Let's open tonight's service
with hymn number 199 from your hardback hymnal. 199, Christ receiveth sinful
men. Let's all stand together. Sinners Jesus will receive, Sound
this word of grace to all, Who the heavenly pathway leave, All
who linger, all who fall, Sing it o'er and o'er again, Christ,
receive a sinful man. Make the message clear and plain,
Christ, receive a sinful man. ? Come and he will give you rest
? Trust him for his word is plain ? He will take the sinful rest
? Christ receiveth sinful men ? Sing it o'er and o'er again
? Christ receiveth sinful men ? Make the message clear and
plain ? Christ receiveth sinful men ? Now my heart condemns me
not ? Pure before the law I stand ? He who cleansed me from all
spot ? Satisfied its last demand Sing it o'er and o'er again,
Christ receiveth sinful men. Make the message clear and plain,
Christ receiveth sinful men. ? Christ received the sinful
man ? Even me with all my sin ? Purged from every spot and
stain ? Heaven with him I enter in Sing it o'er and o'er again,
Christ receiveth sinful men. Make the message clear and plain,
Christ receiveth sinful men. Please be seated. Good evening. I so hope that
that prayer that we just prayed will be answered tonight, that
it'll be clear and plain that the Lord receives sinful men,
sinful men. And he saves sinners and He saves
every one of them, so thankful. By His grace, He makes us to
be sinful. And then He saves us from our
sin. Let's open our Bibles together
to Psalm 121, Psalm 121, I'm sorry, Psalm 122, Psalm 122. It's good to have Ben and Tom
with us here from Nowra, Australia. They attend the church where
Angus pastors and been planning a trip here for some time. And
they're going to spend about five weeks visiting several different
gospel churches in the country. So glad you men are here with
us tonight. Psalm 122, I was glad when they
said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet
shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. We stand on Christ
and he is a firm foundation and solid rock. Jerusalem is builded
as a city that is compact together. With the tribes go up, the tribes
of the Lord unto the testimony of Israel to give thanks unto
the name of the Lord. We thank him for his grace and
for his mercy and for forgiving us of our sin. For there are
set thrones of judgment the thrones of the house of David. The Lord's
forgiveness does not come without him satisfying the demands of
God's law and justice, which is what he did by his life and
by his death. And so there's judgment seats
in the house of God. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
They shall prosper that love thee "'Peace be within thy walls
"'and prosperity within thy palaces. "'For my brethren and my companions'
sake, "'I will now say, peace be within thee.'" That's the
Lord Jesus speaking to his people. He does it, he calls us his brethren,
he calls us his companions, and he speaks peace to the heart.
Because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek thy good. Let's pray together. I'm going
to be, well, Trish and I and Ben and Tom actually are going
to be leaving early in the morning to go up to Kingsport, not Kingsport,
Fairmont. They're leaving here and going
to Kingsport, but I'll be preaching for, for Marvin Friday night
and Saturday morning, and then Lord willing, fly home Saturday
night and be here with you all Sunday morning. So if Lord enables
you to remember that meeting this weekend, I encourage you
to pray for us. And Cyril contacted me today. He's been very sick and asked
that we would pray for him. So I wanted us to do that. So
let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, thank you for bringing us into
thy house. Thank you for putting into our
hearts a desire to worship. Thank you for loving us and for causing us
to love thee back. Lord, thank you for revealing
your glory in the person of thy dear son. And thank you for your
word and for your Holy Spirit. Lord, we pray that in this little
Jerusalem tonight, that you would speak peace to our hearts, that
you would cause us to find our hope and our comfort in the perfect
person and perfect work of thy dear son. Lord, we pray for the
meeting Fairmont and ask your blessings on it, that your gospel
would be made clear and simple, that your children would be encouraged
and your lost sheep would be brought in faith into the fold. Lord, we pray for Cyril and ask
for your hand of strength and healing to be upon him and give
him recovery. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Number 168, let's all stand together
again, 168. ? Lord, I hear of showers of blessing
? Thou art scattering full and free ? Showers the thirsty land
refreshing ? Let some drops now fall on me ? Even me, even me
? Let Thy blessing fall on me Pass me not, O tender Savior,
let me love and cling to Thee. I am longing for Thy favor whilst
Thou art calling, O call me. Even me, even me, let Thy blessing
fall on me. ? Pass me not, O mighty Spirit
? Thou canst make the blind to see ? Witnesser of Jesus' merit
? Speak the word of power to me, even me ? Even me ? Let thy
blessing fall on me ? Love of God so pure and changeless ?
