We're ready to pause the music
when we're ready. It's 7.16, so if you want to
pause the music. All right. Well, good evening. I'd like to welcome everyone
to our Wednesday evening service. And I'm gonna begin with reading
the scriptures. Our text is gonna be in Isaiah
chapter 30, verses 23 through 26, but I'm gonna read starting
in verse 15. So Isaiah 30, verse 15. I have allergies, hence the cough. For thus saith the Lord God,
the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest shall ye be saved, in
quietness and in confidence shall be your strength, and ye would
not." But ye said no, for we will flee upon horses. Therefore
shall ye flee, the Lord says. And this is what they say, we
will ride upon the swift. Well, therefore shall they that
pursue you be swift. 1,000 shall flee at the rebuke
of one, at the rebuke of five shall ye flee, till ye be left
as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on a hill. Strip down to nothing, but a
small remnant of the Lord's people." Verse 18, And therefore will
the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you. And therefore
will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon you. For the
Lord is a God of judgment, blessed are all they that wait for Him.
For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem, thou shalt
weep no more. He will be very gracious unto
thee at the voice of thy cry, when he shall hear it, he will
answer thee. And though the Lord give you
the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet shall
not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more. But thine
eyes shall see thy teachers, and thine ears shall hear a word
behind thee, saying, this is the way, walk ye in it. When
ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left, ye
shall defile also the covering of thy raven images of silver,
and the ornament of thy molten images of gold. Thou shalt cast
them away as a menstruous cloth, thou shalt say unto it, get thee
hence. Then shall he give the rain of
thy seed, and that thou shalt sow the ground withal, and bread
of the increase of the earth, and it shall be fat and plenteous,
in that day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures. The oxen
likewise, and the young asses that ear the ground, shall eat
clean provender, which hath been winnowed with the shovel, and
with the fan. And there shall be upon every
high mountain, and upon every high hill, rivers, and streams
of waters, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers
fall. Moreover, the light of the moon
shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun
shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days, in the day that
the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people and healeth the
stroke of their wound. Let's pray. Our gracious Lord,
Father, we thank you for your precious word. Lord, that you
send us the seed of the gospel, that you minister that word to
us in stripping us down and breaking us from trusting the flesh and
being strong in the flesh, that we might be weak and be brought
to nothing in ourselves, that we might find our all in our
living God, the true and living God who has created us and brought
us to this point to see our need of the Savior, the Savior whom
you've provided, your Son, Jesus Christ. And Lord, we thank you
that you water that precious seed with the rain from heaven
and that you give the bread of heaven in abundance to your people.
And Lord, that we shall be fat, being well fed upon Christ our
Savior and our Lord. Father, we pray that you would
be with us this evening even as we are separate in presence,
Lord, that you would gather us together, united in Christ. And Lord, that you would indeed
set our hope upon Him, keep us ever looking to Him and trusting
in Christ our Savior. Lord, we pray for those that
are sick or struggling, those that are afraid or weary, Lord,
that you would strengthen the hearts and the minds of your
people. And Lord, that you would keep
us ever looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord, that we would
be able to join together soon, that we would be able to fellowship
together and rejoice in one another's presence. And Lord, that we could
help each other and Lord, be there to support one another. We pray that you would keep us,
watch over us. Lord, we know that man has his
thoughts about what's going on, and surely there are others that
are scheming to do certain things, Lord. And Father, we just pray
that you would give wisdom to our government, to our leaders,
that they would do that which is right. And Lord, that you
would keep us, keep us ever looking to Christ our Savior. Lord, let
us not look to ourselves in our own means, but teach us through
this, how to look to you, how to pray to you, how to seek you,
how to seek your will, how to pray that your will be done. Indeed, Lord, this is our prayer,
that your will would be done here on earth, even as it is
in heaven. And Lord, that you would draw us near to you, near
to your son, Jesus Christ. Keep us looking to him. we trust
that you're able to do that and Lord that you're able to bless
your people just as you say in your word that those who wait
upon you which is wrought in them by the power of your spirit
Lord that we would also see the blessing of our God poured out
upon his people through your son Jesus Christ it's in his
name we pray and give thanks amen All right, so we're gonna be
in Isaiah 30, and our text is specifically verses 23 through
26. And last week, we saw how the
Lord is very gracious to his people, even to the point where
he'll wait and let them exercise out all their plans and all their
strategies and all their thoughts and how they're going to protect
and deliver themselves. He'll allow them to work those
things out. If they're going to flee, he
says, well, then those that follow you will flee on horses just
like you. If you go on the fastest horse,
well, he'll send those on fast horses as well to pursue you
until you're worn out and brought to nothing in yourselves that
you find you're all in him. And so the Lord is gracious.
