The Lord enables you to remember
the church in Spring Lake, North Carolina this week. be very much appreciated. I know by them and by me, they've
asked me to come up and preach for them next Sunday. Rupert
is not able to preach at all. And so I'll be there next weekend. And Hugo and Robert will be bringing
the messages here next Sunday. But I covet your prayers, and
I know the church there does. Psalm 34 verse 1, I will bless
the Lord at all times. His praise will continuously
be on my lips. Oh, might God enable us to bless
Him. In another place he says, Rejoice
in the Lord, O ye righteous, for praise is comely for the
upright. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.
God, give us the grace and the faith to see the beauty of Christ
as we join our hearts and voices together in praise to him. Bert's going to come lead us
in the hymn on the back of your bulletin. Let's stand together.
? Be known to us in breaking bread
? ? But do not them depart ? ? Savior abide with us and spread ? ?
Thy table in our hearts ? There eat with us in love divine Thy
body and thy blood That living bread, that heavenly wine Be
our immortal food Be known to us in breaking bread,
but do not then depart. Savior, abide with us and spread
thy table in our hearts. There eat with us in love divine
thy body and thy blood, that living bread, that heavenly wine,
be our immortal food. May we sing. Good morning. Please turn to
Psalm 145. Thank you, brother, for that
message. All week is the Lord's tried to prepare my heart. He
hasn't tried to do anything. He's prepared my heart. To bring
this reading this morning. I thought about the union that
we have in Christ. We were reminded of that on Wednesday.
We were also reminded this morning In this psalm, I know they're
not words that I would speak. It's words that this new man
would speak, and that new man is in Christ. Verse one, I will
extol thee, my God, O King, and I will bless thy name forever
and ever. Every day will I bless thee,
and I will praise thy name forever and ever. That's my hope. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and
his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise thy
works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. Having a new
grandchild has certainly made this passage of scripture come
to light in my heart and I pray that I would do that for him. I will speak of the glorious
honor of thy majesty and of thy wondrous works and men shall
speak of the might of thy terrible acts and I will declare thy greatness
They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness
and shall sing of thy righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great mercy. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we are so thankful that you have brought us all here today. We
asked Lord that you would open our hearts to receive your word. Open our eyes that we may see
the glory of Christ Jesus, our Redeemer. Lord, put in our ears
your word and your word alone. I ask, Father, that you would
be with our pastor, our watchman, and all those men who stand on
the wall and declare your grace and your mercy, that you would
give them boldness to speak truth. And that truth is of Jesus Christ,
our Lord. God, our hearts and our mind
in Christ Jesus. For these things we ask in his
name. Amen. I'm hoping everybody has a blue
handout. You should. We're going to sing the hymn
number five, Come Ye Sinners, number five. And if you could
please stand. Come ye sinners poor and wretched,
weak and wounded, sick and sore. Jesus ready stands to save you,
full of pity, joy, with power. He is able, He is able, He is
willing, doubt no more. He is able, He is able, He is
willing, doubt no more. Come, ye needy, come and welcome,
God's free bounty glorify. True belief and true repentance,
every grace that brings us nigh. Without money, without money,
come to Jesus Christ and buy. Without money, without money,
call to Jesus Christ and buy. Let not conscience make you linger,
nor a fitness fondly dream. All the fitness He requires is
to have a need of Him. This He gives you, this He gives
you, Tis the Spirit's glimmering beam. This He gives you, this
He gives you, Tis the Spirit's glimmering beam. I'm ye weary, heavy laden, bruised
and broken by the fall. If you tarry till you're better,
you will never come at all. Not the righteous, not the righteous
sinners Jesus came to call. Not the righteous, not the righteous
sinners Jesus came to call. You may be seated. We're going
to have special music now. When peace like a river attendeth
my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll, Whatever my lot,
thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. It is well. It is well. With my soul. with my soul. It is well, it is well with my
soul. Though Satan should buffet, though
trials should come, Let this blessed assurance control That
Christ hath regarded my helpless estate And hath shed his own
blood It is well. It is well. With my soul. With my soul. It is well. It is well with my soul. My sin, O the bliss of this glorious
