Good evening. I'd like to open
tonight's service with hymn number 15 from the hardback temple.
Number 15, brethren, we have met to worship. Let's all stand
together. Number 15. Brethren, we have met to worship
and adore the Lord our God. Will you pray with all your power
while we try to preach the word? All is vain unless the Spirit
of the Holy One comes down. Brethren, pray, and holy manna
will be showered all around. Brethren, see poor sinners round
you, slumbering on the brink of woe. Death is coming, hell
is moving, can you there to let them go. See our fathers and
our mothers and our children sinking down. Brethren, pray and holy manna
will be showered all around. Sisters, will you join and help
us? Moses' sister aided him. Will you help the trembling order? heart with sin. Tell them all about the Savior. Tell them that He will be found. Sisters, pray and holy manna
will be showered all around. Let us love our God supremely,
let us love each other too. Let us love and pray for sinners
till our God makes all things new. Then he'll call us home
to heaven. At his table we'll sit down. Christ will gird himself and
serve us with sweet manna all around. Please be seated. Good evening. Will you turn with
me in your Bibles to Psalm 27, please? Psalm 27. I'm not sure what that hymn writer
had in mind when he wrote to pray for sinners, but I stand
before you tonight as a sinner and I I beg your prayers for
me. I covet them. And might the Lord
give us grace to pray for one another. A Psalm of David. The Lord is
my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is
the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked, even my enemies
and my foes, come upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled
and fell. Though a host should encamp against
me, my heart shall not fear. Though war should rise against
me, in this will I be confident. One thing, one thing have I desired
of the Lord, and that will I seek after. that I may dwell in the
house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty
of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. Oh, to see Him and be made like
Him. To be made like Christ means
that we're without sin. And that's what we can't experience
now in the flesh, but how we long to see Him and be made like
Him. I'm sure you heard about Barbara
Bush passing away and her pastor today was consoling the nation
and her family by telling her, by telling everybody about all
the family members that she was now embracing and seeing and
had made no mention whatsoever of Christ. For in the time of trouble, He
shall hide me in His pavilion. Christ is that pavilion, all
to be hid in Him. In the secret of His tabernacle
shall He hide me. And the word was made flesh and
tabernacled among us. The Lord Jesus Christ is that
tabernacle, isn't He? Everything in that Old Testament
tabernacle, the badger skin to the holies of holies, to the
single door, to the basins and the sacrificial, the candles
and everything that represented Christ. He is our tabernacle. Shall he hide me, he shall set
me upon a rock. And now shall my head be lifted
up above my enemies round about me and therefore will I offer
in his tabernacles, sacrifices of joy. I will sing, yea, I will
sing praises unto the Lord. Hear, O Lord, when I cry with
my voice, and have mercy also upon me, and answer me. When
thou sayest, seek my face, my heart said unto thee, thy face,
Lord, will I seek. Hide not thy face far from me.
Put not thy servant away in anger. Thou hast been my help. Leave
me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation. When my father
and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. Teach me thy way, O Lord, and
lead me in a plain path. Oh, the simplicity of Christ,
the clarity and the simplicity of the gospel. Lord, lead us
in a plain path. We're so prone to confuse things,
aren't we? To complicate things. Because
of my enemies, deliver me not over into the will of my enemies
for false witnesses are risen up against me and such as breathe
out cruelties. I had fainted unless I had believed
to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait
on the Lord. Be of good courage. And he shall
strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. Brian and Jill just got back
from Lexington and he was just telling me that Lynn Nybert,
I haven't talked to Todd in a few days, but he said that Lynn's
been sick and not doing well. Lord willing, Todd and Lynn will
be here in two weeks. May the 6th. Thank you. May the
6th. Todd will be preaching for you
on May the 6th and I'll be out of town. So let's pray together. Our merciful Heavenly Father, We pray that you would put into
our hearts the desire to be able to say, this one thing do we
desire. This one thing, Lord, to dwell
in the house of the Lord forever, to inquire in your holy temple
and to behold your beauty. Lord, we pray that you would
As we just sang, crack open the windows of heaven in this hour
and that you would shower sweet manna, the bread of life, revealing
more and more of the Lord Jesus Christ to our hearts, enabling
us to look on him, to rest in him, to trust him, to believe
on him. Lord, we come before you as sinners
with no righteousness of our own. Oh, what great hope we have
in knowing that we have an advocate, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. Lord, reveal to us his glory
and cause us to rejoice in his person and in his finished work. We do pray for Lynn and Lord,
we ask for your strength to be upon her. We pray that you would
comfort her heart and Pray, Lord, that you would strengthen her
body and give the doctors that minister to her knowledge and
understanding and good wisdom to know how to treat her needs. Lord, we pray that you'd be pleased
to put your word on Todd's heart and give them the opportunity
to be here with us in a few weeks. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Let's stand together once again.
