Good morning, brethren. Thank
you for inviting me, having me here. It's an honor to speak
to you, dear brethren, that you know I love and spent many years
with you. And I'm thankful for your fellowship in the gospel.
And I'm thankful for you, Pastor. And thank you for inviting me.
I love you. All right. Luke 12. Luke 12. In verse 41, Peter, hearing his
Lord speak in detail many blessed truths, asks, speakest thou this parable
unto us or even to Yes. The Lord's answer was basically
yes. Because this word, it concerns
we that preach and minister the spirit according to this word
and you that hear it. This concerns us all who have
an interest in the grace and salvation of our Lord. He said yes, and so our Lord
begins to make a distinction now for our benefit, my benefit,
your benefit, your pastor's benefit, and for you that hear. For you
that hear. And he begins to make a distinction
between the faithful servant and the unfaithful servant. And
this benefits us both. This is for our good, for our
instruction and learning, for your comfort. for your comfort. And so, this is to those who
would speak by the Spirit of God. John speaks of telling us
to try the spirits, to try the spirits, to see whether they
be of God or if they are of the Antichrist, of another spirit,
to try the spirits, to know whether they are of God, to know whether
you are hearing faithfully of Christ or no. And the faithful
and wise stored is first and foremost the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the faithful servant of
God, speaking according to all that he heard the father say,
and he declares it faithfully to us. And so he sends faithful
servants, not infallible servants, sometimes We try the spirits.
We can all reflect on things that we've thought and said,
you know, I shouldn't say it that way. Maybe I should say
it another way, right? Or focus on this, not that. That's
unprofitable. We try the spirits and what's
garbage, we let it go. We let it go that we might just
stay upon the Lord Jesus Christ and be faithful to him. Now,
Christ Jesus is the builder of the house. We're not the builders
of the house. We're just faithful servants.
Well, we pray to be faithful servants of our Lord who builds
the house. He builds the house. Christ as
a son over his own house, whose house we are, if we hold fast
the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope, the hope of his
grace, not my work or your work, but the work that he has accomplished
and promised to fulfill and work in us, who by faith look to him. And that faith is not of this
flesh, but it is the gift of God to his children. And we look
to him and trust him, having every confidence in his word
of promise. And don't draw back from that
unto perdition. Don't draw back from Christ and
turn to God. Other dead things of religion
or to the law don't turn from the gospel, the grace of our
God revealed in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. You stay upon
him. You look to Christ and you keep
pressing to Christ. He is the prize. He's our inheritance,
brethren. Even as he tells us that we're
his inheritance and he delights in us, delight in him. Delight
yourself in the Lord. Trust him, believe him. And so
this confidence and hope speaks to the gospel which we heard
from the beginning in the new man when the Lord reveals himself
to us, revealing what he has accomplished faithfully to accomplish
our redemption and our salvation and promises to fulfill all things
that we need, to give us everything that we need. He does not come
short in it. Trust him, stay upon him, I own chickens and that makes
me a husbandman. And what that means is I'm responsible
for the lives of those chickens. I make sure they have their food,
their water, their bedding change, I get their eggs, I just take
care of them. Christ Jesus is our husbandman who has taken
upon himself to provide everything you need, brethren. And he is
faithful, faithful to do it. So let's understand this word
of grace. First, look for a moment over
in John chapter 15, John 15. Our Lord speaking to his disciples. So this is a word for us, John
15, verse four. He shows us what faithfulness
is. He says, abide in me. You stay
in me. You continue in me. And I in
you. As the branch cannot bear fruit
of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except
ye abide in me. I am the vine. Ye are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in
him, the same bringeth forth much fruit. For without me, ye
can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he
is cast forth as a branch and is withered, and men gather them
and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. All who are called of God to
minister the spirit were made ministers of the spirit and of
his grace. We are to preach the hearing
of faith, to declare Christ, I want to bring that out to you,
help you understand what that hearing of faith is. This is
wisdom. This is how men are turned from
dead things that cannot save, from dead-letter religion, turned
from the flesh to behold, to see the true and living God,
to have understanding and knowledge of the mystery of God in the
face of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ministers, therefore, are made
faithful to Christ. Paul said, let a man so account
of us as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries
of God. Paul also asking, he therefore
that minister to the spirit and worketh miracles among you, doeth
he it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? How are we taught, instructed,
fed, nourished, kept? Through the hearing of faith,
through the faithful ministration of the Spirit, to teach you Christ,
to show you Christ. Turn over to Acts chapter 20.
