And I'm going to ask you to turn to the book of Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2, starting with verse 36 to the end of the chapter, that is verse 47. Acts chapter 2, starting with verse 36, Peter preaching on that great day of Pentecost. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. Now, when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you and to your children and to all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward or crooked generation." Some of you may have perverse generation. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers. And fear come upon and fear came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles and and all the believed were together and had all things common and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, that eat their meat, that eat their food with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved." Now, I'm going to be honest with you. Today's message took a different direction than what I originally had planned. I got under a lot of conviction last week. I wanted to end that sermon twice. And I didn't do that at once. But the things that got upon my heart that I could not share. This is like a sequel to last week. And typically I take a lot of time at first to go over the text I just read and explain it. But it's going to unfold as we go along. Let me just say this for right now, because this section of scripture is like peeling an onion. There's just all kinds of layers of things here that could be shown to us as we are watching the beginning of the gospel ministry and the beginning of the church of Jerusalem as it starts to now grow and expand. But to fit our series, which being partakers of Christ, and we've been on the subject of partakers of the heavenly call, the gospel call. Notice what Peter said, among some other things, verse 39, the promises unto you, and to your children, and to all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call, which has direct reference to Joel chapter 2, verse 32. which we're not turning there. But I want you to be aware of the promise and the call. We had brought this up earlier, Hebrews 3.1 and Ephesians 3.6, talk about the heavenly call and the being partakers of the promises of God. And here, as we see something that God has foretold, something He has promised to provide, And the gift of the Holy Spirit, once people believe on the Son of God who died for them and rose again, it says, as many as the Lord our God shall call. Then you get down to verse 40, then he starts really preaching. And we don't know what all the words are, just said many of the words he testified and exhorted in saying this, save yourselves from this crooked, perverse, untoward generation. Salvation's of the Lord, right? But there's this sense in which when the gospel's communicated, you're being called to follow. Turn around, follow, and save yourself. Flee from the wrath to come. Now, Last week, spend time with, well, I just enjoy it. The five solas. And if you don't like Latin, you can just look at the parentheses. Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. Okay? At a time when religion had become so institutionalized, The reformers were pulling people out, calling people to come out of these rigid forms, their rules, their rituals, and so forth, and to understand it's entirely the work of God. Now what I want to make clear here is that these five points establish the basic fact that salvation is of the Lord, not the result of any institutional religious rules and rituals, not the work of man. The Spirit of God speaks through Scripture, invisibly ministers grace, creates faith, reveals Christ, and focuses attention to the glory of God. The five solas do not push man into the spectator seats to just watch God. Rather, they draw us in to seek the Lord, to desire and seek the sovereign spiritual work of God. Now let me just loosen up a little bit here, get off the script. But we have major divisions in Christendom today, major theological divisions, major denominational divisions. And quite frankly, within one church, you can have a split of philosophy about the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. And people have a way of making them mutually exclusive. I mean, everybody says you're saved by grace, but if the church is the dispenser of grace, then really salvation is by the church. and it's sacraments, ordinances, and right down to a Baptist church can have a whole bunch of rules and be no better than some of the other ones that they might disagree with otherwise, but they make forms of things to do, not do. They make rules, lists, traditions, and it's just that awful nature. There's a Pharisee in every one of us, I've been told, and we have to watch out for him. He wants to set stuff up. I mean, remember Peter? He's taken up on the mountain with James and John, and the Lord transfigured himself. He turned into the glorious appearance that he had before the world. And that should have just hushed my mouth, right? Here comes Moses and Elijah to talk to Jesus about his death, and old Peter steps up and says, Lord, it's good for us to be here. Like it was an accident. Thank you for telling Jesus it was a good idea to bring him along. But he says, let's say, let's make three tabernacles here. One for Moses, one for Elijah. Oh, and of course, one for you. And about before he starts lighting candles and who knows what else he might do, the voice from above said, this is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased. Hear him. In other words, be quiet. Let Jesus tell you why you're seeing this. You find out from him what this is all about. And so often we get ideas how we're gonna put