Blood of Christ so rich and free ? Grace of God so strong and
boundless ? Magnify them all in me Even me, even me, let thy
blessing fall on me. ? Pass me not thy lost one bringing
? ? Bind my heart, O Lord, to thee ? ? While the streams of
life are springing ? ? Blessing others, O bless me ? Please be
seated. If you'll open your Bibles with
me to Luke chapter 5, Luke chapter 5. We'll be looking at the fifth miracle recorded
in scripture that our Lord performed. And I've titled this message,
The Miracle of Being Made Sinful. The Miracle of Being Made Sinful. If you find a person who is sinful and if
you find in your own heart sinfulness, you have found a
work of God's miraculous grace because the natural man is not
sinful. This is a faithful saying, and
this is worthy of all acceptation. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners, and then Paul said, amongst who I am chief. Amongst who I am. He's calling
himself a sinful sinner. Not just a sinner, a sinful sinner.
And God saves sinful men. And he only saves sinful men. But it is he that does the work
of grace in our hearts, revealing to us a glimpse of his glory,
enough of his glory to show us that there's nothing in us like
him. And that's what it is to be sinful. There's no, there's no, nothing,
nothing in my heart. that looks like Christ. And if
I don't have him as all of my righteousness before God, and
if I don't have him to put away all my sin by the sacrifice that
he made of himself on Calvary's cross, then I will die in my
sins. The miracle we're referring to
is the great drought of fish that the apostles caught here
in Luke chapter five when they reluctantly obeyed the command
of the Lord to cast their nets back into the sea. And Peter's response to the Lord
is where I want us to focus our attention tonight. There are two of these miracles
performed by our Lord. The first one here at the calling
of Peter to be a disciple, an apostle of the Lord Jesus. The last one we read of in John
chapter 21, when you remember Peter after having denied the
Lord in cursing the night before his crucifixion came to the conclusion
that there was no hope of God ever using him again. He had
so grievously sinned against the Lord that there was no forgiveness. There was no hope of him being
a witness for Christ after so shamefully denying him. And Peter
said to the other disciples, he said, I'm going back to fishing.
Now in the King James, it says, I go fishing. But the meaning
of it is I'm going back to what I know because I've ruined everything
else. And the Lord in his mercy meets
Peter out in the boat and says to him in John chapter 21, cast
the nets on the right side of the boat and the right side of
the ship. And then Peter realized that it was the Lord. So that
was the second miracle. We'll get to that one. It's actually
the last of the miracles recorded in the Gospels. We've been looking
on Wednesday nights at the miracles of Christ and now we're at the
fifth one. The significance of this being the fifth one is that
the number five in the Bible is the number for grace. And
the scripture says where sin abounds, Grace does much more
abound. So only sinful men need grace.
