Turn, oh, turn to me and say,
all your sins are washed away. In my son, your debt is paid.
He for you, the ransom made. That is our hope this morning,
that the Lord will speak those words of hope and comfort and
truth to our hearts as he's pleased to reveal his son to us. Tom, it's good to have you back. I would never be gone four weeks in a row in
fear that y'all would decide you could do without me. You
came close, brother. Adam did a good job. We're glad you're back. Let's ask the Lord's blessings
on our time together. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for putting in our hearts and ordaining in your providence the need to be here and the ability
to come. Lord, we know that you've promised
to meet with your people when they gather in the name of thy
dear son. Lord, you promised that if Christ
be lifted up, that you would draw us to him and cause us to
find in him our all in all. Lord, how prone we are to wonder
and how easy it is for us to lose sight of Christ. Oh, how
hopeful we are. that you would open our hearts
and open your word and open the windows of heaven. Lord, that
you would that you would reveal yourself to us this day. Thank you for Tom. Thank you
for the successful surgery on the hand of healing that you've
placed upon him and Lord, we pray that you continue to give
him full recovery. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Let's open our bibles to john
chapter six john chapter six. Mhm. Every time I stand to preach,
I'm reminded of what the Lord told the prophet Isaiah when
he said Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, speak ye comfortably
unto Jerusalem. I always want the message to
be a message of hope and comfort for the people of God. The Lord oftentimes in his word
uses warnings and admonitions in order
to cause us to see that all of our hope and all of our salvation
and all of our life is found only in Him. This message is
a sober warning to the children of God. It's also a message of great
hope, particularly if we stay with me to the end, because we're
going to be looking at some passages of scriptures that I trust will
be of great comfort to those who find themselves wondering,
is it I? Is it I? That's the question
that all the disciples asked the Lord at the Last Supper when
he said to them, one of you is going to betray me. And each
one of them, suspect of themselves, said, is it I? I don't want to leave this message
with that question still on your mind. We must ask that question in
order to get to a good answer. And so a good portion of this
message will be dealing with holding oneself suspect. But
I trust that in the end, we will find a word of comfort and hope. Peter had just made, in John
chapter six, did I mention that? Open your Bibles to John chapter
six. Peter had just made that confession that we looked at
last Sunday when the Lord invited the disciples to follow the 5,000
that were leaving because the Lord wasn't what they expected
him to be. And Peter made that wonderful
confession when he said, Lord, to whom shall we go? We've got
no place else to go. You alone have the words of eternal
life. If we're going to have life,
we're going to have to find them in you and the words that you
speak. We believe that thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God. And the Lord in verse 70
answers them or responds to Peter's answer by saying, have not I
chosen you 12? The reason you made that confession,
Peter, is because I chose you. And then he makes this very sobering announcement. And John chapter
six takes place a year, one whole year before the Last Supper. So the Lord makes it clear to
all the disciples that one of you is a devil and they live
together for the next year and at the Last Supper when the Lord
said one of you will betray me, each one of them one by one said
is it I? And then Judas got up and left,
and they didn't suspect him then. They thought he was going to
settle a debt because he had the bag, the scripture says.
He was the money man. How sobering it is to think how
I can outwardly portray an image that will that will fool men
of what I am." This is the sobering part of this message and how
important it is. You know, the means by which
the Lord gives faith is the preaching of the gospel by his word. In the preaching of the gospel,
there's always a command to believe. The means by which the Lord keeps
his people is the preaching of the gospel. And in the preaching
of the gospel, there are always sober warnings that cause us
to find no hope in ourselves, that cause us to have to have
Christ. We just sang that hymn. Give
me Christ lest I die. And I would say to you what I
said last Sunday. Don't look for love. Don't look
for peace. Don't look for happiness. Don't
look for joy. Don't look for comfort. Don't
look for assurance. Don't look for those things.
Those things can be counterfeited with very cheap substitutes. You can find those things in
lots of things that will mimic the truth of those things. Look
for Christ because all that we need and all that we desire is
in Him. When we are brought by the warnings
of scripture to hold ourselves suspect and wonder, Lord, is
it I? Let that fear be a godly fear. Don, you read from Timothy this
morning in the men's study. The spirit of fear is not of
God. That's a sinful fear. That's a doubting fear. That's
an unbelieving fear. And that fear will manifest itself
in the same way that it manifested itself in the garden with Adam. It'll cause us to hide from God.
