As far as I'm concerned, you
men can sing that song as often as you want. I love that song. Well done. Alright, if you would
open your Bibles again with me to Philippians chapter 3. For lack of a better title, I
titled the message this morning, False and True Worship. And Lord
willing, I want us to see some marks of false worship. and I
want us to see the characteristics of true worship. And I want to
be very careful how we look at these things and our attitude
in these things. I don't want us just to see the
error in the false religion that's all around us so that we look
down our noses at them and feel very superior to them in our
knowledge and different things. I want us to see these marks
of both true worship and false worship so that we know Are we
worshiping God or not? I want to know, am I a true worshiper
of God? I want you to know, are you a
true worshiper of God? If we're just playing games here,
I want to know it. So we can switch and start worshiping
God. You know, I know that there are
many false prophets going out into the world. But you know,
false prophets also creep into the church on earth. And maybe
they're not preachers often that they are, but you know, they
don't have to be a preacher up here behind this podium. They
could be somebody out in the pew who influences people, who's
trying to influence people and get them to look away from Christ,
to get them to look to Christ plus something else. And I tell
you that they can be very difficult to spot because they're disguised. They're not just doing this openly. They're wolves. dressed in sheep's
clothing. They're trying to fool people.
You know, they pretend to be this sticky, sweet friends, you
know, but really they're enemies of the cross who love self. They
don't love you or God. This is a thing of self that
they love, what they're trying to promote. They pretend to be
the servants of God. They use, you know, words from
the Bible like we do, but really they're servants of Satan. I
mean, this is the method of Satan. Be sly. Be tricky. Be careful how you word things
to get people to look away from Christ. Now, don't just tell
them, oh, look away from Christ. It's more subtle than that. They're
tricky. They pretend to preach righteousness.
And they do it by being all moral and all upright. But really,
all that is is preaching the law, preaching words. See, these
men and women, they're not openly denying Christ, you wouldn't
fall for that, would you? But they're adding something.
They're adding some behavior. They're trying to get you to
conform. They say, well, you know, you can't do that because
a believer never do that. And you have to do this because
all believers do that, you know. When somebody says that, you
mark my words what that is. It's a mixture of grace and works.
That's exactly what it is. And if you think about it, Mixing
grace and works, now you know this, mixing grace and works
totally denies the person and work of Christ, doesn't it? Salvation,
Paul told us in the book of Romans, it's either all works or all
grace. One or the other, they can't be mixed. But when somebody
mixes grace and works, you know the other thing they're doing?
They're denying the whole word of God. They're denying our spiritual
deadness in Adam. If you can do something, a good
work to please God, to make yourself more saved or whatever. That's
denying your spiritual deadness in Adam. It's denying, you just
go back to Genesis chapter three, you deny the whole thing. Well then you're denying everything
after it too. Salvation is not a mixture of grace and works,
it's by grace alone. And these people that try to
pull you away, they're gonna be subtle. And apparently, men like
that have started to creep around the church at Philippi, And Paul's
writing to warn the church about them and to warn us about them.
And I don't want to just be warning us about them. I'm going to take
this warning to ourselves so that we guard against this turning
our religion into just an outward show, an outward form of outward
religion, outward ceremonies, that our religion becomes all
outward so people see how religious we are and we lost the heart
of it. God's worship from the heart, from the heart. God looks
on the heart. And if our religion becomes all
outward, I'm telling you, we've missed Christ. And our souls are in great peril.
So verse one, Paul says, chapter three, Philippians. Finally,
my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you,
to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it's safe. Now Paul
says, it's not grievous for me to say the same things over and
over to you again, just over and over and over. God's servants
repeat themselves a whole lot, a whole lot. When I first became
pastor, one thing Don Fortner told me, he said, you know, you're
gonna have to work at this at keeping fresh. You can't just
say the exact same phrases, you know, over and over and over
again. You got to find a way, you know, to keep this thing
fresh. But we just repeat ourselves a whole lot. And you know why
that is? Because there's just one gospel.
