Sunday Night
Sunday Night - August 4, 2024
Well, good evening to you here in the chapel. This is our Sunday night service here at the First Baptist Church of Algiers, and we're located at 9559, Florida Boulevard, Walcker, Louisiana. I'm glad to be here with you. I want to invite everybody listening. You come and be with us on night services. We'd love to have you. Let's start our service tonight in the Red Book, number 104, Jesus Pated All, verse 1, 2, 3, and 4. I hear the same as sing. I stand in deep as calm. God of wake, it's watching free. Mind in me, I know him all, Jesus Pated All, all to whom I own, sing, and left a prince and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know him all, and I know ♪ Our state white as school ♪ - Amen, our dear father, we thank you for another day. Thank you, Lord, for bringing us back here. Lord, I thank you for another opportunity to stand and to lift up Christ. And Lord, I just ask you for more grace to stand here. And may you give me words to speak. Lord, and be pleased to take the words home to the hearts of the Hearers. I have mercy on us, Lord. Lord, I know that in myself I cannot affect the heart of any individual, but Lord, you're able. And so Lord, I plead with you, have mercy on us, have mercy on our people, on our children, on our loved ones. Help, Lord, we can't do anything at all, but Lord, you can do all things. What's impossible with us, Lord, it's not impossible with you, it's no problem at all. So Lord, we look to thee, I plead with you, have mercy on us, turn the hearts of our people. Lord, shine that light into them, enlighten their minds and understanding, and cause them to see their need for Christ. Help, Lord, bless our pastor. Lord, continue to bless him, guide him and keep him. And Lord, we do ask you for all those on our sick list. Heal and raise, oh Lord, have mercy. Bless us, guide us, keep us. I ask it in Christ's name, amen. Well, I do wanna remind you of the Radio Missions website. Most of you know about it, and you can go there and find the live services. And you can go on the Radio Missions website. And there's a button that says listen live. And you can click that, you can get the live services for the Sundays and Wednesday night. And if the services are not live, you can get the internet radio. The Radio Missions radio station plays 24 hours a day. It's always going. So I wanna remind you of that. You don't need an app or anything. Some people say, oh, I've been using an app. No, you don't need an app. If you use an app, you're quite likely to have commercials and other things inserted into all that you hear, but there's none of that on the Radio Missions internet radio. So don't use your app, and you don't have to listen to that. Also, I wanna tell you on sermon audio, I have been trying to put the Romans series on sermon audio. And there's only a couple of them there so far, but I'm gonna be working on them, and it'll take a while, I'm sure. But they'll be there. And also, all the worship hour messages are there from, I think, a couple of months ago. I'm not sure exactly when they started, but I'm putting them there also. And so if you wanna hear that, you can go on sermon audio also and listen to that. It's also on the Radio Missions website. They're on the archive messages. You can find it there. But it's just another avenue that the Lord has opened up for us to get the gospel out to the world. There's a lot of people tune in to sermon audio, thousands and thousands of people. And maybe the Lord will direct some to hear the truth. So it's there and may the Lord use it. So I thank the Lord for it. And we're looking for the Lord's coming. We're not gonna, I don't believe see a mass of people like Spurgeon encountered in his time. I don't think we'll see that, but I believe the Lord's gonna save one here and one there. There's a few more to be saved, and then the Lord's gonna come. If there's no sinners left to be saved, what's the Lord waiting for? So the Lord's waiting till He calls the last one in, and then it'll be done. So I praise the Lord that He saved me, and I'm coming here and speaking and preaching and praying that the Lord will save our people. So let's take our red book now and turn to number 351 is you're all on the altar versus one, three, and four. (gentle piano music) ♪ You can hold for sweet peace ♪ ♪ And for faith to win free ♪ ♪ And ever will sleep ♪ ♪ Preferably praying ♪ ♪ But you can not be impressed ♪ ♪ Or be perfectly blessed ♪ ♪ And you'll hold me all dear in plain ♪ ♪ Raise your all on the thee all dear ♪ ♪ From savory voids flame ♪ ♪ Your honor and spirit come strong ♪ ♪ You can only be blessed ♪ ♪ And at least at sweet friends ♪ ♪ As you eat in your body and soul ♪ ♪ Oh, we never can know ♪ ♪ What a Lord will we show ♪ ♪ Are the best in for faith ♪ ♪ We can pray ♪ ♪ Still our body and soul ♪ ♪ We are calling control ♪ ♪ And our all on thee all dear in plain ♪ ♪ Raise your all on the thee all dear ♪ ♪ From savory voids flame ♪ ♪ Your honor and spirit come strong ♪ ♪ You can only be blessed ♪ ♪ And at least at sweet friends ♪ ♪ As you eat in your body and soul ♪ ♪ You can tell oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ We will stand on our own ♪ ♪ And now happy our hearts will remain ♪ ♪ Of the fellowship's we ♪ ♪ We shall share and sing ♪ ♪ In our all on thee all dear in plain ♪ ♪ Raise your all on thee all dear ♪ ♪ From savory voids flame ♪ ♪ We are our best in for faith ♪ ♪ And strong ♪ ♪ You can only be blessed ♪ ♪ And at least at sweet friends ♪ ♪ As you eat in your body and soul ♪ Amen. Amen. I wanna speak tonight on the importance of salvation. I don't think that anybody here would say, well, salvation's not that important. It's not something that I need to worry about. I think we all understand that salvation's important. But how important is it? How important is it to you? Amen. Whenever we think about salvation, we have to consider who we're dealing with. And we're dealing with God. We're dealing with God. And I'm not talking about a little idol like people used to worship and call God. But we're talking about the God of the universe, a God that we can't begin to understand. A God who has all power. And I'll just leave it at that because I can't begin to understand what all power means. But we're dealing with a God that can save or condemn to hell. Now, whenever we look at salvation and the opposite of salvation, which is hell, we have to understand that both of them are eternal states. Salvation is eternity with God in a joyful, wonderful place and to be lost is to be doomed to hell for eternity. Eternal torments, torments they'll never end. And that's what the Bible tells us. That's what it teaches. That's why we come and that's why I come and that's why I tell you because I don't wanna even think that you have been lost to that awful place. If you don't believe the Bible, then you can go on out. I have nothing for you. You can live your life. Let your conscience be free, do what you like. But that doesn't change God and that doesn't change salvation. It doesn't change hell. If you believe the Bible, you're gonna have to believe all of it, not just the choice, things there. You can't take some and reject the other. You have to take it all, the good and the bad. You have to take it where Christ says He came to save sinners and that's wonderful and that's great. And you have to take it where it says strive to enter in. You have to take the part that says for sake all. You have to take the good and the bad and take it all. But if God can create the universe, which is something that is just the universe in itself is beyond my comprehension, but He created that and He created mankind. He created the human body. He created the spirit of man that's in the body. Doesn't that mean that God is like the Bible says? Far above us, his ways are far above us. And then we find that God foreknew. He knows the beginning from the end. He knows what'll happen before it happens. Thousands of years before it happens. He knows what kind of God do we serve? We can't begin to understand what God is. But what God is, is merciful, he's long suffering. He's not willing that any should perish. He sent his son to die for us, to make a way of salvation. He loved us, he cared for us. He wants to see us in heaven with Him, and He made a way for us to get there. And He tells you, come. He says, come. He gives us much instruction. We think that God is far off. He's hidden Himself from us. We can't see Him. We can't see His hand when it interferes in our life or intervenes or whatever. We can't see it, we can't know it. The Lord has, in some strange way, He has separated Himself from humanity. From man's point of view, we're separated that we cannot see and know God. We can't know that He's there. We can't tell. We can't see Him, can't feel Him, can't hear Him. There's no audible voice. We have no connection physically with God. But we know He's there. He left us His Word. He sent His Son who came and worked miracles among us to prove Himself. So we know there's a God. He gave us the Bible with all the teachings of it. So we know that there's a God. We know that there's a great God beyond our comprehension. And we know that He left us His Word. We know what His Word says. We read it and it's a gracious thought what the Bible tells us. It tells us about salvation. Most primarily about salvation. But it tells us many other things. It tells us how we should live, how we should treat others, how we should treat God, what we should expect of God, what God expects of us. But the most important thing we find in God's Word is salvation. That Christ came and died for us. That's the most important thing in God's Word. Now a lot of people get sidetracked, go off, thinking other things, not seeing the real need. And it comes back to like I was speaking this morning the deception of Satan, but there's many people who tell you, oh, well, you need to do this, you need to do that, you need to do lots of good works to get into heaven, you need to keep the law, you need to do good, you need to don't lie, cheat and steal, you need to do all those things. And I'll tell you, doing all those things as best you can is a good way to live, but that's not gonna get you into heaven. It doesn't get you into heaven. And the thing is, it seems that many churches, especially the different denominations, one says, say this prayer and be saved, another one says, well, you have to be baptized if you're gonna be saved. And another one says, oh, well, if you're gonna be saved, you're gonna have to dress