Okay, we have some, it looks
like they're very delayed, all the texts, but okay. All right,
so the brethren are in, it's good to have you all. And I'm
gonna begin, again, we'll do the same order of service where
I'll read the text, we'll pray, and then Lord willing, we'll
have a message. So the text is gonna be in Isaiah
30, and we're gonna be looking at verses 18 through 22. Isaiah 30 verses 18 through 22. And Michelle is holding up the
phone, so if you get tired, don't feel bad about just switching
hands. Everyone will understand if you have to move your hands. All right, so Isaiah 30, Isaiah
30 verses 18 through 22. 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 anymore. 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 graven 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. Let's pray. Our gracious Lord,
Father again we give you thanks that you have blessed your people
to have even this technology, Lord, that we could still publish
the word, that we could send the word to your people, to your
hungering, to your struggling sheep, Lord, those that are weary,
those that feel affliction, those that sorrow and suffer for sin. Lord, we thank you that they
may hear the word, Father, we ask that you would bless this
word, that you would indeed minister the word of our Savior to your
people, that those that are hungering and thirsting for righteousness
would be filled with the righteous, blessed gospel of our Savior,
Jesus Christ. Lord, we ask that you would help
Help us, Lord, to hear the word, that you would soften our hard
hearts, that you would open our ears that we may hear it. And
Lord, that your spirit would be upon us, Lord, that you would
look upon us as a body assembled together, united in Christ to
hear your word. And Lord, help me. Help me, Lord,
to preach your word. I pray that you would help me
to declare this gospel word in spirit and in truth, Lord, that
your people would hear it and receive it and believe the gracious
words of our God, which are spoken to us here in our text tonight,
Lord, that you would minister them to our hearts and that we
would be fed with the bread of heaven. Lord, we're so thankful
that you've brought home your people Lord, we're thankful that those
that were traveling have gotten home safely. And Lord, we pray
that you would watch over your people throughout this nation
and throughout the world with the difficulties and struggles
that we're going through now, and that you would give wisdom
to our governments and to our leaders that are making decisions
for us. Lord, that you would give them
wisdom and help them to make decisions that are right and
just and good for your people. We pray this in Christ's name,
our Lord and Savior. Amen. Okay, so we're gonna be, as I
said, in Isaiah 30, verses 18 through 22. And in this chapter,
the Lord has been making known to Israel the body their sin
and their rebellion against the Lord. And he's showing them that
there's a judgment coming for the wicked, but we see what a
mercy and a grace it is for our God to strip this people down,
to expose to them their sin, and how it is that even while
they think that they're doing things which are serving the
Lord and ministering to the Lord, they're not. They're not, they're
trusting in their ways, they're trusting in their strength, they're
trusting in their wisdom. And so the Lord is showing this
people, the whole nation of Israel, he's showing them their sin and
their rebellion. And the Lord here in our text
that we have tonight now, he turns his attention after he
stripped them down and he's brought them to be an ensign, a beacon
on a hill, They have nothing but they're just a small remnant.
And he's talking now, he's speaking now to this remnant of grace. This is the remnant of grace. And like Israel, they too are stripped
down. They're brought low. All their
pomp, all their glory, everything that was vanity, that was external
and not necessary, that which was causing them to stumble in
the way, the Lord has stripped this from them. And so he speaks
to them now in grace and mercy. He stripped them down and he
speaks to them now in grace and in mercy. And it's important
to understand that this people were at one time partakers with
that body of Israel, of the rebellious Israel. Those that were rebelling
against the Lord, those that were trusting in their own strength
and in their own wisdom. And so they were part of that
body of sin, that body of rebellion, just like we all are in Adam.
We all were once part of that body of sin and that body of
rebellion against the Lord that doesn't know the Lord, that's
nothing but flesh. And so these were trusting in
their own strength, right? And what's relevant to us today
in this, because I was obviously thinking about what our nation
is going through and what all the brethren throughout the world
are going through and experiencing now. And so think of these things. I didn't even have to go to another
passage because Isaiah has been dealing with this nation of Israel,
an afflicted people, a people that have been in great sin,
a people that have been in great rebellion, and so we see there's
a great relevance to us because we are, as a nation, very high
and mighty, a people with many outward riches and outward treasures
that is very easy for us to trust in and we've been very successful
as a people, if you will, in the United States. So here we
have now a time of uncertainty for us, and it's a good time
for those that were so confident in their ways and thought nothing
could ever touch us. It's a good time when they were
brought low to feel and to know that there's no guarantee that
we can't trust in something in the nation. We can't even trust
in our government. We can't trust in our wisdom.
