We wouldn't be able to get through
it, but it looks like everybody came. That's good. Let's open
tonight's service with a hymn from our hardback hymnal, hymn
number 52. Number 52, Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned Upon
Our Savior's Brow. Let's all stand. Majestic sweetness sits enthroned
upon the Savior's brow, His head with radiant glories crowned,
His lips with grace o'erflow, His lips with grace o'erflow. No mortal can with Him compare
among the sons of men. Fairer is He than all the fair
who fill the heavenly train, who fill the heavenly train. He saw me plunged in deep distress
and flew to my relief. For me he bore the shameful cross
and carried all my grief, and carried all my grief. To him I owe my life and breath
and all the joys I have. He makes me triumph over death
and saves me from the grave. And saves me from the grave. Please be seated. Good to be home. We missed you
all and so thankful for your prayers and your encouragement. We felt really bad that we weren't
able to be here Sunday. That was the plan. But our flight
from Toronto got canceled and there was just no way to get
here. So we ended up getting home around 2.15 on Sunday afternoon
and just in time to get out of one car and get in the other
car. And when I got in the other car, Robert was sitting behind
me and Bert was sitting next to me. And I thought, man, I
walked off of six airplanes in the last ten days and now I'm
going to be killed by two brothers in my own car. I'm so thankful for them. I appreciate
them. You don't call somebody Saturday
night and say, can you preach in the morning? But they did,
and the Lord blessed. I had a chance to listen to the
messages, and so very thankful. Will you turn your Bibles, turn
in your Bibles with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter
15. I made mention of the fact that
we don't say when we look at unbelievers in their sin, if
we look at them as unbelievers, then yes, we can say, but for
the grace of God, there go I. But we never look at them in
their sin and say, but for the grace of God, there go I. For
if the Lord has made you the chief of all sinners, then you
know that there's not a single sin that they commit that you're
not guilty of. And I made mention of that to
somebody recently, and he said, well, I am what I am by the grace
of God. Let's look at that verse of scripture.
It's in 1 Corinthians 15. Moreover, brethren, I declare
unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you have
received and wherein you stand, by which also you are saved if
you keep in memory what I preached unto you unless you believed
in vain. For I delivered unto you first
of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our
sins according to the scriptures. The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled
all the prophecies of scriptures and all the promises of God are
yea and amen in him. And that he was buried and that
he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. and that he
was seen of Cephas and of the 12. After that, he was seen of
above 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain
unto this present, but some have fallen asleep. After that, he
was seen of James, then of all the apostles. And last of all,
he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time, For
I am the least of the apostles, and am not meet to be called
an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the
grace of God, I am what I am. Paul's talking about being an
apostle. And he's, by the grace of God, we're justified. By the grace of God, we're called.
By the grace of God, we have a righteousness before God in
Christ. This is what he's talking about.
For I am the least of the apostles, but by the grace of God, I am
what I am. And his grace, which was bestowed
upon me, was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than
they all. Yet not I, but the grace of God, which was with
me. Let's pray together. I want to
welcome the brethren in Sarasota. Mary's husband Virgil went to
the hospital this afternoon with heart palpitations and I told
her that we would pray for him. Also, our daughter Jennifer has
pneumonia and is real sick, so let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we're grateful
to be able to come into thy presence and know that we're not only
accepted but loved in the beloved and that we are what we are by
your grace. For apart from your grace, Lord,
we would have no hope of calling your father. We would have no
hope of of having life in Christ. We have no hope of having our
sin put away. We ask Lord that you would be
pleased tonight to send your Holy Spirit and power to open
our hearts and open your word and enable us to to look upon
Christ and to find in him our all and all. Lord, we are centers in need
of your mercy. We pray for Virgil. We ask, Lord,
that you would be pleased to give him life, both spiritual
and physical. We pray for Mary. She would comfort
her heart. Father, we pray for Jennifer.
We ask that you would strengthen her and that you would draw her
near to thyself. We pray it in Christ's name.
