Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to our first reading, the Gospel
according to John, chapter 1, and reading from our text, verse
17. For the law was given by Moses,
but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. John chapter 1 and verse
17. The text is the inspired word
through the Apostle John, and it compares the law with the
gospel, and the gospel is described as grace and truth by Jesus Christ. This verse and the knowledge,
not just in the head, but especially as lived out and in the heart
of the Law and of the Gospel, is the great secret of the way
of salvation and how sinners are saved. It is vital that we
understand this distinction. and actually prove it so in our
lives, what we have sung of in two of our hymns, and what is
set forth here. Perhaps to use a little illustration,
one maybe that many of us are familiar with, and that is where
there is something that is wrong with our bodies, If we have symptoms,
we might have symptoms, we're not quite sure what it is, but
we know that there is something wrong with us. We suspect that
there's some illness, maybe something going on inside. and because of that we might
go to a doctor and the doctor then will conduct tests and the
things that are used may be an x-ray MRI scans of various sorts
and it finds out the worst it finds out what is wrong maybe
a cancer maybe something is really wrong with us and That is comparable
to the Law of God. The Law of God, it tells us,
it shows us what is wrong with us. It tells us that we need
urgent attention, we need something to be remedied. But, going back to our illustration,
If having found out that something was wrong we then thought well
we can fix this by going back to the x-ray machine or back
to the MRI But we know that that will not fix, that will not remedy. We need something completely
different than those things that were very faithful, very good,
very needful in showing us what was wrong. However good they
were in that way, they are not going to be able to heal us or
to fix what we found out was wrong. And so it is the same
with the law. The law of God is to convict
us, it is to show us what is wrong, show us that we are under
condemnation, show us that we need to be saved, and also show
us that we are not able to perform that ourselves. We must look
somewhere else for salvation. And so in the medical sense,
again, we would go to a surgeon and we go to a physician that
would then say how he is going to operate, what he is going
to do to make us healthy and well again. And that is like
the gospel, the good news through the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
what He has done, and the hope that is through the Gospel, which
is through the grace of God, the free unmerited favour of
God, and the truth of God. And it's important that we do
not mix up the two. That we are very, very clear
as to where we are looking to, to be saved. We are not looking
for deeds of our own. We're not looking for our own
good works. The law shows us that we have
broken the commandments and that we need one who has fulfilled
them on our behalf, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And
so this is really what is set forth here and it is really a
key to understanding the way how people are saved and to understand
the whole word of God and I hope then to be able to to look at
it from the scriptures this afternoon to to clearly set it forth the
Lord helping me and the Lord gave understanding and and above
all, teach us in our own lives that we walk out the truth, we
live out the truth. You know, what I've just said
of the illustration, we can explain how someone goes through all
that processes, but if you've been ill, and you've had to have
found out what was wrong, and then found out how to be healed,
and to be healed, That's not something intellectual. That's
not something you've just learnt from a book, or heard someone
else has gone through. You've been through it, and you
know it, and you feel it. And the things of God are just
the same. They are not to just be learnt
in the head, but to be experienced, and to be felt, to be walked
through, to really feel that we are sinners, to really need
to be saved, and to be washed and cleansed. and to be taught
by the Lord Jesus Christ the way of salvation. So I want to
learn this afternoon, and we confine ourselves to three points. I firstly want to ask this question,
why men need to be saved? It's not an option, we need to
be saved. And then secondly, the role of
the law of Moses in salvation. What role does that play? In our text it says the law was
given by Moses. And then lastly, grace and truth
by Jesus Christ, the gospel, what that is. But firstly, why
men need to be saved? We must go right back to Genesis,
really in Genesis, the first three chapters is the key to
the whole of the Word of God. Very, very important. Remember
this chapter in John, he begins the gospel, declaring the gospel,
going right back to Genesis, going back to the creation, testifying
that the Lord Jesus Christ was He that made the world out of
nothing. What an encouragement to us if
we're looking for saving and for deliverance from our Lord,
when we have nothing in ourselves to think, well the creation was
done out of nothing. Surely then the Lord can make
of us a person, a creature, for his praise? This people have
I formed for myself, they shall show forth my praise." Well,
the Lord created the world, he pronounced everything good, and
it was, before the fall, it was perfect. And when we think of
how many things in those first three chapters, we have creation,
we have the Sabbath day, one day in seven to be given to the
