Good evening, everyone. It's
good to be back. Let's open tonight's service with hymn number 24 from
your Gospel Hymns Spiral Hymnbook. Let's all stand together. Jehovah
Sidkenu. The tune is Crown Him With Many
Crowns. Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord our
righteousness. We love to call you by that name,
our Savior Christ Jesus. Jehovah Sidkenu, The God-man
live for us, bringing eternal righteousness which God imputes
to us. Jehovah Sidkenu, our substitute
who died. Your blood has put away our sin,
and we are justified. Jehovah Sidkenu, Your love has
won our praise. Trusting your blood and righteousness,
we're saved by your free grace. Jehovah Sidkenu, we stand in
you alone. Our only fitness before God is
in our Lord, His Son. Jehovah, Sid K. New, the Lord, our righteousness. Christ Jesus, you alone we call,
the Lord, our righteousness. Please be seated. Good evening. I was thinking about that passage
in the book of Corinthians where the Lord tells us that God has
made Christ to be for us our wisdom, our righteousness, our
sanctification, and our redemption so that There can be no boasting
in the flesh. He that boasts, let him boast
in the Lord. Christ Jesus is our righteousness,
all our righteousness. What hope? It's a good righteousness. I want us to read Psalm 130 for
our call to worship. Psalm 130. And I want to try
to bring a message tonight on hope. And so this psalm speaks
to the good hope that we have in Christ as our righteousness
before God. David says, Out of the depths
have I cried unto thee, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice. Let thine
ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. What is it that we need God to
supply us with? A righteousness that we don't
have. If thou, Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who shall stand? Lord, if you take notice of one
of my sins, I'll go to hell for it. But there is forgiveness
with thee that thou mayest be feared. The fear of God, the beginning
of wisdom, comes from forgiveness. I'm gonna close this message
in looking at the fear of God, but I want you to remember this
verse, that there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be
feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul
doth wait. And in his word do I hope. My soul waited for the Lord more
than they that watch for the morning. I say more than they
that watch for the morning. Let Israel hope in the Lord. For with the Lord, there is mercy
and with him is plenteous redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from
all his iniquities. Oh, what a promise. Precious,
precious promise. He shall redeem all Israel from
all of his iniquities. I want us to, Jorge is going
to have surgery tomorrow at Shands up in Gainesville. I want us
to have prayer for him. And also Bert had a difficult
day yesterday, but he was doing a little better today. So it
was good to see him here Sunday. I want to continue to pray for
Bert. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly
Father, thank you for the good hope that
you give us in the glorious person of thy dear son, the Lord Jesus
Christ, who is all our righteousness before thee. Father, we thank you for the
hope of salvation that we have through his shed blood as a covering
for all our sin. So that we've received of your
hand a double blessing. A double blessing, the imputation
of Christ's righteousness as he was imputed with our sin and
suffered the full wrath of your justice. Father, we thank you
that you marked the iniquity of your people in Christ and
that you're satisfied with the sacrifice that he made so that
now there is forgiveness with thee. And in that forgiveness,
we come before the in a spirit of worship and reverence and
thanksgiving and hope. Lord, we pray for Jorge and we
ask, Lord, that you would be with the surgeons that work with
him tomorrow and, Lord, that you would guide their hands and
use them as instruments of healing for him. Father, we thank you
for our brother Bert and ask, Lord, for your mercy for your
strength, for he and Jennifer and the family. Lord, as they
wait on thee, that you would strengthen them in their time
of need. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Let's stand together again. We'll
sing hymn number 314, 314 from the hardbacked hymnal, 314. ? I am thine, O Lord, I have heard
thy voice ? And it told thy love to me ? But I long to rise in
the arms of faith ? And be closer drawn to thee ? Draw me nearer,
nearer, blessed Lord ? To the cross where thou hast died ?
Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer, blessed Lord ? To thy precious
bleeding side ? Consecrate me now to thy service, Lord ? By
the power of grace divine ? Let my soul look up with a steadfast
hope ? And my will be lost in thine ? Draw me nearer, nearer,
blessed Lord ? To the cross where Thou hast died ? Draw me nearer,
nearer, nearer, blessed Lord to thy precious bleeding side. Oh, the pure delight of a single
hour that before thy throne I spent. When I kneel in prayer and with
Thee, my God, I commune as friend with friend. Draw me nearer,
nearer, precious Lord, to the cross where Thou hast died. Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer,
blessed Lord, to thy precious bleeding side. There are depths of love that
I cannot know till I cross the narrow sea. ? There are heights
of joy that I may not reach ? ? Till I rest in peace with thee ? ?
