Alright brethren, let's go back
now to Psalm 65. Now we saw that verse 1 told
us that, Praise waiteth for thee, O God,
in Zion, and unto thee shall the vow be performed. All God's
people are going to be brought into His church to give God all
the glory and all the praise. And the way that vow shall be
performed is because Christ performs His vow to the Father. And that's
His vow to bring us to give Him all the praise and glory. We
saw in this psalm that it's because all of salvation is by Christ. Verse 4 said, Blessed is the
man whom thou choosest and causes to approach unto thee, that he
may dwell in thy courts. We shall be satisfied with the
goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple. Then we saw
how he sets his people immovably on Christ and protects us from
all our enemies. Says verse 5, By terrible things
in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation. who are the confidence of all
the ends of the earth, and of them that are far off upon the
sea, which by his strength set as fast the mountains, being
girded with power, which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise
of their waves, and the tumult of the people. That's what he
does for his people. He sets us immovably on Christ,
and he stills the waves of our enemies, and causes them to cease,
protects us. And tonight we see here in verse
8, the second part, Thou makest the outgoings of the morning
and evening to rejoice. When I raised a garden, I would
walk through it every morning, every evening with a garden hose
and I would water that garden. God does that in the whole earth. God does that in all of His creation. So He makes the outgoing of the
morning and the evening to rejoice. From east to west, from the rising
of the sun to the going down thereof, the morning arrives
with songs of rejoicing and praise to God in creation. And it ends the same way in the
evening. And God does that. I was standing
out here by the creek this week when I was working on this message.
And I just looked around and I thought how everything's just
so lush and so green since spring has come. God did that. God watered his garden and he
did that. He brings that forth. Look here
at the words, Thou, verse 9, Thou visitest the earth and waterest
it. Thou greatly enrichest it with
the river of God, which is full of water. Thou preparest them
corn when Thou hast so provided for it. Thou waterest the ridges
thereof abundantly. Thou settlest the furrows thereof. Thou makest it soft with showers. Thou blessest the springing thereof. Thou crownest the year with Thy
goodness, and Thy paths drop fatness. God does this. God does
this. God promises, and you should
always regard God's promise and not the words of men. God promises
that as long as He sustains this world, there will be perpetual
seasons, one after another. and He'll never let it stop.
Remember, Scripture says all things were created by Him and
for Him. Why did He create the seasons
like that? It illustrates His everlasting covenant of grace. He said in Jeremiah 33 verse
20, Thus saith the Lord, If you can break my covenant with day,
and my covenant of the night, that there should not be day
and night in their season. He says, then may also my covenant
be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son.
That's Christ Jesus. and he'll reign upon his throne. And then if you can break the
covenant of day and night, then my covenant with the Levites,
the priests, my minister shall be broken." That's his elect.
That's you and me who he chose and who he saved by grace. So
he made the seasons and holds them in store to show us his
everlasting covenant can never be broken with Christ and with
his people. I want you to get this from the
message tonight, the continual provision of God that He gives
in nature. It illustrates how God is our
husbandman who sends His gospel like the rain and causes His
people to be born just like the tender plants in a garden. And
He continues to send the rain of His word and the rain of His
grace and He continually blesses His people and grows us. And
He'll never stop doing that as long as He holds this creation
in place. Our message tonight is our husbandman
and his garden. Now, we're not unnecessarily
spiritualizing the Scriptures. The Scriptures often speak of
to His people, God speaks to His people as the earth. He said
in Jeremiah 22, 29, Oh, earth, earth, earth, hear the word of
the Lord. Well, the earth doesn't have
ears to hear, but he's talking to his people there. And so we're
not just overly spiritualizing this. This scripture is meant
to teach us something about God's grace in salvation. And he uses
the natural world to illustrate it. First of all, our salvation
begins with God visiting us and watering us. That's how it begins. Look at verse 9. It says, Thou
visitest the earth and waterest it. Thou greatly enrichest it
with the river of God which is full of water. The earth was
cursed in the fall. It was cursed in the fall. The
earth is unable to bring forth food for you and me unless God
brings it forth. Do you realize that? This earth
would not bring any food for you and me if God didn't bless
it and water it. I can show you that. Look at
Psalm 104 and look at verse 13. 104 verse 13. Speaking of God, it says, Psalm
104.13, He watereth the hills from His chambers. The earth
is satisfied with the fruit of Thy works. He causeth the grass
to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man, that
He may bring forth food out of the earth. If it wasn't for God,
we wouldn't have any food in this earth. God's the one that
does it. He's the one that does it. In
eastern dry climates, where the Lord's people were during the
days of the Old Testament, the earth is dry and cracked. It's just dust, that's all it
is. It has to be irrigated for it to bring forth life. Well,
man's heart, mine and yours and every son of Adam by nature is
cursed. A dry, Cracked, wasted, void
place. That's my heart and yours by
nature. Sinners are incapable of producing spiritual life.
