All right, brethren, let's turn
to Psalm 130. When we're going through a book
together, I don't like to, when I go visit
somewhere, I don't like to preach ahead of where we are in the
book. But this past week, when I went
down to North Carolina, the message came so strongly that I did that. the back half of Psalm 130. I
had intended to look at it this week with us here and ended up
preaching on it Thursday. So I want to deal with this again.
I hope that you have heard the message down there that I preached,
and if not, I pray you do listen to it. I'm not going to preach
that message today. I am going to touch on the first
two points, but I'm going to deal on the third point. I didn't
get to the third point down there. And I'm going to deal with it
here today, and I'll just touch on the first two. Now you know,
you remember, Psalm 130 is one of God's saints in the depths.
He's crying to the Lord. It comes to verse 3, and he says,
If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall
stand? That's where the Lord brings
us over and over. When He first calls you, He shows
you your sin. And shows you if the Lord marked
iniquity, you could not stand. But here's what He also shows
you, but there is forgiveness for thee. He shows you that for
Christ's sake, because Christ bore the sin of His elect, And
He shows you, He bore your sin particularly. And He shows you
for His sake only, because He purged you of all your sin. God's
just. He's holy and He's just to be
merciful to you and forgive you of your sin. And that's how God
creates reverence in the heart. He said there's forgiveness with
thee that thou mayest be feared. He gives us a knowledge of the
Lord, how holy He is and how that holiness is manifest, it
shows you your total, thorough ruin in sin. And it shows you
that you see God's holiness and that God sent His Son, and only
by His Son is the law fulfilled for us. Only by His Son is our
sin put away. Only by His Son are we made righteous.
So that by His Son, God is just to be merciful to us and He forgives
you of all your sin. And that is how He creates a
reverence in our heart. But the scripture tells us the
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. He's going to keep
growing us in understanding of this, of how He's just to forgive
us for Christ's sake, how we're the sinner and how He is just
to forgive us for Christ's sake. And as He grows you in this understanding,
you grow more and more to see, I don't deserve anything from
the Lord. and you grow more and more to see it's all of His grace,
that He's just to forgive me and has forgiven me, and that's
going to grow you in reverence for Him. Grow you in reverence
for Him. Now, my subject today is going
to be reverence speaks the gospel. This is what reverence does.
Reverence uses the gospel of Christ, speaks the gospel of
Christ, and no other means or method. That's what reverence
for God does. Now, I preach these first two
things that reverence does. I preach these down in North
Carolina. This is what the fear of the Lord makes God's child
do. I'm going to touch on them this morning, but I encourage
you to go listen to that message. If you haven't, if you have,
listen again. God-given fear waits on the Lord. We're waiting
on Him to deliver. He said in verse 5, I wait for
the Lord, my soul doth wait. Verse 6, My soul waited for the
Lord more than they that watch for the morning. I say more than
they that watch for the morning. When He first called you, He
taught you salvation is all of the Lord. And you began waiting
for the Lord Jesus Christ to come and to bring you into glory
with Him. That's what faith is waiting
for ultimately. And through every trial, He's
taught you only the Lord can deliver you and only the Lord
can forgive you. And so in each of these trials,
He's grown you in reverence to wait for the Lord. When you enter
the trial, you wait for the Lord. While you're in it, you're waiting
for the Lord. When you come out, He's prepared you for the next
trial. And you're waiting for the Lord. When the trial comes,
you wait for the Lord. Now, notice here he says, my
soul waits for the Lord more than they that watch for the
morning. Natural man just wants, he's just watching for circumstances
to change. He's just watching for natural
light. That's what a natural man is looking for when he's
looking for something in his brethren and what he calls repentance. He's just looking for something
outward. That's all he's looking for. Something to change outward.
A natural man just wants to see circumstances change. He's watching
for the morning. It's dark. It's darkness. He's waiting for the light to
come. The circumstances to change. That's not what God's child is
watching for. We're watching for the Lord Himself. We're watching for the Lord Himself.
The natural man, judging by appearance, says, if things are good in my
circumstances, then all is well with me. That's not how God's
child feels. You've experienced this, that
you could still be in the dire circumstances around you, but
Christ said, my peace I give to you. Not like the world gives. I give my peace to you. It's
in the heart. It's by the light of Christ.
