The Process of Salvation

It was something given by Dr. Ward. Dr. Ward, in his 80s, hadn't even been to the GCE for a couple of years just because of his health. But he felt compelled. He wanted to come and talk. And what he talked about was how we understand that Christianity is about truth and love, and that those two things are the basis of what we're all about. But he said, you know what? Until we understand truth, you can't define love. And that's something that Tim Franke said in a sermon here a couple months ago, I thought was really profound.

Until you have a biblical definition of love, so until you know what truth is. Now, if truth is just information, it's pretty meaningless. But truth, understanding what it really means, creates who we are, which leads to love. If we have love and then truth, you have everybody must accept everybody, no matter who they are or what they do. It doesn't work. So we have to have truth first. And he talked about very strongly how the great danger in the church isn't that we're just throwing out the doctrines because we're not, I mean, the average person. But the world and our emotions are just letting us become all frayed at the ends, frayed at the ends of who we are.

He said we got to go back to, and he actually gave 10 basic doctors, and he said we got to go back to that and build off of that and we'll learn love. But we have to go back to that. I called him, I didn't talk to him for a few months.

Every once in a while we'll talk on the phone, and I called him and said, hey, that was really good. And we talked. He was really on fire. So he talked.

I get to, he preached to me for a while. And we talked about the importance of re-establishing the core truths so they don't get lost in the confusion of the world we live in. So after we talked, I thought, you know what? I'm going to do a sermon on something very basic.

I'm going to explain four words. Four words that you'll find in the Bible, specifically in the New Testament. And in doing so, help us focus in, really focus in, on what's important. You know, we're not giving up the Sabbath, we're not giving up the Holy Days, but there's thought processes. And I want to stress, there's emotions that pull us in. We're going to be talking about this all the way up into Pentecost next week, and then on Pentecost, some of the concepts here. And then it's going to be expanded this summer as we as we try to break this down, how truth must determine what we do, what we think, how we act.

But the truth has to come first. First word. There's all words you've heard of a thousand times. You read them all the time. First word is salvation. You know, salvation is a simple meaning. It means deliverance. It means that you're in dire danger. You're in trouble. You're lost, and you're delivered from that. Someone comes in and saves you. It's salvation. You don't save yourself because you can't. So salvation has to do with deliverance. And biblically, when we look at salvation, it's the fact that every human being is hopelessly, hopelessly lost, and hopelessly in danger of death, of eternal death, unless God does something.

God has to do something first. God has to do something first, and this is going to bring us into these other three words. So this is the first word, the last word, sort of complete this continuum, and I want to bring out the other two words in the middle. Now there's a few other words I'll give definitions to, but basically, these four, which we hear all the time, we need to reestablish in our minds.

You see, we can't save ourselves because one day we read the Bible and say, oh, I'm going to keep the Sabbath, I'm going to find a church in tithe, and I'm not going to divorce my wife, and therefore, I'm saved. See, you hear that argument a lot. If you're a good person, you're saved. And you know, the Bible doesn't teach that. The Bible teaches everybody's lost. Everybody's lost. It doesn't matter how good you are. You're lost unless God does something to save you. That has to do with the corrupted human nature, and we've talked about that before, and we'll probably talk about that some this summer.

But how we are lost, and God must save us. He doesn't save us because we've somehow... He looks down and says, whoa, there's a good person. Well, I don't even have to do anything except call them because they're already saved.

That's not how it works. Everyone is hopelessly in danger, and only God comes down and saves us. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. There's a couple other words here in this passage that we need to look at. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Verse 26, he talks about you see your calling. In other words, God must call you. God must come into your life. You're not here because you said, hey, God, I want to be your friend.

Now, you may have wanted to be God's friend. You may have been searching for God, but if he did not open the door, it doesn't matter how much we search.

It's not like he's hidden and you find him. You're searching, and he says, here I am. He reveals himself. He reveals himself. Before you see your calling, brother, there are not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, or called. So he talks about our calling. And he says the reason why. He says, you are called so that nobody can glorify himself. Nobody can say, look at me, God called me. No. I mean, Paul just lays it out in typical Pauling punch in the face. He doesn't call you so that you can say, look at me, I'm special, God called me. No. Look at God. God called me. It's a totally different viewpoint. Sometimes they seem the same, but they're not.

