Turn back in your Bibles again
to the book of Revelation. I'm always looking to find Christ
in all the Scriptures. And I'm not only looking to find
Christ, I'm looking to find me. I'm looking to find me. I found me. Sinner. Ungodly. Lost. And I'm also looking
to find us as a church, as the Lord's people, especially as
we are in this world and in this day. So look with me here in
Revelation 3, and here the one that we read about in our reading
in Revelation 1. Revelation 3 and verse 7. And to the angel of the church
in Philadelphia write, These things saith he that is holy,
he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth
and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth. I know thy
works. Behold, I have set before thee
an open door, and no man can shut it. For thou hast a little
strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the
synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, But
do lie. Behold, I will make them to come
and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved
thee. Because thou hast kept the word
of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation,
which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell
upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly. Hold that fast which thou hast,
that no man take thy crown. Him that overcometh will I make
a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more
out And I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city
of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven
from my God. And I will write upon him my
new name, he that hath an ear, Let him hear what the Spirit
saith unto the churches." As I said, I'm always looking to
find us as a church, as a local assembly, in this book. Because as was the case in their
text this morning, these words were written and first sent to
a local church in a place called Philadelphia. But more than that,
they are written to describe and to comfort and encourage
all the Lord's people in every age that was to follow. And I wonder if we can find ourselves
in these verses at least to some measure. He says of this church,
he says, you have kept my word. That is, we pledge oftentimes
that the Word of God will be our only rule of faith and practice. I trust that we have sought in
some way and to a good extent to place the Word of God as the
final standard, the final say of everything that we believe
and that we do. and that we most of all do give
the preaching of the gospel the most prominent place. Because God says through Isaiah,
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth, it shall
not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which
I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
God's Word. The psalmist saying, I will worship
toward thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness
and for thy truth, for thou hast magnified thy word above all
thy name, that we have maintained and exalted and clung to the
Word of God above all things." And I hope also that it can be
said of us also, he says, and you've not denied my name. That is, we've not denied any
aspect of God's character. We speak of His love. but we
also speak of His wrath. We speak of His grace, but we
speak also of His righteousness, that we've not denied any aspect
of His work, the extent of it, how that work accomplishes something
for those it is done for, or any aspect of His glory. And most especially, I trust
that we've not and do not deny any part, any aspect of that
work or that doctrine which is called the doctrine of Christ. That's what I'm interested in.
I'm interested in doctrine. I'm interested in sound doctrine. Because it says that the day
comes when men will not heed sound doctrine, but they'll heap
to themselves teachers having itching ears. But we're interested
in doctrine, most especially the doctrine of Christ. But I thought about it, maybe
this expression, describes us best of all, that is, in ourselves
and most certainly as we appear before this world. He says of
these people at Philadelphia, he says, thou hast little strength,
little strength. And we know and I trust that
we have found ourselves willing and able to confess that of ourselves
we are, as he says, without strength. No strength of our own. And we are, as he describes his
people again and again, his little ones, or as He speaks of them
and calls them little children, or describes them as the little
flock, and even sometimes, ye of little faith." Is that us? Well, the weak and frail and
of little strength, that's who Christ died for. Paul writes
to the Corinthians and he says, "...God hath chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen
the weak things of the world to confound the things which
are mighty." We are weak and small in every way. We have but little strength. I think that could be said of
us individually, and it surely must be said of us as an assembly,
we have little strength physically, we have little strength financially,
intellectually, certainly politically, spiritually, and numerically. We just have little strength. And I thought about it, how the
world always reminds the Lord's Church of this very thing, of
how little our strength is. How weak we appear. How few we seem to be. And it mocks us because of this,
and especially mocks us because our size. We live in a day when
bigger is always better. When the men apply this rule
that if God is blessing something, it has numerically increased
or done something like that, appears bigger, when God refers
to His people. in comparison to the great mass
of humanity as few. Few. When you look at that nation
that represented throughout all the Old Testament, the church
and people of God, when you look at Israel, God Himself said,
you're the least of all people. You're the fewest. When he describes
those in Matthew 7 that go in that straight gate and that narrow
way, he says, few there be that find it. And when he used that
great example of Noah and the ark, when you see what he says
