If you turn in your Bibles, we've
got a brief sermon outline there. This is one of those passages
of scripture that's so well known that, in some sense, meditating on it and committing
it to memory, seeing it in the context of the rest of the scriptures
and especially the New Covenant is probably in some ways much
better than preaching from it. It's a clear word from God and
it's a powerful word from God. And it comes, of course, in the
context of the Lord Jesus turning his back on the Pharisees, taking
his own, causing Peter to see who he really is, and then Peter
to stand opposed to him going to the cross. And those shocking
words, get behind me Satan. And then the Lord Jesus calls
all the people to himself. And so as we get the picture
of the Lord Jesus in his travels, he had a small band close to
him, but always close by to them was a larger crowd. And so he
called the people to himself. He summoned this crowd and he
said to them, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny
himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes
to save his life will lose it. but whoever loses his life for
my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit
a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what
will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed
of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son
of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory
of His Father with His holy angels. So I've titled the message, as
you can see there, From Our Coming to His Coming. matters of vital
importance. And so he begins this section
of scripture with a call to the crowd to come, but also an invitation. And it's wonderful the way the
Lord Jesus uses these broad expressions. Whosoever will and here if anyone
wishes, if anyone wishes to come after me. We know from the scriptures,
it's very plain and it's plain from our own experience. that
man in his natural state left to himself will never come to
God. Man, like Adam and Eve, is busy
in the business of stitching his fig leaves together and finding
a place to hide from God. And the wonderful thing that
the Scriptures show us that the Lord Jesus draws his people to
himself with cords of love and he makes them willing on the
day of his power. Psalm 65 verse 4 expresses it
so beautifully. Blessed is the man you choose
and calls to approach you that he may dwell in your courts We
shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, of your holy temple. Blessed is the man you choose
and cause to approach you. It's wonderful that it's anyone. so much nicer than being named,
isn't it? Rather than God saying, if Meron
would come, because Meron would instantly think that there are
lots of other Merons out there and he couldn't possibly mean
me. But when he says anyone, He means all of us included in
that great covenant that He made from eternity. If anyone wishes,
they will have their hearts changed to desire most in this world
what they have most run away from. The Lord wonderfully comes
to the hearts of His people and He creates in them a desire for
Him. And that is their wish. They
wish to come after Him. And so the Lord Jesus, as King
of Israel, has a right to call his people back to himself. As
their king, he continually in the Gospels reminds nation Israel
that they are a people of covenant promise. Nation Israel stood
before God at Mount Sinai and said to God again and again,
You tell us what to do and we will do it. And so much of the
story of the Old Testament is God sending His prophets again
and again to Nation Israel to say to them, You made a promise. You promised, as Exodus 19 says,
the people answered together and said, all that the Lord has
spoken we will do. So this call goes out to all
people, but there's a special call to Nation Israel to come
back to their God, to remember the covenant that they had made
with Him, the covenant that He had made with them. But there's a call to these people
to come after the Lord Jesus. As he led his people through
the desert, as he led his people for all of those years, he calls
his people to come after me. And we know that when he calls,
and when he calls individually and particularly, people will
leave everything to come after him. He walked by the lake and
spoke to Simon and Andrew, and he says, follow me, and immediately
they left their nets and followed him. He called John and James
and he just said, follow me, and immediately they left and
followed him. He came to a tax collector and
said, follow me, and Matthew left and came immediately. And so the Lord Jesus says to
come after him. He's asking his people as he
reminds them in this passage, he's asking them to go to a place
where he will go, to experience the things that he's experienced,
to live in this world as he lived in this world, to suffer the
things that he suffered. As Peter says when he comes to
write his epistle, the first epistle, he says, For you have
been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for
you, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps. So the Lord Jesus calls. In a
sense He calls all, in a sense He calls nation Israel, but really
He calls particularly because those who wish to come are those
who are drawn by the Father. Jesus makes it very plain in
John 6 that no one can come unless they are drawn by the Father. And the reality, the sad reality
of Mark's Gospel and the Scriptures and life's experience is that
there are many who come and seemingly come for a little while with
great excitement, but are really not the Lord's people. In the
parable of the soils we have the stony ground hearers who
hear the word and immediately receive it with gladness, and