There's just one gospel message. We're preaching the same message
every service from a different text. And I had prepared these
notes before I went to the conference in Lexington, but this just stood
out to me, how we were just, we repeat ourselves. The conference
opened up where Gabe Stoniker preached. Chris Cunningham got
right up behind him, and Chris said, well, Gabe stole one of
my points. Gabe stole one of my points,
too. And then the next day, Brother Marvin Stonker and David Edmondson
preached, and they said a lot of the same things. Well, Gabe
already stole one of my points, and I got up and preached. I
stole one of Greg Amquist's points coming up behind me. We had the
same points from different passages of Scripture. We're saying the
same things. Because there's just one Savior.
There's just one message that declares them. And I tell you,
I loved hearing the same things over and over again. I loved
it that first night when Gabe and Chris said the same thing. Brother Henry told me one time
he would have the men come up and read the scripture and lead
in prayer. He told me, he said, now if you ever want to make
comments on one of these passages, just go ahead and make some comments.
I said, Henry, I'm not going to make a comment on something
you're getting ready to preach on. He said, well, that's all
right. He said, you say it, and I'll just come behind you and
amen it. That's what those men were doing. One of them said
it, and Chris came behind him and amened it. I loved it. It's
just a confirmation of our faith. And that repetition of the gospel
is good for us. It really is. It's good for us.
It's the way we learn. I know that's the way I learn
best, by repetition. Going over and over and over.
That's the way I learned. And the repetition of the gospel
is a safeguard for our souls. It's a safeguard to keep us looking
to Christ alone. It's sad, but in this flesh,
what are we doing? Constantly strained, aren't we?
Constantly strained. And we need to be constantly
told, look to Christ. Here he is, look to him. Here
we need to be constantly reminded of that. And a believer loves
it, don't we? We need to be constantly reminded,
oh, stay on the straight and narrow path. This thing of salvation,
this thing of religion, this thing of worship, it's Christ
alone. Don't be bringing nothing else
with you. It's Christ alone. It's good to be reminded of that.
Doesn't it help your heart? You've heard the gospel a long,
long time, many times. What thrills your heart the most? It's that simple message being
pointed to Christ again. And you say, there he is. Oh,
it's safe for us to hear these things over and over and over
again. So first, now Paul says, it's not grievous for me to remind
you of this and warn you of this again, that false religion, not
only is all around us, false religion is in the heart of this
flesh. We carry it with us everywhere we go. So first I want to see
some marks of false religion so that we can avoid these things,
be warned about them. Number one, false prophets are
dogs. Verse two, Paul says, beware
of dogs. Now Paul calls these false prophets
and influencers, you know, in the pew are talking to you after
and trying to, you know, get you to, to trust something that
you do plus Christ. They're dogs. Paul calls them
dogs. Now, maybe that's not as much
of a derogatory term in our day. In Paul's day, this is a derogatory
term, calling them a dog. But you know, that's the way
scripture describes them. Let me read you a few passages. Psalm
22, verse 16. For dogs have compassed me. The
assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. They pierced my hands and
my feet. The Savior said, dogs have done that. Proverbs 26 verse
11, as a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to
his folly. Isaiah 56 verse 10, his watchmen
are blind. These are false prophets. They're
all ignorant. They're all dumb dogs. He doesn't
mean that they don't know anything and that they're unintelligent.
They cannot bark. They don't have anything to say.
They're sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber, Yea, they're
greedy dogs, which can never have enough. They're shepherds
that cannot understand. They all look to their own way,
everyone for his gain from his quarter. Now that's a dog. And this is pretty graphic and
pretty disgusting, but the word dog in all those verses and the
word dog normally translated in the Old Testament means a
male prostitute. They're selling their message
to the highest bidder. They tell people what they want
to hear. They try to find out what is
it that people want to hear, and then tell them about it. I read an article about a, I'll
tell you, Apollo Baptist Church. They finally closed the doors.
They were just down to two or three members, and they had to
sell the building, close the church. And a guy was writing
an article about this. And he said, here's the reason
that they closed. They lost contact with what the
people in their surrounding community wanted to hear. We're not here
to tell people what they want to hear. We're here to tell the
truth. If you believe Christ, it'll
thrill your soul. How horrible would it be for
somebody to go to hell because we didn't tell them the truth?
