We'll begin in verse 10 this
evening, Psalm 116 10. I believed, therefore, have I
spoken. I was greatly afflicted. I said in my haste, all men are
liars. What shall I render unto the
Lord for all his benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation. And call upon the name of the
Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence
of all his people. Let's pray. Gracious Father,
we come together, Lord, as your family. By your grace, Lord,
you've given us a desire to hear of your son. You've caused us
to taste that he's gracious and we know, Lord, that As we come,
we're in need of your presence and your blessing. We can't see, we can't hear,
we can't know unless you come in mercy and power. So we do
pray for your presence, Lord. We pray that you'd open our eyes, that we might see our Savior,
Lord, and rejoice in him alone. Thank you for your blessings.
As we're in this world, Lord, you keep us and you prosper us
and you cause us to enjoy the things that can be enjoyed in
this world. And yet, Lord, we hunger yet
to be with you and to be together to worship and claim and enjoy
that beautiful promise that where two or three are gathered in
your name, There you are in our midst. Give us sweet communion this
evening. Help us to learn of thee and find rest unto our souls. In the name of our Lord Jesus,
we pray. Amen. I believed. I spoke. And it costs something. You see
that? Three things in verse 10. I believed. And therefore, because I believed,
I opened my mouth and spoke. And whatever you believe that's
of any consequence that you have some conviction about,
Something that matters to you. You believe it to be true and
it matters. Those two things. Sooner or later, we're probably
going to know about it. Some of you have great conviction
regarding who to vote for. And I know who you're going to
vote for. Things like that, anything that really, when something is
burning, burning in your heart, when you're a true believer and
it matters. It's gotta be that combination,
those two things. You gotta be truly certain of
it or you're not gonna say anything. Well, not if you're the Lord's. And I'm sure people that speak
error, they're probably certain of it, even though it's wrong. But it's gotta be consequential.
I believe very strongly that it's borderline criminal to cook
a steak beyond medium rare. If you cook it longer than that,
there ought to be a law against that. But if you do, you know,
live and let live, no big deal. The world's not going to crumble. So I'm not going to preach about
that. But what I do preach, I do so of necessity. You remember
what Paul said about that? He said, though I preach the
gospel, I have nothing to glory of. Don't look at Chris and say,
or any preacher of the gospel, and say, boy, that's commendable
of him, you know, that he preaches the gospel. Well, you know, the
Lord's preachers are to be respected and worthy of honor in that office,
as the Bible says. But the fact that I preach the
gospel is not because of some great virtue on my part. God's kind of made it so that
I don't have much choice. That's what Paul said. Don't
don't brag on me. I preach of necessity. Necessity is laid
upon me. Yay. Woe is unto me if I preach not
the gospel. Now, why did he say that? Did
God, was God holding his feet to the fire, you know, making
him? Of course, we know that whatever God has ordained must
be, but the Lord doesn't force us to in that sense, under threat
of some kind, but in exposition of our verse and how that applies
to our verse, David believed, he preached it because he believed
it. That's what Paul said. If you
believe something that deeply, that sincerely, and it is of
monumental consequence, you're going to say something about
it. You're going to declare it. That's what Paul, I believe,
is talking about. And it's the gospel, not another gospel, the
gospel of Christ. I must preach it. Once the Lord teaches it to you,
And you know that it is of consequence. That's not a matter of opinion.
It's life or death, eternal life or death. Then you see why Paul
said, yeah, it's a necessity. It's not some kind of virtue
on my part. It's the nature of the message.
It's the message that demands to be preached. It's too good
not to tell, isn't it? Can you possibly live in the
same house with your children? As they're growing up and not
tell them about Christ? What in the world are you talking
about? And I'm talking to myself, too. It's too good, isn't it? It's too vital not to tell. It's
too consequential not to tell. It's too beautiful not to tell.
It's the message of Him who is altogether lovely. It's the message of salvation.
It's the words of eternal life. And by God's grace, I believe
it. Don't you? Do you believe, God? I believe. And I've got to say something.
Somehow, somewhere, we're not all preachers. We're not all gifted in witnessing. But we are all witnesses. One way or another. Just as parents,
as friends, by example. I believe God's record concerning
his son. And I believe, I know, that if
you do not believe what I preach to you tonight, God will damn
you. He said he would. He told me
and others throughout the ages, go and preach and whoever believes
you, what you preach, the gospel. You tell them what I've said.