Lord. We have the institution of marriage,
Adam and Eve brought together. We have the headship of Adam
and Eve. We have the law given to Adam
and to Eve thou shalt thou canst eat of all the trees of the fruit
of the trees of the garden but the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil in the midst of the garden thou shalt not eat
thereof in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die so the law was given to our first parents Adam and Eve are
the federal head of the whole human race. We all come from
them, from one man, and before that from God. And so there are
many other things that you'll find in those first chapters
that are then developed right through the Word of God. I don't
think there's hardly a book in the Word of God that does not
refer back to creation. And certainly in evangelism,
in setting forth the way to be saved always the apostles were
going back to the creator we read in jeremiah the god that
had not created the heavens and the earth even those shall perish
from under the heavens and the earth. It is no wonder that the
evolution people and that those in our schools, they do not want
creation to be taught. Satan is at the root of it because
it is such an important doctrine. You take that away and you make
the Lord Jesus Christ Himself a liar. He says in the beginning
it was not so, as he's speaking of marriage of two together. And so we begin with what God
made us perfect and pure and he beheld all things and pronounced
them all good. But then our first parents, they
broke the law of God. They did that which God said
they should not do. And God then brought the sentence
that He said would come upon them. And that sentence was,
in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Man died. It was postponed, if you like,
when man actually died. Adam lived many hundreds of years. but then he died and we have
in I think it's the fifth chapter of Genesis the whole list of
those that live many hundreds of years and after each one except
Enoch we read and he died as if to emphasize God's sentence
God's judgment is enacted however much length of time goes on before
it is it most surely is enacted and after death then we are told
the judgment and after judgment there is eternal death in hell
in that lake of fire under the wrath of god eternally and this
is emphasized right through the word of god the solemn effect
of the fall, the condemnation, that which falls upon all the
human race. And we see the evidence all around
us, we see death, we see sickness, the warnings that this body is
being taken down. We see also the hatred to God,
Because in the fall, man was banished from the garden, he
was alienated from God, incapable of knowing God. And we come forth
from the womb, we come forth speaking lies, our languages
depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of the Lord. And
those of us who know the Lord will have known that is our own
nature, that is our heart. And some of us have lived years
when that has been how we've lived. We did not want to know
the Word of God. We did not want to know the faith
of our fathers. We rejected the Lord. We did not even want to hear
about the things of God. We'd rather just be ignorant
and rather imagine that everything will be right at the end. and
most solemnly at many funerals, even in churches today. Whether
a person has professed faith or not, everyone is sent to heaven. The message is you can live like
you like, you can live for self, you can live separate from God,
but it will be right at the end. But it will not. The Bible speaks
very clearly of the need of a personal faith, a personal salvation. and that all have sinned and
come short of the glory of God. Man evidences that he lives for
himself, he is his own God. We will not have this man to
rule over us. The idea that God will require
us to obey Him or to shape our lives according to His Word is
repulsive to man. Even in natural things with the
law, we rebel against authority. We do not like to have people
to tell us what to do. We are our own master. And that
is such an evidence of the fall in this world. It is a world
alienated from God, a world under the sentence of death already. We read in Psalm 9, the wicked
shall be turned into hell, and all nations that forget God. Our Lord says, Fear not them
which kill the body, and after that there is nothing that they
can do. But I will forewarn you whom
ye shall fear. Fear him that after he hath killed,
hath power to cast both body and soul into hell, yea, fear
him. And the emphasis our Lord was
putting was on the soul. Man has a soul that is different
than the beast of the field. Man has a soul that lives forever
and forever. Here below, it tabernacles in
our body. At death, the soul separates
from the body and returns to God. The dying thief, the Lord
said to him when he said, Lord remember me when thou comest
into thy kingdom. The Lord said, Verily, verily,
I say unto thee, This day shalt thou be with me in paradise. His body was still on the cross,
so was our Lord's, and laid in the tomb. But when our Lord said,
shalt be with me in paradise, he was meaning his soul, his
soul. And so at this point in time,
we have the people of God that have died, their souls are with
God. And those that have died, their bodies have
been laid in the tomb, returning to dust. But at the last great
day, when the world shall be no more, and Christ shall come
with power and great glory, with those of his saints, with the
souls of those who he has with him, then the dead in Christ
shall be raised first. Those souls shall be given a