How horrible would it be Eric to have the opportunity to stand
here and preach and tell folks about Christ and not tell them
the truth. Not to lie on God. That's what scares us about coming
up here. Afraid of what I'm gonna say.
Bob Coffey said, the fear in this is this. The new man's afraid
of what the old man's gonna say. It's in us, isn't it? See these
dogs, they're selling their message to the highest bidder and when
they do that they're selling their own soul. They should be
called a derogatory term, shouldn't they? These dogs, they're not
sweet family pets that we love. Last weekend I stayed with a
couple, they got this ginormous dog. He's still a puppy really,
but he's enormous. And buddy, he and me are just
best friends. He thinks he's a little dog. He wants to sit
on your lap, and we're just loving on each other. And I always tell
him, Louie, get off him. I said, no, don't. That's not what this dog that
we love. We're not talking about a family
pet. We're talking about a mad dog who will bite and devour
and tear people down rather than build them up in Christ. These
are dogs who return to their own works and try to get you
to do the same thing. And I tell you what, that's just
as gross as a dog eating its own vomit. Ever seen a dog do
that? First time my wife, Jan, saw
one of our dogs do that, she was so grossed out. You know,
is this what dogs do? That's so gross. It's more gross than that, more
disgusting than that. that we would ever turn away
from the free grace of God Almighty and go back to our own works.
That's more gross than eating your own vomit. They're greedy
dogs. They're trying to get from you
rather than give to you. Build you up in Christ and give
to you the word of God and to lead you to the green pastures
of God's word and let your grace there. Oh, there's plenty. Let's go into God's word. There's
plenty of green grass for all the God's sheep to eat. Let's
just go graze. Instead of doing that, they're interested in building
a big ministry for themselves, a big name and a big following
for themselves, rather than simply feeding the sheep that God has
given them, no matter how many that they are. You know, I told
you to open the service. I'm just excited to be here this
morning, come back and preach to you all. I was talking to
some of the men about that down there. Greg Amquist said, me
too. He said, I just can't wait to
get back home. There's just no place else I would rather preach. And it doesn't matter if there's
just a handful or there's a great big bunch. It's the sheep that
God's called together here. And instead of being happy, just
being honored. What an honor. God's given us
to feed his sheep. Trying to get more. Trying to
get more. Trying to build a big ministry. I'm telling you, when
you do that, all you're going to do is build a goat farm. I want to preach
to God's sheep. Let's find God's sheep. In the
New Testament, the word dog almost always translated means this,
an impure man, an impure man. Well, the only way we can be
pure is in Christ, isn't it? Christ alone. But these men,
they're trying to add something to Christ and it makes them impure. And we need to be reminded of
this often. You know, people do things that
we may not like. False religion or all these other
places, you know. Maybe somebody without meaning
to offends me here. We need to be reminded that don't
become a dog that bites and devours instead of build somebody up
in Christ. You want to build somebody up in Christ, forgive
him for Christ's sake. Just overlook him. Just overlook
that thing, you know, and look to Christ together. We need to
be reminded of this so we don't become a greedy dog instead of
a generous giver to generously help one another. We need to
be reminded often so we don't become impure, that our hope
and our confidence is in Christ and Christ alone. And we don't
start going back eating our own vomit, our own works. All right,
number two, those in false religion are evil workers. Paul said,
you beware of dogs and beware of evil workers. Now look over
Matthew chapter seven. I'm sure this is where Paul got
it from. He got it directly from the Lord
because the Lord called these people evil workers. This is what the Lord says in
verse 23 of Matthew chapter 27. Well, look at verse, verse 22,
21. Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into
the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my father,
which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day,
Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied my name and I name of cast out
devils and I named on many wonderful works. And then while I profess
unto them, I never knew you depart from me. ye that work iniquity. Now you'll notice the Lord didn't
say that they did not preach in his name. He did not say he
didn't cast out devils. He didn't say he didn't do many
wonderful works. He said, you did all those things
and you're an evil worker. You did them and you're an evil
worker because you're trusting in them. You're trusting them
to save you. You're trusting in them to add
to your righteousness instead of trusting Christ alone. That's
an evil worker. And an evil worker tries to put
people under the burden of the law, to get you to act like them,
to get you to, you know, they know you can't keep all the law,
but let's pick out two or three of my favorite ones, you know,
the ones that I think I can keep the best outwardly, and you all
got to do it too. Putting that burden on people
is an evil worker. Salvation is not us doing something
for God. With all of our religious activity,
salvation Is God doing something for us and God doing something
in us? Salvation is the work of God.