And the greater the sin, the more grace we need. And the greater
the sin, the more grace there is. So this is a miracle of being
made sinful. And Peter, has that experience here in our
text. Let's begin reading in chapter
five at verse one. And it came to pass that as the
people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by
the Lake of Gennesaret. And it's also called the Lake
of Tiberias and the Lake of, somebody help me out, the Lake
of, I wanted to say the Gadarenes, but that's not it. Galilee, Lake
of Galilee, Sea of Galilee. That's why it's the Sea of Galilee,
same body of water. Verse two, and while he's there
being, I can just see the crowd pressing him, wanting to get
close to him, pressing him closer and closer to the water. And
he saw two ships standing by the lake, but the fishermen were
gone out of them and were washing their nets. And he entered into
one of the ships. So he's actually pressed off
the land into the ship, into the boat, which was Simon's and
prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And
he sat down and taught the people out of the ship. Now in the Bible,
Oftentimes the boats are representative of the church and this is the
place where the Lord teaches his people. It's where we meet
together and he promises to meet with us and he uses the sinful
and frail voice of a man and he takes his word and he speaks
peace to the hearts of his people. So here we have him symbolically
doing that. He's in a little ship. We're
in a little ship right now, aren't we? Verse four. Now, when he had
left speaking, he said unto Simon, launch out into the deep and
let down your nets for a drought. And Simon answered and said unto
him, master, we've toiled all night. Now Simon's father had
was, was started this fishing industry and James and John are
involved in it as well. Simon's a grown man, but I'm
certain that Simon's been going out on a boat with his father
since he was a small boy. That's all he's done. He's been
a fisherman all his life. If anybody knew how to catch
fish and when the fish were to be caught and where they were
to be caught, Simon Peter would have known. He was a professional
fisherman. And now this itinerant preacher
who he refers to as master, Simon doesn't know who this is yet. The word master here means overseer
and it means teacher. He recognizes that this man is
teaching the things of God and he says to him, master, we've
toiled all night. We know what we're doing. And we've taken nothing. Nevertheless,
that's why I say he did it reluctantly. Nevertheless, at thy word, I
will let down the net. They had no idea what was going
to happen. I'm sure he thought, oh, this is a waste of time.
We've already cleaned our nets. Now we've got to clean them again.
And when they had done this, when they had this done, they
enclosed a great multitude of fishes and their net break. And they beckoned unto their
partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and
help them. And they came and filled both
ships so that they began to sink. In all of Simon Peter's experience
in fishing, he'd never had an experience like this before.
He's got two boats now that are ready to sink with the amount
of fish that they've got. And when Simon Peter saw it,
he fell down at Jesus' knees saying, Depart from me, for I
am a sinful man, O Lord." Now, the word master means overseer
or superintendent. The word Lord means owner. Owner. What a contrast. Simon Peter
saying, You own me. My life is in your hands. You're
God. And you can do with me whatsoever
you will. And here I am in the presence
of Almighty. And much like Isaiah, when he
saw the Lord high and lifted up, he said, woe is me, I'm undone. Simon, I'm sure, was very thankful
the Lord didn't answer this prayer. He said, depart from me. No,
I'm not going to depart from you, Simon. I'm a sinful man. For he was
astonished, and all that were with him at the draught of fish
which were taken And so was also James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
which were partners with Simon. Well, Zebedee had started this
fishing industry and James and John and Peter had been in it
all their lives. And Jesus said unto Simon, fear not,
from henceforth thou shalt catch men. And when they had brought
their ships to the land, I can just see Simon Peter hugging
his father, Zebedee, and saying, we've got to go, dad. Can't help
you anymore. The Lord's called us and he left
his ships. He left his family and he followed
Christ. We could look at this miracle
and conclude that It demonstrates our Lord's glory as one who is
able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. The abundance of these fish,
Peter never seen anything like it. And that would be true. But the real miracle is not the
catching of the fish, but Peter being made sinful. That's the
real miracle. Peter's heart being changed from
seeing the Lord Jesus just simply as his teacher and as his overseer,
as to seeing the Lord Jesus and bowing and worshiping him as
Lord, as his God, as his owner. What a contrast. So there's the
effects of the miracle. Zebedee had a great cache of
fish now to sell and provide for his family. But Peter, James,
and John walked away from every bit of it. Being made sinful. That's a work
of grace. The Bible makes it clear that
all men come into this world with the moral code or the moral
law of God written on their hearts. And a man doesn't need the Holy
Spirit to convict him of violating God's law. If a man lies or if
he If he commits adultery or if he steals or murders, he knows
it's wrong. God's written that on all man's
heart. Now, a man can lie to himself,
the scripture makes that clear, to the point to where he sears
his own conscience and they're no longer able to feel the shame
and guilt of breaking God's commandments, but my point is that the natural
man, including me and you, don't need the Holy Spirit to be convicted
of doing wrong. We have a conscience for that.
