again and let's open this hour
service with hymn number 200 and I'm sorry let's start with
the bulletin. Let's start with the hymn that's
on the back of the bulletin. Let's all stand together. Let all who trust the Savior's
name sing praises to the Lord. May he alone be magnified by
all the church adorned. Behold what love and grace is
this that he for us would die. Amazing pity, Jesus came, God's
love to satisfy. The sins of all His chosen ones
on Him were made to meet. And by His sacrificial death,
redemption was complete. Behold, He ever lives above for
us to intercede. He is the way, the truth, the
life for all His chosen seed. He shall come with trumpet sound,
And all the world shall see, That Jesus is the Lord of Lords,
And praise His majesty. So, O Saints of God, with heart
and voice, unite in one accord. Exalt our Savior, God and King. Sing praises to the Lord. Please be seated. I know when you disciples said,
Lord, is it me? Hopefully he won't say, yes,
it is you. That's our prayer this morning. He won't say that. Yeah, I will. This Lord's blessed
me about something. Turn with me, please, to Philippians
4. We read this in the Bible study, but it is a great truth. So much for being prepared, huh?
We should always be prepared for the hope that is within us.
Philippians 4, Paul is writing to the Philippians. And he's writing this, I believe,
from a Roman prison. And he says in verse 6, he says, Be careful
for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, peace of God, which passeth all
understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ. It is through Christ that we
have the peace of God and through Christ that gives us faith to
rest and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. I will say any
believer knows that's the only peace we have in it because outside
of Christ there's no peace in this world. I'll say that. Nothing
but troubles. Finally, brethren, whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,
whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue
and if there be any praise, think on these things. Brother Alex, I'll never forget
that. Some of you folks have said some things that stayed
with me and I haven't thanked you for, but he made the comment
many years ago, I can't stop thinking about Christ. I pray that's our prayer, that
God would cause us that we can't stop thinking about Christ. If
we do, He'll bring us back to Him, I promise you, through trial
and tribulation and heartache. Those things which you have both
learned and received and heard, seen in me do, and the God of
peace be with you. But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly
that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again.
He is praising these Philippians for they've provided for Paul. He's not in filled by with him.
He's off and they've provided for his needs. Wherein you were
also careful, but you lacked opportunity. Even when you did
have opportunity, your heart was always for my provision and
for my preaching of the gospel. Now that I speak in respect of
want. Parents, do you ever have a hard
time teaching your children the difference between need and want? Well, guess what? I'm still trying
to learn my difference between need and want. I spoke, for I
have learned, God give us the grace to do this, in whatsoever
state I am, to be content. To be content. Whether I be in
health or sickness, to be content. Whether I be rich or poor, to
be content. Whether I to be happy or heartbroken,
to be content. And God give us the grace not
to complain against God's good providence. I need to be reminded
of that often. Too easily I complain. I find
that very easy, very natural for me. For I know how to be abased and
I know how to abound. Everywhere and all things I am
instructed both to be full and to be empty, both to be abound
and suffer need. Don't matter which spectrum I'm
on, look what it says, I can do all things through Christ
which strengthen me. My hope is in Christ, not in
my condition in this world. And a warning to all of us not
to look at our condition in this world, because it's a false hope. Our hope is in Christ and the
hope to come. notwithstanding you have well
done and that you did communicate with my affliction." He tells
him, now you Philippians know also that in the beginning of
the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated
with me as concerning giving and receiving. You're the only
church that cared for me, but you only. And even in Thessalonica,
when I was there, you sent once and again into my necessity.