He says, I'll wait, I'll wait that I may be gracious unto you,
right? And he's gracious to us when
we are brought to nothing and to see that we can't save ourselves. And so the Lord doesn't deliver
us immediately from our enemies. He allows them to work the purpose
for which he's sent them and allowed them even to rise up
and do the things that they do because he's stripping the sinner
of self. He's stripping us of self-confidence,
of being able to provide for ourselves through difficult times,
that we would see that, Lord, I keep forgetting about you.
I keep forgetting you, and I keep trusting in myself, or trusting
what this one's saying, or trusting what that one's saying. And Lord,
you always provide for your people. and that abundantly. When He's
been gracious to us, He provides abundantly toward His people
because it's in His Son, Jesus Christ, whom He's provided for
us, for our salvation, for our provision, and He loves Christ.
Christ is His faithful, obedient Son, fulfilling the will of the
Father perfectly in all things so that His will, the will of
our Father, is fulfilled in us by the grace and the sanctifying
power of Jesus Christ the righteous. Our Lord said in verse 7, Isaiah
30 verse 7, that their strength is to sit still. But we learn
that, right, we learn that by the power of the Spirit. in bringing
us trials, in teaching us these truths, that when I try to work
my way out of it, oftentimes, very often, we're brought to
see how our ideas fail, and how our thoughts about things don't
come to pass, and how it's always the Lord's will instead, not
my will, but His will being done. And so He sends trials that are
governed by the Lord Himself. He's the one who's opening the
seals of the will of God in heaven. He's the one implementing the
will of the Father here on earth. in the midst of his people, and
orchestrating all things to the glory and praise of his name. And so, we're learning about
that, right? We're learning that. So, through
all these, our Lord is exalted in our sight, he's exalted before
us, and we see that he really is God, and that we're not, we're
nothing. The idol of self, we destroy
and we cast it away, seeing how filthy it is, and so we learn
to trust Him, and He does this also in a gracious way. Even
though we don't deserve it, even though we've turned from Him
and fled and tried to do our own thing, the Lord is still
very, very gracious to us. And we see that in His patience,
and we see that in His love and kindness, and we see that in
His continued ability to bring the Word, to give the Word and
to minister the Word to His people. And so we see this here in the
remnant hearing their teachers, right? First they wouldn't hear
their teachers, but now they do hear them and they'll listen. And then they hear the word of
the Lord, which they at one time despised and cast from themselves. And we see them reviling and
despising their own idols, which primarily is the idol of self-righteousness. And so tonight we're gonna see
that when the Lord has done his work, when that work that he
sent has done its purpose in stripping us through hardships
and bringing us low in self, putting our faces in the dirt,
even bringing us to the end of ourselves and the end of our
strength, when the Lord does that and turns our hearts to
see his perfect work and that he's doing this and that it's
for our good because he's drawing us to himself. What we see in
our text tonight is that that stripping is followed with abundance
of blessings, abundance of blessings which are given to us from the
Lord. And in Matthew 5, he says that one blessed verse there
where it says, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the
earth. And the meek are those who hear
the Lord and submit to the will of the Lord. Not fighting against
it, not trying to bring to pass our own will. and fighting and
resisting the hand of the Lord, but that we submit ourselves
and humble ourselves under the hand of God, knowing that He
will lift us up. That's meekness. And He says,
you that are meek, because He's made us so, will inherit the
