It's good to have Joy and Duffus
with us today. You don't have to turn in your
Bibles, just read this one verse from 1 Timothy 1. Now unto the
King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and
glory forever and ever. Amen. Good to see you all this
morning. Good to be here. Tom's going
to come lead us in the hymn on the back of your bulletin. Would
you stand, please? My God, my Creator, the heavens
did bow to ransom offenders and stooped very low. The body prepared by the Father
assumes, And on the kind errand most joyfully comes. O wonder of wonders, astonished
I gaze, To see in the manger the Ancient of Days, And angels
proclaiming ? The stranger forlorn ? And telling the shepherds ?
That Jesus is born ? For thousands of sinners ? The Lord bowed his
head ? For thousands of sinners ? He groaned and he bled My spirit
rejoices, the work it is done. My soul is redeemed, salvation
is won. ? My God is returned to glory
on high ? When death makes a passage, then to him I'll fly ? To join
in the song of all praise through his blood ? To the three who
are one, inconceivable God Please be seated. Please turn with me in God's
word to Psalm chapter 3. This is God's call to his people
to come and worship and praise him. I laughed. I have some religious
people I work with. One lady asked me, she said,
are you having special services on Sunday? And I said, absolutely.
I said that they are special. They're special every time the
people of God gather and the gospel of Christ is declared
and God is glorified. His people, that's special. I
hope I never forget that, how fortunate I am, why the Lord
would allow me this privilege. I know not. Psalm 3. Lord, how are they increased
that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against
me. Many there be which say of my
soul, there is no help for him in God. Where's your God? That's what they say to us. Where's
your God? He's on his throne like he's
been forever, so long. Look what he says. But thou,
O Lord, are a shield for me, my glory and the lifter up of
mine head. That's how dependent I am on
Christ. Verse four, I cried unto the Lord with my voice. And this
is the news for every believer. This is good news. And he heard
me out of his holy hill. Where was God? He was in his
holy hill. And I cried and he heard me. And I laid me down and I slept. You know, as you get a little
older, what you would give to be able to go to bed and wake
up in the morning and slept all night. That was a good night.
That's our rest in Christ. He hears our cries and he speaks
to our hearts and we have a good rest. I will not be afraid. Well, excuse me, I lay me down
to sleep and the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of 10,000s
of people that have set themselves against me roundabout. Arise, oh Lord, save me, save
me. Oh my God, for thou has smitten
all my enemies upon the cheekbone. Thou has broken the teeth of
the ungodly. That's what we're going to declare
next, verse 8. Salvation belongeth unto the
Lord. I was looking how many times
it says in the Bible, thy salvation, thy salvation, thy salvation. It's God's salvation. Lord, thy
blessing. This is for his people. Thy blessing
is upon thy people. I'm ashamed to say how guilty
I am of not seeing how God has blessed me. All I can look at
is the snakes on the ground rather than to the serpent. When I look
to the serpent, I see the blessings. I pray the Lord will enable us
to pray to him this morning. Please join me. Lord, we've gathered here and
we know we're here because you've ordained it. And you've called
your people to come and worship you and to give you all the glory
and all the praise. And Lord, we cry out to you and
hope you hear our voice. We need to hear that our sins
are forgiven. I need to hear that I'm your
child. And I need to hear that Christ
has finished all the work. We ask your spirit and blessing
upon our brother this morning and all those who gather, those
you've called to the preaching of your gospel, that you would
speak through them today and that you would be glorified.
And we ask as your people, Lord, that you would plead with you
to give us the faith to believe what is preached, and to cause
us this day to rest in Christ alone. And Lord, not give us
any, kill any thoughts we might have of hope in ourselves, for
it is your salvation. And we plead, Lord, save us today. We ask that Christ would take
this prayer and make it acceptable to us, and all glory would go
to you. Amen. Let's stand together once again.
We'll sing hymn number 33 from your Spiral Gospel Hymns hymn
book, number 33. Behold, I come, our Savior said,
the Savior promised long. I come to do Thy will, O God,
and thus our hope was born. Behold, the Virgin has conceived
and born a Son of flesh. His name is called Emmanuel. God dwells in human flesh. The angels left their high abode
to see this mystery. The great almighty sovereign
God, a babe of feeble clay. Mortals beheld his lovely face,
the Father's only son. How full of truth, how full of
grace, Christ came to save His own. His spotless life of righteousness
and sin atoning death, ? Fulfilled His Father's holy will ? ? And
satisfied His wrath ? ? Our glad Hosannas, Prince of Peace ? ?
