I wanted to speak to you this
morning about hearing. Hearing. Paul says to the Galatians
in Galatians 4 verse 20, he says, He desires to be present with
you now to change my voice, for I stand in doubt of you. And
he says, Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, Do you not
hear? Do you not hear the Lord? Do you not hear the Word of God? Our great and glorious God in
His providence has so organised the salvation of our souls that
the salvation of our souls and the glory of His character are founded in one another. Our
hope is built, our hope is based on the God, the God that we hear
about, the God that we read about in the scriptures. And Simon's
heart's desire and Jenny's and others of faith as well is again
and again, isn't it? We just long for people to hear. We long for people to hear about
the God that's described in these scriptures, both Graham and Norma
have read passages and described to us the God that is. the God that Simon's mum met
last week. People don't go to nothingness. That's a lie, a lie of Satan
and one of the lies of this world. They leave here and instantly
they are in the presence of God, whether it's for their glory
and salvation or whether it's for their damnation for eternity. That's what happens when people
die. That's what God says. We love to contemplate the character
of our God. We love to think of His sovereignty. We love to think of His grace,
His faithfulness. We delight to ponder the workings
of God in Providence. It was the Providence of God
that led Paul to these Galatian churches. In fact, in Acts chapter
16, Paul wishes to go further beyond north of these Galatian
territories and God the Holy Spirit twice says to him, no,
you're not going there. No, you are not going there.
And he sent him across the sea into Macedonia. What remarkable
providence of our God in the life of Simon's mum. What remarkable
things to contemplate. I know little of it, but as we
think more and more on the workings of our Lord, we should be astounded
at the detail of things. Fancy that, all those years ago she had to suffer No doubt the
extraordinary pain of not having children of her own, but then
being led by the Providence of the Lord to adopt three of them. Why was all of that? All those
years go by, all of those trials go by, in the purpose of God. It always has one purpose, isn't
it? God works all things for the good of those he loves, for
the called according to his purpose. He works all things for good.
What a remarkable gift Simon brought to his mother in the
latter years of her life. She heard the gospel. She heard
the gospel. She not just heard it with the
ears that you are hearing me now, she actually heard it with
the hearing of faith. And what remarkable providences
Simon and Jenny will be able to relate as time goes on. It is true. of what our Saviour
says, isn't it? The death of His saints is precious
in His sight. He watches over them and all
of the events of life and dying are in the hands of a providential,
awe-inspiring God. You see, Paul's agony for these
Galatians is travail in birth again, is
because they are people who had the remarkable privilege in all
that world the Gospel geographically had just gone to by that stage,
very tiny parts of it, and these were one of those extraordinary
privileged groups. And it's in travail in birth
again until Christ be formed in you. And now his desire, his
will is to be with them. He wants to be with them, he
wants To be with them, to change His voice, He wants to speak
to them yet again. And it's wonderful in this defence
of the Gospel in Galatians, we have Paul turning again and again
and again to the only place of hope and the only place of consolation. He just reminds them of the Gospel. It is a remarkable thing. Graham
read those verses in Hebrews 4 and Hebrews 3. It's a remarkable
privilege to hear the Gospel. It's a remarkable and wondrous
thing to have the opportunity to have God described before
you as He really is and you described as you really are. The Word of
God cuts And we are, as God's children,
we are left again and again to seal the frailty of our flesh.
I was thinking as I went home on Thursday evening after church,
licking my wounds yet again, a glorious Saviour deserving
so much more of honour than these stammering lips are able to bring
to Him. And I was just poignantly aware
again that there is absolutely nothing
whatsoever in my flesh, nothing whatsoever in my flesh which
is helpful to me spiritually. Salvation is of the Lord. Sinners, need a saviour, the
unlovely need to be loved. He sets, in that same psalm that
I read from earlier, he sets the lonely in families. The unlovely
need to be loved. The weak and the helpless and
the powerless need to be carried. They have no strength and ability
in themselves. God must do it all for them. Through the blessings of sovereign
grace when the Lord Jesus spoke in Matthew in that famous Sermon
on the Mount. But the blessings of sovereign
grace are to the poor in spirit, to the mourners, to the meek,
to those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, to the pure
in heart, to the peacemakers, to those who are persecuted for
righteousness' sake, to those who are reviled by men and have
evil spoken of them. They are blessings in this world. It's a blessing in this world
to have nothing of yourselves. It's a blessing in this world
to be reduced to a place where the Lord Jesus is all. All that you have, all that you
desire, all that you long for. I know Jenny loves Isaiah and
I found a couple of remarkable verses of Isaiah. preparing this
message out of Isaiah. One is in Isaiah 32, verse 17,
and it says, The work of righteousness shall be peace. That's what Norm
was talking about, isn't it? Hope brings peace, doesn't it? Peace with God. The work of righteousness
shall be peace and the effect of righteousness. And obviously
there is only one righteousness, And it is a righteousness of
a righteous one, the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no human righteousness. It's never mentioned in the scriptures.
