Psalm 66. Psalm 66 is a psalm
that breaks open in the opening verses with great joy. And it
begins to talk about the power of God. And then it begins to
talk about trial that took place. And then in verse 16, We read, Come and hear, all ye
that fear God, and I will declare what He hath done for my soul. The Lord's done something for
the writer. He's done something here for
this one. Through trial, through His power, it's caused this psalm
to be penned with rejoicing. And He says, come near and I'll
tell you what He's done for my soul. I cried unto Him with my
mouth and He was extolled with my tongue. Now here's our text. If I regard iniquity in my heart,
the Lord will not hear. Verily, God hath heard. He hath attended to the voice
of my prayer. Blessed be God, which hath not
turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me. This is the thing
the writer is rejoicing about. It's the mercy of God. That's
what he's rejoicing in. God's mercy and His grace and
His power in this great thing He'd done in his soul. Now, every
sinner that's born of the Spirit of God shall forever have the
words of Christ abiding in us. And we shall forever abide in
Christ Jesus. In 1 John 2.27. Let me get you
to turn there. Hold your place here in Psalm
66. 1 John 2.27. We read this. Let me make sure I've got my place
here. But the anointing which ye have
received of him abideth in you. And ye need not that any man
teach you. But as the same anointing teacheth
you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it
hath taught you, ye shall abide in him." Now, look over at 2
John chapter 1. Listen to how John begins this
epistle. the elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I
love in the truth, and not I only, but also all they that have known
the truth, for the truth's sake, which dwelleth in us and shall
be with us forever." He's spoken into your heart, you know him.
He's spoken into my heart, and he said, if ye abide in me, and
My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall
be done unto you." To abide in Christ and to have His words
abiding in us is what every sinner who's born of the Spirit of God's
grace desires. That's what we will. For us to
abide in Him and for His words to abide in us. That's what we
desire. That's what we want. Paul was
a full-grown man, but he was a child of God. And he said,
I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he's
able, not me, he's able to keep that which I've committed unto
him against that day. In the inner man, we truly want
nothing But for our God to keep us abiding in Him and His words
abiding in us. Ask what you will and it shall
be done unto you. Yet how many times have we asked
God what we will and He refused to give us what we asked? Now
be sure you listen to that question. How many times have we asked
God to give us what we will and He refused to give us what we
asked? Now, I want to ask every father
and every mother and every son and every daughter to give me
right now your undivided attention. From now till I tell you, you're
dismissed. Give me your undivided attention. Children, you owe everything
to your father and your mother. Everything. They gave you life. They provided everything for
you before you were ever born. They have fed you when you couldn't
feed yourselves. They have clothed you when you
couldn't clothe yourselves. They have protected you when
you couldn't protect yourselves. They've given you everything
you need and more. Sometimes you begin setting your
affection on their gifts rather than on them. And so they take away something
that they've given you. And they correct you. They ground
you. Sometimes. Clip your wings. And you want to be free from
it. And all you want is to have that gift back. It might be a toy from some of
the little ones. or a video game, or freedom to
go meet your friends on Friday night, the car keys, the cell
phone, whatever it is that they've taken from you. So you start
begging them. Based on their promise that they'll
always provide for you, you start begging them. You attempt to
bargain with them. And you're sincere. You are so
positive, so sure that what you're asking them for is what you want. But your father knows what you
really want. You don't want for them to unground
you. You don't want that temporary
gift. I know you think you do, but
that's not what you want. Your father knows that what you
want is a faithful father. You really want a father and
a mother who loves you. freely. That's what you want. And because your Father is faithful,
when you beg and when you cry, when you set your affection on
that something else but Him, He will not give you what you
want, what you think you want. But by doing so, He gives you
what you really want. A faithful father. Psalm 66, verse 18. Read the
text again. If I regard iniquity in my heart,
the Lord will not hear, but verily God hath heard. Blessed, and He hath attended
to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, which hath not
turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me." Now, you believing
mothers and fathers, let me talk to you. We owe everything to
our Heavenly Father. Since before we were born, He
provided everything for us. By His sovereign will, He chose
you and gave you to His Son and gave His Son for you. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, came to this earth and He lived and laid down His life
under the wrath of God to put away your sin, to make you the
righteousness of God in Him. He sent forth the Comforter to
give you life that you may enter into this glorious provision
that He's fully, effectually, perfectly provided for you. Turn
your place, hold your place here and turn with me a few pages
to the right over to Ezekiel. Ezekiel chapter 16. Ezekiel chapter
16. I want to read 13 verses to you
here. Ezekiel chapter 16. Again the word of the Lord came
unto me saying, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abomination. And say, thus saith the Lord
God unto Jerusalem, this is you and me, whom he everlastingly
loved, his elect. Thy birth and thy nativity is
of the land of Canaan. Thy father was an Amorite, thy
mother an Hittite. Spiritually speaking, that means
you come from some pretty poor stock, the worst of the stock. And as for thy nativity, in the
day that thou was born, thy navel was not cut, neither was thou
washed in water to supple thee, thou was not salted at all, nor
swaddled at all. None I pitied thee to do any
of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee, but thou was cast
out in the open field to the loathing of thy person in the
day that thou was born. And when I passed by thee and
saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee, when
thou wast in thy blood, live. Yea, I said unto thee, when thou
wast in thy blood, live. I have caused thee to multiply
as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased in wax and
grape, and thou art come to excellent ornaments. Thy breasts are fashioned,
thine hair is grown, whereas thou was naked and bare. Now
when I passed by thee and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was
the time of love. And I spread my skirt over thee
and covered thy nakedness. Yea, I swear unto thee, and entered
into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest
mine. Then washed I thee with water.
