How is that? Most poor and heavy, weep and
cheer, weep sick and sore. Jesus, ready, stands forsaken,
for all the people in power. He is faithful, He is faithful,
He is willing that no more. He is faithful, He is faithful,
He is willing that no more. Come ye, sing ye, come and welcome,
Once we vowed before we vowed to believe in true revenge. Every wish that brings you love. We vowed bloody, without blood,
unto Jesus. With our money, with our blood,
All to Jesus Christ, our God. Let the conscience live newly,
For our faith is fondly free. All the fitness they require
Is to be learning of Him. Yes, He gives. Yes, He gives. Tis the strength He gives. Yes, He gives. Yes, He gives. Yes, He gives. is the spirit of being free. I'll be with you if you need
me. Listen for the final call. We will carry till you're dead. You will never come back. Of the righteous, not the unrighteous,
Jesus came to call. Of the righteous, not the unrighteous,
Jesus came to call. Lo, they are made of the same
blood, made for me. ? Came from His blood ? ? We
cheer on Him, we cheer for Him ? ? No other trust but Him ?
? One God, Jesus, one God, Jesus ? ? And through Him all sin is
gone ? ? One God, Jesus, one God, Jesus ? We are fish. If you will turn to the book
of Isaiah. In Isaiah 45, in verses 5 and 6, it says, I am
the Lord, and there is none else. There is no God beside me. I
girded thee, though thou hast not known me. that thou mayst
know from the rising of the sun from the west that there is none
beside me. I am the Lord and there is none
else." Those help words in that, I am the Lord and there is none
else, we can take those out and it speaks it even stronger as
to what is being given to us here by the Word of God. I the
Lord and none else. Of course, in the day and age
in which we live, none of us are not knowledgeable of this,
it is the I generation. It is the me generation. It is
all about self, about being in control of what we're doing,
about being in control of one's destiny and future. But there
are very few people, and only people that know the truth, that
believe in the perfect and complete sovereignty of a holy God. The
people of this generation, the religious lost especially, ignore
the truth that He alone is the supreme ruler of all things. They deny that each action of
man every day is known by Him, that He knows everything and
there is nothing hidden from Him. We will consider many attributes
of the sovereign God today, but His sovereignty is not an attribute.
His sovereignty is a prerogative to Him being the one true God
that He says He is. And we have this pointed out
to us many times in Psalms. In just three of those verses
from the book of Psalms, the mighty God, even the Lord, has
spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun until the
going down thereof. He ruleth by His power forever.
His eyes behold the nation. Let not the rebellious exalt
themselves. The Lord reigneth, he is clothed
with majesty. The Lord is clothed with strength,
wherewith he hath girded himself. The world also established that
it cannot be moved. False religionists of our day
do not believe that God is sovereign. They believe, though they won't
come right out and say it, that they're in control, that they
make the choices, that they call upon God to do what they want
him to do. And certainly that trend has
become so popular now in the day and age in which we live,
we have even denominations pronouncing themselves as the only ones.
I've noticed on several church sites where they are the, and
they call the denominations name of Greenville or of Jacksonville
or of Newbern. And certainly this is pride in
man personified, certainly having nothing to do with God. But we
know that there is only one sovereign. There can be no other. If there
was more than one, nothing about the Word of God could be true.