Acts 20. I've been harping on this passage
for a while now in my own congregation, and it's blessed. Acts 20. Acts
20, and we're just gonna look at two of the verses there. Paul
is speaking to the Ephesian elders, and in verse 28, he tells them,
this is what the faithful minister preaches. This is what Christ,
the faithful minister, sends his ministers to preach and to
teach his people. Take heed, therefore, unto yourselves.
Prepare yourselves, prepare your congregation, and to all the
flock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers
to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own
blood. That makes us who declare and
minister this word to you very mindful that we are speaking
to the Lord's precious people. You're precious. And if we forget
that, The Lord will remind us that you're precious to him and
we're to feed you. Feed you, feed you what? Look
down at verse 32. I believe this makes it known
what we are to feed the church of God with. And now brethren,
I commend you, I commit you to God and to the word of his grace. Grace, not the law. not to Mount Sinai, but the word
of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you
an inheritance among the saints, to give you an inheritance among
the Lord's people, among them which are sanctified. So that
one who is appointed of Christ, the faithful and wise stored
of God, rule over his household, is going to feed his church with
the word of his grace, and that, brethren, as we saw back in our
text in verse 42, is to give them their portion of meat in
due season. That's what you are fed with,
the word of his grace. That's your portion of meat.
That's what he's determined to give to you, the word of his
grace. Now, if we go over to Luke 24,
Luke 24, our Lord, our risen Lord, is
giving his commission to the church, to his apostles, to the
disciples. He's telling them, this is what
you're to preach, right? We're just seeing this word of
grace, what this word of grace is. And he says in verse 45,
Well, first it says, then opened he their understanding that they
might understand the scriptures, so that this word ceases to be
a dead letter word. Just a little study in the classroom,
right? It ceases to be dead letter religion. I do it this way. I wear this
trinket. I wear this robe. I do this thing,
and this is how I get my blessings. Nonsense. It's dead letter. And this word ceases to be dead
letter when Christ opens our understanding and gives us a
spirit and shows us the spirit of this word, to see Christ in
it. And he said unto them, verse
46, thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer
and to rise from the dead the third day. This speaks to the
doctrine of Christ. This speaks to our confession
that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh that Jesus is the Son
of God, that Jesus is the Christ. That's the confession, and that
sounds like a simple confession. It seems so broad, so simple. Everybody believes that, that
Jesus came in the flesh. What he's saying there, what
John is describing there is what our Lord is saying here. We're
speaking of who he is, who this one is that came in the flesh.