like a godly person and you can't cut your hair and wear makeup and those kinds of things. And another one says, oh, well, you gotta speak in tongues and you gotta do this and you gotta do that and it just goes on and on and on. And so, and you'll find different references to all these things in God's Word. So I ask you, who's right? Who do you listen to? How do you know who's telling the truth? And I say this because I hear all these things, different preachers saying all these things, different people saying these things. How do you know? What's the truth? How do you know what's the truth? How can you tell? Well, God's Word never changes. We have God's Word. It's been around for many years. Let's just leave it at that. It's always the same. Now, in the last 50 or 100 years, man has been trying to say, oh, well, the King James Version, it's not quite easy enough to read and has got some errors in it and we can make a better version and then they continue on and say, well, let's make another one and another one. And there's so many versions out there that you don't know what to look at. What should you believe? Which Bible should you use? Which church should you go to? What preacher should you listen to? Will you ask the Lord? Do you believe there's a God? Do you believe he is able to save you? Do you believe he is able to instruct you? Do you believe he's able to bring you to the right church and hear the right preacher? Or read the right Bible? I don't know about your God, but my God's able. And we have the King James Version Bible here. I speak from it. I read it. I use it as my reference. I stand here and speak and tell you what God's Word says and it is your duty to make sure I'm not lying to you. Now, there's nothing wrong with hearing a preacher. And there's many that preach a lot of truth and you can sit and listen to them and they can teach you a lot of things. But I don't know any. They can tell you how to be saved. I don't. And I believe that that's the dearth that's in our land, the famine of hearing God's Word. It's just not here. We don't have it. But it's your duty as a law center to make sure to seek out God's Word, dig it, go through it, understand it and see if the preacher you hear in is telling you the truth. It's your duty. If you're led astray, you can't blame nobody but yourself because the Bible tells you it's your duty. If somebody takes the Bible and they warp it and they twist it and they explain away your duty in coming to Christ, if they explain away your sinful nature and make you to think you don't have a sinful nature, that you're as good as anybody, that you're as saved as anybody, that's your duty to find out your duty to make sure. If you are led astray, it's you that will burn in hell. That doesn't relieve the preacher. You'll have to answer to God also. But if you accept it and just believe it, well then you have allowed yourself to be led astray. But God has sent us His Word and it's your duty to read it. He's told us that it's complete. It doesn't need anything to be added to it. No dreams, no visions, no voices in the corner, none of that because all of that that we have today, people talk about it and speak about it and hold it up for salvation, but all those things are of Satan. So do you believe God's Word? Do you think you can believe it? Is it important to you? Is salvation important to you? Is it? Look at the topic of salvation. In 2 Timothy 3.15, the Apostle Paul says, talking to Timothy, he says from a child, thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. The Holy Scriptures, God's Word, the Bible, is able to make you wise unto salvation. It's all you need. It doesn't say the Holy Scriptures plus this or plus that or anything else, it's just the Holy Scriptures. It's all you need if you're not saved. It's because you don't believe the Bible. You don't accept it all. You won't obey it. You won't do what the Bible tells you. You're having some ifs, ands, or buts somewhere holding you back. The Bible is God's Word. Psalms 138, "I will worship toward thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth, for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name." Is the Word of God? It is God's Word. To magnify it means to make it more important or greater. The Word of God is more important than even his name. How important is God's name? We want to compare things there. Look what it says about God's name. He's in Philippians 2, 10, that at the name of Jesus, and Jesus is God, God the Son, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow. Doesn't that sound like an important name? That sounds pretty important to me. If all the universe will bow, bow the knee to the Lord. And now God's Word stands above that. God is great, but his Word is greater and more important. What does the Bible say? The Lord is righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works. All his works, he is good, he does good. There's no sin, there's no wickedness, there's no corruption, no depravity. There's none of those things in God. Those things are in each one of us. We deal with those things. We are all sinners by nature. