I didn't. I didn't. Good evening. Let's all stand
and sing out of our hymn books. 208, are you washed in the blood? 208. Have you been to Jesus for the
cleansing power? Are you washed in the blood of
the Lamb? Are you fully trusting in His
grace this hour? Are you washed in the blood of
the Lamb? Are you washed in the blood,
in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb? Are your garments spotless,
are they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of
the Lamb? Are you walking daily by the
Savior's side? Are you washed in the blood of
the Lamb? Do you rest each moment in the
Crucified? Are you washed in the blood of
the Lamb? Are you washed in the blood,
in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb? Are your garments spotless,
are they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of
the Lamb? In a bright group cometh, will
your robe be white? Are you washed in the blood of
the Lamb? Will your soul be ready for the
mansion's bride, and be washed in the blood of the Lamb? Are you washed in the blood,
in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb? Are your garments spotless,
are they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of
the Lamb? ? Lay aside the garments that
are stained with sin ? ? And be washed in the blood of the
Lamb ? ? There's a fountain flowing for the soul unclean ? ? O be
washed in the blood of the Lamb ? Are you washed in the blood? In the soul-cleansing blood of
the Lamb? Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow? Are you
washed in the blood of the Lamb? Turn to page 56. I am his and
he is mine. 56. Everlasting love. Led by grace that loved to know,
Spirit breathing from above, Thou hast taught me it is so. O this full and perfect peace,
O this transport all divine, In a love which cannot cease,
I am His and He is mine. In a love which cannot cease,
I am His and He is mine. Heaven above is softer blue. Earth around is sweeter green. Something lives in every hue. Priceless eyes have never seen
birds with gladder songs or flow, flowers with deeper beauty shine. Since I know, as now I know,
I am His and He is mine. Since I know, as now I know,
I am His and He is mine. Things that once were wild, not
large, cannot now disturb my rest. Closed in everlasting arms,
pillared on a loving breast, O to life forever here, doubt
and care and self-resign. While he whispers in my ear,
I am his and he is mine. While he whispers in my ear,
I am his and he is mine. Forever only his. ? Who the Lord in me shall part
? ? Ah, with what a rest of bliss ? ? Christ can fill the loving
heart ? ? Heaven and earth may fade and flee ? ? Firstborn light
include thee, Clyde ? But while God and I shall be, I am His
and He is mine. But while God and I shall be,
I am His and He is mine. Thank you. I would like to read from Psalm
16. Psalm 16. A poem of David. Preserve me,
O God, for in Thee do I put my trust. O my soul, Thou hast said
unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord. My goodness extendeth not to
Thee, but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the
excellent in whom is all my delight. Their sorrows shall be multiplied
that hasten after another God. Their drink offerings of blood
will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips. The
Lord is the portion of mine inheritance, and of my cup thou maintainest
my lot. The lions are fallen unto me
in pleasant places, yea, I have a goodly heritage. I will bless
the Lord who hath given me counsel. My reigns also instruct me in
the night seasons. I have set the Lord always before
me, because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore,
my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth. My flesh also shall
rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul
in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption.
Thou wilt show me the path of life, and thy presence is fullness
of joy. At thy right hand there are pleasures
forevermore. Our heavenly, merciful Father,
we thank you for allowing us to gather together this evening
once again. What a great, great blessing
it is, Lord, to have a place to gather with like-minded believers. Father, will you be with us in
this evening? And will you pour out your spirit
upon us? Especially we think of Brother
Eric, who stands before us once again. And each time is a new
time, Lord. Will you give him the strength
and the comfort and the liberty to declare your glorious gospel,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, remember us as we sit
here and also those that are listening online. Father, will
you bless us and give us an appetite? And Father, we thank you for
allowing us to have this place from week to week. Will you continue
to go with us and give us, Lord, the financial wherewithal that
we may continue and the strength and the wisdom and all that is
necessary. And Father, that we may rest
in you and trust in you and be with this local community also.
