Back there now to Isaiah 57.
Isaiah 57. Verse 1 says, The righteous perisheth,
and no man layeth it to heart. And merciful men are taken away,
none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to
come. He shall enter into peace, They
shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness. Our subject this morning is Beholding
God, Take His Own. Beholding God, Take His Own. At 7.45 Friday morning, August
25th, I was with a believer as their spirit departed from their
body. When I arrived home late last
night, My mother sent a text thanking me for being there the
last few weeks, and she wrote this. She said, your father was
with you when you took your first breath, and you were with him
when he took his last. I didn't preach my father's funeral.
One, his pastor had given me the privilege of baptizing him,
and I thought, it would be good for his pastor
to have the privilege of preaching his funeral. And two, I thought
the best place for me to be at that time would be by my mother
to try to be of some comfort to her as we heard the gospel
preached. But I had, if I had preached
it, if I had preached my father's funeral, this would have been
the text and the message that I would have tried to have preached
will be something like what I'm going to try to preach to you
this morning. And if the Lord will bless this to our hearts,
I think it will be good to prepare our hearts to remember our Redeemer
at His table. When a child of God departs this
life, and I'm talking about one God has sanctified, when a child
of God departs this life, the comfort for us who remain is
God's description of his saints. This is how God describes his
saints right here. First of all, they are righteous. The righteous perisheth. When
he speaks of perishing there, he's talking about the body dying. Those that God the Father chose
in Christ before the foundation of the world were made righteous
by the Lord Jesus Christ laying down his life on the cross. Our
Lord Jesus did not attempt to make his people righteous. He
made his people the righteousness of God in him. The first Adam,
was made the head of all who would be born of him. He was
made the head of all who would be born of him. And all Adam's
children were in Adam. All of us were in Adam. We all
came from that one man and we were in him. And when Adam disobeyed
God, we all disobeyed God. That's how God declares it, and
that's how it is. When he sinned, all in him sinned. That's headship. That's Adam
being set up by God as the head of all those who would be born
of him. We didn't choose to accept what
Adam did to be made sinners. That's not how we were made sinners.
When we were born of Adam by our first birth, we were conceived
in our mother's womb as sinners. And because Adam made us sinners
by his disobedience, God imputed sin to us. That's how we were
made sinners. God ordained that. Before the
world was made, God ordained that. Why? Why did God set up
Adam as the head of his people? He did it so that, because Adam
was a figure, a picture of the last Adam, God's own son, the
Lord Jesus Christ. He was a picture, Adam was a
picture of Christ in headship. in headship. Listen to Romans
5.19. If you don't have time to turn
to these scriptures, I encourage you to jot them down and look
them up in your own time. But Romans 5.19 says, As by one
man's disobedience many were made sinners. That's the first
Adam. so by the obedience of one shall
many be made righteous. He said there earlier in Romans
5, Adam was a figure of Christ to come, and that's what he's
talking about. As by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many
be made righteous. The last Adam, the son of God,
Christ Jesus, was head of all who would be born of him. Ephesians
1 tells us clearly that before the foundation of the world,
God chose a people by His free grace in Christ and blessed us
with all spiritual blessings in Him. And that's who Christ
represented. and all shall be born of him.
He represented all those the Father entrusted to him. And
when the Son of God took flesh, like unto his brethren, when
he took flesh, all God's elect were in Christ Jesus. Just like
we were in Adam, all God's elect were in Christ. When the Lord
Jesus was holy in the womb, you see, we had to be holy in the
womb. And when our Lord Jesus was holy in the womb, all his
people were in Christ, holy in Christ. When our Lord Jesus Christ
came forth and obeyed God in perfect righteousness throughout
his life under the whole law of God, all his people were in
Christ and obeyed God in perfect righteousness. We did what our
head did. When the Lord Jesus was made
sin for us and suffered the justice of God in the room instead of
his people, the center in every one of God's people, the body
of sin, Romans 7 calls it, was destroyed. In other words, justice
was poured out on us when Christ bore that justice in place of
his people. And you see, justice, the soul
that sinneth must die, but only one time. When the criminal has
suffered the death penalty, the law has nothing else to say to
him. He's answered the full penalty of the law. He's died under the
law. And when Christ Jesus cried, it is finished, what he was declaring
is, it is finished. He declared he has satisfied
justice for his people. and that's what he accomplished
on the cross for all those he represented. Now when the Lord
arose from the grave and he sat down at God's right hand, every
one of God's elect arose from the grave and sat down at God's
right hand in Christ Jesus. This is what Ephesians 2, 6 tells
us. God hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly
places in Christ Jesus that in the ages to come he might show
the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through
Christ Jesus. That happened long before we
were even on the scene. Christ had accomplished that,
and He arose, and we arose in Him, so that in the appointed
hour, that God appointed, when God came and revealed the Gospel
to you, He would show you His grace and kindness toward you
in redeeming you in Christ Jesus. For God's elect, for everybody
Christ represented, before God, now get this, before God, Our
body of sin was destroyed in Christ crucified. We were judged
in Christ crucified. And now, before God, all that
remains is our new man made the righteousness of God in Christ
Jesus. He hath made him sin for us who
knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God
in him. I'm trying to declare to you
justice has been settled for everybody Christ represented.