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But the Bible also tells us as by one man, sin entered into the world and death by sin. So death passed upon all men for all have sinned. And the soul that sineth, it shall die. This is God's Word. This is the Word that God said is magnified above his name. The most important Word, this Word tells us that we're under a sentence of death. Because of our sin, the soul that sineth, it shall die. Every sinner outside of Christ is under a sentence of death, eternal death. The Bible says Psalms 9, 17, the wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God. There's no escape. There's no escape from sin. If you want to be saved, you're going to have to come to Christ. There's no end to hell, no end to it. Look what the Bible says about the longevity of hell. In Revelation 2010, we read the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. You see, this time when he's speaking, he says the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire. That is the end of Satan. The beast and the false prophet were cast into the lake of fire at least a thousand years earlier. And the Bible here says where the beast and the false prophet are, not where they were, but they are. They're still there after a thousand years. They haven't burned up. They're not gone anywhere. And it says they shall be tormented day and night, forever and ever, day and night, forever and ever. How important is salvation to you? Think of the penalty if you're never saved, if you never come to Christ. Every one of us is born into this world under the curse of death. Everyone, by nature and without a redeemer, that's all you can look forward to. Think about the fallen angels, all those multitude of fallen angels. We don't know how many there were or how many there are, but there, I believe there's millions and millions of fallen angels. And they have no opportunity for salvation. No opportunity, no hope. And they look at this time of this earth coming to a close and they know their time is limited. But you have hope, you can be saved. They can't, but you can. How important is salvation to you? Christ knew from the beginning that every man on earth would be a sinner. He knew that every man would be condemned to hell. He knew that before the world was created, before man was put forth. He knew that he would have to come and sacrifice himself to make a way of salvation for his people. He knew that. I believe that Christ knew that. He agreed to do it. He made out his whole plan of what would happen and how it would all come about. But I believe with all my heart, he dreaded the thought. I believe he dreaded the thought. The thought of taking sin upon himself. Certainly he hated the pain and the suffering of the cross, but I believe the greatest sorrow for Christ was having my sin put upon him and your sin. I can't understand that. I don't understand all that. I understand it in a small sense, but I can't imagine a holy God taking sin upon himself to redeem the likes of me. It's beyond my comprehension. It says in Isaiah 53.5, he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities and the chastisement of our peace was upon him. And with his stripes, we are healed. We are healed from that penalty of sin and death. He died for our transgressions and our iniquities or the marvel and a wonder. What a price he paid to save the likes of me. Christ came from heaven. He came to live a perfect life on earth as a pauper. He did it for his purpose, for his reason. And there's two reasons that I see and understand just a little bit. One is God hates sin and sin must be punished. For sin to be punished, I would have to suffer for eternity in hell. There would be no other way for me to pay for my sin. So Christ entered in, intervened, shed his blood, did I could be saved because he loved me. And then for number two, he lived and died so that he could be that perfect sacrifice for sinners. If he had not come to earth and lived a perfect life, a full life, he could not have died as a sacrifice. He had to live, he had to experience life. He had to go through life and he had to do it without sin. If there had been any sin at all in Christ, just one tiny white lie, so to speak. He could not have died for my sin. He could not. He would have become as tainted as I am, as corrupt as I am, but there was no sin in Christ. None, he kept the whole law. He fulfilled the whole law and he made it known that the law is righteous and holy and not to be despised. And the Bible tells us, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? How important is salvation? What do you think of salvation? Christ spent 30 something years of his life going through life on this earth, keeping the law, living the poorest of the poor, so that he could save me? Salvation is the most important thing in this life. The most important thing, there's nothing in this life more important. And so if it's the most important thing in this life, you should not be putting off seeking the Lord. You shouldn't put it off. Don't put it off. There's certainly there are things that you must do in your life, but don't put off seeking the Lord. Your good works, your good things you do, people want to say, oh, will you be good? You'll go to heaven? No, no, only salvation in Christ will get you to heaven. And the Bible says that Christ died for sinners, for the ungodly, for the wicked. Does it say he died for the good? You won't find that