All right, brethren, let's turn
our Bibles to 2 Thessalonians 2. This has been a difficult
week for me, and when I have a week like this, I like to find
a couple of verses in the Scripture that just get right to the heart
of our salvation. And that's what these two verses
do tonight. Sunday, we were here in Chapter
2 of 2 Thessalonians, and we touched on these verses, but
I spent most of the time on the subject of holding the traditions
and showing how that God is always saved by one gospel, and He saved
us by that same gospel. So tonight I want to deal more
with verses 16 and 17. We just kind of touched on them
on Sunday, but I want to go back and just focus on these. And
our subject will be our divisions. Our subject is love, consolation,
and hope. love, consolation, and hope.
Let's read verses 16 and 17. As Paul was writing, it's like
he just wrote down the prayer that the Spirit of God laid on
his heart. And this is what he wrote, Now I, Lord Jesus Christ
Himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath
given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace.
Comfort your hearts, establish you in every good word and work. Now, I don't have to reach for
words to tell you what the main point of the message is. It's
right here. It's plain. It's clear. Our Lord Jesus Christ
Himself and God, even our Father, hath loved us And He's given
us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace. Now
that's our salvation. That's all our salvation. Summed
up in those three things that the Lord is to us and that He's
given to us. I love how Paul states this in
verse 16. He begins there and he says,
Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God, even our Father. Don't you find it to be amazing
that God's child, those he has called and given faith to know
him, don't you find it amazing that we can call the Lord Jesus
our Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus? We can call the God of
heaven and earth our Father. You know, we read too fast, I
think, sometimes, and we skip over things like that, but if
you just stop and think about that, He's our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our Father. And I like
how He said, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Not merely what He has
done for us, though we do rejoice in what He has done for His people,
but Himself. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. See, these things we're going
to look at here, this love and this consolation and this hope,
He is these things to us. And He's given us these things.
But He Himself is these things to us. And the same with God
our Father. He is the things that He has
given to us. He is love. God is love. God is the consolation. He is
our hope. He is, and it's our one God in
three persons, because who laid this word on Paul's heart? He
only mentions the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and he
mentions God the Father, but who gave him the words to write
this? The Holy Spirit did. So this is our one God in three
persons that has done this for us. So when I read each of these
headings, I'm gonna repeat this, because it's needful to hear
it. First of all, our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father
hath loved us. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself
and God our Father hath loved us. So thankful. that I don't
have to try to come up with something to preach. I just preach what
he says. You know, if I gave Greg a letter
and I said, Greg, would you take this letter up to Donna and read
it for her? Well, I'm not expecting Greg
to go up there and on the way up there, pull over and try to
figure out something. What am I going to tell Donna? I've got
to say something that's going to hook her and get her attention.
No, just go up there and tell her what the letter says. And
that's all God's preachers seem to do, is tell you what the book
says. Give you the sense of what it says. And here's what He says
to us. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
and God, even our Father, hath loved us. Now the first question
we have to ask, when you get a letter, what's the first thing
you do? You look and see, who's it written to? If it's not written
to you, it don't apply to you. But if it's written to you, then
you take it. This is written to me. This includes
me. Well, who's it written to? Go
back to 2 Thessalonians 1. In verse 1, Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus,
unto the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's who he's writing this
to. Particularly, this was that day written to the church of
the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
But that's who the church is. The church today are those that
God has put, that we're in Him and we're in our Lord Jesus Christ
by His grace. look over at 2 Thessalonians
2, this is what all have in common who this applies to. This applies
to everybody. This is what we all have in common.
It doesn't apply to everybody, but everybody it applies to,
this is what we have in common right here. This is why it applies
to us. 2 Thessalonians 2.13, he said, We're bound to give
thanks all the way to God for you, brethren beloved of the
Lord, loved before of the Lord, by the Lord. Because God hath
from the beginning chosen you to salvation. He chose the us
in our text or those God chose to save. And He chose you to
salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the
truth. We just read in Ephesians 1,
He predestinated us into the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ to Himself and He abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.
