Good evening. Let's open tonight's
service with hymn number 127 from the Hardback Tymnal. 127.
Let's all stand together. ? Man of sorrows, what a name ?
? For the Son of God who came ? ? Ruined sinners to reclaim
? ? Hallelujah, what a Savior ? Bearing shame and scoffing
rude, In my place condemned He stood, Sealed my pardon with
His blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior! Guilty, vile, and helpless we,
spotless Lamb of God was He. Full atonement can it be? Hallelujah! What a Savior! ? Lifted up was he to die ? ?
It is finished was his pride ? ? Now in heaven exalted high
? ? Hallelujah, what a Savior he is ? ? When He comes, our
glorious King ? All His ransomed home to bring ? Then anew this
song we'll sing ? Hallelujah, what a Savior Please be seated. Our call to worship tonight comes
from First Peter chapter two. First Peter chapter two, beginning
at verse six. Wherefore, also it is contained
in the scripture, behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone,
elect, precious, and he that believeth on him shall not be
confounded. That word confounded also means
ashamed. Unto you, therefore, which believe
he is precious, but unto them which be disobedient, the stone
which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of
the corner, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, to them
which stumble at the word being disobedient, whereunto also they
were appointed. but you are a chosen generation,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should
show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness
into his marvelous light. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we
thank you that you have called us into your marvelous light,
the light of the gospel, in the person of your son, our Lord
Jesus Christ. Lord, we ask that you would lift
him up. Lord, send your spirit down. Lord, be with Jeff as he opens
your word. And Lord, renew the belief. Lord, let us believe like we
did at the very first. Lord, We thank you that you are
our chief cornerstone. You are the bedrock of our salvation. We can do nothing apart from
you. Lord, we ask that you would accept the praise of our lips
and just show yourself again tonight, Lord. Lord, we ask this
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. All right, let's
stand again and we're gonna sing another hymn. Hymn number... 239. Let's stand together. 239 from the hardback. Art thou weary? Art thou languid? Art thou sore distressed? Come to me, saith one, and coming,
be at rest. Hath he marks to lead me to him,
if he be my guide? In his feet and hands are wound
prints, and his Is there diadem as monarch that
his brow adorns? Yea, a crown in very surety,
but of thorns. If I still hold closely to him,
what hath he at last? Sorrow vanquished, labor ended,
Jordan passed. If I ask him to receive me, will
he say me nay? Not till earth and not till heaven
pass away. Finding, following, keeping,
struggling, is he sure to bless? Saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs,
answer yes. Please be seated. Jeff. Good evening, everybody. Well,
I'd like to turn to Proverbs chapter 16 tonight. Proverbs
chapter 16. Just like Tom said, I want to
believe, I want us all to believe like we did at the first. I love
in the gospels where it says, and his disciples believed on
him there, but they already were believers. I want us to believe
again and again. And if you are a stranger to
that grace, I want God to open the windows of heaven tonight.
I want him to make you alive in his son. And only he can do
that. This is a king and a wise man. It's not hard to tell you why
false religion is false. A preacher says, you all have
sinned. You all deserve to go to hell.
