Thank you, Joy. It's been nice
having you here, and thanks for your willingness to do it when
you come to visit. Good evening, everyone. Let's open tonight's
service with hymn number 42 in our hardbacked hymnal, number
42, All Hail the Power. Let's all stand together. so ? All hail the power of Jesus'
name ? Let angels prostrate fall ? Bring forth a royal diadem
? And crown him Lord of all ? Bring forth a royal diadem ? And crown
him Lord of all him, Lord of all. Ye chosen seed of Israel's
race, ye ransomed from the fall. Hail him who saves you by his
grace and crowns him lord of all hail him who saves you by
his grace and crown him lord of all ? Let every kindred, every tribe
? On this terrestrial ball ? To him all majesty ascribe ? And
crown him Lord of all to him all majesty ascribe, and crown
him Lord of all. O that with yonder sacred throng
we at his feet may fall, We'll join the everlasting song and
crown him Lord of all. We'll join the everlasting song
and crown him Lord of all. Please be seated. Good evening. I bring you greetings
from your brethren in Springfield, Missouri. I was so encouraged
to see what the Lord is doing there. They have a desire, matter
of fact, they're meeting tonight, watching the services, so we
welcome them. Grace Baptist Church of the Ozarks. And they're renting a community
center, sort of like what we did when we first got started
with the clubhouse in Kingswood. And they're bringing in live
preachers every other week. And then when
they don't have someone live, they have a big screen TV in
the building where they meet and they watch our services.
But they have a very much of a desire to be a church and to
have a pastor, and I was just really encouraged to spend some
time with them. So, Tricia and I appreciate having
the opportunity to do that, and I know you didn't go lacking.
I listened to those messages coming home on the plane Monday,
and boy, what a blessing. What a blessing. I was so thankful
that you all got to hear those two messages from Todd on Sunday. Open your Bibles with me to the
book of Joshua chapter 1. Joshua chapter 1. We cannot say often enough how
much this book is about the Lord Jesus Christ. I can remember
a time past in religion where we would take the characters
of scripture and try to find patterns of living that we could
emulate. But if there's any character
of scripture that typifies the Lord Jesus Christ, it is Joshua. When the Lord says be strong
and courageous to Joshua, He's talking to Christ, talking to
the Lord Jesus Christ about the work of redemption that He's
going to accomplish. Joshua, you know, his name means
exactly the same thing that Jesus means. Jehovah is salvation. Moses was not able to bring the
children of Israel into the promised land because Moses is a picture
of the law. The Jordan River represents death
and the promised land represents heaven and Joshua was the only
one that could bring the people of God into the promised land. And so as we read these verses,
just want us to think about the spiritual application of them
as they relate to Christ. Now, after the death of Moses,
the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto
Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' minister, saying, Moses, my servant,
is dead. The law has been fulfilled. Now
therefore rise, go over this Jordan, thou and all this people,
and to the land which I do give to them, even to the children
of Israel. every place that the sole of
your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said
unto Moses. From the wilderness and this
Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all
the land of the Hittites, unto the great sea towards the going
down of the sun, shall be your coast. There shall not any man
be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. As
I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. I will not fail thee,
nor forsake thee. Be strong and of good courage,
for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the
land which I swear unto their father to give to them. I'm going
to use you to fulfill the promises of the covenant. Only be thou
strong and very courageous that thou mayest observe to do according
to all the law. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
only one that can fulfill that prophecy. He did all the law. which Moses my servant commanded
thee, turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that
thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. God made his way
prosperous, Isaiah chapter 49. This book of the law shall not
depart out of thy mouth. But thou shalt meditate therein
day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all
that is written therein. For then thou shalt make thy
way prosperous. Now in the previous verse, the
Lord's going to make his way prosperous. And now in this verse,
you're gonna make your own way prosperous by your obedience
to the law. and then thou shalt have good
success. Have not I commanded thee? Be
strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou
dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee, whithersoever thou
ghost. Let's pray together. Our merciful
Heavenly Father, how grateful we are to be able to read Thy
Word and have some glimpses of light and understanding as it
relates to the prosperous, successful work of our Joshua, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And oh, how we pray this hour
that You would enable us, bless Your Word, and cause us to find
our rest and all of our success and all of our prosperity in
the accomplished work and glorious person of Thy dear Son. We pray
for our brethren in Missouri. We ask Lord that you would send
them a man after thine own heart and that you would raise up a
gospel work there. We pray for those that are attending
that are yet strangers to your grace and we ask Lord that you
would give them ears to hear. That you would. Knit their hearts
together in the gospel. Save them by thy grace. Or we
ask it in Christ name. Amen. Let's all stand together again,
we'll sing hymn number three in your gospel hymn spiral notebook.
