Tonight, if you will, if you'll turn to the Book of Acts, at the 22nd chapter, on Saturday evening some of you were here, and I sought to just repeat in your hearing Paul's description of the time when he met the Lord. Just let him tell us what happened. And this morning we thought together about three things that took place, three results that happened just like that, when Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of Jesus Christ, met this one whom he was persecuting, found out that he was alive. found out the mystery of the cross, and responded wholeheartedly to the revealing God. There was another thing that took place immediately after that tremendous experience. It was about that which I wish to talk, and I read, beginning at verse 1, I hope you'll follow me, of the 22nd chapter of the Book of Acts. The Apostle Paul is here, and Luke lets Paul do the talking. He reproduces Paul's words. And Paul is here before a great multitude of people, and he's making a defense. He says, I have heard it said that we do not need to make a defense, but Peter said he was set for the defense of the gospel. And as long as we're in the flesh, we ought to be constantly getting into tights where we have to defend ourselves and what we believe. And Paul makes no bones about it, nor does he give any apology. He's ready to give an answer. about what he believes and about his faith, and he says, I want you to listen to my defense, and I'll make it unto you now. When they heard that he speak in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence so they could hear him. And he said to them, I'm verily a man which I'm a Jew. I was born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia. Yet I brought up in this city at the feet of the great teacher Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day. And to prove my correct teaching and upbringing and parentage and my zealousness, I persecuted this way. Now, that's going by as far as you can go. He said, I looked up these people of this way unto the death. I brought them to the place of death. I was doing that to uphold what I'd been taught. to defend my traditions, to be true to the religion of my father's and yours." And he said, I didn't go about it halfway. I went around wrecking things, making havoc in the church, laying it waste, and persecuting these people unto the death, binding and delivering into prison both men and women. As also the high priest," he's sitting right over there, we're glad to have him with us, Paul said, "'Doth bear me witness.'" He knows how far I went. Then he looked over to the left to the old congregation of the elders and all their state of the elders, from whom I also received letters unto the brethren, and went to Damascus to bring them which were there bound unto Jerusalem for to be punished. He said, it came to pass that as I made my journey and was coming down to Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me. And I fell under the ground and heard a voice saying, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, well, who are you? I wasn't aware I was persecuting some particular person. Who are you? Who art thou? And whoever this was said unto me, as we noticed this morning, I am Jesus of Nazareth. I'm the one your father stumbled over when I was here in my flesh. They looked me over and heard me and said, We will not have this man to reign over us. That's who I am. I'm Jesus of Nazareth whom thou persecuted. They that were with me saw indeed the light and were afraid, but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me. And I said, what shall I do, Lord? And the Lord said unto me, Arise, and go into Damascus, and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do. And when I could not see for the glory of that light being led by the hand of them that were with me, I came into Damascus. And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there, This man came unto me and stood and said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And in the same hour I looked up upon him." Now notice carefully, verses 14 and 15. The man and I said to this man, who is now Paul, the God of our fathers has chosen thee The God of our fathers has chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, to see that just one, and hear The voice of his mouth. God did this. God's responsible for this. What's happened to you in the last few hours? Wasn't an accident. God laid his hand on you. He picked you out. He selected you. Here's a description of salvation, that you should know the will of God, that you should see the just one, and that you should hear the voice of his mouth. And in the Bible, salvation and service cannot be separated. And God, with all its trouble, laying his hand upon your soul. It was God who was that light that was above the light of the noonday sun so bright that it blinded you. It is God in Jesus Christ who spoke to you. It is God who revealed himself to you. It is all on purpose. God's chosen you. You should know the will of God. You should see that just one. You should listen to his voice, hear his message. That, all of that, for only such a person will have anything to say that this old weary world needs to hear. For thou shalt be his witness." That's a tremendous statement. And the Knife says, well, God determined, God fixed it. God's witness, what a calling! Thou shalt be His witness. And certainly this is not limited to an apostle. This is so. Of everybody God called to