Alright, we're going to go back
now to Psalm 12 this morning. We were here Thursday night. But I want to look at one verse
here, and our subject is going to be preservation. I've titled
this, Preserved by the Lord. Let's look at Psalm 12, verse
7. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord. Thou shalt preserve them from
this generation forever. Preserved is a very simple word. It means to guard. It means to
protect. It means to attend to. It means
to keep safe. Preserved. Whenever us parents
lived under our our parents' roof, we depended upon them to
preserve us, to guard us, to defend us, to keep us safe. That's
what you who now live under your parents' roof, that's what you
depend upon them for, to preserve you, to keep you. You have pets
and fish and different things like that that depend upon you
to preserve them. That's what you do, you preserve
them. Well, the reason that the believer perseveres in faith
until the end is because God preserves us. He protects us. He keeps us. He guards us. He keeps us safe, attends to
us, to each and every one of His children. That's why we persevere,
because we're preserved of God. Now let's take this sentence
and we're going to break it down just word by word. And we're
going to start with this question because I think this is going
to help us to understand our need of preservation. Who would
the Lord preserve the believer from? Look at verse 7 there and
look at those three words, from this generation. Go over to Genesis
chapter 3. The generation that God is going
to keep His children from is the generation of the wicked. That's who He's keeping His children
from. Look at Genesis 3 verse 15. He says, this is after the fall,
and He says, and He's speaking to the serpent here, the devil,
Satan. And He says, I will put enmity,
hatred, between thee, between the devil, between the serpent,
and the woman. That woman particularly is Mary,
who gave birth to the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's the bride, it's
the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, His elect. He said, I'm
going to put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy
seed, that is the children of the devil, and her seed, which
is Christ, and all those that God put in Christ. It shall bruise
thy head. He's talking to Satan here. It, Christ, shall bruise your
head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Satan bruised his heel
on the cross. Paul told us, we saw this a few
weeks back, he said, as then he that was born after the flesh
persecuted him that was born after the spirit. Even so it
is now. They speak vanity, our text says. Psalm 12.2 says they speak vanity. Everyone with his neighbor and
with flattering lips, with a double heart do they speak. Let's put
it simply. It's simply this. The wicked
generation that God's going to keep His children from are those
who would have our attention turned to anything and everything
but God's own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the wicked generation. That's the subtlety. That's the
deceit. They would have you turned from
Christ to something else. Men and women get so taken up
in things other than Christ. There are worldly things that
men are taken up with, ambition and pride and honors, lust to
the eyes, lust to the flesh, the pride of life. And in religion,
it's the same way. Men get in religion and for a
little while, they can stand to listen and eat this manna
for a little while. And then after a little while,
you find out not everybody came out of Egypt for the same reason.
They start wanting the garlics and the leeks in Egypt. They
start murmuring and saying, do you got anything else but this
bread? We don't want this bread. They
get taken up with history. They get taken up with denominations.
They get taken up with dispensationalism. They get taken up with prophecy
and with signs. You realize when Christ came
the first time, religious men rejected Him because they were
looking for a temporal kingdom. They were looking for him to
set up a kingdom on this earth, like earthly kingdoms, and to
establish that physical nation, and they rejected him because
he said, my kingdom's not so. Men came to him and they said,
we would believe you if you'd give us a sign. And the Lord
said, a wicked and an adulterous generation seeks a sign. And
there won't be any sign given to it but the sign of the prophet
Jonah. As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's
belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights
in the earth. He's saying, He is the sign. In Isaiah 7 14,
therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. And he said plainly, this is
my beloved son. This is him. I'm well pleased
with him. Hear him. Look to him. Have all
your attention focused on him. Don't look anywhere else. But
Satan is so subtle. He's got a thousand noble causes
to entangle people in. all their noble causes too. There
are things that you just can't do, that you can't let go of.
