Let's start off this evening
by singing from our hardbacked hymnal, hymn number 235, Pass
Me Not. Do not pass me by. Savior, Savior, hear my humble
cry. While I'm lost and lonely, do
not pass me by. Why must we believe? In their
deportation How might we be? Savior, Savior In my own heart
? Who has been mine ? ? Trusting
only in thy name ? ? Good I see thy face ? ? Heal my wounds healing
? ? Saving by thy grace ? Why, O God, why on earth Thou
art falling, do not pass me by? Be seated, please. Thank you, Adam. I love that
hymn. It's always our heart's desire when we come together
for worship. Don't leave me to myself. Don't pass me by. Let's
open our Bibles to Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10. I want
us to look tonight at what God says
about the heart, the heart. That's going to be the direction
that we're, that we'll go tonight. And so I'd like to read this
passage of scripture, beginning at verse nine, Hebrews chapter
10. Then said he, here's the Lord Jesus Christ speaking, lo,
I come to do thy will, O God. He take it the way of the first,
that he may establish the second. At first covenant of works, he
took it away, established the covenant of grace on the work
of Christ. Verse 10, by the which will,
We are sanctified, we are sanctified, we are made holy through the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest, as Old Testament
priests, standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same
sacrifices which can never take away sins, but this man, After
he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever sat down on
the right hand of God from henceforth expecting till his enemies be
made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected
forever them that are sanctified. whereof the Holy Ghost also is
a witness to us, for after that he had said before, this is the
covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith
the Lord. I will put my laws into their
hearts, and in their minds will I write them, and their sins
and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission
of these is, there is no more offering for sin. Having therefore,
brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through
the veil, that is to say, his flesh, and having a high priest
over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in
full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an
evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the profession
of our faith without wavering, for he is faithful that promised. Let's pray together. our merciful Heavenly Father. Thank you for giving your son as the sacrifice for
our sins. Thank you, Father, for perfect redemption accomplished
by his death on Calvary's cross. Thank you for the putting away
of the sins of your people. Thank you for the hope of eternal
life that we have in Christ. Father, we pray that you would
send your Holy Spirit in power this hour, that you would cause
Christ to be lifted up in our hearts, that we would Be drawn
by your spirit to set our affections on things above, where the Lord
Jesus Christ is seated at thy right hand. Father, we pray for
our brethren, Lord, those that are in physical need. Lord, we pray for your hand of
comfort and healing and strength to be upon them. We pray for
your spirit of grace to encourage them and comfort them in Christ.
We pray especially for our brother Bert and ask Lord in this time
of trial and trouble that you would provide for him only what
you are able to give. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. stand again and sing number nine
in the spiral bound hymnal. ? His heart would still release
me ? ? Had Thou not chosen me ? ? Now from the sin that's made
me ? ? Has cleansing set me free ? ? Oh, Thou hast redeemed me
? Be seated again, please. Let's open our Bibles to 1 Peter
chapter 3. 1 Peter chapter 3. in all of the epistles, whether
they be written by Peter or by Paul, there's always a conclusion
of encouragement and admonition as to how these works of grace
done in the heart apply to our everyday life. And so it is here at the end
of this epistle that Peter has written, he's by the direction
of the Holy Spirit, of course, directing wives and husbands
on how they are to live with one another. And the admonitions
that he give require no explanation. They're very simple.
And so we'll leave those to the Lord to apply to each of our
hearts as he teaches us how to live together. But the attention
that I want to give tonight is to verse four. And verse four gives the explanation,
if you will, of how these things come about in the believer's
life. And they come about as a result
of a work of grace in the heart, in the heart. Our religion is
a heart religion. It's not a ceremonial religion. It's not a religion that is to
exalt the flesh or to be even observed in the flesh. It is a work of grace in the
heart. We want to love God from the
heart. We want to worship God from the
heart. We want to do all that we do
with all of our hearts as unto the Lord. So what does the Lord
say about the heart? It is obviously referred to many,
many times in the word of God. I was thinking about the commercial,
I'm sure you've seen it, where the guy is stopping strangers
on the street and handing them a little device that they put
their fingers on and it sends a signal to their smartphone.
