Whenever God the Holy Spirit
enters into a dead sinner and creates life that was not there,
gives faith in Christ that was not there, grants repentance
to turn from our fleshly ways that was not there, we become
pilgrims in this world. We become sojourners. The world
becomes dead to us and we become dead to the world. And we become
pilgrims that are just passing through a foreign land. We're
foreigners in this land. And we're looking forward to
a city whose builder and maker is God. And we believe Christ
has redeemed us from all iniquity. And we believe that He shall
yet redeem us out of this world, out of this body of death, into
that glorious liberty of the sons of God to be with Him forever.
But you know, sometimes we start to doubt. We get plagued with
doubts. Is all this real? Is God really
going to do this for me? Is He really going to redeem
me out of this body? We know we don't have any reason
to doubt. God's true to His Word. And we
don't want to doubt. We hate that about our old flesh,
our old man. But we do it nonetheless. So
I want to give you this morning three assurances of redemption. Three assurances of redemption. Our text is found in Isaiah 52
verses 1 through 6. I'm going to give you our divisions
as we read the text. Our first assurance is God's
Word. God's own promise. Look at verse
3. For thus saith the Lord. Thus saith the Lord, You have
sold yourselves for naught, for nothing, and ye shall be redeemed
without money. We have his word. Secondly, our
second assurance is past deliverances. Past deliverances. We can look
to the past and see how He's delivered His people, redeemed
His people in the past. Look at verse 4. For thus saith
the Lord God, My people went down a fourth time into Egypt
to sojourn there, and God redeemed them out, didn't He? And the
Assyrian oppressed them without cause, yet God delivered them
out four separate times. And then our third assurance
is God's own glory. His own glory. The glory of His
holy name. He says, verse 5, Now therefore,
what have I here, saith the Lord, that my people is taken away
for naught? What advantage is that to me?
What profit is that to me? They that rule over them make
them to howl, saith the Lord. They're not worshipping me. They're
murmuring and howling and complaining. And my name continually every
day is blasphemed, Therefore, my people shall know my name. He says, my people, not those
oppressing them, not those that, not everybody, my people, my
people shall know my name, the glorious name. And therefore
they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak, it is
I. So I want you who believe to
be assured that we have, first of all, His Word, second of all,
His ability and His power that's already been manifest to us,
and then thirdly, His own glory, so that we can trust that He
shall redeem us out of this world. Our first assurance that He shall
redeem His people out of this world is God's own Word, His
own Word. Look at verse 3. For thus saith
the Lord God, you have sold yourselves for naught, and you shall be
redeemed without money. You've sold yourselves for nothing. As we've seen throughout the
Old Testament Scriptures, if a man got himself into debt,
so much into debt where he had nothing to pay, he could sell
himself to his creditors and just work off his debt. But when he did that, he became
a bondman to that creditor. He was legally bound to that
creditor for a certain term of years. Well, that's what the
Lord says of Judah and Jerusalem, you've sold yourselves into bondage. And there was no one else to
blame but them. He said, you sold yourselves. They did it. Their captivity was the fruit
of their own rebellion against God. They did it. And even worse,
they sold themselves for nothing. They got nothing in return for
doing it. They were just abject slaves
is all they were. That's all they got for selling
themselves. So let's learn from this because
this is a picture of us by nature. This is a picture of the slavery
of sin and death into which all men are born into this world.
Listen to Romans 6. I'm just going to read this to
you. It says, you were the servants of sin. You were the slaves of
sin. Servants to uncleanness and to
iniquity unto iniquity. That's what we were. And there's
no one to blame but us. We sold ourselves. God's not
to blame. James 1.13 says, Let no man say
when he is tempted, I am tempted of God. We can't say God tempted
us, for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He
any man, but every man's tempted when he's drawn away of his own
lust and enticed. So we can't blame anybody else.
By nature, we're like Ahab. The Scripture says of him, he
did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord. And
so did we. We were a sellout. Sinner, you
sitting here right now without Christ, I know that you may think
that God's people are dupes, that we've been duped. by all
this. I'm going to tell you the truth.
You've been through it. You're a sell-out to sin and Satan.
