Make sure this is on. I left
it on. Alright, let's turn to Isaiah
57. Isaiah 57. Hear God speak. Hear God speak. Now that's just
not only the title to our message, that's what I beseech you to
do this morning. Hear God speak. The passage that
we're going to read today, God's given us the privilege to hear
Him speak. To hear God speak. To hear God
declare what He's doing in His people and with His people and
why. This is God speaking. So hear
God speak. Hear God speak. Alright? First of all, God is holy. God
is holy. Verse 15. For thus saith the
High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy,
I dwell in the high and holy place. God is righteous. God is holy. The stars are not
pure in His sight. God can only dwell with those
who are as righteous and holy as God. God's holy. And therefore, God only dwells
with those He's made contrite and humble. those who are of
a contrite and humble spirit. He says, verse 15, I dwell in
the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite
and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and
to revive the heart of the contrite ones. Yet by nature there's not
one of us that's humble and contrite. Not one of us. That's the number
one reason. Pride is the number one reason,
sinner, that you won't come to God and bow to God and believe
God. That's the number one reason. Pride. Pride. You think you're
the high and lofty one. That's the number one reason.
The number one reason. Every one of us is proud. Now,
we might put on an outward show of humility and contrition, but
that's just more pride and more self-righteousness. God will
not dwell with anyone who thinks we're good and righteous and
holy. God won't dwell with us. Now,
in order for God to dwell in us, because this is the case,
God must make us contrite and humble. That's what we're going
to see here. In order for God to dwell in
His child, He must make us contrite and humble. Will you hear God
speak? Will you hear God speak now?
Give me your undivided attention. I want you to look in these scriptures
with me and see and hear God speak. That's the most important
thing. Hear God speak. First of all,
God declares... First of all, God declares... God declares here that He will
not contend with sinners forever. Verse 16. He says, For I will
not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth. Angry. Now God does contend with those
He saves. He's going to contend. Before
God saves, God's going to get you lost. Before He comforts
you, He is going to convict you. Before He heals you, He is going
to wound you. That is how God operates. God
contends with you in your conscience. By nature, we're asleep and we're
totally indifferent. By nature, tell me this, here's
a defiled nature, a defiled conscience. Right now, your mind's on everything
that you did last night, on your girlfriend, your boyfriend, how
you tied your shoes this morning, what dress you wish you'd have
worn, or what underwear you got on. But it's on anything but
God. Is that not true? God has to wake us up and get
our undivided attention. And we might try to run from
Him and get away from Him and not pay Him any attention, but
He's going to stay with us in our conscience wherever we go.
We can't get rid of Him. That's just true. And God contends
with you by His Word. When He makes you begin to hear
what He says in His Word, He makes you begin to see what He
says in His Word, and He begins to stir up that wrath and that
enmity that's in your heart. Because He's showing you you're
wrong. That's what He does. That's what He did to me. That's
what He did to everyone here that believes. And God makes
you hear His law speak to you. He makes you to hear His law
declare you guilty. And God begins to strip you of
your fig leaves. And God contends with us in providence. hedging you in on every side.
He begins to set up thorns about your way, every way you go. You can't profit this way, you
can't profit that way. The sun won't even shine on you.
It begins to feel like you're just walking around and you're
the only one in the world that's got a cloud over you because God
won't let you have any sunshine. He's contending with you. He's
forcing you to confront yourself and to confront God. That's what
God does. Turn over to Hosea chapter 2.
To your right there, 4 or 5 books, Hosea 2. Here's God contending with Gomer.
Listen to this. This is what he does. Hosea 2,
6. Behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall,
and she shall not find her paths. And she shall follow after her
lovers, but she shall not overtake them. She'll try to go run after
her lovers. She'll try to go please herself
with the comforts of this world, but I won't give her any comfort,
God said. She shall seek them, but she shall not find them.
