All right, brethren, let's turn
to Psalm 69. Psalm 69. What's the message that makes a sinner, a depraved sinner,
come to Christ and cast all his care on Christ and save in faith,
what is the message that does that in the first hour? It's
the message of Christ and Him crucified. It's the message that
declares that Christ has finished the work. What is it that makes
a babe in Christ who just starting out in the faith, what makes
them want to desire to honor God in the things that they do
in their life. It's hearing of Christ and Him
crucified, beholding His obedience unto the death of the cross by
which He made us perfect before God. That makes a child of God
want to be obedient to God. And that's not speculation. That's so. That's so. And what makes a child of God
hate his sin and his self-righteousness and be turned from it and abhor
himself and take vengeance on himself and take revenge on himself and cast it all on Christ? What
makes him do that? It's hearing about Christ who
bore all his sin so that God is faithful and just to be merciful
to him and to forgive him of all his iniquity. That's what
turns sinners from sin. What I'm saying to you is the
message is always Christ and Him crucified. That's the cure.
For everything and every problem we have, that's the cure. When
you get a call from your loved one and they're sick and they're
troubled and they don't know what to do, the best thing we
can do is remind them of what Christ has done for His people. When a brother's overtaken in
a thought and he's mourning over his sin, and he's
been brought to repentance over sin, the best thing we can do
to bring him to that point, and once he's been brought to that
point, he's declared to him, thy sin is forgiven. You're complete
in Christ. That's not like religion that
says, oh, that'll make a man just want to sin. No, it doesn't.
Not a believer. The Spirit of God takes that
message and applies it and makes us behold Christ crucified for
us particularly. That makes you want to honor
God. That makes you see you fail to
honor God. That makes you see sin in everything
you do. I know we see the sin in the
big sins. But do we see the big sins in
every one of our little sins? Because they're all big sin before
God. So tonight I'll try to preach
this. Brother Henry used to say, read your text, then skedaddle
to Christ. And in Psalm 69, we don't have
to skedaddle very far, because this is a holy psalm, and it's
all Christ speaking. David was used to pen this, but
this is Christ speaking. This is the faith and love of
Christ we see here. Now the believers that are born
of God walk by faith in Christ. That's how we walk. We're constrained
by the love of Christ. And faith which worketh by love
is our rule of life. Now this phrase, as does this
whole psalm that I'm gonna show you here, this phrase sets forth
Christ's faith and Christ's love for his people by which we're
saved and by which he glorified God. Now here it is, we see his
faith right here in this verse, in verse one, in this phrase
in verse one, and this is one of the most amazing cries ever
uttered in this earth. It's one of the most amazing
things ever cried out in this earth. Verse one, save me, oh
God. Now I say that's one of the most
because Psalm 22 one is another. Martin Luther read Christ cry
out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And he studied
it and studied it and studied it and threw his hands up and
said, God forsaking God, who can understand it? Well, this
phrase is just as amazing. God crying out to God, save me. That's what this is. This is
God crying out to God, Save me. Christ Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth,
that man crucified over 2,000 years ago, that man that's now
seated in his throne of honor in heavenly Jerusalem, is God. He's God in human flesh. In Hebrews
1.8, it says, unto the Son, God saith, thy throne, O God, is
forever. You get that? Unto the Son of
God, God said, thy throne, O God, is forever. A scepter of righteousness
is a scepter of thy kingdom. Our text is God crying, save
me, O God. This one who's all God and all
man, like his brethren, He's crying this while He's bearing
the weight of all the sin of all His people, bearing the curse
and wrath of God. The furnace of affliction has
been heated seven times. Any one of us sinners would have
under a far less weight, we would have already cried out in sin
and murmuring against God. This is him in the midst of bearing
the most unimaginable weight of sin and guilt and condemnation
and wrath from God, and he cries out in perfect faith, save me,
oh God. That's our salvation right there.