Your glory shall proclaim ? ? Enthroned in Heaven as our King ? ? We
love to praise your name ? Please be seated. Will you open your Bibles with me
to Isaiah chapter 61, please. Isaiah 61. Good morning again. I want to remind everybody that
three weeks from now, we'll be concluding our annual conference. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
It's going to be, we hope, a blessed weekend. So I pray the Lord will
prepare our hearts and invite your friends and pray for the preachers that are going to be here. In Isaiah chapter 61, I'll remind you that these are the
words that our Lord spoke of when he inaugurated his public
ministry in his hometown of Nazareth. And he went to the synagogue,
as his custom was, and he opened up the scroll and he read and
he said, this day, this day, this prophecy has been fulfilled
in your years and our Lord was clearly identifying
himself as a long-awaited Messiah the one that God had promised
to send to save all of Israel. Every Israelite is going to be
saved. Oh, not those Israelites that are of Abraham by the flesh,
but those spiritual Israelites that are of Abraham according
to the Spirit in faith in their father Abraham. And the Lord is declaring himself in this passage
of scripture sovereign in salvation. And so he says, the Spirit of
the Lord God is upon me because the Lord hath anointed me to
preach good tidings. Oh, what good tidings there are
for the meek, the humble, those that have been made to see that
they have no strength in and of themselves. The good tiding
is that the Lord Jesus Christ is our strength and that he has
been successful in saving his people. He has sent me to bind up the
broken-hearted. That's what we have, a heart
that doesn't work. Our hearts are deceitful above
all things, wicked. We don't know our own hearts.
We can't present our broken heart to God as the means of our salvation. He binds it up. He gives us a
new heart. proclaims liberty to the captive,
the opening of the prison to them that are bound. Prisoner
of war and the criminal are all set free. Our rebellion against
God has been made right. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I
came to restore that which I took not away. You lifted your fist
in your father Adam in rebellion against God, and I restored that,
setting the captive free. and proclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord, that's the year of jubilee, and that's what the
Lord came to do, to establish the year of jubilee, that all
those indebted would be free from their debt. All slaves would
be set free and all property would be returned back to its
original owner and the day of vengeance of our God the vengeance
of God that fell on the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross
and the vengeance of God that will one day fall on this earth
to destroy all those outside of Christ. That's what the Lord
Jesus Christ came to proclaim, that there is a day of vengeance.
And then in verse three, here's what we didn't get to last week.
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion to give unto them beauty
for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise
for the spirit of heaviness. Now I ask you this morning, who
are those who are identified by ashes? Who are those who are
identified by ashes? the spirit of heaviness or by
mourning. These are words that can only
be used to identify a sinner. And that's who the Lord came
to appoint. When God appoints something, He ordains it. This word is also translated
to put, to set, to make, or to ordain. Here's our Lord's promise
to those who are of themselves ashes, those who are left to
themselves, nothing but the spirit of mourning. The Lord Jesus Christ
came to appoint to them, to set for them, to make them, Now the
opposite of appointing something is to attempt to do something,
to wish that something was or to try something. The God that
you hear about in this world is not a God who appoints anything. He is a God who is attempting
to save, a God who wishes men would cooperate with him a God
who is trying to save people, but in the end will be unsuccessful. The Lord Jesus Christ, in reading
this passage of scripture, said, I am the anointed one. I am the Christ. I am the Messiah. And I have come to appoint, to
ordain for those who mourn in Zion. Most folks believe in a God who
wants to save, but can't. We believe in a God who not only
can save, but has saved. And as mercy beggars, we plead
that he would be willing to show grace and mercy toward us. We do not believe in a God who's
trying to get something done or trying to teach us anything. You ever heard somebody, well,
God, I know God's been trying to teach me this. God doesn't
try, you can't put God and try in the same sentence. God's not
trying to do anything. Everything he does is appointed
by him. Our God is omnipotent. He always has his will and he
always accomplishes his purpose. The scripture says that everything
that the Lord does is appointed. It is appointed unto man once
to die. And after that, the judgment.