thought, My sin not in part, but the whole, Is nailed to the
cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Oh, my soul. It is well. It is well. With my soul. With my soul. It is well. It is well. With my soul. And Lord, haste the day when
my faith shall be sighed. The clouds be rolled back as
a scroll. The trump shall resound, and
the Lord shall descend. Even so, it is well with my soul. It is well. It is well. With my soul. With my soul. It is well. They need to do that more often,
don't they? That was great. That was a real
blessing. Thank you, Dunbar's. Will you turn in your Bibles
with me to Isaiah chapter 41. Isaiah 41. I discovered something about
God's Word in preparing for this message that I didn't know until
this week. It'd be easy enough for anybody
to discover it with the tools that we have available to us
now. But I found out this week that
the word commitment is nowhere to be found in the Word of God. Nowhere. Now, in 1 Peter 4, verse 19,
God says, let them that suffer according to the will of God
commit the keeping of their souls to him in well-doing as unto
a faithful creator. And Paul said, I know whom I
have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that
which I have committed unto him, but those words mean to make
a deposit, to trust. It doesn't mean resolve. It doesn't mean, you know, personal
strength and commitment. It means the same thing when
the Lord said in John chapter 2 verse 24, Jesus did not commit
himself unto them for he knew the hearts of men. Those were
the people who called themselves his disciples, but he did not
commit himself unto them. I fear that A lot of preaching
is nothing more than motivational speaking in an attempt to get
people to step up their commitment. Just be a little more committed
and everything will go well. In Proverbs 31 verse 9 and that Virtuous woman spoken of there
in Proverbs 31 is a description of the church. And this is what
God says about his bride. She pleads the cause of the poor
and the needy. Now there's the description that
God gives to us. Poor, and needy. If God ever makes you poor and
needy, you will commit your soul to him. So my objective this morning
is not to try to inspire a higher level of commitment on your part
or on my part, but in hopes that the Lord will make us poor and
needy. I mean, that principle applies
even to the things of the flesh. How many commitments have you
made in your life for diet and exercise that you haven't stuck
to? And yet, when the pain exceeds the pleasure, Now you become
poor and needy. I've had conversations with several
people this week who have suffered serious physical problems as
a result of a very poor diet and very poor exercise, and now
they're poor and needy. I gotta get a handle on this
or I'm gonna die. You see, it's not a matter of
commitment, it's a matter of being poor and needy. And that principle applies most
especially to the keeping of our souls. Are you poor? Are you needy? Most folks aren't. Most folks
aren't. The first mention of poor and
needy, we're gonna get to Isaiah 41 in just a moment, but the
first mention of poor and needy, and it's mentioned many times
in the word of God, is found in Deuteronomy chapter 24, where
the scripture says, thou shalt not oppress the hired servant
who is poor and needy. Now, that's what, The Pharisees
were doing when the Lord cleansed the temple. They were oppressing
the poor and the needy by making salvation a work that was accomplished
by the one coming in. And the Lord said that they made
the house of prayer into a den of thieves. They were oppressing
the poor and the needy by requiring the poor and the needy to make
a contribution for their salvation. And the Lord said, don't oppress
the poor and the needy. That verse goes on to say, whether
it be a brother or whether it be a stranger within thy gates,
don't oppress the poor and the needy. Don't make salvation something
that they can't afford. God makes you poor, you know
you don't have anything to bring. He makes you needy. You're completely
dependent upon Him. Don't oppress the poor and the
needy. Plead the cause of the poor and
the needy. In Psalm 40, chapter 40, verse
17, I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me. That's who He thinks upon. He
thinks upon the poor and the needy. Those who are not poor,
they have no reason to believe that God's thoughts for them
are good. Those who are not needy, the
Lord will let them fend for themselves until the realization of their
inability comes all crashing down in the day of their death. Are you poor? Are you needy? You see, I know that if God makes
us poor and needy, we're going to, we're going to commit to
him. And it's not going to be a personal resolve and commitment.
And I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do better and I'm going
to be more, uh, no, no, I'm going to lay everything down on the
altar. Confessing my total dependence upon Him for all my riches and
for all my ability. Psalm 70 verse 5 says, I am poor
and needy. Make haste, O God, Thou art my
help and my deliverer. The Lord makes you poor and needy.