It has been settled. He made his people the righteousness
of God in him. That's how righteous we have
to be, the righteousness of God. It's not enough just to compare
ourselves to another sinner and say, well, I'm better than he
is. That's not enough. The very best person in this
world who may be righteous in men's eyes has come short of
the glory of God. God demands perfect righteousness,
and only his son is that perfect righteousness. And the same as
we didn't choose to be made sinners by Adam, we did not choose to
be made righteous by Christ. Now hear me. The same as we did,
we'd had no choice in the matter of being made sinners in Adam.
Adam sinned and we sinned in him. Then we were conceived of
Adam's corrupt seed so that we're sinners in our mother's womb.
And by the same token, God's elect didn't choose to be made
righteous by Christ. When born again of the Spirit
of God, and when you're born again of the Spirit of God, we
didn't choose to live. When you were born the first
time in your mother's womb, did you make a choice to live? No. You were conceived and you lived. And when we were born of the
Spirit of God, life was created within us, a new spirit was created
within us, and we lived. We lived. Christ became our life
within us and we lived. A new man was created within
us in Christ's righteousness and his true holiness. That's
what Paul said in Ephesians. And with that new spirit, when
he birthed you again, God gave us faith. Faith's not of us,
it's of the grace of God. If it was of us, we'd boast in
our faith. When you hear men boast of their faith, that's
not the faith God gives. God-given faith doesn't boast
in our faith. We know it was given to us of
God. But when he gave you that faith,
all your choices were gone. He made you behold Christ. We
saw things in Christ's light when he did that. Scripture says
that new man is created in Christ's holiness, and in that new man,
in our new spirit, when born of God, there's no guile, no
deceit anymore. Not in the new man. Now listen
to what that means. That means for the first time,
we owned ourselves to be the sinner. For the first time we
confess, sin is mixed with all that we do, so that we can't
come to God in our own righteousness. We can't come to God trusting
in our works. That's what we, when that new
spirit was created, so that we stopped lying to ourselves, and
we stopped lying to others, and pretending that we were not the
sinner we used to be. When there was no God, we confessed
for the first time, we are the sinner. and everything we do
has sin mixed with it. And because in that new birth,
there's no God in that new man, through that God-given faith,
we for the first time confess Christ alone is our righteousness. We saw him. We looked upon him. We saw we're the sinner, and
Christ alone is our righteousness. the new birth by the power of
that new birth because it took the power of the Spirit of God
to irresistibly quicken and call us to Christ and then since then
by our own weakness We've learned, brethren, that Christ is not
only our righteousness, He's the power. He's the power. He's our righteousness and the
power by which we're kept separated unto Him, kept looking to Him,
partaking of His holiness and His righteousness. Can't you
say that it's all of Him? Turn with me to Isaiah 45. This
will delight every believer's heart right here. Isaiah 45,
verse 24. This is the Lord speaking, and
He says, Now, in my Cambridge King James
translation, the margin has Christ speaking, saying, surely he shall
say of me, in the Lord is all righteousness and strength. I
like that. In the Lord is all righteousness
and strength. Remember Christ said to the apostles
on the night he was preparing to depart, he said, without me,
you can do nothing. He's all my righteousness and
all my strength. Christ said, that's what they'll
say when they come to me. Verse 24, he says, to Him shall
men come. All those God entrusted to the
Father, all those Christ redeemed, the Spirit of God shall draw
to Christ and He never stops drawing us to Christ. To Him
shall men come, to Christ Jesus. And so Christ says, surely he
shall say of me in the Lord is all righteousness and strength.