Draw me nearer, nearer precious Lord ? ? To the cross where thou
hast died ? ? Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer precious Lord
? ? To thy precious bleeding side ? Please be seated. We're going to be back in 1 Peter
chapter three tonight. 1 Peter chapter three. But by
way of introduction, I want us to open our Bibles to Ephesians
2. Ephesians 2. And I just want
to read one verse from Ephesians 2. Verse 12. That at that time you
were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.
and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and
without God in this world." Having no hope and without God in this
world. To be without God is to have
no hope. Job said, my days are spent without
hope, without hope. What a horrible thing it is to
live without God and have no hope. What a comfort, what a
hope, what a grace we have in Christ as our hope. Romans chapter eight verse 24
says we're saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not
hope. So this hope that we have in
Christ cannot be seen with the physical eye. It's something
that has to be seen through the eye of faith. It has to be held
in the heart, not by the hand. And the Lord tells us in Romans
chapter five, verse five, that this hope that we have in Christ
maketh not a shame. It's not a false hope. It's not
a pie in the sky, by and by kind of hope. It's a certain hope
that we have. Now, the certainty of our hope,
the certainty of our hope is determined by the source of that
hope, and it is determined by the reason for that hope, the
source of that hope, and the reason for that hope. And the three points that I want
to try to make from this verse in 1 Peter 3, verse 15, is the
source of our hope, the reason of our hope, and the evidence
of our hope. You have your Bibles open to
1 Peter 3, verse 15, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. In that phrase, we find the source
of saving hope. The source of saving hope. Second phrase we find in this
verse is, and be ready always to give an answer to every man
for the reason of the hope that is within you. What is the reason
for the hope that we have? And the third phrase is with
meekness and fear. And in those two words, we find
the evidence of hope. So the source of our hope is
a work of grace done in the heart by the Lord, revealing himself. The reason for our hope, we'll
try to give an answer to that from scripture. And hopefully
our reason for hope will be the same as what God says the reason
for saving hope is. We're to be ready always to give
an answer to those who ask us, what reason do you have to hope?
What is the answer to that question? And then if the source of hope
is from the Lord in the heart, and the reason of our hope is
according to the revelation of scripture through faith in Christ,
then the evidence of that hope The evidence of that hope will
be meekness and fear before God. Now, the immediate context of
this verse has to do with being a witness to unbelievers. Notice
in verse 14, but, and if you suffer for righteousness sake,
happy are ye, and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled,
but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready always
to give an answer to everyone, every man that asketh you the
reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear, having
a good conscience that whereas they speak evil against you as
evil doers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse you of your
good conversation in Christ. So the Lord has given us some
direction, some instruction on how we are to respond to the
false accusations that are made from the world and the questions
that they have about our salvation. Now my experience in being in conversation with people
about the gospel over the years is that, for me at least, the
vast majority of times, it has been much more for my benefit
than for theirs. The conversations that I've had,
I've learned what not to do in talking with somebody. And you
know, You learn a little bit about how to talk with someone
about the gospel and you make mistakes along the way and you
learn from those mistakes. And the second thing that you
learn from these conversations that the Lord puts you in is
you learn the preciousness of the gospel that you believe,
the preciousness of Christ that you have. When you hear them
speak and you hear the profanity and the blasphemy of their attitude
toward God and the lack of understanding and hope that they have and the
accusations that they make and you come away thinking, but for
the grace of God, there go I. Lord, thank you. So these experiences
have been more for the believer's instruction and comfort. I fear
that the majority of these conversations, at least for me, have ended up
in added condemnation to the person that I was talking to. So for them, it wasn't a good,
they would have been better off had they never engaged in that
conversation. We hope that as we're dealing
with this subject that someone who is a stranger to God's grace
will ask, well, what is the reason for the hope that you have? And
that they will ask that question with some sincerity about an
interest in desiring to know what reason do we have for the
hope that's within us. And at the same time, we know
that the answer to these questions provide a great comfort and increased
hope for those who are in Christ and find their hope in him. So that's always our desire when
we preach, isn't it? That a lost sheep will hear from
God and that they will believe and that they will no longer
be like Job, who lived his days without hope. That they'll no
longer be like the Gentiles are described, we are described by
the apostle in Ephesians chapter two, verse 12, with no hope and
without God in this world, that they will have hope. That's always
our desire. The other thing that struck me
about this verse is for me personally, how appropriate these three points
are in preaching, not just in witnessing, but in preaching.
