Good morning. Let's open this
morning's service with hymn number 224 from your hardbacked hymnal.
It's usually not an opening hymn, but I hope it's going to go with
what Greg's scripture that he's preaching from this morning.
Number 224 from your hardbacked hymnal. I know not why God's wondrous
grace to me he hath made known, nor why unworthy Christ in love
redeem me for his own. But I know whom I have believed
and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed
unto him against that day. I know not how this saving faith
to me did impart, nor how believing in his word brought peace within
my heart. But I know whom I have believed
and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I've committed
unto Him against that day. ? I know not how the spirit moves
? Convincing man of sin ? Revealing Jesus through the word ? Creating
faith in him But I know whom I have believed and am persuaded
that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him
against that day. I know not what of good or ill
may be reserved for me. Of weary ways or golden days
before his face I see. ? I am believeth and am persuaded
that he is able ? To keep that which I've committed ? Unto him
against that day ? I know not when my Lord may come ? At night
or noonday fair ? Nor if I'll walk the avail with him ? Or
meet him in the air ? But I know whom I have believed and am persuaded
? That he is able ? Keep that which I've committed unto him
against Please be seated. Good morning. That is a wonderful
hymn. As you know, the chorus of that
hymn is what the Apostle Paul said. And I think it's important
to to define that word committed You know, we use the word commitment as a determination on our part,
an effort, a work. You know, we're really committed
to this. But that word in the scripture means to make a full
deposit. In other words, I've invested
everything in Christ. I don't have my the investment
of my soul diversified into other places. Everything is on Christ. I'm resting all the hope of my
salvation on Him. And I know whom I believe. I'm persuaded that He is able. We're not able, but He's able,
amen? And there's another stanza in this hymn that stood out to
me this morning in light of what we're going to be looking at. The third stanza, the second
line, says, revealing Jesus through the word, creating faith in him. We're going to be looking this
morning at a passage of scripture in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1,
if you'd like to open your Bibles there. Revealing the Lord Jesus Christ. How does God reveal Christ to
the hearts of his people? Through his word. Through his
word. And by his word, he creates faith
in us. Now, to create something means
that you make something from nothing. Only God can create. We talk about men being creative
but all we are, all we're doing when we create something is changing
one thing into something else. We're just moving stuff around
and we call that being creative. Only God can create. He creates
something out of nothing. And that's what he does when
he gives us faith. He is creating something in us that wasn't made by anything
that we produced. He's not moving things around.
He's not forming one thing into something else. He's bringing
something out of nothing, creating faith in us. What a glorious truth. What a
hope. And what God creates is sure
and certain. I'd love to be able to sing the
hymns that we sing with some understanding. And I think that's
very important. I know I make reference to the
hymns a lot when I first get up here, but hopefully it's an
encouragement to you. I know it is. It is to me as
I sing these hymns and the Lord shows us. So many hymns we can't
sing, isn't there? Because they're not true. All right, let's ask the Lord's
blessings on our time together. Our Heavenly Father, how dependent we are that your
Holy Spirit would cause your word to be alive and reveal to
us the living word, the person of thy dear son, that you would
cause us to to commit everything to him, to invest all that we
have in his glorious person and in his accomplished work for
all the hope of our salvation. And Lord, we know that we have
no contribution to make, that you must create in us that which
does not exist. And so, Lord, we pray that you
would that you would cause us to believe today, that you would
increase our faith, that you would bless us, Lord, with your
mercy and with your grace. We pray that you would do it
for Christ's sake and for the hope and the salvation of our
souls. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. The Lord tells us in 1 Thessalonians
chapter 1 of a couple of things that we have to be hopeful for
in light of the faith that he has created in us. This is our greatest need. This is our greatest hope. This is our greatest joy. those
things that the Lord gives us as a result of saving faith. And we'll read three verses together,
verses eight, nine, and 10 of 2 Thessalonians chapter one. Well, let's go back to verse
seven because that's where it begins. The Lord tells, Paul
is telling the Thessalonians to rest with him, rest in Christ. Cease from your labors. The work
was accomplished before the foundation of the world. Everything that