Just like the earth wouldn't produce it. If it wasn't for
God, you and I cannot produce life. Just can't do it. Not at all. You can go to a church.
You can go through the motions. You can read scriptures. You
can sing. You can join a church. You can be baptized. But if God
hadn't visited and watered, there's no life there. God has to give
the life. If you notice the margin there,
it says, Thou visitest to the earth and waterest it. It says
after after you've made it thirsty
for the rain. I can't read it, writing is too
small. But it says, after you've made
it thirsty for the rain. That's what God does. He even
has to give you a thirst for this water. We're incapable of
producing fruit that's acceptable to God. We cannot make it rain
and we cannot produce fruit. We can't do that in nature. Listen,
are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause
rain? Jeremiah 14.22, of all the vanities,
doing rain dances and praying to idol gods and sacrifices,
are there any of the vanities of the heathen that can make
it rain? Or can the heavens give showers? The clouds can't even
rain until God says, rain. Art not Thou He, O Lord our God? Therefore we'll wait upon Thee,
for Thou has made all these things. And it's the same with God's
people. We cannot create life, we're at God's mercy. We need
God's mercy. We need God's grace upon us.
In 1 Corinthians 3.9, Paul talked about us being laborers together.
But he said, now don't misunderstand this. Ye are God's husbandry. That means God's the gardener.
God is the one who grows and waters and makes life to come
forth. He seals up our hands. Sometimes
he does this in natural things. He'll make it where it won't
rain. And the grass starts dying. And the cattle don't have anything
to eat. And the herbs die. And you and
I don't have, we don't have meat or vegetables to eat when He
does it. He shuts our hand up. We can't do anything about it.
We have to wait on God. And He does that in grace with
His people. He shuts you up to Him to be
looking for His mercy. Job 37.6 says, He saith to the
snow, Be thou on the earth. Likewise to the small rain and
to the great rain of His strength. He sealeth up the hand of every
man that all men may know His work. If you ever say, You can
talk to any of these believers that know this. If you're ever
saved, God's going to make certain you understand He did the saving. That's right. He's going to make
you like a dry, parched, summer field that's just dusty and dry
and has no life in it. And make you see that. Make you
thirsty for rain. And then He'll say, rain be thou. And He'll make you know He did
it. He did it. Salvation is of the Lord. It begins and it's carried to
completion by God visiting us. Our Lord said this in John 3,
5. Nicodemus was a religious man. Nicodemus was a well regarded
man. But Nicodemus was a spiritually
dead man. And he comes to the Lord Jesus
Christ and the Lord said, In John 3, verse 5, Jesus answered,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water
and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh, that which was born of your mother
the first time, that came from your daddy, is flesh, just sinful
flesh, dry, parched, dead earth. And that which is born of the
Spirit, of God the Holy Spirit, is spirit, a new man. Marvel
not, I said unto thee, you must be born again. And our Lord said,
just like you can't command the wind, you can't see when it comes
or where it's going, this grace is the same way. God sends it
when He will, and nobody can resist it. So this thing of salvation
begins with God visiting us. Now secondly, God's blessings
that he gives are from a never-ending supply. Look here at the end
of verse 9. He says, Thou preparest them
corn. I'm sorry, verse 9 he says, Thou greatly enrichest it with
the river of God which is full of water. Thou greatly enrichest
it with the river of God which is full of water." The river
of God is the never-ending supply of God's grace and mercy and
love. That's the never-ending supply
with which He blesses His people. The never-ending supply of the
