Abraham is called the father
of the faithful. And the scripture says that he
looked for a city whose builder and maker was God. A city which hath foundations. When the New Jerusalem is described
in the book of Revelation, it's described as having seven foundations. The foundation being the immovable,
truth of the work of Christ in saving his people and building
his church. We're going to sing a hymn right
now, a firm foundation. Let's stand together, Brother
Tom. 268 and the hardback temple,
number 268. And for our Scripture reading
this morning, would you turn with me to Hebrews chapter 2? And we'll begin reading with
verse 9. But we see Jesus. who was made a little lower than
the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory
and honor, that he, by the grace of God, should not taste death
for every man." Now, this is not all mankind. This is the
elect. We'll see that later on. For
it became Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things,
in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their
salvation. perfect through sufferings. For
both he that sanctifyeth and they who are sanctified are all
of one. For which cause he is not ashamed
to call them brethren." Now you want to notice here that this
is the Lord Jesus speaking and here's what he's saying. Saying,
I will declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst of the
church will I sing praise unto thee." Now where is the Lord
Jesus? He says He's in the midst of
the church and what is He doing? He's singing praise to you. And
again, I will put my trust in Him and again behold I and the
children which God hath given me for as much then as the children
are partakers of flesh and blood He also himself likewise took
part of the same, that Through death he might destroy him that
hath the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them
who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to
bondage. For verily he took not on him
the nature of angels, but took on him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behooved
him to be made like unto his brethren. that he might be a
merciful and faithful high priest in all things pertaining to God,
to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that
he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to secure
them that are tempted." Now I want to ask you a question. What is
the song that he is singing? He says, that's what he says,
and that's his own words. What is this song? Well, in 1
Peter 1.25, But the word of the Lord endureth forever, and this
is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. When the
Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ takes this gospel and makes it
real to your heart, It's the sweetest song that you'll ever
hear. It's the sweetest song you'll ever hear. And it's the
only one that God wants to hear too. Yeah, let us pray. Our glorious and gracious Father,
we do come before you and we do thank you at what was accomplished
when the Lord said it is finished, that it was finished. And Lord,
we come together now as we have already heard this glorious gospel.
We desire to hear it again, for truly we never tire. We must
hear it. And Lord, we do thank you for
all that you've accomplished, and if you would be pleased to
continue this blessing upon us and cause us to worship. in spirit and in truth and cause
us to go away rejoicing in what the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished
for us. We give you thanks and ask it
in his precious name. Amen. by his presence all divine. True and tender, pure and precious. Oh, how blessed to call him mine. All that thrills my soul is Jesus. He is more than life to me And
the fairest of ten thousand In my blessed Lord I see Love of
Christ so freely giv'n of God beyond degree. Mercy higher than the heaven,
deeper than the deepest sea. All that thrills my soul is Jesus. He is more than life to me. And the fairest of ten thousand
In my precious Lord I see What a wonderful redemption Never
can a mortal know How my sin, though red like crimson, can
be whiter than the snow. All that thrills my soul is Jesus. He is more than life to me And the fairest of ten thousand
In my precious Lord I see Every need His hands supplying,
Every good in Him I see. On His strength divine relying,
He is all in all to me. All that thrills my soul is He,
He is more than life to me, And the fairest of ten thousand
In my precious Lord I see. By the crystal-flowing river
With the ransomed I shall sing And forever, and forever Praise
and glorify the King All that thrills my soul is Jesus
He is more than life to me And the fairest of ten thousand In
my precious Lord I see Thank you, Lauren. I so pray the Lord will give
us a genuine concern for our souls, a love for Christ, a desire
to know Him, and to be able to say from our hearts what we just
sang. There's more than life to me. We get so wrapped up in
life, don't we? If the Lord ever makes you to
be a sinner, then the Lord Jesus Christ will be more than life
to you. I wonder if you, like me, find
it difficult sometimes to know how to pray. Where do I start? How do I, as a sinner... Oh,
and the gospel is good news only to sinners. If you're a sinner,
you rejoice in knowing that there's a Savior who saves sinners completely,
all by Himself. How do I, a sinner, enter into
the presence of a holy God? God that knows my every thought,
a God that knows my words before I speak them, knows everything
I've ever... How do I come before Him? I want to fellowship with
Him. I want to feel His sweet presence. I want to experience
His mercy and His grace. I want to... I want to commune
with Him. But how can I? God has given to us in His Word
a prayer that I find myself going to often as the beginning of
my fellowship with God. We looked at the first four verses
of it this past Wednesday night and I'd like for us to try to
consider the whole prayer in its entirety in the next few
minutes. It's found in Psalm 51. Psalm
51. I told the folks Wednesday night
that when I'm on my deathbed and I can't speak and I can't
read, somebody read Psalm 51 to me. These words are comfort to my
soul. This is my hope. I'm a sinner.