He's the light we're watching for. It's the Lord himself we're
watching for. In Song of Solomon, the bride
said, the voice of my beloved. She heard the voice of her beloved.
She was down, she was in the depths, and she said, the voice
of my beloved, behold, he cometh, leaping upon the mountains and
skipping upon the hill. That's who the Lord's people
are watching for, the Lord himself. Our prayer is, Lord, lift up
the light of thy countenance upon us. Thou, when he does that,
it's a spiritual It's a spiritual peace, it's a spiritual gladness
that this carnal world knows nothing about. He says, lift
up the light of thy countenance upon me, thou hast put gladness
in my heart. more than those in the time when
you increased men's natural corn and wine and gave them a good
crop. You increased joy in my heart
more than, men just are rejoicing in carnal blessings, carnal things. He's saying, by you giving me
that out of your countenance, you put joy in my heart more
than any of these carnal things men have. And this is what it
is. He said, I will both lay me down
in peace and sleep for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell safely. That's what He teaches you in
every deep He brings you into by forgiving your sin and keeping
you by His grace for Christ's sake. He teaches you He's the
only one saving you. He's the only one that's going
to make you dwell safely. That puts a reverence in your heart
to wait for the Lord. And then the next thing reverence
does As we wait, God-given fear hopes in the Lord's Word. He
said in verse 5, and in His Word do a hope. God's Word declares
to us that God the Father chose His people in Christ before the
world was made and blessed us with all blessings. It declares
that Christ, by His obedience, made us righteous. It declares
that God will not remember our sin anymore. Before His holy
law, He'll never condemn us. There's therefore now no condemnation
of them who are in Christ Jesus. And it declares to us that the
Spirit of God shall comfort our hearts and shall keep us and
will keep us looking to Christ. He'll continue to forgive us.
He'll keep this reverence in our heart. And He won't lose
us. He's going to bring His people to glory. And so, as we're waiting
for the Lord, we're hoping in His Word. That's what we're doing. We're hoping in His Word. Now,
ultimately, we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness.
by faith. We have God's Word that Christ
is coming. Now He's made us the righteousness
of God in Him. He's imputed the righteousness
of Christ to us through faith. But we're waiting because one
day He's coming and He's going to make us perfectly righteous
in body, soul, and spirit. But the psalmist is talking about
hoping in the Lord's Word when you're in the depths. or when
your brother's in the depths, or when your brother's aired,
or when the church is in trouble. He's talking about hoping in
the Lord's Word. Christ said, I'm with you always.
That's what His Word is to us. I'm with you always. He said
that to His people. He can't lie. And He put it in
His Word. He said, I'm with you always.
He said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. The Hebrew writer
said, that teaches us not to be covetous. He said, I'll never
leave you nor forsake you so that we don't have to fear what
man shall do to us. We don't fear man. We sanctify
the Lord. We consider Him higher and more
powerful and more all-knowing and more able to save than man
can hurt us. He promises, thus saith the Lord
that created thee, O Jacob, and that formed thee, O Israel, fear
not. Don't fear the troubles. Don't fear what this world fears.
Don't fear man. He said, because I have redeemed
thee. I've called thee by thy name, thou art mine. When you
pass through the waters, I will be with thee. That's his word
to us, and we hope in that word. He said these waters won't overflow
you, the fire won't burn you, because I am thy God, the Lord
thy God. I'm the Holy One of Israel, I'm
thy Savior, and that's the word we hope in. So when we're in
the depths, we're waiting and watching for the Lord Himself. And He'll show you by these depths,
He's the only one that can save you. He's the only one that can
save you. I mean right now today, He's
the only one that can save you. If it's temporal trouble, it's
certainly so with spiritual trouble. And of being just before God
and saved eternally by God, that's absolutely so. It's absolutely
so if any temporal trouble you're in, He's the only one that can
save you. We're waiting for the Lord. We're watching for the
Lord Himself. And He's going to save you by
the light of His countenance in your heart, giving you the
peace of knowing I've forgiven you and I'm keeping you and I'm
saving you. And that's going to grow you in understanding
of His grace to you and grow you in reverence for Him. And
as we're waiting, we're hoping in His Word. That's what we're
doing, we're hoping in His Word. Now, here's my message for today. And we're going to spend our
time on this next thing. I didn't get to this the other
day. True God-given reverence speaks the gospel to our brethren. When we're in the depths When
your brother's in the depths, when the Lord's church is in
the depths together, you speak the gospel. You speak the gospel
of Christ. The psalmist here, he's speaking
this to his brethren. Now, he said what reverence taught
him to do. Wait on the Lord. Hope in His
Word. Now, here's what else reverence
does. You speak to your brethren. And here's what he spoke to them.