new body. Often think in springtime you
think of a daffodil, It is put in the ground as just an old
brown bulb, but then in springtime it rises up, a beautiful green
stem, and daffodil looks so different from the bulb that was put in
the ground, but the bulb was a daffodil bulb, and that which
sprung up was a daffodil, not something different, but that's
the difference in the resurrection. The body laid in the tomb and
then raised again. So beautiful. You think of how
the Lord has done in creation with a caterpillar. We see a
caterpillar and it's crawling around on the leaves and then
it dies, as it were, it goes into a chrysalis. and then afterwards
it comes out a beautiful moth or beautiful butterfly. You think
what comparison is there between the butterfly and the caterpillar? It's the same thing, it's the
same one, but there's no comparison and it's the same as we are now
and in the resurrection. Job says, after my skin, worms
destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God for myself
and not another. You shall see Him as Job. And so this is why we need saving,
we need salvation. This is not the only world. Our lives are not like the lives
of a beast that goes down into the ground and perishes and ceases
to exist. We are eternal. And there is
a face in God, there is a judgment, there is a wrath to come. There
is a reason why God sent His only begotten Son into this world,
that we might be saved. A reason why He suffered. There
is a need for man to be saved. Did the Lord do all that and
there wasn't really a need? There is a need for you and for
me. May that be impressed upon us,
that we need salvation. We need to be delivered from
the wrath to come. We need to be saved from our
sins. We need to have peace with God. And may the Lord use this word
this afternoon to impress that on any that are not sure about
or uncertain of that at this time. And those of us who are
saved to have be reminded of what we are saved from. What
a mercy it is that ever the Lord would open our eyes, that the
Lord should show us the way of salvation. Why men need to be saved, not
just some, the whole human race is under the wrath of God and
under condemnation. The Lord has made that way. that His people, a people known
from eternity, they will be saved. And that is to be walked out
and to be known by grace and by calling. And so then we come
to the Lord's use of the law and of the gospel. On to look then at our second
point, which is the role of the law of Moses in salvation. Now we spoke about in the Garden
of Eden that God gave the law to Adam. That was that he should
not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and evil. And that law was broken. Comprised in that law is all
the laws of God and in a way written in every man's conscience
there is the law of God. We instinctively know what is
right, what is wrong. Morality, unless it's been tremendously
perverted, is really burned in us it still is with us and we
are spiritual beings the whole existence of all manner of religions
and thoughts and spirituality in the world that emphasizes
that there are false religions false gods false ways there is
only one way of salvation that's why we come back to who created
the world who gave the law under whose law we are you know If
we were here in the UK and we had to obey the laws in the UK,
it would be useless to us to try and find out the laws of
another country and to abide by them here because we are not
under those laws. They did not apply to us at all. But the laws of God, they apply
to every nation, and kindred, and tongue. All man is under
the holy law of God. But until Adam, or from Adam
until Moses, we read that death reigned from Adam until Moses. But the sin is not imputed when
there is no law. If we had no laws on our roads,
then we could get into a car and we could go whatever speed
we liked and we could drive on whichever side of the road and
whichever way we liked and we would know that we would never
be pulled over, we wouldn't be charged with any law because
there was no law, so we couldn't break a law. But as soon as there
is a law, As soon as the law says you've got to drive on the
right or drive on the left, or that you've got to keep within
a speed limit, then when you break that law, then you can
be charged, then you can be locked up, then you can be brought in
guilty. And that is why the law was given
by Moses. It wasn't given that men should
listen to this law and think, well, we're going to work ourselves
to heaven. We'll keep this law, we'll repair
what Adam broke, and it will undo all of our sins from this
time, from when we were born up to this time. and we'll get
to heaven. The Lord will say what a good
person you are and you can go to heaven because you've been
so good. No, the law was not given in
that way. In fact, it's impossible that
we could redeem ourselves in that way because the law is already
broken. We're already under the sentence
of death. There's no turning back from
that. You have an illustration of this
with the children of Israel, when they were brought at the
end of their, not the end of their 40 years, but end of two
years in the wilderness, and they went to the promised land,
and then the messengers brought back an evil report, They talk
of stoning Moses and to return back to Egypt. And so the Lord
said to them, then you would go 40 years in the wilderness. When they realized the sentence,
when they realized what they'd done and that they were going
to be punished in that way, they changed their mind. They said,
well, we're going to go up. And they tried to go up, but
God said to them, don't. You've already broken my law.