And so the day of our death is appointed by God. There's nothing
you can do to change that. You're not going to prolong your
life Beyond the day that God has already appointed that you
should die Now I've heard one brother say I don't want to live
longer I just want to live healthier And that's probably a good thing,
you know, take care of yourself so that you can enjoy to some
degree the few days that you have here on this earth, but
you're not going to make yourself healthier so that you can prolong
the day that's been already appointed. It's appointed. You remember in Genesis chapter
18, when the Lord came to Abraham and told him at the age of a
hundred that his ninety-year-old wife Sarah was going to have
a child and Sarah laughed and God said is anything too hard
for God? At the appointed time I will
return and Sarah will bear a child And at 90 years old, Sarah gave
birth to Isaac. Why? Because God had appointed
it and nothing is too hard for Him. In 1 Peter chapter 2, the
Lord speaks of Himself as a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense,
even to them which stumble at the word being disobedient or
unbelieving because it was appointed unto them to do so. They were vessels fitted for
destruction who stumbled at the rock of offense. And God said
it was appointed to be so. And the trials that you and I
suffer in this life, no man should be moved by these afflictions
for yourselves. Know that these things are appointed
unto you. You're not going to avoid the
trials that God has appointed for you any more than you're
going to avoid the day in which your death has been appointed. And in Acts chapter 17, the Lord
said, he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world
by this man. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
standard by which all things will be judged, which he hath
ordained. So our God has ordained a day
of judgment. whereby all things will be judged
according to the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the standard. He's the plumb
line. And whatever doesn't measure
up to his perfect righteousness will be judged of God as unworthy. How are you and I going to be
judged righteous? What did Paul say? That I might
be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is of
the law, but that righteousness, which is by the faith and faithfulness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, if we're, if we're in him,
we're just righteous as he is, as he is. So are we in this world? Habakkuk chapter two, verse three
said that says the vision is for an appointed time. At the end, it shall speak and
not lie. Though it tarry, wait for it.
It shall surely come to pass. Why? Because our God is God and
what he has appointed, what he has appointed cannot be avoided. What he has appointed will come
to pass. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
declaring himself to be the Messiah says, I came to appoint, appoint
unto them that mourn in Zion. Who are these blessings appointed
to? Those who are in Zion. They're
the only ones. Zion is a picture of the body
of Christ The ones called out of the nations, I have set my
king upon my holy hill in Zion. This is the church of the Lord
Jesus Christ represented as we saw in the first hour by the
little ship. This is where Christ meets with
his people. And he said, those who mourn
in Zion, he called himself the rock on which this church would
be built. And the Lord adds to His church
those who should be saved, those whom He has ordained to be saved. And that's the reason why when
Paul writes his epistles to the churches, he addresses the letters
to the church which is at Corinth or the church which is at Philippi
or Thessalonica or Ephesus This is Zion and the only place you're
going to find mourners is in Zion. The only place you're going
to find mourners. So how do I know if I'm in Zion?
Well, have you mourned? Have you mourned? Now let me clarify that. I remember years ago, back before
the Lord taught me the gospel, preaching a message on repentance.
And the message had three points. The first point was, in order
for you to repent, you have to have a sense of sin. And the
second point was, in order for you to repent, you have to have
a sorrow for sin. And the third point was, in order
for you to repent, you have to have a separation from sin. And that's repentance and that's
mourning. Well, I've come to understand
that it's impossible to have a sense of something that you're
completely unaware of. And that's the case with most
of our sin. The only sin that bothers us is the stuff that's
really bad. Most of the stuff just eludes
us completely. How can you repent of something
if it means having a sense of sin? How can you have a sense
of something that you don't even know exists? And the second point
is a sorrow for sin. How can you have a sorrow that
would satisfy... When you apologize to somebody
for something, or someone apologizes to you for something, You want
to know that they have some understanding of the pain that they caused
you in order for you to know that their apology is sincere.
Isn't that true? Otherwise you just figure it's
an insincere apology. They didn't really mean it. They're
just saying it just to try to patch things up. God demanded a sincere apology. And you and I are not capable
of understanding the extent of the pain that we caused him because
of our sin. We can't be sorry enough. Turn to me to Isaiah, I'm sorry,
Psalm 38. Psalm 38. Psalm 38, look at verse 3. There
is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger, neither is there
any rest in my bones because of my sin. When the Lord Jesus
Christ went to Calvary's cross, all those that God put in him
in the covenant of grace before time ever began were in him on
Calvary's cross. And so God was not only punishing
their sin, He was actually exercising His wrath against His people.