It's the gift of God. And all you and me can do is
receive it, receive it as a free gift. And it is an evil work. The salvation is the work of
God. It's an evil work to make salvation dependent on the work
of a man. If salvation is the work of Christ
alone, nothing could be more evil than saying, really, it's
a work of man. is denying the sufficiency of
Christ. It's denying the glory of Christ.
It's denying the success of Christ. It's to say that Christ alone
is not enough. It's an evil work for men to make even .00001%
of salvation, something the man does. It's all Christ and all
the glory and all the credit belongs to him. And to take any
of it away from him is an evil work. And we need to be reminded
of that. I hope you do good works. I hope
you are active in looking for ways to help one another, looking
for ways to help this ministry, looking for the ways to help
promote the gospel of Christ here and in other places. I hope
you do those things. We ought to, shouldn't we? But
don't trust in them. Don't think that that makes you
more saved than somebody else. If we start trusting in them,
that's what makes them an evil word. And we need to be reminded
every single time we come to service, Trust Christ alone is
him alone. Then number three, people in
false religion or what Paul calls the concision. He says, beware
of the concision. Somebody I read said Paul made
up a new word there. The word concision means to cut
up and to, to mutilate, mutilate. And what Paul's talking about
their circumcision under the old Testament law. But just like
the rest of the Old Testament law, circumcision never saved
anybody. Never once. All circumcision
was was an outward token of God's covenant with Abraham. It was
a token in the flesh of God's covenant with Abraham. It's just
an outward physical picture of the new birth. That's all it
is. Just like the sacrifice of the Passover lamb. That never
saved anybody, did it? The sacrifice of the Passover
lamb is just a picture of the sacrifice of Christ. That's how
God put away the sin of his people and allowed him to pass over
us. It's the blood of Christ. The Passover land pictured that.
Physical circumcision is just a picture of the new birth. And
I'll show you that here in a minute. But now when Christ came, he
suffered and died, raised again, ascended back on high. The law
was done away with. The law was finished. The Savior
said, it is finished. One of the things he meant was
law. My people are finished with it because Christ fulfilled it. He fulfilled all of it for his
people. And now we don't need all those types and pictures
of the Old Testament law because we have the person. All those
things pointed to Christ, we have the person. So we can put
the pictures away, can't we? You know, being circumcised,
and this is what people were doing. They were coming and saying,
oh, yes, absolutely yes, you're saved by grace. Absolutely. Oh,
you're saved by the death of Christ, by his blood. That's
the way you're seeing it. But you still have to be circumcised
to be part of the covenant. You still have to be circumcised
to be saved. Being circumcised in order to
be saved doesn't make a person righteous at all. Matter of fact,
the Apostle Paul said it makes you a debtor to the whole law.
If you're going to do this one thing to please God, now you're
a debtor to the whole law. And when we do that, all that
does is mutilate the body. And isn't that true of the whole
law? When we try to keep the law, to make God happy with us,
to earn a righteousness, we don't make ourselves righteous. We
don't make God more happy with us. We don't make ourselves more
acceptable. All we do is mutilate our souls by cutting our souls
off from salvation in Christ alone. When we try to keep the
law in order to earn a righteousness, we mutilate our souls by cutting
ourselves off from Christ our righteousness. And we need to
be reminded of this often, so we don't ever forget this. God is not worshipped with men's
hands. He's not worshipped in physical things. That's what
the Lord told the woman at the well there. Well, you know, yeah,
she said, well, we think y'all are worshipped in this mountain.