separate, be, and save. from being a God-called and a God-anointed and God-sent witness of the Supreme God, is thou right, blasphemy? For thou shalt be His witness, watch it unto all men, of what thou hast seen and heard, of what thou hast seen and heard." There are just two parts of the body that are active in salvation, and that's the eyes and the ear. You don't use your feet in getting to Christ. The salvation is a seeing of Christ and a hearing of him. And he said, God's chosen you. There in that little city of Damascus, immediately upon being given his sight that he'd lost it, he just got one look at the Shekinah glory of God in Christ. It blinded him. And he's given his physical sight again. God sent a man to him and said, Paul, you're one of God's elect. You're a chosen one of God. God's responsible for you knowing His will. God's responsible for you seeing His Son. God's responsible for you hearing his voice. And right then and there, the Apostle Paul's doctrine of what we call electing greats was born. And that's the only way it can be born in your soul. If you seek to go from the doctrine of election to experience, you'll wind up wrong. Paul went from experience to the doctrine. It must ever be that way with us. Right then and there, just like that, Paul's vision of a waiting world was granted to him. When I say in election, evangelism, commission, service, obedience, I'm saying the same thing with different words. And when I say election and gospel, I'm saying exactly the same thing. I've had more temptation to never mention the word election again than many preachers, most anybody. It's been so butchered. I've seen men take it as a club to beat other people over the head with it. I've seen people converted to that terribly cold doctrine if it's isolated. I've seen the fact of that conversion to a doctrine creep up in immoral living. It'll do every time. I want what Paul received, and I want to keep on trying to preach a gospel that's full, and that the salvation a man claims he receives when he meets Christ includes the giving to that individual right there, a vision of a God whose purpose is to save, and a vision of a waiting world who cannot be saved apart from hearing and believing that message. God delivers! from making a God, or a place of refuge out of any doctrine. But O God, give us afresh again and again, truth and doctrine born out of experience of meeting a living God. That's what we want. That's what we want. Not too long ago, at their request, I met with the president of the Southern Baptist Fellowship, South Wyatt now, hundreds and hundreds of churches and preachers, zealous men. They asked me to meet with some of them and they wanted me to become, if things could be worked out, the evangelist for the Southern Baptist Fellowship. And they said to me, Ralph, there is not an evangelist in our ranks. where anybody is ever convicted of a deep sense of guilt and need of Christ under the preaching. And he said, you're the only man that we know of, and we want you to preach for us and be our evangelist, if you'll not ever mention election. That's what to say. And I said, why, don't you believe in it? I have never preached election in evangelistic campaigns as a message. I never have until this good day. But if you listen to me preach, of course you believe. You've got any sense. You'll know I believe in it. It's the bottom of the thing. It is the gospel itself. When a man says, I want to God's elect, He's not bragging on himself! He's describing the character of Almighty God, whose purpose is to save. He's glorifying God. He's simply saying, God saved me! God arrested me! God laid His hand on me! Glory to God, He saved me! That's what he's saying. And I said to these men, don't you believe it? And they said, well sure, we have to believe it if we believe the Bible. But the man said, our churches have not been taught it, and it would disturb them to hear about it. And he said, this man the president said, Brother Barney, if you'd leave it out of your ministry, he said you'd have more doors open than you could possibly need. He said, there isn't a man among us who doesn't want you. Now, I'm either a fool, I live, I don't make much money, you know it, I have to pray to get any place to preach. I'm either a fool or I long by the grace of God to preach the gospel. of a saving God. And in order to preach the gospel of a saving God, I've got to preach the gospel of a God who set out to save, who saves on purpose. And I have to preach it. I have to preach it. But I look you in the face, and I can talk along these lines to you, And I say to you that the bare, unadorned doctrine of God selects that man and paints his ear thereby will kill everybody it touches. And that's not it. But the gospel of a God who chooses merely in Jesus Christ because God's purpose is to save, will bless everybody it touches. And that's the reason when Paul found out from the lips of Ananias that what had happened to him was nothing more or less than God laying his hand on him. that God changing him right then and there. The program of the greatest missionary this world ever knew was born in all of its fulsomeness. And Paul got up off of his face and knees there, rejoicing in the high honor of being selected as God Almighty's witness. That's almost blasphemy. But it's so. We have this treasure in earth, and that's what praise God, we've got it. Amen. And he went out from there a flaming missionary. It was settled then