As no doubt you've been reminded,
Henry Mayan died, and there have been many tributes, as there
ought to be. We ought to esteem these men
highly for the Gospel's sake, and I wanted to to add something
to all of that, and many have spoken of Henry's extraordinary
faithfulness, and now if he could have a chance to speak to us,
he'd say, as the Queen of Sheba did when she saw King Solomon,
only the half has been told me. I've only told you the half.
This is far more glorious up here than I could ever have possibly
imagined. But here, on this earth, we have a task, and that is to
preach the Gospel. Paul, when the When he had that
vision of the man of Macedonia, Paul had absolutely no problem
about what the man had said. And he was forbidden to go to
these places, and then in Acts 16.9, a vision appeared to Paul
in the night, and there stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed
him, saying, come over and help us. And Paul had no question
about whatsoever this was all about. After he'd seen the vision,
immediately, we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly
gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel."
To preach the gospel. Henry preached a number of sermons
where he identified the gospel and he called it my gospel. Everyone
has a gospel. Everyone in religion has a gospel.
Everyone has something that they're holding on to. But there is,
according to the scripture, is just one gospel. In fact, in
the 95 times the word gospel is used in the New Testament,
77 of them have the definite article THE gospel attached to
it. There is just one gospel. And
it's called the Gospel of the Kingdom, and it's the Gospel
of Jesus Christ, and it's the Gospel of God. It's the Gospel
of the grace of God, it's the Gospel of Christ. It's Christ's
Gospel. It's the glorious Gospel. It's
the everlasting Gospel. And for the apostles and all
of God's children throughout time, it's always called our
Gospel. Our Gospel. So there is just
one Gospel. Paul, when he was writing to
the Galatians in this country that he has traversed in their
journey through Acts, he says, I marvel at your son, soon removed
from him that called you into the grace of Christ, into another
gospel. Every other gospel has something
other than the grace of Christ attached to it. If you add anything
to it, any of your works, anything whatsoever you think you might
do, to add to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's another
gospel. You're being removed, removed
from Him. See, if you don't have the gospel,
you don't have Him, according to Galatians 1.6. It's not another gospel. and
they pervert the Gospel of Christ. There is just one Gospel. To
the Corinthians He said, He declares unto you the Gospel which I preached
to you. He only ever preached one Gospel.
He didn't change the Gospel ever once. The Gospel which I preached
unto you, which also you have received. The children of God
receive the Gospel of God, and wherein you stand, they stand
in the Gospel of God, by which also you are saved. They're saved by this Gospel.
They receive it, they stand in it, they're saved by it, unless
you believed in vain. It's the call, or defends, the
truth of the Gospel. He proclaims the gospel and he
defends the truth of the gospel. Henry did both. And we pray that
this church would be raised up and continue, has been raised
up and would continue to be a place where there is just one matter
that matters, isn't it? That's the gospel. That's why
it's in the title of our church, the name of our church, as a
gospel church. It's the gospel. It's the gospel. And it's called God's gospel.
If you turn to Romans 1, just very briefly, we'll just look
quickly at some of these statements here. Paul's a servant of Jesus
Christ. He's a bond slave. He doesn't
have a right to rule his own affairs. Bond slaves are owned
and controlled and ruled. And Paul's a happy bond slave.
He's not compelled to do this other than by and constrained
by the love of God. And he's separated, he's called
to be an apostle, he's called to be one that's sent out, and
he's separated under the gospel of God from all of the other
people in this world. God separates his people to the
gospel of God, and God, in his ascension gifts, our Lord Jesus
Christ distributes his gifts to the church. But it's the gospel,
the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand. See, it's the gospel
of God. It doesn't originate with man.
It's a gospel that God purposes. It's a gospel that God designed.
It's a gospel that God decrees. It's God's gospel. God's gospel. It's born from the heart of God.