truth. The river of God is both Christ
the incarnate Word and the written word. You can't separate the
two. The incarnate word is the life
of the written word. And the written word gives life
through the incarnate word. It's all about Christ. The word
was made flesh and dwelt among us. The Lord Jesus Christ. And this scripture right here,
God said through Moses in Deuteronomy 32. My doctrine My preaching, my teaching, my
gospel shall drop as the rain. My speech shall distill as the
dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb and as the showers
upon the grass. This, the incarnate word and
the gospel we preach, this is a never-ending supply out of
the river of God. And also, like we saw Sunday,
the river of God is the Holy Spirit of God, the water of life. Our Lord said, whosoever drinketh
of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I shall give
him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting
life. That's through the Spirit of
God, the water of life. He that believeth on me, as the
Scripture said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. You say, well how can this river
be God's grace and truth and mercy and love and at the same
time be the incarnate Word and at the same time be the written
Word and at the same time be the Holy Spirit of God? How can
it be all of them? Because they're all one. They're
all one. It's one river. It's one river. Turn to Isaiah 55. Now here's
another example. I've pointed this out to you
many times. God has only made one water. It's all, naturally
speaking, it's all coming from the river of God. It's a river
that flows between heaven and earth. And the water comes down,
the water goes back up, and it just keeps on doing it. There's
just one water that God ever created. One water. Now why did He just create one
water? There was a purpose in that.
Everything was created by Him and for Him. Why did He do that?
To show us that there's just one river of life. There's just
one water by which God gives life. Just one. And just like
the natural rain and snow never cease to do what God sent it
to do, the Word of God never ceases to do what God sent it
to do. Look here in Isaiah 55 verse 10. As the rain cometh
down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but
watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that
it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall
my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return
unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall
prosper in the thing whereunto I send it. He says, for ye shall
go out with joy and be led forth with peace. And look at the end
of verse 13. And it shall be to the Lord for
a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. Now
you look at Christ the Word as this water, as this never-ending
supply, this water of grace and mercy. When Christ came forth,
the Word, God said, My Word doesn't return void. It accomplishes
what I sent it to accomplish. Did Christ accomplish what God
the Father sent Him to accomplish? He certainly did. He cried out,
It is finished! You know what that means? That
means He saved everybody He came to save. Everybody He came to
save, He accomplished it. Our Lord Jesus came forth and
for God's elect, He conquered sin, death, and hell. That's what God sent Him to accomplish.
He accomplished reconciling all God's elect to Him. He accomplished
bringing in everlasting righteousness for His people. Our Lord Jesus,
God says in Isaiah, He shall not fail. till He has set forth
judgment in the earth. And He did it. Our Lord Jesus
accomplished that. This is the Word that comes down
like the rain and accomplishes what God sent it to accomplish.
That's what Christ did. Isn't it amazing that we walk
through a world that was created by God and natural man does not
even see all these spiritual illustrations that God made to
show us salvation. But when God gives you life,
that's what He's meaning in Isaiah 55, when He gives you life by
this word, the hills are going to start clapping their hands.