He sent the Spirit of God and sent the Spirit of His Son into
our hearts and sanctified us. and brought us to believe the
truth. The truth. Christ said, I am
the truth. We believe the Lord Jesus. He's
the only way to the Father. And He says, whereunto He called
you by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus
Christ. What do you have to have to enter
into heaven? You have to have the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What does that include? Everything Christ is. Everything
He accomplished. That's His glory. He's God in
human flesh. He's the wisdom, the righteousness,
the sanctification, and the redemption of His people. That's His glory. He gets all the praise and the
glory for that. And that's what He shows us,
He reveals in His people, it makes us trust Him and Him alone. He gets all the glory. So that's
who this is to. That's who the us is. But just
think on this now. Next time you're troubled, next
time you're having a rough few days or something has troubled
you, sit down and find you a verse like this right here. And really
think about this. Think on this right here. And
try to get this down in your heart, child of God. Listen now.
Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God, even our Father, hath
loved us. You know, on a clear night, you
go outside, you gaze up at the sky and you just see the vastness
of the universe and you just see stars just from one horizon
to the other. I used to love it down in, I'm
from southern part of Arkansas, but there's a delta that's not
far from where I live. And in the delta, it's just flat
as far as you can see. And they call it the biggest
sky on earth. And you can, I mean, from one
horizon to the next, it's just sky. And you can just see stars
and just see the vastness of it. And when you look up and
you see that, and you see how large, and then you think about
how small we are, how very small we are, how very insignificant
we are. You see why David wrote in Psalm
83, he said, When I consider the heavens the work of thy fingers. Just think of that, that's the
work of his fingers. The moon and the stars which thou hast
ordained. What is man? that thou art mindful
of Him. And the Son of Man, that thou
visitest Him. Look what Isaiah 40 says. Look
over here at Isaiah 40. Look at what it says about God
and about us. Look here. Well, let's start in verse 15.
Behold, the nations, all the nations, all the people in the
nations are as a drop of a bucket. You know when you pour out water
out of a bucket and there's just those little droplets in it?
He said, that's what all the nations and all the people are
to God, just a drop of a bucket. He said, and in Canada it's the
small dust of the balance. When you weighed up corn or something
in a measuring, in a bucket and you poured it out and there's
just that little dust in the bottom that you don't even pay
attention to. that all count as the small dust
of the balance. Behold, he taketh up the aisles
as a very little thing." Look down at verse 17. All nations
before him are as nothing. And they're counted to him less
than nothing and vanity. Vanity is when you walk out on
a cold morning and you breathe and that little mist comes out
and it's there and in just an instant it's gone. That's what
all flesh is to God. Just less than nothing in vanity. Verse 22 says, it is he that
sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof
are as grasshoppers. And yet our Lord Jesus Christ
himself and God, even our Father, hath loved us. Job said in Job 25.5, he said,
Behold, even to the moon, and it shineth not, yea, the stars
are not pure in his sight. How much less man that is a worm. You know what that word means.
It means a maggot. How much less man that is a worm,
and the son of man which is a worm. You think of the love that you
have for your children. You just think of the love you
have for your children. You love them as part of yourself.
I mean, they're part of yourself. You ever felt like you just sit
and watch them sleep or something, and you look at them and you
think, I couldn't love them more than I love them. I mean, they're
me. If they get hurt, it hurts me.
You know, you feel that way as a parent. That's your child. That's a part of you. And our
love for our children is imperfect at best. Our Lord Jesus Christ
Himself, and God even our Father, hath loved us with perfect love,
as one with Himself. John said, Behold what manner
of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called
the sons of God. That's a special distinguishing
title, the sons of God. Not everybody can be called the
sons of God. Scripture said, he said, Jacob
have I loved, but Esau have I hated. God is angry with the wicked
every day. He hates all workers of iniquity.
Not just the sin, like the world says, but the workers themselves.
Because that's all we are by nature is sin. Why did He love
those that He saved? Why did He love us? Scripture
says, simply because He would. There wasn't a cause in us. Behold
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we
should be called the sons of God. All right, let's behold
it. Before creation, before He made
anything, before God created anything whatsoever, Behold electing
love. Behold covenant love all in Christ
Jesus. That's what manner of love He
loved us with. That's what we read in Ephesians 1. That's where
He blessed His people with all spiritual blessings. That don't
leave a single one out. All spiritual blessings. in heavenly
places before the foundation of the world and where did He
bless us with His blessing? How? According as He chose us
in Christ Jesus. What's the purpose in that? Romans
9 said, the purpose of God in election is this, so that salvation
will be of God that calleth and not of you and me. That's the
purpose. That's the offense to natural
man because we want a part in it. It's of God. Behold what
manner of love. At Bethlehem, behold incarnate
love. Son of God, thought it not robbery
to be equal with God. Philippians 2 said, in all points
he's equal with God. He's God, the second person in
the Trinity. And yet he humbled himself. and
took the form of a servant. He came down. Those the Father
trusted Him to save, they were flesh and blood, and so He took
part of flesh and blood. He made Himself of no reputation.