And God sent his son. Even though we didn't deserve
it, we could do nothing to make God send Christ. But now that
he has, you need to do something to make it work for you. walk
an aisle, your baptism, a decision to make him your Lord. Well,
he actually didn't say anything wrong. We have sinned. We couldn't
get God to send Christ. But a half-truth in spiritual
things is really a lie, and the result of that half-truth is
people going to church and thanking God that though they didn't deserve
it, God decided to give them a chance to use him to save themselves. And that's right. They've never
worshipped God though. Worship comes from need. It comes
from emptiness. It comes from a complete lack
of anything in yourself, and only then do you look to God,
and only is that worship. The Lord says, thy money perish
with thee, because you thought you could buy the gift of God
with money. Who's given to God, and it's
been recompensed to them again? How has anybody ever put God
in a position where he owes them something? Throughout the scriptures, we
see this illustrated time and time again. The full soul loathes
a honeycomb, but to the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet. And what is that bitter, sweet
thing? That a man, a wise man, that
excludes us. is all in all our salvation. What a man thinks makes the difference
between him going to heaven and him going to hell, that's what
he worships. That's what he worships. But
the true God and his true gospel says that the son of God came
and he pacified his father on behalf of his elect children. When Abraham was about to sacrifice
his son, God told him, I will provide. God is the one who provided. He's the one who was provided. And he's the one who received
what he provided. So we are looking in Proverbs
16 and verse 14. The wrath of a king is as messengers
of death, but a wise man will pacify it. In the light of a
king's countenance is life, and his favor is as a cloud of the
latter rain. Now, in this proverb, God the
father is king. And God is angry with the wicked
every day. God saw in Genesis chapter six
that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every
imagination of the thought of his heart was only evil continually. He saw the wickedness of man.
He saw that his heart, man, that includes everybody in here. We
need a wise man to pacify God for our hearts. It's not just
our sins. I used to think you'd go through
your day, start off good, sin, up, doing well, sin again. No, it's everything. It's everything
in between those. It's who you are. Behold, the
Lord cometh with 10,000 of his saints to execute judgment, to
convince all that are ungodly of their ungodly deeds and of
their hard speeches that ungodly sinners have spoken against God. And that day is coming. Now the congregation of the dead,
those who would have us thank God for availing himself to us,
they hide the keys of knowledge, they take the hope away from
a sinner, because they tell you to trust a God who would wish
none to perish, who is trying his hardest, and will be sad
with how everything ends up. How sad. If we want to know God's
will on something, we need to go to the place in Scripture
that most clearly explains it, and that's Romans chapter 9.
You don't have to turn there, but Romans chapter 5, God tells
us how sin came into the world. He says, by one man, sin entered
into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all
men, for that all have sinned. Now, Romans chapter 9, 22 tells
us why sin, because it says, what if God willing? We will
hear often that God is not willing that any should perish. What
if God willing to show his wrath? He's willing, he's continually
having it to be so. This is his counsel. What if
God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known,
endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to
destruction? In verse 17, he gives an example
of Pharaoh, who he raised up, that he might show his power
in Pharaoh, and that his name might be declared throughout
the earth. The psalmist says God dumped his body in the Red
Sea, to get himself a name in the earth. And that's what's
happening right now. These vessels of wrath are purpose,
but verse 23, verse 23, and just as much so, and that he might
make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy,
which were afore prepared unto glory. I need God to purpose. I need God to look at me and
say, I'm going to use Him for that. I need God's purpose to
use me to make known His glory and to prepare me. It's not of
Him that wills, nor of Him that runneth. God, prepare me. How
can I prepare myself? It says, God hated one and loved
the other, neither having done good or evil. I'm too late to
prepare myself. What are we going to do? How
can a king continually will to make known the riches of his
glory on one whose thoughts are only evil continually? How is he going to prepare? It's
in our text, by a wise man who pacified the king's wrath. When God looked down from heaven
on the children of men to see if there were any that understand,
he saw fools. They're all gone out of the way.
But here's a wise man. Scripture says he gave himself
for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world
according to the will of God. And he is God. This last summer, I ran into
some Jehovah's Witnesses on the beach, so I chatted them up. As you know, that sect denies
that Jesus Christ is God. and they say that they're Christians.
