Good morning. We're going to
open with the hymn on the back of the bulletin, which is kind
of unusual for us. So, but if you don't have one
yet, now's a good time to sneak back there and get the bulletin
on the table. So let's all stand. We'll sing the hymn that's on
the back of your bulletin. With harps and with viols there
stands a great throng in the presence of Jesus and sings this
new song to Him who hath loved us and washed us from sin. Unto Him be the glory Forever,
amen. All these once were sinners,
defiled in His sight. Now arrayed in poor garments,
their voices unite. To Him who hath loved us and
washed us from sin, unto Him be the glory. Forever, amen. He maketh the rebel a priest
and a king. He hath bought us and taught
us this new song to sing to him who hath loved us and washed
us from sin. Unto him be the glory. forever amen how helpless and
poor we sinners have been. If He had not loved us and washed
us from sin, to Him who hath loved us and washed us from sin,
unto Him be the glory ever. Allowed in His praises our voices
shall ring so that others may hear. This new song shall sing
to Him who hath loved us and washed us from sin, unto Him
be the glory forever. Amen. Please be seated. Good morning. If you'd like to open your Bibles
with me, we're gonna be in Ecclesiastes chapter three, the first hour
this morning. Ecclesiastes chapter three. And there's one verse that I
want us to look at. Let's ask the Lord's blessings
on our time together. Our Heavenly Father, our hope this morning is that
you would be glorified, that Christ would be lifted up, that
you would send your Holy Spirit in power, that you would bless
your word to our hearts, that you would teach us and, Lord,
reveal to us the glory of Christ and cause us to find our hope,
our salvation, our comfort in him. Lord, we thank you for your
word. We thank you for causing us to
believe it. We ask, Lord, that you would
forgive us for so much unbelief that remains in our flesh. Lord, the cause of all of our
sin is our unbelief. Lord, we thank you for the shed
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that covers our sins and gives
us acceptance before thee. We ask it in his name. Amen. I've titled this message, Taught
of God. Taught of God. And I want to
introduce it by asking the question, how is it that we know what we
know? How is it that we know what we
know? Philosophers would tell us that
reason and observation and logic and the testimony of others and
those sort of things would be the means by which we know what
we know. The problem with all of that
is that those things are ever-changing. And so what we thought we knew
to be true at one time, as new information comes out, we find
out that we were wrong and we have to adjust what we thought
we knew and now we think we know something better. One thing that philosophers never
address in this area of knowledge is divine
revelation. They never address that. They
know nothing about that. Divine revelation. Now brethren,
that's how we know what we know. And that's the only way that
we can know what we know to be true. The Lord Jesus said, if you know
the truth, the truth sets you free. There's such confidence. There's such certainty, there's
such comfort and assurance in being taught of God. Being taught
of God. So that we don't have to rely
upon the testimony of a man. We don't have to rely upon logic
or reason or experience to conclude the truth. The spirit of God
takes the word of God and causes us to believe. And by divine revelation, we
know. We know some things. And no one can convince us otherwise. If God's taught you, there's
no changing. Our God's immutable. He never
changes. His truth doesn't change. So
it's not a matter of, well, when we get some more information,
maybe things will be different. No, we know more of him, but
that doesn't mean that the things that he taught us before he teaches
us more were not true. Faith is believing the revelation
that God's made. And so faith in that regard is
progressive. The Lord teaches his children
and they believe And then he teaches them more and they continue
to believe. And this is how we know what
we know. Look at this verse with me, Ecclesiastes
chapter three, verse 14. I know, I know, that phrase is used often
in the scriptures. I know, we know, you know. There are some great, glorious,
liberating truths that the child of God knows, but they can only
know them if God teaches them to them. They can only know them
by divine revelation. They will never conclude them
by their power of reason or by their logic or by being taught
of another man. Something another man teaches
you, if you believe it just because you learned it from him, someone
else can teach you out of it. But when God teaches you, you
can say, I know. And what does Solomon say here that he knows? Look at verse 14. I know that whatsoever God doeth,
it shall be forever. Nothing can be put to it, nor
anything taken from it. God doeth it that men may fear
before him. Now, to fear God is to believe
God. It's just to believe him. And when you are taught of God,
you know that whatsoever God doeth, you can't add to it. You can't take away from it.
God did it. And it causes you to bow in worship
and faith before him. Let's look at another verse.
Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 54. This is so glorious. We live
in a world that's so uncertain. You know, information is more
now than it's ever been. And I fear that most of what
most men know, they learn from YouTube and Wikipedia, you know,
and those things are always changing, aren't they? What does God teach
us? What's God taught you? What's
he taught me? What do we know? Beyond any shadow of a doubt,
we can rest the eternal destiny of our immortal soul on it. We are so convinced of it. We're so sure of it. We're so
certain. We're so confident. That's where
I want to be. And that's where I want you to
be. Because everything in this world is changing. Everything
is uncertain. And that's not even to consider
ourselves, how we are changing, and how uncertain and unstable
we are. You have your Bibles open to
Isaiah, I'm sorry, 54. Look with me at verse 11 of Isaiah
54. Oh, thou afflicted, afflicted
with your sin, afflicted with so many fears and doubts, afflicted
with this world like Lot, was grieved by the wickedness
of Sodom and yet, though he was grieved by it, he had to be taken
by the hand and pulled out of Sodom. He lingered in Sodom. Isn't this our experience? Afflicted, oh ye afflicted. Tossed with tempest. We're tossed about so many things. Now here's what the Lord says,
skip down with me to verse 13. And all thy children, all thy
children, every single one of them shall be taught of the Lord. Now that's what I, I wanna be
taught of God. All thy children shall be taught
of the Lord and great shall be the peace of thy children. And
God teaches you the truth. You rest right there. You just
are confident and you know it's true. And you're
not tossed about by what God teaches you. Verse 14. In righteousness shalt
thou be established. Thou shalt be established in
the righteousness of Christ. Look down with me at verse 17.
No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper, and every
tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness
is of me, saith the Lord. What a great glorious promise. All my children. This is what
the Lord was referring to in John chapter six when he said,
as it is written in the scriptures, they shall all be taught of God. And every man therefore that
hath heard and hath learned of the father cometh unto me. So there's the evidence of having
heard And we know that the hearing ear and the seeing eye are from
the Lord. And if he doesn't open the eyes
of our blindness and unstop our ears, we'll not hear, we'll not
see. Divine revelation. But he that has heard and been
taught of the Father comes to Christ. Comes to Christ. Nothing can be added to it, nothing
can be taken from it. The Lord did it, that all men
might fear him. God gives faith, we bow and say
truth, Lord. Truth, Lord, I believe. When
God gives repentance, we have no trouble saying what we have
the most trouble saying to one another, I was wrong. I was wrong. Through and through,
I was wrong. From top to bottom, I was wrong.
Lord, that's what repentance is, is to change the mind. Is
that not the most difficult thing that men like us of pride have
to say to one another? And yet when God gives repentance,
we bow before him. And we say, truth, Lord, I believe. Lord, forgive my unbelief. I
was so wrong. I thought I knew something. I
was like Naaman the leper. You remember when Naaman came
to Elisha to be healed of his leprosy? He was the commander
of the army of Syria and he was a great man and he had leprosy. And he heard that the prophet
Elisha could heal him. Elisha told him to go wash in
the river, Jordan. But Elisha didn't come out and
tell him. Elisha sent his servant out.
And Naaman got wroth, the scripture says. I mean, he was filled with
anger. And he said, I thought, seeing who I am and the position
in the world that I have, I thought that the man of God would come
out And then he would wave his hands and he would do all these
religious things and I'd be healed. He speaks of himself at that
point in the third person. He says, I thought that the man
of God would come out and heal the leper, the leper. He couldn't even identify himself
as a leper. And finally, one of his servants
told him, he said, go wash. Go wash. And he came back cleansed
of his leprosy and he fell on his face before the prophet Elisha
and he said, now I know. He went from I thought to now
I know that there is no God in all the world save in Israel. I know that the God of Israel
is the one and only true God. That's what happens when God
gives faith and repentance. We can say, I know. I know that whatsoever the Lord
doeth, it shall be forever. You can't add to it. You can't
take away from it. For the Lord hath done it. And
when the Lord does it, men will fall before him in worship. And that's what the fear of God
is. The fear of God is not a cringing,
hiding fear like Adam had after he sinned in the garden, trying
to cover himself with fig leaves and hiding in the trees, fearing
God. That's not, that's not, that's
slavish fear. That's fleshly fear. That's sinful
fear. The fear of God that's being
spoken of here is the fear that doesn't cause us to hide from
God, it causes us to drive to come to him and to bow before
him and to confess and to worship and to believe. That's the fear
of God. Let's go back to our text and
let's read it again. I know, do you know this? Absolute certainty, have you
been taught of God? I know that whatsoever God doeth,
it shall be forever. Ecclesiastes 3, verse 14. Nothing
can be put to it or anything taken from it, God doeth it that
men should fear before him. There's a few things we know.