Call out your sheep. You know exactly where they are
and what they stand in need of. Father, remember those that can't
be here this evening, especially we think of Brother Scott and
Johnny. Father, be with them as they
are struggling with illness, Father, you have given some encouragement,
but will you continue to bless the healthcare and that they
may eventually be gathered with us once more? Father, remember
all of us. Remember all your churches, wherever
they are, and especially, Lord, remember our loved ones. Some
are very far away and some are traveling. Lord, will you protect
them and bring them back here also in due time? And be with
those, Lord, that have a desire to move to this location. Continue,
Lord, to give them what is necessary for Jesus' sake alone. Amen. Good evening. Just so you brethren
know, in case anyone's missed it, both Johnny and Scott have
tested negative for COVID. So no one that we're aware of
has COVID among us. So we're thankful, very thankful
for that news. All right, our text is in Isaiah
42 again. Isaiah 42 and this evening I
want to pick up in verse 13 and work down to verse 16 with you. Now this chapter is the declaration
that our Lord himself must save his people. Only he can save
his people. Otherwise, they cannot be saved. There's no other God that can
save us, and we certainly cannot save ourselves. So if we're going
to be saved, it must be by the grace of God through the one
whom he has sent to accomplish our redemption, our salvation. And this chapter began with verse
1, look there with me, saying, Behold, my servant, whom I uphold,
mine elect, and whom my soul delighteth, I have put my spirit
upon him. He shall bring forth judgment
to the Gentiles. So this word spoken here to us
in this verse is the overshadowing spirit from which all the hopes
and the joys and the comforts we receive in this chapter. All right, so this verse is what's
overshadowing all of that. It's what's feeding and giving
life to and hope in everything that we read here in this chapter
that follows. Now, tonight's text here, strongly
brings into focus the final phrase there of verse 1. He shall bring
forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall bring forth judgment
to the Gentiles. Now judgment simply means the
gospel. He shall bring the gospel of
our salvation to the Gentiles. He's going to bring the gospel
of God, of divine wisdom and truth from God in heaven down
to man here on earth. And He is going to reveal to
us that spiritual, heavenly knowledge and give us spiritual understanding
whereby we know, whereby we learn the things of God. Because otherwise
we're in total darkness to these things. We may be very religious,
but we don't know the true and living God in the flesh according
to this nature. And so Christ himself came and
he preached the gospel. He brought judgment to the Jews
when he preached the gospel here in the flesh and during his earthly
ministry. And then he gave power and authority
to his apostles to carry that gospel, that judgment of God,
that gospel out to the Gentile nations whereby they heard that
word. They were converted and they
bowed the knee, confessing Christ as their only hope. And all you
who confess that Christ is your only hope, all you who have that
same hope, you are in the same family and partakers with the
saints of grace, having believed on the only one whom God has
sent to provide salvation for his people. So I've titled this
message, Judgment to the Gentiles. Judgment to the Gentiles. All
right. So the first thing we're gonna
look at is there's a word in verse 13 about jealousy, jealousy
being stirred up. And then the second half, we'll
look at the conversion of the Lord's people, of him turning
his saints, of him bringing light and life to his people. Now,
I wanna look here with you in verse 13 where we closed. Before you get there, though,
if you turn over to Romans, because there's a phrase in verse 13
which reveals the purpose of God in the election of grace. And Paul traces out this in Romans
10, 19, and then we'll see him in Romans 11. And it concerns
the Jews. And he says in Romans 10, 19, First Moses saith, I will provoke
you to jealousy by them that are no people, and by a foolish
nation I will anger you. And so speaking then of their
rejection of Christ, the Jews as a nation, that they rejected
the Christ scent of God, that we know was the occasion that
God used to send that gospel out to the Gentiles. It came
out to us in foreign lands. And this is what Paul says in
Romans 11, 11. I say then, have they stumbled
that they should fall? God forbid. But rather, through
their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke
them to jealousy. And so I brought you there to
see how the Lord stirs up jealousy in the Jews in order to send
that gospel out to the Gentiles. It would be the marker, if you
will, the beginning in which God sent that word out to the
Gentiles to work jealousy, to provoke them to jealousy, to
stir them up, to be jealous that God was bringing the word of
his salvation to the Gentile people and not the Jews because
they refused it. left to themselves and their
own nature and their flesh, they refused it. And so back in our
text here, Isaiah 42, 13, this is what's declared here. It says,
the Lord shall go forth as a mighty man. He shall stir up jealousy
like a man of war. All right, he stirred up jealousy
like a man of war. He had a purpose, and he was
determined to conquer his people among the Gentiles, and he did
this, and at the same time, provoking the Jews to jealousy. And so,
the gospel was widely accepted by the Gentiles, broadly accepted
among the Gentiles, and this was done according to the purpose
of God, which was to save his people, according to his good
pleasure. And the purpose of His own will,
apart from any works that we do, apart from anything that
man may or may not do that would provoke God to show favor to
him, that's not what happened at all. God freely, sovereignly
chose a people whom he loved and gave to Christ to accomplish
this work of salvation for him and this is what God is doing.
