Good morning, everyone. Let's
open this morning's service with hymn number 37 from your hardbacked
hymnal, number 37, How Great Thou Art. Let's all stand together. O Lord my God, when I in awesome
wonder Consider all the works Thy hands have made, I see the
stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe
displayed. Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great thou art! When through the woods and forest
glades I wander, And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,
When I look down From lofty mountain grandeur, And hear the brook,
and feel the gentle breeze. Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! And when I think that God, His
Son not sparing, Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in. That on the cross, my burden
gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin. Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! When Christ shall come With shout
of acclamation And take me home What joy shall fill my heart! Then I shall bow in humble adoration,
And there proclaim, My God, how great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee How great Thou art! Please be seated. Good morning. Once again, it's
amazing to me. Tom, did you look at Psalm 117
when you chose that hymn? I don't know of a hymn that would
be more appropriate to the passage of scripture that I want us to
look at this morning. If you'll open your Bibles with
me to Psalm 117, Psalm 117 for his merciful kindness is great
toward us. How great thou art. Let's ask the Lord's blessings
on our time together and bless us with this presence. Our Holy
Father, we come into thy presence thanking you that we have an
advocate. We have the Lord Jesus Christ,
thy dear son, as our accomplished Savior to stand in our stead
before thee. We thank you, Lord, for the promise
that where two or three of us are met together in thy name,
there you are in the midst of us. Lord, how we hope this morning
to, to know your presence, to know your grace and your mercy.
to have you reveal to our hearts just a little bit more of how
great thou truly art. Lord, there's no way we can comprehend
your greatness, but by your spirit, If you would enable us to look
to Christ and rest our hope in him and rejoice in his finished
work, depend upon him for all our righteousness before the.
Your greatness truly is good toward us. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Psalm 117, truth is always simple. If it's complicated, if it's
hard to understand, if it requires a long and difficult explanation,
it's not true. Man-made religion. is very complicated. It's contradictory. It's convoluted. It cannot be understood. It just
has to be bowed to without any real, without any real understanding
of the truth. I love the simplicity of the
gospel. Christ is all. Psalm 117, you'll notice in your
Bibles, is but two verses. It's the shortest chapter in
the Bible. It's the shortest Psalm in the
Psalms. And yet, in these 33 words, we
have summarized the whole gospel in its simplicity. and how thankful
I am for that. This simple two-verse psalm reveals
to us the glory of Christ and the work of redemption that he
has performed for the salvation of his people. It begins, Praise
the Lord, all ye nations. Praise him, all ye people. Now, when the New Testament quotes
the Old Testament, we have a clear understanding of what that Old
Testament passage means. And so it is with Psalm 117. Paul in Romans chapter 15 quotes
from Psalm 117 and gives us an understanding of what this Psalm
and particularly what this first verse is meaning. So if you'll turn with me in
your Bibles to Romans chapter 15. we'll begin reading in verse
six, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even
the father of our Lord Jesus. Now, the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ has always been made up of people from every kindred,
every tribe, every people, every nation. Our God is not a respecter
of persons in that he takes into consideration anything about
us personally before he's pleased to have mercy. He sovereignly
chooses whomsoever he wills, and his people have always been
brought from many different cultures, many different languages, many
different walks of life, and that's the makeup of the church,
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, sometimes that difference
that believers have may cause a little rub between them in
not being able to understand one another. And yet, in light
of the gospel, they have a union in faith and a union in Christ
that overrides all their differences. And that would be illustrated
no more clearly than in the Church of Rome. The Church of Rome was
made up of Gentile Romans who were coming out of a very, very
pagan culture as well as it was made up of Jewish believers that
knew the scriptures. And in the wrapping up of this
epistle, The Lord is admonishing this church to remember their
unity in Christ. Okay. So he says in verse seven,
wherefore receive ye one another as Christ also received us to
the glory of God. The Lord made no distinction
based on your race or your sex or your language or anything else, male,
female, rich or poor, doesn't matter. And so in the same way
the Lord made no distinctions, we're to make no distinctions.
Why? Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision
for the truth of God to confirm the promises made unto the fathers. Now this is all in light of who
Christ is and what he did. What the Lord Jesus Christ did
was he brought all the promises of God that were given prior
to this time only to Israel. No nation outside of Israel had
a revelation given to them of God. They had natural revelation,
they had the revelation of conscience, but they had no special revelation.
