Good morning. We're going to be. Looking at
some verses of Scripture in Psalm 145 this morning, Psalm. 145 I've titled this message when
God speaks and that is our prayer this morning. That our God. would send His Spirit and power
and speak truth to our hearts, revealing to us the glory of
Christ and giving us faith to rest all our hope in Him. Every time we gather together,
our main concern is, Lord, speak. Give me ears to hear. Give me
eyes to see. Give me a heart to believe. Jerry Salzberg has been in the
hospital the last day or two with kidney stones. I think he
went home last night. So I'm thankful that they were
able to treat him and he's doing better. Let's go to the Lord
in prayer, ask his blessings. our gracious, glorious, and merciful
Heavenly Father. We would not dare call you our
father, except that we have the Lord Jesus Christ as our brother. And united to him, Father, we're
able to come into thy holy presence and know that we have acceptance that the Lord Jesus Christ is
all our righteousness, all our justification, all the hope of
our salvation. Father, we do pray that you would
not leave us to ourselves, just to our natural hearing and natural
reasoning and natural sight. Lord, that you would open the
eyes of our understanding that you would cause your word to
be alive and effectual, that it would be as you've described
it, that two-edged sword, which is able to divide and discern
the heart from the thoughts and intents of our hearts. And Lord,
we long for you to perform that miracle here this morning. Lord, we Thank you for the forgiveness
of sin. We thank you for the the shed
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and. Lord, we pray that you would
look to him. And to his redemptive work on
Calvary's cross for all our forgiveness. We thank you for for Jerry and
Marianne and for your hand of protection and healing that you
gave them this weekend and Lord, Pray that you will give Jerry
full recovery. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. Psalm 145, and we'll begin at
verse four. One generation shall praise thy
works to another and shall declare thy mighty acts. When God speaks
to the heart, there's no desire greater than for our children
and grandchildren, our loved ones, to hear what the Lord has
spoken to us. And so here our Lord is telling
us that when one generation hears, they declare what they hear to
the next generation. And that's our hope. That's our
prayer. That's every parent's prayer. That's every grandparents
prayer that the Lord will be pleased to speak to their children. And there's out of all the responsibilities
that a parent has, there's no greater responsibility that they
have than to have their children under the sound of the gospel.
And if they've heard from the Lord, they know that there's
no greater need that their children have than for the Lord to speak
to them. You know, I've thought there's,
in a lot of ways, there's generation gaps that exist that make it
challenging from time to time to raise children, trying to
get on the same page and understand what one another's thinking and
feeling. And yet when it comes to the
gospel, there's no generation gap whatsoever, none whatsoever. From 19 to 90, the message is
the same. We don't try to adjust the message
to a particular age group. We declare Christ and him crucified. And all men, regardless of their
age, are sinners in need of a Savior. And the gospel doesn't change. It's timeless. It's immutable,
just like our God doesn't change. And I hear religious groups talking
about wanting to make the gospel relevant to culture. Just preach Christ and Him crucified,
and it'll be relevant to culture. We don't have to try to package
the gospel up and make it relevant to one generation or another.
Our call from God is to unpackage the gospel, to get rid of all
the cultural things that would cloud the truth of the gospel,
not to try to not to try to fit the gospel into them, but to
expose the irrelevancy of culture by preaching the relevancy of
the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is relevant. The gospel is relevant to every
area of life, eternal life, temporal life. The Lord Jesus Christ is
the answer to every need that we have. And if anything's irrelevant,
it's culture. It really is. We're preaching
the same message that the church preached 2,000 years ago, 1,000
years ago. What else could be said of that? Could that be said of? Nothing
else. Everything else changes, doesn't
it? But the gospel never changes. One generation, shall praise
thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts, the
acts of God, the mighty acts of God. In the covenant of grace,
choosing a particular people according to his own will and
purpose, justifying them eternally in the land that was slain before
the foundation of the world, that hasn't changed a bit. God's
word doesn't change, the gospel doesn't change. One generation
declares the same message to another. And what a blessing
it is to see 15-year-olds and 50-year-olds embracing together
and rejoicing in exactly the same person, in exactly the same
message. They may not have anything else
in common, but that makes them have everything in common. that
makes them to be united in Christ. And what a blessing it is. You
know, the last verse in the Old Testament, Malachi chapter four,
verse six, the Lord is speaking of the coming of Christ. And
he says this, this is the last verse in the Old Testament. He
shall turn the hearts of the fathers towards their children
and the hearts of the children towards their father. That's
exactly what the Lord's saying here, that this is not a generational
thing. This is not a cultural thing.