That's our salvation. If somebody asks you, what do
you believe? You can say it. All my hope is that Christ in
my room instead cried out perfectly to God and said, save me, oh
God. That's righteousness. That's
faith. That's holiness. That's obedience. That's all my salvation. He did
that for me. I've never cried that out in
perfect faith. I've never cried that out without
it being mixed with more unbelief than faith. He cried that out
in perfect faith at a time when he was tested and tried so much,
so unbelievably much. Now behold His faithfulness in
the midst of bearing sin and judgment. Verse 3. Here's His
faithfulness now. He's bearing sin and He's bearing
judgment. Now listen to this. He said,
I'm weary of my crying. My throat is dried, mine eyes
fail while I wait for my God. You see there, he's waiting for
God. This is faith, he's waiting for
God. Verse 13, as for me, my prayer
is unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time. O God, in the multitude
of thy mercy, hear me in the truth of thy salvation. Our Lord
in perfect faith was content to suffer. He was content to suffer. Why? God gave it to him. Lord
teach me to learn that, I gotta learn that. To just live with
it. He suffered. He was content to
suffer. content to suffer under his Father's
hand, content to suffer the cruel cross, content to suffer until
mercy and truth met in harmony. He said, in an acceptable time. He said, in the multitude of
thy mercy hear me, and in the truth of thy salvation hear me.
But don't hear me until that acceptable time when mercy and
truth are met together in harmony. When justice is satisfied and
my people's sin is put away and your law is honored, so that
you can be merciful to your people without offending your justice. In that acceptable time, Father,
hear me. That's faith. Waiting on God. That's faith. We can't wait at
a stoplight. That's waiting on God. Faith
waits on God even when you're in sorrow. He said, I'm weary
of my crying. Faith's not natural sight either.
He said, my throat is dried, mine eyes fail. Faith's not natural
sight. Faith's not seeing what God is
doing and then go, oh, I believe Him. No, faith's believing He
gonna do what He said before you ever see Him do it. Faith is, I wait for my God. It's so hard for us to wait on
God, is it not? We're going to have to wait on
God. It's the hardest thing you have to do. The only time you'll
do it is when you get to the point where you realize, the
more I put my hand to it, the more I am messing it up. And
I'm messing it up for others. I have to close it, wait on God. Well, can't you do something?
Can't you say something? Can't you just have to wait on God? That's
what Christ had to do on the cross for us. That's how he saved
us. He waited on God. We gotta wait on God. We seek Christ's faith in waiting
for the Father to deliver him. Look here in verse 14. Deliver
me out of the mire. Let me not sink. Let me be delivered
from them that hate me. And out of the deep waters, let
not the water flood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow
me up. Let not the pit shut her mouth
upon me. Brethren, that's God speaking. but God has taken the form of
a servant and he's depending entirely upon the Father. And that's perfect fidelity.
That's perfect faith. This is the faith of Christ by
which we're justified and saved. Deliver me out of the mire. We're gonna look at that in just
a minute. Deliver me from those who hate
me, he said. Couldn't he have just delivered
himself and spoken, not in save me and you, he couldn't. He had
to wait on God and trust God to deliver him. While he suffered
their hatred, he had to do that and wait on God to deliver him.
Deliver me out of the deep waters of justice. Deliver me out of
the pit, the grave. You think about the faith involved
in dying and trusting that God's going to raise you from the dead.
Willfully being able to give up your spirit so that you don't
have any spirit in you and lay down your life and trust that
the Father's going to make good on his promise. Christ did that
perfectly. He did that perfectly. That's
why when we face death, the sting's gone and we have the victory
because He passed through the pit and out the pit. And He saved
us. And we don't have to worry about
that. We see God's faithfulness in that. We see that He's faithful
to His Word. He's gonna raise us because He
did. We've seen Him do it already.