I'm a sinner. And I find such great encouragement
in knowing that I can come before a holy God and have His forgiveness
of my sin. If I do, I'm going to come like
David came. For in fact, as Isaiah said,
it is your iniquity that separates you from your God. If we lack
fellowship with God, you can have a relationship with God
and not have fellowship with Him. But those who have a relationship
with Him have tasted of His sweet fellowship and they're never
satisfied being out of fellowship with Him very long. Those who
have never tasted of His grace, oh, might God give you grace
to get a taste of it. Because once you fellowship with
Him, you get out of sorts of fellowship, you just need to
get back. And Psalm 51 is a prayer. We don't pray it in vain repetition. We don't just recite words. But
God is pleased with that which He has given to us. If we're
going to make sacrifices to God, they're going to have to be the
sacrifices that He's given to us. We don't come up with something
new and clever and something that He's going to be impressed
with. We just give back to God what He has already given to
us. That's what He's pleased with.
So when you find it difficult, to know how to pray. Know this
for sure. That it's your sin that makes
it difficult. And God has given to you a prayer. Oh, I have found myself praying
this prayer often times. You just read a verse and meditate
on it and cry out to God from your heart and the Lord will
give you the experience of knowing what it is to have the Spirit
of God make utterings and groanings to God for you that you can't
even put into words. That's when you enter into sweet
fellowship with God and you experience the grace of forgiveness. and the peace that keeps your
mind and your heart in Christ Jesus. In religion, men come up with
what they call the sinner's prayer. Well, just pray this prayer and
God will be obligated if you pray it and you really mean it.
You've got to be obligated to answer it. And so you prayed,
well I prayed that prayer, I settled that, I nailed that down, that's
taken care of. Now let's move on to bigger and
better things. Oh no. This is the true sinner's prayer.
And it's not a prayer that you're going to find yourself feeling
as if, well I've got that taken care of. We can move on to bigger
and better things. If God's made you to be a sinner,
you're going to find yourself coming into His presence often
with David's words, the Holy Spirit's words, on your lips. And the first thing out of your
mouth is going to be, have mercy upon me, O God. You're going
to be a mercy beggar. You're going to know that you
don't have anything. You're going to know that you
can't do anything. You're going to know that you
don't know anything. You're going to come before the
throne of grace simply as a publican, a mercy beggar, like that man
who smote himself upon the breast and would not so much as even
look up, but cried, Oh God, have mercy upon me, the sinner. Now the publican on the other,
I mean the Pharisee on the other hand prayed thus unto himself
and said very hypocritically, Oh God I thank Thee that I'm
not as other men. And our Lord asked, which one
of these two men went down to his house justified? Justified. Not justified in the
sight of men, but justified in the sight of God. If you have
any trouble at all with understanding what that word means, just take
it apart because that's really what it means. Just if I'd never
done it. Oh, to be found in Christ is
to be justified before God. It's to have God Almighty call
you Jehovah said, Can you the Lord our righteousness? It's
to have he that sanctified and them that are sanctified made
all as one so that he is not ashamed to call you his brother. God would be able to call me
his friend and his brother. I would be able to stand in the
presence of God like Abraham and speak to Him face to face
as a friend? How can it be? How can it be? Only if He justifies me. And
if God justifies me, then who is He that condemneth? It is
God that justifieth. If God justifies you, you're
justified. Justified sinners come before
the throne of grace as mercy beggars. That's how we come. You have any trouble? No. How
do I pray? I've got so many things. I've got so many conflicts. I've
got so many problems that I need to ask God, what do I do? Start
out begging for mercy. Have mercy upon me, oh God. According to thy loving kindness,
not according to my sincerity, not according to my offering,
not according to my gifts, but according to your grace and according
to your mercy. According to the multitude of
thy tender mercies. Why do you need a multitude of
mercies? Because you've got a multitude of sin. But here's your hope. As a father pitieth his children,
so the Lord pitieth those who fear Him. And those who come
to Him as mercy-beggars are demonstrating their fear of God. And He shows
toward them tender mercy." Tender mercy. Oh, He's not a harsh taskmaster. He's not an angry father. He's standing at the end of the
road. And when the prodigal comes home,
he lavishes him with kisses, puts a robe of righteousness
on him, and ring upon his finger, and shoes upon his feet, and
kills the fatted calf, and rejoices with his household. This, my
son, who was lost, is found. Wash me truly from my iniquity.