This is a message that applies to every person of every language. What a blessing it is to fellowship
with our brethren in India. And their culture is completely
different from our culture. I mean, they come out of a very
pagan Hindu culture that's different. I don't know how to relate to
it, and yet, They rejoice in the same exact message and the
same Christ. So here's what our Lord's saying. When I speak, when God speaks,
what he says is so clear and so relevant that one generation
will declare it to the next and they won't need to change it.
They won't need to change what the Lord has told us about the
covenant of grace and what he's done in eternity past in choosing
a people and justifying them in Christ eternally. They won't need to change the
truth of what God did in Revelation when God sent prophets and Moses
and the law and the Psalms And he reveals to us in the very
Word of God the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. They don't
need to change it. You know, most of the modern
day paraphrases, and that's what
they are, they're not translations, they're paraphrases, is man's
attempt to make the Word of God relevant to modern culture. Most of them have all come about
just in the last 40 years. There's dozens of them now. Every time I turn around, I see
the advertisement of a new Bible. We don't need to make it new. What a blessing it is to just
be able to go to God's Word and know that the Word of God is
clear and plain, and it reveals Christ. And He's the one that
we are preaching, whether it be through the law, or the Psalms,
or the Prophets, or the Gospels, or the Epistles. It's all about
Him. In the volume of the book it
is written, may one generation shall declare His mighty works
and how mighty His works are. I want you to notice in these
next few verses how that is spoken of, the mighty acts
of God, the strong works of God. The scripture says that the children
of Israel knew the acts of God. They saw the dividing of the
Red Sea. They saw the plagues in Egypt.
They witnessed and gathered together every morning the manna that
came from heaven. They observed the mountain that quaked and
shook with lightning. And they saw the water coming
from the rock when Moses smote that rock with the rod of God's
law. They saw the water coming from
it and they benefited from all the things that God did. But
that verse that tells us that the children of Israel knew God's
acts goes on to say, but Moses knew his ways. Moses knew his
ways. What we're declaring from one
generation to the next is not what God has done, but why he's
done it. Why he's done it. Those unbelieving
Israelites, they saw the acts of God. They knew what God had
done. They knew these things were miraculous. They knew that
they were nothing short of the very hand of God, but they didn't
see Christ in them. They did not see the gospel in
them. They did not know that that rock was Christ, that that
water was Christ, that that manna was Christ. They did not know
that the cloud that hung over them for 40 years was Christ,
or that the pillar of fire that led them was Christ. They didn't
know it. They couldn't see it. They didn't
know that Moses was a type of Christ as a lawgiver. They could
not see these things. And so when we're not just declaring
the acts of God, we're declaring the mighty acts of God. We're
declaring what these acts actually accomplished. What did they accomplish?
They accomplished the salvation of God's people. And you compare
that to what you see in religion. What do you see in religion?
Well, you know, if you believe that Jesus is the miraculous incarnation
of God, that he lived a sinless life, that he died on a Roman
cross, and that he was miraculously raised from the dead and ascended
back into glory, then you're a Christian. And there's millions
of people in this world that believe every one of those historical
events, but they don't know why. They don't know why. So yes,
these historical events are true and they actually did happen
and we do declare them unapologetically. But most importantly, we want
men to know why they happened. What is it that God was accomplishing?
What was it he was performing? What was the what was the might
behind that act? What was the purpose? And his
purpose was the salvation of his people. And that hasn't changed. And so that's the message that
we declare. We declare that salvation is of the Lord in election, in
revelation, in redemption, that Christ didn't just die on a Roman's
cross. He died as a sinner substitute,
satisfying, satisfying everything that God required for righteousness
and for justice. Then when he cried, it is finished,
he actually finished the accomplished salvation of all of those whom
God chose in the covenant of grace. That's the why. That's
what he did. That's why Moses smote the rock
with the rod of God's justice. God Almighty was smiting his
son on Calvary's cross, satisfying his divine justice. We declared
the mighty acts of God. what God has done from generation
to generation. We don't try to improve on it.