And then Christ waited in perfect faith glorifying all the attributes
and blessings of God by which we're saved. You know, all the
attributes and the blessings and the glory of God is seen
in Christ and what he did for us, for his people, and we see
that. And as he's suffering here, he's
glorifying all those attributes, or at least some of them for
us here. Look here. The loving kindness of God. He
says, verse 16, Hear me, O Lord, for thy loving kindness is good. Isn't that just a sweet word? Loving kindness. He's glorifying that attribute
of God by waiting on God, trusting His loving kindness. God said,
in loving, He said, I'm God, I change not. He said, I've loved
you with an everlasting love. Therefore, you're not consumed,
but in loving kindness, I'm gonna draw you. We see that preeminently
in Christ, trusting the Father to save him in loving kindness.
We see God's tender mercies. He says, turn unto me according
to the multitude of thy tender mercies. Somebody will say, you know, yell out something, you
know, well, I'm going to hold from you what you deserve. I'm
not going to give it to you. I'm going to have mercy on you.
Uh-uh. God's mercies are tender mercies. It's tender. Do you know that? Do you know His tender mercies
in not giving you what you deserve every second? Tender mercies. That's what He does for me and
you, brethren. We don't deserve mercy. Hide not thy face from
thy servant, for I'm in trouble. Hear me speedily. Draw nigh unto
my soul and redeem it. What does that mean? Why would
Christ say redeem my soul? Look at the next word. Deliver
me. That's what he means. Deliver me because of my enemies. And then here we see him glorify
God's omniscience. And this is something we need
to remember in all our suffering. God knows. He knows. He knows your heart. He knows
the heart of your enemies. He knows. That's great confidence. That's great comfort in trouble. Look at this. Verse 19. Thou
hast known my reproach and my shame. and my dishonor. Mine adversaries are all before
thee. I pray one of these days we learn
this. We can't do anything, if we're
a child of God, we can't sin against God and God not chasing
us and correct us and bring us out of it and bring us back to
Christ's feet. Now that may take a while, and it may involve some
great sorrow and some great pain and suffering to do it, but God's
going to do it. And guess who's going to get
the glory? God only. God only. Nobody else is going
to. And if anybody else tries, we're
going to see that too. We may not get to it tonight,
but if anybody else tries to get the glory, they're not getting
the glory. God gets the glory for that. He alone can turn the
heart. He alone can really create repentance. You know what that is? That's
a radical change of heart and mind toward our sin as it is
before God. And only God can do that. God
can make you break out in weeping and tears right there where you
are right now just because He can make you see all of a sudden
you're a sinner by breathing. I'm a sinner by I just sin, just
sin. And he'd make you mourn over
that. Thou has known. He knows everything
about us and he knows everything about our enemies, brethren.
We don't have to fear. He knows. And Christ in faithfulness
magnified that omniscience by simply saying, Lord, you know.
You know. You know my enemies, you know
my reproach, you know my shame, you know my dishonor. You know,
Lord. He taught that to Peter, didn't
he? Lord, thou knowest. You know. Lord told Peter what
he's gonna do before he did it. Lord told Peter what the Lord
was gonna do before he did it. And then the Lord came and brought
it all to pass Peter's disobedience, then he brought to Peter and
did for Peter what he said he was going to do. I prayed for
you that your faith fail not. I'm going to restore you, Peter.
And what did Peter learn from that? Lord, you know. You know. In Christ's cry, every child
of God beholds right here, brethren. the author and finisher of our
faith. Save me, oh God. That's the author of our faith,
the beginning of it, all the way to the end of it. Right there
in that one phrase, save me, oh God. And he did this by himself. Look at verse 20. Reproach hath
broken my heart, I'm full of heaviness, I looked for some
to take pity. But there was none. I looked
for comforters, but I found none. You know what this statement
tells us? Number one, it tells us we're some cold-hearted sons
of Jacob's. That's what it tells us. Looking out for ourselves, that's
it. That don't make me very proud
of myself. It makes me ashamed of myself. But that also tells us He didn't
need our help. He did it without us. He tread
the winepress alone. He did it without us. He's a
man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. You know what he's
gonna make you and me? Men of sorrows acquainted with
grief. But in this we see the author and finisher of our faith.
