Well, we read Isaiah 44, the
first 20 verses, and you'll have noticed that from about verse
9 down to verse 20 is all about idols, false idols, things that
men make that are false gods, and of course we know that it's
not just the gods that they make with their hands out of bits
of wood, but it's the gods that they fashion in their minds,
their darkened minds make idols. And in the bulletin I've put
a piece by Walter Groover, the missionary to Mexico, Walter
Groover, on the futility of idols, and it's well worth reading that,
it's a true story, true story about the impotence of idols. Anyway, as we come to the first
five verses of Isaiah chapter 44, We want to, as Peter was
praying, it's the gospel that we're interested in. You say,
many religious folks think, well you don't find the gospel in
the Old Testament. Oh yes you do. It's on every page. The things
of Christ are on every page. The gospel is the good news of
unconditional grace from God. God's riches at Christ's expense,
the riches of God, of peace with God, of knowing God, at the expense
of what Christ accomplished in his death on the cross. And it's
unconditional, absolutely unconditional. I put another piece in the bulletin,
how to tell the true from the false. The false gospel that
you hear all around us using all the terminology of the kingdom
of heaven, keeps saying that there's something that you have
to do, you have to do, you have to do. Have you done? You need
to do, do, do. And yet the true gospel declares
that Christ has done. He has done it. It is finished. What were his words on the cross?
It is finished. You see, in the covenant of works,
In the law, your acceptance with God is dependent on you meeting
certain conditions. If you look at Deuteronomy 28,
and you don't need to look at it because I'll read it to you
anyway, but in verse 3, It's talking about blessings coming
upon you. Verse 3, blessed shalt thou be
in the city and blessed shalt thou be in the field. And it's
all based on if you shall hearken diligently in verse 1 to the
voice of the Lord, if you shall do all his commandments which
I command you this day, then you shall be blessed in the city
and blessed in the field. And in verse 16 of the same chapter
of Deuteronomy, there's a warning that if it come to pass that
you will not listen to God, and you will not do all of his commandments
that he commands, then cursed shall you be in the city, and
cursed shall you be in the field. You see, that covenant of works,
that law of God requires this, perfect obedience. Cursed is
he who does not continue in all things which are written in the
book of the law to do them continually, perfectly, without ever failing.
If you do, blessing. If you fail, a curse, a curse,
the curse of the law. Just as Jesus said to the rich
young ruler, the rich young ruler came to him wanting confirmation
from Jesus that he was one who would inherit eternal life. What
must I do that I might inherit eternal life? And Jesus said,
you know the law? Do it all. And he said, well,
this is the law, that you do all the things that God has said
in the commandments. And he said to him, Jesus said
to him, you have answered right. You've said correctly. This do,
this law, and you shall live. If that is your way of being
right with God, then do it perfectly and then you shall live. You
shall have eternal life if you do it perfectly. But it's all
dependent on your doing. And if you fail to do, it threatens
penalty. It promises penalty. And if you
do it, It promises reward. The promise versus the curse.
You see, in religion, there are only self-righteous hypocrites
who gain comfort from their religious works, because they think their
works are good enough. They change the law. of God as
it is, that they might have a law which they know that they keep
themselves. They make a Sabbath law about
the things that you can and can't do on this day of the week, the
places you can and can't go on this day of the week and they
tick all of their boxes and they put on all the right attire and
behave in the right way and they think that they are obeying the
law of God and thereby earning favour with God. and they don't
realise. It's hypocrisy. It's self-righteous
hypocrisy. It's falsehood. It isn't true.
It isn't true. The Gospel, you see, the true
Gospel, has no curse in it. The true gospel has no condition
to be met. The true gospel is based on mercy
from God to man. And it comes to sinners as sinners
where they are. That's how the gospel comes.
Isn't that a blessed thing to know? You and me, sinners, before
the law of God, broken His law, in all points, we're completely
condemned in our nature by the justice and holiness of God.