Now I want you to see verse 17. Not because I desired a gift. Your provision wasn't because
of something I needed. I was content whether I had nothing
or everything. But I desire fruit that may abound
to your account. But I have all and abound, and
I am full, having received of Ephroditus the things which were
sent from you." Now, I don't know what they sent, what they
sent, Paul, we know not, but, "...your sending was an odor
of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to
God." Verse 19, but my God shall supply
all your need according to his riches in glory. And these needs will be supplied
by Christ Jesus. Two things that struck me here
is one is, oh Lord, that we would be content no matter what our
circumstances and praise God for them. I'm learning that the
hard way. And the second thing is Paul's
statement that these gifts you gave me, they weren't for my
good. They were for your good. Your giving was for your good,
not for mine. I didn't need them. God doesn't
need us to give Him anything. There's nothing we can give God
that would be pleasing to Him. Our giving is a sign of what
Christ has done for us. And it is for all things work
together for what? Our good and His glory to them
that love God and who are the called according to His purpose.
God, teach me. Giving's not for you, it's for
me. And the Lord will bless it. He
will bless it. I pray that God give us the ability
to believe Him, that we pray. Lord, we've gathered here this
morning. We ask your blessing upon our time together. Lord, we pray that you would
be glorified in all that we say and do. Lord, we confess to you
we have nothing to offer, nothing to give, that we are dependent
sinners. And Lord, we didn't even know
we were sinners till you gave us the faith to believe that. Lord, we need you to give us
faith to believe this morning by your spirit. We pray for your
servant, our brother, our shepherd that you put over us and wherever
your people gather, that you would put your words in their
mouth and heart. And oh God, we plead with you,
give us the faith to believe it and to rejoice and to be content. We ask this for your glory. Now let's all stand together.
Hymn number 256 from the Hardback Tymnal. 256. 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 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 for my soul. 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,
O my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my
soul. And, Lord, haste the day when
my faith shall be sight, 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, it is well with my
soul. Please be seated. Michael, that was my fault. I'm
sorry. I called on Michael out of order
to do scripture reading this morning in the study, and I think
that threw everything off, so I take full responsibility for
that. I'm so grateful for him and for
Hugo last Sunday. I had a chance to listen to those
messages and it's blessed my soul to know that you were able
to have the gospel preached so clearly. to you in my absence. Thank you for your prayers. It's
good to be back home. I'm going to begin in the Song
of Solomon. If you'd like to turn with me
there in your Bibles, the Song of Solomon, Chapter 5. Alan and Christine Jellett visited
with us, oh I guess it's been maybe two years ago now, And
Alan was showing me some pictures on his tablet of their home. And he said, here, I have some
pictures of my garden that I want to show you. Well, to me, a garden
is where you have tomatoes and squash and cucumbers and corn
and those sort of things. He showed me these pictures and
I said, well, that's your backyard. Where's your garden? It was a
beautiful backyard, very well manicured, wrapped around with
perfectly trimmed hedges and flowers. And that was their place
of respite. That was their garden. That's
where they went to find separation from the hustle and bustle of
their life. That's where they went to enjoy
the beauty of God's creation. That's where they went to see
the growth that took place. He said, you know, our garden's
been, it's been in dormant now, you know, for many months, but
now it's just now beginning to bloom. And that is the place
where they found some rest. Now God, in his word, likens
the church to a garden. And Those are the things I want
us to consider this morning as we consider what the Lord is
doing in his church. It is a place of separation. It is a place of beauty. It is a place of growth, and
it is a place of rest. You have your Bibles open to
the Song of Solomon, chapter 5, verse 1. I am come into my
garden, my spouse, my sister, my spouse. The Lord Jesus Christ
said, where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there I am in the midst of them. He walks among the candlesticks.
He inhabits the praise of his people. Does that mean that he's
not omnipresent? Does that mean that he's not
everywhere else too? No, it doesn't. Yes, he is omnipresent,
but what he's talking about there is this is the place where I'm
pleased to make myself known. This is the place where I'm pleased
to manifest my glory and my grace to the hearts of my people. I
have come into my garden. Look at chapter 4 at verse 12. A garden enclosed is my sister. A garden enclosed. Alan and Christine's garden was
very distinctly enclosed. It was a place of separation. And so it is with the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ. When he's pleased to make himself
known in his garden, the first thing he does is he separates
you from yourself. He separates you from yourself.