We see our righteousness, we see our holiness, we see our
perfect spotless obedience, we see God's grace and mercy and
loving kindness and omniscience and everything about God. We see this in Christ on the
cross waiting in perfect faith crying, save me oh God. That's
the faith of Christ by which all God's people are saved. Paul
said, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the
law, but by the faith of Christ. Even we've believed in Jesus
Christ. That we might be justified by
the faith of Christ, not by the works of the law. For by the
works of the law shall no flesh be justified. There's the work,
there's the faith of Christ that our faith in Christ believes. this perfect waiting on God,
save me, oh God. And now secondly, we're not only
saved by the faith of Christ, we're saved by the love of Christ.
And this is that love that's gonna constrain us. There's the
faith we just saw that's gonna be the faith of our faith that's
gonna keep us looking to him. Here's the love of our love that's
gonna keep us constrained in our heart to try to love as he
loves. Now to see this and to remember
how he loves us, we need to remember what Genesis 6, 5 said. This
is what God saw about me and you, brethren. This is what he
saw about all sinners, but this is what he saw about his elect
too. God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually. That's you and that's me right
now as children of God in our flesh, in our sinful flesh. Your
thoughts are only evil continually and so are mine. Do we know that? He came to save chosen sinners
whose every imagination of the thoughts of our hearts were only
evil toward him continually. Would you save somebody like
that? Our fall came by one transgression,
but our justification came by a multitude of transgressions. He had to save us from a multitude
of transgressions. I think it was McShane that did
this, but I did it today while I was back there. If you just
take our sins of thought, meaning we sin every second of every
day, just our sins of thought, There's 86,400 seconds in a day.
That means we sin just in thought only, 86,400 times a day. Now,
take 365 days out of the year, that means we sin 31,536,000
sins of thought a year. Take a man that's 75 years old. That's 2,365,200,000 sins in
thought only. Not counting word and deed. Just thought. 2,365,200,000.
That's for one elect child alone, just in one aspect of our sin. That's a lot of sin. and knowing what we were, that
all that sin was against Him. Here's love. Hereby perceive
we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us. What was I upset about? What was that off look somebody
gave me that offended me? Why was I offended about that?
What was that great, tremendous sin you did, you sinned against
me that I got offended about? I got 2,365,200,000 of them at
least against God. And yet, He laid down His life for me. I'm not trying to justify my
sin, and I ain't trying to justify your sin. But there's only one way we can
love, and that's as He loved us. And He said if He loved us
by laying down His life for us, we ought to lay down our life
for one another. Here in His love, God, God, God
came down from the highest glory to the
lowest parts of the earth. There's our first problem usually.
We won't come down. While we can't forgive, we won't
come down. We're gonna take the high seat until God in his grace
makes us take the low seat. And he willingly put himself
under the law that his people broke, now listen, and lived
33 years under that law for us. Talk about love. Now imagine
this. Imagine denying ourselves this
much. This is love right here. He lived,
imagine going out into a stinking trash dump and living. That's what it was like for him
to come here. like you going out to a stinking trash dump.