That's why in Isaiah chapter 53 verse 10 that God said, I
saw His seed and I prolonged His days and the pleasure of
the Lord prospered in His hand. God's people were in Christ on
Calvary. That's why Paul said, I'm crucified
with Christ, nevertheless I live. And that's why in Romans chapter
six, do you not know that as many as you were baptized into
Christ were baptized into his death so that as Christ died,
we died, we died in him. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
bearing his people owns our sin as his sin because he owns us
as his people. For mine iniquities are gone
over my head as a heavy burden. They are too heavy for me. Verse 11, my lovers and my friends
stand aloof from my sore and my kinsmen stand afar off. They
also that seek after my life lay snare for me and they that
seek my hurt speak malicious things and imagine deceit all
the day long. See, David is speaking prophetically
what the Lord Jesus Christ would experience on Calvary's cross.
Now skip down with me to verse 17. For I am ready to halt and
my sorrow is continually before me for I will declare mine iniquity. I will be sorry for my sin. Now the Lord came to appoint
unto them who mourn in Zion, to give unto them the oil of
gladness for ashes, the joy for heaviness. He came to give His
people who mourn in Zion. How do we mourn? The Lord Jesus
Christ is the only one who is able to mourn. in the sense that
God was satisfied with the sorrow that he experienced as a result
of our sin. He's the only one who had a sense
of sin and he knew every sin that he was bearing. He's the
only one who experienced the sorrow that God required in order
for the justice of God to be satisfied, in order for God to
accept the offering. And he's the only one Separation
from sin, the third point of my old message. Separation from
sin. What sin have you ever separated
yourself from? Completely. In your heart. You see, having a sense of sin
and sorrow for sin and separation from sin is not what it means
to mourn. It's not what it means to mourn. I said that only in Zion will
you find mourners. What is a mourner? A mourner
is one who believes themselves to be nothing but sin. Zechariah chapter 10, when the
spirit of grace and supplication is poured out on the house of
Jerusalem and on the inhabitants of, on the house of Israel and
the inhabitants of Jerusalem, They will mourn after him whom they have pierced as one
mourneth after his only son. Now, when you mourn after somebody,
you're wanting them. You're wanting them. So don't
get this idea that I've got to mourn enough to convince God
that I'm sincerely sorry for my sin in order for God to forgive
me. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ
did on Calvary's cross. When the spirit of supplication
is poured out, we are asking God, supplication means for God
to supply something to me. that I can't supply for myself,
what am I asking Him to do? I'm mourning after the one whom
I pierced. The Lord Jesus Christ died on
Calvary's cross because of my sin. And I'm mourning for His
righteousness. I'm hungry and thirsting after
His righteousness in hopes of being filled. My hope is that
God will supply me with justice satisfied by what the Lord Jesus
Christ accomplishes. You're only going to find that
in Zion. People are not mourning after Christ outside of Zion.
Why? Because the gospel is not being
preached outside of Zion. And only where the gospel of
God's free grace is preached do men mourn after Him and believe
that they pierced Him and that He's the only one who had a sense
of sin, a sorrow for sin, and He's the only one who separated
us from our sin. He's the only one that did it.
How do I know I'm in Zion? Because I'm mourning after Him.
I'm not looking to anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ and
his sacrificial vicarious atoning death on Calvary's cross as the
hope of my righteousness and justice before God. I need Christ. I need a savior. That's what
it means to mourn after him. No hope of salvation whatsoever
outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Lord said, I have come
to a point to establish for those who mourn in Zion. What is he going to appoint to
them? Look, go back with me to our text. to give unto them beauty
for ashes. Now, what is dirtier? Don't you hate cleaning out your
barbecue pit or your fireplace or, I mean, ashes? We had to
convert our fireplace from a wood-burning fireplace to a gas fireplace
because Tricia didn't want any more ashes in her house. you
gotta fix this fireplace. I'm not bringing any more wood
in here. We're not burning any wood in there because ashes get
everywhere. They're dirty. They're useless. And that's what everyone who
mourns in Zion believes about themselves. They believe that about themselves. You say, preacher, you need to
have a higher self-esteem. You know what's the problem with
self-esteem? It's two words, self and esteem. That's the problem. You're not going to get confidence
by esteeming yourself. You get confidence by esteeming
Christ. You get confidence by knowing
that I have an acceptance with God Almighty in the Beloved that
no man can take from me. What does it matter what anybody
else thinks of me? If God be for me, who can be
against me? It's not a matter of let the
world talk about self-esteem all they want. As I said, there's two problems,
self and esteem. Esteem Christ and you'll be confident. If you're confident with God,
what else matters? If you've got confidence before
God, if you can come before the throne of grace with boldness,
with confidence, with courage, with conviction that you have
acceptance, how are you going to do that? looking unto Jesus, the author
and the finisher of your faith, who has appointed unto you beauty
for ashes. There's nothing beautiful about
ashes, but here's what Daniel said, my comeliness was turned
in me. Now you've heard me quote this
verse many times, but I think I left out the in me. A lot of
times I quoted it. Daniel chapter 10, when I saw
him, My comeliness was my beauty and my strength was turned in
me into corruption and I retained no strength. Now that's mourning. I've got no comeliness before
God. I've got no beauty. I've got nothing but ashes. I've
got nothing to offer him. I need a savior. And that's what
the Lord Jesus Christ came to do, to give beauty for ashes. And that's why Ezekiel said in
Ezekiel chapter 16, verse 14, when the Lord speaking of his
church, listen to what he says, thy renown went forth among the
heathen for thy beauty. For it, thy beauty was made perfect
through my comeliness which I put upon thee." When the Lord Jesus Christ speaks
of His church in Song of Solomons, He says, one look from your eye
smites my heart. You're so beautiful, you're captivating. Where do we get our beauty from?