We'll sing hymn number two from your Spiral Gospel Hymns hymn
book. Hymn number two. Yeah. Lord, we come before Thee now,
at Thy feet we humbly bow. O do not our suit disdain, shall
we seek Thee, Lord, in vain? Lord, on Thee our souls depend,
In compassion now descend. Fill our hearts with Thy rich
grace, Tune our lips to sing Thy praise. in thine own appointed way. Now we seek thee, here we stay. Lord, we know not how to go till
a blessing thou bestow. and the message from thy word
that may joy and peace afford. Let thy spirit now impart Christ's
salvation to Will you open your Bibles with
me to Psalm 26. Psalm 26. The Lord has been impressing
on my heart and teaching me more clearly how impossible it is
for the natural man to believe the gospel. It's just absolutely
beyond his ability. It is a mystery that can only
be revealed by the Spirit of God. It is contrary to everything
that men believe. All men believe that they have
a righteousness before God. And to be made a sinner, to be
made a sinner is a miracle of grace that the natural man knows
nothing about. He knows nothing about it. Psalm
26 I've titled this message, Union with Christ. Now, either
David was the Pharisee of Pharisees, or he was writing prophetically
about his descendant according to the flesh, the son of David,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who could be judged by the law of God and
come out innocent. And the only hope, the only hope
that you and I have to be able to stand in the presence of a
holy God is to be found in Him. Not having our own righteousness
which is of the law. We have no righteousness. None. Now I hear preachers talking
about the evils of our society and how degrading we have become
in our generation. And, you know, I suppose that
if you compare the moral climate of today to that which we had
in America in the 1950s, we have declined morally. in this country. But if you compare the 1950s
to the 1850s, the 1850s were a whole lot worse. I mean, you
look at the lawlessness of the Wild West, and you look at what
was happening during the Civil War, and then if you go back
to the Roman Empire, the time when
the apostles were living and writing. Morality is a thing that goes
up and down. And to point out the evils of
the world is only to suggest that we don't have any evil. When in fact, when in fact, self-righteousness
is more evil, is more evil in the face of a holy God than is
indulging in the pleasures of the flesh and of this world.
Now I'd rather live in a neighborhood where people are honest. I'd
rather live in a neighborhood where there's an abiding by the
law. I don't want to have to bar up
my doors and windows and have a loaded gun by my side all the
time and have criminals in my yard. I don't want that. But
neither do I want to be around a Pharisee. You know, it just, the self-righteousness. And let me say this, I am much
more concerned about the Pharisee in here than I am with the one
out there. We all are recovering Pharisees. And if the Lord teaches
us what it means to have a union with Christ and the perfection
that we have before God in Christ, the grace of God will be the
thing that will cause us to hate that Pharisee and all other forms
of sin in our lives. But we're not going to stand
here and point our finger out at the world and talk about how,
you know, I hear preachers, preachers that I think preach the gospel
and they write and they talk about how evil the world is. We really are recovering Pharisees. And the more we grow in grace
and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, the more ugly that
Pharisee becomes. So when David prays in Psalm
26, And he says, judge me, oh Lord,
for I have walked in mine integrity. I have also, I have trusted also
in the Lord. Therefore, I shall not slide. Now, David also wrote in Psalm
73 that the that the unbeliever has no bands in their death.