And he did this, putting himself under the law, under the reproach
of sinners that opposed him at every turn. And for 33 and a
half years, he lived to perfect obedience for you and me, whose
every imagination of our thoughts was only evil continually against
him. Does that, that just, I'm serious
now, that melts my heart. Does the spirit grab your heart
when you hear that? Or is it just cold and dead and
lifeless as that pew you're sitting in? I hope not. This is something
God's gotta teach us in our heart. This is me, this is the multitude
of our sins, brethren, and he came and did this for us. That's
laying down your life. And He did it for the multitude
of His elect. Look back at verse 4. They that hate me without
a cause, that's me and you as well as every other sinner. They're
more than the hairs of mine head. How many enemies do you and I
have? Everybody He came in contact
with was an enemy with Him by nature. They're more than the
hairs of my head. They would destroy me, being
my enemies wrongfully. And we had no reason to be this
way against him. None. And he's doing this for
us. They're mighty. And then I restored
that which I took not away." We took everything away from
ourselves by our sin. We separated ourselves from God
by our sin. He restored that communion. We
lost a view of the glory of God because of our sin. He restored
that fear and that glory in our hearts for us so we could behold
God in His glory. He restored life in us, eternal
life which He took not away. He fulfilled the law that He
didn't break. He did all this for His people. Now look, in
order to restore us, He who knew no sin was made sin for us and
He endured the cross despising, despising the shame of our sin. Look here in verse two, Psalm
69, two. He says, I sink in deep mire
where there is no standing. I'm coming to deep waters where
the floods overflow me. A few years ago I mailed out
an article every day for a year. Brother Don told me that was
the hardest thing he'd ever tried to do and it was the hardest
thing I ever tried to do because you got your travel and your
regular work and all that. It was hard. But on one of those
articles I wrote out and I went through the scriptures and I
wrote it very vividly and very describing some gross pictures.
to describe our sin. And somebody told me, they said,
that's just too vivid, it's just too gross for people to read.
But I got every one of them from the scriptures. We just don't
get how vile and gross some of these words are, is what it is.
We gotta use cuss words and all that today to even mean anything
to us, and that don't really dawn on us. We're so accustomed
to it. But the word mire, let me give
you a description of what it was. In David's day, they'd dig
a hole out in the ground and just leave it open, and that's
where they'd throw prisoners. Dirt bottom. And they'd throw
multiple prisoners in there, and it rained in there, and it
filled up with water up to their knees, and they're walking around
in mud and human waste. That's the mire. I sink in deep
mire. I've never, I never loved like that. That's
how he loved us, brethren. That's what sin was to him. That's
how shameful it was to him. He found us on the dung heap.
All our very best deeds are minstrel rags, he said. We were babies
cast out, aborted in our own blood, left out in the field. Vivid descriptions of the foulness
of our sin. But He endured the cross, despising
the shame for sinners who only thought evil against Him continually.
Imagine if every city, your heart was open right now for everybody
to see. Every sin you ever committed
in darkness that nobody knew about and the ones you try to
don't think about and the ones that all of them, if they just
all of a sudden, all of them were right here and everybody
knew every one of them, that would be shameful. You'd be ashamed. I would too. That's nothing compared
to the shame Christ bore for His people. He's sinless. He's
innocent. And by taking our sin, that's
the shame He despised about our sin. And God did this to be just in
order to pour out wrath on Him. And look at this, while he bore
this shame, he wasn't concerned for himself, he was concerned
for us and what we would think of him. Look at this, verse 5,
O God, thou knowest my foolishness and my sins are not hid from
thee. That's Christ speaking. He owned
the sins of his people to be hid, they were made his. in order
for God to be just to pour out wrath on him. God won't punish
an innocent man, he's just. God made him bear our sins. He
didn't sin, but God made him bear our sin. And listen, he
confessed that, that you know my foolish, my sins are not hid
from thee. He's the only one that ever confessed
sin perfectly. We don't even do that perfectly.
He's our righteousness in doing that perfectly. And look at this. Let not them that wait on thee,
O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let not those that seek thee
be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel. He was worried about us. He was
concerned about us not being ashamed of Him. doing this glorious thing for
us because He was bearing our sin. Because naturally, we were. Naturally, we said, Oh, he's
smitten, stricken of God. He's getting what he deserved,
but he was being wounded for our transgressions. Look, verse 7, For thy sake I
have borne reproach. He's saying this to God the Father.
