Hymnal, let's all stand together,
hymn number 32. Children of wrath, in bondage
and sin We helplessly lay, condemned and unclean God's law in its
infinite justice and wrath We abandon, we suffer an eternal
death ? But long before time had ever begun ? ? One stood
in our place, God's glorious Son ? ? He offered himself to
go live among men ? ? And give his own life to atone for our
sins ? The great substitute, behold
he has come. The price has been paid, the
work is all done. Christ took on himself the great
load of our sin. He poured out his blood and he
put a place in. God's justice and law are now
satisfied, and all who believe have been justified. Through faith in the blood of
the Lamb we are free from sin's condemnation, eternally free. Please be seated. Good morning. If you'd like to
open your Bibles with me to 1 Thessalonians 2, what we just sang is our hope
and prayer this morning, that we will find our hope and to
all our salvation, all the freedom from sin and condemnation in
the glorious person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ, we are
free. Free. We cannot preach Christ
high enough. We cannot preach man low enough. and we cannot preach grace free
enough. But that is our desire and that
is our attempt to lift Christ up. And I, if I be lifted up,
will draw all men to me. And this is a faithful saying
and worthy of all acceptation, Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners, sinners, whom I am chief." Grace, grace, grace unto it,
Zacharias said. All of grace from election through
redemption through regeneration, sanctification, glorification,
all of our salvation is all a work of grace. That means that it's
all done by God. That means that the Lord's not
looking to us to make any contribution to it, that he has finished the
work all by himself. That's what grace means. And
the opposite of that is works. In a works gospel, will not save. A works gospel can only condemn,
it can only leave us under the law. May the Lord be pleased
to enable us to lift up Christ, to reveal to us our need for
him, and to show us that salvation is of the Lord. It's of the Lord,
all of him. If God is pleased to reveal that
to our hearts this morning, we will leave this place a happy
people. I mean, it doesn't matter what else might be going on if
God speaks. And that's my message this morning,
when God speaks, when God speaks. We've been looking at these passages
in 1 Thessalonians for several weeks now. And we find ourselves
this morning in chapter two, at verse three, where the Apostle
Paul says to this church in Thessalonica, and let us not forget that though
what I just said is accurate historically, Our interest is
not in what Paul said to Thessalonica, our interest is in what God might
be saying to us. We don't study the Bible in order
to entertain our minds with historical events. We study scripture that
the Lord might be pleased to speak to our hearts. And when
God speaks, all of the voices are silenced. You know, your
life is like my life, where there's a lot of voices, a lot of responsibilities,
a lot of opportunities, a lot of things competing for our attention. And when God speaks, all those
voices are silenced. All those things become irrelevant
when God is pleased to speak effectually to the heart. And
we're not talking about an audible voice here. We're not talking
about hearing some strange voice and having some strange mystical
experience. We're talking about God, the
Holy Spirit, speaking truth to our hearts, revealing Christ
by his word. And when that happens, it's a
whole lot louder than an audible voice. It's convincing, it's
converting. And let me say this too, that
our God is not running around trying to get men to hear him.
The Lord said in John chapter 10, he said, you do not believe
on me because you're not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice,
they hear my voice. and they follow me and I give
unto them eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall
any man pluck them out of my hand." So when the Lord speaks,
he's not trying to get us to listen. Before we get into our text,
go back with me to Psalm 28. Here's the believer's heart's
desire. Here's the sinner's need. The sinner's need. I've shared this. We'll leave
that. Psalm 28, verse 1. Unto thee
will I cry, O Lord, my rock, be not silent to me. Lest if
thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the
pit. If God doesn't speak, we have
no hope. We're left to ourselves. We have
nothing but darkness and opinions. Hear the voice of my supplications
when I cry unto thee. When I lift up my hands towards
thy holy oracle, draw me not away with the wicked. Sinners
understand by their own experience and by the revelation of scripture
that their hearts are desperately wicked. You know that about yourself,
don't you? Someone said, my heart's good
and I've got a good heart. You don't know your heart if
you think you have a good heart. Because the Bible says that the
heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked and no man
can know it. And if God leaves us to follow
our own hearts, we will be carried away with the wicked. And so
what our need is for the Lord to speak and silence the voices
of our hearts and of condemnation and of the world and of all these
other distractions. So now back with me, if you will,
to our text for our exhortation. Paul says in verse three, was
not of deceit nor of uncleanness nor in guile. Paul is referring back to those
three weeks that he was in Thessalonica preaching the gospel. After having
preached the gospel for three weeks, Those who hated the voice
of God tried to silence the voice of God. And they made sure that
the Apostle Paul was run out of town, thinking that that would
silence God's voice. It didn't. It didn't. Paul had
to leave, but he didn't leave behind without a testimony. There's
a church now, there's a group of believers that are hearing
and declaring the voice of God. But he's saying to them, when
I came to you, as we saw in chapter one at verse five, I did not
come to you in word only. I wasn't just speaking words.