You've got to talk about those things. And next thing you know,
you're all wrapped up. Next thing you know, somebody's
walking away from where the gospel of Christ and Him crucified is
preached for some stupid, ignorant reason. They don't have a thing
in the world that's not going to help you spiritually in the
salvation of your soul at all. 2 Corinthians 11. 2 Corinthians
11 verse 3, Paul said, But I fear, lest by any means, any means,
however he's got to do it, whatever he's got to use to do it, as
the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety." You know what
he did? He turned Eve from God. He turned Eve from the Word of
God. He turned Eve from depending
entirely upon God. And he turned Eve to the work
of her own hand. And he made her to think, this
is wisdom. Here's where wisdom is. This
is where you can get wisdom, right here. Turn away from what
God has said and do what God says don't do. That's where you'll
find wisdom. He says here, I'm afraid, as
the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your mind should
be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he
that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we've not preached,
or if you receive another spirit which you've not received, or
another gospel which you've not accepted, you might well bear
with him. Believers don't have but one
object to keep our own, and it's so simple. is so single. We got one object to keep our
eye on and for some reason we want to put our eyes on every
other object but that one object. That one object is the Lord Jesus
Christ. The simplicity of Christ is salvation
is by Christ. Christ is salvation. That's the
simplicity of Christ. Of God are we in Christ Jesus. of God is do we have the mind
of Christ so that when we are truly born of the Spirit of God,
Christ becomes wisdom to us. And with the mind, we serve the
law of Christ. We serve Him. Of God Christ is
made unto us righteousness. He is the Lord our righteousness. You know what we've got to have?
We've got to have righteousness. He's the Lord our righteousness.
Of God is He made unto us sanctification. He that sanctifieth and they
who are sanctified are all of one. of God as Christ made unto
us redemption. We have been sealed with the
Holy Spirit of promise." This is true of every believer. Sealed
with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance
until the redemption of the purchased possession. That's what redemption
is. It's the purchase of a possession.
And He owns that possession. And that possession is each and
every one of His children. And it's unto the praise of His
glory. When it comes to the wicked generation,
look at Colossians 2.8. Colossians 2.8. Paul said, Beware, lest any man
spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition
of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him, which is
the head of all principality and power." I doubt very seriously
that Mary knew anything at all about what most of this religious
world is taken up with. I doubt she knew or cared about
anything that this religious world is taken up with. But she
sat at Christ's feet. And this is what Christ said
of her. He said, but one thing is needful. One thing is needful,
and Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken
from her. Christ is the treasure hid in
a field. Christ is the pearl of great
price. Paul said, doubtless I count
all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ
my Lord, whom I suffer the loss of all things and I count them
but dung, that I might win Christ and be found in Him, not having
mine own righteousness which is after the law, but that righteousness
which is by the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of
God, God given, God provided, God God made righteousness. That's the righteousness I want
to be found in. And everything else to me is
dung. If you don't want me to tell
you that what you're hanging on to is a pile of feces, then
don't come to me talking about dung. Don't come to me trying
to turn my attention away from Christ to something else, because
that's what I'm going to tell you. That's what I'm going to
say to you. That's dung. And I don't care anything about
it. I found the pearl of great price. I found the treasure hidden
afield. I'm willing to sell everything
else to have Him. To have Him. If a sinner ever
meets righteousness, if a sinner ever meets righteousness, we'll
lay aside everything else and start following after Him. Hebrews
12.1, this is what it says. We have a great cloud of witnesses,
a great cloud of witnesses who laid aside everything else and
followed after Christ. And he says, wherefore, let us
lay aside every weight and the sin that this has easily beset
us, and let's run with patience the race that's set before us,
looking to one object, Jesus, the author and finisher of our
faith, who for the joy that was set before Him." You see what
he's saying is Christ is our joy that's set before us and
the joy that was set before Christ was His people that He was redeeming
and He redeemed them. He despised the cross. He despised
what He had to suffer and we despise it. We despise the fact
that men are going to persecute us and reject us and walk away
from the gospel and walk away from us and count us as nothing
and the refuse of this world that they might go on in their
religious charade. We hate that. I hate it. I hate
it for them and I hate that we have to bear it. But he despised
that shame of that ignominious cross where he bore the sin of
his people in his own body on the tree. But he did it and he
did it for one reason. Because there was a joy set before
him. The glory of his Father and the
salvation of his people. And the joy set before us is
the Lord Jesus Christ. We're running this race looking
to one object. One object. the simplicity that's
in Christ Jesus. So God's called out children.