They don't fear death. That was another thing I heard
all the Bush family and everybody's talking about, Barbara just had
no fear whatsoever of death. And I fear that the reason she
had no fear of death, because she thought that her righteousness
would be acceptable before God. That's the reason that men go
to the grave without any fear. They compare themselves to other
men and they think themselves to be doing well. But David says here, judge me
according to the law. Put the law before me. Let me
stand in the full light of the holy law of God. I have walked in perfection according
to that law. That's what the word integrity
means. It means uprightness. It means innocence. It means
perfection. And so David is crying out to
God, God, I want justice. I want justice. We say we don't
want justice, we want mercy. But we want justice too. We want
the law to be fulfilled. We want to be found in Him so
that God can be just. We don't want to compromise the
justice of God. We don't want to water down the law. We don't
want to be the self-righteous Pharisee that pretends to be
fulfilling and satisfying the demands of the law. We want God
to be holy and just. We want Him to satisfy the demands
of His law. And when we say, Lord, try me,
look into my heart, and you'll see Now, we know that every imagination
of the thoughts of the heart of man is only evil and that
continually. We would never say, Lord, look
at my thoughts and you'll find that I'm perfect. You'll find
that I've got perfect integrity. But we can say, Lord, look, look,
you gave me faith. You caused me to rest all the
hope of my salvation in thy dear son. Yes, look to Him. But look, Lord, that's what's
in my heart. I can't make any other claim.
But here the Lord Jesus Christ is saying, judge me in my integrity. Is it not the Lord that said,
think not that I came to destroy the law? I came not to destroy
the law, but to fulfill it. Christ Jesus the Lord is the
end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Now,
the Pharisee will hear us talk like this, and I'm becoming more
and more convinced that if you're not being accused of being an
antinomian, you're not preaching the gospel. You're not preaching
the gospel. Anti, against, nomos, the law,
an antinomian is against the law. People here is preaching
grace and they say, well, you're just advocating lawless living. No, we're not. No, we're not. We're preaching the gospel. We're
saying that God's law is holy and just and good and it's perfect. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
the only one that ever kept it. And so he's saying, judge me. And that word judge means to
hold me up against the law of God. And you'll see that my integrity,
my perfection, my obedience makes me innocent in the face of the
law of God. Who can stand in his presence?
Who? They who have a clean hand, clean
hands and a pure heart, pure heart, only by virtue of our
union with the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
means that we're looking to Christ alone for all our righteousness.
That's what it is. And don't you love the story? I know I made reference to the
story of Ruth and I forgot Orpah's name, Sunday. Thank you, Norm. Yeah, I can
hear your voice. These guys try to tell me things
when I'm preaching and I don't hear them. But in the story of the book of Ruth,
you remember when Boaz determines that he's going to redeem Naomi
and Ruth? And Naomi says to Ruth, she says,
you sit right there. For the man will not rest until
he settles the matter today. And what did Boaz do? He went to the city gates and
he got 10 elders. Is there something significant
about the fact that he got 10 elders? There's the law. There's
the 10 commandments. He got these 10 elders and he
brought them together because he told Ruth, he told Naomi,
he said, there is a kinsman nearer to you than me. And the law requires
that kinsman to redeem you first. And so I gotta go do business
with him. And Boaz says, Ruth and Naomi's
back from Boaz And her property, according to her husband, according
to the law, Lima Lake's property has to be bought back. It has
to be redeemed. And if you're not going to redeem
it, I'll redeem it. And this kinsman that was closer
to Naomi than was Boaz said, I'll redeem them. I'll redeem
it. And Boaz said, in the day in
which you redeem Ruth, Naomi, you must also redeem Ruth the
Moabitess. And what did that kinsman say?
I cannot redeem her. That's what he said. I cannot
redeem her. Now that kinsman is the law. And he said, I cannot redeem
her lest I mar my inheritance. If I bring a Moabitess into my
family, then it's going to destroy, it's going to destroy everything. And Boaz took off his shoe. And that goes back to another
Levitical law. You remember the law, and this
came up in the New Testament. Do you remember the law where
if a man died and he didn't have any children that his wife, his
widow, was to bear children by his brother so that his name
would continue. And if the man refused to take
his dead brother's wife and bear children by her so that his name
could continue, which is a picture of eternal life, then she was
to take him before the elders and she was to take off his shoe.
before the elders and reveal what kind of man he was. Spit in his face also, the scripture
says. She was to spit in his face if
he refused to redeem. Now, part of that law is being
carried over now into the book of Ruth and Boaz and the near
kinsmen take off their shoes because the near kinsman says,
I can't redeem her. I can't buy her. And Boaz says,
I'll do it. I'll do it. And he did. And Ruth became the mother of
Obed and Obed became the father of Jesse and Jesse became the
father of David. And this Moabitess was in the
lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a glorious story. But that
near kinsman had to be settled, had to be dealt with. Boaz could
not redeem Ruth until that near kinsman had been dealt with.