That's what that fear does. And that spirit of fear is not
of God. Yet the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. What
is the difference between a sinful fear that causes us to hide from
God and a godly fear that's given to us by God? Well, the second
causes us to run to him, causes us to run to him. And so when
the Lord said to these disciples, one of you is the devil, And then the disciples were brought
to wonder, is he talking about me? The evidence of this warning
will be that we will run to him and take hold of him and trust
him and depend upon him for all of our righteousness and for
all of our justification before God. Notice in verse 71, he spake
of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for he it was that should
betray him, being one of the 12. Judas Iscariot. Oh, what an infamous name he
has. We never name our children Judas. And yet the name Judas is the
same as the word Judah. It's the same word from which
we get our word Jew. And it means to be praised or
to praise. And Judas Iscariot is going to
be used by God for God's praise. He's going to be used of God
for God's glory. He was ordained to this end,
no question about it. His surname, Iscariot, translated
means a man who kicks with his heel. You say, well, how would
a person kick with their heel? Well, if you're behind a person
and you're not expecting to be kicked, they could kick you they
could kick you with their heel. Now the importance of that, if
you'll turn with me to Psalm 41. Look at verse nine. This is a prophecy
about Judas Iscariot. Yea, my own familiar friend,
in whom I trusted, the Lord gave him the money, which did eat of my bread, hath
lifted up his heel against me. And we can't read that prophecy
that the Lord gives us in this Psalm of David, without thinking
all the way back to the garden and what the Lord said about
the seed of the serpent bruising the heel of the seed of the woman,
but the seed of the woman crushing the head of the serpent. So,
Judas Iscariot was created by God, purposed by God, ordained
of God to praise the Lord in the salvation of his people by
fulfilling the role that he fulfilled. Judas was fully responsible for what
he did. We don't come to this conclusion
about God's sovereignty and purpose to excuse the sin of anyone for
that matter. But if there's ever been a time
when the Lord has brought good out of evil, this is it. This
is it, the greatest evil that ever took place on the face of
the earth was the crucifixion of Christ and the greatest glory
and the greatest praise and the greatest good that ever came
from anything was the sacrifice that Christ made on Calvary's
cross for his people. Our God reigns, he's sovereign,
he works all things together for good for them that love him
and those that are called according to his purpose. This is Judas Iscariot. There are several verses in the
Old Testament that testify of him. Let's look at another one
in Psalm 109, Psalm 109. And there are several verses
in here, but let's just look at one because this is the prophecy
that the disciples in the upper room after the ascension of Christ
and before Pentecost, you remember they chose Matthias to replace
Judas? They got ahead of themselves
because Paul, the apostle, was the replacement for Judas and
the fulfillment of this prophecy. But they knew this prophecy and
they thought, well, we've got to choose one, and they cast
lots. which was an Old Testament method
of discerning God's will, casting lots in order to determine who
should replace Judas. Nothing ever mentioned of Matthias
after that. He wasn't Judas's replacement.
But look at verse eight, and there's several verses that I
said, but verse eight concludes, let his days be few and let another
take his office. That's Judas. Let's turn to the end of the
Old Testament to the book of Zechariah chapter 11. Here's a prophecy concerning
what Judas would do in betraying the Lord to the religious leaders of his
day for 30 pieces of silver, the value of a slave. And in verse 12 of Zechariah
chapter 11, we read, and I said unto them, if you think good,
give me my price, and if not, forbear. So they weighed for
my price 30 pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, cast
it unto the potter, a goodly price that I was prized of them,
and I took the 30 pieces of silver and cast them to the potter in
the house of the Lord." Judas, in sinful fear, not in a godly fear,
but in sinful fear and shame, tried to take the money back,
and we know the rest of the story. Judas hanged himself and The
Pharisees used the money to buy Potter's Field. So we see from these verses and
others in the Old Testament that Judas was ordained of God to
this role. Now, it is true that The word
predestination is only used in the Bible in reference to God's
chosen elect saints. We find it in Romans chapter
nine, for whom he did foreknow, he did also predestinate. We find it in Ephesians chapter
one, he predestinated them to the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ unto himself according to the good pleasure of his will. The Bible speaks of God predestinating
a particular people, his elect people. And 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse
9 says, he hath saved us called us notice that he saved us before
he called us in election in predestination
and in time he called us with a holy calling not according
to our works but according to his own purpose and grace which
he hath given us in Christ Jesus before the world began there
is no avoiding the truth of God predestinating a particular people
according to his own purpose and according to his own will.