And where we are as sinners, helpless, hopeless sinners, the
Gospel comes to us with its good news, with its good news of forgiveness
of sins, its good news of justification from condemnation, its good news
that you are made the righteousness of God in Him on the basis of
what the Lord Jesus Christ has done in taking your sin and dying
for it and paying its penalty on the cross of Calvary. This
gospel comes to sinners as sinners where they are, unable to contribute
anything. You see the gospel that so many
preach is like this. There's a drowning man away from
a boat in a tempestuous sea that's going to kill him undoubtedly.
He's going to drown in the sea. He has no hope. He has no strength
left. And they throw out a life belt.
but they leave it five meters short. And they say, there you
are, there's yourself, all you have to do is you have to swim
that last five meters in that raging sea to grab that line
and be saved. And of course, he has no strength.
He has none whatsoever. He has absolutely zero ability,
none whatsoever. That's not the gospel. That's
shattering news, that if only you had the strength you could
save yourself with this line that I've thrown you, that's
not saving truth, that's not a comfort at all, if it depends
in any measure on any strength that you have. Look at the first
five verses of Isaiah 44. This is what I want to look at
with you this morning because here we see God's gracious promises
of salvation to his people. Yet now here, O Jacob my servant,
and Israel whom I have chosen, Thus saith the Lord that made
thee, and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee. Fear
not, O Jacob, my servant, and thou Jesurun, whom I have chosen. Jesurun is, it's the same people,
Jacob, Jerusalem, it's the people of God, and Jesurun particularly
describes them in an upright condition, whereas as sinners
we're not upright, yet in the Lord, were in an upright condition
for what He has made His people to be. And He says to His people,
I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the
dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon thy
seed and my blessing upon thine offspring. and they shall spring
up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses. One shall
say, I am the Lord's, and another shall call himself by the name
of Jacob, and another shall subscribe with his hand to the Lord, and
surname himself by the name of Israel. I want us to see firstly,
a thirsty people. Secondly, abundant water. Thirdly, verdant growth, green
growth. And fourthly, a new identity. Thirsty people, first of all.
In verse 1, Yet now hear, O Jacob my servant, and Israel whom I
have chosen. Here is a call from God to hear. Here is a call from God. A call
to whom? A call to His people. A call to the objects of His
grace, whom don't know necessarily that they are the objects of
His grace when He calls. They are, like all natural men,
in ignorance of the things of God. They are, as Ephesians 2
tells us, children of wrath, even as others. There's no difference.
They're sinners. We're all All have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God, and yet God calls to the people
of His choice. And God speaks words of grace
and peace to the people of His sovereign choice. Israel, whom
I have chosen, is not the scripture full of the fact that God is
sovereign in electing grace, that God is the one who calls
his people? The Great Commission, where Jesus
at the end of his ministry, before he ascended at the end of Matthew,
go therefore into all the world and preach the gospel, baptizing
in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
That great commission is not a commission to go out with the
free offer of the gospel as some men call it, not at all. It's
to go out to declare gospel truth so that the elect that God undoubtedly
has out there in all places at all times, His chosen ones, that
they might hear it. Why? Because it pleased God through
the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. This
is how he calls his people. He chose them in Christ before
the foundation of the world. In the Lamb slain from before
the foundation of the world, the justice of God was already
satisfied for these people, yet Christ had to come in time to
satisfy everything. He had to come and die in time
as a man on the cross of Calvary, the God-man, to shed his precious,
sinless blood. for the sins of His people, that
His people might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
He came, He accomplished all of that. The people are justified
from all eternity. Those people whom the Father
gave Him, for whom He died, they're justified from all eternity.
But as they're born, they don't know it. They're born as sinners. As David said, in sin did my
mother conceive me. It doesn't mean his mother was
an immoral woman. It means that just by nature, by the nature
of being a person, a human being, he's a sinner. We all fall short
of the glory of God. and under the sound of the preaching
of the gospel of grace, it pleased God to call those people whom
Christ has died for, to believe the truth and to embrace it.
