Our subject is Christ's call
of grace. Christ's call of grace. I thought
about, I pointed out to you those precepts. This passage is full
of precepts, full of commands from the Lord. And I thought
about titling it this, Necessary Gospel Precepts, all which are
worked by Christ and made effectual in His redeeming. Ben might think
that title was a little too long. He tells me I need to shorten
up my title sometime. This is Christ speaking. And
we're going to see here what Christ accomplishes when He speaks
into the heart of those He redeemed. These are precepts. These are
commands Christ makes effectual. You know, Scripture says the
Lord God said to His Son, the Lord Jesus, Thy people shall
be willing in the day of Thy power. This is when he speaks,
this is the power by which he makes his people willing to obey
him, and we'll see what he tells you to do. Now, the whole purpose
of this passage, and the point of it, is down in verse six.
Therefore my people, you see that, my people, shall know my
name. Therefore they shall know in
that day, that I am he that does speak, behold it is I. Now that's
the point, that's who's speaking, that's who's gonna speak in the
heart of his people, that's how these commands are made effectual,
that's how we're made willing to do as he commands. Now this
passage applies, just as it stands here, it applies to the Lord
delivering Israel out of Babylon. It applies to the day the Lord
will call his people out of this world into glory. That'll be
the final redemption out of this world into glory. But it also
applies to this gospel age right now and what Christ does when
he sends the gospel and through the Holy Spirit when he calls
his people. This is what he speaks into our
heart and this is what he brings his people to do. Now first of
all, Christ's call of grace wakes his people. This is the first
command to us that we're going to heed in our experience of
His grace. This will be the first command
He gives that we actually heed. He says in verse 1, awake, awake,
awake, awake. Like I said this morning, we
come into the world dead, spiritually dead sinners. And you know, He
compares, He calls death for a believer sleep. And here we
see how this is his quickening word, this is his regenerating
word when Christ speaks and says, awake, awake. We come into this
world unable to, we can't wake ourselves, but when he says awake,
now false preachers preach a false gospel. And they couldn't give
us life. You know, as long as you were
under a false gospel, some of us were, and they couldn't give
you life. They had us in bondage. just
like Egypt had the children of Israel in bondage, and then like
Babylon took them in bondage. Look at verse 4. He said, they
oppressed them without a cause. He said in verse 5, my people's
taken away for nothing. He said, they that rule over
them make them to howl, saith the Lord. And my name continually
every day is blasphemed. Listen, a false message is oppression. A false message preached is oppression. And here's why. This is what
most messages that are preached. I'm talking about just in the
name of Christianity. You know there's only two religions
in the world. There's the religion of Adam
and the religion of Cain. I mean, Cain and Abel. Abel is the message of grace. He came in the blood of a lamb.
Cain's the message of works. He came with the fruit he produced.
And God rejected him. There's only two messages. Grace,
saved by grace, or saved by works. outside of Christianity and Christian
can be reduced down to those two. There's only two. Every
other religion requires the sinner to do something. But there's
only one that declares God does it all. That's the religion of
grace. That's the true message. And
the reason false religion is oppressive is they whip you with
the law, they guilt you with the law, and they frighten you
with that law. and then they promise you rewards
if you do the law. But brethren, they don't preach
Christ. And Christ is the only way that
the law is fulfilled. He's the only way the heart's
made new. And without Christ, everything men preach is oppressive.
They call on sinners to do what sinners can't do. And they can
build large congregations that way. Because men are willing
to give their money to build large cathedrals just so they
don't have the guilt on their conscience. But wherever the
gospel's preached and God gets all the glory and man doesn't
get any glory, you're not gonna see great big giant places of
worship. Not usually. There's been a few
in history, but not usually. But it's oppression. The Lord
said, they'd make my people howl. Egypt and Babylon are a picture
of false religion for all falsehood Only Christ speaking in power
can awaken he can regenerate his people and he speaks through
the Holy Spirit to the gospel Through God's Word and he speaks
in power when he says awake awake. You know what you're gonna. Do
you wake up? You gonna wake up. How could anybody? call for a
dead man to awake a Dead man can't do anything. That's what
we all were why would the preacher? Read this word of God that says
awake, awake. Well, let me show you why. Go
to Ezekiel 37. Here's why. I want you to read this now,
Ezekiel 37. This is the Lord teaching Ezekiel what he is to
preach. Ezekiel's a prophet, a preacher,
and he's telling him what he's to preach. Ezekiel 37. He said, The hand of the Lord
was upon me. Verse 1, He carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord
and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full
of bones. And He caused me to pass by them round about. Behold,
there was very many in the open valley, and lo, they were very
dry. And He said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And
I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. And He said to me, now
listen to this, He said to me, prophesy, preach upon these bones,
and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord." That
sounds like a foolish thing, doesn't it? Tell some dry bones
to hear? Hear the word of the Lord. And
he's going to tell them what to preach. Brother Jeff just
read that Psalm. We're going to declare his works.