As 1 Timothy tells us, which in his times he shall know who
is the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and Lord of
lords. Many men have come and gone who
thought they were sovereigns, who thought that they were the
leaders. We have many men that live today who think that they
are sovereign. All we have to do is look to
North Korea. All we have to do is look to
some of the other lands. We've seen Hitler in our past,
and Khrushchev, and Caesar, and Nero, and many others that are
all dead and gone. They were not sovereign, but
there is truly but one sovereign. He exists eternally. He has always
been, and he will always be, as testified even in the book
of Revelation, saying, We give thanks, O Lord God Almighty,
which art and was and art to come, because thou hast taken
to thee thy great power and hast reigned. a God that is supreme,
a God with no external restraints as man would have you believe,
a God that is all under His power and control of everything and
command. For the Lord your God is the
God of gods and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty and a terrible,
which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward. As we leave
those help words out, we read that verse and certainly it points
to the one true, perfect, sovereign, holy God, the holy and righteous
God, the only one that can make that claim, that can use that
word I and say, I the Lord and none else. And when we look at
I the Lord and none else, we look at that, we can look at
that in creation. I the Lord and none else in creation. But when we look at what man
says and what we have bombarded in our day, the smarter that
man thinks that he is, the more advanced in technology and science
he becomes, we find the less people we find that believe in
the true doctrine of creation, that God created all things and
he did it in the timetable that he stated. Compare it in our
own lifetime. Just think about it in the lifetime
in which we live, the dwindling of those that believe that this
world and all the universe came about and came into being because
Almighty God chose it to be so. As Psalms 33 says, by the word
of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them
by the breath of his mouth. How strong a statement is that?
How does that take everything away from man? Look how long
it takes man to create anything. And the older we get, the slower
we get. It takes years just to build
bridges or high-rises, and God, in one moment, and in one breath
out of His mouth, creates all the universe. There was not anything
before. As we were told there in those
very familiar verses of Genesis, In the Holy Word of God, it says,
in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and
the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the
face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of
the waters. Why did He create? Because He
chose to. It was His discretion. He did
not have to consult with anyone. There was no one to consult with,
as Job said, which alone spreadeth out the heavens and treadeth
upon the waves of the sea. He formed it to be inhabited,
no consultation to anyone, no consultation to anything, no
seeking if this is the right thing. Isaiah 45 and the 18th
verse of the chapter that we in, for thus saith the Lord that
created the heavens, God himself that formed the earth and made
it, he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed
it to be inhabited, I am the Lord, and there is none else.
Yet in the vast world of false religion, man believes that God
should consult with him, that he should consult with him in
all things, that God does not have the power to save him eternally,
that God does not have the power to choose and to call whom he
wants. In his sin, man believes that
he has the power over God and over the God that created all
things, even him. In His Word, God over and over
again shows man for what He is in His sinful nature, why He
rejects him as the Creator. And certainly it shows His insignificance
as we look at the Word of God, the insignificance of man to
the Creator. And we just have to turn back
to Isaiah 40 and some verses from there. It says, Behold,
the nations are as a drop of a bucket. and are counted as
a small dust of the balance. Behold, he taketh up the isles
as a very little thing. All nations before him are as
nothing, and they are counted to him less than nothing, and
vanity. Have you not known? Have you
not heard? Hath it not been told you from
the beginning? Have you not understood from
the foundation of the earth? Is that sitteth upon the circle
of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers,
that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them
out as a tent to dwell in, that bringeth the princesses to nothing,
He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. Yea, they shall not
be planted. Yea, they shall not be sown.
Yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth. And he shall
also blow upon them, and they shall wither. And the whirlwind
shall take them away as stone. To whom then will ye liken me,
or shall I be equal, saith the Holy One?" What powerful words
these are! That God is the only one, that
He is the Holy One, and there is no equal, and man can claim
all he wants to claim in his sinful self. But none of that
is true. God created all things, both
physical, material, and spiritual. All things. Whether it brings
joy, whether it brings happiness, or sorrow, or grief, or peace,
or calamity, God created them all. He created all things spiritual,
therefore He created all the angels, including the ones that
failed, including Satan. As Isaiah 45, there in the seventh
verse, it says, I form the light and create darkness. I make peace
and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. People in their finite mind don't
want to believe this. Yet how can God be sovereign? How can he know all things? How
can he have created all things? How can he be the creator as
he says he is if this were not true? As John 1, 3 tells us,
all things were made by Him, and without anything, and without
Him was not anything made that was made. Surely, in creation,
we see the strength and the proof of His sovereignty, that He has
always been and will always be, and that there is no other, no
matter how many things sinful man invents and calls God, there
is only one true sovereign God. What was his purpose in this?