There's lots of things we know. I don't have time to deal with
all of them, but I want to deal with just a few. The first thing
we know is that the Bible is the word of God. We know that. Why? Because we've been taught
of God. I have no interest in trying to prove to you, there's
a lot of people who call themselves scholars and preachers and theologians
and they are making their efforts to try to prove to men that the
Bible is the Word of God and they use logic and they use history
and they use theology in order to try to insist that you believe
that the Bible is the Word of God. I have no interest in doing
that. Because if I use logic, you're
gonna find something in God's word that seems illogical. If
I use history, you're gonna find some apparent inconsistencies
in the revelation that's made historically in scripture. And
you're gonna say, well, we can't rely upon that. No, you've got
to be taught of God, don't we? We all have to be taught of God.
All God's people need to hear is thus saith the Lord. That's
all they need to hear. And that's all I'm interested
in declaring. I'm not here to defend the Bible
or to prove the Bible. I'm here to declare it. And that's
what we do. And God, the Holy Spirit causes
his people to believe. All my children shall be taught
of God. They shall be taught of God.
And once you believe that the Bible is a word of God, there's
no unbelieving that. You read it, and you say, well,
I don't understand it, but I know it's true. And you bow to it,
and you ask the Lord to show you what it means. And when he
does, you say, truth, Lord. Truth, Lord. Not the Koran, not
the Book of Mormons, not the wisdom writings of Buddha or
Hinduism. The Bible is the Word of God. We know that. We believe that. This excludes all other supposed
prophecies or revelations that men claim to have had from God? This book concludes with a stern
warning in Revelation chapter 22. If any man add to the words
of this prophecy, the plagues of this book should be added
unto him. And if any man take away from the words of this prophecy,
his name shall be taken from the book of life. So nothing
can be added to it. Nothing can be taken from it. At the end of John's gospel,
John says this, and speaking of himself, he says, this is
the disciple that testify these things. And we know that his
testimony is true. It's true. We just know it's
true. The Pharisees didn't believe
the word of God. The Lord Jesus Christ, the very
incarnation of the word of God spoke and every word that came
out of his mouth was nothing less than the very word of God.
And what'd they say? Prove to us that what you're
saying about yourself is true. We wanna see a sign. We want
to see a sign. The Lord said, a wicked and adulterous
generation seeketh after a sign, no sign to be given unto you.
The sign of the resurrection, the sign of Jonah, who spent
three days and three nights in the belly of the whale and came
forth alive. That's the resurrection is the
proof that, and it's the only proof that God gives. And the
only proof that God's people need. I know. I'm hanging the hopes of my immortal
soul and I believe every word that God has spoken. Now I'll
need a sign to prove it. The Spirit of God's taught me.
And then when the rich man went to hell and he pleaded for Abraham
to send Lazarus and put a drop of water on his tongue, what
torment he was in. And he cried out, he said, oh,
go warn my brothers of this place. Go warn my brothers of this place.
What'd Abraham say? They have Moses and the prophets. If they believe not them, neither
will they believe the one raised from the dead. No sign, even
that of the resurrection. In John chapter 11, after the
Lord Jesus Christ rose Lazarus from the dead, been the grave
four days. I mean, there was no question about the miracle
that took place right before their eyes. And at the end of
that miracle, the scripture says, some believed and some ran back
to Jerusalem and told the Pharisees what had happened. And that's
when the Pharisees got the Sanhedrin together and said, we got to
get rid of this man. I mean, they observed. They weren't
relying upon the testimony of another. They observed it with
their own eyes and they didn't believe. And you won't believe
and I won't believe. No amount of signs or miracles
will convince us. We must be taught of God. We must be taught by the Holy
Spirit and all my children shall be taught of the Lord. And they
that hear and are taught of my Father shall come unto me." What
comfort, what hope, what peace and rest we have in knowing that
God is faithful and true to his word that he's given us such
precious promises. He said no man can come unto
me. except the father which sent me draw him. And here's the promise. And how do I know that the father
has drawn me? He said, I can't come unless
the father draws me. How do I know if the father has
drawn me? No man can come unto me except
the father draw him and he that cometh unto me, I shall in no
wise cast out. That's how we know the Father's
drawn him. We wouldn't have come to Christ had the Father not drawn
us, had the Spirit of God not taught us, we wouldn't come.