Number three. ? Of covenant mercy I sing ? Nor
fear with thy righteousness on ? My person an offering to bring
? The terrors of law and of God ? With me can have nothing to
do ? My Savior's obedience and blood hide all my transgressions
from view. The work which is goodness began,
the arm of His strength will complete. His promise is yea
and amen. and never was forfeited yet. Things future nor things that
are now, not all things below nor above, can make him his purpose
forego. ? Or sever my soul from His love
? I name from the palm of His hands ? Eternity will not erase
? Impressed on His heart it remains ? In marks of indelible grace
? Yes, I to the end shall endure As sure as the earnest is given,
More happy but not more secure, The glorified Spirit's in heaven. Please be seated. Not sure who wrote that hymn,
but my name in the palm of his hand I wonder if the hymn writer
was thinking about our text tonight. Will you turn with me in your
Bibles to Isaiah chapter 49. Isaiah chapter 49. I've titled this message Comfort
for the Afflicted. comfort for the afflicted. Relating to that hymn we just
sang, look at verse 16. Behold, I have graven thee upon
the palms of my hands. Thy walls are continually before
me. The Lord in the previous verse
says, Will a mother leave its sucking child? That wouldn't
be natural. But if it did happen, I'm not
going to leave you. I'm not going to leave you. I'll never leave you nor forsake
you. I've written your names in the palms of my hand." Every
time he looks at those scars, those nail marks, he sees the
ones for whom he died. and makes them acceptable before
God through the sacrifice that He made on Calvary's cross. What
a glorious Savior we have. What a God. What a promise. I have graven Thee on the palms
of my hands. Look in verse 13. Sing, O heavens,
and be joyful, O earth, and break forth into singing, O mountains,
for the Lord hath comforted his people and will have mercy upon
his afflicted. Not only the child of God that's
got two natures understands, the apparent contradiction in
this verse. This verse speaks of two opposite
things. It speaks of rejoicing with singing,
and it speaks of being afflicted and having a need to be comforted. Truth is that the believer's
greatest affliction is their sin. And the believer's greatest
joy is to know that all their sin has been put away. We have
both experiences, don't we? It's not either or. The Lord said in Hosea chapter
5 verse 15, I will go and return unto my place. God speaking.
He said, I'm going to withdraw the awareness of my presence
from my people until they acknowledge their offense and seek my face. In their affliction, they will
seek me early. So, when the Lord withdraws His
presence, and we're left with our sin, the affliction of that
sin is what drives us to Christ. He said, I'll withdraw myself
from them. And when the burden of their
sin becomes great enough, they'll seek me early. The older shall,
in fact, serve the younger. The believer's greatest affliction
is their own sin. And the flip side of that is
that their greatest joy Their greatest joy is to have the Lord
say to them, your sins are forgiven. They've been put away. I remember
them no more. I've separated them from you
as far as the east is from the west. I've satisfied all the
demands of God's holy justice. Your comfort, your joy, your
singing, your rejoicing is to know that God's not looking to
you for anything. He's not looking to you for anything. He's looking to the Lord Jesus
Christ for everything. And when He looks to Christ,
He's satisfied with what He sees. and pleased to accept those for
whom Christ died. What great joy! Yes, we have
a great affliction with our sin. We're afflicted with the addiction
of our sin. We're afflicted with the fact
that we're slaves to our sin. Did Paul not say in Romans chapter
7, we know that the law is holy, but I am carnal, sold under sin. I'm a slave to it. I can't do
anything but sin, because I do it. It's sinful. And then we
have the accuser of the brethren, who's always trying to accuse
us, and using our sin to do it. What affliction! And then we
have the the affliction of our own conscience, and the affliction
of this world in which we live. We hate our sin, and yet we can't
escape it. All we can do, all we can do
is flee to Christ. And what does He say? I will
have mercy upon my afflicted The only thing that delivers
them from the affliction of sin is grace and mercy. And the one
thing that aggravates their sin more than anything else is the
law. I was thinking about an illustration. My father suffered with With what he called it ulcers
stomach ulcers horribly the whole time I was growing up and And