The first thing that the Lord teaches you when you learn the
gospel is that you have no righteousness whatsoever. That you are the
chief of all sinners. Those things that you trusted
in for the hope of your salvation become dung to you. They're no longer something that
you want in your garden. separates you from your unbelief. There was a time when you couldn't
believe, but when you came into the Lord's garden and He met
you there through the preaching of the gospel, He gave you faith
and He separated you from that unbelief. That's just what the
Lord does. The first thing he separates
us from is from ourselves. He separates us from our blindness.
There was a time we couldn't see. We said what everybody else
said. Well, I don't understand. What's
the big deal? And then all of a sudden it became so clear. Our eyes were opened and we saw
the difference. And we were able to say, initially,
we were able to say, I don't know about all those theological
debates that you guys have got going on, but I know this. Once
I was blind, and now I see. The Lord separates his children
from themselves. They become a new creature. They are given a holy nature.
A nature that is sinless. They all of a sudden become two
people. The problem now is that they never had a problem with
sin until the Lord separated them from themselves. Now they've
become a contradiction to themselves. Now they're in constant conflict.
Now the spirit wars against the flesh and the flesh against the
spirit, so they cannot be what they would be. You don't become
a sinner until you come into the Lord's garden and He's pleased
to make Himself known to you. And when He does, you're able
to say with the Apostle Paul, I am the chief of all sinners. There's no one in need of grace
more than me. God has separated me from myself. Wednesday night I mentioned a
statement that I've made, and I assume that most of you have
made it. It has an appearance of humility to it, but I hope
to never say it again, and I hope you'll never say it again. How
many times have you made the statement, but for the grace
of God, there go I. It has an appearance of humility
to it. But in fact, there is absolutely
no difference between that statement and what the Pharisee said when
he stood in the temple to pray and said, God, I thank thee that
I'm not like other men. It's the same statement. It's
exactly the same statement. To look at someone who's living
in degradation and to say, but for the grace of God, there go
I, is to not just imply, but it is to declare that you're
not as bad as other men. If God's made you to be a sinner,
you know you're worse. You know you're worse. You say,
well, I'm not doing some of those things. Well, that's fine. To whom much is given, much is
required. Even in our judicial system,
the law differs depending on the the position that a person has.
If a person's a CPA and they're cheating on taxes, the weight
of the law is gonna come down. If a person's a teacher in a
school and has been entrusted with children and then they abuse
those children, the law is gonna come down harder, isn't it? Too
much is given, much is required. How much has been given you?
How much grace, how much light, how much mercy has been given
you? And yet what happens? God happens. You continue and
continue and continue to be a sinner. Oh, might God give us the grace
the next time we see someone. By the way, that statement, but
for the grace of God, there go I, was popularized by an arch
enemy of the gospel. John Wesley was the first one
to make that statement. When walking down through the
streets of downtown London and saw a street person lying in
the gutter, that was the statement that he made. Might God give us the grace to
say, I'm worse. I'm worse. Truth is, the world says good
people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. The gospel teaches
good people go to hell and bad people go to heaven. Now that's
a mystery that the natural man cannot comprehend. See, that
doesn't make sense to me. The reason it doesn't make sense
to him is because he's not experienced the separation that the work
of God's grace does in the heart when he comes into the garden
of God. He's just not experienced it. But if he has, if he's been
made a sinner, then he knows that that's the case. Not only does the Lord separate
you from yourself, but he also separates you from all false
religions. All false religions. When you
meet the Lord Jesus Christ in his garden, and he's pleased
to separate you, you know, you know the difference. And you
can't ever go back. You just can't do it. You know
that you were drinking out of the polluted cesspool of dung
and you don't want any part of it ever again. It's a stench
to your nostrils. It is a burden to your soul to
consider what people believe and where they are and where
you were. The Lord separated you from that.
When the Lord said, Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate,
saith the Lord. That's what he's talking about.
