We boldly approach...
Father, You promised the Holy Spirit
to them that ask.
We know that the Spirit has come
into this world to glorify Christ.
That's what we want.
Lord, give us the Spirit, we pray.
Give Him. As You've said for us to pray.
We ask.
And Lord, we pray that we might have the Spirit
that we would bring forth greater
glory to Christ in the year ahead.
Whatever it is.
Whether it's in mission, whether it's in evangelism,
whether it's in any type of outreach,
whether it's in benevolence,
whether it's in the love right here among ourselves,
whether it's in our worship, whether it's in our singing,
whatever it is, we pray that the Spirit of God
would be unleashed upon the east side of
San Antonio, that Christ might have all the glory.
That these old refuges of demons out in these streets,
that all these old places, broken down walls,
that we may be the repairer of the breach,
restorers of streets to be dwelt among.
Lord, we pray that Christ would be honored,
that He would be magnified.
If Christ would not be honored, then tear this church apart.
Cast it out to the winds.
But Lord, if You would be so pleased to cause
that candlestick to burn bright here for one more year,
Lord, that it would emanate with the beauties of Christ,
with the fragrance of Christ, with the light,
the beaming light and fire,
may it shine forth, Lord.
Father, You have been so good to us.
For Christ's sake, You have been good to us.
We know it.
We would be lying, we would be blind if we said otherwise.
Lord, You have been good to us.
Please Lord, show Your goodness to us today as well.
In Christ's name we pray, Amen.
Ok, quickly, on with our text.
Romans 10.
I want to read five verses to you this morning.
Romans 10:9-13
Romans 10:9
"If you confess with your mouth,
that Jesus is Lord."
Now remember, Christ says this:
What comes out of the mouth is
an indication of what is in the heart.
Now that's not to say that people
can't just say the words, "Jesus is Lord."
That's not what confession is.
Confession is saying, "Jesus is Lord,"
maybe even more so by your actions sometimes.
Remember what Scripture says,
"by their works," (this is found in Titus)
"by their works they deny Him."
You can say one thing and by your works
deny what you say.
So just confessing Jesus as Lord doesn't save you.
It's that belief from the heart that wells up
in a confession through words, through life.
It's when you're in the family,
and they are telling you to close your mouth,
we don't want to hear that.
But you're going to confess Christ as Lord.
It's in the workplace, where they say, "we don't want any of that."
"Away with your Christ. Away with your Christianity."
"Away with your religion. We don't want it."
But you confess it there when it's hard.
Some of you've heard Paul Washer say
it's when those Roman legions came down the street
and they said, ok, offer up your little tax,
offer up your little worship to Ceasar.
And the Christians would say, "Jesus is Lord."
Not Ceasar, Jesus.
And it would cost them.
And that's the idea.
It's confessing Him.
That's what Christ says,
"If you confess Me before men,
I will confess you before My Father."
That's the idea right there.
Confessing Christ.
And you know worked into the very fabric of this
is they will not be put to shame.
You see, that's the temptation.
That's what it says there in verse 11,
"They'll not be put to shame."
Because that's the temptation.
When you're before the family, the lost family,
the world, the workplace, out there in the school,
out there in the other places,
that's the temptation.
To keep your mouth shut, and to be ashamed.
But if you confess Him as Lord,
believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead,
you will be saved.
Make no doubt about it, you will be saved.
Hey, I'm not saying you just flippantly spatter off a little words,
and you say very flippantly,
"Well, I believe Jesus Christ was true, historic fact."
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm saying if you believe truthfully in your heart,
a faith that is willing to bank all on Christ,
all your trust is there, I'm telling you this:
you will be saved.
Make no qualms about that - no argument there.
Scripture verifies it. You will be.
It's not an exception. You will be.
It's not maybe, you might be.
There's a certainty here.
For with the heart one believes.
Not just with the head.
You guys have to understand this.
Anybody can rattle off historical facts.
Now yes, our faith is based on historical facts.
But you can say those facts and not really believe them.