he would drink cold milk to get relief from his ulcers and I
And it would give him a temporary relief. But as you probably know,
milk is one of the most difficult things to digest and causes your
stomach acid to only produce more. And so in the end, he was
worse off than he was at the beginning. But for that temporary
relief, he'd drink that cold milk and then he'd suffer with
more ulcers. That's kind of the way the law
is, isn't it? We are afflicted, and men run to the law, and they
look to the law for some relief, and in the end, they're worse
off than they were to begin with. They might get some temporary
sense of peace in thinking, well, I've done that right. But when the fullness of the
law is known, turn to me to Proverbs chapter 31. Proverbs chapter
31. Here's a picture of what the
law does to the afflicted, the one who is afflicted with their
sin. The natural man thinks that if
I can just do a little bit better, I can relieve myself of some
of this affliction. And all he's doing is aggravating
his sin. Notice in Proverbs chapter 31,
and you know this is a spiritual picture of the church of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord's counseling his people as to what
kind of church to look for. I preach from this passage in
Missouri Sunday in hopes that it would be an encouragement
to them to know that this is the church of Christ. And he
says in verse 4, he said, It's not for kings, O Lemuel, it is
not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes to drink strong
drink. Now, this is not a prohibition
against any consumption of alcohol. This is a spiritual picture.
The Lord's talking about that spirit of works, where the Lord
said, try the spirits and see whether they be of God. And he'd already mentioned the, the women of the world being
a perversion of the gospel of God's grace. It's a mixture of
works and grace. Law and grace is what it is.
And if it is of grace, it can no longer be of works, otherwise
grace is not grace. We cannot mix the two. But men
by nature do, or they try to. And the Lord's saying, don't
drink of that intoxicating spirit. It will only confuse you and
deceive you. Look what he says, lest they
drink and forget the law. You see, the person who's looking
to law and grace for the hope of their salvation has forgotten
what the law requires. Do you not know what the law
demands? It demands perfect obedience.
The Lord made that clear in the book of Galatians. The man's
going to live by the law. He's got to do every bit of the
law. He's got to keep the whole law. Cursed is everyone that
hangeth upon a tree. Christ suffered the curse of
the law because we weren't able to keep it. lest they drink and
forget the law and pervert the judgment of any of my afflicted."
God's people are afflicted because of their sin. I guess you could
say to some degree all men are afflicted because of their sin.
And then some, because they're drinking of the intoxicating
spirit of a law and grace mixture, they're sabbing their conscience
believing that things are okay when they're not. But in order
to do that, they have to pervert judgment. They have to change
the judgment that God has already declared. They've got to lower
the standard of the law. They've got to believe that God
is somehow satisfied with their keeping of the law. And so in order to, if you drink
of that spirit, you're going to forget what the law says. You're going to have to pervert
the judgment of God, and it's not going to give any relief
to the afflicted. The only relief that the afflicted
can get is pure grace. You saw that Sunday, didn't you? My little children, I write these
things unto you that you sin not. But if any man sin, we have
an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous One."
And those verses in chapter 1, the only thing that gives the
believer any ability to have his sin restrained is to know
that he's nothing but sin. It's to know that he's nothing
but sin. And that in Christ, He's perfectly
righteous before God. What did the Lord say to the
prophet Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 40? Comfort ye, comfort ye, my
people, saith the Lord. Speak ye comfortably unto Jerusalem. Cry unto her. and tell her that
her warfare is accomplished, and that her iniquity has been
pardoned, and that she has received double from the Lord for her
sin. She has perfect righteousness.
The law's been fulfilled. Her sin's been put away. That's
going to be her comfort. She's not going to be comforted
by being told about something that she can do in order to make
things right with God. She's going to be comforted by
hearing what the Lord Jesus Christ has done to put away all her
sin. That's going to be her peace.