This is exactly what he's doing and what he's speaking of here
in our text. And so Christ brings judgment. He brings the gospel to the Gentiles
in order that they should be saved. in order to make them
know the truth because they did not know the truth. He brings
in the gospel to work this salvation in their hearts to give them
to bring to them the experience of grace in the heart and the
experience of faith being wrought in them by the spirit and power
of God. And so now the Lord says in verse
14, Isaiah 42, 14, he says, I have long time hold in my peace. I
have been still and refrained myself. Now will I cry like a
travailing woman. I will destroy and devour at
once. Now, there's two thoughts here
on this verse. There's two thoughts on this
first. One is how it concerns the Gentiles and then the other
is how it concerns the Jews. Now both though are a blessing
to consider because both hold comforting words and bring us
who believe they are a means to cause praise in our hearts
when we see how our God is accomplishing everything necessary in the hearts
of his people. In any case, it regards the salvation
of the people of God. It regards our being birthed
into Christ, being birthed by him and into his kingdom, being
part of his family, part of his inheritance. So regarding the
Gentiles, it says the Lord has held his peace a long time. He held his peace a long time,
many hundreds or even thousands of years, he held his peace concerning
the Gentiles. And the Gentiles went about doing
their own things in darkness and in ignorance, not knowing
the true and living God. They worshipped stumps and pagan
idol gods. They made gods of stones and
sticks and stumps. They made things that looked
like beasts and man and creeping things. They were foolish. They
were utterly blind. And they were in complete darkness,
having absolutely no light. And all that time, God sent them
no instruction. He didn't raise up prophets from
the people. He didn't bless them to know
the true and living God. I mean, even in the account of
Jonah, all they knew is that God was going to destroy them
in 40 days. And they believed the messenger
that God had sent. They believed God in believing
and heeding the words of the prophet. But that's all we know
that they know. I don't know if they heard anything
else, but that's all it says that they heard. But the Lord
didn't teach the Gentile people. He left them in darkness. They
don't know how to worship God. They don't know how to approach
the true and living God and worship him. in faith and in light with
understanding or anything of that sense. And so God said,
I've long, in that sense, God says, concerning the Gentiles,
I've long time hold in my peace. I have been still and refrained
myself. I left them in idolatry." He's
saying, I just left them to their own abominable works. Now, regarding
the Jews, the Lord, we know, gave commandment at Mount Sinai. He gave the commandment of the
covenant of works at Mount Sinai. And what we see as we read the
scriptures, it wasn't because man can keep those commandments. It's not because man has any
power or strength or ability to keep the law that God gave
at Mount Sinai. Instead, it shows unequivocally
that man cannot save himself by the works of the flesh. It
shows us that even in the best of circumstances, no man can
save himself looking to the law and doing his best to keep the
law, not even being surrounded by a whole country of other people
just like you trying to keep that law. And it doesn't matter
how quickly they killed a man. Right in the beginning, they
stoned a man for picking up sticks on the Sabbath day. And that
was right in the beginning. And even with that testimony
before their eyes, it didn't change their hearts. It still
didn't affect righteousness in them, and it didn't affect any
ability in them to keep the law that God had given them. And
so the Lord is showing us conclusively that left to himself, man can't
save himself. He just can't, he can't do it.