Look at verse 9. I'll take away my corn in the
time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will
recover my wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness. I'll
make her have great financial difficulties. She can't even
afford the gas to go to church. She can't even afford the bread
to put on her table. She can't even find a job anywhere
she looks. She's demoted instead of promoted.
God said, I'll do all this to her. Look here, verse 10. And
now will I discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers. I'm
going to expose her even before the world. And none shall deliver
her out of my hand. I'll also cause all her mirth
to cease, her feast days, her new moons, her Sabbath days,
and all her solemn feasts, all that rejoicing she had in her
vain religion. I'm going to strip that away
too. And I'll destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she
has said, these are my rewards my lovers have given me, and
I'll make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall
eat them up. Everything she thought was the fruit of her righteousness
and her doing, God said, I'm going to make all that fruit
disappear. Verse 13, and I'll visit upon her the days of Balaam.
I'm going to bring to her memory and conscience that everything
about her vain worship has just been idolatry. wherein she burned
incense to them, and she decked herself with her earrings and
her jewels, and went on after her lovers, and forgot me, saith
the Lord." That vain Jesus she called after, because she walked
in the aisle and made her decision, because some preacher coerced
her, because she decided it was time to turn over a new leaf,
because all this vanity, that little Jesus she called Jesus,
which was really Balaam. God said, I'm going to make her
know he's Balaam. Now go back to our text, Isaiah 57. When
God contends with you, God's going to make you know He's got
a controversy with you. It's serious. He calls it here
being wroth. He says, I smite them. I hide
me from them. From our view, when we look at
God, when He's doing this with us, We feel like God is being
angry with us, that he's unleashing his fierce anger upon us. And
that's profitable for us. We should feel that way. Because
chastening is not supposed to be pleasant. It wouldn't be chastening
then. It's supposed to make you feel,
God is whipping the fire out of me. That's what he's doing.
Christ describes it as an invasion, as a conquest. He said in Luke
11, 21, when a strong man armed keeps his palace, his goods are
in peace. That's what the devil is that's
got the sinner captive, and that's what the sinner is. He's a strong
man, he's armed, and he's keeping his palace. Ain't nobody getting
in his palace. Christ said, I'm going to storm
your little silly moat. I'm going to scale your walls.
I'm going to pull all your guards out of your towers. I'm going
to come into where your inner circle is, right to your heart,
and I'm going to just destroy everything that you put any confidence
in. He says, when a stronger than he shall come upon him and
overcome him, he taketh from him all his armor wherein he
trusted and divides his spalls. Believe that God contends with
us also. This is not just the sinner he
contends with. He contends with you and me too.
Because there's times when you and I start straying from God
and going in our way. There's times when our heart
becomes cold toward God. There's times when we start neglecting
all the privileges God's given us. We don't read His Word. We
won't come to the worship service. We won't pray to Him. We won't
do anything. We get too caught up in the world
and the world starts stealing our affections away. And God
will contend with you and me because He's a faithful Father.
And our faithful Father contends with us using the very same means
as well. And there's one means that He
uses that's even worse to a believer. He says, I hid my face. I hid
my face. Isn't that bad? You that believe
God know what it's like. When God shines His face on you,
you have His presence in your heart. You feel His presence
in your heart with you. When He hides His face from you,
you feel like you're all alone. I can tell you this. The worst
thing in the world is to get in this pulpit and feel like
you're standing here all by yourself. That's the worst thing in the
world. Ooh, that's bad. And it's bad when you're going
through all the difficulties in life and troubles in life
and you feel like you're all by yourself. All by yourself. At times, he hinders us from
partaking of these privileges. He'll make it so we can't come
to his house because we wouldn't come to his house. So he takes
something away from you to show you how valuable it really is. to make you long for it, to make
you want it. And He'll head you away so you can't come to His
house. That's right. Now there might be somebody here
experiencing this. Maybe you were just indifferent,
sitting here, you didn't care, and now all of a sudden, there's
a warfare going on, a conflict going on inside you. Your sin
didn't bother you at all, and now you're trembling over it.
