Dark the stain that soiled man's
nature Long the distance that he fell Far removed from hope
and heaven Into deep despair and hell But there was a fountain
open And the blood of God's own Son Purifies the soul and reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone Praise the Lord for full salvation
God still reigns upon His throne And I know the blood still reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone. Conscious of the deep pollution,
Sinners wander in the night. Though they hear the shepherd
calling, They still fear to face the light. This the blessed consolation
That can melt the heart of stone That sweet balm of Gilead reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone Praise the Lord for full salvation
God still reigns upon His throne And I know the blood still reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone All unworthy we who've wandered
And our eyes are wet with tears As we think of love that sought
us Through the weary, wasted years Yet we walk the holy highway
Walking by God's grace alone When Calvary's fountain reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone Praise the Lord for full salvation
God still reigns upon His throne And I know the blood still reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone When with holy choirs we're standing
In the presence of the King And our souls are lost in wonder
While the white-robed choirs sing Then we'll praise the name
of Jesus With the millions round the throne Praise Him for the
power that reaches Deeper than the stain has gone Praise the Lord for full salvation
God still reigns upon his throne And I know the blood still reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone Thank you, Adam. I love that
hymn. And every time I hear it, I think
of the scripture says where sin abounds, grace does much more
bound. I'm so thankful for that fountain.
Listen to what the Lord said in Zechariah chapter 13, and
it shall come to pass in that day. saith the Lord of hosts,
that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land
and they shall no more be remembered. And I also will cause the prophets
and the unclean spirits to pass out of the land. That's the day
in which the fountain shall be opened in the house of David
in the house and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The fountain was
opened for sin and for uncleanness. It is that fountain of blood
that flows from Calvary's Mount that covers our sins. The Lord
said, when I see the blood, when I see the blood, I'll pass over
you. Let's open our Bibles together
to Judges chapter 19. Judges chapter 19. And I've titled
this message, When God, judges his people. The judgment of God
must begin in the house of the Lord, when God judges his people. And we know that in the volume
of the book, it is written of Christ. and that these Old Testament
stories are types, they are shadows, they are pictures that point
us to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so in our story this morning,
I want us to look at Micah, whose name means who is like God. was like God. When we are found
in Christ Jesus as he is, so are we. I want you to see Micah
as a type of God's elect, the believer, the child of God. Dan
was the seventh son of Jacob. He was one of the twelve sons
and later became a tribe of people, the tribe of Dan. Dan translated
means judge. And the Danites are going to
come in and they're going to take Micah's idols away from
him. And Michael's going to get upset
that he's been robbed of his idols and he's been robbed of
his priest. But then he's going to see that Dan is too strong
for him. And so he goes back to his place
of rest. Dan, in our story, is a picture
of the Lord Jesus Christ, who takes from Micah his idols and
takes away from him his priest, and sends him home dependent
on the strength of Dan, his judge. Wednesday night we looked at
chapter 17, and I won't repeat a lot of that, but Micah is the
character that comes up in chapter 17, and Micah makes idols, fashions
idols to worship, and mixes idol worship with the true worship
of Jehovah. which is so typical of what happened
not only in that day, but happens in this day. Men will take things
that are true and mix them with error. And the comfort that we
have is that no lie is of the truth. A little leaven leavens
the whole lump. And so we are very, concerned
and cautious about embracing error and mixing it with the
truth of God's grace. And yet men left to themselves,
it's exactly what they do. Exactly what we did. And then
Micah, after he fashions these idols, he goes out and while
he first appoints, he ordains his very son as his priest, as
his intercessor. And then a young man of the tribe
of Levi, which was the priestly tribe comes traveling through,
and he's looking for a good lucrative job as preachers do today. always looking for a bigger and
better place and a bigger salary. And that's exactly what this
Levite does. And Micah takes him into his
home and hires him as his personal priest. And I want you to notice
two verses in chapter 17, verse six. In those days, there was
no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right
in his own eyes. Now that is the nature of man.