You're going to cry out to God, God, make haste, make haste. Come to me. You are my help. You are my deliverer. I can't
provide for myself. Lord, I'm poor and needy. He
shall spare the poor and the needy. Psalm 72 verse 13, and
shall save the souls. of the needy. Now that's what
I need. I need the Lord to save my soul.
Do you know how I want Him to save your soul? He saves only
the poor and the needy. He doesn't save those who have
a greater commitment. He saves the poor and the needy. You have your Bibles open to
Psalm Isaiah 41. Verse 17, when the poor and the
needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth
for thirst, I, the Lord, will hear them. I, the God of Israel,
will not forsake them. Lord, I'm dying of thirst. I've
tried drinking out of the polluted cisterns of this world and they
only make me sick. Lord, I'm sick with sin. I need that water that comes
from the river, which flows clear as crystal from the throne of
God. Oh, Lord, smite the rock. I live in a wilderness. I pray,
Lord, that the rod of the law would smite the Lord Jesus Christ
on Calvary's cross, and the water of Your grace would flow and
that you would satisfy my soul. Lord, I'm poor and needy. I can't
find any place else to drink. I'm shut up to you. I've got
no place else to go. Verse 18, here's the Lord's promise
to the poor and to the needy. I will open rivers in high places. Oh Lord, that's what I need you
to do. I need you to open the windows of heaven. In that high
place, I need you to cause the river of life to flow. I need
you to give me a fountain to drink from like you gave to that
woman at the well when you said, if you drink of this water you'll
thirst again, but if you drink of the water that I give you,
you shall never thirst. Lord, that's what I need. I need
a water that will cause me not to thirst anywhere else. I will open rivers in high places
and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a
pool of water and the dry springs and the dry land springs of water. Lord, that's what I need. I will. You see, those who aren't
poor and needy don't depend upon God's will, they depend upon
their will. They say, I will. I will set myself on the throne
of God. I will have it my way. I will
let God save me. Oh, that's one who's not poor.
One who thinks that he's going to obligate God to save him by
his will. I will plant in the wilderness
the cedar and the shita tree and the myrtle and the oil tree
and I will set in the desert the fir tree and the pine and
the box tree together. There we are. Each one of us a different tree.
And yet together the trees of righteousness which are the plantings
of the Lord make up his forest. He said I'm going to do it. that
they may see and know and consider and understand together that
the hand of the Lord hath done this, the Holy One of Israel
hath created it. How do I know that I've been
poor and needy? Because he's made me rich and he's satisfied
my soul. And I know that he did it. He
did it. And most folks are not poor. Not biblically speaking. They don't believe themselves
to be without anything. They believe that they've got
something to bring that's going to in some way obligate God to
their salvation. Ask the poorest person that you
can find about their soul and they will tell you something
about their good works or something about their free will. When the
Lord spoke to the Jews about no man can come unto me unless
the Father which sent me draw him. The scripture says this
is a hard saying. Who can hear it? That word hard
does not mean hard to understand. It means harsh. It means inflexible. And many of his disciples went
out from him from that day. Why? It wasn't that they didn't
understand that they couldn't save themselves. is that they
didn't believe it. It was too inflexible. It was
too harsh. It was too hard for them to swallow. Why? Because they weren't poor.
They weren't poor and needy. They thought they had something
that they could bring. I must do something to enable
God to accept me. That's what most folks believe.
I've got to do something. To enable God to accept me. He can't accept me like I am.
I've got to do my part. God's done his part and I've
got to do my part. Those who are poor have nothing to bring. It is not of him that willeth.
It is not of him that runneth. It's of God that showeth mercy.
I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy. and whom I will,
I'll harden." That's a hard saying. That's inflexible. Most folks
won't receive it. Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now that doesn't mean
that God's going to bless you with the kingdom of heaven if
you become poor in spirit. That means that if you're poor
in spirit, you've been blessed of God and you've got the promise
of the kingdom of heaven. Oh Lord, make me poor. Make me
poor. Make me so that I've got nothing.