You had your little way, And your vain way all figured out,
and you thought, now this is the way I ought to go. This right
here makes sense. And God's making you know your
way's vanity. Your way's vanity. Has anybody
experienced that? If you have, be thankful because
there's hope for a sinner when God contends with him. If God
leaves you to yourself and he never does this in your heart,
and you just go on loving you and your way and your sin and
everything that you're worldly friends are, that's horrible.
God's left you to yourself. But when God contends with you,
that's good. There's hope for the sinner God contends with.
All right, now look. But God says this in verse 16. He says, I will not contend forever. Neither will I be always wroth.
Here's why. For the Spirit should fail before
me. God would crush us if He really
showed us His fierce anger. If He let it go on and on and
on when He starts dealing with us this way, He would crush us
just like you crush a little ant. Our spirit would fail within
us if he continued. But God knows we're dust. Psalm
103. Look there with me. Psalm 103
verse 10. Anytime God's dealing with His
child, And that's who he's contending with, his child. Listen to this
now. Psalm 103.10. No matter how fierce
it seems and how bitter it seems, Psalm 103.10 says, "...he hath
not dealt with us after our sin, nor rewarded us according to
our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above
the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him." As
far as the East is from the West, so far hath He removed our transgressions
from us. Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. For He knoweth
our frame, He remembereth that we are dust." We're dust. God's fury was poured out on
Christ. God made Him to be sin, not sinner,
not sins, He made Him to be sin. He made Him to be a curse for
us, for His people, so that God poured out His fierce anger on
His Son, so He won't pour out His fierce anger on you. When
He poured out His fierce anger on His Son, He removed our sins
as far as the east is from the west. Go west, you won't go east. Go east, you won't go west. As
far as the east is from the west. And so, He stays His rough wind
in the day of His east wind. Oh, He's going to be rough with
us. But He stays that roughness with His east wind. He doesn't
pour out His fury on us completely. But you might say this, He does
this for those that fear Him. Did you read that? He does this
for those that fear Him. And you know, when I read that, I
thought, but a lost sinner don't fear Him. You see, but God doesn't
speak of us in terms of what we are while He's dealing with
us. He speaks of us as what we are when He gets done with us.
He's just and justifier of all that believeth on Jesus. That doesn't mean your believing
is going to make him just and justified. That means you're
going to believe because he's just and he's justified. You
see what I'm saying? He speaks of you as one that
he's already dealt with. Now look, let me show you that
in Lamentations 3.19. Here's a man who knew that affliction.
And listen to what he says. It's only this one who God loves
and he's chosen and he's redeemed and he's regenerated, that he's
going to deal with this way. Now listen to what he says, Lamentations
3, 19. Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and
the gall, my soul hath them still in remembrance and is humble
in me. That's the purpose of this, isn't
it? To humble you. Now watch. This I recall to mine
and therefore I have hope. It's of the Lord's mercies that
we're not consumed. Because, because, His compassions failed not. They're
new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. Look
down at verse 31. For the Lord will not cast off
forever, but though he calls grief, yet will he have compassion
according to the multitude of his mercy. You see, it's only
with his child, the child of mercy and grace that he contends
with. But he won't cast us off forever. The purpose is not to cast us
off forever. And he says, and because I could
crush you, I'm not going to keep on contending with you. Now He
gives another reason here. And this is the other reason.
It goes with just what I just said. God won't contend with
us forever because the one He contends with, He chose us. He redeemed us. He regenerated
us. He made us. He made us. That's
why He won't contend with us forever. Look there, verse 16.