That's what you are. You're a sell-out. Just nothing
but an old sell-out. In Ahab's day, all these vainly
religious people who were worshiping God, they were so sure and they
were so certain in their heart. False religions, they're not
insincere. They're certain and they're sure
and they're sincere in what they're doing. And they were so sincere
and so sure that they even made their own sons and daughters
pass through the fire. They put them through the fire.
This was part of their worship routine. But God says of every
bit of it, they sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the
Lord to provoke Him to anger. I've said this to you before
and it made people mad when I said this, but this is so. I would
rather my children not get in false religion and free will
works religion. I'd rather them not get into
it at all. Period. and just be out of it
completely. Even if they didn't believe anybody
or anything, I'd rather them just not get in false religion,
period. Because false religion, a false
hope, will works, works, men think they can come to God by
their works. That's damning. That's a damning problem with
men. And all religion without Christ
formed in the heart, without Him being formed in the heart,
so that your new motive for everything you do is the fact that your
salvation has been accomplished by Him, and that He will not
turn you away, and that He's done it all by His grace. When
that's your motive, you've been made a new creature. But religion
without that, It's just a vain show. The scripture says, Paul
said, the law is spiritual. You can't see it, we can't see
it by nature, we can't understand what it says by nature, and we
can't do what it says, but it reaches to the heart, to the
depths of the heart. The law is spiritual, Paul said,
but I'm carnal, sold under sin. Now that's the case with each
of us. That's the case with you, sinner. Stop working your way
to glory. Stop trying to do something to
gain God's favor. Stop trying to earn a salvation
that can't be earned. And submit to God and believe
on Him. Cast everything into the hand
of the Lord Jesus Christ. You have no ability to come to
God by your law keeping. You can't do it. You need Christ
who is the kinsman redeemer. And we didn't only, not only
did we sell ourselves, we sold ourselves for nothing. Absolutely
nothing. You look at the things that entice
us to sin. The things that entice us to
sin. You know, Satan came to the Lord
Jesus and he showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the
glory of all those kingdoms and said, I'll give these to you
if you'll just bow down and worship me. We don't have to have him
do that to us. Esau sold his birthright for
a bowl of soup. We don't have to have golden
carrots dangled before our eyes for us to sin. We sin for nothing,
for absolutely nothing. And sin pays us nothing in return.
How many times have you thought, you know, I can just cheat a
little bit this way and do this just a little bit, you know,
under the radar and I'm going to get some great advantage by
it. And you ended up in sorrow and suffering and pain from it. That's what sin does. We don't
gain by sin. James 1.15 says, When lust hath
conceived, it brings forth sin. And sin, when it's finished,
brings forth death. You see the picture there? It's
the picture of a woman conceiving a child and then giving birth
to the child and the child being stillborn. That's what our sin
does. That's what it is. Wherever you
find sin, you find the payment for sin, which is death. The
wages of sin is death. Listen to this now carefully.
If we miss what happened in the fall, we miss it all. Romans
5.12 says, Wherefore, as by one man, sin entered into the world,
and death by sin. And so death passeth on all men. What does that mean? The psalmist
said, Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother
conceive me. I was conceived in Adam's lust,
he had his lust, and he brought forth sin. And sin, after it's
born, brings forth death. And that's what happened. And
we all died in it. For that, all have sinned. Because
I was conceived with a sin nature, you know what I did? I sinned.
The Scripture says the wicked are estranged from the womb.
They go astray as soon as they be born speaking lies. Have you
tried your best to teach your children to sin? Have you sat
them down and said, now son, let me be sure and teach you
how to sin. Let me teach you how to say no to me when I tell
you to do something. Let me teach you how to run headlong
into sin and do all the things contrary to what I would have
you do. Let me teach you that. You didn't have to teach them.
They just know how to do it. Why? They come from our mother's
womb centers. We come forth sinners. And we
can't deliver ourselves out of our sin. We can't do anything
about it. Job 14 verse 4 says, Who can
bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing? Can you just think
about that? That's so simple. Can you take
an unclean thing and bring a clean thing out of it? It's impossible. You take a dish rag, you dip
it, submerse it down in oil. So it's just covered in oil.
Can you bring a clean dish rag out of that? No. Nothing. Who is man that he should be
clean? And he which is born of a woman that he should be righteous?
