All right, we could find our
seats. We can go ahead and get started. Good morning. One week is way
too long. I missed everybody. Let's open
up this morning's service in the hardback hymnal number 361.
And this is our prayer, number 361, sweet hour of prayer. If
you could please stand. sweet as sweet hour of prayer that calls
me from a world of care and bids me at my father's throne make
all my want and wishes known. In seasons of distress and grief,
my soul has often found relief. And off escaped the tempter's
snare, By Thy return, sweet hour of prayer, Sweet hour of prayer,
sweet hour of prayer, Thy wings shall my petition bear, To Him
whose truth and faithfulness Engage the waiting soul to bless. And since He bids me seek His
face, His word and trust His grace. I'll cast on Him my every care
and wait for the sweet hour of prayer. Sweet hour of prayer,
sweet hour of prayer, May I thy consolation share. Till from Mount Pisgah's lofty
height, I view my home and take my flight. This robe of flesh
I'll drop and rise to siege the air. everlasting Christ, and
shout while passing through the air, farewell, farewell, sweet
hour of prayer. As we were singing that hymn,
I was thinking about the Lord cleansing the temple and saying
that they had turned the house of prayer into a den of thieves. And how I hope this morning this
will be a house of prayer, not a den of thieves, robbing God
of his glory robbing Christ of his glory. That's my hope. Let's let's pray together. Our merciful Heavenly Father,
we thank you for putting into our hearts. That very desire. To come before thy throne of
grace. We thank you, Lord, that you've provided the way that
we have an advocate, Jesus Christ, the righteous one, whoever lives
and intercedes on our behalf. We pray, Father, that you would
send your spirit in power to anoint thy word, cause Christ
to be lifted up in our hearts. We pray, Lord, that you would
draw us into thy presence, comfort our hearts by knowing that The
Lord Jesus Christ has put away all the sins of all thy people,
that we have a righteousness in him, that thy justice has
been satisfied. O Lord, that the blood of Christ
would be before thee on our behalf, and that you would give to us
the faith to look to him, for we ask it in his name. Amen. I agree with Bert. It has been
a long week. I was telling some of the men
this morning, I don't want to do that again. I take off on
Wednesday after such a wonderful weekend. So in the future, we'll
have services on Wednesday night after our conference. Last week
was such a blessing. Aren't you glad we had the weather
we had last weekend rather than this weekend? I want to thank
you all for being so gracious to our visitors. I can't tell
you how many people spoke to me about how what a wonderful
host you were for them. And I was just proud and thankful.
for you, and I want you to know that. Lord willing, we're going to
begin a verse-by-verse study in 2 Corinthians this morning,
so if you'd like to turn with me there in your Bibles. 2 Corinthians. I don't know how far along we'll
get in this first chapter, but I've I've titled this The Certainty
of Grace. The Certainty of Grace. And The Certainty of Grace begins
with confidence in believing that this book is nothing less
than the Word of God. I can't prove that. Don't intend
to even try, but I know that if the Lord convinces you of
it, and even after he has convinced us of it, oh, what a wonderful
experience it is to be convinced again and again and more deeply
and thoroughly that the Lord has blessed us with nothing less
than his inspired, infallible word. Paul begins by assuring us that
the only claims we have to that truth is the claims that the
Bible makes about itself. And some would say, well, that's
not sufficient. It is, if the Lord gives you
faith to believe, James put it like this, of his own will begat
he us with the word of truth. And so this matter of being born
again is essential in order for us to be able to believe that
this is the word of God. You say, well, don't other people
believe that the Bible is the Word of God that don't believe
grace? Yeah, they do. I've met many
fundamentalists who would shed blood over the fact that this
book is the Word of God. And yet, like the Pharisees,
Like the Pharisees, they search the scriptures because they think
in them they have eternal life. And they've missed the truth
that these are they which testify of Christ. So the difference
is that we believe this book is not just the inspired Word
of God. We believe that it reveals the
word of God. In the volume of the book, it
is written of me. We're not making a rule book
for Christian living out of the Bible. We're not building our
lives on precept upon precept. We're going to the scriptures,
looking for the glorious person and accomplished work of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And as God's pleased to bless
his word to our hearts, that will be the result. We'll see
the living word through the written word. Let me show you a passage
of scripture. I'm getting all this from verse
one of 2 Corinthians. We'll go there in just a moment.