Verse 7, Let Israel hope in the Lord. For with the Lord there
is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem
Israel from all his iniquities. First thing we see here, reverence
for God knows by experience. You know this by experience.
You know that the only way the Lord gave you life and faith
and saved you the first time he called you, the only way he
did that was through the preaching of the gospel. That's how he
did it. That's how he did it. He may have used a lot of other
things. Me and Brother Adam was talking about this the other
day. He could use a lot of things. But when he makes it come down
on you and you know the Lord has saved me, he's going to do
it through this gospel. Somebody's going to preach this
gospel to you. I know that's so because that's how he saved
everybody in the New Testament. In the Old Covenant, he spoke
in different ways. Hebrews 1 tells us that. But
in these last days, He's spoken by His Son. He's risen prophet,
priest, and king, and He's saving through the preaching of this
Word. And when you've experienced that power, and you understand
that, you're going to speak this Gospel to your brethren, because
you know this is the Word He's going to bless. This is how He's
going to save His people. Let Israel hope in the Lord. We're saved by hope. We're saved
by hope. It's called the helmet. And your
mind gets all twisted and contorted when you start looking at all
the waves and all the troubles and all the things. And it's
going to be the Lord bringing you to hope in Him. Hope in Him. He's given you a good hope through
grace. It's hope of eternal life which
God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began. God can't
lie. And He promised. He gave His
word. that He will save us. He gave
His word on that. We're justified by His grace
and we shall be made, we should be made heirs according to the
hope of eternal life. That's the hope of it. We've
been justified by His grace, by Christ. And that's the hope
of eternal life. When you're in the depths, it's
going to be the Lord. The Lord Himself, God our Father,
and His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. If you read this Psalm,
you'll notice it switches between capital L-O-R-D and small letter
L-O-R-D. Capital is Jehovah, the existing
one. That's the triune God. Little
L-O-R-D is the triune God manifest in Christ Jesus our Lord. It
means Master. It means the one we're trusting
to rule everything and save us. But it's going to be God, our
Father, and His Son Jesus Christ that's going to comfort you,
and console you, and keep you, and the way He's going to do
it, it's going to be by Christ. That's what Paul said. He said,
we're comforted in all our tribulation that we may be able to comfort
them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves
are comforted of God. And what is that comfort? He
said, as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation
aboundeth by Christ. He puts you in the deep, and
then He saves you, Christ saves you. He does it through this
gospel. applying it to your heart, making you hear it again like
it's the first time you ever heard it. And He does it so that
when your brother is in affliction, you don't use anything but this
Gospel. That's all you use. God saves
through the Gospel of Christ, teaching us that's how He saves,
so that you use the Gospel to speak to your brother. And that's
what reverence is going to do. If He saved you and put reverence
in your heart, you're not going to condemn the law, you're not
going to use some other means and some other method, you're
not going to water down the gospel, you're not going to do that.
Irreverence does that, not reverence. That's a total lack of fear of
God to do that. That's not what God's child is
going to do. When He's put reverence in your heart, you're going to
use this gospel. Because you're fearful of offending God more
than you are of offending man. We've been going over this for
over a year now in the preacher school these men were in this
class with in the Philippines. And I have gone over this over
and over and over again. I went over it again Saturday
morning. That's what the Lord taught Ezekiel.
You know, I won't have you turn there, but you remember in Ezekiel
37, this is what Israel was saying. They were in Babylonian captivity
and they were saying, all our hope is gone. Our hope is lost. And Ezekiel was pretty down too. And the Lord was teaching Ezekiel
to hope in the Lord. He dealt with his preacher first,
teaching him, you hope in the Lord and you wait for me and
you preach my word. And he dealt with him to teach
him this so he would go and teach the brethren, let Israel hope
in the Lord. He took them out of that valley of dry bones.
He said, Can these bones live? And his ego said, Lord, you know,
that's where we need to be brought. I don't know. I don't know what
God's going to do. I have no idea. But he knows.
And the Lord told him, you preach to these bones and you tell these
bones to live. You preach the gospel to them.