earth. We will inherit those things
that He has promised to give us. Now, we've heard this word
before in Ephesians 1-3 which says, blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. But those words that we hear,
we know it, but they take on a new sound, a different sound
when we've experienced them, right? When we're brought to
the exercise of going through them and experiencing it and
feeling and knowing that, wow, that blessing really is of the
Lord. And it's not something that I
did for myself. It's not anything I would have
even chosen to do for myself. And we don't always know why
certain things happen. But one thing we do discover
and are reminded of is when we are seeking the Lord, when our
knees are bent and we're on our knees praying to the Lord and
crying out to Him for mercy and grace and to know Him. And so we experience them, the
truth of these words, after we've been fed the bread of adversity
and been made to drink the water of affliction, And so those times,
those hardships, those trials that we go through, they're followed
by spiritual blessings that we know are from the Lord. And so
that's our title tonight is, Then Comes the Blessing. Then Comes the Blessing. And I came up with that because
our text begins with the word then. then. And so think, child of God, think
about the blessings that the Lord has brought upon you. Think
back, think on those things, dwell on the blessings of the
Lord and what he's done for you up to this point, what he's shown
you and what he's provided for you. And we see it here in this
text. When you think of what Israel
in our text here went through, it was after the Spirit gave
them life, right? He brought them low in themselves. They were resisting Him, they
were fighting, they didn't want to hear the truth, and they just
wanted to do their own thing. But after the Spirit gave them
life, right? And the Spirit made you to feel
your need of Him. right, and the Spirit made you
to hear the gospel. He brought you under the sound
of the gospel and opened your ear, your closed ear, your hard
heart, and caused you to hear the gospel word. And this is
after that the Spirit regenerated you, right, and gives you faith
to look to Christ the Savior that God has sent and to look
to Him unto salvation, unto the fullness, not just a casual look
and a glance, but we see Him. we see him. And that's the Spirit's
work. The Lord does that for us. And
so, after the Spirit has wrought fruit in you, so that part of
that fruit, in addition to believing on Christ, is to defile your
own idols and to not have any hope. You cease boasting and
talking about what you've done and trying to comfort yourself
by your works. And instead, you're comforted
by the works of Jesus Christ. That's a work of God, to defile
your own idol and to take sides with God against yourself and
say, yes, Lord, I'm the sinner, undeserving of your grace and
mercy, but you've provided it abundantly in your son, Jesus
Christ. And so after all this work of
God, apart from you doing anything, he goes on to say in our text,
in verse 23, then, Then shall he give the rain of
thy seed. The seed of all those works which
he's done for you, leading up to this point. Then shall he
give the rain of thy seed, that thou shalt sow the ground withal,
and bread of the increase of the earth. And it shall be fat
and plenteous. That's where it should stop.
And then in that day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures. So, brethren, these are blessings
that God has given to you. These are your blessings, you
that believe on Christ for righteousness and have no confidence in the
flesh. And so here in this verse, he
speaks of rain, right? He speaks of rain, which the
Lord says is given for thy seed. And this is the gospel seed,
right? The seed of the gospel that the
Lord has planted in you. The Lord has given this to you
and made you to hear his gospel. So that this is seed which wasn't
just thrown by the wayside. This seed wasn't cast forth and
then just landed by the wayside where the birds picked it up.