But let me show you a passage of scripture in 1 Peter. 1 Peter chapter one. Verse 24, I'm sorry, let's begin
at verse 23. Being born again, not of corruptible
seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth
and abideth forever. So you say, well, is that speaking
of the written word or the living word? My answer to that question
is yes. We do not separate the two. Verse 24, for all flesh
is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, the flower
thereof falleth away. Now he's comparing the Word of
God to the flesh of man. And our flesh is like the grass.
It's going to be mowed down. It's ever-changing. It's corruptible. It's mutable,
unlike the word of God, which is incorruptible and does not
mutate. Now look at verse 25. This is
so important. But the word of the Lord endureth
forever. And this is the word which by
the gospel is preached unto you. Now what God's telling us here
is if the gospel's not being drawn from the scriptures, then
the word of God is not being preached and it's not believed. It's not believed. So go back
with me to our text in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. an apostle of Jesus
Christ by the will of God and Timothy, our brother unto the
church of God, which is at Corinth with all the saints, which are
in Achaia. So Paul's claiming divine authority
as an apostle of God. He's saying that the words that
I'm writing are not my words. He's a penman. The scriptures
that the Bible says are not by private interpretation. They're
not by the will of man. They're not just man's opinion,
but holy men of God wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. And so, that's the claim that
the Bible makes about itself. That's the claim that the Apostle
Paul is making of himself. And what a glorious claim it
is. Turn with me to Galatians chapter
1. Galatians chapter 1. I want you to be assured of the
grace of God based on the authority of God's word. Now, I can't give
you that. The Spirit of God's got to give
you that. But I know the means by which He gives His people
that assurance is the declaration of His Word, what we're doing
right now. Just saying what God's Word says
will encourage God's people to believe. Galatians chapter 1,
here's another claim that Paul makes about himself. Look at
verse 15. But when it pleased God, who
separated me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace
to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the
heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. So
Paul's saying, he's talking about his experience with Christ on
the road to Damascus. When that light shined from heaven,
knocked him off his horse, he was persecuting the church. And the Lord spoke audibly from
heaven and said, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And Saul said, who art thou,
Lord? I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecuteth. You remember
Saul was taken blind into Damascus and Ananias came three days later
and prayed for him and God opened his eyes and he's saying here,
I conferred with no man. I didn't go to the apostles to
find out if what I had heard was true. I knew that God had
placed his hand on me. And look what he says, neither
went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me,
but I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years, I went
up to Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit took the Apostle
Paul into Arabia. Now I think it's interesting
that the only other place in the scriptures Arabia is mentioned
is in relationship to Mount Sinai. No penman of scripture is more
clear on defining the difference between law and grace than is
the Apostle Paul. God gave him a special revelation
to delineate clearly the difference between a works gospel, which
he was bound up in, and a gospel of God's free grace accomplished
by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm just I'm just
sure that he learned that right at the foot of Mount Sinai. The
Lord sat him down. Paul, here's where you've been.
Here's where you're going to be now. So he calls himself an
apostle. My question is, what is your
authority for truth? What is your authority for truth?