I can't do anything. I don't know anything. I'm in
abject poverty. Has God made you poor? That's
who the gospel's for. And the degree of your commitment, you committing your soul to God,
will be a reflection of how poor you are. The Lord said to the church at
Laodicea, Oh, I fear this for our church. I don't want us to
be lukewarm. The Lord said, if you were hot,
or you were cold, I'd have mercy on you. But because you're lukewarm,
I'm going to spew you out of my mouth. Why were they lukewarm? Because thou sayest, I am rich
and increased in goods and in need of nothing. And knowest
not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind
and naked. I'm somebody. I've got something
to offer. No, you don't. You're poor. You're blind. You're naked. You're miserable. I counsel thee
to buy of me gold tried in the fire. Oh, Lord, if I'm going
to have any value before God, I'm going to have it in Christ.
that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment, that thou mayest
be clothed, that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear,
and anoint thine eyes with eye salve. Oh, Lord, I need the robe
of righteousness. I need Christ. I need you to
open the eyes of my understanding for me to be able to see. No
amount of intellect, no amount of education, no amount of study,
no amount of effort on my part's gonna do it. Lord, I'm poor. to the Gospels for. He shows
mercy to the poor and to the needy and most folks aren't poor.
They're not. You know you've seen men and women on the street corner
begging and you look at that and you think You know, sometimes
they look like healthy people that could work. And you think,
have you lost all your dignity? I think that. Yep, they have. And the only way you're going
to be a mercy beggar is for you to lose all your dignity. That's a hard saying, isn't it? Have you lost all your dignity?
Have you lost all your beauty, all your ability, all your strength,
all your wealth? For you know that the grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sakes
he became poor, that you through his poverty might be made rich."
There's the gold. There's the gold. The Lord became
a poor worm. That's what he calls himself
in Psalm 22. And that's right here in our
text. Look at Look at verse 10 in Isaiah 41. Fear thou not, for I am with
thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy
God. I will strengthen thee, yea,
I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand
of my righteousness. This is a precious promise to
someone that's poor. This is hope for our soul if
we've got nothing. Behold, all they that were incensed
against thee shall be ashamed and confounded. There was a time
when I wasn't poor. There was a time when my self-righteousness
caused me to believe that I had something that I could bring
to God that would cause Him to have mercy upon me. And I was
incensed against him. And now I'm confounded. Now I'm ashamed of those things
that I tried to bring to God. And the Lord says of Christ,
He says there's going to be a time when all those who are incensed
are going to be ashamed and they're going to be confounded. And those
who won't be ashamed, and those who won't be confounded, those
who won't lose all their dignity, look what the scripture says
about them. They shall be as nothing, and they that strive
with thee shall perish. So, all that are ashamed and
all that are confounded have become as nothing. As nothing. Has God made you a nothing? If you're not a nothing, you're
not poor. You're not poor. You're poor
when God makes you a nothing before God. You stand in the
presence of God and you are an absolute nothing, completely
dependent upon that one who was rich who became poor for you.
That through his poverty you might be made rich. And you're
seeking Him for that gold which is refined in a fire. And you're
looking to Him for that robe of righteousness that your nakedness
might be covered. And you're pleading with Him
for the eyesalve to open the eyes of your understanding so
that you can see the truth. You're poor! And those who are not that way
will perish. That's what God says. I don't
want to perish. I don't want you to perish. I
want God to make us poor. Lord, make me poor. Make me a mercy beggar. Thou shalt seek them and shall
not find them. God's speaking to Christ and
saying all that are incensed against you, all that are your
enemies, You're not going to find them anymore. Why? Because
some of them are going to become your footstool. They're going
to be ashamed of their self-righteousness and they're going to bow. And
they're no longer going to be at enmity with you. And the rest
of them are going to perish. So that in the end, Christ will
have no one standing against him. Thou shalt seek them and shall
not find them. Even them that contended with