and his power and what he's doing. Here's what the Lord told him
to preach. Verse five, he said, preach this. Thus saith the Lord God unto
these bones, behold, I will cause breath to enter into you and
you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you
and I will bring up flesh upon you and cover you with skin and
put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that
I am the Lord." That's what he told Ezekiel to preach. He told
Ezekiel to preach what he's going to do to those bones. See, that's
why I'm preaching to you the works of the Lord. I'm telling
you what the Lord says He's going to do to His people. And through
that message, the Lord works that in His people. And so Ezekiel
preached the Lord's works and the Lord did exactly what he
said. Look at verse 11. Now here's the point. Then he
said to me, son of man, these bones are the whole house of
Israel. They represent God's people.
We're not talking about just the nation. We're talking about
his true spiritual Israel, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, bond
and free, male and female, those that the Lord saved. He said,
these bones represent my whole house. Behold, they say our bones
are dried and our hope is lost, we're cut off for our parts,
therefore preach and say to them, thus saith the Lord God, behold,
O my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come
up out of your graves and bring you into the land of Israel and
you shall know that I am the Lord when I've opened your graves,
O my people. That's the only way you're gonna
know the Lord is when he's done the work. When he's done it,
you're gonna know he did it all and he's the Savior. And he said,
and you'll know that I brought you up out of your graves, verse
14, and shall put my spirit in you, and you shall live, and
I shall place you in your own land. Then you shall know that
I, the Lord, have spoken and performed it, said the Lord.
That's what our text says. In that day, in the day of this
grace, when he calls you, he said, my people shall know my
name. Therefore, they shall know in that day, I am he that does
speak, behold, it's I. Wouldn't it be wonderful today
if the Lord spoke? And for us that know Him, that's
our desire every time we assemble. We want to hear Him speak again,
don't we? We want to hear Him speak into our heart. It's His
voice speaking in power. And you know, that's illustrated
in when God made Adam. It said He formed Adam of the
dust of the ground. And it says, and the Lord God
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became
a living soul. That's physically. Well, the
Lord, he breathes, when he speaks the word, he speaks new life
into his people, spiritual life. So it's written, the first man
Adam was made a living soul. The last Adam's made a quickening
spirit. We're talking about a spiritual
life. This is what the Lord said. He said, it's the spirit that
quickeneth. The flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak to you
their spirit and their life. So we need to hear him, don't
we? It's not an audible voice, but it's more powerful than an
audible voice when he speaks. That's when a believer knows
the power of God and salvation, Christ, the power of God and
salvation. That's when you know the value
of the gospel. That's why Peter said, Lord,
to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal
life. We have to have your words because
That's how we're made to live. The law of the gospel. This is
what Psalm 197 said. The law of the gospel of the
Lord's perfect converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord
is sure making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are
right rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is
pure enlightening the eyes. I said to you in Isaiah 52, you
hear one command after another, one precept after another. Natural
man hears that and he thinks, oh, I've got to go to the Ten
Commandments and if I do the Ten Commandments, I can have
life. No, you need to hear these commands, the Lord speaking in
our text, awake. That's when you're going to have
life. That's when you're going to have life. When we go through
affliction, we've experienced His power. We know that he called
us and he gave us life, so when we go through affliction, you
know what we're wanting more than anything else? We want to
hear Christ speak. We need the gospel. Listen, Psalm
119.50, this is my comfort in my affliction, because thy word
hath quickened me. You've quickened me by your word,
so I know when I'm in affliction, this is how I'm gonna be comforted,
your word. You're gonna speak, Lord. I'm
gonna know it's you that's speaking. Christ said, my people shall
know my name, And that day they're going to know it's I that speaks.
This thing of, I said this just the other day and I had to correct
myself. I made the statement of, I think the Lord's trying
to tell me something. No, He don't try. When He's telling
you something, you're going to know it because He's going to
speak in power. Alright, secondly, when the Lord calls, He commands
us to put on something. When He calls, He commands you
to put on something. There's two things a sinner needs.