Some would say, well, science is my authority for truth. Those
things which can be determined by my natural senses, by my five
senses. If I can't see it and touch it
and feel it and hear it and taste it, it's not real. The problem with that is it limits
you to the physical world. If that's all you use as the
source of your authority, and in addition to that, what man
has done is he set himself up on the throne of God, and he's
determined that he's the one who's able to discern truth based
on what he is able to sense. Oh, that the Lord would give
us faith to believe that this book was written by God. That He gave to us a source of
authority that we can trust our souls on. That we can rest our
immortal souls on the truth of God's Word and what He's done. Some would make the testimony
of one man their source of authority. Millions of people in this world
are trusting in the testimony of Muhammad for their source
of authority. One man wrote the Koran, not
so with the Bible. God used many different penmen
over the period of many different centuries in order to portray
the same exact story over and over again. The story of who
God is, the story of who we are, the story of how it is that God
is able to save sinners. Many would trust their souls
in the testimony of Joseph Smith or Confucius. Many would put
their hope in the testimony of the Pope. We believe that this book is
the infallible, inspired, all-powerful Word of God. And we look to it
in order to discover the Word of God, in order to find out
who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what He's done to save us. Paul makes these claims about
him. I love what the apostles said when the Lord asked them,
will you lead me also? And they said, Lord, where are
we going to go? You've shut us up to yourself. We've got no
place else to go. You alone have the words of eternal
life. We know and are sure that thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God. If the Lord's going
to give us that assurance, He will use the means of His Word
to do it. Hebrews tells us that this Word
of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, able to divide asunder
the thoughts and the intents of the heart. It's what the Lord
does when he speaks to us by his word, he exposes us and reveals
to us our need for Christ. All scripture, all scripture
is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,
that the man of God might be made perfect, thoroughly furnished
unto all good works. What a blessing God has given
us. He's provided for us a revelation of Christ and given to us the
faith to rest our souls on what he's declared. And Paul begins
in giving us assurance of grace. He's telling us that God called
me and God revealed to me the truth of the gospel, and I'm
just recording nothing less than the word of God. The beginning
of our assurance is found here in verse 1. Paul calls himself
an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. Look at verse
2. Grace be to you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice the order. Grace
always comes before peace. You cannot have peace with God. You cannot know the peace of
God apart from the grace of God. For by grace are you saved through
faith. And notice he mentions grace
of the Father and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. What does
that mean? Well, election is of grace and
that's the work of the Father. God Almighty chose a particular
people according to His own will and purpose and wrote their names
in the Lamb's Book of Life. That was the work of the Father
and it was all of grace. He did not look down through
the quarters of time and see who would believe and choose
them. He chose them according to His own will and His own purpose. The Lord told the disciples,
he said, you did not choose me, I chose you. So God the Father
in grace chose a people. God the Father provided for us
the Lamb of God who is our peace with God. The Lord Jesus Christ
said, my peace I give you, my peace I leave unto you, not as
the world giveth. Yeah, the world's looking for
peace. Peace to the world is the absence of conflict. That's
peace to the world. More often than not, the peace
of God, which passes understanding, the peace of God, which enables
us to come into the very presence of God, does not come with the
absence of conflict. To the contrary, it oftentimes
comes with much conflict. So when we look for grace and
peace, we're not looking for something physical. We're looking
for a spiritual access to the Father by His grace and by His
peace and by the Lord Jesus Christ's grace. It was by grace that He
laid down His life. We didn't do anything to deserve
that. We didn't ask for it. He did
it, all of grace, a free gift of grace. And by one offering,
which he made of himself, he put away our sins and made peace
with God through his precious blood. So, Paul's beginning with
a very clear declaration of, here's our confidence of grace.
This book, this testimony that I'm writing to you is nothing
less than the word of God. The essence of this message is
grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be God, even the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God
of all comfort. the father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. I love what the Lord said to Mary. She was the first
one at the tomb on resurrection morning. And you remember, she
mistook the risen Christ for the gardener. And she was weeping
over the tomb being empty, not knowing that she was conversing
with the Lord. And she begged him, if you know
where they've put his body, please tell me. And he spoke her name,
Mary. And she fell at his feet and
said, Rabboni. And the Lord said, Mary, don't
cling to me. The scriptures in the King James
says, touch me. But in the original language,
it's a word of clinging. Mary, don't depend upon my physical
presence for your hope and for your peace. For I must ascend
to the Father. But go and tell the disciples
that I go to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to
your God. The relationship that God's people
have with God in the Lord Jesus Christ is the same relationship
that the Lord Jesus Christ had. He's our God and He is our Father. The Lord said, when you pray,
pray like this, Our Father which art in heaven. By virtue of adoption,
by virtue of our union with Christ, we are able to approach God Almighty
and call Him our Father. What a glorious, glorious truth
that is. What assurance of grace we have. And He says He's the God of all
comfort. What comfort he gives us when
he blesses us with his Holy Spirit and assures our hearts of who
the Lord Jesus Christ is and what it is he's accomplished.