It's the person that's willing to cast all.
All your money. All your life.
All your time. All your family. All your children.
Your spouse. Everything. All your material possessions.
It's there.
Lord, You are Lord. It's all Yours.
I've been bought with a price.
That, and that alone, is the faith, the belief that justifies.
And with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
For the Scripture says everyone who believes in Him
will not be put to shame.
For there's no distinction between Jew and Greek.
The same Lord is Lord of all,
bestowing His riches on all who call on Him.
For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
As you scan these five verses,
it ought to be apparent to you right off.
This is no discourse about predestination,
nothing here about the second coming,
this isn't about church order or gifts of the Spirit,
nothing here about the Trinity.
You know what?
If you just search the word "saved"
in your New Testaments,
you know what you'll find?
The word is not used anywhere in the Scriptures
in a more condensed fashion
than right here in these five verses.
There's nowhere in the Scriptures that the word "saved"
shows up three times in five verses.
Except here.
You know what?
Paul's dealing with one simple subject here.
You know what it is?
Being saved.
You can see it. Right?
You see the word right there at the end of verse 9?
You see it again at the end of verse 10.
You see it again at the end of the verse 13.
Ok, now everybody says, alright, we see it.
Now let's move on to something more interesting.
But hold on just a second...
let me tell you something,
the word "saved" -
there are few words associated
with Christianity more than that word.
We hear it all the time, right?
I mean how many of you have not heard that
quaint, little expression, "Jesus saves"?
You've seen it on bumper stickers,
you've probably seen it on billboards,
you've seen it at ballgames.
You don't see it so much anymore at ballgames.
You don't see John 3:16 in the end zone anymore.
What happened to that?
I guess people going to football games
are more pagan now than ever, right?
The beer drinkers probably threw a few bottles,
and they realized they weren't welcome there.
Let me tell you something,
people love to talk that way.
"Oh, I'm saved!"
"I got saved when I was three."
"I was baptized. I got saved."
People love to throw that term around.
Saved, saved, saved.
We hear it a lot.
People walk in here, "Are you saved?"
"Oh yeah, I'm saved."
They're not saved, but they say they are.
Because they haven't bowed the knee to Christ.
There's no confession of His Lordship in their life.
Not by their works.
Oh, they might say, "do you believe Jesus is Lord?"
"Oh yeah, I believe He's Lord."
Then they walk right out and they're slaves to sin.
They're not obeying Him.
Don't you realize what it says?
Why call ye Me, 'Lord, Lord,'
and then you don't do the will of My Father in heaven?
It's not those who say, "Lord, Lord."
It's those who do the will of the Father.
You say you've got to be doing something to get saved?
I'm saying this, if you're truly saved,
if you truly have that faith that saves,
you're going to submit to Christ.
Because that's what happens.
God says under the new covenant,
I'm going to write My laws on their heart.
I'm going to break their heart.
I'm going to take that old stony thing out.
I'm going to put a heart of flesh in.
My laws will not be grievous.
And if you say that you are a Christian,
1 John 2 says, "but you don't keep His commandments,
you're a liar. The truth isn't in you."
Oh, I hope that just rings in our heads.
I'm trying to lay down,
true Christianity is that which submits
to the Lordship of Christ.
It's that one thing.
People banter around this idea of being saved
all the time, "I'm saved."
And people come along, "yeah, I've been saved five times."
"Six times."
Well, that's not a salvation that I want!
If you can lose it, it's no good.
That's not being saved.
What are you saved from?
You're certainly not saved if you can lose it.
So here's what we're dealing with: saved.
Greek word: sozo
Of the 110 times it's found in our New Testaments,
93 times (that's about 85% of the time)
it's translated "save" or some form of that (saved).
Now listen, as I began studying this
you know a lot of times I don't know where I'm going.
I sit down and I open up my Bible
and I start reading the next section of Scripture.
I don't often know how far I'm going,
what I'm going to deal with,
I just begin reading.
Sometimes I know ahead of time.