Amen. Let's stand together once again. Hymn number 25, number 25 from
yourself back, Tymnel, 25. Savior, bind my heart to you. Guide my steps in all I do. By your grace and power and love,
fix my heart on things above. Give me grace to honor you. Savior, bind my heart to you. Lord, my sinful flesh is weak
and opposed to all I seek. Things I would, I cannot do. What I hate is what I do. Jesus, I would follow you. Savior, bind my heart to you. While I walk this pilgrim way,
Jesus ever near me stay. Hold me lest I fall in sin, when
I do restore again. Lift me up and make me true,
Savior bind my heart to you. If my days on earth be long,
give me grace and make me strong. Hold me, Christ, and I shall
stand safe, secure within your hand. If my days be long or few,
Savior, bind my heart to you. How long, O Lord, must I toil
till this flesh returns to soil, till I leave this world of sin
and your glory enter in? Lord, I long to be with you. Savior, bring me home to you. Please be seated. If you'd like to open your Bibles
with me to Matthew chapter 21, we're going to begin in verse
17. Matthew chapter 21. titled this, Two Sides to Faith. Two Sides to Faith. What I mean
by that is faith is the coin that has two sides. And I hope
the Lord will enable us to see how faith is expressed in these
two miracles that our Lord performs. The Lord made it clear that a
wicked and perverse generation seeketh after a sign. Men won't
believe unless they can see. Perform a miracle for us, they
said. And faith, contrary to that, sees because it believes. The miracles that are performed
by God in his word are not for the purpose of the miracle in
and of itself. The miracle of the miracle is
the message of that miracle behind the miracle. And if the Lord
is pleased to enable us to understand what that miracle means, then
a miracle of grace has been performed in our hearts, enabling us to
understand why this particular miracle was performed by God. And we see that all throughout
the scriptures. If the Lord gives us eyes to
see, we'll understand that Jonah wasn't just the miracle of a
man being swallowed by a great fish for three days and three
nights, but as the Lord said, no sign will be given to this
generation except for the sign of Jonah. Jonah is a picture
of Christ. Jonah was thrown into the sea
in order to save the rest of the mariners on the ship and
he was swallowed and died into the belly of that whale and was
brought forth to life as the Lord Jesus Christ went into the
tomb and was raised miraculously for as our life. So all these
miracles you can You can go through any one of them, and if the Lord
performs a miracle of grace in our hearts, giving us eyes to
see and faith to believe, then we'll understand what these miracles
were intended to portray to the hearts of God's people. Now,
our Lord is about to perform a miracle here, and then he speaks
of another one. verse 17 in Matthew chapter 21. And he left them and went out
of the city unto Bethany, and he lodged there. Now in the morning
as he returned into the city, he hungered. What a picture of
our Lord's humanity. He often retreated to Bethany. That's where Mary and Martha
and Lazarus lived. And he obviously stayed in their
home, which was just a walking distance from the city of Jerusalem. And now he's coming back into
the city. His day, his hour has come. He, you remember, for most of
his earthly ministry, he avoided Jerusalem because they sought
to kill him and it wasn't his time. But now he knows in this
last week that that it's time for the crucifixion. And so he
goes into Jerusalem and makes these final declarations of who
he is and what he came to do. And previous to this verse, he
cleanses the temple. That miracle, that act was performed
twice by the Lord. He opened his public ministry
and he closed his public ministry in the cleansing of the temple.
When he went in, made a whip, Turned over the money, changed
your tables, and chased out the animals, and made this statement,
you have turned the house of prayer into a den of thieves. You're doing nothing but merchandising
men's souls. You're making salvation something
that can be purchased by something that man has to offer. And our
Lord made it clear that that wasn't salvation. And so he does
that in the beginning of chapter 21. And now going back into Jerusalem,
the scripture says he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in
the way, he came to it and found nothing there on but leaves only,
a fruitless fig tree. It was a fig tree, looked like
a fig tree, shaped like a fig tree, leaves look like a fig
tree, but it was fruitless. It didn't provide any any meat
on the tree whatsoever. And so our Lord looked at it
and said unto it, let no fruit grow on thee henceforth forever.
And presently the fig tree withered away. So there's the first side
to this coin of faith. The fig tree is cursed by the
Lord and it immediately dies. And when the disciples saw it,
they marveled, saying, how soon has the fig tree withered away?
