of his faithful preachers home to glory.



We're coming up on a passage in Isaiah 57 that says, the righteous perisheth and no man layeth it to heart. The Lord takes home his faithful preacher, no man lays it to heart. But God's saints do, we do. We do because we love those the Lord gave preach Christ to us. They preach the gospel and through exalting our Savior, the Lord saved us. He called us.

And we ask that question because, you know, if we don't see the Lord raising up pastors, because we need the gospel. We need it. And those children of God that the Lord has called and those that he shall call after us, they need the gospel. And so we lay it to heart if we don't see the Lord raising up faithful pastors, we're still in this earth. If the Lord tarries and if the Lord's appointed for us to live longer, we will have some time to go before the end of this life, we need the gospel.

I raise that question not to trouble you, I raise it because this psalm gives us the good news that we shall have the gospel. The Lord will provide pastors for his people, faithful men, and he will provide faithful brethren, witnesses, and we shall have the gospel. So long as he has a lost sheep in this earth, we're gonna have the gospel.

Now in this psalm, last time we saw those first three verses we looked at, that first of all, this is Christ praying to the Father, speaking to the Father of what He will do. He will exalt the Lord. He will exalt God. He will praise God. And here now in our text in verse four, He declares this, hear the Lord Jesus speaking. He says, one generation shall praise thy works to another. Speaking to the Father, Christ says, one generation shall praise thy works to another and shall declare thy mighty acts.

See, David couldn't make that statement like Christ can make that statement. Christ can make that statement with all certainty. How is this sure? How is this word certain to come to pass? Look at the next word. Verse five, I will speak of the glorious honor of thy majesty and of thy wondrous works, and men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts, and I will declare thy greatness. They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness and shall sing of thy righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and of great mercy. The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works.

And this will be the result. This will be the result. Verse 10. All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord, and thy saints shall bless thee. They'll praise thee.

I wanna show you three things. I wanna show you Christ's promise. and secondly, Christ's word, and thirdly, the message. All right, here's our Lord's promise. This is our Lord's covenant promise to the Father as our mediator, as the prophet, priest, and king of his people. This is his covenant promise to the Father, that the gospel shall go forth in this earth, bringing all glory and praise to him. He said, verse four, one generation shall praise thy works to another and shall declare thy mighty acts.

I asked Brother Adam to read Ephesians one, and I wanted to focus primarily on those last few verses. Our Savior is risen, and as the God-man, God's given him all power over all. And he's the head over the church, and he's filling all in all. This is one of those covenant promises to the Father that our Savior shall bring to pass. He will see to it that one generation praises the Lord to the next generation, one to another.

Our Lord's gonna provide pastors. He said in Jeremiah 3.15, I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. A true pastor doesn't just take it upon himself to be a pastor. The Lord gives pastors. He gets the glory for that. Our Lord called his apostles and assembled them when he walked this earth, but to show us that he's still doing the same from glory, he called the apostle Paul and made him apostle after he had risen. And he said, I've appeared to thee for this purpose. He told Paul this on the road to Damascus, to make thee a minister. a witness both of these things which thou hast seen and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee. And he said, to turn my people from darkness to light, to bring them out from Satan's grasp, to bring them to Christ.

It's Christ who provides his preacher and it's Christ who provides faithful brethren. And this thing of the church being together and continuing year after year after year, that's all to the praise and glory of our Lord. He's the head and he's providing all and he's gonna never leave himself without a witness so long as he has a people in this earth. He said in Matthew 24, 14, he said, this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations and then shall the end come.

So when we're prone to be fearful and we see the Lord taking pastor's home, and maybe we don't see him raising up pastors right away. The Lord works in his time, but be of good courage, because our Lord will provide, because he's gonna have this gospel go forth from one generation to the next, according to his covenant promise to the Father.

Now, look at this next thing. The way that we know this is going to happen, and it's gonna continue, is the same way you were called and I was called. It's because the Lord speaks effectually when this gospel goes forward. Verse five, he said, I will speak of the glorious honor of thy majesty. This is Christ, I will, I will speak of the glorious honor of thy majesty and of thy wondrous works. And you could take men out, or maybe this is a result of what will happen when Christ speaks and men shall, but they added it, so you can take it out. He said, I'll speak of the glorious honor of thy majesty and of thy wondrous works, and shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts, and I will declare thy greatness. Christ said, I will speak, I will speak.