And I'll save them if they believe you. If they don't, though, they'll
be damned. They'll be damned. And I believe
that, so I've got to talk about it. Unless you embrace and trust
Christ by faith in the preaching of his gospel, you will forever
suffer under God's wrath for your sins. So of course I've
spoken, of course I've spoken. I can't even eat a really good
meal at a restaurant without telling somebody about it, can
you? I got to tell somebody about it. And that's of very little
importance really. God is having mercy on sinners.
And it's by this means, by the preaching of his word that he's
doing so, that please God by the foolishness, what this world
calls foolishness, and by the preaching of a fool, But he's
not preaching foolishness. It's not the preaching of foolishness. It's the foolishness of preaching.
It pleased God by those means to save them that believe. So
how can we shut down now? How can we shut down? Y'all want
to do something different? We just close the door and we
do something different. We all get together and maybe open up business
of some kind. But how will our children and
our grandchildren be saved? Because if God's going to save
them, he's going to do it. He's not going to do it without
the gospel, you reckon? We believe and we speak. And
look at the third thing in verse 10. The message that David spoke
wasn't well received. Does that surprise you? I was
greatly afflicted as a result of it. Paul, read sometime again
all the things that Paul went through. You know why? for preaching
to God because he believed and he spoke. He was whipped and
beaten and suffered shipwreck and went through all kinds of
afflictions, left for dead, maligned and despised. Turn with me, let's look at this
together because I think this is important. 2 Timothy 3 and
verse 10. Because I'll tell you this, here's
the thing. I hope in our lifetime we don't have armed soldiers
come in and break up our meetings, you know, and things like that.
I'll tell you this, it ain't far from that, is it? We'd be
called hate criminals, per se, and homosexuality is evil. We
ain't far from that. And I've heard people say we
ain't far from that when we were far from that. But now, we ain't
far from that. But I tell you what, we will
suffer now and have been. It's just the opposition of,
it's just the way it is, and it is hard to do this. It's gonna
take commitment. Where there's not sincere commitment
of a group of people by God's grace, there's not gonna be a
church. There's lots of trial involved in it. God's gonna try
our faith and our commitment. And he has done. And he will
do. But listen to it, 2 Timothy 3,
10. But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life,
purpose, faith, long-suffering, charity, patience, persecutions,
afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at
Lystra. Now look, he lists all these
things. I'm an open book, Paul said. You know all about me.
That's pretty well true to a great degree of any preacher. You've
heard me enough. Watched me enough. You know me.
Well, not know me long enough But notice my doctrine and my
persecutions are all part of the same description. They just
go together, don't they? Well suffer some things now and
look at verse 12, but but But out of them all look at the end
of verse 11 first, but out of them all the Lord delivered me
Yay And all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer
persecution. But evil men and seducers show
what's worse. It's not going to get any better.
People aren't going to start liking the gospel all of a sudden.
They're not going to all of a sudden be proud of us for standing for
the truth of God. It's going to get worse and worse.
So what are we going to do about it? Just keep doing it. You see
that verse 14? Just keep doing it. It's going to get worse though. We're going to suffer. We're
going to fight. It's going to be a battle. The flesh, if the
flesh is the, my own flesh is the only thing I have to fight.
What a battle that I can't win it without Christ. And it ain't, I'm not getting
any better either. But just continue, just keep
preaching. Continue thou in the things which
thou hast learned and has been assured of, knowing of whom thou
hast learned them." Persecutions and our doctrine just go together.
You see that? So what are we going to do? Just
keep on preaching it. Your family shuns you because
your doctrine is, and all these other things Paul mentioned,
your faith, your commitment to the gospel, your family shuns
you and despises you, won't have any use for you. Well, here's the thing about
that. Their only hope is that doctrine that they hate. So if you compromise that doctrine
in order to get along with them, what hope do they have now? You
see how important this is? Oh, they're gonna hate you for
it. Right up until they don't. Right up until God has mercy
on their wretched souls. And that's up to Him, isn't it? Oh, but I just don't see how
that can happen. I don't see how He can save me either, but
I know He's able. He's able. And I kind of do see
how, because of the precious blood of Christ. It's not up
to them. I'm glad of that, aren't you?
You're not up to them. You talk about hopeless now.
