Thank you, Tom. I want to do
that tonight. For you and for me. For those
who are always in need of being saved. I've titled this message
how the Lord saves. And I hope that the Lord will
apply it to our lives right now. We won't be thinking like the
the religionist who only considers salvation as a one-time past
experience. We need to be saved from all
those things we just sang. How prone we are to wonder. We
need to be saved from ourselves. First and foremost, we need to
be saved from Satan. We need to be saved from our
own sin. And it's a daily walk of faith. Hosea chapter 11, Hosea chapter
11. I'd like for us to spend most
of our time in verse four of this chapter, but I wanna read
the first three verses. Hosea chapter 11, verse one. When Israel, that's the church,
was a child, then I loved him. and called my son out of Egypt. That was the new birth when the
rod of the law was broken and the Lord led his people through
the baptism of the Red Sea and into the wilderness to be fed
with manna and to drink from that rock for 40 years. And at
the end of that time, they'll cross the Jordan and their Joshua
will lead them into the promised land. That's our walk, isn't
it? It's our story, our story of
being saved. And the Lord said, I delivered
them. I brought them out of Egypt.
And now in verse two, he's talking about Moses and the prophets,
he says, And as they called them, so they went from them. They
sacrificed unto Balaam and burned incense to graven images. How
prone they were to look over their shoulder and to forget
who had loved them and who had redeemed them. In the midst of
their troubles and trials, in the midst of their temptations,
they lost sight. of their God. Can you relate? We just sang about it. I taught Ephraim, another name
for the church, also to go, taking them by their arm, always leading
them, such a faithful shepherd, never, never leaving his sheep,
and yet how often they forgot that I healed them. I was the
one that healed them. Am I going to give up on them
because of their unfaithfulness? Am I going to give up on them
because of how prone they are to forget who I am? No. When they believe not, I will
remain faithful, for I cannot deny myself. They're mine. They're my children. And so verse
four says, I drew them with cords of a man with bands of love. And I was to them as they that
take off the yoke on their jaws. And I laid meat on to them. How the Lord saves three things
he tells us in this verse, and he continuing to save his people
this same way. I'm a little reluctant to say
how the Lord does anything. And I'm reminded of what David
said in Psalm 50 when he said, when God said, you thought us
that I was altogether such a one as yourself. We have ways that we do things.
And we might have a conversation about doing something, and I
might say, well, I do it this way, and you might say that I
do it that way. And the older we get, the harder it is for
us to change our ways. The more we get to doing, there
may be a better way to do it, but we do it the same way over
and over and over again. How the Lord saves. He's not like us. He's not like
us. There's a pattern to his work
of grace in the hearts of his children. And he tells us in
this verse what that consistent pattern is. And it begins with
that irresistible, call of grace. Yes, it was irresistible when
we first heard his voice, and it continues to be irresistible
every day. As we look away, we hear his
voice and we're brought again and again and again by his spirit. Look what he says. I drew them. I drew them. It's what the Lord Jesus said
in John chapter six when he said, no man can come unto me except
the father which sent me draw him. How dependent we are and
the more we grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ, the
more we are thankful that the Lord is faithful to draw us. And that if he wasn't, we've
had enough experience with our wandering ways to know that if
he didn't keep us on a leash, if he wasn't a faithful shepherd
to come to lead the 90 and nine and seek out the one and bring
them back into the fold, we would wander away to our own destruction. This is where salvation begins. I drew them. If we could resist
him, we would. But he makes it so that we can't. In our first experience of grace,
what do we hear men say? I got saved. What do we say? The Lord called me. The Lord
saved me. The Lord shut me up to himself. We don't speak like We hear religious
men speak when they say, best decision I ever made in my life.
No, salvation for us was never a decision. It was a place where
the Lord put us, where we didn't have any choices. We were drawn
by him. We had no place else to go. Like Jonah, we were in the belly
of the whale. We've been brought down to the
depths of the mountains, and we were made to cry, Lord, save
me. If I'm gonna be saved, you're
gonna have to do it. Salvation is of the Lord. The evidence that the Lord has
drawn us is that that's what we come to. Romans chapter 8 tells us, those
whom he did foreknow, that's his love for us before we were
ever created, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image
of his son. And them that he did predestinate,
he called. He called. Many are called. The outward call, that's what
we're doing right now. We're calling men to come to
Christ. Every time we preach the gospel, we're saying, come. The spirit and the bride say,
come. We're trying to reason with men.