They didn't understand the meaning of this miracle. They were just
amazed that the Lord would speak to a fig tree and that it would
immediately die. And Jesus answered and said to
them, Verily I say unto you, if you have faith and doubt not,
you shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree. So there's
the first side of the coin. God, the Lord is saying, if you
have faith, you'll curse fig trees also. What does that mean? Obviously, it doesn't mean killing
a tree. I've done that plenty of times. Sometimes on purpose and sometimes
by mistake. That's not what he's talking
about, is it? The miracle is understanding what the Lord is
performing this miracle for. If you have faith, and doubt
not, you shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree,
but also, if you say unto this mountain, be thou be removed,
and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done. Now there's the second miracle,
moving mountains. And again, he's not talking about
moving a physical mountain. Men can do that. We used to live
in North Alabama where they did strip mining. And I mean, I have
physically watched mountains be moved. I mean, whole mountains. You go by six months later and
it's not there. It's been taken down. So that's
not what he's talking about. But he's saying if you have faith,
number one, you'll curse the fig tree. And number two, you'll
move the mountain. What? is he talking about? What is the miracle that our
Lord would have us to understand in these two acts? There is a rule of first mention
in the scriptures. Oftentimes when a item is made
mention of in the Word of God, it's repeated many, many times
throughout the scripture. If you look at a fig tree, you'll
find it referenced many times in the Word of God. What was
the very first reference to the fig tree? Because the meaning
that was applied to that fig tree at its first reference is
the meaning that carries out throughout the scriptures. What
is the first mention of the fig tree? You know what it was. When
Adam and Eve fell, when they sinned against God, what did
they seek to do? They sought to hide their shame,
hide their nakedness before God by doing what? Sewing together
leaves of fig trees. Was it sufficient? No. No, it wasn't. It wasn't sufficient. What do men by nature do? the
shame and the guilt of our sin. We know that there is a God with
whom we must do. God has created each of us in
this world with a conscience and he's put his law on our hearts. Every man comes into this world
knowing the difference between right and wrong. And so what
does he do in order to try to hide the shame of his sin and
prepare himself to meet God? He does exactly what Adam and
Eve did. He tries to cover up his nakedness with fig trees,
with fig leaves. The fig tree here is a picture
of man-made religion. It's a picture of that which
man does in order to earn favor with God. And what does the Lord
say to do with that tree? What does faith do to that tree?
It curses it, doesn't it? It curses it. You remember when
Philip went and got Nathanael and told Nathanael that in the
first chapter of John, he said, we found the Messiah. He's Jesus
of Nazareth. And Nathanael said, Nazareth? What good can come out of Nazareth?
And Philip said, come and see. And so Philip brought Nathanael
to the Lord, and the Lord saw Nathanael, and he said, ah. An
Israelite indeed. He wasn't talking about his physical
lineage as a child of Abraham. He was talking about this is
one of God's chosen people. This is a child, a spiritual
child of Abraham. An Israelite indeed in whose
mouth there is no guile. And what did Nathaniel say? How
do you know me? How do you know me? What did
the Lord say to Nathaniel? When you were under the fig tree,
I saw you. What Nathaniel say? Oh, oh, truly
thou art the Son of God, thou art the Christ. You see, Nathanael
was under the law. He was under the works of man.
He was trying to, what he was doing under the fig tree, we
don't know. The scripture doesn't say. Perhaps, I think he probably
was sitting under some fig tree somewhere asking God to reveal
to him the truth of salvation. He knew that he had never been
able to produce enough. to satisfy the demands of God's
righteousness. He knew that he was still under
the condemnation of the law. He knew he couldn't keep the
law. He was under the fig tree. And the Lord said, I saw you
when you were there. And he saw you when you were there. He saw
me when I was there. He saw us under the works of
the law. The very law that was condemning
us, the very law that was standing in judgment of us, the law that
we proudly thought that we were somehow satisfying. He saw us
there. What do we do now? Once the Lord
reveals himself as the Christ, as the anointed one, as the one
who did himself, the only one who ever satisfied the demands
of God's law, what do we say? What do we say about those past
experiences that we had? What does faith say about those
experiences that we had under the law? When we were putting
forth our hand, we were like us, weren't we? When David was
carrying the ark on a cart, which was was contrary to what God
had told him. He said, you put a staff through
it, carry it on your shoulders. They saw the Philistines carrying
it on an ark. Remember, that's how the Philistines
sent the ark back after they had captured it. They put it
on an ark, on a cart. And so they thought, well, that
looks, that's easier. We'll just do that. And so they
did what the Philistines were doing. Isn't that what men do?