We know from going through Colossians, Colossians 2 tells us Christ is the head from whom all nourishment is ministered. You know, you can tell in, this world's religion, you can tell that they don't believe that by the way they conduct the services and the way they try to, they use, they're heavy handed in the way they try to make converts and all the trickery they use. That's what Paul was talking about when he said, we don't use the word craftily. We're just preaching the gospel. Why? Because our savior is speaking the word. He's calling his people. When you were called, it was a power that made it evident to you that this word was so. That was the Lord. The Lord made you know and believe the gospel. That's him calling his people.

Remember in Isaiah 52, he said, my people shall know my name. They will know in that day it's I that speak. And when he said after that in Isaiah 52, when he said, his watchman, thy watchman shall lift up the voice with thee voice together, all his watchmen in agreement, but with thee voice together, that's with Christ the voice together. That's how the word has power. That's what Paul meant when he said, I don't wanna preach to you in the wisdom of men, I wanna preach to you trusting the Lord to make you stand and make your faith be by the power of God, not the wisdom of men, not the power of men, but by the voice of the Lord.

Turn to Psalm 22. I know I've quoted this quite a bit lately, and I did, I think, last time we were in this Psalm. But in Psalm 22, I wanna read to you Hebrews 2. I had you turn here last time, but I'm just gonna read Hebrews 2. verses 11 and 12, and it comes from Psalm 22, and I'm gonna show you. Let me read this to you from Hebrews. It says, both Christ that sanctifyeth, and they who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause he's not ashamed to call them brethren. And he said, saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst of the church while I sing praise unto thee.

Now, does that mean that was only when Christ walked this earth? that he preached in the great congregation, and he brought his people to glory in the Lord. Was that only when he walked this earth, or is that now from glory?

Well, look, in Psalm 22, the whole first part of this Psalm is our Savior suffering the cross. You're very familiar with it. When he was in the darkness and he cried out, why hast thou forsaken me? Well, at the end, he gets down here now to verse 21, and he prayed to be saved from the lion's mouth, and he said, you've heard me. And the Lord did hear him, and the Lord raised him.

Now these next verses is our risen Redeemer speaking. Listen to what he says here. And this is where Hebrews 2 comes from. Listen to this now, Psalm 22, 22. I will declare thy name unto my brethren. There it is, Hebrews 2, 12. I will declare thy name Unto my brethren in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. Ye that fear the Lord, praise him. All ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him, and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. For he hath not despised nor poured the affliction of the afflicted. Christ is talking about himself. Neither hath he hid his face from him, but when he cried unto him he heard. When Christ cried from the cross, the Father heard him.

He said, my praise shall be of thee and the great congregation. I will pay my vows before them that fear him. The meek shall eat and be satisfied. They shall praise the Lord that seek him. Your heart shall live forever. and he's gonna do this for his people all over the world.

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nation shall worship before thee. He's gonna call all his people. He said, for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he's the governor among the nations. All they that be fat upon the earth shall eat and worship. All they that go down to the dust shall bow before him, and none can keep alive his own soul.

Now listen to these words, just like our psalm. A seed shall serve him. It shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born that he hath done this.

That was not just when our Lord walked this earth, that's now from glory. Whenever Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost and they preached in languages they had never learned, Peter said, the Lord worked this. The Lord sent the Spirit, the Lord gave them the message, the Lord gave the pastor, the preacher, the Lord gave the message, the Lord gave those that, he gave them wisdom to speak in languages they'd never learned, and he gave those that heard hearts to believe.

And Peter said, him being by the right hand of God, He said, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which you now see in here. And the Lord filled their hearts with the gospel and gave them faith to believe him. The Lord did that, our Savior did that, same as he did it when he called you. In fact, he's been doing it from the beginning.

It was Christ who called Adam out of the trees, and made him preach the gospel to Abel. It was Christ who called Noah and gave him faith, and he preached the gospel in his day. It was Christ who called Abraham and caused him to preach. And all through the prophets, they preached because Christ gave them the word and the ability to preach. Even David in this psalm, he got this psalm because Christ gave him the word, just like it was on that day of Pentecost. and it's been so to you and me. The Lord has kept somebody preaching this gospel, and he keeps quickening his people and calling his people.

Listen to what Peter, or Paul wrote in Hebrews 2, verse three. He said, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, listen to this last part, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him. You see, the Lord, he said he would praise the Father. Every day I'll glorify thee, Father. Every day I'll praise thee. That's what we saw last time in verse two. And every day the Lord is bringing glory and honor to the Father through the preaching of this gospel, causing his people to rejoice in God and causing his people to give God the glory and give Christ all the praise and the honor. Our Lord's working this. This is his covenant promise to bring glory and honor to the Father.

