Now it's good to see everybody is here on this first day of a new year. I would like to turn to the first verses of the New Testament and some selected verses from the book of Matthew. Matthew's Gospel, please. And first of all, I can use all of this water, I'm sure, because it can get replenished at the interval, so I'll just pour it all out. Matthew's Gospel, chapter one, please, first of all. And reading from verse one: the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judas, or we would say Judah, and his brethren. And Judah begat Pharas and Zara of Tamar. Verse five please. And Salmon begat Boaz of Rachab, or Rahab, as we would say. And Boaz begat Obed of Ruth, and Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David the king, and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Uriah. Chapter nine please, of the same gospel. Chapter nine. All our readings will be in Matthew. Chapter nine please, and verse ten. And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your master with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, they that behold need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth. I will have mercy and not sacrifice, for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Chapter eleven, please. Verse twenty eight. We'll just break in just to read these famous words of the Lord Jesus. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Over to chapter twenty one, please. Again, just, uh, a part of a verse and the verse that follows, verse thirty one, and just into the middle of the verse, starting at the word verily, chapter twenty one verse thirty one. Verily, I say unto you that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and you believed him not. But the publicans and the harlots believed him, and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him. Now finally, the closing two verses of the gospel, the last two verses of Matthew twenty eight. Verse nineteen of chapter twenty eight. Go ye therefore and teach, or we know it's more literally, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Now we do trust, we do believe that God blesses the reading of his sacred, infallible, inspired word. Our brother has spoke today about our blessings, and he said significant things about God's grace and God's mercy towards us. I want to just have a little look at some great principles from this great gospel of Matthew, and I want to challenge us today and ask ourselves some very searching questions. I don't come to court controversy or to cause offense, but I want us to ask ourselves some big questions in the light of what the word of God says, and ask ourselves the question, are we really adhering to the pattern of the New Testament, or are we starting to move away from it? This gospel, I believe, is absolutely foundational to the whole of the New Testament. It starts with remarkably similar words to what you will find repeated in the book of Genesis. The book of the generation of. We would all agree today that Genesis is foundational to the whole of our Bible. Undermine even the opening three chapters of the book of Genesis, and you've undermined the whole of scripture. Three enormous distinctions are made in the opening three chapters of the book of Genesis. The distinction between man and beast, the distinction between male and female, the distinction between good and evil. Everything falls apart when those things are undermined. When I come to Matthew's gospel, though, I keep hearing repeatedly these words, ah, but that's Matthew, and that's Jewish. And in fact, I also hear these responses. Ah, but that's kingdom truth. Now, I'm well aware that Matthew, of course, was a Jew, but I tell you something, he wasn't much of a Jew. He was a Jew who had betrayed his nation, and as far as they were concerned, effectively, although not literally physically, but morally, they considered him to be an adulterer. Do you want to see the evidence of that, have a look at the parable the Lord Jesus speaks in Luke's Gospel, chapter eighteen. And he speaks of a Pharisee and a publican, and this is what the Pharisee says concerning the publican. I thank God that I am not as other men are, unjust, extortioners, adulterers, or even as this publican. You see, these publicans had aligned themselves with a foreign occupying power. They were collaborators, to use a word more familiar to those who went through the wars of the last century. This man, Matthew, was one of them, and he would have been despised by the people of his day. But as I go through his gospel, I discover this, that while we talk about this gospel as being the Jewish gospel, it is also remarkable. I- I know one of the reasons we say that, of course, is because there are two great discourses in the gospel. There is the Sermon on the Mount, takes three full chapters. There is the Olivet Discourse, takes two full chapters. That's still less than a fifth of the book, by the way. The other gospel which has much in common with those two sermons, or most of it, or at least records more of it than the others, is Luke's gospel. And remarkably, Luke's gospel is the only gospel that was written by a Gentile. In fact, it's perhaps the only book in the Bible that was written by a Gentile. This is also the gospel that in its opening six verses, we read some of them today, it draws to our attention not only a list of kings of Israel, but a list of four women, at least two of which, possibly three, and even possibly four, were all Gentiles. It is a gospel which concludes with verses that we've read today, and those verses speak about not only the place that they were to go to. If you read in, uh, Mark's gospel, he's more interested in going into the nations, but he doesn't say who they'll be preaching to. You could infer that they could be preaching to Jews, as to some extent they first did. But Matthew is explicit that they've to make disciples of the nations, of the Gentile peoples. And