<TITLE>08. Par 31-35</TITLE>L-31 But God has a provided way, and every man must meet that provided way. God's got a provided way tonight, and you must walk in that way. Abel did. And here how beautiful Cain, perhaps made the biggest, prettiest church. And he put his lilies and so forth out.
It's coming Easter. You people around Phoenix here will be going to Easter services. Everybody goes out to Easter service, show your new hat. All right. And they go out there... And I used to tell the congregation, when I was a Baptist preacher, I said, "Merry Christmas to you. I won't see you any more now till Christmas." Every Easter... See them again Christmas. All right, get a new change of clothes and come back. All right. Here they come; it's a disgrace. That's right. Sure is.

L-32 And here they come; look at them. Cain probably put their flowers, Easter flowers, on the altar like you'll put on the altar. There'll be tens of thousands of dollars, yes, up in the millions of dollars, spent in America for Easter flowers to put on the altar of the church. God don't want the flower on the altar; He wants you on the altar. Altar wasn't made for flowers; it was made for man. That's right.
But you send the flower in your stead. Cain did the same thing. See where it comes from. And here comes Abel, nothing pretty, nothing beautiful. Well, I guess they didn't have any hemp in that day, so he probably had a grape vine wrapped around the little lamb's neck.

L-33 Here he come pulling the little lamb, the lamb knowing that death laid near him, pulling back. I wonder what kind of a death that was when this little fellow knowed he was coming. And he laid him upon the rock, pulled back his head; he perhaps didn't have any knives or lances then. So they just took a sharp rock and begin to chop on his little neck.
Did you ever hear a lamb die? You hear the most pathetic cry you ever heard when you hear a lamb dying. Anyways they beat him across his little jugular veins with this rock, and the blood spurting out bathing his little wool, God looked down and said, "That's it."

L-34 What did it speak of? It spoke of some four thousand years later, when the Lamb of God was hanging on the Rock of Ages and the judgments of God of the sinner man was hanging there, and His bloody locks dripping around His shoulder, speaking...
Abel couldn't understand what the lamb was saying. And Jesus when He died spoke in an unknown tongue, "My God, My God why hast Thou forsaken Me?" He was God's lamb dying on the altar, the Innocent for the guilty, God dealing with sin in that manner.
Nothing at all you can do, it's all... God has already did it; you have to accept it, and by Sovereign grace believe it. And God will vindicate your faith by giving you the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That's right.

L-35 If you haven't received the Holy Spirit since you believed, there's something wrong somewhere. God gives everybody, every believer the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That's right. That's the confirmation of your faith.
Abraham believed God by faith, true. But God give him the seal of circumcision as a confirmation of his faith. And Ephesians 4:30 says, "Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed until the day of your redemption."
So the seal of the confirmation of your faith is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Amen. There God dealing, making a provided way for sinners... Isaiah said that he was... "Who has believed our report? and whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" How He would grow up like a tender branch, how He was, be taken as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, opened not His mouth, and yet we did esteem Him smitten and afflicted of God.


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