And just because a person's conscience is pricked or even
overwhelmed with guilt and shame for having done wrong doesn't
mean that they're under the conviction of sin. There's plenty of people in this
world that are bound up in therapy or in religion, trying to salve
their conscience. And the world says this, the
world says, you know, it's really not your fault. And we can figure out a way to
help you. They speak peace when there is
no peace. The religious world, on the other hand, says it is
your fault, but you can fix it. You can fix it. If you'll just
do better, clean up the outside, wash the outside of the cup,
whitewash the tomb, reform your behavior, be more dedicated to
God, you can fix the sin problem. The gospel says it's all your
fault and you can't fix it. That's the message of the gospel.
It's all your fault and you can't fix it. And not only that, but
it's not just the things that prick your conscience that are
your fault because when the When the Spirit of God convicts one
of God's people of sin, it goes much, much deeper than just the
disobedience of God's law. The Lord said that when the Spirit
of God comes, he will convict the world, and the word world
there is the same as it's being used in John 3.16. He's talking
about God's people out in the world, not talking about the
whole world. Spirit of God doesn't convict the whole world of sin,
but he convicts his people that are in the world. And so he says,
it's expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the
Comforter will not come. But when he comes, he will convict
the world of sin, because what? Because they believe not on me.
Now, there's the root cause of all sin. Unbelief. Unbelief. It's why we need the
Holy Spirit. To not just convict us, turn
with me to Romans chapter seven, to not just convict us of a bad behavior, which you have
a conscience for that, but to convict you of unbelief. Look what Paul said in Romans
chapter 7 beginning in verse 7. What shall we say then? Is
the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known
sin, but by the law. For I had not known lust. He's
not talking about, lust is a thought of the heart. He said, I have not known lust,
except the law had said thou shalt not covet. The 10th commandment. Now the apostle Paul tells of
his own testimony when he said concerning the law, I was blameless. Not before God, but he considered
himself to be blameless before man. His outward behavior was
such that no one could accuse him of of breaking God's commandments. But now, now the Holy Spirit
comes. And look what he says. For I
was alive without the law once. Paul never lived without the
law. He was born under the law. He learned the law from a very
small child. He knew the commandments of God.
He was trained by Gamaliel. He was an expert in the law.
But here he says, for I was alive without the law once, but when
the commandment came, sin revived and I died. When did the commandment
come? When covetousness and lust were
exposed in his heart. He realized that I've been looking
at the outward appearances. And Bible says, man looks at
the outward appearance, God looks at the heart. And God says that
every thought and imagination of the heart is only evil and
that continually. The heart is wicked and deceitful,
no man can know it. This is where sinfulness is. It's not in outward behavior,
it's in the heart. It's a condition of the heart.
That's why we can't ever create for ourselves, we were talking
about this before the service, Scott, we cannot create for ourselves
an environment where we can be insulated from sin because we've
taken it with us. You lock yourself up in a closet
to try to protect yourself from the sinful world and you've just
taken your biggest problem in that closet with you. Sin's in
the heart, there's the problem. And that's what we need the Holy
Spirit for. The natural man can see that doing bad things is
wrong. He's got a conscience for that.
But to see that every thought and imagination of the heart
is only evil and that continually, that requires the Holy Spirit.
To see that I am full of unbelief, that requires the Holy Spirit. Let me say it like this. if the
sincerity, consistency, and fervency of prayer is the thermometer
that measures our faith, the temperature of our faith. And
I believe that's a true statement. I believe that the consistency
and the fervency and the sincerity of prayer is a thermometer that
measures the sincerity of our faith. And if that's true, where
does that leave you? I'll tell you where it leaves
me. Lord, help thou mine unbelief. Lord, I'm not coming to you with
faith, I'm coming to you for faith. Lord, I'm so full of unbelief. And I'm so much more conscious
of my unbelief than I am of my faith. I'm just full of it. And that's what Peter's saying.
Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. If something's
full, you can't put anything else in it. Peter wasn't just saying, you
know, it wasn't like when he, you know, you could understand
Peter saying I'm a sinful man when he denied the Lord on that
night before the crucifixion and in cursing denied him. and
how the Lord let the eyes of compassion fall on him, and Peter
went out and wept bitterly. Oh, he had done something so
shameful. It wasn't like David, who had
Nathan come and say to him, Nathan, thou art the man, and expose
his adultery. And David, as a result of that,
wrote Psalm 51. We understand those kinds of
things. What was the sin that exposed Peter in this miracle? What was it? He thought he knew better than
God. He thought, I'm the expert fisherman here. What are you
telling me, how to go fishing? He doubted God, he responded to omniscience as
if he knew better. Lord, I know what you said but
it's completely contrary to my experience. The polluted fountain from which
all foul streams flow is unbelief. It is the sin that doth so easily
beset us. And only the believer who's experienced
a miracle of grace in his heart can admit that, see that, believe
that. Only those who have been placed
where Peter is can say, oh Lord, there's nothing in me like you. Is this not what caused, what
made the Lord Jesus Christ so, I don't want to use the word unique,
but I don't know, I'm at loss of words right now, among men.
He believed God perfectly. Perfectly, he believed God. He
believed his father. He trusted his father in thought
and in word and in deed and in heart. He never experienced that
unbelief. And everything we do is tainted
with it. Everything we experience. Unbelief is the cancer from which
all symptoms come. It is the infected soil from
which all the seeds of doubt spring forth and bring forth
their rotten fruit. It's unbelief. how much we walk by sight. We make judgments based on what
we can see and what we can experience and what we feel. We trust our
experiences rather than trusting God. I already made mention of this
in Mark chapter nine when that father brought his child who
was possessed with an evil spirit to the disciples and The disciples
couldn't do anything. And the father finally brings
the child to the Lord and says, I brought him to your disciples,
but they were not able to help. If thou can't do anything, help
us. And what'd the Lord Jesus say?
If thou can't believe, all things are possible to him that believe
it. The problem's not with my ability, the problem's with your
faith. Here's the problem. And afterwards, he met with the
disciples, came to him and said, Lord, why couldn't we cast them
out? Well, the Lord say, this kind comes only by prayer and
fasting. Oh, this is a faith that you
don't yet know anything about, but I'm gonna grow you in grace
and in your faith, and you're gonna see more and more of my
glory. And see, these things go hand in hand, don't they? The dependence upon Christ and
the revelation of our own sinful
unbelief are two sides of the same coin. That's why the Bible says, where
sin abounds, grace does much more abound. And the more we
grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ, the more sinful we
become, the more dependent we become, the more we see of the
tentacles and the poison of unbelief that invades every recess of
our heart. That's what Peter's saying. The
sin that Peter is so convicted of here is that he thought he
knew better than God. We've toiled all night, we've
been working hard and we've caught nothing and I know something
about fishing. But nevertheless, at thy word,
we'll do it. Is this not our experience? Does
not our experience tell us that things aren't going as we planned
them and we get nervous and we get
anxious and we get impatient and even angry and we murmur
and we complain? What are we saying? What is our
unbelief? What is our sin nature saying?
We know better than God. Because at the same time, God
says that he reigns and that he does what the armies of heaven
and the inhabitants of the earth whatsoever he wills and that
he works all things together for good for them that love him,
those that are called according to his purpose. And that everything's
in place and everything's on time and everything is under
his sovereign reign and control. And yet our experience tells
us otherwise. And rather than believe God,
we fear. This is the very thing that causes
the child of God to say, I'm such a sinful man. Lord, I need
your righteousness. I need your forgiveness. I need
your grace. I need you to take control of
me. I need you to help me. Help thou mine unbelief. Does not our experience tell
us that because we like David can say my sin is ever before
me but Our feelings and our experience take that and cause us to oftentimes
be timid and reluctant to come to God. And yet the Lord says, come,
come boldly with confidence. You know, I've, separated your
sin from you as far as the East is from the West, I remember
them no more. I've loved you with an everlasting love and
I've got nothing but grace and forgiveness for you and yet we
allow the accuser of the brethren to manipulate our feelings and
our experiences and we say like Peter, my experiences are contrary
to what God says and so I'm going to Our experiences tell us that
when we're afraid, we have two options, fight or flight. And we generally choose one of
those two options when we're afraid. But what's God say? Come
unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden. Learn of me,
take my yoke upon you. Be still, know that I am God.
