Galatians chapter 4, and we'll
be looking at verse 7 this evening. The title of my message tonight
is, Heirs of an Inheritance. Heirs of an Inheritance. We get this from Galatians 4,
7, where Paul says, Wherefore, thou art no more a servant, but
a son. And if a son, then an heir of
God through Christ. Last week we saw how God has
made us sons by adoption. This is the purpose of redemption. The purpose of justification
was that God might adopt us as sons. Sons of God. And we saw that we were sons
of God by the purpose of God in election. God purposed before
the world that we should be sons. That we should be children of
God. God the Son came then and paid
that adoption price by His redeeming blood, adopted us into the family
of God, and purchased our salvation on the cross. and that our adoption
is still yet future, when He will one day come and receive
us unto Himself as our Father. As a father receives a son, that's
exactly what happens at death, and that's exactly what's going
to happen at the resurrection. When the resurrection comes,
our body and soul will unite if we have died, or if we're
still here, it'll rise up all together and be glorified with
Christ. Now, we saw also last week in
Galatians that Paul, when he has reference to his son, he
was talking about a full-grown son. One that reached the age
of maturity. One that had come to the time
where the father had given him all that was his for an inheritance. So then, we that believe have
all the rights and privileges of sonship, all of the rights
and privileges to the inheritance, although we've not fully experienced
all of them. Now, these things that I'll mention
tonight about the inheritance, every one of us has these things
by experience, but really only in a measure. We've only experienced
these things in a measure, but the fullness of them the fullness
of them, we've not yet plumbed the depths of them. We've not
reached the bottom of any of them. And this is why heaven
is eternal. It's going to take us forever
to reach the bottom of these things. And so, we that are led
by the Spirit of God, Paul says, then are you the sons of God.
And he concludes that if we are then sons, And this is altogether
important tonight. If you are then a child of God
by faith in Christ, if you have been adopted by God, and the
Spirit of God does lead you, then you are a son of God, and
thus Paul concludes, if a son, then an heir. If you are a son,
then you are an heir. And the time has come for you
to fully understand what's yours. What's yours? in the inheritance. What then is an heir? What is
it to be an heir? You know, I know that some of
us have maybe been inside where someone of our family has died
and they've read a will. I know some of us have experienced
that. They've died and they've left their last will and testament. And as that will is being read
and you hear your name in that will, and they say, you receive
this, this and this. You see, that's your inheritance. That's what you call an inheritance.
You've been made an heir of something, of something. Well, that's exactly
what we have before us. You see, the will, the last will
and testament, it is though we are reading the last will and
testament tonight of a very wealthy father who has died and left
his children on inheritance. But I'll tell you this, remember
that as long as the testator of a will is alive, the will
doesn't have any power, does it? If I have a will for my children
to inherit my vast fortune, my grand estate of all that I have,
you know, it doesn't really do them any good until I've died.
They won't inherit anything until I have died. That's what he tells
us. Paul tells us in Hebrews 9, verse
15, he says, For this cause he is the mediator of a new testament,
that by means of his death for the redemption of the transgression
we were under the first testament, they which are called might receive
the promise of the eternal inheritance. And he says that for the testament,
there must also be of necessity the death of the testator. You
see, Jesus Christ is the testator of the will. But we know that
we have the inheritance. How? Because the testator has
died and therefore the will has been enacted. The will has been
enacted. Dear believer in Jesus Christ,
let us see and rejoice in that we are not only made children
of adoption by the death of Christ, but also made heirs of an eternal
inheritance. Eternal inheritance. For where
the will is, there must be the death of the testator. And while
he lives, there is no force. But after his death, the will
has power. It has strength. It has purpose. Praise God for the death of Jesus
Christ who had redeemed us from that first testament, that first
will. Remember that first will on Mount
Sinai, that law? God has testified and yes, there
was a bloodshed to ratify that testament, but it was the blood
of an animal. But here we have the blood of
Jesus Christ making effectual the inheritance. In other words,
it makes it real. It is real, and what I'm going
to tell you tonight is real. This is a real last will and
testament of Christ for you. This is His. You are tonight
under the sound of the reading of the will of God. And this
will has been made effectual by the death of Christ. That's
how it's been made effectual. Jesus Christ, who has died, He
has died and the will is effectual. Now, what is our inheritance? For us tonight, I want us to
look at Isaiah chapter 54. I know that I can go many places,
but this, I think, is one place that you can go for many parts
of the inheritance. This is not going to be exhaustive.
I promise you, this is not going to be exhaustive. And even the
things I mention, I cannot exhaust them all. David said this bless
the Lord. Oh my soul and forget not all
his benefits How many benefits is it to be a believer in Christ? How many benefits are there are
there can you count them? I can't count them. I Know this
we cannot exhaust them. Although we get exhausted trying
I Sometimes I go back there and I'm reading and I get exhausted.