things in order. You remember Israel, they crossed the Jordan coming into the promised land, and God says, I want you to take 12 stones, one for each tribe, and I want you to stack up a monument here. And then he said, don't you dare touch those stones with your tools. Don't make them perfect. Don't make them a wonderful work of art. Stack up the stones the way they are, just like I'm stacking you up the way you are. Until I get done with you. But depending on the work of God. Following God instead of escorting God. Okay. I'll get back to my script here. The five solas don't push man into the spectator seats, rather they draw us into in to seek the Lord, to desire and seek the sovereign spiritual work of God. So here I am, minding my own business, which might be a very bad thing. It might be a religious thing. It might be an irreligious thing. But then I find out that a sovereign God is going to judge the world for sin. But He has made a way. He has provided His Son. And everyone is to listen to Him and follow Him. And it behooves me that if His Spirit doesn't talk to me, I'm in big trouble. Because my natural efforts won't do. My natural wisdom won't do. I have to be saved by a sovereign, all-powerful God that can overcome my willpower. We get so busy defending free will. that we forget God's the one with the free will. When we had free will back in the garden, we blew it. We blew it. We did have free will. Now we're described as a bird that's in a cage. The bird can fly, but it can't because he's in a cage. And our wills, they work. And we appeal to them, but the fact is the door's got to be open on that cage to liberate a person. And that's what the Holy Spirit's doing. Liberating people. That door's open. Despite my nature, I can now come. And once in a while, I try to describe it like this. When a girl likes a boy, she makes it think it was his idea to ask her out. And what he doesn't know is she's been plotting all along. Be in the right place, the right time, the right dress, the, you know, whatever. God has been wooing us calling us, doing things in the path. I don't care much for curling, but I always think of the example. Here's this big granite piece going, and there's these guys in front just brushing away, just brushing away, making that thing go farther. And you might say, God's the one that launched us, but he's also the one there that's brushing and taking out obstacles and making things happen just a certain way. Mr. Spurgeon, I love to quote him a lot, but he describes salvation as there's this gate, and over the gate it says, whosoever will may come. So you go through, because you were invited. You turn around, it says, chosen before the foundation of the world. And now you know the family secret. But Mr. Spurgeon was confident that this is also a good thing to tell lost people. Because we need a God who's bigger than us, stronger than us. And a lot of us think we're so miserable, so rotten, we'll never make it. And He says, you don't have to make it. My Son has made it. Surrender. Be still. This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. Hear Him. And like our hymn just said, out of the darkness, out of the misery, out of the terrible poverty of spirit, poverty spiritually, I should say, He calls us to come. And faithful is He that calls you who also will do it. He who calls you will also do it. And so when you finally learn about how awful the sin nature is, there's no other way a person can be saved but by the sheer sovereign grace of God. But that doesn't mean we sit down on our blessed assurance and do nothing and wait for something pizzazz to happen. We are called to urgently respond. Save yourselves! And I'm hopefully going to have a good time in a moment going through some great gospel ministry in the book of Acts. And you're going to see some things very consistent. The five solas give us assurances that we may come to Christ and have the blessed assurance of salvation according to his promises. And have you ever met people who don't think you can have assurance of salvation? They think it's pride to say that. I did. I think I've told some of you before. I was at a conference. It wasn't as big as a Billy Graham meeting. It was Jack Van Impey and a citywide campaign. And we're in a... you know, the place where they have all the county fair and all that stuff, where big grandstands. And Jack Van Impey, you'd have to just see him to believe him. He'd leap up and say, how many of you know if you die tonight, you go to heaven? Raise your hand. And hands were shooting up. And I'm sitting there thinking, who do these people think they are? They think they're going to heaven, they're just good enough, right? Well, the first thing I did is shoot my hand up because if I didn't, they were gonna nail me. I didn't want anybody to have me as a target. So I shot my hand up, inside I'm going. But you know, I listened. And I don't know if it was that night or some other time, but I got the picture. These people say, I know I'm going to heaven if I die because Jesus paid it all. Jesus came into my heart. Jesus changed my life. Jesus has promised to keep doing that, keep me and secure me to the day of redemption. Their confidence was in Christ, not themselves. And eventually I could do that very thing like everybody else, but I didn't know what I was talking about before. Well, the five solas, which They're only a representation of biblical truth that had to be used to undo religion and its forms and legalism and all that other stuff. It's what the scriptures teach. And it had been suppressed and buried and hidden by a lot of slight of man, the little shell game. Here's the truth and here's three shells and we switch