Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Let's open this
morning's service with hymn number 22 from your Spiral Gospel Hymns
inbox. Number 22. Let's all stand together. We were ruined by the fall. Adam's sin defiles us all. By our deed, as by our word,
we deserve the Lord's great curse. Helpless, hopeless, sinners flee. Never can our souls retreat. Came as man in flesh and blood
He fulfilled the Lord's demands And in death stretched out his
hands On the cross of Calvary Christ redeemed and set us free
In the time in which darkness sets The Spirit came for His
elect To regenerate and call From the ruin of the fall By
His power and by His grace We were born for God's own praise
Now your purpose be fulfilled Sing this song of joyful praise
for the glory of your grace. Blessed Holy Triune God, hear
my praise through Christ our Lord. And if you'd like to turn with
me there in your Bibles. Hopefully this'll be the last
Sunday I have to wear these things. Although Don said I looked good
with earrings on, so. I was gonna say off the record,
but I guess we are on the record. I don't know if it matters. We
are gonna have services in our new building this Wednesday night.
We're going to work out any kinks we might have in the recording
equipment and streaming and sound equipment. And then hopefully
by next Sunday maybe we'll be able to have our first official
meeting over there. Psalm 119, verses 97 through
104, I've titled this message, Perfect Obedience. Perfect Obedience. Cannot tell you how many times
I've tried to talk with someone about the gospel. And their response
is, I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best. God's not
satisfied with our best. God demands absolute perfection. And that is where the gospel
of God's grace in the glorious person and finished work of the
Lord Jesus Christ comes in. Pray this morning, the Lord will
give us grace to rest all our hope on him. The Lord himself
said, your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes
and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter in to the kingdom
of God." Perfect righteousness is what God requires, and it's
what he has provided in the Lord Jesus Christ. I want us to pray
together before we begin. Richie and Fior Diaz are here.
Some of you know that their son Mikey has suffered kidney failure
and is on dialysis and is waiting to get on the transplant list
for a kidney transplant. So I'd like for us to pray for
Mikey and pray for Richie and Fior, the Lord to give them wisdom
and grace and His comfort. So let's pray together. Our merciful and gracious, glorious
Heavenly Father, what great hope we have in knowing that we are
accepted in Thy presence in the Beloved, Your beloved Son, in
whom You are well pleased. Lord, we pray that Your Spirit
would give us the grace to be pleased in the one in whom you're
pleased, to rest all our hope in his accomplished work of redemption
and his perfect obedience to your law. Father, we pray for
Mikey. We ask for your hand of mercy
to be upon him. We pray, Lord, that you would
provide for him the donor and transplant Lord asked that in
the process of this great trial, that you would give grace to
Richie and Fiore and that you would open the eyes of Mikey's
understanding and reveal the glory of Christ to his heart. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. So the Lord said, except your
righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees,
you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of God." The apostle
Paul was a Pharisee and he said of himself concerning the law,
I am blameless. Now he was speaking of his life
before the Lord met him on the road to Damascus. Before the
Lord called him, before the Lord revealed himself to him, Paul,
in speaking of his life as a Pharisee, as a Pharisee, he said, I was
circumcised the eighth day. I was of the tribe of Benjamin.
Concerning the law, I was blameless. No one could accuse me of any
disobedience against the law of God. And then he went on to
say, yet, When the law came, he said, well, he said, he said,
without the law, I was alive. I was alive. I trusted in my
righteousness for the hope of my salvation. But when the law
came, then sin revived and I died. What was the difference? Paul
was looking, Saul of Tarsus was looking as a Pharisee to his
outward performance of the law for his righteousness before
God. But when God revealed the true nature of the law to his
heart, and he sums up what happened when the law came and sin revived
and he died, spiritually died before God. He said, when I realized
the law didn't just speak to my outward behavior, the law
spoke to the intent of my heart. Because the law said, thou shalt
not covet. And when I realized that God
was looking at the heart and the thoughts and the intents
of the heart, then sin revived. I became a sinner. And I died. I had no hope of salvation based
on my righteousness. I was completely dependent upon
the Lord Jesus Christ for all my righteousness before God.