You come out of that religion. When Nehemiah returned from the
Babylonian captivity and was restoring the walls around Jerusalem,
Sanballat and Tobiah came to Nehemiah and said, you know,
we believe in the same God. Let's just find a place of compromise. And Sanballat wrote him a letter
and invited him to meet with him in the valley of Ono. It's not difficult for you to
look up that word Ono. It means translated common. And what Sanballat was saying
to Nehemiah was, let's just find some common ground. Surely we
all believe the same thing. We just have some distinctive
differences in our doctrine, but that shouldn't separate us. Nehemiah wrote him back six times. He only wrote one letter. Samballot
kept writing him different letters, and Nehemiah told his servant,
send him the same letter again. He sent him the same letter six
times. He just kept saying, just tell
him the same thing. I'm not changing my words, not changing my mind,
I'm not adding to it. And Nehemiah said, no, we're
doing a good work here. God has separated us. We're building
the wall, we're setting the gates, and there's no place for compromise. When God teaches you the gospel,
when he brings you into the garden of his grace and reveals to you
the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, you cannot have part with a works
gospel ever again. You can't participate in a free
will worship of God. You know what it is. You were
a blasphemer. You were an injurious man. You
were a persecutor of the church. But you did it, as Paul said,
ignorantly, in unbelief. And God has delivered you from
that in the knowledge of the gospel. You've been separated. You can't go back. In Galatians, Paul uses the analogy
of Ishmael and Isaac, and he says, he that was born after
the flesh, that's Ishmael, persecuted him that was born after the spirit,
and as it was then, so it is now. They're not going to like
it, they're not going to agree, but there's nothing we can do
about it. God has separated us in his garden, and the hedges
are high, and we can't cross them. The Lord separates you
from yourself. He separates you from religion.
He separates you from the world. He does. For the first time in
your life, you understand what Solomon meant when he said, Vanity
of vanities, all is vanity. This world is on a wide road
to destruction, and I'm no longer a part of it. I'm a pilgrim.
I'm a stranger in a foreign land. God's made me to be that way.
He's just separated me. And I know my flesh is still
very much attached to this world, and in so many ways I'm worldly,
but I'm talking about the spiritual perception of the gospel. You
know if God separated you. that this world is not your home. Like Abraham, who is the father
of the faithful, you seek a city whose builder and whose foundations
are God. Do you know that? You're longing
for that. The Lord Jesus Christ said in
John 17, when he prayed for us, he said, pray, he said, Father,
I pray not that you would take them out of the world, but that
you would keep them while they are in the world. Finally, the Lord's revealed
himself to you in his garden. He separated you from your sin.
That's right. You say, well, oh, sin's so real
to me. I have separated your sin from
you as far as the east is from the west, and I remember them
no more. Now that's what God says. You
say, well, Michael, you made this point last week. You say,
well, that's how God sees it, and that's the way it is. That's
the way it is. Reckon yourselves to be dead
indeed unto sin. Consider it to be so. Why? Because
God's done it. The sin bearer, the Lord Jesus
Christ, bore in his body all the sins of all God's people
and suffered the wrath of God's judgment in order to put away
our sins once and for all. He separated them from us. If
God finds one sin left on you, one sin, That sin will be worthy
of eternal judgment, eternal separation from God. The Lord
separates his people. He separates them from themselves.
He separates them from religion. He separates them from the world.
He separates them from their sin in his garden. Has he done that for you? Has
he? This is where it happens. This
is a place of separation. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter
58. Look at verse 11. and the Lord shall guide thee
continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat
thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like
a spring of water whose waters fail not." Oh, this is a... This is a place of separation,
it's a place of growth, it's a place of beauty. Look with
me to Isaiah chapter 50. Isaiah chapter 51, I'm sorry.
Isaiah chapter 51. Look at verse 1. Hearken to me. Oh, listen to what the Lord says.
Hearken unto me, ye that follow after righteousness. What is
it to follow after righteousness? It's to follow after Christ.
He is our righteousness. We have no righteousness of our
own. Ye that seek the Lord, there it is, he's just repeating what
he just said, look unto the rock from which ye were hewn. Oh,
an empty cistern, a broken cistern is that of the flesh. The rock
from which we were hewn is that rock that followed the children
of Israel through the wilderness. That rock that watered them all
the way through. And look to the hole of the pit
from which you were digged. Two things believers know. They
know that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only source of water.