God required for the salvation of his people, the Lord Jesus
Christ accomplished on Calvary's cross. And so we looked at that
last week. Those who you are troubled, rest,
rest with us. when the Lord Jesus shall be
revealed from heaven with his mighty angels. This is, you know,
I was thinking about why were the apostles standing on the
Mount of Olives after, as the Lord was ascended into heaven,
why were they standing there gazing up into heaven? The Lord
had to send angels to correct them, The angel said to the apostles
as they were standing there gazing up into the clouds where the
Lord had been caught up into glory, men of Israel, why stand
you here gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus which has been
caught up from you will return in like manner. And I think the reason they were
gazing up is because they assumed that the Lord was going to do
whatever it was he had to do and come right back. That he was, you know, they were
waiting even at that moment, they were waiting for his imminent
return. And every child of God since
then has been doing the same thing, waiting in anticipation
in hopeful anticipation of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ
to gather his people together, to establish his eternal kingdom
in glory, to reveal the fullness of himself. We're watching and
waiting. And when he returns with his mighty
angels in verse seven, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them
that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who shall be punished with an everlasting destruction
from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power,
when he shall come to be revealed or to be glorified, I'm sorry,
in his saints and to be admired in all them that believe because
our testimony among you was believed in that day. So Paul's saying
to the church in Thessalonica, he had only been there for three
weeks. He was there for three weeks and run out of town. And
we're gonna go to Acts chapter 17 in a moment and look at those
verses where he testified of the gospel. of Christ to the
believers or to the people in Thessalonica and some of them
believed and some of them believed not. But he's saying to them, because
you believed our testimony, because you believed our testimony, here's
the hope that you have. Number one, escape the wrath
that is to come. No fear of judgment, no fear
of wrath. The full wrath of God for the
sins of his people was quenched at Calvary's cross. When the
father sheathed the sword of his justice in the heart of his
own son and God saw the travail of his soul and God said, I'm
satisfied. That's the hope of every believer.
that we fear not the wrath that is to come. Wrath is coming.
Lord's clear here, isn't he? In those two verses we just read.
The judgment of the world doesn't believe it. They don't believe
it any more than they believe that God was gonna destroy the
earth by flood. Noah preached and they scoffed.
And in 2 Peter, The scripture makes it clear
that there are still scoffers in this world who say, where
is the coming of the Lord? You guys have been talking about
this from the very beginning. The world has no fear of God. They have no belief that God's
gonna come and exercise his holiness and his wrath in order to satisfy
his justice by the destruction of this world. They don't believe
it. We believe it. God's revealed it, we believe
it. But we need not fear it. We need not fear it. For all
the wrath of God has been completely quenched. His fire has been put
out and God's satisfied with what
Christ did. The second thing that the Lord
tells us in these verses is that when these holy angels come,
when the trump of God sounds, when the Lord Jesus does return, that we're going to worship Him
as we ought. We're gonna see Him in the fullness
of His glory. We're going to We're going to
delight, our hearts and eyes are going to be fixed on him
for all eternity. And for the believer who has
tasted of his grace, we're just tasting of it now. We're getting
little glimpses of it now as we attempt to worship him. We know that in that day, we'll
worship him without any obstruction. without any of the distractions
of our own sin and flesh and this world. And my question for you this
morning is, is that your hope? To escape the wrath that is to
come and to worship Him as we ought? in the fullness of his
glory. What else is there? You see,
that is the belief. When all the trials and troubles
and whatever else we suffer in this world are over, there it
is right there. And the Lord's saying, because
our testimony was believed among you, you have this hope. Now he's speaking of these two
things as the result of faith and they are the result of faith. I want you to know, I want to
say with as much clarity as Lord will enable me, that though these
things be the result of faith, our salvation Our salvation is
not the result of faith. Faith is the result of our salvation. Faith is not our contribution
to our salvation. Faith is what happens when the
Spirit of God is pleased in his own omnipotent sovereign power
to invade our souls and our hearts and create in us that which never
existed before. Faith is what salvation produces.