And he asked them a question, how's your heart? How's your
heart? I've titled this message tonight,
How's Your Heart? And I hope that the Lord will
enable us to put our fingers on the pulse of his word and
that the Lord will encourage us in our hearts as to what he
has to say about the heart. And there's much in this one
verse, look at verse four. But let it be the hidden man
of the heart. Now one of the things we learn
from this passage of scripture is that this new man in the heart
is hid. He's hid, he's concealed. In that which is not corruptible,
this new man of the heart that God gives in the new birth is
an incorruptible man, he's a perfect man, he's a sinless man. Even
the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, and here's the evidence
of that new heart, particularly as we find ourselves coming before
the throne of grace, the Lord gives, as a result of this new
heart, a meek and quiet spirit before God, which is in the sight
of God of great price. When we speak of the heart, we're
obviously not talking about the muscle in our chest that pumps
blood through our veins. We're talking about the whole
of man, our understanding, our will, our affections. This is what every culture and
every language means when they speak of a man's heart, what's
in your heart. What is it that, what are your
inward desires, your motivations, your personality, your your heart. What does God say
about these things? The whole inner person of the
heart. And the first reference to heart
in the Bible is found in Genesis chapter 6 at verse 5 and we often
quote that verse where God looks down from heaven and he sees
that every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is only
evil and that continually and so the Lord begins by revealing
the sinfulness of our natural heart and then the very next
verse which we never quote Verse six of Genesis chapter six says,
and God repented that he had made man on the earth and it
grieved him in his heart. So Genesis chapter five and six
tell us what God says about the heart of man being sinful and
the heart of God being holy. That God's heart is grieved over
sin. We are also familiar with Jeremiah
chapter 17, where the Lord says that our hearts are deceitful
and that they are desperately wicked and that we can't know
them. We are easily deceived by our hearts. In the next verse in that passage
of scripture, which we hardly ever refer to, the scripture
says, I, the Lord, search the heart and I try the reins and
I prove the man. So God looks at the heart. He knows the heart. He sees our
hearts for what they are. Proverbs chapter 28, he that
trusteth in his own heart is a fool. Now, we're foolish to
trust our heart apart from having the desires of our hearts tested
by God's word. God's word, the scripture says,
is like a two-edged sword and it divides asunder the thoughts
and the intents of the heart. So we want to always take our
heart's desires before God's word and say with what David
said in Psalm 139. Let's turn to that passage, Psalm
139. I want you to see this. This is such a good prayer for
those who hold themselves suspect, those who believe what God has
said about the natural heart, those who have proven by their
own experience how oftentimes they've deceived themselves by
their own hearts and how oftentimes their hearts have been drawn
away by their own foolishness and by the wiles of the devil
and the temptations of the flesh and the things of this world. We've proven ourselves, haven't
we, to not have a trustworthy heart. And so David understood
that in Psalm 139, and he concludes by this. Look what he says in
verse 23. Search me, O God, and know my
heart. Try me and know my thoughts. Lord, when I have something in
my heart, Lord, prove it by your word to be pleasing to you. We want to do what we do from
the heart, but we also have to hold our heart suspect until
they're tried by God. Look at the very next verse.
And see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the
way everlasting. Lord, change my heart. Delight yourself in the Lord
and he will give you the desires of your heart. Lord, enable me
to have your heart. That's what Peter's talking about,
this hidden man of the heart, which is not corruptible. It
is the new heart. And this is the result of the
new birth. We clearly have the remains of
our corrupt nature in our thoughts, in our hearts, in our minds.