We can't trust that anything that we do is gonna work out
a certain way and that's never more apparent to us than when
our whole world is shaken and when the things that we trust
in are shaken. And we see this here because
Israel was trusting in a strength that they thought was greater
than themselves. They were trusting in Egypt. and they were brought
to shame for trusting in Egypt. And so it is how even we today
understand and see the relevance for our own works and our own
thoughts and what we trust in. And so this, you know, it's These things are shaken and the
things of man are easily shaken and you can see that now where
there's such a global supply chains and things of that nature
that are all intertwined. and how easily that which seems
so strong and so powerful of man is easily shaken now. And there's interruptions and
it's shaken. So the remnant here in our text
is now stripped. They're brought to shame for
trusting in those things. And what we see though for them
is that they're brought to cry out to the Lord. And we know
that, right? We understand that when we are
shaken. And when we're ashamed of our
thoughts and our trusts and our actions, when we're brought to
that, that's when we begin to cry out to the Lord. And that's
when we wait upon Him for salvation. And I've heard it said, and it's
good when you're brought low and when you're brought to nothing
in yourself, that's when the brethren truly pray to the Lord,
and that's when they cry out to the Lord. And that's why,
you know, I would even say there's probably, I could count on one
hand, the times when I was brought to truly cry out to the Lord, and just cast myself completely,
entirely upon Him. It's good to be honest like that,
even in a time like now, because none of us knows what tomorrow
may bring. So here's this people, this remnant,
that's the key thing, it's a remnant of grace is stripped down and
they're crying out to the Lord and waiting upon Him for His
salvation. And that's the mark of the elect,
right? The elect, you're not necessarily
going to look upon them and see super religious persons necessarily. You're not necessarily going
to say, wow, they're so pious and so holy, I'm afraid to go
near them or touch them or speak to them. Not at all. They're
very normal-seeming people like you and me, but the reality is
they're sinners and the elect are brought to be convicted of
their sin and to confess that they are sinners and that there's
nothing in them that recommends them to God, that God should
look upon them and say, wow, good job. What you did really
surprised me there and you did what was right. No, we don't
do that. We trust in the Lord ever because
there's always sin mixed with everything that we do in this
flesh. So these are sinners, the elect
are sinners, convicted of sin, emptied of their power and strength,
and made to feel their poverty in spirit. And so that these
know, right? The elect come to know this salvation. They know the salvation of God. That salvation is a work of God. He must save us. We depend upon
his work of grace for us. And there's nothing that we can
offer to God to move him to save us. There's nothing that we can
do or any work that we can trust in that would cause God to turn
and have mercy upon us. Our God shows mercy upon us in
grace. complete grace and mercy through
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we'll be brought to see
that salvation truly is of the Lord, and there's nothing that
we ourselves can turn to and trust in of our own selves. We're
brought to trust in one, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the Lord, in what is called
the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, he called these blessed. blessed, because these have the
work of the Spirit in them. And listen to some of what he
says in Matthew 5 verses 3 through 6. He says, blessed are the poor,
the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This kingdom here of this world
is in our kingdom. but we have the promise of the
kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn,
mourn for their sin, mourn for their folly, mourn over their
foolishness and the shameful things that we trusted in, because
the Lord says, you'll be comforted. We can't undo that or change
that, but we can confess it to the Lord and cry out to him and
those that do are blessed which is why they cry out, because
the Lord has blessed them and caused them to know their sin
and their rebellion, so that they're turned and moved to cry
out to the Lord. Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth. And blessed are they which do
hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled, he
says. And so that's the promise of
our God. He's declaring to us, revealing
His will, that these are the blessed ones. These are the ones
that I've blessed. And you can see that I've blessed
them because this is the fruit that I bear in them. They hunger
and thirst for righteousness. They mourn. They cry out to the
Lord. And so these learn to sit still. because their strength is in
sitting still. They're looking to the Lord and
resting in him. They're casting all their care
upon him rather than figuring out how to save themselves. They're
trusting the Lord. All right, so our title for tonight
is The Lord's Gracious Weight. the Lord's gracious weight. And we'll see first, we're looking
at verse 18, we'll see how the Lord is gracious, right? How
he can be gracious to us who are sinners. And then for the
rest of the verses, we'll see the effects of God's grace, the
effects that he produces in his elect. All right, so let's look
at the beginning of verse 18 here, and we see a most gracious
promise. This is God's gracious promise
to us who have no other hope, who have been brought low in
themselves. He says, and therefore, you having been stripped down,
therefore will the Lord wait. And here's why. that he may be
gracious to you." And so think about that. The Lord will wait. And what he's saying there is,
I'm not going to move swiftly to remove the enemy that is in
your face right here. I'm not going to move swiftly
to take that away immediately. because then you're gonna think,
oh, it wasn't an enemy at all. It was nothing at all. It all
blew over very quickly, and I guess we got ourselves out of that.