So that no flesh or glory, now number 30, verse 30, but of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that as it is written, he who glories, let him glory in the Lord. Our focus is on God, not ourselves.

He says so that we are called for righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Now, redemption is a word I, you know, we're not going to talk about a lot today, except in the context of what we're going through. Redemption means that you're lost and someone pays the price to get you back. So when Paul says here, you're called because you have nothing to give and you simply respond to God. So we have a thing we have to do. I mean, this isn't like, oh, we're not teaching Calvinism. God calls you, you're saved, and there's nothing you could do about it. You can go out and kill 50 people, you're saved. No, no, no, that's not right. We have to do something. But the initial thing comes from him and is not because of us. It's because of his decision, and we have no idea why he chooses us, except it says that we're pretty much the weak of the world. That's why he chooses us. He chooses us and then he pays the price for us because we can't do it.

So the acceptance of Jesus Christ, because you are in Christ Jesus, is central to the process. And his sacrifice for us. And because of that, because of Jesus Christ, we become righteousness and sanctification. Romans chapter 5.

I'm just going to take a couple passages on each of these words.

I mean, we could easily spend an hour on each of these words. But I want to put them together through the process. We have to see the process of what God is doing. Romans 5.

And let's start in verse 6.

For when we were without strength, we're just laying once again that foundation of salvation. For when we were without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were cut off from God, he had already died for us. Not because he looked at us and said, you're a good person. Much more than now having been justified by his blood. Now this is going to be our next word. Justified by his blood, we shall be saved, salvation, from wrath through him. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more having been reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ that through him we have received the reconciliation. Okay. Salvation is not only you hopelessly lost, and if you've grown up in the Church, you have to understand God sees you the same way. You had a privilege that God brought you, and we're going to talk about what he did to you, he brought you into a relationship with him before some of you were born into it, right? He let you come into a relationship with him. It was still through his mercy because you still had a corrupted human nature. So you had a special grace from God. You had a special favor from God if you grew up in this, that God let you come into it as a child.

That was a gift. But the bottom line is, if he didn't do that, even as he did it, you have to recognize that there's something inside of you that is the enemy of God. This message is absolutely rejected in the humanistic new age Christianity. Nobody's the enemy of God. God loves everybody, accepts you who you are, and therefore, things like this just show that Paul really was pretty much an idiot.

No, this is God's viewpoint of humanity. Every human being except Jesus Christ started out as his enemy. Inside us, the corrupt human nature was not what he designed us to be. But through this process of salvation, he reconciled us to him, and then he justified us. Justification is the next word. Reconcile to God. Remember, this is just some definitions. That's all we're doing today. Some basic core definitions.

So, we're reconciled to God means that he doesn't see us as enemies anymore. He lets us come into a relationship with him. And that's what justification means. Justification means that God accepts you to come before him. That doesn't mean we're perfect. It means that he, through his righteousness, says, I will let you come before me, even though you... I give you a righteousness you don't have. In other words, I give you a privilege you don't have. You can come before me, even though you're still a sinner. And so, we are justified. Now, this is where justification becomes a very... I mean, this concept is argued in Christianity all over the place. And yet, the principle is very simple. God accepts you. God calls you. You respond. You believe that he exists. You begin to seek him. You begin to want to learn. You start searching for truth. And he says, okay, you can come before me. Now, this goes back to because of Jesus Christ. But at this point, it doesn't mean you totally know all the truth. It means... because how do you learn the truth if God doesn't teach it to you? And how can God teach you the truth if he doesn't let you come to him? You see the problem? So, justification happens before we have all of it. And let me prove to you why it says in the Bible, justification is by faith. And that doesn't mean you just have to believe, and that's all there is to it, which is a lot of the definitions given to justification.

Let's start in Romans 3, and then we're going to look at Romans 4. Romans 3 and 4. So we're going to now have... we've looked at salvation. It's God saving you from grave danger that you cannot save yourself from. So he does it. And he calls us then to be saved, to receive salvation. You know, I still have beside my desk a booklet written by Herbert Armstrong in the 1950s, and it's simply entitled, What is Salvation? I've used that booklet more than any other book. Because he was... you know, he was setting up what this is all about.