There is just one righteousness. The work of righteousness shall
be peace and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever. I'd spent some considerable time
studying that verse before I knew that Norm had prepared a thing,
I hope. But isn't that lovely? The work
of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness,
quietness and assurance forever. He says in Isaiah as well, that
in returning and rest shall you be saved, in quietness and confidence
shall be your strength." The children of God are brought
again and again to a place where they are left and they are gratefully
left in the hands of sovereign mercy and sovereign love. And in this world, They long
to be heard. They long for an opportunity
just to speak. They long for someone to hear. I saw someone that I'd known
for 30 odd years at the shop down the road this morning and
he was off to church. And he was going to church and
he said, I'm going there because my son's class is having something
at the Catholic Church up the road. And then he said something
about the fact that his son is going to be saved because he's
a good person, he's a good boy, he's right with God. And I quoted
to him a verse of the Lord Jesus. He said, He came to call, didn't
come to call the righteous, that he came to call sinners to repentance. And I was not wondering what
was going to happen. I was hoping, of course, that
there might have been some conversation. And I said, good people don't
go to heaven. The children of God go to heaven
on the basis of the goodness of the Lord Jesus. They don't
go there with their good works in their hands. They cannot get
in there. And his response to me is a response that, sadly,
is a response that this evil world that we live in engenders
in so many people. And he just quite blithely said, well, I'm probably
going down there then. I'm probably going to hell, he
said, and went on drinking his coffee. And I thought, isn't
that just extraordinary. There he had He had just a simple
word of God. He had me longing to have a conversation
with him, longing for him to come and hear the word of God. And yet he didn't hear anything,
did he? He hadn't heard anything. That's Paul's concern, isn't
it? That's the concern that Paul,
as he writes in Hebrews, that to hear To hear without hearing
is a dangerous, dangerous thing, isn't it? He says, harden not
your hearts. Today if you'll hear His voice,
harden not your hearts as in the provocation in the day of
temptation in the wilderness. Harden not your hearts. Only God can remove a heart of
stone and give someone a heart of flesh. But throughout the
scriptures, people are held accountable for their hearing of the Word
of God. And that's in a sense what Paul
is saying to these Galatians, isn't he? He's asking them a
question. in verse 21, tell me, you that
desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? He's anxious to be with them.
to preach the Gospel to the Guineans, anxious to be in their presence
with them, because now their desire has changed, wasn't it?
Their desire was for Him and their desire was for Christ,
and now their desire is to be back under the law, to be back
in a place where their works, their activities, their morality,
their religion, Their doing has something to do with salvation. They desire to be under the law.
Verse 9 he says, you desire to be in bondage. In chapter 5 verse
1 Paul says it's an entangling again. You go into it and you
get more and more entangled. I remember seeing on one of those
nature shows, one of those vines in Africa that has all these
sort of spines on it, and as you get caught on one, the more
you actually try to extract yourself, you just get more entangled,
and this whole vine just sort of wraps around you, and it's
quite a process to get out of it. It's an entangling, isn't
it? Works is entangling. He wants... The Apostle Paul's
heart is a heart that's breaking. Like so many of God's children,
their hearts break. Their hearts break for those
around them. Their hearts break for those
around them who won't hear the Gospel. Their hearts break for
those around them who hear the Gospel and for whom it is a light
thing. And their hearts break especially
for those who stay in church and are entangled in a bondage
of work's righteousness." He wants to be there, he says, to
change his voice. He wants to be able to interact
with them. He wants to be able to comfort
those who are struggling and mourning. He wants to speak tough,
serious words to those whose hearts are hardened against Him
and hardened against His Saviour and hardened against His brothers
and sisters. The Lord Jesus changed His voice
didn't He? The Lord Jesus spoke in remarkable
ways in response to what was laid before Him. When He came
When those came to Him who were the outcasts and had nothing
in their hands, they brought He spoke with great tenderness
to all who came to Him in need. He spoke with great tenderness.