Instead, the Lord waits that the purpose for which he sent
the affliction or the adversity, that it may work its perfect
work in us. So the Lord says, I will wait
that I may be gracious unto you. He's gonna allow it to accomplish
its purpose. And so the Lord's purpose to
us, you that are afflicted, you that are suffering and see your
sin and have no hope in yourselves, the Lord's purpose in that is
that he may be gracious and show his grace to you. He said to
Moses in Exodus 33, 19, I will be gracious to whom I will be
gracious. And I will show mercy on whom
I will show mercy. mercy. And so, we're going to
learn the sovereign grace of our God. Because our God teaches
us that salvation isn't something where God is responding to the
sinner. Salvation doesn't begin with
the sinner crying out or the sinner having faith. Salvation
begins with God moving upon the sinner to show them grace. And that's why he says, I'll
be gracious to whom I will be gracious. I'll be merciful to
whom I will be merciful to, apart from any works that you or I
do for ourselves. So the sinner actually responds
to God's moving and God's work and God's power moving upon them
so that God sovereignly acts upon the sinner. It's not because
we've done anything to earn his grace, because then it wouldn't
be grace at all. So now in verse 18, as we move
through that verse, we see how our thoughts are directed to
know just how holy and righteous our God is, because he's going
to reveal that he can be gracious and merciful to us because he
has punished sin, right? He's punished sin. So verse 18,
as you read through it, let me just read it here. He says, and
therefore will the Lord wait that he may be gracious unto
you. And then he, it's almost seems
disjointed, but he says, and therefore will he be exalted
that he may have mercy upon you. And so This exaltation here,
the reason why God can be gracious to us is connected to him being
exalted. And that exaltation is our Savior,
Jesus Christ. God is gracious to us because
he exalted his Son. He exalted the Savior. He exalted
the Lamb of God. And that exaltation refers to
the crucifixion of our Savior. It's when he was exalted and
being lifted up on that cross. bearing the sins of his people,
not for any crimes or sins which he himself committed, but it
was his crowning obedience to the Father, fulfilling the will
of the Father, who would be gracious to us, Christ came and bore our
burden and bore us in himself, bearing our sin and our iniquity,
and was made sin, made what we are, that he might suffer under
the wrath and judgment of God as a fit and perfect sacrifice
to put away sin forever." So Christ died the death of his
people. And so our Savior in his death
accomplished our salvation. And this is what our Lord said
in John 12, verse 32. He said, I, if I be lifted up
from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This said he, signifying
what death he should die. And so, our Lord was saying,
if I'm exalted, if I'm lifted up, that's gonna be your salvation. I'm gonna draw all my people
to myself in that. When he died, our salvation was
settled right then and there. And so, because of his obedience,
because he did what he did, we're told in Acts 5.31, that him hath
God exalted with his right hand to be a prince and a savior for
to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And
so this is the grace of our God toward us, right? For Christ's
sake, that God may be gracious to us, he granted repentance
to Israel, right? And we understand, we know that
that's grace, right? Our repentance isn't us being
chided and chastened and whipped and beaten by man with the law
and getting us to stop doing certain sins. Repentance is being
turned by the Spirit of our God through regeneration. He turns
us from trusting in our works and our own strength and wisdom
and being turned to the salvation of our God, right? So we're repenting
of all of our dead works and we're trusting in the salvation
of our God, which he's provided in his son, Jesus Christ. And
so our God sent the son that he might be merciful to us, that
he may be gracious to us. And so that in Christ, we're
told that mercy and truth are met together, right? God must
punish sin. He's holy and just, and he must
punish sin, and he does that that he may be merciful to us.