in those verses about Those who actually were brought into the
ark and therefore saved from the flood of God's judgment in
that ark. This is what Peter says, "...once
the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the
ark was a preparing wherein few That is, eight souls were saved
by water. Eight souls. But it was through
the preaching of one, this man that God set apart, to build
that ark by His specifications, and to tell of that coming judgment,
and to warn the generation in which it was being built to flee
from the coming wrath. A man by the name of Noah. Somebody said, Noah didn't have
very many in his Sunday school. And He didn't have painted on
the back of the ark or the front of the ark any of the slogans
that men and women use in our day and say things like, smile,
God loves you. But rather it says that God spared
not the old world, but saved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher
of righteousness. That's what Noah was. He was
a preacher of righteousness, it says, bringing in the flood
upon the world of the ungodly. That's what I hope I am, is a
preacher of righteousness. But these that he describes in
this way, And whatever way that Christ describes us, that's exactly
the way that we are. But these to whom He speaks,
He speaks to this one who is called the angel of the church
at Philadelphia. And we can really get Things
that we read in the Bible, names and terms and words, we can get
really messed up and misguided if we apply what we hear described
by the world, especially the religious world, about these
things and nothing probably more than that name or word angel. What does that word mean? It means messenger. And when we hear it applied to
the Lord Jesus Christ or to His gospel preaching servant, that's
exactly what it means, messenger. The writer of Hebrews says this,
"...for verily he took not on him the nature of angels." Christ
is no angel in that sense of the angels, some of which fell
and some of which did not. He took not on him the nature
of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham. But here
he writes and sends this message, speaks by John, to this angel
of the church in Philadelphia, and that is simply one who speaks
to a body of believers in a location. In other words, a preacher of
the gospel. And the truth is, a messenger,
a messenger, that's what I Hope I am, pray that I am. A messenger
is only a messenger if he speaks about the messenger. That's why Paul said, we preach
Christ and Him crucified. That's why he said, I determined
to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He spoke constantly on, He taught
thoroughly the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because this is what God had
said through Malachi. He said, Behold, I will send
my messenger. and he shall prepare the way
before me. And the Lord whom you seek shall
suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant,
whom ye delight in. Behold, he shall come, saith
the Lord of hosts." In other words, every God-sent messenger
is preaching about and telling about, according to the Scriptures,
the messenger of the covenant. That's Christ. That's the Lord
Jesus Christ. And He speaks here to this church,
and I trust He speaks here also to us, and has a word. to remind us of some things,
and to encourage us in some things, and to encourage us as His people
with this message in this world. That is, if we have an ear to
hear. That's what He says, "...he that
hath an ear," and that's the ear of faith, "...he that hath
an ear, Let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."
And here, as he speaks, he gives this description of his own self,
this angel of the covenant, this messenger of God, God who, it
says, in these last days, has spoken unto us by His Son, by
His gospel, which is the gospel of Christ, He speaks, and He's
the angel in this sense. Do you remember Jacob? When he
was about to bless, as the custom was, Joseph's sons, and all the
other grandsons and everything? Jacob refers to the Messiah,
or to the Lord Jesus Christ as He is. He says, the angel. capital letters. The angel which
redeemed me from all evil. That can only be one. He said,
bless the lads and let my name be named on them and the name
of my fathers Abraham and Isaac and let them grow into a multitude
in the midst of the earth. And he describes himself. Look
down at verse 7. He says, "...these things saith
he," this is the Spirit directing John, "...these things saith
he that is holy." He's holy. I know everybody in this world
If you ask them to give you a one-word description of God, a one-word
description of Jesus Christ, most often in our day, they'll
give you that word L-O-V-E, love. But He says here, He that is
holy. He's holy as God, He's holy as
man, That description given of that One that was born of Mary
is that description wherein He is said to be that holy thing. He is the Holy One of Israel. He is Him that is holy. And this Christ, who the Bible
says, knew no sin, He as such was made sin for us, that we
might be made the righteousness of God in Him. And He's the only
holiness we have. He's holy. For such an our priest
became us who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,
and made higher than the heavens. The one who's talking here, He's
the one that's holy. Not only that, it says, He that
is true. Not much truth in our day, and
since there isn't much truth in our day, there aren't many
people who are true. But Christ is the truth. He's
all the truth. He's described in John 1 as the
true light, in John 6 as the true bread, in John 15 as the
true vine. True means real and genuine. And his gospels call the way
of truth. Somebody asked me yesterday,
they asked me specifically in a group of people, having heard
on some news program a debate, and as a result of that question
they were considering, he asked me, he said, which is Christianity,
a religion or a philosophy? I told him it's neither one.