Cleanse me from my sin. Don't leave a stain on me. Oh,
I'm so thankful that the blood goes deeper than the stain. You
ever stain a shirt or dress, ladies, and you do everything
in your world, within your power to get the stain out, send it
to the cleaners? It comes back with a little sticker on it that
says, with a sad face, you know, sorry we couldn't get it out.
And, you know, it's just ruined. What does He say? Wash me thoroughly
from my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. When
He washes us in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, He takes
that which was red like scarlet and makes it white as snow. For
I acknowledge my transgression. My sin is ever before me. If God's made you to be a sinner,
then every time you look at yourself, that's all you see. That's all
you see. God's made you to be a sinner.
Being a sinner doesn't mean that you're just preoccupied with
some evil thing that you did. Being a sinner means that when
you look at yourself, you say with the Apostle Paul, in me,
that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." I can't find
any light of virtue. I can't find a speck of righteousness. My sin is ever before me. It doesn't mean that you're just
suffering a horrible guilty conscience because of some terrible thing
you did. People that aren't sinners go through that. People who have no regard for
their soul or no thoughts for God suffer a guilty conscience
when they do bad things. That doesn't mean you're a sinner
just because you felt guilty when you did something wrong.
You should have felt guilty. It means that when you look at
yourself, everything you see is sin. Everything is sin. You can't find anything but sin.
And the deeper you go down into your soul to try to find something,
the darker it gets. My sin is ever before me. That's who this is for. Do you fit the qualification?
Because there's hope. There's hope. When a beggar,
when a mercy beggar asks the Lord to wash him throughly, the
Lord washes him throughly. He doesn't leave a stain. He
doesn't send the garment back with a sad face on it. No, He
causes rejoicing in the heart. Oh, it's been taken out. Against
thee, verse 4, And thee only have I sinned, and done this
evil in thy sight, that thy eye might be justified when thou
speakest, and be clear when thou judgest." God, you're right and
I'm wrong. God says, guilty. And the mercy beggar has no defense.
Not before God. He has no appeal. The gavel has
come down, the judge of all men has spoken, and the courtroom
is silent. And the defendant has nothing
to say. And then his advocate stands
in his stead and says, Father, it's one of
mine. I satisfied your righteousness
on their behalf. I suffered your wrath in order
to satisfy divine justice for that one." And he does all the
speaking. As we saw last week, he's our
advocate. If any man sin, we have an advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. It clears the guilty. Look at verse 5. Behold, I was
shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. I've
had this problem all my life. As far back as I can remember. I can't think of a time when
I wasn't a sinner now. Now that I know that I'm a sinner,
I've always been one. I came out of my mother's womb
lying. there's never been any righteousness in me I was born
spiritually dead at enmity with God I know there's some people say
well I've never raised my fist to heaven and curse God you know
what's worse than that You know what's worse than that? Indifference. Apathy. And before the Lord made
you to be a sinner, that's what you were towards God. Oh, you
may have been very religious. You may have had a zeal for God,
but it was without knowledge. Towards the God who is, you were
indifferent. You didn't care about Him. You
didn't love him? You didn't have any interest
in him? You were indifferent toward him. That's the worst
kind of hatred of all. And that's what David is saying.
In sin I was conceived, I've been this way all my life. Behold thou desirest truth in
the inward part, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know
wisdom." Oh, what God's impressed with is what He does. Now what men do is they will
speak things about God with their lips that they don't believe
in their heart. You hear people say, well, you know, they've
got head knowledge but they don't have heart knowledge. The head
and the heart are spoken of interchangeably in the scriptures. In truth,
what you have in your head, you got in your heart. What you got
in your heart, you got in your head. The disconnect is not between
the head and the heart. The disconnect is between the
head and the heart and the lips. Men are liars. And men will honor
God with their lips when their hearts are far from Him. And
what God says is, I desire truth in the inward part. I'm not impressed
with what you say with your lips. I'm impressed with what I do
in your heart. God, give me a new heart. Take
out my heart of stone. Lord, cause me to love you and
believe in you from my heart. I'm so capable of fooling myself
and fooling others. I say with the disciples, Lord,
is it I? Is it I? I can say things all the time
I don't believe and I don't mean. Why? Because all men are liars. Lord, give me the ability to
speak the truth about what I am from the heart, so that when
I say, Lord, I'm a sinner, and when I beg for mercy, it's not
just lip service. When I say that I believe that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that it would be from the heart. Lord, that You would teach me
what that means. When I declare Him to be all
my righteousness, that I would genuinely be resting in Him,
trusting Him and loving Him from the heart. The Scripture says
they lost because they have no love of the truth. It doesn't
mean they didn't hear the truth or couldn't speak the truth.