And so in Christ, righteousness and peace have kissed each other,
right? So God is righteous and just
and holy that he may be the justifier of them which believe in Jesus,
okay? Now, The Lord's waiting, right,
is mercy toward the elect, right? And we see the effects of God's
grace upon the elect. It says in verse 18, blessed
are they, right? So this is now the effects of
his grace toward them. Blessed are all they that wait
for him. And this is God's grace being
worked in the sinner, right? Religion will tell you that If
you wait for God, then you'll be blessed. But no, what we're
seeing here is that this is the fruit born in the elect. God bears this fruit in them
so that when they are stripped and brought low in themselves,
their turn now to the Lord to wait upon him. Now they're waiting
for His salvation. Now they're waiting for Him to
arise for them. They trusted in some other strength,
and that was brought to nothing, and they're ashamed of that,
and they're brought to cry out to the Lord, and now they're
waiting for the Lord. That's His fruit, because that's
what's born in the regenerated child of God. They're regenerated. They're born again by the Spirit. There again, we see that in Adam,
we're in that body of sin. We're in that body of sin and
we were of Adam and had that inheritance and partaking with
Adam and Adam's seed, but now we are born again of Christ's
seed and our part is with Christ. Peter writes of this too. He
shows us how that our God is waiting for us, in the sense
of he's waiting patiently to bring each of us to that time
of love that he's appointed to be gracious to us. It says in
2 Peter 3, 9, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise,
as some men count slackness, but his long suffering to us
word not willing that any should perish, but that all should come
to repentance." And so, we see that our Lord, he's patient in
this, right? Because he's working out, he's
allowing the things which he has set in motion, the things
which he is determined to do and bring to pass, as in the
time that he's determined to bring them to pass, that he may
be gracious to us, all right? So now seeing this power and
glory of our God there, right, through these promises to be
gracious to us, knowing that it's his will to be gracious
to us, now we can look at the rest of the verses in our text
and see that this is indeed God's grace toward us who are his remnant
of grace, his chosen seed. All right, so let's look now
at the effects of God's grace. The Lord reveals here this blessing
in verse 19 that we're going to dwell in Jerusalem. This is
his promise to us. Look at verse 19. For the people
shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem. And so this is a promise to us,
brethren. We're going to dwell in heavenly
Jerusalem. We even now dwell in the kingdom
of our God through the Son, through Jesus Christ. In Hebrews 11,
actually turn there, Hebrews 11, look at verse 13. It speaks there of our brethren,
just like you and I, just like us, who hope in Christ, who have
no hope in ourselves and have no confidence in this flesh.
We have no strength or ability to save ourselves. And look at
this, we have the promise of God that we shall dwell in Jerusalem. And don't despair of that, because
look at our brethren in verse 13, who speaks of them. And it
says, these all died in faith. They died looking and having
heard the promise of God and looking and waiting for the promise
of God to be fulfilled. And he says, not having received
the promises. In other words, there were many
that were raised up throughout the years that were shown promises
of God. The promise, they heard of the
promise of the Messiah, and many believed, but they died. They
died trusting the promise of God, but not having received
it. But having seen them afar off. They saw and believed God,
but they didn't know when it was gonna come to pass. But they
died in faith. They died believing the Lord.
But notice this, they were yet persuaded of them. They were persuaded of those
promises, though they died not receiving them. They embraced
them. They embraced the promise of
God. They leaned upon what the Lord had said. They trusted him
and they confessed. They confessed and that through
this all, what they saw is that in themselves, they're nothing.
In themselves, they're nothing. But that in this world, they
were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. They're strangers
and pilgrims on the earth so that like this people here in
Israel now who is stripped down and brought to nothing, they
too throughout the ages, our Lord has had a people that were
stripped of what this world calls joys and treasures and the many
things that this world has. They were stripped of these things
and brought to see that they're nothing so that They didn't delight
and joy in what this world delights and joys in, but rather they
found that they were strangers. They didn't love the things that
this world loved and they didn't seek to profit in those things.
And so that's what the Lord does for all of us. We're brought
to see that our inheritance isn't in Adam. Though we were originally
born, that we are born of this flesh, which is of Adam, that
there's no hope or confidence for us in that flesh. That's
not our hope. And we don't stand before God
now in the confidence of this flesh, but we stand now in the
promises of our God through his son, Jesus Christ. And look at
Hebrews 11 verse 10. These look for a city which hath
foundations, whose builder and maker is God. So the foundation
is Christ, brethren. It's upon Christ that we rest
and our hope is built. And that builder and maker is
God, right? He's the one who determined to
be gracious to us, which he is through his son, Jesus Christ.