And you're going to start seeing illustrations of God's grace
everywhere you look. Because He made it all to glorify
Him. Every bit of it. God said, and look at Psalm 36.8,
we've preached on this before, but go back there, Psalm 36.8,
look at this. They shall be abundantly satisfied
with the fatness of thy house, and thou shalt make them drink
of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain
of life, and in thy light shall we see light. He gonna make all
his people drink of this river, and have life. And then by Christ's
power the gospel we preach comes forth as rain and it doesn't
return to God void. Every word preached by the Spirit
of God through His earthen vessels in spirit and in truth accomplishes
what God sent it to accomplish, every single one. We might not
see the results, God does and God accomplishes it. Psalm 46,
verse 4. Look there. Psalm 46, verse 4. There is a river, the streams
whereof shall make glad the city of God. That's the only people
that's going to be made glad by this river. Everybody else
just gets mad. But this river makes glad God's
people. The city of God. The holy place
of the tabernacles of the most high. What are these streams
of the gospel? It's the never-ending supply
of this gospel we preach. These streams are the message
of the electing grace of God. God's people never get tired
of drinking of that stream. to know God chose me not based
on anything in me, but purely by His free grace. That means
God won't reject me because of anything in me. If it was up
to me, if God saw something in me and that's why He chose me,
then there would always be something that I could do that would make
God reject me. Not when it's by God's electing
grace. We drink of these streams of the everlasting covenant of
grace. We're going to look at the covenant,
Lord willing, on Sunday. And here's the thing about the
covenant of grace. Adam was put in a garden and he was given
a covenant of works with one law. Just one. Of every tree
you can eat, don't eat of that tree. In the day you eat that
tree, you shall surely die. That was the covenant of works.
If he wanted life, he had to obey God. If he disobeyed God,
he would die. That's a covenant of works. He
disobeyed God, broke that one law, and died. And when he died,
every one of his people died in him. You and me. But the everlasting covenant
of grace is this. God ordered this covenant. And Christ made this covenant
sure. He came forth and fulfilled everything
for his people. in our place, as our representative,
so that we fulfill our side of the covenant perfectly. All those
God chose in Christ, He sent Christ forth, and Christ, the
last Adam, fulfilled the law for His people, justified His
people, and made sure this covenant so that God's satisfied. He sees
His people and says, sees us in Christ and says, you fulfilled
every word of that covenant. You've kept your end of it. And
so God keeps His end of it. What I'm saying is, God never
leaves a part of that covenant to you and me. He fulfilled the
whole thing. That's a stream I like to drink
from. What are these never-ending streams that flow from God? It's the message of redemption.
We're bought with a price, Christ's blood, and He owns us. And He
don't lose anything, He owns. We've been justified freely by
His grace. We've been pardoned. We've been
adopted. We're children of God. Think about that. Children who
belong to God our Father. It's the stream of regeneration.
It's the stream of perseverance by God's grace. It's the stream
of eternal life by Christ our life. This is the never-ending
stream that makes glad the city of God. And where does this river
come from? It flows from God our Father
and the Lamb, Christ Jesus. John saw in Revelation 22.1,
he said, He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear
as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the
Lamb. How big is this river? It's as
big as God. When you say it's never ending,
what do you mean? It's as eternal as God. It comes from God the
Father and from the Lamb and so it's an abundant, never-ending
supply of grace and mercy and truth and salvation from our
God. He'll never, ever fail to give
His child grace. All the grace you need. It's
a never-ending supply. Now lastly, God's always effectual. to bring forth life and fruit
in His people. All His plants that He has planted,
they shall live and they shall all bear fruit. Because God does
it. He never fails to do this. Look
here in verse 9 at the end. He says, Thou preparest them
corn when Thou hast so provided it. You bring forth fruit when
you have prepared it. First of all, God prepares the
ground in His child. You remember that parable of
the sower that went forth to sow? And there was three out
of the four kinds of ground was unprofitable. But what makes
that one ground profitable? What makes a sinner to be good
ground? God does. God does. A plow can't dig into our hard
natural hearts. A plow can't dig into it and
the seed can't be planted there. There'll be no root there and
no life there because of these hard, sinful, fleshly natures
of ours. So God's going to have to create
an entire new ground. He's going to create a new ground
where He's going to sow the seed of the Word. How does He do this? God sends the showers of the
Gospel. the showers of the gospel and
he rains down with the gospel and brings his child down from
our pride and he humbles us and he gives us a soft heart instead
of that hard heart. He creates a new heart. Look
at verse 10. He says, thou waterest the ridges
thereof abundantly, thou settlest the furrows thereof, thou makest
it soft with showers. That's the shower of this word.