Yea, I throughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed
thee with oil. I clothed thee also with broidered
work, and shod thee with badger skins, and I girded thee about
with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk. I decked thee
also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy hands, and
a chain on thy neck, and I put a jewel in thy forehead, and
earrings in thine ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine head. Thus thou
wast decked with gold and silver, and thy raiment was of fine linen
and silk embroidered work. Thou didst eat fine flour and
honey and oil, and thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou
didst prosper into a kingdom. Turn over to Psalm 110 now. Psalm
110. You see, when the Lord comes
by the power of His grace, His grace must always precede grace
that we receive. He must first begin a work of
grace to abase us, to humble us, that we might receive the
grace that He's freely given unto us. This is how He finds
us in our blood and in our nativity. He clothes us and He decks us
with ornaments by His grace. He does this. And look what He
makes us willing to do in Psalm 110.3. Thy people, the Father
says to the Son, thy people shall be willing in the day of thy
power Ask what you will. Where'd you
get that will? Thy people shall be willing,
willing sacrifices and offering a gift offering unto God willingly
in the day of thy power. And here's how they're going
to come. In the beauties of holiness, you mean Kind of on down the
road when they get closer to the grave. No, no, no, no. From
the womb of the morning they gonna come decked in beautiful
garments. Holy. Thou hast the dew, the youth,
the multitude, the pureness of thy youth, of thy children. The
Father saying, Thou shalt have them. every one of them, and
this is how they're going to come to you. Willing by your
power in holiness, purely washed and swaddled. We died in Adam
when he sinned in the garden. We died legally in him. And by natural generation, we
were made partakers of his corrupt nature. When the Lord Jesus Christ came,
the second Adam, and took the sin of His people upon Himself
and was made sin for us, He bore legally the penalty that was
due to us. And He put away our sin and satisfied
God fully in righteousness. And this one is called the second
Adam. He's the everlasting Father. His relationship to us in the
regeneration, in the new birth, will always be. He's the everlasting
Father. You were born of Christ the Word,
the incorruptible seed, made partakers of the divine nature. And in the day of His power,
in that time of love, like a newborn babe from the womb, He swaddled
you in the beauty of His holiness. He made your will His will. You're His youth, His child,
made willing, more dependent upon Christ than your own babes
were when they first put them in your arms. You remember that? They took Emma and washed her
head to toe, put some oil on her, put a snow white swaddling
cloth around her to tighten up her limbs so they wouldn't be
disformed and be disfigured. It just lay there. They tightened
them up together, hedged them in with that swaddling. And they
brought her over there to me, pure, clean, white, put in my
hands. We're in the arms of Christ Jesus,
the everlasting Father, swaddled in His holiness, washed in His
blood, pure by the offering that He's made, sanctified by the
sprinkling of the blood in our inner man, in our conscience,
robed in the snow-white garment of His holiness. 1 Corinthians
1 chapter 4 says, By the grace of God given you by Jesus Christ,
in everything ye are enriched by Him, in all utterance and
all knowledge, the same way that the testimony of Christ was confirmed
in you, established in you, so that you come behind in no gift
waiting just waiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ,
who shall also, in the same way He from the womb of the morning
robed you in that holiness and established you in His righteousness
and swaddled you and brought you into His arms, the same way
He shall also establish you until the end, that you may be blameless
in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. That means He's going
to reserve mercy for you. That means He's going to seek
to it that you abide in Him and He abides in you. Because that's
what He's made you really want. That's what He's made you really
will. It's for Him to abide in you,
you to abide in Him, and His words to abide in you. And God's
faithful. by whom you were called into
the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's faithful. He's going
to see to it that you abide in Him and He abides in you. His
truth abides in you. The incorruptible seed of God
abides in you. Christ Jesus. But sometimes we
start setting our affection on other things. On His earthly temporal gifts,
rather on Him. And some of those gifts are ones
that we can't live without. And so He corrects us. He grounds
us. He clips our wings. And we want
to be free from it. All we want is to have what He's
taken away. It might be ease in our work
schedule. It might be peace in our homes.
