All the Treasures Hidden in Christ

Introduction

And to see that Jesus is everything. Christ is all. If you can ever figure out, you’ll really be happy. You’ll really find joy and peace of mind. If Jesus becomes everything to you, when you do that, my friend, you’re on your way. I don’t care what else you do. You you can drive a garbage truck for a living, and you’ll be the greatest success in the world. It doesn’t matter what you do. And so if we conceive that that’s what this right writer is trying to urge us by the Holy Spirit to recognize in the Colossian letter, how great Christ is, why we owe him everything, and why he is the only one who can help us in life and cause us to finally one day reach heaven’s home.

So the apostle urges these brethren to see the greatness of Christ in this first chapter. Now in the second chapter, he’s going to warn us about some of the dangers. I go around the country, and I meet people all the time that I knew years ago and see they’re still faithful, and I find out somebody else has fallen away, or they’ve gone off to some other religious organization doing something else, and it just it always bothers me, you know, that somebody could read the Bible and be committed to what it says, and then let somebody, some other voice, somebody called from somewhere else, some other word come from someplace else, and they go and listen to that. And so what we need to see this morning in this second chapter, listen to the Apostle Paul in the first three verses.

1. Knit Together; All the Treasures Found in Christ

I would that ye should uh ye should know what great conflict I have for you and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love under all the riches of the full assurance of the understanding and the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ. And who are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge? Notice the apostle said, I’ve got a great conflict here. I’m trying to get people to see when you think about what we’re doing here, that that in their heart they might be comforted, that is, encouraged, and uh, and to be called near together, and to be knit together, he says, in love.

This word knit together is just the idea of a of somebody doing some knitting. My grandmother years ago when I was a boy, she took some of these gigs and some of that thick thread, and she took and made a bunch of knots in it and made me some shoes for Christmas, gave them to me, said, Now don’t wear those outside. And I said, Okay, grandma. Well, I one night forgot to feed a dog, so I went out to the doghouse late at night with my flashlight and fed a dog, headed back toward the house, and my foot got cold about halfway to the house on one side, and I turned the light on look, and there were two threads running all the way back to the dog house over the nail.

And I thought, well, I’ll just pull that off and it’ll stop. Well, the more I pull, the more it undone. I thought, you know, my grandmother, she fooled me. She just took a piece of thread and tied it into a bunch of knots and got it all tangled up together, so it made a pair of shoes. And you just couldn’t pull that apart without tearing the whole thing up. If we could see good people, Paul said, you know what I want you all to do? I don’t want you to sit off of the periphery of someone on the edge and stay off in the distance. I want you to come in here and get in the middle of saying and get up close to people and get wound up and let your heart get knit together and encouraged, comforted with each other, together in love and in the under the all the riches of the full assurance.

So here’s the complete assurance that we should have of the understanding that is to know what God has done and to acknowledge the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, and whom are hidden all the treasures of knowledge and wisdom. Think about all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Where would you find all that? The Colossian people had in their mind that we’ve got some secret information. We’ve got some ancient information. And really, that’s the information that people need. And the apostles are saying, let me tell you where all the treasures, where all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found, they are found, my friend, in Christ. This book right here that I’m holding, this little book of about 300 pages, is holding all the wisdom, all the treasures what a person needs to know.

2. Lest Any Man Beguile You With Enticing Words

And if you’ll take this testament and write it in your heart, study it and learn it and memorize it, you will find out what you will know is how to live your life. How to go out in the world, have the knowledge and the wisdom, the insight, so you’ll live so you won’t make a mess out of your life. But now notice what he says next to tell us about the danger, because see, they were listening now to these people who were given over to Gnosticism. This knowledge, this knowledge they thought was some kind of perfect and better knowledge. He’s warning about the dangers of listening. Some other voice, somebody else calling, somebody else saying something. And this I say, lest any man should beguile you.

That means to delude or to misguide or to misdirect. So this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. You know, men can say things that are real enticing. And you, oh, that’s him, oh, that I just feel that makes me feel so good. I want to go where somebody makes me feel good. I want to be enticed. I don’t want to hear the truth. I don’t want to hear what God has said. I don’t want to know what God has said. I just want somebody to make me feel good. I want to be enticed with comforting words. He says, Paul said, let me tell you something about that. You be on guard, and you make sure that who you listen to is not somebody who just has enticing words, but has these words of the gospel.