Romans 3, 21.

Here's where people get confused. But now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being written, witnessed by the law and the prophets. In other words, the law is a product of God. God is the product of the law.

He says, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and all who believe, there's no difference. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Now he's writing here... the whole context is inside the church, the debate between Jews and Gentiles. One of the things in Romans... and you know, on Wednesday night, I've been going through Ephesians. We're going to look at some real important things that Paul talks about in Ephesians. Because he talks about the mystery of the gospel, and then he breaks it down into three parts. And the first one is the mystery that all people can be called and are being called to be, not every human being, but people from all groups, all ethnicities, all races, all are being called. People are being called and that being an Israelite isn't any kind of guarantee of salvation. That's one of the mysteries of the gospel.

That God is calling all people in the church age. Now Israel still has a place in his plan, and Israel's called... the physical Israel is brought back together when Christ comes back to serve him on the earth. But being born an Israelite doesn't equal receiving salvation right now. Receiving salvation right now is open to whoever God calls of all peoples. That's the mystery he talks about. And then he talks about the mystery of Christ and the mystery of the church, and he says this is the mystery of the gospel. This is the gospel that God calls all people, whoever he wants, to be part of his people. And this is what he's talking about here in this passage. All have sinned. He's saying Jews, you've sinned, Gentiles, you've sinned. So you should be fighting each other in the church. Being justified freely by his grace or his favor through the redemption... we're back to being redeemed. We've been bought through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance God has passed over the sins that were previously committed. Once again, it's God who is doing this because God is righteous and God is good and God is great. And we are given this remarkable privilege. Grace or favor from God is a privilege because we can't grab it, earn it, beg for it. If he doesn't give it, he doesn't give it. It's a privilege given by God. And it's a privilege that every human being will receive at one time or another. That's why there's different days of salvation.

So let's go now to chapter 4 verse 1. So remember he's talking here to, okay, you're a Jew, and you say, no, no, no, we are the special people of God. So we're in part of the argument in the first few chapters of Romans is, wait a minute, no, because you're a Jew doesn't mean that you're a superior Christian to a Gentile who's been called into the church. You're not. That's a part of what he's going through here. How were you justified? Whether you're Jew or Gentile, how are you in the new covenant allowed to come before God? He said through Christ. And Christ is offered for everybody. What then shall we say that Abraham, our father, was found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. He says, okay, the argument is, and this is what he's going to deal with, he was justified before God when he was circumcised. So part of the argument is Gentiles have to be circumcised because that's how you're justified. He was allowed to have a relationship with God when he was circumcised. Well, there's a couple problems with that. First of all, God called him long before he was circumcised. God worked with him long before he was circumcised, and God justified him. In other words, he was able to come in the presence of God long before he was circumcised. Right? So, okay, let's deal with this argument. So verse 9, does this blessedness, this interaction with God, then come upon the circumcised only or upon the uncircumcised also. For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness. He says, okay, so you're saying unless Gentiles are circumcised physically, they can't be justified. Now we do know he taught, well, let's skip over. We'll get to this in a minute. How then was it accounted while he was circumcised or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. He was justified because of his faith. Okay, let's end there and just say, see, just believe in God and you're justified. Yes, but there's another step in this. He believed in God enough to leave his country. He believed in God enough to follow. He believed in God enough to give up always pagan gods. Okay, he believed enough to follow, and he kept following and kept following. So he was already justified. And then he says in verse 11, and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised. That he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them by faith. He said, so because he was allowed into this relationship with God through faith, what did God do? He made a covenant with him. God said, you have faith, you're responding to me, you're opened your heart and mind to me, so I'm going to make a covenant with you, and the sign of the covenant is circumcision. Okay, what if Abraham would have said, I'm not doing that, I'm not going to be circumcised? That's weird. Would he be the father of the faithful today?