When there is not a reigning sovereign, when there is no grace
to bow to the Lord Jesus Christ and to hear what God has to say
through him, every man will be left to do what's right in his
own eyes. What a horrible place to be.
We need a sovereign. We need the Lord Jesus Christ
to overpower us. We need him to reign in our church
and in our homes and in our hearts. Otherwise, we'll do that which
is right in our own eyes and it won't be right. It won't be
right. There is a way that seems right
unto man, but the end of that way, the scripture says, is death. If Lord leaves us to ourselves,
we'll be convinced that we're doing the right thing. And we'll
carry that false hope right into eternity and miss heaven altogether. The second verse I want you to
see in chapter 17 is the last verse of this chapter, verse
13. After Micah, he's got himself a Levite now that he's hired
to be his personal priest. And he's got some silver idols
that he's fashioned and put them all around his house. And he's
got an ephod, which was a instrument of worship from the true worship
of Jehovah. And he's mixed all these things
together. And here's what he says. Then said Micah, now know
I that the Lord will do me good. Seeing I have a Levite to my
priest. Oh, he's in, he's in hog heaven. I mean, he's, he's, he's comfortable. He's convinced he's at rest. And, uh, The tribe of Dan comes
down to where Micah lives. And we'll begin reading at verse
22. They stole his idols and they
enticed his Levite to go with them. The character of this Levite
is so bad. I mean, Micah hired him and now
they come to the Levite and they say, would you rather be the
priest for a whole tribe or for one man? And then he said, oh,
for a whole tribe, you know, and he, and he was happy and
he went. So they take away his priest and they take away his
idol. The name Dan means judge. And when they were a good way
from the house of Micah, verse 22, the men that were in the
houses near to Micah's house were gathered together and overtook
the children of Dan. So Micah gets the neighbors and
they all grab their weapons, whatever they might've been,
and they chase after the tribe of Dan to recover and retrieve
Micah's idols and his priest. And they cried, this band of
men from the neighborhood, they cry unto the children of Dan.
And they, the children of Dan, turned their faces and said unto
Micah, what ailest thee that thou comest with such a company?
Why are you coming after us? And here's the verse I want you
to see. And he said, you have taken away my gods, which I made,
and the priest, and you were gone away with them. And what
have I more? You've taken everything I've
got. And what is that, that you say unto me, what aileth thee?
How can you say what aileth me? You've taken everything away
from me. And the children of Dan said
unto Micah, Let not thy voice be heard among us, lest angry
fellows run upon thee, and thou lose thy life with the lives
of thy household. And the children of Dan went
their way. And when Micah saw that they were too strong for
him, he turned and went back to his house." Now Micah in chapter 17 had no
sovereign. And he had a false hope. And God sends the tribe of Dan
to take from him those things that he trusted. Micah gets angry
at first, which is why men get angry at
the gospel. The gospel of God's free grace
in the accomplished work of the Lord Jesus Christ robs men of
their idols. It strips them naked before God.
It leaves, it takes away their hope. And they say, what more
do I have? Until they come to see that the
judge is too strong for them. And at that point they rest.
And not only rest, but they rejoice in what he's done. In chapter
49 of Genesis, Jacob gets his 12 sons together just before
he dies in Egypt. And he pronounces a blessing
on each one of his sons. And here's what he says to Dan
in Genesis chapter 49, a troop shall overcome him, but he shall
overcome at last. Jacob speaking prophetically
by the Holy Spirit was talking about the Lord Jesus Christ as
the judge of the whole world. And he said to Dan, he said,
a troop's going to overtake you. but you're going to overcome
at last. Oh, I think about that band of
soldiers that came to Garden of Gethsemane. And the Lord Jesus
confidently stands before them and says, whom seeketh thou?
Jesus of Nazareth. And the Lord Jesus Christ says,
Jehovah. He says, I am. He declares himself
by the very name of God. in the Greek, and what happened
to those soldiers? That troop of soldiers fell backwards. Oh, never a man spake like this
man before. What power and what authority. A troop will overtake thee, but
Dan shall overcome at last. And that's exactly what he did.
