If you could find your seats,
please. We're going to sing the hymn,
the hardback hymn, on number 352. Number 352, Jesus, lover
of my soul. And if you could all please stand. Jesus, lover of my soul, let
me to thy bosom fly. While the nearer waters roll,
while the tempest still is high, hide me, O my Savior, I. Hide me, O my Savior, hide, till
the storm of life is past. Safe into the haven, God, O receive
my soul at last. Other refuge have I none, hangs
my helpless soul on thee. Levi, leave me not alone, still
support and comfort me. All my trust on Thee is stayed,
All my help from Thee I bring, Cover my defenseless head With
the shadow of Thy wing. Thou, O Christ, art all I want,
More than all indeed I find. Raise the fallen, cheer the faint,
Heal the sick and lead the blind. Just and holy is Thy name, I
am all unrighteousness. False and full of sin I am, Thou
art full of truth and grace. Plenteous grace with Thee is
found, Grace to cover all my sin. Let the healing streams
abound, Make and keep me pure within. Thou of life, the fountain
of life, Be seated, please. Every time I get up here, I think
of our dear brother, Maurice Montgomery. I'll never forget
it. I long for the Lord. He'd say
here, and he said, ah, ah, ah, ah. He said, do you see what
I'm doing? While I was sitting back, I thought,
yeah, you're breathing. He said, I'm dependent on the
Lord Jesus Christ for the very next one. That's how dependent,
and I'm dependent on the Lord Jesus Christ. enable us to read
His Word and to believe it and to rejoice in it. Would you turn
with me please to John chapter 17. The Lord Jesus Christ is praying
to God the Father. And as we read this, I want you
to consider, is there any chance that God the Father is not going
to give him everything he prays for? And the answer is absolutely
not. Everything Christ asks for in
his prayer is going to be granted. And I have to sometimes, there's
a lot of pronouns in here, I like to take it back to the original
noun to help me better understand who it is talking. So bear with
me if you would. And these words spake Jesus,
and he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, God the Father,
the hour has come. Glorify thy son, Christ, that
Christ may also glorify God the Father. As God the Father has
given Christ power over all flesh, that Christ should give eternal
life. to as many as God the Father
has given him. People ever ask you, do you believe
in election? That's my hope. That's my only
hope, that God would choose a people, because I'll never come. Elections,
that's the backbone of our salvation, that God would choose us. And
this is life eternal. that these people might know
God the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom God
the Father has sent. Christ has glorified the Father
on the earth. Christ has finished the work
which God the Father gave him to do. And now, O Father, glorify
thou me, Christ, with thy own self, with the glory which I
had with God the Father before the world was. Christ has manifested God's name
unto men. And who did he manifest it to?
Which thou, which God the Father gave him out of the world. These
people, they were, and God the Father gave them to Christ. And
we have kept his word. Only by Christ we've done that.
Now, we know that all things whatsoever God had given of Christ
are of God. For Christ has given unto us
the words which God the Father gave him. And we have received
them. And we know surely that Christ
came from God the Father. And we have believed that God
did send Christ. Now look at verse nine. This
is the hope of my salvation. Christ says, I pray for them. I pray for them. My only hope
is that the Lord Jesus Christ would pray for me. If he doesn't pray for me, there's
no hope. But look what it says next. Christ says, make no misunderstanding,
I pray not for the world. I'm not praying for everybody.
I'm not praying for all men and women, children that have been
born, but for the people which God the Father gave me, for they
are his people. And verse 10, all my people are
God the Father's people and all the God's people are Christ. And I am glorified in them. We
glorify Christ. And now I am no more in the world,
but his people are in the world, and Christ is going to God. Holy Father, keep them through
thy own name, the people that God gave Christ. Here it is,
that we may be one as we are. And verse 12 will finish. For
while Christ was with us in this world, Christ kept us in the
name of God. And everyone that God gave me,
Christ, I have kept. And none of them is lost, not
a single one, but the son of perdition that the scripture
might be fulfilled. It's good news. Christ is not
going to lose a single one. And there's not gonna be one
extra, and there's not gonna be one less. And it is a comfort to my soul.
And we ask this morning, Lord, would you pray for us this morning?