The Lord Jesus Christ came to appoint unto them who mourn in
Zion beauty for ashes. and the oil of joy, the oil of
joy for mourning. You see, rejoicing is always in the Lord. Rejoice over your circumstances. Sometimes circumstances can be
very sad. Sometimes they can be very painful.
Sometimes they can be very difficult. God says, rejoice in the Lord. And again, I say, rejoice. Rejoice in Him. That I am in
Him. You see, God has never seen His
people outside of Christ. He put them in Christ before
time ever began. In the covenant of grace in eternity
past, God took a particular people according to his own will and
purpose and put them in Christ. They've always been in Christ.
I can rejoice in knowing that I was in Christ before the foundation
of the world. I can rejoice in knowing that
I was in Christ when he lived a perfect life of obedience.
I can rejoice in knowing that I was in Christ when he went
to Calvary's cross. I can rejoice in knowing that
I was in Christ when he raised from the dead. offered up for
our offenses and raised again because of our justification,
I can rejoice in knowing that I am in Christ in the heavenlies
right now, right now. And so the Lord said, I've come
to bring the oil. You see that rejoicing, the oil
is a picture of the spirit of God. Aaron was anointed with
oil and the oil was poured on his head and it ran down his
beard to the hymn of his garment. And the whole thing that the
Lord's saying here is that I came as the anointed one, as your
high priest. And then on the day of Pentecost,
he sent his spirit and power to enlighten the eyes of the
understanding of his disciples and cause them to have their
hope in Christ. And so he said, I came to bring
the oil of joy for mourning. and the garment of praise for
the spirit of heaviness. Oh, what is it to have the spirit
of heaviness? Again, do we have to somehow
be so burdened down with weights and that we convince God that
we're truly repentant? No. It means that I cannot remove
one single sin from my life. Now, the natural man goes about
trying to atone for his own sins. Trish and I were talking about
this on the way here this morning, talking about somebody we know
that's involved in some kind of mission work over the seas. And we talked to their parents
the other day. And they're attempting to atone
for themselves, make up for their own sins. You know that you have a spirit
of heaviness when you realize that one sin is too heavy for
you to pick up. You can't move it. If the Lord
should mark iniquity, who should stand? If God should charge you
with one of those sins that you're not even aware of, We're going to go to hell for
it. Lord, I can't, I can't atone for myself. I can't make up for
my sin. I can't remove one bit of guilt. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
came in order to give a garment of praise for a spirit of holiness,
a spirit of heaviness. What is that garment of praise?
It's the same garment that God put on our father Adam in the
garden when he slew that lamb, the lamb that was without spot
and without blemish, the innocent lamb of God. Blood was shed and
his fleece was given as a robe of righteousness for our father
Adam. Cover his nakedness. You see,
we go about, man goes about trying to establish his own righteousness.
And we're still doing what our father Adam did back there in
the garden, sewing together fig leaves, trying to cover our nakedness
before God. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I
came in order to give you a garment of praise for your spirit of
heaviness. That you might be called the
trees of righteousness, which is the plantings of the Lord."
Now in conclusion, listen to what the Lord said. In Matthew
chapter 15, when the Lord rebuked the Pharisees for taking the
commandments of God and turning them into doctrines of men, The disciples came to the Lord
and said, Lord, the Pharisees were offended at what you said. And here's what the Lord said.