The shoes had to come off. His humanity had to be exposed. The 10 elders had to be brought
in and business had to be conducted. That's exactly what the Lord
Jesus Christ did on Calvary's cross. He bore our sins in His
body, exposing His humanity, suffering the full wrath of God's
justice in order to satisfy the demands of God's law. And He
alone, and we in Him, are able to say, judge me, O Lord, for
I have walked in mine integrity. There's our hope. His life is
our life. I love the point Todd made one
time when he said this is a biography. It's an autobiography of Christ
and it's a biography of me. Because everything the Lord Jesus
Christ did, I did. What did he do? He satisfied
the law. That's why Paul said, oh, that
I might know him and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship
of his sufferings, the life he walked, we walked, the death
he suffered, we suffered. And we can say before God, Lord,
I don't want you to compromise your law. I know your law is
holy. I know that apart from my union
with the Lord Jesus Christ, I've never been able to keep it. I
have no righteousness outside of him. And yet, Jeremiah chapter
33 says, and she shall be called the Lord our righteousness. Oh, what hope. What hope we have. Dead dog, mercy-begging sinners
that have no righteousness within themselves, but stand perfect
before a holy God in the person of their substitute. That's the
gospel, isn't it? And that's the only way you're
going to understand Psalm 26. You think you're going to pray
that prayer to God apart from the righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ? No. Let the world say, I've walked
in mine integrity. I've been a good person. What
that rich young rose said? These things I've done from my
youth. What the Pharisee say? God, I thank thee that I'm not
like other men. The natural man cannot see this. He cannot believe it. And the religionist will hear
what we're saying and they'll say, well, you know, you need
to preach more responsibility. And as I said Sunday, when a
man says to me, you need to preach more responsibility, I have come
to understand what the motive behind that statement is. And
he'll, and I've had him do it. You need to teach more responsibility
because look what so and so and so and so and so is doing. And
they'll point people out in the church and expose their sins. Are they really concerned about
how other people are living? They're not. Do they want me
to preach more responsibility because they don't know what
they ought to be doing? You know, I would ask somebody,
give me one example, one scenario of something that you don't know
the difference between right and wrong. People know what the difference
is. You don't need to be told how
to live. The power to live unto God is only by grace. It's not
under the law. The strength of sin is the law.
You put a person under the law and all you're going to do is
inspire more sin. You're like a man putting his wife under
his authority. All he's going to do is inspire
rebellion and resentment. It doesn't work like that, does
it? No, they know what they ought
to be doing. The person who says you need to preach more responsibility
is saying to me, I want my righteousness justified. I want my life to be approved. I need to know that
my righteousness is is acceptable before God. Therefore I shall not slide.
Psalm 73, David said my feet had almost slipped when I saw
the prosperity of the wicked. When I saw how the unbeliever
lived and how they have no fear of death and they just indulge
themselves in things. Then Psalm 73, after David said,
my feet had almost slipped, I was jealous of them. But then I came
into the house of the Lord and then I knew their end. I knew their end. Wasn't jealous
of them anymore. Oh no, we don't want any part
of that end, do we? Any end. that would cause God
to judge us by our righteousness. We don't want any part of that. Verse two, examine me, O Lord,
and prove me. Try my reins. Now that's a reference
to motive. And as I said recently, I've
learned In 63 years, it took me a while, but I've learned
not to inspect my motives too closely. They're always mixed. I've never had a pure motive
for anything. And that's what David's saying.
He said, he said, my reigns, try me. God, you look at my motives. and you look at my heart, my
sincerity. We don't want to be hypocrites.