Now, here's the last thing I want you to see. Here's the message. First, we have the promise. Christ is fulfilling his promise. He's sending this gospel. He's been doing it in every generation. Secondly, the reason it continues to go forth is because it's Christ who is the power that speaks effectually and gives his people the faith and gives his preacher the faith and makes his people witnesses and that's how the gospel continues.

Now here's the message he gives. Here's what we preach. And you know, to you and me, you hear the gospel a lot and this is not anything new to us. But you think about the people in this world that are listening to messages that's constantly preaching man's works, constantly hearing man's works, and how contrary to that this is right here. Listen to what the Lord says he'll cause his people to do. Verse four, one generation shall praise thy works to another and shall declare thy mighty acts.

When the Lord speaks of one generation, He's talking about his regenerated people. The generated, regenerated people that he calls them a holy generation. A seed shall serve him, he said in Psalm 22. It shall be counted to the Lord for a generation. There is, time is in this thing of one generation to another. like one decade to another, but when he speaks of a generation, he's speaking of his people, you that he's made a holy people. And he said, and they'll come and they'll declare his righteousness to a people that shall be born that he hath done this.

That's our message. He called us before time and separated us in Christ by the election of grace. And then he created all things by his word. We're preaching his works. We're declaring everything's been of him from the beginning. He made everything in this world, spoke it into existence, created it out of nothing. And you know why he did that? Why did the Lord just speak everything into existence by his word out of nothing?

Because that's a pattern of what he does when he creates the new creation. You're the new creation. The people he's called and made new by his word is the new creation. He didn't use anything of us, nothing of our flesh. He spoke the word and he created a new spirit in you that was not there. And one day he's gonna give a new body and we're gonna be with him and we will be entirely the creation that Christ created. Everything that's of Adam is going back to the dust He's not gonna raise a body that is from Adam. He's gonna create a new glorified body, and we're gonna be new in body, soul, and spirit by the Lord. That's his work. That's what we're preaching, his works.

We not only speak of his works, but we're giving him glory, his person. Look at verse five. I will speak of the glorious honor of thy majesty and of thy wondrous works. His glorious person, the glorious honor of his person, his majesty. You remember when Isaiah beheld the glory of the Lord? He heard the angels cry, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth's full of his glory. And they were so, his majesty is so splendid that they covered their eyes and they covered their feet, and men wanna just run in and speak just any old word about God?

He's holy God, holy, holy, holy God. We behold the glorious honor of his majesty, the same place Moses did in the cleft of the rock. In Christ Jesus, we behold the glory of his majesty, and we behold his wondrous work. That means they're surpassing. That means they're unsearchable.

Think about this. The honor of his person, his majesty, and his wondrous works. The son of God became a man. Anybody want to try to explain that? That's a wondrous work. We don't try to explain it. We just believe it. Our sinless Holy Savior made sin for His people. He hath made Him sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. We believe that by God's grace. But it's a wonderful work. Justified in the Spirit. You know, God the Father spoke from heaven and said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased to hear you hear him. Peter was wanting to build a tower. He wanted to build something to honor Moses and Elijah. And the Lord, he hid his face. When the Lord spoke and when the Lord looked up, there was none but the Lord Jesus. And the Lord said, this is my son. I'm well pleased with him and him only. You hear him. The wondrous justified in spirit. And then our Lord said this, having been made sin for his people, having made a curse for his people, the Lord himself said this, he is near that justifieth me. Talk about a wondrous work. The sinless Lord made sin, stood right in our place, stood right in the place of his people. And he said, God is near who justifieth me. I'm not gonna try to explain that. No, sir. But it's a wondrous thing. It's a wondrous thing.

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. Here's the most wondrous work of all. Believed on in the world. that you would believe him, that I would believe him. You don't talk about a wondrous work of God, believed on in the world, received up to glory. We preach his acts of judgment. This is the message. We preach his justice, his perfect Righteousness, verse six. Men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts, and I will declare thy greatness. They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness and shall sing of thy righteousness. All of that goes together, brethren, all of that. The terrible acts are God's judgment, his justice. When you read in scripture, his terrible acts. He destroyed the world, the whole world with a flood. You see it flood. We got all that rain today. And sometimes it floods in little pockets of the world. And we just think it's going to keep raining, keep raining. What if it didn't ever stop and covered all the mountains? The Lord did that one day. He's not going to ever do it again. He gave us the rainbow as a covenant to promise he won't do it. But that too pictures Christ. That rainbow's around Christ's head, John saw, and he said, I'll look on that rainbow, and I'll remember my covenant. He looks on Christ and remembers his covenant.