If God has done all He can do, and now it's up to us, You talk
about time to quit now. It's not that way, thank God. Just keep telling them whenever
you can. Their only hope is the thing that they hate, the one
that they hate. The one that they spit on and
nailed to a cross with their spit on his face and laughed
at him while he bled out. He's their only hope. Falling
in love with him is their only hope. only he can make that happen. One more thing about this. We're
talking here about the affliction mentioned
in verse 10. He said, I believed I spoke and
I was afflicted and we're saying that he was afflicted because
of what he said. And that's from the New Testament.
We see clearly that that's gonna be the case. But also this now,
If God gives faith, and that's how you're going to be able to
say with David, I believe if God gives you faith, he's also
going to try that faith. And it may not involve somebody
that just hates what you say. He may just try that faith. You
see what I'm saying? If you believe, you're going
to suffer. You're going to be afflicted.
You're going to be tried. And that comes in many forms. But
God says it's necessary. And he also says the trial of
your faith is precious. So it's gonna be fine. It's gonna
be better than fine. It's gonna be real good because
he do with all things well. So be encouraged in that. Verse
11. I said in my haste, all men are
liars. When you believe and you speak,
You're going to discover something, aren't you? Not only that men
don't like what you say, but they don't have any idea
what you say and what they say is going to be false. You see
how this all goes together? I believe the word of God and
I preached it. I've witnessed of him. And you
know what I found out? In people's reaction, number
one, they don't like it. and you're going to suffer because
of it one way or the other. And also, all men are liars.
And you know how you know that is when you speak the truth.
That's when you start finding out what liars we are, is when
you say what's right. And you have people react to
that. Now David acknowledges that it was a hasty thing of
him to just say all men are liars because here's why that's hasty. Because if David believed and
therefore spoke, then there must have been others doing that as
well. May not have been many. There aren't many now, but there
are some. They're telling the truth about
God. But we're all liars by nature, and there's no quicker way to
find that out than to tell the truth. Verse 12, what shall I render
unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? Now again, this is
richly to be understood in the context of verse 10. This is
another natural consequence of believing, of faith in Christ
and his word and preaching it. And I say natural consequence,
I'm talking about the new nature. It's not natural to our old nature.
But to the new nature, it's just natural. If you believe on Christ,
what is it that we believe? What is the good news? It's what
God has done for sinners like me in Christ and by Christ. All of the benefits that God
has bestowed upon me in his blessed son. The gospel is not what you need
to do, contrary to what religion is constantly talking about.
The gospel is what God has done. That's the benefits that David's
talking about right here. All of the benefits, redemption,
sanctification, life, knowledge, wisdom. Everything that's worth
having is ours in Christ. All of the benefits of God. And
when you believe and you preach that, and God teaches you that,
and you learn it by experience through affliction and trial,
you're going to begin to see the magnitude of what God has
done for you. And you know what you're going
to say? And again, this is natural to the new nature, not the old
one. This is natural to the new nature. Your reaction is going
to be, Well, what can I do for him? Isn't that right? What can
I do for him? And that's good. I mean, God has
given us some things to do, hasn't he? Think with me now. Be ye witnesses of me. Go and
preach. Love one another as I've loved
you. Endeavor to keep the unity of
the Spirit in the bond of peace. Feed my sheep. Be kind one to
another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for
Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. The Lord's given us some
things, oh yeah. They're not the things religion's
up to. And by the way, when he says love one another, that's
action. That's not just a feeling. That's action. You love one another.
You take care of one another. You bear one another's burdens
and fulfill the law, which is fulfilled in the love of Christ.
But as we've seen before from the Word of God, when God gives
us something to do for Him, it's really Him doing something for
us. You know that's right. Now the
fact that you're here tonight, is that you doing something for
God? Or is that because He did something for you? So the truth of the matter is,
and this is one of those things where in one sense we can say
this, and in another sense, we are servants of God. Paul is
a servant of Jesus Christ. We do desire and serve Him, and
we're ordained unto good works. And we're going to get to that
in a minute. But I tell you, you know this is right. The truth
of the matter is we don't really do anything for God. He just
does so much for us that some of the things He does for us
looks like us doing something for Him. Isn't that right? You know that's right if you're
His now. You know that's right. And that's why David answers
his own question the way that he does. Look at verse 13. What
am I going to do for God? I will take. What can I render unto God? Well, I'll take. Because that's all we can really
do. And I'm going to call on His
name. I'm going to depend on Him. I'm going to cry to Him
in need and necessity and desire. God doesn't need me, I need Him.
