and great designs of grace, with
power and love that never fails, shall order all my So bestow my heart and doubt
no more Believe and find sweet rest God's wisdom, love and truth
and grace Is ordered by my God Who promised
that in all this year We'll ever do it good So be still my heart
and doubt no more Believe and find sweet rest God's wisdom, love, truth, and
power are mine to make. All right, if you'd open your
Bibles to the 116th Psalm. And while you do, let me express
my appreciation for your appreciation, your treatment of me while I'm
here. Ever since I knew the gospel,
I knew that God would treat me as though I were Christ. I didn't
know God's people would. But we preachers, and I, this isn't just to sound humble,
because I'm not, but I know the truth of this. We preachers,
we know that we're nothing, because we've stood up here and tried
to be something, and generally speaking, We've made fools of
ourselves anytime we try to. Even if you don't see it, we
do. And yet, after we come up here and be nothing, you thank
us, you take care of us, not as those who preach, but as the
one who's been preached. So generous you are to us. So
generous with your appreciation, your support, and your prayers.
And we thank you, we really do. And may the Lord use this next bit, bit of time,
and enable me to set forth Christ to you. The psalmist says in Psalm 116,
I love the Lord. I love the Lord." And so there you'll notice that
the word Lord is in all capitals, therefore we understand that
they are translating the name of God. I love Jehovah. This morning There are probably
120 people here, something like that. Some of you love the Lord. I could wish that all of you
did. Some of you do. Some of you don't. There is no
middle ground on this. Love is one of those things that
really you can't love more or less. You either love or you
don't. And when I say there are some
who do not love the Lord, I am not saying that you feel within
yourself an emotional contempt for God. There is love for God and everything
else is counted as hatred of God, even if it's just that you
don't pay any attention. There are many in this world
who hate God as the scriptures would define that, and they've
never even heard of Him, never even heard of Jehovah. And you
say, well, you can't hate somebody you never heard of. Yes, you
can. Because everything in the natural
man, everything that is of the fleshly natural mind is hostile
to God. And the only thing it would take
to provoke those feelings of animosity is to come face to
face with Him. But the psalmist says, I love
the Lord. Now a believer might be, and
we often feel uncomfortable in declaring our love for the Lord.
Not because we're ashamed of Him or think Him unworthy of
love. It's quite the opposite. We're
not ashamed of Christ. If you are, the Lord says, if
you're ashamed of me in this world, I'll be ashamed of you.
Believers aren't ashamed of the Lord Jesus Christ. But they may
feel a little odd expressing their love for Him because they
are ashamed of their love. They are ashamed that it's so
weak, that it is so fickle. We look at the kind of love we
think Christ is worthy of. and compare it to the love that
we feel and express and show in our lives and we think I dare
not call this love. Yet, the Apostle Peter, and oh
what a mess he'd made of things. I'll not deny you, I'll go to
death. And that, you know, he eventually
did. He eventually did go to death
for the Lord Jesus, for the sake of Christ and his gospel. But
the Lord said, not tonight. You're going to deny me three
times. And he did. And you know something? Even
as he denied the Lord, he loved him. Say, how do you know? Because when the Lord looked
at him after that third time, it broke him. And what did the Lord ask him? Three times. He didn't say, Peter,
do you promise me you'll never do that again? Peter, I got a book on how to
love me. And it's available for $9.95
on the back table. Pick up a copy. He said, Peter,
do you love me? And you can almost hear Peter
say, yeah, Yes. Okay, feed my lambs. Peter, do
you love me? Yeah. Okay, feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? And Peter knew why he was asked
three times. And he said, Lord, you know. You see, The Lord did know. The one who didn't know was Peter. You know that I love you. The
psalmist says, I love the Lord. Every believer loves the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now I pointed out to you that
this is I love Jehovah and yet I keep saying I love the Lord
Jesus Christ. Why? Because the Lord Jesus Christ
is Jehovah. We read back in the study Isaiah
6 and in the year King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw Jehovah. high and lifted up. And he said, woe is me, I've
seen the king, I've seen Jehovah. And John says, these things spoke
Isaiah when he saw Christ's glory. Now I can't explain how that
man is the eternal Jehovah. Great is the mystery of godliness
and I'm going to leave it a mystery. But mystery that it is, it's
true. That man walking around, getting hungry, getting thirsty,
getting tired, being surprised is still Jehovah God in human
flesh. I love the Lord. Now when a believer
expresses his love for the Lord Jesus Christ, he is not bragging
on himself. He's not saying, look at me,
I love the Lord. It is funny how people will say,
I'm a Christian, as though they're saying something good about themselves. As though it's a virtue to be
a Christian. It's not. Being a Christian means
that you believe that Jesus is the Christ. And that means you
believe he's the prophet and you believe he's a prophet because
you're confessing your ignorance and you need somebody to tell
you the truth. You're confessing that he's the life because that's
what kings guaranteed for their people. You're confessing he's
the king because you can't rule yourselves and you can't protect
yourselves. And you're confessing that he's
the priest because you have lost your way and he is the way to
God. When I say I'm a Christian, I'm
saying that I am one who is unfit to be in the presence of God
and yet he was pleased by his son to bring me into his presence
and call me son. We are not expressing our virtue. We are saying, look at Him, who
wasn't loving? It is insanity not to love the
Lord Jesus Christ. Spiritual insanity. What is there
about Him not to love? Show me anything about Him that
is not lovely. In the song of Solomon, The woman
says, help me find him. Help me find my beloved. And
they said, why? What's so special about your beloved? And she said,
let me tell you. Let me tell you. Sit down a minute, you know.
