Alright brethren, let's turn
to Deuteronomy chapter 32. Deuteronomy 32. Let's just read verse 2 to begin. This is Moses speaking. And he says, My doctrine 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. Now he says, my doctrine shall
drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small
rain upon the tender herb. That's a little rain, a small
rain on a tender herb. And then he says, and, and, he
says, my doctrine shall drop as showers, as a heavy downpour
upon grass, upon the grass. I want to talk to you about one
doctrine and two works. First of all, the message of
the gospel is one doctrine. It's one teaching. the message
of the gospel. He says there, my doctrine. I heard a brother point this
out once in a message, and I think I've pointed it out here to you. But in the Scripture, whenever
the Scripture is speaking of falsehood, it speaks usually
of, in the plural, as doctrines. But when it's speaking of the
truth, it's in the singular as doctrine. Let me give you some
examples. Concerning lies, Scripture says,
the Lord Jesus said, In vain they do worship me, teaching
for doctrines the commandments of men. And then Paul said to
Timothy, The Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter
times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing
spirits and doctrines of devils. He said in the Hebrew, and Hebrews
13, be not carried about with different and strange doctrines. For it is good that the heart
be established with grace, and not with meats, not with works,
not with ceremony, which have not profited them that have been
occupied therein. And then speaking of the truth,
the Scripture says, the Lord Jesus said it came to pass When
Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at
His doctrine. Singular. And then again, He
taught them many things by parables and said unto them in His doctrine. And then Jesus answered them
and said, My doctrine is not mine, but Him that sent me. Now,
the doctrine of God, our Savior, the doctrine of the Lord Jesus
is one doctrine. Now, it has many many teachings
in it, it has many branches of doctrine in it, but it's all
just one doctrine. It's so united, it's so glorifying
to Christ and Him alone, to God and Him alone, and so abasing
of man, of all sinners, that it's just one doctrine. It all
stands together. We preach the doctrine of total
depravity. We preach the doctrine that all
men died in Adam. And that doctrine glorifies Christ
because Romans 5 tells us that Christ in the fact that he was
a representative, I mean Adam, in that he was a representative
man, he pictured Christ who is the representative of his people.
And then the doctrine of depravity shows us it goes together with
the doctrine of election, because it shows us that if God had not
chosen a people to save, because we fell in Adam, there would
be none that would be saved. You see those doctrines just
go right together with each other. And then the doctrine of election
goes right with the doctrine of particular redemption. Because
Christ said, I laid down my life for the sheep. And he told some
men standing there, you're not my sheep. The reason you don't
believe me is you are not my sheep. He laid down his life
for the sheep. And the sheep are those God chose
before the foundation of the world. They're the elect of God.
That's who he laid down his life for. And not for anybody else.
He laid down his life for the sheep. And he accomplished their
redemption. He justified his people. That
doctrine goes right with irresistible grace. Because we're depraved,
we're dead in sin, so a dead man can't do anything. He's got
to be irresistibly, invincibly regenerated to life. He's got
to be given faith to believe. He's got to be made willing in
the day of Christ's power working in him. Because God elected His
people and because Christ redeemed His people, they've been justified. from all their sin by what Christ
did for them before they ever knew anything about it because
of what God the Father and His Son has done in separating them
and making them holy and justifying them on the cross. So they must
be called out. They must be regenerated. So
it goes right with this thing, but they're dead. So how's it
going to be that they're going to live and God's going to remain
just because if they perish, if even one perishes, That does
damage to God's justice. Well, the scriptures clearly
say, Christ said a man must be born again. He must be born from
above. So it goes right with that irresistible
grace of God giving a man a new heart. They all must be kept. They all must persevere. They
all must believe until the end. Without faith it's impossible
to please God. There's no coming of God but
in Christ. And yet they're sinners in themselves. So how are they
going to be made to persevere? How are they going to be made
to continue until the end? If it's just left to them and
left to us. So there you see God's irresistible
grace. You see His sovereign power to
keep them. because they've been justified by that particular
redemption, they must be kept. And so, God's absolute sovereignty,
the keeping power of God, bringing God all the glory and giving
man no glory, all these doctrines go together and they're just
one doctrine. Just one doctrine. And if you
start, if you take one out and preach error on one, You've got
to preach error on the others if you're going to be consistent.