Isaiah 57, 16. He said, The Spirit shall fall
before me and the souls which I have made. Which I have made. You see, God's purpose in contending
with us, with His child, that He's made, that He's created
by His grace, His purpose is not to destroy us, to crush us,
His purpose is to humble us, to bring us down, to get our
undivided attention, to subdue that old man of the flesh, that
He might do something in that inward man. This is the purpose
for which He contends with us. Alright, now look, secondly,
God ends his contention because contention, his contending with
us, his smiting us, his chastening us alone will not turn us. It won't turn us. Look at verse
17. For the iniquity of his covetousness
was I wrought, and I smote him. I hid me, and was wrought, and
he went on forwardly in the way of his heart. God declares here
the reason that he contends with us. Let's get this first. He
says, For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth and
smote him. I hid me and was wroth. For the
iniquity of our covetousness. What in the world is that? We
saw it in Ezekiel 14 a couple of Thursday nights ago. It's
the idols in our heart. It's that stumbling block of
iniquity that we set up before our face. It's everything in
the world that we love and worship and adore and covet other than
God and His glory. You name it. You name it. It
can be in religion and out of religion. It's everything our
hearts are set on other than God, Christ, His glory. It could
be pleasure. It could be our occupation. It
could be our ambitions. It could be our honors and accolades. It could be riches. It could
be religion. It could be works. It could be
all these different things. We got our hearts set on. He
says that's what I smote him for. In other words, he smote
you to convince you of your sin. You see, we've got to be brought
to this point where he says, where he makes you to see, I've
done the sinning. That's all I've done. He says,
I'll contend with them after their idols. That's what the
Lord said. I'll answer him that cometh according to the multitude
of his idols. Your idols have got to be crushed
first. They've got to be ground to chalk
stone before you'll ever even have that way cleared. That stumbling
block of iniquity has got to be cast up and moved out of the
way. So he's going to convince us of our sin, and then he's
going to convince us of righteousness. Here's the number one thing about
righteousness he's going to do first. He's going to convince
us we're totally absence of it. We don't have any. We don't have
any. Everything we thought was righteousness,
we don't have it at all. And then he's going to show us
this. God requires perfect righteousness. This is just when he's contending
with us for our iniquity. Because, see, that's one of those
things, one of those idols. We thought we were righteous.
We thought our works made us good. We thought we had merit
in ourselves and all those things. He's going to show us, no, you
don't, but you've got to have a perfect righteousness. He's
going to convince us of judgment. The judgment of God against your
sin and against my sin. That's number one. He's going
to bring you to confess against thee and thee only have I sinned
and done this iniquity, this evil in your sight that you might
be justified when you speak and be clear when you judge. He's
going to make you, instead of standing with your little chest
poked out and saying, how dare God? He's going to make you come
and stand behind God and take sides with God and say, God,
you're just in condemning me. That's what he's got to do. That's
what he's doing. And God also declares here, after
all that he does to us, he declares here how hard our hearts are,
the heart of our flesh, our sinful man. This is how hard we are.
Though God contends with us, God says he went on forwardly
in the way of his heart. He went on forwardly in the way
of his heart. Did you catch in the scripture that Brother Scott
read? That he said, the reason that I've smitten you is to make
you return, but you wouldn't return to me. You wouldn't return
to me. How many times have you heard
this? Well, we just... I don't have my jobs played out,
and my finances are down so much, I just can't come to church. If you're God's child, God said,
I smoked you with that to make you turn to me, not to make you
turn away. But that's the hardness of our
heart. We think we're so smart. We think we're so wise. Oh, it
just makes sense. If I don't have the money, I
shouldn't go to church. Oh, I'm not going to cancel my
cable just yet. I'm not going to cancel the... I'm not going
to quit eating ribeye steaks just yet. But I can't go to church. I'm going to cut that out first.
God says, get in your car, come and hear my gospel. I'll make
a way. That's why I'm smiting you. But
he says, but you go on forwardly in the way of your heart. Forwardly
in the way of your heart. Our sin nature, our heart of
flesh is so evil against God and so deceitful and stubborn
and rebellious, even when God contends with us, we just ignore
Him altogether and go on forwardly in our way. But notice this.