God saw the travail of his soul and God was satisfied with the
sacrifice that he made for the sins of his people. God raised
him from the dead. He brought him back into glory
and said, sit down here at my right hand until I make thine
enemies thy footstool. And we have a priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek who saves to the uttermost. He has overcome at last. He will come again as a reigning
sovereign. He came the first time as a suffering
servant. When he comes next, he'll be
riding a white stallion with his name upon his thigh, King
of Kings and Lord of Lords. And he'll take his people home
and destroy this world. That's who we worship. He is
our God and he's Dan. who has stripped from his people
their worship, their idols, and their priest, and left them with
nothing." What reason for rejoicing we
have. John chapter five, the Lord Jesus
Christ said, the Father hath committed all judgment unto the
Son. And in the Psalms, the scripture
says, he shall judge thy people with righteousness and the poor
with judgment. The gospel doesn't do away with
the judgment of God. It doesn't make God into some
sort of doting God that just overlooks sin. Our God must punish
sin. And judgment and justice must
be satisfying. And that's exactly what he did
when he poured the full fury of his wrath out on his son. Those for whom Christ died are
poor. They're poor. They don't have
anything. They can't do anything. Apart from God's revealing grace,
they don't know anything. Abraham, when pleading with God
for the life of Lot, who was in Sodom, Abraham came to this
conclusion, shall not the judge of all the earth do what's right? Yes, he will. Yes, he will. He will exercise his judgment
and his justice until he is satisfied. when we talk about judgment,
I always hear someone wanting to quote Matthew chapter 7 verse
1, judge not that you be not judged. That's not the kind of
judgment we're talking about. We're not talking about looking
down your self-righteous nose at someone and thinking that
you're better than him. Matter of fact, when God makes you to
be a sinner, you see yourself as the chief of all sinners,
and that kind of stuff just goes away. You can't have a superior
view of yourself over others if you're a sinner. Does that
do away... People want to take that one
phrase and do away with judgment altogether. You know, don't judge.
Let's be not judge. Let's don't talk about judgment.
No, we need judgment. We need God to come in and and
judge us righteously. Matter of fact, the scripture
says, judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous
judgments. What is it to judge righteous
judgments? It's to make judgments according to God's judgments.
Whatever God judges to be true is true. Whatever God judges
to be false is false. That's what it is to be, to make
righteous judgments. Paul, in praying for the church
at Philippi, said, I pray that your love may abound yet more
and more in all knowledge and in all judgment. Child of God, we want a God who
is just, a God who is holy, a God who is true to his righteousness. Psalm 2, why do the heathen rage? Why do the kings of the earth
stand up against the king? How foolish it is. And then the
end of that Psalm, the Lord says, kiss the son, kiss the son, lest
he be angry and you perish from the way when his wrath is kindled
but a little. Blessed are they that put their
trust in Him. We kiss the Son because He willingly
bore the judgment and justice of God for our idolatry. You and I are idols by nature.
We come into this world, yeah, we've got a, We've got a foundry,
an idol factory working very soon in the dark recesses of
our hearts. And we fashion a God that is
altogether such as we are. And then we're like Micah. We
take great hope. We've got our idols. We've got
our image of God. We're convinced it's true. We've
got our priest. We've got men that are affirming
what we think is true. And so we're just at home comfortable. And the Lord in his judgment
and in his justice causes us to kiss the sun. so that the
wrath and fury of God. Well, the Lord Jesus Christ is
called the propitiation for our sins. To be made propitious means
that the wrath is all, the fire has been put out. Wrath's been
taken away. Not only has it been taken away,
but it's been changed with grace and love and mercy. The Lord
Jesus Christ is our propitiation. We want judgment. We want justice. We don't sacrifice the justice
of God for grace. A lot of people do that. That's the modern interpretation
of the word grace. It just does away with the justice
and judgment of God. It makes God a very tolerant,
doting God who just overlooks things. Oh, no. No. Scripture says, I will in no
wise allow the guilty to go unpunished. Every sin must be paid for. Every
sin must be punished. And God's people want it that
way. We want it that way. So Micah lost everything. And
if the Lord in his mercy shows you his judgment and his justice
and takes from you your idols and leaves you with nothing,
if that happens, oh, that'll be salvation. Luke chapter nine, verse 23,
the Lord said, if any man will come after me, he must deny himself. Now, what does that mean? Certainly,
certainly there are things in this world we ought to deny ourselves
of. Certainly there are shameful things that we ought not to participate
in. But is that what the Lord's talking
about? Denying yourself all worldly pleasures and all earthly things?
