Good morning. Well, we're going
to begin. The text is Jeremiah 51. Jeremiah 51, verse 10. And the
message is influenced by this verse. I don't plan to necessarily
go through it exegetically, but this is what is influencing this
message. In Jeremiah 51, 10, we read, hath brought forth our righteousness. Come, and let us declare in Zion
the work of the Lord our God." Now, our Lord makes known to
us that all men, all women, all children, so everyone young and
old, are sinners. We're all sinners, and that means
that Naturally, we're not righteous
in the flesh. By nature, we're not righteous
in and of ourselves. That means that our actions,
the things that we do, don't justify us. They're not righteous
acts. We're not making ourselves to
appear righteous before our God. And this means that our righteousness
and our justification including our holiness, these are all things
which God does for the sinner. So it's not from ourselves that
we are righteous, but it's the work of God that he does in the
heart of a sinner. It's what he does. So our holiness,
this means our holiness, our righteousness, it's found in
the will of God. will of God our Father. Peter, in 1 Peter 1 16, he reveals
to us what God's will is for you that believe him. You that
are his people and believe him, we hear and see the will of God
for his people. We're told that the Lord says,
Be ye holy, for I am holy. And that's first and foremost
revealing to us the will of God for his people. Because he wills,
you shall. And we are made holy in the Lord
Jesus Christ because without holiness, no man shall see the
Lord. We're not going to see the Lord
unless we are holy and we're made holy by him, by his work
of grace through Christ. And so, because this is the will
of God, because it's God's will that His people be holy and righteous
and just before Him, that means that God has undertaken the whole
of salvation to provide everything necessary for His people. That's why He sent the Lord Jesus
Christ. Because we cannot make ourselves
righteous in this flesh. We don't have the means, the
wherewithal to make ourselves righteous, to work righteousness,
to justify ourselves before God. So God determined in himself
to send his own son, to send Christ in the flesh to work perfect
righteousness for his people, and by faith, the faith which
he works in his people, we believe him, and he imputes righteousness
to us, and he justifies us through the righteousness which Christ
our Lord and Savior has worked for us. That's how we're made
righteous. That's how we are holy. That's
how we're justified before God. in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that means that righteousness,
our righteousness, can never be a work under the law. It can never be a work under
the law by something we do, because the law is not a faith. The law
was given to subdue the flesh, to show the exceeding sinfulness
that we are in the flesh. And so we're never going to be
able to look to the law and start working on the law to justify
ourselves before God. It's not going to happen. And
so righteousness is something, it's what God provides for all
his children. It's through grace, it's in grace
through Christ. Now, turn over to Galatians 2. And just put a marker there because
we're going to look at several verses throughout the message
in Galatians, so it's a good place to put a mark to more easily
find it. But Galatians 2 verse 16 says,
knowing. knowing that a man is not justified
by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. Even we have believed in Jesus
Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not
by the works of the law. For by the works of the law shall
no flesh be justified. So the law wasn't given to justify
our flesh, but to make sin known to the flesh. Alright, so that
also means that the law wasn't given to make us righteous, but
given to reveal sin in us. Now Romans 3, when Paul was writing
to the letter of to the Romans, it says in Romans
3 verse 20, similar to what we read in Galatians, to there,
therefore by the deeds of the law, by your actions and my actions
and laboring under the law, there shall no flesh be justified in
God's sight. For by the law is the knowledge
of sin. As we've been seeing in our study
in Romans, God gave the Law to reveal sin in us. Before the Law, people were sinners
and dying, even before the Law of Moses. But the Law of Moses,
when it was given, expounded and made known very distinctly
in a very enlightened way, an illuminated
way, it shined a light on just how wicked we are in the flesh. It makes known to us how far
short we fall of God's glory, of His righteousness, of being
able to save ourselves under the works of the law. That's
why the law was given, to show us that we're all sinners, condemned
in the flesh, in need of grace and mercy. Righteousness is by
God's grace, and the Lord revealing that it's by grace, it shows
us that Well, what we see in the scriptures is that that's
entirely contrary to what the Jews were teaching, the Jewish
leaders. They were teaching their hearers that it's by their practice
and labor in the law. And that's our righteousness.