You didn't just hear the voice of a man, but I came unto you
with power and with the Holy Ghost and with much assurance.
So the Spirit of God blessed these audible words and made
them effectual to the heart and gave assurance of salvation to
God's elect. And that's always the result
of hearing God's voice. When you hear from God, you're
comforted, you're sure that what God says is true. and you hang
all the hopes, all the hopes of your life in this world and
in your life to come on the promises of God. Knowing that all the
promises of God are yea and amen in Christ. Knowing that our God
cannot lie and what he says is true. Notice in verse one of our text,
for yourselves brethren know, you know this, that our entrance
into you was not in vain. It was not empty, it was not
devoid, it had substance, it had truth, it had power because
our entering into you was all about Christ. So Christ is the
substance, he is the power of the gospel and of our message. And Paul is reminding them, and
as I said already, God is reminding us that when the Lord speaks,
when he sends his word in power and in the Holy Ghost and in
much assurance, it's not empty, it's not vain. How many empty
words we have to listen to? How many empty, vain words we
speak? We speak. God's Word is full of substance. It's full of power. It's full
of truth. It's full of meaning because
it's full of Christ. In the volume of the book, it
is written of me. We don't separate the written
word from the living word. The written word is a revelation
of the living word. The Lord Jesus Christ being the
living word of God revealed to us by God's grace in his word,
in his written word. When we open God's word, we're
always looking for Christ. And Paul says our exhortation
did not come of deceit. It did not come with error. We
did not say some things that were true and some things that
were not true so that you had to figure out for yourselves
what was right and what was wrong. We spoke the truth as it is in
Christ. What great hope we have in knowing
that God's word has no mixture of error whatsoever. It is inspired
of God, it did not come by private interpretation. Holy men of God
wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. It is profitable,
it is profitable for doctrine. It is profitable for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man
of God may be thoroughly furnished unto all good works. It is God's
word. Someone says, Well, how much
of the Bible do you have to believe to be a believer? The Bible is
God's word. God makes you to be a believer.
You believe every word of it. And I'm not here to try to convince
you that it's true or that it's God's word. That's not my job. That's the Holy Spirit's work.
He's the only one that can do that. If I could talk you into
believing that the Bible is the word of God, someone else could
talk you out of it. But if God convinces you that
the scriptures are his breathed, inspired, inerrant word, no man
can change your mind. You can't pluck yourself out
of God's hands. You've been taught of God. That's
what the Lord said. And they shall all be taught
of God. I said, I wanna be taught of
God, don't you? I wanna be taught of God. I've changed my mind so many
times on things. And what I used to think was
right, I found out was wrong. You know, you have opinions about
different things. We live in an ever-changing world,
don't we? We live in an ever-changing body. We live in an ever-changing
mind. We need the truth. The unchangeable truth, the immutable
truth, that which cannot be changed so that culture can't change
it, time can't change it, nothing can change it. And that's
what Paul say in our exhortation, the preaching of the gospel did
not come to you with deceit. There was no error in it, nor
of uncleanness. Our gospel did not come from,
nor does it lead to that which is unclean or that which is unholy,
that which is impure, that which is unacceptable, unacceptable
to God. This is God's holy word. And
though we find so much in our own hearts and lives that are
impure and unholy, Paul saying, when I preached the gospel to
you, there was nothing unclean about it. It didn't advocate
uncleanness, it exposed it. It didn't encourage it, it didn't
come from uncleanness, it didn't come from unrighteousness. It
exposed all of that for what it is. This is what always happens when
God speaks. When God speaks, I did not come
to you with guile, Subversion. I wasn't speaking out of both
sides of my mouth. I didn't say, well, you know,
God is omnipotent. He's all powerful until he comes