And she goes through this list of, you know, his hair, and his
eyes, and his arms, and his legs, everything. She says, he's all
together lovely. If you don't love the Lord Jesus
Christ, Well, there's just something
wrong. There's something wrong with your understanding of Him. Why do we love Him? Well, we
love Him because He first loved us. No question about that. John
says that clearly. We love Him because He first
loved us. The love of God is what started this whole thing
we call salvation. It was what motivated God to
choose a people in the Lord Jesus Christ predestined them to be
like Christ and ordain all good things for them and adopt them
as his children. Love started all of that. Love
is what motivated the Lord Jesus Christ to give himself for the
church. So God's love Expressed actually
in all the persons of his trinity. There's another mystery. I don't
understand, but it's just so But his love expressed in of
the the love of the singular God expressed in all three persons
of the Godhead is What began this whole thing? And we love
him not out of the goodness of our hearts, but out of the goodness
of his and We are just reflecting the love He had for us. We love
Him because He first loved us. We love Him because He enabled
us to love Him through the operations of His Spirit in the new birth.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, not the fruit of the flesh. If
you are this morning a natural person, that is you've only had
your natural birth from your fleshly mom and dad, I can't
make you love the Lord Jesus Christ. I could maybe tell you
something about Him and you get some warm feelings about Him,
but as soon as you saw the world again in its glories, then it
would eclipse the glories of Christ and He'd mean pretty much
nothing to you. I can't do that because see love
for God is a spiritual thing and if you haven't been born
again you're not a spiritual being. That's why the natural man does
not receive the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness
to him neither can he know them for they are what? Spiritually
understood and he's not a spiritual person. We love him because we've been
born again and given spiritual life. We've become spiritual
beings. As God first created Adam, made
him in his image. You say, what's the image of
God? Well, our Lord Jesus says God is spirit. And the image
of God in man is that spiritual nature that God gave to Adam. That enabled Adam to know, love,
and believe God. and it died when he sinned and
in the new birth it is reborn we love him because he enabled
us to by the new birth but here when the psalmist says I love
the Lord he's talking about what was the immediate motivation
of his love for the Lord what awoke that love and it was this Because He hath
heard my voice and my supplications. Now I remember or I've heard
songs and heard people try to sound super spiritual and say,
well I love God for what He is. Really now? Because He was all
those things before He ever heard your voice. Did you love Him
then? Before He opened your eyes to the truth, He was holy. He
was sovereign, He was powerful, He was omnipotent, He was all
those things that He is now before you ever loved Him. And you didn't
love Him. When did you begin to love Him?
When He heard your cry for mercy. We are beggars. Now we may have been taken from
the garbage dump and set among the princes, but we still are
by natural birth beggars. And we love him because we were
sitting there on that garbage dump, eating out of the dumpster, so
to speak. God gave us spiritual life. We cried unto him for salvation. He saved us. And then we loved
him. The unbeliever doesn't love the
Lord, and I know why. The Lord hasn't done anything
for him. And truth be known, if you could
get into his mind and get him to be honest, he would say, God
hasn't done anything for me. And those who are of a natural
understanding of spiritual things in this religious world, they
keep acting like signing a decision card or praying the sinner's
prayer is you doing something for God. No wonder they don't
love Him. They're doing stuff for Him.