What am I going to do for God? I'll just keep taking. What is the cup of salvation?
Well, the Lord Jesus Christ is sitting around a table with his
inner circle, his choice, beloved, chosen, highly blessed, and privileged
disciples. Can you imagine sitting down
for a meal with the Son of God? And in Luke 24, 14, it says,
when the hour was come, he sat down and the 12 apostles with
him. And he said unto them with desire, have I desire, to eat
this Passover with you before I suffer. You think about him,
the God-man now, and he's about to face what he's about to face.
And he said, before I do, boy, it's been the desire of my heart to sit down with you first. and eat and drink together to
eat this Passover to worship with you. I wish that I desired to worship
with him as much as he desired to worship with me. For I say unto you, I will not
any more eat thereof until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of
God. And he took the cup and gave thanks and said take this
and divide it among yourselves for I say unto you I will not
drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God shall
come and he took bread and gave thanks and break it and gave unto them and said this
is my body which is given for you this do in remembrance of
me and likewise also the cup after supper saying this cup
is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you. I will
take the cup of salvation. If that cup was the new covenant
in the blood of Christ, I'd say that has something to do with
salvation, wouldn't you? The cup of salvation, to drink
the cup of salvation is to drink by faith the blood of God's son. He said, unless you do, there's
no life in you. unless you eat the flesh and
drink the blood of the Son of Man. But if you do, you have
life eternal. And my flesh is meat indeed and
my blood is drink indeed. It's to be by faith now to partake
of Him. And it's to be partaker of His
sufferings in this way. It's to benefit personally from
His redemptive work. You see, this is beyond just
believing the doctrine of effectual atonement, which we do. And thank
God for faith in that truth, in His Word. But beyond that,
it's to receive Him. It's to receive Him who died
for you. To drink something is to partake,
for it to become part of you. It's to be one with Him, to be
united with Him, to have communion with Him, to be vitally joined
unto Him. We drink because we must, and
we drink of Him because we must. It's not you doing something
for God, it's God doing everything for you. Because you see, he
that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all,
how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? It's
to have your sins washed away in that blood, to drink the cup
of salvation. And it's a drinking and not a
bathing, because our filthiness is an inside problem. It's to
take him within. That's the picture here. Our
drinking, our sin, our evil, our corruption is on the inside.
Can't just clean the outside of the cup. And so the only cure
is the precious blood of God's Son. In Christ, precious blood
is salvation because what we're saved from is the wrath of God
against our sin. And the way we are saved from
God's wrath is by Christ bearing our sin and its consequences
in His own body on the tree at Mount Calvary where His precious
blood was shed. That was the event of events.
That was the hour when the Lord was glorified of
His Father and He glorified His Father and saved us. So David said, I'll take this
cup. I'll take this cup. And that's
all we do in the matter. It's a passive receiving of what
the Lord says. You take this and drink it. And the new covenant is yours
because of my precious blood. And we do. We passively receive
the Lord Jesus Christ. To as many as received him, to
them gave he power. Become the sons of God. The Lord
Jesus at the table. He poured the wine with his own
hand and gave it to them and told us what that symbolized.
This is my blood which I shed for you. Which I supply to you
and give to you. And you just receive it. The new covenant in my blood.
The old covenant was null and void because it was contingent
upon our obedience. which could never be rendered
by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in God's
sight the new covenant is salvation if this cup is the new covenant
then it's the cup of salvation because it was only contingent
if you can even use the word contingent regarding that which
is eternal It was only contingent on the successful, complete,
redemptive work of Christ in shedding his precious blood for
his sheep. So it's accomplished. Salvation
is accomplished by that blood. So that's the cup of the new
covenant. Salvation by the blood of Christ. He said, I lay down my life for
my sheep blood. And they shall never perish.
Salvation. The cup of salvation. Who is
he that condemns? A salvation. What's the answer
to that? It is Christ that died. There's
the blood that. Is the cup of salvation, the
blood of Christ and all of the benefits of that eternal new
covenant new because it's newly revealed in Christ. All of the
benefits, what shall I render unto God for all of his benefits
toward me? All of the benefits of that covenant are ours in
that precious blood. And what shall I render? Well,
I just keep taking and enjoying those benefits. That's what I'll
do. And I'm going to call upon his
name. God not waiting on me to do something. I'm waiting on
God to do something. That's what it is to call upon
him. Lord, I need you. I must have you. Paul wrote in Romans 10, 13,
whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
That's why I call upon the name of the Lord. I need to be saved.