And so all that time, the Lord held his peace, he was still,
and he refrained himself while the Jewish nation drifted further
and further off into idolatry and rebelled more and more. He
preserved them, he kept them, sending them prophets and turning
his people, right, through the line of Judah. He preserved them
because he had purposed to fulfill the promise he gave to to all
men in Adam and Eve when he promised the seed and to Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob that the seed would come and all nations in in that
seed in that one in Christ would be blessed and so for the sake
of blessing his people with Christ he preserved those people but
but many of them had no knowledge of what they were worshiping
or doing and they went into idolatry and and died not in in being
not in faith and so they were left and and not not only that
but how long did they have possession of the truth and the oracles
of God and prophets and It didn't go out to the Gentiles. It was
still kept. They still kept it shut up to
themselves and for their own use. And there was very, very
few proselytes or very few Gentiles who were converted and believed
what the Jews believed anyway. And so the Lord here was teaching
us that it's only through grace. It's only through grace, the
grace of God, that anyone is saved. And that grace comes through
the one, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one whom we preach and declare,
because that is our only hope of salvation. And why we lift
him up and exalt him before the people, because what else can
we say wherein we could have any hope? If we're turned back
to the law, or we're turned back to false gods, or we're just
turned to dead works religion, There's no life in that. There's
no light in that. That's no better or no different
than all the pagans and idol worshipers that came before us. And so after the prophet of Malachi,
after he closed his ministry to the Jews, it was some 400
years that the Lord was silent and gave no further word to the
people until The Lord raised up John the Baptist who came
to declare the coming of the Messiah, to declare that the
Christ was coming. And so the Lord says, now concerning
the coming of Christ, he says, now, now's the day, right? Now will I cry like a travailing
woman. I will destroy and devour at
once. Meaning that in the appointed
time, God brought forth the gospel. in the birth of his son. Right? In that time, when he brought
Christ into the world, that was the appointed time where the
travailing of bringing of the birth of his people was then
wrought in Christ there in time among the people there. Right? And so in Christ, the chosen
seed are the conquered people. We're the ones who have been
conquered. and being given life and hope
in Christ. He's saved us and brought in
us the obedience of faith. That obedience. He's done that
work in us. The faith that we have, that
spiritual fruit, is of the Lord. And it's through the redemption
of the Lord Jesus Christ, meaning meaning that on the cross he
died in the place of his people and he shed his blood, the purchase
price for our redemption, for our purchase, Christ shed his
blood to make payment that we should have no sin, that we should
be holy and acceptable unto the father, that wherein he died
in our place, that we should go free and be delivered from
the wrath of God that was our due for our sins. Christ took
the place of His people, bearing their punishment, that they can
go free now, that they do go free in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so because of that, we are
brought to a spiritual birth. We're given spiritual life in
the Lord Jesus Christ, whereby after that birth, that gracious,
sovereign, spiritual work of God for and in the sinner, After
that work of Him where we are born again, we see with eyes
of faith, we hear with ears of faith, we then understand and
see the Kingdom of God and believe what God is declaring unto us
and then grow in that grace and faith that He's revealed. All
the while that's happening among the people of God, the wicked,
they're destroyed and they continue in disobedience, right? They
continue in the disobedience of all those left in Adam's nature,
having no part, no inheritance in Christ, being left to themselves,
and so they shall never be leaved. They remain in disobedience,
in unbelief, in spiritual death. So in either case, the spirit
of Christ works powerfully in his ministers to lift up their
voice, to raise their voice, to proclaim the gospel to sinners
and declare what Christ has done. As a travailing woman, preaching
and declaring to you what our Lord has accomplished for all
who believe in him. All who trust in him shall never
be ashamed. Knowing that God takes those
words as it pleases him and with power brings it home to the heart
and draws out faith, draws out life, brings light and life and
liberty to his people to save them in Christ. I like how Paul
worded it to the Galatians in 419. He said, my little children,
of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. And so the Lord's church, His
people gathered together and bringing a preacher, a pastor,
a minister to proclaim, to travail in birth through the preaching
of the gospel until the Lord is pleased to take that word
and give you life in the new man by the spiritual seed of
Christ as it pleases Him. So while some are being born,
others who are already alive in the kingdom are nourished