up against your free will, and then he abdicates his power to
you. He relinquishes his authority
to man, and man now becomes all powerful. You can't make sense
of nonsense. He said, I did not come to you
with guile, with subversion, with subtlety, with yene preaching. I did not talk out of both sides
of my mouth. I did not say to you that Jesus
Christ came into the world to lay down his life for the sins
of all men, but most of the men that he died for are going to
end up in hell. I didn't say that to you. That
doesn't make sense. That's subtlety, that's deceit,
that's guile, that's yay-nay preaching. Paul said, I've had
to preach to you yay and nay, but it's all yay and all the
promises of God are yay and amen in Christ. In Christ. This is how God speaks. If you
listen to a message that is contradictory, a convoluted message, a confusing
message? Religion is very confusing. You
never know exactly how much you have to do. Or how often you
have to do it? Or what you have to do? Or what
words do I need to pray? Or what works do I need to perform? And how faithful do I need to
be? And how sincere do I need to
be? And how sorry do I need to be? You see, you can't make sense
of it. It's confusing. And Paul said,
when I came to you, I did not come to you with that sort of
confusion of speech. But I came to you with the simplicity
of speech that Christ is all in salvation. Christ is all.
He's done it all, and he is all, and God is looking to the Lord
Jesus Christ for all, and faith looks to the same place that
God the Father looks. Faith just looks to Christ and
rests all its hope in the perfect righteousness and the atoning
work of the Lord Jesus Christ in the shedding of his precious
blood on Calvary's cross for the forgiveness of all of my
sin, all of my sin. Oh, what comfort, what hope there
is when God speaks. And Paul said, I did, you know,
so much of religion is men glorying in the flesh. And they're always looking for
a following and trying to build a big name for themselves. And
Paul said, I didn't do that. There was nothing flesh honoring
about what we did. We weren't looking for followers.
We weren't looking for disciples. We were holding up the Lord Jesus
Christ, knowing that God has a people in this world. And when
the message of the gospel converges with the hearts of God's people
by the power of the Spirit of God, they will believe and they
will come. We don't have to persuade them.
We don't have to manipulate them. We don't have to put them on
a guilt trip and tell them, well, you know, you need to do this
and need to do that and make people feel guilty because they
don't do one thing or the other. We did not come to you with guile.
Turn with me to Galatians, back just a few pages to Galatians
chapter six, I wanna show you something else that Paul said
to the church at Galatia along these lines. Galatians chapter six, this is
such a depiction of modern-made Man-made, it's not modern-made
but man-made because it hasn't changed. It's the same today
as it was 2,000 years ago. It's just man-made religion.
Look at verse 12 of Galatians chapter 6. As many as desire
to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised
only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross. There's an offense in preaching
Christ as everything in salvation. The offense is to the pride of
man. The offense... What do you hear
in religion? Well, you know, I did this and
I did that and I invited Jesus into my heart and I think this
and I... There's no I in grace. There's no I in grace. We're
not here to talk about what I did, we're talking about what the
Lord has done or what we're going to do for him. No, no, we are
but unprofitable servants in the best of our efforts to serve
the Lord. We fall so far short and could
never glory in anything that we do. We glory in what he, let
him that glorieth glory in the Lord. No flesh should glory in
his presence. But Paul's talking about these
Judaizers that came in behind him at the church at Galatia
and he said they were looking for a fair showing in the flesh.
They were giving you something to do to merit favor with God
and to earn your salvation so that they could glory in you
as their disciples and as their converts. Why? Because they didn't want. the persecution that comes by
just preaching Christ. They couldn't. Look at verse 13, for they themselves
who are circumcised, and circumcision is a picture of works religion. That's just what it is. It's
the cutting away of the flesh. Just think about it like that.