Because you can't say a man is dead in sins and unable to do
anything and he's depraved and then turn around and preach that
he has a will and he can come to God when he gets ready. You
can't preach both of those. You see what I'm saying? And
I was thinking about it. What makes the doctrine of Christ
to be one doctrine? It's the sovereign will of God
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit
in the heart of His people. God makes the doctrine one. It's in one God and it's one
doctrine because it's in one God. And you think about the
message of free will works religion. Is there anything about that
message that makes all those various doctrines to be one and
be vitally united? They have no cohesion. They have
no unity. The only thing that runs between
them and keeps them even connected is the will of man. Isn't that
sad? So anyway, the point is that
it's my doctrine. It's one doctrine. Just one doctrine. Now here's the second thing.
But though we preach one doctrine, there are two works produced.
He says first, this one doctrine works upon the tender herb. My
doctrine shall drop as the rain. My speech shall distill as the
dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb. Now look at that.
It's going to drop as rain. That's light rain. It's distilling
as the dew. That's how light it is. You can't
even hardly see dew. You can't. It just appears. That's how the gospel works.
You can't see it working. And it's an unseen work. It's small rain. It's on a tender
herb. But then look at this. He says,
and this same doctrine works differently on a different type
that it falls on. Look. And as the showers upon
the grass. You see, it's just one doctrine
doing this. Just when it's falling gently as dew on the tender herb,
and this word showers is like a torrential downpour, like a
heavy downpour, like in a thunderstorm. And it's falling on grass, not
a tender herb, on grass. Grass, this is like the grass
that grew up on the housetops. There'd be these flat housetops
in Israel. They grew grass on top of them. And there was no soil, there
was no earth like we saw Thursday night. It sprung up and it died.
The scripture says, let them all be confounded and turn back
that hate Zion. Hate the church of God. And it
says, let them be as the grass upon the housetops which withereth
before it groweth up. Wherewith the mower filleth not
his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom. It's good
for nothing. It's good for nothing. But these
two different works can take place by the same doctrine in
the same person. Two different works can take
place by the same doctrine in the same person. When a sinner
is born again, the nature that's created of God is a new nature. It's a new man. It's a new heart,
a new spirit. He said, I'll put my spirit within
you and I'll cause you to walk in my statutes and you should
keep my judgments and do them. Because God said, I'll put my
spirit in you. David described the new heart.
He said, create. It has to be created. In me. It's in a sinner. Create in me
a new, a clean heart. This is a clean heart. Whatever
God makes is going to be clean. A clean heart. Renew. It has to be renewed. It has
to continually be renewed. It has to continually have life
from another source given to it. Renew a right spirit within
me. This is a righteous spirit that's
within the sinner. And then he said the sacrifices
of God are a broken spirit. This is a broken spirit. He said
broken and contrite. A broken and contrite heart,
O God, Thou will not despise. You should get the picture here.
This new heart's tender. This new heart is like a little
tender herb. That's what the new heart is
like. And then the old nature is described in Isaiah 40. Turn
there with me. Isaiah chapter 40. The old nature is what we got
from Adam. That's how we're born the first time. Look at this
old nature. The voice said cry. The voice
is Christ. He sent John the Baptist, and
he sends all his preachers. And he said, cry. And he said,
what shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the
goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass
withereth. It withers. Why does it wither?
And the flower fadeth. Why? Because the Spirit of the
Lord bloweth upon it. Now, see here how that this withering
is connected with the Holy Spirit blowing upon it? And then watch
this. He says, Surely the people is grass. The
grass withereth and the flower fadeth, but the Word of our God
shall stand forever. He connects the Spirit and the
Word. And this is what makes the grass
wither. The grass withers. Now, turn to Romans 7. Here's
the thing about this old man. in this new man. And hold your
place here because we're going to come back to Romans 8. Look
here at Romans 7, 18. This is Paul. He's a regenerated man and we
know that because only a regenerated man with a new heart knows this
about himself. A dead sinner does not know this
about himself. Only a new man. He says, verse
18, I know that in me, and he's going to qualify what he's talking
about here, that is, in my flesh. in my own nature, in that nature
I got from Adam dwelleth no good thing. There is not a good thing
in my flesh by nature. For to will is present with me. Where is this willingness? This
is in the new man. This is in the new heart. I have
a willingness to please God, to serve God, to walk after God.