And they do, not one of them. What is the will of the father
which sent Jesus? He said this, this is the will
of him that sent me, that of all that he has given me, all
the people he has given me before the foundation of the world,
I should lose nothing. Why would he lose any of them?
because of the law of God, because of the justice of God, saying
that the soul that sins it shall die, that God will not have anything
that defiles in his eternal kingdom of glory and of peace and of
righteousness. But Christ, by what he did, has
made his people the righteousness of God in him. And we believe
it and we embrace it and we show that we are the objects of God's
sovereign electing grace. by belief of the truth, sanctification
of the Spirit and belief of the truth. I have formed you from
the womb, it says, verse 2, thus saith the Lord that made thee
and formed thee from the womb. It doesn't just mean that he
made he's believing people like he made every other type of people.
No, it doesn't mean that at all. What it means is that he formed
them for his own self. God has formed his own people
for his own self. It's a bit like when Paul is
describing how he was called to his ministry. It says in Galatians
1.15, when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's
womb, and called me by his grace, he set, God did it, God set him
apart, right from the start, God set him apart to accomplish
his purposes of grace. Called me by his grace to reveal
his son in me, for what purpose? That I might preach him among
the heathen. This is all in the purpose of
God, forming from the womb A message of, Fear not, O Jacob, my servant,
and thou, Jezurun, whom I have chosen. Fear not, fear not, though
by nature you ought to fear greatly. Do you know that? By nature you
ought to fear greatly. It is appointed to man to die
once, and then the judgment. This is true. This is true. We
must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ and receive the
things done in the body. The books will be opened. The
books of the records of God will be opened. Naturally, we must
fear. We ought to fear greatly. But
God has gracious purposes for his people. Fear not, he says
to his people, despite your deserving of hell and condemnation because
of what you have been made in the Lord Jesus Christ, he says,
fear not. He has gracious purposes for
his people. Who are his people? Who are they? This is the question. Does it
include me? Does it include me? Is this not
the important question? All of us, everyone listening.
Does it include me? Listen, listen. See if you can
hear his voice calling you. Yet now hear, O Jacob, my servant,
and Israel, whom I have chosen. Fear not. Jeshurun, whom I have
chosen. Verse 3, I will pour water upon
him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground. I will pour
my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring. Verse 3, are you counted among
those whom God describes as thirsty? Thirsty? Thirsty in what way? Thirsty for God. with a spiritual
thirst. You see, in our natural selves
we are not thirsty for God. The natural man is not thirsty
for the things of God. Do you know why the natural man
is not thirsty for the things of the true God? Because naturally
we love the world too much. Naturally, we love ourselves
too much. Do you ever hear that advertisement,
it's for cosmetics of some sort, I'm sure some of you will know
it well, and it says, because you're worth it. Oh, I despise
that advert. I mean, I don't despise the product,
but I despise that advert because of the very basis of what it's
saying. Yeah? Because you're worth it.
I'll tell you what you're worth in the eyes of God. You're worth
nothing. You're less than the small dust of the balance. You're
worth nothing. No. The reason you know thirst
for God is because you love the world and you love self too much.
This is true thirst for God. Listen to this, this is the psalmist,
Psalm 42 verses 1 and 2. As the heart, that's the h-a-r-t,
which is the deer, the stag, and the picture is of the stag
that has been chased by the huntsman and the hounds, and it's a hot
day and it's been running and running and running for its life,
and it comes to the brook of fresh clear water, and it's dying,
literally dying for water. As the heart panteth after the
water brooks, So panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth
for God, for the living God. Thirsty. Are you thirsty for
the things of God? Are you thirsty to know peace
with God? Are you thirsty to know acceptance
with God? You see, thirst is a desire,
isn't it? It's a desire for water. There's
all sorts of things that we desire in this life. And if we don't
get them, it doesn't really matter. You know, you might desire a
new PlayStation, you might desire a new car, you might desire a
new whatever it might be, you might desire it. And if you don't
get it, you're not going to die of not getting it. You might
think so when some children want something particularly badly,
they plead and plead and plead and, oh, he's going to die if
he doesn't get it. No, they're not. No, no. There are all sorts
of desires, thirsts for the things of the world. They're not life-threatening.
But a lack of water is deadly. How long can you go without water?