They're called a chosen generation, a chosen generation, a royal
priesthood, a peculiar people, a holy nation. And God's going
to keep this people from this evil generation so that we show
forth the praises of Him. Him has called us out of that
darkness into His marvelous light. Alright, now here's the second
question. Back there, Psalm 12, 7. Who's going to do this preserving? Who's going to do this preserving?
See how the sentence begins? Thou. You, O Lord. You, O Lord. If I could sum up
salvation, if I could sum up what this book's teaching from
the first page, first word to the last word, if I could sum
up what I believe, where I rest in, what my hope is, it's what
Jonah 2.9 says, salvation is of the Lord. Salvation means that sinners
are saved by a Savior outside of ourselves. That's what salvation
means. Sin and self is what we're being
saved from. Sin and self is what we're being
saved from. We need to be made alive spiritually,
and we can't do that. The Lord Jesus said, except you
be born of water and of the Holy Spirit. You can't see the kingdom
of God. We need to be made holy. We can't
do that. not by works of righteousness
which we've done, but according to His mercy He saved us by the
washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. He's made
His people what Adam was when He created Adam before sin ever
entered in. And even better, we can't fall
because we need an eternal righteousness. And we can't make that eternal
righteousness, but Christ came and God But he hath made him
to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him." We need to be kept preserved
from all evil. The Scriptures tells us to keep
ourselves unspotted from this world. He that's born of the
Spirit of God, he keeps himself and the wicked one touches him
not. But this verse tells us why that's so. This verse tells
us why that's so. Thou, thou shalt keep them, O
Lord. Thou shalt preserve them from
this generation forever. Being confident of this very
thing, Paul said, that he, he which hath begun a good work
in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Paul
said, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver
us, and whom we trust which yet shall deliver us. It's God who's
doing this. Salvation's of the Lord. He purposed
it. Christ purchased it. And the
Holy Spirit applies it. And this is what the Scripture
says. The salvation of the righteous is of the Lord. Is of the Lord. He that is our God is the God
of salvation. And unto God the Lord belong
the issues from death. Now, Robert and Carol, you've
started working. Y'all have gone out and started
working. You think about it, now that you've started working,
and you see it's not easy to work, and you understand something
about what your fathers have done for you this whole time,
providing everything for you. Imagine if all of a sudden you
had to do everything. Imagine if all of a sudden every
member in your household depended on you to provide all for them.
What I'm making is when a sinner understands something of what
has to be done to bring us into the presence of a thrice holy
God, that's when a sinner begins to realize and be thankful that
we're called and redeemed and kept and preserved by God. This works. His work, brethren.
His work. All right, here's the next thing.
Look at the next word in that sentence. Shout. Thou shalt. Never pass over God's shalls
and his wills, because this is so very important. God never
does anything in maybes. God does everything in absolutes.
This world, if you hear men speak, they speak as if they can't be
certain about anything. Everybody's so scared of being
sued and taken down by another one that they will not stand
up and just tell you something. I wish I could find a doctor
that would say, this is gonna fix it. or a lawyer that would
say, that's wrong, or a politician that would say, this is what
needs to be done, instead of speaking out of both sides of
their mouth. Everybody's so afraid of being taken down, I mean,
taken out of their position of authority and their position
of, especially preachers. But this is the case. God does
what He does in absolute certainty. All the promises of God are yes
in Christ and they're in Him. Amen unto the glory of God. The
Scripture says, He shall confirm you unto the end, that you may
be blameless in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful,
who called us into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our
Lord. We've been told lies so much,
and we've lied so much, that it's hard for us to understand
that what God says is true. It's hard for us to really enter
into when somebody's telling us truth, when it's true. But
look there at verse 6. The words of the Lord are pure
words. As silver tried in a furnace of earth purified seven times.