And all that are sensed against him shall be ashamed. Now, since
the day the Lord called us, since he called you to faith in Christ,
and you beheld Christ as your only righteousness, your only
holiness, our aim has been to walk in righteousness and holiness. That's the character of God's
saints. But brethren, beholding our sin, God has brought us to
say exactly what the Apostle Paul said. Go over to Philippians
3.8. Let's see what he said. Here's an eminent saint of our
Lord, one that is made holy by God, and here's what he said.
He gave that long pedigree of all the things he once trusted
in, and then down in verse 8 he says, Verse 7, he says, But what
things were gained to me? Those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do
count them but done, that I may win Christ and be found in him. not having mine own righteousness
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of
Christ, through Christ's obedience, through his faithfulness, the
righteousness which is of God by faith. That's where he keeps
you. I spent four days in the hospital
at my father's bedside, and in those four days I saw him in
total inability. He could not even open his eyes.
There was a machine keeping him breathing. And as I sat there
looking at that, I thought, that's what our sinful flesh has been
all along. Just that helpless. Our Lord
Jesus said, the flesh profits nothing. What you see in one of God's
saints dying, What you see there is the pinnacle of what our sin
nature is. That's the pinnacle of what it
will produce. Eventually, it will produce death. But God's description of His
saints is that we've been made righteous by the obedience of
the Lord Jesus Christ. That's our hope, and that's our
comfort for those saints who depart believing on the Lord
Jesus Christ. They're righteous in Christ. Now secondly, God not only describes
his saints as righteous, but as merciful. He said in Isaiah
57 1, the righteous perisheth, and he said there in the next
part, merciful men are taken away. They're merciful, they're
righteous, and they're merciful. They're godly. Knowing God has
delivered us by mercy, and knowing that he continues every day showing
us mercy, it makes his people merciful. It makes his people
merciful. But here's the thing about that.
We can't even put confidence in our being merciful, because
it's Christ Jesus the merciful who keeps you knowing his mercy,
and that's how you're kept being merciful. He does it by showing us new
mercies every day in the face of our sins. Every day he's withholding
from his people what we deserve. That's what mercy is. And he's
being gracious, giving us what we don't deserve every day of
this life. Brother Ravi preached that Christ
honoring message to you last Sunday on our Lord's parable
of the publican. That publican, it says, stood
afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven,
but smote upon his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. That's where God brought us in
the very first hour. That's where He brought you,
to see what you are, so that you smote upon your breast and
said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And because He's left
us in these bodies of death, and we see our sin, that's where
He's kept us every day since then, is crying unto God, God,
be merciful to me, a sinner. We behold Because of our sin
and our failures and our errors, we behold, we deserve none of
God's favor. And time and time again, we are
crying out like David did. David in Psalm 6-1. This is a
man after God's own heart. That's what God called David.
Listen to what David cried, O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger. You know what that meant? That
means he knew he needed rebuking. That means he knew he had turned
aside. That means he knew he had sinned.
But he prayed to God, Rebuke me not in thine anger, neither
chasten me in thine hot displeasure. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for
I am weak. O Lord, heal me, for my bones
are vexed, my soul is also sore vexed. Return, O Lord, deliver
my soul, O save me for Thy mercy's sake. Very often we're brought
to cry like he did after he'd sinned with Bathsheba. and then murdered her husband.
He cried out when he was brought to repentance and said, Have
mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according
to the multitude of thy tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. Whenever Job was afflicted, he said this, To him that is
afflicted, pity should be shewed from his friend. But he didn't
receive any. But Christ is that friend that
sticks closer than a brother. Our Lord Jesus looked for some
to take pity. When He suffered the cross, the
scripture says, I looked for some to take pity, but there
was none. And for comforters, but I found
none. That's Christ speaking in the psalm. And so being touched
with the feeling of our infirmities, he intercedes with the Father
for his mercy-begging people. He intercedes with the Father,
and the Father shows us mercy for the sake of Christ our righteousness. From the first hour to this day,
child of God, we've experienced God's faithfulness to his covenant
promise. This is what he promised, and
this is what we've experienced every day since he first called
us. He said, I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and
their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. And brethren, for that reason,
Every child of God confesses this. Every single child of God. I'm talking about those truly
made to see their sin. made to see that your very best
deeds have sin mixed with them. You hate sin, and you don't want
to sin, and you love righteousness, and you love holiness, but you
see what you are, and you see your very best deeds have sin
mixed with them. Not to mention just how your
thoughts can just go here and there and every vile thing, and
then there's deeds you do that you know it's just sin. And because
you keep experiencing God's mercy over and over and over, this
is what every one of God's children say, it is of the Lord's mercies
that we're not consumed, because His compassions fail not. That's why we're not consumed,
because the Lord's mercies never fail. His compassions never fail. And by Christ showing us mercies
continually every day, He makes His child merciful. He makes
his child merciful because we know we're being saved on a daily
basis by his never-ending, never-changing tender mercies, and that makes
you merciful. That makes you merciful. When
a believer departs this life, this is our comfort. God delights
in mercy. God delights in mercy. Now, thirdly,
back in Isaiah 57, When God's child departs, we have the comfort
of knowing this, God did it. God did it. In verse 1, merciful
men are taken away. He said the righteous is taken
away from the evil. It's God who takes his child
from this life. It's God who gave us life, it's
God who sustains our life, and it's God who takes away our life. It's God. God ordained the day,
the time, the place, the means that each of his saints shall
depart this world. Nothing that comes to pass in
this world is by accident. The true and living God is sovereign.