they have no root in themselves, so endure only for a time. Afterward, when tribulation or
persecution come, they fall away." Which is where the Lord Jesus
leads us in this passage. They are to come. And then there
are three commands. And I remind you before we go
to them that the commands of the New Testament are really
the promises of God in the lives of His people. He must deny himself. The Lord Jesus doesn't send people
with a false prospectus about what God has offered them. He's
plain and straightforward. He doesn't offer them health,
wealth and prosperity. He doesn't offer them victorious
life. He never says that He loves everyone
and has a wonderful plan for all of their lives. He doesn't
say to people, claim your victory now. He says to them, you are
to deny yourself. Because those coming to Christ
don't come to give Him, but to receive from Him everything that's
vital for their lives. We don't come to Him seeking
that He will make much of us. but He would give us the grace
to make much of Him. We come thirsty, needing the
water of life. We come hungry, needing the bread
of life. We come sick, needing to be made
well. We come because there is nowhere
else to go. Like the lady who had been bleeding
for all those years, we've tried all the doctors in town and have
spent all we have and are no better but only grew worse. God calls his people to deny
themselves. Peter had fallen so badly because
he had sought to approach God and to talk to God about and
use the wisdom of men. For you are not mindful of the
things of God, but the things of men. And so coming to the Lord Jesus
is denying ourselves. It's being lost in Him. It's
being lost in desires for our own activities and for our own
good. And the next statement he says
would have shocked the apostles. We are so used to, Simon said
a little while ago, we're so used to hearing things of God
about redemption about the cross without realizing how revolting
it was. We have the word in our language
for the most horrible pain you can ever suffer, and it's called
excruciating pain, because the cross is that word that we get
that from, because such was the pain of the cross. Such was the
shame of the cross. that people were hung naked.
Such was the reality of the cross that Peter and these men probably
saw people crucified and saw the bones because the idea was
that the person was hung there naked, shamed, mocked. by men and they were left there. The birds ate their flesh and
it rotted away and their bones stayed there as a testimony to
how wicked this person was and as a warning to everyone else,
don't treat your lords, your Roman lords like this man did. To take up your cross is to actually
say that you no longer have any life of your own in this world. You are like a dead man walking. So carrying the cross is not
just enduring the hardships of this world with patience. but
it's a deliberate choosing a course that is sure to bring trouble
upon you, because trouble lies in the path of those who follow
the Lord Jesus. The cross is a place where there's
no hope in this world. There's nothing the people of
this world and nothing anyone can do. Those fixed to the cross
have their destiny in this world fixed. They only face one direction. Their life is no longer their
own. To say, that we are to take up
our cross, like the Lord Jesus did his, offends the wisdom of
men, it offends the ability of men, it leaves nothing in the
hands of men. To take up our cross is to say
that I will be led by faith in my God in a way that I would
never choose, to go to places I would never wish to go, to
suffer things which would normally cause me revulsion. But it's
Christ's way. And He will lead His people to
rest in His sovereignty because His eternal purposes are infinitely
more significant for me and others of His flock than I can possibly
imagine. And to take up our cross is to
view the things that led to the Pharisees and others crucifying
our Lord Jesus, to view those things with revulsion. Who were the people who conspired
with trickery to crucify the Lord Jesus? They were religious
people. They had a religion that had
brought them enormous power. They had a religion that had
brought them honour in the eyes of men. They had a religion that
had caused them to cling to traditions. All the things which natural
men aspire to, these are the things in religion which caused
zealous religious people with great soundness of doctrine to
create the most horrible ignominious death ever invented by the heart
of wicked men. Such were the Pharisees And if
the Lord Jesus came back again in the same way he did before,
it would be conservative religious people who would crucify him
all over again. So, to take up our cross is to
turn away from the things that led the Lord Jesus to be crucified. a religion which is based on
tradition, a religion which is based on the wisdom of men, a
religion which is based on the power of men, a religion which
is common and is embraced by most people, is to turn away
from those things and is to be turned toward the things that
were achieved at the cross. The cross for the Lord Jesus
was the place of His crowning glory in this world. It was the place where He exhibited
the character of God most clearly. It's the place where He displayed
the depth of His love for His people in a way that nothing
but something as horrible as a cross could ever do. The cross
of the Lord Jesus teaches us that the world and all of its
ways is the enemy of God. The world and all it offers is
in opposition to Christians. There is nothing that the world
offers. that is good for our souls and there is nothing that
the world offers which will help us in our walk with the Lord.