It's equally true that all the Lord has to do for a reprobate
person is just simply leave them to themselves. If God left us
to our own opinions or if he left us in the darkness of our
own views of ourselves and our own belief about God. All he
has to do is just leave us alone and we'll be condemned. He doesn't
have to do anything to make that happen. We bear that responsibility
ourselves. All that having been said, I don't want to sacrifice the
sovereignty of God in predetermining all things by some feeble attempt
to protect his compassion and his mercy. Sometimes men have a problem
with what's referred to as double predestination. Predestination
is only used in the Bible, speaking of the elect. But the meaning
of the word, to destine beforehand, is found
all throughout scripture concerning all things and all men. And so
I really don't have a problem with double predestination. Men are offended by that. They
think that that it perhaps takes from God
his compassion and makes him responsible for the condemnation
of the reprobate. But in coming to that conclusion,
I fear that we sacrifice on that altar the glory of God's absolute
sovereignty and his absolute will and purpose and his absolute
justice in all things. And how God is more concerned
for his power and his sovereignty and his glory than he is with
the salvation of all men. This, let me show you a couple
of verses, 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter 2. Speaking of the unbelievers'
response to the gospel. that Christ is the chief cornerstone
on which the church is built. Upon this rock I will build my
church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And how those who want to build for themselves a works gospel,
they want to hold on to some power and control of their own
rather than acknowledging that salvation is of the Lord and
it's all of him. that that stone which God has
laid as the cornerstone has now become a stone of stumbling.
And the picture here is a workplace where a building is being built
and the chief cornerstone is lying there in the yard and the
workers, rather than putting it in its proper place, are tripping
over it. And so in verse eight of 1 Peter
chapter two, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, even to
them which stumble at the word, being disobedient, whereunto
also they were appointed." Does that sound like double predestination
to you? Whereunto also they were appointed. Judas was appointed of God to
the role that he took. Turn with me to Proverbs chapter
16. Proverbs chapter 16. This is all part of the fearful
part of this message, the sobering part of this message. that our
God is absolutely sovereign in salvation, and that a man like
Judas could live among the disciples and never be identified for what
he was, and how much of a counterfeit Satan is, and how Apart from
God's grace, we would be deceived if it were possible. Lord, is it I? Proverbs chapter 16, look at
verse four. The Lord hath made all things
for himself, yea, even the wicked for the day of evil. The reprobate. God made them. Turn with me to Romans chapter
nine. I'll show you this one more time. Verse 21. Hath not the potter
power over the clay? to make of the same lump. Now
this lump of clay is a picture of all of humanity. And the potter
has the sovereign right to take the massive humanity and make
one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor. What if God, willing
to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with
much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction? Now, when the Bible says that
God doesn't take pleasure in the destruction of the wicked,
it's speaking of the heart of God, if not rejoicing over the
destruction of the wicked in the sense that he's delighting
in it, but it in no way means that he hasn't ordained the destruction
of the wicked, that he hasn't purposed it for his glory. God's priority is always his
glory, and that ought to be our priority. And we don't need to protect
God. He's absolutely sovereign. He's
absolutely all powerful. He hath done whatsoever he wills
with the armies of heaven and all the inhabitants of the earth.
And no man can stay his hand or say unto him, what doest thou?