It allows for no rival. It's not a matter up for debate.
Christ is the truth. He is the way. He is the life. There's nothing up for discussion.
He's not a philosophy. And when men speak of Christianity,
they're speaking of what religion has come to be in our day, where
people just name Christ. But you don't find that in this
book. As a matter of fact, what you find is, where the name Christian
is used, it's used by the enemies of God. Spoken of His people
in contempt of the one they believe on, the one that they follow.
But he's not only the truth, he's true to his people. That's
what the Lord's writing about here. It's like the way it speaks
of his omnipotence in other places. It says in one place, say to
the heathen, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. But he says, say to
Zion, thy God reigneth. Big difference, isn't it? Big
difference. But He is true to keep all His
own by His power, and He's true to bless them as He's promised,
and He's true to be with them to the end, and He's true to
watch over them and protect them, and true to deal with all their
enemies. He's true. He's faithful and
He's true. And then he tells us this about
the one who is speaking to him here. He says, "...and he hath
the key of David." There are many prophecies in which David
was said to be one who would rule on the throne over all the
earth. And we know that the man David
did not actually do that, but the one that was being spoken
of was that one that David as a king is a picture and type
of, the Lord Jesus Christ. He has the key of David. And if you notice there, it doesn't
say he has a key, or he has some keys, but he has the keys. That means the one who is the
key holder, as we call them in our day, that's the one who's
in charge, that's the one who's the responsible person, that's
the one who's the possessor and has authority, if he has the
key. And David typifies Christ. as king. And the king signifies
his dominion and his sovereignty over all things. You say, well
don't get too carried away with this here preacher. Turn back
to Isaiah chapter 22 and listen to what is said here. Isaiah chapter 22 And look down
at verse 22. Here is a man called Eliakim
who is likewise, obviously, a picture of Christ. And what is said here
has to do with the Lord Jesus Christ. God says, "...in the
key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder." What
does that mean? His shoulder? That means he's
got the weight and the burden and the responsibility of all
that this key represents. "...I'll lay upon his shoulder,
so he shall open, and none shall shut, and he shall shut, and
none shall open." In other words, what he's saying here, in our
text this morning is, though we're small and weak and frail,
our King and our Savior has infinite dominion and power over all things. And that means that Christ as
He is in His glorious person, And as such, having done this
glorious work of righteousness, everything will be brought to
pass, and especially everything concerning His people on this
earth shall be brought to pass because of Him, who He is, and
what He's done." Now, how much power does He have? And you know
this business of saying that Christ can do this and Christ
could do this if He wanted to, that's nothing. But when He speaks
of His power, He does so in that 7th verse of Revelation 3 in
such a way as to make us know and be sure. What is the extent
of His right, His authority, His dominion over everything
and everybody in this world. Well, verse 7 says, this Holy
One, this One who is true, this One who has the key of David,
He uses that key. He uses it. It says, He opens
and no man shuts. Well, you say, well, preacher,
what about free will? What free will? He opens and
no man shuts. What about if this one does that? Or that one does this? Or another
one does this? Or what about what's going on
outwardly in this world right now? He opens. and no man shuts." That's exactly
it. Let me read you a verse out of
Job chapter 12. It says, "...behold, he breaketh
down, and it cannot be built again. He shutteth up a man,
and there can be no opening." No opening. He opens, and no
man shuts. And He sets before us a picture,
evidently of a door that has a lock on it, and the key is
in the hands of the Sovereign Christ, and He opens that door,
and if He opens it, no man shuts it. You think about that. Because
the first thing that comes to my mind is the door of salvation. You see, rather than being painted
in Scripture as some weak and pathetic Savior who can only
do what men allow Him to do and save who men allow Him to save,
here He is, He opens that door and no man shuts. As a matter
of fact, He's the door Himself. He's the door Himself. As a matter
of fact, the Father, when He prays to the Father, He said,
You've given Him power over all flesh, that I may give eternal
life to as many as Thou hast given Me. Isn't that heaven the
key? He says in John's Gospel, I am
the door by Me. Preachers say, well, Christ is
the door. If you'll only put your hand
on the door, He's standing there knocking. Just turn the key,
turn the door and let yourself in. That's what it is. No. He
says, I am the door by Me. If any man enter in, he shall
be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture. He determines
who will be saved. He determined that in old eternity. He said, I'll have mercy on whom
I'll have mercy. I'll be gracious to whom I'll
be gracious. He's going to save His people
and He's going to save them in every sense of that word. He's
going to save them all from their sin. He's going to save them
all from themselves. He's going to save them all from
Satan. He's going to save them all from
this present evil world. He's going to save them in every
sense. He's the one who opens that door
of salvation and nobody can shut it. Aren't you glad of that?