Now you know out in a garden after a plow runs through a field
and you go out there and you prepare that field, that ground
for seed, you're going to have ridges and you're going to have
valleys, ridges and valleys. But now if you look at that garden
before it rains, you'll see those ridges. But after a hard rain
comes, it'll push those ridges down and they'll be level with
the valleys. They'll be level with the value.
That's what he's saying here. See, in our flesh, we're nothing
but pride. Self-righteous pride. And the first thing listed in
that list of sins that God hates is a proud look. God resisted
the proud and gives grace to the humble. But we can't make
ourselves humble. You and I who are believers,
our number one enemy is pride. We still have that high ridge
in us of that proud, arrogant, natural man. And God's constantly
resisting that proud man and He's constantly giving grace
to that humble man and his child. He's constantly doing both those
things. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou will not despise. So how does he do this? He sends
a hard ring, the gospel. He sends it and he makes his
child hear the law's curse against him. We'll never be brought down
from our pride and confess our sins and our nothingness until
God makes us see we're nothing. That's right. Men will talk about,
oh, I'm just too sinful to come to God. That's not why you're
not coming to Christ. You're not coming because you
think you're too good. God's got to bring that proud, arrogant
ridge down and make it flat. That's what he's going to do
to this guy. He's going to cause you to hear the law. Just take
the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt have no other God
beside me, God said. Do you know how many gods we
have in this world? Everything that you'd rather
be doing rather than be here is a god to you. You broke it. And when you broke that one,
you broke all of them. Me too. We, thou shalt not steal. All
we are is thieves trying to steal the glory that belongs to God
constantly. You take a garden for example.
I can remember planting a garden and that garden would grow and
it would be pretty and I'd just brag and brag about how I grew
that garden. That was just stealing God's glory. I didn't grow the
garden, God did. We're stealing God's glory constantly. Every time we pat ourselves on
the back for something, we're stealing the glory of God. He did it. We didn't do it. And He has to make us hear that
curse and hear that we're guilty before God. There is none righteous,
no not one. And when He makes you hear that,
He makes you see your sins in light of how holy God is. I'm not that sinful. It's not
your fellow man that you need to compare yourselves to. We
need to compare ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. There
is a holy God. Perfection. Requiring perfection. And will by no means have any
dealings with a sinner. He is holy. And you and I have
to see our sins in light of Christ who bore the sins of His people.
We have to be made to see our sins put Him on that cross. How
foul we are before God. I know that I can't say this
in a way that conveys it and only God can bless it to our
heart, but foul. I mean, you think of a word,
if you want to really talk about something in a bad light, call
it foul. God says we're foul by nature. An abomination, a stink to God. Do we know that? God's going
to have to humble us and He keeps us humbled by making us know
that. And I'm going to tell you something. We get proud, we don't
even know we're proud. We get proud of our humility. But when God humbles His child,
He gets the job done. And He humbles us. But God also
sends that doctrine that steals like the dew, the gospel that
declares how God sent forth His only begotten Son, made of a
woman, made under the law to redeem vile sinners that were
under that curse. And the Lord Jesus Christ obeyed
God fully on behalf of His people and He went to the cross and
here's the innocent Lord Jesus who did nothing wrong. And willingly,
he gives himself to God and he made him sin for his people. He took the sin of His people
and He made Christ to bear the sin of His people in the room
instead of His people. And having made Him sin for us,
then God justly poured out the curse on Christ instead of His
people. He made Him bear the condemnation,
the hell that His people should have borne. He bore it. And the
wages of sin is death. And once Christ died that death,
the law says, I got nothing else to say to Him. He did that for
every one of His people. He didn't just die for this ambiguous
thing that the world talks about and just hopes somebody will
avail themselves of it. He died for individual particular
sinners. That's who He died for. The world
says, oh, he just hates sin, he don't hate the sinner. They