It might be financial stability. It might even be that we want
our health back or we want the health of a loved one back. So
we begin to beg Him. We petition Him based on His
own promise. You said if we ask what we will,
it would be done unto us. We sometimes try to bargain with
Him. But we really don't want to have to merit His favor. We
know that's an impossibility. But at the time we're sincere,
we're sure, we think we know exactly what we
want. And sometimes we even think He
shut the heavens against us. He just don't hear us. And yet
the Lord gave you grace in the beginning and then said, believe me. And
by His grace, you believed Him. He gave you grace and by His
power said, turn and believe me. And by His grace, you turned
and believed Him. He said, do you buy His grace? He came in grace and He said,
separate yourself from those idols you're trusting in, the
vanity of your own imagination, and wholly cast your care upon
Me. And by His grace, you turn from
those idols and the vain imagination and you cast yourself wholly
upon Him. And He never stops operating that same way. Grace
comes. and works effectually in us,
that He might make us receive His grace. And we're brought
to this situation and we're praying because we just know what we
want. We know what we want. We want
that thing back. We want to be ungrounded. We
want that which we've set our affection on. Now look at Isaiah 49.14. Isaiah 49, 14. But Zion said,
the Lord hath forsaken me. My Lord hath forgotten me. Verse 15. Can a woman forget
her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the son
of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will
I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon
the palms of my hands. Thy walls, your protecting hedge, are continually before me. Thy
children shall make haste. Thy destroyers and they that
made thee waste shall go forth of thee before you look out there
anywhere else. the wasters and the destroyers
that He is going to make go forth from us are right here in this
flesh. Right here in this flesh that
dwells right here with us. Your Father knoweth what things
ye have need of before you ask Him. Before you started asking Him
for that thing, you just know you want. He knows what you have
need of before then. You don't want for Him to unground
you. You want that temporary gift. But He knows what you really
want. He knows what you really want
when you and I only think we know what we want. Because your Heavenly Father
is faithful. When we beg, when we cry, when
we set our affection on something else but Him, He will not give
us what our flesh wants. He took it away from us for that
reason. That's why the whole thing started.
But by not giving us what we want, He's given us what we really
want. A faithful Father. We really want the true bread
from heaven, so He won't give us the stone that we keep crying
out for that will sink us. He won't hear, but verily, He
hears and He attends to us. If I regard iniquity in my heart,
the Lord won't hear me. He won't give it to me. But verily,
God hath heard me. He hath heard me. He hath attended
to the voice of my prayer. Do you think that David is extolling
his works? Do you think he's extolling the
fact that he didn't have any iniquity in his heart? Read the
rest of the psalm and find me one place where he's extolling
himself in the least bit. He's talking about the mighty
works of God. He's talking about what God has
performed. In the beginning, I asked you
this. I said, how many times have we
asked God what we will and He refused to give us what we asked?
You know what the answer to that question is? Never. Never. If He doesn't give the thing
we ask, He is giving us what we will. I don't want to be turned away
from Him, do you? I want to abide in Him. I want His words to abide
in me. Isn't that what you want for
your children? Isn't that why you take away
the gift and correct them? It's to turn their affection
from those things, from trusting in those things, from looking
at those things, back to you. Isn't that right? Because why? You know what your
children really want. Because their children, they
don't know what they want. They think they do. They're sure
and sincere and say, I want that! Daddy! So it is with our God. And our
faithful Father in His faithfulness will not give in to our tantrum.