Shame hath covered my face. I've become a stranger to my
brethren. My brethren don't even know me
right now. Paul said to the Galatians, you'd
have plucked your eyes out for me. He's probably blind. You'd have plucked your eyes
out and given them to me. Now I've become your enemy. Think how he felt preaching grace
and mercy and receiving none. How was he
comforted? Christ became a stranger to his
brethren. He knows what that's like. He became an alien to his
mother's children because the zeal of your house has eaten
me up. The reproaches of God-hating
rebels that hated you, God, they've fallen on me, he said. When I
wept, when I chastened my soul with fasting, doing that for
his people. You know what we did? Judged
him. That was to my reproach, he said.
I made sackcloth my garment. This is a picture of somebody
repenting. This is a picture of somebody,
he had no sin to repent of, but he was mourning our sin, and
he made sackcloth his garment. He came in human flesh. And did we have mercy? Did we
be tender and loving since he was repentant? I became a proverb
to him. They that sit in the gate speak
against me. I was the song of the drunkards. That means when
we were in the shame of our sin, our Savior, you know, we're like
this. He's not like this. When He saw
us in our sin, He didn't stand aloof from us. He didn't disassociate
Himself from us. Can you hear that? Is that just
the preacher talking? God didn't disassociate Himself
from us when He saw us in the shame of our sin. He tells us
to love one another as He loved, and He's showing us, this is
how I love. When you were in the shame of your sin, I wasn't
worried about people seeing me as shameful. I wasn't worried
about associating with you and people casting reproach on me
and calling me a sinner. I wasn't ashamed of going to
the cross for you and bearing this in your room instead so
that every sinner in the world from then until now have always
looked at that and said, oh, he was just another man, casting
reproach on him. He wasn't ashamed to bear that
shame for us, brethren, to save us. He came to where we are. He took our sin. He bore the
shame of it. He bore the justice of it. You
know why? So we could walk away not condemned. Not condemned. Not only did He identify Himself
with His people and bear our shame and reproach, He interceded
for us while He did it. Verse 6, let not them that wait
on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let them
not be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel. I'm bearing
this reproach for you. What I'm trying to show you is
this is how our Savior loved. This is His faith and this is
how He loved. It wasn't a cold, Legal transaction
that took place on the cross. It was a feeling it was a it
was being touched with all the feeling of our sins and everything
they cause and all the shame of it so that Not only is it
how he bore away our sin brethren, but and how he justified us But
it's how he knows how to restore us when we're in the shame of
our sin It's how he knows how to to turn us from, and make
us see our sin as Meyer. Do you believe He's able to do
that? If He's done that for your brother, and your brother tells
you that, that He's done that for you, what are you going to
do to Him? Let me read you this, this right
here. This is a great love for His
people, to give us this warning and this instruction. I pray
He'll make us hear this. I pray He'll make us hear this.
Verse 21. They gave me also gall for my
meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Now listen,
Christ is praying this against those that put Him on the cross.
Let their snare Let their table, that is their religion, become
a snare before them, and that which should have been for their
welfare, let it be a trap. Let their eyes be darkened that
they see not, and make their loins continually shake. Pour
out indignation upon them. Let your wrathful anger take
hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate.
Let none dwell in their tents. Why did our Savior pray for that
against his enemies? Because here's what they did.
For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten. And they talk to
the grief of those whom thou hast wounded. Add iniquity unto their iniquity. He's saying that was iniquity,
what they did. Now add more to it. Let them
not come into thy righteousness. Let them be blotted out of the
book of the living and not be written with the righteous. What
is he talking about? Pious holy men did what God ordained
to be done. That was God using them to accomplish
His will in the crucifixion of His Son. That would have been
for their own welfare had they been willing to submit to Him.