They had no word from God, only Israel. And so the Lord preserved
that nation of Israel. And until the coming of Christ,
the Messiah, which was all those Old Testament promises pointed
to who was going to come and what he was going to do. And
how now the message of the gospel was not going to be reserved
just for national Israel, but it was going to go outside of
Israel to all people. Look at verse nine, and that
the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy as it is written
for this cause, I will confess to thee among the Gentiles and
sing unto thee unto thy name. And again, he sayeth rejoice
ye Gentiles with his people. And again, praise the Lord, all
you Gentiles and loud hymn all ye people. Now that's a quote
from Psalm 117 verse one. So what is the Lord telling us
in the first verse of this two verse song? That in Christ Jesus,
there's unity. There's a unity of faith that
God's people look at, look at verse, um, verse 12. And again, Isaiah say it, there
shall be a root of Jesse and he. that shall rise to reign
over the Gentiles in him shall the Gentiles trust. Now the God
of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you
may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. So it's the Holy Ghost that gives
us faith, gives us eyes to see and hearts to believe, enables
us to set our affections on Christ, rest our hopes in him and in
his finished work, and regardless of where you came from, regardless
of your experience, whether you're Jew or Gentile, whether you're
Greek or Roman, it doesn't matter. This is for all God's people. It's for all God's people. When the Apostle Paul prayed
for the church, turn to me and the book of Ephesians chapter
two, I believe it is. The end of chapter one. This
is. This is Paul, under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, asking God for his blessings on the church.
And he says in verse 16 of chapter one, cease not. I cease not to
give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers that the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give
unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge
of him. that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened
that they may, that you may know what is the hope of his calling
and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints
and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us were to believe
according to the working of his mighty power. Oh, that's, uh,
that's Paul praying for the unity of the church that we would all,
uh, unite together around the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the Lord would not have put that in scripture without honoring
that prayer. That is our prayer, that the
Lord would enable us by his spirit to put aside whatever differences
we might otherwise have and rejoice in the unity that we have in
Christ Jesus. That having been said, the Lord
Jesus himself prayed in John chapter 17. And we know that
that prayer was not only heard, but it is being answered. When
the Lord Jesus said, father, I pray that they might be one,
even as I am one with thee. So there's the unity of the saints. That's the effects of the gospel.
The effects of the gospel is that the Lord gives each one
of his people the same hope. Paul asked this question in another
place. He said in the book of Corinthians, he said, is Christ
divided? It was a rhetorical question. No, Christ is not divided. He's
one, one head and all members of the same body. And so the
psalmist, when he prays that We would all praise the Lord
and that our voice, go back with me to Psalm 17,
Psalm 117. Praise ye the Lord, all nations,
praise him, all ye people. And here's the truth, brethren.
Because we have the same spirit, we have the same gospel, we have
the same word, we all believe the same thing. Turn with me
back to the book of Ephesians one more time. Ephesians chapter four, I therefore
the prisoner of the Lord, I'm a bond slave of the Lord Jesus
Christ, as is all of God's people. They're willing servants. I,
therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk
worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called, with all lowliness
and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love,
endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of
peace, that there is one body, One spirit, even as you are called
in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and father of us all, who is above all and through
all and in you all. The simplicity of the gospel.
unites the hearts of God's people so that, as Isaiah said, they
shall all see eye to eye. Someone's saying, but there's
so many divisions in Christianity. Yeah, there is. You know, in
Islam, there's really only two sects, one small one that's a
little more political than the other two. In Hinduism, there's
four major denominations. In Judaism, there's five major
denominations in Judaism. You cannot count all the denominations
in Christianity. You can't count them. I mean,
I've looked them up. There's hundreds that I've never
heard of before. They're all over the world. Everybody's
got their own little sect, their own little opinion, and their
own little, Bailiwick, their own little denomination. How
does that fit with what we just read in the Word of God? You
can only come to one conclusion. They're not Christian. I'm sorry
if you're offended by that, but that's the truth. All of God's people all believe
the same thing and they all rejoice in the same Christ. Christianity is the largest religion
in the world. And you know I'm using that word
very loosely. 2.3 billion people in the world
claim to be Christian. And there's hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of different denominations and opinions as to what Christianity
really is. I want to know the simplicity
of the gospel, don't you? All that's so complicated. It's
all, it's, it's, it's hard to understand. The gospel is not
hard to understand. That's why I say Psalm 117 and
these 33 words, these two short verses summarizes everything
we need to know about the gospel. David said, Oh, how good and
how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity and
what a blessing it is. What a blessing it is when God
enables us to join our voices together and say, praise the
Lord, all ye nations, wherever you come from. Now all men everywhere
ought to praise God, and all men everywhere ought to repent,
and all men everywhere are without excuse. But we've already seen
from Romans chapter 15 that that's not the application of this verse.