If it's left in any way to any of the poor sons and daughters
of Adam to save themselves, if we had just a little tiny key
like they used to put on those jewelry boxes to get any part
of it, we'd all perish. Our comfort is not in our ability
to keep ourselves or save ourselves. Our comfort is looking to this
Christ in His power and glory. And He opened that door, it says
in Hebrews 10, by a new and living way which He hath consecrated
for us through the veil. That is to say, His flesh, that
way to God, the way to God's presence, the door of salvation,
He opened up. He opened it by His bloodshed. He opened it by His righteousness. That's the only thing that could
open that door, and nobody can shut it. It's the same with the
heart. He opens the heart, and no man
can shut it. We always hear, over my lifetime
I've heard it, said people say, well, just open up your heart,
give your heart to God. Our hearts, He says, "...are
deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Desperately
wicked. We can debate with God and call
it reasoning. We can do all these things. We can sin, we can lie, we can
cheat, we can do a lot of things. But we can't open our hearts.
But thank God, as it says in Acts 16, concerning a certain
woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira,
which worshipped God, when she heard us, Paul says, whose heart
the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken
of Paul. Now she thought she knew God. You remember Christ said of the
Pharisees, He said, you compass land and sea to make one proselyte,
and when you make that one proselyte, you made him two-fold more the
child of hell than he was before. What does that mean? That means
that those who are brought into false religion, such as the Pharisees'
works and self-righteousness, he says, they're two-fold more
the child of hell than they were before that. I know they're a
lot harder to be around. How in the world was the heart
of a man like Saul of Tarsus open? He thought he knew God. He taught people about God. He sat at the feet of the greatest
religious teacher of his day. He was on his way full of zeal,
zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. He was on his way
to Damascus to bind men and women and cast them into prison for
what? preaching and worshipping Christ. You think he was seeking the
Lord? He was seeking to kill anybody that had anything to
do with the Lord Jesus. He stood by and held the coats,
not to soil his own hands, but to hold the clothes of those
who in that religious wickedness stoned Stephen to death. We've got lots of family, and
we've got lots of friends, And for the most part of them, I
do believe, they are in some way touched with this religion
without God, and content in it, and so satisfied with it. How
in the world will they ever, if they ever are brought to a
knowledge of Christ, how will that happen? If God purposes
to save them, He'll open their The man I told you about that
asked me that question, he looked me in the eye, and he called
my name, and he asked me that question before I could even
answer a whole bunch of religious people around him. I mean, they're
sure, they'll cuss one breath and talk about Jesus in the next
breath, but they're Christians. They'll tell a big pile of lies,
and you know it, one breath, and then they'll quote you a
verse of scripture. They wouldn't even let me respond
before they were already telling them. One fellow said, Jesus
is the Son of God. That's true. It's not the truth,
but it's true. The hope of all our children,
our families, our friends, And there are some people in this
world, there are some people who deny this, but this is the
truth. I just love them. There's a lot
of people in this world that I really like. I mean, they've
got good personalities, they're outwardly kind, they're not obnoxious,
they're just nice people. But they're stone-cold hardened
to the gospel. How will they ever be saved?