or seed that landed on stony ground that quickly withered
under affliction and persecution and tribulation, right? Or seed
that landed among the weeds, which was choked out by the weeds,
the cares of this world. But this seed that the Lord gave
to you is seed that landed on good ground. ground that He prepared
through the trials and through the hardships and through those
difficulties to see what sinners we are and that we are unable
to save ourselves. And so now this second blessing
is the rain. He now sends rain upon that seed. This is rain to water that word
which you've heard. so that we now experience this
word, right? And we saw this, we looked at
this last week in verse 20, right? That word which you hear behind
you, saying, this is the way walk ye in it, when ye turn to
the right hand and when ye turn to the left. So the Lord gives
us this rain for thy seed that thou shalt sow the ground with
all and bread of the increase of the earth. Now, before, right,
as chosen, elect children of God, yet in darkness, we didn't
know the truth necessarily. And then even after, after we've
come to knowledge of the truth, we still are fed the bread of
adversity at times, right? There's times where in the beginning
we were fed this because the Lord brought us to see that we
can't save ourselves, And as we continue to walk on this pilgrimage,
when we get foolish and when we look here or we go there and
we turn aside, the Lord is able, the Lord is able to bring us
back. Which of us brought ourselves
back? We know and can see and testify, I'm only here because
the Lord brought me here. We're only here and have a hope
in Christ to this day. because of the faithfulness and
the grace of our God, who was gracious in his way while we
did foolish things, even under the truth, even while believing
the truth when we went astray and sinned and did very many
foolish things. But the Lord was gracious in
His wait, and He sent those trials and hardships and difficulties
and afflictions to do their work, and the Lord was waiting graciously,
allowing it to have its work, to bring us to see, Lord, where
am I? What am I doing? Save me, Lord. So He brings us to that point. And so, before we were fed the
bread of adversity, but now, he says, we'll be blessed with
the bread of the increase of the earth. And so, the Lord is
telling us that though we go through times, and there's times
where he's just exercising us, to strengthen us, to increase
our patience, to increase our experience, right? We believe
that our God sanctifies us, not we ourselves, but he sanctifies
us. Well, how does he do that? Well,
he works these things in us. He's teaching us. He is working
that patience and and experience, and brotherly love, and brotherly
kindness, and gentleness. He works those in us by giving
us opportunity to bear those fruits, and he works those fruits
in us. It's of our husband, it's of
his seed. And so, now though we suffer,
we shall be made fat, fat with the gospel word. And that's what
it says, and it shall be fat and plenteous. And how often
is that so? When you can sit under the sound
of the gospel for years and months and days and many, many years,
but the Lord has a way of making it new and fresh to us and relevant
to us again so that we hear it with a new ear. an unclogged
ear and were made to hear in such a way that it's a blessing
to us and it's fat and it's ripe and it's full and plenteous for
us. So before, when we were yet in
darkness, we thought that blessings came as a result of something
that we ourselves did. That blessings were wrought by
the works of our hands. That if we did this and that,
well then we'd receive this blessing. But if we do that and those,
then we'll get that type of blessing. We thought it was from our works,
and our goodness, and our obedience. And so we thought that's where
the blessings of the Lord were. And not seeing that, it's the
Lord who makes us obedient. We're fools in the flesh. This flesh is sinful. It's not
improving or getting any better, and it doesn't cooperate any
more with us today than it did yesterday. But the Lord brings
us to cry out to Him, and to confess our faults, and to confess
our sins before Him, and we wait upon Him, because that's our
strength is in sitting still, confessing our faults, confessing
our sins, to the Lord, knowing that our righteousness and our
forgiveness is found in Jesus Christ alone. Now, these spiritual
blessings, they're of God and they're given to us in grace
through Jesus Christ. Turn over to James chapter 1.