But they weren't. But they did what He said to
do. But these men crucified Christ. Now listen to me. They were as
convinced as you are sitting where you are that you're doing
what you're doing for the glory of God. They were convinced they were
doing what they were doing for God's glory. Convinced they were right, convinced
Christ was a sinner, and so with wicked hands they slew the one
God sent to them for their own welfare. But they had it in their hearts,
not only to do what He ordained, but to go beyond what He ordained. To go beyond what He ordained,
to really take out more, put more on Him than what God ordained. Christ said, I mourned in sackcloth. And instead of that moving them,
they whipped me more. They had more wickedness in their
heart than what God was willing for them to pour out. He restrained
them from doing what they would have done, but they went beyond. Brethren, they persecute him
whom thou hast submitted. The only one that's gonna get
the glory for chastening his children and correcting his children
is God. Now, he may use our brethren
to do that to us, And that's loving when he does, when he's
humbled us to do that. And when a brother's brought
to repentance by God, if I'm going to insist that more
be put on him, then I'm persecuting him whom
God has smitten. I'm talking to the grief of those
that God has wounded. Let me give you an illustration.
You can read all of this tonight at your leisure, but Isaiah 10,
11. God sent Assyria to chasten the Israelites. And the king
of Assyria said, shall I not, as I've done unto Samaria and
her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols? See, he had his
stout heart, his wicked heart. He thought he just had free reign
to just go and kill everybody. Wherefore it shall come to pass,
God said, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work
upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I'll punish the fruit of the
stout heart of the king of Assyria and the glory of his high looks. He said, By the strength of my
hand have I done it, by my wisdom, for I'm prudent, I've removed
the bounds of the people, I've robbed their treasures, I've
put down the inhabitants like a valiant man. God said, Is the
axe going to boast itself against him that used it? See, it's good
to love and to bear one another's burdens. It's good to love each
other and to rebuke tempered with mercy. But what's the purpose of that?
Is it to slay? Is it to kill? Is it to divide? Or is it to build up? If it's anything but to build
up, you've never heard that from me. Not a time. Because I've
never said that, I've never preached that. It's to save, it's to build
up. But we go beyond that, God will, He'll chasten His child
that sinned and rebelled And he'll use a brother to do it,
to talk to him and chasten him. And God will begin to grant that
brother to see how awful his sin is and to hate it and mourn
it. But if I'm the one God's using
to rebuke this brother and I begin to get a little too full of myself
and to be a little condescending and a little disrespectful and
I'm going to insist that more be done upon him than just that
repentance God's granted him. Now, God's going to chase me. The one he used because I've
gone too far like the king of Assyria. Rather than destroy
me, he's going to chase me. He's going to break my heart. And when he's broken my heart,
Just like he's broken the heart of that brother who sinned. We
can come together and we can say, I'm so sorry. I hurt you. And me who had to do the rebuke
can say, I'm so sorry. I went too far. I trust God. He's dealt with you. And the
other ones say, I trust God. He's dealt with you. When you have two worms who God
has dealt with, there will be unity and mercy and forgiveness.
That's so in every relationship. That's the only way there's going
to be unity, as long as one's still judging and condemning And we're always right when we
judge and condemn. As far as what we're judging
and condemning, the problem is we don't see the half of it.
We don't know the half of that brother we're condemning. We
only saw just one little thing. We hadn't seen everything there
is to see. You believe that about yourself. But when God brings his people
down, It makes you mourn what you are. Whether it's the sin of self-righteousness
or the sin of sin. Whether it's falling into sin
and having to be rebuked or whether I'm seeing that speck in my brother's
eye while I've got a huge beam in my own eye. Either way, both
of them have to be broken. Then there can be peace. That's
the love we're with Christ. Herein is the love of God. He
laid down His life for us. Brethren, we ought to lay down
our lives for one another. There wouldn't be any disruption. There wouldn't be any trouble.
There wouldn't be any division in this world if we all loved
one another like Christ loved us. I'm not saying I've done
that. I haven't. see that and I hate
that. If I can ever get the chance
to do that, I'm going to love like Christ loved me. That's
how I want to love. God has to teach us this. There's always hope that he's
going to teach his brethren this, his people this. That's the love where with Christ
love does. If we love this way, there'd never be any problems.
And one day, we're gonna forget everything that ever made us
rise up and stiffen up our necks, and we're gonna bow at Christ's
feet around his throne, and we're gonna love that way, perfectly. I pray God will bless that. Brother
Art.