We know what circumcision is. And in religion, men think, well,
if I can just cut things out of my fleshly life and stop doing
this and stop doing the other, that I can merit favor with God. And those are men that are preaching
circumcision. They're preaching a works gospel
for the hope of men's salvation. Why? Because they want a glory
in your flesh. If I can get you to stop doing
something, it makes it look like, you know, I'm not doing that
either. Here's the dirty little secret. Preachers that are preaching
against certain sins and trying to get you to stop certain sins,
mark it down. Those men are guilty of the very
thing that they're trying to get you to stop doing. Why? So
they can glory in your flesh. If I get you to stop doing it,
it takes the attention off of me and makes me look like I'm
not doing it. That's exactly what's happening in man-made
religion. Am I suggesting in any way there's
things we ought not to be doing? Obviously not. You know Christ,
you hate your sin. You know there's things you ought
not to be doing and you're grieved when you do them. We're not here
to preach against that. We're not here to preach the
law, to put men under the law. We're here to tell men what Christ
has done in putting away our sin and fulfilling God's law
perfectly. Everything else, everything else
is glorying in the flesh. They desire to make a show, verse
12, a show, a fair show in the flesh. and they constrain you
to be circumcised only lest they should suffer persecution for
the cross. For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the
law, but desire to have you circumcised that they may glory in your flesh."
That's exactly what I just tried to say. God says it right there,
so simply and so clearly. That's what religion's about.
If I can get you to keep the law, or to pretend like you're
keeping the law, Glory in your flesh. That's what legalistic man-made
religion is. Everybody's glorying in what
they're doing and what they're not doing. Looking down their
self-righteous nose to people that don't measure up to their
standards. Verse 14, but God forbid that
I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ by whom
the world is crucified unto me and I to the world. Christ is
my life. We did not come to you with guile,
subversion. We came to you with a message
of encouragement. You see, a works gospel is not
encouraging, is it? Unless you're a liar, I mean,
you can go about life like most self-righteous religious people
do, lying to themselves and lying to one another and lying to God
and pretending to be something that they're not. But if God's given you any understanding
of the truth and any understanding of yourself, you can't find any
comfort in that. You just, you know, you put me
under the law, well, Like I said, how well do I have to keep it?
How often do I have to keep it? There's no comfort. There's no comfort in a message
that gives me something to do. The only comfort is in a message
that tells me what God has done. And therein lies the difference
between the false gospel and the true gospel. Two simple letters,
N-E, N-E. Oh, but what comfort there is
in knowing that salvation's been done. It's of the Lord. It's
been finished. I can rest there. I can trust
Him. That's what exhortation, this
word exhortation is used a lot in the Bible to exhort. We don't
use it much in our modern day language. Translated, it means
to come along beside someone and speak to them encouraging
words that are to be responded to with urgency. That's what
exhortation means. Some of you may know or be familiar
with the word paraclete. It's the word that is translated
comforter in the Bible speaking about the Holy Spirit. He's the
one who comes along beside of us and he speaks words of comfort
and hope and peace to our hearts, revealing to us the glory of
Christ and what he's done in accomplishing our salvation.
This word exhortation is from that same word, paraclete, one
who comes along beside. Also, when the scripture speaks
of the Lord Jesus Christ himself being our advocate, we have an
advocate. My little children, I write these
things unto you that you sin not, but if any man sin, we have
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one.
And that advocate is the same word here, paraclete. We have
one pleading our case and our cause before the judge of all
the world. And he's never lost a case. Never
lost a case, he's our advocate. He's our lawyer, he's our attorney. Now if you were charged guilty by
some law, And you had an opportunity to hire a lawyer who has had
millions and millions of cases before a particular judge and
never lost a single one of them. How long would it take you to
think about having to have that lawyer as your advocate? That's what we have. We have
the Lord Jesus Christ. to stand in our stead and to
present himself as the one who kept the law and as the one who
satisfied the demands of God's justice for the fact that we've
not kept the law. And he's our paraclete. And so
we are coming along beside with words of comfort, words of exhortation, Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter
14, he said, he that prophesieth, and prophesying here is not referring
to telling of some future event, it is declaring a past event. Right now, we are prophesying.
Any man who stands and pretends to tell you about something,
he thinks that he's got a word from God and something's gonna
happen tomorrow, he's lying to you. We don't prophesy future
events. We don't know what God has in
store, but we know who's in control of tomorrow and that whatever
he does is going to be right. But we don't know what he's done.