That verse begins with the word for. And God is telling us why
He won't contend with us forever. And He's saying here, the reason
I won't contend with you forever is smiting you and afflicting
you, that ain't going to make you turn to Me. That won't make
you turn to Me. Mothers and fathers, we ought
to get something from that. You can beat them all you want
to. We ought to chase them now, don't get me wrong. But that
alone ain't going to make them turn and obey. It didn't make
you turn and obey. Listen to this. Why should you
be stricken anymore? You'll revolt more and more.
The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. From the sole
of the foot even to the head, there's no soundness in it. But
wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, they've not been closed,
neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. God contends with
us to hedge us up. to put us down and to get our
attention inwardly, but it's God's goodness that's going to
lead us to repentance. Alright, here's the last thing.
God will not contend forever because it's grace. It's grace. It's grace that's
going to lead us to cast all our care on Christ. Grace. Now here's God's grace. Look
at verse 8. I have seen His ways. Sinner,
think of the depth of that statement. Everything that we've done in
the darkness, God's seen it. Everything. Everything we've
thought and kept to ourselves that our dearest spouse don't
even know, God sees it. When God smote us to turn us
and we just went on running in our way, saying, oh, I love the
doctrine of depravity. I love it. I love it because
it gives God all the glory. I love the doctrine of election.
I love particular redemption. I love irresistible grace. I
love perseverance of the saint. And we just go on forwardly in
our way. I can't go to church, though, because God's hedged
up my way. When He makes a way, I'll go,
but right now I can't go because I'm just hedged in with thorns. God said, I've seen those ways.
I've seen that wicked way. I've seen that sinful way. Claiming
to rejoice in my sovereignty and not trusting it. Claiming
to rejoice that you're totally depraved and running on in your
depravity and relishing in your depravity and making excuses
for your depravity. I've seen your ways, God said.
But here's grace. Yet, he still says, and I will
heal him. And I will heal him. Now, be sure to get this. Be
sure to get this above everything else. Be sure to get this. This
is the good news of the gospel of grace. God choosing us by
grace with no regard to our ways means Our ways cannot turn God
from exercising that grace in us. He didn't look on your ways when
He chose you. And though He's seen your ways
now, your ways aren't going to turn Him from being gracious
to you. Isn't that good news? Isn't that
good news? You know, it might be different
if we could hide some things from God. Because then we could
act like we're righteous. But you see, when God comes around
and speaks, we're going to find out all our fig leaves weren't
enough to cover us. And we're going to find ourselves
hiding in the trees. Hiding from God. Hiding from
God. But it's good news when you know
He sees everything. He sees everything. You know
when you're chasing a cockroach sometimes and he runs in and
scurries behind something, you just pick it up, move it, and
there he is. And he just like takes off the other direction.
That's how we are with God. Wherever we go, He just picks
up whatever it is we're hiding behind and says, I see you. Dummy,
I see you. Don't try to run from me. Here's effectual, irresistible
grace. He says, I will heal him. He doesn't say, I'd like to.