That's our acceptance. That's the hope of our acceptance
with God. And the Lord revealed that that's
not what the scriptures are teaching. When Christ came in the flesh,
he exposed that as hypocrisy, showing that you think you're
earning righteousness by your practice of the law, but you're
hypocrites, and you're full of sin and darkness, and you're
not worshiping the true and living God by your practice of the law. You're doing that in the flesh,
and there's no fellowship there in your practice of the law.
And so it's by the word of God and his teaching, his revealing
it to us, that we see the scriptures reveal Christ and that Christ
is the righteousness of his people. All right, now our title is The
Lord Brings Forth Our Righteousness. The Lord Brings Forth Our Righteousness. And we'll have three divisions.
First, we'll answer the question, is the law the saint's rule of
life? Is the law the saint's rule of
life? And then we'll look at Christ's
command, which is his command to us to look to him. Not to
the law, but to look to him. And then we'll see more clearly
in our third point that Christ is our rule of life. So I've
already answered the first point for you, but we'll go through
the scriptures so that you see it in the scriptures. So alright,
the saint's rule of life is not the letter of the law. It's not
the law. That's not our rule of life and
how we walk and how we live and move and serve God and move among
one another. It's not the letter of the law.
The following scriptures, if you turn over to Romans 7, and
we'll end up in Galatians 3, we'll just go through, I'll read
four scriptures with you. These make that plain to us.
So Romans 7, 6 says, but now we are delivered
from the law. In Christ, we are delivered from
the law, that being dead, wherein we were held, that we should
serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. All right, turn over to 2 Corinthians
3, 6. 2 Corinthians 3, 6. says, we also have, or who also,
God also, hath made us able ministers of the New Testament, the Testament
of Christ. We're serving and ministering
to the people of God, the Testament of Jesus Christ, not of the letter,
not the law. That's not what we're ministering
to. That's not what God's ministers are laboring to teach the people
is, it's not the letter of the law, but of the spirit. For the
letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. All right, so that's
where we're ministering. We're declaring and ministering
to you the testament of Christ and what he accomplished for
his people. Turn over to Galatians 2.19. Galatians 2.19, Paul says, I
through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. Look at Galatians 3.11, but that
no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident,
for the just shall live by faith. Alright, so God reveals, what
he's revealing to us in the scriptures is that the law, by our labor
and practice of the law, no flesh is going to be justified before
God. We're not going to put away our sins and justify ourselves
before God under the law, but the scriptures reveal to us Christ. That is, who Christ is, what
he did, what he accomplished, Our need of Him, He's revealing
to us the glory of Christ and His righteousness. Galatians
3.14. Galatians 3.14 says that the
blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus
Christ. That we might receive the promise
of the Spirit through faith. And so the promise of the Spirit
to you that believe God, to you that have heard the word from
the Lord that we're not going to justify ourselves. We're sinners.