You know how this goes often when you're speaking with somebody
who's in error, and for the days or weeks afterward, when you're
reading the scriptures, the verses that have to do with that conversation,
they always jump out at you. You're always taking yourself
back to that conversation you had, or trying to find them so
that you can tell them. But here's the thing though,
that was happening, but for every verse I saw in the scripture
that just reminded me that Jesus Christ is God, there'd be another
that showed me that he is man. Believers know he has to be both,
he is both. Fully God and fully man, that's
God using error of the wicked to strengthen his sheep. We worship
a man who is God. The scripture says, as by man
came death, even so by man came the resurrection from the dead. Now here's the promise through
scripture. This is what we can hang our
hopes on. There's a man in heaven right
now. If you would allow me to say
it this way, we can't see him. But he is there. He's really
there. He really is a man seated in
glory who really suffered these things. And this. It's in the same way that we
can't see something on the other side of town right now, but we
know it's there. We know it's there. The promise
throughout the scripture, in the words of Isaiah, is this,
a man shall be their hiding place. A man shall be the hiding place
in a covert from the storm. Throughout the scripture, though,
this was promised from the start. God would set up human leaders
in offices to picture, to typify, the kingship and the salvation
that would come when he sent his son into the world. I remember
in the very start, God said that the seed of the woman, Christ,
would bruise the serpent's head. And then Eve, she conceived and
she gave birth to Cain. And she said, I've gotten a man
from the Lord. I believe she believed that that
was the Messiah that God had just promised. But Cain, Cain
was full of malice, hateful, and hating one another. He only
showed us why we need a Savior. He wasn't the Savior. He killed
his brother for worshiping God. And later comes Moses. Moses communicated the covenant,
but he was a man like any. Christ is the covenant. God said, I will give thee for
a covenant to the people. That old covenant said things
like, curses every man that hangeth on a tree. But a man hanging
on a tree can't buy peace. It can't put away sin. We need
Christ to be made a curse. And when he is, Here's the infallible
result, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles
through faith. Now, later, God raised up judges,
but chapter two of that book tells us why it could never work,
because when the judge died, the people went back to sinning.
We need an unchangeable, ever-living, King, now is Christ risen, never
to die again. Then there were kings. You know,
the vast majority of them, all it says is that they did evil
in the sight of the Lord, and then they died. And that's all
that can be said about us. No, no, no. We've been waiting,
and he's come. We need a judge. The Lord is
our judge. The Lord is our lawgiver. He
is our king. He will save us. In the fullness
of time, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under the
law, to redeem them that were under the law. You remember Simeon. Simeon held up Christ. Let now thy servant depart in
peace. My eyes have seen your salvation. the one you provided. That was God in the flesh, in
the womb of the Virgin Mary, Yahshua, the Lord is my salvation. Who is this one? Let's go to
Colossians. Colossians. Colossians says all
you need is in Christ. He is the head of the principalities
and powers. He's the cause of the first things. He's before the first things.
He's the uncaused first cause, God. And he is the head of his
church. My wife and I were watching a
program recently about these men in Nepal who would scale
cliffs to get at this honey, these honeycombs, this prized
honey that they had to scale a cliff to get to. Before they
climbed the cliff, they threw rice up in the air to their God
for their idea of God, I guess to bless them and keep them safe.
Well, among a million things. You know what the problem with
that is? It had nothing to do with blood. It had nothing to do with blood.
For it's the blood that maketh an atonement for your souls,
and I've given it to you on the altar. See, the sacrifice that
puts away our sin must be man, because it's man that sinned.
And it must be God. Spotless, pure, harmless, separate
from sinners. Scott and I were talking about
this yesterday. Romans 8 says what the law could not do. in
that it was weak through our flesh. God, sending his own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh, enforced sin, condemned sin,
in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled
in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
So, Colossians chapter 1. Let's go to Here's what we're
doing. Verse 12, giving thanks unto
the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance
of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of
darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear
son, the child born and the son given, and the government is
upon his shoulders. Verse 14 now. in whom we have
redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins,
our sins forgiven. If you were a slave and a man
bought you back out of slavery with money, you'd say your redemption
is from him because his money is as good as anybody else's.