He rules all things. He works all things after the
counsel of his own will. In heaven and earth and all deep
places, if it's coming to pass, it's because it's the will of
God. He said, shall evil happen in a city and the Lord hath not
done it. The Lord doesn't do the evil, but He's ruling those
that do the evil. And He's only permitting evil
to come that's going to bring glory to His name and going to
be for the salvation of His people. But everything that's coming
to pass in this world is by the sovereign hand of our God. Who
else do you want it to be by? You want it to be by the devil?
You want it to be that God and the devil are in competition?
Or you want it to be that God is sovereign, ruling everything?
I trust the God who's ruling everything. That's my comfort.
There's no untimely death. God appointed the day. As I stood
there that Friday morning looking at my dad's lifeless body, this
was the thought I had. Seventy-five times, seventy-five
times, 7.45 a.m. on August 25th came and
went and nothing happened. 75 times in his life. A few of those times I picture
him anxious at 7.45 in the morning to get the work day over so he
could drive all the way from Camden, Arkansas down to Eldorado,
Arkansas to pick up that pretty Watson girl, take her out on
a date. And he never knew that at 745 on August the 25th, 2023,
his 76th year, that was the hour, the second God appointed to take
him home. For some of God's saints, the
day is at a young age. For some of God's saints, it's
middle age. For some, it's older. Some at
home, some in a hospital, some from disease, some of natural
causes, some at men's hands, some by some other means. But none of that matters. That's
not what matters. You know what matters? Dying
in faith, trusting the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what matters.
That's what matters. Listen to Revelation 20 verse
6. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection. You know what that is? That's
when he comes to you in the new birth and regenerates you and
gives you faith in Christ. That's the first resurrection.
Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection.
All such, the second death hath no power. But they shall be priests
of God and of Christ and shall reign with him for a thousand
years. A set time eternally they'll
reign with him. That's the only way we're righteous
and holy is to be brought to see Christ Jesus, our righteousness
and our holiness. And that second death, that is
when men die, the first death, the physical death, then's the
judgment. And if you're not found in Christ,
there's a second death. It's that death that lasts for
eternity, in hell, cast out in the outer darkness. But for those
that have part in the first resurrection, born again of God, brought to
trust Christ, that second death has no power upon them. Because
Christ already settled judgment for them. Death for the believer
is itself mercy from God. Look there. The righteous is
taken away from the evil. God takes the righteous, His
child, from the evil of our own bodies of death, the sin nature
we have. He takes us out of this body.