And they know that the pit from which they were digged from is
nothing more than the pit of sin. It's a dry and thirsty place. Look unto Abraham your father
and to Sarah that bear you. What do those two people represent?
Faith, that's Abraham, and a miraculous birth, that's Sarah. You've been
born again, miraculously, just like Isaac was born of a 90-year-old
woman, impossible, impossible. Yes, and no less impossible is
your spiritual birth. What did God say to Sarah when
she laughed? Is anything too hard for God? That's what he said. Look unto
Abraham. He's the one who believed God
and it was counted to him for righteousness. What did he believe? He believed that God was able
to perform that which he had promised. That's what he believed.
You believe God's able? His ability is the only hope
we have. And Sarah was the instrument through which a miraculous birth
took place. For I called him alone and blessed
him and increased him. For the Lord shall comfort Zion,
he will comfort all her waste places, and he will make her
wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the
Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found
therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody. Go back with
me to Song of Solomon chapter 5. Look at chapter six and verse
two. My beloved is gone down into
the garden to the beds of spices to feed in the gardens and to
gather lilies. Look at verse 11 in chapter six.
And I went down into the garden to see the fruits of the valley
and to see whether the vine flourished and the pomegranate budded. Oh
Lord, would you be pleased to visit this garden? You know, the garden of the world,
when Abraham and Lot separated, Abraham said, you take the area
you want, and Lot, the scripture says, lifted up his eyes, and
behold, he beheld the plains of Jordan, and they were like
the garden of the Lord to him. Well, we know what happened to
Lot, don't we? We know what happened to that
garden. We know what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah when the
fire of God's wrath fell. But Lot saw that valley as a
garden. Isn't that the way it is? You
know, we look at this world and we think, well, what a lush garden
it is. And it, like Sodom and Gomorrah,
is slated for destruction. Oh, this garden. This is the
true garden right here. We're sitting in the fenced garden,
the place of separation, the place where God is pleased to
make known his glory and what he accomplished on the cross
of Calvary when he separated us from our sins. The garden
also is a place of beauty. It's a place of great beauty. I was encouraged to see those
pictures that Alan showed me. It was very well manicured. backyard. His garden had lots of flowers
in it and spices that he was growing there and so it is. So it is with the place where
the Lord Jesus Christ is pleased to show forth his grace. The
flowers are beautiful. Have you seen them? Have you
seen them? Have you seen that that flower
over there in that corner of the garden? that has never changed. It's called immutability. It's
the flower of the Lord Jesus Christ that has always been the
same. What a beautiful flower it is.
I change not, therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. God
Almighty, in the covenant of grace, before time ever began,
established the salvation of his people. And what he ordained
in eternity past, he purposed to last for eternity future,
and nothing that happens in time can change it. That's the only
hope I've got. Only hope I've got is that the
Lord Jesus Christ is that flower of immutability. He never changes. I change all
the time. You change all the time. Here
in this garden, we hear about one who changes not, and we hang
the hopes of our soul on him. There's another flower in this
garden, a flower that never had a beginning, the flower of eternality. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I
am. I am. I'm the creator and sustainer
of all of life. I'm not dependent on you for
anything. You are completely dependent
upon me for everything. What a beautiful flower that
is. The flower of immutability, the flower of eternality. And then there's a tall flower
that stands guard over all the other flowers, and it's called
the flower of sovereignty. He rules and reigns over all
the other flowers. What hope we have in knowing
that He is sovereign. He's sovereign in creation. He's
sovereign in the providential circumstances of your life and
of my life. And He's sovereign, most importantly,
in salvation. You don't make Him Lord, He is
Lord. Oh, what a tall flower that is.
This is a beautiful garden. It's a garden of beauty. There's
a... There's a flower that has two
buds coming out of the same stem. It's called the flower of union.