And he told them, he said, the message he told them to declare
is what the Lord is going to do. That's our message. We preach
the works of the Lord. We preach His person and His
works. He said, you preach and you tell them to live. And he
said, and I'll come and I'll make them live. And he said,
and when you preach it, he said, you pray to me to send the spirit
and I'll put life in them. And so, Ezekiel preaches that
word, and he's gotta wait on the Lord to work that. But he's
hoping in the Lord's word, the word just told him that's what
he'd do. So he's praying to the Lord to send the Spirit. And
the Lord said, when I've done it this way, he said, everybody
involved's gonna give me all the glory. That's the purpose.
That's what we saw this morning in our first message. And so,
you know what I'm convinced of? I think I've told you this before,
but I'm convinced that James' entire epistle is what the Lord
taught James when he erred in judgment and he told Paul to
use the law and come under the law and try to persuade his Jewish
brethren that he wasn't against the law. I'm persuaded the whole
epistle of James is what the Lord taught him that. He begins
with trial and he ends with if a brother has erred and you convert
him. And everything in between are
works of faith that you only do when you reverence the Lord. He began there with just what
our psalm says. He said, let patience have her
perfect work. When you're in the trial, and
your brother has sinned, and he's fallen, and it looks bad,
and it's just as bad as it can be, just like Israel said, there's
no hope for us now. He said, let patience have her
perfect work. What was James saying? Wait on
the Lord. And let Israel hope in the Lord. He said, don't use
anything but this gospel. He said, remember, you were begotten
again by the word of the Lord. You were born again of God by
the word of the Lord, with whom is no variables, neither shatter
of eternity. If He saved you this way, this is how He's going
to save the rest of His people. And He said, so be swift to hear,
slow to speak, slow to wrath. Receive the engrafted word that
you might be saved thereby. These are the works of faith
God works when He puts a true fear in your heart. He said,
keep yourself unspotted from the world. Don't use the world's
means and methods. Don't go run off and sin with
the world. He said, but you visit the orphans
and the widows. That's people that are utterly
helpless. That's what God's child is when
you're in the depths. You're utterly helpless. You're
utterly helpless all the time, but that's what you are especially
when you're in the depths. He said, you visit them with
the word of this gospel. He said, don't show respect to
persons. He's just using an outward rich
and poor as an example. But when a brother's fallen,
and he's sinned, and he's in trouble, and if you're judging
and having a respect to persons, you're going to treat him like
a man would treat a poor man that comes in an assembly in
comparison to a rich man that comes in an assembly. He said,
don't do that. Don't treat him different. Love
him as a brother. And he said, and if you know
that if you offend in one point, you're guilty of the whole law.
If God's shown you that if he marked your iniquities, there's
no way you could stand. If you know that, and you've
seen that he's forgiven you all your sin for Christ's sake, he
said, then here's what you're going to do. You know you're
going to be judged by the law of liberty, the gospel of Christ,
free forgiveness for Christ's sake, so you'll rejoice in mercy. rather than condemning and judging
your brother. He said, and the next thing is,
when you have this reverence in your heart, this is what God's
gonna make you do. Don't be many masters. Don't
try to climb up and be the master and Lord over another and make
Him do what you'd have Him to do. Our text says, He doesn't
say, Israel, hope in the Lord. He said, let Israel hope in the
Lord. He's saying, I beseech you, hope
in the Lord. This is grace. It's not law. And don't be a master. He said,
when men do that, He said, It's not a reverence for God. He said it's a devilish, sensual
spirit, a lust to have the preeminence, and all it results in is confusion
and strife. The whole house is turned into
confusion. Just point, point, point, point,
condemn, condemn, condemn, and it's confusion. No grace, no
speaking of Christ, no waiting on Christ, just confusion. That's
what the devil desires, confusion. And here's what reverence in
your heart does. This is what it is to use only the gospel.
You remember there's one lawgiver. He's able to save and destroy.
Only he can. And so you know he's the master
able to make his people stand. So you submit it to him and you
trust him. That's what we do when we preach
the gospel. We're waiting on the Lord to
save. And he said, and don't be self-willed. You know, he
used the illustration of people saying, well, we'll go here tomorrow
and we'll do this tomorrow. Your life's a vapor, you don't
know what you'll do tomorrow. He said, we ought to say, if
the Lord will. Well, the whole point of that,
in the context of the whole letter is teaching us, don't be self-willed
in this thing when a brother falls. You're not his master,
and he don't have to please you. You submit to the Lord and pray
to the Lord, Lord, your will be done. Whatever it is you're
willing to do, we submit to your will. We're waiting on you, Lord.