There's two things we need to be saved. By the Lord's grace
and power, He puts these things on us. He's really the one that
puts these things on us. That's how we put on these things.
So He speaks in power and does this in us. But here's the two
things we need. We need to be sanctified within. We gotta be given a new man,
a new spirit, a new heart, so that we have life. A holy man
is born within. and we need to be justified before
the law of God, made righteous before God. We need those two
things. Well, Christ is the sanctification
within his people. He says here in verse one, awake,
awake. He says, put on thy strength,
O Zion. Now, get that. As soon as he
wakes his child up from the dead and gives you spiritual life,
the very next thing he says is, put on your strength. What's
your strength? It's Christ. He's your strength. He's the strength inside of us.
He's your strength. What does it mean? He's the life.
1 Corinthians 1 says, He is the power of God unto salvation. He's made unto us wisdom of God. He's made unto us wisdom of God.
He's made unto us of righteousness. He's made unto us holiness, sanctification. He's made unto us redemption.
He's made everything to us in our inner man and the strength
by whom we have strength to put Him on and look to Him and trust
Him that He has truly sanctified us by His death unto the cross. The only power we have to do
that, the strength we have to do that is Christ in you. Causing
you to look out of yourself to Him. To Him. When He says put on thy strength,
when He commands it, you're gonna look to Christ. You're going
to look to Christ. That's what true sanctification
is. Looking away from you to Him. That's right. That's the
only way you're going to follow Him, obey Him, do anything He
says, is trust Him. He is everything you need. All
right? I want to give you some scripture
on that. Go over into Isaiah 27. Isaiah 27. Verse 2. Christ is God's strength for
us. He's the one who made peace with
God for his people. Look here in verse two. In that
day, and when you read that, always hear it first of all meaning
in the day he calls you by his grace, in the day he speaks to
you, whether it's the first day he spoke to you or it's the day
you're in affliction or it's the last day he speaks to you,
he calls you home. But in that day, listen, sing
ye unto her a vineyard of red wine. I, the Lord, do keep it. That's what he calls his people,
his church, a vineyard of red wine. I, the Lord, do keep it.
I will water it every moment, lest any hurt it. I will keep
it night and day. Fury's not in me. Now look, who
would set the briars and thorns against me in battle? That's
one thing men will do. They set up their wall. You know,
in Africa, they put up a wall of thorns and briars to keep
the lions from coming in. And he said, who's going to do
that to me? I would go through them. I would burn them together.
He said, or, here's what he gives your heart to do. Instead of
fighting God, he says, or let him, the believer, let him take
hold of my strength. That's Christ. And he, Christ,
that he, Christ, that, I'm sorry, that he, the believer, may make
peace for me, and he, Christ, shall make peace with me. Christ
is my strength. You take hold of him, Christ
makes peace with me for my people. And you'll make peace with me
if you trust Christ. That's what we saw. That's the
whole message we saw Thursday night from Colossians 1, 20.
He has made peace through the blood of his cross. He's reconciled
all his people to God. God said, he's my strength. You wanna have peace with me?
You lay hold of him. And that's, how you gonna do
that? Christ comes to you in the day of his power and says,
Put on your strength. Put me on. Trust me. Look to
me. Look, what's gonna be the result?
Verse six, Isaiah 27, six. He, Christ our strength, shall
cause them that come of Jacob to take root, and Israel shall
blossom and bud and fill the face of the world with fruit.
That's all of Christ. Every bit of that. Here's another
example. Remember the man with the withered
hand? This man's hand been withered. all his life, he couldn't use
it at all. Christ came to him and Christ said, stretch forth
thine hand. What did he do? Stretched it
forth. When Christ commands you, you're
going to do what he commands. That's the only way you're going
to do what he commands. He has to speak affectionately
and powerfully. If we could do anything the Lord commands on
our own, you know what we'd do? We'd pat ourselves on the back,
say, look what I did. Look what I did. What hast thou
that thou didst not receive? What do you have that wasn't
given to you from above? That's Scripture. And if you
received it from God, why boast as if you didn't receive it?