We can't work a righteousness. The promise of the Spirit is
that our God makes us righteous in Christ. That's why he sent
Christ. He's the one who's providing
the righteousness for his people, and we receive that truth of
the Father by faith, faith which He reveals in you. It's His fruit. It's His spiritual work. He gives
it to whomsoever He will, and it's revealed in that we hear
and believe. We believe God. We don't believe
ourselves. We don't say, wait a minute now,
I can do this. No, we hear and say, you know
what, Lord, you're right. I am a sinner. I am not able
to keep this all perfectly. You're perfect, you're holy,
you're righteous, and I don't measure up in my flesh. But here
I'm hearing of how it is that I do measure up. It's in Christ,
by faith, not by my works, but by His work. It's all His work. And so Galatians 5, verse 5 says,
For we through the Spirit, by the Spirit here, we through the
Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. That is, faith which worketh
by love. Now, we're waiting for the hope
of righteousness by faith. In other words, what he's saying
to us is that we look at the flesh, we see this flesh, we
love the Lord, we want to love one another and serve one another,
and we do, we love the Lord, but we see in this flesh, we're
honest, and we see in this flesh the inability, the falling far
short of what we want to be. But the Lord shows us, in His
Word, shows us perfection. And we see, that's not me. I'm
not doing what I want to do. I want to serve the Lord. I want
to love Him perfectly with all my heart, soul, mind, strength,
everything. He deserves it. I want to do
it. But I keep seeing in me sin. I see my weakness and my inability. And seeing that, that's what
prevents us from despising others, because we see, I'm not perfect,
I don't do, I'm not perfect, and I don't do what I'm supposed
to do either. But, we've heard Christ, we've
heard Him, and the Lord tell us, in Christ, you are righteous,
perfect, holy. unblameable, unreprovable in
the sight of God. And so we know one day we're
going to be standing before the throne of God and we believe
that God will find us righteous, perfectly righteous, not because
of anything that you or I have done, but because of His Son
Jesus Christ and what He's accomplished. That's the hope of righteousness,
that when it all comes down to it, and it's all over, and all
this has gone away, and it's just us face to face with our
Creator and Judge, that He shall find us perfectly righteous in
His Son, Jesus Christ, by His work. That's our hope, and we
know that by the Spirit. That's why we believe it, by
the work of the Spirit. Alright, so, for us who believe,
We see that the Jews, they looked at the law, right? They were
looking at the law and their practice and keeping of the law
for righteousness. And so what? Their confidence
that God loved them and God would receive them was in their practice
of the law. It's because they practiced.
They had the law and they were practicing it. And so they looked
at that and said, clearly this is a mark of God's favor upon
us. We must be his people. We have
the law, and we're doing our best to keep the law. And so
that's where their confidence was. It was in their practice
and the law. And so what does that mean for
us today? Because the Pharisees are alive
and well today, just like they were back then. It just comes
under a different name. It comes under Christianity.
If you want to bring it close to home, there's many religions,
but it's also even under the name of Christianity. And so
we see today that many rest their hope of righteousness. I did
it for many years in religion, resting my hope of righteousness
because, well, it wasn't the law, but I had the Bible. I had
the Bible, and I read the Bible. I actually read it, you know?
And so that was my hope. And I would attend services pretty
regularly. That was my hope. And I would
hear what the elders or the pastor was saying. And I would try and
listen to it and take it to heart and pray about it and try to
do what they said. And I would do some good works,
you know, as they defined them, what the good works are. And
so that was my hope. I rested. All right, I think
God's going to receive me now. I say the name Jesus, I believe
in Him, and I'm doing all this. And so there was my hope was
in what I was practicing, what I was doing in the name of Christ. So whether you practice the law
of Moses or you have some other set of practices that you follow,
whatever it is, that's where so many people are putting their
confidence is in that execution of religious things, doing religious
things. Well, I guess I'm a believer
now, because I do these things. And I can see that they don't
do those things, and I can point that out to them. And so that's
another mark that I'm a Christian, because I see what they're not
doing. That's what we base it on. So that's where we put our confidence,
in these practices. The practice of religious things,
that's not salvation. Even if you say the name Jesus
as opposed to Mohammed or some other Buddha or Confucius or
whatever it is, it doesn't matter how perfect you think you are
in practicing it, that's not salvation. is in one, the Lord
Jesus Christ himself. And so the Jews were trusting
in their keeping of the law and they were deceived under that
so that when Christ came, when the Lord of light and glory came
and spoke to them and showed them true righteousness, they
wouldn't hear him. They didn't receive him but rejected
the Lord of glory and crucified him. so rejected them that they
sent him to die on the cross, all because he exposed our hypocrisy
and the wickedness in our own hearts. He just showed our religion
and that it doesn't save anyone. And so, believers, our foundation
is, it must be, the Lord Jesus Christ, because only in Christ
does God save us. When I say in Christ, I don't
mean now you just do practices under his name. But our confidence
continues to always be that Christ is my righteousness. And the
Lord, the Spirit in you, will constantly bring you to see through
various trials and afflictions, showing us our weaknesses that
we can't save ourselves. It's not by our works of righteousness
that now we've arrived. It's always going to be, Lord,
have mercy on me. Lord, forgive me for my sins. have patience and mercy upon
me. Lord, forgive me for my sin.