Sometimes I can see out two or three weeks.
But this week, I opened up
and I began reading these five verses
over and over and over.
And this word "saved."
And I really began to think about,
what does it mean?
And I'll tell you something that really probably pushed me off
in the direction that I want to go this morning.
I have Bible software that allows me to look at other translations.
Let me tell you something.
There is an English word
that is usually used to define the word "save."
Linguistically, in the English language,
it's almost spelled the same except one letter is swapped.
And they're actually swapped for a letter that's very similar.
You know what, it's the word "safe."
William Tyndale, 16th century martyr,
burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic church.
What did he do?
Must have been some pretty terrible crimes
to take a man and burn him at the stake.
What did he do? Rape a bunch of little children?
Was he a serial killer?
Roman Catholic church
That's what God saved me out of.
Leddy, where are you at?
You got saved out of that.
What did the guy do?
He translated and published the New Testament Scriptures.
Let me tell you something.
In his translation of the New Testament published in 1525,
he actually translated Romans 10:10 this way,
"For the belief of the heart justifieth,
and to knowledge with the mouth, (that's confession)
maketh a man safe."
Romans 10:13 he translates this way.
Now listen, Tyndale is largely the source
from which the translators of all of the English
translations come from.
The King James was taken largely from Tyndale's work.
And all subsequent translations as well
owe much to Tyndale's work.
Listen to what he does with Romans 10:13,
"For whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord,
shall be safe."
As I got looking at that,
I suddenly began to feel
this fear rise up in me.
Men are not safe.
When we start talking about "saved,"
the gut level meaning of saved,
it carries the idea of making safe.
If men need to be saved, they are not safe.
You don't talk about being saved,
unless there is peril.
Unless there is danger.
People, the human race, is not safe.
Think about that.
The very concept demands a scary reality.
It demands that there is something here.
There is something around us.
There is something out there,
that is constantly looming.
That is constantly reaching.
That is constantly coming for man.
That is endangering him with some type of harm,
with some sort of death, with some sort of calamity.
Something is out there. Something is there.
Now, if somebody says, well, of course,
hell's out there.
That makes us afraid.
After all, hell can burn us. Hell can harm us.
Hell can trap us.
Hell - it's thirsty for the souls of wicked men,
and that makes us afraid.
Because we are such men.
But what is it?
What is hell?
Hell is a place. That's all it is.
It's just a place.
Yes, it may be a scary place, but it's nothing more than that.
And you know what, on top of that?
It's a place none of you currently are.
So why do you fear it?
You say well I fear it because, I might go there one day.
And that's right.
That's right.
But listen to me, it's not like hell
comes and gets us where we are.
Look folks, hell is not the reason why men are not safe.
There's something out there is that is far more terrifying
than hell that men need protection from.
You know what makes it so unsafe for us to
walk about in this world?
For sinful men to even walk down this sidewalk?
What is it that makes it so unsafe?
It certainly isn't hell. It certainly isn't the devil.
Folks, it's something far, far more dangerous
than those things.
It's man's worst nightmare.
What you and I need to be saved from...
That thing in this world that is not safe...
is God Himself.
You know what? Jesus knew this.
When He came to the earth and He walked among us,
He warned us.
He said, men, don't be foolish. Open your eyes.
The thing that you've got to fear is not
what you so typically fear.
It is something else.
Men walk about - I'll guarantee you go out on these streets,
what do they fear?
They fear the police.
They fear finding out they've got AIDS.
Yes, they may fear hell, but you say, "do you fear God?"
No, they don't fear God.
Why? Because in their mind He's
just this big old fat Santa Claus old man up in the sky
sitting there smiling at them.
If they realized what God was, if they could see
the way He's looking at them right now,
they would be terrified beyond description.
And Christ comes to this earth,
and He says I will warn you.
He warned us.
I will warn you Whom you should fear.
Luke 12:5, "You should fear Him Who after He has killed,
has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you..."
Not fear hell, not fear death, not fear the devil,
Christ says fear Him.