It's too late now. You can't repair it. They still
tried to, and they were put to the worst and chased back. It was too late. Once the sentence
was done, once it was passed, if you had someone go up before
the courts of the land, and it was past sentence, and they say
to the judge, look, look, give me another opportunity. Tell
me your rules and I'll obey them, but don't send me to jail. He said, no, it's too late. You're
already sentenced. A man is in that position. And
so on Mount Sinai, in the Ten Tables, that's really the first
written language The first time that is written down is written
by the finger of God in tables of stone, the law of God. The first table is concerning
against God and the second table is concerning the laws concerning
man, our neighbor. And the law was given then. to bring us guilty. If you read
the Old Testament, you might think, how severe is that law? A man was caught gathering sticks
on the Sabbath day, and he was stoned to death. And we read
many other things which you think, how could anyone keep that law? It is such a high standard, we
couldn't possibly do it. And that is exactly why it's
set at the high standard. This is the Holy Law of God.
This is what God Himself is able to keep, and which our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ, when He came upon this Earth, did keep
perfectly. But no man, no fallen sons of
Adam, can keep the Law of God. And so it is The law is given
then, and we read this in Galatians, was a schoolmaster unto Christ. It was to show us that we cannot
be saved by our own deeds and to convince us of our sins. The
Apostle Paul in Romans 7, he tells us how this worked in his
own case. Remember what I said about it
needing to be experienced. It was with the Apostle Paul.
The Apostle Paul was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He felt he
did obey the law. He felt he was a good person
and he was going to get to heaven by his own works. Until the Lord
brought one commandment one commandment by power into his conscience
to convince him that he was a sinner in that point. No wonder he says,
later, whoso offendeth in one point is guilty of all. No wonder the apostle says when
he wants his fellow countrymen to be saved in Romans 10 that
they had a zeal for God but not according to knowledge. They
were going about to establish their own righteousness, their
own goodness, instead of submitting to the righteousness of God in
the Lord Jesus Christ, that which is preached. And so the Apostle
Paul, the one sin was, thou shalt not covet. And when that commandment
was given, thou shalt not covet, it wrought in him all manner
of evil concupiscence, evil sexual desire, and he was brought in
as a guilty sinner. And you can read in that chapter,
Romans 7, the good that I would, I do not, the evil that I would
not, that I do. And he sets forth his own personal
experience when he'd been quickened when he'd been born again. The
Lord uses the law of God in first giving spiritual life to his
people. And the first evidence of that
life, very often, I wouldn't lay down hard and fast rules,
but if we are to be saved from sin, we must know what sin is. We must know what condemnation
is. If Paul comes to Romans 8 and
then says, there is therefore now no condemnation to them that
are in Christ Jesus, he's already known what it was to be condemned. And the way the Lord does it
is to impress upon our hearts that we have sinned, we have
broken the law of God, we have done that which is wrong. The
devil will say, well there's no hope for you then. But the
gospel says there is hope, but not in you. earning your way
to heaven, yes, wherever God works, He will make that person,
their lives will change, their lives will be different, they'll
want to do that which is good and right. But if we do it with
the idea that we're going to purchase heaven or do the work
of the Lord instead of Him doing it, then that is repulsive to
God. We're trying to pay for a great,
great debt with something that is very small and inferior. What
would someone think if we had a debt of hundreds of thousands
of dollars and we came with a few dollars in our hands and say,
look, can we pay our debt off? This will pay for the debt. That's an insult. That's just
nothing. That cannot pay the debt. And
that is like us, trying to pay our debts. And if you looked
at, using the illustration again, you looked at the money and even
that which is going to be used, you say, but this is all ma,
this is inferior, this is not right currency. Because all our
righteousnesses, all our good works, are stained and dyed with
sin. They're mixed with sin in everything
that we do. Our prayers are stained with
sin. They all are. You know, when
the Lord first began to teach me and teach me to pray, and
I felt I should pray, and in my own home, kneeling at a chair
trying to pray, and no words came. I didn't know what to pray
or what to say at all, so I just knelt there doing nothing. and
then came into my head all manner of evil thoughts and desires
and I thought this is this is a terrible thing you're in the