Can Ethiopian change his skin? Can a leopard change his spots? God says, then may ye also do
good that are accustomed to do evil. So you see, by one man's
offense, death reigned by one. Everywhere there's sin, there's
death. So God says of you and me, you've sold yourselves for
nothing. Now let me ask each one here
a question. Are you in bondage to sin? Are you in bondage to
sin? Is there a sinner here that is
in bondage and captivity to sin and you cannot free yourself
from sin? You cannot do anything to please
God. Is there anyone here like that?
Or what about a believer? Let me ask you this question.
Do you desire to be freed from this body of death so that you
can be with holy God? so that you can be with the Redeemer,
not just be saved from hell, everybody wants to be saved from
hell, but I'm saying to be with God, to be with Christ, to be
there where He is with Him all the time in a holy, perfect environment. Do you want that? Do you desire
to be redeemed out of this body of death to be with Him? If we
say no, I've got no good news for you. Because a man's got
to be in bondage for this to be good news. You've got to be
a slave for this to be good news. You've got to want liberty for
this to be good news. And you've got to want for another
to do it, to be absolutely unable to do it yourself, for anything
I'm going to say to you to be good news. Let me hear, I've
got good news for you who said yes. Look at the next verse,
verse 3. He says, ye shall be redeemed
without money. You shall be redeemed without
money. Now, child of God, you first
just think about this. Just this right here is comforting
enough. He says, ye shall be redeemed. Now, this is what's
saying. This is our first point. We've
got God's Word on it. We've got God's Word. God who
cannot lie. He says, you shall be redeemed. At the point he's talking about
here, Israel had not yet even gone into captivity. At the point
when he's telling them this, they hadn't been in captivity
yet. Believer, you understand this.
We may come into some worse captivity. We may come into some captivity
and some bondage, but this is what he's saying before we ever
come into it. You shall be redeemed. That's what he says to his child.
You shall be redeemed. And Christ has already redeemed
us from sin and death. He's done that. But we're going
to be redeemed from these bodies of death too. We sure are. And he says this, without money.
Without money. Now if a foreign country, they
capture some exiles and they take them in custody and they
have them in slavery and bondage in their prison or whatever,
they usually require the other country from which those captives
came to pay them a ransom to let them go. We got to pay them
something. When we get these prisoners released
overseas, we always have to pay something to get them released.
God says, I'm not paying the king of Babylon anything. He's
not getting a payment of anything. God's children are in bondage
to the prince of the power of the air, to the devil himself.
But God says, just like Cyrus came to Babylon and he redeemed
Judah and Jerusalem out of Babylon without paying a cent to the
king of Babylon, even so Christ redeemed his people out from
the bondage of Satan and didn't pay Satan a thing. because he
didn't deserve to be paid anything. Yeah, he did. He paid him something.
He paid him. a crushed head. That's what he
paid him. Because in Genesis 3.15, the Lord said to Satan,
you're going to bruise his heel, but he's going to crush your
head. He's going to bruise your head. And that's what happened
on Calvary's tree. But here's the blessed news to
me and you who believe, the spiritual and internal redemption from
sin, from Satan and the law, as well as the believer's future
redemption from this world and from death and from hell is obtained
for God's people without his people paying anything. It's
free. Listen to Romans 3.24, being
justified freely by His grace. Justified means I'm cleared of
all sin, past, present, and future. You know, the Scripture tells
us there's only one who can create and destroy, and that's God.
He can create and He can destroy. Our sins have been destroyed.
If you took all our sins and you wrote them out on a page
and you put them in a fire and you burned up that fire so that
nobody could ever read them, they would still be there. The
ashes would be there. The matter would be there. There
would still be matter. But God destroys all our sin
through what Christ did. It's gone. It's never ever a
thought in God's mind toward His people because their sins
are put away. And it says, and we're justified
freely by His grace. You know what grace is? It's
unmerited favor. We do it all the time every day.
We choose some and pass by others. We choose different things and
pass by other things. And we do so with people. We
choose certain people and we pass by people. that we do that. God did that in matters of salvation. It's free unmerited favor. God chose whom he would not based
on any works in those he chose, not based on good in them or
evil in them, irregardless of them. God chose his people simply
because he would, simply because he has the authority and the
right, the prerogative to choose whom he will and pass by whom
he will. I don't like that. You don't
like God then. God did this. I'll show you.