Fear Him Who has that authority.
In Matthew 10:28, "Fear Him Who can destroy
both soul and body in hell."
So many people say, "My god is not like that."
"My god wouldn't do that."
Let me tell you something, your god is not
the God of the Scriptures.
One of the most terrifying texts in the Bible,
Psalm 50:22, you know what the Lord
threatens to do to sinners?
Our ESV says "tear them apart."
All other translations,
God is threatening to tear sinners to pieces.
The Lord is the One Who we looked at last week
in Luke 19, Who says bring My enemies before Me
and slaughter them
before Me.
This is the God of Scripture.
All of you guys turn back in your Bibles right now
to Romans 5. It's not far away.
I want you to see this. Romans 5:9
The Apostle Paul, he's preaching the Gospel.
In one of the most extended, intricate fashions
that you can find in the Scriptures.
Powerful.
And in Romans 5:9, you tell me - you guys read that.
Let your eyes go through that verse right there.
You tell me what that verse tells us we need to be saved from.
The wrath of God.
Now listen, wrath is not like this detached,
separate thing from God.
It is God's wrath.
It is God Himself that has the wrath.
It's not like wrath is some separated thing,
out there down the street,
away from Him.
It's God's wrath.
He's saying you've got to be saved from God.
How easily and flippantly men talk of being saved.
But they have no idea what it is that they truly
need to be saved from.
My friend, God is not this pushover old man
up in the sky somewhere.
He is the Lord God Almighty.
The whole earth is full of His glory.
He is fearful.
He is your greatest need of salvation.
What you need to be saved from is from Him.
That's what men need to be saved from.
Sinners are not safe.
Because God is out there.
Because God is not safe.
Oh how men should fear.
And I'm telling you, some of you sit in this room right now,
you've got false professions.
They aren't worth the money you've got in your pocket.
You've never truly submitted to Christ.
You walk around with this foggy deception
about being saved.
You like to calm your fears
and tell yourself all is going to be well.
This God is out there.
And He's coming for you.
And I'll tell you, all your false profession does
is add to the wickedness, and add to the wrath,
and add to what God is going to bring on your head
very soon if you do not seek refuge in His Son.
There's only one place of safetly, folks.
You are not safe where you are outside of Christ.
You can have the greatest profession in the world,
but if you are outside of Christ,
if you're deceived, you better fear.
Christ Himself the Savior warned you.
Fear Him.
Do you know what? I know how this was.
I was living in all sorts of sin.
You go back 20 years, there I am,
head over heels immersed in the muck
and the filth of my sin.
And you know what I thought?
I thought God was smiling on me.
Have you guys been there?
I don't doubt we've got some lost people
in this place right now.
That's your perception.
Wicked men typically think God is pleased with them,
not really too concerned about their sin.
Many have this concept in their mind,
that He just sort of winks at their sin.
Kicks it under the rug.
Not a big deal.
Many people imagine God up there in heaven,
you know kind of weak, wringing his hands,
"oh, you know I'm doing everything I can
for those poor sinners down there.
There's nothing left for me to do,
it's all left in their hands now.
Oh, I want them to be saved so bad.
I just have all these good purposes,
and I'm smiling at them. I'm crying for them.
And everything in me, I just wish there was more I could do."
People have this idea that God is like that.
I'll tell you what, that's a misguided notion.
People running around with this idea:
God never puts anybody in hell.
Your own sins take you there.
Oh, you have misread your Bibles if you think that.
Christ says you better fear Him Who
has the authority to cast into hell.
Bank on it.
It will be God.
If you go to hell in this room,
it will be God who cast you there.
And He wil do it.
And He will do it for certain.
He is not safe.
If you are walking in your sins,
you are not safe.
You imagine there's any reluctance?
There's any weakness with God to cast wicked men
into hell this very moment?
I'll tell you when God rises up,
who's going to resist Him?
Who's going to stand in His way?
If He put men in hell, I'll tell you what,
they're going in there right now.