God's not calling on all men to praise Him. Only believers
can praise Him. Only those who are in Christ can praise Him. And those that are in Christ
come from all nations, and yet their unity in the Lord Jesus
Christ, their unity in the faith, one God, one Father of us all,
one baptism, one faith, one church, overrides whatever differences
we might otherwise have and unites us together in Christ. Only the gospel can do that. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter
52. Isaiah 52. This is so glorious. And let me say this, in light
of what we're talking about, There's only one reason to join
a church. And there's only one reason to
leave a church. Period. End of statement. The Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ, you know, is a very precious and rare thing. I mean, she's
hard to find. And the only reason you'd ever
want to be a part of an assembly is that the gospel of God's free
grace is being preached and the only reason you ever want to
leave is that that gospel is not being preached. That's it.
That's it. Period. We don't, well, let's look at
this passage in Isaiah 52, verse 7. You know, this is a passage that
Paul quotes in Romans chapter 10, speaking of God's preachers,
those who are declaring the gospel, those that you're listening to. How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth
peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation,
that saith unto Zion, thy God reigneth. There's a summary of
the gospel. What do we say to get to Zion?
Our God reigns. He hath done whatsoever he's
pleased with the armies of heaven and all the inhabitants of the
earth. No man can stay his hand. No man can say unto him, what
doest thou? Our God reigneth. He's God, and
we're not. We're completely dependent upon
him. Look at verse eight. Thy watchman shall lift up the
voice, with the voice together shall they sing, for they shall
see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion. Isn't it glorious how All the men that
God has called and all the churches that gather together around the
gospel of our Lord's free and sovereign grace, they all preach
the same thing and they all believe the same thing. It's glorious. We don't have to debate anything.
We don't argue. We just rejoice. That's what
Psalm 117 verse 1 is telling us. Now what exactly are we unified
about? What is it that we give God the
glory for? Everything. Everything. We give him glory for having
according to his own will and purpose. chosen a people, predestinated
them before the foundation. He gets all the glory for that.
We don't have anything to do with that. He gets all the glory
for having made a covenant of grace and having agreed with
his son and with the spirit to redeem his people and to regenerate
them by the power of his spirit. He gets all the glory for that.
We don't have anything to do with that. He gets all the glory
for taking out our heart of stone and putting in a heart of flesh
and teaching us the gospel. He gets all the glory for revelation.
We wouldn't know God if He didn't reveal Himself to us. And He
reveals Himself in His Word. That's what the watchmen do.
The watchmen are preaching the gospel from the Word of God.
And our faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the Word
of God. Without any mixture of error,
we're, we're, we're, we, we preach the word in season and out season
don't out of season. Don't we? Um, in sanctification,
he gets all the glory. He's the one that keeps us from
falling. He's the one that causes us to, to wake up in the middle
of the night and fret over our souls. He's the one that wakes
us up in the morning and reveals to us the glory of his son and
gives us once again a renewed faith and hope in Christ. He's the one that will successfully
receive us into glory and change this vile body into the body
of Christ, into a renewed, resurrected body. Make us see him as he is
and be made like him. He's the one that justified us
before God. He's the one that gives us all
our righteousness in the presence of God. He's the one that adopted
us into his family. You know, I was thinking about
Rachel and Rebecca as I was thinking about adoption this week in Salzburg. The two little baby girls. laying
in a manger, laying in a crib over there in some far out place
in China. And Jerry and Mary Ann go over
there and go into the nursery and pick them out and bring them
home. What do those girls have to do
with that? Well, you think they raised their
hand and said, pick me, pick me? Oh. Oh, that was completely
the choice of Jerry and Mary Ann, wasn't it? And here over
these years, we've watched them grow and I thought about what
their lives would have been like if they'd been left in China,
never having heard the gospel. That's the Lord. And that's an
illustration of what he does for us. He chooses us, we choose
him. We're in unity about that, aren't
we? We're in complete agreement about praising the Lord, for
he gets all the glory. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto
us, but unto thy name be glory for thy mercy and for thy truth's
sake. And that verse brings into focus
verse two. For his merciful kindness is
great toward us. Toward us. Now, if there's an
us, there's got to be a them. God's merciful kindness is not
great toward all men. It's great toward his children.