Look at other man's religion and think, well, we can make
a little compromise here and there. A man by the name of Uzzah was
walking alongside the ark. And there must have been a rut
in the road, I'm sure there was. One of the wheels fell into a
hole, and the ark looked like it was going to fall off the
cart. And Uzzah did exactly what you would do, exactly what I
would do. He was standing there next to the ark, and he thought,
well, I'll hold the ark, keep it from God forbidding anyone
putting their hand to the ark. God killed Uzzah right there
on the spot. Right there on the spot. You put your hand, that's the
fig tree, that's the fig tree. You put your hand to the work
of Christ and you defile it. The Lord said when you build
an altar, you take unhewned stones and stack them up. Don't put
a tool to it. Don't try to shape the stone.
Don't try to make it look better than it does right off the ground. As soon as you put your hand
to it, you've defiled it. Isn't that? Whatever we put our
hand to. Like Nathaniel, we were under
the fig tree. The Lord sees this fruitless
fig tree and he curses it and it dies. And that's what our faith does
with the experiences that we had by nature. We all come into
this world the same way. We all come into this world thinking
that there's something we've got to do. There's some contribution
we have to make. There's some work that we have
to perform. There's some law that we have to keep in order
to satisfy the demands of God's justice and righteousness. And
unless the Lord opens the eyes of our understanding and enables
us to see that Christ is everything in salvation, we'll hold to that. Who is it that made you to differ?
What do you have that you've not received? We still have that
in our old man, don't we? We still have in our flesh these
thoughts of self-righteousness and these thoughts of legalism.
That's why we have to keep hearing the gospel. Because even as believers,
we're being drugged down by that. We have to have someone declare
to us that the Lord Jesus Christ himself is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believeth. that God is pleased
with him, not with you, and that all your salvation is wrapped
up in his successful, finished work of redemption on Calvary's
cross, when he suffered the full wrath of God's justice in order
to put away all the sins of all of God's people of all times.
And he did, through the sacrifice of himself, once for all. Once for all. What a glorious
gospel we have. And when we hear that gospel,
we curse the fig tree. We just do. We say, oh Lord,
I was a blasphemer. I was an idolater. That's what
I was. I'm encouraged. Sometimes people
hear the gospel and they move from being Arminians to being
Calvinists. They just exchange their doctrine
is all they do. And I'm never really impressed
or encouraged with that until I hear them renounce their past
experience for what it was. Till I hear them curse the fig
tree. Till I hear them say, you know,
I was under that tree. I was doing everything I could
to try to earn favor with God. I was competing with my peers
and thinking that somehow because of what I did or didn't do, God
was pleased or not pleased with me. And I was wrong. I was wrong. I was an idolater.
And until a person's willing to say that, you know, That's the first half of faith. Cursing the fig tree. Have you
cursed your fig tree? Has it withered and died? Now
I know from the roots, there's sprigs that keep coming up and
we have to keep cursing it, don't we? It's not something you do
one time. You gotta keep cursing the fig
tree. Otherwise it's gonna start. But that fig tree never produces
fruit. It never can. It's a fruitless
tree. Every imagination, the thoughts
of man are evil. Evil. Man-made religion. It just needs
to be cursed. And it's the reason why we're
faithful to expose the errors of false religion. We have to. We have to. I'm not interested in being contentious
for the sake of being contentious. That's just, that's a bad spirit.
I've met enough of those folks over the years to know that,
you know, that's their badge of honor. You know, that they're
just argumentative, and they argue over words, and they like
being in a fight all the time. I don't like conflict. I don't
like being in a fight. And yet, I've been accused twice
today, today, of being contentious, of being intolerant, of being
unloving. because I'm too narrow on the
gospel. And when those accusations come,
I say, Lord, I don't want to... Lord, am I wrong? Is there something
wrong with me? Do I have a bad spirit? I don't
want to be that way with people. You know, I don't just take it
as a compliment right off the bat and say, well, you know,
that's your problem. If you've got a problem with
me, I don't want to be mean-spirited about the exclusivity of the
gospel. But we can't compromise the gospel.
A little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump. And if we don't
curse the fig tree, then we'll be cursed. I mean, that fig tree
It has to be put to death in order for me to have hope of
salvation. If there's any life in that tree, it robs me of my
hope, and it robs Christ of His glory. And it's consistent with the
Scriptures, isn't it? What was the very first contentious
relationship that took place after the fall? Cain and Abel. And what was it about? It was
about the gospel. Abel offered a sacrifice, the
fruit of his labors, didn't he? He brought to the Lord that which
he had produced with his hands. And Cain did. And Abel brought
forth the firstlings of the flock and offered a blood sacrifice.