Pray for us, Lord. We ask that. Let us go to him
in prayer. Lord, we confessed that we are
a sinful people. We have no righteousness. We
do not have the ability to believe. And Lord, unless you come and
save us, we will not be saved. We cannot save ourselves. Only
Christ is able to save us. And we profess this morning that
he alone is the only one that can save us. Oh Lord, would you save us this
morning? We are in need of you speaking to our hearts. We're
in need of you keeping us. We're in need of you to reveal
yourself to us. And we pray that you would send
your spirit that would reveal yourself to us and give us the
faith, Lord, a faith we do not have to believe you. And Lord,
we rejoice. Oh, we rejoice that the union
between God the Father and Christ the Son and his people can never
be broken. Oh, I'm so thankful that it's
not dependent on something that we do. And it is forever. And as your word says, it was
before the foundations of this world. We ask your blessing upon
your servant this morning, our brother, speak to his heart as
only you can. Oh, Lord, that you would put
your spirit upon him to declare Christ. And if we're your people,
we'll rejoice. And if you're lost this morning,
oh, that God would convict you and cause you to flee to him,
pleading for mercy. We ask it in the name of Christ,
our only hope. Amen. We're going to sing the hymn,
the Hardback Hymnal No. 158, and you'll remain seated. Come, Holy Spirit, heavily dove,
With all thy quickening powers, Kindle a flame of sacred love. In these cold hard covers Look
how we grovel here below Fond of these earthly toys Our souls
how heavily they go to reach eternal joys. In vain we tune our formal songs. In vain we strive to rise. Hosannas languish on our tongues. and our devotion dies. Dear Lord, and shall we ever
live at this poor dying rate? Our love so faint, so cold to
Thee, And Thine to us so great, Come Holy Spirit, heavily doth
With all thy quickening powers, Come shed abroad a Savior's love,
And that shall kindle ours. I hope the Lord will answer that
prayer this morning, that he will send his Holy Spirit in
light in the eyes of our understanding. Truth is that you and I are unable,
apart from that blessing, to see anything like it really is. Everything we believe, apart
from the revealing of truth by God to the heart through faith
is wrong. It's wrong. I'll prove that to
you from the scriptures. Turn with me in Isaiah chapter
55. Isaiah chapter 55. You and I are in need of God
to do a work of repentance in our hearts. Now I know that there
are folks that think every time someone offends them that they
are owed repentance. And everybody's looking, do you
need to repent of this and repent of that? The word repentance
literally translated means to have a changed mind. It is the work of God the Holy
Spirit. We just asked the Lord. to speak
to us, to reveal God to us. If he doesn't give us a spirit
of repentance, we'll be doomed to conclude everything as we
would naturally think it is. And we will be wrong. Wrong about
everything Look what the Lord says in Isaiah chapter 55 at
verse 8. For my thoughts are not your
thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. Now that, what's that mean? Well,
it means what it says, doesn't it? God's thoughts are not our
thoughts. His ways are not our ways. For
as the heavens are higher than the earth, how far is that? Further than you can see. It's the natural eye. It's, as
the heavens are higher above the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Oh, I want to have the thoughts
of God. I want to know what God thinks
about things. I need for Him to reveal to me
the truth. The truth about Himself, the
truth about me, the truth about sin, the truth about salvation,
the truth about my circumstances, and the truth about time. Those
are my six points. Because, in fact, We are wrong
on every one of them. If the Lord doesn't give us the
mind of Christ, we will think everything wrong about the nature
of God, about the nature of ourselves, about the truth of sin, about
the nature of salvation, about the truth of our circumstances,
and about the truth of this thing that we call time. Oh Lord, would
you show us. Would you give us the mind? If
we are to receive this truth, it will come by one means, and
the Lord's gonna tell us what that is. Look at verse 10. For
as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth
not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it to bring
forth bud. Now he's just using a natural
analogy of rain. God opens up the windows of heaven,
the rain comes down, it waters the earth, and everything grows
as a result of that. it bringeth forth bud, that it
may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. Now this
is a, you see what he's talking about, don't you? So is my word. This is the seed of God's word
when he opens up the spiritual windows of heaven and allows
the sower to have seed to scatter and the eater to have bread to
eat. Lord, I'll eat swine husk. I'll eat things that aren't good
for me. Lord, give me the seed of thy
word. So shall my word be that goeth
forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void,
but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall
prosper in the thing whereinto I sent it. Oh, that gives me
hope. It gives me hope for my own soul.
It gives me hope for your soul. That the Lord is going to cause
His Word to prosper. And He's going to accomplish
the purpose for which He sends it. That's true in preaching
the gospel, what we're doing right now. It's true in comparing
the spiritual to the spiritual, which is what we're going to
do right now. But it's particularly true, it's particularly true
when the living word, the word that was made flesh, came and
dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory as the
only begotten of the Father, the one who himself is full of
grace and full of truth. The one who tabernacled among
us, the one who ascended back into glory. the living word,
he didn't go back empty-handed. He did not return to God void. He took with him the names of
those for whom he lived and died, and he presented them to God.