and fed in the new man by the Spirit of Christ. All right,
so there's that sense there that the Lord did this work. And so
now I want to look together with you concerning our conversion. Because the next few verses,
well, first, there is a sense in which they speak of the enemies
of God being destroyed. But if all we see is the destruction
of enemies, we miss the language of scripture. which speaks in
the terms that we see here in these coming verses. how that
the Lord is our help, how that he works this salvation in us,
how he delivers us from all of our former false vain hopes. All those dead letter, dead works
of religion, that baggage that we have by nature, he delivers
his people from that. We don't continue in those things
and worshiping God in those ways and what we formerly did. worship
God now in the Spirit in the Lord Jesus Christ. All right,
so let's see this here in verse 15, Isaiah 42, 15. He says, I will make waste mountains
and hills and dry up all their herbs and I will make the rivers
islands and I will dry up the pools. Now, considering this
first to the wicked who continue in disobedience, who count themselves
unworthy of eternal life and refuse to hear the word of God,
right? Because they're left to their
own strength and their own wisdom, so they will do that. The Lord
warns that to the wicked, all their places of hiding. All that
they trusted in, all their mighty men, and their wisdom, and their
philosophers, and their sciences, and their little people, and
all manner of people and strongholds that they trust in, which the
Lord terms here as mountains and hills, herbs, rivers, and
pools, the Lord says, I'll waste these things. I'll bring these
things to nothing. You will have no hiding place. You that stand before me in your
own righteousness will have no hiding place. I will remove it.
I'll shake it and remove everything that you formed. And only that
which I've created will stand before me. We can see this actually
in Revelation 6. Go to Revelation 6, at the end
of the chapter there, verse 14, we see this language is used,
and it's even in Isaiah 2, where the Lord speaks of shaking these
things and dissolving these man-made works of the flesh, but Revelation
6, 14 says, in the heaven, departed as a scroll when it is rolled
together, and every mountain and island were moved out of
their places. And the kings of the earth, and
the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the
mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, all right,
great and small, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks
of the mountains, and said to the mountains, and rocks, fall
on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne,
and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of his wrath
has come, and who shall be able to stand? All right, so that's
a picture of what shall become of the wicked and all their hiding
places will not save them and will not keep or protect them.
All right, but what does this mean then for the salvation of
God's people? How is this a comfort to us?
What do we see here in terms of the language of scripture
concerning our conversion? How does the Lord work this in
our hearts? Well, let's read verse 15 and
16 together again, because I want to show you this language in
scripture. But he says there in verse 15,
I will make waste mountains and hills and dry up all their herbs,
and I will make the rivers islands and I will dry up the pools.
And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not. I will
lead them in paths that they have not known. I will make darkness
light before them and crooked things straight. these things
will I do unto them and not forsake them." And what the Lord is saying
in short is He's going to remove every obstacle, every obstruction
that prevents us from seeing the Lord and knowing the Lord
and coming to the Lord. He's removing all those things. All those works of the flesh
that were a stumbling stone to us, right, as it were, to the
Jews, He removes that. I'm sure some of you if not yourself,
but you probably know people who have testified that they
heard grace and resisted it and didn't believe it and fought
against it until the Lord conquered their heart and removed that
stumbling stone, removed that obstacle and brought them, gave
them life and liberty from trusting in the flesh. And he does that
for his people. But let's see this language back
in Isaiah 40, Look at Isaiah 40, verse 4. This is what John
the Baptist declared concerning the coming of Christ and what
he would bring, what he would do. And this is, I believe, the
same language that we see here in Isaiah 42, 15, and 16. He
said, every valley shall be exalted, verse 4, and every mountain and
hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough places plain. And so the Lord, everything that
confuses and keeps us shut up in darkness and in ignorance
to the things of God, He, through the Gospel, is bringing light,
shining light into our hearts. In the face of Jesus Christ,
He's shining light into our hearts to make us to know that He is
our salvation, that He's our hope, and we're comforted in
Him. All right, many of us, we don't
know a lot of things, but we know that I have no hope outside
of Christ. I know that I'm a sinner and
that without Him, I cannot be saved. But I've heard, I've heard
the gospel, the good news that Christ did everything necessary.