That he be glorified. That his eternal purpose in the
Lord Jesus Christ be carried out. Nowhere does it say that
man will be glorified, that man will be praised, that man will
be worshipped, and despite the beliefs of all those around us,
it is all about the sovereign God. As Ephesians tells us in
Ephesians 3, And to make all men see what is the fellowship
of the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been
hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ, to the intent
that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places
might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according
to the eternal purpose which is purpose in Christ Jesus our
Lord." If he owns every man, and he owns everything, and all
earthly things, all spiritual things, then he has the right
to do and to require whatever he wants. And that is certainly
not the belief of the world in which we live. Yet, all our doctrine,
all that we believe, all that we hold true, All of it hinges
on exactly what He says, and exactly who He says He is, that
He is the faithful Creator, and that He is I, the Lord, and none
else. And then we see that He is I,
the Lord, and none else in holiness. Holiness, by definition, is a
separation or setting apart. Separation from all that is sinful,
all that is impure, all that is morally imperfect, It is a
moral wholeness. By the very definition of man, by the very definition
of groups of men in this world, in this nation and in this world,
a group that claims to be holy shows that they are not. God
in His Word tells us all the time that we have a sinful nation. Nature, that right away shows
that there is no holiness in us, in ourselves. We have to
be truthful with ourselves to understand this. To claim to
be holy is a lie. And that, therefore, you are
disqualified right away from being so. As we are shown over
and over again, there is only one that is truly holy, and that
is the triune God. I will also praise thee with
the psaltery, even thy truth, O my God. Unto thee I will sing
with the heart, O thy holy one of Israel. is a cry of His people
that testifies to His holiness, to the Lord's holiness. That
attribute is His alone, not man's, and only those that have been
called by Him recognize that. As we see in Isaiah 6, and one
cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord
of hosts. The whole earth is full of His
glory. God is holy. We see it in the
Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. This is the absolute
perfection of holiness. It is not something claimed.
It is not something sought after. It is not something tried to
get by, jumping up and down and shouting, or whatever you want
to put with it. It is not something played at
today and gone tomorrow. There is but one holiness, and
that is all in God. Revelation, who shall not fear
thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? For thou art holy. For all nations shall come and
worship before thee, for thy judgments are made manifest.
The revelations of God's holiness certainly is exemplified in the
character and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sinless as
God, sinless as man, the one and only. There is no man holy
and has never been holy other than the Lord Jesus Christ. And
that burst the bubble of the majority of the religious loss
today. God is not as man. He is not
subject to perfect law or moral excellence, nor is He subject...
He is not subject to it. He is it. He is perfect. He is moral excellence. He is
holy. He is righteous. And all these
things we'll talk about today. He answers to no one He is the
perfect sovereign God. He answers to no code. He answers
to no rule set forth by any other because He has set forth the
perfect rule. All that is holy. All the perfect
moral law, all that is right, all that is just, is in the immutable
nature of God. Therefore, all this is God. It is Him. He is the basis and
strength. He is the rock of all that is
holy, for there is none else. As 1 Samuel tells us, there is
none holy as the Lord, for there is none beside Thee. Neither
is there any rock like our God. The holiness of God, as we look
at His holiness and what we can understand, it causes us to stand
in awe of Him, to reverence Him, and to adore Him, for there is
none else. When I first came here some years
ago, and I was talking to Gary, and I made the bad mistake of
referring to Gary as reverent. And he let me know in a kind
way that there was no reverence about him. Of course, he's exactly
right. There is nothing holy about us
and ourselves. All holiness is in the Lord Jesus
Christ, and that is where our holiness resides. Holiness is
the divine condemnation and opposition to all sin. By God's standard,
there is no such thing as a little sin or a little white lie. It
is all sin. And therefore, it can't be holy.