And so he says, Be careful lest somebody entice you with these words, persuasive speech. For he said, For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in spirit, join and beholding the order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. So see, these people, they they knew the truth. They were on track. But Paul was afraid people were coming in and sounding other voices and calling other voices, feared that they might go and they might hear those other voices. And so he says to them in verse 6, as ye have therefore received Christ, Jesus the Lord, so walk or so live in him. How did they receive Christ? We’ve already mentioned there’s no indication they ever saw a miracle. Paul said, What you did was you heard the truth.

You learned the gospel, and you received what you heard. So when you were, when preaching was done by this man at Epaphorist to these people, they heard the word that away and they received it and they believed it. That’s how they became believers. Paul said, you know how you received it? You just keep coming back. Keep coming over to this same old bowl, dipping out of the same old dish all the time. Everything you eat, everything you drink spiritually, make sure it comes right out of this book. And so the apostle says that they that’s the way they should walk, the way they received it, being rooted and built up. I mentioned earlier about the value of it being rooted as like a tree growing in the ground and build up.

3. Beware Lest Any Man Spoil You Through Philosophy

So here’s something that’s coming up, being lifted up and edified, growing up, standing up, and steadfast or strengthened, some translations say, in the faith. There’s only one system of things to be believed. This is the faith. So, Paul said, I want you to be strengthened, established and built up and rooted in the faith. As ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. And so, first of all, Paul says, Be careful, somebody can allure you, somebody can distract you and call you off and call you away, and you might believe them. They might cheat you or rob you in some way. But now notice in verse 8 another danger. He says, Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the traditions of men and the rudiments of the world and not after Christ.

Now, Paul said, you know what else can happen? Somebody can come along here and they can kidnap you. They can kidnap you with some kind of teaching. Somebody might be persuasive and leading you off. You might go off that way. Somebody else might come along and kidnap you, take you away. I always told my boys, you know, about when they were younger, I said, if somebody kidnaps you and they tell you that they’re going to get a ransom before they get you back, tell them, well, you better buy some bread because I’m going to be with you. My daddy don’t have any money, and if you take me away, you’re going to have to feed me the rest of my life, but he can’t buy me back.

You see, if somebody takes you off and kidnaps you, who’s going to redeem you? Who’s going to buy you back? You see, Christ is the one who bought you. You belong to him. Don’t let somebody allure you and draw you off and lead you away and cause you to become kidnapped by philosophy. Isn’t it amazing? The Bible, the only time it speaks about philosophy, it warns us about the danger of philosophy and the vain to see after the traditions or the rudiments, the source of what men say. Don’t let those things allure you and draw you off. These are after the rudiments, the ABCs of the world and not after Christ. Here’s the fundamental. Men are all the time trying to get to these fundamental things and figure out these basic things.

It just amazes me how men can be so highly skilled and so highly so highly trained in the world of education, and they can’t see how simple they violate the very principles that cause the universe to work. They believe somebody violates all the principles and makes my makes the world and all that is work. It’s just amazing to me. How somebody can become so smart and be so, I don’t want to say that, but not be so smart. You know what I’m saying? And so he says to us in verse 9, for in him, as in Christ, dwell all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Jesus is everything is to be God. We looked at that in detail already, so we’re not going to explore that more.

4. A Circumcision Made Without Hands

And ye are complete in him. You’re full, you see, everything you need. Which is the head of all principality and power. For in him also ye are circumcised with a circumcision made without hands and the putting off of the body of sin of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. So now he tells us how it is that we’ve become committed to Christ and He’s become our Savior is because what happened is that God operated on us. In the Old Testament, you were circumcised to be a Jew on the eighth day. And that’s what happened as a sign that you were a Jew. But in the New Testament, what happens is there’s a circumcision without hands. When a person is baptized, when you go down in the water grave of baptism, what happens is they don’t sprinkle you.

They don’t pour water on you. He says, You’re buried. You know what it is to be buried? My boys years ago had a dog, and that dog one night in the house bit into a lecture cord. We were in the bed and heard something frying over in the corner of my wife. I said, What is that? She said, I don’t know. I got up and the dog was, he was into that corridor. I kicked him up against the wall, got him loose and unplugged the cord. And uh, and so of course we tried to dock him up. We didn’t make it. So I told the boy, we’ll take him out and we’ll bury him and have a kind of funeral. Okay, Dad. So we went out to the farm, we did some work, and we worked all day and we forgot about that.