And then in time, as we have, as we grow in grace, we have
those, we have those glorious experiences where we know that
it was for our sin that he died. And we have that comfort of knowing,
you see, believing the gospel and having assurance of salvation
is two different things. It's two different things. To
believe the gospel is to believe what this book declares about
who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what it is he's done. That's
believing the gospel. I'm just, I got all my eggs in
one basket. I'm persuaded that he's able.
I'm persuaded that I'm not. That's the only thing I can do
is what that Ethiopian eunuch said. I believe that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God. That's faith. That's believing
the gospel. But oh, that the Lord would give
us assurance of our salvation. to comfort our hearts, causing
us to believe that He died for me. Those are two different things,
and it comes from God our Father. Look what He says, and the God
of all comfort who comforts us in all our tribulations. What is the comfort? that the
Lord gives to His people. Well, when they are enabled by
grace to look to Him, to look to Him and to believe Him, then
they lose sight of their sin. They do. What disturbs my soul
most of all, what causes me to doubt my salvation? Well, I take
my eyes off Christ and look at my sin. If I look at my sin,
I'm not looking to Christ. And he says here that he comforts
us in all our tribulation that we may be able to comfort them
which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves
are comforted of God. Don't think that repentance means
that you are somehow delving into the deep, dark sorrow
of your sin. That's penance. That's what I
learned as a Catholic growing up. You do penance. You just wallow in the shame
and the guilt of your sin and then you do things in order to
try to appease the wrath of God. That's not repentance. That's
just penance. Looking to Christ is the only
way that we're going to have our sin taken away. The Lord said, I've removed your
sin from you as far as the East is from the West, and I remember
it no more. Isn't it amazing? The one thing that he remembers
no more is the thing that is ever so present on our minds. Lord, enable me to look to Christ,
to be comforted in knowing that when you see the blood, you pass
by me. and that that precious blood
that the Lord Jesus Christ shed on Calvary's cross is sufficient
to put away all my sin, to meet all the demands of thy justice. Lord, give me faith to believe
that the Lord Jesus Christ himself met the requirements of the law
perfectly. He made, as Isaiah said, the
law honorable. He is the end of the law for
righteousness to everyone that believeth. Give me grace to look
to Christ. The only evidence of salvation
is faith. That's the only evidence. If
you begin to look in yourself for evidence of your salvation,
You're either gonna become overwhelmed with despair or you'll be turned
into a hypocrite. In other words, if you're honest,
you'll be overwhelmed with despair. If you're a liar, you're gonna
be a hypocrite. But that's just what happens,
isn't it? But if God enables us to be comforted in our tribulation, And, you know, this is, that's
my greatest tribulation. My greatest tribulation is my
sin. That's what I need, that's what I need put away more than
anything else. That's what I need to be assured
of more than anything. Everything else, you know, is relatively easy. I've made
this statement before, I'm going to say it again. Any problem
that you and I have that can be solved with time or money
is not really a problem. You think about it. It's not
really a problem. Time's going to solve every problem
we've got. Except one. Except one. That's our greatest
tribulation. That's our greatest problem.