But what shocking, difficult words they are for us to read
when the Lord Jesus spoke to the Pharisees, to those who had
a righteousness of their own, to those who had a righteousness
that allowed them to stand in judgement. upon the Word of God. He was abrupt, he was direct,
he spoke the truth. He said, you are children of
your father, the devil, and you do his words. He saw into their
lives and he saw through all of the external piety and all
of the external religion and he saw to the very core of their
being and he told them what they were thinking in their hearts.
You desire to kill me. that when the Lord Jesus met
with those who were broken-hearted, to those who had nothing, He
was just the most remarkable Saviour, wasn't He? Won't you
come to Him with your needs? I love reading those stories
of the people who came to Him. There was a letter came to Him,
beseeching and kneeling down to Him and saying unto Him, If
Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean, Mark 1. And then verse
41, this is a description of our Saviour in that situation
with that person. And Jesus moved with compassion,
moved with compassion. God Almighty moved with compassion,
put forth His hand and touched Him and said unto Him, I will
Be thou clean. Faith, needy faith, needy sinners,
move the heart of God Almighty to compassion. Paul knew what it was. to be a Pharisee and stand in
judgment of the Word of God, to stand in judgment of the Christ
of God, to stand in judgment of the people of God. That's
why this letter is full of such extraordinary passion. He says, what a word from God
the Holy Spirit to a group of people who are zealously attending
church and zealously being involved in all sorts of law-keeping works. He says, I stand in doubt of
you. He says, I'm perplexed about
how to deal with you. Under the Gospel you became sons. You were sons of God and now
you're acting and turning back to being like slaves. You were
free-born heirs and now you're going back under a jailer, under
a pedagogue. You were men and now you want
to become like children. You were sons of God and now
you want to go back under the elements of this world. You were
spiritual. spiritually minded and heavenly
minded and now you're carnally minded. You have human desires
for human rewards. And Paul keeps questioning them,
doesn't he? He questions them again and again
and again. This is another one of his questions, but he's questioned
them in verse 15 of chapter 4. He says, where is the blessedness? Where is that state of blessedness
you spoke of? I had heard the gospel. I had returned from those works. Those horrible works that they
were in bondage to under those old pagan gods that they worshipped,
and they'd return to a bondage which is very, very similar indeed. In fact, according to the Scriptures,
it is the same. It is the same. There is no difference. There is no difference eternally. between being an incredibly pious
religious person and zealously looking to your works and the
works of others than to being a pagan worshipping a rock somewhere. Saving faith is a spiritual relationship. a spiritual relationship with
Him. You see, when the Word of God
is attacked, the very Word of God Himself and His character
is attacked. You see, the Galatians in effect,
under this deceiving desire that they had been led to, were actually
saying something about the Lord Jesus Christ, weren't they? They
were saying that His work is insufficient. I must add my activities
to his activities for it to be fully rounded and fully complete
and fully acceptable to God." It's saying that he failed. Paul's husband is being attacked. There's a statement I heard,
I think it's attributed to Calvin, and he said that when When the
owner of a vineyard's dogs hear some intruder coming into the
vineyard, the dogs are stirred up and they bark. He said, shouldn't
the children of God be stirred up and barked when the Lord Jesus,
their husband, is ridiculed and mocked? You see, saving faith, saving
faith is faith in a person. In Ephesians 1.13
it says, in whom you also trusted after you heard the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation. You heard Him, you heard a person
who is God Almighty described. His saving faith is not a what,
Saving faith is not a doctrine. Saving faith is in whom you are
also trusted. People criticise us for being
dogmatic about our descriptions of the Lord Jesus. The question, again, of this
passage in the Garlic Relations is leading us to is, is who must
a person trust to be saved? See, it's who, isn't it? There
are multitudes. There are multitudes who are
trusting now in a God that's not described in this book. Billions of them. How many Roman
Catholics? 1.3 million Catholics. Over a
billion Muslims. There are just multitudes. Simon's mum met reality the other
night. She met the living and true God. She didn't meet the figment of
someone's imagination. She didn't meet the God described
in so many of the churches that she went to. She met He who is
absolutely sovereign. She met Him who is infinitely
holy. And to meet Him, To meet Him
in saving faith is to meet Him with the most extraordinary assurance. That's assurance that you have
now. You trust a person, so your false
Christ cannot save. And you hear of this Christ,
through the Word of Truth, Ephesians 1.13. In Him you also trusted
after you heard the Word of Truth. To trust Him you must hear the
Word of Truth, the Gospel of your salvation. It is the Word of these Truths. It is the Word of these Truths
because it came from the God of Truth. It is the Word of the
Truth because it speaks of Christ, who is the Truth. And it's revealed
by God the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, who leads His people
into all the Truth. And it's this Word of Truth that
brings peace, brings rest, brings assurance. It sets prisoners
free. God doesn't save his people apart
from or without the word of truth, and he doesn't save them by then
hearing and believing lies. Paul was troubled about the salvation
of the souls of these people. Eternity is what mattered. So Paul is asking them, the Holy
Spirit is asking us again and again, did you hear? Have you
heard? Have you heard of Him? Have you
heard from Him? There are, as you know, in the
scriptures, there are different forms of hearing. Multitudes
heard the Lord Jesus. Multitudes heard the apostles.