You know, sinful man, we would have made everybody know who
we are. Don't you know who I am? That's
not the spirit our Lord had. He didn't tell anybody who He
was. He came forth preaching the gospel. He is that gospel. But He came forth to work out
a righteousness for His people and save His people, but He made
Himself of no reputation. Took the form of a servant to
serve God in perfection for His people. That's what manner of
love the Father has bestowed upon us. But on the cross, behold,
redeeming love. We were under the curse. We sinned
in Adam. We fell in Adam. We died in Adam. We gotta be
redeemed from that curse. That law says the soul that sinneth
must die. Holy God said, I demand justice. If I'm gonna save them, they
gotta die under the justice of the law because I'm holy and
I will by no means clear the guilty. And everybody who is
the us are guilty. That's all the law says about
us, guilty. And so Christ came and took our
sin, and took our shame, and took our curse, and bore the
wrath of God in the place of His people, and redeemed us from
the curse of the law. Behold what manner of love the
Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the
sons of God. Right now, before the throne, just look by faith
right now, before the throne of God, And you behold interceding
love. We have an advocate with the
Father. We have a lawyer, an advocate, who is there at the
right hand of the Father. And He is not only our advocate,
He's our righteousness. He's the propitiation for our
sins. And He ever lives to make intercession
for His people. That's love. That's the manner
of love with which God loved us in our new birth. The whole regenerating
love. We were dead in sins. We couldn't
know God. No wonder men object to the gospel.
We did too. Everybody does. The carnal mind
is enmity against God. The carnal mind is hatred against
God. That's what Romans 8 says. 1 Corinthians 2 says, the natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, they're
foolishness to him. Neither can he know them, because
they're spiritually discerned. God has to give us his mind,
the Spirit of Christ has to give us the mind of Christ. How can
a man know what another man's thinking unless that man tell
him? The Spirit of the Lord has to enter in and create a new
spirit and give us an understanding. And he said this in Ezekiel 16,
8, we were that baby cast out and nobody helped us and nobody
swallowed us. We were just cast out, aborted,
just left for dead. That was us. And he said, when
I passed by thee and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the
time of love. And I spread my skirt over thee
and covered thy nakedness. Yea, I swear unto thee and entered
into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest
mine. Behold what manner of love the
Father has bestowed on us. Regenerating love. In this wilderness
right now, as we're going through this wilderness, every one of us here who has
a new spirit, in that new spirit's no guile. And so you will confess,
you will say readily, confess, if it wasn't for God keeping
me, I would have departed a thousand times. Behold it, what manner
of love? Preserving love. Kept by the
power of God unto salvation, ready to be revealed. Preserving
love, preserving us and keeping us from the evil. And in our utter weakness, in
our total thorough weakness, Behold His sustaining love. Underneath are His everlasting
arms, upholding us by His everlasting love. That's why we don't fall
away. He's upholding us underneath
of the everlasting arms. Behold what manner of love the
Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called sons of God.
Do you see His love? And our Lord Jesus Himself and
God, even our Father, behold This amazing, perfect love. Remember what our Lord said? He's speaking to the Father,
praying to the Father in John 17. He said, of all those He
loved, He said, Thou hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me. Perfect love. He said, I've loved
you with an everlasting love. It has no beginning and no ending,
just like God. Those he loves in Christ, he
loves eternally. Paul said in Romans 8, who shall
separate us from the love of God in Christ? He lists about
everything you and me will ever face. And he said, nothing shall
be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus. Joseph Swain was a hymn writer. He wrote this, His love
no end or measure knows, no change can turn its course, eternally
the same it flows from one eternal source. John Kent wrote, Believer,
here thy comfort stands, from first to last salvation is free,
and everlasting love demands an everlasting song from thee. Behold what manner of love. Secondly, our text says, Our
Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God, even our Father, hath given
us everlasting consolation. Everlasting consolation. Go with
me to John 14. John 14. Now, I think he begins
with the Lord Jesus here because there's no coming to the Father
but by the Lord Jesus Christ. And our first understanding of
ourselves and of God is going to be by our Lord Jesus coming
to us. And he said this, he's going
to do it through the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is a comforter.