Multitudes are going in there right now.
Do you think God's got any reluctance
to throw sinners into hell?
He does not.
Hell is filling up even this very moment.
Just because some guy's off in India
somewhere or Africa, living in his wickedness,
beholding what he can of the glory of God
in the creation, and he refuses it,
he denies it, he suppresses it.
I'm telling you what, there's no reluctance with God
to take somebody like that and cast them into hell.
They're going in there by the millions.
Absolutely.
Listen to this, Nahum 1:6,
"Who can stand before His indignation?
Who can endure the heat of His anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire,
and the rocks are broken into pieces by Him."
You say I don't like this.
This is not what I wanted to hear today.
I'll tell you what. You can get in front of smooth-mouthed,
slippery fellows that will tickle your ears
and tell you what you want to hear.
I know a lot of people aren't saying this,
but this is what our Scriptures tell us.
Look, when the whole earth trembles at His voice,
and rocks break into pieces before Him,
do you think you will be able to stand before Him?
Can you feel it, sinner?
You're not safe.
Let me ask you this:
What do you think there is to keep God from
coming upon you this very hour?
Do you think there's something standing in the way?
Listen, you say justice.
Justice.
I've heard people say that.
"All I want when I get there is what I deserve."
Justice does not stand in the way of God throwing
you into hell right now.
Scripture.
Scripture talks about "God so loved."
Let me tell you this.
Scripture says that everyone
who is not obeying the Son,
John 3:36, the wrath of God is upon you already
and you face, what is it, John 3:16, 17, 18?
Yes, God so loved the world,
but I'll tell you this,
it says that if you have not believed,
God's condemnation is upon you.
It's amazing how everybody wants to quote verse 16.
What about verse 17? 18? 36?
People don't like to go there.
There's wrath, folks.
There is wrath. There is condemnation.
You know what?
You say, what about the law?
Let me tell you this. The law says this:
Everyone who does not keep all things written
in the book of the law, to do them, is cursed.
You know what? Don't make any appeal to justice.
Don't make any appeal to Scripture.
Don't make any appeal to God's law.
Because all three are standing against you.
All three are urging God right now,
"Cast them away!"
They demand your head. They demand your blood.
Justice demands it.
Scripture demands it.
The Law demands it.
I'm telling you, you don't have a cheering section there with God,
egging Him on.
As someone has said before,
when man first sinned, those angels were
reaching for the hilt of their sword.
They were looking to execute judgment.
There's only one thing standing between
the sinner and hell flames right this second.
I'll tell you what, last night as I was out
under that cloud, under the sky,
I was looking at the horizon all the way around,
the vastness of the sky.
I was imagining all that I could see
to be one massive floodgate.
A sinner stands underneath that.
And that thing begins to bulge.
The wrath of God held back.
It bulges and it creaks.
It's about to give way.
All the wrath of God stored up.
Listen to me!
Scripture does not call the sinner a child of wrath for nothing.
It means there is wrath against you right now.
People have this idea,
"Oh, God is fiercely angry with those people in hell."
Let me tell you this:
There are some of you sitting in this room right now
that God is more fiercely angry with than some
he's already tormenting in hell.
You say, "Well, why am I still here?"
Only because your time has not run out yet.
Theirs has.
Some of you have committed much more
grievous sins against God than some in hell.
There are Africans, there are Indians in that fire right now
that have not heard the truth that some of you
lost folks in this room have heard.
God's wrath against you is storing up,
that floodgate is bulging, it is creaking,
it is ready to come in.
There's only one thing holding it back right now.
It's not justice, it's not Scripture, it's not the Law of God.
It's God's sovereign pleasure to hold it back this moment.
That's it.
Let me tell you something.
There are few Scriptures that give us a glimpse.
One of them is found back in Genesis.
Let me tell you something.
God comes along, He's speaking to Abraham.
He says Abraham, let Me tell you something,
I'm going to take your offspring,
I'm going to take them into Egypt.