But how to perform that which is good, I find not. I have a
willingness in my new man, but because of this old man, I can't
do what my new man wants to do. You can look on down the page
there. He says, verse 23, I see another law in my member. Wait,
verse 22. I delight in the law of God after
the inward man. See there? But I see another
law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, against the
law of the inward man, bringing me into captivity to the law
of sin, which is in my members. He's describing a warfare here.
He's describing a warfare between an old man and a new man, so
that you can't do the things that you would. Alright? So there's
a new willingness. And yet, we can't do what we
would, but now look at Ephesians 4. And yet, this is what we're
told to do. This is what we've been studying
in Ephesians 4, Ephesians 5. We've been told to do a lot of
things. How are we going to do these
things? Look here, verse 22. Put off concerning the former
conversation. Ephesians 4, verse 22. Put off
concerning the former conversation, the former conduct, the old man.
He said, put the old man off which is corrupt according to
the deceitful lust, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. This
is in the new man. And that you put on the new man,
which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
But, since it's not, we just read what Paul said, I have a
willingness to do that. But he said, how to do that which
is good, I find not. I don't have the power in me,
of me, by myself to do that. I just don't have the power to
do it because the old man is too strong to do that. So how then
shall we put off the old man and put on the new? How am I
going to be renewed in the spirit of my mind? How am I going to
put on the new man? How is the old man going to be
mortified and the new man be renewed? How is this going to
happen? Well, this is the work spoken of in our text. It's done
by this doctrine, this one doctrine. The doctrine of God, my doctrine,
is done by this one doctrine, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ. The Holy Spirit makes the power of the doctrine to
be effectual in the new man. Look at Romans 8 now. We saw
this not too long ago. He said, If the Spirit, the Holy Spirit,
Romans 8, 11, If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from
the dead dwell in you, that is, if you're born again, He that
raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal
bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you. He's saying there that
He's going to Yes, He's going to quicken you in the end and
He's going to raise our mortal bodies. But He's saying here,
it's the Holy Spirit that's going to quicken you. It's the Holy
Spirit that's going to renew the inward man and make it so
that you can walk after God. You can believe God. You can
repent. You can walk after God. You can
believe. You can, you know, do the things
that He commands you to do, to serve Him. Alright, look here
at the verse 13. He says, For if you live after
the flesh, you shall die. But if you through the Spirit
do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live. You shall live. We preach Christ and Him crucified.
We publish the name of the Lord. We speak of the greatness of
God. We declare Christ the Rock. We declare His work. We declare
all His ways. And we do that because this is
the message whereby the Spirit mortifies our old man of flesh. those old desires and those old
lusts of the flesh and lusts of the eyes and the old man. And at the same time, this is
how He renews the inward man. It makes you not want to walk
after sin. It makes you want to walk after
Christ. It makes you want to honor Christ. It makes you want
to follow Him. The Word goes forth and the Spirit
does this through the Word. Now, to preach the truth, Christ,
and to wait on the Spirit to work this in our heart. That's
what it is to walk after the Spirit. But now, if we preach
works and we urge sinners and we never declare the gospel,
we never declare how the sinner is dead and how you can do nothing,
you can't... Christ is your only strength,
the only power, the only wisdom. Unless we declare this, If we
don't preach that, we preach works and we preach law and we
try to constrain people by rewards and constrain people by threats
of judgment and try to make you take your own strength and make
you clean up yourself and modify yourself and reform yourself.
To do that is to walk after the flesh. That's to walk after the
flesh. Now, so we just preach the gospel.
And by the gospel, the Holy Spirit does the work. He renews us inwardly.
And then, because there's no strength in us to renew the inward
man either. We can't do that work either. We can't mortify
the deeds of the flesh and we can't renew the inward man. Christ
does it through the Holy Spirit, through the gospel. That's why
Paul said the preaching of the cross is to them that perish
foolishness. They say, they'll preach the
cross a little bit, but then they say, now we're going to
get past that and now we're going to talk about what you do and
what you need to do. You know how they do. But, unto
us which are saved, this gospel is the power of God. Because
the gospel is how God does the work. This is how He does the
work in the earth. Alright, let's go back to our
text now and see the third thing. We see both these great spiritual
works are accomplished by the same doctrine at the same time.