anywhere in the Bible. It's not there. He says, "By the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight." By the deeds of the law, deeds working, keeping the law, doing good. Your good works won't justify you. They won't save you. Why? Because you can't keep the whole law. You can be good for a few minutes. You can not tell a lie for a few minutes. Maybe a few minutes you can go without having bad thoughts. Covetous thoughts, lustful thoughts, whatever, for a few minutes. But you have to keep the whole law, all your life. If you're gonna be saved by the law and you are just plain and simple, you're not able to do that. None of us are able to do that. It's been said before, if man were able, if he were able to save himself. Even in the most unlikely events, if he were able to save himself, Christ would not have come and died for us. He wouldn't have had to. And whenever I think about the death of Christ and his sacrifice, I think about a great sacrifice, a great price he paid, an awful thing for a holy God to go through. I can't imagine it. And it's no wonder to me, did in the garden he cried, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me. I can begin to understand him abhorring what he had to do. And if there were any way possible for man to be saved, apart from Christ, he would not have died. He would not have come. But it's not possible. It's not remotely possible. It's not possible at all. Without the law, if there were no law, maybe you could get by. And I say maybe because of how corrupt man is. But without the law, the Bible says that the law was a schoolmaster to make us to no sin. And without the law, how could we know we were sinful? If the law didn't say thou shall not kill, how could we know that killing's a sin? If the law didn't say thou shall not covet, how could we know these things like stealing and those things all grow up from covetousness? The law makes us to know sin. It's not there for you to live a perfect life. It's there for you to know how wicked you are. Christ made the sacrifice for you. Christ came to save you. The Bible says we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Without keeping the law. You are justified by faith. Your works are these deeds of the law. They won't save you. It is your faith in Christ that saves. You must get that faith from Christ. He must give it to you. How can you get it from him? You have to seek out the Lord. You have to come to him. You have to beg and plead with him that he'll give you that faith. You have to seek him. I tried to look in the Bible one time of all the places and the times where the Bible tells you, seek the Lord, call on the Lord, these things and it's there through the Bible just again and again and again. I believe every book of the Bible has it multiple times. Seek the Lord. Seek His face. It's there. Again and again. And I believe that's our one great instruction to every law center. Seek the Lord. Seek His will. Do what the Lord wants. We come back to that Scripture that says to obey is better than sacrifice. Obey the Lord. Obey the Word. What he tells you, do what he tells you. And the first thing he tells you, the most prominent thing is seek the Lord. Call on him, plead with him, beg him. That's God's Word. That's what the Lord has given us, the great, all-knowing Holy God. He created us, He put us here. He gave us His Word and that Word says, seek the Lord. What else can I tell you? He says Christ came to save sinners. Are you a sinner? The Bible says you are. Do you believe the Bible? Or do you wanna say, well, no, I'm not that kind of person. Seek the Lord. Call on him. Come and reason with him. You want instructions on being saved? The Bible's full of them. To obey is better than sacrifice. Christ came. He made a sacrifice in your stead. Paid your debt for you. He holds it in His hand. He offers it to you and He calls you to come and receive it. And receive it. But what do we find? Well, I'm too busy. I got other things to do. I don't have time right now. But what you don't understand is your time's running out. You don't know how much time you have. Christ holds salvation out to you. He calls you come. He promises to save you. Whosoever cometh, I'll not cast him out. He says, "Ask and you'll receive." The Bible is full of promises of what the Lord will do. But we just don't believe it. We don't believe it. We don't believe it. Not interested, unconcerned. May the Lord help us. May he give us grace. You they want to be saved. May the Lord prick your heart one more time. May he pour in more grace, abundant grace, to cause you to seek him. Lord, help us. Our Father, I thank you for this time. Thank you for thy word. Thank you for Christ. Thank you, Lord, for that shed blood. Thank you, Lord, for calling an old sinner like myself. Lord, I come pleading with you. Have mercy on us. Save our people. Save my children, Lord. Save these here that say they want to be saved. Turn their hearts, Lord. Open their hearts. Shine in the light. Give them grace to seek thy faith. Give them faith to believe. Give them repentance, Lord, to see their need, to see the awfulness of sin and to flee to Christ. Lord, help us. Guide us. Keep us, Lord. Go with us, Lord. Through another week, if it be thy will. And I ask all this in Christ's name, amen.