgments passed on them, and yet the prophets stood up and spoke of the day of the Lord, the promise that a remnant would be saved, that from the twelve tribes God would choose a people out of each of those tribes and save a remnant. Why? So that the nation could be kept intact. Why? So that Messiah could come into that nation. He promised the people that he would restore the land, that he would restore the Davidic dynasty, that he would restore the covenant that had virtually been lost, that he would restore the theocracy where he would rule. That he would include the Gentiles and expand the covenant beyond just the Jews, but expand it to all kinds of people from every walk of life. You can read about it in the Kings and the Chronicles. Two different stories, by the way, the Kings written as a commentary on the theological importance of the Davidic promise, draped in moral failure. And in that book you see call after call after call to repentance. And yet, against that backdrop, as I told you the last time we were together, a seemingly insignificant verse, the tribes had virtually been wiped out, lost their identity. Yet somehow, in the goodness, and I put that in quotes, of the heart of this evil king, you read in 2 Kings chapter 25, verses 27 to 30, that in the 37th year of the exile of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, in the year evil Meredok became king of Babylon, he released Jehoiakim from prison. On the 27th day of the twelfth month, he spoke kindly to him, gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiakim put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king's table. Day by day the king gave Jehoiakim a regular allowance as long as he lived. Why did he do that? Why is that verse in the Bible? Is that just giving us history? No. It is telling us that even though the whole of Israel had been decimated, even though the tribes had lost their identity, they were draped in moral failure, God in his sovereignty was going to keep the remnant hope alive, and he was going to impress even on the heart of an evil king that he should release Jehoiakim out of prison, and he did. And from Jehoiakim the line is kept open so that the remnant eventually could be saved. What a wonderful, wonderful story of people brought into an impossible situation. If you were a Jew living in the exile, and somebody walked up to you with an Old Testament in hand and said, Here, right here it says that God is going to build of you a great nation, that all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed. You would have spit in his face. You'd have said, How dare you taunt me this way? I know we've lost hope. I know we no longer have any rights. We are virtually eliminated as a people. There is none who is faithful. We have the prophets touring the area, but nobody's listening to them. For all intents and purposes as a nation, we are defunct. An impossible situation. And yet, way over here in the far corners of the earth, in a little dungeon, there's a little man sitting there who suddenly gets a knock on his doorsail. Suddenly the cell is opened, and somebody walks in and says, You're a free man. In fact, you're not only free, you're going to fare sumptuously with the king. Well, why? Why would he do that? And the only answer you could conceivably give at that particular point, if you were living at that time, was, I don't know. I don't know why he's doing that. But on this side, as we are able to look back, God was preserving through an impossible situation his remnant. Well, now we move to the fifth touchstone. You see, for 400 years, the prophets were silent. In fact, there were no prophets. For 400 years, between the testaments, the people of God had become acculturated. You say what do you mean? I mean the distinctiveness of Israel was lost. Now, as a people and as a nation, they existed. But as a distinctive people of God, they no longer existed. They were a fractured community. Over here on one side, you had the Pharisees, who were strict legalists, held tenaciously to the legalism of Old Testament law, and sought to impose not only what the scriptures said, but many of the things which the scriptures didn't say on their people. Over here you had the Sadducees. We would call them the rationalists or the humanists. They didn't believe in the supernatural. They didn't believe in the resurrection or angels. They didn't believe in a heaven or a hell. They were the materialist of their day. They were the naturalist of their day. Over here you had the zealots who saw that salvation was going to be in political reform, and political reform would have to be brought about by terrorism and militarism. And over here you had the Essene community and this community and that community, and different factions and groups existed within the nation of Israel so much so that you couldn't tell what a Jew was. You couldn't tell what a Jew believed. So by the time that Jesus comes in the incarnation, by the time the first Christmas unfolds, at the incarnation of Jesus Christ, he is born into a Judaism that is basically non-identifiable. You could not put your finger on what it was. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But you couldn't even identify who his own were. You know, I compare that to where we are today. I believe the coming of Christ is very near. I've said before, and I can't prove this certainly, but I can prove that there are certain signs in Scripture that clearly warn us that the day of Christ is near. I believe we are very, very close to the coming of Christ. And one of the reasons I believe that is because of the nondistinctive aspect of Christianity. We are warned in Scripture that prior to the coming of Christ, the church as a church will become a show church institution. That you will no longer be able to identify or to distinguish between the show church and the true church. Christianity as a world religion, for all intents and purposes, is no different now than Judaism was when Jesus came the first time. We have our Pharisees today. We have our legalists who sit over here and watch and pass judgment on everybody else. We have our Pharisees, even within our own denomination. And I say this with love, even within our own denomination, there are some who stand up and say that unless you do this in a worship service, it can't be worship. And they pass judgment on others who hold a different position. That unless it's done this way or that way or this way or that way, it can't be true worship. The Pharisees did that in the first century New Testament time. We pass judgments on people that unless they meet up to our standard, unless they do things the way we think they ought to be done, that it can't be Christian. We have our Pharisees today. We have churches today that have imposed rules on people that are not biblical rules. That you must do this, this, this, and this, and you must say this, this, this, and this in order to be a Christian. And many of those things have no foundation or basis in Scripture whatsoever. Even the zealots exist today. We have the political zealots. We have preachers and teachers who are standing up today and saying that the coming kingdom of Christ has to come politically. And they hold doctrinal positions that speak of Christianizing our society and changing the infrastructures of our society so that we may bring the kingdom to earth. Politically, the zealots exist. We have the Sadducees today. They call themselves Christians. If you were to ask them, are you a Christian? They say, Well, most certainly I am. They would say, Well, how do you know? Because I'm in the Methodist Church, or I'm a Baptist, or I'm a Presbyterian, or I'm a Lutheran, or I'm a Roman Catholic, or I'm this or I'm that. Well, what do you believe? I believe that we need to love everybody, we need to do good to as many people as we can. We need to bring justice to unjust situations, we need to feed the hungry, we need to clothe the poor, we need to remove oppression from the face of the earth, we need to get rid of racism and all these other things, and they all sound wonderful and good. But ask those 20th century Sadducees whether or not they believe that Jesus Christ is creator God, and that there's one way to heaven, and that is through faith in Him. Ask them if they believe in the physical resurrection of Christ. You know what's so sad? I read a book recently. A book that kind of surveys what Bible school students believe. Seminary students. Now they didn't go to the liberal seminaries, they didn't go to Princeton Seminary. They didn't go to some of the other schools. I won't mention too many of them. They didn't go to those schools because we know what they believe. They don't believe anything. They went to the places where supposedly, historically, they have held tenaciously to the word of God. Where they have held tenaciously to this book, where they have believed in the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. And they asked these Bible students, these future pastors and teachers, these are the guys in the next five to ten years are going to be standing behind the pulpits. What do you believe? And I read through that book, and I could feel blood vessels starting to swell in my neck. I mean, they're asking such questions as, do you believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead? And the overwhelming majority of these guys are either waffling and saying, Well, I don't know, or they're saying, No, I don't believe it, or no, it's not necessary for salvation, or ask them about the inerrancy of scripture, and they give you the typical form criticism answers or literary criticism answers that show they don't believe in the inerrancy of scripture, and these are the guys that are going to stand in the pulpits in the next five to ten years and pastor the churches. And they're coming out of evangelical schools, they're coming out of Christian schools. It's interesting, years ago, the late Francis Schaefer wrote an essay called The Great Evangelical Disaster, in which, without even knowing it, I think prophetically he said that day was coming. Why? Because slowly but surely we have eroded the foundations of our faith. The Sadducees exist