where Luke qualifies the commission of the Lord Jesus by saying, beginning at Jerusalem, Matthew remarkably does not. I would point to it also, this is the only gospel in which you will find the word ecclesia, the word for the church, whether or not it's in the context of a church, it occurs three times, it's never found in any of the other gospels. I'd also submit, just for your consideration, it's the gospel in which three wise men came from the east, no doubt Gentiles. It's the gospel in which the Lord Jesus went down into Egypt and came off out of Egypt. It is the gospel, of course, in which we have these remarkable words which you and I often take upon our lips as we remember the Lord Jesus, where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst. It is also the gospel, of course, where in a very similar circumstances and in similar context to that, the Lord Jesus speaks very clearly about them being together, and I would suggest indicates col- collectively throughout the gospel God's great grace moving out upon all of mankind. Now, we don't have a lot of time today. I don't want to have to experience the, uh, the words that when I first moved up here many years ago, I remember a brother at a conference, not on a first of January, on a second of January, and from the front row, uh, the whole hall could hear the words, the pies are in, the pies are in. Well, today I know the pies are coming in at quarter past, so we're going to be very brief in what we have to say. But I want us just to stop for a moment to consider some of the things that we've read today. Chapter one, we see something of the credentials of the Savior, and I want to just point out to you that in those credentials, the inspired word of God makes no attempt to hide away the horrors of some of the greatest failings of the Old Testament. And four women are mentioned. I want to suggest they're mentioned for a reason. When I come over to chapter nine, I want to say we see something of the cleansing of the Savior. He says, I didn't come to call the righteous, but I came to call sinners to repentance. When I come to chapter eleven, I see something about the compassion of the Savior. He looks on a people who the Pharisees, as he himself says, were putting burdens upon them, and they wouldn't as much as lift a finger to relieve the burdens. And he says to them, come unto me. But he says, my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. When I come to chapter twenty one, he utters these remarkable words as he summarizes the kind of people who came to him in this gospel. I want you to grasp this. This is what he says to the Pharisees. He says, the publicans and the harlots, the lowest rungs of society, the most deep-dive sinners you could ever imagine. He says, that's my companions, that's the people who are coming into the kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven. And many of you are not, because they rejected the word of God. And when, of course, we come to chapter twenty eight, we see the commission of the Savior to you and I. Go ye into all the world. Now, I don't want to cause any offense by what I'm going to say, but I want you just to consider this for a moment. As I go about our assemblies today, it's thirty years this year since I came to this area. Worked in the steelworks just down the road, it's gone. I see Junior smiling, he worked in the same place. Had difficulty, I didn't realize he was called Jim in there instead of Junior. Took me a few days till I worked out it was the same fella, of course, you know. I have to say I have a great affection for this place, for New Stevenson, because of the great kindness that I was shown at that time. I have no desire in any way before God today to in any way be offensive, but I want to tell you this, I noticed there is a terrible decline amongst our assemblies. I moved to an earlier in Ayrshire eighteen years ago, nearly nineteen years ago now. In North Ayrshire, there were twelve assemblies. Today there are six, and many of them are weak, very weak. I don't need to be specific today, as I've moved around this shire in the last two years and speaking to the same people I've spoke to repeatedly. We have a number of assemblies. I say this carefully, they look as though they're on their last legs. And yet, when I come to the Great Commission and I look at the pattern of scripture, and I want to take Matthew's gospel as much as the pattern of scripture as the Acts of the Apostles, because I really believe it is. Are we really fulfilling the gospel? Going into all the world, you know what I discover we're doing now? We've got a children's work, and we've got an old folks work, and the great mass of humanity that lies in the middle, we barely touch them. We put on series of meetings, we hope they may turn up, but we make no real attempt to get out there amongst them and to bring them the gospel. I am well aware that our society, I tell you, you couldn't be more aware, has degenerated into the most moral mess and chaos. I see it in the children that my own children bring to the home. You sit at times with tears in your eyes at the filth that man's wicked behavior has inflicted upon those children. But I wonder, have we moved away from the New Testament pattern now, and we're just starting to think there's a class of people out there who are untouchable, and we can't go to them. I hear it. A long way from here, one night I came out of a gospel meeting, the usual gospel meeting. I'd taken it. Same folks sitting in the gospel meeting who broke bread in the morning. But as I came out, another group of people were being ushered into the hall. They were being ushered in for, I would have to confess, first and foremost, good works and kindness to be showed upon them. But they were getting the gospel as well. I know some would say, oh, we're not here to preach a social gospel. I tell you the things that Jesus began to do and say. He