James chapter 1, and we'll see here that these blessings come from
above. They don't start on the earth
in our works, in our doing, they come from above. So James says
in chapter 1 verse 16, he says, do not err my brethren, beloved,
or my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect
gift, see it's a gift, it's not earned, it's a gift, is from
above and cometh down from the Father of lights with whom is
no variableness, neither shadow of turning. It's in grace. Of
his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that gospel
seed, that word which is the seed of truth, that we should
be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. Wherefore, my
beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak,
slow to wrath." Right? And what was that that Israel
wasn't doing previous to this? They weren't hearing. They weren't
hearing. And now the Lord is giving us
an ear to hear and a patient ear to wait upon the Lord, which
is a blessing, a spiritual blessing of the Lord. All right, so we
see that the seed, we have the rain and the bread, which is
all spoken of, is all from the Father. Understand that all the
blessings we have are given to us in grace from the Father. John 6.33, our Lord said, for
the bread of God, is he which cometh down from
heaven and giveth life unto the world." And it's Christ. Christ is that bread of heaven. He's the bread of the increase
of the earth. And he was sent here by the Father
to bless his people. And he put away their sin by
the death of himself. In his own body he bore our sin.
He bore us and what we are before the Father and died our death
to put away our sin and to make us righteous before God so that
we are accepted of him. I was looking at Psalm 78, before
I came out here, speaking of Christ, where Israel was going
through the wilderness, and they were on that pilgrimage out of
Egypt, out of darkness, into the promised land. And the Lord
reminds them, here in Psalm 78, verse 24, He said, and He had
rained down manna, upon them to eat, and had given
them of the corn of heaven, so that man did eat angels' food. He sent them meat to the full."
So, you think of that, that's the Lord has sent us heavenly
food to know Him, and we'll see that more as we go through, but
every blessing, every gift, every spiritual blessing is from the
Father. and it's not wrought by these hands. So when you go
through difficulties, don't think that it's, now believing on Christ,
don't think that it's, that you've got to start bartering with God
and trying to work your way out of it. He gives us these trials
and these tribulations to strip us of having confidence in the
flesh and to bring us to cry out to him and to wait for him. and to confess to him, Lord,
we need you. We need your grace and your mercy
and your help. So that's the fruit that should
be brought out of us when we go through difficult times. It
should be confessing and humbling ourselves under the mighty hand
of God. That is that, Lord, we're nothing.
I can't work my way out of this. Please, Father, have mercy upon
me and upon my brethren. All right. The blessings come
from above. If you look over in Isaiah 55,
again, we see how Isaiah just keeps bringing up these truths
throughout the word here, throughout the book of Isaiah. He comes
back to this later, and we'll see this when we get up to Isaiah
55, but verse 10, 11 For as the rain cometh down,
and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth
the earth, and maketh it bring forth buds, that it may give
seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be
that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void,
but it shall accomplish that which I please. And it shall
prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." And so there in these
two verses, or actually in verse 10, we see there how that the
Lord himself is the giver of these spiritual blessings. Rain,
seed, and bread. Rain, seed, and bread. The Lord
gives us these blessings. It's all the gospel word. It's
all Christ. Christ is that initial gospel
seed that's given to us. Christ and His mercy is the rain,
right, in preaching the gospel to water that seed which He's
given to us, and it brings forth bread to the eater, right, which
we feed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the bread from heaven, okay? So even according to Joel, and
I won't read it all, but in Joel, he speaks of the blessings of
rain and the fatness of food, which follow the stripping of
the flesh, right? Wherein naturally we would trust
in this flesh and trust in self and our own strength. And Joel
in two verses 25 and 26, He says, God said that he'd send the rain
and that with that rain, he'd fill the barns with wheat and
with wine and fatness of oil. And he says there in verse 25,
and I will restore to you, now listen to who did this, I will
restore to you the years that the locusts hath eaten, the canker
worm and the caterpillar and the palmer worm my great army
which I sent among you." So we see how the Lord is the one in
control of all these things and it's that he may be gracious
unto us, a remnant people whom he loves, whom he sent his son
to lay down his life and shed his blood for. And he says, ye
shall eat plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord
your God, which we don't do when we're all high and lifted up
in the flesh. But now we'll praise the name
of our God that hath dealt wondrously with you and my people shall
never be ashamed. We won't be ashamed because he's
the one who preaches the word to us and turns us from the left
And from the right, it says, this is the way. You walk upon
Christ. You walk in the way of Christ.