never read the Bible. God says he hates the sinner. And it's the sinner for whom
Christ died, particular sinners. And He satisfied justice, He
brought in righteousness, and He saved His people. And when
He makes you, here you are, you've heard the law, you're broken
down, you're contrite, you're in the dust, you see your nothingness,
you see you deserve hell, and then He makes you hear, Christ
did it all. You're righteous in Him and accepted
of God. And I'll tell you what that'll
make you do. That'll make you cast all your hope into Christ's
hand and say, I don't want it to be anywhere else. It's called
believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. And He blesses this Word and
He makes life spring forth and He continues to bless it. Look
at the end of verse 10. Thou blessest the springing thereof. In 1 Thessalonians 1.5, Paul
said, Our gospel came not unto you in word only. If you walk
out of here tonight only hearing me, it came to you in word only. But if you ever hear God, it
comes in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance. and He causes life to spring
forth. It's by His blessing. And He
continues to send the showers of this Gospel and continues
to bless His child and make us grow, make us bear fruit. Now,
when you plant seed in a garden, if you plant seed at different
times, you know, you plant your potatoes way earlier because
they need longer and they do better in wet, cold dirt. And
then you're going to plant your peas later. And you're going
to plant your corn a little later than that. And so all these different
seeds are going to be growing at different degrees in the garden. Not everything is going to be
the same height. Some are going to be taller. Not everything
is going to be bearing as much fruit. Some are not going to
be bearing any fruit yet. Well, God's garden is full of
plants all growing at different rates. You have tender plants
that are just springing up, newborn babies. You have plants that
are beginning to bloom. You have some plants that are
bringing forth a little fruit. Then you have some more mature
plants bringing forth a lot of fruit. But it's all of God. Every bit of it is of God. Now
brethren, remember this. This growth is of God. God causes His people to grow
and bring forth fruit and He does it at different rates. Scripture
says, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn
in the ear. Brethren, here's what I'm getting
at. Don't speak critically of your
brethren, because here's what will happen. At first it just
starts as an innocent joke or something or just you and one
little person talking. Next thing you know, you'll start
to focus a little bit more on their sins. Next thing you know,
their sins will be all you can see. Next thing you know, you'll find
that you don't love them quite as much. Next thing you know,
you'll find out you just flat heart against them and you hate
them. How'd that start? Just a critical word. That's
all. See, you're going to find sin
in your brethren, but we're never told to look for that. We're
never told to focus on that. We're told to look to God who's
growing His plants just as they should be grown. Besides that,
if I'm judging my brother, I'm judging the husbandman who planted
him and is growing him. Would you walk out into a garden
and judge God because one tomato plant is bearing some fruit and
the other one is not? And we certainly should not ever
try to weed God's garden. Christ said, you'll pull up the
weeds, you'll pull up the tears, I mean, you'll pull up the wheat,
the good plants, and you'll leave the weeds. Listen to this. God's church
is a land which the Lord thy God careth for. The eyes of the
Lord thy God are always upon it from the beginning of the
year even to the end of the year. He said in Jeremiah 17, 7, Blessed
is the man that trusteth in the Lord and whose hope the Lord
is. See, that's something I can't
see when I look at you. I can't see your heart. I might
see some sin, But I can see your heart, and the heart might be
right. Blessed is the man that trusteth
in the Lord, whose hope the Lord is, listen, he shall be as a
tree planted by the waters, that spreadeth out her roots by the
river, and shall not see when heat comes, but her leaf shall
be green, and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither
shall cease from yielding fruit." God's not going to have one plant
that he's planted to die, not one of his children. They're
going to all grow by this river of water and they're going to
be evergreen and he's going to make them fruitful in his time.
I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, God said, floods
upon the dry ground. I will pour my spirit upon thy
seed and my blessing upon thine offspring and they shall spring
up as among the grass as willows by the water courses. That's
what God's doing. What can I do for my brother?