All right, now in verse 19, he continues saying, thou shalt
weep no more, All right, because we're of that blessed body of
Christ. We're the church of the living
God. And he tells us that, that in that heavenly Jerusalem, he
says, I'll wipe away every tear. I'll take away your tears. Your
hope and your joy will be in me. All right, and then he says
to them, going on in verse 19, God will be very gracious unto
thee at the voice of thy cry. When he shall hear it, he will
answer thee. All right, so our Lord is saying,
because you're mine. And Christ said, anything you ask in my
name, you shall have it. You that ask in accordance with
the will of my Father, you shall have it. All right, and that's
how we pray. We seek to know the will of the
Lord and that his will be established in the earth. All right, now,
the Lord in verse 20, he rehearses their experience to them. He
rehearses their experience to them so that we see that he is
a tender father that cares for us. Our savior is a high priest
that feels the feeling of our infirmities and he cares for
us. And so we cast our care upon him. And here in verse 20, he
speaks of afflictions and difficulties which are brought upon the people.
He says, verse 20, and though the Lord give you the bread of
adversity, and the water of affliction, right? Though the Lord send these
trying times to you, these fiery trials and these afflictions
that strip us, bring us to see our weakness, things that would
be contrary to what we would want or have in the flesh, And
even times that just are difficult, even if we're not trusting in
the flesh or don't think we're trusting in the flesh, but are
trying to serve the Lord, but suffer hardships and afflictions. Even though the Lord give you
the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, he's doing
it for our good. He's bringing these things upon
us that he may be gracious to us. And you can think of one
like Job. Job, right, he was a righteous
man. He was very religious and he
believed the Lord and seemed to do that which was right. And
yet it pleased the Lord to afflict him, right? And Job was stripped
and brought to nothing and lost many earthly possessions and
things that he loved and cared for. And through it all, though,
Job was shown much grace by the Lord, right? And he said, I've
heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eyes
seeth thee, and I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. And that's what I'm saying when
I said at the beginning how, you know, I wonder sometimes
even, you know, I wonder, you know, can I count how many times
I truly cried out to the Lord, casting myself completely upon
him. Can I not count that on one hand? And Job here had prayed every
day for his children and every day for himself. And now for
the first time, he's saying, now, now mine eyes seeth thee,
now mine eyes seeth thee. So brethren, these afflictions,
bring us into a relationship with the Lord that we otherwise
wouldn't have and we wouldn't know him. And so he brings this
bread of adversity and this water of affliction that he may be
gracious to us. Now, as we go through here in
verse 20, we see that Israel was discounting their prophets.
They weren't listening to their teachers and their preachers
at all. This was a people, as you look
at Isaiah, they were described as ones who the Lord said, you've
refused the waters that go softly, the waters of Shiloh that go
softly. And he showed them, he declared
to them their rest. He declares to them their strength
and he says, you refuse these things. You will not rest in
me. You will not look at me. You will not trust in me. You're
gonna trust in everything else but in me. But he says here in
grace, we see another thing. He says, yet shall not thy teachers
be removed into a corner anymore, but thine eyes shall see thy
teachers, right? He's not gonna remove them completely
because that's how we hear the gospel. If we're stripped down
and so stripped down that we're brought to nothing and then have
no gospel teacher, well, then how are we gonna hear what the
Lord is saying to us? And he goes on now in verse 21,
through the preaching, he says, in 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. And so brethren,
this is the faithful preaching of Christ, right? Not turning
us back to our strength, not turning us back to our flesh,
not turning us away from the Lord to something in us, but
keeping our eyes and our focus looking upon the Lord, Jesus
Christ, who said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man
cometh to the Father, but by me. And so we're to preach Christ
because that's, That's how we're gonna hear the voice of our God,
because He is the voice of our God. He's the Word of God, and
He's going to show us and keep our eye singly focused upon Him. And that's where we need to be,
fully trusting in Christ and not our own works. And so the
gospel goes forth because that's how his poor, stripped, weak,
terrified, afraid people are gonna hear and know the grace
of our God and what he's doing and trust him and be convinced
of these things and persuaded of these things and to hope in
the promises of our God. He says, if you turn over to
Romans 10, Romans 10, we'll look at verse 13. Verse 13 through 17 says, for
whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, they shall
be saved. How then shall they call on him
in whom they have not believed? All right, the Lord's gonna going
to keep your teachers there? Because otherwise, how are they
going to call on him that they've not believed? And how shall they
believe in him of whom they've not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sent as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of
them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings
of good things." And we preach the gospel of peace. We preach
the Lord Jesus Christ because we're united by his spirit in
Christ. And so we're gonna speak of him.