We're speaking of why he came. that he came to fulfill the will
of the Father. We declare what he accomplished
by himself on the tree to put away the sins of his people with
his own blood. We're making that known. We're
declaring Christ crucified according to the scriptures, according
to what the prophets and the law wrote, all testifying of
Christ, not the flesh, but of Christ, appoint us to the Lord
Jesus Christ. This is the doctrine of Christ. We're declaring that he was given
a body to suffer because I'm such a filthy, vile sinner and
cannot save myself. I'm an enemy, a rebel of God
by nature, and I cannot be delivered except Christ do this for me,
except he come willingly and accomplish my redemption and
my salvation. and provide for me from alpha
to omega, from beginning to end, from start to finish, please,
Lord, don't give me anything that depends on me, else I will
be sunk to hell. And so we need him fully, fully,
and that's what he does. And that's the testimony that
we're given unto you. That's what we're to speak, declare
Christ, look at it, go on to verse 47. repentance and remission of sins
should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at
Jerusalem and ye are witnesses of these things. This is what you're a witness
of, you're bearing witness of Christ who came and suffered
fulfilling all righteousness and suffered and died was buried
and rose again the third day for the redemption, the salvation
of His people, the forgiveness of sins, to reconcile us to the
Father, to have fellowship with Him, and to be given life more
abundantly. That is to know these things
now and to walk in the light of them now by His Spirit of
grace in faith, living, rejoicing in who He is. With him as our
hope and pressing to Christ, pressing to him, we're witnesses
of these things, of these things. And so what is this repentance
and remission of sins? Well, who gave you, who obtained
for you the remission of sins? That's the one who works repentance
in you. And what is repentance? But it's
turning. We all, religion focuses on the
flesh. You stop that. Start this, right,
and they teach you that's repentance. Repentance is being turned from
trusting yourself and depending on dead works and the trinkets
of religion and being turned to Christ, to trust Him as all
my salvation, my Savior, my God, my Lord, my husband, my friend,
who loved me and gave Himself for me. That's repentance and
that's what He works in us. And he gives that heart, he gives
that hope and that faith and that love to love him, not be
in turn to the law, but in love, loving our brethren, loving our
Lord. That's why when Peter says, dearly
beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims in this world abstain
from fleshly lusts, which were against your soul. I feel the
lusts in my members. I feel the things that I like
in my flesh. I'm well aware that they are
there by the grace of God. I know how they just war. They turn my attention on me
when I've committed them with shame and guilt, and I don't
want to spend my time on that. I want to joyfully go through
the word. So, Lord, help me. Deliver me
from these lusts and wicked things that I might serve you and serve
my brethren. Faithfully faithfully looking
to you rather than at my my own flesh All right now We're witnesses
of these things we bear witness of these things why because faith
cometh by hearing and Hearing by the Word of God this word
which you are told by your Lord your witnesses of these things
preach Christ preach Christ preach What who he is why he came what
he accomplished and what he's working in his people by his
grace and power sovereignly Just keep pointing them to Christ,
pointing them to Christ, and don't point them away from Christ
to the flesh. And so we preach our Lord, we
trust Him, we trust Him. Now, back in Luke 12, Luke 12,
43 and 44, Blessed is that servant whom
his Lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing. Doing what? Bearing
witness of Christ, resting in Christ, trusting Christ, walking
by faith, looking to Christ. And when you're testifying of
Christ, you're speaking of him. You're telling them what he did.
Many of us don't know the doctrines or get fumbled up in our words
when we're speaking to others. That's okay. One thing you can
do is just tell them what Christ has done for you. Just tell them
what he did for me. I was a sinner, I was blind,
and now I see. I don't know, he just took it
away, and he gave me rest and peace. And just glorify him in
the simple words that you do know. Speak of him, boast of
him. Don't tell him what you stopped
doing and started doing. Just tell them of Christ. Just
put it all on him, and he'll minister the Spirit through that
word of grace. Paul said in Ephesians 3, 7 and
8, whereof I was made a minister according to the gift of the
grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his
power. He has power and it's effectual. And he makes his word living
in you, brethren, in the new man. Unto me, who am less than
the least of all saints, is this grace given. that I should preach
among the Gentiles, what? The unsearchable riches of Christ. That's the word. That's what
this word is speaking of here, Christ. This is the grace words,
the spirit of this word. We're pointing you to Christ.