Deliver me from the body of this dead. He's always bringing us
to see that, that our need is in Him so that we don't rise
up against our brethren and start judging them and being angry
with them and getting upset because we see, Lord, I need patience
for my brethren. I need mercy from my brethren. So he brings us to see that other
foundation can no man lay than that is laid which is the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's whom God has provided.
He's our foundation and upon whom we build all our hope and
confidence. It's all fit and established
upon him. So Many are resting in the religious
practice and not resting in Christ, not believing Him. And yet the
Lord tells us, ye all are children of God through faith, through
faith in Christ Jesus. So it's by our faith that is
revealed that we're children of God. Not by our ability to
trade in one set of religious practices for a new set of religious
practices. And that's what everyone's doing
right in in America there's so many churches around here and
I don't know maybe they balance between different places because
it it sues whatever it is that they're itching to hear but but
it's not just about trading in some set of things for a new
set of things it's it's getting rid of all that that that religious
stuff that we're confident and trusting in and resting, waiting
for the hope of righteousness in Christ by faith. Just trusting
Him that the Lord, that I'm righteous in Christ and not in anything
that I am doing. And actually, this is what we
see in Romans 10, verses 10 and 11. Romans 10, Paul tells us,
it's with the heart. Romans 10.10, for with the heart
man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession
is made. So that the evidence is the fruit of the spirit. It's
not something that we do. We can't even take ownership
and say, look, I believe and you don't. But you that believe,
believe truly in the heart, which is a fruit of the spirit, so
that you know I'm not righteous in myself, but Lord, you've declared,
you've shown Christ came to do this work, that he's put away
my sin by the shedding of his own blood, and we're resting
there. It's in the heart first, and
then what? Confession is made. To show that, yeah, the Lord's
manifesting his grace and mercy in me so that I do believe in
him, and I stop talking about what I've done, and what I've
done for the Lord, and look at me and how how religious and
righteous and holy I am, but we declare his righteousness
and holiness and rejoice in his work of mercy. For the scripture
saith, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. And so it really does come down
to that. The Lord makes, he manifests
his glory in his people, and the only way that we know it
is because He reveals it in faith. He reveals it in your heart so
that you really believe, yep, that's my righteousness. You
stop trusting in self and you confess Him. You believe Him.
Lord, I believe you are the Lord. It's really that simple. And
all who really believe Him, they will not be ashamed. You that
are waiting for the hope of righteousness, you'll stand before God and you
will not be ashamed for believing Christ and trusting Him. for
all your righteousness. And it's His work. So that's
what it is. We'll continue being led of the
Spirit. The Spirit will teach you. He'll reveal Himself to
you. He'll grow you in grace and faith. And He'll bear fruits
in you. But that's not our focus, isn't
on that. Our focus is on Christ. And He
will bear all that fruit in us. He'll teach us. And He'll lead
us. And so by faith we'll run that
race. looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,
having no confidence in the flesh. Philippians 3.3, no confidence
in the flesh. All right. So if it's not the
law of Moses, that's our rule, all right? That it's not this
set of religious practices that keeps us on the straight and
narrow and doing what we should be doing and not doing what we
shouldn't be doing. If it's not the law, then what's
our rule? Well, Christ tells us. He commands
us, in the spirit, he commands us to look to him. keep looking
to Him, to trust Him. Our Lord tells us that we're
to follow none, not to follow Moses, but to follow Him. He says in Isaiah 45, verse 22,
look unto me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I
am God and there is none else. There's one salvation, the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's it, all the ends of the
earth, are given one in whom we look, the Lord Jesus Christ.