So the scriptures make it really clear, isn't it, that we're not
to have friendship with the world. To have friendship with the world
is enmity against God. to be a friend of this world,
to be a friend of its religion, to be a friend of its traditions
and its powerful systems, is to be an enemy of God. Love not
the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any
man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world,
the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride
of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. So God's
people, when we look at the cross, we are turned from the things
that caused our Saviour to be sent there, and we turn toward
the things that the cross achieved. So the Lord Jesus draws his people
away from this world by the love that he has and the love that
he's displayed. He gave himself for us that he
might deliver us from this present evil world according to the will
of God our Saviour. And God's people say, I have
been crucified with Christ. for me to live is Christ and
to die is gain. I have been crucified with Christ,
says Paul, and the life I now live in the body, I live by the
faithfulness of the Son of God. And so this is the victory, isn't
it, that overcomes the world. It's our faith. And I think that's the testimony
of God's people. Certainly it was the testimony
of God's people in the Scriptures. That when we are most weaned
away from the things that this world entices us with, is when
we're actually most closely in love and feeling the communion
of our Lord Jesus. When we bend beneath the cross,
when we come to see our Saviour bleeding there for us, all of
a sudden this world is seen through a different light altogether. God's people are called to a
life of suffering, so we deny ourselves. God's people take
up their cross and God's people follow the Lord Jesus. In fact,
the same word is used, they come after Him. And wonderfully, God's
children are led by their Master in places where He must go with
them. He can never leave His people
nor forsake them. There's a wonderful verse in
John 12, verse 26. He says, if anyone serves Me,
he must follow Me. Then the remarkable thing about
this verse is it's exactly the opposite to human thinking. Human
thinking would say, where I go, then the Lord Jesus will come
along and care for me. The Lord Jesus turns it around. It's great comfort, isn't it?
For where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves
me, the Father will honor him. So we can never go anywhere as
God's children in this world without the Lord Jesus having
gone before us, without the Lord Jesus drawing us to be there,
without the Lord Jesus being with us while we are there. One of the things that God's
ministers in this world are called upon in 2 Corinthians 3 is that
we are to be ministers of the new covenant, And one of the
things we need to remember as we're reading the Gospels is
that the Gospels give us this bridge between the old covenant
and the new. The Lord Jesus never causes people
to do anything other than honour the law of Moses because he was
born of a woman and born under the law and he lived to perfectly
fulfil that law. But one of the things that is
remarkable in the New Testament is that from the moment the Lord
Jesus has risen from the dead, there is never a command in the
New Testament to follow Him. And the reason is plain and simple. Because following Jesus is something
that people could do under the old covenant while He was in
the flesh. It's not a big enough term to
describe Christian life. As John 12, 26 says, that where
he is, there my servant will be also. The New Testament description
of Christian life is not following the Lord Jesus, The New Testament
description of Christian life is living in Him. 176 times I
think that phrase is used in the New Testament. And about
half of them directly relate to what it is to be a Christian.