Let me show you that. Romans 9. Go to Romans 9. I just
want you to get an eyeball on this so you see God did it. Romans
9. In Romans 9, 6, Paul was talking
about how Israelites, many of them didn't believe, and he says
in Romans 9, 6, "...not as though the word of God had taken on
effect." It's not as though God hadn't been effectual in saving
His people. "...For they are not all Israel, which are of
Israel." He's saying not everybody in that nation of Israel were
His people. They were not all his people
there. And he said, neither because they are the seed of Abraham
are they all children, but in Isaac shall thy seed be called.
Isaac is a picture of Christ. That is, they which are the children
of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children
of the promise accounted for the seed. For this is the word
of promise, at this time will I come and Sarah shall have a
son, And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by
one, even by her father Isaac, for the children being not yet
born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose
of God, according to election might stand, not of works, but
of him that calleth. It was said unto her, the elder
shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have
I loved, but he so have I hated. And he knows what you're going
to say. The Spirit of God knows exactly what a sinner's going
to say. That's not fair! And so he says, what shall we
say then? Is there unrighteousness with
God? Is God unfair to do this? You see, what we fail to realize
is he chose his people from a mass of sinners. He chose his people
from a mass of people that were perishing. They were dying. They
could not save themselves. Grace, sovereign electing grace
is salvation. It's how we were saved because
he chose some. And then he justified us freely
by his grace. By his grace, it means that there
was a price that had to be paid. He can only save his child. if
his law is established. His law demands if a sinner sins,
he's got to die. So his law's got to be established.
That's got to be upheld. That sinner's got to die. Well,
how can God show that sinner mercy? How can he show that sinner
grace and that sinner still die? He sent his son. And His Son
took the place of all those that the Father gave Him before the
world began, and He took our sin upon Himself. And He went
to the cross, and He bore the eternal wrath of God for us in
our room instead. And because He's God eternal,
He made eternal satisfaction. And because He's man in the flesh,
He died as a man. And so now, God's law has its
payment. The payment's been made, the
ransom has been made, and all His people died. So now God's
just to give us grace and mercy and save us from our sins. Being
justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus. Oh, I want you to get that. Neither
by the blood of goats and calves. All that in the Old Testament
was showing what He would do. It was a picture of what He would
do. And then He came forth, and not by the blood of goats and
calves, but by His own blood, He entered in once into the holy
place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. Now let me
pause a minute. I get accused a lot of not preaching
practical things, and things to tell sinners what they should
do and they shouldn't do, and things to constrain sinners to
do this or not do that. Now let me pause just a minute.
I want for you, child of God, to try to enter into what Christ
did. You think about this. You think
about this justice being satisfied in harmony with His grace and
His glory. The Son of God volunteered Himself
to be made of a woman. I give you that illustration
about going into a horrible neighborhood that's a frightening neighborhood.
This whole world was just the opposite of what he is. It was
the frightening neighborhood and he came here for his people
to be made under the law, his own law, to come down under that
law and be made under that law, to be made sin for his people
and to suffer the punishment of our sin. to declare God just. He will by no means clear the
guilty. He poured out wrath on His own Son when our sin was
found on Him. And to declare God your justifier. Now, you're justified freely
from the curse of the law by His grace through the redemption
that's in Christ Jesus. Now the next time, believer,
you're about to complain about anything being too costly, about
to complain about something being too demanding of our time, or
too far of a distance for us to travel to take up His cross,
or it's too hard for you to freely
forgive your erring brother. I want you to stop and think
about this. He took your cross. You who believe, He took your
shame. He took your curse. He took your
spitting and the ripping out of His beard and being separated
from God, His Father. He took that. He took up your
cross and by His unimaginable depths of shame and unimaginable
depths of suffering for you, you're justified freely by His
grace. I'm going to tell you something,
the antidote for murmuring, the cure for our complaining, the
cure for the mortification of our sins, the cure for giving
us the energy and the strength to move and be up and serve Him
and take up His cross, that means it's not going to be easy. A
cross means it's going to be painful. A cross means it's going
to be a sacrifice. A cross means it's going to be
hurtful sometimes. But this right here, this message
of what He did, this is what makes His people take up His
cross and serve Him because He willingly served us. And if this
won't do it, if this won't put an end to our murmuring, and
this won't put an end to our complaining, and this won't put
an end to our doubts, and this won't make us to be ready to
serve Him with everything that He's given us, nothing will. Nothing will. Ah, for you without
Christ, God set Him forth to be a propitiation through faith
in His blood. That means He's the mercy seat,
He's the propitiation, He's the place God will do business with
you in mercy towards you. But you've got to come to Him
through faith in His blood. That means you're going to have
to leave off all your so-called goodness, leave off all your
so-called works, leave off every bit of baggage that you think
some goodness that will merit something for you with Him, leave
that behind and come to Him absolutely empty, trusting Him alone to
save you. And He'll save you. He promises
He will. He says, all that comes to me,
I will in no wise cast out. He said, if any man is thirsty,
let him come unto Me. And I'll give him life. I'll
give him eternal life. It takes the Holy Spirit to make
you do it. I do pray He'll make you do it. This is the only way
we're going to be saved is through Him. So, God's Word is our first
assurance. This is our first assurance.