That's what he said in 1 Corinthians. He said, so that no flesh or
glory in his presence. Of God are you in Christ? Of
God is Christ made unto you wisdom and righteousness and sanctification
and redemption. so that he that glories, glories
only in the Lord. This is the difference in this
true religion, I'm saying, and false religion. In true religion,
there's only one getting the glory and the praise and the
honor. That's our triune God in Christ. He gets all the glory. You know what we preach? Here's
our message. Salvation is of the Lord. That's our message. I heard preachers like to quote
preachers. I heard Brother Paul quote Brother
David Evanston, and I'm gonna quote Paul quoting David. Here's
what he said. David said, salvation is of the
Lord. He said, you know what comes
after that? A period. A period. That's in the story. That's our message. I can do
all things through Christ who strengthened me. Second thing,
we need justification. We need to be made holy so we
trust Christ. And we need to be, when we're
made to trust Him, we need to believe He's all our righteousness,
all our justification before God. All right, look at Isaiah
52.1, after He tells you, put on your strength, this is what
He says, put on thy beautiful garments over Jerusalem, the
holy city. See, you've already been made
holy when He's done that, because He told you, put on your strength.
So you're holy now, you're the holy city. He's made you holy
inside. Next thing he says, now, put
on thy beautiful garments. Christ commands us, believe on
Christ. That's what he's saying. Believe
on Christ. Trust he is our righteousness. He is our righteousness. His
righteousness is our beautiful garment. That's what Isaiah said.
He said, he's robed me in the righteousness, in the garment
of righteousness. He's made me like a bride decked
out for her husband. That's what he's done. He did
it, he did it. Now, when he's, what does it
mean to trust Christ as your righteousness? You know Romans 10, Romans 10
tells us, Paul said, I bear record, he said, my kinsmen according
to the flesh, these Israelites, he said, they're going about
to establish their own righteousness. They're trying to keep the law
and they think they're doing it. They're trying to establish
their own righteousness. He said, and they're ignorant of the righteousness
of God. He said, for Christ is. He is
the righteousness of God. He is. That was the whole purpose
of God giving the law was to show me and you our sin. But
when you read the law, you see how holy and wide and broad it
is and how you and I, even the thoughts of our heart are sinful.
Then you see, when you look to Christ and He shows you Christ,
you see the perfect the perfect man who represented his people.
He's the one who, his heart was holy, and he did everything in
perfect obedience to God. I do always those things that
please the Father, he said. Then he goes to the cross because
he's the, he proved himself to be the holy spotless lamb. He
proved himself to be the one pictured in all those spotless
lambs that God said to be sacrificed. He's the fulfillment of that.
He came forth, proved himself spotless, under the law, perfect. So he's the only holy man. Adam was created upright, but
he sinned. Every man after that has been
a sinner. Christ is the only other man who started his life
out completely holy from the womb. And he came forth and fulfilled,
I mean, was perfect before the law. And then he goes to God,
presents himself, and God Scripture says, he hath made him sin for
us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. Romans 5 says, by one man's obedience,
many shall be made righteous. Christ is that one. He is the
righteousness of his people. He robes us in his beautiful
garments. He puts his beautiful garments
on us. I meant to write down that verse
where Isaiah said he's robed me. I thought it was Isaiah 61. Yeah,
Isaiah 61. Let's go to verse 10. I will
greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my
God, for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation. He
hath covered me with the robe of righteousness. As a bride
groomed, decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth
herself with her jewels. That's what he's done. He robed
me. And when he says, put on your
beautiful garments, he's saying, believe me, I'm your righteousness. I'm your righteousness. And when
he's worked this, this two-fold work, when he's made you see
he's your strength, your holiness, and he's made you see he's your
beautiful garments, your righteousness, he does that because he has circumcised
you in the heart. That's what circumcision pictured,
physical circumcision, pictured what Christ did on the cross.
He put away the filth of our flesh on the cross, and then
he comes and circumcises you in the heart, gives you a new
heart, puts away, he didn't put it away, but he gives you a heart
to believe despite your filthy, sinful flesh. And look, let me
show you that. Look at verse Isaiah 52, I'm
getting ahead of myself. He says, from henceforth, There
shall no more come unto thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. That's what he said. You see,
all those days of old, now every sinner ever saved was saved by
the Spirit of God making them be born again and Christ was
made their strength within, their sanctification, and He was made
their righteousness without. Everyone that was ever saved
has always been saved the same way. But there was a lot of people
that called themselves Israel, and that day, they weren't saved.
Well, on the day of Pentecost, when Christ had died and risen,
he poured out the spirit of God, and the whole world changed after
that. You have to look at the world and see, the world changed
after that. He saved a multitude on the day of Pentecost, and
then a few days later, saved another multitude of people,
and he's been saving his people all along. And so that's the
only way to be in his true church. Now I'm saying there's always
people that come into the church that don't believe the gospel.