I mean, I can dig into this and I can't find the bottom, and
I can get exhausted looking at it. Oh, but I'll never exhaust
them. I'll never get to the end of
them. So tonight, we're going to look at some of these benefits.
I've got five, and Lord willing, I can make it through. I want
to make it through. This is good. And it's been a blessing to me
this week. This chapter ends with this statement, and I want
us to see the end of this chapter to let us know this is talking
about the inheritance. Look at verse 17. First part
of this we know. We've heard this before. No weapon
that is formed against thee shall prosper, and every tongue that
shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn." Now, here
it is. This is the heritage of the servants
of the Lord. In other words, he said, all
of this that went before, everything that I have mentioned in this
chapter is part of the inheritance of the servants of the Lord.
This is your inheritance. This is yours. I got five things
I want us to see. First of all, I want us to see
the first part of our inheritance that we've all experienced and
we are all experiencing right now, even right now, the mercy
of God. This is our inheritance, the
mercy of God. Look at this in verse seven.
For a small moment, God said, for a small moment, I have forsaken
thee. but with great mercies." That
word's plural, isn't it? Mercies. I will gather thee. We know that God has chosen us
from the foundation of the world, that Christ has predestinated
us unto the adoption of children. We know that that's the purpose
of God. But in your experience, When you were born into this
world, were you not born dead in trespasses and sins? Were
you not, for a small moment, lost and in your sins? Yes. Yes. We were. We were lost and in our sins
for a moment, and by nature, the children of wrath, even as
others. In the purpose of God, our salvation
was accomplished. in God's purpose. But all of
God's decrees must come to pass in time. All of those purposes
in eternity must come to pass. So there was a time that we were,
like in the beginning of this chapter, if you read it, the
barren woman. We were barren of all righteousness, right?
We were barren of all fruit and love for God. We were cast out. We were abandoned. We were wasted
in our sins. Worthless to men and worthless
to God. And yet, because of His great
mercy in Christ, because of the death of the testator, the will
of God reads to all sinners, I will have mercy. That's the will of God. You want
to know what the will of God is for sinners? Here it is. I
will gather thee with mercy. That's your will. That's his
will for you. That's his will. That's your
inheritance. I will gather thee with mercy.
Oh, believers, it's not so with us. Did he not come and gather
us in great mercy? Did he not come to us when we
were in the greatest moment of our need? Did He not come when
we were down in the depths of our sin? Yes. He came at our
lowest point. He came when we were made sensible
of what we are by nature. He came when we were in our lowest
depths of hell and we could not find hope. And what did he do? He came just like he said he
would. He said, I will gather you with
mercies. And he has. That's our experience. He came to us in great mercy.
And this is our inheritance. The mercy of God. The mercy of
God. Believer, how many times are
we like Asaph? Remember, O Asaph, me and him,
we're good buddies. Because I tell you, we look a
lot alike. We have a lot of the same problems,
me and him. Psalm 73, that's one of the psalms
that I can identify with most readily. Remember when he said
this, but as for me, my foot is almost gone, my steps had
nigh well slipped. I know this is my experience
in my pilgrimage. Many times I look at the prosperity
of the wicked, I see that they're not concerned about sin, they're
not concerned about God, they're not concerned about righteousness
and judgment, and the things that concern us, they have no
idea what we're doing here. They don't have any idea. Those
people are crazy. And many times we get discouraged. But my friend, when we find ourselves
in the footstep of Asaph, we need to do this. We need to return
to the sanctuary. We need to go back to the Word
of God and see what God says and what God has for us. God
has mercy for us. God says, I will be merciful
to you. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord
for His good, for His mercy endureth. How long? How long? Forever. Forever. In matter of fact, that
word endureth is not even in there. It should read like this
for his mercy forever, for his mercy forever. Dear child of
God, do you need mercy? Are you trapped? Do you have
sin's weight around you, casting you down? God has put his will in front
of us tonight, and his will for you is mercy. Mercy. If you're in need of mercy, I
got good news. He's full of mercy. Full of it. Full of it. His mercy is forever. Remember Romans 9.16 when I preached
the other week? It's not of him that willeth,
nor him that runneth, but God that showeth mercy. He showed mercy. He's showing
mercy even now, and He will show mercy. You can write it down,
put it down. Why? Because God put it in His
will for you. That's what God says about you,
believer. He says, I will show you mercy, and this is part of
your inheritance. His mercy is new every morning. Wake up! It's new! Fresh! It's not old. You see, he don't
get tired of having mercy on you. That's good, isn't it? He
don't get tired of having mercy. How many times we get tired of
asking for it, but yet he don't get tired of giving it. Why? It's your inheritance. The Father's
given it to you. It's already yours. Number two,
our inheritance is kindness and a covenant of peace. I put these
two together. Look at verse 10. It says, For the mountains shall
depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart
from me, depart from thee. Neither shall my covenant of
peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. Has
God had mercy on you? Well, this is this leads us to
the next one. If you had mercy, if he's had
mercy on you and you can see that that's your inheritance,
will this your inheritance to right here? Kindness and peace. Kindness. Let's look at that.