We don't try to make it relevant. We don't try to adjust it to
the culture. We just declare God for who he
is and the Lord Jesus Christ for what he has accomplished.
For who he is, the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and that
you are complete in him. That the Lord Jesus is our surety
before God, that everything that God requires. This is the mighty
acts of God. This is who we are declaring,
the Lord Jesus Christ as our sin bearer, satisfying God's
holy justice. We don't try to improve on regeneration. We know that's a work of the
Spirit of God. And we say to men and to our
children and to our grandchildren, cry out for mercy. Ask the Lord
to give you a new heart. Ask the Lord to give you ears
to hear. Ask the Lord to give you eyes to see, because you're
not gonna come to any conclusions about this on your own. The natural
man, cannot receive the things of the Spirit, neither can he
know them. They're spiritually discerned.
The Lord has to unstop your ears and cause you, you can see some
events, you can see the acts of God, but to see his ways,
to believe on Christ, To have all the hope of your salvation
bound up in the glorious person of the Lord Jesus Christ, that's
a work of the Spirit of God. It's called regeneration. And
we say to our children and to each generation exactly what
our Lord said to Nicodemus, except you be born of the Spirit, you
cannot see the kingdom of God. And ask for the Spirit of God,
ask for him. No man's ever come unto the Lord.
You know, I, you remember in, towards the end of the book of
Matthew, I think it's in chapter 23, where the Lord looked over
Jerusalem and he said, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft would I have
gathered you under my wings as a, as a hen gathereth her chicks. but you would not. Now, a lot of people use that
verse to say, well, you know, God wants everybody to be saved
and the gospel is, you know, is sufficient for all men's salvation. That's not what that verse is
telling us. What the Lord is saying to us is that if you're
not saved, It is all on you. That's all that verses say. If
any man come unto me, I will in no wise cast him out. All the glory, all the glory
for our salvation goes to him. And all the responsibility for
our unbelief is on us. That's all the Lord's saying.
I would, you would not. You would not. You would not
come unto me that you might have life. So that's what we want
to say to our children. Come, come, believe on Christ. Only hope that we have for the
forgiveness of our sin and for the hope of our salvation is
the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe on him. And if you don't,
you can't blame God. You can't say, well, God didn't
call me. God didn't give me an experience. God didn't do this,
or God, no. No, the scripture is clear on
that. Let no man say when he sins, James puts it, and what
greater sin is there than to not believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ? Let no man say when he sins that God made me do it.
For God tempteth no man to sin. No, that's all on us, isn't it? I'm paraphrasing that passage,
but you know what I'm talking about. One generation shall declare
it to the next. The mighty acts of God, the power
behind what God did, This is our hope and this is what greater desire does one
generation have than for the next generation to believe on
Christ. The mighty acts of God in sanctification. You're not gonna make yourself
holy. The Lord's gonna have to do that. He that sanctifyeth
and they that are sanctified are all as one whereby he's not
ashamed to call them as brethren. The Lord Jesus Christ is our
sanctification. He's our holiness before God.
He's the one who has to keep us and present us faultless before
God, before the throne of God. And so we declare the mighty
acts. This is a mighty act. It's a
mighty act for God to keep you. For God to not forsake you, for
God to cause you every day of your life to believe on Christ,
when you would leave if you could, but you can't, why? Because the
mighty act of God is at work in your heart. You can't leave. And then when you see why you can't,
you don't want to. You don't want to. You even hear men Modernizing
heaven as if, you know, somehow heaven is going to change to
adjust its place for each generation. The Lord Jesus Christ himself
is heaven. His glory, his presence. Oh, what a. We can't even begin to imagine.