No. If any man come after me, he
must deny that he had any contribution to make himself toward his salvation. Can you deny yourself of that?
That's where Micah is. Micah is a, you've taken everything
from me. I was, I was looking back to
an experience that I had when I, when I prayed the prayer and
I accepted Jesus and I made him Lord of my life. And now you've
taken that away from me. That's what it is to deny yourself.
To deny that you have any contribution to make yourself in your salvation,
that he gets all the glory. If any man come after me, he
must deny himself, take up his cross, take up his cross. Now I hear people talk about,
you know, the cross of that's a person's cross. They have to,
there's a lot of suffering in this world, a lot of suffering.
And each of us have different trials and tribulations that
the Lord sends for our good, for our good. Um, but that's
not the cross he's talking about. Paul said, I am crucified with
Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me. The life that I now live, I live
by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and died for me.
You see, to deny yourself is to deny that you had anything
to do with your salvation. And to take up your cross is
to identify the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's
cross as everything necessary to pay the penalty for your sins.
God's people are in Christ. When Christ lived a sinless life,
God's people lived a sinless life. When Christ died a substitutionary,
vicarious death, we died in Him. When Christ rose from the dead,
we rose with Him. That's why Paul said, Oh, that
I might know the suffering of His crucifixion and the power of His resurrection.
that I might be more thoroughly persuaded by God that when Christ
died, I died. That when he raised from the
dead, I raised from the dead. When he ascended into glory,
I ascended into glory. That's what it means to be found
in him, in him. All the blessings of God are
in the heavenlies in Christ. My word will not return unto
me void. Now we take great comfort in
that when we preach the gospel, that God will accomplish the
purpose for which it's sent. And I'm sure of that. Some will
not hear anything. Some will get mad and some will
rejoice, but God will apply it to each heart as he sees fit. But you know, there's a lot more
to that verse than that. The Lord Jesus Christ is the living
Word of God. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word
became flesh, and He dwelt among us. And when the Word of God,
the living Word of God, returned to the Father, He did not go
empty-handed. He did not go void. He accomplished
the purpose for which He was sent. He took with Him the names
of those for whom He lived and died. And they are in Him now
as much as they were in Him when He died on Calvary's cross. Here's
the gospel. He strips you of everything. Takes away all of your idols
and all of your priests and all those religious preachers and
people that have been affirming what you falsely thought was
your salvation. Now the judge Dan has come and
he has exercised his judgment and he's taking from you your
hope. Whosoever shall come after me,
deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. Follow me. We don't make a rule book out
of the Bible. We're not under the law. We're
under grace. We're following a person. We're following the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the Lord goes on to
say this, for whosoever shall save his life shall lose it. You try to hold on to those idols,
try to hold on to that priest. What did those Danites say? Shut
your mouth. For some, you keep complaining
and you and your household are gonna die. And Micah said, they're
too strong for me. And he went back home quietly. Whosoever shall save his life. You try to save some false hope
of salvation. Try to save something that you've
done or some decision you've made, or some prayer you prayed,
or some work you performed, or whatever, he that tries to save
his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my namesake
shall save it. You see, who is like God, Micah? Mike experienced the judgment
of God when the Danites came and took away his idols, took
away his priest. And he said, why are you asking
me why I'm upset? You've taken everything I've
got. I've got nothing left. That's a great place to be. That's
a great place to be. That's where I want you to be.