What union the Father has with the Son. He said, if you've seen
me, you've seen the Father. And by virtue of my union with
the Father and my work of grace for you, you have union with
me. So that the fullness of the Godhead
resides in me bodily and you are complete in me. Christ in
you is your hope of glory. What a beautiful flower that
is. I've come into my garden in order
to manifest my grace and my glory to my sister, to my spouse. What a beautiful garden it is.
There's a garden. There's another flower that's
golden in color. It's called the flower of holiness.
Oh, and He is. He's holy, holy, holy. He's the Lord God of hosts. Heaven
and earth is filled with His glory. Man thinks that He's altogether
as we are. We fashion in our imagination
a God that's like us, but He's holy. He's other than we are. He's not like us in any way. Who will you compare me unto? No one, Lord. There's nothing
like You. Oh, that golden flower of holiness
is a beautiful flower. It's the only hope I have. Who He is. Who He is. And then there's the lily of
the valley. Oh, what a flower it is. The flower of love. He is love. What affection His
love inspires in the hearts of His sister, of His spouse, to
love Him back in return. We do love Him because He first
loved us. And then there's the flowers
of His work. There's a flower in the middle
of the garden, and it's crimson red. And it's a beautiful flower. It's called the flower of His
redemption. It's the flower of His sacrificial
death on Calvary's cross. It's the blood flower. He shed
His blood for His sheep. And we know that when God says,
when I see the blood, I'll pass by you. That's the flower that
we hope for. That's the only hope that we
have. That our sins will be covered from the sight of God. that God
would accept the sacrifice that our sin bearer made on Calvary's
cross as penalty for our sin? Not one drop of his blood was
wasted. What a beautiful flower it is.
Oh, I love that red flower. I love the golden flower. And
then there's the beauty of his spices, the gifts of his grace
that he gives unto his children. There's the peace of God that
you just read about, Michael, that passes understanding, that
keeps our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus, so that we're
able to think upon those things which are good, and those things
which are lovely, and those things which are of good report. Those
are the things that demonstrate Him, the virtuous things are
of Him. What a gift of grace that He
gives to His children in enabling them to think upon Christ. The fruit of faith. We couldn't
believe if He didn't give us the beauty of faith. The beauty
of faith is that it exalts the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the only
thing that exalts Him. Complete dependence upon Him
for everything. He gets all the glory. Why? Because
we bow in faith. And faith, contrary to what a
lot of people think, is not some sort of inner strength or dedication
or commitment. The Lord Jesus Christ said, lest
you have faith as a little child, you shall not enter the kingdom
of heaven. What kind of faith does a little child have? Complete
dependence. What can a little child do? What
can a baby do? It can cry and mess itself up. That's about all it's able to
do. And that's about all faith can do. Messes itself up and
it cries for mercy. Oh Lord, help me. Help me. What beauty this garden is. What beauty it reflects upon
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a place of separation. It
is a place of beauty. It is a place of growth. The seeds of the gospel are scattered,
and some of them do fall on stony ground, and they're plucked away
by the birds of the air, and some of them fall on the wayside,
and they're on the rocky soil. They're caught up in the briars,
but by God's grace, the seed of the gospel who is Christ. We preach Christ crucified and
the scripture refers to the Lord Jesus Christ as Abraham's seed,
not seeds, seed, singular. And when he falls unto the heart
that God has prepared, the fallow ground that he has toiled for
and prepared for the seed of the gospel, then it takes root,
it germinates, it takes root, and it grows, and it produces
fruit to His glory. Some forty, some sixty, some
a hundredfold, but it'll produce fruit. This place, this garden is a
place of growth, where the trees of righteousness, which are the
plantings of the Lord, have been put by the river of life, and
they grow. They do grow, but as they grow
up toward heaven, they're also at the same time sending their
roots deeper into the earth. Truth is the way up is down.