It is infinitely more than following the Lord Jesus. It's us and Him
being bound together as He leads His people in this world. And
in a sense, they follow Him. But in a much, much deeper sense,
they live in Him. They live in Him. And so the
Lord Jesus takes these people who would have been horrified
by those words about taking up your cross, And then he expands
on them with three transactions, three transactions of immense
importance, just to highlight the significance of what's before
them. Mark 8.35, for whoever wishes to save his life will
lose it. For those who wish to come, they
can come. For those who wish to save their
lives, to cling to the things of their life in this world,
they will lose it. There's a story told of the maid
on an old sailing ship and there were rich passengers on the ship
and the ship was sinking and the rich passengers had left
their rooms and scattered gold coins and things all over the
place and they'd rushed out and jumped onto the lifeboats and
there was a maid on the ship and she had never seen so many
gold coins and she gathered all the gold coins and tied them
tightly around her waist and she went to the edge of the ship
and jumped over and sank like a stone between the boats that
were there rescuing people. It's just one of the many pictures
we have of people in this world clinging like limpets to their
own lives in this world and then losing them. How often do we
find when we talk to people about the Lord Jesus, as Simon and
I did to a guy here this morning, they do the same thing over and
over again. It's very repetitious. It's just
a mark of what we are all like without the grace of God. They'll
listen quietly, they'll display and talk about their own righteousness
and their own good deeds and then they'll try and leave with
a smile as if none of this matters at all. They are clinging to
their lives and they will lose them. In fact the word is a strong
word, it's destroy. But whoever loses his life for
my sake and the Gospels will save it. In fact the word is
strong as I just said. Whoever loses his life, whoever
allows his life to be destroyed if needful. To lose your life is to lose
to lose the things that you cling to in this world and be swallowed
up in something so much bigger. It's trusting God in His character,
in His sovereignty, that He is Lord over all and our lives are
in His hands. He has the right to do with every
single human being in this world exactly as He pleases. whoever loses his life for my
sake and the gospels. The other gospel accounts say
for my sake and my words. The Lord Jesus has led Mark to
write these words, that to lose your life for the sake of the
Lord Jesus and his gospel, to hold to his gospel as it's proclaimed
by him and his apostles, is vital to losing your life and saving
your soul. He and his gospel are bound together. His glory is bound intimately
with his gospel. The Gospel is a declaration of
His finished work. It's a declaration of Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. And men for thousands of years
have been inventing a multitude of different ways of turning
away from the Gospel. And any Gospel that leaves man
doing anything for his salvation man doing anything in the initiating
of his salvation, in the completion of his salvation, to get rewards
from heaven at the end of all of his activities. Any Gospel
that leaves man doing things rather than man receiving things
and man being led by the grace of God is a Gospel that takes
away from the perfect finished work of the Lord Jesus. Our bulletins
each week have that wonderful passage from 1 Corinthians 1.30. We print it on the front so that
we'll be reminded again and again. By His doing, by God the Father's
doing, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from
God. We don't seek any wisdom from
this world and the men of this world. The wisdom that we have is God's
wisdom and it's wrapped up in who the Lord Jesus is. And He's
our righteousness. He's all of our righteousness.
You have none. You have earned none. You have
none to lose because the Lord Jesus is all the righteousness
of His people. And remarkably, the next word
would horrify most of the religious people of this world. The Lord
Jesus is our sanctification. We have no sanctification outside
of His sanctification. The idea of progressive sanctification
is not a biblical concept. It has people working and working
and working their way to get more and more holy with God.
And really what it's saying is that Jesus' holiness is not sufficient. And I can add some of my own
holiness, because that's what the word means, I can add some
of my own holiness to Jesus' holiness. God's people grow.
They grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus. To grow in
grace is to grow down in your own estimation of yourself and
be more and more aware of how wicked and vile and how much
sin is not just our activities, but sin is what we are. Read
Mark 7. It's out of our hearts that all
of this sin comes. And it's just to be reminded
that God's demands are for perfect holiness. He will not accept
our holiness plus His holiness. So whoever would lose his life for my sake
and the Gospels will save it. It's a great promise from God. And then he has three Quick but incredibly significant
statements which just show you how important it all is. The
questions are simple. Jesus has the most wonderful
way of saying such deep, profound things with simple words. May that be a lesson for all
of us. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world
and loses his own soul? You can look at all of this material
universe and all of this world has and it's not worth comparing
to the value of a soul. Or what will a man give in exchange
for his soul? What can you give that you can
exchange for your soul? Micah is a prophet of God sent
to a wicked nation who had turned away from the Lord to all sorts
of idolatry. And he says in Micah 6.6, With
what shall I come to the Lord, and bow myself before the God
on high? Shall I come to him with burnt
offerings, with yearling calves? Does the Lord take delight in
thousands of rams, in ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present
my firstborn for my rebellious acts? the fruit of my body for
the sin of my soul." What can a man give in exchange for his
soul? Absolutely nothing you can give
in exchange for your soul. You can gain the whole world
and lose it. You can give all that you can
possibly imagine to give. You can give all the religious
things you can gather together and give. The answer is you cannot
give anything in exchange for your soul. People can lose their souls in
so many ways. People can murder their souls
by loving and clinging to the world. They can poison their
souls with the religion of this world, a religion which exalts
men and brings God down to their standards. People can starve
their souls. By staying away from reading
God's Word, from communing with God's people, we can starve our
souls. Satan has concocted many, many
different ways to go to hell, but there is only one way to
heaven, and that is the Lord Jesus. And so he finishes this
section of scripture with a wonderful promise and a warning. Whoever is ashamed of me and
my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of
Man will also be ashamed of him. This world is adulterous. In fact, every time the scriptures
talk about adultery, except in very rare circumstances, they're
actually talking about the adultery of God's supposed people mixing
their religion and their works with the finished work of the
Lord Jesus. It is joining with those people
who want to mix the works of men with the works of the Lord
Jesus, His work that He's done for His bride, His work in eternity,
His work in time, His work in their lives. There's not a single
word in all of scripture that encourages God's children to
join with and participate in the spiritual matters of those
who deny the gospel. As Paul said, I'm not ashamed
of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation.