We’ll come to be sundown. I was tired of what I saw that dog on the wagon. I just put that dog over in the thicket, uh, bush thicket. And I thought the boys would forget about it. They came up there and said, Dad, wait a minute, we’ve got to have a fender for the old dog. Where’s the dog? I thought, oh man. I said, I gotta go in that thing and get that dog. So I said, Well, I took care of it. I said, Well, Dad, what did I thought? He said, Well, they said, Dad, he’ll stink and make a mess. We’ll make the place stink up. We gotta bury that dog. I said, Do you mean we gotta? They said, Yeah. So we got the dog, and I made a little hole and kind of said, Dad, that won’t work.

We gotta bury him good. So they they said, You know, he’ll stink if we don’t bury him. We gotta we gotta put him under there. That’s what a burial is. Baptism is a burial, good people. It’s not a sprinkling on somebody that doesn’t know anything. Not a pouring on somebody that has no idea what it’s about. Here’s somebody who has faith. They’ve heard the gospel, and they’re circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, and where God cuts away the body of sin. And I’ll tell you, I can remember when I obeyed the gospel. I went to this church, and I’d been listening to the Bible over and over and I’d learned the truth by listening to the Bible. I wanted this old preacher to baptize me, and I went in there to church to get him to baptize me, and he didn’t want to do it.

He thought I was some kind of a nut, and I’m sure I was acting that way, and that’s why he thought that. But uh I I knew that if I could get him to baptize me, I knew what God was going to do. God would take all the sins that I committed. And I’m going to tell you what, I was thinking they’re going to have to have the water boiling and take care of my job. Because I was a terrible sinner. And I I told that preacher, he said, he said, he told me his name, and I said, Well, I’m Gary Sanderskin. I’m here to be baptized and stuff like that. I knew there was some other stuff to do. I didn’t know what it was.

But I was going to do whatever it was. Well, that old preacher said, Well, we better talk this over. I don’t think you know what you’re doing. And so I could see he didn’t want to baptize me. Well, I went home on that Wednesday night, and I thought, I’m going to have to come back on Sunday and make this old boy baptize me. And so I went back that next Sunday. I knew what was going to happen. I was going to have my sins washed away. And I was excited and thrilled at thinking about it. I went to church, he preached, and I got up and went on the front row and said, He said, What are you doing? What you’re doing? You understand the gospel.

I said, I’m going to tell you what, I don’t understand all of it, but I know one thing. If you put me in that water, I’ll come up out of the water, and my sins will be washed away, and I’m going to shout hallelujah because I want to be baptized and stuff like that. He said, Well, calm down, calm down, we’ll baptize you. I said, I’m going to shout hallelujah when you bring me up out of the water. Because I know what God’s going to do. He said, I’m telling you, people think you’re nutty. You better calm down. But you see what’s going to happen, my friend. If you come this morning, you don’t have to know everything. Do you know that Jesus is the Son of God?

He loved you and died for you. He’s purchased this church, these people’s own blood. He wants you to be a part of it. He’s calling you to it, and other people are calling you no. Come over here and do this. Come over here and do that. Don’t do what the Bible says. He’s calling us to have this circumcision made without hands. In the cutting away the body of sin, God will operate on you. And so here’s a picture of this concept of somebody having their sins remitted, sins washed away. So here’s the language of baptism, first of all. But notice after he says that to us, he says in verse 12, buried with him in baptism, wherein also you’ve risen with him through the faith, the operation of God who raised him dead.

So this is not, as some people say, the Holy Spirit baptism, because if it is, you’re baptized in the Holy Spirit, and you raised back up out as quick as you got into it. You wouldn’t stay in that. Here’s a baptism you go into and you come right back out of. You’re buried with him by the faith, the operation of God, and you’re raised from the dead, raised up. So we’re taking this old man, putting down a water grave of baptism that is dead and raising him up to be a new man. And you being dead in your sins and the uncertainty of your flesh, hath he quickened together, uh having forgiven all your trespasses. And so now here’s the language of, here’s financial language. Here’s a debt that you owe.

You’ve sinned. You’ve broken the heart of God. You’ve done what is wrong. Your father loves you, and you’ve dishonored your father. You’ve ignored the Son of God. You’ve blaspheme the Spirit, but not doing what the Spirit said. And so you need to come and do something about that. If you’ll come and do that, my friend, what will happen is when you’re raised up, all your sins will be forgiven. And God will receive you as a child, and your debt will be paid. Can you imagine somebody saying to you today, I don’t know what you owe, but I’m going to pay the whole debt for you. Everything you’ve ever done, every every crime you’ve ever committed, you will be forgiven. It will be washed away. It will be thrown into the sea, into the depths of the sea.