He was justified by faith and came into a relationship with God, and this relationship went on for years. And then he said, because of this relationship, I'm making a covenant with you, and you have to be circumcised. And it's called, you know, circumcision is the sign of the covenant. That's argued throughout the entire Old Testament. That would be like someone today saying, I have faith in God, I believe in God, I'm following God, I've started to keep the Sabbath, I'm not cheating at work anymore, you know, I've been working on, I used to have a lot of problems with greed and covening, and I don't anymore. I've made such progress, I'm so good, and I have this relationship with God, and God says, well, wait a minute, you need to repent and become part of the new covenant, which means what? You have to be baptized. The sign of the covenant is baptism, and laying on our hands receives the God Spirit. And he's like, oh, no, no, I don't need that, I'm okay, I'm justified. He's not going to be justified much longer.

So this justification is something God says, come here, I call you for salvation, and this comes into this relationship, and he opens it up, and you're allowed to come before God even though you're absolutely unworthy. And he lets us come before him, and he talks to us, he works with us, he guides us. Sometimes that takes years and years and years, and once we reach a certain point in this, God says, I wish to make a covenant with you. So when we refuse baptism, we're refusing the covenant. We're accepting justification without the next step. And we already read about the next step, which is called sanctification. Sanctification is God now separating you. You're justified, you're in a relationship with him for salvation. He's separating you for his purposes, and his purpose is to make you his child. That's his purpose. Dr. Ward says, once we forget that, our Christianity means nothing. Once we forget why, we're called to be his children. He and I have great conversations. I take everything from him I can. Once we lose that, it all becomes ritual. But we have a relationship with God, and everything we do is part of this relationship. And this relationship with Jesus Christ, who redeems us so that we can be saved. And now we're separated, we're made holy.

How are we made holy? Well, obviously by God. But I wanted to notice something in John 17. We read this at the Passover every year. John 17.

Jesus' prayer for his disciples, not only those that were with him, but those that would come after them. He said, they are not of the world. That's a big statement that we're going to all have to work on in the chaotic world we live in. Just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them. Sanctification. Separate them. Make them holy. Make them fit for your purpose. Sanctify them by what? Your truth. You can only be sanctified by growing and understanding truth. Truth can only come from justification. And truth can only, justification can only come because God calls you.

Those things have to happen. But we must be sanctified. This is a process you and I must totally participate in. God does the work, but we have to participate. We can hold back the work of God because God won't make us. He could. We just be animals, robots. We participate in the sanctification process. Sanctify them by your truth and your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And notice what he says. And for their sakes, I sanctify myself. Jesus says, I set myself apart to be their Passover.

I have the power to do this because of who I am. And I set myself apart as their sacrifice. That they may also be sanctified by the truth. We must seek truth in everything all the time. Now nobody knows all the truth. I don't know all the truth. You know what scares me as I get older? I had a birthday when I was over in Turkey. I forgot. My two daughters came up and said, Happy Birthday! And I looked at them for a minute and I said, What? Today's my birthday? Oh yeah! I had forgotten what day it was. You know, we just lost and everything was going on.

They enjoyed watching me. They would just say, We just enjoy watching you. I was telling Chelsea, my one daughter said, Dad, how come here? Everybody calls it Hagia Sophia. And you call it Hagia Sophia. I said, because it was originally written by the Greeks. And they're saying it in Turkish and I'm saying it in Greek. It's like, you nerd.

I call it Hagia Sophia. It's a big church. We'll talk about that. We'll show you a slide of it. By the truth. Now, the only way this can happen is once again from God.

So when He makes this covenant with us, we're justified to be sanctified. Now we enter into this covenant. God's Spirit must be put in us. And then the real battle of Christianity begins, right? Because it's internal. As we struggle with sanctification, as we struggle with sanctification, being separated and made holy for God. 1 Corinthians 6. 1 Corinthians 6. The words we're talking about today are words of life. I picked these words out. I really had about 25, but I just took them down to four. We're just given definitions. It may not be the most exciting of sermons, but it's core. It's truth.

1 Corinthians 6 verse 9. He says, Do not do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Do not be deceived. Okay, so we have to receive the calling of salvation. We have to respond. We must be justified. And you know what? If you're sitting here today and you're not baptized, or you're a teenager, or you're a 10-year-old, understand you are justified before God.