This will drive the believer to him, bowing in worship and
submission and dependence upon him. This will anger the unbeliever. This will cause the unbeliever
to come to this conclusion. Well, the God I worship is not
like that. Well, the God you worship, if
he's not like that, he's not God. He's not God. Any God that's not absolutely
sovereign is not God at all. He's nothing more than a figment
of men's imagination. Here's what the Bible says about
Judas and about God. And someone would say, well,
I thought it was God's will to save everyone. Well, let's look
at a couple of verses that are most popular in supporting that
theory. The first one can be found in
First Timothy chapter two. First Timothy chapter two. We have to read the first three
verses to get to the fourth verse to understand it. I exhort, therefore,
that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving
of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are
in authority. Now, I remind you that the believers
that Paul's writing to were being persecuted unto death by the
civil authority of Rome. They were dragging them off and
putting them to death. And it would be very easy for
a believer to write off a large section of society, and particularly
in that day, and say, well, those people are reprobate. Those people
cannot be saved. Those people are outside of the
scope of God's mercy and God's grace. And so the Lord tells us, pray
for those kings, and for all that are in authority, that you
may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and honesty. Pray the Lord will restrain them,
for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
who will have all men to be saved. Now, if everything we've said
up to now is true about our God, who's all powerful, and sovereign
and has ordained all things to his glory. If he wanted all men
to be saved, all men would be saved. If Christ died for everybody,
everybody go to heaven. Let's just go home and wait till
the end. We're all good. That's not what
this verse is teaching. Let me show you another verse
where this word all is used in the Bible. Turn with me to Acts
chapter 10. Acts chapter 10. Acts chapter
10, Peter is in Joppa at the Tanner's house, and he's up on
the roof, and God has prepared the heart of Cornelius, a Gentile,
to hear the gospel, the first Gentile convert. And God now
is preparing Peter to take the gospel to that Gentile. And God
gives Peter a vision, a vision of these animals that are coming
down from heaven in a large sheet. And they're unclean animals.
They're Old Testament animals that God had forbidden the Jews
to eat. And Peter's looking at these
animals and God says to him, take and eat. And Peter said,
nothing unclean has ever passed my lips. And the Lord says to Peter, don't
call that unclean, which I have made clean. Now he's connecting
this vision to Cornelius, because as far as Peter was concerned,
Cornelius was outside of the scope of salvation. He was unclean. He was a Gentile. The gospel
was just for Jews. And in verse 12, of 1 Corinthians chapter 10, wherefore, I'm sorry, Acts, I said 1 Corinthians,
excuse me, Acts chapter 10, what am I thinking? Did I say 1 Corinthians
or Acts? Acts, Acts chapter 10. I don't
know what I'm looking in 1 Corinthians for. Acts chapter 10. at verse
12, wherein, you see the next two words? All manner. All manner of four-footed beasts
of the earth and wild beasts and creeping things and fowls
of the air. That's what was in this vision. Same exact word. Translated here,
all types, all kinds, all manner, not every animal. It wasn't every
animal in the world that was in this sheet. It was just the
sampling of different types of animals. All types, all manner
of animals. Now go back with me to 1 Timothy
chapter two. And let's look again at that
verse. and understand it in its context. Remembering the
first three verses, the believers had written off
large sections of society as being outside of the scope of
salvation. And the Lord is correcting them.
And he's correcting us. He's saying to us, don't ever
write anyone off. You don't know who the reprobate
are. You don't know who God's elect are. If there's life, there's
hope. Continue to pray for them. For
God would have all manner of men to be saved. All types of
men. Yes, even those kings, even the
Saul's of Tarsus. They were breathing out threatenings
against the church and arresting people and taking them to have
them put to death. And when Paul ended up in Damascus
and the Lord The believers there, they said, we know who this guy
is. No, he's one of my servants.
And so this verse that men pull out of context and they say,
well, right here it says, God will have all men to be saved.
It's not what that means. Not indiscriminately all men.
If God would have all men to be saved, all men would be saved.
But the Lord's saying to us, I've got believers in every walk
of life. In every walk of life, the beggar to the king, the billionaire
to the pauper, it doesn't matter. Gender doesn't matter, race doesn't
matter, nationality doesn't matter, religious background doesn't
matter. I've got all manner of men that I'm gonna save. You
preach the gospel to everybody and you leave it up to me to
separate the sheep from the goat and the wheat from the tare.
Don't you go around trying to pull tares out of the church,
saying, well, you're not a believer, because you're going to wound
the weed if you do that. Now, the second verse that men
love to use to say that God wants all men to be saved is found
in 2 Peter, chapter 3. 2 Peter, chapter 3. Now, give me just another few
minutes. We're going to get to the comfort of this message.
2 Peter, chapter 3. The Lord is not slack concerning
his promise. Peter's writing about the coming
of Christ and the believers were waiting and other believers were
dying before the Lord had returned. And there were concerns about
what happens to them and what happens to us. And so Peter is
speaking a word of hope. And he's saying, the Lord's not
slack concerning his promises. He's gonna keep his promise.