I'm going to leave them there 400 years.
4 generations, I'm going to leave them there.
Why?
Why not two generations?
You know why?
Because when they come out,
they're going to kill the Amorites.
When they come out, they are
going to subdue seven nations in Canaan.
You know what God says to Abraham?
The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
You know what Daniel the prophet said?
He speaks about transgressors not yet
reaching their limit.
Paul to the Thessalonians
talks about the Jews
filling up the measure of their sin.
Let me tell you something,
Sinners only sin so far.
You cannot hide beneath a false profession.
That floodgate is going to bulge so far.
That measure is going to come up.
Your time is numbered.
You say, "Oh, I'm healthy."
People have this idea, don't they?
Oh, you know, the sun's shining...
I got sick - God healed me.
I was in this car wreck - God spared me.
And they think because they've seen these
little glimmers of God's mercy to preserve them
from that pit of fire already, they suppose,
that must mean God's wrath
does not hang over my head.
That must mean everything is ok.
I've made my peace with Him upstairs.
Don't buy into that deception.
That floodgate is ready to unleash on your heads,
if you have not a place of safety.
Man is not safe.
Let me tell you something,
there's a time when those Israelites,
they're out there and they began to complain,
and they began to grumble,
and it's like spontaneous combustion took place.
If you've never read about it, folks, it happened.
Numbers 11:1 - you read about it sometime.
I'll tell you what happened.
There was sin in the camp.
God dwelling in that camp.
And it's like this sin - when people have sin
that is seething and breeding in the heart,
you know what the natural course of things is?
It's for God to break out in fury and fire and wrath.
Spontaneous combustion began to consume people
in the outer vestiges of that camp.
Oh, we feel so secure. Our feet our planted.
Let me tell you something,
you may feel like your feet are planted
on the ground right now.
You may feel like you're pretty healthy right now.
But I'm telling you, if you're outside of Christ,
you are on a very rocky foundation.
That great big massive as-far-as-the-sky
the limits of it who can measure?
The wrath of God.
Who can measure the wrath
against a lifetime of sin?
When God's wrath against one sin of Adam and Eve
cost them paradise, cost them their life.
One sin.
Who can imagine the wrath?
When Scripture calls the lost "children of wrath,"
you've got to understand, thunderclouds are black,
it is ready to rain torrents of wrath.
There is only that one thing that holds it back.
God only forebears so long.
Let me tell you...
I was at my step-dad's side.
He refused Christ.
He went to church when he found out he had terminal cancer.
But anytime I talked to him about Christ,
he didn't want to hear it.
Anytime I talked to him about sin,
he didn't want to hear it.
He rejected Christ to his dying day.
I was at his bedside as I watched him
pass off into eternity.
I'll tell you this, it's not even possible
for us to conceive the colossal wave of the floods
of the fierceness and wrath of God
that rushed upon him with inconceivable fury
and omnipotent power that moment he passed off.
We don't see it happen, so we can become blinded to it.
We become senseless to it.
We can fall asleep.
Children of wrath.
I found this ridiculous quote on the Internet yesterday.
Somebody makes the claim,
"God does not send anyone to hell - they send themselves."
One very well known televangelist,
you'd all know his name if I said it.
He says this, this is his quote:
"God doesn't send anyone to hell.
Anyone who goes to hell will be there
because of decisions they've made.
I'm not going to deny that people end up in hell
because of decisions they've made."
But he comes to this conclusion:
"you send yourself there."
Oh, don't be deceived.
God casts men there.
I'll tell you this.
When a child of Adam, a son of Adam, a daughter of Adam,
they walk around out in this world,
tainted with sin,
they are not safe.
They may feel it.
They may feel young. They may feel healthy.
They may feel good. They may feel happy.
But they are not safe.
The very ground they walk on
is made of such material,
it is ready to cave in.
Let me tell you something,
can you imagine if you guys were right now
walking on this decaying, rotting fabric
out over some great chasm?
And you're walking upon it.
And every time you sin, bang,
there's another weight on top of you.