if the one who opens and no man shuts opens the door of their
heart." He says that he opens and no man shuts, and that surely
has to do with the Scriptures, doesn't it? This book, this book
is the written Word of God. It doesn't contain the Word of
God, it is the Word of God. But it is a closed book to every
fallen, blind son and daughter of Adam. They cannot see the
message of this book, they cannot understand, and neither do they
like the things of Scripture. You say, well, these preachers
have got a Bible. Why in the world don't they preach the Scriptures,
the Bible? Because folks don't want to hear
it by nature. They don't want to hear it. Ah, we'll have a
cantata, and we'll have a picnic, and we'll have a singles group,
and we'll have this and that and the other, and we'll do all
the... But not the Scriptures. And even those poor disciples.
They just, after the Lord was crucified, they're just hanging
around and... The fact that they do not really
have a true understanding of who He is and what He was actually
doing on that cross is made manifest by the fact that they're gathered
up somewhere and they're feeling sorry for themselves and all
that. But then He appeared. to some on the Damascus road,
and they were brought to say later, they said, did not our
heart burn within us while He talked with us by the way, and
while He opened to us the Scriptures? He opened to them the Scriptures.
He said, these things, whether it's in the Psalms, or whether
it's in the books of the Law, or whether it's in the Prophets,
they all have to do with Me. Then to a larger group later
on, He came into their midst and He revealed Himself, and
it says, then opened He their understanding that they might
understand the Scriptures. See, we have to have a revelation.
We can't just sit down in this book and decide one day we're
going to find out about God, and by our searching find Him
out. He has to reveal Himself through the Scriptures to us.
He has to open that door. And when He opens the Scriptures
to us and our hearts and minds to the Scriptures, and we behold
Him, That doesn't mean that we understand everything, every
verse in this book. It just means that we understand
that Christ is all, that salvation is of the Lord, that it is by
His grace, and that it is through His sufferings and death, and
nobody can change your mind. I'm telling you. I'm 65 years
old. I hipped and hopped and skipped
and jumped from one thing into the other all my days. And some of Betty's kin, I believe,
said when they found out that I was preaching, they said, he
won't stick with that. He's into this, he's into that,
and he's the other. They were right. When the Lord
Jesus revealed the truth to me, when he gave me a measure of
understanding of the Scriptures, By His grace, come what may,
come some new revelation or some new scientific discovery of this
or that, I'm not changing. This is the truth. This is the
God of the Bible. This is Christ and His salvation. You see, He even has to open
up the door of witness. We don't just... I was in a gas
station the other morning. A fellow turned away from the
coffee machine, turned to me, stuck out his hand and shook
me and said, Brother? Brother in Christ? I wanted to
say to him what an old preacher said to a fellow that asked him
that. Ask him, are you a Christian?