If it's by blood in his death, it would be in Him, in whom we
have redemption through His blood. Even the forgiveness of sins,
that means being holy and without blame, in God's sight, in love. We do this thing, we call it
forgiving, but it's not. We'll withhold it, even though
we say we haven't, because we're not sure that that person really
understands what they did to us. They don't really know how
it hurt. And so we don't feel like forgiving
them until they do. Actually, until they really,
really know. You know, that's not God. If you want good, if you want
to see what goodness and forgiveness looks like, we need to look at
what God does. We wound ourselves with our sins
daily. and then we slap a bandage on
it and call it something else though. When Jesus Christ hung
on the cross, he said, my wounds stink and are corrupt because
of my foolishness. He calls it what he is and he
experienced everything that it brings. We can't, but God forgives
us because he experienced it. Now verse 15. The one who did this is the invisible
God, the image of the invisible God, excuse me, who bear our
sins. We have no idea how far away
from us God's wrath really is. We can't picture it. We can't
imagine it. It's gone. There isn't wrath
for us. It's so hard to see how that
can be. He tells us in his word right
here. On to chapter 2 real quick. In Colossians chapter 2 here,
when Paul wrote to Timothy, the motive he gave to shun profane
and vain babblings was this, that the foundation of God stands
sure, the Lord knows them that are his. In Colossians, The motive
is this. We're gonna learn the foundation
right here. Verse eight, beware, beware lest
any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit because you're
complete in him. Verse 10, you are complete in
him, which is the head of all principality and power. We are
his body. And he is the fullness of the
Godhead bodily, and his body did what he did. This is how
saints will be able to say, we can judge angels. Can you imagine
that? How can God say the saints will
judge angels? Because we're in Christ. Verse 11 now. in whom also ye
are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands and putting
off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of
Christ. Circumcised means cut off. Remember
the prophecy was in three score and two weeks shall Messiah be
cut off. Or the psalmist says that he
was, or I'm sorry, Isaiah 53 says he was cut off from the
land of the living. And we in him, now that verse
12, baptism, buried with him in baptism, wherein also you
are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God,
who hath raised him from the dead. Baptism, that's plunged
under, to be pushed or plunged beneath something, is what that
word means. Remember, He says, the waters
compassed me about, even to the soul. The depth closed round
about me. The weeds were wrapped around
my head. Remember, they put a crown of thorns around his head. I
went down to the bottom of the mountain. The earth with her
bars was about me forever. You remember, that's why he can
say when he calls us to his feet, he can tell us, I've break the
gates of brass. I've cut and sundered the bars
of iron. Sorry, this burial with him in
baptism, notice that word wherein also in verse 12. This burial
is that wherein we are also risen with him. The baptism, the going
down, also means arising. Why? Because this is the just
dying for the unjust. Let's go to Psalm 18. I wanted
to show you this. If a sinner were to die for his
sins, that's not sufficient. That is not meritorious to release
anybody else from their punishment. If holy God dies for the sins
of others, though, Now, let's read verse, Psalm 18, starting
in verse 4. The sorrows of death encompassed
me. Now, this Psalm in 2 Samuel,
chapter 22, is almost a word-for-word copy of this Psalm, and it says,
this is when the Lord delivered David. And David, as the type of Christ,
this is when the Lord delivered Christ from the grave. Verse
four, and it's before when he was on the cross too. The sorrows
of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me
afraid. The sorrows of hell compassed
me about. The snares of death prevented
me. The snares of death went before
him, remember? Behold, we go up to Jerusalem,
he told his disciples. He knew, he knew exactly what
was happening. Continue on. In my distress,
I called upon the Lord and cried unto my God. He heard my voice
out of his temple and my cry came before him, even into his
ears. Now skip down please to verse
16. He sent from above, He took me,
He drew me out of many waters. That's why in Revelation, God
can say that the sea around His throne was like glass, smooth
glass. Those waters of our sins were
gone, were gone and smooth. And every attribute of God is
reflected up. just like that glass around his
throne. And we see in God's salvation, every attribute of God is perfectly
reflected in that. So verse 17, he delivered me
from my strong enemy and from them which hated me, for they
were too strong for me. They prevented me in the day
of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay. He brought me forth
also into a large place. He delivered me because he delighted
in me. The Lord Jesus is the only man
who can say this right here. The Lord rewarded me according
to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands.