That's where I want to be. I've got nothing left. I got nothing
to offer God. If Christ doesn't stand in my
stead, if he doesn't present himself as my righteousness,
if he doesn't justify me before God, I won't be saved. I've got nothing else. Christ
is all and he must be all if I'm going to be saved. Notice
Micah said, you've taken away my God's which I made. Oh, what a confession. What a
confession. I made these gods. I fashioned
these false images of God. It was all on me. Can't blame anybody else. We read this verse earlier in
Zechariah chapter 13 at the beginning of the service. In that day,
I will cut off the idols out of the land. Oh, what a blessing it is. When
the Lord shows you that you're idols, not much of a God that
a man can fashion. If you can make a God, well,
that makes you God, doesn't it? That makes you God. And he becomes
subject to you. And that's what men do. When the Lord killed that lamb
in the garden, and took that fleece, a picture of the robe
of righteousness that we see all the way through to the book
of Revelation, the saints in glory, dressed in a white robe. What are these white robes, John
asked. That's the righteousness of Christ.
The Adam had to be stripped. of his fig leaf aprons before
he could be clothed with that righteousness, didn't he? What
a blessing it is when God leaves you naked. God takes away all
of your false hopes and leaves you with nothing but Christ.
Blind Bartimaeus, oh, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy
upon me. And he cried louder and louder.
And the people said, shut up, Bartimaeus. You're just a filthy
beggar. And then one of them came to
him and said, be of good cheer, the master calleth thee. What
did Bartimaeus do? He had an outer garment. I can just imagine what that
thing looked like. I mean, we know what homeless people look
like today. Can you imagine? Filthy, dirty,
stumped. Nobody could be around him. Full
of holes. Scripture says that's all he
had. He took it off. He dropped it there on the curb
and went to Christ. The Lord said, what would you
have me to do? Oh, Lord, that I might see. that
I might see. Saul of Tarsus had to be stripped
of everything that he had on the road to Damascus when Dan
met him and took away from him his idols and stripped him of
his priesthood. Oh, Saul said, I had excelled
among my peers in Judaism. He was working toward becoming
the high priest. I mean, he was a Pharisee of
Pharisees, part of the Sanhedrin. He was moving up. The voice of God, Saul saw, why
persecutest thou me? Who art thou, Lord? I am Jesus,
whom thou persecutest. Lord, what would you have me
to do? And then Paul later writes, those things which I thought
were gain, I now count as loss. and do count them to be dung,
that I might win Christ." Paul didn't say, I hear religious
people talking about the things they gave up, you know, before
they got saved. And you think, boy, they want
to go back to that. Oh, when the Lord takes your
idols away from you. Child of God, you have no interest in
going and listening to someone tell lies about Christ, do you?
You have no interest whatsoever. God has taken the idols out of
your life. You could no more sit and listen
to someone talk about salvation as if it depended upon your will
and your works. Robbing Christ of His glory,
you can't do it. That's a blessing of God. That's
a work of grace in the heart. He took away his gods, took away all his hopes in a
false gospel, a freewill gospel, a works gospel. Makes you become a sinner. Sinners have but one place to
go, to the Savior. You've taken away everything
I had. Why are you saying, why are you upset? Of course I'd
be upset. You've robbed me of all my hope. And you've taken
away my priest. Clergy laity is practiced in
every religion in the world. Even those who say they don't
practice clergy laity practice it. I mean, some of us have been
in Calvinistic reformed churches where the elders were the clergy.
And you bowed to their will or you suffered for it. So it doesn't
matter if it's an imam or if it's a rabbi or if it's a monk
or if it's the pope or a priest. Every religion practices clergy
laity. And men love it that way. They
love it that way. They know there is a God with
whom they must do. And they don't have time to figure
out who this God is, so let's just hire a professional. And
so they listen to the clergy, and they do whatever they tell
them to do. Peace, peace, the Lord said those
prophets say, when there is no peace. There is no peace, false
hope. We have a priest. A high priest, he's seated at
the right hand of God. And I will make you to be a kingdom
of priests. We don't look to a man. We don't
look to a preacher. We don't look to another man.