And notice how God has put these things. We hear and we are repulsed
by the wickedness of sin that we see in this world. But the
wickedness of sin in this world has sprung from the adultery
of men. when they have mixed the works
of men with the works of God, they end up worshipping man and
worshipping a Creator. The root cause of it, the root
cause of the sinfulness, is the adultery. The root cause of the
blasphemy of our Saviour in this world is from religious people
who are involved in adultery. And then we have a great promise.
When He comes in the glory of His Father with His holy angels,
all of this is only here for a little while. It's all temporary,
and what's before us is infinitely eternal. There is great glory
of our Saviour. The glory of His Father and the
glory of our Lord Jesus are intimately linked together. And that glory
is so wonderfully displayed on the cross, which is why the Lord
Jesus turned so strongly to Peter when Peter was denying the place
of our Lord Jesus' glory. The God the Father promised to
glorify His Son. and He will glorify it again,
and He is glorifying His Son in the lives of His people. But
He is coming, and He's coming with His holy angels. The Lord
Jesus is coming with a multitude of angels, and He's coming to
gather His people out of this world and to destroy this world,
to burn it up with fire. So what's all this mean to us
today? There are two responses. Possibly
three, when people read these words of the Lord Jesus. Some
people, like the fellow who was in here this morning, will just
ignore it, and it's just water off a duck's back, and he can
walk away, and he can talk about the good things he's doing, and
he can cause us, if he can, to want to delight in all the good
things he's doing. It's rubbish, says God. And some
will say when they hear the commands of God, as the Pharisees did,
I have done it. Look at all the things that I
have sacrificed to follow the Lord. I give generously. I give my time. I have lived
in relative poverty. I have suffered all of these
things for the sake of spreading the gospel. I have suffered the
rebuke of men. I have been a bold witness. I have taken up my cross and
I carry the cross openly before men and I suffer it. I follow
the Lord Jesus. He tells me what to do and I
do it. When the Lord Jesus meets those
people in the Gospels, He has nothing but the sharpest
possible rebuke of them and calls them children of Satan. Other
people sitting here will say, when I hear these words of command,
deny myself, take up my cross and follow Him, they will be crushed by these
words. And they will say, I see in myself
so much that I'm ashamed of. The many times that I've failed
to love the Lord, there's so much weakness and there's so
much trembling. When I should be standing bold
and courageous, how often have I been weak and cowardly? I see
the bold ones and I see the courageous ones around me, and I hear of
the triumphs that they proclaim, and I see the great things that
they have supposedly done, and I hear the glowing words as others
speak so wonderfully of them, and I look at myself. and feel ashamed and feel weak. And I cry out with the man in
Mark's Gospel, Lord, I believe, please help my unbelief. So these powerful words of the
Lord Jesus and these words of warning from His lips will either
crush us or cause us to look at our deeds and feel, I have
done that. And we need to remember some
things in the context of this passage of scripture. My friends,
just remember that these words come after Peter, someone loved
by God from eternity, a beloved apostle, a man who had left everything
to follow the Lord Jesus. He had just fallen so badly. Remember that these words come
after the Lord Jesus says he's going to the cross. And Peter,
after the resurrection, is turned into a man who will stand before
a vast crowd, including those who killed the Lord Jesus, when
God's people are led and carried by God. They will not be ashamed and
they will be led to deny themselves. But also we need to remember
that God's people in this world have their fallen Adam flesh. God will have us remember in
Mark's Gospel that there's a continual revelation of who the Lord Jesus
is. He exercises authority. He speaks
and men respond. He sends them and they go. He
speaks to demons and they obey. He speaks to disease and it's
healed. He speaks forgiveness of sins.