That's the new birth. That's the new birth. When the
Lord makes you to be a sinner. when he causes you to see that
you've never been able to satisfy any part of God's law by your
own strength and that you stand guilty before God. That's what
Job came to the conclusion of after the Lord spoke to him. The first words out of his mouth
were, behold, behold. And that word means I see something
I never saw before. I am vile, for truly I had spoken
without knowledge. I had heard of God by the hearing
of mine ear, but now mine eyes have seen him, and I repent in
dust and ashes. That's why we preach Christ.
We preach Christ in hopes that the Spirit of God will open the
eyes of our understanding, enabling us to see him in the splendor
of his glory as the only one who obeyed God's law, And in
seeing him, we automatically see ourselves. Isaiah saw it
that way. I saw the Lord high and lifted
up. And what's the first words out
of his mouth? Woe is me, I am undone. I'm a man of unclean
lips. I live among a people of unclean
lips. Mine eyes have seen the king. And if he doesn't have
mercy upon me, I will die in his presence. Psalm 119, we've seen over and
over again, as is true in all the Psalms, relates to the Lord
Jesus Christ. And it's so clear in these verses.
And only by virtue of faith in Christ can it relate to us. So we read these passages And
through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we know that they are
true for us. But outside of Christ, we can
never, ever measure up. You have your Bibles open to
Psalm 119. Look at verse 97. Oh, how I love
thy law. It is my meditation all the day,
all the day. Let me ask you a question. Do
you meditate on God's word every minute of every day? That's the
requirement of the law. When the Lord summarized the
law, he said, this is the summary of the law, that you love the
Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your mind, all
of your soul. And the intent in that passage
is all of the time. That's what God requires, that
every thought, Every intent, every word, every action, be
in perfect obedience to the word of God. Who can say, oh, how
I love thy law. I meditate on it all the time,
every day. As the living word of God, and
that's who the Lord Jesus Christ is. He is the living word of
God. The Word became flesh. The Word
dwelt among us. We beheld His glory as the only
begotten of the Father, the one who is full of grace and full
of truth. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Word that returned to God, not void, not void, but with the
names of those for whom He lived and died. And He intercedes on
behalf of his church right now, seated, seated at the right hand
of God until he makes his enemies to be his footstool. You see,
we are by nature at enmity with God. And in us, Lord Jesus Christ
reconciles us to God and makes us to sit at his feet. By nature,
by nature, we say, I'm not gonna have that man reign over me.
I'm gonna have it my way. I'm gonna do it my way. And then
the Lord breaks that spirit of rebellion and causes us to bow
before him. And we sit at his feet. And the Lord says to every one
of his children, as he said of Mary, Mary, Martha has chosen
that one thing that is needful. She's sitting here at my feet,
listening to my words. The Lord Jesus Christ as the
living word of God had every thought by virtue of his nature. Every thought and every word
was the word of God. Now, by contrast, you and I have
to weigh our words, don't we? I hope we do. I hope we have
a filter between our minds and our mouths, those who don't.
And when we don't, we're being foolish. We need to be careful
how we speak. Why? Because we have so many
vain thoughts. We have so many words in our
minds that ought not to be spoken. We have to weigh our thoughts.
We have to ask ourselves, is it true? Is it profitable? Is it necessary? Is it kind? And if it doesn't meet the qualification
of those questions, then we ought not to speak them. You know,
the Lord Jesus never had to, he never had to weigh his words.
He never had to ask those questions. He meditated by his nature as
the Word of God. Every thought he had was the
Word of God. Every word he spoke was the Word
of God. And that's what God requires.
That's what he requires. He's not satisfied with our good
works, making up for our sin. God sees us. He sees the And
here's what the Lord said, the heart is wicked, deceitful, who
can know it? Deceitful above all things. But
you know, that's true of your own heart, isn't it? You know,
it's true of your own thoughts. The Lord said in John chapter
six, after he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven.