It's great toward his elect. This idea that God loves everybody
and Christ died for everybody and God wants everybody to be
saved is just not true. His merciful kindness is not
wasted on the goats. This term merciful kindness is
grace. It's what it is. His grace is
effectual. And his grace, where is, look
at the rest of this verse. His merciful kindness is great
toward us and the truth of the Lord endureth forever. Where does mercy and truth meet
together? Where does righteousness and
peace kiss each other? Psalm 85 verse 15, where does
that happen? It happened at the cross. This
is where the mercy of God How can God be just and justify sinners
at the same time? How can he be merciful and be
just? How can he be merciful and maintain
integrity to the truth? You know the answer to that question,
don't you? The Lord Jesus Christ meant all that God required. for the salvation of his people. He suffered the full penalty
of God's justice and of God's wrath and he put away once and
for all by the sacrifice of himself all the sins of all of God's
people so that the integrity of truth and righteousness might
be maintained and God would have mercy on those for whom Christ
died. His merciful kindness is great
toward us. You say, well, I thought it wasn't,
I thought God wasn't willing that any should perish. Turn
to me to that passage of scripture. It's in second Peter, second
Peter. I'm going to say this as clearly
and plainly as I can. If God willed all men to be saved,
all men would be saved. I am God's watchman standing
before you today saying by the authority of God's word, our
God reigneth. He does whatsoever he wills.
If he willed for all men to be saved, all men would be saved. Otherwise, he's not God. Man
has set himself up on the throne of God. Look at, uh, second Peter chapter
three, verse nine, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise. As some men count slackness,
but is long suffering to us word, not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance. Don't leave the us word out of
that passage of scripture. His promise is to us word. And
he is not willing that any of us word would perish, but that
all of us word would come to repentance and he'll see to it.
He'll make sure it's done. And that's why we praise him.
And we all believe you see anybody that doesn't believe that doesn't
believe the gospel. I'm sorry, that's just the truth. Scott and I were talking this
morning and he was expressing his frustration at talking to
people about the gospel and them agreeing with him. You've
had that experience, you talk to people. They have a presupposition. You understand that. All men
are convinced that God loves everybody, Christ died for everybody,
God wants everybody to be saved, and man has a free will. Now
everybody believes that to be non-negotiable foundational truth. And so what they hear from you,
they're fitting into that grid. They don't know. That God doesn't
love everybody. They don't know that Christ didn't
die for everybody. They don't know that God doesn't
will all men to be saved. They don't know that man doesn't
have a free will. They don't know that. They don't
believe that. And until God brings them to
repentance, which is to have a changed mind, they've got no
room for the gospel because they've got all these lies that they're
holding on to. Psalm 117, look at verse 2, for
his merciful kindness, his grace is great. Now I looked up that
word great. It means to prevail. It means
to be powerful or to be mighty or to be strong. It's a word
that's used to describe the jubilant celebration of a victorious army
coming home. Now, we don't know anything about
that. We were watching a movie the other night and they had
some clips of the victory in Europe, VE Day
in New York, and the parades and the jubilance. I mean, you've
seen the pictures. You've seen depictions of that. We don't know anything about
it. Korea didn't end that way. Vietnam didn't end that way. The Middle
East War is still going on. It's not going to come to an
end like that. What would it have been like to be a part of
that sort of celebration? When the enemy was completely
defeated, never to rise again. There's not going to be a fourth
Reich. Okay? I mean, that's over. Why? Because the Allies won. And they
got the victory. And everybody celebrated with
jubilance beyond anything that we've ever experienced before
in terms of an army coming home with victory. That's the picture
here. Great. is His mercy, His grace
toward us. Why? Because He has gotten the
victory. He's prevailed with God and He's
prevailed with man. He got the victory for the father.
And the father saw the travail of his soul and the father was
satisfied. And the Lord Jesus Christ was
received back into glory when the father said to him, sit down
here at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
He gets the victory with his people when he makes them willing. He opens the eyes of their understanding.