thee, they that war against thee shall be as nothing and as a
thing of naught. God made of naught. He made nothings out of his children
in order to cause them to be poor and needy. For I, the Lord
thy God, will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear
not, I will help thee. Fear not, thou worm, Jacob. You know, when we contend with
one another to see who's got the, you know, the upper hand,
it's just one worm, you know, saying to another worm, you know,
I got a better place in the dirt than you do. Are you poor? Has God made you
a worm? You know, people sing amazing
grace, they don't believe that they're wretched. blind, worms. How sweet the sound that saved
a wretch like me. You hear people sing that? They
don't believe that about themselves. The gospel and all salvation
is only for the poor. Only for the poor. For I, the Lord thy God, will
hold thy right hand, fear not. Behold, verse 15, I will make
thee a sharp threshing instrument, having teeth, and thou shalt
thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and thou shalt make
the hills as cliffs. The Lord said if you had faith
as a mustard seed, you could say unto this mountain, be thou
be removed, and it would be cast into the sea. Now mountains are
barriers. We don't live around mountains
here, but if you've been around mountains, you know you can't
get from one side of the mountain to the other very easily. And
what does the scripture say that separates us from our God? Our
sin. When the Lord makes you poor,
you realize that that which once separated you from your God has
been cast into the depths of the sea. You're looking to Christ. And there's no more separation
and no more sea. Not only has the sin gone away,
the seed's gone away. Oh, that's what I need. It's
for the poor and the needy. Thou shalt fan them, and the
wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them,
and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the
Holy One of Israel. Who are you glorying in? We like to glory in ourselves,
don't we? We like the praise of men. I'm talking about right
now in your heart. In your heart, do you have anything
to glory in before God? Or are you naked and miserable
and poor and blind with nothing before God? It's who the gospel's
for. The poor and the needy. Very quickly, the Lord throughout
the Old Testament gave the children of Israel some laws concerning
the taking care of the poor. And there's a spiritual application
of these laws. One of the laws was that when
you harvested your field, you could not go back and glean the
field. You couldn't pick up the scraps
that were left over. You had to leave them there so
that the poor could come in and have something to eat. And that's
the story of Ruth, isn't it? Going to Boaz's field and she
haps upon Boaz's field and she gleans his field. Why? Because
her and Naomi were destitute. And the Lord provided for her
in the gleaning of that field. There's always bread for the
poor. They left Moab and they came to Bethlehem, the house
of bread. God has provided for the poor
their daily bread. Secondly, on the seventh year,
God required the children of Israel not to plant or harvest
on the sabbatical year. And the poor were given free
reign of whatever came up. So those who had no land, those
who couldn't plant for themselves, all these fields, the seeds that
were left in them from the previous year would sprout and things
would grow. But it was against the law for
anyone to harvest it. It was given to the poor. And
not only were the fields given to the poor, but they were forbidden
on the sabbatical year, the seventh year, they were forbidden to
pick the olives or the grapes. They were to leave everything
for the poor. Oh, that sabbatical year was
the year of rest. And that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ came to do. He came to give us rest so that
the poor have free reign to everything that God provides. And then on the 50th year, the
seventh sabbatical was the year of Jubilee. And the trumpet would
sound. And on that year, all slaves
were set free. And all land reverted back to
its original owner. And all debt was to be canceled. And God gave that in the law
for the poor. Why? Picturing what the Lord
Jesus Christ did for us. He's the one who brought in the
year of Jubilee. He's the one who delivers the
poor from their debt of sin to God. He's the one that restores
to them what they lost in their father Adam, and he's the one
that delivers them from the curse of the law, the bondage of death. Another law that God gave to
the children of Israel was that usury or interest on a loan was forbidden
for the poor. If you loan a poor man money,
you cannot charge him interest. He never pays back to you more
than you gave him. Oh, what a picture of our salvation.