He said, if I wasn't, what could you do about it? That's not witness. As a matter of fact, Paul at
a place called Ephesus where it was so bad that he described
it like this, he said, I fought the wild beasts at Ephesus. Ephesus was the home of the shrine
of the goddess Diana and he had all those people making money
off of selling the little trinkets of Diana. That's really where
it all gets down to, you know, don't you? That's what religion
in this world is all about. That's why all these preachers
are so zealous and everything about things that are contrary
to the Scriptures, because they make big profits out of it. He
said, a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there
are many adversaries. Well, Paul, if there are a lot
of adversaries, why don't you just give it up and go somewhere
there's not a conflict going on. He said, "'Cause the Lord
has opened the door of witness, and He faked your door.'" You
might remember at that place called Corinth, Paul evidently
was afraid. Now that was a wicked place. He's down there in Corinth, and
there's all this rejection, and all this opposition to him, and
what he's preaching, that the Lord visits him in a vision in
the night, and he tells him to keep on preaching this gospel. He says, fear not, for I have
much people in this city. You're going to preach it, and
though the masses may reject it, this sheep, and that sheep,
and the other sheep, they're going to believe it. And when
I open the door, Nobody can shut it. Nobody can shut it. And then
finally it's obvious that he'll be the one and is the one who
opens the door into eternal glory. One day he opened it up to let
Saul of Tarsus get a little peek, I mean let Stephen get a little
peek while they were stoning him. He just opened the doors
of heaven, let him see it. And He's going to open the door
of blessing, He's going to open the door of all these things,
and bring all His people into His holy presence glorified. But then briefly, the other side
of that coin is this, it says, He shuts and no man opens. If I'm learning anything in my
old age, is the things that we plan and the things that we want
to do, at some point, it just becomes obvious it ain't going
to happen. You ever reach those points,
you know? Well, we planned this, we're going to do this, we're
going to go there. But it just becomes obvious it's just not
going to happen. Why? Because he shuts and no
man opens. And if it's obviously not going
to happen, he shut it. He's the key, he has the key
over all things. And rather than just fighting
against it and beating your head against the door, like we're
so prone to do, and so sad, so disappointed, so ill with everything. Nothing ever goes my way. If
you're in Christ, everything has always gone your way. You
understand that? Everything. Everything. And if He shut the door on something,
that means it's for your good. Spiritually, maybe even physically,
but certainly eternally. He shuts the door of grace. Knowing
His family entered into that ark, Who does it say, shut that
door? It says, the Lord shut them in. And when He shut that door, and
in mercy shut them in, He shut a multitude of people out. That's awful. It is, but praise
His name for His wisdom and His glory. Gospel age that we live in one
day. He's going to shut it down to
the end. He's going to close her down.
We live in the last days. But it's coming a time. He describes
it in Matthew 25. He says, that those foolish virgins,
it says, and while they went to buy, the bridegroom came,
and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage,
and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other
virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and
said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not. Watch therefore,
for you know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of
Man cometh. We don't decide where the gospel
goes. In every age, there have been
those who truly and sincerely sought to go to preach the gospel
here or send the message there, just like it was with Paul and
the apostles. It says they went in one direction,
surely the Lord would have us go preach there, and the Spirit
forbid them. They started in another direction,
and it says the Spirit forbid them to go there. And they said,
well, we don't know what the Lord wants us to do. They lay
down and went to sleep. Paul had a dream or a vision
in the night. The Lord visited him and showed
him a man of Macedonia saying, come over and help us. And then
he'll shut that door finally, like he did between Abraham and
Lazarus and that rich man. And that rich man called out
for Abraham to send Lazarus for just a drop of water to cool
his tongue. Abraham said, he can't come.
Can't come. You can't come here? He can't
go there. And beside all this between us
and you, there is a great gulf fixed, so that they which would
pass from hence to you cannot, neither can they pass to us that
would come from thence." He shuts it, and no man opens it. There's no purgatory. There's
no temporary holding cell. When He binds up and casts into
outer darkness all with their weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth, that door is closed. He shuts, and no man opens. Ah, we're of little strength.
But our King is the King of kings. He's holy, He's true, and He
has the key. He's the King with the key. He
holds it in His hand. He watches over His people. saves
all his people, and he gives him what he calls the keys to
the kingdom. What is that? That's the truth
of God's grace. That on the basis of what God
says and promises in Christ, on the authority of God, in such
statements as this, he that believes on Him, Christ shall never be
ashamed." All believing and trusting the true Christ, they shall be
saved. Based on what he says, and salvation
the way he says, you can say, looking to Christ, pleading his
blood, trusting him alone, You shall be saved from wrath through
Him. I couldn't tell you you're going
to be rich and famous and healthy all your days, live 150 years. I can't tell you you're going
to prosper outwardly or anything like that, that you won't have
troubles. But I can tell you this, salvation's in Christ. He's the one refuge. Look to
Him. Cast off all hope in yourself,
all hope in your religious past experiences, you'll be saved. Father, we thank You this day
for Your darling Son and our Savior. Give us fresh glimpses
by faith of our Lord as You have set Him forth in Your Word. He
is our salvation. He is our provider. He is our
King. And He rules. Our God rules. And rules and reigns for our
good and His glory. We pray and thank You in His
name. Amen.