Y'all think y'all are worshipped in Jerusalem. And the Lord told
her, the place isn't the issue. The place is not the issue. God
is spirit. He's worshipped in spirit. And
don't think that this thing about God being worshiped in places
and things with men's hands is done away with and all that applied
to the Jews over there. It's alive and well. A man told
me this recently. I was floored when I heard it.
He told me, well, I chose this certain church to attend because
of who the pastor was 20 years ago. Now if you hadn't noticed,
he's not there no more. All that is is worship in a place. That's all it is. And God's not
gonna bless that, because God's worshiped from the heart, not
in form and ceremony. All right, enough of that. It
had to be covered, but enough of that. Now let me give you
something to take home with you that'll make your heart happy. Here's the marks or the characteristics
of true religion. And you'll notice each of these
things, we can only have them, if God puts them in it. We're
completely dependent on Him. Number one is this, true religion
is heart worship. Verse three, for we are the circumcision,
which worship God in the spirit. You know, Paul says we're the
circumcision, this is what he means. God's people, believers,
they're the ones who've been born again. They've been born
again with a new heart and a new nature, and we worship God from
that heart. Now let me show you that in Romans
chapter two. Every believer has experienced
this inward work of grace in the heart. When we talk about
a believer having a new heart, a new man, a new nature, and
you got two natures in one body, every believer automatically
understands it. You could say, yeah, that's my
experience, this flesh and the spirit, you know, fighting with
each other. Every believer has experienced
this inward work of grace. Sometimes scripture refers to
it as spiritual resurrection. In second Corinthians five or
17, Paul called it a new creation. If any man be in Christ Jesus,
he's a new creation, brand new creature. And here Paul calls
it Romans chapter two, the circumcision of the heart. Look at verse 28
for he's not a Jew, which is one outwardly. Neither is that
circumcision, which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew,
a true Jew, part of spiritual Israel, which is one inwardly. And circumcision is that of the
heart, in the spirit and not in the letter, whose praise is
not of men, but of God. The circumcision of the heart
is the cutting away of the filth of the flesh. It's the cutting
away of us trusting the vomit of our works and having Christ
formed in the heart. That's why Paul said, I travail
to Christ be formed in you. this inward work of grace. The
circumcision of the heart is to have our heart broken before
God and to be given a new heart, a soft heart, a warm heart that
loves God and believes God. Your fleshly circumcision was
just an outward token that a man's part of this covenant, the nation
of Israel. The circumcision of the heart,
the new birth, That's a token too, but it's an inward token. It's an inward token that a person
is a believer. It's an inward work only God
can perform, and only God can see it. It's in the heart, but
that's where God looks. And I never thought about this
before, but I read this this week. The circumcision of the
flesh is permanent, isn't it? Once that's done, there's no
going back. Well, the new birth is permanent too. Once you've
been born again, there's no going back to the law. The new man
just won't do it. That new heart will always believe
God. In every circumstance, in every
situation, that heart will believe God and love God and trust God. And just like our brother Peter,
we're going to fall from time to time in the flesh. We'll have
weak faith, but that new heart God gives will never let us fall
away. We'll stumble, but we won't fall
away from God and return to the vomit of our own works. The new
man can't stomach it. That new heart that God gives,
it can and it does worship God publicly. It worships God privately. It'll worship God when you're
on a mountaintop. And it'll worship God when you're
in a valley. That new heart worships God because God Almighty speaks
to that heart by the preaching of the word. He applies it to
our hearts. Now that's a gift, isn't it?