It is the effect of our salvation, not the cause of it. It is the
result of the new birth. The scripture says that faith
is the evidence of things not seen. What's not seen? What's
not seen? Our names written in the Lamb's
Book of Life, we can't see that. How do we know that our names
are written in the Lamb's Book of Life? Faith is the evidence
of things not seen. Christ dying on Calvary's cross,
that happened 2,000 years ago. We can't see that, we weren't
there. How do we know that his death
was effectual and successful in redeeming all of his people?
Faith is the evidence of things not seen. The ascension of the
Lord Jesus Christ back into glory as we just spoke of in Acts chapter
1 when he left the Mount of Olives and ascended back to his rightful
place in his throne in glory at the right hand of the majesty
on high. We can't see that. How do we know? Faith is the
evidence of things hoped for. That we are seated in the heavenlies
right now in the person of our substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ,
we can't see that. How do we know? Faith is the
evidence of things not seen. You see, faith is not the cause
of these things, faith is the evidence of these things. And
faith is not anything that we produced or any contribution
that we made. We're all so works-oriented,
if we're not careful we'll make a work out of faith. The whole
world has. The religious world makes a work out of faith. They
think that, you know, that God wants all men to be saved and
devil's voting against everybody and your faith is what breaks
the tie. You are the one who make the
decision. Men have set themselves up on the throne of God and they've
made themselves to be God by believing that their faith is
the deciding factor in their salvation. We know that's not
true. We know that by grace are you
saved through faith and that faith is not of yourselves, it's
a gift of God, isn't it? It's a work of grace in the heart. And so faith here in our text,
the Lord is speaking of those things that are the result of
faith. Notice again in our text where
he says in the parenthetical statement of verse 10, because
our testimony was believed. Because you believed our testimony,
therefore you have the hope. You have the hope of knowing
that when the fiery wrath of God's justice comes against this
world, you have nothing to fear. And when the Lord Jesus appears
in the fullness of his glory, you're gonna worship him as you've
always longed to worship him since he made himself known to
you. You've been looking through a glass darkly but then face-to-face. That's the believer's hope and
that is the result of our faith. Because our testimony Among you
was believed. Go back with me to Acts chapter
17. We'll see what testimony the Apostle Paul gave to the
church in Thessalonica. You know, in religion, personal
testimonies are a big thing. Men love to stand up and tell
their life story as their testimony. And most people think of testimony
as, you know, as in that light. But the word testimony here is
a reference to the gospel. Because the things that we told
you, because what we testified of was believed by you, therefore
you have this hope that When the wrath of God comes, you're
not gonna be a part of it. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
appears, you're gonna see him and worship him. And as Paul
said in that scripture, admire him. And there's another word
that, you know, words change meanings over time, don't they?
We use that word admired. You know, we might say to somebody,
well, you know, I really admire you for that. The word here is
to glory, to praise, to be overwhelmed with the fullness of his splendor.
We're going to admire him, worship him as we've longed to be able
to worship him. So in Acts chapter 17, beginning
in verse one, And when they had passed through Amphipolis and
Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica where was a synagogue of the
Jews. And Paul, as his manner was,
went in unto them and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of
the scriptures. He reasoned with them out of
the scriptures, opening explaining the scriptures, declaring
the scriptures, comparing the spiritual to the spiritual, scripture
to scripture, and alleging and proving. That's what that word
means. We're not just alleging something
that might be or may not be. No, we're opening up the scriptures
and proving from God's word. From God's word, what? that Christ
must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead and
that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ. Now that's the testimony that
they believed because you believed our testimony. Therefore, you
need not fear the wrath that is to come and the longing desire
of your heart to see the Lord Jesus in the fullness of his
glory is going to be experienced, it's going to be realized. Because
you believed our testimony. What did you believe? That Jesus
is the Christ. Look at the next verse. And some
of them believed. And bound themselves together
with the apostle Paul. They consorted with Paul. They
met with him. They asked him questions. They
wanted to know more. They wanted to know more. You
know, Peter refers to men being willingly ignorant. Unbelief
is man exercising his will to not want to know anything more.