It means they had no love of the truth. Thou desirest truth in the inward
part. Lord, when I confess that the
Lord Jesus Christ is all my salvation, and that He accomplished in my
stead, on my behalf, every single thing that God requires for me
to be able to come into His presence. The Lord caused me to believe
that, caused me to rejoice in that. Now the sad thing is that There
are many who have a zeal for God without knowledge who don't
even speak the truth with their lips. Now you hear religious folks
all the time talk about how God loves everybody. Talk about how
Christ died for everybody. How God wants everybody to be
saved. How the Bible is a rule book for Christian living. How
man's got a free will. They're not even speaking the
truth with their lips, much less having it in their hearts. And in the hidden part, thou
shalt make me to know wisdom. The only way you're going to
know wisdom is if God makes you to know wisdom. God has to make Christ to be
our wisdom. Everything that we come into
this world believing about God is just exactly the opposite
of what the truth is. Don't think that, oh, I just
need to tweak my knowledge a little bit so that I can have a better
understanding of God. If you don't know the Lord, everything
you think is true about Him is just the opposite. You got it
upside down. When the disciples were accused
of turning the world upside down by preaching the gospel in Jerusalem,
they were in fact turning it right side up. It was already
upside down. We come into this world upside down. God has to
make us to know wisdom in the heart. Look at verse 7, "...purge
me with hyssop." Hyssop is what the priest dipped into the basin
of the Paschal Lamb's blood and sprinkled it on the mercy seat.
It's the item that was used to sprinkle the blood on the people
when they gathered. What a beautiful picture it is
of the scourging of the Lord Jesus Christ by whose stripes,
Isaiah 53, we are healed. Healed. And what David says,
Lord, purge me with hyssop. Lord, if you purge me with hyssop,
I'll be made clean. If you'll take the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ and use it for a covering for my sin and
sprinkle that blood upon the mercy seat, then I'll know something
of your mercy. If you'll sprinkle His blood
upon me, then I'll be made clean. If you purge me with hyssop,
God, if you do it, I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be
whiter than snow. Oh, when our Lord went up on
the Mount of Transfiguration and the veil of His humanity
was taken away and the radiance of His deity shined forth through
the robe of His righteousness, the Scripture says that the brightness
of His image was brighter than the sun. and glistening white,
so white that no fuller could make it? And Peter, James, and
John were forced to fall on the ground in His presence? And now what's He say? That that same whiteness, that
same robe of righteousness, that same perfect cleanness before
God, is imputed to every mercy beggar, every sinner that comes
to Him for mercy and for grace. And let me say that the only
place you're going to find grace is where sin abounds. It's the
only place you're going to find it. But where sin abounds, grace
does much more abound. Grace always overpowers sin. Always. Make me to hear joy and gladness. Lord, cause me to get my eyes
off of myself and to fix them on Christ. If I do that, then I'll see who
I am in Him and I'll have reason to rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord,
in the Lord always. And again, wait a minute, you
don't know my circumstances. No, no, no. Again I say unto
thee, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known
unto all men. Why? Because the Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing but in
all things by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, thanksgiving. Mercy beggars are grateful people. And they don't have anything
else. Lauren, what you're saying is true. He's more than life
to me. Whatever else may be not going
right, if He's taken away my sin, and I have peace with God,
what else is there? What else is there? make me to hear joy and gladness
that the bones which thou hast broken." You know who I love being around? Broken people. I just love being around broken
people, people that God has broken. People that aren't pretentious.
They're not holier-than-thou. They're not self-righteous. They're not trying to prove anything. They're just broken people. Why?