God always, He always gives us more than we ever give Him, doesn't
He? He never charges usury. And if that poor man gave to
you for his pledge, for that loan, his garment, which is all
he had, you could not keep that garment at night. Before sunset,
you had to give him his garment back. Why? Because that was the
only hope of warmth that he had in his rest, in his sleep. The Lord's speaking of his care
for his poor. I'll care for you. I'm not going
to charge you usury. You're always going to get more
from me than what you ever give to me. I'm that sabbatical year. I'm
the year of Jubilee. The field is always ready for
harvest. Give us Lord this day another
law that God gave the children of Israel for the poor was that
they had to be paid at the end of the day. You could not keep
their payment for the end of the week or for the next day. You remember the parable the
Lord told about those laborers that came and they paid them
each at the end of the day? Every poor man had to receive
his wages for that day. He depended upon those wages
to be able to go home and buy bread for his family for that
day. Oh Lord, give us this day our
daily bread. Lord, I'm poor. I'm poor. I can't collect enough wages
to get me through tomorrow. I need daily bread. And every time I try to save
over something for tomorrow, it just gets full of worms and
rots. Are you poor? Do these laws that
God gave to the children of Israel describe your spiritual condition
before God? Poor and needy. Needy. Do you have a need? Do you have a need to be saved? I'm not saying are you committed
to follow God by which He'll reward you with salvation. I'm
saying has He made you needy? So how do I know if I'm needy? When the Spirit of God comes,
he will convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of
judgment. Has the Holy Spirit convicted
you of sin? Now, I've had people say to me,
you know, yeah, the Spirit of God's convicted me of sin because
I feel guilty when I sin. If you were a Jew or a Muslim
and you mistakenly ate a piece of bacon, you would suffer great
pains of conscience for that. Does that mean that you were
convicted by the Holy Spirit because you ate a piece of bacon? If you were a fundamentalist teetotaler and
you drank a beer, You would suffer great pains of conscience for
having let alcohol touch your lips. Does that mean you experience
the conviction of the Holy Spirit? Now, don't discount your conscience,
don't violate your conscience. Your conscience is your first
line of defense. But your conscience is not the
conviction of sin. A lot of people feel guilty about
things. Read John Bunyan, who was the
author of Pilgrim's Progress, wrote in his biography, and this
confuses me, I don't know any way to explain it, but the sin
that God convicted him of, that he says was the beginning of
his seeking after Christ, was playing ball as a boy in the
yard on the Sabbath day. Now, I can't explain that. All
I'm saying to you is that feeling guilty for something is not the
evidence that you have a need. And neither is it the evidence
that you have a need that you've come to believe that everything
about you is sinful. You've heard that enough to where
to where if you've sat under the gospel for any length of
time, you know that the scripture teaches that in me that is in
my flesh dwelleth no good thing and that everything about me
is sinful. But that in and of itself is
not evidence that God has convicted you of sin. What is the evidence that the
Spirit of God has done a work of conviction in my heart? and
that he has caused me to be a sinner and made me to have a need for
Christ? The answer is very simple. When
my sin has led me to Christ. When I look upon him whom I have
pierced, when I see that I have no hope
outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn to me to Zechariah. Next to the last book in the
Old Testament, Zechariah chapter 12. Verse 10. And I will pour upon the house
of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace
and supplication. How do I know if God has poured
out the spirit of grace and supplication upon me? Is it because I feel
guilty for something that I did? Is it because I've come to the
conclusion that everything about me is sinful? Those are not Those are not sufficient
evidence to know that I've got a need. Here's the evidence that
I have a need. And they shall look upon me whom
they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth
for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him as one
that is in bitterness for his firstborn. I'm looking to the
Lord Jesus Christ hanging on Calvary's cross, and I believe
that my sin did that to him. that He bore my sins in His body
upon that tree, that the One who is holy, harmless, undefiled,
and separate from sinners, my Creator, the sustainer of all
my life, the God of glory, the Holy One of Israel, The only
hope for righteousness that I have took my sin on Him on the cross
and God poured out the full fury of His wrath on Christ for me. That's how I know. Don't trust in a guilty conscience
and don't trust in your understanding of total depravity. Trust Christ. And don't cease to seek Him until
you know. Salvation is of no real benefit
if I don't have assurance of it. Is it? I want to know. look at the next verse in that
day shall there be a great morning in jerusalem as the morning of
hayden reman in the valley of mageddon he's caused me to see
the real evil of my sin We suffer the consequences of
our sin, and sometimes those consequences are enough to get
us to stop doing things, but that doesn't mean that we've
mourned over our sin. Lots of folks have quit doing
things that, like I said before, when the pain is greater than
the pleasure, you'll quit. Chapter 13, verse 1. In that
day, there should be a fountain opened to the house of David
and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness. And
it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts,
that I will cut off the names of the idols. Oh, I'm drinking
now. I'm drinking of the water of
life. Christ is satisfying my thirst. I've got hope. My sin and my uncleanness has
been put away once and for all. By the sacrifice of himself on
Calvary's cross, I've got no sin. And God has caused me to
put away all my idols. And he goes on to say that if
your own child professes faith in another God,
that you'll stone them. Now that doesn't mean that we
treat our children or our family members with that sort of harsh
legalism. It means that we don't have any
interest in them. We're not influenced. I was talking
to somebody recently who said they believe the gospel and their
child came home from some Bible study espousing some false gospel
and they affirmed them for it. And I thought, well, God hasn't
cut off your idols. Has God made you poor? Has he
made you needy? That woman with the issue of
blood was needy, wasn't she? She had spent everything she
had on physicians. Oh, if I could just touch the
hem of his garment. And she crawled through the crowd
in seeking after Christ. Why? Because she was poor and
needy. Was she committed? Did she have great commitment?