Claim to but don't. But to really be in his true
church and in his kingdom is to be circumcised in the heart.
And what he's saying there is after I've saved my people and
justified my people and you saw him pour that spirit out on the
Day of Pentecost, since then the Lord has really done a work
far greater than what he did under the old covenant. That's
because he had been to the cross. That's what he meant, Isaiah
54, when he says, sing. That's when he started showing
he's got a people among Gentiles, not just among the Israelites.
He's got people all over this world. He's got some that are
kings, got some that are paupers, and all stages in between. And so he says, There's no more
coming into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. It's because
of what Christ did. Go with me to Colossians 2. Let
me show you. This is on the cross and in the
heart. Colossians 2.11. He's speaking here now. When
you read these epistles, you always go to the beginning and
see who's being spoken to. And you know we study in Colossians.
You know he's speaking to God's saints. That's who he's speaking
to in all the epistles. So that's who it applies to.
It applies to you in whom God's done this work. Look Colossians
2 11. He says this is it in whom in Christ also He just said in
Christ. You're complete. You're complete
in him Which is the head of all principality and power verse
11 in whom also you're circumcised With the circumcision made without
hands that means me and you didn't do it What happened in that work? Into putting off of the body
of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. He did
that on the cross, that's what he did. Buried with him in baptism,
that's what water baptism pictured, that baptism with which we were
baptized when he was immersed in judgment and then he went
into the grave and then he came out, look, and he said, And then
you are also risen with Him through the faith of the operation of
God. You rose when He rose, all His people did when He raised
Him from the dead. And then you, being dead in your
sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened
together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses. Look at Romans
2.28. One more place, Romans 2.28. Romans 2.28. He says, for he is not a Jew
which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is
outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew which is one inwardly.
Circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the
letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God. You see that?
What does the circumcision do? What does true Jews do? I don't
care where he is born, whether he was born a Gentile or born
a Jew in Israel, all God's people born in the Spirit are the true
Jews. That's what, they're the true Israel of God, the true
circumcision. What do they do? What's the traits
of them? Go to Philippians 3. What's the
traits of the true one that's been circumcised of God, born
of God, and made to trust Christ? Here it is, Philippians. Philippians
2, I'm sorry, Philippians 2. No, I'm sorry, Philippians 3. Here it is, verse 3. For we are
the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit, in the Spirit
that He's given you. We rejoice in Christ Jesus. We
give Him all the glory for everything. And we have no confidence in
the flesh. No confidence in anything we
do. Our confidence is Christ. Our rejoicing is Christ. So that's
what he means here by this work he's done. By this work he's
done. So then he tells you, thirdly, he doesn't only command you to
put on Christ, then he says, now you put off something. These
are the true commands they give you by which we live and have
life. Verse 2, Isaiah 52, 2, he says,
shake thyself from the dust, shake thyself from the dust,
You were nothing but dust. You were a perishing creature
of dust. He made you out of dust, and
you're going back to the dust because you sinned. And that's
all would have been of you and me if He had left us to ourselves.
And He says now, because I've created life in you, He said,
shake yourself from that dust. Don't be looking to your flesh
anymore. Shake yourself from that dust
anymore. All the works are accomplished by Christ. He finished the transgression. That's a regression we committed
in Adam. Christ finished it for His people.
He made an end of sins. He completely put away all the
sins of His people. He made reconciliation for iniquity
to God for His people. He made peace. He brought in
everlasting righteousness for us, and He's that righteousness.
He sealed up the vision in prophecy. He fulfilled all the law for
His people. And even the prophecy, like we're
reading right here, that says what He'll do for His people.
He does that. He fulfills all that for his
people. He's done all that. He anointed the most holy. He's
entered to the holiest of holies. We have an advocate with the
Father now. So he says, so shake yourself from the earthy things. All we were doing, Paul called
it the rudiments of the world, minding the things of the flesh.
You know what our religion consisted of? Here's what it consisted
of. Sinning in our flesh and trying to do something to fix
the sin and make up for the sin. And all that was just flesh,
just dust, that's all it was. Now you see Christ and what he's
accomplished. He says, shake yourself from
all that. Don't have any more confidence in your flesh. Then
he says to you, arise and sit down. You arose in Christ. What did Christ do when he arose?