That there can be no hope of preaching without first going
before the Lord and having him do a work of grace in my heart. So the sanctifying, the Lord
God in your heart that you might be able to give an answer that
those who ask you for the reason of the hope that's within you.
And that you do it with meekness and with fear. So how dependent
we are on the Lord anytime we share the gospel of the Lord. or even think about the gospel,
to have the Lord first sanctified in our hearts before we can understand
anything of the reason for the hope that's within us and before
we can be brought to that place of meekness and fear. We are speaking to men about
the reason for the hope that's within us, but we're speaking
to men in the presence of God. You know, if you're relaying
a story that no one else has experienced, you may leave some
things out or you may elaborate on things a little more than
you ought to. But if you're telling a story to someone else and another
person is standing there who knows exactly what happened,
you're gonna be much more accurate in communicating that story. And so this sanctifying the Lord
God in your heart that you may be able to give an answer to
those who ask you for the hope that's within you, the reason
for the hope that's... Turn with me to 2 Corinthians
2. Let me show you. Let me show you something here,
2 Corinthians. chapter 2. So when we, my point
is that when we speak of these things, we're speaking of them
in the presence of God. It's not our place to leave any
part of it out or to exaggerate any part of it, to speak of it
in His presence. Look at 2 Corinthians 2 at verse
17. For we are not as many which
corrupt the word of God. We don't change it. We don't
adjust it. We don't make it fit the circumstances. We don't corrupt the word of
God. But as of sincerity and as of God, in the sight of God,
we speak And that little word in is most
often translated of, and probably much more accurately would be
of here in this text. So what is the Lord saying? We
don't change the word of God. We're doing this in his presence.
And we're speaking of Christ. He is the reason for our hope. And we're, We're doing it in
the very sight of God. There's no way that we can give
a proper answer to the question, and there's no way that we can
have a proper spirit about the answer, about ourselves, without
first sanctifying the Lord God in our hearts. Everything that
is of any spiritual value begins with the sanctifying of the Lord
God in your heart. And the flesh is capable of producing
lots of things in the flesh, but they have no eternal value.
The only thing that has any eternal value must come from the Lord
and must be done in the heart. That's it. Turn with me to Jeremiah
chapter 32. Jeremiah chapter 32. We're dealing now with the source
of our hope, the source of our hope. And the Lord himself is
the source of our hope. And this source is done by him
in the heart as a work of grace. This is, if we're gonna have
a sure hope, it has to be done in the heart and it has to be
done by the Lord. Look at verse 37, behold, I will
gather them out of all the countries whether I've driven them in mine
anger and in my fury and in my great wrath and I will bring
them again unto this place and I will cause them to dwell safely. Notice how many I wills there
were in that one verse, three times in one verse. I will, I
will. Man in his pride says, well,
I will. No. You will if God lets you. You
will if God permits it. You will if God enables it. But when God says I will, there's
nothing, there's no limits to that. There's no conditions that
have to be met when God says I will. There's certainty that
it will be done. and they shall be my people and
I will be their God. Here's another, I will. Verse
39, and I will give them one heart and one way. I will. What a precious promise. I will
give them one heart and I will give them one way. There are
not many ways, there's one way. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I
am the way. the truth and the life, and no
man can come to the Father but by me." Our hope comes from God. Look at verse 40. I will give them one heart and
one way, the rest of verse 39, that they may fear me forever
for the good of them and of their children after them. And I will
make an everlasting covenant with them. And I will not turn
away from them to do them good, but I will put my fear in their
hearts and they shall not depart from me. Yes, I will rejoice
over them to do them good. And I will plant them in this
land, assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul.
For thus saith the Lord, like as I have brought all this great
evil upon this people, so I, so will I bring them all the
good that I have promised them. There's our comfort. Lord, if
you don't do it, there's nothing in my will that can give me hope.