Why can't we just believe God? Why can't we believe everything?
You know, we often say, you know, believers believe everything
that God says, and we do. We do. When we read it, we say,
yes, amen, that's true. I wish I could live it. I believe a whole lot more than
I do. I know it's true. Why can't I,
why can't I act on it? Why can't I walk in faith rather
than walking by sight so much? Why do I call God into question?
Why do I doubt his ability and his sovereignty and his mercy
and his grace and his love? And I follow my feelings. And then the Lord exposes that
and we say with Peter, oh Lord, I'm just a sinful man. The battle's not yours. It's
the Lord's, that's what God says. Oh, if we could believe that
as we ought, we wouldn't find ourselves engaging in warfare
as much as we do. My experience tells me that if
I work really hard, I'll get rewarded. And that may be true
in the natural world. What does God say? Now unto him
that worketh is reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not,
but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted
for righteousness." Oh, how oftentimes like Elijah. We have Jezebel
hot on our heels, and what do we do? We run back to the law.
We think, we know that we're not saved by the law. We know
that the law can't help us. We know that the law only condemns
us. But we have these thoughts and feelings. Why? Because it's
our experience. And we're prone to walk by, we're
prone to do what Peter did. And we go back to, well, if I
can just, if I can just do better and, and do these things will somehow
improve my, rather than coming to Christ, what did the Lord
say to Elijah when he was there on Mount Horeb, which is Mount
Sinai? And when he was in the cave and
the rain fell and the rock split and the earth quaked and all
the, what are those things? Those are experiences. And he
was looking for that. He was looking to those overt, things for God to speak to him
and the scripture says the Lord was not in it, he wasn't in it,
he wasn't in it, he wasn't in it. And what was he in? A still small voice. Where does God speak to us? Still
small voice. He exposes us for what we are,
sinners. He draws us to himself. And the Lord said to Elijah while
he was on that mountain, he said, Elijah, three times, I think,
in that passage, Elijah, what are you doing here? What are
you doing here? What'd you come back here for?
Well, you know, Lord, I was afraid, and I thought if I got back to
the law somehow, you know, that would fix everything. My experience tells me that if
I just be a giver all the time, people are gonna take advantage
of me and I'm gonna end up with nothing. And so we guard ourselves
about that, don't we? Sometimes we're reluctant to
give and thinking that somebody's not gonna appreciate this or
somebody doesn't appreciate it and so we cut it off. What's
God say? It's more blessed to give than
to receive. Just keep being a giver. My experience tells me that my
security is in the abundance of my material wealth. How oftentimes
we worry about those things. What's God say? Labor not for
that meat which perisheth, but for that meat which leads to
everlasting life. Labor for Christ. What profit is it if a man gains
the whole world and loses his own soul? And yet, stock market
crashes and a financial thing doesn't work out properly and
we get all worried, don't we? Why? Because we're doing exactly
what Peter did. Here's the root cause of our
problem. We think we know better than
God. And rather than trust him and believe him and follow him,
we follow our experiences and our feelings. My experience tells
me that my feelings and my intuitions are reliable sources of discernment.