He takes us from the evil of wicked men. He takes us from
the evil of this world. He takes us from all the evil
to come. Turn with me over to 2 Corinthians
5. Child of God, how many times
have you grown within yourself to be taken from the evil? Listen
to this, 2 Corinthians 5. Paul said, We know that if our
earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building
of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with
our house which is from heaven. If so be that being clothed,
we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle
do groan, being burdened. Burdened by our sin. Burdened
by the sins of this world. Burdened by the wickedness of
this world. Burdened. Burdened to be with Christ. not
for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality
might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for
the selfsame thing is God, who also has given us the earnest
of the Spirit." He's given you the Spirit of God as an earnest,
a foretaste to assure you you're going to enter into that heavenly
house that he's made. Therefore, we're always confident,
knowing that while we're at home in the body, we're absent from
the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by
sight. We're confident, I say, and willing
rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the
Lord. So many times you've grown to
be present with the Lord. And the day of death for God's
child is the day when we're delivered from the evil. That's a good
day. That's the best day for a believer. Besides being born of God and
brought to behold Christ is your all. Believe in this world. and going to be with Him. That's
the best day. That's the best day. Listen to what Revelation 7,
16 says concerning about being taken from the evil. They shall
hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun
light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb That's Christ Jesus. The Lamb in the midst of the
throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains
of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. Revelation 21 verse 4 says, There
shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall
there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away. You know what causes all those
things? Sin. And the former things are passed
away for God's sake that departs this life. We use the expression,
he passed away or she passed away. But God's child really
does not pass away. Those born of God really don't
pass away. For God's child, the former things
are passed away. All the sin and evil of this
world is passed away from God's child. Now, fourthly, I want
you to hear God declare what happens to His child when He
departs this life. What happens to God's child when
He departs this life? He said there in Isaiah 57 verse
2, He gives us three things. First, He says He shall enter
into peace. He shall enter into peace. I've
been trying to imagine what that's like. A brand new world of peace. With the God of peace, with the
Spirit of peace, with Christ the Prince of peace, with the
angels of peace, with the children of peace. A world where it's
all peace. To know God our Father and to
know His Son as He knows us. To know Him like He knows us. To know what everything in this
book means in perfection. John said in Revelation 21 3,
I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle
of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall
be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their
God. He said in verse 7, He that overcometh
shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall
be my son. You want to talk about peace?
To be with the God of peace. Peace. Peace. I don't even know how to really,
you know, we're like fish that's always lived in water. I mean,
they wouldn't know what it is to be out of water. And we've
always lived in this world of where there is not peace and
where there is sin and evil. And it's really all we know.
I'm talking about really entering into where there's perfect peace. I know this, there'll be a total
absence of pride and envy. Pride and envy keeps us from
serving one another perfectly. And not only that, pride and
envy keeps us from letting others serve us. We might let somebody
do so much for us, but then pride just won't let us let them do
more for us. Christ said this of His people.
Now you think about it. This is God, our Savior. This is the King of Glory, and
this is what He said. He said, They shall sit at My
table in My kingdom, and I will come forth and serve them. You remember when He said, He
asked us in this life, He said, Which is greater, He that sits
at meat, He that sits there, or he that serves. Well, we look
at it and say, well, the one that's sitting there being served,
that's the great one. Christ said, my people are going
to sit at my table in my kingdom, and I'll come forth and serve
them. That's a total absence of pride and envy. That's a total
absence of it. All that are there in glory will
delight to serve the other. We just read the scripture, in
honor preferring the other. In glory, everybody will prefer
the other's honor. And not only that, everyone will
delight to be served by another. I can't even get my little puny
mind around that. A total absence of pride and
envy. Nothing contrary to peace. Nothing
contrary to peace. No sin within, no temptation
without, no sorrow, no sighing, no sickness, no death, no strife,
only perfect peace with the Prince of Peace. You see why when our Lord was
suffering on the cross, He said, don't weep for me. Our weeping ought to be for ourselves
that are left behind, not for that departed saint that went
to be with our Lord. They've entered into perfect
peace. Verse 2, here's the second thing he said, they shall rest
in their beds. When he speaks of the righteous
perishing, Christ promised God's saints shall never perish. He
said those he redeemed shall never perish, nor shall any man
pluck them out of his hand. That's what he said. God's saints
never perish. He's talking about our bodies.
When our bodies die, they'll merely rest in their beds. Right now, my dad's body is resting
in its bed in a cemetery about three miles from his house. My grandfather's body rests nearby. And on my grandfather's gravestone,
there's just one word, waiting. That's what it said, waiting. Waiting for when Christ returns. According to the Scriptures,
when Christ returns, the dead in Christ shall rise first with
a brand new glorified body, and then those that remain will be
translated to meet Him in the air and will be with our Lord
forever. Then we'll be perfectly in body,
soul, and spirit. Perfect. But until then, what are God's
saints doing? What are they doing now? Verse
2, each one walking in his uprightness. When God's child takes his last
breath on this earth, immediately we're with the Lord in spirit. That's what he said, to be absent
from the body is to be present with the Lord. Immediately we're
with the Lord. Walking in the perfect uprightness
Christ has made us. Right now we try to walk in that
uprightness, but we just can't walk in it in perfection. We
have his perfect righteousness imputed to us. But because of
our sin nature, we can't walk in perfect uprightness. But in
that day, we will walk in perfect uprightness, in perfect righteousness,
and we will walk with the one who made us perfectly upright,
perfectly righteous, our Lord Jesus. John saw those whose robes
were washed white in the blood of the Lamb. And he said, they
are before the throne of God, and they serve him day and night
in his temple. And he that sitteth on the throne
shall dwell among them. Can you imagine being so perfect
that God, who requires absolute perfection, can walk along beside
you and you by him? as companions, as being in perfect
communion with one another, accepted because of Christ our righteousness.