My heart is deceitful, desperately wicked. I can't know it. And I will deceive myself. Lord,
if I'm going to have a good hope, if I'm going to have a good hope,
you're going to have to give it to me. And you're gonna have to
give it to me beyond just giving me some doctrine or some words
to say or some, this is not a religious ritual. This is not a rite. This is not a ceremony. This
is not doctrine. This is a work of God in the
heart. I will give them one heart and
one way. It's the beginning of all our
hope, whether it be in witnessing, as we've seen this verse of scripture,
or in prayer, or in worship, or in faith, or in assurance. It's a work done by God in the
heart. If we're to be delivered from
the rigors of the law, if we're to have wisdom, if we're to have
salvation, comfort, knowledge, begins with God turning our hearts
toward him. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians,
2 Corinthians chapter three. I want to have a good hope. There are so many discouraging
things in this world. And in my heart. I need to have a word from God
that. That is undeniable. Second Corinthians chapter 3.
Look with me. Adverse. at verse 12, seeing
then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech. Great, I love that, great plainness
of speech. We're talking about a good hope.
And this good hope can only come from God and must come from him
to the heart. And when he speaks, he only speaks
to the heart. If we've heard some other voice
that hasn't, the heart is the whole man. The heart is the understanding,
the heart is the will, the heart is the affections. So when God
speaks, yes, he gives us understanding, but he also makes us willing
and he also gives us an affection for Christ. It's all of us, it's
the whole man. Look at verse 13. Not as Moses,
which put a veil over his face that the children of Israel could
not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished. But
their minds were blinded for until this day remain at the
same veil, untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament,
which veil is done away in Christ. Moses came down off of that mountain.
The radiant glory of God was such that he had to cover his
face. He had been in the presence of God and the people could not
look upon him. The Lord telling us that when,
to this day, when men read the Bible, when they read the law,
when they read the Old Testament, the veil is still over. They
can't understand until the veil is taken away, was taken away
in Christ. And notice verse 15, but even
unto this day, when Moses read the veil is upon their heart,
nevertheless, when it, what is it? The heart. When the heart
shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. You see that when the heart is
turned, the veil's taken away. There's no more confusion as
to where this hope comes from and what the reason for it is. The veil's taken away when the
heart is turned, but not until the heart's turned. You know, the outward behavior
can be turned. Some measure of cognitive knowledge
can be turned, I suppose. But until the heart's turned,
the veil remains. The veil remains. I will give them a heart to know
me, and I shall turn their whole heart, the Lord said. That's
why our Lord, when he was speaking to those disciples about their
concern for so many things, said, seek ye first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness. That has to be done in the heart.
and all these other things be added unto you. That's why when
the Lord gave us that model prayer, he started with our father, which
art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. We come before we make
any petition or confess any sin, we acknowledge the glory of God
and our need for him to be hallowed in our hearts. The prophet said, turn us again,
oh God, and cause thy face to shine upon us and we shall be
saved. Turn our hearts. Turn our hearts,
Lord. Our religion is a religion of
the heart. So many religions are just outward
appearances. That's all they are. Men trying
to prove to other men that they're holier than thou. You know, there
can be no, this sanctifying the Lord God in your heart and being
ready always to give an answer to them to ask you a reason for
the hope that's within you with meekness and fear. We don't want
people to feel threatened when we converse with them about the
gospel. I don't want people to feel that
way when I'm preaching. It's got to come from the heart.
It's got to come from God's heart, to my heart, to your heart. And
that we're dependent upon the Lord to do. We can't change our
hearts. We can clean up the outside of
the cup. We can whitewash the tomb. We
can turn over a new leaf. We can act religious. We can
do all the things that men do in order to try to have some
hope. But unless God does it in the
heart, it's all a false hope. It's a false hope. When David, with his 600 men,
were in battle against the Philistines, they had left their wives and
children back in a town called Ziklag. And after their victorious
military campaign, they came back home in victory to be reunited
with their families. And from a distance, they could
tell that Ziklag had been burned to the ground. I mean, I can
just imagine it looked like that town over there in Hawaii. They just burned the whole thing,
nothing but embers and ashes and smoke. And when David and
the men got there, They saw that their families were gone. And
the scripture says that David's men, as loyal as they were to
him, were so grieved over what had happened that they wanted
to stone David. They were ready to kill him. And here's what the scripture
says. But David encouraged himself in the Lord. In other words,
David sanctified the Lord God in his heart. David turned to
the Lord for the comfort that only he could provide and only
he could give it in the heart. So this good hope must come from
God and it must come to the heart. But it's also true in our everyday
trials and troubles and doubts and fears. Lord, you've got to
do something for me in my heart. You know, we try to fix things,
don't we? We try to patch things up. We try to put patches on
the holy garments and new wine and an old wineskin. No, it can't
be done. It can't be done. We need a new
robe of righteousness. We need a new heart. We need
a new wineskin if it's gonna hold the new wine. Everything of any spiritual value
begins with sanctifying the Lord God in your heart, in your heart. And as I said, the heart is the
whole person. Know therefore this day and consider
it in thine heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and upon
the earth beneath and there is none else. Know that. So the
heart has to do with knowledge. Secondly, the heart has to do
with the will. Delight thyself in the Lord and
he will give you the desires, the will of your heart. And as
we delight ourselves in him, our desire is for more of him,
more of him. Romans chapter five, verse five,
this hope make it not a shame because the love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which he has given unto
us. So this matter of the heart has to do with understanding
and has to do with will and it has to do with affection. And only God can touch that part
of us. The word create in me, David
said, a clean heart. Don't you know, David was sure
so ashamed and so convicted by what he had done. I bet he went
to the temple every day for that year. I bet he made sacrifice
on top of sacrifice. Because in Psalm 51, he said,
the sacrifice of God is broken and contrite heart. No God, that
will not despise. I've been making other sacrifices. David was obviously very miserable.