It's designed for the glory of God. And it's meant to accomplish
the purpose of God. And we see that it does. But
it's a gospel that was promised beforehand. And when it's promised
beforehand in the scriptures, the holy scriptures that are
referred to in verse 2, That's all the Old Testament. It's the
Gospel that was promised in Genesis. It's the Gospel that was promised
and pictured in Noah. It's the Gospel that was promised
and pictured in the call of Abraham. It's the Gospel that was promised
and pictured in the covenant that God made with Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob. It's the Gospel that's pictured
in the redemption of those people out of the land of Egypt. It's
the Gospel that's pictured in all of the Old Testament. All
of the Old Testament are pictures of the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and if you can't see them there, the problem's not
with God. So we go and beg him to show
us the gospel there. Sometimes it's remarkably clear,
as we saw in Hosea earlier, and sometimes it's obscured. It just
means, it means that we just need to go and ask God to help
us to see it there. It's God's gospel. It's the gospel
promised beforehand. See, it didn't originate with
the apostles, and it didn't originate with man. This is Moses' gospel. It's Enoch's gospel. It's Abel's
gospel. It's Noah's gospel. They all
preached this gospel. They are all saved by this gospel. See, God never changes His way
of saving sinners. He saved Abel in exactly the
same way he saved the last person that will be on this earth, who
the Lord will come and open his heart, or her heart, and believe. And then the doors will be shut.
The work will be done. The wedding feast is prepared. We're so thankful that our God
doesn't change. Malachi 3.6 says, you know, I change not, I change
not. Therefore you sons of Jacob are
not consumed. And God never regenerates, he
never restores, he never saves any souls except through his
sons. That's why Paul goes on to say, it's the gospel, verse
three of Romans one, it's concerning his son. It's God's gospel. It's the eternal gospel. So it's
not concerning what you did or what you do. It's concerning
Christ. The gospel concerns Him. No, none of these modern notions
about God wishing to make your life a bed of roses in this world. It's the gospel concerning His
Son. And God's people are so thankful it is concerning His
Son. See, it's God's gospel. It's a gospel that declares His
eternal glory, His eternal suretyship, His eternal grace, His eternal
covenant. It's a gospel concerning his
son, it's concerning his incarnation in coming into the world. It's
about him magnifying the law and making it honourable. It's
about his death, his burial, his resurrection, his intercession,
him coming to gather his own in this world and out of this
world. As we see in Acts, he goes wherever
he wishes and he gathers his own. He comes to his own people
at what he calls the time of love. And as with Gama, he allures
her. He allures her back to himself.
And he brings them into the fellowship of believers. And he meets with
them as he gathers them together. It's His, it's concerning His
Son, His Church, ruled by His Spirit. It's His mediatorial
work. It's about His will being done.
So the Gospel's concerning Him. We are participants in the Gospel
only as we are joined to Him, brothers and sisters. So that's
why the gospel's not a plea to people, it's a proclamation.
It's not a decision, it's a declaration. It's a declaration of who God
is in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a declaration about a decision
that was made a long, long time ago, brothers and sisters. Concerning his son, Jesus Christ,
Jesus Christ, Jesus Joshua, That name of humiliation, he was given
that name because he will save his people from their sins. He's
Christ. In the New Testament, in the
New Testament, almost in every situation you find, the Lord
Jesus Christ is always given his titles. I grieve other people
talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus all the time. Give him his titles. He earned them, brothers and
sisters, and he deserves them. And his titles mean a lot to
his people. For him to be the Christ is to
be the Christ in union with his people. He does all of it in
union with them. And He's Jesus Christ, our Lord. For God's people, He is our Lord.
He's the Lord of everyone. But for God's people, He's particularly
our Lord. We love the fact that He's the
Creator. We love the fact of His sovereign rule over all things.
We love the fact that as Lord, He's providential in all things. We love the fact that as Lord,
He says, come to me and I'll give you rest. Come to me and
I'll give you peace. And he says, come to me and don't
move a muscle. Because coming to Christ is not
a physical activity at all. It's not coming down the front
to a preacher. It's not making a decision and
signing some piece of paper. It's not praying some prayer
that someone else has written out for you. It's coming to him. It's a hard submission. and reception
of the Lord Jesus Christ as he's declared in the Gospel right
where you are. Salvation's not a decision. Salvation is a work of God. He says, He says, so thankfully
to his people, that my ways are not your ways, declares our God. He'll save his people in his
ordained way at his ordained time, and he'll do it by his
own particular providential care of them, but he'll always do
it. Whenever the Lord Jesus Christ really saves someone, the work
will have the fingerprints of him all over it. And all of God's
people are joined together in union with Him because they've
been brought near to Him by His blood. But there are many Gospels
out there. The promise of God is that there
are many Gospels out there. In Paul's day, there were many
Gospels out there. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself
warned the false teachers again and again and again that they'll
come to you in wolves' clothing and sheep. They'll be dressed
like sheep, but they'll be really wolves. In 2 Corinthians, Paul
speaks of another gospel and another spirit. See, every preacher
has a gospel. Every church has a gospel. Every
so-called believer has a gospel of some sort. It's a gospel which
he believes, a gospel which he contends for, a gospel which
he proclaims. There are gospels being proclaimed
all over this land at the moment and all over this city. And you
can go on their websites and you can go and listen to their
gospels. And you are commanded of God to try the spirits. You are commanded of God to test
them. It is not a bad thing to do, to test the person speaking
to you, to see whether they are speaking on God's behalf. And
there are people who are dedicated to their Gospels. There are Gospels
that they will die for. But Paul, twice in the Scriptures,
called it my gospel. It's all very well for it to
be a gospel out there, but he says the Scriptures declare it
to be our gospel, and it's my gospel. In Romans 16 and 2 Timothy
2, he says it's my gospel. So why did he call it my gospel?