That's going to be the relief of her affliction. If you drink of law and grace,
you'll have to forget the law. You'll have to pervert the judgment
of God and there'll be no relief from your affliction. Give strong
drink unto him that is ready to perish, wine unto those who
have a heavy heart. And that word heavy is the word
bitter. And in Proverbs 31 verse six, let those who have a bitter
heart an angry heart against God, a hatred towards God. Let them who have a bitter heart
drink of that spirit. Are you afflicted because of
your sin? Look to Christ. Rest in His finished work. Believe Him. Let him drink, excuse me, let
him drink, verse 7, and forget his poverty. Forget his poverty. Let those
who drink of that spirit of law and grace, let them be intoxicated
by it. Let them forget their poverty. We don't forget that we're mercy
beggars, do we? That's our comfort. In Isaiah
chapter 40, when the prophet asked the Lord, where do I begin
this message? What'd the Lord tell him? What'd
the Lord say to the prophet? Tell them they are grass. The grass withereth. Perisheth. My word endureth forever. Tell
them they're grass and they won't be looking to themselves to relieve
themselves from their affliction. Tell them to look to the same
place I'm looking for the relief of their affliction. Tell them
they can't do anything to make up for their sin. They can't
do anything to make up for their sin. The strength of sin is the law. All the law does is inspire more
sin. That's all it does. You put men
under the law and all they're going to do is be moved to be
more rebellious. I can remember years ago I used
to work in finance business. I think I shared this with you
all some time ago, but we had an unspoken, unwritten policy
in our office in that we would not loan money to politicians,
policemen, or preachers. They wouldn't pay their bills,
generally speaking. And I got to thinking about it
years later, well, politicians write the law, policemen enforce
the law, and preachers interpret the law. And these are men that
are all having to do with the law, and they're lawless. The law is for the lawless. Sin shall not have dominion over
you, for you are not under the law, you're under grace." You're
under grace. The only thing that's going to
restrain your affliction, the only thing that's going to inhibit
bad behavior is grace. It's grace. Knowing that I'm
nothing but sin, The and that I'm nothing but
grass or what deliverance there is in that The believers greatest affliction
is a sin David said in Psalm 51 my sin is ever before me I
Paul said in Romans chapter 7, Todd read that whole passage
Sunday morning, to will is present with me, to how to perform that
which is good I find not. I find not. I've got this evil
nature. When I would do good, evil is
ever present with me. Oh, wretched man that I am! Who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? That's my greatest
affliction. My greatest affliction is not
a bad relationship with another man. It's not financial problems. It's not physical sickness. My
greatest affliction is my sin. And that's been true for every
child of God. And the Lord said, I'm going to comfort my afflicted.
I'm going to show them mercy. Turn to me to Psalm 25. Look at verse 16. Turn thee unto me and have mercy
upon me for I am desolate and afflicted. It's my sin. Now I'm not suggesting that the
affliction of our sin, we're going to see this in Isaiah chapter
53 in a moment, he was afflicted and he knew what real affliction
of sin was. But when God the Holy Spirit
reveals to us our unrighteousness, the fact that we cannot do anything
to earn favor with or any merit with God, We've come to realize
that we're sinful. We're afflicted to the point
to where we become mercy beggars. And so he says, turn thee unto
me and have mercy upon me for I am desolate. I don't have anything. I'm poverty stricken. I've got nothing to offer God
that would turn Him towards me. and I am afflicted, the troubles
of my heart are enlarged. Oh, bring thou me out of my distresses. Look upon my affliction and my
pain and forgive all my sins. It's my sin that's caused my
affliction. It's my sin that's caused my
pain. Consider mine enemies, for they are many and they hate
me with a cruel hatred. How many enemies do you have? God's made you to be a sinner.
You've got a whole bunch of them, don't you? And they just happen
to be sitting in the same seat you're sitting in right now,
aren't they? Lord, deliver me from my enemies.
Help thou mine unbelief. And that's a cry for God to restrain
your flesh. You see, the new man believes
God perfectly. With all of his heart, all of
his mind, and all of his soul, he believes God. The old man's
never believed God. And so when that man said, I
believe, he said, my new man believes, help thou mine unbelief. I've got this old man that won't
ever believe God. And he's my enemy. And I can't
control him? How am I going to control the
old man? Grace! Grace, not the law! Don't try
to control the old man with the law. All you'll do is aggravate
him. The strength of sin is the law. Coming to realize that you're
nothing but sin, that you're grass, that Christ has put away
all your sin and that you have perfect righteousness before
God. That's the only comfort the afflicted
can get. Oh, verse 20, keep my soul and
deliver me. Let me not be ashamed for I put
my trust in thee. All I know to do is look to Christ. I can't grip my teeth and bolster
my commitment and pull myself up by my bootstraps and just
say, well, I'm going to do better, I'm going to pray more, I'm going
to stop this and start that. That's putting yourself under
the law. All you're going to do is get
worse. All I know to do is look to Christ.