them around. You don't know what's truth and what isn't after some religions get done with you. So, you can know. You can have blessed assurance. Some always keep you in the, I hope so, mode. Now you've done this, and you've done that, and you've done this. You might make it. But you've got to keep doing this, and this, and this. And we, of course, you've got to be a part of our church. If you leave our church, you're going to hell. Or purgatory, but you know, all those different inventions to keep people under the control through fear. And I'm going to be clear that even though we talk about the Reformation and breaking away from the Catholic system, and the Reformers did a lot of reforming, but I don't think they were thorough. They didn't finish the job, and they still brought some of the baggage of religion with them. And other people reacting to them formed other things. And you know what? It's just a cycle of religion. And it goes right down to even the good old fundamental Baptists and other evangelicals. If we don't watch out, we become like them. We just have a different set of rules and traditions. Paul said to the Corinthians, I wanted to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified when I came to you. Yeah, we talked about that before in 1 Corinthians 2. So let's have some enjoyable moments. Once I did this paragraph, I didn't even want to preach anymore, but I did. We'll see how it goes. But Acts chapter 2, verse 36. through 40. I can't deal with the whole scripture reading today, but this much I will do. So we have in verse 36, the Jesus rejected by the leaders of Israel, the Jesus that was crucified and yet fulfilled the prophecies, who by the will of God laid down his life for our sins. Now he's Lord. He's Christ. You need him. And they knew something had to be done, and they didn't have the slightest idea what. But that was miserable news. Here we are, the good, respectable Jews. We come from all over the world to come here and celebrate Pentecost, and we're into our festivals, and we're into God's things, and now you tell us we killed our Messiah. We always said we were waiting for him. We killed him, what? And the truth is, but by the grace of God, had they been there, they would have also been yelling, crucify him. Because that's the way it had to be. But now when they said, what shall we do? Peter says a very interesting little formula here. And if you notice at the bottom of this page, I've kind of broken it down. The first one is repent. Which means to change your mind. You may not care for the word metanoia, but it means a turnaround, a change. And it's that of the mind. Some people misunderstand. They think it's you have to change your life, you have to reform yourself. But it's about a change of mind. I don't like the way I'm going. I want to turn and do it the Lord's way. I want to follow Christ. So that means I got to turn my back on the world. I may have to turn my back on my own family. I may lose my job. I may lose my life even. to have Christ, everything else is done, right? So repent. And if you will look consistently, repent is always there when the gospel's being described. Sometimes repentance and faith or believe and repent are used interchangeably. I've heard testimonies where people talked about their conversion and they said, this is the day that I repented. where we normally say, this is what I believe, but this is all accurate and true. This is a consistent thread. And I'm trying to bring that up because the next phrase, and be baptized, every one of you, and what most people think is be baptized for the remission of sins, but it doesn't say that. It's baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Now, it's who you're being baptized unto. It's who you're focusing on here. Baptism is in the name of the Lord. Jesus specifically said the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Different narratives in the book of Acts will say they were baptized in the name of the Lord, they were baptized in the name of Lord Jesus. And you know what? We don't have to have the exact incantation. Because if you said Jesus, he said all authority is given to me in heaven and earth. If you say Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, you're doing just what Jesus said to do. And the whole Trinity of God, which is something we never would have understood except Jesus took that great section in John's gospel and laid it out like never before. But it's this baptism is a public confession. It's following the example and the command of Christ. It's identifying with him and with his people before others. As we see here, they believed on Jesus, they repented, they had to repent of their religion, they had to repent of their good works, as well as their sins. These weren't just slobs that day, these are devout Jews. They had to repent of their righteousness that they had, like Paul will describe in Philippians 3. And so, they're now gonna turn to Jesus, and when they did, they showed it by being baptized. We're identifying with Jesus. despite the leaders of Israel, despite what the nation has done. We're following Jesus. Give me Jesus. Keep the world. Give me Jesus. Give me Jesus. Keep religion. Give me Jesus. Baptism is saying that. It's like two people fall in love, they make a commitment, they decide to get married, and before family, friends, and God as witness, they commit themselves forever. And so often, our tradition is, what sign do you show? What symbol do you have to show the sincerity of your vows? And out come rings. The ring doesn't marry people. It's a symbol of the love and the commitment and so forth of that marriage. If I just went downtown and grabbed some