When the gospel is preached, and you've had this experience
perhaps in your own life, in your own family, try to talk
to somebody about the Lord and and you open and allege to them
from the scriptures who the Lord Jesus is and what he accomplished,
and they listen just a little while and they come to the conclusion,
if what you're saying is true, I'm not saved, I don't wanna
hear anymore. I don't wanna hear anymore. Willingly ignorant. I'll just stay in the dark because
this is too uncomfortable for me. But those for whom the Lord saved and those whom he creates faith
in them, they just believe. They want to know more. Tell
me more. Tell me more. I don't want to
be ignorant. I want to know as much as I can know about who
he is and about what he's done. Tell me more. I trust that's
why we're here this morning, to know more about him. We're
not trying to figure out something different. We just want to know
more of him. And so the ones that believed
consorted with Paul. They met with him. They asked
him a thousand questions. They wanted to know more what
the Lord had revealed to him from the scriptures about this
Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ. And now in writing back
to them, he says, because you believed our testimony, this
is your hope. You need not fear the wrath of
God. And the longing of your soul to see him in the fullness
of his glory is going to be experienced when he sends his holy angels,
either in that fiery day of judgment when he destroys the earth or
when he sends his angel. to take you by the hand and usher
you into his presence. Either way, here's your hope. We just sang that in that hymn.
Lord, if I walk through the veil with you. What is the veil? Well, the veil
was the renting of his flesh, his death on Calvary's cross.
If I walk through the veil with you, or if I'm here when you
return, to take your church home either way, here's my hope. My hope is that the wrath of
God has been quenched. It's been put out. My sin's been
put away. And the hope of seeing him is
my desire, my longing, nothing else. That's my greatest, my
greatest need is those two things, it's my greatest need. He reasoned with them out of
the scriptures. Turn with me to John chapter
six. Look with me at verse 63. It is the Spirit that quickeneth,
the flesh profiteth nothing. Well, that does away with anything
that we could add to our salvation. The flesh profiteth no thing. It cannot produce anything. It
is the Spirit that quickeneth. Isn't that what the Lord told
Nicodemus? Nicodemus, accept you be born of the Spirit. You
cannot see the kingdom of God. You can't perceive of it. Nicodemus
was a leader of the Jews. He knew the Bible inside and
out. He memorized large portions of it. And yet he didn't know. He didn't know. He needed to
be born of the Spirit, born from above. The words that I speak
unto you, they are spirit and they are life. But there are some of you that
believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that
believe not and who should betray him. And he said, therefore, said
I unto you, no man can come unto me. except that are given to
him of my father." That's pretty clear, isn't it?
Oh Lord, I don't have the ability to come to you. What'd that leper
say? Lord, we know you can heal us
if you will. And what does man-made religion
say? Man-made religion says God wants to save everybody, but
he can't. His hands are tied until you give him permission,
until you do your part. And just the opposite is true. Paul alleged and opened and proved
to these men and reasoned with them out of the scriptures, out
of the scriptures. Another place, the Pharisees
said, by what authority do you do these things? And the Lord had already revealed
himself for who he is, the son of God, but they didn't believe
it. And so he said to them, he said, I'm going to ask you a
question. He answered a question with a
question. He said, if you answer this question, then I'll answer
your question. The baptism of John, was it from heaven or was
it from men? And they all got together over
on the side and started talking. Well, you know, if we say it
was from heaven, then he's going to put us on the spot and want
to know why we didn't follow John. And why did we believe
the testimony of John, who said clearly, behold, the Lamb of
God, which takes away the sins of the world, when John pointed
to me? So we can't say it was from heaven, but John was a very
popular prophet and well-loved among the people. If we say that
it was from men, then the people are going to turn against us. They were stuck, weren't they?
What were they trying to do? protect their position, protect
their power, protect their own opinions. They would not bow. And the Lord Jesus looked at
those men and he said, when they said, we cannot tell, we can't
tell. And the Lord said, neither will
I tell you by what authority I do these things. He had already veiled by what
authority he was doing these things, but they didn't believe.
They didn't believe. What do believers believe? We believe God. We believe everything that he
said in his word. You know, sometimes somebody
will say, well, how much of the Bible do I have to believe to
be a believer? If you're a believer, you believe every word of it.