He said, Yea, I've spoken it. I will also bring it to pass.
I've purposed it. I'll also do it. We've got His
Word on it. We've got His Word. Secondly, we have past deliverances. Look at verse 4. For thus saith
the Lord God." For indicates what he's about to say is connected
with what he just said. He's fixing to show us some past
deliverances so that he gives us assurance that we will be
saved, we will be redeemed. Now he says here, First of all,
from Egyptian bondage, verse 4, my people went down a fourth
time into Egypt to sojourn there, and we've seen how he brought
them out of there. He brought them out of there and saved them.
And then four separate times, the Assyrians took them, oppressed
them. In verse 4 he says, and the Assyrians
oppressed them without cause. So the Lord's saying to you,
you shall be redeemed without money, and then He says, and
as proof that I can redeem you, and shall do it, remember how
I delivered you out of Egypt? Remember how I delivered you
from all those Assyrian bondage? That's a loving God that wants
His people to be assured that we shall be redeemed, and He
gives us these works to show us that He's done it, and we
need it, don't we? Because we ourselves also, which have the
first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves,
waiting for the adoption to wit, the redemption of our body. For
we're saved by hope, but hope that's seen is not hope for what
a man seeth. Why does he yet hope for it?
But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience
wait for it. And sometimes we groan within
while we're waiting. We groan within. So let's do
what the Lord did here. Let's do what He did. Let's go
to past redemptions and past deliverances that He worked for
us. Let's think of those. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter
5. 1 Corinthians 5. Paul says here to the Corinthians, In everything, you're enriched
by Him. In all utterance and in all knowledge, even as the
testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come behind
in no guilt. Paul says, you remember now,
you were regenerated and converted by God. And He's given you all
these spiritual gifts so that you don't come behind in any
gift. You have, somebody will say, well, I don't have as many
gifts as He does, as His brother does. Well, Christ didn't intend
for you to have them. He's given you the gifts He intended
for you to have. And so you come behind in no
gift. You have everything that He's given to you. Our Savior
promised He would do this. He said, All that the Father
giveth to me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I'll
in no wise cast out. He's assuring us He would regenerate
us, and He did. And He converted us to see Him,
and He broke every chain of darkness, and He brought us to Christ.
He made us fall down at His feet and beg mercy, and He said, Stay
with me. Stay in me. I've saved you now.
Follow me. So that's a redemption. That's
a deliverance of sorts. We have that to remember. And
then we have another past deliverance to remember. We have the assurance
that we still believe. After this long a time, we still
believe. Because we wouldn't if it wasn't
for Him. We wouldn't still believe if
it wasn't for Him. I was going to wait and give this illustration
to you another time, but I'll give it to you now. I love it.
Arthur Pink said this, and I'm going to have to paraphrase it.
I can't remember it exactly, but he said that a believer would
persevere through this world amid all the dangers and the
trials and all the things we face and still believe on Christ
is as much a miracle as if a man took a lighted candle across
an open moor, an open bay, in the middle of a hurricane and
kept it lit. You think about if you left up
here at, what's the place where we put in and went over to New
York City? What is it called? If you put
in up here on the Jersey side, whatever it's called, and you
went across that Raritan Bay when Hurricane Sandy's blowing,
and you're trying to keep a candle lit and keep it burning the whole
time. It'd be a miracle, wouldn't it?