went about doing. His words were seasoned with salt, but they were full of grace, but I tell you, they were backed up by action. As these folks came in, and I tell you, you only needed one look to see the difference in these folks to the folks that were coming out. A dear brother, and he is a dear brother, he's a brother I've admired for, I can literally say, my entire life, but he said something that day that made me shudder as I walked out of the hall. He looked at these folks coming in, and this is what he said. There's not much material for the assembly amongst those folks. Mm. And brethren, I hear it week in, week out, the same sort of stuff. I really want us to challenge ourselves today and ask this question. Do we think that the God who can overcome the insurmountable in this gospel, and I tell you it was insurmountable. Let's just look for a few seconds at these four women. These four women represent every hideous form of sexual immorality that you could ever begin to imagine. That you could ever begin to imagine. Go back through the scriptures and have a look. Look at the incident with Tamar. ah Three great terrible acts of sexual immorality in one incident. Judah's son that should have fulfilled an obligation, which, by the way, was being practiced before the law was written. He committed one act of defilement against her. Judah, as we read the godly line here, as we read the messianic line, please remember this is the messianic line. I'm not surprised when I read Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, although I would point out that two of them were polygamists. But when I get to, and Jacob begat Judah and his brethren, well, Judah's not the godly man that the first three were, I'll tell you that. Look at scripture, you'll see it. You'll find just how ungodly a man is. After his wife dies, he goes up the road and he turns aside to a harlot. There's the next great act of sin, and she involves him in an act of incest. And out of that awful mess, you know, there was a third son. God didn't need to use the result of that, but in his grace he did, right into the messianic line. I come down a few more verses over a load of more obscure names, and I come to two more women. One of them is called Rahab, and one of them is called Ruth. Now, let me be clear, Ruth herself personally was not involved in any immorality, but she was the descendant of the most horrendous act of immorality you could perhaps find in scripture between Lot and his two daughters. And as a result of that and of the subsequent behavior of the what was produced from it, the Moabites and the Ammonites, the Moabites in particular, at the very beginning of Israel's history in Deuteronomy, are cursed, and it says they've never to come into the congregation even forever. Ten generations, even forever. Somebody said to me, ah, but Ruth was not a Moabite. She was a Moabite. Well, I didn't have the presence of mind at the time. I wish I had to say, well, turn to Nehemiah. At the end of the nation's history, not the beginning now, and the same verses are quoted again, and it's in the context of having taken Moabite wives. In other words, they were Moabiteesses. And the scripture is black and white and clear-cut and unambiguous, Ten generations, even forever, they cannot come into the c- the company of God's people. But Ruth came in. But we've missed one, we've missed Rahab. If I want to find an example in scripture of sin and depravity at its absolute greatest, don't turn any further than Rahab. Quoted three times in the New Testament, mind you. She's in the genealogy of the Messiah. She's not only in the genealogy of the Messiah, she's quoted in the catalog of the heroes of the faith in Hebrews, and she's held up not only as an example of justification by faith in Hebrews, but in the very next book in James, she's held up as an example of justification by works. We know the incident, don't we? But where was she and who was she? Number one, she was a Canaanite. Not only was she a Canaanite, I tell you, she was in Jericho, the cursed city, the head city of the Canaanites. She was from a filthy people in a filthy place, and she was involved in a filthy occupation. She was a harlot. Now, these verses in Matthew, you know, the New Testament illuminates the Old Testament for us. That's just what it does. We're not looking at it with a veil over our faces. We're looking at it through the New Testament. We can see it. We can understand it now. They couldn't. They searched. They couldn't understand, but now much of it we can. It tells me this about Ruth, about Rahab. I would have found from the Old Testament she came into the congregation, but I wouldn't have found this. I wouldn't have found that she came into the Messianic line. And beyond this, I certainly wouldn't have found this. She's the mother of Boaz. She's the mother of Boaz. You see, God specializes in the impossible. There are no limits to the grace of God. We are placing limits on them today that don't exist in scripture. I believe it with all my heart. We only ever hear one side of it. There are twenty four brethren who will minister between today and tomorrow. The vast majority of them believe what I'm teaching today, but it's never heard. It's never heard. Nineteen thirty five, there was only one thing heard. You could get The Witness magazine and you'll see it, and it was the exact opposite of what we hear today. By nineteen seventy six, you can go back and look at the magazines, and there was a debate. But now we have this. Here are the statements. Fit for heaven, but not fit for the assembly. Oh, God has lower standards than us, does he? You see, we are raising children nowadays. I tell you this, in many of our assemblies, I'm sad to say this, I think we've got folks who are not fit for heaven. We're in a day of childish and childlike and poor professions at times. We're in a day of very, very weak gospel preaching. And yet, when