They expect Him to love them in return for their goodness
to Him. They got it all backwards. There's
not a person here that's ever done anything for God Certainly we haven't done anything
for God that he couldn't have done better for himself. This religious world has no real
love for God because the troubles he has saved them from were no real troubles. Those who love God remember their
former condition. Do you remember what it was like
before you knew him? When all you were was a natural
man, natural woman, all you knew was natural things. You were
walking in darkness and thought it was light. You were living in sin and thought
it was righteousness. You were worshipping yourself
and thought you were worshipping God. And into that darkness, God shined
the glorious light of the gospel. And you found out who you are,
what you are, and what you were doing. Do you remember those
days? The religious world can't remember
them because they're still in them. And they are still in the
darkness. And just like Esau compared to
Jacob, God could have left you in your Esau condition. Israel complained against the
Lord and said, what good has it been to be an Israelite? And the Lord said, was not Esau
Jacob's brother? Yes, Jacob had some tough times,
all his own fault. But Esau had it worse. And God
left Esau alone. He troubled Jacob for Jacob's
good, left Esau to himself. And where now are the descendants
of Esau? Where is Esau's blessing? No, the world doesn't know God's
blessing. They say things like, and you've
probably heard this, maybe even said this kind of thing. And
I've heard people give this, this was their testimony of salvation.
I was poor and God enriched me. And I'm not talking symbolically
there. Symbolically, that's true of
us, isn't it? I knew a guy back in the church I was raised in,
and he'd give his testimony once in a while, and everybody, including
me, was really impressed, and here was his testimony. I was
walking the streets of Huntington, West Virginia, couldn't rub two
nickels together, and I prayed to God, and I opened a business
selling clothes, and now I'm rich. That was it. You know what? I saw him in probably
about 1982, 83, somewhere in that time, in a bank in Huntington,
which was, I suppose, his favorite place. And we were talking, and
I'd been for quite a few years out of that church. And I said,
you still going over there? By the way, the name of the church
was Grace Gospel Church, but it was in Huntington. And I asked him, I said, still
going to church? No, I don't go there. Didn't go anywhere. Why? He didn't love God. Why? God hadn't done anything
for him. All he was was rich. They say
I was rich, excuse me, I was poor, now I'm rich. I was sad,
now I'm happy. I was a drunk and I got sober. I was sick and God made me well. I had a broken family and God
patched it all up. You know something, all those
are good things. I don't despise the least of blessings. But those
things are small things compared to the real trouble we're in
and the great blessing of being saved from that everlasting trouble
of sin and all the consequences that come by it. God saves them
or delivers them from a few of the fruits of the sin that's
killing us, and they think it's wonderful, but they just have
a small love because really they've never been delivered from the
big problem. You shall call His name Jesus,
for He shall save His people from their sin. The Lord Jesus
Christ in His salvation gets to the root of the problem. And
when He digs out the root, all the fruit dies. And don't get me wrong, if I
get sick and laying in the hospital and the Lord raises me up, I
pray Lord God just get me out of this. I'm going to sing his
praises if he does. But it'll only mean something
because he has already delivered me from that really bad problem
that I couldn't touch. You know, we pray when someone's
sick, if we want God to heal them, you know, often we'll say,
you know, Lord, give the doctors wisdom. And we're expecting God
to use means. Do you realize God uses no means
in saving a person? And by that, I mean, he doesn't
use the talents and abilities of men to get it done. He just
does it. It's a direct work of God. No, the believer defines his
trouble in these terms. He said terms of trouble and sorrow. He says in verse 3, the sorrows
of death compass me. The pains of hell, that's the
grave, get hold on me. I found trouble and sorrow." All these things that he mentions,
the sorrows of death, the pains of the grave. So wait a minute,
he didn't die, they didn't bury him. How was he experiencing
those things? This man understood where all
our other troubles come from. Right now, every one of us is
on a march to the grave. And the only difference is how
far down the road we've gotten. Some are just getting started.
Some are pretty close. And all this in between. And
you know all these sorrows and pains and aches and sicknesses
and everything between birth and the grave are just big signs
pointing to that grave. They are death not quite fully
accomplished yet. You get a cold. You know what
that cold is? It's death. It's just if you get over it.