But. The Lord's not adjusting anything
for culture. Yeah, we do, man changes. We do things different and see
things different and different things, but that doesn't affect
the gospel, doesn't affect the issue of sin, doesn't affect
the issue of a savior, the person of Christ, doesn't affect heaven. One generation. shall declare
thy mighty acts to another. Look at verse five, when God
speaks. Now, this is the Lord Jesus Christ
speaking in verse five. And I want you to see verse five
and verse six together. I will speak of the glorious
honor of thy majesty and of thy wondrous works, and men shall
speak of the might of thy terrible acts. Again, we speak of the
power of his acts, what was actually accomplished by his acts. We're not calling on men to believe
in a historical event. We're calling on men to believe
in a God who actually accomplished his purpose through that historical
event. We believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. And notice, I don't know if you
have it in the margin of your Bible, I do in mine, in verse
five, the word works. You see that last word in verse
five? It's translated over 800 times in the Old Testament as
the word word, W-O-R-D. Now what do we say about men's
words? We say, well, He talks a lot,
but he doesn't follow up his speech with his actions. Or,
you know, we don't believe what a man says unless he follows
it up with what he does. You know, words are cheap, and
that's the kind of language we use. We're capable of doing that.
We're capable of saying one thing and doing something else. We
do it all the time. But you know God's not capable
of that. When he speaks, it is his work. Let there be light, and there
was light. Your sins are forgiven thee.
Who is this that blasphemeth, thinking that he can forgive
sins? Only God can forgive sins. What is easier for me to say,
your sins are forgiven you, or take up your bed and walk? But
that you might believe that I have the power to forgive sins, I
say unto thee, take up thy bed and walk. And the man got up
and walked. The disciples were in a boat
on the Sea of Galilee and they were dying in a storm. They were
going to die in that storm. Lord cares not that we perish.
These were seasoned fishermen. They were afraid. Oh, you have
a little faith. Peace be still. Storm's gone. This turbulent
sea is like a placid lake. And the disciples look at one
another and they say, what manner of man is this? That even the
winds and the seas obey his voice. You see, all he has to do is
speak and him speaking is his work. He's not like us. We say one thing and do something
else. When he speaks, it's his work. That's when God speaks. You see, we don't, we don't,
filter the words of God like we filter the words of men. You
know, we watch a person's body language. We take into consideration
their character and their reputation before we believe what they're
saying. And then we know that their words
are not completely without error. They're just men speaking. But we don't do that. When God
speaks, we just believe every word that he speaks. That's what faith is. Faith is
just believing God. It's not weighing his words or
filtering them through some judgment on our part. That's what men
do. Men are always criticizing. You know, God's Word and our
faith and what God has said and what God has done, the mighty
acts of God. But no, when God speaks effectually
to the heart, we desire to declare it from one generation to the
next. And we just believe every word that he speaks because we
know that it's his work. It's his work. The first time
this word, it's in the Hebrew, it's the word dabar. It's mentioned,
like I said, over 800 times in the Old Testament. It's always
translated word. And one of the first places this
translated word is in Genesis chapter 15, verse one, after
these things, after the battle of the Kings, where Abraham engaged
in these battles and Melchizedek is revealed in chapter 14 of
Genesis. In Genesis chapter 15, verse
one, the Bible says, after these things, the word of the Lord
came unto Abraham or Abram in a vision. saying unto him, Abram,
fear not for I am thy shield and thine exceeding great reward."
You see there's no difference between the Word of God and the
work of God. You know Bert, you take on a
job and Maybe you sign a contract or you give them your word that
you're gonna do a certain thing, but you gotta back that word
up with your work. You gotta do the work in order
for your word to mean anything. God, all he has to do is speak
the word. Don't you love it when that centurion,
he said, Lord, I'm a man of authority. I say unto this one, go, and
he goes. I say unto another one, comes,
and he comes. And Lord, I know that you have ultimate authority.
I'm not worthy that thou should come under my roof. Only speak
the word and my servant shall be healed. All you gotta do is
speak the word. All you gotta do is say it and
it's done. Isn't that glorious? That we're not looking for, and
you say, well, what about the work that the Lord Jesus Christ
performed on Calvary's cross? Well, he performed it as the
word of God. He performed it as the Word of
God. He's the living, incarnate Word of God. In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And the Word dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory as the
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And
so what the Lord Jesus did on Calvary's cross in fulfilling
the Word of God by His work of redemption was done as the Word
of God. The point being that there's
no difference between his word and his work. There is with us,
but not with God. Not with God. John chapter 6
verse 63 says, It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth
nothing. The words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit and they are life. Don't look for a sign. Don't look for feeling. Believe
God's word. That's what faith is. Faith is
just believing everything that God says. Lord, you've given
me faith because I really do believe everything that you've
declared. I'm not going to pretend to understand
it all. I don't understand any of it, actually. But I believe
it with all of my heart. All of my heart. If my whole
heart is invested in anything, it's that God's word is true. That everything that he's declared
about Christ and about salvation is true. I'm hanging the hopes
of my immortal soul on it. Everything I've got's in one
basket. All my eggs are in one basket.