That is what our faithful Lord sends his servants to do and
makes them faithful in that. Just preach me, preach Christ,
preach Christ. And so, This is what our God,
who said, I'll give you pastors according to mine heart, which
shall feed you, feed you with knowledge and understanding. And that knowledge and understanding
is the knowledge and understanding of Christ, the mystery of God
revealed in Christ. That's the comfort of the child
of God. It's Christ. It's what he's done. Now, We come to the opposite
of that, where the servant, so called, is not bearing witness
to the grace of God in Christ. Alright? He's found turning the
people to wicked works of the flesh. Now he's turning, this
one is turning the people away from Christ to look to their
flesh. And this is the abundance of
religion in our day. It's just fleshly works. It's
all on you. Everything's resting on you in
dead letter religion. Start this, stop that, don't
do that, don't be seen there, don't say that, don't do it this
way. It's all on you, rather than pointing you to Christ who
works as he wills in your heart. To walk faithfully and to love
him. And so he turns you to himself and to fleshly things. So look
at verse 45. But and if that servant say in his heart, my
Lord delayeth his coming and shall begin to beat the men servants
and maidens and to eat and drink and to be drunken. This is not
a faithful man. This man, rather than feeding
them, the people of God with the meat, their meat, their portion
in due season, the grace of God just faithfully preaching Christ,
He now starts giving you the husks, the empty, papery husks
with no nutrition, and that's what he feeds you on. Dead letter,
law, religion. That's what he's given to you,
dead letter, religion. And he becomes your Lord, and
he's your rule of life, right? He's turning you away from our
Lord, Christ. He's turning you to dead things.
When he says, my Lord delayeth, it would seem that this man at
one point was ministering the gospel, right? He was speaking
of grace and of what Christ had done. But he says, I'm looking
for fruit here and I ain't seeing what I think I should see in
you people. And he says, my Lord delayeth his coming. He said,
if I preach grace that he'll bear fruit in his people. I don't
see that. I guess I got to do something different. And then
that's when he ceases preaching Christ and he starts telling
you of the law. He starts telling you of fleshly
things. He starts playing games with
religion and trying to get that fruit that he's looking for,
that he thinks that he should see. My Lord delayeth his coming. And then it says that he shall
begin to beat the men servants and maidens. He turns back to
the law for righteousness, whipping the people of God, driving you
hard, saying things that we cannot do, putting a yoke upon your
neck that you cannot keep. He threatens you with punishments.
He threatens you with hell. He threatens you with a heavy
yoke in order to bring forth fruit that he thinks he should
see in the way that he should see it, according to the flesh.
This last season, I got some blueberry bushes. I wanted to
try to grow some blueberries. And I put them in there, and
they came with some blueberries already started on them. And
so I had an idea of what it looked like. I've never really grown
blueberries. And I went through the winter.
And then afterwards, I looked at the bush. I wanted to see
something. And I saw a flower. There was
flowers there. I said, OK, good. This is going
good. And then the flower fell off. And I saw this little thing
that just had like a jagged, almost like a little crown. sticking
out. And I said, OK, good. This is, I guess, how it starts.
And I'd go back week after week. And week after week, it looked
the same. This is on two weeks now. And
the third week, it started to turn that blueberry color, that
bluish color. But I'm looking. I'm like, where's
this fruit? I'm thinking, here's this thing
here where the flower came off. and I'm expecting fruit to grow
here. And I'm looking for it, and looking
for it, and getting upset. Like, I don't know, maybe it's
just not working. I guess I can't grow blueberries.
And I'm thinking, I'm going to have to do something radical
now. I'm going to have to change up how I'm doing this. And eventually,
after about five or six weeks, I came back, and I noticed, wait
a minute. That little crown thing, that's
the bottom of the blueberry. The blueberry's over here. I'm
looking over here, thinking this is where the fruit's going to
be. And here it is, right over here, I'm not even noticing it.
And isn't that what the Lord does in his people? It's a subtle thing. Grace is
a patient work in the people of God, where he instructs you
and teaches you and settles you down from all the fears and the
terrors that you have in life, and he just points you to Christ,
and he just keeps feeding you Christ. and feeding you Christ,
and over time, he's just softening your heart, revealing hope and
faith and loving you, which are quiet things oftentimes. They're
not always loud things that everybody sees. It's things that we see. It's playing the piano. It's
watching the children in the back. It's doing the recordings.