and there. He didn't have to have a meeting six months later and get him to surrender his full-time service. Bless God it happened just like that. He didn't have to have a study course to teach him missions. Brother, you had it burned in him right there. Oh, that's what we need. I'm not interested in you or not in the proclamation of something to prove something, but I'm interested in men and women meeting Jesus Christ and getting up from that meeting with a vision of a waking world and with a heart seeked in the grace of a God who will select me and you to be his witness in this world of sin and war. So I come with that introduction to the text, Ephesians 1, verse 3, according as he hath chosen us in him. had won the dry doctrine. When Paul could write to the saints at Ephesus, he's writing out of experience. He said, you had experience like I did. You found out the Lord laid his hand on you. You felt the impact of God laying his hand on you. And you went away from there. But some things settled. As far as your relationship to the will of God, As far as you're keeping your eye on the just one, and as far as you fulfilling the qualifications of a Christian, my sheep, listen to me. My sheep, listen to me. And a stranger's voice they will not follow. My sheep, listen to me. Those are the marks of election. Do you know the will of God? Who else does except somebody who's been arrested by God? Who else spends his time looking at his face and serving him? That's all there is to being a Christian. That's the only thing the Bible says we'll do in glory. It may do other things, but the scripture says we shall look on his face and we shall serve him. In the New Jerusalem, that's what we'll do. That'll be enough. That'll be enough. Look on his face and serve him. That's what we do down here. No need in rules. That's it. That's it. What I'm pleading for is as I face the multitudes of professing Christians in America who've never got beyond paying somebody else to witness And I see that we need the full gospel, which will face men with the whole Christ, and demand wholesale surrender to Him, like Paul did, and receive from Him our commission to be His witnesses. beginning there. Of what? Of some highly spun theories. No, sir. Of what we've seen and of what we've heard. That's it. And so when Paul writes to the church at Ephesus, he says, you've been blessed because that's the way God is. You've been blessed according as he hath chosen us in him. In him. Now I've been preaching nearly 36 years. I've been looking at that verse of scripture, more than any verse of scripture in all the Bible. I still don't know how to handle it. I pull off my shoes, I'm on holy ground. I would worship here. I would beg men and women never to lose sight of the fact that election can never be separated from Jesus Christ. That the act of God in choosing men was not apart from his Son, but was in him. And that's the reason I say the gospel and God's election are one and the same thing. It's God laying a hand on man, putting him in Christ, joining him to Christ. That's what it is. And I may live long enough yet to see the day when that'll be a blessed thing instead of an area of controversy. Do you get it? according as he has chosen us in him." If you preach a lecture that way back yonder, God made a decree, and then way down here somewhere, Jesus Christ came along. You're wrong. However God worked it out, Christ is right there. It is in Christ. It is in reference to Christ. And so I can preach that Christ is God's only remedy. I can preach that Christ is God's last word. I can preach that Christ is the mirror. I can preach that Christ is Luther's book of life. I can preach that election is nothing on God's earth than a God of purpose laying his hand on a man and changing him. And it's all in Christ. And that humbles me. And to where have you asked me if I understand it, I say certainly not. But I want four things to be the result in my life of a heart belief that in the Lord Jesus Christ, glory to his name, I can say God, laid his hand on me. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever else it is, it's the act of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever he does, I want to say, praise God, praise the Lord. And since I have no way or finding out that I've had God's hand laid on me, except to experience his hand on me. There's no reason that I get muddled there. The only reason I believe I'm one whom God saved is because I believe he saved me. That's not good sense, but that's the only evidence I've got. I heard him, I saw him, I felt his impact. I didn't find out that until a long time later. But don't get discouraged, Paul didn't find it out until Ananias told him. Then he got right to the Church at Ephesus. It wasn't a cool doctrine, it was just a matter of rejoicing the act of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, I tell you, you folks over there in Ephesus, you are somebody. God chose you in Christ. Isn't that wonderful? And there are four things that will do for anybody on God's earth that comes to it out of experience. See what I mean? It will breed confidence in you. And I know it's a trite expression, but there never was a day when we need confidence any more than today. Brother, everything that's vital for time and eternity is subject to the most vicious, powerful attack from the demons of hell this world ever known. I am the weakest Christian I guess that ever lived, but I don't know