That God would give us a heart that would believe him and love
him. That's true worship. Number two, true religion is
worshiping God in the spirit. Paul says, we are the circumcision
which worship God in the spirit, in the spirit. True worship,
It's not something that we do so other men see us and are impressed
with our worship. True worship is seeking to see
God and to hear from God. Might God have a message for
me this morning? True worship is seeking a message
from God. True worship's not what I do
or what I say. True worship is hearing God speak
from his word. It's not even hearing what the
preacher has to say about God's word. It's not seeing what the
commentaries have to say about God's word. I don't know if this
is original with Greg Yelmquist. You know, I were talking, he's
made this statement the other day. Boy, you got all these commentaries
and they're awful wordy. And Greg said, but isn't the
word of God a good commentary in those commentaries? Explains
a lot, doesn't it? True worship is just hearing
what God says from his word, plainly, simply, and unvarnished. True worship is, it's in the
heart. It's not so other people can see us, and it's not done
with physical aids. You know, it's something that
makes us feel more religious, you know. You know, we don't
have crosses. We don't have stained glass windows,
you know, And a lot of times those stained glass windows,
you know, they have, oh, that's Peter and that's Paul. I guess
that makes the flesh feel, you know, more pious or more religious
or something, you know, makes us feel, you know, Peter's up
here in this stained glass window looking down at me, you know,
better sit still. That's not true worship. All
that does is make the flesh feel good. True religion is not smoke
and mirrors. It's not psychological tricks.
It's not getting the mind in this certain kind of haze. True
religion is worshiping God in the heart when we hear his word. All we need to worship God is
his word. We can meet in a barn. We can
meet in a field. We can have this building burnt
down. Tell you what we'll do. We'll
have a big old tent meeting. We'll get a big tent. We'll have a tent meeting.
We don't need a building or a bunch of hubbub going around. We just
need the Word of God. That's all we need. True worship
is not having the right order of service to make me feel good
about what I'm doing. Judas had that, didn't he? Judas
had that. And he denied the Lord. True
worship, this thing, it's in the heart. It's in the attitude.
It's submitting. It's submitting to God and bowing
at his feet. And whatever he does is right.
Whatever he does is right. True worship is not a head knowledge
of the truth. Bro. Henry, you say it's going
to go through the head to the heart. You know, I know you got
to understand what I'm saying before you can believe it. But,
but salvation and true worship is not a head knowledge of the
truth. It's not only a head knowledge.
Demas had that. He forsook it. True worship is
not in what I do or what I don't do. The Pharisees had that and
they perished in their, in their self-righteousness. True worship,
I'm telling you it's an attitude. It's a submission of heart to
trust Christ. I submit, I submit to the righteousness
of God. I give up trusting in anything
that I've ever done, I submit. I trust Christ as my righteousness.
It's a submission of the heart to trust the Lord to save me
without me helping Him at all. Now that's a blessing God gives
His people. of worship that bows and submits to him. I'm telling
you, we're not gonna worship until we bow. One of the best
definitions you'll find of worship is in that leper that came to
our Lord and he bowed. And the scripture says he worshiped
and said, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. He didn't
worship because the Lord healed him. He worshiped whether the
Lord was gonna heal him or not. Worship is bowing before the
Lord knowing I'm in his hands and he'll do with me what he
pleases. And we're not gonna worship till we bow that way.
Number three, true religion is rejoicing in Christ Jesus. For we are the circumcision which
worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus. Now
the word in verse one, rejoice, finally my brethren rejoice in
the Lord, that word, means to be happy in, to be glad in, to
be glad about. The word rejoice in Christ Jesus
in verse three, that's a different word. And that word means to
boast in. And true worship, true preaching,
all it is is boasting in Christ the Savior. That really is all
it is, is boasting about who he is and what he's accomplished
for his people. Brother Rex Bartley in Danville.
He presides over the service and he announces the preacher.