Therefore, how does man think that he can be holy in his own
nature, when by his very nature, his first choice is to sin? Had
God not chosen us, and God not called us, we would never have
chosen him. Just as in our sinful nature,
we would not choose to be holy, no matter what the religions
of the world say today. Man by nature is not holy. There is no holiest of men, or
this person is holier than that person, or holier than thou,
as we often hear referred to. We see it in Catholicism as the
Pope is the holiest person that there is. There is no holier
than thou. Holiness is only in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Though being in Him, that is
what we want. Through Him. It is our aspiration. It is our want. It is our desire
because of His calling us. But there can be no holiness
in ourself. It can only be in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Why? Because we fell when our
Father fell. Fell in Adam. Has that fallen
nature. There is no getting around that.
We can argue till we're blue in the face and some will that
there is some good in all. But that doesn't change one thing.
There is no good. By our very nature, we're sinful. We're born sinners. We're born
unholy. And though created in the image
of God and our fallen Adam, we lost the one of the most essential
features of that image of God, and that was holiness. In the
pride and self-righteousness of sinful man, we want to claim
wholeness. We want to look at others and
their actions and say, oh, I'm better than that, or I would
never do that. Not so. Look at the example after
example of those things that transpired in men's lives in
the Bible, in Scripture. Men, by the Bible's testimony,
that are children of God and patriots of faith. Don't say
we won't, because we have that sinful nature. Every attribute
that we speak of today in holiness and in others as we will speak
of is in the Lord Jesus Christ. As Paul stated, a sinner which
I am chief. There is nothing holy about me. It is all holiness in my Lord.
All holiness in the Lord Jesus Christ because He chose it to
be so, not because I did. that no flesh, as Corinthians
tells us, that no flesh should glory in his presence, but of
him or ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that according
as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. All
our holiness, all our righteousness, all our glory, has to be in the
Lord Jesus Christ. Our old fleshly sinful bodies
cause us nothing but pain, cause us nothing but heartache, cause
us to do nothing but sin, but there's a time when we will become
holy as the Lord Jesus. When we will be holy in our bodies,
righteous in our bodies, still in the Lord Jesus Christ, but
not burdened with the sinful flesh that we have now. As Philippians
tells us, who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned
like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby
he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. And then
we see that God can make that statement, I the Lord and none
else in justice. God's justice is a necessary
outflow of His holiness. If He were not just, then He
wouldn't be holy, and He could not be God. All these attributes
of God are absolute to the one and only Sovereign, that being
God. As Hebrews 12, in those few short
words there, says, for our God is a consuming fire. And that's
what we picture in the justice of God. The justice of God, though
ignored by man, especially in the day and age in which we live,
is so prevalent that we see all around us their main focus is
God's love. Not God's love by his definition,
but God's love by their definition. It is proclaimed over and over
again in the Scripture of His justice. And it leaves no room
for man's interpretation, and it leaves no room for this great
truth to be ignored, but is ignored all the time by man. Abraham,
over there when he was talking about Lot and he was speaking
to God there in Genesis 18, he speaks of the justice of God.
That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous
with the wicked, that the righteous should be as the wicked, that
be far from thee, shall not the judge of all the earth do right. And he always will. His justice
is divine justice. His justice is perfect justice. No judge or jury or any legal
system of this world can attain that. With God, there is no error. There is no mistakes. What he
has proclaimed is absolute and above question. Yet each and
every day, we hear the questioning of God being just. Yet he judges
in perfect righteousness. His laws are divinely equitable
and practicable. There is nothing imperfect about
God, nothing imperfect about His justice. The sentence He
pronounces, the rewards He gives, and the penalties He inflicts
are all righteous because He is righteous. His justice is
perfect for the believer, and His justice is perfect for the
unbeliever. And you will find very few people
that believe that. There's a judgment of every man.