that I've been much worse shaped than you are, and if I have, I'm a little bit sorry for you. Oh, not God! I have to cry and pray and walk the floor and plead and weep to keep from being scared out of my wetsuit days. And if I could, I quit right now in the flesh and say, let the world go to hell. I can't stand the gaffe any longer. And if I didn't have some chronic belief in a God who seeks men and who purposes to save men and proved it by seeking me and saving me, I wouldn't have anything that would stand me instead when during the night hours the heavens are black and all hell's popping on my pillow. And the accusations against me and the failures I've made ring in my soul and I'd go crazy if I didn't have some heart belief. that despite hell of high water and the winds of hell that are blowing from every direction, God's still on the throne. And He's a God of election. He's a God who purposes to save. And He saved me. That breeds confidence. It doesn't produce doubt. We don't need something to produce doubt. It doesn't produce misgiving. We don't need any help there. But bless God, it has a tendency to remove doubt. It has a tendency to remove misgivings. I thought by the time I got as old as I am, I'd be perfect, but I'm getting meaner all the time. The battle's getting worse all the time. I pray more now than I used to. I weep now ten times more than I did ten years ago. My heart broken now ten times more than it was five years ago. Oh, I've got the crushing burdens of seeking to preach and teach and witness and live in the icy cold atmosphere of the buried demon pit of hell today. It's awful. And I look in myself and I see nothing there. It gives me the slightest assurance I'm a child of God. And if you take away from me the blessed privilege I have, that praise God as a last resort, I am not shut up to make a choice of Christ. I'm shut up, thank God, to His choice of me. Brother, that's the only thing that'll stand you instead when hell's a-poppin'. Confidence. And without the false piousness we've got too much to be, it enables me sometimes to stand up and challenge the very devil himself. Confidence will be all mine in all of my pain and all of my sin. Every child of God can do this. God laid his hand on me. I am his witness to all men of the things I've seen and heard. It's his doing, not mine. How it blesses one to go back and read once in a while, you haven't chosen me, I've chosen you. Isn't that something? I run into the nest of people who believed in election, and they made the very mention of it stink. Brother, that don't keep me from believing it. Because I read in the Book of Romans, God never goes back on his call. That's Moffat's translation. The King James says the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. Moffat said that just means in simple English, Brother Henry, God never goes back. on his call. You know, he started all this, but he's stuck with me. Praise the Lord. I get confidence there. I get confidence. Oh, my sin embattled, storm-tossed child of God, and if you're not tossing today, it means you're a disgrace to the name of Christ. If you're not embattled on every side to be, it means you're a traitor to the commission of Christ. You can't be on Christ's side now without going through hell, because this world hates Christ. And the very spirit of anti-Christ is everywhere. Hear me! Let no doubt within you. Let no criticism from without you. It's truly your quiet assurance to make you question the reality of your experience. It is the eternal will of God and His unbiable decree that nothing less than that on which your new life rests. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Confidence. God thinks a lot of me. Confidence. He laid his hand on me. He chose me. I'm his. There's a second thing that results from a hard experience of what I'm talking about. Not a head knowledge, that'll ruin you and everybody you touch, but a hard experience. and that certain amount of boldness. Paul said, I'm an envoy of Christ. I'm an envoy of Christ. He sent me forth. They said the old Puritan Calvinists One king said he'd rather face a marching army than one convinced Calvinist with the word of God. They might have been wrong in a lot of things, but they were convinced that they were messengers of Almighty God. I'm not fussing that you or me, you couldn't be any weaker than I am, but under God, How Ashland needs some people who've seen Christ and heard from him and just can't keep it to themselves. This town Dead Shore don't need to know about your doctrine, they don't care. But they need to know about the Christ you say you've seen. and whose voice you've heard. And all that doctrine is good for is to buttress, to stand on when the winds blow, and tell men and women what you've seen and what you've heard. The church people of Ashland, I've been in battle with them for years. They never have seen Christ. They never have heard his voice. If revival comes, I'd love to spend a day in it before I die. When timid little babies get out of the hospital, we call out churches, and with a holy boldness, as witnesses of God, of what we've seen and heard. And if a man has a conviction, he has been apprehended of God. He has been chosen of God. He has been appointed a witness of God. There's some boldness that'll be in there. And this little cry, Brother Barnard, just can't talk to anybody about Christ, won't get so much of that. Paul said, as I hold this ministry, By God's