We don't try to get... One thing that's very popular
in religion is men affirming one another of their salvation. And we don't need that. I don't
need you to affirm me, and you don't need me to affirm you.
If God hasn't given you peace, then anything else is just gonna
be a clergy word of, it's not gonna help you, not gonna help
you. The Lord teaches you the gospel,
makes you to be a sinner and Christ becomes all and he takes
away your idols, he's gonna take away your priest. You're not
gonna be able to listen to those men anymore. You're not gonna
need them. You're gonna have the Lord Jesus
Christ. They shall be all taught of God. That's what the Lord
said. Learn of me. We learn from him
and we learn of him. Father, I thank thee that thou
hast hid these things from the wise and the prudent and revealed
them unto babes, even so it seemed good in thy sight. You gotta
be a little child. Gotta be a little child. Oh, the judgment of God. The
judgment of God puts away our sins so that God can't see them. Now, I don't pretend to understand
any of this. How can an omniscient, all-knowing,
all-seeing God, say, I have separated your sins as far as the east
is from the west and I remember them no more. And when the Lord
said make righteous judgments, that's a righteous judgment.
That's what God says. Turn with me to Daniel chapter
9. Daniel chapter 9. You got to
see this. I know for many know this passage
very well, but we have to look at it. The Lord has given to
the prophet Daniel, uh, 490 years before the coming
of Christ. And by the way, it was this prophecy
that the, uh, the Magi from the East, that's where Daniel was
when he wrote this. And, um, and they had studied
Daniel's prophecy. And when they came from the East
following the star at the birth of Christ, they knew it was time
for his birth because the Lord is very, very specific about
when that was going to happen. He tells him how many weeks and
what a week means and what a day means and how it's going to unfold.
Let that be as it is. I want you to see what happened,
not when it happened, but what happened. Look at verse 24, 70
weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city. And what's going to happen in
70 weeks? To finish the transgression, to make an end of sins and to
make reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness
and to seal up the vision and prophesy, and to anoint the
most holy." And that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ accomplished 490 years after this prophecy was given
to Daniel. He put an end to sin. The judgment that God Almighty
poured out on the Lord Jesus Christ when he bore the sorrow,
the shame, and the separation for our sin was so complete and
so perfect that it put the sins of God's people out of the very
sight of God. You see, what God takes from
us is, well, it's just evil. What he gives to us is perfection. It's perfection. There's our
hope. He so perfectly reconciled his
people. He so satisfied divine justice. He said in Psalm 38, I will be
sorry for my sins. You and I experience sorrow when
we sin. It doesn't last long. We get
over it pretty quick, don't we? But no depth of sorrow expressed
by you and me is going to be sufficient to put away your sin. You and I experience shame when
we sin, but no degree of shame that we can experience and we
get over that pretty quick too. will satisfy the justice of God.
Dan must come in. We experienced separation. The
Lord, the scripture says, your sins have separated you from
your God. We experienced that. And we, and we grieve and long
for, but doesn't bother us really all that much, does it? My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" What the Lord Jesus Christ
experienced on Calvary's cross when it comes to sorrow, and
when it comes to shame, and when it comes to separation, is exactly
what God required in order for justice to be exercised, in order
for sin to be put away. This is what Daniel's talking
about. He finished the transgression. He made an end of sins. He made reconciliation. We're
reconciled to God through the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what
he accomplished, brethren. This is what our Dan does when
he comes and strips us naked and takes away our gods. God requires nothing more, and
he will not be satisfied with anything less than what the Lord
Jesus Christ accomplished on Calvary's cross. Now in closing, I want you to
take notice of what Micah says to the Danites. or what it said about Micah in
verse 26 of our text, Judges chapter 18, verse 26. And the
children of Dan went their way. And when Micah saw, oh, by the
way, when Dan told Micah to be quiet, let me remind you, by
your words, you shall be justified. And by your words, you shall
be condemned. What do you say about Christ? What do you say
about your salvation? That speaks volumes. And so the
Lord told, Dan's telling Micah, be quiet or you're going to die.