He doesn't say, I wish I could. He doesn't say, if he'd just
meet me halfway, I would. Brother Scott sent me a picture
this week of a wheelchair ramp, accessible ramp built by an Armenian,
free wheel worker. First two steps you had to take
on your own and after that you could ride down and on a wheelchair. That's what we thought salvation
was. You just take a step, got to
do the rest. That's why we're standing in
all that and we're bragging in all that and we thank God. God's
going to come to us and He's going to contend with us and
He's going to subdue us, that fleshly man of sin. But that's
not going to make us healed. That's just to get our attention
so we can hear the physician. What's going to heal us is God's
going to create us all anew inwardly. God's going to come and create
a new man in you. and revive a spirit in you so
that you can hear Him. Just smiting you and bringing
down that old man of flesh, that's not going to stop you. Oh, you
might get contrite and humble outwardly and act like God's
really done something for you, but in just a little while, you
know what's going to happen? It's like them old What's some
old fuzzy flowers in the yard? You can try to mow them down
in a minute and here they come right back up. That's what's
going to happen. God's got to create something
new in you and heal you inwardly. And here's the revelation of
grace. When He does that, He says in verse 17, I will lead
him also. When He's created you anew, He's
healed you. You don't know it yet, but He
has. But now He's got to lead you somewhere. Where's He going
to lead you? You see, when He was smiting you, He was driving
you. Because in our man of flesh,
we can't be dealt with in any way but just driving us. But
see, when He's dealing with that new man He's created, He's leading
you in love. In love and kindness, I've drawn
you. He's leading you. Where is He going to lead you
to? Straight to Christ. straight to Christ. He's going
to reveal to you now that He showed you that you have no righteousness
and He requires righteousness. Now He's going to show you Christ
is the righteousness of God. He's the fulfillment of all righteousness
and He's the righteousness you have to have. He's revealed to
you the judgment of your sin and showed you your sin and showed
you something of how sinful you are and showed you the judgment
and wrath of God for all those that stand before God without
Christ. Now He's going to show you But your judgment has all
been settled when He made Christ to be your substitute. That's
what He did for all His elect people. And He's going to make
us know that personally. Then He's leading us when He
reveals in our hearts that all our sins are forgiven through
faith in Christ because God is just and the justifier in Christ. He's going to reveal salvation
is entirely by God's grace. Entirely by God's grace, apart
from any works in us. Here's what He's going to reveal.
God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son.
That's what He's going to reveal in the heart. Now listen carefully.
Listen very carefully to me. Are you experiencing God contending
with you? Anybody here, believer or unbeliever,
lost man or saved man, are you experiencing God contending with
you? You want to know when it's going
to stop? Let me tell you first why He's
doing it. Why is He doing it? Because you think you can be
saved by your works. You think there's some value
in you, some merit in you that ought to indebt God to be kind
and favorable to you. You think, you think that you
can be saved by your will. You think that though God's smitten
you and you've chosen, well, I need to go over here now and
wait till God makes a way for me to come into His house and
worship Him and be with His people and commit to the gospel. You
think that's the way. God's going to make you see you
can't be saved by your will, your way, your works, or your
worth. We've got to be saved by Christ's
merit, Christ's worth. We've got to be saved by God's
sovereign will. We've got to be saved by Christ's
righteousness alone. We've got to be saved by His
grace alone. That's how we've got to be saved.
God won't accept you and your works. He won't do it. Now, you
want to know when it's going to end? You want to know when
the contention will end? Here's when it'll end. The moment
He makes you to behold Christ and you surrender to God, you
come to God in your heart believing God in all His sovereign right
can have mercy on whom He will and pass by whom He will. It's
God's sovereign right as God to do with His own what He will.
When you in your heart come to God believing, the moment you
believe, God say, my grace is sufficient for you. Because my
grace is made manifest, my power is made manifest in weakness.
The moment you confess that to God, God, I believe your grace
is sufficient for me. The contention will end the moment
you renounce your works and your worth and your will and your
way and turn and cast all your care on Christ. That's the moment
the contention will end. Turn to Isaiah 55. I can back
that up. Isaiah 55. Look what He says here now, ìO
everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. And he that
hath no money, come ye, buy and eat. Yea, come buy wine and milk
without money and without price. Wherefore do you spend money
for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which
satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto Me, and
eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself
in fatness. Incline your ear, hear God speak. And come unto me, hear, and your
soul shall heal. Watch this now. And here's when
the contention ends. And I will make an everlasting
covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. That's the
promise of grace. Look back at our text, Isaiah
57, 18. God promises this by His grace. I will restore comforts unto
you. Notice the word comforts here
is plural. It means I'll make you to know you're
freely, forever, fully forgiven. I'll make you to know that I've
made you perfectly righteousness in my Son. I'll make you to know
that you have reconciliation with God. God is your friend.