today. They exist today. We've got the Pharisees, we've got the Sadducees, we've got the zealots, we've got every branch of Christianity conceivable, but ask the people how to get to heaven and they can't tell you. Ask them how to face death and they don't know how. Ask them how to deal with the loss of a loved one in faith and they'll waffle. Ask them if there's a heaven to be gained and a hell to be shunned. They're sure to tell you, yes, I believe in a heaven, but no, I don't believe in a hell. We live in a time that's very, very similar to the first coming of Christ, where Christianity has lost its distinctiveness. We are no longer a force of moral significance on the face of this earth. We no longer carry the clout that we did even 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, morally speaking. To be an evangelical Christian, and I mean evangelical in the sense of adhering tenaciously to the inerrancy of scripture, to be that kind of a Christian today, you're laughed at. Take it to school with you. Take it down to any campus, take it anywhere. And what will you find? You will find resistance, you will find closed-mindedness, and do you know who you'll find it from? Professors and teachers who are faithful trustees and deacons in their local mainline churches. But they're too intellectual to believe in anything miraculous. They are our modern-day Sadducees. It is into that backdrop, into that lifestyle, God became a man. And you know why? To bring salvation through that Judaism background to bring salvation to the world. Now, how in the world was he going to do that with such a fractured, diverse people? You see, in their fracturedness and in their diversity, each one of those groups grew to hate him. Each one of those groups teamed up. They wouldn't even speak to each other in a local synagogue. They certainly wouldn't serve on the same committees in their churches. But in that same group, in that same context, they would team up to get him hung on that cross, to crucify him, to put him to death. And in modern-day Christianity, we're doing exactly the same thing. Exactly the same thing. We want Jesus put to death. We want no restrictions on our lives. We want no moral requirements. We want no call to faith. And don't speak to me about being born again. Don't talk to me about being saved. Don't talk to me about a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. And certainly don't tell me anything about bearing witness to lost people out there in the world. What's my business spiritually is my business and it's none of yours. And it is into that backdrop, I believe, he's going to come again. It is into that kind of apostasy. Jesus will come and separate the show church from the true church. You see, sitting here right now is the show church. Take a look around. There are people I would say, if I were to ask you, are you a Christian this morning? If less than 90% of you would say yes, I'd be very surprised. Probably closer to 100% of you would say, Yes, I am a Christian. Well, what do you mean by that? What do you mean when you say you're a Christian? And how far does your Christianity carry you? How does it make a difference in your life? How has it changed you? Are you just a Christian here? How about when you go to work? What do the people who work with you say? What do they think? If I were to walk onto your job and ask your employers or your employees, is he a Christian? Would I be snickered at and laughed at? Would I be ridiculed? Would I be told? If I were to say, is he different? And he were to say, oh yeah, he's different, all right, what would he mean by that? What would he mean? What is your Christianity? What is it to you? What do you believe? You see, God has brought us, I believe, as a church, among many churches, to a point of conflict. Every one of us, whether we want to believe it or not, since we preach and teach the word, our church has become a source of conflict in the war between God and Satan. And I want you to know something. In the years to come, you've heard it first here, book it, take it to the bank. In the years to come, if the Lord does not return soon, it is going to be unsafe for you to be a member of this church. Or any church like this church. Say, wait a minute, you guys think you have the corner on the truth? No, we have a small section of it, but not the whole corner. We got a large chunk of the corner, but not the whole corner. One thing I know for sure, what we preach and we teach concerning how to get to heaven is absolutely true. And Satan does not want you to believe that. And the world out there is going to tell you in the days and months ahead it's not politically correct to believe that if they haven't told you that already. It's too what? Narrow. It is not going to be safe. So you better chalk it up now, brother, sister. You better chalk it up now as to what you believe. You better take inventory. Look inside and say, what do I believe? Because some of you will fall away. You will fall away. You will back off. I don't know what it will take when the heat gets turned up. I don't know whether