You know, the sea is seven miles deep off the Philippine Islands. Can you imagine how far God will remove your sin? He said, I’ll remove it as far as the east is from the west. You realize that that’s directions that do not meet anywhere. And you think about God saying, I’ll take your sin away, I’ll remove it, I’ll erase it, I’ll eradicate it, and I won’t remember it against you anymore. That’s what God will do. And it can happen this morning. And you don’t have to know everything. I didn’t know much, but I knew that. And I was thinking, if he don’t do it, I’m going to have to baptize myself. Because I’m going to do what God said. And so the writer says in verse 14, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, that was contrary to us, taking it out of the way, nailing it to his cross, and having spoiled principality and power and might, uh principality and power, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

5. Let No Man Judge You: Don’t Chase Shadows

Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or respect of holy day, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ. Now notice here, he tells us what God does is he’s triumphing over all sin in the cross, and when we come to that, what we should do is that no man should judge us by these things that were nailed to the cross. The Old Testament law, the Sabbath day, the Ten Commandments. Do you know those laws were dedicated with animals’ blood? Have you ever thought about that? When Moses went up into heaven, God gave him the Ten Commandment law. He came down and he first of all spoke it to all the people. Then in Exodus 24, he wrote it down.

And then he got up and he read the law before all the people. And they said, This we will do and be obedient. And he took animals’ blood. And he sprinkled animal blood on the book. He sprinkled animal blood on the instruments that they were used in worship, on the garments, on those priestly garments. Animal blood was sprinkled on those garments. Animal blood on the people. Animal blood dedicated the Ten Commandment law. Animal blood did that. Jesus took that Ten Commandment law and nailed it to the cross. It stopped and ended there. So nobody should judge you today by meats you eat. In the Old Testament, you couldn’t eat catfish. You ever thought about that? There are things we eat today that you couldn’t eat under the Old Testament.

And there were Sabbath days. You couldn’t go over a certain journey on a Sabbath day. You couldn’t burn a fire in your house on the Sabbath day. There were things you couldn’t do. You think about that. We’re not living under that law anymore. And those feast days that they had. And those sabbatical things that God gave. All that came to an end. It all stopped there. And notice what he says about that. Let no man therefore judge you. I was at a ball game one time, and reminded me of this passage. When a young boy hit the ball and ran to first base, and was standing on first base, and it was close call. He ran on by the base and came back. Well, somebody in the bleachers hollered, Out!

And so he was running that away. Well, he thought that the umpire called him out. So he starts back toward the batter’s box. Well, the old boy got the ball through it to the first baseman. First baseman over and touched him, and then the umpire said, Out. And the old boy said, What do you mean that? I was already? And the umpire said, Listen, don’t let somebody in the bleachers call you out. I’m the umpire here. Somebody out there can’t call you, they can’t call you safe. He said, Only the umpire can call you safe or out. You see that? Don’t you let somebody tell you you’re safe if you’re not. And don’t you let somebody tell you you’re out if you’re not. Don’t you let somebody judge you by what people say and what they tell us today about what they think.

And the apostle says in verse 17, which are a shadow. All those things in the Old Testament were shadows. All the animal sacrifices, they were shadows pointing to Jesus. And so this picture here, there’s a shadow of that which has come, but the bodies of Christ. I like to tell this story. When I was a kid in school, we used to play a game. We’d be out on the playground playing, and the sun would be shining, and someone would come up behind you, and they would jump over and jump on your shadow, and I say, I got your shadow. And so you take off running somewhere, you know. And then they wake you weren’t looking at they jump on you. And I tell you, some religions are chasing shadows.

They’re shadow chasers. That’s what they’re doing. There was a man in Madison named Tom. I was going to meet him one day down time to eat, and Tom’s kind of got a stomach like this and got a beard like that. And so I was going down the corner to meet him, and I was going to meet him at the street corner. Well, he was standing on by a building at the corner there, and the sun was shining, and his shadow was standing down on the sidewalk. And so I could see his stomach and see his beard, so I knew it was old Tom. So I walked up to the side of the building. I didn’t walk around. I just came around with a fish like that.

I was going to hit him in the jaw. He went, woo! He said, What are you nut? What are you doing? I said, I got your shadow, old buddy. I said, I could see you before you ever come around the corner. But you see, I didn’t come to Tom. I came to a shadow. If you come to the Old Testament to try to go to heaven and try to be justified by the law that was dedicated with animals’ blood, my friend, and to think you can get to heaven by keeping law that away, you can never come to God that away. You have to do it perfectly, and you can’t do that. You’re chasing a shadow. You won’t get there. You’ve got to come to the body.