You walk in Christ and trust him and he'll lead you to me. He'll provide everything necessary
that we may be with our God in eternity when this temporary
flesh is laid aside. All right, so the blessings in
our text, they continue now. He says in verse 23, 23, at the end there, I think the
end of verse 23 goes very well with verse 24. He says, in that
day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures. The oxen likewise
and the young asses that ear the ground shall eat clean provender,
a clean good mix of food, which hath been winnowed with the shovel
and with the fan. And so this reference here, we
see that it references beasts of labor. These are beasts of
labor, this cattle here. One is used for plowing fields,
like oxen. They plow fields. They break
up fallow ground for the planting of that seed so that when the
rain comes, it waters that seed. And we have asses. Asses could
also be used for plowing fields or they could be used for carrying
heavy loads, right? Burdened down with heavy loads. In one sense, this is a reference
to your ministers, to your pastors that the Lord gives you, the
gifts that the Lord gives to labor in that word and to seek
that word from the Lord for your good, for your edification, for
your help through this. I know, I've sat in years past
without a pastor. I've been there without a pastor
and I know just from the experience of it, even listening to messages
and watching videos of other faithful pastors, It still wasn't
the same as having your own pastor and being in a body with other
sheep and being grown together by the power and the grace of
our God. And so we see these beasts of
labor, these servants, right? We're servants. for your good,
to minister to you who are the inheritance of the Lord, the
people of God. And so we're made happy to do
that. And so they're beasts of labor. And so what's amazing here is
that the Lord is saying that He's gonna break open blessings
to them in the sense that they'll eat clean provender. We're gonna
eat good seed. And I see that in that the Lord
blows away the chaff so that in this gospel day, in Christ,
we see so much more clearly what our God has done for us and how
it's all of Jesus Christ. It's all of Him. So that what
we're eating, that we may give to you, is Christ. Christ, Jesus
Christ, it's all of Him. It says this seed has been winnowed
with the shovel and with the fan. Now I've never raised livestock,
but I don't think that you winnow out the chaff and process this
seed the way that you feed it to your family. You give good
seed to the children. and you give the chaff and the
garbage to the oxen and to the asses, right? That's what they
get. That's what they're worthy of. And so the Lord's saying
there'll be such abundance that even the oxen and the sheep will
have good food for them, winnowed and shoveled food. So it's all because if the Lord
is feeding us well, then you'll be fed well, right? You'll be
fed well with that gospel, that gospel word. And we also can
see in here a diversity of believers in the sense that you have the
Jews and the Greeks, the Jews and the Gentiles, right? And
we see that spoken of what Christ accomplished in his one body,
he accomplished taking two totally different people, those who knew
of God and those who knew nothing of God, and he made them both
one. He grafted them in to be one body in Christ. Paul says
in Colossians 3.11, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision
nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but
Christ is all and in all. So that we're told in Ephesians
2, where Paul also speaks of this body, be coming together
of Jew and Gentile. He says in verse 17, that Christ
came and preached peace to you, which were far off and to them
that were nigh. For through him, we both have
access by one spirit unto the Father. Now I bring that point
up, I bring that aspect up because that is what is made more clear
in the next verse of our text. In verse 25, how we see that
this blessing of God comes upon all people throughout the world. Verse 25, and there shall be
upon every high mountain and upon every high hill rivers and
streams of waters in the day of the great slaughter when the
towers fall." So that brethren, this is the gospel day. Our Savior, Jesus Christ, has
accomplished our salvation. We that have nothing to give
to God we that have no righteousness, no goodness, nothing to recommend
ourselves or to take away our sin, we that hope in that gospel
word of promise to us, that God has established the covenant
of grace with us in the blood of Jesus Christ, apart from any
works that we did or shall do, It's all of grace, and our Savior
has accomplished this salvation already, abundantly. The works
are finished. He's done that work, and so that
this rain now, this blessing of God, we've heard the gospel
word, and this blessing of God and rain comes upon every high
mountain and every high hill, so that rivers and streams of
waters come down. And there's high hills and mountains
throughout the world. They're not just in one place,
they're throughout the world. And that's what the Lord's showing
us, is that all his people, scattered as they are throughout the world,
they shall have the blessing of the Spirit of God poured out
upon them. Look over in Isaiah 41. Isaiah 41. Look at verse 18. The Lord says
in verse 18, and we'll read down to verse 20, I will open rivers
in high places and fountains in the midst of the valleys.