And he ever lives to make intercession. Michael, he's still praying for
us. Praying for us right now. Making intercession for his people. He prospered in the thing which
God sent him to do, which was the salvation of all Israel. All Israel, Hebrews, Romans chapter
11, all Israel shall be saved. He's not talking about Jews over
there in the Middle East. He's talking about spiritual
Israel. Every single one of them shall be saved. I want you to
turn with me, if you will, to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. 1 Corinthians
chapter 2. If the Lord's going to correct
our thinking, if he's going to renew our mind, if he's going
to give us faith to believe things as he sees them, then he's going
to use his word to do it. That's what we just read, it's
clear. The windows of heaven will be
open, the word of God will come, and that will be the means by
which God's faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the word
of God. In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, Now you've heard me on many occasions
quote verse 9 in reference to those things that the Lord has
prepared for us in glory. The scripture says that God's
word is exceedingly broad. And so what stated in verse nine
is true when it comes to I not having seen, nor ear having heard,
nor having entered into the imagination of man, the things that God has
prepared for us. He said, I go and prepare a place
for you. I will come again and receive you unto myself so that
where I am, there you are maybe also. We can't imagine the glory
of that place. John and Paul saw it, and they
weren't able to express it. The Lord showed them things,
there was no language, there were no words in the human language
to express what they saw. And so, What great hope we have
in knowing that it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But
we know that when he shall appear, we shall see him like he is and
be made like him. And that verse is true when it
comes to that glorious hope that we have in Christ. But it's not
the way the verse is used in its context. It's not. Look what he says. Look at the
next verse, verse 10. But God hath revealed them unto
us by his Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the
deep things of God. He's talking about the gospel,
particularly in its context. In verse 9, he's talking about
the gospel. You can't come to any right conclusions on your
own about the deep things of God apart from the Spirit of
God. Verse 11, for what man knoweth
the things of man, saith the Spirit of a man which is in him?
Nobody can read your mind. That's what that verse is saying.
Nobody can read your mind and you can't read somebody else's
mind. Even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit
of God. The spirit of God's the only
thing that knows the mind of God. Now, now we have received
not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God
that we might know the things that are freely given unto us
by God. So now he's saying, you do know
these things. You know them by the ministry
of the Holy Spirit, who takes the word of God and reveals them
to you. Which things also we speak, not
in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost
teaches, comparing spiritual things to spiritual, comparing
scripture to scripture. He's saying the same thing that
Isaiah said in Isaiah chapter 55. that my thoughts are not
your thoughts, my ways are not your ways. You want to know my
thoughts? You want to know my ways? I've opened the windows
of heaven and the seed of my word is going to come and give
seed to the sower and bread to the eater so that my word will
accomplish the purpose for which I sent it. What is that purpose? To enlighten the eyes of your
understanding and show you how I see things. The truth is, is
the way that God sees it is the way that it is. Now I don't want
to be deceived. I don't want to be deceived by
seeing something different than the way it is. But the natural man Verse 14,
Receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness
to him. He's come to his own conclusions
about God. He's come to his own conclusions
about sin. He's come to his own conclusions
about salvation. And these things that are revealed
in Scripture are foolishness unto him. Why? Because they're
contrary to what he's already decided the truth is. He's come
to his own conclusions about truth by his own opinion. And
he can't hear the gospel because it stands in complete contrast
to what he's already decided is the truth. The natural man
cannot receive the things of the Spirit. They're foolishness
unto him. Neither can he know them because they are spiritually
discerned. Now, if you come to the Word
of God believing that it's already a settled truth in your heart
and mind that God loves everybody, Christ died for everybody, and
God wants everybody to be saved, that the law is your rule of
life, and that you have a free will. Now those are just settled
presuppositions, aren't they? Those are just things that men
believe to be true, and so they can't hear the gospel. They can't
hear the gospel because they refuse to reject their own opinions. But he that is spiritual, who's
the spiritual man? The one who's been blessed with
the Spirit of God. He that is spiritual judgeth
all things, yea, himself is judged of no man. Criticize me all you want. I've
been taught of God. I've been taught of God, and
it matters nothing to me if what you believe is contrary to what
God has taught me as far as what I know to be true. Father, I
thank thee that thou hast hid these things from the wise and
the prudent, and you've revealed them. You've revealed them unto
babes. They shall be all taught of God. That's what he's saying here.