What was all that a shadow of? I’ve seen a picture. Somebody painted Jesus, supposed to come out of his father’s uh carpenter shop and stands outside the shop and kind of stretches his arms out like that. And when he stretches his arms out outside the shop, it’s supposed to be a picture of Jesus. Here’s a shadow of the cross cast all the way across the globe. Let me tell you, the cross. What was shadowing the old testament was the cross of Christ. Everything was pointing to this priest that was coming, this Savior, the Lamb of God, the Old Testament was pointing to come to Jesus. And so if you go back and let somebody take you back to the Old Testament and say you’ve got to do those things, my friend, you’re chasing a shadow.

6. Holding the Head, Not a Headless Body

But notice the other danger that we find here. In verse 18, he says, Let no man begile, that means to rob or disarm or disqualify you of your reward in voluntary humility and washing of angels and truly the Lord’s things which he had not seen or seen, as some translations say. Vainly puffed up in their fleshly mind, and holding not the head from which the whole body and joints and bands having nourished, ministered, and knit together, increase with the increase of God. Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ in the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are you subject to ordinances? Touch not, taste not, handle not. Which things are indeed which things are to perish with their using after the commandments and doctrines of men.

And notice the apostle says, Let me tell you the danger that you face in some of these religions that men have it. Somebody can rob you by telling you something and you not holding on to the head. You see, if Christ is the head of the church, I have no right to tell you to do anything. I have no right to say, Well, you ought to wear special garments or do things this way. Jesus, the head. And if we do something without the head, you know what we’re doing? We’re a body that is headless. We should hold on to the head. We should never say, Well, let me tell you what I think about that. What I think about it doesn’t matter. The head has told us everything to do.

And so if we do something without the head, we’re a headless body. I was in the country when I grew up, my grandmother had a garden out in the back, and I didn’t know it, but she had this pet black snake. It was about six foot long. It kept the mice and the rats out of the garden. I didn’t know it was her pet. I went out there one day and saw that big old snake’s tail out from under a tomato plant, and I won down to the barn and got the Tennessee gooseneck hole. I run up into the garden, and buddy, when he stuck his head out, I laid into it. And I just cut his head right off, and I was just as proud as I could be of myself.

I went back to the house. I said, Grandma, you won’t believe, oh, I fixed you today. I sure took care of you. She said, What did you do today? I said, I cut the head off a big old black snake in your garden. She said, Go get me a switch. I’m going to wear the hide off you. I said, What in the world? Well, I thought I would. She said, That snake kept all the critters out of my garden. I had to worry about all the other snakes and things. And so I needed that old snake out there. And so she switched me. Well, I went out to the garden and I looked at that old snake. You know what? It been it had been ten minutes since I cut his head off.

His head was going like that. His old body was just a twisting and death was a coming up. He was twisting it. He was doing more activity and carrying on without his head than he was with it. But you know what I knew about that old snake? Because that snake’s head was gone. I knew that snake was a body on his way to death. It was a body on its way to now. It was doing a lot of things, but it was on its way to death. And I can remember learning that a lot younger than that. My grandmother would go down to the barn, she’d have me chase a chicken down to catch it. And she took care of it. She’d get a hold of its head and wind it up like a clock.

And she’d snatch it. And that chicken’s body would hit the ground and she’d have the head in her hand. Now I’m sorry if that terrifies you people, and that might not sound sound like something you want to hear about if you love animals. But I she had me standing with a bucket or a box. And my job was to jump on that old boy before he got away. And sometimes I’d miss him. And that old chicken would run across the barnyard and plow into the barn. He’d bounce off the barn and run over and fall in the pond. He’d come out across the pond and run over the hog pen. He’d run all over that barnyard. He did more things without a head than he ever did with one.

But I knew something about that old chicken. I knew if you’ve got a chicken without a head, it might look like it’s really going somewhere and really doing it. But I knew that old body was a body on its way to death. Let me tell you, people. Just start doing something the head doesn’t say do. Just get some new invention. Find some new way to do it better, you think than God has told us to do it. When we start doing that, my friend, we might build a big body of people. We might make a lot of noise. I was telling about a when I was in Kenya years ago preaching. I ran into a place where we rented a big uh area and and there was a lot of other churches in this area where they went to school.