A day? Two, maybe, at the most? Get
into a third day, you're almost certainly going to die of thirst.
Really. The ancient mariner captures
it, doesn't it, in poetry. Coleridge's poem, The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner, where the ship is becalmed in tropical
heat in an ocean that's not moving, there's no wind, and everything
looks oily and greasy, and he says, water, water everywhere,
and not a drop to drink. They're dying of thirst, they're
surrounded by a salty ocean which they cannot drink, and yet they're
dying of thirst. Lack of water is deadly. Those
traveling through the deserts, I mean even in these days, we've
just been to Australia, And there are clear warnings about driving
off into the bush, exploring, because if when you get out in
that hot interland of the middle of Australia, where the heat
burns down, if your car breaks down there, then there's a good
chance that you are going to die of thirst, even in these
days, that nothing will be able to save you. A lack of water
is deadly. It's like that with the soul
and God. I must have Christ and His salvation
or else I die eternally. It's the thirst that the soul-seeking
God experiences. Are you thirsty for God? Listen
to His word. Psalm 63 and verse 1, O God,
Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee. My soul thirsteth for Thee,
my flesh longeth for Thee, in a dry and thirsty land where
no water is. Do you hear that? My soul longs
for you, I'm thirsting, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs
for you in a dry and thirsty land where there's no water,
there's no satisfying. For this world is a dry desert
regarding the things of the living God. This world with all of its
wizardry, with all of its technology, with all of its wonders of the
false prophet of Satan's antichrist, There's no water there for the
thirsty soul. There is nothing there that will
satisfy. Isaiah 55 verse 1 says this,
Ho, everyone that thirsteth, everyone that's thirsty for the
things of God, come ye to the waters. Come ye to the waters. And he that has no money, You
know when you're thirsty in a hot city like Rome in the middle
of August and it's 40 odd degrees, it's so hot there, and you're
dying of thirst and I'm afraid you go to one of the stalls and
they're charging as many euros as they can get away with for
a bottle of cold water. But here, no, he that hath no
money, come ye buy, and eat, yea, come buy wine and milk without
money and without price. Why? Because it's free grace. It's of the free grace of God.
There is no condition for you to do or to meet in order to
receive it. No. It's free. It's free. Matthew 5 verse 6, Blessed are
they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness. Do you hunger
and thirst for the righteousness of God? If you do hunger and
thirst, then this is the blessing. You shall be filled, for Christ
will fill you. He has filled you. He is able
to save to the uttermost all those who come to God by Him.
His righteousness is sufficient. His justifying righteousness
is sufficient for all. and then I want you to see a
thirsty people then abundant water for God says I will pour
out upon him that is thirsty water and floods upon the dry
ground I will pour water on him that is thirsty he doesn't say
I will drip water on him I will not give the odd drip of water
here and there I will pour water on him that is thirsty floods
not just a sprinkling, floods upon the dry ground. We've had
quite a period without rain. I believe all the time we were
away it hardly rained at all, and it certainly hasn't rained
since we got back. And the ground and the plants
are looking very, very dry. I was trying to water them yesterday
evening. The land outside here, you wouldn't
think it would you, in verdant green and pleasant land of England,
but it's a dry and thirsty land. It really is. You don't have
to Just scrape below the surface, you'll see there is no water
there. It's crying out for some rain. We might love the warm,
sunny weather, but we need some rain for the crops to grow. We
need some floods on this dry ground. God says, I will pour
water on him that is thirsty. God will give his spirit. God will give this spiritual
water to him that is thirsty, not in a niggardly way, not in
a holding back way, but an abundant way. He will pour water upon
him that is thirsty. At that great feast in John 7,
37-39, Jesus stood and cried in the middle of the feast saying,
if any man thirst let him come to me and drink. He wasn't selling
bottles of water, he was saying that in him and in him alone
is that spiritual water which alone can satisfy that thirst
for the things of the living God. He that believeth on me,
he said, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall
flow rivers of living water. That within him there will be
an abundant supply of living water. What's he talking about?