As we hear God's sovereign particular redemption accomplished by the
Lord Jesus, we hear this gospel through His precious blood, the
Word comes softly into the new man. And it distills like dew
on the tender herb. Verse 2, my doctrine shall drop
as the rain. It comes down, it comes from
Christ at the right hand of God and He speaks through the Spirit
into the heart. My speech shall distill as the
dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb. God in all His greatness
and all His sovereign power and all His ability, He does for
His people what we can't do for ourselves. He sends this gospel
to us. He draws us to the place where
the gospel is to be preached. And He unites us there. And He
gives us ears to hear it. And He gives us a heart to believe
it. And He begins to speak in our heart. And He keeps doing
this all the life of faith. This is His greatness to do this
work. And as He does this, He enters in and Christ is formed
in us. And the life that we now live,
we begin to live by the faithfulness of Christ Himself, who loved
us and gave Himself for us. It's by Him working in us. And
then the same doctrine comes upon our old man and subdues
the flesh. Look at verse 2. And as the showers
upon the grass. This is just one doctrine doing
both these works. Have you ever seen, we're talking
about like in a field, you'll see that sage grass, you know,
that grows about this tall. And you ever seen that grass
when I'm talking about a thunderstorm comes and a heavy downpour comes? If you see grass like that in
a field, you know what it does after the storm? It lays down.
It lays down. And that's what this gospel does
to the old grassy man of our flesh. It comes like a heavy
shower on the flesh. While it's distilling its dew
in the inward man, it's like a heavy shower upon the grass
of our flesh. And Moses tells us why this one
doctrine does this. Why does this one doctrine have
these two different effects on these two different men in one
believer? Why does it do that? Here's why,
verse 3. Because I will publish the name
of the Lord, ascribe you greatness to our God. The doctrine of the
greatness of God feeds the inner man. Nothing comforts me, nothing. When I'm all, my flesh is what
gets worried. My flesh is what thinks, you
know, how are we going to pay the bills? How are we going to,
how are we going to keep it all together? How are the brethren
going to keep coming here? And how are the, how's this work
going to continue? There's so many distractions
and there's so much to pull you away and there's so much going
on in the world. How's this work going to continue? That's my
flesh. But when I hear about the sovereign God who does as
He pleases in heaven and in earth, who can turn the heart as He
will, who's working everything for His people, who's the one
who makes the word effectual, when I hear how He draws His
people and plants His people and keeps His people and hedges
His people about, it calms. That old man is subdued and shut
up and the new man is strengthened to trust God. and trust Him. That's how we're going to do
this. This work's done through the gospel. Here's why I look
here. Because I'll publish verse 4, that He's the Rock. His work
is perfect, for all His ways are judgment. A God of truth
and without iniquity, just and right is He. You see, the new
man's renewed because the new heart delights to hear about
Christ our Rock. My old man gets to sinking down. My old man starts sinking down.
My old man makes me to look to my flesh. And it makes me look
to my works. It makes me look to my law keeping. It makes me look to my past experiences. It makes me look over my life.
And every time I do that, you know what happens? It scares
me to death. I think, I can't possibly be
a child of God. And I start becoming fearful,
and I start becoming afraid, and I start thinking, oh, I got
to clean this thing up. I got to do something. I got
to do. I got to do. I got to do. But when I hear
about Christ the Rock, when I hear about my one foundation, when
I hear about Christ who came and who came and whose work is
perfect, that means His work is finished. It's complete. And
I'm complete in Him. That's what He says. He says
just like He is seated at the right hand of God, that's where
I am and that's how I am. Righteous, accepted of God, holy,
meet for heaven with the inheritance, with the saints in light. That's
what He says about me. And when I hear him speak about
how all his ways are judgment, they're all just. How that he's
a God of truth and without iniquity, how he's just and right. I hear
about how He wouldn't clear the guilty, how He came to where
I am and took my sin and went to the cross and in judgment,
in just judgment, He bore the wrath of God in my room instead
so that He put away my sin, He made me righteous, He fulfilled
the law for me, and so that now I'm the righteousness of God
in Him. And He did it in truth, He did it in judgment, and He
made me just and right and true in Him who is all these things. That inward man is renewed and
the old man that wants me to look to me and the law and is
moved by Satan, that old man is put down. And the new man
looks to Christ where I'm seated at the right hand of God and
I'm settled. That tender herb is no match
for that strong old sage grass that's growing up. It's got to
have this work done by the Lord God. This is food. Here's how
the work's done. Here's the message. Verse 5,
it's because how published they have corrupted themselves. Their
spot is not the spot of his children. They're perverse and a crooked
generation. Isn't that what we are, brethren,
by nature? And nobody but a believer loves to hear the message that
by nature I'm perverse. By nature I'm nothing but spots
and wrinkles and perverse and unacceptable to God. You know
why the believer is the only one that loves to hear that?