Now the bread is a picture of that word, the word of God that
feeds our souls. Give us this day, our daily bread,
not as your father ate in the wilderness, speaking of that
manna and died. And he went on to say, unless
you eat of my body and drink of my blood, there's no life
in you. And, uh, Those that were listening to him were greatly
offended. I don't know what they thought. They thought, talking
about cannibalism? What's he talking? No, eating
of the body of Christ is looking to the life that the Lord Jesus
Christ lived in his flesh as our only righteousness before
God. Drinking of his blood is looking
to his sacrificial death in faith the only atoning sacrifice sufficient
before God as a covering for our sins." And then when he saw that they
were offended, he said this, the words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit and they are life. You have heard it said
of old, And he repeated the doctors of the law, but I say unto thee. You know, the prophets of God
always had to say, thus saith the Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ
never spoke like that. He never spoke like that. He
said, I say unto you. He didn't have to say, thus saith
the Lord. He is the Lord. And every word that he spoke
was the word of God. And so he was able to say, I
say unto you, never a man spake like this man. His authority, he spoke with
authority, the scripture says, not like the scribes, not like
the scribes. The scribes, when they spoke,
they would say, well, you know, it might be this way, it might
be that way, seems like to me, the Lord spoke with absolute
authority. And God's people listened to
his word, and they rejoice in knowing that his words are spirit. They can only be understood by
the spirit of God. The natural man cannot receive
the things of the spirit. They are spiritually discerned.
Lord, give us your spirit. And they are life. We have no
life outside of Christ. Christ Jesus the Lord is our
life. And we know him by what he spoke, just like we know one
another. You know what's in a man's heart
by what comes out of his mouth. Out of the mouth flows the issues
of life. So, you know, we weigh the words
that we hear and the Lord Jesus Christ spoke those words. Now, by virtue of our union with
Christ, by virtue of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, looking
unto him for all our righteousness and all our obedience before
God. I want you to see a passage of scripture. Turn with me to
1 Corinthians chapter 2. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Now, the general principle of
this passage is often quoted in reference to the hope of glory. Paul the Apostle and John the
Apostle, at least in two different occasions, were caught up into
the third heaven. They were given a vision of heaven
and they saw things that were unspeakable. They could not reveal
them. in words, human language was
not sufficient to describe them. And I often think of that when
I read this verse, but I also want you to understand this verse
in its context, okay? Look at verse nine. But as it
is written, I hath not seen, this comes from Isaiah chapter
64, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man
the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. I go
and prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself so that
where I am, there you are also. But that's not really the context
of this verse. What I just said is perfectly
true and consistent with all of scripture. But look at the
context, but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit, for
the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
God has revealed to us that we're sinners. God has revealed to
us that Christ Jesus the Lord is the only sufficient righteousness
that we have before God. He's revealed to us His nature
as the Son of God. And He's given us faith to look
to Christ for all the hope of our salvation. Look at verse 11. But what man
knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which
is in him, even so the things of God knoweth no man but the
spirit of God. Could you imagine what chaos,
what confusion, what conflict there would be in this world
if we were able to read one another's minds? I mean, it'd be pretty bad, wouldn't
it? Nobody knows what's in the heart
of a man except that man. You know, you listen to him speaking
up and you kind of get an idea of what he believes, but, you
know, we're, because we guard our words, don't we? And rightfully
so. And so it is with God. No one
knows the mind of God except the spirit of God. Now, verse
12, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the
spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that
are freely given to us of God. We've been given the spirit of
God so that we might know what things are freely given unto
us. The forgiveness of sin is the
free gift of God. Eternal life is the free gift
of God. These things have to be given
to us, and we can know this only by the Spirit of God. Verse 13, which things also we
speak. Not in the words which man's
wisdom teacheth. We don't try to explain these
things with human reason or logic or philosophy. No, we explain
them with the scriptures. But which the Holy Ghost teacheth,
comparing spiritual things with spiritual. And that's what we're
doing right now. We're comparing 1 Corinthians
2 to Psalm 119. And all of God's word complements
God's word and reinforces God's word. So how do we know what's
in the heart of God? By comparing the spiritual to
the spiritual. By looking to what God says. And know that when we listen
to a man speak, we always have to know that that man's like
us. So is what he's saying true? Does he really mean what he's
saying? Is he being sincere? And we have to, but when we listen
to the word of God, we never have to ask that question. He
always means what he says. He always says what he means.