Every tree which my heavenly father hath not planted shall
be rooted up. Let them alone. They are blind
guides leading the blind and they shall all fall into the
ditch. Only trees that God's planted
are going to bear fruit. Only trees that God's planted
are going to survive. And here's what he says, I came,
I came in order to appoint. the trees of righteousness which
are the plantings of the Lord. In Psalm 92 verse 12 God says
the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. Now I looked up the word tree
in the dictionary this week and a tree by definition number one
must be made of wood and number two must have branches. A palm tree has neither. Have
you ever seen a piece of furniture made out of a palm tree? It's
not wood. A palm tree is not a tree. It's a plant. We call it a tree, but it's not
really a tree. And the Lord says, My people
shall flourish like a palm tree. Now, on a normal tree, the life
of the tree is right under the bark. So if you take a hatchet
and chop an inch within the ring of a tree, the tree is going
to die. You do that to a palm tree and
it won't die. You know why? Because the life of a palm tree
is in the heart of the tree. It's right in the middle. Everything
else is just dead fibers. The heart of the tree is where
the life is in a palm tree. You see, the trees that men plant
have their life right under their skin. It's just skin deep. And
just cut them a little bit, they'll die. But the righteous, which
are the trees that the Lord's planted, they're like that palm
tree. Their life is in their heart.
God planted them. They're not like other trees
at all. I think I already said this once,
I'll say it one more time in conclusion. Go back with me to
our text. To point unto them that mourn
in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for
mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness,
that they might be called the trees of righteousness, the planting
of the Lord, that he might be glorified. God's people don't take any credit
for their salvation. You won't hear the trees that
God's planted talk about when they accepted Jesus or gave their
heart to Christ or you won't hear them boasting about the
good things that they're doing. That's what conversation we have
with some Friends we knew years ago, they were telling us about
all the wonderful things they're doing for God. You won't hear
believers talk like that. That He, that He might be glorified. He gets all the glory. He gets
all the glory for having chosen us. He gets all the glory for
having redeemed us. He gets all the glory for having
regenerated us. He gets all the glory for keeping
us. He gets all the glory for presenting us before God with
much joy. He's the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end, the first and the last. He gets all
the glory. We don't boast in our... Well,
listen to what Paul said. First Corinthians 127, God hath
chosen the foodless things of the world to confound the wise
God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the
things that are mighty. The base things and the things
which are despised hath God chosen, the things which are not. Do you qualify? Ashes? Mourning? Heaviness? No righteousness? To bring to
naught the things that are that no flesh should glory in His
presence. But of him, of God, are you in
Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us all our wisdom, all our
righteousness, all our sanctification, and all of our redemption, that
according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory
in the Lord. In the Lord. The Lord has appointed it to
be so, and it will be. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we ask that You would bless these
feeble efforts with Your Holy Spirit and cause Your Word to
be effectual in the hearts of Your people. Appoint unto us
joy and gladness. for the ashes and the heaviness. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Number 31, in the Spiral Gospel
Hymns hymn book. Joe, I've got a note to repeat
the last verse. I can't even think of what hymn
we do this to. I'd have to hear it. Okay. Number
31. I don't even know that hymn. I don't even know that hymn. Sorry, folks. Let me see if I
can figure out what this is. Do you know what hymn that is? Hail thou Galilee and Mary and
King. But what's the name of that hymn? Hail thou once despised Jesus. Do we have that in that hymn
book? Okay. No, but that's not this hymn. That's all right. Let's do it to this, Joy. We'll
do this, okay? Sorry. Verses. Here we go. Repeat the last two verses. Hear
the voice of grace and glory in our dying Savior's shrine. Rocks and hills asunder, and
the vale to bring us nigh. It is finished, it is finished,
our victorious Savior cried. It is finished, it is finished,
our victorious Savior cried. It is finished. See God's pleasure
prosper in our risen Lord. Covenant blessings without measure
flow to us by Jesus' blood. It is finished, it is finished,
O how sweet the Saviour's word! It is finished, it is finished,
O how sweet the Saviour's word! Finished all justice demanded. Finished all required by law. Finished all portrayed and promised
in the shadows of the law. It is finished, it is finished. Bow, believe, rejoice with awe. It is finished, it is finished. Bow, believe, rejoice with awe. Jesus finished our salvation
when he died upon the tree. Righteousness and full redemption
for his love and chosen seed. It is finished, hallelujah, praise
the Lamb of Calvary. It is finished, hallelujah, praise
the Lamb of Calvary. Thank you.