The believer is judged through Christ who paid the penalty for
his sin. The unbeliever is judged according
to his sin. As it is appointed unto man once
to die, as Hebrew says, but after this the judgment. As our brother
spoke to us a couple of weeks ago, it is an appointment for
all men, judgment, that the justice of God be rendered to each and
every one. His justice is shown in the gift
of eternal life to each and every believer through the redemptive
price, the only acceptable price, in the death of our Lord Jesus
Christ. And were that not so, he would not be just. Therefore,
the judgment of eternal damnation must be to the unbeliever, or
he would not be just. As he pointed out to us, that
justice is and must be shown unto each and every individual.
There is no escape of justice, of God's justice. As John 3 tells
us, he that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that
believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed
in the name of the only begotten Son of God. God could not have
shown justice if not for the redemptive work of the Savior.
In all justice, the price has to be paid for the wrongdoing. We are born doing wrong, born
a sinner. In our father Adam, our judgment
was paid in our Lord Jesus Christ. In the second Adam, as Romans
3 points out, who God has set forth to be a propitiation through
faith in his blood to declare his righteousness for the remission
of sins that are past through the forbearance of God. to declare,
I say at this time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the
justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." In justification,
a just, holy God declares a hell-deserving sinner with no ability to save
himself, with no desire to save himself, declares him in the
justice rendered by the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. He
declares him righteous, and acceptable before Him, and it can be no
other way. It cannot be the workings of
man. It cannot be the choice of man. It cannot be what man claims
he can do for himself. As a sinner, as we've already
mentioned, we would never seek out the true God. We have millions
of so-called religious organizations offer hope in a false God. saying that they can seek this
God out, that they can seek solace from this God, and that they
can find solace in their conscience from this God. But that cannot
be the case. It is God's choice, not our choice. Justification not in ourself,
no works, no thought, no seeking, nothing but the mercy and grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ can save us. But after, as Titus
tells us, but after that, the kindness and love of God our
Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which
we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us by the
washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. And then in
a sovereign, holy God, this God can say, I the Lord and none
else in righteousness. righteousness, that purity of
heart, the complete, perfect, lacking nothing, the absence
of sin and action and thought. With that being the definition
of righteousness, then none of us in here would qualify for
it. It is a consciousness of no will or desire to sin, no
will or desire to do wrong, no matter the application, there
can be no sin in perfect righteousness. None of us could claim that.
If we are honest with ourself, then we know we can't meet that
criteria. With anything that is in us,
no matter the attempts, no matter the works, no matter the deeds,
no matter what we think or other men think of us, we and our sin
that we inherited from our earthly father is defined in the scripture. These verses put us in our place.
They define just how wretched we are as we look at those verses
there in Romans 3. As it is written, there is none
righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth.
There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of
the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good,
no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher,
and their tongues they have used deceit. The poisons of ass is
under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursings and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed innocent blood. Destruction and
misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not
known. There is no fear of God before
their eyes." In this world, where everyone thinks that they're
somebody and they know for sure that they're better than the
person standing next to them, surely they do not understand
these verses. Therefore, if we are defined
by these verses in Romans, and we certainly are, how can we
approach a high and holy God who specifically says that he
can have no part of sin and remain holy and righteous? certainly
only in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is but one righteous, and
that is the triune God. As we saw earlier in Abraham's
conversation with God, when his question was, shall not the judge
of the world do right? Only, there has never been and
never will be but one righteous man, the Lord Jesus Christ. the only man to ever meet the
requirements of the law, to be able to keep the law with never
breaking the law, never broke one of them in thought or in
deed. As Jeremiah says, in his days
Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely and this is