We just wouldn't come. The evidence. Don't try to figure
out whether you're elect. We can't look into the Lamb's
book of life and figure that out, see that. Do I believe? Have I come to Christ? Has God
made me to come to Christ? Because that's the only way I'm
going to come. Have I been taught of God? Such precious promises. Our God
reigns. He reigns. He's sovereign. And
I know, I know that whatsoever God doeth, it is forever. My
God reigns. He's in absolute control. He
hath done whatsoever he wills with the armies of heaven and
all the inhabitants of the earth. No man can stay his hand or say
unto him, what doest thou? My God is omnipotent, he's sovereign. Oh, I know that. I know that
I've been taught of God. I know that nothing's too hard
for him. I know that whatever he does is right. I know that
the work of redemption is finished. Look and live. My grace is sufficient
unto thee. Oh, what precious promises, brethren. And we hear these words and we
know that God has spoken them. And we know that he's spoken
them to us because we believe them. We rest in them, rely upon
those words in hopes of him. I am the resurrection and the
life. He that believeth in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live. And he that liveth and believeth
in me shall never die. Believest thou this? That's all
the Lord said. Martha, do you believe this?
Yea, Lord. I believe that thou art the Christ,
the Son of God that should come into the world. You've taught
me, you've shut me up to yourself and I do believe, I believe. I know that whatsoever God doeth
and he penned his word. This book is not by private interpretation. Holy men of God wrote as they
were inspired and moved by the Spirit of God. And some 40 different
penmen over 1,500 years wrote 66 books and God inspired every
single one of them. And every word of them reveals the glory of Christ.
And we bow, we bow. What great hope. Where are we
going to go? Well, where are we going to go
to find any? Oh, you can't believe the politicians,
historians, the scientists. I understand now that the big
discovery is maybe there wasn't a big bang. And they, you know,
every time they discover something new in the universe, they begin
to question their theories of the past. They don't know, but
we know. We know. Why? Because God's taught us.
Now, I know because I used to be a part of that group that
there are men who consider themselves fundamentalist, who say they
believe the Bible is the Word of God and they say they believe
every word of it, but they don't. They don't. They don't believe
it is finished. They don't believe that. They
believe that there's still something that has to be done in order
to make what Christ did on the cross work. They don't believe
that he finished the work all by himself. They don't believe
that God chose us in him, in Christ, before the foundation
of the world. They don't believe that. They
don't believe, Jacob I loved and Esau I hated. They don't
believe that God's love is particular for his children and for his
people and for his elect. They don't believe that. A man
can stand and say, well, I believe the Bible's the word of God,
but if he don't believe every word of it, he doesn't believe it. They do not believe. It is not
of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth. It is of God that
showeth mercy. I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy,
and whom I will I'll harden. They don't believe that. Don't
be fooled if a man says, well, I believe the Bible's a word
of God. You believe every word of it? Every word of it. Because when
you're taught of God, when God teaches you that this is his
word, you don't pick and choose. You're not like that king in
the Old Testament. You remember they brought the scroll to him
and as he read it, the scripture says he pulled out his pen knife
and he cut out the pieces he didn't like and he threw them
into the fire. I can't tell you how many times Trisha and I driving
home, she'll say to me, what did we believe about that passage
before? How could we not see that? How
could we explain that away? Well, we did, because we hadn't
been taught of God. We explained it away, or we completely
ignored it, or we just, you know, we just skipped over it. Now, when you're taught of God,
you don't cut up God's word, you believe it, you believe every
bit of it. Second thing we know for certain, if we've been taught
of God, is that we're sinners. We're sinners. And by that, we
don't mean that, well, you know, I've committed some sins. By
that, what we mean that is there's no righteousness in me. Everything
in me, everything in me, every thought, every motive, every
word, every deed, everything about me falls short of the glory
of God and therefore it is sin. There's no, Paul said, I know
that in me, Now he's speaking as a believer, so he has to put
this statement next. He said, that is in my flesh.