How about you? The cup of salvation. And then verse 14, and this is
the proper order. I will pay my vows. Unto the Lord now. See that word
now? Having believed. And having received
the cup of salvation at his hand. Being partakers. And having an
interest by his grace in that new covenant of grace. I do resolve to honor him. That's what that word vow means,
to resolve and to promise. Now, in the presence of all of
his people, this is not a boast in the flesh. I'm going to do
something for God, and I'm going to do great things for God. By
God's grace, we know that the flesh profiteth nothing. This
is simply a sincere desire and resolve to do that, which we
know that the Lord would have us to do, what he's given us
to do, what he's clearly revealed that we are the business that
we're to be about. We want to be doers of his word
and not hearers only. And we determined to do so by
his grace. Nothing wrong with that as long
as we see the order now in the text and understand that for
us to do something for God, he has to do something for us first. And that even when we do something
for Him, it's really Him doing something for us. As long as
we understand that, then do everything you can for the Lord. Everything
you possibly can. Be a doer of His Word. Be zealous
of good works. Be constantly thinking, what
can I do for Him? What can I do for Him? As long
as you understand who's getting the glory and why. Because it's
Him blessing you. And we know that. Now to render,
to render to God, what shall I render unto him? I'll pay my
vows. To render unto him is to take. It's what we've seen here.
What shall I render? I will take. And then him being
the vine, now think about this, we take. I will take the cup
of salvation. Think about this in the sense
of him saying, I am the vine and you are the branches. He
that abideth in me, beareth much fruit. If you abide not in the
vine, you wither and die and get burned up. That's all you're
good for. But think about this. Why do
branches bear fruit? It's a natural result of abiding
in the vine. And what? Taking. The branch
takes from the vine. It draws life and vigor. and everything necessary from
the vine. It's a natural result again.
It just happens that way. The branch takes life from the
vine and there's fruit. And we can confidently say, I
will, because God has said, I will. God has said, I will, and they
shall. And so we say, I will. Sure enough,
I will, because he did. and said we would. We do. He said we'd be willing
in the day of his power, and he has exerted his power, his
gospel, the power of God into salvation and he gives us power
as life from the vine to the branches. And we are indeed willing. So we say, I will. In that covenant
that we spoke of, he said, I will, and they shall. I will Write
my laws on their hearts. I will be to them a God. I will
forgive their transgressions. And they shall be to me a people. And that includes acting like
it. They shall. And so we say, I will. You see
that? This is all about him. And we
want to. We want to. By his grace, we're
willing in the day of his power We desire to honor and serve
and obey our Lord and in Christ we do. We do vow and we do pay
in Christ. This will be our final thought
tonight. Now you think about this. We do pay. I will pay the
vows that I vowed unto the Lord. You know how I know that? Because in Christ. God calls me. His servant and
says unto me, well done. It's not as though we paid our
vow. It's not as though we rendered
unto God what he's worthy of for all of his benefits in Christ. We have done. Now you think about
this with me for a minute. When preparing this message,
I had already typed in my mind out this sentence. All of my
works are full of sin. But Christ is my righteousness.
I'd already typed that out of my mind, and then I deleted it
in my mind. And I said, wait a minute, that's
not the most scriptural thing to say about this. The scriptural way to say it
is this, Christ is my righteousness, and I have no sin. If God has not beheld iniquity
in me, Then what am I doing going around
saying I'm full of sin? Now think with me. Now I can
say this with David. David said my sin is ever before
me. That's the truth, isn't it? But
it's not before God. And that's the truth too. And if I can see it, and God
can't, Who do you think has better eyes? So in this sin, in Christ, I
will pay. And the Lord has received of
our hands double for all of our iniquities. And we do render unto God. What
shall I render unto Him? One of the prophets said, shall
I sacrifice my own children? That wouldn't pay for a single
sin, but something did. Something paid for all of them.
It was the precious blood of the Son of God. And so in Christ,
we do render unto God all that he's worthy of. He's fully satisfied
with me through Christ. Let's pray.