John 12, 26, if any man serve me, let him follow me. Follow Christ, look to him. And
where I am, there shall also my servant be. If any man serve
me, him will my father honor. The Lord's gonna turn our eyes
away from self and away from dead letter works to him. He'll bring forth the works that
He's purposed to bring forth. He'll do that, but we keep looking
to Him. You want to see fruit in your
life? Keep looking to Christ. You'll probably never see it
yourself. You'll always still see what a sinner you are, but
your brethren will see it, and they'll know, and they'll be
thankful for you. But you keep looking to Christ.
You keep trusting Him. Revelation 14, 4 and 5. This is one of my favorites.
These are they, some people think this is for some other group
of people in the future, 144,000 males, something like that, but
no, this is believers, right? Here and now, these are they
which were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. This isn't
an attack on women. This is showing that all of you
who believe men and women, both, we don't hear the whore of Babylon. We're not listening to her and
all her her daughters of false doctrine and getting caught up
in dead letter religion. We're not being deceived by the
false religion, the horror of Babylon. We're virgins in Christ. These are they which follow the
Lamb, withersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among
men, being the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb. It's his
fruit that he's producing in us. And in their mouth was found
no guile, for they are without fault before the throne of God. That means that we stop using
deceit and lies and telling the people deceitful things to try
and obtain a goal in someone. Because religion is about getting
you to do something in your flesh that you wouldn't otherwise do
so that I can feel good about myself in saying, well, I must
be a Christian because, look, I got that person and that person
and that person to do this and this and that. Surely I'm one
of God's people. And then you also are deceived
in thinking that, well, because I did what so-and-so said, I
guess I'm a believer. And so there you go right back,
not looking at Christ, but looking at what you did. All right, and
trusting in those things. So that's God, is to not speak
of Christ, but to speak of our works as something that really
does work righteousness and earns us a favor with God. And we're
no longer building on the foundation, which is Christ, but building
on our flesh and what we're doing and improving in that sense.
Ministers of Christ are called not to protect ourselves and
say what we think the people want to hear so we can build
up a big congregation with people that like what we're saying,
but to be faithful to Christ and trust that Christ will build
his church, that he'll build the house, that he'll strengthen
each one here, that he's gathered here and put here and establish
them and build that house together, all upon the foundation, which
is Christ, the sure foundation, and then he'll grow it as it
pleases him. All right, now Paul said in Galatians
5.11, he said, and I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision,
if I preach some set of works and rules for you, why do I yet
suffer persecution? For then is the offense of the
cross ceased. And if I begin to teach you works
and some set of practices, then the offense of the cross is over.
Because the offense of the cross declares, we didn't do it, we
fell short of the glory of God because we're sinners. Dead in
trespasses and sins, but Christ is a savior. He gets all the
glory for saving his people. That's the cross, but it's an
offense to the flesh because it's saying, you and me, we're
weak, we can't do it. We fell short. We're worthy of
hell. That's what we have earned. And
then Paul elaborates it in Galatians 6, 12 and 13. He says, as many
as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain
you to be circumcised. And that's what I was saying
earlier. It's constraining you to do something in your flesh
only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of
Christ. In Paul's day, there was many who were still zealous
for the law. They claimed to believe Christ,
but they were zealous for the law, and they looked at Paul
and said, what you're saying is gonna lead to sin and filthiness
of the flesh. You can't do that. That's horrible,
Paul, and you're against the law of Moses. And so they judged. Paul and they judge his ministry
and those who heard him were all judged as being antinomians
and lawless ones and just being sinners, not in the grace of
God. But he says, neither they themselves
who are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised
that they may glory in your flesh. And so that's what most of Christianity
is today. It's a fair show in the flesh.