Multitudes have heard the preaching of the Gospel throughout time. You have all been in situations
where the same word has been spoken to you and spoken to others
and to some. it becomes a word of life and
for others it becomes a word that just floats by in some way
and doesn't impact their lives. It appears from what Simon and
Jenny say that the word of truth impacted the life of Simon's
mum. It went down from the surface
and it went in to the very heart of them and he's asking The Scriptures
are asking all of us, haven't we, have we heard? Have we heard
from God? You tell me. See, I can't speak
on your behalf. You tell me, says Paul. You respond
to this. You heard the Gospel. You heard
the Gospel and you relished the liberty. What extraordinary liberty. The glorious liberty of the Gospel
is that I have no righteousness of my own. I have none to defend,
none to work at, and I have all of the righteousness of God.
As far as God's concerned, I have perfect righteousness before
Him simply by trusting in Him. These people showed That parable
of the soil is a living thing, isn't it? There was this exciting
response. They heard the Gospel and they
thought Paul was an angel from heaven and they responded to
the Gospel in self-sacrificial love. You would have plucked
out your own eyes and given them to me. They were the desires that you
had under the Gospel that Paul preached. They weren't desires
towards Paul, they were desires towards Paul's Lord. They didn't
bring people to follow them. They brought people as John the
Baptist did. They heard of him and they followed
the Lord Jesus Christ. They looked away from themselves
and away from men and they just simply looked to Him. And now these Galatians, as many
that we have seen, have this new desire. It's the desire that
I never initiated and it's a desire that doesn't come from the one
who called you into the grace of Christ. It's a desire, Paul says, that
I know a lot about. I lived my life. I was born under
the yoke of bondage to the law and I lived it. I lived it as
a self-righteous pharisee. I lived it so carefully, so studiously,
so meticulously that I could say that I was blameless. No
man could accuse Paul of breaking the law of God whatsoever. He knew the scriptures, he knew
the law of God, he thought he knew all about the Christ of
God. And if you'd asked him to give
you a detailed description of the verses that relate to the
Christ of God, we would be embarrassed in his presence by our ignorance. He could talk for hours about
the Christ of God. He could talk about the character
of God and the quality of God. He could talk about the scriptures
and he didn't know him at all. He was as lost as a goose in
a snowstorm. He was lost. But he knew how captivating it
was. He knew. He knew what it was to live like
that. That's why he says it's entangling. And it's a captivating desire,
isn't it? It's an enticing desire. And
this desire had been brought about by false teachers, sneaking
in, craftily sneaking in, and bringing the apostle into disrepute. bringing these people to a place
where they could live more righteously and more ethically by allowing
themselves to be circumcised and entering into a whole new
realm of living by the law. And it's very enticing and it
seems to be very encouraging, but the new desire It's a shocking
thing, isn't it? The scriptures say in Galatians
and in other places that to live under this, to live in works
righteousness, to live looking to the things that you do, to
live looking to the things that you do under the law of God is
no different to their service. Look at it in chapter 4 verse
8. Read it with me. Howbeit then, he speaks of their
former lives, when you knew not God, you did service to them which
by nature are no gods. They are just the figment of
the imagination of men, controlled and exercised by the power of
Satan. You did service to them. how be it, verse 9, but now,
after you have known God, or rather are known of God, how
turn you again to the weak and beggly elements whereunto you
desire again to be in bondage? It's no different. It is no different. Being a self-righteous legalist
and being a pagan worshipping the evil idols that populate
this world are no different. Where, Paul says to them, where
is the blessedness you spoke of? Where is the blessing of