poor unsuspecting lady and stuck a ring on her finger and drug her home, I'd be arrested for kidnapping. I would not have married them by doing that. There's no magical power in the ring. There is no supernatural power in baptism. That is water baptism. There's another baptism we could speak of in which the Holy Spirit immerses us in Christ, I can't get to that one right now. So repent, change your mind, turn to God. Be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ. Confess Christ publicly, identify with him and his people before others. And now it's Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. And I try to be careful when I read this, but I was attacked by people in my first pastorate who were in the town and wanted to tear me down. And this thing about baptism saving people, they believed in the same mode of baptism I did, except the part where the person is already saved and they're getting baptized, they had them getting baptized and now they can pronounce them saved. And we argued and argued and argued, and it wasn't, I don't know what it accomplished. All I know is I got, they wanted to have me publicly debate in their church, and I said, I'm not into debate, but I'll preach. You give me 45 minutes, I'll preach, and then you can do what you want. He had all these loaded questions. All these things I had to answer all loaded his way, you know, and I had to end up looking like I was denying stuff. Well, I had 45 minutes. So for 40 minutes, I preached the gospel. And I won't go into the whole sermon, but I preached the gospel. When I was done, I gave the last five minutes to his list and say, that's why that doesn't mean that baptism saves you. That's why baptism doesn't save you. That's why. And that's the best I could do. They stayed there another hour after me. And that man was angry, but the fact is I'm willing to make enemies for the sake of the gospel. If they're God's enemies, if they're Christ's enemies, if they're enemies of the gospel, they might as well put me on the list. My goal isn't to make enemies, but my goal is to be the friend of Christ. And if I would seek to please men, I cannot be the friend of God and the servant of God. Okay, it's Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. And this one I do want us to turn. Luke 24. Some of you have been with me enough that you already know what I'm about to do. But the same writer who wrote Acts, Luke. The last chapter of Luke's Gospels, he talks about Jesus' final ministry when he had risen from the dead, how he's training his church. Very valuable words here, and you will not see baptism mentioned, but here's what you will see. 24 verse 44, And he, Jesus, said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures. And you know that was Old Testament scriptures at the time. And he said unto them, verse 46, thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ, or it was a necessity for Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day. And, verse 47, that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. Nothing about baptism. It's repentance and remission of sins in his name. And I submit to you the same writer when he was recording these things in Acts chapter 2 as Peter was preaching. It is repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. Do you get it? Yeah, it's Christ for the remission of sins. Baptism is a picture. It's a wedding ring. It's a beautiful ceremony when the love relationship has already been created. Okay, and then you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. I don't have time to go into all the aspects of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, but one thing is crystal clear, and Joel's prophecy talks about it, and there's things Jesus explained. Again, in John 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, you get the picture that a relationship with the Father is so unique in Christ, and it's different. than the relationship people had in the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant. Now, it always takes the Spirit of God to make a person a believer, don't get me wrong. But that we would actually be a temple, our bodies a temple for the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to live in? Yes. This is so unique. You're going to get the gift of your body being His house, your heart being His cathedral. that he'll actually, Jesus will live his life through you. So you're gonna get this unique gift of the Holy Spirit. And it is not encapsulated in the speaking in tongues part. That's best I can say right now without going off on one of my tangents. But speaking in tongues was for a time. And again, Joel talked about that. And every time tongues is mentioned in the book of Acts, Jews are present because it was a sign to them And it was something that was going on in the very early times of the church forming and the New Testament was being compiled. And someone has described it as scaffolding while you're building a building. And when the building's all done, you take the scaffolding down. We don't have to imitate the apostles and their miracles and these other phenomena. They were needed at a time. And now we have the spirit of God operating through the scriptures in us, through us. And folks, that's a handful right there. I don't have to add other visible entertainment and proofs for people who... What kind of generation seeks a sign? Do you remember? It says an evil generation seeks for a sign. We don't look for signs, we're looking for life. We're looking for a changed life, a new life in Christ. So there's a little breakdown on Acts chapter 2. I did get to at least some of it that way. But would you please join me in Acts 3? I'm going to see if I can just do a few more of these. Acts chapter 3, starting with verse 18. Acts chapter 3 verse 18 to 26. And as the gospel is being preached, Verse 18 says, but those things which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Repent ye therefore and be converted. Notice it doesn't say be baptized, it says repent and be converted. That your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things. which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me. Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people. Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel, and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days. You are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed, unto you first. God having raised up his Son, Jesus, sent him to bless you, and turning away every one of you from his iniquities." Did he get some assurance out of that? Do you get a no-so kind of a salvation being offered here? Well, let me just move a little farther here. There's another great one in chapter 13. And this one has a special reason that I want to get it out. But in Acts chapter 13, starting with verse 38, Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. Beware, therefore, lest that come upon you which is spoken of in the prophets. Behold, you despisers, and wander and perish. For I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you." And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. Now, when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God. And the next Sabbath day, almost the whole city together to hear the word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you, but seeing you put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, we turned to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed." I better stop there. I went way past my point. I couldn't stop. But do you see the sovereignty of God working here? The prophets have said this and this. And when the Jews rejected it and we go to the Gentiles, God said that too. That's going to happen. He knows the end from the beginning. And not just passively. But remember I mentioned in Acts 2, save yourselves. It shows a non-fatalistic approach to this teaching of God's grace. And so it is here. Verse 40, beware therefore lest that come upon you which is spoken of in the prophets. Do you see what he's saying? God said this is going to happen, but don't you let it happen to you. Don't you be that person. It's the essence of saying save yourselves. So there's nothing here in which we're just droning away words and people come down like robots and just do whatever. No, there's this passion, this urgency, this compelling. And people have to wrestle with thoughts and they're dealing with destiny. And so as we reach out, they reach back. Boy, there's some people like to, they would pay money to change verse 48. But it says, as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. That's a tough one. That's the one that changed my perspective. Everybody has their own tripwire, I guess. But that one there, it didn't say, as many as believed were ordained. It says, as many as were ordained believed. Now, do I fully understand how that all works? Not exactly. But I'm settled in the fact that God has so great salvation, and He loved us before time, before we could do good or evil. And He is appealing to us. Instead of free will, I want to give you a term that I think is more correct, and that's called free agency. The free moral agency of man. Someone's set up as an agent, they have to take care of business, and they're responsible for what they do there. We have a responsibility to take care of the business God gives us. And someone argued with me once and said, well, free moral agency, that's not in the Bible. And I had to tell them, free will isn't in the Bible either. The only time you ever see the phrase free will, it's about people giving an offering where they weren't commanded to, they could do it of their own. But we've just gotten bent on certain subjects here. You are responsible, I am responsible. God has given us permission to come and even a commandment to come, but the ability The ability will show itself when we seek the Lord and we seek His sovereign grace to change us and to come into our life. And if He doesn't, if He doesn't, I'm lost. I'm lost. Well, I can't, I can't keep going there. I got to get to something. And this was on my heart last week. It's the words of an old gospel hymn. Pass me not, O gentle Savior. And I say this hymn shows the bridge between God's sovereignty and man's need to seek the Lord. Now catch these words. Pass me not, O gentle Savior. Hear my humble cry. While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by. There is a non-fatalistic way to say, Lord, I can't do this without you, so I'm calling for you. It takes all of you to save all of me. But we call. And we ask people to call. The Spirit and the bride say, come, and whosoever will may come and take of the water of life freely. And anybody that hears, they get to say, come, as we reach out to bring others with us. This subject of God's call, I realize it's kind of taken me over a little bit. I actually have more in this series I want to talk about, but God's call is mentioned everywhere in Scripture. And we started out with some particular places, you know, Hebrews 3.1, partakers of the heavenly calling, partakers of the promises, partakers of Christ. But here we have scriptures in the paragraph after that hymn that will show you again and again and again, the word call, the called, calling, you see your calling brethren, it's all over the place. It is not just that I got smart and I let him in my heart, like one kid song would tell