They're judged of no man. You're not intimidated by the
fact that the whole world stands in opposition to what God has
taught you. Why? Because you've got the mind
of Christ. You've got the Spirit of God. You see things as God sees them. For who hath known the mind of
the Lord? Now we're trying to get our thoughts
to be like God's thoughts and our ways to be like God's ways.
The means that God's going to use to do it is his word. And it's only in the mind of
God, revealed by the Spirit of God to those who have the Spirit. That he may instruct him, but
we have the mind of Christ. If you have the mind of Christ,
You're not going to believe the thoughts that the world has about
God. You're just not gonna do it.
Not if you've got the mind of Christ. My thoughts are not your
thoughts. My ways are not your ways. Here's
what the psalmist said in Psalm 50 verse 21. Thou thoughtest
that I was altogether such a one as thyself. You thought that
I was like you. Every man comes into this world
as an idol factory, and he creates an imaginary God in his imagination
that looks, man, in short, man worships himself. He just worships
himself. He sets himself up on the throne
of God, and he creates this little idol God that is subject to him. He doesn't believe that God's
sovereign. He doesn't believe that he's
immutable. He doesn't believe that he's
omnipotent. He believes that the God who
exists will respond to his gifts, and to his offerings, and to
his will, and to his works. Why? Because he's just fashioned
this little idol. We're no different than the silversmiths
in Ephesus that made little idols after the goddess Diana, and
they worshiped her and they bowed down to her. We're no different.
No different. We may call him Jesus. We may
call him God. We don't know. Apart from the revelation of
God's grace by his word, Through His Spirit, we do not know that
the Lord Jesus Christ is holy. Holy. Holy, holy, holy is the
Lord God. He's not like you or me in any
way. In any way. That's what that
word holy means. It means separate. It means other. He's other than we are in every
way. He's holy. He's harmless. He's harmless. He came as the
harmless Savior in order to accomplish the salvation of His people.
Undefiled. Undefiled. He's not like us. Separate from sinners. That's
who He is. Oh, Lord, give me the mind of
Christ. Lord, don't let me have thoughts
about You that are inconsistent with who You are. He is the King
Eternal. He's immortal. He's invisible. He's the only wise God. And he
gets all honor and all glory forever and forever. He's worthy of our worship. Worthy of our worship. Whatever
Jeff read in the study this morning before our service, that story
of the woman that brought her daughter to Christ. A Syrophoenician woman that brought
her daughter to Christ, who was possessed with a demon, and here
she is begging the Lord to heal her daughter. And the scripture
says the Lord ignores her. He doesn't give her the time
of day. And then the disciples try to get the Lord to run her
off. You know, Lord, she's just an
embarrassed, she's a Gentile dog. She's embarrassing all of
us. Just tell her to shut up and
go away. And the scripture says she bowed down and worshipped
him. And he looked at her and he said,
it's not right for me to give the children's bread to dogs. Now, What are most folks gonna
do? They're coming begging for mercy.
She's got a problem that she can't solve, and she's asking
the Lord to show mercy toward her, and he calls her a dog.
First he ignores her, then the disciples try to run her off,
then he calls her a dog. And what does she say? What does
she say? Truth, Lord. Truth, Lord. That's what I am. The dogs eat
the crumbs that fall from the master's table. The Lord had revealed to her
who he was. And she knew that he was worthy
of her worship whether he did anything for her or not. She
was nothing but a mercy beggar. Men by nature have a view of
God that only has use for him for what he can do for them.
They're not going to worship Him as the sovereign Savior. They're going to strip Him of
His glory and believe that He's somehow subject to them. My thoughts
are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways. It's true when it comes to our
understanding of God. It's true when it comes to our
understanding of ourselves. Of ourselves. The natural man
devoid of the Spirit of God, will not believe that his righteousnesses
are as filthy rags. He won't believe that. He'll
take pride in his good works. He'll take pride in his prayers.
He'll take pride in what he's done. He believes himself to
be somebody. He believes God to be obligated
to reward him for what he's done. That's the natural man. Why?
Because his thoughts are not God's thoughts. He cannot see
that every imagination of his heart is only evil and that continually. He cannot see it. He cannot see
that everything about him falls short of the glory of God. He
cannot see that at his very, very best state, in the best
moment of his life, He is nothing but altogether vanity. He can't
see it. Why? Because his thoughts are
not God's thoughts. His ways are not God's ways.