It's a fair show. But in this congregation, it
looks like that. In this congregation, it looks
like this. And over here, it looks like that. And so each
one has their practices with which they think we're Christians. And then when you come in, if
you don't conform, you're marked out as not one of the children
of God. You're an outcast then and then. It doesn't matter what you think
of Christ. The point is that when we do that, when we emphasize
these works like that in the flesh, then we've ceased to rest
in Christ. We've ceased to believe Him and
we've turned the eyes of the people off of Christ to look
to these practices and to gain some kind of confidence that
this must be salvation, what they have me doing here. I guess
this is it and I'm in their community now. and that's what it becomes. But it's Christ and Christ alone
that makes us holy and unblameable and unreprovable in the sight
of God. It's really the Lord. So our
third point is Christ is our rule of life. And that's the
truth of the matter. Christ is the saint's rule of
life. He's our rule. He's who we follow
and who we look to for perfect righteousness and acceptance
with God. Turn over to 2 Corinthians 3.
2 Corinthians 3, and we'll begin
in verse three. You that go here. know this is one of my favorite
portions of scripture, 2 Corinthians 3 verse 3, and I love how he
starts off this saying, for as much as ye are manifestly, see
the Lord's going to manifest himself, you're going to believe
Christ, you're going to rest in Christ, you are manifestly
declared to be the epistle of Christ, ministered by us. In other words, Christ is the
author and finisher of your faith. He's the one writing the epistle. He's the one writing his story
on your hearts. And what he's purposed to do
with you and in you, that's what he's doing through the preaching
of the gospel. That's what I'm here to minister,
is to minister Jesus Christ to you in his righteousness. or
his workmanship, written not with ink, not some fleshly, carnal
thing of this world, but with the spirit of the living God,
not in tables of stone, not by the law, but in fleshy tables
of the heart. That is, the Lord writes his
heart, or his law in your hearts. He reveals Christ to you, whereby
you hear his voice, And when you sin, the Lord is the one
who chastens you. The Lord is the one who reveals
that to you and turns you from it by the Spirit. Sometimes quickly,
sometimes we're very stubborn. And we have a hard time with
certain things. But the Lord is the one that
does it. And the Lord does it perfectly.
And He's the one who's working His will in the hearts of His
people. Yeah, so, and what he's saying
there is that by the Spirit, we're born again, we're born
of His seed, and we're living and moving and having our being
all by His work in us. It's His seed which makes us
born again of Him, whereby we are made righteous in Him. And, verse four, such trust have
we through Christ to God were. So confident are we in Christ,
that's why we preach Him. And I've said it many times before,
you know where someone's confidence lies in what they're preaching,
and what they're speaking. If my confidence isn't in Christ,
then you're going to see me go to the law, and labor in the
law among you, and just keep hammering away at what I think
you should be doing in the law, and turn you to the flesh, because
that means I don't have a confidence in Christ. I'm not believing
that he really is our righteousness. But if I continue to preach Christ
to you, and reveal to you the righteousness of God, revealed
in us and to us by the Lord Jesus Christ in Him, then you know
where my confidence is, that it's in Christ. And that's what
Paul's saying. Such trust have we through Christ
the Godward, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think
anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God. So we see, we confess that we're
sinners, that we come up short in the flesh before salvation
and after salvation. We're always falling short in
the flesh. so that we continue to see and
recognize and declare to one another, our sufficiency is of
God. He's the one who makes us to
stand in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, these verses here, they
contain the truth of all the righteous fruit that you and
I bear. It's all contained here in these
scriptures so that every fruitful thing that is born in us, we
give glory to God in Christ. We thank Him for it, right? Our
election, that's of God. Our atonement, that's of God
in Christ. Our sanctification, right? Our
being separated and set apart and being brought under the sound
of the gospel to hear it and to receive it, his work as well. The faith that we have revealed
in us, whereby we hear and believe God, what he said concerning
us and what he says concerning Christ, that's of his work being
born in us. Our sanctification, that is our
walk and our growth in him, that's of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
all being born in us of the fruit of Christ. And it continues in
our perseverance, so that we don't fall away, There's times
where believers go into dark times and it may seem like it's
lifeless there. But if we're the Lord's, we're
going to persevere. He's going to bring us out of
it. He's going to return us back to Himself. Ultimately, all leading
to our glorification. I will stand glorified in the
Lord. thanking him for it because it's
all his work. It's all his fruit that he bears
in us. And that's what we see there
in that verse. Such trust have we through Christ to God. We're so confident in him that
he's producing everything necessary in us. So it's all provided for
us in Christ. by our God who's pleased to put
everything necessary for our salvation into the hands of Jesus
Christ, His Son, our Lord, our Savior, the Lamb of God. He committed everything to Him.