Because he was saved by it, because he believed it, because he loved
it, because it was committed to his trust. He talked about
the fellowship of the gospel. See, the gospel is a person,
and therefore the gospel is personal. That's why we can call it my
gospel. So when God's gospel is my gospel, then I'm safe in
this world and forevermore. God's gospel is the power of
God unto salvation. The gospel of God. So people
have a gospel they live by. Henry declared this gospel, and
he said, this is the gospel I've lived by, and this is the gospel
I'll die by. And let me say something that
I've said many, many times. If your gospel is not a matter
of life and death, then you don't have the gospel. If you have
a gospel that can be shared with all sorts of other people and
you can join in fellowship with all sorts of other people in
other churches, because they talk about, A, Jesus, and it
doesn't matter where you go. because all of them are talking
about some Jesus, then your gospel's not a matter of life and death.
Paul's gospel is a matter of life and death. He called it
my gospel. Henry called it my gospel. This
is my gospel. This is our gospel, brothers
and sisters. See, this gospel came to Lydia, didn't it, and
opened her heart. The Lord opened her heart. She
believed, so she heard this gospel. And then it says she attended
to this gospel in Acts 16, which means that she grasped a hold
of it. She grasped a hold of it. She was gonna hold it to
herself. She cleaved to it with her heart. She heard this gospel, and Timothy
was with him, and when Paul wrote to Timothy, he said, in this
gospel, a death is abolished, and life and immortality, componder
that, brothers and sisters, immortality, Everyone here and everyone who
hears is going to live forever. But in this gospel is the declaration
of immortality, life with God, and immortality with the Lord
Jesus Christ is brought to light. It's brought to light through
the gospel. That's why Paul calls it the
gospel of your salvation. It's the gospel of your peace.
That's why he describes it in Philippians 1 as the gospel,
the faith of the gospel. So let's just look, in the little
time we have left, at some characteristics of this gospel. This gospel that
my friend Henry May, and I never met him, but he's a brother.
And if we'd known, had any glimpse of what Henry has enjoyed in
this last few weeks, we'd cling to his gospel, cling to his saviour,
and we'd pray that his saviour would work in our hearts. My
gospel exalts a sovereign God. And when we mean sovereignty,
we mean absolutely, immutably, unchangeably sovereign. He's
sovereign in creation. He just speaks a word and this
universe comes into existence. He's sovereign in providence. Nothing happens in this universe,
not the hairs of my head. Your hairs of your head are numbered
by God right now. There is somewhere in this world
a useless, worthless sparrow falling to the ground, and that
sparrow cannot fall to the ground apart from the will of my God.
everything. To be sovereign as the scriptures
declare God to be sovereign means he's absolutely sovereign. Sovereign
in creation, sovereign in providence, he's sovereign in salvation. That verse in Acts 15 is just
wonderful, isn't it? Known unto God are all his works
from the foundation of the world. Salvation is his glorious work.
If you want to call the work great, it's his greatest work. It's the greatest revelation
of himself, is in the salvation of his people in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Sovereign in salvation. God Because Isaiah 46.10 says,
God declares the end from the beginning. So what was the end?
The end with God is that there will be a population beyond a
number of men and women who will be perfectly conformed to the
image of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they will inhabit a new heavens
and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, wherein there
cannot be any sin or hindrance whatsoever, where the Lord Jesus
Christ will be exalted by every thought and every look and every
word all the time. and there will be a real feeling
fellowship. There will be real people there.