Because God's made them to be sinners. You know that's true
of every child of God. Every child of God. That's why
you know when you're around somebody that's religious, if they've
not been broken, They're not teachable. They're not compassionate
towards other sinners. They've not been broken. The
bones which thou hast broken. Would you ask God with me for
him to break you? I mean to break you. There's no salvation apart from
being broken. He only heals that which He breaks. Sinners are broken people. They're
just broken before God. They're broken before men. They're
humble people. They always hold themselves suspect. They don't look down their self-righteous
nose at others. They're sinners. They believe
themselves to be the chief of all sinners. They truly are able
to esteem others more highly than themselves. Why? Because
they're broken. They're just broken. Do you think David was a broken
man when he wrote these words? Do you think when Nathan pointed
his finger in the face of David and said, Thou art the man, that
David was broken? Has God broken you? Hide thy face from my sin. Lord, cause thy face to shine upon
me, but you won't shine if you have to see my sin. Lord, cover
my sin. Put it under the blood. Put it
away. Give me the hope and the assurance
that what the Lord Jesus Christ did on Calvary's cross was for
me. You know, there's a lot of folks
that believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came
on the sovereign decree of God as the Messiah to accomplish
the salvation of God's elect. and that he was successful in
doing what God sent him to do. But they don't know if it was
for them. Psalm 51, God gives you the grace
to pray it from your heart. be the means by which God will
confirm to your heart that it was for you. Don't quit coming before the
throne of grace as a sinner until you know that what Christ did
was for you. Don't be satisfied with some
theological truths about the gospel, true as they are. If God hasn't spoken peace to
your heart, ask Him to confirm it to you.
Come to Him like this. Pour out your soul to Him, groan
before Him until He speaks peace to your heart and confirms to
you Hide thy face from my sin." Lord,
let my sin, my sin, blot out all my iniquities. Oh, if God gives you a concern
for your soul, that's going to be it. We're going to see at
the end of this psalm in just a moment that David's attention
turns to others, but it starts with himself. And you're of no
good to pray for or help anybody else until God first speaks peace
to your heart. You've got to come for yourself
first. Create in me. in me, a clean
heart. Renewal right spirit in me. Lord, take away this fear, take
away these doubts. Return unto me. Lord, I thought
I tasted the joy of thy salvation one time. Would you return it
unto me again? Lord, it belongs to you. Sin has separated me from you. Lord,
I've come and all I know to do is plead Your mercy and Your
grace. Return unto me the joy of Thy
salvation and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me." Don't get worried
about that and perseverance of the saint. Well, how could you
be saved and have the Spirit of God and then have Him taken
away from you? If you're in this state of prayer, you're holding
yourself suspect. And you're fearing the greatest
fear of all, that God would take His presence from you and leave
you to yourself. That's your greatest fear. And so you cry with David, take
not thy spirit from me. Lord, don't depart from me. Don't
leave me. Be like Jacob who wrestled with
the Lord Jesus Christ all night long until the Lord touched the
hollow of his hip and he was crippled the rest of his life.
He was a broken man that night. He was a broken man. God changed his name, didn't
He? The Lord Jesus Christ changed His name that very night to Israel. He was a Prince of God. Then, verse 13, Lord if you'll
do that for me, then I'll be able to speak to others about
you. If you have trouble talking to
somebody else about Christ, It's because you've got a problem
between you and God. That's just it. And if you come before Him as
a mercy beggar and He ministers grace to your soul and gives
you the joy of His salvation and the power of His Holy Spirit,
you won't be able to shut up. You won't be able to not tell
people about what God's done for you. And let me warn you
ahead of time. The only reason your unbelieving
friends don't hate you is because they don't know what you believe. You stand for Christ. You're
not going to have to worry about, do I need to break off this relationship
with my unbelieving friend or my religious friend? No, you
won't have to worry about that. God ministers grace to your heart.
You tell them, you speak to them about Christ. God will either
save them or they won't want anything to do with you. That's just the way it's going
to be. You can't have friendship with
the world and friendship with God at the same time. It's not
going to happen. You try to ride that fence, it's
just, that's a teetering wall. The only thing you're going to
find out in the middle of the road is dead animals. And that's where
you're going to be if you try to ride the middle of the road. Oh, but what a joy it is to be
able to talk to people about what God has done for you. Just
tell them. What a delight! There's no greater
joy in this world than to be able to share your faith with
somebody. Tell somebody about the Lord Jesus Christ. Then I
will teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners will be converted
unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness,
O God! Was David talking about the blood
guiltiness of Uriah and the hundred men that were with Uriah? Was
David talking about the blood guiltiness of the child that
God took as a result of his sin? I'm sure those things bothered
his conscience greatly. But he's already said, against
thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight.