Our Lord's terrible acts, he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. I mean, just rain, down, fire, and judgment. You know why? Because it was a bunch of homosexuals, a bunch of sodomites, just like our world today. Why hadn't he done it today? Same reason he didn't do it till he got Lot out of there. He had one righteous Lot, one just Lot, justified by the Lord, and he said, I'll spare it for his sake. He's sparing this world because he still has a people in it. But it's coming, his judgment's coming.

What about Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea? He destroyed the mightiest king in the whole world. I don't know that we've ever seen a king that had the kind of power Pharaoh had, and the power, the might, and the army, and the Lord destroyed it all. Why? He said, I raised him up for that very purpose. I raised him up to kill him in the Red Sea to show my power, that he's the most powerful of all.

Well, brethren, for God's people, he has an elect remnant, and if he hadn't didn't leave us a remnant, we'd have been like Sodom and Gomorrah. But he has a remnant. And that's what we deserve. We deserve what the world got in Noah's day. We deserve what Sodom and Gomorrah got. We deserve what Pharaoh and his army got. Why didn't the Lord give that to his elect? Because our Lord Jesus said, I will stand in their place. I'll take their place. And he came to where we are and stood in our place. And the Lord made him send for his people. And he bore the strict Fury of God's justice, just justice. He bore that. He bore it. That's why we were spared.

God is so righteous. It says there, we'll speak of his righteousness. He's so righteous, he wouldn't spare his son. He's so righteous, he would not make him a curse till he made him bear our sin. And when he bore our sin, he would not spare him. That's righteousness. This thing of saying that the Lord punished an innocent man, that wouldn't be righteousness.

Now, our Lord is innocent of himself. He did not sin, but he's there manifesting the glory of God's righteousness. That's what he's at the cross for. And before he would even pour out justice on him, he had to be worthy of that justice. And the Lord made him bear the sin of his people. and he poured out that justice and he wouldn't spare him. That's righteous. But you know what that means? Because he bore that and put that sin away and satisfied divine justice, God will never, ever, ever pour out his justice on one for whom Christ died.

That same righteousness that demanded the Son of God come and the Son of God be made like his brethren, and the Son of God be made sin, and the Son of God be made a curse, that Christ bear our sin in his body on the tree. The same justice that demanded that is satisfied and demands we must be saved. And for that reason, this is our message, brethren. If you come here and you say, well, he just preaches that same thing over and over. I don't have anything else to preach. I don't want to preach anything else. If somebody's not content with the gospel of God's righteousness, Christ himself, I feel for him. Because this is all my salvation and all yours. And this is his great goodness. He said, we'll declare his great goodness.

This is the great goodness of God. He delivered him up for us all. What does that mean? For that great multitude. That great multitude that God chose and trusted in him, he delivered him up for us all. It wasn't just a few sins Christ bore. It wasn't just the curse of one. It was the sins of all his people. Read Romans 5, that's the point. There was one sin that plunged us and made us guilty. It wasn't for one sin that Christ died. He died for the multitude of his people's transgression. He delivered him up for us all.

Brethren, that veil ran into from top to bottom, from God down to us, declaring that's not the way into God's presence anymore. That law, and there's a new way now. There's a new way open that Christ is. He is that new way. Through his blood, through his righteousness, with Christ as our high priest, we can come to God by God's grace. We preach and bear witness that the Lord is gracious, verse eight, the Lord is gracious. That's why we preach the Lord is gracious, because we just, everything we just looked at, we've seen it by God's grace, we know it by God's grace, we see that he chose us by grace, redeemed us by grace, he called us by grace, he's kept us by grace, he's gonna bring us to glory by grace, and so we declare the goodness of God, and I'll say the Lord is gracious.

Is that what is being preached? Is that what's being preached in the world? No, I don't say that to put down people. I don't say that to put down churches or these, let me rephrase that, religious institutions. I'm not trying to just merely, I'm saying it because if you hear it and our young people hear that, I want you to know there's a reason we preach what we preach. We've experienced this grace of God. We've seen the Lord of Glory. And read the Psalm. He said, my people are going to declare the works of God. They're going to preach the glory of God, of His person and His works. And we know now, verse 8, He's full of compassion, He's slow to anger, and He's of great mercy.