We can commit everything to Him. We can trust Him for all things. All right, so I opened this message
with a text from Jeremiah 51, 10. Jeremiah 51 Tim, it says again,
the Lord hath brought forth our righteousness. Now having heard
that, do you see how the Lord brings forth our righteousness,
how he's everything to us? We're not looking to our practices,
we're not looking to the law, It's not about how well we can
judge other people, it's trusting Him. The Lord hath brought forth
our righteousness. It's in Jesus Christ by His power,
by His Spirit, living and abiding and working in us as it pleases
Him. So if you see that, Then he says,
come and let us declare in Zion the work of the Lord our God. That is, let us continue to be
ministers of Christ. We minister the love and the
patience and the kindness and we speak of Christ and how wonderful
and merciful and tender He is to us. We continue, that's what
we continue to do because we believe it, that's what we declare
in Zion. We declare the Lord Jesus Christ. So I pray that the Lord will
bless that to your hearts and help us all to continually see
that Jesus Christ is indeed our righteousness and that we wait
upon Him. Alright, let's close in prayer
now, brother. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for the tenderness, for the love, the mercy and grace
which you have shown to us abundantly in your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord,
keep our eye ever upon Him, and having no confidence in the flesh,
not trusting in our works, but continuing to hope righteousness
which comes by Jesus Christ alone knowing that we shall one day
stand before your throne perfect and accepted holy and righteous
in the blood of our Savior Jesus Christ and Lord help us indeed
to not only believe it but to declare it to one another and
to live that life of love for one another to one another in
the Lord Jesus Christ and Lord we Pray for your kingdom. Lord,
our hearts are heavy with the thought of Pastor Fortner, and
Lord, just knowing what a faithful servant he has been to so many
of us for so many years, Lord, and to see his body growing weaker
and weaker. We know that he is thankful and
that he is doing well, and we're thankful for that, Lord. We ask
that you continue to strengthen him, bless him in grace and in
mercy, Lord, and that you would indeed strengthen Shelby, help
her as she ministers to him, and helping him with things that
he needs help with now, and bless the congregation. And Lord, we
ask that your will be done. If it pleases you to heal him,
Lord, we know that you are able. And if it pleases you not to
heal him, Lord, we trust you and know that you do all things
well and perfectly. And so Lord, we ask that you
would just indeed comfort your people in this time and that
you would indeed keep our eyes focused upon the Lord Jesus Christ
and that you would make your ministers of Christ to continue
to be faithful, even as Pastor Fortner has been faithful for
so many years in pointing us to the Lord Jesus Christ. We
know that you are able and that you do all things well. And Lord,
for your people here, we know that there are those that are
suffering, those that are struggling and going through various trials
and afflictions. Lord, whether it's sickness or
just Just things that we don't understand and that pain us and
cause us to feel hurt, Lord, help us, strengthen us, and help
us to see that you know, Lord, your Spirit knows all things,
and that you would work your grace in the hearts and in the
minds of your people, and that you would bear much fruit in
us as it pleases you in the Lord Jesus Christ, even in this dark
part of the world. Lord protect us as we go home.
Keep us safe even in the midst of stormy weather. We pray this
and give thanks in our Lord and Savior and His name. Amen.