But at the same time, what Peter's talking about is an incorruptible
heart, a sinless heart, a new heart. Look at, turn with me
to Ezekiel chapter 36. This is a passage we're very
familiar with, Ezekiel 36. Verse 24, for I will take you
from among the heathen and gather you out of all countries and
will bring you into your own land. This is the new birth. This is where God seeks out his
lost sheep and brings them into his fold. Then will I sprinkle
clean water upon you, and you shall be clean. From all your
filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new
heart also will I give unto you, and a new spirit will I put within
you. And I will take away the stony
heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh,
and I will put my spirit within you. and cause you to walk in
my statues that you shall keep my judgments and do them. And
you shall dwell in the land that I give to your fathers and you
shall be my people and I will be your God." Now that's the
new heart that we just read about when we opened the service from
Hebrews chapter 10. He takes out that dead, cold, unbelieving, stony, lifeless
heart of unbelief, a dead heart. And he puts in a live, warm,
beating heart. A heart that has the desire to
hear him and to know him and to follow after him and to believe
on him. This is the new heart. This is
what David, this is what Peter's talking about. This is the new
birth and that's God's, that is God's promise. Paul in Romans
chapter 7 calls it the inner man. He said, he said, I delight
in the law of God after the inward man, the inward man. That's this,
that's this new heart. In 1 Corinthians 2, verse 16,
Paul asked the question, who hath known the mind of the Lord?
But we have the mind of Christ. We have the mind of Christ in
the new birth. God gives us his thoughts. and
his desires, and his word, and his understanding, and his will,
and his affections, and he causes us to understand the things that
he understands as truth and error, and to will after the things
that he desires, to know Christ, and to have him as our only hope
of salvation, and to have an affection for him. We're just
saying, Lord, we know that If we love you, it's because you
first loved us. So this is the work in the heart. In Malachi chapter 4, the Lord
says, that I will turn the hearts of the fathers toward their children
and the hearts of the children towards their fathers. And by
that, I think in part what the Lord is saying is there's no
generation gap between believers. It doesn't matter how old they
are. It doesn't matter if they're in their 80s or in their 60s
or in their 40s or in their teens, if they've been given a new heart.
This heart beats together for the things of God and it's an
incorruptible heart. It's a, it's a hidden heart also. David is spoken of as a man after
God's own heart. So this is what Peter's talking
about. We know that our old man is deceitful. He's wicked, he's
corrupted. The thoughts and imaginations
of his heart are only evil and that continually. Because of
his presence, we can say with the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter
seven, to will is present with me. I would love to have nothing
but a perfect heart. I would love to have nothing
but the mind of Christ. I would love to have nothing
but the desires of God and but the love of God. to will is present
with me, but how to perform that which I find not, when I would
do good, evil is ever present with me. I've got that old man,
he's still there. He's still there. So we have
a divided heart, don't we? Our hearts are one way and then
the other way. But here, David said in Psalm 51, he said,
create in me a clean heart, oh God. And that's how sinners are
always coming. He also said in Psalm 51, my
sin is ever before me. The corruption of my flesh, of
my old man is ever there. Lord, I need for you to create
the hidden man of the heart that's uncorruptible. I need you to
do that work of grace in me. Jeremiah chapter 32 verse 39,
the Lord said, and they shall be my people and I will be their
God and I will give them one heart and one way. So this, this
new heart, this uncorruptible heart, this, this hidden man
of the heart is the same in every believer. It's the mind of Christ, it's
the inner man, it's the new man. It's Christ in you, which is
your hope of glory. The Lord tells us in Luke chapter
6, he uses the analogy of a tree and he says a good tree cannot
bring forth bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bring forth good
fruit. And we used to Look at that and think, well, you know,
we need to inspect one another's fruits as if the outward evidences
of this new man in the heart was the thing that we were to
focus our attention on. But here's what the Lord goes
on to say in Luke chapter 6. He says, a good man out of the
good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good fruit. and an evil
man out of the evil treasure in his heart bringeth forth evil
fruit for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."