So what are you going to believe? You going to believe what God
has said in his word about who you are? About your need for
a savior? Or are you going to believe what
man tells you? You know, you deserve this and
deserve that, don't you? Oh, you need to have a higher
view of yourself. Oh, that's our problem, isn't
it? Our problem is we have much too high a view of ourselves. What does God say? In me, that
is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. No good thing. I'm vile. I'm vile. Before God. Before God. I am nothing but sin. Thirdly, not only does man in
his natural state have a wrong thought about the nature of God
and the nature of himself, but he has wrong thoughts about the
nature of sin. You ask folks, are you a sinner? And their answer to that question
will be, well, yeah, I've done some wrong things. And then they'll quickly let
you know, well, I've never murdered anybody. I'm not a thief. They have no understanding of
the nature of sin. They don't know that while man is looking
at the outward appearance, God's looking at the heart. They don't
know that they can't do anything but sin. They don't know that. They think that sin is nothing
more than a bad behavioral problem. The Lord's got to make you a
sinner. You know, I was thinking this week, If we could see sin,
if we could see our sin like God sees it, one of two things
would happen. We would be so overwhelmed with
shame, we'd not be able to live with ourselves. Or we'd never sin again. Isn't
that true? If we could see our sin like
God sees it, We're so prone to compare sin
to sin, we just categorize our sin by
one worse than another. We don't know. Here's what God
says about our sin. If he should mark iniquity, if
he should mark iniquity. Here's what God says, and we're
just opening the windows of heaven to ask God to answer these questions
so that we can think right about sin. Now you know what the word
iniquity means. It's not those things that you're
ashamed of. Iniquity is the good works that you do in order to
try to measure up to the righteousness of God, going about to establish
your own righteousness. If he should mark iniquity, that
means that if he takes the best thing you've ever done, one thing,
just marked one thing that you've ever done, the best thing you've
ever done, if he should mark iniquity, who shall stand? The best thing you've ever done
is all it would take to send you to hell for all eternity. That's what God says. Man doesn't
see sin that way. The natural man doesn't believe
that. Scripture says that he will pour
out the spirit of grace and the spirit of supplication on the
house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem and they will look
upon him whom they have pierced and they will mourn after him
as a father mourneth after his only son. What does God think about sin? Look to the cross. The father
mourned after his only son when the Lord Jesus Christ bore in
his body our sins and suffered the wrath of God's judgment. Oh, we could see God, see ourselves,
see our sin. Man, the natural man, my thoughts
are not your thoughts. Man doesn't see salvation. He
doesn't see salvation for what it is. He's got a skewed, perverted
view of salvation. He believes that God... Here's
what the natural man believes. He believes good people go to
heaven and bad people go to hell. That's what the natural man believes.
My thoughts are not your thoughts. It's just the opposite. It's
just the opposite. Good people go to hell. Bad people
go to heaven. Learn what that means, and you'll
learn something about what God thinks about salvation. But isn't
that what the natural man thinks? God's gonna reward me with heaven
for my good behavior. The truth is that we have no
righteousness. We're all evil, we're all sinful,
we're all bad. We have no righteousness outside
of Christ, but in Christ, we have perfect righteousness before
God. We're accepted in the beloved. Oh Lord, would you give me your
thoughts about salvation? So that it is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, it's of God that showeth mercy.
So that I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy. And I
will hardeneth whomever I will harden. I'm the potter, you're
the clay. I've got the sovereign right
to make out of the same lump of clay some vessels of honor
and some of dishonor. This is God's salvation. Jonah
said salvation is of the Lord. He's the one who chose a particular
people in the covenant of grace before the world ever began,
wrote their names in the Lamb's book of life, and shed the precious
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lamb that was slain in
that covenant before the world ever began. He's the one that
satisfied his divine justice. When he slayed his own son, it
pleased God to bruise him The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled
the law and ascended back into glory and represents us before
God. He's the one who sent his Holy
Spirit to open the eyes of our understanding and cause us to
have faith in Christ. He's the one who keeps us from
falling and presents us faultless before the throne with much joy.
Salvation's of the Lord. It's not of me. It's not of him
that willeth. It's not by man's free will.