You know what? You've seen this report. When
I first heard it a week or two ago about the man whose child
died in a hot car, my heart broke for him. I thought, you know,
how's he ever going to get over that? And now it's come out that
he killed the two-year-old. Seems like. I mean, I guess innocent
until proven guilty. But, you know, they've got a
lot of evidence that showed that he killed his own child. How
is he ever going to live with that? Man, you're talking about
blood guiltiness. You know before God, you and
I are guilty of something worse than that. Guilty of something worse than
that. That's why we don't look down
our nose at a man like that and think, I would never do that,
or what a horrible person, but for the grace of God. Truth is,
I'm guilty of something worse. I'm guilty of spilling the blood
of God. And I didn't do it innocently.
I did it with my eyes wide open. It's not a crime against humanity.
It's not the shedding of human blood, as terrible as that is.
It was an assault against Almighty God. It was the assassination
of the King of Kings, treachery and murder against the Son of
God, guilty of the highest treason of all. You say, well, I wasn't there. If you don't believe you were
there, then you have no hope. You have no hope of having your
sin put away. Because if God's made you to
be a mercy beggar and he's made you to be a sinner, you know
that it was your sin that committed that crime. What does David say? Deliver
me from blood guiltiness. Lord, I'm guilty. I'm guilty. I've shed blood. O God, thou God of my salvation,
and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. Lord, if
you'll put my sin unto the blood of Christ and deliver me from
my guilt and shame. then I'll be able to sing and
rejoice in knowing that my sin is gone. It's gone. O Lord, open thou my lips, and
my mouth shall show forth thy praise, for thou desirest not
sacrifice. That's what religious people
do. They bring their sacrifices. and they've got all their programs
and they've got their little things that they do in order
to try to earn favor with God and prove their faithfulness.
Oh no, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite
heart. That He will not despise. Why
won't He despise it? Because if you've got it, He
gave it to you. If God's broken your heart over
your sinfulness before Him, if your sin is ever before you,
if you see that what the Lord Jesus Christ did on Calvary's
cross was because of you and for you, then you've got a broken and
contrite heart that God gave you. And that He will not despise. That's how we come. That's the
sacrifices of God. That's the sacrifice. And then in verses 18 and 19,
David's been redeemed. He's been delivered. He's been
sanctified. He's been justified before God.
And now what does he do? He turns his attention away from
himself to his brethren. And he prays for God's blessings
upon the church. If you've never poured out your
heart to God for the church, it's only because you haven't
yet poured out your heart towards God for yourself. If God does a work of grace for
you, then He's going to cause you to say with David, Do good
and thy good pleasure unto Zion. Build thou the walls of Jerusalem,
O Lord. Then thou shalt be blessed and
pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness and burnt offerings
and whole burnt offerings. Lord, then we'll be able to sing
from our hearts and serve you with a gladness of spirit. Can you come to God as a mercy
beggar? If you can, come. Come. Do you have a broken spirit and
a contrite heart? It is the sacrifice that He accepts. Why? Because He gave it to you. Somebody says, well, I don't
know. Let me ask you this. Do you believe that what you
heard this morning from God's Word is the truth? Is the truth. If you believe it is, then you
ask God. You just take Psalm 51 verse
by verse and ask God to minister grace to your heart. Get alone
with God. Be still and know that He is
God. He'll turn your morning into
rejoicing. We're going to celebrate the
Lord's table this morning. This table is not for everybody. It's not for everybody. It is
for all those who are trusting Christ alone for their salvation. It's for God's children. And
they rejoice in knowing that the bread reminds them of the
life of the Lord Jesus Christ unleavened in perfect righteousness
and holiness the Lord our righteousness in the bread the wine reminds
them this is a memorial it's a remembrance do this in memory
of me and so that's what we're doing we're doing a memorial
and it's just for the sake of reminding us that his shed blood
on Calvary's cross is the only covering for our sin if you believe
that If God's taught you that and given you reason to rejoice
in Him, then receive the table joyfully. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we're so
very thankful that there's a Savior for sinners. We thank you that
you've been pleased to make your children to be sinners and then
you've cause them to look up, set their affections on things
above where Christ is seated at the right hand of the majesty
on high. We thank you for the success
of his work here on earth, and we pray that as we receive the
bread and the wine, Father, that you would minister grace to our
hearts by your spirit and cause us to remember what thou hast
done. For we ask it in Christ's name.
Amen. I ask the men if they'll come,
please, and distribute. Number 191 in the Saltback Temple. You can just remain seated, please.
191 from the Hardback Temple. Yeah.