But we know that the audible voice is not the voice that will
change the heart. It's the voice of God. It's the
inward call. It's the irresistible call that
God must speak to the heart. I drew them. Acts chapter 13, verse 48, for
as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. How shall they
believe? How shall they call upon him
in whom they've not believed? Oh, how the Lord has to give
us faith. You see, Calling on the Lord
is the evidence that he's drawn us. It's not the cause of it, it's
the evidence of it. How many times we read this phrase
in the Bible? I will be their God. That's a
willful decision that God has made to be our God. And they shall be my people. And men turn it upside down.
And they talk about their will and their decision and their
coming. No, I'll be their God. And they
shall. They shall. They're going to
come. They're going to believe. They're
going to follow. They're going to be saved. Not
one of them is going to be lost. And it begins with him drawing
us. This is how the Lord saves. And notice how it is that he
draws us. How does he draw us? And the
scripture says, with the cords of a man. With the cords of a
man. Now this word cords is most often
translated sorrows in the Bible. Sorrows. It would take a person with no
conscience to not feel sorrow for another individual who is
experiencing true sorrow. To mock someone else's sorrow
or to rejoice in someone else's pain and suffering, that's not
That's not natural. I don't care who they are. If
a person is suffering true sorrow, we feel empathy for them. If
we don't, we're the worst of narcissists that you have no
empathy for another person. This is the word that the Lord's
using here. I will draw them with empathy,
with sorrow. I'm going to experience their
sorrow. The rich young ruler, the scripture
says, went away sorrowful, for he had much goods, much riches. And then the scripture says,
and the Lord loved him. The Lord loved him. We don't
know for sure who that rich young ruler was. Perhaps it was Saul
of Tarsus. But we know this, that he went
away sorrowful, but the Lord pursued him. For the Lord only
loves his people. And scripture says the Lord loved
him. He loved him. He entered into his sorrow, and
he broke his heart with sorrow. The scripture says that even
the Lord himself takes no delight in the destruction of the wicked.
We've seen people most recently delighting in the death and sorrow
of another person because they didn't agree with them. Like I said, that's not even
natural. The Lord doesn't do that. He
takes no delight. Now, is he going to exercise
his justice and pour out the fury of his wrath? Absolutely,
but does he take delight in it? No, no. The Lord uses the cords of a
man more than Him seeing our sorrow and drawing us from that
place of sorrow. When he calls us, we see his
sorrow. He was a man of sorrows. He suffered,
the Bible says, the contradiction of sinners. We don't even know
what all that means. That God, the eternal holy God,
lived in this sinful world and put up with foolish, sinful men
every day, a man of sorrows. And then he felt the sorrows
of his own, of his disciples and their unbelief. And then he bore all our sorrows
in his body upon that tree. We've looked at this verse before.
I want us to look at it again. Turn with me to Psalm 38. Psalm
38. Look with me at verse 17. I am
ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me. For I will declare mine iniquity
And I will be sorry for my sin. Psalm 38 verses 17 and 18. David's speaking prophetically
of our Lord. We hear men say that if we come
before God and we're sorry for our sins, well, how sorry do
you have to be? How sorry do you have to be? You have to be perfectly sorry.
Does the Lord stir in our hearts a sorrow for our sin? And do
we, as the prophet Zechariah said, mourn after him as one
mourneth for his only son, the one whom we have pierced? Do
we experience some sorrow for that? Yes, but no amount of our
sorrow is going to is going to satisfy what God requires for
the atonement of our sins. The Lord Jesus is the only one
that knew that kind of sorrow. He draws them with the sorrow
of a man. He enters into our sorrows. He
bears our sorrows before God. And he enables us to come into
the very presence of God because he was sorry for sins that he
had not committed, but sins that he owned as his own. He draws
us with cords of a man. It's not the law that God uses
to draw us. It's not the wrath of God and
the fear of God's wrath. It's the goodness of God that
leadeth to repentance. The Lord told Moses on Mount
Sinai, I will cause my goodness to pass before thee. Where do
we see the goodness of God most gloriously displayed? Is it not
when he bore the sorrow of our sin on Calvary's cross? Is this
not what breaks our hearts and moves the direction of our thoughts
and our eyes from being like the Israelites wandering around
in this wilderness and being brought again and again? I drew
them with cords of a man. Go back with me to our text in
Hosea chapter 11. I drew them with the sorrows
of a man. I knew something of their sorrow.