So the Lord's speaking of the fruit of our lips. In other words,
what do you say about Christ? That's an evil tree, cannot bring
forth good fruit about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. You
believe that he's the fullness of the Godhead bodily, that he's
the fullness of God's sovereign grace, that he's omnipotent,
that he's immutable, that he's successful in what he came to
do as the Christ, the savior of his people? We believe that? And what do we say about ourselves?
Well, we say two things about ourselves. We say we're sinners. We're left to ourselves. We're
nothing but sin. And yet, at the same time, in
Christ, as we read in Hebrews chapter 10, we're sanctified. We're set apart. We're made holy.
We have the inner man that's incorruptible. We're complete
in him, complete in the Lord Jesus Christ. Full. We have everything that we need. Everything that we need to stand
in the presence of a holy God and to have acceptance in the
sight of a holy God in the person of our inner man. The inner man. The new man. Christ in you. Your hope of glory. The mind
of Christ. And this inner man, go back with
me to our text, I remind you, and let it be the hidden man
of the heart. This man can only be seen by
the eyes of faith. If we look for the new man based
on outward evidences of our behavior, we're going to be discouraged
at best and lose all hope at worst. We know that this inner
man is a man of faith, and yet when we look at our faith, we
see more of our unbelief than we see of our belief, don't we?
We know that this inner man is a man of love, and yet if we
try to look at the evidences of our love, we see how cold
and indifferent we can be. If we look for evidences of our
faith in service, we find ourselves Even now, as we attempt to worship
and as we try to preach, we find ourselves like the disciples.
Could you not pray with me for one hour? The spirit is willing,
but the flesh is weak. This inner man is a hidden man. He's not observable by our physical
eyes. He's not observable by the evidences
of our life. When we look to our life, we
don't... I hope that there's some evidence
of Christ in me to you. and I know there is evidences
of Christ in you to me, but when I look to try to find evidences
of Christ in me, in me? You see, we know our own sin
and our own unbelief and our own fears and failures better
than we know anyone else's, don't we? And so this inner man of
the heart that is uncorruptible, perfect, without sin, He's hidden
to me. If I try to find him by looking
for him in my life, I see how easily disquieted I
can become by my circumstances and yet I'm supposed to have
an inner man of hope and peace and comfort and grace. You see,
he's hidden to me. He's hidden to me. to my natural
sight, he's hidden. The only way that this inner
man can be seen is in Christ. In other words, we don't look
to the evidence of Christ in us, we look to Christ. We look
to Christ. That's the inner man. That's
the one who is hidden. The new heart, yes, is a broken
heart as David described us in the new man, the new heart in
Psalm 51. The sacrifices of God are a broken
and contrite heart. And yet by broken, we see more of
how our hearts don't work properly than we do a brokenness over
our sin, don't we? The thing that bothers us most
about our sin is how little it bothers us and yet we know that
this new man is a heart of repentance and yet how indifferent we are
about our sin. This new man is the heart of
faith and yet we find so much unbelief in our lives. Let it be the hidden man of the
heart. This hidden man is a man who
seeks mercy. He seeks grace. He finds himself
completely dependent upon Christ for his life. And yet, when we look for him
in our lives, we see how independent we can be. and how unbelieving
we are. You see, he's a hidden man. He's a hidden man. All these graces are hidden to
our natural observations and they are to be seen only
by the eye of faith in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's
the one that's incorruptible. Here's my hope. Here's what I'm
trying to say. The hope of my salvation is not
in that I see great evidences of faith in my life. The hope
of my salvation is that I'm looking to Christ alone for all of my
acceptance before God. That's the hope of my salvation.
He's hidden. He's hidden to the natural man.