You know I'm not suggesting that. I'm just saying that once you
understand the sin that's within, you realize that you can't do
anything right. But here's the Lord. Examine
me, O Lord. Approve me. Try my motives and
my sincerity. You'll find that I'm innocent
for thy loving kindness is before mine eyes and I have walked in
thy truth." I've walked in thy truth. Now, child of God, if
you're looking to the Lord Jesus Christ for all of your righteousness
before God, you can say, I have walked in thy truth. I believe
the gospel. I do. And, you know, the sins
that David's going to talk about in this chapter are the sins
of self-righteousness. They're the sins of the religionist. They're the sins of those, he's
not talking about those shameful acts of misbehavior that nobody
ought to do. He's talking about the things
that men do to toot their own horn. to walk in their own righteousness. I have not sat with vain persons." You know, who did the Lord...
I mean, just look at our Lord's life and ministry. Who was drawn
to Him? Who was drawn to him? The publicans,
the harlots, the sinners. What did they say? Look, he eats
with sinners. And who was it that was so offended
by him? The self-righteous, the Pharisee,
the religionist, the outwardly moral. Why? because the offense
of the cross strips men of all their righteousness and leaves
them with no hope of salvation outside of Christ. No hope outside
of Christ. And men won't have that. They're
not going to have it. Well, you know, I made a decision.
I hear people talk about it. I've heard, you know, I don't do the things
I used to do. Well, good. Good. You shouldn't have done
them when you were doing them. But don't look to that as the
evidence of your salvation. When David says, I've not sat
with vain persons, I'm not, I tell you what, I don't know how to say this.
I hope you'd never catch me anywhere I ought not to be. But I can
tell you someplace you're not going to catch me. And that's
sitting in a false gospel church with vain persons worshiping
a vain God. I can tell you right now that
by the grace of God, you're not going to find me there. I have not sat with vain persons,
neither will I go in with dissemblers." Now, a dissembler is a liar.
That's a liar. David said, I'm not going to
go with those who lie on God and say that God loves everybody
and Christ died for everybody and God wants everybody to be
saved. I'm not going to be around it. Those who say, you know,
I've got a free will and I've got some good things I can do
and I've got something I can produce in order to earn the
favor of God, I'm not going to do. I'm not going to be with
a dissembler, a liar. You're not going to find me there. Now, in the truest sense of the
word, all men are liars and we, it's like I said, your motives
are never pure and perfect and the image that you present to
people I wish I could stand up here and be as transparent, and
I want to be. I pray that God would enable
me to be. But I can't preach the gospel
without being concerned about me. And that's shameful. I know it is, but it's true.
But here he's talking about those who would lie on God. And he
said, I'm not going to be with him. I'm not going to be with
vain persons. I'm not going to be. I have hated the congregation
of evil doers. Now that's not the congregation
that meets down at the bar. That's the congregation that
meets on Sunday morning in the church. And God says they're
evil doers. all their righteousness is all
the things that they're looking to for the hope of their salvation
is filthy rags before a holy god and david says i'm not gonna
i'm not gonna shoulder up to those people i was there once
can't go back i will not sit with the wicked i will wash my hands and Innocency,
so will I compass thine altar, oh God. Hebrews chapter 13, verse 10
says, we have an altar. We don't make an altar here.
We don't do like the Catholics do and make an altar and do some
sort of hocus pocus sacrifice on an altar. We don't bring people
down an aisle to kneel and, no, we have an altar. We come to
him in faith, in our hearts. And it goes on to say in Hebrews
chapter 13, of which they have no right to. They don't have
a right to that altar. Because the only way you can
come into the presence of that altar is through faith. And so David says, I will compass
thine altar, O Lord. Now the word compass or compass
is to turn around, to turn around. And that's what we do when the
Lord gives us faith. We turn. That's what repentance
is. It's a changed mind. Now, the
world, the self-righteous Pharisee would say, well, I turned around.
I used to do this and now I do that. Turning around is looking to
the Lord Jesus Christ for all of your righteousness before
God. And this applying to Christ says, I compassed thine altar. Oh Lord, where is that altar?