Don't you want to be like the Savior? We're not trying to stand in our works, we're not trying to come to God in our works, but while I'm in this earth, I wanna be like my Savior. And here's what I mean by that. Our Lord Jesus, when he was here walking this earth, he was so gracious and so full of compassion, slow to anger, he was of great mercy toward us. And all we were were self-righteous, and all we were were sinners. Everybody in our Lord camp was around our Lord. We were just so self-righteous by nature, and we have nothing to be proud about, because we're sinners. And yet, our Lord, toward his people, was full of compassion. And he was so merciful, and so slow to anger. And he was very harsh with one group of people. He was harsh with the religious teachers, the Pharisees that were teaching men lies, he was harsh with them. But everybody else, they would come to our Lord, and our Lord was so full of compassion. He receiveth sinners, and He does for sinners what no religious man would do, what the Pharisees would not dare do. It's an amazing show of His grace. That leper came to Him. Can you imagine that crowd jumping back and trying to get out of the way? I mean, you didn't want to touch a leper. What'd our Lord do? He reached out and touched him. He reached his hand out and touched him. If that don't say he is God in human flesh, that he is the savior of his people, I don't know what does.

Why wasn't he afraid to touch him? Because he's the life that made him whole. Because he is the great physician that reached out and touched him and made him altogether healed. And nobody else would have anything to do with that man.

Can't you say that? If that is your case, that was my case. I'm that leper. Were you that leper? And yet our Lord had compassion on us, was slow to anger and of great mercy.

Look here in verse nine. This is so of everything we've been looking at right here. The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works. I wanna be sure you understand this. I wanna be very clear when I speak this. This is not speaking of God's goodness in sending the sunshine upon the unjust and the just. He does do that, but that's not what this is talking about. This is talking about what the context is, and the context is saying the Lord is good to all those chosen from eternity. He's good to all his people who he laid down his life for. His tender mercies are over all his works. by which he saves his people. Everything he's doing in this world, he's doing it for his people. He has been from the first click of the clock.

He is, there's no such thing as common grace. Our Lord's grace is particular, our Lord's grace is saving, and those he loves, he loves in Christ, and those he loves in Christ, he's been gracious to them, and he saves them. That's so of our God. That's so of the true and living God. The Lord is good to all his elect. He's tender mercies over all his works of salvation. All the works that are involved in saving sinners like you and me is by the goodness of our God, and it's all grace, every bit of it.

And what have we seen here, brethren? This is Christ's covenant promise to the Father. By Christ's wisdom, by his grace, by his power as the God-man, prophet, priest, and king of his people, he says one generation is going to keep speaking this gospel to another. He's going to keep the gospel going forward. He's going to provide pastors, he's going to provide brethren, churches that he's assembled, and he's going to keep this gospel going forward. It's gonna be because it's Christ speaking the word by which we're saved. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

That's not simply by the Bible. If it was, we'd just drop Bibles out of the sky. It's by the preaching of this word and Christ himself speaking affectionately into the heart. But it's what he said, I will speak, I will declare. That's what he said. And then the message we preach, is His person, the majesty and glory of His person and all His wonderful works. You cannot preach Christ high enough. You can't preach Him high enough. You can't preach His works enough. And that's all His people, that's what saved us. That's all we wanna hear. And we wanna hear more about Him. Him, Him, Him, Him, who is our Savior.

Look at verse 10. This is gonna be the result. All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord, and thy saints shall bless thee. They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom and talk of thy power to make known to the sons of men his mighty acts and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. That's what he's gonna do without fail. And when we get to glory, we don't be talking about man's works there. We'll be talking about his glorious person, his works, for all eternity.

All right, brethren, let's, Brother Adam, let's, we won't have a closing hymn. We're gonna close in prayer. Since Adam's working the recorder too. Let's go to him, brethren.

Our Father, we thank you for trusting this whole work to your son. Lord, thank you for giving us faith to hear and believe to see you and to see the works that you've done. Lord, we see your glory in your son. We're so thankful that you've done this, thankful that you saved us. Lord, we pray you make this gospel go forth and make your people hear and rejoice. Keep sending it forth, Lord. Keep blessing it to the hearts of your people. Keep us looking only to Christ, and Lord, make us Make us give you all the glory, just like you promised. Lord, thank you for our faithful pastors. Thank you for our faithful brethren. Thank you for doing it to bring glory to our Father. In Christ's name we pray, amen.