I move around and I find around this nation of ours at the moment, there are a group of young men, I call them young men for all of them, I think, rather than one, and there's eight or nine of them, have gone out and taken this commission, and they are reaching out to those whose lives are absolutely destroyed by sin. I was in a home with some of them. There was a dear old man. He came up here just a few months ago to a funeral, as godly a man as I've ever met. I sat with dinner with him. A couple sat with us and their four children. Well, I say their four children, they were her four children, but they weren't his. Some were and some weren't. I said we wouldn't go into details from a public platform, but the chaos and the horror that went right back to the childhood of these folks. But they had been gloriously saved by the grace of God, transformed in a way that as I sat and listened particularly to this young woman, and she spoke about what the Lord had done to her. I spoke to another full-time servant recently, he'd been at the same place, and the young fellow was standing up worshiping in the Lord's Day morning. Do you know his earliest recollection of his father is when, as a child, he taught him how to inject heroin. The people of the Lord's Day said, what's he doing keeping company with people like that? The Lord Jesus said, they're the very people that I came to save. I honestly believe we've lost our way. I cannot find, I don't have time to go into it. I know there are many here today who are going to disagree with what I'm about to say, but I, I tell you this, I stood at a graveside this year. It was said of a dear servant of God, one of the greatest men that this shire has ever produced. It was said at his graveside that he was guiltless of the blood of the people where he laid, lived, of the town where he was brought up. So he was. I want to clear my feet as I stand here today. This is not something I've ever spoke on publicly before. Highly likely I'm not going to keep going on saying it again and again. But I searched through this New Testament of mine, and I cannot find any example, any precedent, any suggestion that sin in people's past lives ever had any bearing on their fellowship with God's people after they're saved. I cannot find a shred of evidence for it. I just simply have to say it as I look through the New Testament, I just want to give you some examples. Because you see, this is how Matthew's gospel goes on, but you see, we didn't mention the fourth woman. The first three, I could say of them that at least two of them were Gentiles, maybe all three of them. We could say that they were either before the law or perhaps even beyond the law. But when I come to the matter of David, and listen to the inspiration of scripture, now I know the words in italics and the authorized are added, but actually it makes it even more powerful. It would simply read this: begat Solomon of her of Uriah. There's inspiration now. No other holy book would uncover that, would it? Hm? You wouldn't get that in the Quran. The greatest, one of the greatest of God's servants, involved in the most heinous of sin, not just the sin of adultery, but the murder that followed it, because that's what it was. We'd have covered it up and hidden it away. I'm only five and a half verses into the New Testament, and the Holy Spirit brings it right out into the light of day. What a mess. I tell you this, David was the most accountable man on the face of the earth. He was the leader of God's people. If there was a more accountable man on the planet, I don't know who it could have been. He was the leader of the people of God, the king. God had placed him there. He was the man after God's own heart. He failed in the most awful way. There were terrible consequences, I'm aware of that. But once he repented, it never affected his fellowship with God. He was still described as a man after God's own heart afterwards. And God chose that union. Now, you know, David had six wives at least prior to this, and amongst them was a godly woman called Abigail, and she had a son called Chilion, or Daniel, if you want to use, use that name, he has both names, and God could easily have moved the messianic line to there, but he never. He kept it here. Why? To demonstrate to you and I that the grace of God has no boundaries. And a number of these young men have approached me directly, several by email, several in person, others have asked, just would you come and speak? Because they're dealing with folks whose lives are destroyed by sin, utterly destroyed, cannot be put right. Just like Saul of Tarsus. The chief of sinners, and so he was. He murdered the people of God. If the law was put into place, he should have been executed when he got saved. Do you know what he says? He says, I was the chief of sinners, but the grace of God, I am what I am. Our brother has told us today about our blessings. He asked the question, why me? Why us? Let us never for one moment ever forget that but for the grace of God, there go you and I. Genealogies. My father's mother was the granddaughter of one of the founding members of the Assembly in Larkhall. That means my children are the sixth generation. That's a great thing. We thank God for that. That's no reflection on us, by the way. That's entirely down to his grace, entirely down to it. But I just wonder, we've gone through these generations, and we have become, if I can use the word, totally insensitive to the world that's out there. It's a world that's in darkness. My Savior came to seek and to save that which is lost. He went to the sinners. In this very gospel, the two categories of people he mentions as going into the kingdom of God, harlots and publicans. One were committing a physical act, the other were doing it morally because, as we've seen, they were an adulterous relationship. They'd gone against their nation. These are the people he reached out to. And when