Let integrity and uprightness preserve me. Robert, you preached
on integrity a couple of Wednesday nights ago. The integrity of
the Lord Jesus Christ. His uprightness. Let Him preserve
me. For all I know to do is wait
on Thee. To wait on Thee. to trust Christ,
to rest in him, to wait upon the Lord, redeem Israel, oh God,
out of all his troubles. What is your trouble? What is
your trouble? Your big trouble. I know y'all have heard me say
this before, I'll say it again. Any trouble you've got that time
or money will solve is not the kind of trouble I'm talking about. And every other trouble that
we have in this life, either time or money is going to fix
it. There's one trouble you and I have that no amount of time
and no amount of money can solve. That's my affliction. That's
my trouble. That's my enemy. That's my old
man. My God, give us the grace to
acknowledge that old man for what he is. He's nothing but
sin. And to look to our Advocate,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who ever lives to make intercession for
us. Oh, we do have an affliction.
Here's what the Lord said, I have seen the affliction of my people
Egypt You see what afflicts us most
about our sin is the taskmaster That's when sin afflicts us Sin
afflicts us when we when we think that we can fix it When we when we look to the law
to improve on it that's when that's when sin afflicts us and
I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt. And every attempt we make to
meet the quota of making of bricks, the quota just keeps going up,
doesn't it? Can't ever achieve it. Turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter 26. Deuteronomy chapter 26 at verse
6. And the Egyptians evil entreated
us and afflicted us and laid upon us hard bondage. Now that's my experience in trying
to fix my sin problem with the law. And when we cried unto the Lord
God of our fathers. The Lord heard our voice and
looked on our affliction and our labor and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of
Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and
with great terribleness and with signs and with wonders. He has
brought us out to this place and has given us this land, even
the land that floweth with milk and honey. What a picture of
the gospel! What a picture of law and grace!
This whole book is about law and grace. Everything in this
book is about law and grace. It's
about the Lord Jesus Christ. But it's constantly contrasting
what we are by nature drawn to. We are by nature drawn to the
law. It is a supernatural work of grace to be drawn to grace. The natural man won't have it.
He's going to pride himself in something. God has to do a work
of grace. It's not of him that willeth,
nor of him that runneth. It's of God that showeth mercy.
The Lord's got to show us what pure grace is, doesn't he? We'll
go to the law every time. in our affliction. Go back with
me to our text. Sing, O Heavens, verse 13. and be joyful, O earth, and break
forth into singing, O mountains, for the Lord hath comforted his
people. Has he comforted you? If he has,
he's convinced you that you're grass, that you're nothing but
sin. He's caused you to cast all your
care on the one who careth for you. He's enabled you to look
to the Lord Jesus Christ for all your righteousness and you're
able to rest right there in Him. He will have mercy. He will have
mercy upon his afflicted. Now, turn over with me just a
couple of pages to Isaiah chapter 53. In Deuteronomy chapter 16, the
Lord is describing the Passover. And here's what He says, Thou
shalt eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days thou shalt eat
unleavened bread, the bread of affliction. For thou camest forth
out of the land of Egypt, All the days of thy life. All the days of thy life you're
coming out of Egypt. And we're still coming out of
Egypt, aren't we? We're still prone to try to figure out something
we can do. That's why we have to keep hearing
the gospel, isn't it? And the Lord calls that unleavened bread
the bread of affliction. Whose affliction? Well, we know
what that unleavened bread represents, don't we? It represents the sinless
life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And God says you shall eat no
leaven during Passover. If you have any hope of me passing
over you and the death angel not destroying you, it'll be
because there'll be no leaven, the bread of affliction. It was
His affliction. We are afflicted, praise God,
thank God, that the Spirit of God does a work of grace convicting
us of our sin. Now, don't think for a moment
that when you're convicted of sin that you've got a full understanding
of your sin. You don't. You don't. Todd dealt with this in 1 John
chapter 1, Sunday morning. If we confess our sins, agree
with God, speak the same thing about our sin that God says about
it, Lord, I have nothing to offer you but sin. That's it. That's what it is to be afflicted.