And right before you get up to preach, he'll say, Eric, come
up here and brag on the Savior. John, come here and brag on the
Savior. That's what he says. That's what Paul's saying right
here. Just brag on the Savior. Just brag on him. Don't we brag
on the Savior? Don't we boast? I boast in this. The Son of God became flesh. I can't explain that. How did
the Son of God become a man? He's still God and He's still
man. But I boast in that. He did that to redeem His people
so He could be our representative. I boast it. Someone as glorious
as the Son of God would humiliate Himself to appear in our flesh
to be our representative. Don't you boast in somebody to
do something like that? We boast that the Lord Jesus Christ is
our righteousness. Jehovah Sidken, He's the Lord
our righteousness. I didn't earn my righteousness
by my obedience. My righteousness is the Lord
Jesus Christ. I boast in that. If Christ is
my righteousness, I can never perish. I love to boast about
Christ is my righteousness. It's perfect. We boast, don't
we? In the cross of Christ, in what
he accomplished on the cross. By his death, Christ cleansed
all of his people from all of their sin. by one sacrifice,
by his precious blood. He can do that because of whose
blood it is. It's the blood of God. I love to boast on that. That's my hope. That's all I
hope my sin has been put away. There's no way that anyone for
whom Christ died can perish because of the power of his blood. I
love to boast in the power of his blood. That gives my heart
confidence. We rejoice. We've been made children
of God. Joint heirs with Christ. Now joint heirs with Christ,
being an heir of everything that the father's gonna give the son,
which is everything. Now there's only one possible
explanation that any of us could be a joint heir with Christ. It's grace. Christ earned it, not me. I love
to boast about that. I love to boast about this. Somebody
as wonderful as the Son of God would do something that defies
human understanding to sacrifice Himself to save somebody as low
down and wretched as me. I love to boast on it. Doesn't
that give you hope and salvation? I love to boast about who the
Lord Jesus Christ is. He's the successful Savior. In
Him, our sins forgiven. In Him, we're pardoned. In Him,
we're made righteous and holy. We have peace with God. You don't
have to be afraid of God. You have peace with God in Christ.
We have access to the Father. We can bow in prayer and have our prayer heard because
Christ is our mediator. See, true worship is boasting
in Christ. I can just rest in Him. Because
He's done everything it took to save my sorry soul. And only
true worship, the only way your heart could really be made happy
and glad, like the word rejoice in verse one is, the only way
that can happen is if we boast in Christ and who He is, what
He's done. Doesn't that make us say, preacher,
tell me one more time. Tell me who He is. Tell me what
He did. Why did He do it? Tell me, where
is he now? That's boasting in Christ. What
a blessing. God's given us a place. We can
hear men boast on Christ, brag on him. And then last, true worship
is having no confidence in the flesh. We rejoice in Christ Jesus. Our confidence in him sustains
the reason, doesn't it? We have no confidence in the
flesh. Now as obvious as that is, our
flesh is dead, it's sinful, we know we shouldn't put any hope
in it, don't we? But as obvious as that is, we
have to constantly be reminded and hear the same thing over
and over and over again. Don't put any confidence in your
flesh now, yours or anybody else's. We have to hear that over and
over and over again, because this flesh is not listening to
the gospel. It's not listening, it doesn't believe it, it never
will. So the flesh is trying to constantly
drag us back into captivity to the law. and trust the works
of the flesh. And that's self-righteousness.
And nobody can worship God in self-righteousness. The only
way we can worship God is trusting Christ. Him alone without anything
we add to Him. And we need to hear this over
and over and over again. Aren't you thankful to hear,
believer, God's not going to accept you in your flesh. And we come in here just dragging
in things. I can't believe. I can't believe who I am. I can't
believe what I've done. I do. I love Christ. I love the
gospel. Look at me. Just look at me just
getting ready and driving here this morning. And doesn't it just lift you
up? God doesn't accept you in that.
Don't trust your flesh. He accepts you in Christ. You
can trust him. So you're accepted. Your worship is accepted. Your
person is accepted. Oh, my acceptance with God, my
worship with God, all depends upon who the Lord Jesus Christ
and what he's done. I'll tell you, I can worship
and leave here rejoicing, rejoicing, bragging in Christ Jesus and
leave here glad, made happy in who he is. Oh, I hope God will
give us that heart, that attitude and that spirit. Let's bow together.
Our Father, how we thank you. for the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ. How we thank you, you've given
such a glorious message to your people to hear, to believe. Christ, the successful, sovereign
savior of sinners. He's done everything necessary
to save his people from their sin, and they're saved. Father, I pray, I beg of you,
that you give each heart here this morning, to believe in Christ,
to look to him, to rest in him, that you take the word as it's
been preached and apply it to each heart here, that we might
leave here boasting in Christ our Savior. It's in his precious
name, for his sake and his glory we pray, amen. All right, Sean.