And he gives his people the mind of Christ and the spirit of God
in order to be able to hear the word of God. Verse 14, but the natural man,
the unbeliever, receiveth not the things of the Spirit. He
doesn't have the capacity. Look, for they are foolishness
unto him, neither can he know them, for they are spiritually
discerned. The unbeliever can't understand
the word of God. He can't believe on Christ. You see, that's why the Lord
said to Nicodemus, except you be born again, you shall in no
wise enter into the kingdom, you shall in no wise see the
kingdom of God, is what he said. You can't even perceive of the
kingdom of God until you receive the new birth. That's why we
don't believe in free will. We don't believe that, you know,
we have to make a decision and then, you know, God blesses,
no. The new birth is an act of God's
spirit. That's what the Lord said to
Nicodemus. That which is of the flesh is flesh, and that which
is of the spirit is spirit. The flesh profiteth nothing.
The spirit of God's like the wind. You don't know where he's
coming from. He listeth whithersoever he wills. He goes wherever he chooses to
go. But unless the Spirit of God blows life into your heart,
you will not see the kingdom of God. The new birth is a unilateral,
sovereign work of God without consulting our will or our works. It's a work of grace in the heart. And that's what the Lord's saying.
Unless I, by my Spirit, give you life, you can't perceive
the things of God. But when you're given the new
birth, you're given the Spirit of God. And the Spirit of God
unstops your ears. The Spirit of God opens the eyes
of your understanding. The Spirit of God gives you a
heart of faith to believe every word. You say, well, how much
of God's word do I have to believe to be a believer? By the very
definition of believer, every word of it, every word of it. And God's people do, and they
rejoice. in believing everything. Now, am I saying that you fully
understand it? You don't fully understand any
of it, any of it, but you believe it. Now, the pride of man, and
particularly in the reform movement, makes understanding the prerequisite
for faith. You can't have faith until you
understand. And that's just backwards. That's
why they exalt human knowledge and education and human reason
and all those sort of things. No, these things come by the
spirit of God. You don't understand them until
you believe them. That's how, and then, and even then that
understanding is incomplete, isn't it? But we believe every
word God says. Look at the rest of this passage. He cannot know them because they
are spiritually discerned, but he that is spiritual. Now that
doesn't mean that you've got some sort of esoteric life of,
you know, of monkism or something, I don't know. You know, it doesn't
mean that at all. That's not what being spiritual
is. It means you have the spirit of God. It doesn't mean you walk
around acting weird. It means that God's giving you
his spirit. to discern the things that are true. But he that is
spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no
man." Paul said, I'm not worried about
other men's judgments. And Mary said, I don't even judge
myself. My judgment is before God. And the hope is that I'm
going to be judged in Christ. that his righteousness is going
to be sufficient. For who hath known the mind of
the Lord, that he may instruct him, but we have the mind of
Christ. The mind of Christ. That's what
the Lord gives us in the new birth. He gives us, well, it
said of David, he's a man after God's own heart. And that's what
the Lord gives us. And then he gives us a new nature,
gives us the mind of Christ. He gives us the ability to believe
on Christ, to rest all our hope on him, and to see that his meditation
on God's word all the time is our righteousness. Go back with
me to our text, Psalm 119. Oh, how I love thy law. And we
do love that. The word law here is not just
a reference to the 10 commandments. It's a reference to the entire
canon of scripture. And so the child of God says,
I love God's law, love his word. It's by his word that he makes
himself known to me. It's not by man's words, it's
by God's word. It is my meditation all the day. The Spirit of God, I'm not meditating
on the things of God. My mind goes in bad places. The Spirit of God is the one
who brings me back. And that's why we're back here
today, isn't it? Because this is the means by
which the Lord brings us back to Christ. We live in a world
where we were like those disciples who were having their feet washed
and And Peter resisted the Lord in having his feet washed. And
he said, Peter, if I don't wash your feet, you have no part in
me. And Peter said, oh, don't wash just my feet, wash me all
over. And the Lord said, you're already clean. You're already
clean. How are you clean? You're clean
by the righteousness and the grace and the shed blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ. But you know what? You've been
walking out there in the world and you come in, your feet are
dirty. You got to have your feet cleaned. over and over and over
again, don't we? Verse 98, though through thy
commandments, thou, I'm sorry, thou through thy commandments
hast made me wiser than mine enemies, for they are ever with
me. Not my enemies are ever with
me, your commandments are ever with me. And because your commandments
are ever with me, you have made me wiser than my enemies." Oh,
that's an understatement when it comes to the Lord Jesus Christ,
isn't it? When they came to him and said,
by what authority do you do these things? The Lord trying to trap
him. And the Lord said, tell you what,
I'm gonna ask you a question. And if you answer the question
I'm going to ask you, then I'll answer your question." He had
already answered the question that his authority was from God.