He causes them to be willing in the day of his power. He got
the victory on Calvary's cross over death. Listen to what the
scripture says. He hath done marvelous things. His right hand
and his holy arm hath gotten him the victory. Death is swallowed
up in victory. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15,
oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin. And
the strength of sin is the law. Listen to that, the strength
of sin is the law. You wanna see someone, someone
put them under the law. You won't have no power over
sin, put yourself under the law. The strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth
us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. He got the victory. When he bowed his mighty head
on Calvary's cross and cried, it is finished. Jubilance. That's what it, the
year of jubilee. that was supposed to be celebrated
in the Old Testament every 50 years. All the slaves were to
be released. All debt was to be canceled.
All property was to go back to its original owners. It was God's
law for preserving the property among the tribes of Israel. No
evidence that they ever practiced it. But that's the year that
the Lord Jesus came and completed his work. And what did he do? He returned everything back that
we lost in our father, Adam, and so much more. He set the
prisoners free. He canceled the debt that you
and I, oh God, that we cannot pay. He got the victory. For his merciful kindness has
prevailed. It has prevailed. It's mighty.
It's great. It's victorious. Toward us. You know what the child of God says
in light of this? How many people are there in
the world? I don't know what 6 point something billion. Why
me Lord? Why would you allow me to hear
the gospel? Why would you call me out of darkness into your
marvelous light? Why would you pass by the whole
world and enable me to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Why
me? Who maketh thee to differ? What
do you have that you did not receive? And if you received
it, If you received it, then why do you boast? Why do you
take glory in it? No, we don't. We don't. We don't
boast in the flesh. We don't boast in man. We boast
in the Lord. That's what the word praise means.
We praise Him, knowing that He did it. Why He called us out? It was
according to His good pleasure and will. He did not look down
through the quarters of time and see who would choose Him.
and decide, well, I'll, I'll choose them because they're going
to choose me. That's foolish. That doesn't even make sense.
That's nonsense. That's the, that's the convoluted
opinions of man that don't even, you can't make sense out of that.
No, God saw God chose God elected according to his will and purpose. And Christ accomplished his merciful
kindness toward us. It is great. And in closing, look at this
last. Look at the last part. Mercy and truth have met together. It's the whole gospel in these
two verses. Grace and truth. How can God be just and justify
centers? How can he maintain the integrity
of truth and be merciful toward us? Well, that's what happened
on Calvary's cross. The Lord Jesus Christ, when talking
to Pilate, Pilate asked him, are you king of the Jews? And
the Lord said, for this cause came I into the world, and for
this purpose was I born, to bear witness unto the truth. They that are of the truth hear
my voice, and they follow me. And Pilate said, truth? Truth? Is that what this is all
about? Don't you know that there's no
such thing as absolute truth? And the world in which you and
I live still believes the same thing Pilate believed. That's
why they tolerate all the different opinions of Christianity as being
part of the faith. It's not part of the faith. God shows you the truth about
who he is and about who you are. Truth is, Lord, you're sovereign,
you're holy. And if I'm going to be saved,
you're going to have to do it. And the only hope that I have for
any righteousness is that Christ be my righteousness. The only
hope that I have for my sin to be paid for is that he paid for
them on Calvary's cross. That's my only hope. Because
I'm a sinner. I've got no righteousness and
I can't do anything to put away my sin. Let's read this psalm
together. Oh, praise the Lord, all ye nations. From wherever you've come from,
you all believe the same thing. You're praising the same God,
worshiping the same God. Praise him, all you people, Jew,
Gentile, Greek, Roman, doesn't matter. For His grace is victorious
and effectual toward us. And the truth of the Lord doesn't
change. It doesn't change. You see, what's
true today, you look at these religious denominations, they're
always adjusting. Matter of fact, the pews that
we're getting from West Virginia are coming from a religious organization
that calls themselves the Pulse. The Pulse of all things. That's
the name of their church, The Pulse. And they're upgrading
their church by getting rid of anything that looks religious
and converting it into something that looks more entertaining
and more inviting and more secular in order to get more people to
come in. And we're getting their pews. 25 16-foot pews for $1,000. Happy
to have them. But that's the direction that
the religious world is going. Always changing and adjusting
to the current opinions of man. The truth doesn't change. And
I started this message by saying, truth is simple. Not only is
that simple, it's immutable. It never changes. It's the same
today as it was yesterday. It wasn't 2000 years ago. It's not going to change why?
Because all truth is bound up in our God and he changes not. Amen. Alright, let's take a break. Okay.