Just read on, but this spake he of the Spirit. You see, the
natural man, us in our natural state, we're dead to the truth
of God, and we're as a dry and thirsty land. But ones blessed
of God, to feel thirst for peace with God, they are promised abundant
spiritual water. That is the Holy Spirit coming
to His people. He will come. He sends His Spirit,
the Comforter, to His people. God pours out His Spirit upon
His people. Listen, he says, I formed you. Don't be afraid. I will pour
water on you. I will satisfy your need for
the living God. What is it that the water does?
Symbolically, what is it that it does? Well, you know what
water does actually, physically? Water washes. It washes clean.
It purifies. Ezekiel 36, 25 says, Then will
I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all
your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you.
God will cleanse his people. You know when Jesus died on the
cross and the soldier at the end pierced his side, and do
you remember what it says in John's Gospel? That out of that
side came not just blood, but blood and water. The blood is
symbolizing the justifying cleansing of that propitiating blood of
Christ that turned away the anger of God. For without the shedding
of blood there is no remission of sin, but Christ shed his blood,
his precious blood. He has cleansed us. You are not
redeemed with corruptible things like silver and gold, says Peter,
but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot. And that blood flowed and that
blood answered the demands of the broken law for the sins of
His people. Yes, in that blood was justifying
cleansing, but the water was symbolical of that sanctifying
of the Holy Spirit that would come and wash within. Ephesians 5.26 says this, that
He might sanctify and cleanse it. His church, Christ loved
His church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and
cleanse it. with the washing of water by
the Word. The washing of water, cleanse
it, put a new clean nature within that wasn't there before. Not only judicially justified externally
from sin, but cleansed within by being given a new nature. This is what the water does.
He says, I will pour that water upon... God makes His people
the righteousness of God in Him. Not that they are in themselves
inherently righteous, but they have a righteous nature given.
That though they sin, and if they say they have no sin, they
deceive themselves and the truth is not in them, yet there is
a new nature within that is given by the Spirit of God. He pours
water on him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground.
A second thing that water does, naturally, is that it softens
the hard ground. That ground out there, if you
try to put a spade into it in certain places, it feels like
concrete. It is so hard. And yet what softens
it? Poor water on it. One of my university
holiday jobs was making concrete piles for large buildings. I was in a team of labourers,
and it was hard work, but it was good, healthy work. It got
me fit. Probably did damage to my back,
but never mind. It was very hard work, and we
used to start by trying to bore a hole in the ground, and it
used to be so hard, it was just like concrete, and so do you
know what we did? we'd pour buckets and buckets of water on it, and
that would soften it. The water softened it. Listen
to what Job said, Job 23, 16. Job says this, God makes my heart
soft. The Holy Spirit of God comes,
and you know we read of a hard heart that will not hear the
things of the Spirit of God? We hear about a hard heart that
doesn't want the things of the Spirit of God, and yet the Spirit
of God comes and softens that hard heart. He takes that heart
of stone out of the flesh and gives a heart of soft flesh to
heed the things of the living God. This is the spirit that
God gives, that He pours out upon him that is thirsty. That
Spirit comes and like water, it's invigorating. Water is life-giving. We water our plants because we
want them to produce flowers and fruits. This is why we water
them, because it's invigorating, it's life-giving. Just like the
fruit of the Spirit, as Galatians 5.22 says, the fruit of the Spirit
is love, joy, peace. It's invigorating, it's life-giving,
it produces fruit. It isn't dead, it isn't academic,
it isn't cold. Fourthly, it's refreshing, isn't
it? Water is refreshing. You feel
your mouth dry, you feel your body asking for some water, and
a glass of cold water is so refreshing to the parched spirit. Well,
the Spirit of God is refreshing to the parched spirit of man. It's refreshing. The things of
God come. Have you ever experienced it?
You experience the refreshing that the Spirit of God accomplishes
in your soul, thinking, meditating upon the things of Christ, upon
the salvation He's accomplished as His Spirit comes and takes
of the things of Christ and reveals them to us. How refreshing is
it to the soul? And then it's delightful, isn't
it? It's delightful. You know, have
you... I used to, when I was younger,
I used to think I didn't really like water. It had to have some
sort of fruit squash in it to make it palatable. But now I
absolutely love water just as it is. Nothing more refreshing
or tasty to the soul, to the body, than pure, clean, cold
water, refreshing to the parched spirit, but delightful also.