And he said, and you're going to have to be patient. He said,
remember Job? He used Job as an example. He
said, Job waited just like a farmer's waiting for the early rain and
the latter rain. Job waited, and what happened? God blessed
him, and his latter end was greater than his beginning. And he ends
that word, that epistle, and he says, when a brother is sick,
he said, let him call for the elders. And what are you doing? You're preaching this gospel
and you're praying that God will send the Holy Spirit and anoint
him with oil and renew him in the inner man. And he said, and
if he sinned, God will forgive him his sin. He'll forgive him
his sin. And he ended it and he said,
brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, that's the trial
you're dealing with. That's the depths. The brother's
brought into the depths and he's erred from the truth. And he
says, if any of you err from the truth and want to convert
him, let him know that he which converteth the sinner from the
error of his way shall save a soul from death and shall hide a multitude
of sin. You know what that multitude
of sins is? It's not just sins in your brother that's found.
It's sins you're going to commit if you have irreverence for God
and you do everything opposite of what James said in that epistle.
And what God's child does, it's been saved through the gospel,
it's been brought to the depths, it's been made to see our sin
and made to see His free forgiveness and had it brought to our hearts
through the preaching of this gospel, what we do is we preach
this word in reverence to God saying, let Israel hope in the
Lord. Let Israel hope in the Lord. Now secondly, what do we
declare as we preach this gospel? We declare the truth that God
saves by mercy. That's our message. God saves
by mercy. He said in verse 7, let Israel hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord there's mercy. When you're fresh out of the
depths, and you needed mercy, and you begged God for mercy,
and He was merciful to you, and He forgave you, that's going
to make you reverence the Lord more, so that all you want to
do is be merciful to anybody that's in need of mercy. You
want to tell them, hope in the Lord, with the Lord is mercy. You can tell them by experience,
fresh out of it, I'm telling you the Lord is merciful. He
saves by mercy. He only saves sinners. That's
all he saves is sinners. And therefore, he only saves
by mercy. Our Lord Jesus Christ looked
at these self-righteous, self-taught, self-holy, self-willed, self-serving
Pharisees and said, go and learn what this means. I will have
mercy and not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous
but sinners to repentance. Does that mean he just does that
in the beginning? No, you repent and you repent
and you repent and you repent. David is writing this psalm and
he's somebody who believed God and he's repenting again. He's
in the depths crying to God, praying for mercy and God forgave
him and showed him again his mercy. God, Christ Jesus, called
you, and you were a sinner when He called you, and He had mercy
on you, and He brought you to repentance. He's gonna keep calling
you, and keep saving you, and keep showing you mercy, and it's
gonna be Him that grants you repentance and faith, and keeps
converting you from error, and keeps you looking to Him. He
saves by mercy. When a brother sins, listen,
how come God was just to show you mercy? He was just to show
you mercy because Christ justified His people. Christ honored the
law, magnified it, justified us, put us in a way, and God
is just now. You have already died. All God's
elect have already died in Christ, been punished, been thoroughly
bore the sentence of death in Christ. So God's just to show
you mercy. Well, let me tell you what that
means. When your brother sins, You are just to show them mercy. Their sin's been dealt with.
You're just to show them mercy. That's absolutely so. For Christ's
sake, God delights to show mercy. He not only saves with mercy,
He's not only just to show mercy, He delights to show mercy. This
is our gospel. You know why He delights to show
mercy? He delights in His Son. He delights in His Son. He told
Judah, fear the Lord alone. And He told them, He said, your
strength is to wait on the Lord. He said, sanctify the Lord of
hosts. He said, don't fear what everybody
else is fearing. He told the children of Judah,
you fear the Lord. He will be your sanctuary. Your
strength is to wait on the Lord. Because He's the only strength
of His people. But they wouldn't. Well, if God's child that He
chose and at Christ's redeeming, He's regenerated, if you won't
wait on the Lord, and you're going to hook and bull and you're
going to try to make it happen, and you brought down to the depths
and you've made an utter mess of things, is He just going to
throw you out? No, you know what He's going
to do? He's going to show you mercy. But He's going to do it
by bringing you to the end of you. He's going to bring you
to see You can run, but you can't hide. You can try, but you're
not going to succeed. You can try to do it your way,
but you're going to end up doing it God's way. And He's going
to head you in. He's going to bring you down.