No. She was poor and needy. What
about blind Bartimaeus? Was he the bastion of commitment?
No. He was poor and needy. Son of David, have mercy upon
me. You see, it's not commitment.
It's being poor and needy. That prodigal, oh, he did eat the husk that
the swine did. He was eating pig's food. He
was poor. My servants at my father's house,
I'll go home and beg my father's mercy. He's poor and needy. That's who the Lord shows mercy
on. The thief on the cross, who was
hurling insults with the other thief at the Lord Jesus Christ,
all of a sudden he's looking deaf and the Lord has mercy upon
his heart. God, Lord, remember me when thou
comest in. He was poor and needy, wasn't
he? That's the qualification. A broken
and contrite heart He will not despise. Why won't He despise
it? Because He gave it to you. He
gave it to you. Poor and needy. And I will open rivers in high
places fountains in the midst of the valley, and I will make
the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water." Are you poor? Got nothing. Needy. Can't do anything. The table that we're about to
celebrate reminds us that the life of the
Lord Jesus Christ is the only hope for life that we have. That
his death on Calvary's cross is the only hope for having our
sins put away. I've asked Bert to lead us in
a special hymn during the table that we don't normally sing during
the table, but it applies to what we're about to observe,
and it applies to the message that we just heard. So let's
remain seated. Men, if you'll come, please,
and distribute the bread and the wine. And Brother Bert, number
318, number 318, let's stand, or just remain seated. ? I need thee every hour ? Most
gracious Lord ? No tender voice like thine ? Can peace afford
I need Thee, oh, I need Thee, every hour I need Thee. Oh, bless me now, my Savior,
I come to Thee. I need Thee every hour, stay
Thou nearby. Temptations lose their power
when Thou art nigh. I need Thee, O I need Thee, every
hour I need Thee. O bless me now, my Savior, I
come to Thee. I need Thee every hour in joy
or pain. Come quickly and abide, for life
is vain. I need Thee, O I need Thee, Every
hour I need Thee, O bless me now, my Savior, I come to Thee. I need Thee every hour, Most
Holy One, O make me Thine indeed, Thou blessed Son. I need Thee, O I need Thee, Every
hour I need Thee, O bless me now, my Savior, I come to Thee. The Lord Jesus Himself is the
Gospel. His life was lived in perfect
faithfulness and obedience to the Father. Bread without leaven. And that hard saying in John
chapter 6 that they said was too hard for them, That whole
passage was talking about His body being our meat and His blood
being our drink. And they said, that's too hard. Is the life of the Lord Jesus
Christ, His obedience to God, His faithfulness to suffer the
wrath of God, His satisfying the justice of God, all your
life before God? Christ your life. Not is he the
most important person in your life, is he your life? We do this in remembrance of
him. When I see the blood, I'm so
thankful for that. Aren't you glad God didn't say,
when I see your commitment? No, when I see his commitment,
when I see the blood, I'll pass by you. Do this in remembrance
of me. And all God's people said, Amen. I need Thee every hour. Let's
stand together. Brother Robert, would you dismiss
us with prayer, please? Father, we come before You this morning,
Father, knowing that only the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ,
Father, will take away our sin. We are poor and needy, Father,
and there's nothing we can do, Father, to please Thee unless
it's done through Christ. We thank You, Father, that You've
done all things well, Father. You've put us in union with the
Lord and Savior. You've guaranteed us eternal
life by His death.