And God had respect for Abel's offering and had no respect for
Cain's offering. And Cain, out of jealousy, put
his brother to death. That hasn't changed. It's the
same thing. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
offense of the gospel. And if we're going to hold him
up and give to him all the glory for our salvation, it's going
to mean that that fig tree's got to be cursed. Because it's
a fruitless tree. And it robs him of his glory
and robs us of the hope of our salvation. We were under it. We were under it. After the story of Cain and Abel,
we've got the story of Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. What did
God say to Abraham? He's the father. We're talking
about faith now. We're talking about what does
faith do? What are the two sides of faith? It's cursing the fig
tree. That's the first side. What did God say to Abraham in
Genesis chapter 12? Abram, come out of your country. Come out from among your family.
Leave your father and follow me to a land that I'll show you.
That Ur of the Chaldees, Abram was a pagan. He was a false,
he had a false God. He was an idolater. And God called
him to come out. And what does he say to us? Come
out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. And
he's not talking about just, well, live a holier life than
they religious live. No, he's talking about cursing
the fig tree. He's talking about identifying
it for what it is. The plagues of Egypt? What were
they about? What were those 10 plagues about?
Every single one of them exposed the gods of Egypt. They had a lord of the flies,
they had a god of the river, they had a god of the sun, they
had a god of the fleas, and everything. And what did the Lord do? He
plagued them with their own gods. Why? to expose those gods for
what they were, and to show that he is the one and only true God.
That's what those plagues were about. All throughout the scriptures. When Nehemiah went back to rebuild
the city, and Tobiah, and tried to get him to make a compromise,
and they said, come on down to the valley of Ono, and let's
find some common ground. And Nehemiah said, I can't. I
can't. God's given me a work to do.
And we don't have a point of compromise. That's a cursed fig
tree. There's no life in it. It's just
the works of man. You read the prophets. How are
you going to read the prophets without seeing the condemnation
that God speaks through the prophets against all the false gods of
the world? Don't be intimidated by those people that would call
you narrow-minded, unloving, intolerant. Be kind. Be kind. And, you know, I hope
that the Lord will enable us to speak to the idolaters of
this world with compassion, remembering that, but for the grace of God,
there go I. We would be just like them. He's
the only one that made us to differ. But at the same time,
a little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump. That fig tree's
got to be cursed. It's got to be cursed. It's got
to be cursed first in our own hearts and in our own experience.
And then it's got to be seen as a curse in the world. Our Lord, who was it that was
so offended by the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ? Wasn't
the Romans, they didn't care. They weren't concerned about
Him. And Pilate never would have put
him to death if he didn't think that putting our Lord to death
on a Roman cross was going to benefit him with the Jews. It
was the Pharisees. It was the ones that the Lord
said, whitewashed tombs, brood of vipers. It was the ones that
the Lord said, you are wolves in sheep's clothing. He cursed
the fig tree. And as a result of that, men
are offended. and they will make personal accusations,
like I said, and I'm not expressing this as a badge of honor in any
way, but I mean, twice today, today, and you'll have the same
thing. If any man, if you stand up for
the gospel, men are gonna hate you for it. They're gonna hate
you for it. I like what Brother Hugo told
me one day years ago. He said, the only reason men
don't hate us more than they do is because they don't know
what we believe. There's a lot of truth to that.
There's a lot of truth to that. You stand for the gospel of God's
free grace in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
at least by implication, if not by direct declaration, curse
the fig tree of man-made religion. And you'll find your friends
become narrower and narrower, and eventually, the only friends
you're going to have are believers. The only friend you're gonna
have. And that's okay. That's okay. So the first side of faith is
cursing the fig tree. What's the second side of this
coin of faith? Casting the mountains into the
sea. Now I know people say, you know,
you gotta have faith to move mountains. Faith will move mountains.
And what they're referring to is the trials and tribulations
and troubles of this life. Those are not mountains. Those
are bridges. They're not mountains. The way
of the Lord is through the sea. The troubles that God gives you
are not keeping you from God. They are the, I mean, they're
the water slide to God. You know, they're just, they're,
isn't that true? The Lord makes it clear in Isaiah. He said, my hand is not short
that it cannot save. Neither is my ear deaf that I
cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated
you from your God. Now, we don't know much about
mountains in Florida. It's just flat ground. We were just in
Alaska last week. I was blown away by the mountains. I mean, they are completely impassable. You can't get over those mountains.