We have this, the scripture says we have this treasure, this incorruptible
treasure, hidden in an earthen vessel. That's us, we're the
earthen vessel. That the excellency of the power
might be of God and not of us. You see, if we could find, if
we could find as the self-righteous religious people find, and try
to prove to one another evidences of their salvation. The excellency of the power would
not be of God, it'd be of us. We'd be resting the hope of our
salvation in what we see in us. And we'd be competing with one
another to see who was holier than thou. God says that holier-than-thou
attitude is a stench in my nostrils. This man is hidden from us because
he's Christ in us. We can't observe him in the natural
way. God must set our affections. Turn with me to Colossians chapter
three, and this passage of scripture came to new light for me. I hope it will be for you tonight
as I read it in light of this message. Colossians chapter three, verse
one. If you then be risen with Christ,
seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right
hand of God. In other words, look in faith
to the beauty and perfection of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's
all your acceptance before God. Set your affections on things
above. Set your heart on Him. Not on the things of the earth.
He's not just talking about setting our affections on worldly pleasures
and worldly possessions. He's talking about setting our
affections on evidences of our faith that we might be tempted
to look to and look for in our own lives. And we do. We do,
we start to doubt our salvation, we start to doubt the things
of God and what do we do? We automatically are drawn to
look to ourselves to try to find something to give proof that
we're saved. Set your affections on things
above. We're Christ-seeking, not on
the things of the earth. For you are dead. You are dead
and your life is hid. This is the hidden man of God. Your life is hid with Christ
in God. So Peter's telling us, he said,
this inner man is hidden. When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then we shall appear with Him in glory. Then we'll
be like Him. Then we'll be without sin. In
the meantime, we have to set our affections on Him. We have
to look to Him to have any hope, any hope of salvation. And if
we look to ourselves to try to find evidences of faith, oh,
We're going to be discouraged. We're going to be put under the
law. We're going to be, lose all assurance and all hope.
But when we look to him, when we look to him, that's what Paul's
saying in Romans chapter eight, after he bewails his old man
in chapter seven. Turn with me to Romans chapter
eight. He says at the end of verse of
chapter seven, I thank God. Yeah, wretched man that I am.
I look at my heart, not as it ought to be. Always, always crying,
Lord, turn my heart. And yet there's an inner man
that's hidden and he's incorruptible. I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord so them with the mind I myself serve the law of God
but with the flesh the law of sin." We've got these two natures
going on all the time and he's talking about the mind as the
inner man, he's talking about the new heart, he's talking about
the mind of Christ. And so he says in chapter eight,
there is therefore now no condemnation, no condemnation to them which
are in Christ Jesus. Why? Because they have the inner
man of the heart, which is uncorruptible in them, who walk not after the
flesh, but after the spirit. They're not, we're not looking
to fleshly evidences. We're looking to Christ. For
the law of the spirit of the life in Christ hath made me free
from the law of sin and death. So what the law could not do
and that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own
son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned
sin in the flesh that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled
in us. The righteousness of the law
is fulfilled in you. How can the righteousness of
the law be fulfilled in you when you look at yourself and all
you see is sin? The inner man who is hidden to
the natural eye is Christ. And he has established the righteousness
of God. He is the end of the law for
righteousness to everyone that believeth. The heart. The heart is the understanding. We understand. Say, how do I
know if I have a new heart? You have the understanding of
God when it comes to who he is, who you are, what he requires
for salvation, that he's God. Holy, undefiled, separate from
sinners, that we're sinful. He's righteousness, we have no
righteousness. You see, we understand that Christ
is all in salvation and we will Christ to be all in salvation.
We desire him to be all in salvation. If God requires anything of me
other than what Christ has done, I have no hope of salvation.
We desire Christ to be all. And our affection, we love Christ
being all in salvation. We love it that way. We love
being reminded that we're sinful and that we have no righteousness.
We love being reminded that he is a successful sovereign savior
of sinners. that he's seated at the right
hand of God and that we are complete in him. And so the whole heart,
the whole heart, here's the evidence of it. And notice in our text that this
heart is not only hidden, but it's not corruptible. It's not corruptible. It can't
be defiled. Sin can't touch it. Your new
man is perfectly sinless. Why? Because it's Christ in you.