Kindness or the love of God. Now, God says, for the mountains
shall depart, hills be removed. The mountains and hills will
depart and be removed. This is a fact. Everything on
this earth will one day be burned up. Everything. Everything we
hold dearly here, everything we think is going to last and
keep us and satisfy us, every bit of that is going to one day
be gone. It's going to be burned up. Every
hill is going to be made low by the hand of God. God's going
to wipe it all out. There's nothing there. There'll
be nothing here left. God will burn this world up,
purify it, and then put it back the way it was before sin entered
in. That's what's going to happen. Have you ever seen any great
mountain? I know you have. You've seen
pictures of mountains. Ever tried to climb one? I have.
It was really tough. Not a hill. I'm talking about
a mountain. I was in South Korea during the
service and we had to climb mountains. We were scaling these mountains. It was hard. These things were
huge. And you see that Mount Everest.
Everybody talks about Mount Everest. It's huge. And everybody just
says, oh, what a big thing to climb it. You ever try to move
it? You don't see men trying to bulldoze Mount Everest. They
can't. They can't. You see, you can
only build on a mountain or go around it. You can't do anything
else with it. It's big. And God says, He'll move it. He says, I will remove it. Like
a child, you put a child out there in a sandbox and he builds
this sandcastle. And his mom says, time to go.
And he takes a stick and he just levels it. That's exactly how
God can level the mountains of this earth with just one swoop
of His hand and it's gone. We just talked about Haiti. Just
think about that. One brief shake of the earth
and it devastates men. The power of God. He says, these
mountains, I'll remove them. I'll remove them. But these mountains,
they mean something more. He's talking about refuges. You
see, in that day, a mountain was a refuge. It was a place
of military strategic position. In other words, if you wanted
a city to survive a siege, it had to be on a mountain. You
see, that's why Jerusalem was always a good city and hard to
capture, because it was on a mountain. On Sunday when I talked about
Israel being taken captive in Lamentations, the kingdoms of
the earth in Lamentations 4, it says that the kingdoms of
the earth were saying, how in the world? You mean Jerusalem
was taken? Why? Because it was on a mountain.
It was on a mountain. This is refuges. This is literal
nations. Is anybody trusting in this nation? I hear so many people saying
today, have faith in this nation. Don't have faith in this nation.
This nation will pass just like every other nation has passed.
Don't have faith in this nation. God will level this nation. That
is just a fact. Men kick at it all they want
to. God will one day take away this nation. Don't have confidence
in this nation. But I think it has something
more to do with than that. I think these mountains are figurative
of spiritual refuges. Spiritual refuges. God says,
I will take away all false refuges. Remember in Revelation when it
says, those men are crying, let the mountains fall on us? That's
not a literal sense. They're not really saying for
them to be dead. They don't want to die. I mean,
if they're fearing the wrath of the Lamb, they're not wanting
to die. What is that saying? That is
saying this, cover me with the refuge of my lies to save me
from the wrath of the Lamb. That's what men will do. In their
death, they will ask the mountains of their refuge of lies to cover
them. Lord, have we not done this in
Thy name? Have we not cast out devils in
Thy name? Cover me! He's crying to His
works to cover him. And in that day, they will not
cover him. They will not cover him. God
says, I will remove them. I'll take them away. If any are
relying on their self or their religion, God says, you can't
hide in it. I'll find you out. You know, you may deceive me.
It's easy to do. Many do. Many come to me and
say, I'm a believer in Jesus. Well, OK. All right. I'll take your word. One thing
you won't do is you won't deceive God. We won't deceive God, will
we? No, God, no. I don't know. But
I'll tell you this. All who do believe. All who do
believe. Don't worry. About the mountains. Don't worry about false religion. Don't worry about them. And even
though God says, I will remove them, I will not remove My love
from you. I won't do it. Even though I'm
going to cast them into outer darkness where there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth, yet for you have I reserved the
best of My love. And My love will not depart from
you. God's kindness and love will
not depart from us. He says, I have given Egypt for
thy ransom, Ethiopia and Sheba for thee. He says, I have given
men for thee and people for thy life. Can we not see the evident tokens
of God's love in our life? Can you not see them? They're
everywhere. They're everywhere. Think about
where you were born. Think about your family and think
about how God has moved all things so that you would come to hear
His Word. Think about that. Ladies, you all tell me all the
time about how you kicked about being in your home and how rebellious
you were and all those things and you didn't like going to
church, you didn't like those things. But God was doing that
for you. He loved you. He loved you. He showed you and He said, I'll
give people for your life. Evident tokens of God's love
are all around us and His great kindness is always for us. Why has He done such great things?