And He's going to do this. I'm telling you somebody He's
done it to. He's done it to me on many occasions. But He's going
to do this to His child. And here's why. He told them
in Isaiah 30.18, He said, you wouldn't wait. He said, therefore
the Lord will wait. You're going to wait until He
brings you to the end of yourself, that He may be gracious to you.
Therefore will He be exalted, that's why He's waiting, to show
you, I did it all, that He may have mercy on you. We think these
troubles and these trials and these deeps that we come into,
we think, oh, God's angry with us. God said, I'm doing it, that
I might have mercy on you. For the Lord's got a judgment.
He knows what's right and best for us. And blessed are all they
that wait for Him. The people shall dwell in Zion
at Jerusalem. Thou shalt weep no more." He's
going to wipe your tears away. You're going to be brought to
glory with Him. He said, and He's going to be very gracious
to thee at the voice of your cry. He's going to bring you
to cry just like the psalmist did. Lord, hear me. Please hear
my voice, Lord. If you marked iniquity, none
could stand. Lord, there's forgiveness with
thee that you may be freed. He's going to bring you to praise
Him, exalt Him for His free forgiveness and His mercy. And when He hears
that voice, He'll answer you then. When you're not trying
to do it yourself anymore and you're just trusting Him, He'll
have mercy. This is what we preach. This
is what we declare. I thought about it after I preached
down there in North Carolina. I didn't get to the third point,
but I thought, but everything I declared to them about the
first two points is the third point. I sat there and preached
the gospel to them. This is what you do. You wait
on the Lord. You hope in His Word. And here's why we do it.
Because He loves mercy. Let Israel hope in the Lord,
for with Him is mercy. Here's the third thing. Reverence
is going to preach this gospel declaring that He's plenteous
in redemption and shall redeem us from all our iniquities. Look
at verse 7. Let Israel hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord there's mercy and with Him is plenteous redemption
and He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Now hear
me on this right quick. I'm going to be brief, but I
want you to hear this. Now, you know, they are looking
forward to Christ coming in the sense that He shall redeem us
from all iniquities. Well, Christ has already come
and He has redeemed His elect, you and me sitting here, that
He's redeemed you from all your iniquities. In Him is plenty
of redemption. He paid the price of His own
blood. That's what redemption requires. You redeem something
when you buy it. And He paid the purchase price,
His blood, and He redeemed us. And He redeemed every single
elect child of God, and we're His purchased possession. He
redeemed us. He bought us. He delivered us.
And one day, we can say He shall redeem us from all our iniquities.
We can still say that right now today because one day, He's going
to redeem us out of this body of death and out of all of this
world of affliction. Romans 8.21 says that those that
He redeemed shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption
into the glorious liberty of the children of God. And so we
ourselves, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves,
grown within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the
redemption of our body. So He shall redeem us one day
in the glory. But now the psalmist is talking
about being in the depths. And all the iniquities that are
involved when you're in the depths, He's going to redeem you from
all your iniquities in every trial and every trouble. When
you've been in the depths and when He's made you see you couldn't
deliver yourself from your own sin, you couldn't free yourself
from your own sin, and He delivered you. and He redeemed you out
of the depths, you're going to know and you're going to tell
your brethren, with Him is plenteous redemption. And I'll tell you
this, you're going to need plenty. You're going to need plenty.
You're going to need to be redeemed, delivered, plenty. And with Him
is plenteous redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from
all his iniquities. The Lord Jesus did not have to
be forgiven to fear. He's holy from the womb. He came forth reverencing God
with a perfect reverence for God. But the Lord did pour out
the Spirit on Him and He grew Him in wisdom and understanding
and favor with men. And so when He went to that cross
and suffered, you know what He did? He waited on the Lord. He
suffered and He waited on the Lord. And the purpose for waiting
on the Lord was to give God all the glory that God would be exalted. Christ had power to deliver Himself
from the cross. When they said, if you be the
Christ, come down off the cross, deliver thyself, He could have
just like that and put every one of them on their behinds
again in the dust. He could have done that. But
you see His glory in serving God in perfection. He's the perfection
of our reverence, brethren, in His perfect reverence for God.