Well, it's that much of a miracle that God keeps his child in faith
and keeps that fire burning within us for Christ in the midst of
all these hurricanes that we face. It's that much of a miracle.
But he says, I give unto them eternal life, and they shall
never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand."
God's promised it, and He won't let it happen. And so, He gives
us these little deliverances to remember. And look at verse
8. He says, "...who shall also confirm you unto the end, that
you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God
is faithful by whom you were called unto the fellowship of
His Son Christ our Lord." So, we've got the assurance of His
Word, we've got the assurance of past deliverances, and then
we've got this next assurance. We've got the assurance of His
glory, the assurance that He's not going to give His glory to
another. Look at verse 5, Isaiah 52, 5. Now, therefore, what have I here,
He says, that my people is taken away for naught? God's not profited
by His people being taken away. Nobody paid Him anything to take
His people. One, they were taken away for
nothing. God's true elect, Christ's redeemed are purchased possession.
He bought them with His blood. If you had a son that willingly
laid down his life, knew he was going to die for somebody else,
And He willingly laid down His life for them and died for them. Would you see to it that person
that He did that for was saved? Would you try your best to do
everything in your power to help them any way you could? Well, God's Son laid down His
life for His people. And God's going to see to it
that not one of them is lost. He purchased them with His blood.
And He did it lawfully, but when they're stolen away, that's unlawful. And He didn't get anything for
that. The second reason is those that take them rule over them
and make them to howl, saith the Lord. God made His people
to praise and to glorify Him. And you know what happens whenever
God's people are lorded over by men? And they're brought into
bondage by men? You know what happens? They cry
out, and they murmur, and they complain, and there's no joy
in anything they're doing. That's all in the world false
religion is. That's all it is. I don't want
to ever be chargeable for making your lives bitter with hard bondage
like folks are doing that are preaching law in churches. I
don't ever want to do that. Now, don't misunderstand me.
Be careful to maintain good works. The unbeliever is watching what
we do, and he's looking for a reason to throw it back in our teeth.
And if you ever get a chance to talk to them about the gospel,
whenever they become offended at the gospel, the first thing
they're going to do is bring up your sin and throw it back
in your face. So you need to be careful in how you conduct
yourself around others. But brethren, I don't want to
ever, the last thing in the world I want to do is create a bunch
of phony Pharisees. Self-righteous, looking down
their nose at other people, acting like they're holier than anybody
else. I want you to know you're a worm and I'm a worm. We can't
get any lower. And so we got no reason to exalt
ourselves over one another. I set before you the works of
our triune God for this reason. I am persuaded He's able to add
to the church daily such as should be saved. I'm persuaded He's
able to teach and correct and grow His child in the heart.
And I'm persuaded He's going to do it through the message
that declares His works, not our works. That declares His
grace, not something we've done. That declares His glory, not
our glory. And that's why I preach Christ
in Him crucified. Another reason God's not profited
by what they were doing is because His name was continually everyday
blasphemy. Look at Habakkuk. Turn to your
right there. You go past Daniel, go past Jonah,
and go past Nahum to Habakkuk. The Assyrian never did acknowledge
that God gave His people into their hands. They never acknowledged
that. and neither do false religion. They don't acknowledge that it's
God who did all the work. They will say God did it, but
they added some help. They did some work to help him.
Now look at this. They call themselves fishers
of men, and they catch large numbers of men and women and
children. They get large numbers. Now look at this, Habakkuk 115.
They take up all of them with the angle. they catch them in
their net, and gather them in their drag. Therefore they rejoice
and are glad. Therefore they sacrifice unto
their net, and burn incense unto their drag, because by them their
portion is fat, and their meat plenteous. However, how many
times have you ever seen, gone onto a church website, something
like that, and see all of these things they're offering? All
of these classes they got, all these different activities they
got going on, all these giving ministries they have, all this
stuff they got going on. These are all things that they
use to market their church to you and get you to come and join
with them. And when they get you to come
and join with them, they've gotten you to come and join with them
because they've used a net, they've used a drag, they've used an
angle, they've used all these various methods to get you in
there. And so you know what they rejoice
in? You know what they praise? You know what they glory in?
Those methods. All those different individual
methods that they use to get you in there. You know what we
have? We have Christ and Him crucified. We have the Gospel. That's what
we have. And we set forth the Gospel and
we wait on Him to call in His people and save His people so
that when it's done, We can say, God did this. We didn't do this.