Now that's pure. That's pure. You think a silver
heated up seven, purified seven times. That's pure, free from
all impurity, perfect, pure, pure words. Proverbs 35 verse
5 says, every word of God is pure. It's pure. Nothing in this
word is untrue. It's called the sincere milk
of the word. The words of the Lord, they're
more valuable than silver and gold, more valuable than money,
more valuable than anything that we deem as being valuable. Imagine
this, if somebody gave you the keys to the largest bank in the
whole world and said, here it is, there's treasures in there,
there's diamonds hidden in there, there's valuable, there's all
the wealth that you could ever want is in this bank. Here's
the keys to it, it's yours, have it. Take it, take it, take what
you want. Let me tell you, turn to Proverbs
18. This book that you're looking into right here, that's what
this book is. This book is a treasure. It's
a mine of treasure. It's a mine of precious jewels. And this is what God says to
us in this book. Proverbs 8, 10. He says, receive
my instruction and not silver. And knowledge rather than choice
go. For wisdom is better than rubies.
and all things that may be desired." I mean, think about that. What is it that men deem valuable?
All things that may be desired are not worthy to be compared
to. And you know what you can do
with this book? If you had something that was more desirable than
anything else, than all things that are to be desired, if it
was anything else, you'd have to go home and lock it away in
a safe. You'd have to get somebody in
one of these armored trucks to drive you around in it to keep
people from robbing you with it. You take this book and put
it in your car, you ride home, get out, go in a restaurant,
leave it sitting on a seat. You'll put your iPod under the
seat and leave this just sitting out in the open. You can go home,
you can set it on your coffee table, just leave it sitting
out there all week. You can set it out on your deck
if you want to and just leave it there. It'll be right there
when you come back because nobody's interested in these rupees. Nobody's
interested in this treasure right here. And the Lord says it's
more valuable than anything else. The Lord shall. He shall. What He does is absolute and
we can trust when the Lord says He's going to do something. You
can trust what He says because it's true. It's pure words. The
reason I have you turn to these scriptures is I want you to see
I'm not here speaking my words. I'm not here, I didn't make up
this doctrine. I didn't make up this and come
and start preaching it just because it's my words. It's God's words. And I want you to see when I
say something, I want you to turn to that scripture and look
into that scripture and see God said that. That's what God said. I want you to see it, because
if you reject Him, if you reject these words, if you reject my
gospel, you understand you're not rejecting my gospel, you're
rejecting God's gospel. And if you receive it, you understand,
I didn't give it to you. I'm not the one who came out.
It's God's gospel. He's the one who's given it to
you. These are pure words from Him, and He says He shall. Look
at the next word. It says, He shall keep them,
O Lord. Thou shalt preserve them. keep and preserve are the same
things. Let's look first of all at them. You see, everything
God does, he does for a particular people. He doesn't do something
arbitrarily as the world declares that he does. They act like God's
done all this stuff and it's just sitting up on a shelf now
and he's hoping somebody come get it. God does what he does
for somebody. Anytime you find a promise in
the Bible, you're going to find that promise is for somebody
particularly. He says, I'm doing it for them.
Who are them? Well, back in verse 5, he says,
For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy,
now will I arise, saith the Lord. Oppression means violence. It
means ravaging destruction, robbery, spoiling, wasting. That's what
you and I That's what happened to us in the garden in Avon.
We were ravaged. We were spoiled. We were robbed.
And that's what we were in our flesh. We were ravaged and we
were ravaging one another. That's all we were. Poor and
needy. You can be poor and still provide
your needs. There's a lot of people who are
poor in comparison with other people and they can provide their
needs. But when you're poor and needy, When you're poor and you
can't provide your needs, that means you're absolutely dependent
on somebody else to do it for you. That's who the them are.
Believers lost all in the fall. And so now we depend entirely
upon God to save us. The Lord Jesus Christ said plainly,
without me you can do nothing. We can't do anything without
him, nothing without him. We're so oppressed, we're so
poor, we're so needy, we couldn't persevere one more minute in
the faith if God wasn't keeping us. And that's just so. That's
just so. I've given you this illustration
before, but you take a car that's out of line, and you got your
hand on the wheel, and you're holding that car steady so it's
going straight down the lane like it's supposed to. But the
moment you take your hand off of it, that car's right over
into the ditch. Me and you are that car. If God don't keep his
hand on us and keep us going, moving straight ahead, we'll
fall out of the way in a heartbeat. And the man that don't think
he will don't know himself. He don't know himself. A believer
will do anything else anybody else will do except for the grace
of God. And that's so. Look at what he
says here, verse 7. He says, Thou shalt keep them.