And the children of Dan, verse 26, went their way. And when
Micah saw that they were too strong for him, we need a God that'll overpower
us. We need a God that will make
us willing in the day of His power. We need a God that will
leave us no choices, no options. Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ
is not a decision. A decision means that you have
two or more options. We need a God who will shut us
up to the Lord Jesus Christ so that we've got no place else
to go. Lord, where shall we go? To whom shall we go? You alone
have the words of eternal life, and we know and are sure that
thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. We've got
no place else to go. And that's the only way you're
gonna be saved. The only way I'm gonna be saved
is if God takes away from you all your options, leaves you
like Micah, naked without any idols and without any priest,
and you come to this confession. It's too strong for me. I can't debate this. I can't resist him. I can't argue with God. I need
a grace that is effectual. I need a grace that is irresistible. If you can resist the grace of
God, you will. If you can resist the grace of
God, you will. The only way the grace of God
becomes irresistible is when God makes himself too strong
for you. Our will has to be broken. We
have to have a God who does for us what he did for Levi. When
he saw Levi there at the money changers table, Levi had a lucrative
business and the Lord said, Matthew, follow me. And immediately he
got up and he followed Christ. We need a God that will do for
us what he did for Peter, James and John, who had a very lucrative
fishing business. Nets and servants and boats and
And the Lord comes up to them on the Sea of Galilee and says,
follow me. I'm going to make you fishers of men. They left
their nets and they followed. That's what you and I have to
have. We have to have a God who at his command, it is so overpowering
that we can't resist. We can't, we can't say no. We need a God who's able to take
out our heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh. We need
a God who can bring our thoughts into his thoughts. Only God can
make a man love that which he hated and hate that which he
loved. Only God can make a blind man see. Only God can make a
deaf man to hear. Only God can make a dead man
to live. Only God can do that. You and
I can't do it. God must do it. He must cause us to put down
our weapons. And that's exactly what he does. He said, I'm going
to cause you to beat your swords into plowshares and your spears
into pruning forks. So when I come and overpower
you and you take away your gods and take away your priests and
show you that I'm too strong for you, and I show you the judgment
that was exercised against your sin upon Christ, then The tongue
is the sword. Matter of fact, the scripture
says in Psalm 57 verse four, their teeth are spears and their
tongue is a sharp sword. So this goes back to what the
Lord said to, what the Danites said to Micah, don't speak. Don't
speak, be careful what you say. Be careful what you say by your
words. And the Lord, the Lord causes us to take those blasphemous
words that we once said in honor about a God who we had fashioned
in our own minds. And he shuts the mouth. And the
sword of the Lord, which is the word of God, becomes our only
God. In our teeth, Oh, we use those
teeth to feed on all sorts of, well, you remember the prodigal?
He found himself eating the husk that the swine do eat. And that's
what we did in religion. We just ate husk. And now the
Lord Jesus Christ comes and he brings us his body as the bread
of life. He said, my body is your meat
indeed, and my blood is your drink indeed. Unless you eat
of my body and drink of my blood, there's no life in you. What
a blessing. Micah, who is like God. If you
and I are going to be like God, and that's what God's people
are, in salvation, in salvation, they're all a bunch of Micahs.
Dan, the judge, must come, strip us of our gods, take away our
priest, and show us that he's too strong for us. Send us back
to our homes in peace. I'll hope to do that. Our heavenly Father, thank you
for your word. Thank you for the gospel of your
free, sovereign grace in Christ. Thank you for your son, for his
accomplished work of redemption. Lord, overpower us by your grace
calls us to bow, we ask it in Christ's name, amen. 125, let's stand together.