He said in John 14, 16, he said, I will pray the Father and he
shall give you another comforter that he may abide with you forever. Even the Spirit of truth, whom
the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth
Him, but you know Him, for He dwelleth with you and shall be
in you." That's true of His people. There's a distinguishing element
right there in what He just said. The world won't receive the Holy
Spirit. To receive is to be given the
Holy Spirit. He said, I'm praying the Father,
and He's going to send the Holy Spirit to you. Not to the world,
to you. And He's going to be in you and
He'll dwell with you. So the Holy Spirit of our Lord
is our Comforter. He's our consolation. And then
our consolation is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He's called the
consolation of Israel. of his spiritual Israel. He's
the comforter of his spiritual Israel. 1 Peter 1.8 says, whom
having not seen, you love, in whom though now you see him not,
yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. That's the consolation. That's
the result of it, of him rejoicing with joy. Our consolation is
God, even our Father. He's called the God of all comfort.
He's the God of all comfort. We're talking about real comfort,
spiritual comfort, true comfort. He's the God of all comfort.
God our Father is in Christ. Christ is in you. And our Savior
promised this, I will not leave you comfortless. I will come
to you. Now you go back to the very beginning
when the Lord first began to deal with you in your experience
of His grace. When he first made the commandment
come, it made us really hear what the law says about us. For
the first time in our lives, we died to everything that we
thought was good. Everything that we thought commended
us to God died that day. When the Lord began to make us
hear the law, declare us guilty. But Lord, didn't I do? Guilty.
But I did that. Guilty. But what about this? Guilty. My grandmother was a
believer. Guilty. But I joined the church,
guilty. But I've tried to keep the commandments,
guilty. But I've learned some doctrine,
guilty. He brought us to the end of ourselves
to see we were guilty before God and nothing that we were.
We were trusting in all these different things and he made
us see, no, you yourself are guilty. And we had no comfort. You had no comfort. That work's
got to be worked in us, brethren. Sin laid heavy on us, and it's
got to be done. So a man's brought there, he
still trusts in himself. Paul said, when the commandment
came, sin revived and I died. Paul was so self-righteous, he
thought he was doing God's work and was persecuting God's people
and thought he was really, really pleasing God. And he said, when
Christ sent the commandment to me, on that road to Damascus,
he arrested Paul and put Paul down in the dust. And when that
commandment came, Paul saw his sin for the first time, and everything
he thought was in the plus column, he saw was in the minus column.
What things were gained of me, I counted them lost. I counted
them but dumb, he said. And then Christ made you see,
He is all your righteousness. He made you see Him. The Holy
Spirit took the things of Christ and showed them to us. And He
made us see that Lord Jesus Christ Himself had come and purged our
sin. Put away the sin of His people.
When He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down at the
right hand of the majesty on high. And our Father made us
know He remembers our sin no more. For Christ's sake, by His
blood, by His righteousness, He remembers our sin no more.
And Christ robed us in his righteousness through faith and made you know
you're righteous in me. I made you righteous. I am your
righteousness. And Christ himself and God our
Father through the Holy Spirit became our consolation. He became
our comfort. Joy filled our heart. We realized
I've been saved by the Lord. Have you been saved by the Lord?
Have you experienced this? I'm not trying to teach you to
trust in an experience, but I'm telling you this, when He works
it, you're going to know, I can't trust in anything about myself. He's all my salvation. He made
us know our salvation don't depend upon our faithfulness to Him.
Yes, without faith it's impossible to please God. Faith is the gift
of God, it's by His grace, not of works, lest any man should
boast. But our faithfulness or our unfaithfulness doesn't change
how we're saved. Adam made of sin by his disobedience. By the disobedience of one were
many made sinners. Well brethren, our righteousness
is by the obedience of one, the Lord Jesus Christ. He made everybody
he represented righteous. And he is our righteousness.
That's our everlasting consolation. Everything in this life that
gives comfort. Oh, we go after our little toys
and we find a little joy for a moment and we think we found
something that's going to last. It don't last. You figured that
out? God's not going to let it last
for His people. If a man's not His, He'll let
him go and He'll let him find his joy in this world. But for
you that are His, He's not going to let you be satisfied with
the temporary comforts of this life. They're going to eventually
turn into sorrow. But sorrow that this world gives,
it's not the peace, it's not the joy Christ gives. And the
peace that this world gives is not the peace He gives. Our Redeemer's
consolation is always ours. And nobody can take it from you.