He died in my place to set me free. And there's nothing I can
do to earn that, and there's nothing I can do to pay Him back.
I'm a debtor to His grace, and I'm thankful. Some of us, that's
all we know. And that's enough, because you
know Christ. And you that know Christ and
hope in Him, have all you need to stand before the true and
living God. And He'll give you more. He'll
teach you and comfort you and satisfy your longing for Him. He'll grow you as it pleases
Him. But you that struggle, but have no hope but Christ, that's
a good hope. That's a good hope to be in right
there. Because there's many that think they have Christ and are
trusting in a whole lot more that they have, right? Their
wisdom and their knowledge of the doctrines and their keeping
of the law and all these other things that they think are what
really ensures that they're Christians and keeps them in God's good
standing. Paul said, though we walk in
the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. That's in 2 Corinthians
10. In the next verse he speaks of
strongholds, imaginations and every high thing that exalteth
itself against God." We're not going to defeat those things.
We're not going to bring down strongholds by works of the flesh. We didn't save ourselves according
to the flesh. We don't defeat the vain imaginations
of our mind and the wicked doctrines and teachings of men with our
own flesh, it's by the spiritual wisdom and knowledge that our
Savior brings to us in the gospel. It really is the simplicity of
the gospel. Nothing can stand up to it. You
can get into battles over all kinds of deep doctrines that
we're not always so sure about and you know that are vaguely
spoken up to some degree, but But one thing we do know is the
simplicity of Christ is what our God reveals to us. And that's
our hope and the foundation from which we build and understand
and have a knowledge of the things that God has revealed to us.
Now when the Lord speaks of drying up all their herbs, There, it's our flesh that he's
talking about. He's talking about the flesh
of man, our strength, our wisdom, our will, all right? All those
things that we trust in, the Lord removes those things, dries
them up, withers them away, our vain confidences through various,
well, through his grace, through various afflictions and trials
and troubles that bring us to see in ourselves we're nothing.
and that it's all of his grace. And when we get lifted up in
pride in our knowledge of things, the Lord has a gracious way of
bringing us low in self that we should once again see that
he's all our hope and all our confidence. And he does that
as often as is necessary, according to his purpose for each of us
in his body there. All right, and so we see this
in Isaiah 40, like there again, Excuse me, my allergies. They're
verse six and seven. A little ways into verse six,
he says, all flesh is grass and all the goodliness thereof is
as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower
fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely
the people is grass." And so He dries up our flesh, our fleshly
works, our fleshly confidences in grace. He dries them up. We depend on Him. Then he speaks
of rivers and pools being dried up. And that could mean the foul
spring of nature whereby we understand polluted things and think that
we come to God through polluted practices or fleshly things is
what I mean. Or, and this is probably what
it has a greater sense of is, you know, think of how the Lord
dried up the Red Sea and how He dried up the Jordan River
and made a way for the people of God to go over to the Promised
Land. So that obstruction, those rivers
that stand between us and the Lord, our God dries them up so
that there's nothing preventing us from coming to Him and dwelling
with Him in the Promised Land, having eternal life and hope
with your God. That's a sweet thing. He does
all that for his people. All right, now verse 16, let
me read it again. He says, I will bring the blind
by way that they knew not, and I will lead them in paths that
they have not known, and I will make darkness light before them
and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them
and not forsake them. And so we know that our forefathers
as Gentiles were pagans, they were idolaters, heathens, people
that were ignorant of the truth of God in blindness and in utter
spiritual darkness. And we were in a crooked way,
we were not. We were all over the place, but
all over the place in the land of death. We were dead and outside
of the grace of God in Christ, but our Lord delivers us through
His saving power. He leads us to Christ in the
gospel. He's the one that conquers all
of our doubts, all of our fears, all of the things that we throw
up in the flesh, all of our unbelief, all of our Our non-existent faith,
whatever it is that stands between us and God, He conquers that. He brings that Gospel and through
His power leads us out of that dark prison, that dark stronghold
that held us fast in the stocks. He sets us free from that. Be delivered, and the Lord Jesus
Christ, look to Him, cry out to Him, beg Him for mercy to
deliver you from that prison. Many of us struggle with fears
and doubts and depressions and anxieties about whether we know
the Lord, really. There's nothing we can do in
ourselves to figure that out. All we can do is cast our hope
upon Him who said, Trust me, believe me. All who look to me
and trust in me shall never be ashamed. Believe him. And when
you doubt, thankfully he's faithful still because he cannot deny
himself. And he's faithful to keep his
people and to deliver them and keep giving them light and the
life and the hope that any of us has, which is Jesus Christ. We can't find anything in ourselves.