it will take some personal tragedy in your life. I don't know whether God will have to ignore you or back off for a while or seem like he's absent. I don't know whether it's going to be trouble in your marriage or trouble on your job or trouble in your own physical body, whether you're going to go through physical pain or whatever, but Satan is not happy with you. If you are a true, Bible-believing, Christ-honoring, God-honoring Christian who loves the word of God and wants to take that word out of the confines of the church and into the world in which you live, you are a threat to the kingdom of hell. And don't you think for one minute Satan isn't going to launch every single missile that he possibly can to bring you down in your faith. He's going to do that. And it's going to cost you something. And I hope you're ready to pay the price. Because if you're not, you need to take a look in the mirror and ask yourself whether or not you truly are a believer. It's going to be very costly. You see, I believe the touchstone of the incarnation is the most critical point in all of human history. It is at that point that Satan unleashed an horrific attack to stop Jesus from going to the cross. And what was the first thing he did? Do you remember? What's the first thing Satan did when he heard the announcement that the birth of Jesus, the birth of Messiah, that the seed of the woman promised all the way back in Genesis chapter 3, that the seed of the woman that he sought to destroy all the way through the Old Testament, that that seed of the woman, that one who would come out of the line of David, had been born. What's the first thing Satan tried to do? He went out and tried to kill all the babies. And yet, even prophecy tells us there shall be weeping and lamenting in Rama. Mothers weeping for their children. The prophet told us 700 years before the birth of Christ that the mothers would weep, their babies would be taken from them, and a sword would be placed into their hearts. Why? Because Satan wanted the child dead. And he would even rally the zealots and the Sadducees and the Pharisees together and get him nailed up onto the cross, thinking that he had won the victory, only three days later to find out that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, had conquered sin in the grave, had burst forth out of the tomb, so that salvation that he had offered in coming to the cross in the first place could be sealed forever and forever, that Satan would then be bound, that he would be cast out of heaven, that he would be bound and would not be permitted to thwart the spread of the gospel until the coming of Jesus Christ the second time. From that day on, the kingdom of God has advanced. It has advanced, it has advanced, and it has come through some horrible things. The history of the church bears out the fact that we have come through some horrible things. In spite of the persecutions of the first century, where babies were taken from their mothers. What these parents must have felt like. What these parents must have felt like. Can you imagine what the mother and the father of that soldier who was dragged through the streets of Somalia? Can you imagine what they must have felt like watching their son's dead body dragged through those streets? But can you imagine that you were in a situation where all you had to do was denounce your faith in Jesus Christ? And the baby that had just been taken from you and draped in a lamb's skin who was about to be thrown into a lion's den would have been released, where all you had to do was say two words, I recant. Can you imagine what they must have felt like? To be ripped apart by the lions, to be hung up on the crosses, to be torched, to be lit up like lanterns under Nero and Valerian and Domitian and all these other persecutors of the faith who tried to destroy the faith. In spite of the embarrassment of the crusades, the kingdom of God has continued. In spite of the dark ages where the church and the state married, the kingdom of God has advanced. In spite of the heresies that came out of the Enlightenment period, the heresies of relativism and naturalism and humanism, the heresies of godless atheism, in spite of that birth of modern-day humanism and forum criticism that came out of that period of enlightenment, in spite of that, the kingdom of God has advanced. In spite of the embarrassment of the modern-day TV evangelists, the kingdom of God continues. In spite of the gross doctrinal error that exists in the church today. Doctrinal error that ranges from higher criticism all the way over on the left to radical extreme fundamentalism and all the other isms in between that embarrass us as Christians. From those who remain faithful to the word, contrasted to those who remain faithless to the word, in spite of that faithlessness, the kingdom of God still advances. In spite of all of the social sins that the church has embraced, sins like abortion or the Episcopalian bishop who has just ordained publicly for everybody to see a homosexual pastor. In spite of the fact that most of the mainliners are dealing socially with