us. I know it's wise to seek him, but it wasn't me smartening up, it was me being called. It was me being interrupted. It was me receiving an intervention from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And the work of gospel workers often are in this. It's a calling. And the call isn't just for a moment, the call is for the rest of your life. Keep coming, keep coming. Enjoy some of those scriptures there. I can't help you enjoy them. Besides the concern for our eternal destiny, we should consider that salvation gives us the wonderful privilege of knowing and loving God. Now, I'm gonna talk about someone for just a moment called Andrew Murray. Andrew Murray was a pastor in South Africa many years ago. Last, you know, well, no, two centuries now. He was in the 1800s, I believe. And Andrew Murray was known for a very gracious, loving, humble ministry and his sense of Christ consciousness. He was, you know, just very Christ-centered. And he wrote some really wonderful books on your life with the Lord, your love life with him. Some people make fun of deeper life, and they think that's a joke. Because they imply that if you have deeper life, you've gone down too far, you need oxygen, man, you need to get back up here. Or you're so heavenly minded, you're no earthly good. I get tired of that. It isn't that there aren't some people that fit such a description. But if you don't believe in deeper life, do you believe in shallow life? And if Paul says to the Colossians, set your affection, your mind on things above, not on things below. It seems to me that there's some warrant here. And our man, Andrew Murray, did a wonderful work on John 15, I am the vine, you are the branches. Boy, oh boy, oh boy. But here's the thing. He suggests that salvation is designed to bring us to a blessed state of faith, humility, and submission. That is to say that we are being restored to the original design that God had when he created us. Pride is the enemy of our soul and keeps us from this blessedness. Soli Deo Gloria. To God only be the glory. Let's read this excerpt from a book called Humility. And if you need to get a copy of it, I'm going to try to make that available to you. But here's what he says. Faith is the means by which we perceive and apprehend the heavenly world and its blessings. Faith seeks the glory that comes when God is all. As long as we take glory from one another, as long as we seek and love and jealously guard the glory of this life, the honor and reputation that comes from men, we do not seek and cannot receive the glory that comes from God. Pride renders faith impossible. Salvation comes through the cross and the crucified Christ. Salvation is the fellowship with the crucified Christ in the spirit of his cross. Salvation is union with and delight in, even participation in the humility of Jesus. Is it any wonder that our faith is weak when pride still reigns and we have hardly learned to long or pray for humility as the most necessary and blessed part of salvation? Now, if you're like me, I had to read that about three times to get it. Let it soak in. But I'm telling you, I did that and God graciously has made some things soak in and I'm very concerned. We often look at humility as the subject that, oh, well, I'm such a sinner and I did so wrong. I'm humbled now. And we think humility is associated merely with our sinfulness. That's actually a secondary thing. That the original design of man was to be humble and for the holy angels to be humble. And what happened to Satan? Pride was found in him. And that awful breathing of pride came to Eve in the garden. Ye have God said. Oh, he knows that you'll be like him, knowing good and evil. So all of a sudden she's looking at that fruit differently, looking at God's words differently, even adding to God's words. And the next thing you know, Adam fell into sin and sin came upon all of us. And it started with pride, wreaking pride. But what beautiful thoughts here that when we are saved, we're getting restored to our original design. Humility isn't just in case of emergency, break glass. In other words, when you sin, you've got to humble yourself. No, humility is a way of life. It's understanding God for who He is, knowing Him and loving Him and letting God be God. And all of a sudden, everything's right. My heart's adjusted. I look at life in perspective because God is God. And I knew who I am before him. And I know who everybody else is before him too. So the fear of man's out. The love of man's praise, out. No room for, oh, do I get credit? You know, no room for that pride. And I purposely made bold the words fellowship, union, and participation. They fit the series, partakers of Christ. These words define the idea of what it means to be partaker of the heavenly call and a partaker of Christ. Our salvation is not, as I said before, a spectator sport. It's an active, interactive relationship with the living God. And of course, everybody's got to answer this for themselves. Do you have that relationship? Are you enjoying and fulfilling what God has planned for you through that relationship? Dear Father, I've delivered my soul as best I can. I pray that you'll challenge us in areas we need challenged, encouraged, where we need encouraged, and equip us, Father, so that we can get the gospel out from a truly loving, urgent heart. Not panic, but urgent. Help us, Father, to reach our family, friends, and neighbors. Help us to reach people in our country and people even in other countries, and that we would realize that the great humbling of man would be the great liberty of man to finally live because they know you. I ask that you'll do your work through these things in Jesus' name. Amen.