There's nothing about me that's sinless. No, there isn't. But
the Lord Jesus Christ is. And if he's in you and you're
in him, you have an uncorruptible heart. He will present you holy,
unblameable, and unreprovable in the sight of God. John put
it like this, whosoever is born of God, whosoever has been given
this new heart, the heart of God, the heart that trusts Christ
for salvation, doth not commit sin. It does not commit sin for
his seed, the seed of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, remaineth
in him and he cannot sin for he's born of God. This uncorruptible,
this new hidden man, the man that we can't see with the natural
eye, that we can only see through the eyes of faith as we look
to Christ, cannot be corrupted. He's perfect, sanctified, sinless. That's what Paul's talking about
here in Romans chapter 8. He has established righteousness
in us, in us. That's our hope. Only through the eyes of faith
are we able to see that one who is holy, himself, undefiled,
separate from sinners, and higher than the heavens. We have the
Lord Jesus Christ as our new man. And notice in our text, I want
you to see a couple more things quickly before we finish. Notice that this This uncorruptible,
hidden man of the heart is meek and quiet in spirit. Meek and quiet in spirit. So when I look at the way I act
sometimes and I don't seem very meek and quiet, God gives you a new heart. I'll
tell you where you're meek and quiet. When you come before the
throne of grace, you're humbled in the sight of
God, aren't you? You just want to hear from Him. You come into
the presence of God, you know that He is in the heavens and
that you are upon the earth and that your words need to be few.
You come before God, you say with that publican, Have mercy upon me, O Lord, the
sinner. Have mercy upon me. You say with
that Syrophoenician woman, truth, Lord, truth, Lord, I'm a dog. Lord, feed this dog with crumbs
that fall from your table. You say with that woman at the well, Is not
this the Christ? Or with the Ethiopian eunuch,
when Philip asked him, if thou believest with all thine heart
thou mayest, and what the Ethiopian eunuch say, I believe that Jesus
Christ is the son of God. I believe that, I really do. We don't come before God charging
him with wrongdoing. We don't come before God claiming
any rights, or we don't come presenting any arguments of self-righteousness. We come before God with a meek
and quiet spirit, depending upon him alone. And like a river, to an underground
spring, all evidences of grace find their source in that hidden
man, that inexhaustible source of water. And so when I find myself not
being meek and quiet as I ought before men, I'm drawn by the
Spirit of God to come into his presence. And he makes you meek
and quiet, doesn't he? He does. This inner man, this
incorruptible man, the one that's hidden, he's meek and quiet before
God. And so the context of what Peter's
talking about in terms of husbands and wives He's saying that if
you want your behavior with one another to be as it ought, come
before God first. Find that inner hidden man, Christ,
who's incorruptible. And you'll be meek and quiet
before him. And the evidence that you've been with him will
be will be shown in your relationship with men. When we aren't as we ought in
our relationship with one another is it not because we're desperate
to try to control our circumstances or control people or get an advantage
on somebody and we come before God we come to realize quickly,
right away, Lord, I'm not in control of anything. Lord, you're
in control of everything. And that meek and quiet spirit
is developed in the presence of God. You see, if we just try
to force a meek and quiet spirit in the presence of men and we
don't get it from God, if the source of that river is not found
in that hidden spring of life found in Christ, then we'll just
be hypocrites, we'll just be pretending to be something that
we're not. But if we come before God, we will be making quiet
before Him. There's no question about it. We will find ourselves a new
heart. We started this service tonight
by reading Hebrews chapter 10 and where the Lord speaks of
writing his law upon the hearts of his people. And that's not the moral law. That's not the 10 commandments.
The scriptures are clear in Romans chapter two that all men come
into this world with a moral law written on their hearts.