Hath he recompensed me? Ask of me and I will give thee
the heathen for thine inheritance. For I have kept the ways of the
Lord and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his judgments
were before me and I did not put away his statutes from me.
I was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity. There it is. My iniquity. Because sins were laid on him,
but he kept himself from it. There it is right there. Verse
23. Therefore, hath the Lord recompensed
me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of
my hands in his eyesight. Father, I will. that they which
thou hast given me be with me where I am." He will get his
reward. He has. Back to Colossians. I have never been good at finding
books in my Bible. Never been good. I'm sorry. Verse we're in chapter 2 verse
13. 13 and you being dead in your
sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh. Has he quickened
together with him having forgiven you all trespasses? He made us alive, brethren. Having forgiven, having already
forgiven. Remember in Ezekiel chapter 16,
when God comes, he sees us polluted in our own blood. He spreads
his skirt over us. He says, live, we're forgiven. He spreads his skirt over us.
He's not airing out our sins. He's not shaming us. He doesn't
use shame. He covers it up. They already
are covered. He puts it out of our view because
they're out of his view. He spreads his skirt over us
and says, you're forgiven. It's taken care of. Come with
me. He doesn't have any anger. God
has no anger toward us because it's pacified. That's what pacified
means. If I told you I was pacified
toward you and I showed anger toward you, it could only be
because I'm not. How, how, how does this happen? Verse 14 now, blotting out the
handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary
to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. Now, Notice it says, which was
contrary to us, and it has the word ordinances, plural. The
ordinances was contrary. That's because they all are one. If any man offend in any one
point of the law, he's broken all the law. They stand or fall
all together. And he nailed it all to the cross
and took it out of the way by blotting out. Blotting. I think I've even said this before
myself, but it is not true. It's not true to say that God
sees our sins under the blood of Christ. That's not true. He sees the blood of Christ.
He doesn't see our sins. A long time ago, I wrote a long letter to somebody.
Things weren't well between us. And I was going to fix that.
I wrote something on there that I realized I should not have
written. And before I sent it, I was trying my best to blot
that out. Every color pen, every kind of
marker I had, I was trying to cover that up. Because it was
such a long letter, I didn't want to rewrite it. And I could
hold it up and still see what I had written. It didn't work.
Well, God didn't have to find out what we've done. He already
knows. And we're not going to blot anything out. Blotting. I love that song that we sing. His perfect life and death for
our sins is what God sees. They're blotted as a thick cloud. As a thick cloud. Our sins are
all connected together. You don't know where one ends
and the other starts. If you take an honest look at
yourself, we're always sinning. Deeper than the stain has gone. I love that song. That's the
song I was thinking of a second ago. The scripture says, as sin
has reigned unto death, even so, grace might reign through
righteousness by Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And that's
what we have in the gospel right there. I wanted to speak a word
on wisdom, its nature, its source. Man thinks that the gospel, and
believing it, is below him. That's not true, though. Thy
judgments, O God, are far above out of their sight. They're not
above because the gospel is too complicated. God's judgments
are far above out of the sight of the wicked because they're
too simple. And that's it. Man loves to pontificate and
gain wisdom and trade ideas. People get really excited about
that because it lets them use their imagination. It lets them
virtue signal. It lets them show others what
they're all about because when you're telling someone your view
about something, really you're telling them who you are. Isn't
that part of the point? That's kind of the feeling I
get from people a lot. They're expressing themselves.
The scripture says, The fool has no delight in wisdom, but
that his heart may discover itself, reveal itself. People like talking
about what they think. I'm sure you've noticed. And the scriptures do not accommodate
that at all, at all. Here's a quick example. Go to
a garden variety pagan. any kind, ask them, why do people
die? Why do people die? You know what they, I can't even
try to, anything under the sun is probably an answer that's
included. You'd hear anything. Our answer
though, why do people die? Sin. You see, though, if someone
has already decided that they don't want to know God, they
don't want anything to do with the Scriptures, there's really
nothing in that answer there for you. If you've decided you
don't like this and you don't believe, there's nothing there
for you in that answer. It's too stark. It's too plain.