he comes to the end, he gives a commission, and he says, go into all the nations. And so when I go through the Acts of the Apostles, they did. Oh, I know they started in Jerusalem. Thousands were added. I never find any evidence that any of those thousands were considered fit for heaven, but not fit for the ascent. Three thousand on one occasion, five thousand men only on another. They go down to Samaria. That's a place where he'd been as well. He stood and he spoke with a woman who had five husbands, and he who she now had was not her husband. You know what he discussed with her? Worship. His grace knows no boundaries, known unto men, for out of his infinite riches in Jesus giveth and giveth and giveth again. That gospel continued. It went to an Ethiopian, a cursed one from the line of Ham. It went to a Cornelius, a Roman centurion, with all that that involved in the filth of Rome. It arrested a murdering, blaspheming, injurious, insolent, awful man called Saul of Tarsus. Look at the people today who strap the bombs to themselves and blow people to smithereens. That's the kind of man he was, but he didn't even have courage to do it himself. And God took him. And God lifted him out of that mire, and God set him as an apostle amongst his people. And God demonstrated the places he went to. Now just listen to them. This is what he wrote to the Romans. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. This is what he wrote to the Corinthians. Whoremongers and adulterers, and such were some of you. You know, the very word Corinthianize in our language, the word for the name of Sodom, has been associated with an awful sin, but the name of Corinth was as well. To Corinthianize, go and look up the Greek word to Corinthianize, it means to commit sexual immorality. The place was a filthy, filthy, filthy place. And yet God established an assembly. Galatians, you serve them that by nature are not gods, they were idolaters. Ephesians, we've read of it today, but we could have read on. They were dead, they were devilish, they were dirty, they were doomed, they were aliens without hope and without God in the world. Not a claim of any description, but God in his grace. The Philippians, our vile bodies need to be changed. It's not just the physical. The Colossians, he says, you were alienated, you were enemies. The Thessalonians, you turned to God from idols to seek the living and true God. Timothy, grace exceeding abundant. That's how Paul describes his own salvation. He says, I'm the least, I'm not worthy to be called an apostle. He says, I'm the chief of sinners. You couldn't be worse, and it was all irreversible. Titus, the Christians are liars, evil bellied, slow, gluttonous. Philemon. Ah, people say, well, what about Onesimus? He's made to come back and he's made to put things right, is he? He couldn't put it right. Where do you think a slave was going to be able to get the finance to put it right? Paul says, if he owes you anything, just put it on my account. And before you get high and mighty, Philemon, remember what you owe me. I brought you the gospel, and if it wasn't for what I did, Philemon, and bringing you that gospel, you would be no better than him either. Now, I could go on and say much more, but I know those pies are coming. I want to say to you now, we go through our New Testament, and we go to verse after verse, and I don't have time to look at them today, and we jump to conclusions, and we make them fit our way of thinking. Paul writes to Timothy and Titus on three occasions, he says this concerning elders or deacons. They must be the husband of one wife. Instead of just simply accepting what it means is what it says, we come up with three other, we can't even agree, we come up with three other explanations. I would suggest to you all three of them have really no foundation. I think the verses mean quite simply this. There are folks whose past lives did not disqualify them from assembly fellowship, but they did disqualify them from that position of leadership amongst God's people because of the testimony outside. Therefore, when it came to overseers and deacons, they needed to be literally, in every sense, the husband of one wife. Now, I know there'll probably be a queue to speak to me after this, and I, I, I haven't sought, I promise you, to cause controversy or anything else. If ever a meeting has been on my heart for months now. This was, and um eighty percent of what I meant to say has never been said, but I want us to ask the question today. The God who, in conditions of law, could overcome, and they are unsolvable problems from scripture. The God who, in those conditions, could overcome them, why can't he overcome them now? Why do we really feel that there is a generation of people out there that we're frightened to go near because we think they bring more problems? I know they'll bring problems. These folks brought awful problems. The folks that are getting saved in places are bringing tremendous difficulties and problems. It's shaking us out of the comfort. But I want to tell you this, I believe our nation has degenerated to such an extent it resembles New Testament times far more now than it has done for years. You see, these men didn't go to Victorian England to take the gospel, or to Presbyterian Scotland, or to non-conformist Wales, or Puritan England, or any of these things. They went to filthy, degenerated Roman Greek places, and even the places where the Jews were, you know. Peter writing, we've been in Peter's epistle today, writing to them, he says, we spent so much of our time living like gentles and lasciviousness and drunkenness and all the rest of it. The gospel went to the most awful places, and God's grace reigned supreme, and thousands upon thousands were brought to Christ. God's not changed. I ask the question today for your consideration. Have we changed? We trust that God may bless what has been of himself. Thank you for listening.