Well, the scripture says we have an altar in the heavens, not
made with the hands of men. And that's where, remember in
the old Testament, the blood of that sacrificial lamb on the
day of atonement would be put on the mercy seat and God would
pass over their sins for one more year. And the Lord said,
here, I will meet with you. The blood that the Lord Jesus
Christ shed on Calvary's cross was placed on that mystical mercy
seat in heaven. that mercy seat that's not made
with the hands of men. And God saw that blood and God
was satisfied. And God said, here, I will meet
with you. And so when David says, I've
come past your altar, I've turned and looked to your altar. The
Lord Jesus Christ, when he was, when he was giving up the ghost
on Calvary's cross was looking him heavenward. And though the
father could not see him, And he could not see the father.
He was looking in faith to that altar in heaven where his blood
was going to be applied. Verse seven, that I will publish
with the voice of thanksgiving and tell of all thy wondrous
works. Oh, his works are wonderful,
aren't they? His work of election, before
creation was election. When God, I say when, we can't
think of eternity, can we? When the Lord speaks of eternal
life, when He says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and He'll
give you eternal life, eternal life is not something that starts
now and lasts for eternity. Eternal life is something that
never had a beginning and never had an end. That's why the Lord
said, I've loved you with an everlasting love. We've been
hid in Christ for eternity. There's never been a time. God
didn't just decide one day in eons past before the world was
made, I think I'm going to elect a people. God's never had a new thought.
God's never had a plan B. God's never decided one day that
He's going to do something different. That's what I am means. I am
means I am what I've always been. I change not, therefore you sons
of Jacob are not consumed. I'm the same yesterday, today,
and forever. What a glorious thought. And
we've always been in him. And then in the covenant of grace, God has chosen. a particular
people according to his own will and purpose, placed them in Christ,
written their names in the Lamb's Book of Life, indelibly, using the blood of his Son for
the ink of his pen, if you will. Those names, I know, and we speak
of these things with verbs as if it was a past tense event
but it's an eternal event, it's an eternal event. And we speak
of his glorious, wondrous works. His wondrous works of creation,
after election comes creation, doesn't it? And He hath created
all things for His own glory. And the heavens declare His handiwork
and the firmament His glory. And all these things have been
created by Him and for Him." And we look at creation, we say,
you know, let the fools of this world talk about evolution. We know whose hand is behind
it. We know who created it and we know why he created it. God
created this world for one purpose, to house his church and to bring
his son into this world. People talking about, well, you
know, we're spending billions of dollars looking for a life
on other planets. We're trying to find another
planet that's like the planet Earth, you know. He said, well,
there's trillions and trillions of planets out there. Surely
there's one. Why does there need to be? The work of redemption. How glorious
was that? We're looking at verse 7, that
I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving and tell all
thy wondrous works. His works are full of wonder. You know, we use that word very
loosely when we say it's wonderful, isn't it? But to be, the truest
sense of that word is it's beyond comprehension. We just look at
it and we wonder at it. And we realize how much infinitely
bigger than us it is. We can't comprehend it. We can't
get our hands around it. We can't get our minds around
it. We believe it. Truth is, truth is we don't understand
anything we believe. Nothing. Not in its fullness. We believe it and the Lord grows
us in grace and he gives us a little more understanding. But election, what do we understand
about that? Creation, what do we understand about that? Redemption?
What do we understand about what was really going on between God
the Father and God the Son on Calvary's cross? We believe it. We know that He was bearing the
sins of His people. We know that He was fulfilling
the conditions of the covenant that He made with the Father.
We know that He was satisfying the demands of God's holy justice.
We know those things, but what does that really mean? What does
that really mean? And what did it really mean when
he cried out and said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? What does it really mean for him? We're so accustomed
to being at odds with God because of our unbelief. What does it
really mean with the agony that the Lord Jesus Christ experienced
when he drank from the bitter dregs of our sin? Father, if there be any way this
cup can pass through me, what does that really mean? I don't
know. I don't know, sin isn't always bitter to me. Sometimes
it's sweet. There's pleasure in sin for a
season, isn't there? But to him, oh, every bit of it was bitter. Wondrous works. He didn't make
an offer of redemption. He actually purchased his people
with the precious blood that he shed on Calvary's cross, a
successful redeemer. What about regeneration? What
do we understand about regeneration? We don't even know exactly when
we were regenerated. Oh, we can look back at a time
when I think maybe, you know, somewhere right around there,
the Lord opened my eyes. But sometimes we hear the gospel
and our salvation is so fresh to us, we think, you know, if
I've never been saved before, I think I am now. And isn't that
the way it ought to be? Rather than us relying on some
experience from the past. And yet we know that the call
of God and regeneration, the new birth is a miracle of grace. It's His wondrous work. It's
the work of the Holy Spirit, isn't it? Sanctification to be
made holy, for him to keep us from falling and to present us
faultless, glorification. These are all his works. Salvation
is of the Lord and he gets all the glory. And that's what the
Pharisee won't have. They will not have a gospel that
robs them of all of their glory. They're not gonna have it. And the child of God won't have
it any other way. Won't have it any other way.