I can pray for him. I can ask God to work that in
him. That would be much better than talking about him, wouldn't
it? Here's the result of God's husbandry. Look at verse 11.
Thou crownest the year with thy goodness, and thy paths drop
fatness. They drop upon the pastures of
the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with
flocks. The valleys also are covered
over with corn, and they shout for joy, and they also sing.
God encircles the year, the whole year, with goodness like a crown. Brother Paul Bayhand texted me
a while back and asked me about how things were going up here.
And I was telling him some good news, that Cheryl's going to
have a baby, and Kristen's going to have a baby, and, oh, that's
so good. And I said, but we got some bad
news, because Cheryl has got cancer. And Paul texted me back
and said, oh, good news. It's all good news. Why? Because no matter what God's
doing in His garden, He's encircling us like a crown with goodness
all the time. It's hard to see that when bad
things happen to us, isn't it? There's really no bad things
that happen to God's child. They're all good things. We just
see them as bad things because they're painful to us and naturally
we don't like pain. But you know the things that
bless God's plants the most and make us bear the most fruit are
the most painful things. He gives the early and latter
rain and there's no drought in God's church. No plant that God
plants will ever wither and die. It's because as God walks through
His garden, get this picture, His paths drop fatness. He's just dropping fatness for
us each step He walks through the garden. That's what he's
doing. And he drops these blessings
only upon his people, only in his church. They drop upon the
pastures of the wilderness, the little hills and the valleys
also. The pastures are clothed with
flocks and the valleys also are covered over with corn. We're
in one of those pastures right here. We're on one of those little
hills. We're in one of those fertile
valleys. By God's grace, he brings his sheep into this pasture,
and his sheep are well fed by the showers of his word and of
his providence, and his valleys are covered over with corn, the
corn of his planting. We have nothing, nothing, nothing
to ever worry about. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want. He maketh me to lie down, where? In green pastures. He leadeth
me beside the still waters, this river we've been talking about,
Himself. He restoreth my soul, He leadeth
me in the paths of righteousness, that drop fatness, they're His
paths. And why does He do it? For His
namesake. Do you think God's going to let
His name be taken in vain? Do you think He's going to let
His name be reproached because He didn't do something He promised
you? No way. No way. We got His name
behind it. And these days when a man puts
his name behind something, it don't mean much. But when God
puts His name behind it, it does. Surely goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life, and I'll dwell in the house
of the Lord forever. Goodness and mercy are following
me everywhere I go. Well, you remember the reason
for all this back in verse 1? Praise waiteth for thee, O God,
in Zion, in His church. Unto thee shall the vow be performed. All your people are going to
praise you, God. Every one of them. When Christ
fulfills His vow to the Father, He worked out all of salvation
for us. He planted us immovably on Him.
He's protected us from all our enemies and He sent us these
showers of His gospel and blessed us and grown us by His grace
and made us fruitful and He put us in these green pastures. You
know what we're going to end up doing? Look at verse 12 at
the end. The little hills rejoice on every
side. Look at the end of verse 13.
They shout for joy and they also sing. Who are they singing to?
Who are we singing to? Who are we shouting for joy to?
To God be the glory. He did every bit of it. Just
imagine when we're all together in that one green pasture one
day and we're all shouting for joy and we're all praising God. It won't be anybody else getting
glory but Him and He'll get it all. That's what He makes us
do right here in this little green pasture. That's what we're
going to do. I pray God will bless that. Father,
we thank You for Your Word and we pray now You'd bless it. We
pray You'd do all these things we've seen here. Make the seed
germinate. Make that incorruptible seed
grow. Bring forth life. Lord, bring forth fruit in Your
time. Ask us to pray for the showers. Make us to pray for
the showers. Ask for the showers. Make us
to depend entirely upon You. Make us a hole in Your hand.
Make us a spade in your hand, a vessel you use to help your
garden, help your plants. And Lord, bring us to give you
all the glory. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.