Because they'd have to defeat the Savior to take it from you,
and that won't happen. Listen now. He said, John 16,
22, and you can apply this to us. He was saying it about the
apostles that night he was going to the cross. He said, you now
therefore have sorrow. Because he said, I'm going away,
now you have sorrow. Well, you can take your little
temporary toys and you find some joy for a little while, and then
it's going to come to sorrow. And you can hear Christ say to
you, you therefore now have sorrow. Somebody you love, somebody you
were with for years and years and years, they're taken. Lord
takes them to glory. Therefore, now you have sorrow. But Christ said, but I'll see
you again. and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man
taketh from you." Now that's so, brethren. You can apply that
to every time you come into some sorrow in this life. You can
apply those words. Christ says to his people, now
you have sorrow, but I'll see you again, and I'll abide with
you, and I'll give you joy, and I'll be your consolation, and
no man will take it from you. It's everlasting consolation. Not because we're just joyful
every hour of every day. We don't walk around smiling
like an opossum eating salt bars. We don't have joy every hour
of every day. But it is an everlasting consolation
because it's founded on the everlasting love of God. The everlasting
covenant of grace, ordered in all things insure, yes and amen
by Christ alone. It's the everlasting righteousness
of Christ that we have, and it's the everlasting salvation that
He is and that He accomplished. That's why it's everlasting consolation.
Everlasting mercy by His righteousness. Though our own sin is our shame,
our gracious, loving Savior promises. He says this in Isaiah 61.7.
Now listen. For your shame you shall have
double, and for confusion they shall rejoice in their portion.
He said, I'm your portion. Therefore in their land they
shall possess the double, everlasting joy shall be unto them. We saw
Sunday, he said those that judged his people and didn't show them
any mercy, he said, I'm going to give you double judgment that you
gave to my people because you didn't show them mercy. He says
to you, for your shame and your sin, in the place of that, I
will give you double joy. and everlasting consolation.
That's grace, isn't it? That can't be nothing but grace.
He commands his pastors in Isaiah 40 verse 1, Comfort ye, comfort
ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,
cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, her iniquities
pardoned. She has received of the Lord's
hand double for all her sins. That's grace. All we did was
sin. All we contributed was sin. And
the Lord said, I've given you double. Everlasting life, everlasting
righteousness, everlasting consolation in the place of all your sin.
When we suffer for His sake, Christ and God our Father, He's
our consolation. Look at 2 Corinthians 1.3. I
know you know it, but I just love this. And I want you to
see it. I know you like it too. 2 Corinthians
1, look at verse 3. Look at these titles right here
and look at what he is. Blessed be God, even the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God
of all comfort. who comforteth us in all our
tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in
any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of
God. For as the sufferings of Christ
abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ." You
see that? He is our consolation and it
abounds by Him. That's why it's everlasting.
Nobody can stop Him from giving you this consolation, and nobody
can take it from you. He's our consolation. Now finally,
I'll be very brief, I'm out of time. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself
and God, even our Father, has given us good hope through grace.
And the Greek here is, He's given us good hope in grace. Good hope
in grace. When we look to ourselves and
we start trying to find some reason to have hope in ourselves,
your hope's going to be greatly disturbed. If you're a child
of God, that's going to be so. Because our hope's not in us.
Our hope's in the grace of God. Everything God does in salvation
is by grace. It's a good hope in God's grace.
Listen, as it's used in the Bible, the word hope's not a wish. We
use that word, I hope it don't rain tomorrow, I hope I get a
promotion, I hope this, I hope that. We just wishful thinking.
But in the Bible, the word hope is the expectation of God-given
faith. This is what we expect. It's
based upon the oath of God. It's based upon the promises
of God. It's based upon the grace of God. It's based upon the goodness
of God. And it's all in and by Christ.
That's why it is a good hope. It's a good hope. Hope is a gift
through grace. He gives you this hope. Like
everything else we have, it's the gift of God. Faith, repentance,
righteousness, holiness, every fruit of the Spirit is the free
gift of God's grace. And hope is the gift of God's
grace. We're born again, not of blood, nor of the will of
the flesh, nor of the will of man, we're born of God. We didn't
first choose God, God first chose us. All of this is by grace.