No matter what right words we use. No matter how sincere we
appear. No matter what kind of face we
put on. No matter how we cry for that thing. He said, Zechariah 12, 10, I
will pour upon my children the spirit of grace and supplications. I will, he said. He had to do
it the first hour. He has to do it every other hour.
Grace always precedes grace. I'll pour the spirit of grace
and of supplications and they shall look upon me. whom they have pierced. And they
shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be
in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his
firstborn. Job said, Then shalt thou have thy delight in the
Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God, and thou shalt make thy prayer
unto Him, and He shall hear thee." And thine ears, Isaiah said,
shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk
ye in it, when you turn to the right or to the left. Isaiah
says in another place, Then shall thy light break forth as the
morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily. And then
by faith you behold that Christ thy righteousness shall go before
thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy re-reward, thy reward. You behold in this clouds going
away and this light bursting forth because of His grace having
taken those things that we had set our affection on away from
us, not answering that prayer that our flesh wanted, not giving
us that stone that we asked for, that He might be faithful and
give us what we really want in our inner man. And by doing so,
He turns us to Him. And He causes the light to shine. And He causes us to not cry out
for things, Not cry out for stuff, but to cry out for Him! And when
He does it, He makes us to see that all the time, the entire
time, Christ our righteousness was going before us, and Christ
the glory of God was coming behind us, and His walls are around
us continually, and He's been keeping us the entire time. Then shalt thou call, and the
Lord shall answer. Thou shalt cry, and He shall
say, Here I am. Here I am. I've been here the
whole time. I've been here the whole time.
Now, look at Psalm 66 and start in verse 8 with me. Oh, bless our God, ye people,
and make the voice of His praise to be heard. which holdeth our
soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be moved. For thou, O God, hast proved
us, thou hast tried us as silver is tried, thou broughtest us
into the net, thou laidest affliction upon our loins, Thou hast caused
men to ride over our heads. We went through fire and through
water, but Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place. I will go into Thy house with
burnt offerings, with Christ Jesus my Lord. I'll pay Thee
my vows with my lips, have I uttered with my mouth, have I spoken
when I was in trouble. I'll enter into Christ. I'll
offer unto thee burnt sacrifices of fat fatlings with the incense
of rams. I'll come to you now in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's so much more than tacking
His name onto the end of a prayer. That's coming to Him wanting
nothing but what glorifies the Father and what glorifies the
Son. Now, I'll come with that incense, because I'm going to
come in His name now. Think about that. Stop and ponder
that a minute. Come here, all ye that fear God. I'll declare what he's done for
my soul. He's held my soul in life. How so? I cried unto him with my mouth.
He was extolled with my tongue. When was that? That was when
I was in trouble. But if I regard, set my affection
on iniquity in my heart, the Lord won't hear. He wouldn't
give me what I wanted. He would not give me what I wanted.
But verily, God hath heard me. He hath attended to the voice
of my prayer. He has given me exactly what
I really wanted. a faithful father. What can I say about that? Blessed
be God which hath not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy
from me. Now you sons and daughters, when your parents withhold something
from you, some temporal thing, and they correct you, I hope
you get some idea of why they're doing it. They're not doing it to upset
you. They're not doing it to anger
you. They're not doing it to cause you sorrow. And you'll
probably be caused all of those things. But they're doing it
because you want the bread of a faithful Father. And they're
not going to give you a serpent. They're just not going to give
it to you. They're not going to give you
a snake just because you think you know what you want. It's
not going to happen. And as they reserve this mercy
for you, because you wouldn't reserve it for yourselves, and
as they reserve their mercy for you, I hope you one day, by God's
grace, can behold how that their heavenly Father reserved mercy
for them, and one day behold how He reserved mercy for you. And bear this in mind too. When they're causing you that
trial of affliction, and they say to you, This hurts me more than it hurts
you. If they see the relationship
and what they're trying to teach you in regard to what our Heavenly
Father mercifully teaches us in spite of us, they mean what
they're saying. They mean exactly what they're
saying. And brethren, you who are born
of His Spirit, kept by His power, as we eat this temporal piece
of bread right here, and drink this cup of wine right here,
I pray our faithful Redeemer will once again draw you near. And sweetly, sweetly, Whisper
into your soul and say, Reach hither thy finger and behold my hands. And reach hither thy hand and
thrust it into my side. And be not faithless, but believing. Verse 19, Verily, God hath heard,
he hath attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God,
which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me. Amen.