And I brought them to believe that my sorrow before God was
perfect on their behalf. And with bands of love. bands of love. Now the Lord is
contrasting how it is that he draws us to himself to what men
would do with prisoners whenever they conquered another nation.
They would tie them together with rope and drag them against
their will and make slaves out of them. Sometimes they would
put flesh hooks in them so that they couldn't leave from that
from that place, they were in bondage. And that's what this
word bands means. This is the illustration that
the Lord's using. But he's contrasting the bands
that he uses to that band. He's not saying, well, I put
flesh hooks in them, I tied them together and I forced them into
slavery. No. I drew them with bands of love. I love them with an everlasting
love. It's the first cause of our salvation. God's love for
us. We see his love most gloriously
demonstrated at the cross. For greater love hath no man
than this, than he lay his life down for his friends. What love? Herein is love. Not that we love
God. We do love him because he first
loved us, but we can't measure love by our love. Our love is
so fickle. We're like these children of
Israel who have been delivered from Egypt, and yet in our wandering
in the wilderness, we're prone to murmur and to forget and to
lose sight of and to just so much like these Israelites between
Egypt and the promised land, here in this world, Lord, save
me." What Peter prayed when he was drowning in the sea is what
every believer prays, and this is how the Lord does it. He draws
them. He draws them with cords of a
man and with bands of love. Scripture says of the Lord Jesus,
He loved them to the end. Speaking of His disciples. He loved them to the end. His love is seen in the covenant
that He made with the Father in eternity past when He became
the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. And he became our
surety. And he said, I will be surety
for them. I'll bring Benjamin home. And
we see his love when he left his rightful place in glory. What could that be like? What
could that be like? I don't know. But we know that
he was He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and that the
Word became flesh, and that he dwelt among us. He did that out
of love. As I've already mentioned, he
suffered the contradiction of sinners his entire life. Why? Out of love. It's what he's doing. He's using the bands of love,
not the bands of bondage, not the flesh hooks of the law, not
the threatenings of judgment and wrath, but the bands of love. And he draws us to himself. We are reminded sometimes what
James said when he was rebuking us for showing favoritism toward
the rich. And how he reminds the church
or reminds us that they were giving favor To the to the rich people James
said they are the ones that are dragging you into court Don't
you know that? It's the same word that the Lord
uses in John chapter 6 When he says no man can come unto me
except the father which sent me draw him or drag him out And
the meaning here is that the result is the same. We end up
in a place where it's determined by the other person where we're
going to be. We didn't have a choice about it. But the difference
is that we're not being dragged against our will. The Lord is
making us willing in the day of his power. He's causing us
to bow. He's causing us to believe. He's
causing us to love. Oh, Lord. Lord, drag me again,
draw me again with bands of love and cords of a man. Lord, remind
me who you are and what you've done and show me how foolish,
how foolish it is for me to try to find comfort and satisfaction
and hope and peace and salvation anywhere else, anywhere else. So he draws us, here's the three
things that the Lord does. Every time he saves us, he draws
us with cords of a man and bands of love. And I was to them as
they that take off the yoke on their jaws. Take off the yoke, I was unto
them. What is that yoke? It's the law. It's the law. And the Lord delivers
us from the threatenings and the bondage of the law by satisfying
the demands of the law for us. Always trying to and never able
to do enough. That's the picture of those taskmasters
in Egypt, that when Moses came and told Pharaoh that the Lord
had told him to take the people out, what did Pharaoh do? He
commanded the taskmasters to increase the quota, make the
children of Israel produce more, and then If they got close to
that quota, what did he do? Take away their straw. It's the
law. It's the law always demanding