But he said to them, he said, the baptism of John, was it from
heaven or was it of man? And they said, they consulted
together. They said, well, that's a tough
question. What do we say? If we say it's from heaven, then
he's going to ask us, why didn't we believe on John's preaching? What did John preach? Behold
the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world. John
the Baptist preached Christ and pointed to Christ. And he said,
I must decrease and he must increase. And if then if John's baptism
and John's message was from heaven, why did not you believe him,
John? And they said, but if we say it as a man, then, you know,
the people will turn against us because they love him. And
so they came back and they said, we can't tell. And he said, neither will I tell
you by what authority I do these things. In another place in Matthew chapter
22, he asked them, he said, he said, who's, he said, what think
ye of Christ? Whose son is he? And they said,
well, he's the son of David. And the Lord said, well, then
if he'd be the son of David, then why did David speaking by
the spirit of God, call him Lord? When David said, the Lord said
unto my Lord, sit thou here at my right hand until I make thine
enemies thy footstool. No man was able to answer him
a word Neither did any man from that day forward ask him any
more questions. Now go back with me to our text.
Thou through thy commandments has made me wiser than mine enemies. He was never intimidated. He was never caught without an
answer. No, he's wiser than all his enemies,
and he's wiser than his enemies today. Scripture says that the wisdom
of God is foolishness unto man. And then it goes on to say that
the foolishness of God is wiser than man. So, you know, the simplest
truths of God put man in his place, humbles us. Lord, if you don't show your
wisdom to me, I'll be a fool. I'll be a fool. And in Christ, in Christ, we
can speak boldly. We can speak confidently. We
can speak unapologetically if we're speaking the truth. We're
speaking the truth. In my experience, as one who's
been called of God to do a lot of speaking on the truth, has
been that the enemies of God cannot refute the message of
God with the word of God. Oh, they try to refute it with
historical examples or with human reason or with philosophy, but
they cannot take the word of God and refute the truth of God. And I welcome that, I welcome
that. When Paul went to Berea and he
spoke to the Bereans, he said they were more noble than the
Thessalonians for they received the word of God with gladness
and they searched the scripture daily to see if what I said was
true. Search the scripture, don't take
my word for it. See if this is what God says. That's why we
just keep going back spiritual to spiritual. What sayeth the
scriptures? That's our, that's our, our foundation,
isn't it? That's our source of authority,
our only source of authority. Turn to me in a second, Timothy. Chapter four. Well, chapter three is that verse
that we often quote all scripture. All scripture is given by inspiration
of God. All scripture is profitable.
Every bit of it's profitable to us. That the man of God may
be perfect. There it is. You see that in
verse 17 of chapter three? That's what God requires. Perfect
obedience. He's not going to settle for
anything less. If He would, then Christ didn't
have to come. If we could work out an obedience that would be
satisfactory and sufficient for God, then Christ died in vain. I charge the chapter four verse
one, therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall
judge the quick and the dead. Now the word quick means to be
alive. So God's going to stand in judgment of the believer and
the unbeliever. The believer is going to be judged
in Christ and the unbeliever is going to be judged on their
own works. Which way do you want to stand before God? I know how
I want to stand. Oh Lord, Don't look on anything. Don't look on my best efforts.