All men know right from wrong. They have a conscience given
to them by God. Now, they may sear that conscience
and it may become dull and ineffective, but they know. So when God says
I'm going to, when I save them, when I call them out, let's close
by going back to that text in Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter
10. Verse 16, this is the covenant
that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord. I
will put my laws into their hearts and in their minds will I write
them. Now here's the evidence of the
new heart, the hidden man of the heart, the incorruptible
man. the presence of God in us, Christ
in us, the hope of glory, the inner man that Paul talks about,
the mind of Christ. Here's the evidence. The law
of God is written on the heart. What is the law of God? Well,
James speaks of the law of liberty. If you have Christ in you, and
you hear someone robbing you of your freedom and liberty in
the finished work of Christ, you're not gonna have anything
to do with that. You have the law of liberty written on your
heart, you're not gonna be put back under the law. You're not
gonna be told that there's something you need to do in order for God
to be able to save you. The law of liberty, you're free. You stand fast and the liberty
with Christ has made you free and you're not entangled again
with the yoke of bondage. You don't go back to the law.
The law of liberty has been written on your heart. You can't go back
to a free will works gospel. You can't do it. You won't do
it. The law of Christ, the scripture
speaks of the law of Christ. You know that Christ in your
understanding In your desire, in your affections, Christ is
everything in your salvation and he's the only thing that's
incorruptible and the only thing that makes you acceptable before
God. The law of righteousness, you
know that you have no righteousness of your own and that he is all
of your righteousness before God. These are the laws that
are written on the heart. The law of the spirit of life
in Christ has made me free from the law of sin and death. You
know that sin cannot charge you, that death has been conquered,
that the Lord Jesus Christ actually bore all of your sins in his
body upon the tree and put them away once and for all by the
sacrifice of himself. You can't live in fear. of your sin charging you before
God. You know that there's no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus. And you know that he conquered
death. You can't face death without knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ
opened the grave and that he is the firstborn among many brethren. And that his resurrection is
the hope of your resurrection and that you what he said to
Martha, I am the resurrection and the light. Believe us all
this. And you say, yeah, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ
that should come into the world. I believe that death has been
conquered. I believe that sin's been put away. Scripture speaks of the law of
sin. These are the laws that are written on the heart. What
is the law of sin? Everything about me apart from
Christ is nothing but sin and everything about me in Christ
has no sin. Here's the law of sin. God's got to write that on your
heart to believe that. The law of faith, the faithfulness of the Lord
Jesus Christ, Men make a work out of faith because they misunderstand
the very nature of faith. They make their faith as something
that they bring to God for their salvation but faith by its very
definition and by its very nature means that it doesn't have anything
to bring. Faith is the empty hand. Faith by its very definition
is is complete dependence and reliance upon another. It's not
that faith can't boast in anything, it can't take credit for anything,
that's just the opposite of what faith is and so the law of faith
has been put on your heart. The faithfulness of the Lord
Jesus Christ and your dependence upon him for your acceptance
before God, the law of truth, Malachi speaks of the law of
truth You know the Lord Jesus Christ
himself is the truth. He's the truth. He's written
that on your heart. The inner man of the heart, hidden, uncorruptible. a meek and quiet spirit before
God. And as a result of that, we'll
be before men. Let's pray. Our heavenly father,
thank you for taking those who by nature have a wicked heart,
a sinful heart, a deceitful heart, and putting within them in the
new birth, the heart of God, the mind of Christ, a new nature,
uncorruptible, sinless. Lord, we pray that you would
forgive us for looking somewhere other than Christ for the hope
of our salvation and remind us by your word tonight to look
to him alone. For it's in his name we pray,
amen. Adam, number 12, number 12 in
the spiral hymnal, let's stand. Number 12 in the spiral. Upon my great and sovereign God,
I cast my soul and rest. My Father's hand controls the
world, and what He does is best. So be still, my heart, and doubt
no more. Believe and find sweet rest. God's wisdom, love, and truth,
and power combine to make thee blessed.