How many times you follow your heart? Bible says in the book
of Proverbs that it's a fool that follows his heart. And yet
how many times we follow our hearts rather than following
God. We must look outside of ourselves
to the Lord Jesus Christ revealed in God's word for discernment
and truth. My experience, like Peter, tells
me that when I'm walking on the water and the waves start lapping
up around me, that I need to take my eyes off of Christ and
be more concerned about those things that are threatening my
life. And as soon as I do, what do I do? I find myself sinking,
drowning. Peter was drowning. Lord, save
me. Now there's a prayer that Peter's
glad the Lord answered. He didn't answer, depart from
me for I'm a sinful man. No, sinful men are who I came
to save, and I'm not gonna ever depart from a sinful man. I'm
not gonna answer that prayer, Peter, for you're good. Would you cry out when you're
drowning, Lord, save me? Yes. Oh, ye of little faith, Why did
you doubt? Why did you doubt? The apostles
are in the boat with the Lord. He's asleep. Cares not that we
perish? Oh, you have a little faith. I'm right here. Why'd you doubt? Lord, because we're sinful men.
We're sinful men. We want to believe you. We do
believe you, but so oftentimes we follow our experiences and
our thoughts and our opinions rather than you. Jacob, when they left Simeon
down in Egypt and now they want to take Benjamin, what did Jacob
say? Joseph is no more. As far as Jacob was concerned,
Joseph was dead. Joseph is no more. Benjamin is
not. Simeon is not. Now you want to
take Benjamin? And then what did he say? All these things
are against me. He was looking at his experiences
and coming to the conclusion that all these things were against
him. When God had made covenant promises to him to provide and
protect for him and his descendants, all the rest of his life. And
what Jacob didn't know was the best days of his life were yet
ahead of him when he went to Egypt and lived as the father,
the patriarch of the prime minister of the greatest nation in the
world in the land of Goshen. All these things are against
me. Have you ever felt that way? Sure you have. All these things
are against me. Why would we come to that conclusion?
Why would we think that? Why would we say that? Unbelief. That's it. Or we think, you know, what so-and-so
said or what so-and-so did is going to be to my hurt. What's
God say? Oh, you may have meant it for
evil. God meant it all for good. He meant it for good. And we
know what that good is. We're not looking for some temporal
blessing as a result of some bad experience. The good that
we're looking for is Christ. And what God's doing through
all these experiences in your life and in my life is leading
us to depend upon the Lord Jesus Christ and to know him in this
life and in the life to come. And whatever God does will be
to that end for his children. And it'll be good. It'll be good. that we could rest in him." Why
is, David asked this question, why am I so disquieted? Why am
I so anxious? Why am I so afraid? Unbelief. Jairus came to the Lord and said,
Lord come to my house, my young daughter is on her deathbed. And while he's still talking with the Lord,
the servants, why as they begin to go back to Jairus this house,
the servants of Jairus come, bother the master no more. Your
daughter's dead. And the Lord looked at Jairus
with such compassion, such tenderness, knowing that Jairus was broken
and the Lord said, be not afraid, only believe, only believe, only
believe. And they got to Jairus' house
and the Lord shooed everybody away and said, child's not dead,
she's asleep. And they mocked him. And none of those people that
were there at that house grieving the death of this child were
allowed to come into the room except Jairus and his wife who
believed. The Lord said, only believe and
Jairus just believed. I've got nothing else to do but
to believe you, Lord. And Jairus and his wife testified
and they witnessed the raising of their daughter. the giving
of life to her. Brethren, God's ways are not
our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts.
As the heavens are high above the earth, so is our God high
above us. Lord, help my unbelief. Forgive
me. Forgive me for I am a sinful
man. All right, Tom. Number 37. 37, let's stand together. Number 37. Approach, my soul, the throne
of grace in every time of need. There's mercy for the needy one
who Jesus' name shall plead. Though I'm a weak and sinful
wretch, I will approach the throne. I'll lean upon Christ's mighty
arm and plead His blood alone. The blood, the precious blood
of Christ has opened up the way by which I can draw near to God
and to my Father pray. Though Satan tempts my heart
to sin, I'll call upon my God. And if I fall, he'll lift me
up and cleanse me in the blood. The way is open, God will hear
my groans and cries of grief. Nothing can keep me from His
throne but my own unbelief. ? O Lord, my unbelief remove ?
And turn my heart by grace ? Compel me to approach your throne ?
And there spread out my case ?