We know where he's been. And so when we prophesy, we're
speaking of those events that are past tense. We're speaking of that event
that took place before time ever began. when the Lord Jesus Christ
entered into a covenant relationship with his father and agreed to
be the surety of those whom the father had elected and chosen
according to his own will and purpose. We're speaking of that
event that took place 2,000 years ago on Calvary's cross when the
Lord Jesus Christ became the sin bearer of his people and
satisfied God's justice and put away their sins by the sacrifice
of himself. We're speaking of that promise
that he made when he said, I go and prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and
I will receive you unto myself so that where I am there, you
may be also. He that prophesied speaketh unto
men to the edification and exhortation of comfort. Comfort, comfort
ye, comfort ye my people. Speak ye comfortably unto Jerusalem
and tell her, tell her that her warfare is accomplished. The
enemy's been defeated, grave has been opened, the grave's
been opened, sin's been put away, Satan's been destroyed. Tell her her warfare is accomplished.
Tell her all of her iniquity, all of her iniquity has been
purged. It's been put away. That's the
comfort of the gospel. Anything else, if you add one
ounce, one molecule of anything that we do to what he has already
done, You're going to mess it up. You're going to destroy it. A little leaven leavened the
whole lump. A little bit of works destroys
grace. If it's of grace, it can no longer
be of works. Otherwise, grace is not grace.
It's got to be all of grace, all of grace. There's our comfort. There's our, Paul said, well
I, my exhortation unto you, I came along beside you and I pleaded
with you with words of encouragement and hope and urgency. Paul wrote to Timothy, he said,
Timothy, you preach the word. Preach the word, be in season,
be faithful. in season and out of season.
When it's convenient. Right now I feel like I'm preaching
in season. I'm preaching to folks mostly
of which love what they're hearing. But if God put me in a place
as he did a few weeks ago where I'm preaching to another congregation
who hate you and hate everything that you're saying might he give
us the boldness to preach the exact same thing. Exact same
thing. So we're To preach the truth
in season and out of season, Paul said, exhort, exhort with
all longsuffering and with doctrine. Compassionate, pleading, encouraging
men to believe God. We don't preach a message that
gives men any opportunity for debate. I'm not asking you to, you know,
let's, you know, in religion, we used
to have Bible studies where we would sit around, everybody would
pool their ignorance and try to impress each other with what
they knew and debate with one another about what that verse
really meant. It really means what it really says. It's not
complicated. It's not complicated. Our message is simple. God's
Word's not complicated. He doesn't need us to put our
minds together and try to parse verbs and try to figure out what
the Bible really means. What's it really mean? It really
means what it really says. And it's not up for debate and
it's not up for discussion. It's not up for reflection. It is declared with exhortation
to be believed. Belief. And that's where the
rub comes, isn't it? That's where man's pride You
know, I said earlier, there's no I in grace, but I is the middle
letter in the word sin. It's also the middle letter in
the word pride. And men will not bow. They will
not believe. God doesn't ask us for our opinion.
He doesn't ask us for our contribution. He doesn't ask us for our discussion. Thus saith the Lord. And when
God takes you, oh, when he destroyed, the eye has to be destroyed,
doesn't it? The eye has to be destroyed.
The eye has to be made for what the eye is, a sinner, full of
pride and self-righteousness. And when God does that, you just
come and you bow. You just believe. It's when God
speaks, he just removes all barriers. That's how we know he's spoken. Well, God said this, but I don't
believe it. No, God didn't say that to you
if you don't believe it. If God said it to you, you believe
it. The Lord saw Levi sitting there
at that money changer table. He said, Matthew, follow me.
Immediately. He heard the voice of God. Paul was breathing out, Saul
of Tarsus was breathing out threatenings against the church. He hated
Christ. He hated grace. He was hanging
all the hopes of his salvation on a works gospel. And the offense
of the cross was robbing him of his hope. And he was determined
to put that out. And he went to Damascus to have
Christians arrested and thrown into prison and put to death.
