In Romans, the Scripture tells us that not one of us ever sought God; He sought us.  Anything in you that seemed to indicate within you a desire to move toward God was the very grace of God, the very mercy of God, and the very work of the Holy Spirit to draw us to Himself.  Let me remind you, He’s done that for every other person, because God is no respecter of persons, and He’s not willing that any would perish, hallelujah!

What is it, then, that brings us in times like that of just seeing the overwhelming task that’s before us?  Nothing less than that great truth of John 17, the Word of God.  Aren’t you glad that we can go to the Word, and it puts everything into perspective?  It reveals the love of God, the justice of God.  It reveals our position in Christ, that we are heirs and joint heirs with Christ Jesus.  All of these great truths come from the Word of God, yet there are so few places, today, that we can go in and find the unadulterated Word of God being taught or preached.  I know what some of us would think at that time, “Well, it’s being preached everywhere: television and radio, and there are churches all around.”

What we want to look at is:  is the message of the gospel, is the Word of God really being brought forth?  If it is, where’s the evidence of the biblical fruit to prove it?  We see in the Scripture that in the last days, in that day of judgement, we’re going to give an answer for every idle word that we’ve ever spoken, every rebellious, independent thought that we’ve ever had.  There will be a day.  We talked about it a couple of months ago, as we talked about the Judgement Seat of Christ.  We want to be very sure that our sins have gone before us (amen?), that our sins have already been dealt with by the blood of Jesus Christ, that our sins have been cast into the sea of God’s forgetfulness.  The reason, for the believer, that none of those things will ever appear at the day of judgement is because they never happened.  That’s how powerful justification is.  No one can ever bring accusation against us.  The Bible says the handwriting of ordinances that was against us has been blotted out.  God has taken your sins and my sins and cast them into the sea of forgetfulness.  When the accuser, Satan, comes and rails against us, and God opens those books, it’s blotted out, there’s no record, hallelujah!

But that’s only going to be the experience of very few people.  Many are called, but few are chosen.  "Broad is the way that leads to destruction," and that was written to professed believers, not pagans.  He’s saying, “All you people who say you are Christians, all you people that say you have a relationship with God, you’re on a broad path to destruction.”  He said, “There’s a narrow way and only a few will find it.”  Now, "few" is relative when you’re talking about billions of people.  The Bible teaches us very clearly that many will stand before Him in that day and justify themselves before Almighty God.   Many will look Him in the eye and say, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we?  Lord, we preached Your name.  We cast out devils.  We laid our hands on the sick and they recovered.”  And Jesus is going to look at them and say, “Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity.  I never knew you.”  There’s only one way to be accepted of Jesus.  He said, “If you will come after Me, you will deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Me.  Come and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.”