That's what Paul said. I'm persuaded. that he's able to keep that which
I've committed, I've entrusted everything to him, everything. Our Lord said in John chapter
14, verse 10, this was after, remember that
chapter is the one that starts out where the Lord says, let
not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me. For in my father's house are many mansions, if it were
not so, I would have told you, but I go and prepare a place
for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again and receive you unto myself that where I am there, you may
be also." Heaven is the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
what did Philip say? Lord, we don't know where you're
going. And the Lord told him, he said,
Philip, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No man come to
the Father but by me. And then he said, show us the
Father, and it sufficeth us. Oh, have I been with you so long
that you don't know that if you've seen me, you've seen the father
for I and the father are one. And then the Lord goes on in
verse 10 to say this, believe thou not that I am in the father
and the father in me, the words that I speak unto you are not
of myself, but the father dwelleth in me and he doeth the works. The word word and works again
are put together. The words that I speak unto you
I receive from my father. It is my father that's doing
the work. Isn't it glorious? Here's what
great hope we have. We cannot completely trust Anyone, most particularly ourselves,
the scripture says in the book of Proverbs, it is a fool that
trusted himself. Okay. Parents, your children
ask you, don't you trust me when they want to do something, you
know, they shouldn't be doing. Just tell them, yeah, I trust you
about as much as I trust myself. And that ain't much. And that, you know, that just,
that, that's just the truth, isn't it? We can't trust ourselves,
we can't trust one another. Not with our souls, not in that
sense. But here, the Lord's given us
his word is his work. Trust me. Lean not on your own
understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he shall
direct thy path. Trust in the Lord with all thine
heart. That's faith. And when God speaks, when God
speaks, not when you've heard the voice of a man, not when
you've read some theology or doctrine or history, but when
God speaks effectually to your heart, you believe that the same
message is relevant to every generation. And the only thing
irrelevant in this world is culture. and that the gospel is the only
thing that's true. And you believe every word of
it. You believe his words and his works are one and the same. One and the same. And his works are what he accomplished in his
work. You know, there are religious
groups that we used to call them name and enclavement group. They
call themselves the word of faith group. What they say is that faith is
demonstrated by you speaking something and if you speak it
in faith and believe it, then it'll happen. You know all that is, is men
trying to be God. That's all that is, is men trying
to be God. God's the only one that can speak
something and by speaking it, it happens. Look, look at this. The Lord
Jesus Christ says in verse five, I will speak of the glorious
honor of thy majesty and of thy wondrous works. And that's what
the Lord Jesus did. Everything he spoke, he spoke
of his father. He spoke of what God had done.
All that God had done throughout the Old Testament to the children
of Israel was for the purpose of our Lord coming into this
world. taking on the likeness of sinful
flesh and being born of a woman, being born under the law to redeem
them that are cursed by the law. And how God had chosen him, he
was God's elect. He was God's chosen servant.
How God had sent him in the full power of the spirit of God to
accomplish the salvation of God's elect. That's what our Lord say,
and I will speak. And men, look at verse six, and
men shall speak. And that's what we're trying
to do right now. And men shall speak because I have spoken,
therefore men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts. and I will declare thy greatness. You see, all we can do is speak
audibly of the might of God's terrible acts, but only he can
speak spiritually to the heart of his greatness and convince
you of who he is and what he's done. When God speaks, when God
speaks, he speaks to the heart. He just changes us. He just causes us to believe
everything that he said. What a... Lord, speak. Speak. Cause me to believe. Cause me
to bow. Cause me to come. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for your word. Speak to our hearts of thy mighty
acts. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.