Moses and Elijah came back from heaven and they were noticeably
and identifiably Moses and Elijah. They just didn't disappear into
the ether. The new creation will be a physical
creation. Just as the Lord Jesus Christ,
when he came back from the resurrection, after the resurrection, he was
really there. You could touch him, you could feel him, you
could walk with him, you could talk with him, you could eat
with him, and you could fellowship with him, and he could teach
you. The new creation, that's picturing the new creation, and
God has determined from the beginning. No one under God always works
from the foundation of the world. So before this world was created,
God had in mind a new world, a new world wherein dwells righteousness. And every enemy that can harm
the children of God in any way at all are shut out. The door
is shut and they can never, ever enter in. Isn't that remarkable,
brothers and sisters? Not your sin, not all that troubles
you and plagues you in this world. He declares the end from the
beginning. And therefore, with his purpose and determination,
he created this world we knew. And he said to Adam, he said,
when you eat of the fruit of the tree, you'll fall. You and
all of your race will fall. But in the beginning, before
the fall and before the creation, such is the sovereignty of our
God, there was a Redeemer chosen and a way of redemption in the
lambs slain from the foundation of the world. And there was a
people chosen out of every tribe and nation and kindred, a people
chosen, put in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our God is sovereign. His will never changes. His purpose and design never
changes. What he determines in eternity
takes place always in time. He's sovereign, absolutely unchangeably
sovereign. Secondly, my Gospel recognises
the fall of man. It's a complete fall. Man wasn't
just wounded, he was spiritually slain. He didn't lose the sight
of one eye or become a bit of a cripple. He was totally blinded
and unable to do anything. The Lord looked down from heaven
upon the children of man to see if there were any that did understand
and seek God. They had all gone aside. They
are all together become filthy. That word filthy means stinky.
There is none that doeth good, no not one. They're not dead
mentally and they're not dead physically, but they're dead
spiritually. The carnal mind is enmity against
God. The natural man receives not
the things of the God. The heart is deceitful and desperately
wicked and beyond cure. Man at his best state is vanity. Their righteousnesses are filthy
rags. The wicked go astray from the
worm-speaking lies. And man is so stuck in that situation
that there's nothing he can do. Can the Ethiopian change the
colour of his skin? Can the leopard change his spots?
By your willing or by your working? That's what the scriptures declare,
man. Dead. Neither can you do good
who are accustomed to evil. So we're dead and we must be
made alive. Sinners are totally incapable
of believing on Christ. Sinners are more than capable
of constructing a God and constructing a Christ and constructing a religion
that they can believe and understand. It's a mystery, brothers and
sisters. It requires, as Nicodemus was told that night, that incredibly
intelligent, incredibly moral and remarkably religious man. You must be born again, you cannot
see the Kingdom of God, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Dead. The mind of the natural man is
dead. He can comprehend a false God,
but not the living God. He can comprehend a false gospel,
but not the true gospel. He can comprehend a way of works,
but he can't comprehend the way of grace. Only those who are born again
will understand this. Man is dead. Man is totally dead. God is absolutely sovereign.
And thirdly, Henry went on to say, my gospel is based on a
covenant of grace. We love speaking about the word
covenant, don't we? We love the covenant of grace.
We love the fact that it's an everlasting, eternal covenant
in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. I remember when I went
to India, and I was first, and I went there with my religion,
and I went there with all my tracts, and I went there with
all this stuff. I went there with my zeal and all of these
things. And someone started talking to me about covenants. And I
had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. And then
when it was opened up to me, I couldn't get over it. I never
stopped thinking about it and talking about it. It's mentioned,
it's written 250 times in the book of God, and I hadn't heard
a word about it. And I'd been to Bible college,
and I was an elder in a church. Our gospel, the real gospel,
is based on a covenant of grace. God made covenants with Adam
and Noah and Abraham and David, but this covenant, this covenant
is an everlasting covenant. It's the covenant in the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a covenant in which the
Lord Jesus Christ became the surety. We speak often of that
word surety, and you need to know what it means. It's sometimes
referred to as a guarantor, but it's much bigger than a guarantor. In the Lord Jesus Christ, except
that those people of the Father had given him that we read about
in John chapter 10, and they were given into the hands of
him, at that moment the Lord Jesus Christ became a surety
of this everlasting covenant. And from that point on, God the
Father will only ever look to Him. only ever look to Him for
everything that He requires, for all of your sin bearing,
for all of your righteousness before God, for all of that entrance
into Heaven's glory. He looks to Him. He's the surety.