You have to find a pass in the mountains to get from one side
to the other. And we tried climbing one that would have been a hill
compared to the mountains, and we couldn't get a third of the
way up it. It's just amazing. Mountains that have nothing but
glaciers on top of them. Those mountains are barriers.
And prior to air travel, there was just no way to get from one
side to the other of them. What is the mountain that separates
you from your God. What is it? I just quoted it. Isaiah makes it clear. Your sins
have separated you from your God. The only thing that keeps us
out of fellowship with Christ is the guilt and the shame and
the condemnation of our sin. Isn't that your experience? Isn't
that your experience? It's not our trials that keep
us from Him, those push us to Him. The Lord said, I will separate
your sins from you as far as the east is from the west and
I will remember them no more. I'll cast them into the depths
of the sea. What does faith do? Faith moves
that mountain. Faith looks to Christ alone. It doesn't look to my obedience.
It doesn't look to my repentance. It doesn't look to my faith.
It doesn't look to anything that I do. Faith rests in Christ as
the hope of having that barrier that separates me from my God
cast into the depths of the sea. The Lord said, if you have faith,
not only will you curse the fig tree, but you will say unto this
mountain, be ye cast into the sea, and it will be so. We have a forgiving God. But
His forgiveness is not determined by our sincerity. His forgiveness
is not determined by our commitment. His forgiveness is secured by
the finished work of Christ. And faith is the only thing that
lays hold of that. Faith is the only thing that
lays hold of Christ. We need to hear that, don't we?
We need to have that mountain removed. We need for God to be
casted into the sea so that we can have fellowship with our
God. And that's what he does. John put it like this, whosoever
is born of God doth not commit sin. Is that your experience? It's
God's word. What does it mean? For his seed remaineth in him,
and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." It means that God has cast our
sins into the sea. He separated them from us as
far as the east is from the west. It means that the Lord Jesus
Christ has satisfied God's justice, and that there's no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus. They're taken away. All of them. Robert, as you said last Sunday,
past, present, and future. All our sins. All our sins. If you have faith. And Mark,
when he mentions this, he adds, of a mustard seed. If you have
faith of a mustard seed, you'll say unto this mountain, Be thou
be removed, and be cast into the sea. You see, it's not the
degree of your faith. It's not the strength of your
faith. It's the object of your faith. It's believing with all of your
heart that the only hope that you have of standing accepted
before God is to be found in the Beloved. Do you believe that? Yeah, I know that if you're like
me, you have times where you doubt that if what the Lord did
was for you. But if you're a child of God,
you know without any shadow of a doubt that what He did is the
only hope that you've got. You believe that with all of
your heart. There's no other way. faith of a mustard seed, cast
the mountain of sin into the sea. For whosoever committeth
sin transgresseth also the law. For sin is the transgression
of the law. And you know that he was manifested
to take away our sin. Oh, there's my hope. My hope
is in Christ. I've got no other plea. I've got no other place to go.
Lord, the accuser of the brethren takes my sin, puts me back under
the fig tree, makes me look to the works of my hands as the
hope of my salvation, and it's fruitless. It's fruitless. The only thing that I've got
is an Advocate, Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, He's the only
one that's right. All my righteousness are His
filthy rags. He's the only one that can plead
my case for me and put away my sin once and for all. What a
glorious hope we have. The two sides to faith. Have you cursed your fig tree? And do you see the fig tree of
man-made religion as a cursed thing? And are you looking to
the Lord Jesus Christ to have that which would separate you
from your God cast into the sea? Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank
you for your word. We pray that your Holy Spirit
would bless it to our hearts and enable us to believe you,
to trust Christ, We ask it in his name. Amen. Number 116 in the softback terminal. Let's stay. My God, I would confess my sin,
but where shall I begin? All that I think or say or do
is sin and only sin. My righteousness and my good
works I now renounce as vile. Arising from my sinful heart,
My noblest works are vile. Within my loathsome heart I see
a den of all that's vile. A pit of dark iniquity, my heart,
my heart is vile. A helpless, worthless sinner,
Lord, I fall before your throne. O God, be merciful to me, a sinful
wretch undone. I know that if you will, you
can, by your almighty grace. Save me a wretched sinner, Lord,
and all my sins erase. I plead Christ's blood, His precious
blood, and nothing but the blood. Be pleased, great God, for Jesus'
sake, to save me by the blood. It is. It is.