He's a faithful God. as some men count slackness,
but as long-suffering to us-ward. Don't miss the us-ward. Peter's
talking to the believers. He's long-suffering toward us-ward.
It was the believers that were worried about what's gonna happen
to us and what happened to them. And what about all these people
that are saying, well, the Lord's not coming back? He's not slack
concerning his promise to us-ward, not willing that any should perish.
And men will take that one phrase, just as we read, they will rest
the scripture to their own destruction, being disobedient to the end
of which they were ordained. And they will use the Bible.
God has written his word in such a way as to give the unbeliever
enough rope to hang himself. And men use the Bible to defend
their heresies. But all these scriptures understood
in the context of the sovereignty of God, the absolute sovereignty
and omnipotence of our God who is holy and does everything right. And who are we to question him? If we start there, if we start
there, we'll understand these things. So how do I know? How do I know that I'm not reprobate?
How do I know that I'm not a Judas? How do I know that I haven't
fooled others like he fooled the disciples and will ultimately
forsake the Lord? Turn with me to 2 Corinthians. It's good that we be that we'd be warned about ourselves. You remember Peter at the same
night when all the disciples were saying, is it I, is it I?
Peter said, is it I too? But then later he said, now,
he got thinking about it. And later on that night, he said,
now, they may forsake you, but not me. And we know what happened
to Peter that night. You see, he didn't hold himself
suspect. He didn't see the, weakness of
his own flesh and that's the whole purpose of this message
is to cause us to realize that Lord if you don't keep me if
you don't save me if you don't do all my salvation I'll fool
myself and I'll fool others and I'll be left without Christ 2nd Corinthians chapter 13 Now,
Paul is writing to this church at Corinth. This church at Corinth
was so fleshly. I mean, they had, you talk about,
I heard a man say, you know, I was going to join your church,
but there's so much sin in your church, I decided not to. And
my response was, well, good thing you didn't, because we got all
we need. You know, we don't need any more.
And the church at Corinth, oh, man, I mean, They had incest going on. They
were getting drunk at the Lord's table. They were taking one another
to court. And all these things that had
to be rebuked about and had to be corrected. And the biggest
problem they had was that God, in the early days of the church,
there were gifts of the Holy Spirit that were manifested before
the writing of scripture. We don't need those things now,
but back then, There was speaking in tongues, there was healing,
there were gifts that you could see in a person. And what happened,
the Holy Spirit had given many of these believers some of those
gifts and they became proud of them and they were boasting in
their gifts. And then on top of that, there
were other preachers that were coming in from Jerusalem that
were accusing Paul of not being a true apostle and calling into
question some of his preaching. And so that's the context of
chapter 13 at the end of the second letter that we have. Now,
we know that Paul wrote three letters to Corinth because he
mentions it here, look, in verse 1 of chapter 13. This is the
third time that I'm coming to you. In the mouth of two or three
witnesses shall every word be established. I told you before
and foretell you as if I were present the second time and being
absent now, I write to them which heretofore have sinned and to
all others that if I come again, I will not spare. He said, take
these words that I've written to you to heart because if I
come in the flesh, And I find that these things are still being
done. I'm not gonna spare you. Paul was an apostle. He had an
authority and a power from God. Verse three, since you seek a
proof of Christ speaking in me, you're questioning whether or
not I'm a true spokesman for God. These men came in and said,
well, Paul's not really one of the apostles. And some of the
believers were entertaining this thought that maybe he's not. Which to you it is not weak,
but is mighty in you. They were exalting themselves
against above Paul. They were taking pride in their
gifts and in their discernment and in their preaching. all these
things and denying that Paul had the power that they had. Verse four, for though he was
crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God.
Speaking of Christ, he lives by the power of God, but he was
crucified in the weakness of the flesh. For we also are weak. And here's the comforting part
of this message, brethren. Here's our hope. We also are
weak. Paul's making a confession about
himself. He's saying to these believers in Corinth, I wish
that you understood your own weakness as I understand my weakness
and as Christ manifested his weakness. Here's our hope. Our hope is not in our strength.