attitude of prayer and all this is going on in your heart and
you'll be for God and so I started to pray that the Lord would forgive
my sin and deliver me from these evil thoughts and evil desires
and I went on in this way confessing them before the Lord and asking
him to take them away and to forgive these things and then
I stopped and then I thought well that was a good prayer wasn't
it what a good prayer that was and then I thought Well, here's
an amazing thing. A moment ago, you had no prayer. Then you had those evil thoughts,
and then God gave you prayer. And now you're proud of your
own prayers. And so I went to pray again and
asked the Lord to forgive my pride and to take away my pride. One of our hymns says, the heart
uplifts with God's own gifts and makes even grace a snare. We are proud by nature, and we
like to think well of ourselves and others to think well of ourselves,
instead of to think that we're a sinner, a hell-deserving sinner,
nothing but sin and disgrace, in thought and acts impure, nothing
in ourselves. No wonder the Lord told of the
Pharisee and the publican in prayer, the Pharisee telling
all his good works. But the republican God be merciful
to me a sinner. And he went down to his house
justified, that is, free from condemnation rather than the
other. That is how we must come, as
a guilty sinner. And this is the role of the law. as a schoolmaster to teach us
our need of Christ. Don't measure and think well
I must know so much about sin or so much about my evil to be
saved. You need enough so that you do
not trust in your own righteousness and good works and that you trust
alone in Christ. That you have that knowledge
that without the law of Jesus Christ, without the gospel, without
another way of being saved apart from myself, I cannot be saved. And so that is why we have in
our text, the law was given by Moses. The law is good if a man
use it lawfully. In Hebrews chapter 12, we have
a comparison of law and gospel, And it said, you are not come
unto the mount that might be touched, or Mount Sinai, which
smoked, the loud trumpet sounding long, and the thunder, which
even Moses says, I fear and quake. That is the law of God. It knows
no mercy. It knows no relenting. The soul
that sinneth, it shall die. The law of God. We cannot look
to that to be saved, but it shows us our need and brings us then
to look to Christ. And so in that Hebrews 7, but
you come unto Mount Sinai, or you come unto the church of God,
you come unto the gospel. So let us come to that. The role
of the law is to make way for the gospel. And so if there are
those of you, and the law has done that work, brought you in
as guilty, make you feel to have sinned against God. Like the
prodigal son, I have sinned against God, sinned against thee and
against heaven. No more worthy to be called thy
son. Make me as one of thy hired servants. Luke chapter 15, you read it
at your leisure. How he was brought to feel his
sinnership and then coming to seek mercy from his Father. So then let us come to the grace
and truth that comes by the Lord Jesus Christ. Our text says the
law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. When Paul writes to the Ephesians,
he says in chapter 2, by grace you are saved through faith,
and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Grace is
the free, unmerited favor of God. The scriptures put it like
this, I pass by thee when thou wast in thy blood, and when thou
wast in thy blood, I bid thee live. The Lord insists in John
3 that we be born again, born of the Spirit. It is God's work
to begin salvation and He begins using the law. That where the
Lord begins, we read in Philippians, he which hath begun a good work
in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ. The Gospel, then, is in what
Christ has done, who Christ is. He is the eternal Son of God. He is one with the Father. He
is God manifest in the flesh. In one person, He is God and
man, joined together. God is His Father. Mary, the
Virgin Mary, was his mother, made like unto his brethren the
sin accepted. And the work that the Lord Jesus
Christ came to do was to live a life that we cannot live. He was to give a righteousness
as if we had lived that perfect life. He was to give that to
believers. This is the name wherewith he
shall be called the Lord our righteousness. This is the name
she, the church of God, shall be called the Lord our righteousness.
It's the same surname. Our righteousness is of Christ
put on our account. If we owed a debt, say to a builder's
merchant or whatever like that, whether you hold an account and
you couldn't pay that debt, but you had a friend that was a wealthy
person, they had an account at the same builder's merchant,
and they went to the merchant and said, could you put his debts
on my account? I will pay what he owes. Then that debt would be taken
from you and put on him to pay. And so our Lord Jesus Christ,
in the garden of Gethsemane, he hath laid on him the iniquity
of us all. All of the people of God, he
laid their sins on him. He bore them. We read of him
being pressed down, sore amazed, sweating great drops of blood.