Okay, I won that round. But you are not going to win
the fight. And so whatever was happening to him, he recognized
it for what it was, just the foreshadowing of death. And he said, this is my trouble,
and all this trouble comes to me because of the death that
is working within me, and that death is working within me because
of one thing, sin. All these troubles we have, whatever
form they take, they come because of sin. Not any particular sin that you
did. Oh, I used to believe that because
I was taught that. I mean, you know, you commit
a particularly bad sin, look out. Here comes the hand of God
to smack you a good one. Not understanding that at any
moment He had warrant to destroy me utterly. But I said a cuss word as though I were less righteous
at that point or more sinful at that point than at another.
I remember one night laying on my bed all so grieved over sin. I'm not going to use that word.
That sounds too spiritual. I was bound up in legal fears
over my sin. I was a believer but I was still
feeling that legal bondage in my mind. I struggle with it all
the time. And I was sitting there thinking about my sin and my
pet sins and all that and I fall to them and I was thinking, oh
man, what's God going to do with me? And the Lord brought to my
mind that scripture in kind of a paraphrased way, as though
the Lord said out loud, Joe, if I were marking your iniquity,
you wouldn't be standing. If I was taking note of the things
you do, you'd be gone. Do you think now at this particular
moment, I will destroy you? I could have destroyed you at
any moment. Our trouble is sin, and this
trouble never goes away. You will get sick and then you'll
get well. You may experience some times of relative poverty,
and I call it that way because there's almost no poor people
in the United States of America like the Bible describes poor
people. Our poor people live like kings compared to a whole
lot of the rest of the world. But times of when we don't know
how we're going to be able to make the next payment on our
new pickup truck. But we get over them, don't we?
Then we have a little bit more money, we go out and buy another
new pickup truck. But all I'm saying is these troubles
we have, they come and they go. Here's a trouble that we were
born with and it never goes away in this life. Brother Mahan said,
any port in a storm, and men will get in a storm of life and
they'll run to the port, Christ Jesus, but when the storm is
gone, it's back out to sea. He said, but the one who has
come to understand the everlasting storm of sin and God's wrath
goes to port, drops anchor, and stays. Oh, He's delivered us from something.
much more serious than the individual troubles we may have in this
life. We remember the darkness, the death, the condemnation.
Those who love God have experienced his deliverance. Verse six, the
Lord preserveth the simple. I was brought low and he helped
me. Now, that word help, we normally think of that as we can do part
of it and somebody But not all of it, so somebody comes along
and finishes it up. Maybe, you know, I can lift 75 pounds, but
there's something 100 pounds I've got to move, so I've got
to call on somebody to help me. But that's not really, I suppose
400 years ago, the word help meant something else. The Hebrew
word here means save. Save. In fact, I didn't have
time to chase this out, but looking at it, I think that it makes
up part of the name of the Lord Jesus, which in Hebrew is Yeshua
or Joshua. He shall save. I was brought low and He Christed
me. He Jesused me. He saved me. He didn't help me. He didn't
help them that helped themselves. He helped them that can't help
themselves. He didn't add the last little bit I couldn't do.
I couldn't do anything. He did it all. We know what salvation is. Those
that love the Lord understand what it is to be saved. Understand
the character of His salvation. That it is a deliverance. It
is rest. It is bounty. He hath dealt bountifully. with thee." The Lord doesn't
save us a little bit. We aren't going to get into heaven
with the singe of hell upon our clothes. It's not going to be, whew, well
that was close. It wasn't. We shall go into the
presence of God blameless and full of joy. an abundant salvation. No tears. No death. No sorrow. No trouble. Why? Because the former things
are passed away. Those were the things of the
old creation and we're new creation in Christ. Those are the things that come
as a result of sin. And He will have removed all
sin. And then those who love God understand
how it was they obtained this salvation. Verse 4, Then I called
upon the name of the Lord, O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul. He did not say, I was in trouble,
I realized it was my own fault, and I made a vow never to do
that again. I have girded up the loins of
my determination never to fall into that trouble and that sin
again. And I said, Lord, if you'll just get me out of it this time,
I will not get back in that pit again. He said, I cried unto
the Lord, deliver me. I'm in over my head. I'm in a
mess I can't fix. We call upon His name. We believe
that He will hear. Verse 10, I believe therefore
I have spoken. The one who has seen God for
who He is. And here is a description of Him. Verse 5,
Gracious is the Lord and righteous, yea, our God is merciful. I love
that word mercy. We normally think of it in legal
terms. We normally think, well mercy is not getting what you
deserve. But do you remember our Lord
going through Jericho? And there's blind Bartimaeus sitting beside
the road. And the Lord is waiting through the crowd. Healing people. Touching them here. Speaking
to them there. Whatever. Healing them. His beggars
over here. He's heard of Jesus. He's blind. All the way blind. And he cries
out, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And the one
who called the universe into existence was stopped by a word. He whose word orders everything
was stopped by a single word, mercy. The Lord's ear is always
open to a cry for mercy. And what was Bartimaeus talking
about when he said mercy? Was he saying, I'm in trouble,
don't give me what I deserve? Here's what he's saying, the
word actually indicates pity. He's saying, Lord, Son of David,
look at me. I'm a mess. And he knew that
if the Lord would just look at him with a merciful eye, he would
do whatever was necessary. And that comes from a gracious
and righteous person. The righteous will look and not
pity. The gracious will look and forget
justice. The gracious and righteous one
looks upon the sinful like you and me and his heart breaks for
them. When was the last time your heart
broke for somebody that offended you. Maybe for your children
once in a while, when they break the rules you've made, instead
of being angry, you think, oh, he's going to get himself in
a mess. But pretty much for the rest
of the world, if they offend you, all you are is righteous.