The believer is the only one that has a new man. And the new
man is the only one that likes to hear that in my flesh dwells
no good thing. If all you are is flesh, this
gospel is offensive to you. Because you want to put your
will in it. You want to put your works in it. You want to put
your hand to it. And you are going to corrupt the work. You
are going to defile it because everything we touch defiles.
But because we have a new man, we'd like to hear about our depravity. We'd like to hear that we're
unclean outside of Christ. But in Christ, we're spotless
and without wrinkle. We can't be rebuked in Christ. Can you think of anything that
would make God the Father rebuke His Son? His only begotten Son
who's seated there at His right hand? There's nothing that would
make Him rebuke His children. Nothing that will make him bring
the wrath of God upon his children. He'll chasten his child, he'll
correct his child, but not in wrath and not in judgment because
he settled that at the cross in his son. Now brethren, that's
another reason why the preaching of Christ and Him crucified is
to us who are called both the power of God and the wisdom of
God. Don't you see the power of God
in the gospel and the wisdom to save through the foolishness
of preaching? God said, He said He does two things. He said,
I kill and I make alive. And every time you and I sit
and hear this gospel preached, those two things take place.
He kills our old man of flesh and He makes alive the new man.
He said this, the Word of God is a two-edged sword. The Word of God is quick and
powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even
to the dividing of soul and spirit. and of the joints and of the
marrow. It's a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
When you hear the Gospel, this two-edged sword within the hand
of Christ Jesus the Lord, when He wields this sword, He cuts
with one side and cuts the old man of flesh. It's better for
your hand to be cut off if it offends you. It's better for
your eye to be plucked out if it offends you than to enter
through life and to perish in hell. You and I won't ever pluck
that eye out and we won't ever cut that hand off that's left
to us. But when this gospel comes, it slices and it cuts and it
cuts off what needs to be cut off. And it pierces. And then
the other side heals. It heals. One's cutting the old
man and the other one's healing the new man. And it divides that
old man from that new man. And keeps them separate. And
keeps us looking to Christ and not looking to ourselves. That's
what this gospel does. Ah! It falls softly as dew, distilling
upon the tender herb. And it falls with a heavy downpour,
beating down the grassy flesh. Now listen. Like I said, if you
only have the old man of flesh, That's why this gospel is offensive
to you. That's why you don't want to
come here. That's why if you had your brothers, you wouldn't
come here. That's why you see kids get to be 18, 19 years old
and their mom and dad don't have the rule over them anymore. They've
moved out and they stopped coming. Because they never wanted to
be there in the first place. They never were there in heart.
Because this gospel doesn't give you a work. It doesn't give you,
it doesn't make you to have the will to do anything. It declares
that your flesh is nothing but grass. But don't stop coming. Don't stop coming to here. I
wish that, the only good thing about the fact that kids these
days don't grow up to their 35 years old is the fact that you
at least have to stay under mom and daddy's roof maybe. That's
one of the good things about us being in this bad economy.
You have to stay under your mom and dad's roof a little longer.
Maybe they can just keep you coming to hear the gospel. Because
this is how God's going to give you life. It's through this Word.
And this is how He's going to continue to save His people.
So believer, this is why we have to have it. This is why we have
to keep hearing it. You know that old grass in that
field, when it gets knocked down by that shower, it's just a little
while and it starts poking its head right back up. And then
we hear this gospel and he knocks down our man of flesh, but in
a little while, he's right back. We got to keep hearing it. We
got to keep hearing it. Got to keep hearing it over and
over and over and over. All right, brother. Our gracious God, we thank you
for your word. Thank you for showing us these
things in simple illustrations using your creation to teach
us the great, marvelous spiritual works you do in the new creation. Lord, make us to see, make us
to rejoice, make us to be renewed inwardly. And Lord, subdue our
flesh, bring us down in our old nature. We don't want to walk
after that man. We want Him to be put down. We
want Christ to have the glory. Lord, make Your Word effectual.
We pray in the hearts of some of our young people and whoever
it is here, young or old, that don't know You. Lord, make them
to know You. Make them to see Christ and rejoice
in Him. Forgive us of our sins, Father.
We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.