He has command over the law, the wind and the waves, the bread
and the fish. He has command over the good
ground which produces a rich harvest of faith. He has command
over death itself and He has command over the proclamation
of the Gospel and He has command over His enemies. When the Lord
Jesus meets men who have good works in which they can feel
proud of themselves, He treats them with a shocking forthrightness. when the Lord Jesus meets with
people who have no resources, no righteousness. They are outcasts
of this world. He treats them with the greatest
care and graciousness. The leper has nothing and no
one to help him. The bleeding woman, the dead
girl, all of them have nothing to bring to him. But he's always
in the business of growing and nurturing faith. But the disciples
continually show us what man is if he's left to himself, even
his best self. Just look at some of the things
that happened in Mark's Gospel to these apostles. After the
feeding of the 5,000, they are again confronted by a large crowd
and they say, how can one man satisfy these people in this
wilderness? The Lord Jesus had just fed a
huge crowd. When he warns them of the yeast
of the Pharisees, they are immediately sitting around in a boat with
the Lord Jesus and wondering how on earth they're going to
get fed with one little piece of bread. They're more concerned
about earthly things than they are eternal things. And Peter,
as we saw last week, can speak wonderful words from God when
God gives him revelation, and can speak Satan's word when he
follows man's wisdom and his own best thoughts. And each time
the Lord Jesus tells them something extraordinary about himself,
we see the apostles falling in a heap. He tells them in the
next chapter that he's going to the cross, and immediately
we find the apostles saying, who's going to be the greatest
in the kingdom? The next chapter he talks about his death, his
betrayal and death, and immediately James and John want to have positions
of preeminence. And we all know what happened
in the upper room when the Lord Jesus says you're all going to
fall away. And Peter says, those other ten, they're a pretty dodgy
lot, Jesus, but I'm strong. Even if it means death, I'll
be there with you. And the Lord Jesus rebuked him
and said, Peter, you're pretty weak. And before the cock crows,
before a little maiden, you'll run away and hide. But all the
others said, don't you worry, Jesus, we'll be there. We'll
be there, we'll be strong. God's children in this world
are reminded again and again that without the Lord Jesus we
can do nothing. God's children are drawn to Him
and drawn to His service by cords of irresistible love, constrained
by His grace, reminded of His sovereign blessings, aware of
their own frailty, but aware especially at the cross of His
grace and His mercy and His love. It's love for God that compels,
God's children, not duty of service, but love compels them and love
constrains them. And God's children are continually
made aware of their weakness and His strength. They trust
the Savior who's going to lead them, come after me. The Lord moves the hearts of
His people to love and faith because they have tasted and
seen that He is gracious. And they'll deny themselves because
they have found something which is infinitely more precious to
their hearts than anything that they have in themselves, of themselves
or anything that they've ever collected. And the Lord leads
His people to take up their cross, take up His cross, because He
has become so precious. to His own because He is their
husband. And they realize, as Psalm 16
says, that they are all His delight. The Lord's people have seen the
reality of eternal things and they value their souls more than
all the riches of this world. So God's children will have two
things happen to them always. They will be brought down and
then thou will be rised up. God will always strip them before
He clothes them. He'll empty them before He fills
them. He'll always wound them before
He heals. He will always make them thirsty
before He gives them something to drink. He makes them hungry
and He feeds them. He'll make them lie down before
He raises them up. And He'll bring His people low
before He lifts them up. that He is the Lord who kills
and makes alive. And He'll cause His people to
know that they are sick and wounded and they are desperately in need
of things from outside of themselves to walk through this world. That's
why in the Sermon on the Mount there's a blessedness. for the
poor, for the mourners, for those who hunger and thirst, but wonderfully
there are promises of filling. God knows that we are weak and
broken clay pots, but into these clay pots he's put a treasure,
the treasure of the gospel. the Gospel that leads His people,
the Gospel that inspires His people, the Gospel that motivates
His people, the Gospel that causes His people to go again and again
to see Him on the cross. to see that Jesus Christ and
Him crucified is all of their hope, is all of their future,
and nothing in all of this world can mean anything compared to
Him giving Himself to His people, His bride. Let's pray.