Let me end with this. I want to give you a word to
heed. And here's the word to heed. Lay this to heart. What I'm telling you, lay this
to heart. You may be sitting here now and you may not agree
with what you're hearing. Well, I spent a lot of time preparing
this message. And so don't reject it just right
off the cuff. You go home and you study for
as long as I took getting this message from God. You go home
and ask God to give you a heart to understand and lay this to
heart. He says there, no man layeth
it to heart, none considers. I witnessed this this past week.
I witnessed this happen this past week. The same day that
we buried my father, my mother took her brother to the doctor.
He's diagnosed with colon cancer. He's lost well over 100 pounds. He's bleeding internally, and
he's going to die soon. There's just no way around that. He will die very soon. When he
was at the hospital, they gave him four or five, I don't know
how they measure it, but liters or pints or whatever of blood,
and still couldn't get him enough blood to where they could do
the surgery they needed to do. But by his own confession, and
I wouldn't say this if he didn't say it himself out of his own
mouth, By his own confession, he has no hope and he has no
interest in the gospel whatsoever. His own words to me were, when
I die, I'm going to bust hell wide open. My uncle saw my father die, and God gave my dad dying grace. I never heard him complain. I never heard him complain. When I was with him in those
four days, he couldn't speak. But they started easing him off
of the life support to see if his heart could pump on its own.
And as they eased him off of it, and they eased him off the
pain meds, he began to be able to speak. Never heard him complain. And he didn't complain then.
The only thing he asked me was, take me off life support. When
I called him that Sunday before I went down there, I got home
just in time to call him. They had already taken him to
the emergency room. And I talked to him. And I said,
how are you, Dad? He said, I'm 99% well, almost
100%. And a minute later, his heart
stopped. They coded, they got him back,
got it pumping, and they put him on life support. And I got
home, and I spent the next four days with him. And the only thing
I heard him say, he never complained, all he asked was, take me off
this. Within a day of putting my dad's
body in the ground, my uncle was taken for emergency surgery
to the very same ICU in Little Rock. And the whole time he cussed
God, he cussed the doctors, he cussed the nurses, and he checked
himself out of the hospital. All he had on was an old robe.
And we don't have any idea how he made it back home. Two and
a half hours. We don't know how he got home. He saw the righteous taken and
had no effect on it. Never laid it to heart. Jeremiah 12, 5 says, If thou
hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then
how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace wherein
thou trustest they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the
swelling of the Jordan? Will you lay this to heart? That's
the question. Will you lay this to heart? I
can tell you this, God will make His children lay this to heart.
God will make his children lay this down. Seek Christ while
he may be found. This is the day of grace. This
is the day of grace. Don't put confidence in your
flesh. If you'd have asked my daddy
to do one work whereby he could be saved while he was laying
there in that bed, he couldn't have lifted a finger. And that's
what you're capable of doing too right now in the prime of
your life, to please God, not one thing. We have to be found
in Christ's righteousness only. Cast all your care on Christ
and trust him alone. Jesus said to Martha, I am the
resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth
in me shall never die. He's life. Do you believe this? That's what he asked her. Believest
thou this? I believe him. He's my only hope. And I pray
he make you believe him. Revelation 7, 9, John said, I
beheld a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations,
and kindreds, and people, and tongues. They stood before the
throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and
palms in their hands. And they cried with a loud voice,
saying, Salvation to our God, which sitteth upon the throne,
and unto the Lamb. They praised God. They gave God
all the glory for salvation. And all the angels stood round
about the throne, and about the elders, and the four beasts,
and they fell before the throne on their faces and worshipped
God, saying, Amen, blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving,
and honor, and power, and might be unto our God forever and ever. Amen. That's what God's people
wanted. That's what we want to do in
perfection now. That's why we come here. We want
to praise Him alone now. But one day, we're going to get
to praise Him perfectly and give Him all the glory because it
all belongs to Him. Amen. Let's remember our Lord
at His table