Justification from all our sins by grace. We're justified freely
by His grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. Well,
brethren, likewise, hope is the gift of God's grace. And true
God-given hope, hope's in His grace. Unmerited free favor. not based on anything good or
evil in us, just grace, free favor. Our Lord Jesus Christ
Himself, even God our Father, which hath loved us and hath
given us every consolation and a good hope through grace. This
is the good news right here. You that believe God, this is
the good news. God, what He gives, He sustains
in His people. If He gave you the hope, He's
going to sustain hope in you. Listen, now the God of hope fill
you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound
in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. You see that?
You don't just muster up hope of yourself. It's the gift of
God and He's going to sustain it through the power of the Holy
Spirit. Now what is hope? It's the anchor of our soul.
The anchor, you know the anchor. Is the anchor in the boat? It
don't do no good in the boat, does it? If you got hope in you,
hope in yourself, hope in something you've done, it's not going to
do you any good. Where's the anchor? It's outside of the boat.
The anchor of our soul is outside of us. Where's it at? Go to Hebrews
6. I'll show you where it is. Hebrews
chapter 6. Here it is. This is how he saved
Abraham, this is how he saves all his people. Hebrews 6.17,
wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise
the immutability of his counsel, unchangeableness of his counsel,
he confirmed it by an oath. so that by two immutable things
in which it was impossible for God to lie, he made an oath and
he swore by himself, because he could swear by no greater.
So there's two unchangeable things in which it was impossible for
God to lie, so that we might have a strong consolation who
have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us,
which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast,
and which entereth into that within the veil. Our hope is
in that true holiest of holies in heaven, where the full runner
is for our sinner, even Jesus, made a high priest forever after
the order of Melchizedek. He's our hope. He's our salvation. He's everything. Christ is. And
He's our anchor of our soul. Our hope is Christ Jesus, our
salvation. The psalmist said, Lord, I've
hope for thy salvation. Beloved, now we're the sons of
God, and doth yet appear what we shall be, but we know that
when he shall appear, we shall be like him. For we shall see
him as he is, and every man that hath this hope in himself. He purifies Himself even as He's
pure. That's our hope. He's coming
again and we're going to be like Him. Just like Him. By Him. By His grace. Listen. He was
foreordained before the foundation of the world but manifests in
these last times for you. And it's by Him that we believe
in God that raised Him from the dead and gave Him that glory
so that your faith and your hope might be in God. That's what
Peter said. Our hope's in Him. He's called
the hope of Israel. He's the consolation of Israel,
He's the God of all comfort, and He's the hope of Israel.
We, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness
by faith, Paul said. We've been made righteous now
by Christ, in Christ, by his obedience, and his righteousness
is imputed to us through God-given faith. But we know one day he's
coming, and he's gonna make us perfectly righteous in body,
soul, and spirit, perfectly conformed to his image. And it's gonna
be all by his grace. And so we, through the Spirit,
wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. He's coming. He's coming. Our hope is a confident expectation. Our Lord said, I know the thoughts
I think toward you. Sayeth the Lord thoughts of peace
and not of evil to give you and expect it in. It's called the
hope of eternal life which God that cannot lie promised before
the world began. That's what it's called in Titus
1-2. Three times the psalmist declared
his hope was in the Word of God. We have the Word of God. We have
God's Word on it. Listen to Psalm 119.49. He said,
Remember the Word unto thy servant upon which thou hast caused me
to hope. That's our prayer. God, remember your promise to
us. You've made us hope in this Word. He said, My soul fainteth
for thy salvation, but I hope in thy Word. I don't need something
else. This is the word of God. God's
given us his word. This is his word, brethren. Oh,
it's been translated. God controlled the translators.
This is his word. He's preserved it. Thou art my hiding place, my
shield, I hope in thy word. Shout out to God before, during,
and after trouble. Before trouble, during trouble,
and when the trouble's over, bury yourself in this Word. Read
this Word. It's not about how much you read.
Don't try to read a whole book. Read a verse or two. I'm just
mainly right here in one verse. And think on what it says. And
ask God to give you an understanding. Ask Him to comfort your heart
with it. Listen, whatsoever things were written aforetime were written
for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures
might have hope. So since He loved us, this is
our prayer to Him and this is our confidence in Him right here.
Since our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God, even our Father, since
He has loved us, since He has given us an everlasting consolation,
Since He's given us good hope through grace, good hope in His
grace, we have this confidence. We have this confidence in what
our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God, even our Father, shall
do. Here's what we have confidence He will do. Verse 17, He'll comfort
your hearts and He'll establish you in every good word and work. That's what He'll do. I pray
that's a blessing to you, brethren.