It's leading the hymns. It's coming and setting up early.
It's making food for one another. It's coming in fellowship. It's
just coming and sitting down So you can encourage your brethren
All right, that's an encourage. You have no idea how much of
an encouragement it is just to see your face Even if you don't
do anything else it really is an encouragement to us because
it's a child of God and we're Feeding you your portion of meat
and do season as the Lord commanded us to do and gave gives us a
heart to do and so We see this, you know, that's what Saul did. We were looking at Saul yesterday.
Well, back in 1 Samuel 13, something very similar to what I'm saying
here happened. They were getting ready for war
with the Philistines. This is not the latter one, but
an earlier battle. And Saul's thinking, I've got
to have the blessing of God for me to go into battle with these
Philistines. I've got to have God's blessing.
We need to sacrifice to obtain God's favor. And Samuel said
to Saul, give me seven days to get to you. We've got to have
time for the news to get to me, and then I've got to get myself
together, and then I'll get to you and Gilgal. Give me seven
days, and I'll come. I'll come. Just give me seven
days. And what happened was seven days came, and the people are
getting all nervous and worried, and they're starting to fall
away and go home. And Saul's thinking, this is
not good. I need to do something. I need to take this into my own
hands. And so he said, bring me the
sacrifice and I'll sacrifice as the high priest. No, no, no,
don't do that. Don't do that. And so what he
was looking for is fruit. I need fruit here. I gotta change
things up. I gotta take things into my own
hands and do it my way so that we can get God's blessing. And
when Samuel showed up, he said, what has thou done? What has
thou done, right? If we cease to preach Christ,
if we cease to be witnesses of these things, when our Lord comes
back, what has thou done? What were you thinking? You're
not gonna get fruit that way. I'm the one who bears fruit in
my people. You think you don't see fruit and you're beating
the people and whipping the people with the law and thinking that's
gonna bring forth fruit? No, no, no. Why did you cease
to preach me? Why did you turn my people's
eyes off of me and put it on you in their flesh? Don't do
that. So men who drive other men to
the law, they're doing what our Lord said. Do men gather grapes
of thorns or figs of thistles? You ever wonder what our Lord
means by that? When he said, you shall know them by their
fruit, because he was talking about false prophets. He said, you'll
know them by their fruit. That used to bother me so much
when I was little because I could look at other people and say,
knowing my own heart and the thoughts that I thought, I knew
there's people out there that don't confess Christ that are
better than me. They got greater character. They're more faithful,
more loyal. They're just better. They're
more giving. They're more kind than me. I'm so grumpy and short-tempered. And they're better than me. So
I was really, really confused about that. But he says what
the false prophet, they look for grapes among thorns and figs
among thistles. What happened in the garden when
Adam sinned? The Lord said, curse it as the ground for thy sake.
You're going to labor and toil and it's going to bring forth
to you thorns and thistles. It's the curse. Any man that
turns you to the flesh is trying to bring forth good fruit from
that which is dead, that which is sinful, that which cannot
bear good fruit. And that's the false prophet. That's the unfaithful store.
He's turning you to the flesh. Again, when the Judaizers came
in with the law, they said, except ye be circumcised after the manner
of Moses, ye cannot be saved. And they troubled the disciples,
they troubled the Gentiles to do a fleshly work, to try and
sanctify themselves and improve themselves and make themselves
acceptable to God. But isn't what Christ did our
full acceptance and assurance with God? If we're not accepted
of God for Christ's sake, how are we gonna do any better than
what he's done? And Peter stood up and said, now therefore, why
tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which
neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe
that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be
saved even as they. We're trusting the grace of God,
we're trusting him who promises, Paul wrote to the Romans saying,
if we hope for that we see not, right? If I don't see what I
think I should see in me, then do we with patience wait for
it. And he gives us a spirit of adoption
whereby we cry, Abba, Father, Lord, have mercy on me. Lord,
I'm troubled by this storm. Lord, I'm troubled by this sin.