Nor of him that runneth. It's not by man's effort. It's
of God that showeth mercy. Men don't believe that. They
don't believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is everything in salvation. That when He said it is finished,
it was finished. They believe they've got to add
something to it. Gotta add something to it. How
does this book conclude? We're talking about God's thoughts
now. What is God's thoughts? He said, if any man adds to the
words of this prophecy, the curses of this book will be added unto
him. If any man takes away from the words of this prophecy, his
name will be taken away from the book of life. In other words,
you don't add to or take away what the Lord Jesus Christ has
done. He has done it all. He's done it all. That's salvation. Quickly, in conclusion, man by
nature does not see his circumstances like God sees them. He just doesn't. The truth is that if you had
the power of God, you would change or tweak pretty much everything
in your life. If you had omnipotence, if you
had the wisdom of God, you would change nothing. Nothing. You would know that everything
is exactly where it's supposed to be. That everything's right
on schedule and you would know that all things work together
for good for them who love God and those that are called according
to his purpose. you would know that the Lord,
that there's nothing in providence. Nothing in providence. I've told
you what that word means. Pro means before, and video,
it's pro video. Before the movie was, it was
already in the can. You know, that's the providence
of God. All this stuff we call time and
circumstances in our lives was already predetermined by God
before the world ever began. That's true of every day. Oh,
Lord, give me the faith to believe that. I get so out of sorts when
my circumstances aren't as I think they should be. And God says
when we get that way, your thoughts are not my thoughts, your ways
are not my ways. As the heavens are high above
the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts and my ways
above your ways. Oh Lord, open the windows of
heaven and cause the seed of your word to take root in my
heart that I might have the mind of Christ and believe that my
circumstances are exactly where they're supposed to be. Exactly. I love the story of Jacob when
Jacob's sons went down to Egypt to get bread in the famine. And
Joseph was already appointed prime minister of Egypt. And
Joseph had not yet revealed himself to his brothers. And the brothers
come back and they run out of food. And then on the first trip,
Joseph makes them leave Simeon behind. And then on the second
trip, he tells them, don't come back without Benjamin. And so
now the brothers have run out of food again and they approached
Jacob and they said, we can't go back to Egypt without Benjamin.
And Jacob, here's what Jacob said. Joseph is not. Simeon is not. And you want to take Benjamin
away also? All these things are against
me. All these things are against
me. You feel that way? Everything's
against me. And what was the truth? Joseph
not only was, but he was the one providing them food. Simeon
was fine. Joseph was taking care of Simeon.
Benjamin was going to be good too. And in fact, all these things
weren't against him. All these things were working
in God's time for him. And so it is for you and for
me. If the Lord gives us the grace and the faith to see things
like he sees them, to have his thoughts and to know his ways, God, self, sin, salvation, circumstances. We just think upside down on
everything. And in conclusion, time. Time. God sees this bubble of time
that you and I live in from an eternal perspective. And so he
says to us, A thousand years to you is like a day to me. What is your life? It is a vapor. It's a vapor. It's a shadow. We don't see it that way, do
we? Why? Because we have these perverted
thoughts about time. We think, oh, tomorrow, or February
is going to be a long time away, or next year, or whatever. Oh, my little child. This thing
we call time is no time at all. It's no time at all. David put it like this in Psalm
90. Teach us to number our days that
we might apply our hearts to wisdom. Wisdom is seeing things
as God sees them. Wisdom is having the thoughts
of God. Make me to know mine end, and
the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. Now I know usually when we read
the genealogies, particularly in the first chapters of Genesis,
we tend to skip over them. Because there's a whole lot of
hard names there that are hard to pronounce, aren't there? But
you know what's the most important thing about those genealogies?
Go back over and just scan them. And you're gonna find out at
the end of every man's life, the word of God says, and he
died. And that's what you're gonna
do. And that's what I'm gonna do. Sooner than we think. sooner than we think. Oh, God,
give me your thoughts on this thing called time and enable
me to look at it from your perspective. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we're hopeful that you would show mercy toward us in giving
us the mind of Christ and enabling us to see things as you see them,
all that we would have the thoughts and the ways of God. We're dependent upon your spirit.
We thank you for your word. We pray for the light of your
mercy. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Brother Burt, we're gonna sing
you the hymn on the back of your bulletin. Let's stand together. Come sound his praise abroad,
and hymns of glory sing, Jehovah is our sovereign God, the universal
King. He formed the deeps unknown,
He gave the seas their bounds, The watery worlds are all His
own, And all the solid ground. Come worship at his throne, come
bow before the Lord. We are his works and not our
own, he formed us by his word. Today attend His voice, nor dare
provoke His fraud. Come ye, the people of His choice,
and praise your gracious God. Thank you.