That's what David died on his dying bed. He said, God has made
with me, not that I made any covenant with God, God has made
with me an eternal covenant. ordered and sure in every detail. He had no question about God's
absolute sovereignty, and he had no question about it being
a covenant of grace, because there was nothing in David, nothing
in David that deserved anything of that. As Judah said, that he was surety
for Benjamin in Egypt. He said, if I don't bring him
back to you alive, I'll bear the blame forever. The Lord Jesus
Christ has covenant with his father to take all of these people
the father gave him and take them back to him. The Lord Jesus
Christ is the surety of the covenant, but let's not forget, heavenly
brothers and sisters, the Lord Jesus Christ is the covenant.
We don't have time to look at them in great detail, but in
Isaiah 42, 6 and Isaiah 49, he is the covenant. He's given by
God as the covenant of the people. And he's the mediator of this
covenant. He's the one that intercedes
between the two parties to reconcile. And because of the covenant,
he's the intercessor. He's the one that says to the
Father, forgive them for my sake. Accept them because of my person
and my work. Bless them in this world for
my sake. Look upon me and bless all of
those that are in me. See, our gospel, my gospel, is
a covenant gospel. and we're not ashamed about it
and we're not bashful about it. We long to proclaim its beauty. It glorifies Him. It glorifies
His faithfulness. It glorifies Him in all of the
marvellous attributes of God that are revealed. This book
that you hold in your hands is bound together by that covenant. Hebrews 13.20 says, it's the
covenant in His blood. That's a covenant in his bud.
Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord
Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep. Through the blood
of the everlasting covenant make you perfect. This covenant makes
people perfect. It's a covenant in his blood.
Brought again the Lord Jesus from the dead. How did he die? He died on a cross. He died as
a substitute. He died according to all of the
scriptures ever typified about the great sacrifice. He died
as a substitute. He died in our place. Our Lord
Jesus, I love how Paul uses those personal pronouns. I hope you
can use them. My father. My God. My shepherd. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the
good shepherd. He's the great shepherd of the
sheep. The great shepherd of the sheep. He says, I know my
sheep and they hear my voice and they follow me. through the
blood, see not through your works, through the blood of the everlasting
covenant. That's how you made perfect,
brothers and sisters, through the blood. By one sacrifice,
Hebrews says, by one sacrifice he has perfected forever them
that are sanctified. The Lord Jesus is that great
surety. He says, I'll bring them home and there won't be one lost.
Every single one of them. They're in my hands and I'm carrying
them home. They're scattered throughout
this world. The world doesn't know where they are. The world
doesn't know and they don't know the circumstances that the Lord's
using to draw them to himself. But he does all the time. It's a covenant of grace. It's
not a covenant of works. It's a covenant of grace. Eternal
grace, sovereign grace, efficacious grace. It's free grace. It's not earned by your good
works, and it's not demerited by your sin. Otherwise, it's
not grace. It's God's grace. He bestows
it upon whom He will and when He will. See, grace looks for
nothing in or from the recipient. Grace looks to Christ. and Him
alone, and all God's grace is saving grace. Henry went on to say, if my gospel
declares an incarnate God, this is the gospel that he contended
for, this is the gospel that he was prepared to die for. And
he believed it so much that he said, if you don't believe this
gospel, then he has every reason to believe that you're lost and
you're in your sins and you haven't yet met the Lord. That's the reason he's preaching
this gospel, that others might be brought to see the glory of
this God. It declares an incarnate God,
a sovereign God. a fallen man, a covenant of grace,
and an incarnate God. The virgin will have a child,
says Matthew 1.23. Bring forth a son, you shall
call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted, God with us. Jesus Christ is God. The word was made flesh and dwelt
among us. We beheld his glory. It's a great
mystery, isn't it? We can't explain it, brothers
and sisters, the Incarnation, but we can believe it. We can't
explain it, but we can delight in it. Without controversy, great
is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh,
justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the
Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. God was in Christ, says Paul
in 2 Corinthians. Be reconciled to God. Our God is an incarnate God. He walked on this earth and he
tabernacled with man. He walked on this earth in human
flesh. Our God declares an incarnation,
but our gospel declares an effectual work that He came. Our Gospel
declares the successful, complete salvation accomplished by the
Lord Jesus Christ. A salvation which is of God,
declared in God's Gospel. A salvation that declares Him,
through His perfect life, His atoning death, His glorious resurrection,
and what He's doing right now. He's not passive, brothers and
sisters, right now. He's not wandering around heaven
trying to work out how things are happening with his church.