Would you please have mercy? We wait upon him. We don't turn. We don't start beating our backs
and trying to whip ourselves into shape. We keep waiting for
him and praying, watching prayer, cry out to him, hear the word. That's how he turns us. As he
also said that same thing to the Galatians in Galatians 5.5, Paul wrote the same thing. For we through the spirit, right? I'll give you a second. We through
the spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. And
so does the minister. We were witnesses of Christ and
we wait. We wait through the spirit for
the hope of righteousness by faith. As soon as you pick it
up with your hand, you start wrecking things and dividing
things. and stripping things, and messing
things up, and that, Paul tells us in Galatians, that's just
works of the flesh. That's what men do when they
do that. When they turn to adulteries
to try and soothe themselves, and fornications, and drunkenness,
and dividing, and whisperings, and separating, that's of the
flesh. Paul never says that that's a
fruit of the spirit. He says love, faithfulness, gentleness,
kindness, Love beareth all things, love believeth all things, love
endureth all things, love never faileth. Love is kind to one
another. Grace closes the curtain on sin
rather than opening it and exposing it. Like we're patient, we wait
on the Lord and we trust the Lord. So we believe that through
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved. He's able, brethren, believe
him and be not faithless. Don't draw back to perdition.
Just keep pressing to Christ. Keep pressing to our Lord Jesus
Christ. And Paul said, you know, when
it speaks of eating and drinking and to be drunken, that's by
another spirit, be drunk with another spirit. But that eating
and drinking means he's serving himself. He's embarrassed. He wants to see a better people,
right? He wants to show you off so that
he can be glorified in the flesh. And Paul said in Galatians 6,
12, as many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they
constrain you to be circumcised only lest they should suffer
persecution for the cross of Christ. For neither they themselves
who are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised
that they may glory in your I'm so thankful that the scriptures
say that Christ is not ashamed to call us brethren. He knows
what we are. He knows our weakness. And he
knows the heart that he's given you, and the spirit that he's
given to you. And he's patient, and he's gentle,
and he doesn't drive you hard, but he just keeps giving you
your portion of meat in due season that grows you like a little
baby. to slowly, it's a long, patient work for that child to
grow up and become an adult. It's just little bites of food
over and over again. And that's what we do. That's
the faithful minister. And don't preach the law. The law isn't able to build you
up and to give you an inheritance among them which are sanctified.
Grace, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is able to build
you up. That's what the word says. Trust
it. Stay upon it. Stay upon it. and
trust him, and there's a way that seemeth right unto a man,
but the end thereof are the ways of death. He that laboreth for
himself, that one, for his mouth craveth it of him. That's speaking
of him who's just serving himself, doing it his way, rather than
trusting the Lord. He's saying, my Lord delayeth
his coming. Where's the fruit? I better start doing it this
way. No, don't. Don't do it that way. Just keep
preaching Christ. And then at the end there in
verse 47 and 48, and I know this from experience, that servant
which knew his Lord's will and prepared not himself, neither
did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.
But he that knew not and did commit things worthy of stripes
shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given
of him shall much be required, and to whom men have committed
much of him they will ask the more. We learn, right? You know, we reflect on how the
Lord's grown us and teaches us. And like I said in the beginning,
we try the spirits. If we find something is off,
scramble it up, get rid of it, and just keep preaching Christ.
Just keep pressing to Christ. Just trust him, believe him,
and don't draw back, brethren. That's what our faithful Lord
gives us. That's your portion of meat. That's the word of his
grace. Believe him. Love him and love one another,
brethren. Again, thank you, brethren, for having me.