Because Christ was in him. But he said, I know that in me,
that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. You've been taught
of God, you know that all your righteousnesses are as filthy
rags before God. You know that you've got nothing
that you can present to God that would give you any hope of standing
in the presence of a holy God. Nothing. You know that you're
a sinner. God made you to be a sinner.
And that's a miracle of his grace. It is a miracle of God's grace
to be made a sinner. because the natural man's not
a sinner. Oh, you'll find very few people that will admit that
they haven't sinned, but at the same time, they're hanging the
hopes of their salvation and their eternal destiny on something
that they see in their lives that's virtuous, something that's
good, something that's worthy of God's acceptance. When you've
been taught of God, you know there's nothing there, nothing
there. Nothing can be added to that. Well, yeah, I know I'm a sinner
but, oh no, nothing can be added to it. God made you to be a sinner,
you're not trying to add anything to it. When God says to you what
he said to that Syrophoenician woman, the bread is not for the dogs,
it's for the children. And what did that Syrophoenician
woman say? Truth, Lord. Truth Lord, that's me. That's
me. I'm a dog. Would you just scrape
a few crumbs off the master's table for me? I'll lick them
up off the floor. That's all I need. God has to make you to be a sinner,
doesn't he? And when he does, you know, you know that the only
hope you have is that the Lord Jesus would stand in your stead
and present himself on your behalf, that he would cover your sins
with his blood and that he would be your righteousness before
God. And without him, you have no
hope. Are you a sinner? I mean a sinner. A Bible-defined sinner. Here's
the good news. And this is a faithful saint.
And this is worthy of all acceptation. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. To save sinners. Oh, there's
our hope, brethren. He saves every sinner and he
only saves sinners. We have no claim on God. As a
sinner, all we can do is plead his mercy. And they that have heard and
have been taught of the Father, every one of them cometh unto
me. We've heard from God's word,
of his own will begat he us with the word of truth. He has taught
us and convinced us that this is nothing less than the inspired
divine word of God and that every word of it's true. And that whatever
he says is right. God says I'm a sinner, I'm a
sinner. Really, that's enough. Don't
try to find a place where you can wallow deep enough in the
mire of your sin to experience what it is to be a sinner. Don't
do that. That's self-righteousness. That'll
turn into a work, won't it? It'll turn into a work. I'm just
gonna be, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna wallow in the shame
and guilt of my sin until I feel it deep enough to where I know
that I'm a sinner. Yet that will turn into a work.
So how is it that I come to believe that I'm a sinner? One reason,
God said so. God said so, that's enough. And
by God's grace, we see the tip of the iceberg. We see what's
sticking out of the water and other people see, but the majority
of our sin is below the surface and we don't even know what it
is. And if God showed it all to us, we wouldn't be able to
show ourselves in public. If he showed us the real, if
he showed us what our sin looks like, before Him and the greatest
evidence that we have of what our sin looks like is the cross. It's the cross. It's when God
the Father poured out the full fury of His wrath having made
His Son to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. That's all we need to know about
our sin, is what it took God to put it away. And that God
said that we're sinners. Don't put on this false humility
of wallowing around in the mire of sin, thinking that, well,
I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, that's not repentance.
Repentance is, Lord, you're right, I'm wrong. You say I'm a sinner,
you say everything about me sin, that's true. Thank you for not
showing me the full depths of it. And thank you for causing
me to flee to Christ for all the hope of my salvation. We know this, back to our text,
I know that whatsoever God doeth and here's the, here's the, We know that Jesus is the Christ,
the son of the living God, that he is the successful savior of
sinners. And what he did, no man can add
to it and no man can take away from it. He doesn't need our
approval. He doesn't need our agreement.
He doesn't need our acceptance. What he did, you can't add to
it. He actually successfully put
away once and for all, all the sins of all of his people on
Calvary's cross when he bowed his mighty head and said, it
is finished. It was finished. It's finished. That means we
can't mess it up. Nothing we can do to mess it
up. It's already done. We know that whatsoever God doeth.
Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 42. Isaiah 42. God, the Holy Spirit is speaking
now to me and you. And he's saying, behold, look,
look, look and live. The spirit and the bride say,
come. Behold my servant, he's speaking of the Lord Jesus, who
came as the servant of God, the Christ, to accomplish the salvation
of his people. Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
mine elect, the one I chose, in whom my soul delighteth. This
is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. I have put my spirit
upon him and he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. No,
no question about it. He's going to do it. I put my
spirit upon him. That's what Christ means. The
anointed one, the Messiah, that's who the Lord Jesus is. He's the
Christ. He shall not cry, nor lift up his cause or nor
cause his voice to be heard in the street. He's not going around
begging men to let him have his way. Oh, won't you invite Jesus
into your heart? God's not in heaven wringing
his hands, wishing that the men that he loved and died for would
invite him and accept him. That is not God. That is an idol. That is a figment of men's imagination. That is man putting himself on
the throne of God and making God subject to him. That's what
that is. A God that depends upon me to
do something. No, he's not crying. He's not
lifting up his cause. He's not going out in the streets.
He's not looking for a following. He's already got a people. A bruised reed hears your hope.
Child of God, sinner, sinner, sin has bruised us. A bruised
reed, he shall not break. A smoking flax, That little wick
on the oil candle that's run out of oil and it's just a glimmer
left, he doesn't wet his fingers and put it out. He puts more
oil in the lamp and he breathes the breath of life on that wick
and he brings the flame back. A smoking flax, he will not quench. and he shall bring forth judgment
unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged. See, this is what God says. Has he made you to believe his
word? You see how contrary this is? People say they believe the
Bible, but they think that God is some sort of defeated, discouraged
God who was really wishing and hoping men would be saved and
he can't make it happen. It's not our God. It's not the
God of the Bible. He shall not fail nor be discouraged
till he has set judgment in the earth and the isles shall wait
for his law. We believe the Lord Jesus Christ
is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. They please God that in Him all
fullness should dwell. And as God, we believe that He's
sovereign. We believe He's omnipotent. We
believe that He's immutable. His work of redemption is perfect. Can't add anything to it. Can't
take anything away from it. Why? Because the Lord did it. And what's the result? That men
might fear God. If that's what God's done, all
I can do is come bow before him. It's all I can do. All I need
to do, all I want to do. The Lord Jesus speaking to the
disciples and he said to them, he said, where I go, you know.
Where I go, you know. and you know the way." And Thomas
said, Lord, we know not where you goest, neither do we know
the way. And the Lord Jesus looked at
Thomas and said, Thomas, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but
by me. And then Philip said, Lord, show us the Father and
it sufficeth us. Oh, Philip, have I been with
you so long that you don't know if you've seen me, you've seen
the Father? You see, when the Lord said, you know where I'm
going and you know the way, what he was saying was, you know me.
Why? Because you've been taught of
God. Everyone that hears and is taught of the Father cometh
unto me. If you know me, you know the way. If you know me,
you know where I'm going. I'm going to prepare a place
for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again and receive you unto myself, so that where I am, there you
may be also. If it were not so, I would have
told you. I would have told you. Let not your heart be troubled.
Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse four. He is the rock. His work
is perfect. For all his ways are judgment,
a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. And I know, and you know this
if you've been taught of God, and if you haven't been taught
of God, oh, I pray the Lord would use this to teach you. Use his
word, empowered by his spirit, to teach every one of us. You know that nothing can be
added to and nothing can be taken away. Why? Because God did it. Period. Simple. And everything you and I do,
something could be done better, something could be added to.
Everything we do, something could be added to it. You go look at
my projects and you're going to find lots of little things
you could say, well, I could fix that or I could do that better.
And a lot of things can be taken away from what we do and would
make it better. But make no mistake in erring
that God is altogether such a one as ourselves because our God
is perfect and what he does, no man can add to it and no man
can take away from it. His work is perfect. Perfect. And I close with this, his providence
is perfect. Paul said, you know, we know,
we know this. We know what? That all things
work together for good for them that love him and those that
are called according to his purpose. We stand on the threshold of
a new year. And sometimes I hear people say,
well, you know, I hope next year is better than last year. Oh,
child of God, Whatever joys and whatever heartaches God sent
you away last year, it was in his good providence and it was
by his love and by his mercy. Be thankful for all things, for
all things of the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
And as we look forward to the new year, David said in Psalm
139, he said, he's gone before me and he's behind me. As we look forward to the new
year, we know that whatever God has purposed for us this year
will be right. It'll be good. May not be easy. We know that if he does it, nothing
can be added to it and nothing to be taken away from it. God
has done it. Amen. All right, let's take a
break.