God has said, you can come talk to me. You're justified. Now, you're just learning about sanctification. You've got to head towards baptism to take the next step in sanctification. But you're learning sanctification now, but you're already justified. Now, you can lose your justification by just refusing to have a relationship with God. But you already have received that from God. You're already justified. That's remarkable. That's remarkable. You have to really grasp that. And those of us who have God's Spirit need to remember, we want to give up. We get trapped in our discouragements. We get trapped in the craziness around us. We get trapped in our sins, and we forget, you have been justified.

In fact, there's a couple points that says, you have been sanctified. But then it goes on to explain it's not done yet. Okay, it's not done yet. But in other words, you were in the process of being separated by God for Him. That's what Christianity is, because of Jesus Christ.

Sanctification, we're going to talk about a lot. We're going to talk about it next week. We're going to talk about some of it, probably, even on Pentecost. That we are being sanctified. These are the most important theological words, or some of them, that we should know. We read them, we sort of know what they mean. But they have to turn into an internal application of who we are.

He says, Do not be deceived, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extorsions will inherit the kingdom of God. In other words, people who live this way and never receive salvation because they never respond to God, he may offer it to them. If he offers it to them and they reject it, if he justifies them and they reject it, if they refuse sanctification, he says they will not inherit the kingdom of God. That's a truth. Not everybody becomes the family of God. That's a hard truth that's in the scripture. He says, and such were some of you. Well, you know, Paul makes a number of long lists in his writings about sins. And all of us, if we search all those, it's like, oh yeah, that was me and that's, that wasn't still me. I mean, we're still struggling with stuff, right?

His point is, but you're not staying there. You've moved beyond this and you're continuing to be moved beyond it because sanctification is both, okay, you are sanctified, but you're not done yet. It's a process. Just like salvation, all this is a process. Justification is a process. Sometimes it's a long time before God lets you know him and before you actually become baptized. Sometimes it's a long time in that justification process.

And you're sanctified.

And then you go through that. As such were some of you, but you were washed. We're back to baptism. We're back to the covenant. You were washed and you were sanctified. And you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Oh, these words are now starting to be put together into a singular concept. It doesn't have been the right order in a way.

It's fine because Paul's not purpose isn't here to put him in order. It's just to say that you've gone through all this. You've entered into a covenant. You were justified. You're sanctified. This is all happening. It's real. Until this becomes real to us, how do we struggle through every day? Do we see what God is doing? Because he wants us to be his children.

And that brings us to our last term.

I was going to go to Ephesians, but I mean, we've made the point. Once again, I could go to 1520 scriptures on each of these subjects or each of these words just to fill out what they mean.

The last one, we usually use the word conversion.

There's a better word than that that's used in the Bible. You know, conversion means change, right? You're changed from one thing to another. But there's a fascinating word Paul uses in Romans chapter 12. Now, this is one of those memory verses that many people know by heart, but let's go there. Romans chapter 12.

Verse 1.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, your whole life, who you are, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. In other words, when you realize what it takes to receive salvation, justification, sanctification, you give back everything. This is what we're supposed to be doing. Everything. We give everything to God in our lives.

He says, And do not be conformed to this world, and we're going to have to talk about that this summer. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Transformed there is, and the Greek word is metamorpho, is where we get the English word metamorphous.

Well, you know what a metamorphous is. It's like when a caterpillar spins itself around, and it's in there, and it comes out something totally different. I mean, it's not the same thing.

Paul literally says, you're going through a metamorphosis.

You are called because if you stay who you are, you will live your life and die. And if God doesn't do anything, you're dead forever.

It's eternal. So God says, I've come along to save you because you're all messed up. Satan's got a whole of you, and you've learned good and evil, right? Oh, Satan said, you'll know good and evil. Okay, folks, you've learned good and evil, and you can't tell the difference. So I come into your life, and I save you, and I bring you out of this, which is a whole process. And as I bring you out, you respond. And then I justify you. And you and I have a relationship. And that goes on and on and on and on, and it gets deeper and deeper. And at some point, you say, I'm ready. I wish to have this covenant. And he says, I make a covenant with you, and now you're being... Because you're justified, now you're being sanctified. And he puts his spirit in us. He's working with us with his spirit, right? You can't go anyplace without God working with you. He's working with you. You get to this place, and he says, now, now, I gotta put my mind in you. And the Holy Spirit comes from both the Father and the Son. It's very important. It comes from both of them.