All you are is righteous. Mercy. and we believe him for
that. I believe therefore I have spoken
therefore I cried out and I was greatly afflicted and I said
in my haste all men are liars. Now what does he mean by that? Here's my take on that. When
his troubles so overwhelmed him that he realized He could never
get himself out of it and he needed nothing but the sheer
mercy of God. He realized all that men had
been telling him about how to get out of his trouble was a
big lie. A big lie. And you know what? When he said
all men are liars, he was right. Go listen to them. They've got
the programs for you to get yourself out of trouble. And David says
they're liars. There's only one way out of here.
And it's the mercy of God. Now what did he do because he
loved the Lord? Verse 13. I will take the cup of salvation.
Now that's strange. Usually, in response to a wonderful
work done, we try to do a wonderful work in return. He says, the
Lord has saved me and therefore in response, I will take more
salvation. He gave me a drink of salvation,
I'm going to drink some more. Do you realize the best gratitude
you can show to God for His mercy towards you is to cry out for
more of it? John describes the Lord Jesus
Christ as being full of grace and truth and says, and from
His abundance have we received grace for grace. And that confuses
a lot of people. It just means grace upon grace.
The Lord is an artesian well of grace. He's just coming out
and we stand under that and we say, more, more, more. It is a supply without end. Blessings,
goodness, acceptance through Jesus Christ. I will lift up
the cup of salvation. I will pay my vows. Well, there
it is. That's where we do what we promised
God we'd do if he'd just save us. No, these vows always involved. They were sacrifices of thanksgiving.
That's all they were. Declarations of gratitude. toward
God. I love the Lord. Do you? If He saved you, you do. You
don't always act like it. You may wonder it yourself. You
may be like John Newton. There's a point I long to know
and often it gives me anxious thought. Do I love the Lord or
not? Am I His or am I not? But like Peter, if somebody presses
you on the point, yeah, I love Him. I don't act like it. I don't
deserve it. I'm embarrassed to say that someone
like me loves the Lord, but I do. Because he's been so good. He
saw my wretched soul. He heard my pitiful cry. And
he answered. It says he inclined his ear. Amazing. Amazing. Blessed be
God. I want to close this weekend
with one verse of scripture from the book of Revelation. The spirit
and the bride say come. Come. Paul, in a place that I, forgetting
those things which are behind, I'm so very thankful that I've
heard the gospel this weekend. And I'm sitting there thinking,
I don't know if I ever heard it before, but I've heard it
now. Maybe heard it for the first time, forgetting all those experiences
of the past. God's opened the windows of heaven. He has. He's fed us with the
bread of life. And that's a rare thing. What
a blessing. Gabe and Hannah and the girls
have to drive back to Tennessee this afternoon, so I'm going
to ask them to get to the table first so they can get their meal.
And please stay. If you didn't know, we were having
lunch. There will be plenty of food. Hope you'll stay and enjoy
fellowship. The weather's nice outside. You
can sit outside or in here. And we'll stay as long as we
like, OK? So Tom's going to come lead us
in a hymn. And then I want to ask Brother
Norm Wells, where's Norm? Norm, would you close the service
in prayer after Tom leads us in a hymn, please? Okay? All
right, let's stand together. Number 78 in the soft back tenor.