We're looking to Him who is all our hope. I like what Paul said
here in Colossians 1. Go there to Colossians 1 and
look at verse 12 through 14 with me. He said, giving thanks unto the
Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance
of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of
darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear
Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness
of sins. And so, we see there that He's
the one that's delivered us. He's the one that's birthed us
into the kingdom of His Son. And He's not going to forsake
us. He's not going to leave us. He doesn't tell us, I've started
the work, now you've got to finish it. I've put before you the engine
of salvation, now you've got to fire it up with your own fleshly
faith. Right? He doesn't leave it to
us. He does the whole thing. He gives the faith. And He's
the One who completes the whole work. Because faithful is He
who hath begun this work in you who shall perform it. He's going
to complete that which He's begun in you. And so trust the Lord
and believe Him. This is the judgment that He
promised here in His Word to bring to you who are Gentiles. to bring to you that you should
know the salvation of God and have that fellowship and life
and light and peace and joy with the Father through the Son, Jesus
Christ, who loved you and gave himself for you. You that believe
in hope, He's done that, and that's His grace and mercy to
you. So I pray that He bless you once
again with that comforting word here in this chapter, because
it's just so full of Christ and how He blesses His people with
the gospel. So may He bless your hearts tonight
and keep you ever joyful the rest of this week until we meet
again and hear His gospel gracious word again. Let's close in prayer.
Our gracious Lord, we thank you, Father, for your wonderful, glorious,
gracious, full salvation. Lord, that you should do this
work for such a small group of sinners like us. Father, that
we should know you, that we should hear these words. Lord, you know
our fears, you know our weaknesses, our struggles. Father, deliver
us from the prison of sin, deliver us from the the prison of unbelief
and those shackles, Lord, take them off us. Call us out by your
grace, mercy, and power. For apart from you, Lord, we
see we have no hope. You showed us that in your words
so clearly that we cannot save ourselves by the works of the
flesh. So Father, we cast ourselves upon your Son, whom you sent,
knowing, believing that you provided him for the means of the salvation
of your people, and have freely shed his blood for us. Lord Jesus
Christ, that you would do this for us, we're so thankful and
ask that you would dwell in our hearts by faith and that you
would keep us and grow us in the grace and knowledge of our
God and what you've done for us. It's in his name we pray
and give thanks. Amen. Let's stand and sing 296, All
the Way My Savior Leads Me. 296. All the way my Saviour leads
me, what have I to ask beside? Can I doubt His tender mercy,
who through life has been my guide? Heavenly peace, divine
comfort, here by faith in Him to dwell. For I know what e'er
befall me, Jesus doeth all things well. For I know what e'er befall
me, Jesus doeth all things well. All the way my Savior leads me,
cheers each winding path I tread, gives me grace for every trial,
feeds me with the living bread. Though my weary steps may falter
and my soul a thirst may be, gushing from the rock before
me, lo, a spring of joy I see. Gushing from the rock before
me, lo, a spring of joy I see. All the way my Savior leads me,
O the fullness of His love. Perfect rest to me is promised
in my Father's house above. When my spirit, clothed immortal,
Wings its flight to realms of day, This my song through endless
ages, Jesus led me all the way. This my song through endless
ages, Jesus led me all the way.