his name whereby he shall be called the Lord our righteousness. In His promise to His own, in
His promise to each one that has been chosen and each one
that has been called, He imputes His righteousness unto us. Not
because we deserve it or earn it. There is no scoreboard up
that proclaims our good deeds and our righteous score goes
up. It is only in the Lord Jesus Christ. Only in Him alone. As Corinthians tells us, for
He hath made Him to be sin for us. Who knew no sin? that we
might be made the righteousness of God in Him. That is the only
way. And yet the false religions of
the world today would leave those last two words off. They would
say, for He hath made to Him to be sin for us who knew no
sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God. But you've
got to add that in Him. It can be no other way. They
proclaim their righteousness in themselves, and the more good
deeds they do, the more legalities they can invent and follow, the
more righteous that they say they are. But that is not the
case. There is only one righteousness, and that is in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Any belief that is based on the thoughts and actions of
man is wrong. It is invalid. There is but one
true and valid doctrine in the Scripture, and that is the Lord
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That is where it all dwells,
because He paid the price of all these things. One must know
and believe that it is all in Him and nowhere else. And only
when our hearts and eyes are opened by the Holy Spirit will
we believe that. And as Romans says, and if Christ
be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive
because of righteousness. Righteousness not our own, but
imputed unto us by the Son. Even as David testified, that
righteousness comes from God and has nothing to do with men,
as it is proclaimed there in Romans. Even as David also described
the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputes righteousness,
without words. Our Lord, in His intercessory
prayer therein, John, as He addressed His Father as righteous, showing
all that is righteous is in the Godhead. All that is not righteous
is in the world. O righteous Father, the world
hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee. And these have known
that thou hast sent me, and I have declared unto them thy name,
and will declare it, and the love wherewith thou hast loved
me may be in them, and I in them." And then we see that a sovereign
God can make that statement, I the Lord and none else in salvation. the Lord Jesus Christ, the author
and finisher of the only one true divine salvation that there
is, the eternal deliverance and power and dominion over sin.
As Matthew says in announcing his birth, and she shall bring
forth a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall
save his people from their sins. Salvation for His people, not
all people, for His people. The salvation that Jesus proclaimed
during His earthly sojourn. The one and only salvation. Hebrews, how shall we escape
if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be
spoken by the Lord, which was confirmed unto us by them that
heard Him? It is the gospel. It is the proclaiming
of the crucified Christ. It is Christ. It is the power
of God. For I am not shamed of the gospel
of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone
that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Salvation
complete. in only one place, in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Why? Because He chose it to. It brings glory and honor to
God, not to man. All the salvations of false religions
are based on the actions and inventions of man. That makes
them false. No one can be delivered in this
salvation. No one can be delivered in this
false doctrine and these false proclamations. Deliverance is
only in the crucified Christ. Only to those that He chose before
the beginning of the world. Not in any action of man, but
all of God. It is His action from start to
finish. He does not offer it. It is His
gift to those that are His own. How did God choose to do this? God that cannot look upon sin.
Sin cannot be in His presence. There was only way, and that
was in the redemptive blood of Christ. Blood that was shed in
the will of the Father and the will of the Son. The only blood
powerful enough to redeem those that He had called unto Himself.
Therefore, the Father was willing to sacrifice the Son, and the
Son was willing to be sacrificed. to save those that are his own,
all bringing glory and honor to God, once again in John, and
all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified
in them. This is the only true salvation.
All others proclaimed and demanded by man, of man, is invalid. There are so many attributes
of the salvation, and we won't have time to get into all those
today. And all those attributes of God,
They are attributes of God and they're not attributes of man.
There is the one that is most proclaimed, and certainly most
understood, is the attribute of love in salvation. Certainly,
this is one of the most misunderstood and falsely claimed in this day
in which we live. The love of man is nothing like
the love of God. The love of man is temporary.
It has no depth. And for the most part, it is
a love of self. God's love is eternal. God's
love is singular. Above all else, it's perfect.