There's nothing you can do with it. But... The Lord Jesus Christ,
in whom are hid the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, is the
one who all will answer to. Again, in the court of public
opinion, what do you think attracts men? Just a simple question,
where does life come from? You would hear so many things
that sound so wise. evolution, mythology, some weird
combination of the two. It sounds very learned. It sounds
like men had to really research and think about this stuff. Now,
the believer, they say, well, God spake and it was. You see,
again, it's just too simple. There's nothing you can do with
that. In fact, it sounds foolish. Ask somebody, Ask an unbeliever,
how would you go about accomplishing some huge task? Pick one. I don't know. They would talk
about, well, I have an MBA, some deep pockets, I have friends
in the right places, pull some strings. They would talk about
how powerful they are. That's what it comes down to.
That's what their answer would come down to. Ask the Christian
the same question. Well, I'd make a few phone calls,
but really I'd wait on God. That's what I would do to accomplish
that. You see, that sounds weak. I will destroy the wisdom of
the wise. I will bring to nothing the understanding
of the prudent. The preaching of the cross is
foolish. Foolishness to those that perish.
Because it says this. It says something so simple.
It says that God made man. Man fell. God loves some of them
and redeemed those ones he loves by the blood and life of a suitable
sacrifice, Jesus Christ. That's it. That's really the
truth of why anything exists. That's why we're here. Now, an
even better example, though, Look at the cross. Look at Christ
himself. God would save sinners by him? The one who didn't have anywhere
to lay his head? Or the one who didn't even answer
a word at his own trial? Sounds weak, doesn't it? Well, the weakness of God is
the only strength this world ever can know anything about.
And the strength of this world is really just weakness. This
is God who makes diviners mad and frustrates the tokens of
the liars and turns the wise men backwards and makes their
knowledge foolish. If I'm going to have God's favor,
he's going to have to make me a little child. He's going to
have to divorce me from every foolish, notion I've ever entertained,
he's gonna have to make me hate my thoughts. Maybe some of us
grew up in a irreligious or very loosely Christian home and can
think back on when we were teenagers, maybe, and lyrics to songs or
something that we saw that At the time, as an unbeliever, we
said, yeah, that's it, that's so wise. We got a little boost
from it. We saw these things as guiding
us through life, and we heard the wisdom of the world about
life, its meaning, how to be, how to act, and we really thought
that was something. And we look back on that now,
what foolishness, how damning, how damning. I need God to make
me a little child. Because truth is simple. Wisdom
is really simple. It's not complicated. Now back in our text, Proverbs
16 verse 15. Now if all that wasn't enough,
to make us know that our salvation is going to have to come from
entirely outside of ourselves. Now, verse 15, in the light of
the king's countenance, that's God the father, is life. But how do I seek his face as
a sinner? How could that light ever have
anything to do with me? How can it shine on me? Now,
a countenance, I would not know that word if it wasn't for a
King James Bible. A countenance is the presence,
the feeling given off by your facial expression. You remember
the psalmist asked himself, why is the light of thy countenance
fallen? Or when Laban was up to his trickery with Jacob, Jacob
saw that the countenance on Laban's face had changed and it was not
toward him as before. Laban hadn't said a word. Jacob,
you could just see it on his face. And that's the word here.