freedom that you spoke of? Paul had brought them the Gospel. Paul had brought them the Word
of God. He simply brought a message of
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And in that time he was there
with them, he preached the Gospel to them, and he preached the
Gospel to them out of the Law. He preached all he had. He preached
the Gospel to them out of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy,
he preached Christ to them out of all of the Old Testament finishing
with Malachi. Sermon after sermon, discussion
after discussion, he preached Christ and he showed them again
and again that this Christ is the end of the law. This Christ
is the fulfilment of the law. He magnified the law, the only
way you possibly keep the law of God. The only way you honour
the Law of God is simply by looking to the Lord Jesus and trusting
Him. The Word of God is precious,
isn't it? So they're turning away from
the Word. I want you to spend a bit of
time with me thinking about how precious this Word is, the more
I study the Word of God, the more amazing it becomes, the
more shocked I am and then the more thrilled I am. What a remarkable
thing that Paul is led by the Holy Spirit to do in these verses
here before us. You see, he could have said,
didn't he? He could have said, do you not hear the law? He could
have then taken them to all sorts of places, couldn't he? He could
have taken them back to Exodus to hear the thunderings of the
law from Mount Sinai. He could have taken them to that
place where Moses himself trembled exceedingly as the mountains,
the inanimate objects of this world, in the presence of the
Lord giving the law, they shook. Great clouds, great thunderings. He could have taken them to the
extraordinary bold promises of these people, both before and
after the giving of the law. They kept saying, all that the
Lord commands us, we will do it, we don't have any problem
doing it, I can do it, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. Three times they said it, once
before the law was given, twice just after the law was given.
and what was the first recorded activity of them as a result
of all their great promises. This little golden calf, says
Aaron, just miraculously popped out of the fire. But this little
golden calf, he told them, he's the one that brought you out
of Egypt. We're still going to give him the same name and we'll
still give him some of the attributes of God. Their first activity
as a response to all of their bold proclamations about all
that they will do is to fail and fall most miserably. He could have told them, couldn't
he, about how the law condemns with cursing and lays to the
charge of every child of Adam. all of what lays against them. It just exposes and enumerates
their sin and it is in a sense just a charge sheet against them
with guilty beside every little bit of it. He could have taken
them to the Ten Commandments, couldn't he? He could have taken
them and shown them, couldn't he, those Ten Commandments. You
shall have no other gods before me. and we have a multitude of gods
before him all the time. He could have taken them to the
commandment about rest in the Sabbath. Have they ever rested?
Were they resting in the Lord Jesus Christ? They were for a
time and now they are turned away from him and they are seeking
to work. He could have taken them anywhere. He could have taken them in all
sorts of places and yet, and Lord willing we'll look at it
again next week, but he took them to this remarkable place. And the more you study it, the
more you study the Word of God, the more remarkable it is. See
Paul's situation was that there he'd brought There he brought
the word of God to these people, the word that reveals a division
among humanity. Adam had two children, one born
of the promise, one born of a slave. And these men were wanting to
go back into slavery. And the end result. The end result,
as we'll see next week, of the revealing of the grace of God
in the lives of His people, the revealing of His promise keeping
to Abraham in the birth of Isaac, was the fact that not just did
Hagar mock Rebekah, but Ishmael mocked Isaac. He takes them to
a place in the law to show them that the law is more than just
the Ten Commandments and the law is more than circumcision.