more than we can possibly achieve. And yet, we will spend our whole
lives trying to work our way to heaven, trying to do enough,
a little bit more, just a little bit more. until the Lord delivers
us from that yoke and puts us in the yoke of himself. I was
unto them as a yoke that broke the jaws. Come unto me. Come unto me, all
you that labor. It's what we do by nature. nature
we labor to earn our way into heaven to merit favor with God
we will we will do that we will try go about trying to establish
our own righteousness not knowing being ignorant of the righteousness
of God and not knowing that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believes this whole world and it doesn't matter
if a person's religious moral or immoral Every unbeliever is
self-righteous. Every one of them. Every unbeliever
believes that they've got something good about themselves that would
merit them favor with God. Turn with me to Proverbs chapter
30. There's a wonderful passage here
I want you to see in Proverbs. Proverbs chapter 30, concerning
this yoke that the Lord delivers us from. And look with me at
verse 12. There is a generation that are
pure in their own eyes. and yet is not washed from their
filthiness." This is self-righteousness. That a man will be pure in his
own eyes, and yet before God, he's still polluted with filthiness. There is a generation, oh, how
lofty are their eyes and their eyelids are lifted up. They have
no fear. to look up into heaven. They
have no fear to presume upon God even though they don't know
Christ. There is a generation whose teeth
are as swords and their jaw teeth as knives to devour the poor
from off the earth and the needy from among men. Their jaw teeth. I'm going to
lift the yoke off their jaws. What does the world, particularly
the religious world, what does it do with the law? It takes
advantage of the poor and the needy and puts them under the
taskmasters of the law to do more. So we have all these religious
organizations trying to Trying to get men to make more contributions. Look at Psalm 22, Psalm 22. And look at verse 14. I am poured out like water And
all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted
in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like
a pot shirt. And my tongue cleaveth to my
jaws. And thou hast brought me into
the dust of death. And we know that Psalm 22 is
a glorious prophecy of exactly what the Lord Jesus would experience
on Calvary's cross. What is it that caused his tongue
to cleave to his jaw? What is it that, why did the
Lord suffer these things on the cross? It was the law of God
exercising its judgment against one who was bearing the sins
of his people. It was God's law. That's why
Isaiah said it pleased the Lord to bruise him. It was the sword
of God's justice that put the Lord Jesus to death on Calvary's
cross. What does that say to me and
you? The law's been silenced. The law has nothing else to say.
The law has been satisfied. Everything that it required and
everything that it demanded of all of God's people has been
fulfilled. The Lord Jesus said, I did not
come to destroy, the law came to fulfill it. And that he did. And so we see, we see in that,
well, They plucked out his beard. Scripture says that they put
some sort of robe over his head and then beat him with their
fist in his face and his jaw and mocked him by saying, prophesy,
who hit you? What's the Lord doing? He is
bearing the yoke of the law on his jaw. at the cross with his
tongue cleaving to his jaw. Now go back with me. Isaiah chapter 30 verse 28 says,
and there shall be a bridle in the jaws of the people causing
them to err. If we're under the bridle of
the law, The bridle of that law is gonna cause us to err, because
all the law can do is expose our sin. The purpose of the law
makes sin utterly sinful. It shows us our inability to
keep the law. Now, with all of that concerning
the jaw and the yoke of bondage, what did Paul say in Galatians
chapter five? That we're to not not go back
to the yoke of bondage? Stand fast in the liberty wherewith
Christ has made you free and be not entangled again with the
yoke of bondage? What is the first temptation
that Satan gives? The accuser of the brethren,
when we find ourselves looking away from Christ, And the accuser
of the brethren identifies our sin and our unbelief. And then
what does he tempt us with? He tempts us with the law. He
tempts us with something to do in order to rectify the problem
for ourselves. But there's no salvation in that.
There's no salvation in that. Go back with me to our text.