The word keep there means to hedge about with thorns. In Africa,
sometimes they have to, if you're camping out, they have to build
a wall of thorns up all the way around them to keep the lions
out, fenced out the lions, so the lions can't get into the
campsite and devour the people. Satan is called a roaring lion,
and whenever he came to tempt Job. He said this of God's protection
of Job. He said, Hast thou not made a
hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he
hath on every side? You see, the believer lives in
a fortified palace. He lives in a fortified castle,
surrounded by high walls, surrounded by bulwarks, a moat, and outside
of that bulwarks with all kinds of things that makes it difficult
for people to cross over. And that one is our God, salvation. God is salvation. Salvation he
will appoint as bulwarks. He's the fortified palace. He
keeps his people as a hedge round about. He says, and thou shalt
preserve them. When I was growing up, we used
to go to this place down at the river and hunt ducks. And there
was a certain place you could hunt. There was a certain place
that was a preserve. And the ducks figured out which
one was which. And the ducks would always You know, they'd
hear shooting in the mornings and they would go straight to
that preserve. And you could drive up to that preserve and
look out there at it, but you couldn't cross the line. You
couldn't go out there. And they'd be just ducks swimming
around and bathing themselves and having a big old time out
there. And you just sat there and watched them. Couldn't do
anything about it. That's what God says I'll do
for my people. I will preserve them. I'll keep
them from harm. New wine must be put into new
bottles. He makes everything new and both are preserved. The
Spirit of God comes in and makes us new and we're preserved in
Him. Jude 1 says, sanctify by God the Father and preserved
in Jesus Christ and called. Now this them, the reason He
does that is they're the elect of God. They're those that Christ
has redeemed. They're those that are the members
of His body of whom which He's the head. And His body's not
going to be blemished. His body is not going to be one
member of that body missing from Christ. So He's going to save
each and every one. If He doesn't, God's glory is
blemished. And that won't happen. He will
not lose any. He's justified them. He's made
them righteous. And He's calling each one out,
and He's going to keep each one. Romans 8, 8.33. This is what this preservation
is. It's something even more than physical preservation. Eventually,
God's going to take the heads down and you and I are going
to have to be separated from these bodies in death. That may
come in a In a violent way, it may come in a peaceful way. But
he's going to do that eventually, and the hours are pointed to
where we're going to have to be separated from these bodies.
But this preserving we're talking about is preserving in righteousness
that cannot ever be taken away. Romans 8.33, who shall lay anything
to the charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies. There's
our preservation. Who is he that condemneth? It's
Christ that died, yea rather that's risen again, who's even
at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
There's our preservation. Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? So tribulation, or distress,
or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword,
as it is written, for thy sake we're killed all the day long.
We're counted as sheep for the slaughter. But no, in all these
things we're more than conquerors through Him that loved us. There's
our preservation. Now here's the fourth thing.
Go back to Psalm 12, verse 7. How long is the Lord going to
do this? How long is the Lord going to preserve us? Look at
the last word. Forever. How long do you need
to be preserved? That's how long God's going to
preserve us. Forever. He said, the Lord shall preserve
thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth even
forevermore. You see, when you meet somebody
who loves you, purely loves you, when you meet somebody who is
trustworthy, you meet somebody who only tells you that which
is so, and who provides for you, and protects you, and guards
you, and keeps you, you are drawn to them because of all those
traits about them. Their pureness, and their trustworthiness,
and their protection, and their keeping of you, and you love
them. And you want to do what you do
to show them you love them. That's what it is to be married
to Christ. That's who He is. And that's what it is to be married
to Him. I do hope that He'll make us see what He's done for
us and how He's keeping us and keep us drawn to Him. Thou shalt
keep them, O Lord. Thou shalt preserve them from
this generation forever. Amen.