Lord, I need to know that my sin has been put away. Lord,
would you comfort my heart in enabling me to look in faith
to the Lord Jesus Christ? Faith is the substance of things
hoped for. It's the evidence of things not
seen. looking unto Jesus, who is the author and the finisher
of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured
the cross and despised its shame. Look at verse 5. For as the sufferings
of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by
him. Now there's two things that are
meant here. The sufferings of Christ. What
are the sufferings of Christ? How is it that they abound in
us? Well, The scripture says that
if anybody walks after Christ, they will suffer persecution
in this world. If you've not experienced that,
it's only because people don't know what you believe. You stand
for the gospel in time, you're going to find that your friendships
in this world will become less and less. Here's a passage of scripture. Whosoever toucheth you, toucheth
the apple of his eye. Now that's your pupil. You all
that wear contact lenses, I don't know how you do it. I can't put
Visine in my eyes. I can't do it. You're gonna have
to force my eye open to put anything in there. It's just so sensitive.
That's the apple of your eye. That's the sensitive part of
your body. And the Lord said, whoever touches one of mine,
he's touching the apple of my eye. So when he talks about,
for as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation
also abounded by Christ. So as we suffer and are persecuted
in tribulation because of the gospel, we know. Well, it's just
like what I mentioned a moment ago, when the Lord spoke to Saul
of Tarsus, what did he say to him? Saul, Saul, why persecutest
thou me? You can't separate the body of
the Lord Jesus Christ from the head. Whatever happens, so he's
saying as we suffer persecution in this world, we're comforted
in knowing that it's his body and he's going to take care of
his body. The scripture says that he is
able to be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. As we bear the sorrows of our
loved ones, and we do, if you have a loved one that's suffering,
you love them, you'd just soon take that suffering from them,
wouldn't you? And you burden for the sufferings that how much
more, if you be an evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more your Heavenly Father will give good
gifts unto them that ask him. Our love for our children cannot
be compared to his love for us. And so what he's saying here
is as for the sufferings, as the sufferings of Christ abound
in us, so our consolation aboundeth by Christ. As we experienced
persecution in this world as a result of the gospel, we know
that he will never leave us nor forsake us. And we're comforted
in believing that we are the apple of his eye, we are the
body of Christ, and he's going to take care of his children
and every need that they have. Now here's the other thing that
this means. As the sufferings of Christ abound
in us. What does that mean? Well, the
Lord Jesus Christ, Paul put it like this in Philippians chapter
three. He said, oh, that I might know him and the fellowship of
his suffering. As we grow in grace and in the
knowledge of Christ, we come to believe more and more that
when Christ died on Calvary's cross, the only hope that I have
is that I was crucified in him. Paul said, I'm crucified with
Christ. Nevertheless, I live yet. Not
I, but it's Christ that lived with him. The life that I now
live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and
died for me. Paul said, oh, that I might know him, the fellowship
of his suffering. Now, Paul made that statement
at the end of his life. He said, I want to be more thoroughly
convinced, I want to believe more fully that when Christ suffered,
I suffered. Why? Because I believe with all
of my heart that what the Lord Jesus Christ did on Calvary's
cross satisfied the demands of God. It satisfied Him. So if God's satisfied with Christ,
and I'm in Christ, then God's satisfied with me. And so here's
what He's saying. As the sufferings of Christ abound
in us, Two things, as you grow in grace, you're going to suffer
more tribulation in this world, but you're comforted in knowing
that you're the apple of his eye and you're a member of his
body. And the second thing is, as you
grow in grace, you see more and more. The only hope of your salvation
is your union with Christ on Calvary's cross, that you fellowshiped
in his suffering, that when God drew the sword of justice and
slew his only begotten son, that he was satisfied and that he's
satisfied with you. And there's the comfort. As the
sufferings of Christ aboundeth, so our consolation also aboundeth
by Christ. Aboundeth by Christ. He is the
consolation of Israel. And we derive our hope, our comfort,
our grace, and our peace in believing that He put away He's our propitiation. He satisfied God's justice and
put away our sin once and for all. What greater comfort can
we have? What greater comfort? Alright,
let's take a break. three quarter.