They tell me that pretty much every tree, what you see above
the ground is exactly a mirror image of what you would see below
the ground. Just turn it upside down with its roots. And as it
grows up, it's growing down. Isn't that the way it is? We grow in grace and in the knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we grow, we become more
and more aware of our need for more grace. Sin abounds as we
grow in grace. But where sin abounds, grace
does much more abound. Oh, this place. It's the only
place like this in the world. You know that. There's no other
place like this. No other place, no place else
you can go where these things that we're speaking of now are
true. The Lord said, I've come into
my garden. You're not going to find this anywhere else. The more we grow in grace, the
more separation becomes more real, the more beautiful beauty
becomes and the more faith, the more sure faith becomes. And
my final point, Alan and Christine say, they
had a bench back there and said, we go back there and we read
back there and we sit and relax and rest. We rest there. Oh, what a beautiful place of
rest this is. Resting from your labors as God
has rested from his. The work's been done from the
foundations of the world, Hebrews chapter four. There's nothing
left to do. It's all been accomplished. The
Lord Jesus Christ ascended back into glory and took His rightful
place where? On His throne. He's seated at
the right hand of the majesty of God, having accomplished the
work of redemption for His people. What do we do? We rest in Christ. We're not under the law. We're
under grace. We're not trying to prove anything to anybody. We're looking to Christ and resting
in Him. For he that is entered into his
own rest, he also is ceased from his own works as God did from
his." Noah, when it first stopped raining,
he sent out a dove. And the scripture says that the
dove went out And it came back because it found no place of
rest for its soul, the soul of its feet. It went out in the
world and it came back to the ark. Isn't that the way we are? God's doves. And they're likened
in the Song of Solomon to a dove as well. sent out into the world. They find no place of rest for
the soles of their feet, and they come back to the ark. I am coming to my garden, my
sister, my spouse. I've gathered my mirror. I have eaten my honeycomb with
my honey. I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, oh friends,
drink, yea, drink abundantly, oh my beloved. Is this a place of separation
for you? It is a place of beauty? Is it
a place of growth? Is it a place of rest? That's
what the Lord's garden is. Tom's going to come lead us in
our closing hymn. And I've asked Jimmy, those of
you that weren't here the first hour, today's our last Sunday. Jimmy Toll is going to be with
us on a regular basis. He promised to come back. But
he's moving to West Virginia and going to be attending the
church that Mike Walker pastors in Cottageville. And so we're
going to miss him sorely. But Jimmy's going to close the
service and pray after we sing a hymn. So let's stand together,
Brother Tom. Number 56 in the hard back ten. Loved with everlasting love,
Led by grace that loved to know, Spirit breathing from above,
Thou hast taught me it is so. O this full and perfect peace,
O this transport all divine, In a love which cannot cease,
I am His and He is mine. Heaven above is softer blue Earth
around is sweeter green Something lives in every hue Christless
eyes have never seen Birds with gladder songs o'erflow, flowers
with deeper beauty shine. Sense I know, as now I know,
I am His and He is mine. Things that once were wild alarms,
cannot now disturb my rest. Closed in everlasting arms, pillowed
on the loving breast. Oh, to lie forever here, Doubt
and care and self-resign, While he whispers in my ear, I am his
and he is mine. His forever, only His, who the
Lord and me shall part. Ah, with what a rest of bliss
Christ can fill the loving heart. Heaven and earth may fade and
flee, first born light in gloom decline. But while God and I
shall be, I am His and He is mine. Lord, we thank you for bringing
us another Sunday here at your garden. Lord, continue to bring
your grace, your message that preaches to the hearts of sinners,
that brings us to our knees constantly, and say, Lord, just like that
Syrophoenician woman, Lord, help me. Continue to do this, Lord,
at this wonderful garden here in Florida. We pray to all the
congregations around the world to please keep this message.
Keep this hand over and keep bringing us here. We are always
in need of your mercy and tell us of that old, old story of
Jesus, your son, what he came to do, his accomplished work,
and his love for his people, what he did upon that cross for
his people. Oh, even me, Lord, please keep
us We pray for Chris and his family
and his continued travels. Pray for this pastor, pastor
who I've known all my life, and that he will continue to preach
to the hearts of sinners here. We ask these things in Jesus'
name. Thank you.