He was trying to fix the problem, wasn't he? God had to do a work
of grace in his heart. And when Nathan said, David,
thou art the man, David said, oh, I've sinned. I've sinned. God has shown me that. And Nathan said, and the Lord
has forgiven you. And there's my hope, there's
your fear. And then David wrote Psalm 51. How many blessings we miss and
how much time we waste. taking things into control, in
our own control, trying to fix it rather than sanctifying the
Lord God in our hearts, coming before the Lord with a broken
spirit and contrite heart and asking him, oh, what peace we often forfeit,
oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything
to God in prayer. Is that your experience? That's
my experience. Sanctifying the Lord God in your
heart is the beginning of all spiritual blessings. And it is
the source of our hope. The source of our hope, it must
be a work of grace done by God in the heart. So what is the
reason of our hope? Well, Christ Jesus the Lord is
the reason for our hope. We've already read that in Corinthians,
the veil is taken away in Christ. I have no hope. in anything that
I have done, in a decision that I've made, any doctrine that
I have accurately defined, I have no hope in those things. All
of my hope is in Christ. It's in his glorious person and
in his accomplished work. All my works are his filthy rags.
Jehovah's in Kenya, we open this service with that hymn, the Lord
is my righteousness, there's my hope. My hope is that all
my righteousnesses are as filthy rags, but he is my righteousness.
God has made him to be my righteousness before God. If I'm gonna stand
in the presence of a holy God, he can't mark iniquity, Psalm
130. If he marks one iniquity, if
he takes notice of one of my sins, I'll go to hell for it. But if Christ stands in my stead,
And he's all my righteousness before God. You see, the Lord
Jesus Christ is the reason for my hope. The source of my hope
is a work of grace done by God the Holy Spirit in my heart.
And the reason for my hope is Christ. His shed blood is all
my hope that God cannot see my sin. The shed blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ, all my hope, for my sin being hid so that God
can remember them no more and separate them from me as far
as all my hope, all my hope. It's not, no, I've done my part,
now I'm looking to Christ to do the rest of it. No, all my
hope is in the doing and dying of the Lord Jesus Christ. His
perfect righteousness. and his sacrificial death on
Calvary's cross. And his resurrection is all my
hope that I'll be raised from the dead. That when that appointed
hour comes and I close my eyes in death, that I'll be ushered
into glory because he was raised from the dead and he conquered
death and he conquered the grave and he defeated Satan. He is
my hope. He's all my hope. I've got no
hope anywhere outside of Him. When someone asks you the reason
for your hope, be ready always to give an answer. Give an answer. Christ is the
reason for my hope. That's a pretty clear answer.
Christ is all and He's in all. And his life and death is all
my righteousness and his sacrifice given to the Father is all of
my justification and Christ is all my wisdom and he's all my
righteousness. He's all my holiness before God. If I'm going to be redeemed,
he has to do it. My hope is built on nothing less
but Jesus Christ. Jesus blood and righteousness,
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but holy lean on Jesus
name. He's my hope. There's the reason
you asked me. I'm not going to tell you about
an experience that I had or a prayer that I prayed or a work that
I performed or a doctrine that I've come to be able to articulate
and define. I'm going to tell you about Christ.
He is the reason for my hope. The source of my hope was a work
of grace done by the Spirit of God in my heart when he made
me willing, taught me the gospel, and gave me a love for Christ.