He is brought then to the judgment hall and brought to Calvary,
seen by Pilate as innocent. I find no fault in this man.
He couldn't see the sins that he was bearing. He couldn't see
that. But the Lord was silent before
Pilate because he knew what he was bearing. And so on Calvary
he was made, and we read this in Galatians, he was made a curse
for us which knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. It is the wrath of God then fell
upon the Lord. You can compare the sufferings.
You could say, well, they were terrible sufferings. Our Lord
was scourged. He was whipped. He was nailed
to the cross. He had thorns pressed into his
forehead. He was mocked. He was smacked
upon. He was jeered. And terrible as those sufferings
are, They pale into insignificance when you know the wrath of God
that He endured. A wrath that His people would
endure for eternity if He did not suffer in their place. It
is a substitutionary offering. It is He instead of us. It is
He enduring the wrath of God instead of us. The prophecy is,
and I, if I be lifted up above the earth, will draw all men
unto me. They shall look upon me whom
they have pierced. They shall mourn for him and
be in bitterness for him as for a firstborn. The sufferings,
the cross of Christ is absolutely central to the faith and hope
of God's people. This is why in the Lord's Supper
we do show forth his death till he come. It is a constant reminder
to the Church of God that the debt is paid. When I see the
blood, I will pass over you. The Passover that brought the
children of Israel out of Egypt, freed them from bondage, That
wasn't through any of those nine wonders, but it was through the
blood shed at the Passover. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Passover Lamb. And so it is absolutely vital,
and the whole plan of salvation Right from the beginning, the
Lord is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And
when we read that portion in Galatians 3, the Apostle draws
our attention that the promises were first given to Abraham 430
years before the law was given to Moses. And he points out that the law
that was given that long after cannot disannul the promises
that were given to Abraham to his seed. And Paul says that's
not to seeds, but one seed, that is Christ. So all the promises
of God are yay and amen in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says
that ye are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit which are his. God's people are redeemed
people, and that will make them love the Redeemer, the Lord Jesus
Christ, that will make them trust Him, want to obey Him, want to
serve Him, want to live lives that glorify Him, and that do
not add sin or disgrace to the name of a Christian, a follower
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord said to those that believed
in His name, He said, If ye continue in my word, ye shall be my disciples
indeed." That is real disciples. There's solemnly many that say,
oh we're a Christian, we're going to go to heaven, we've accepted
Christ, we've believed, but they don't continue in his word. They
don't read it, they don't obey him, they don't serve him, they
live lives that are totally inconsistent with the gospel. The Lord said,
A disciple indeed, I hope you and I are disciples indeed, followers
indeed. So we continue in the Word, and
what the Lord said, You shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free. Free from idolatry, free from
sin, from its condemnation, free from every false teaching of
man. The Lord Jesus Christ looses
His people, sets them free. And this is the grace of God. This is free, it's unmerited. And we read in Psalm 84, He shall
give grace and glory. We know our election, we know
our choice, that God has chosen us by being called, by knowing
the law, and the law bringing us to Christ. And by trusting
and believing in Christ, we know that it is the Lord that has
done that. And that will give us a hope
beyond the grave, that when we die, our souls will return to
God. We shall be with the Lord forever
and forever. And when we read here, grace
and truth, really all what's bound up in the truth, the truth
of sin, the truth of the Lord, enduring that sin, the truth
that there must be justice. God cannot just say, oh, it doesn't
matter. The debt must be paid, and the
debt is being paid at Calvary by our Lord Jesus Christ. The
truth of God. is what sets the people free. The Lord says in John 14, I am
the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father
but by me. So may we have a clear view of
the role of the law and of the gospel. Be persuaded that the
only way of salvation is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
alone. And the evidence of it is a life
of faith and prayer, believing and following the Lord Jesus
Christ, being with His people, gathering with them here below.
We have a token, we shall gather with them in heaven at last,
an innumerable multitude whom no man can number. May the Lord
give us that real desire to know the Lord Jesus. and to know these
blessings in our own heart and that we know this key, the difference
between law and gospel and the gospel is a beautiful gospel. Christ has done all for his dear
people and he gives them, I give unto them eternal life They shall
never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of mine hand.
The Lord bless the word this morning, bless it to us each
this afternoon. Amen.