mercy to me, I never lose heart in it. That's a rebuke to me. 2 Corinthians 4 and 1, Moffat's translation, as I hold this ministry, by God's mercy, by God's mercy, by God's mercy, I never lose heart in it. boldness. Moods change, don't they? Feelings come and go, don't they? Difficulties rise up, don't they? But behind all is God, who by his mercy gave us the ministry of his witnesses. Boldness. There's a third thing That'll affect the person who has a hard belief in what I'm talking about. It'll be amazement. Amazement. I run just as hard as I can from anybody that takes the truth of the Bible and wants to argue about it. I don't want to get in that atmosphere. But I like to be in the presence of somebody that hadn't yet got over being amazed that God saved him. Paul would look you in the face and say, I may could have understood how God would look on some people, but I hadn't got over being amazed that he looked on me He saved even me. He would have said, I don't understand how he'd show mercy to somebody else, but I'm still amazed that he showed mercy to me. God never has called anybody to be his witness of dry truth. We're called to be his witness of what we've experienced of him, amen? I'm amazed that he should ever save me. Oh, if you wouldn't tell anybody, it'd wipe that frown off your face, fix you so you couldn't talk about Christ the lost man without a sob in your throat. If you'd elect yourself a committee of one to recover, and cultivate and fertilize the amazement that dawned in your soul when first you came to the knowledge of the glory of God, the face of Christ when you met him. Under God don't ever let that die down. Dear old Mordecai Ham, that prophet of God in other days, spent the last two, three years of his life rejoicing in the ministry of Billy Graham. And I heard him tell about talking to Billy when he started to be prominent. And he said, I told Billy, son, don't ever lose your sweetheart love for the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't ever lose it. In God's name, don't ever get to where you can talk about God saving you. without a sense of amazement, that he selected you, that he arrested you, that he laid his hand on you. I'm amazed. I'm amazed. And then there's the last thing, that'll be true to some extent at least, just like that. when it dawns on you that what's happened to you is God's doing. It's His doing. It's His electing grace. It's His salvation. Not only confidence, boldness, and amazement, but for Paul, a passion gripped him. Did you get it? A passion gripped him. A passion took charge, a passion to lead all men to the same source of blessing where he'd drunk of the water of life. I looked you in the face and in my own heart That's saying to you that a person who claims to be a Christian who's not gripped by such a passion is a disgrace to the God of election. Election simply means God's purpose to save. Oh, Paul was literally seized and gripped by a passion to lead all men, not just some, but all, to the same fountain of living water that had refreshed him. I am all things to all men. Let them shave my head, take a Jewish bow, compromise, we'd see on many occasions the odd things to all men to suffer for the elect. God put men and women chosen to be witnesses of what they've seen and heard, to work at the job of keeping alive that passion that God gave you when he saved you to lead men and women to the same source of blessing that you've been brought to. Oh, if God would select me, he wouldn't have any trouble saving anybody else, Paul said, in the rest of my life. is going to be spent seeking to lead everybody I can to drink at that fountain. A man who met a redeeming God, found out that God sought him before he ever sought God. Found out that God changes whatever he touches. Went forth from that experience with a confidence A boldness gripped by passion. This old world's dying on its feet. Because it's got popular not to believe anything much today, lest you'll get hurt. But oh, what we say we believe. It is true. It is of utter necessity. And I covet for you what I covet for me, to have something of the awful necessity, the utter necessity, that we find in Paul's words, woe is me if I preach not the gospel. It's necessary. Woe is me I'd hear his heart bleeding. I'd hear his heart breaking. I'd see him looking at a waiting world for whom there's no hope outside of Christ. If he'd stand from this pulpit tonight when they say that Christ is no longer unique, that God speaks to men through every great religion on earth, if he stood tonight in this congregation living in a world where the doctrine of universalism, that God is so good and man so worthy, that all men will finally be saved. And that's the fastest growing doctrine in the world. I think I could see old Bent, weak-eyed, despicable-looking Paul of Tarsus stand behind this pulpit lift up his fingers and say, he's committed this ministry of reconciliation to us. And we stand in Christ's stead, let our hearts bleed over a waiting world, and say, be ye reconciled unto God. It's an utter necessity. an utter necessity. Our Father, in the name of him in whom you chose us, we commit the message. We'll have to answer for how it's delivered and how it's listened to. Do things in the hearts of the preacher who's delivered it and the people who've heard it that'll count. stand tall in the kingdom of God. Lord, have your way in somebody's life here you may be speaking to. Glorify Christ even now.