What is the Lord telling us that he does when he really saves? I drew them with cords of a man,
with the sorrows and compassion of a man, and with bands of love
I drew them, and I was to them as they that take off the yoke
on their jaws. He delivers us. from the bondage
of the law. He puts us in yoke with himself. Now, I know that people hear
us talking this way, and they say, well, are you advocating
lawless living? Of course not. Of course not. We've got such a better law. Someone said, if I believed what
you believe, I'd live like I want. And the child of God says, oh,
I wish I could live like I want. I want to live in a way that's
going to honor him. I don't want to get tripped up
and caught up in all this worldly fears and trials and troubles
and temptations and sinful flesh and all these things. Oh, wretched
man that I am. What's the only hope? for the Lord Jesus to say, I
was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws. They
took off the yoke of the law and they got in the yoke with
me. Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden. I'll give you rest. My yoke is
easy. My burden is light. Learn of
me. Learn of me, I'll give you rest
for your soul. Here's how the Lord saves. He
doesn't save with the law. He doesn't take us back to the
law. He doesn't beat us with the law and shame us with the
law and enable us to do penance so that we can somehow feel like
we've made up. No, I'm gonna draw them with
bands of love. And I'm going to be to them as
one that takes the yoke off the jaw, because I bore in my jaw
the full penalty of the law. And they're going to be under
the law of grace. They're going to walk with me. And I'm going
to keep pointing them back to me. And I'm going to keep drawing
them with more bands of love and more cords of a man. I'm
not going to give up on them. But this is how I'm going to
do it. This is how I'm going to do it. And look at the third thing he
says. I'm not just going to draw them.
I'm not just going to deliver them. I'm going to feed them.
And I remind you that meat in the Bible is not just talking
about the flesh of an animal like we might use that word.
It's talking about everything required to sustain the body.
So it's all manner of food and drink. And what does the Lord Jesus
say? My body is your meat indeed. And my blood is your drink indeed. And unless you eat of my flesh
and drink of my blood, you have no life in you. Now the Lord's
reminding the children of Israel when he brought them out of Egypt,
what did he do? He reigned manna from heaven,
the meat. that they needed, the perfect
food. You know, you could not be sustained.
We've got to have a variety of food if our bodies are to be
healthy. If we're to remain alive, we can't just eat one thing all
the time. We have to have all the nutrients
and vitamins that, and the man had everything in it that was
required to sustain the body. And Christ has everything in
him that is required to sustain our immortal soul. I'm going
to feed them. I'm not just going to draw them.
I'm not just going to deliver them. I'm going to lay meat unto
them. I'm going to cause them to look to me in my perfect life
of obedience and look to me for where I am
now, having risen from the dead and ascended into glory, standing
before the Father. as their advocate, as their sin
bearer, as all of their righteousness before God, I'm going to draw
them and deliver them and cause them to look and to live. And just as they're going to
eat food to sustain their body, I'm going to be the meat, the
meat that they need for their soul. The Bible talks about feasting
on fat things. And then we see so many times
where God sends a famine. And I thought, you know, how
much of life is feast or famine? Feast or famine? Seems like that
cycle kind of repeats itself a lot, doesn't it? whether it
be in a relationship, whether it be financially, whether it
be politically, whether it be in the world, you know, we just
go, the pendulum keeps swinging back and forth from feast to
famine. And if we've tasted the goodness
of His grace, we've eaten of that meat, Then when we find ourselves in
the dry and thirsty land of the famine of unbelief, we run back. Like Mephibosheth, we hide our
feet under the tablecloth of the king, and we sit there and
are fed by him the rest of the days of our lives. Mephibosheth
was drawn, go fetch him. Mephibosheth was afraid when
he first got to David, And David looked into Mephibosheth's eyes,
and he saw his friend Jonathan. He said, oh, Mephibosheth, Mephibosheth. And Mephibosheth's heart was
broken. Sit here at my table. I'm going to feed you. I don't know what Mephibosheth's
life was like in Lodabar. I mean, I know what he was like. He was afraid. What sort of provisions? Well,
actually the word means land of no bread. So I don't know
what it was like physically speaking, but I know where he was spiritually. Let's read this, this verse together. I drew them, I drew them with
cords of a man and with bands of love. And I was to them as
they that take off the yoke on their jaws. I bore that yoke
for them. My jaw was broken for them, and
I laid meat unto them." And I'm going to keep doing that all the way to the time that
they are at the wedding feast of the lamb in glory. I'm gonna
keep drawing them. I'm gonna keep feeding them.
I'm gonna keep delivering them from the shame and guilt of the
law that never produced anything. Now I'm gonna keep putting them
in the yoke with Christ. Love divine, all love. Excelling. Number two in our
hymnal. Let's stand together. Tom, you
come please and lead us. Number two.