We're saved in His love. His love is salvation. The Father loves us through the
Son. He could not love us without
the redemptive work of the Son. As 1 John 4 tells us, in this
was manifested the love of God toward us because that God sent
His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through
Him. Herein is love, not that we love
God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation
for our sins. As His own, we dwell in that
love. We understand that love to be
a sustaining love and an everlasting love. A love that is eternal
in eternity past and in eternity present. Jeremiah 31 tells us,
The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have
loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving
kindness have I drawn thee. This everlasting love instills
in us hope. It instills in us boldness, a
love that takes away fear, a love that comforts. It is a love that
makes us long for our Lord Jesus Christ, long for the eternal
provider of this great love. this love that provides solace
unto us in times of worry, in times of trouble, and in times
of stress. We see that certainly there once
again in 1 John 4. And we have known and believed
the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth
in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love
made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgments,
because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear
in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect
in love. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
a perfect love. It is a personal love. It is
an individual love. Love from the One that knows
all of our sin, knows all of our failure and all of our weakness.
never stops loving us. Has love for us for eternity
past and through eternity future. He always will love us. He has
always loved us. No matter that we're the chief
of sinners as our brother Paul identifies himself in us and
truly we are. His love never diminishes. The
truest love that there is. As John says once again, I in
them and thou in me. that they may be made perfect
in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and
hast loved them as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that
they also, which thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that
they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me, for thou
lovest me before the foundation of the world. This is not the
love proclaimed all around us. This is not the love proclaimed
by false religions of the world. This is not the love that is
here today and gone tomorrow. This is not the love that is
produced in the sinful hearts of man. This is holy, righteous,
eternal love only in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the love
His love that we have in us and that pours out to others. Surely
is not in ourself, but that love goes forth to others. And if
that love is not shown our brother, then the scripture says, we are
not one of his. We love him because he first
loved us. If a man say, I love God and
hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth
God, love his brother also." And then in salvation, there
is that attribute of grace. The unmerited favor of God. Without grace, there is no possibility
of His love unto us. But God, who is rich in mercy
for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were
dead in sin, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace,
ye are saved. Grace makes us alive in Christ
and dead in ourselves. In the crucified Christ, grace
provides the sufficient satisfaction for our sin. In the true grace
of a holy and righteous God, grace rules out all human merit. In that one statement alone,
that nullifies all false religion. Grace requires not any action
on our own. but the God-given faith in the
perfect sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Despite our totally
deprived person, despite our total inability, and the total
and complete perfect ability of God is shown in the grace. Grace is Christ. Grace is in
Christ. in His merit, in His standing
forever. Therefore, being justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom also we have access by faith into this grace, where
when we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
In Him is our salvation, our safety, our preservation forever. We are wrapped up in people who
believe that you can lose your salvation. And that statement
alone in itself is true, because if they believe you can lose
your salvation, then they don't believe the truth. Any salvation
based on man is totally lost anyway. But the salvation of
our Lord Jesus Christ can never be lost, for it is based in Him
and on Him alone. Grace is completeness in Him,
in the Savior. For in Him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in Him, which is
the head of all principality and power. Grace requires only
the merit of Christ, for there is no merit in any of us. Romans
5 says, for as by one man's disobedience, speaking of Adam, many were made
sinners, so by the obedience of one, speaking of Christ, shall
be made righteous. Grace is the merit of Christ,
meeting all the requirements of God, all the requirements
of the law, therefore lifting the requirements of the law from
his own. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus
Christ our Lord. For sin shall not have dominion
over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace. If
not for the grace of God, there could be no salvation. If not
for the grace of God, there could be no sovereign God. Only in
His willingness to accept Christ and Him crucified, as the payment
for the sin of His own, could this be possible? Only in grace
are we acceptable unto Him. Not one minute thing in us would
cause a high and holy God to even look upon us to accept us
only in His unmerited favor and His alone." And then there's
that attribute of mercy. Translated into Hebrew, the word
is kindness. Translated into Greek, the word
is compassion. Mercy is a form of love determined
by the condition of the recipients. That being the case, we need
a lot of mercy. In our state of suffering and
need, all the while undeserving and unworthy, there is that continuous
need of the Lord's mercy. Illustrated by the child that
is hurt, the first thing they do is run to their parents and
want compassion. That is mercy. We're continuously
wanting mercy. The mercy spoken of in the scripture,
though, is divine mercy. Mercy from a compassionate, loving
savior who showed the ultimate form of mercy, excuse me, in
dying on the cross for his children. Mercy is a result of grace and
love. And in that result, we're obeyed
in the compassion and kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not
that we deserve it. but all in the Savior's love.