But the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the bread of affliction, had
an understanding of what affliction sin really causes. Notice with
me in verse 4, Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried
our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God,
and afflicted. but he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep
have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way, and
the Lord, the Father, hath laid on the Son the iniquity of us
all. He was oppressed, And he was
afflicted. He was afflicted. He drank damnation dry. He suffered the full wrath of
the sword of God's justice. because of our sin, bearing our
sin in his body as he's described here. He was oppressed and he
was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was brought
as a lamb to the slaughter and as sheep before her shearers
is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. He owned our sins as his
own. He had no defense. He was guilty
before God. with the affliction of sin. He was taken from prison and
from judgment and who shall declare his generation for he was cut
off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people
was he stricken and he made his grave with the wicked and with
the rich in his death because he had done no violence neither
was any deceit in his mouth yet it pleased the Lord to bruise
him. He hath put him to grief. When
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed
and shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall
prosper in his hand. He, the Father, shall see the
travail of his soul, his affliction." You see, Don't take your affliction
to God as a penance for sin. Don't do it. Don't think that,
well, if I can just suffer some affliction for my sin, and I'll
bring my repentance to God, and He'll be obligated to receive
me. No, He won't. You can't feel the affliction
of your sin. Christ did. He did. And God saw the travail of his
soul, and was satisfied. By his knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquity. And I will divide I will divide
him a portion with the great, and shall divide the spoil with
the strong." In Proverbs 31, when the Lord's
talking about the church and the virtuous woman, He said,
and she has no need for spoil. Why? Because her husband's already
provided it. She is the spoil. She is the
spoil. God divided to Christ the spoils
of war. The labor that He had done rewarded
Him with His bride. Comfort. Comfort for the afflicted. Our affliction is our sin. We
have just a moment. Let me let me ask you if you
will to turn with me to Jonah Jonah Jonah chapter 2 Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord
his God out of the fish's belly and said, I cried by reason of
my affliction." Have you ever been in the dark
dungeon of shame and guilt? Separation from God all because
of your sin? Condemnation? By reason of mine affliction
unto the Lord, and he heard me out of the belly of hell, cried
I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hast cast me into the
deep, in the midst of the seas, and the floods can pass me about.
All my billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said,
I am cast out of thy sight, Yet I will look again toward thy
holy temple. The waters come past me about,
even to the soul. The depth closed round about
me. The weeds were wrapped around
my head. I went down to the bottom of the mountains. The earth with
her bars was about me forever. Yet hast thou brought up my life
from corruption, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord and my prayer. came into thee and to
thy holy temple. They that observe lying vanities
forsake their own mercy. They that look to law and grace
to be delivered from this affliction. Can you see yourself in the belly
of the whale? In the affliction of sin? But I will sacrifice unto thee
with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that that I have vowed
salvation. Salvation is of the Lord. And the Lord spake unto the fish
and had vomited out Jonah upon dry land. Jonah cried in his affliction
and the Lord heard him. The Lord Jesus Christ cried in
His affliction, and the Father heard Him. It is the affliction of sin that
caused Christ to go to the cross. It's the affliction of our sin
that causes us to go to Christ. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we pray that You would Reveal
to our hearts the glorious person of thy dear
son. Give us a glimpse of his glory, his lordship, his
accomplished work. And enable us, Lord, in faith
to flee to him for our comfort. For our joy and for our rejoicing,
we ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Brother Tom. Number 186. Let's stand together.
186. The Church's one foundation is
Jesus Christ, her Lord. She is His new creation by water
and the Word. From heaven he came and sought
her to be his holy bride. With his own blood he bought
her, and for her life he died. Elect from every nation, Her charter of salvation, One
Lord, one faith, one birth. One holy name she blesses, Partakes
one holy food, And to one hope she presses, With every grace
endued. Mid toil and tribulation and
tumult of her war, she waits the consummation of peace forevermore. the vision glorious, her longing
eyes are blessed, and the great church victorious shall be the
church at rest. Yet she on earth hath union with
God the Three in One, and mystic, sweet communion with those whose
rest is won. O happy ones and holy, Lord,
give us grace that we, like them, the meek and lowly, on high may
dwell with Thee. Thank you very much.