You believe every word of it. No exceptions. You just believe
God. That's what a believer does.
And now Paul's saying, because you believed our testimony, we
reasoned with you out of the scriptures, we opened and alleged
to you who the Lord Jesus is according to the scriptures,
and you believed it. And because you believed it,
you have the hope that when the wrath of God comes, you're not
gonna be a part of it. You have a sin bearer. You have
one who has suffered the full judgment of God for all your
sins and put them away once and for all. Don't fear that. Not only do we not, you see this
isn't just a matter of escaping the judgment of God, escaping
hell, who wants to go to hell? But the other side of that is
that The longing of my soul, just like those apostles who
were standing on the Mount of Olives gazing up into heaven.
The desire of my heart to see him in the fullness of his glory
is going to be experienced and I'm gonna worship him and my
heart, eyes are gonna be fixed on him for all eternity. Oh,
what hope, because you believed our testimony. You believed what
we declared. Let me ask you a question. Is
the gospel logical? It is. It is logical. Do we use logic to prove the
gospel? Why not? Well, men generally
are pretty logical when it comes to most things in life, but when
it comes to the most important thing, The salvation of their
souls? Men are illogical. They believe
things that don't make sense. They believe that God loves everybody,
but that most of the people that God loves, he's gonna punish
for all of eternity in a devil's hell, fiery hell. They say they
believe that God is omnipotent, all powerful. until he comes
up against the power of man's free will and then he has to
back down. That doesn't make sense. The Lord said man has set himself
up on the throne of God. If God's dependent upon me for
anything then he's not God I am. You see, they don't They say
that God is sovereign, that he's immutable, that he's holy, that
he's just, and yet they deny all those essential natures of
God in a freewill works gospel. It doesn't make sense. It's illogical. You can't make sense out of nonsense,
and a man-made freewill works gospel is nonsense, and yet men
They eat it up, hook, line and sinker, they swallow it. They
become illogical when it comes to spiritual things. And so when we try to use logic
to prove the truth of the gospel, it doesn't work. It doesn't work
because we're talking to people who are illogical when it comes
to spiritual things. So yes, the gospel is logical. But the Lord doesn't bless logic.
He doesn't bless human reason. He doesn't, you know, we can
use all these things. What does he bless? He blesses
his word. He blesses his word. And you
talk to someone about the gospel. You know, Trish and I had this
experience just the other night. We were talking to a couple.
You know, I tried to use a couple of illustrations and the illustrations
I used fell on deaf ears and they turned them around. And
then I would quote scripture. And these people knew the Bible,
but they could not refute God's word. Their mouths were shut. Every time I would use God's
word to prove the truth of the gospel, their mouths were shut. Or they would come back with
something, well, yeah, we believe in predestination, but we believe
that God has predestinated everybody to be saved. But he's given man
a free will so that most of the people he's predestinated to
be saved are going to end up in hell. Do you not know what predestined
means? You see that people are just
illogical, irrational. But here's the point. We preach
God's word. We allege and we prove and we
open the scriptures. We could talk about the illogical
point of free will. You know, I just say this on
the side that, and you can YouTube it if you want, more and more
philosophers who have no interest in spiritual things whatsoever,
and no interest in spiritual things, are putting things out
there now debunking the even logical possibility of free will. And they're not relating it to
the gospel, they're just saying that there's no such thing as
free will. No such thing as it. You do some
study of that on your own. It doesn't make sense. Our will cannot choose against
itself. It is bound to its nature. Given two or more options, you
always choose that which you have the greatest inclination
for. You cannot choose against that which you have the greatest
inclination for. And if you're given an option
between Christ and something else, you have a greater inclination. You won't choose Christ. You
can't choose Him because you don't desire. No one has ever
wanted to be saved and not been saved. No one has ever, let me
rephrase that. No one has ever wanted Christ
to be saved on God's terms, let's put it that way, and been turned
away. The reason why men aren't saved,
because they don't want to be saved. They can't will to be
saved. God has to give us a new nature.
He has to give us, he has to make us willing in the day of
his power. He has to regenerate us. He has to birth us by his
spirit before we're gonna have a desire for him. No. All that having been said, I
will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy and I will harden
whom I will harden. And it is not of him that willeth
nor of him that runneth. It is of God that show of mercy.