I'll make you to know you're a son of God and God is your
Father. That's comforts. I'll make you
to know you have acceptance with God and assurance with God. I'll
give you full provision and full protection forever. That's comfort. He says, I'll give you unchangeable
security. I'll give you eternal inheritance
reserved in heaven for you. I'll give you the peace of God. That's the comforts that He gives. Sinner, listen to this. Some
of you sitting here right now hadn't been listening to a word
I've said. You hadn't looked up at Scripture. You've sat there
with your eyes closed and tried to keep your ears closed and
tried not to listen. God's talking to you. Listen, you don't have any idea how folks
have mourned praying to God that He'd save you by His grace. You
don't have any idea. They love you more than you do.
They care for you more than you care for your soul. You don't
have any idea how they mourn asking God to have mercy on your
soul. You're going to spend eternity
somewhere. One day you're going to find
out that preacher that you talked about behind his back, he was
telling you the truth. But let me show you one more
thing. When God restores these comforts in the heart of His
child, He not only gives these comforts to His child, He gives
these comforts to those that mourn for Him, asking God to
save Him. Look there. He says in verse
18, And I will restore comforts to his mourners. To his mourners. Old Jairus, he came to Christ
praying, asking Christ, just mourning for his daughter. Begging
Christ to save his daughter. Don't you know when he was on
the way home and he got word that his daughter had been raised
from the dead? Don't you know that all his mourning
went away and God restored comfort into his heart for that daughter
that God saved? That Canaanite woman came to
Christ and she was on her, she was under the master's table
just begging for a crumb, mourning before God. God, please have
mercy on my sick child. And when Christ said, go thy
way, it's done unto you exactly as you've asked. Don't you know
that morning just fled away and God restored comfort in her heart?
Martha and Mary, they were mourning and crying over their brother
Lazarus and just, oh, if you'd have been here, Lord, he wouldn't
have perished. And when Christ raised him from the dead and
drew him out of that grave, Oh man, they were so happy. Let's
just have a feast. They were so happy. Your parents
have mourned for you. This pastor has mourned for you.
These men that have taught the gospel here, they mourn for you.
Everybody that's ever witnessed to you has mourned that you would
be saved by God's grace. When God saves His people by
His grace, He even comforts those that prayed for Him and mourned
for Him. Isn't that something? Now, do you hear God speak? Do you hear God speak? Do you
hear God speak? I'm not talking about sitting
here. The saddest thing in the world a preacher can hear is,
oh, I wish my son would have heard that. Oh, I wish my daddy
would have heard that. I wish my mom would have heard
that. Well, did you hear it? They wasn't here. You was. Did
you hear it? Do you hear God speak? Do you hear God speak? Will you renounce you and all your works and surrender
to the Lord Jesus Christ, believe in Him? That's the issue. That's
the issue. Hear God speak. Hear God speak. Turn over to Psalm 107. I've
got one more scripture. Our Savior said, if a man will
hear My words and do what I say, I liken him to a wise man. He
built his house on a rock, Christ said, and it can't be washed
away by any kind of flood or wind or anything. And Christ
is that rock. You heard Him speak? Listen to
what He says right here. Psalm 107 verse 43. Who so is wise and will observe
these things, Even they shall understand the loving kindness
of the Lord. Which is it, sinner? Are you
wise or a fool? Will you go on in utter absolute
ignorance or will you observe these things and know the loving
kindness of the Lord? I pray God a blessing. I pray
God. You know He's going to. He's
going to either bless it and make it a savor of death unto
death or of life unto life. He's going to accomplish His
will either way. That's right. I pray He'll make it a savor
of life unto life. Amen. All right, Brother Eric.