Don't look on the most sincere prayer I ever prayed. Don't look
on anything, anything, the most selfless thing I've ever done.
No, Lord, don't look on it. I'll go to hell for it. If God
judges us right now, and I know I've said this before, this is
so pointed and so true. If God judges you and me right
now for what we're doing right now, Outside of Christ, we're
going to go to hell for what we're doing right now. That's it. We've come here to
worship God. We're looking at God's Word.
We're preaching Christ. You see, we've got to be found in Him. He's the only one that measures
up to these passages. He's the only one that kept God's
law. Does that mean that we are frivolous about the law of God?
Does that mean that we don't love the law? No, we do. But
we look into Christ. He's going to judge the quick
and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom. Look at verse
2. Preach the word, therefore. It's the only hope that men have.
It's the only hope that you have. It's the only hope that I have
is to preach the word when it's convenient and when it's not
convenient. When you're preaching to people
who love it and when you're preaching to people who hate it, you preach
the same message. We don't preach one message to
unbelievers and another message to believers. We preach Christ
and him crucified because whether we are believer or non-believer,
that's what we need. It's what we need. And so Paul's
saying to Timothy, I charge you before God, preach the word,
be instant, in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort
with all along, suffering and doctrine, for the time will come
and the time has come. You compare what you're hearing
here to what's being preached out there in religion. the works gospel, the freewill
gospel, the word of faith gospel. You know, if you just, the health,
wealth, and prosperity gospel, all these different messages
that are being preached out there, what are men doing? They are
gathering themselves together with teachers that'll tell them
what they wanna hear. I mean, you look at it. It's amazing. I used to have a higher estimation
of men's ability to see foolishness. I used to not think, you know,
people are not going to fall for that. I mean, they pack stadiums with
tens of thousands of people to listen to somebody like Joel
Osteen. What are they doing? You know, they've got these... I mean, I could give you 100
examples. You know them. For the time will come when they
will not endure sound doctrine. They don't want to hear about
themselves being a sinner. They don't want to hear about
Christ. They want their ears tickled. They want to hear a
message that's going to make them feel better about themselves.
You know, before I knew Christ, I was preaching at a very large
church and I had come to understand some things about the doctrines
of grace, which we don't use that term because there is but
one doctrine of grace and that's Christ. And it all stands or
falls in him. But I had come to understand
some things about the doctrines of grace. And I, although I had
not been made totally depraved, God had not yet made me to be
a sinner. I understood scripturally the doctrine of total depravity
and I preached it. at a very, very large church. And the pastor came to me the
next morning in my office and he said, he said, Greg, he said,
I heard that message you preached last night. He said, you need
to know that people come here to be made to feel better about
themselves. And that message you preached
just made people feel bad about themselves. We can't have that
kind of preaching here. I knew enough of the truth to where
I left immediately. I mean, I was on staff there.
I just left. I knew that wasn't right. For the time will come when they
will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own loss, they
shall heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they
shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned
unto fables. And that's all the false gospel
is. It's just a fable. You can arrest
the eternal salvation of your soul on a fable, on a myth, on
something that's not true, on the figment of a man's imagination. That's all man-made religion
is. But watch thou in these things,
in all things, in due reflection, do the work of evangelists, make
full proof of thy ministry. How do we make full proof of
our ministry? We preach Christ and Him crucified. So in summary, go back with me
to our text. Oh, how I love thy law. It is
my meditation all the day. Only the Lord Jesus Christ could love God with all his heart,
all his soul, and all his mind, all the time, and we look to
Him for our perfect obedience before God. And in looking to
Him, we do love God's law, and in looking to Him, we do meditate
on the things of God, and we rejoice in the things of God.
Thou through thy commandment has made me wiser than my enemies,
for they are ever with me. The Lord Jesus Christ, He is
wisdom. He is wisdom. God has made Him
to be unto us our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification,
and our redemption. He's all our wisdom. And by grace, He gives us the
wisdom to discern the difference between the enemies of God and
the truth of the gospel. Amen. All right, let's take a
break.