And you sin again, bang, there's another weight.
And it's pressing you, pressing you,
down through that rotten fabric.
There is the mouth gaping wide open for hell.
And every time you sin, God presses,
that weight is coming down.
That great big door of God's floodgate of wrath,
bulging, ready to come forth.
And you tempt it.
The very hand that holds it back -
you kick against it, you kick against it.
With every sin, you hate God, hate His people,
hate His Word.
You say, that's not me - I don't hate it.
You're talking awful graphic.
I'm telling you this,
if you have not bowed the knee to Jesus Christ,
you can maybe have some concept of God in your mind.
You can have some deception you're going to heaven.
But you're not.
It's not those who call Him, "Lord, Lord."
It's those who do the will of the Father in heaven.
You kick against His Lordship.
Listen.
Why it is so important there in Romans 10:9?
That Christ came out of the grave.
Let me tell you why it's important.
In this epistle to the Romans,
the one thing that Paul wants us to see
about the resurrection from the dead
back in Romans 1:4 is this:
Christ coming out of the grave proved Him
to be the Son of God in power.
When Christ declared Himself to be the Son;
When He said, "God is my Father."
What did they do?
They picked up stones.
I'll tell you why,
because that title "Son of God" means deity.
It means He's equal with God.
I'll tell you this,
that great floodgate that is just bending
under the weight of the wrath toward sinners,
you realize what it means when it says,
"He Who knew no sin became sin."
That's not safe to become sin.
He willingly walked out underneath that floodgate.
He said, "Father, I'll stand in the place of My people."
And bang!
That floodgate came open.
Every bit of the wrath rolled across Him.
He drank it.
It crushed Him.
It wasn't a day in the park.
It crushed Him. Every bit of it.
He drank it dry.
Him coming up out of that grave
proved Him to be the Son of God with power.
That's what you need.
That's the only place of safety.
This isn't a mere man we're talking about.
He's Lord. But He's more than Lord.
He is the Son of God.
"My Lord and my God," is what Thomas proclaimed.
That's what you need.
That's your only place of safety.
There is no other place.
And I'll tell you this,
everyone who calls on the name of the Lord,
as old Tyndale said, will be safe.
Oh, we've got to find a place of safety.
This is why in the Old Testament,
they came up under the priesthood
and they're establishing the Mosaic covenant,
they had these cities of refuge.
What were they a picture of?
Christ.
You need refuge.
You're not safe.
You're out on the plain.
Flee! The wrath of God is coming!
You're out there in Sodom and Gomorrah.
You're in the City of Destruction.
You've got to flee. You've got to run.
You say, "but does that include me?"
Everyone who calls.
It includes you if you call.
You say, "you don't know my sin."
Everyone who calls.
Christ says, "Him that comes to Me,
I will in no way cast out."
Look.
We're in a day,
God has moved some,
you've got your Jonathan Diaz,
pulled into the Kingdom.
Lauren Griffin, pulled in.
Stacy Bell, pulled in.
Why would you stay where it's not safe
when others are coming in?
Why stay there?
Repent.
And turn from it all.
Let it all go.
Bow the knee to Christ.
Come to Him.
I mean, He has proved Himself worthy.
He has proved Himself to be the Son of God.
And I'll tell you this,
you come to Him, and do you know what verse 12 says?
He'll bestow on you all the riches...
you know how I've described this,
and you go out to the very horizons
all the way around.
You see this great big floodgate.
It's just bulging under the wrath of God.
I'll tell you, you come to Christ,
and now all of a sudden,
you've got a floodgate - it's bulging.
It's bulging with the riches of Christ,
with the inheritance, with the love of God,
and in Christ it's ready to burst upon your head.
All for good.
Folks, you're not safe.
Or you've got a false profession and you know it.
You know the thing is not solid.
Call. Call fervently. Call earnestly.
Call now.
Call upon Him until your salvation is certain.
Call till you find Christ.
Call.
Sinner, you are not safe.
Amen.