His church is perfectly fine all the time. His church is perfectly
secure all the time. His people, no matter what the
trials of this life are, are in the hands of a sovereign God. It's a finished work. It's a
finished work. I love that that word that he
declared on Calvary's tree, when he says it is finished, also
means perfect. Perfectly done. Sin is perfectly
put away with. The Lord is perfectly satisfied. He's kept it perfectly. He suffered
perfectly, completely. God set him forth. He did it
all, our Saviour. He paid it all. He accomplished
it all. Romans 3.25 says, whom God set
forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to declare
his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through
the forbearance of God. the Gospels of Declaration, to
declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might
be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. To be justified is to be declared
in the courts of God's holy justice, that there is no charge. Who
shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? So to preach
Christ and Him crucified is to preach Him as a sovereign God. to preach Him as an eternal surety
and the covenant head of His people. To preach the Lord Jesus
Christ and Him crucified is to go all the way back to eternity. We call it eternity past because
we don't have any better words to describe it, and we call it
eternity future because we don't have any better words to describe
it. Nevertheless, it means far more than that. You can't preach
Him unless you go back to the beginning. In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was made flesh. In the beginning, to preach
Him, Jesus Christ and Him crucified, is to preach Him as the surety
of the everlasting covenant, to preach His blood as efficacious. It's more than just to preach
a man on a cross, it's to preach him according to the scriptures
as that one who is seen in all the sacrifices, that trail of
blood that reaches from Genesis 3, before they were expelled
from the garden, there was a sacrifice that covered their shame. And
they were sent out into this world to preach him, it's to
preach him. as the Passover, the Tabernacle,
the Ark of the Covenant, to preach Him in His incarnation and to
preach Him as coming with a purpose, to set His people free from their
sins. So the question is not What happened,
not just about a man dying on a cross, thousands, hundreds
of thousands of people have been hung on crosses and died. It's
who died and who put him to death. It's the determinate counsel
and full knowledge of our sovereign God. It's because those people
were so one with him, that he took their sins and declared
them to be his own. To preach Jesus Christ and him
crucified is to preach his death. The wages of sin is death. It's
to preach his rising, his exaltation, his intercession, his mediatorial
work right now. It's to preach him returning
to gather his own. To bring His own, it's to preach
Him as the King of a kingdom. To preach the Lord Jesus Christ
and Him crucified is to preach holiness of life and obedience. See, we love Him. We love him
because he first loved us. His love constrains and motivates
and compels us. We saw it in Lydia, didn't we? Lydia didn't have to be given
any rules. Immediately, what did she want
to do? She wanted to be baptized, she wanted to confess him. She
wanted to be joined with him. She said, come to my house. My
house is your house now. When we see him as he is in the
real gospel, the things that religion wants men to do flow
naturally because of the sovereign hand of a loving God. He's a
king. He's ruling right now and reigning. He reigns in the hearts of his
people and he reigns over all things in this world. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do thank
you for your faithfulness to your people in bringing us the
Gospel, Heavenly Father. We thank you for your faithfulness
in doing as you promised, in bringing your sheep to hear your
voice. We do thank you, Heavenly Father,
for your faithfulness in sending that great shepherd of the sheep
to lead his own out, out of this world and out of the religion
of this world and out of the sins and the snares of Satan
which so easily entangle us. But most of all, Heavenly Father,
we thank you for revealing to us your Son on Calvary's tree,
that shed blood, that broken body, that blood shed to wash
us from our sins, that water that flowed from his heart to
wash us and sanctify us. Our Heavenly Father, you promised
to give faith to your people and you promised that this gospel
that you have brought to us and sustained amongst us, Heavenly
Father, is your power unto salvation. And we pray, Heavenly Father,
that that might be our portion here. that we might be led by
a great shepherd to Him, away from ourselves, to see Him as
He really is, to delight in Him, to die for Him. Our Father, bless us, cause us
to know Him, that as we take these elements, we might remember
Him yet again. We pray in His name, Amen.