And the reason for my hope is the Lord Jesus himself. And that's
a good hope. That's a good hope. We can know
if that's the source of our hope and that's the reason of our
hope, we can no longer say we are without hope and without
God in this world. We have an anchor for our soul.
Let me show you that. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
six. Hebrews chapter six. This is such a, we looked at
this, Sunday or Sunday week ago, Hebrews chapter six, verse 17, wherein God willing
more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise. There are
heirs that God has chosen himself to receive the promise of salvation. and the immutability of his counsel,
and he confirmed it by an oath. Now the oath is the cross, and
his counsel was the covenant of grace. And so what the Lord's
saying here is that by these two immutable things, the fact
that God chose a people in the covenant of grace before the
world began and Christ confirmed that by his death on Calvary's
cross, that by two immutable things in which it is impossible
for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation who have
fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us.
We have a strong consolation, we have a good hope. We have
a God who cannot lie, who has confirmed this oath in Christ. which hope we have as an anchor
of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth in within
the veil. The Lord Jesus Christ went within that veil. God rent
the veil from top to bottom when our Lord bowed his head on Calvary's
cross and said, it is finished. It is finished. And the Lord
Jesus went into the holies of holies and put his blood on that
mercy seat. And God said, when I see the
blood, I'll pass by you. There's our hope. Whether the forerunner is for
us entered even Jesus made a high priest forever after the order
of Melchizedek. Oh, he's the reason for our hope.
This is a good hope. This hope doesn't have anything
to do with anything we've done. God sanctified. Christ in my
heart. God's the one that keeps turning
my heart. He's the one that continues to
pursue me and cause me to come to the end of myself and to find
my need in him and to turn my heart toward him and then to
find him to be all I need. All I need for the reason of
the hope. And in closing, let's finish
this. What is the evidence? What is the evidence of this
hope? Meekness and fear. That's the evidence. Say, well, I don't feel very
meek. You know, I'm I see a lot of pride, I see a
lot of self-righteousness, I see a lot of arrogance, I see a lot
of worldliness in my heart. We come before God. This word
meek means gentleness. We can't express any of that
arrogance before God. And again, this verse is talking
about witnessing. When we're witnessing, we do
it in meekness and fear, knowing that when we're talking with
someone, that the only reason that the tables are not turned
is God's grace. The only reason that you're not
telling me about the reason for the hope that's within you is
all of grace. And so who am I to stand in In
judgment, or who am I to be, to have any attitude of gentleness
and meekness? Fear. Fear. There is forgiveness with
thee. that thou mayest be feared. You see, it's not until we're
forgiven of our sin that we have any understanding about what
it would be to stand in the presence of a holy God and have to answer
for one sin. It's not until we're forgiven
that we have any reverential fear for God. Before we were
forgiven, we thought, well, I can stand before God. I can say,
but Lord, I've done many wonderful works in thy name. Lord, I've
tried to live a good life. I've done this and I've done
that. And I know this and know that. Now that I've been forgiven,
there's fear. There's no way, no way that I
can stand before God unless the Lord Jesus Christ is all of my
salvation before God. Unless he's the answer, unless
he's the reason, the fear of God, the fear of
God is the beginning of wisdom. So, the source of our hope is the
sanctifying of the Lord God in our hearts. The reason for our hope is Christ. He's the only reason for our
hope. And the evidence of our hope is a spirit of grace, fear,
reverence, meekness before God. We have that. We have a good
hope. Have good hope. Our Heavenly
Father, thank you for your word. Lord, we pray that you would
continue to turn us again. Oh Lord. That we might be saved. Or be that. Source of hope in
our hearts. and cause us to rest all the
hope of our salvation on Christ. Lord, we know that if you do
that, there will be meekness and fear before they. We ask
it in Christ's name, amen. 225, let's stand together. I heard the voice of Jesus say,
come unto me and rest. Lay down, thou weary one, lay
down thy head upon my breast. I came to Jesus as I was, weary
and worn and sad. I found in him a resting place,
and he has made me glad. I heard the voice of Jesus say,
behold, I freely give the living water, and drink and live. I came to Jesus and I drank of
that life-giving stream. My thirst was quenched, my soul
revived and now I live in Him. I heard the voice of Jesus. this dark world's light. Look unto me, thy morn shall
rise, and all thy day be bright. I looked to Jesus, and I found
in him my star, my sun. And in that light of life I'll
walk till traveling days are done. Yeah, he's got the rubber now.