Remember in Psalm 51, David said, God, hide your face from my sin. Hide your face. Everything done
by me was done by polluted, selfish me. Hide your face from my sins,
God. The rocks and the hills won't
hide me. A man shall be as a hiding place. You know, Scripture shows Christ
at God's right. Think of this now. Christ at
God's right hand, and we're at Christ's right hand. That means that every time God
needs to look at us, He only sees Christ. And every time we
see everything we know and see of God is in the face of Jesus
Christ. So is it my moral excellence? Would it be my decision to appropriate
God and use him to save myself? Could it be my charitable efforts
that win God's favor, that have the light of his countenance
shine on me? No. No. Those things will send
you to hell. In him was life. In him, in Jesus
Christ. Again, we've never obligated
God to do anything. God's either looking at Christ
when he looks at us, or he's looking at a sinner. If God gives
life to a broken sinner, it has to be through the one who is
the light of his countenance, his righteous servant, his beloved
son, in whom he is well pleased. The last part of verse 15 says,
and his favor is as a cloud of the latter rain. God's favor
is what we need. We need that. He says, I will
love them freely. Freely. The Lord once told his
disciples, freely you've received, now freely give. You didn't do anything. Now give
it to other people who don't do anything, and that's how we
receive. That is how God favors freely. This is the just-in-time reign,
the latter reign. Think about this now. You're
born. Here's time. You're born. Sin,
sin, nothing but sin, maybe. The Lord calls you to himself
when you're 10 years old, maybe when you're 90 years old. Still,
it's right here. And you die in eternity in the
King's presence. That sounds like the latter rain. Think about the thief on the
cross. He led a filthy, polluted life. He snatched from death at the
last minute. Favor as a cloud of the latter
rain. God describes his church as trees
of the Lord's planting and a garden enclosed. Now trees receive their
nourishment from above. You and I can't call a cloud
to us. And a plant can't either. A plant
cannot obligate rain to fall on it. But it comes from above,
and it comes from God's will. 1 Peter and 2 Peter, they both
start like this. 1 Peter says, God has begotten
us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Christ. 2 Peter starts, We've obtained,
like precious faith, through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. So, this receiving God's favor,
it has to do with the resurrection. And the resurrection has to do
with righteousness. If there was no resurrection,
we would not be given faith. There would be nothing to have
faith in. And if there was no righteousness brought in everlastingly,
as the scripture says it would when Christ died, there would
be no resurrection. Our favor, God's favor, and our
receiving it in the gospel comes down like rain onto God's garden. God's favor is powerful, it's
targeted. Favor means being personally
interested in and pledged to the well-being of another. It says they got not the land
by their own sword but by God's right hand and by his arm and
by the light of his countenance because he had a favor to them
and that is the only reason anybody will be in heaven. It says the
Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you
were more You were actually the fewest. It was because the Lord
would love you. I need God's favor. We need this. I need God to purpose, to use
me, to show the riches of his glory and to prepare me. I need
a wise man to pacify. God's wrath. I need the express
image of God's person to purge my sins. I can't help him. Then I need him to make me a
fool so I can become wise. I need the king to smile on me
with the light of his countenance because of Christ, my life, purging
away my sins and sitting down in glory. I need God's favor
to fall on me like rain. Behold, these bones are very
dry. They're getting drier. But here is the promise of the
gospel, brethren. Believe on the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. That's it. Let's pray. Oh God, our Father,
we thank you, God, for these wonderful words of life that
you've given us, Lord. in your scriptures and for your
promises that stand and will never fail, God. We look to you,
God, to nourish us and to send your rain, Lord. Please do not
leave off, God, the work that you've started here, but please
make this a city on a hill, Lord, to sound out your gospel for
many, many generations to come, Lord. We look to you, God, in
all these things. We thank you for the blood of
your son. Amen. 28 in the spiral hymn book. God has mercy on whom He will,
and whom He will, He hardens still. To whom He will, He gives
His grace, and when He will, He hides His face. Let none despise
God's sovereign throne. He does what he will with his
own. It is his right to save or kill
according to his sovereign will. Yes, God saves some and others
leaves. to reap the fruit of their own
ways in the eternal ages past. God made his choice and it stands
fast. Aware that I'm a guilty man and
that I'm in God's sovereign hand. Prostrate I fall before his throne,
a wretched, helpless, guilty one. Lord, if you will, you can,
I say, take all my guilt and sin away. A guilty sinner at
your throne, I beg for mercy through your Son. ? Now trusting
Jesus Christ, God's son ? ? I know that I'm his chosen one ? ? And
God's eternal sovereign choice ? ? Makes this poor sinner's
heart rejoice ?