We read of David before he was finally crowned king over all
Israel in the days when Saul was persecuting him and trying
to have him destroyed, Saul the king that is. In 1 Chronicles
11 and verse 17 we read, and David longed and said, O that
one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem. Because if he'd had that, how
it would have delighted him. Of course, they went and got
him a drink. And do you know what he did with it? He poured
it out on the ground. Why did he pour it out? Because
he said, I can't drink it. He said, it's just cost too much,
I can't drink it. It's nearly cost the lives of
these men that went to get it for me. But it was that for which
he so longed, because it was so delightful to him. Oh, how
it is with the Spirit of God and the things of God, to know
what it is to be right with God, to know what it is to have the
presence of God and the Spirit of God within and the comfort
of God and the assurance of salvation accomplished. Living water. You
know when Jesus met the woman by the well, the Samaritan well,
and in John chapter 4 and verse 13, He says to the woman, whosoever
drinks of this water, the water that's in your well, shall thirst
again. But whosoever drinketh of the
water that I shall give him, the spiritual water, shall never
thirst. But the water that I shall give
him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting
life. All around us, people are trying
the broken cisterns of this world. As God said through Jeremiah,
this have I got against you, my people. You have forsaken
me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewn for yourselves
cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. We strive
in the flesh, in this world, to carve out for ourselves cisterns
out of stone, to hold water, And they always get a crack in
them and a break in them. And the water that they hold
is not lively, not living. It's stagnant, stale water. And
we soon discover it to be absolutely hopeless water. I tried the broken
cisterns, Lord, but ah, their waters failed. And even as I
stooped to drink, they mocked me as I wailed. No. The water
that God gives is living water, a fountain of living water within. And it anticipates that river
in paradise. You read in Revelation 22 and
verse 1, And He showed me, says John, a pure river of water of
life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and
of the Lamb. Of course, this is picturing,
symbolically picturing. every spiritual need met in the
eternal paradise of God. There is every resource that
God has for his people on unending supply. There is no shortage
of it, there is no end to it. Unlike the broken cisterns of
this world, how rich and how clear and how flowing is that
river in paradise to which we look as believers. And it produces
Thirdly, verdant growth, verse four, and they shall spring up
as among the grass, as willows by the water courses. What is
it that springs up? Let me just suggest some things
quickly that spring up as a result of the Holy Spirit coming within.
As we water plants, you see green growth come and you see flowers
and you see fruits and vegetables. When the Holy Spirit comes into
the parched ground that is the natural man, He produces a godly
fear. There's a godly fear that springs
up. Why do I say that first? Because
the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, is the beginning of
knowledge. What is this fear? What is it?
It's not a fear in the child of God of condemnation. It's not a fear of judgment.