Because there's only one spirit, but it comes from both of them. And so he comes into us, and now we are being sanctified. We're being set apart for his purpose. Made in his image. And the reason why is, according to Paul, now we understand we're going through a metamorphosis. This isn't just a set of beliefs, although you have to have the beliefs. To have the truth and not do the metamorphosis means nothing. That's why to have love without the truth, in the end, doesn't change who we are either.

What it is, is that we have to be transformed. We have to go through a metamorphosis. And you know what happens after that? Here's another word that will take a whole sermon to explain. But I'll just mention this word. Romans 8.

Romans chapter 8 verse 12.

Paul says, Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. We come out of the world. He doesn't mean we are to become aesthetics and beat ourselves and all go to a monastery and be celibate and sleep on a bed of nails. That's not what he's talking about here. He's saying, you don't give in to what you've been sanctified from because we're being turned into someone else. So if you used to go out and like drinking with your buddies and fighting all night, no, you don't do that anymore. You change.

The metamorphosis is happening.

He says, For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. That's the bottom line here. We're talking about life and death. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. The transformation is to become the literal children of God.

And John said, I don't know what we exactly had to explain that. I'm paraphrasing a little bit there in first John, but he says, but we know we'll be like him. We'll be like Jesus Christ. He says, that's what we're going to be like. I don't know what that means. I mean, we're never going to be as great to Jesus Christ, right? But we're going to be like him in a literal sense, just like your children are like you. Now, a baby is never the parent. It takes the parent to take care of the baby. We'll never be God. We're never going to be Jesus Christ. But that's not the point. The point is, we will be like them.

We will be a pet. We'll be children. We'll be children.

For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father, very dear word.

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him... Now, here's the next word that we won't go into this time. That we may also be glorified together.

You are sanctified and you are going through a metamorphosis. At the end of the metamorphosis, at the end of your salvation process, you are glorified, which means you become a spirit child of God.

That's the core of everything.

That's why we keep the Sabbath and the Holy Days. That's why we don't believe in the immortal soul. That's why we don't keep Christmas and Easter. This is it. This is why. Because God has given you a favor, an undeserved grace, so that you can go through this metamorphosis. And sometimes it's hard. And sometimes we can discourage because of our failures.

As if we can do this ourselves.

We just get up every day and say, God, do your work today and let me submit to it. That's what we do.

Do you do your work today in me and let me submit to it? Help me. Now, sometimes God says, you're a hard one to submit. I'm going to have to knock you around a while, but okay, we'll do it. I'll get you there.

And His purpose is to glorify you. That's God's purpose.

But that's another subject.

We can't afford to lose this.

And this is just some of the basics we have to go back to. I was just inspired by Dr. Ward being so pumped up in his 80s.

And I've always enjoyed talking to him. I like it. Kim and I stayed with him one time at their house. And we got to know them for who they are. Kim says, it's real dear to her. She got up early one morning. No one else was up. There were a few other ministers there and their wives. She went down and there's Dr. Ward. What was he making, Brad? What was he doing? He's making muffins. Coffee and muffins. So when everybody would get up, he could give them coffee and muffins. And it's real early in the morning. And the two of them just talked for an hour. You know, well, she watched him and helped him make muffins.

And I've always appreciated the fact that we've got to know. Because, you know, Dr. Ward's bigger than life. But then you get to know the real person. But to see that passion, Gary, there's ten things that has to be the foundation. And we have to make sure they get that. Because there's too many things pulling at these people. There's just things pulling them all over the place. And the key thing is they're not focused on what's important.

And I agree with him. We all suffer that. We can't afford to lose this. We can't think that our...

It's all about secret knowledge and rituals.

Now, God gives us knowledge, gives us truth. But, you know, this isn't about having secret knowledge, and you don't have it. And God gives me a ritual, and you don't have it. That's not what this is.

God has called you to make a covenant with you. And that you are going through now the process of salvation, justification, sanctification, and metamorphosis. And that's what your life is all about. Okay, what we'll do is have a song. Then we'll take a... Say, by noon. And then I'll do a little half-hour presentation of some slides, and then we'll go eat. Because I probably won't be able to hold you back past that. You'll just run out in need anyway, so...

And by the way, it's really good to be home with all of you. It really is.