I look at your faces now. We started out here with four
or five families. And we got, I don't know how
many families we got now. We got a lot more than that.
And you have to look at each one of them and say, God did
it. God did it. Some have been through some heavy
persecution to come to where you are now. And you did anyway. Who did that? God did it. God
takes His people and turns them and directs their path to where
He'll have them to go and He brings them out. We didn't do
it. God did it. And if you stay here, you know
how you're going to stay here? God's going to do it. That'll
be the only way. And if He takes His hand off
us for a minute, we'll run right back out into the world and just
be one in a million. But these that are using all
these other methods, they're blaspheming the name of God.
They're just using His name for lip service and blaspheming His
name. But our Savior knows the oppressors
and He hears the cry of His people. when he called them out of Egypt,
he said, I've surely seen the affliction of my people which
are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their
taskmasters, for I know their sorrows, and I've come down to
deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, to bring them
up out of that land unto a good land and large to a land flowing
with milk and honey. And that's what He's going to
do for His people. And those that are blaspheming and carrying
on, they're doing it because He's allowed them to do it. And
He's got a set time that He's going to let them do it. And
He says in Revelation 13, He says, All that dwell upon the earth
shall worship the beast, whose names are not written in the
Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
And if any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into
captivity shall go into captivity. He that killeth with the sword
must be killed with the sword. This is the patience and the
faith of the saints. We're waiting right now because
not only are we waiting for God to call out all His elect into
His body, we're also waiting for the fullness of the iniquity
of unbelievers to be filled up. and they're going to be killed
with their own sword. That sword and those methods
that they're using to take into captivity, they're going to be
brought into captivity. And that fleshless sword and
strength they're using is going to kill them. And so the faith
of God's saints is to wait. Wait on God because He's destroying
them with their own methods. That's what He's doing. But God
is going to deliver His elect children from all oppressors
by His effectual grace in this gospel age. He says there, My
people shall know My name. He says there, They shall know
in that day that I am He that does speak. He says, My people
shall know My name. Look at John 10. John chapter
10. I've got to wind this up. John
10. Speaking of Christ here, it says
this. John 10 verse 3. To him the porter openeth, and
the sheep hear his voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name. and leadeth them out. And when
he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the
sheep follow him, for they know his voice. And a stranger will
they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the
voice of strangers. Look down at verse 27. My sheep
hear... Oh, look at verse 26. This is
what he told to those that rejected him. You believe not, because
you are not of my sheep. That's why you don't believe
you're not my sheep. As I said unto you, my sheep hear my voice,
and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal
life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. My Father which gave them me
is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of
my Father's hand. I and my Father are one. So there's no doubt,
Hebrews 8 says, they're going to all know me from the least
to the greatest, every one of them. And He's going to redeem
us then from all captivity for His name's sake, for His glory's
sake. The psalmist said, He saved them
for His name's sake that He might make His mighty power to be known. That's what He's doing. He put
His name on His people before the foundation of the world.
They wear His name. He did. His name is the God who
keeps covenant. He doesn't lie. He keeps His
covenant. And His name is His divine perfections and His glory,
wisdom and faithfulness, grace and mercy, justice and holiness,
power and goodness and truth. This is His name. So brethren,
you have the assurance of His word. He said you shall be redeemed
without money. You have the assurance of past
deliverances. He has saved us, He is saving us, and He shall
yet save us. And we have the assurance that
He's going to do it because He will not share His glory with
another. He won't. Now, if you don't like
what you've heard here today, I want you to think of something
real hard. Think of something long and hard.
Did you hear man today get any glory? If you hear a man built
up and God brought down, I never said to you, he's trying, if
you'll just let him. I never said, he wants to so
bad, if you just, he's done all that he can do, now it's up to
you. I'd say anything like that. I've told you God saves, and
he shall save, and nobody's gonna stop him. Now, if you don't like
that message, you have to ask yourself why. Why don't I like
you? I'll tell you the reason. It
didn't give you any glory. It took everything out of your
hands and it gave all the glory to God. You're going to give
all the glory to God, either now or in the day of judgment. But you're going to hit your
knee and you're going to say, God, all glory belongs to you. I pray he'll make us do it now.
I do. Amen.