His strength is made perfect in our weakness. Our hope is
in our weakness. Paul went on to say, I'll glory
in my weakness. For when I'm weak, then I'm strong. But we shall live with him by
the power of God toward you. Now, here's the verse. Examine
yourselves whether you be in the faith. Now, how do we examine
ourselves to whether we be in the faith? Do we look at our
behavior and see if we're, if we're, you know, well, I don't
do things I used to do. Well, good. I'm glad. You shouldn't. I hope the Lord restrains all
of our evil. And I'm doing things I didn't
use to do before. Well, that's, you know, if that's a good thing,
that's good. But we can't look at those things and get any assurance
of our salvation. That's not how we prove whether
we'd be in the faith. We can't look back to an experience
that we had when we prayed a prayer and accepted Jesus like the religious
people do. What is it to prove yourself
to see whether you'd be in the faith? Prove your own selves. Don't
go around judging others. Prove your own selves. And that's
this message. This is what the Lord has dealt
with me in this message, I hope. Prove your own selves. Know ye
not your own selves? Don't you know how weak and sinful
and unable you are to save yourself or to do anything of any value? Don't you know that Christ is
all? Know your own selves. Know that
Jesus Christ is in you. He's your hope of glory, except
you be reprobate. If all of your hope of salvation
is not in Christ, then you have reason to think that maybe I'm
a Judas. But if all of the hope of my
salvation is in Christ, if God has revealed to me, my own self,
that I'm a sinner, That I have no claim on God and no righteousness
and no way to justify myself before God? I can't boast like
these Corinthians were? Here's what the Lord says, know
your own self, prove your faith. Don't you know that your salvation
is Christ in you? He's your hope of glory. It's the same thing that the
Lord tells us in 1 Corinthians 11. I ask you at the beginning
to stay with me to the end. I hope you have. Turn with me
to 1 Corinthians 11. 1 Corinthians 11. Look at verse 26. For as often as you eat this
bread and drink this cup, You do show the Lord's death till
he come. The blood of Christ is the only
covering for my sin. The only way I can be justified
before God is that the price that Christ paid on Calvary's
cross paid the penalty for all my sin. the body of Christ, the
bread, his righteousness, his perfect obedience. So as often
as we take up the table, we do show his death and we show his
life. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat
this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall
be guilty of the body and blood of Christ. But let a man examine
himself And so let him eat that bread and drink of that cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh
damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. If I take the
Lord's table and I've lost sight in taking of the Lord's table,
I've made this a ceremony of my righteousness. I'm just going
through the motions of trying to fool others like Judas did
at the Last Supper and thinking that I'm one of them, but I'm
not looking, discerning the Lord's body as my righteousness and the Lord's
blood as my justification before God. that I'm taking of the Lord's
table unworthily. Judas took of the Lord's table
unworthily that night. That's our hope. There's a believer saying, amen. The only evidence that I have
that I'm not a Judas is that Christ is all of my salvation. He's all my hope. He's all my
righteousness. He's all my justification. I
can't look at my gifts. I can't look at my works. I can't
look at my knowledge. I can't look at my life. I can't
look at my experiences. I can't look at my feelings.
I've got to have, give me Christ lest I die. And so these warnings, Lord is
it I, are given to us in order that we might, yes,
hold ourselves suspect, and in doing so, come to this conclusion. I have nothing in me that gives
me any hope. I've got to look to Christ. I've
got to come to him. But in him, I can rest. And I close with Hebrews chapter
four. Turn with me there. Hebrews chapter four. Verse one, the Lord's using those Old Testament
Israelites that wandered in the wilderness and they died in the
wilderness. They died without faith. Let us therefore fear. I began this message by talking
about fear, a sinful fear that causes us to hide and doubt and
not have any hope because we're looking somewhere other than
Christ. Let us therefore fear, lest a
promise being left us of entering into His rest that any of you
should seem to come short of it. And we won't take the time,
I'm sorry we're out of time, but Read the rest of Hebrews
chapter 4. Christ is our rest. He's our
Sabbath. We don't find rest for our souls
anywhere outside of Christ. We don't find rest for our souls
in looking for happiness and love and joy and peace and all
these things that can easily be counterfeited. We find our
rest in Christ, for he is my life. He's my righteousness,
he's my justification before God. And he's the only reason
I have to not think and worry that maybe
I'm a Judas.