and not speak of the flesh and not speak of those things that
are false and a lie and vanity and that cannot save us, but
we're gonna speak of Christ. Because when you look at in Isaiah,
you see that the feet on those mountains are Christ's feet,
right? And so we must be sent of Christ.
And you'll know that we're sent of Christ because we speak of
Christ. We turn your eyes to look upon Christ and to believe
him and not trust yourself not trust a man, not trust anything
in this world, but trust the Lord Jesus Christ, all right? So then faith cometh by hearing
and hearing by the word of God, right? As opposed to those who
don't hear or that hear but don't obey, they don't believe the
gospel, right? And so we see that it's of God's
grace. It's of his grace and of his
mercy, all right? I can appeal to you and I can
try make it as easy to understand, but we still depend, ever so
depend upon the Lord to be merciful and to open your hearts, to open
your ears, to make you to see that I'm the sinner, I'm the
sinner, I'm nothing before God and I need his grace and mercy.
And so the Lord has to do that. And so God says he'll preserve
teachers for us that we may hear the gospel, all right? And now
we see in verse 22, the fruit that the Lord produces in his
people." This is the fruit now that he bears in his people.
He says, verse 22, "'Ye shall defile also the covering of thy
graven images of silver, and the ornament of thy molten images
of gold. Thou shalt cast them away as
a menstruous cloth.'" Right? It's filthy rags, he says elsewhere
in Isaiah, right? Filthy rags. "'Thou shalt say
unto it, get thee hence.'" And so we'll discover the idols that
we've been holding on to and what we've been trusting, right? Some of them are external, but
really the greatest idol that we have is our own self-righteousness
and trusting our own works and trusting our own wisdom rather
than trusting the Lord. And he says in grace, he'll bear
this fruit. which is born in us of our Savior's
spiritual seed, our husband. And this fruit is born unto God,
whereby we cast aside these dead idols, these false idols, and
we embrace Christ. We believe him and trust him.
And so it's the Spirit's work to destroy these idols in us,
and we cast them off like they're dumb, right? Like Paul, who said,
all those things I did in religion are but dumb. I cast them aside,
they're filthy to me. And so we see this even in the
early church. In Thessalonians, for example,
we're told how, or Paul writes to them saying, how ye turned
to God from idols to serve the living and true God. And then
like we saw earlier in the text, it says, and to wait for his
son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which
delivered us from the wrath to come. And so we see that our
God waits to allow these afflictions and adversities to come upon
us, to work their work to strip us down, that God may be gracious
to us. And then that fruit that he works
in us is the fruit of sitting still, of waiting, looking to
our God to save us, crying out to him. for mercy, and he says,
I'll be merciful. I'll be merciful to those that
wait for me, that look for me, because it's the fruit that he
bears in them to cause them to wait, right? They're brought
to nothing that they wait upon the Lord. So I pray that the
Lord help us to see that he's ever gracious, even in the afflictions,
even in the hard times, even in the stripping, times and moments
that we go through, whether they're short or long. It could be a
long time, and we may suffer many ills here in this day, but
we know the living God, the true and living God, and so we may
be confident in him. being persuaded and confessing
that we're strangers and pilgrims in this world and we're waiting
upon him for the salvation which shall come from heaven when our
Savior comes again in the clouds and we shall look up because
our redemption draweth nigh. So I pray the Lord will bless
that word to your hearts. Let's close in prayer. Our gracious
Lord, we thank you, Father, for your mercy and your grace We
thank you, Lord, for the salvation which you have freely
provided in your Son, not because of anything that we have done,
but, Lord, because you waited that you may be gracious. You
purposed it, Lord. You did the whole thing in exalting
your Son before our eyes and sending Him to the cross and
Him willingly going to the cross freely laying down His life to
put away the sins of His people. Lord, we pray that You would
teach us, cause us to look to our Savior and to trust in Him
and to have no confidence in the flesh. It's in Christ's name
that we pray and give thanks. Amen.