And on the road to Damascus, God arrested him, stopped him
in his tracks, spoke from heaven. I have no doubt that it was an
actual, well, The other men that were with
him heard something, but they didn't know what was said. But Saul heard, Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou me? Who art thou, Lord? I am Jesus,
whom thou persecuteth. It's hard for you to kick against
the pricks, isn't it? Saul was like a defiant ox. who was pulling a plow. And the master of the ox was
behind him with a sharp stick. And every time the ox would slow
down, the master would stick that ox with a goad. And Saul was just the ox. He had witnessed the stoning
of Stephen. And the Spirit of God was convicting
him, but he had not spoke to him until he spoke. When he spoke, what was the first thing out
of Saul's mouth? Lord, Lord. That was the first word out of
his mouth. Lord, what would you have me
to do? God has spoken. Who am I? Who am I to question what God
has said? Faith just believes God, just
believes God and believes everything he says. Oh, what hope and comfort
and rest there is in just believing God. You know, in the Old Testament,
the law said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And
the law said even if you killed someone by accident, that the
near, it was an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, so it was
a life for a life. That was the law. And the nearest of kin of the
person that you killed accidentally had the legal right to take your
life, to avenge the death of their loved one. But God provided
cities of refuge. Six cities of refuge scattered
all over Israel. And on the roads, there were
signs pointing you to the nearest city of refuge. And the roads
going into those cities of refuge were removed of debris so that
if you killed someone accidentally, you could flee. to that city
of refuge. And you'd have no trouble getting
there. All the impediments would be out of the way. The signs
would be there pointing you where that city of refuge was. And
once you got in the city of refuge, you were protected inside that
city from the avenger of blood, the nearest of kin, who had the
right to take your life. Christ Jesus the Lord is that
city of refuge. And all we're doing right now
is pointing to the signs in God's Word as to where that city of
refuge is and who that city of refuge is and we're calling on
sinners who may not have been conscious of their sin until
now and in exhortation and encouragement
We're saying flee, flee, run, run to the city of refuge. The
avenger of blood will kill you. The law will destroy you and
cast your soul into hell. Flee to Christ. That's what exhortation
is. When the disciples were traveling
from Galilee down to Jerusalem, they wanted to go around Samaria,
as all self-respecting Jews would do. They hated the Samaritans.
And the Lord Jesus Christ said to the apostles, he said, no,
we must needs go through Samaria. I've got some lost sheep there
that my father chose before time ever began. There are some Samaritans
there that I'm going to die for. And particularly there's one
woman who's been married five times. She lives in this little
town called Sychar. No telling how many homes this
woman had broke up. And the man she's living with
now is not her husband. She's going to be at the well
in the middle of the day. All the other women are going
to go there early in the morning before it gets hot. And they're
going to enjoy that woman time together. And they're going to
get their water. And most of the time, they're
going to be gossiping about this woman that's going to show up
in the middle of the day and complaining about how much they
hate her and what she did to their family. But she's one of
mine. She's one of mine. And I must needs go through Samaria. She asked, the Lord asked her
for a drink of water. He said, Oh, if you knew who
it was that speaketh unto thee, you would ask of him. and he
would give you living water. Well, you know how the conversation
goes in John chapter 4 till she finally said, I know that when
Messiah comes he will lead us into all truth. And the Lord Jesus looked at
her and he said, I am speaketh unto thee. I am speaketh unto
thee. I'm that Messiah. I'm your Savior. In all that you've done and all
the shame and guilt that you have, I've come to take it all
away. How do we know that she heard
him? Because about that very moment
the disciples show up And she leaves. And the very town that
she'd been living in the shadows of, the very town that she had
to walk around with her head hung for her shame, she goes
into the city, into that town, and she begins to cry. Come! Come, meet a man! Meet a man
who told me everything that I ever did. Is that not the Christ? And they followed her back up
to the well. You see, God had spoke to her.
And it didn't matter to her what those people thought about her
anymore. God had spoken to her. She said, come, this is the Messiah. This is the Savior. And the scripture
says that they all came and they heard him. And then they said
to her, now we know. that this is the Christ, not
because you told us, but because we have heard him ourselves.
They heard the voice of God. When God speaks, he speaks with
exhortation. He doesn't speak with deceit
or uncleanness. He doesn't speak in vanity or
guile. He speaks in simplicity and his
sheep hear his voice and they follow him. They follow him. Lord speak, speak to my heart. Cause me to hear thy voice. Turn me and I shall be turned.
Cause me to follow you. Don't lead me to myself. Amen.