He sat down. Why'd he sit down? You know,
there was no, when the high priest went into that Holy of Holies,
there was no chair in there, they couldn't sit down. You know
why? They'd never put away sin by
one of those sacrifices. The work was never finished.
When Christ entered the true holiest of holies, in God's presence,
you know what he did? He sat down at the right hand
of God. You know why? The works are finished. Isn't that good news? Oh, that's
all my salvation. And then he says this to you,
the devil can't bring you into bondage anymore. He can't accuse
you anymore. So he says, verse 2, Loose thyself
from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. Be done with
Egyptian religion. Be done with Assyrian religion.
Be done with Babylonian captivity. Be done with all that. The devil
can't accuse you anymore. That's all represented in false
religion. He can't accuse you anymore.
Then Christ declares, This didn't cost you anything. He did it
all. He paid all the price. Look,
verse three, for thus saith the Lord, you've sold yourselves
for nothing. You didn't get a thing for your
sin. We never get anything in return
for sin but death. Sold yourselves for naught. You
shall be redeemed without money. It was no price to you to be
redeemed. Why? Christ came. and poured
out His precious blood, and bought us from that captivity, bought
us from sin and death, bought us, purchased us, we're His purchased
possession. And He did it all. You know,
He talks here about Egyptian bondage, He talks about the Assyrians,
and He talks about the Babylonians. You know, in all three of those
deliverances, all three of them, Christ pictured Himself He worked
all that, and all of them he pitched himself. He's the Passover
lamb through which Israel was delivered out of Egypt. He used
Sennacherib, king of Assyria, to surround Hezekiah and bring
them down, and then when he got finished, he discarded king Sennacherib. Like you would discard an axe
after you chopped a tree. That's what he said. That's what
God said in Isaiah, through Isaiah. He used the devil, just like
that, to surround Christ on the cross with a host of his wicked
men, just like Sennacherib did Israel, and crucify our Savior. But it was God fulfilling his
purpose, and by that Christ put our sin away. And then in Babylon,
he sent King Cyrus, and he said, I'll send him and he'll work
my counsel. And he delivered them out. That put to Christ
our King who delivered us out. You know, we saw last Sunday
how the Lord created all things by Him and for Him, and He rules
all things. There's yet an example. He used
those whole nations. He used Egypt to take Israel
captive, the Syrians to come up against them, Babylonians
to take them captive, for the purpose of showing you pictures
of how Christ is the Savior of His people. Our God is a... Don't
worry about Trump, don't worry about Biden, don't worry about
Democrats, Republicans, or any king in any nation, Putin, Xi
Jinping. Our king's ruling it all. He's
ruling every bit of it, and his will's coming to pass, and he's
doing it for the good of his people and the glory of his holy
name. That's what he's doing. Now lastly,
verse six. And when he's worked this, he
said, therefore, my people shall know my name. Therefore, they
shall know in that day, I am he that does speak. Behold, it
is I. Have you heard him speak? If
you have, here's what you'll do. You'll treat your old man
of flesh like what it is, a dead thing. You'll see that your old
man, before the justice of God, before the Lord God, died on
Calvary's cross when Christ died in your place. That's when our
old man of sin died. The law has nothing else to say
to us. What does the law say to a dead man? When's the last
time you saw a police officer over here in his graveyard trying
to arrest somebody? The law don't have a thing to
say to a dead man. We died in Christ. The law has
nothing else to say to us. Now we're alive to God and you
can live to God, live to God, live to him. That's what you'll
do when you've heard his voice. You'll start living for him.
Because you want to, because you love him, because you want
to please him, because of everything he's done for you. Don't you
want to please your father? If you have a good father, you
want to please him. We want to please him. We're not doing it
to be righteous or holy. He's made us so. He saved us.
And all the while, here's what we're going to do. We're going
to rejoice in Christ his son who did all this for us. And
when you turn aside and you look back to your flesh and you sin
and you fall and you will because you still got this old man with
you. When you do that, you know what's going to happen? You know
what's going to save you from that? He's going to bring you right here
like this. He's going to hear the gospel preached, but you're
going to hear Christ speaking. And he's going to turn your heart
to him. And he's going to, it'll be like the first day saved you.
He'll renew you and you'll keep following him. He's going to
do that for his people all the way to the end. And the last
time he's going to call you is when he's going to say, come
on up here and abide with me for all eternity. That's what
he's going to do. And he won't lose anybody. Amen. All right. Brother Greg. M224 will be our closing M.