It's not a fear of what I might lose. No, not at all. But it
is a reverential respect. Do you ever watch the Antiques
Roadshow? And you see when somebody has
brought along an incredibly valuable piece of antique pottery, or
whatever it might be, and the expert comes along, and everybody's
going, oh, don't drop it, don't drop it, hold it carefully, oh
gosh, just imagine if you dropped that thing, oh dear, what a dreadful
thing that would, well, that is the kind of fear, I believe,
that is the fear that the child of God has, the godly fear. It's
such a reverential respect We don't want to do anything that
breaks that communion with God. When He's come, says Jesus of
the Holy Spirit, he will reprove the world of sin and give a godly
fear because of that sin that he's in, and of righteousness
and of judgment. Just as when Peter preached on
the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, and the crowd that had crucified
Christ just a few days earlier, it says they were pierced to
their heart with a godly fear, with a godly reverence. What
shall we do? Look what we've done. In Jeremiah
32 and verse 40 we read this, I will make an everlasting covenant
with them, this is God speaking, that I will not turn away from
them to do them good, but, God says, I will put my fear in their
hearts that they shall not depart from me. That's a godly fear
that God puts within the hearts of his people. That's what grows
up, that's what springs up as among the grass, as willows by
the water courses. he puts in a spirit of prayer. When Saul of Tarsus was met by
the Lord Jesus Christ on the Damascus road and the light shined
and he became blind and he was led into Damascus and a man called
Ananias was told to go and minister to him and he said, I'm frightened
of him, we've heard about him. But God said to him, go and minister
to him because he is a chosen vessel of mine. And the other
thing he said, you will find when you come to him, he's praying. Zechariah 12 verse 10, God says,
I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants
of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications. That's
prayer. That's prayer. He puts a spirit
of prayer. Where the natural man would never
have thought to pray to God, he puts a spirit of prayer. The
natural religious man might say prayers, which might sound eloquent
in their form, but the true child of God has a spirit of supplication
given by God within. As with David, the Lord put it
in his heart to pray, and so he does. The other thing that
springs up is faith, of course, faith, faith. Ephesians 2.8,
by grace are you saved. It's the grace of God entirely
from start to finish. that saves you in all that Christ
has done, but how do you know it, how do you apprehend it,
how do you perceive it? It's by faith, and that, not
of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It is one of the fruits
of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5. one of the fruits of the Spirit,
of love, joy, peace. Faith is one of those that's
listed there. In 2 Thessalonians 1 and verse
3, we are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as
it is meat, because that your faith groweth exceedingly. Faith that grows. Peter said,
grow in grace and the knowledge of God. The next one, fourthly,
hope. Hope is that which springs up
as a result of the spirits being poured out. Hebrews 6, 18 and
19 lay hold upon the hope set before us. Which hope? We have
as an anchor of the soul. We are saved by hope. Hope is
that hope of eternal life. It's evidence of the gracious
work of salvation accomplished by Christ that we know and we
long for that state, thy kingdom come, that state of eternal glory,
that to depart from this life and be with Christ is far better.
To be absent from the flesh is to be present with the Lord in
that moment. And fifthly, love. God is love. That springs up in the heart.
Love that wasn't there before. Love for God. Love for God's
people. God is love and His Spirit is
love. And that Spirit within produces
love for God and for the brethren. And now abide these three, faith,
hope and charity. But the greatest of these is
charity, love. Charity, love. Why not faith
and hope? Because why will we need faith
to see spiritually, when we're in the flesh, that which we will
experience in reality? And why will we need hope for
heaven to come when we're there, in heaven that has come? But
love will still be there, that's why it's the greatest of those
three. There's verdant growth springs up as a result of the
Holy Spirit coming. And then there's this identity,
a new identity, and I'll be very brief. In verse 5, one shall
say, I am the Lord's, and another shall call himself by the name
of Jacob. When God gives his spirit in
the hearts of his people in the new birth, when he changes children
of wrath into children of God and gives them a new nature and
new desires and new graces, humility, a broken spirit, a tender conscience,
godly sorrow for sin, patience in the things of God, gracious
desires for God's kingdom. With all that, he gives a new
identity. You are bought with a price,
says Paul. You are bought with a price,
you're not your own. What was the price that bought
you? The doing and dying of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you are
stamped, you are branded with a new mark of ownership. In Revelation
7 we read about judgment being withheld until all the people
of God are sealed in their foreheads with the mark of ownership of
God. It's a mark of ownership which
is pictured in that marriage union. The earthly marriage is
just but a picture. Song of Solomon 2.16, my beloved
is mine and I am his, he feedeth among the lilies. This is the
marriage union of Christ and his people. What shall we do
to fulfil the conditions God puts upon his people? That's
what they asked Jesus in John 6, 28. What shall we do that
we do the works of God? Jesus said to them, this is the
work of God. that you believe on Him whom
He has sent. This is the work of God. It's
God's work that brings you to that place of believing. It's
God's work that keeps you. It's God's work from beginning
to end, for He is the author and finisher of our faith. It
is that you believe, and that not of yourselves, it is the
gift of God. It is that you look to what Christ
has done, has done, has done. Amen.