sins that the Bible clearly explains as sinful, in spite of that apostasy, the kingdom of God still advances. In spite of the gross acculturation that has taken place, where you, many of you, have identified yourself fully with the culture in which you live, thus compromising what you believe and stand for, rather than being transformed by the wonderful grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. In spite of that acculturation, the kingdom of God continues. But there is coming a day when God's going to close the door, and the last of the elect is going to be saved. God is going to close the door, and there will be no second chance. And then shall appear the sign of the coming of the Son of Man. And the whole world will know that he is about to come, and all that what they have believed about him is not true, except for those who are his elect. And he will come swiftly, and the whole world will see it. And he will bring judgment. And he will cast into hell those who have been lost forever and forever. And he will resurrect the saved. Bring them into his glory. I believe that with all of my heart. You know what my problem is? I don't believe you do. At least some of you. At least some of you. Oh, you say you do. But when it's time to pay the price, will you say you do? When it's time to chalk up the score, will you say you do? When the heat gets turned up, when Satan fans the flames, will you still believe it? Will you still believe it? You see, the show church will be separated from the true church. The remnant still survives in every church. The remnant exists. The tribulation will come if it hasn't already started. At least as far as time is concerned, it will come to an end. The beginning was when man was created. The end is when man will be recreated. When Jesus Christ will come back, we will experience the final touchstone in redemptive history. The final touchstone when all of what we believe is brought to light. And many will come to him in that day and say, Lord, Lord, was I not a member of GRPC? Did I not sit and listen to sermon after sermon? And you know that's going to be one of the horrific. Parts of this is he's going to replay all those sermons. You're going to have a videotape and you're going to hear how you sat there and you listened and you listened and you listened and you walked out of here the same person as you walked in. And it won't be on my conscience because I've warned you. It will be on your head if you don't know Christ. You know, if you don't know Christ this morning, I don't know how you could sit there. I'd have walked out of here a long time ago. I wouldn't take this stuff. How dare him say these things about me? Why I'm a member of such and such a church. Why I sing in the choir. You know, Satan's really good at music. Did you know that? Did you know that? He was the director of the first choir. Did you know that? Satan's real good at music. Why I study the Bible? Do you know Satan's a student of the Bible? Unless you're very, very careful, he knows how to take half the truth out of here and make it sound like truth. And on and on the list can go. I'm a good father. I'm a good husband. I'm a good wife. I'm a good mother. Are you really? Good according to whose standard? You say, well, my wife's happy with me. Is God happy with you? Is God happy with you? Is he pleased because he sees his son in you? Or do you think that somehow he's going to be pleased as you face him bare naked? Here I am, Lord. I know all of heaven has been waiting for this day. Here I am. Angels get kicked up there, start celebrating. Saints roll out the red carpet. The naked sinner is here. Here I am. And somehow or another, God's going to say, Well, you know, there really are two ways. You don't have to come through my son. His death was meaningless anyhow, only for a certain few who believe that stuff. But for you, we'll make an exception. You've been reading too many magazines, you've been watching too many soap operas, you've been watching too many programs. You've got a poor image of Christianity. There's only one way to heaven. Only one way. And if you drop dead tonight and stand before God, are you sure that you have eternal life? Would you bow with me in prayer, please?

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Now may the grace of God, the love of our Lord and our Savior, Jesus the Christ, the very presence, person, and power of his Holy Spirit abide with each of you now until Christ comes again and forevermore. And all God's people said.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

Mark Ink's Ministries exist to offer help and hope to hurting people by pointing them to the promises of God and the comfort of his word. Through In His Grip, Ask Dr. Betters, Daily Treasure, and Help and Hope, we provide free, faith-based resources for those walking through suffering, grief, confusion, and seasons of deep need. To learn more about Dr. Betters, explore our resources, or contact us, visit N R K I N C dot org. May you rest today in the assurance that God can be trusted even when we do not understand his plans.