I want the Lord Jesus Christ to get all the glory. All the
glory. From election to glorification,
everything in between. He's the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end, the first and the last. He's all
and He's in all. And that's the offense of the
cross, isn't it? Men are offended by the gospel. They're offended
by Christ. Look at verse eight. Lord, I
have loved the habitation of thy house and the place where
thine honor dwelleth. The Lord Jesus Christ loved the
house of God, didn't he? He was enraged. in anger, holy
anger, against those who had turned the house of prayer into
a den of thieves, and proved His righteous indignation by
turning over the tables of the money changers, those who were
bribing God. And there's another. We love
God's house. This is where His glory dwelleth.
This is where we hear and reminded again and again and again that
salvation is of the Lord. that he gets all the glory and
he's done it all and his honor dwells here and we love the habitation
of his house. We don't try to put people under
the law and make them come to church. God's people hear the
gospel, they meet with the Lord Jesus Christ, they're going to
love the habitation of his house. Gather not my soul with sinners,
nor my life with bloody men, those who would deny Christ his
glory. Now he's going to describe what
a sinner is and what a bloody man is. Look at verse 10. In whose hands is mischief and
their right hand is full of bribes. Listen to what The Lord says
in Proverbs chapter 11 verse 1, a false balance is an abomination
to the Lord. Now that means if a person's
selling some product and they put a weight on one side of the
balance scale and they tell you that that weight is a pound,
but in fact it's only 14 ounces. So they're selling you 14 ounces
of a good for the price of a pound, God says that's an abomination
to me to be dishonest like that. What's the spiritual application
of that? Men coming to God with a bribe, an unjust balance. You see, this goes all the way
back to verse 1. Judge me according to thy justice,
Lord. I don't want you to have an unjust,
I don't want to present my righteousness on one side of the balance scale. I want your justice to be satisfied
and I don't wanna bring before you a bribe. Oh, Isaiah said in Isaiah 55 verse
one, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. Ye that have no money, come,
buy and eat wine and milk without money and without price wherefore
do you spend money for that which is not bread and labor for that
which satisfies not see this is the bribery of self-righteous
pharisaical religion where men are trying to trying to bribe
God and David said I don't want any part of that and you don't
want any part of that do you and when it rears its ugly head
in your heart there's nothing you hate worse is there Nothing
you hate worse. And he closes with the same thing.
Look what he says in verse 11. As for me, I will walk in mine
integrity, redeem me and be merciful unto me. My foot standeth in
an even place in the congregation, in the congregations. Notice
that. In the congregations will I bless
the Lord. There's a little congregation
here. Another one up in Lexington. Y'all were just there. Here and there, little congregation.
Congregation in the Dalles. The Lord says it's an even place. No man, no man has an advantage
over another man. by his righteousness. The ground at the foot of the
cross is level. It's even. We all come the same
way in the righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Norm, would you close us in prayer
please, brother? Almighty God, we are so thankful
for your good comments in purpose of grace that we can be committed
to being this house tonight. We thank the Lord for these words
and the songs. And we thank the Lord that as
you commit us over and around the scene, we can see that there
can only be fulfilled one, and that is your son, our Savior,
who Number 45, let's stand together. Number 45. So, How vast, how full, how free
the mercy of our God. Proclaim the blessed news around
and spread it all abroad. how full it does remove the stain
of every sin and makes our souls as white and pure as though no
sin had been. O guilty sinner, come! Christ stands to comfort thee. Come, cast thyself upon His love,
so vast, so full, so free. I'm glad salvation's free. I'm glad salvation's free. Salvation's free for you and
me. I'm glad salvation's free.