And so they were all kinds of different groups over there carrying on, and so we were over there doing some preaching, and this old boy across the way from us, he had a big crowd of people, and they had a band and had drums and and they had all kinds, they were stand up shouting, and they were dancing and they were carrying on and screaming and hollering and carrying on. And we were just sitting over there, and I was doing like you all, we were kind of quiet. The only noise was me teaching. And so we’d work a while and then we’d take a break. We’ll say, Well, come on, we said, What preacher, what are y’all doing over here? He said, You’re we’re singing and dancing, we got music and having fun and doing all kinds of things.

You all just sit over quiet. It’s not like you all did it over. You tell me what in the world’s going on, why was that? Why aren’t you all making some noise over there? I said, Well, I said, I heard years ago by an old preacher explained that to me pretty well. And I said, I saw it when I was a boy in the country. When I used to go out to the hog pen to feed the hogs, I’d go down there with a bucket of slop or something, and when I’d get that bucket of slop up over the hog pen, those hogs come running, they’d be squealing and making all kinds of racket and all kinds of noise because they weren’t getting anything, and they’d just keep on squalling, king.

But when I dumped that slop or throw that corn in there and they started eating, when they were getting fed, they were as quiet as they could be. I said, I think my folks didn’t fed, and I think your folks are hungry over. But I said, Well, we need to see right here. And notice what Paul goes on to say about that in the last verse. Which things have indeed a show of wisdom and will worship and humility and neglecting of the body and not uh not in the honoring to the satisfying of the flesh. Paul says, You know what a lot of people do in religion? They have self-made religion. They have man made. They have real worship. What we want to do, you see.

We’re going to do what we think we’re going to do. We’re doing what we feel like we’re. You know, you may grow up in a religion, you think, well, this is not this. The Bible, I’ve never, I never seen religion like this, never heard of before. See, it doesn’t feel right to you because you’ve got real worship. You’ve got what men taught you to do. And it’s not until you take this book. And you get a hold of the head, and you pull Christ to you and what he said, and you do what Jesus said. When you do that, my friend, let me tell you, you’re on the road to being a part of a body that is going to glorify God and honor God by doing what God said.

Conclusion

And I tell you, that’s a body that’s alive. It may not sound like it. That old boy said to me, You know, all you all got over there is a message. And I said, You know, you’re exactly right. I said, I’ve been telling this morning. We’ve been looking at Colossians, and we’ve been studying about a fruitful message. It was a message that people heard. I said, That’s all we’ve got about you. Let me tell you something about our message. He said, What’s that? Our message is a message from God. That’s what makes this message different. When you hear me reading these words, you’re hearing my audible voice, but you know what you’re hearing? You’re hearing the words of God. If you’re here this morning, you’ve never obeyed the gospel.

Let me tell you the Lord wants to save you. And he wants to save everybody. But it may be that you won’t do what God says. Maybe you won’t respond to it. I don’t know. But you can come. I like to tell this story to illustrate salvation and what you need to understand. Do you all remember when Reagan was inaugurated? You remember the night that he was inaugurated, the airplane landed there at the air at the airport and went off the runway and landed in the Potomac River. You all remember that? And there were cameras and helicopters, and people were getting out in this ice cold water, and they were trying to swim, and they had a helicopter fly over and drop a rope down, but that rope kept blowing in the wind and nobody could reach it.

And there was one old boy who was pretty healthy. He swim out there and he swim chasing. He’d get hold of that rope, he’d grab the rope, he’d bring a rope over, and the first thing he did was he, I’m trying to find an older line. Sorry. He hooked that rope on that older lady and he let go of it. And they took that lady up into the in the helicopter. It came down again, and the old boy swam up again. He got it again. This time he took it over and he hooked it on to a gentleman. And he hooked it and he took that man up. Then he threw it down again, and then it came down. And he found a young, there was a young girl there by him.

He took that young girl and he hooked that rope on that young girl and he pulled her up. And the camera zoomed in on the old boy, and hypothermia got to him, and he slowly saw that old boy sink down and go out of sight. And the news people said, What was he thinking about? What kind of a nut was that who just kept swimming after that rope and didn’t save himself? And they asked one old boy, what would cause somebody to do that? And he said, I know what caused that old boy to do that. He loved the life of somebody else. More than he loved his own life. There’s somebody who loves your life more than he loved his own. Why don’t you come to it?

You don’t have to know everything. You can do like me. I’m learning every day. I’m about the most ignorant preacher you’ll ever meet. I’m learning every day. But if you come, the Lord wants to save you. Why don’t you come and over sing the song encouraging?