The law is the Old Testament laid out before them. And the
law prophetically reveals to them exactly what's going on
in the circumstances of their life, exactly what they are doing
to Paul, exactly what they are doing to the Word of God, and
exactly what will be done in the lives of that Galatian community. As one group hears the Word of
God, They hear from Paul, but they hear much more from Paul. They hear from God Himself. God takes this word. He takes
this word of warning and this word of extraordinary encouragement
to God's people. He takes that and He brings it
to life in the hearts of His people. And they will, like Paul,
like Isaac, like Sarah, they will suffer the persecution of
those who ridicule them. And what do they ridicule them
on? What do they stand on? What do they stand on to stand
in judgement? They stand on the basis of their
works, their wisdom and their worth. And then they can look
down their noses at God's people. It is the most extraordinary
thing and it fills me with heaviness to think of the number of people
that we have brought the word of the Lord to. The number of
people that you have brought the word of the Lord to and how
few here. The Proverbs 20 tells us that
the hearing, ear and the seeing eye, both of these are from the
Lord. I beg of you to go and ask Him. says in Luke 18, he says, take
heed therefore how you hear. And he's speaking a parable,
a parable that's well known of the psalms, take heed how you
hear. The Old Testament in Ecclesiastes
says to be mindful as you come to the house of God about how
you hear the word of God. In Ecclesiastes 5 he says, Keep
thy foot, be careful of how you walk when you goest to the house
of God, and be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice
of fools, for they consider not that they do evil. We are, as we read in Ephesians
1.13, we are born again. We are brought into a place of
liberty. We are begat again with the word
of truth. He says in warning in Hebrews
13.12, he says, see that you refuse not him who speaks from
heaven. Hebrews 12, verse 18 says, For
you have not come unto a mount that can be touched and burned
with fire, nor unto blackness and darkness and tempest, and
to the sound of the trumpet and the voice of words, which voice
they heard, entreated that the word should not be spoken to
them any more. For they could not endure that
which was commanded. that if so much as a beast touched
the mountain it shall be stoned or thrust through with a dart.
So terrible was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly fear
and quake, but you have come. to Mount Zion, unto the City
of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, unto an innumerable
company of angels, to the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn,
and to the Judge of all, the spirits of just men made perfect,
and to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the
blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than the blood
of Abel. You see, in the context of Hebrews
it is more serious, it is more serious today hearing the Gospel
than it was to stand at the foot of Mount Sinai and have that
mountain quaking and you with two million other people terrified
for your life. You see, if you sinned under
the law, the Gospel, gave you hope of salvation. David sinned
under the law. What was the law's demand of
David? Take him outside and stone him
to death with Bathsheba as well. Under the law there was hope
of the Gospel. To reject the Gospel, where do
you go? Where do you go? May God work in our hearts to
make us diligent about hearing. May He cause us to go to this
Word and see it as precious. May we go to it with reverence,
that this before you is just not bits of ink written on a
paper. It comes to you through stammering
lips, it comes to you through broken-hearted preachers so often. but it comes to God's people
as a word from Him. For thus says the High and Lofty
One, it speaks of Him as High and Lofty, that He inhabiteth
eternity, whose name is Holy. It speaks of One who is Holy,
that the remarkable thing about the Gospel is it speaks of Him
and it speaks of His dwelling place. He says, I dwell in a
high and holy place. But He doesn't dwell there on
His own. Simon's mum went there the other day. I dwell in a high
and holy place, with him or her, all so that it is of a contrite
and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and
to revive the heart of the contrite ones. It speaks of him. who dwells
as a holy one with his people. Hear the word of the Lord, ye
that tremble at his word. I long to have the Lord work
his word in my heart that I am left trembling at it." That's
what he promises, isn't it? I want to be in awe of what God
says. Hear the word of the Lord ye
that tremble at his word. Your brethren that hated you
and cast you out for my name's sake, said, Let the Lord be glorified,
but he shall appear, he shall appear to your joy, he shall
appear for your joy, and they shall be ashamed. May you go to His Word, led by
Him, to see His Son in it, to look for the Lord Jesus from
Genesis to Revelation and find Him there, and find Him who is
your Saviour. Find His words. the words that
will judge you. If any man hear my words and
believe not, I judge him not, for it is one that judges him
the word that I have spoken. I love the fact that it's a word
of promise that when Paul wrote to the Galatians, I'm sure he
was well aware from his perspective that there were people that heard
him and people that didn't hear him. He wasn't to know who they
were. But may Paul's heart be our heart,
that he longs to be with them. He longs to talk to them face
to face. He longs for one more opportunity
to preach the gospel to them, that they might hear about the
Savior. They might hear. They might hear
with a spiritual ear that he alone can give. Let's pray.