Now there's God's word. You can argue logically other
things, but you can't argue against God's word. I lay down my life for the sheep. You believe not because you are
not my sheep. That's God's word. Jacob I have
loved and Esau I have hated. That's God's word. We reason
from God's Word, we allege and open the scriptures and what
are we doing? We're proving that Jesus is the Christ, the Son
of the living God. The natural man refers to Jesus
Christ as if Christ was his surname. Christ is not the Lord's surname. It is his title. It means the
Anointed One. It means the Messiah. It means
the Savior of all of Israel. It means the one who comes in
the full power of the Spirit of God to accomplish the purpose
for which he is sent. It means that he cannot fail.
There's nothing that can limit him. There's nothing that can
hinder him. He is the Christ. And that's what Paul was alleging
and reasoning and opening from the scriptures and that's what
they believed. And the revelation of the Christ begins all the
way back in the garden. When the Lord said, to Eve and
Adam, the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. And that revelation of a successful
savior continues from then on. The lamb that God slew in the
garden and took the fleece off to cover the nakedness of Adam
and Eve, there's the Christ. There's the Christ. The ark that
Noah built that was pitched or atoned or covered so that the
judgment of the deluge could not drown those inhabitants in
the ark. There's Christ. There's the Messiah. The Passover lamb that Moses
slew in Egypt and put the blood on the door. You see, this is
the alleging and proving and opening up of the scriptures
of who the Lord Jesus is and what he would accomplished. When God spoke to Abraham and
took that sacrifice to confirm his covenant promise and slew
the sacrifice and then passed through the sacrifice with a
smoking pot and a burning flame. There's the Messiah. He's going
to fulfill his covenant promise. He's going to save all of his
people. Not one of his sheep is going
to be lost. We are proving from Scripture, from Scripture that
Jesus is the Christ. Philip went to Nathanael and
said, After the Lord found Philip, the scripture says, and the Lord
in John chapter one saw Philip and found Philip and called Philip.
And then Philip goes to Nathanael and says, we found the Christ.
We found the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. And Nathanael said,
what good can come out of Nazareth? What good can come out? He can't
be the Christ. Come and see, that's what Philip
said to his brother Nathanael, come and see. And Nathanael came
to the Lord Jesus and the Lord said to Nathanael, he said, an
Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile. And Nathanael said,
how do you know me? And the Lord looked at Nathanael
and said, Nathanael, when you were under the fig tree, I saw
thee. And Nathanael in exaltation cried,
Rabbi, thou art the son of God. Nathanael had been praying to
God to reveal himself to him and now the Lord Jesus Christ
and I was the one you were praying to, I'm that Christ. Even the woman at the well who
was but a Samaritan and only had the first five books of the
Bible. when the Lord Jesus revealed himself to her. And she went
back down into Sychar and he said, she said, oh, come and
meet a man who told me everything I've ever done. Is not this the
Christ? Is not this the savior, the Messiah,
the anointed one, the sovereign successful savior of sinners? Is this not he? Yes, and when
they came and they heard him and they met him, they believed. Not because of the testimony
of the woman, but because they met him, they believed. Alleging from scripture that
manna that fell from heaven, it's the Lord Jesus. The rock that followed them through
the wilderness, upon which the rod of Moses' law struck, and
out from which flowed the water of life, the rock, the rod, the
water, all of it, all of it, is proving from God's Word that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Paul said, in writing back
to these believers that he'd only been with for three weeks,
he said, because you believed our testimony from the scriptures that Jesus
is the Christ. Therefore, when the fiery wrath
of God comes, you're not gonna be a part of it. And when the Lord Jesus, the
trump of God sounds The Lord Jesus splits the eastern
sky and every other knee is going to
bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. They're going
to be forced. The rod of God's wrath on the
back of their knee will bring them to that confession. But
because you believe now, you need not fear that wrath. You
need not fear that rod. The longing of your soul is going
to be realized when you see him. in the fullness of His glory
and you can be made like Him, no more sin. Let's take a break. Thank you.