I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs
of water. I will plant in the wilderness
the cedar, the shita tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree,
right, all different types of trees. I will set in the desert
the fir tree and the pine and the box tree together that they
may see and know and consider and understand together that
the hand of the Lord hath done this and the Holy One of Israel
hath created it. You see that, how the Lord gathers
together and takes all different types of people and brings them
under the shadow of Christ, under his healing wings, covered in
his blood, cleansing them of their sin and making them one
in the body of Christ. And so I ask, are you thirsty? Are you thirsty? Do you need
righteousness, the perfect righteousness which only God can give? That's what he requires, perfect
righteousness. If you are a dried up, withered
sinner, unable to bring forth fruits that are worthy of God,
and we can't, I'll tell you right now, we can't do it. All our
works are tainted with sin. But if we would hear what the
Lord says, hear his gospel seed, his gospel word, which he said
in John 7, verses 37 and 39, that in the last day, he said
this, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried saying,
if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. he that believeth
on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall
flow rivers of living water. But this he spake of the Spirit,
the Holy Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive."
Because until then the Holy Ghost hadn't been given because that
Jesus had not yet been glorified. So what we see here in our text
is that the blessing of God which rains down upon us is the blessing
of the Spirit, His Holy Spirit that lives in us and dwells in
us, that regenerates us, that gives us that life. It's of Christ's
seed that we are born again. It's of His power, His water,
His Holy Spirit falling down upon us, giving us life. Because otherwise we go through
the things that others go through and don't know, we're still in
darkness, and we don't know God anymore than we knew before,
right? But through the regeneration
work of our God, he makes this word effectual to us so that
we hear it. We're born again, that's what
it is. It's all of his grace and mercy. That's why Christ
said he must be born again. Not that we make ourselves born
again, but that it's his blessed work for his people according
as it pleases him. And he makes you thirsty. If
he's working in you, he makes you thirsty. He makes you to
see you have no righteousness and no hope in yourself. And
he strips you of those confidences that men and women have in the
flesh through religion. He strips us of those things
so that Christ's gospel goes forth, conquering us in the heart. And what comes down when he does
that? The towers of the evil one, the towers of Babylon, the
towers of darkness of that kingdom wherein we were born into in
Adam, they come down so that the reign and dominion of sin
and iniquity and that mystery of darkness that just covers
our minds and our hearts with a veil so that we can't see and
can't hear and can't know the true and living God, are all
destroyed and done away, and he delivers us. Christ comes
forth and goes in to the strong man's house and hath delivered
us from the power of darkness, from that prison cell of darkness
wherein we were shut up and in, and didn't even know it, thought
we had freedom, thought we had light, thought we had life and
liberty, and we had none of it because we were prisoners of
darkness, ignorant of the things of God, ignorant of his truth
and his grace in Christ, how that it's his work. totally ignorant
of these things. So he delivers us out of that
darkness and brings us into the kingdom of his dear son, the
kingdom of light, the kingdom of Jesus Christ, so that we are
now under his rule and his reign. Christ has become our husband
we hear His voice, we receive His word, His law, which is written
in our hearts, right? The law of faith and liberty,
the law of love to our God and to serve and to love one another
so that we follow our Savior now. We don't continue to walk
in those paths of darkness. He delivers us from that. And
so Christ, your husband, teaches you the gospel word, all right? And he forms that love in our
hearts for him. And he says, you know, speaking
to his scattered church throughout the world, where he sends that
gospel word in Ephesians 5, 26, it's that he might sanctify you
and cleanse his church with the washing of water by the word. through that gospel word, right?