And you see it in that He would not deliver Himself out of it.
He bore it. Me and you can't boast of our
reverence and our waiting because I guarantee you when you're in
the trouble, it gets better. If you had the power to get out
of it, you'd get out of it, wouldn't you? He didn't. He didn't. He did that for his people. He
did that to glorify God. He did that to put it all in
his hands. Go to Isaiah 50. This is what
he teaches you and me. Listen to me. Some of you right
now are in the depths, and maybe you're upset with your brethren,
maybe you're upset with somebody in the church. Let me give you
a word, and I want you to get this now. Don't miss what I'm
about to say. If you're in that place, don't
miss what I'm about to say. God's going to have His way,
and you're going to submit to Him, and you're going to like
it, because He's going to make you rejoice that He forgives
you of all these sins that you're in right now. And you're going
to reverence him more for what he's done. You're going to look
back on it all and say, this was the best thing he could have
ever done for me. So while you're in it right now, when you want
to unload your tongue and say something negative about another
brother, don't burn bridges. You're going to cross them again.
And if they're your brethren, you're going to be reconciled
to them. Don't burn the bridges. Because a crow ain't fun to eat.
But if you have to, you're going to eat the beak to the feathers.
So don't do that. Don't speak and judge men and
condemn them. You don't know what God is working.
Trust Him. Fear Him. Wait on Him. There
is plenty of redemption with Him. He loves mercy and He is
going to show you mercy and save you by mercy. But look what Christ
teaches us. He learned everything through
the things He suffered, and He's teaching us only by the Gospel,
and here's what He teaches us. The Lord's given me the tongue
of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season
to him that's weary. He's the preeminent one preaching
this Gospel to us. He wakeneth morning by morning,
He wakeneth mine ear to hear us, to learn. The Lord hath opened
mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave
my back to the smiters, I gave it to them that plucked off their
hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting, for the Lord
God hath helped me. I won't be ashamed. I won't be
confounded for trusting Him. I've set my face like a flint,
therefore I know I shall not be ashamed. He's near that justifies
me. Who will contend with me? Let
us stand together. Who's my adversary? Let him come
near. Behold, the Lord God will help me. Who is he that shall
condemn me? All the enemies are going to
wax old as a garment and a moth will eat them up. But listen,
you trust the Lord to do that. That ain't your business. You
just look to Him. That's what He did. He committed
it to Him that judges righteously. So here's what He teaches you
and me through this Gospel. He's teaching you this. Hope
in the Lord. He's teaching you with Him is
mercy. He's teaching you with Him is
plenteous redemption. He is that redemption. Christ
is. He's teaching you now. He says, Who's among you that
feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of His servant, that
walketh in darkness and hath no light? Let him trust in the
name of the Lord, and stay upon his God. Hope in the Lord, Israel. Look here. Behold all ye that
kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks, and walk in
the light of your fire. And in the sparks that you have
kindled, this shall you have with my hand. You shall lie down
in sorrow. And if you're His, He's going
to make you experience that. You're going to lie down in sorrow
if you try to walk in your own spark. But He's going to bring
you to stay on the Lord and wait on Him. And He's going to save
you by His grace. You see, when you experience
that, and the more you experience it, and the more you experience
it through the Gospel, the more you know this Gospel is the only
way God saved. Paul said, I'm not ashamed of
the Gospel of Christ. For it is the power of God unto
salvation unto everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and
also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness
of God revealed. from faith to faith. The church
shall live by faith. He's going to say through this
gospel. And so reverence for Him uses no other means. We don't water it down. We just
preach Christ and we pray to Christ to bless it and we wait
on Him to bless it. Brethren, hope in the Lord. That's
the message, hope in the Lord. Reverence and speak this word
to one another. All right. Father, we thank You
for this Word. We pray You bless it, bless us
and keep us. Thank You for doing all this
for us through the depths and growing us in understanding and
reverence for You. We pray for our brethren, Lord,
that are suffering. Oh, it's so painful when You're
going through it, Lord, but You work all this for us. Lord, when you bring us to reverence
you more, it's all worth it. And it's a great act of mercy,
plenteous redemption. Lord, make your people wait on
you and trust you and hope in your word. We ask it in Christ's
name for his glory. Amen.