The woman with the possessed daughter understood that mercy.
She understood that she was undeserving. She understood that just a small
portion of that mercy was all that she needed, was sufficient.
Then came she and watched him saying, Lord, help me. But he
answered and said, is it not meet to take the children's bread
and to cast it to the dogs? And she said, Truth, Lord, yet
the dogs eat of the crumb which falls from the master's table. All that was required was just
a crumb. That is how great His mercy is.
It is our solace, our relishing, and savoring the love of the
Father for the child. In our distress, in our heartaches,
in our fears, and so much more, there is that boiling up of our
plea for mercy of our Lord. Hear me when I call, as Psalm
says, O God of my righteousness, thou hast enlarged me when I
was in distress. Have mercy upon me and hear my
prayer. In this book of Psalms, certainly
mercy is mentioned more than in any other book of God's holy
word. Just as it was so many times
in this book, it is in our weakness and it is in our inadequacy that
we cry out for our Lord to have mercy. Psalm 62 says, have mercy
upon me, O Lord, for I am weak. O Lord, heal me, for my bones
are hexed. the hatred rendered by those
around us, by the false religionists, the daily contention with those
that believe not the truth, bring us to that cry of mercy. Have
mercy upon me, O Lord. Consider my trouble, which I
suffer of them that hate me, that thou liftest me up from
the gates of death. In that most familiar Psalm,
David writes of what he desires and thrives upon, not the riches
and powers of his kingdom, but of his relationship with the
compassion of God. Surely, goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever. Mercy, like all attributes of
salvation, is everlasting. It is eternal. There has never
been a time when there was no mercy. In Psalms 136, in every
verse, in all 26 verses, it says, His mercy endureth forever. Paul
spoke much of the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ to his letters
to the believers, as he has there in Ephesians 2. But God, who
is rich in mercy for His great love, wherewith He loved us even
when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ,
by grace are ye saved, and hath raised us up together and made
us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. He loved us
in His mercy. Even when we were dead in our
sins, our Lord spoke of that mercy in the mount. Blessed are
the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Mercy is the spiritual
IV that sustains us. It is the kindness and compassion
of our Lord that sustains us and keeps us going every moment
of every day. It is how we survive. in this
sinful world. Most important, it is how we
survive in our sinful self. Praise be to God for that mercy
that endureth forever. How stabilizing to the child
of God are these truths of God's Holy Word. In a world where there
is no black and white anymore, According to man, all is gray.
When the news service report not the truth but slanted words,
they pass their opinion on to the listeners. When it is all
right to lie to get readers or listeners or viewers, we have
the good news. We have God's Word, His promise
that He is in control and there is nothing that happens that
He is not in control of. All we believe is based on His
being the one eternal, true sovereign, truly alone, he can proclaim,
I the Lord, and none else. Heavenly Fathers, we come to
you. We are thankful, Lord, for these scriptures. Certainly to
those that you have called, to those that believe the truth,
they are our solace to our hearts. They make us understand that
there is nothing that we can do. They make us understand that
it was all done through you. They make us understand that
you are totally in control of each and everything that happens
in our lives. And there is nothing that surprises
you, and there's no curves that you can't see around and no hills
that you can't see over. Thank you, Lord, for being I
the Lord and none else. Be with us as we go our way today.
May you keep us. And we pray that you will bring
us back at the next appointed time. Be with Brother Gary and
the services there. May they be blessed and may your
name be glorified and honored. And may you give him safe journey
mercies back tomorrow. In Jesus' precious name we pray.
Amen.