And you see that seed and that water, all by the power of our
God, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church,
not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should
be holy and without blemish. All right, so when we were made
to hear the gospel, and we were regenerated by the Spirit, that's
when we heard it and believed it, and then we know. He teaches
us that even though I may not feel it, but I know through faith
that even now in Christ, we are the very righteousness of God
in Him. And that's what we see here in
verse 26. Moreover, Verse 26, moreover, the light
of the moon shall be as the light of the sun. All right, just like
the moon, the church is compared to the moon. The moon gives off,
has no light source of itself. It's in darkness, but it reflects
the light of the sun. That's what we are, brethren.
We're like the moon in that we shall be as bright as the sun. We are as righteous as he is
before God our Father, who has established us and brought us
in, adopting us into the family of God and making us one with
him. And then before our eyes, we
see how that Christ, his light is exalted in our eyes. He's
exalted. Look, and the light of the sun
shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days in the day that
the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people and healeth the
stroke of their wound." And that wound, brethren, is the wound
that we received in Adam in the garden when we sinned against
God in Adam and fell in Adam and died in Adam and became darkened
in our minds and had that veil of death over us so that we couldn't
heal ourselves, but the Lord as a friend and a fellow, he
heals us in complete grace, free, sovereign grace as it pleases
him, and he expects nothing from us, nothing of us first to do
for him, and the fruits he'll produce in us, causing us to
rejoice in him and to love him, so that by himself, he's the
one that has made us whole, he's the one that heals us, making
us righteous and accepted with our God so that we are made the
very light of Christ and bear his testimony with us wherever
we go. For ye were sometimes darkness,
Paul said, but now are ye light in the Lord. Walk as children
of light. And so it's the Lord which blesses
us with seed and rain and bread, so trust him. He's done this
up to this point. He'll continue to provide for
us, and He'll keep us, and He'll provide all the other things
necessary. It's His perfect work. Allow
Him to do His perfect work. You keep seeking Him and trusting
Him through it, and pray that His will be done. and it will
be done regardless, but we want to rejoice in that and see His
will, not fight against it. We want to hear His word and
rejoice in what He's doing among us. Now I'll close with Proverbs
three, if you wanna follow along, it's a few verses, but this will
be where we close on in Proverbs three, starting in verse five,
and we'll read down to verse 14 together. Trust in the Lord with all thine
heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy
ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not
wise in thine own eyes, for fear the Lord, and depart from evil.
It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones. honor
the Lord with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all
thine increase. So shall thy barns be filled
with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.
My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary
of his correction. For whom the Lord loveth, he
correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.
Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth
understanding. for the merchandise of it is
better than the merchandise of silver and the gain thereof than
fine gold. I pray the Lord would bless that
word and comfort his people with that word and turn your eyes upon the Lord
Jesus Christ. Trust him and rest in him and
seek him. Seek him, brethren. All right,
let's pray. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for your grace, for your mighty
work among your people and in your people. Lord, the depths
of your grace, we don't even understand it, Lord, but we're
so thankful that, Lord, that you do not change, that there
is no shadow of turning, and that it pleases you to pour out
your gifts, your spiritual gifts upon your people in your Son,
Jesus Christ. And Lord, we pray, asking that
you would indeed keep our hearts soft and tender, trusting in
you, not confident in self, but trusting in you, Lord. We pray, Father, that you would
deliver us from evil, deliver us from temptations, and Lord,
that you would establish us in grace and in hope and in mercy,
ever looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's in His name we pray
and give thanks. Amen.