Why has He had mercy on you? Because He loved you. And He
says this in His last will and testament. Here is His last will
and testament. I love you. My love is always for you. And you know what? His love is
not lip service either. You see, His love has power. So when we say our inheritance
is the love of God, we're not talking about just a lip service
love. God is doing all things for us. Everything. Everything you are
experiencing, everything you are going through is a token
of God's love, even though you can't see it. It is. Absolutely. He loves you and He has shown
you great kindness. The second part of this is a
covenant of peace. You see, the Scripture tells
us about sitting in heavenly places. How can you sit in heavenly
places if you don't have peace with God? Is that possible? No. So what God says in His will,
He says, I've loved you, and I've also made peace for you. I've made peace for you. Isn't
that something? God made peace for us with Himself. You see, God was the offended
party. We were the offenders, and God was the offended, and
yet God moved to make peace. He moved to make peace. So he
determined a covenant of peace, a covenant of grace, his last
will and testament that we are reading. See, we were under the covenant
of Sinai and of works. But this new and better covenant
is one of peace. The first one, that these Galatians,
and that's why Paul is talking about being an heir, because
he's talking about being an heir of peace, in that these Galatians
were trying to go back under the first covenant. They were
trying to go back under bondage. Why would you go under bondage
when I have given you peace already? That's a foolish thing to do. Don't go back. He says, I've
made a covenant of peace with you. You have been heirs. You
are heirs of the free woman. You're not heirs of the bondwoman.
You are heir of a free woman. Don't try to be a child of the
bondwoman. What good is that? That's foolish.
We're made heirs of the free woman. How? By the peace that
God has made through the blood of His Son. Colossians 1.20,
having made peace. How? by the blood of His cross. He gave His Son so that we might
have peace. Did He give Him? Did Christ shed
the blood? Has He given you faith to believe? Stop trying to make peace with
God. God already did it. God's already
done it. And God is here telling us this
because that's what we try to do all the time. God said, don't
I've already made it. I made peace. You are always
at peace with me. I give you peace." What did He
say? My peace I give unto you. Not like the world gives it.
They give and take back. God never gives and takes back.
He gives and gives and gives and gives. What does He give?
Peace. It's all done. Peace is done. But how many times
has God treated us because we are heirs and children of God?
And yet, does that mean that God, because He's given us peace,
is going to take away all of our troubles? We're going to
float through this life on flowery beds of ease. Is that what He
means? Absolutely not. You know, I love
my son. He's an heir to all I've got.
But I'll tell you what, I will chasten him. God does chasten
us. And it's not fun. Nobody says
chastening is fun. But it's necessary. And if we've
been chastened, it's not that God is at war with us. God is
our Father and He is doing well for us. He's doing well for us. He chastens us. So to show that
we are sons and not bastards. Praise God. for the peace that
He has given. The peace that He has given.
We feel at times like David, when David was surrounded by
Saul, by the enemies of Saul, he felt trapped. He felt encaged. And what did he do? He said,
I'll call upon the Lord in distress. And what was the Lord's answer? What was the Lord's action to
David when he called on him? He said, He set me in a large
place. There's nothing more peaceful
than being in a large place, is there? It's just peaceful. You know, I like being in a wide
open space. You know, I don't like being
cramped up in a little cubicle somewhere. I like being out.
That's why before I was a pastor, I was a P.E. teacher. I never
liked being in the classroom. I always liked being outside.
I always liked being in open space. Being in open space, there's
a breath. There's freshness in that. And
so God sets us in a large place. You see, our foundation is not
a pebble. We're not relying like on Christ
as some kind of pebble that we got to stand on our tiptoes.
No, we have a large foundation. We have a large foundation that
we can never fall off of. We can fall on it and we can
be broken by it, but we can't fall off of it. Isn't that great?
God has set us in a large place that we're not feeding in a little
yard, are we? We're feeding in a large, open
range of pasture. He says, you shall go in and
out and find pasture. My friends, we're free. Free! Free! Why? He has made peace! There's peace. There's peace
with God. And it shall not be removed.
This is your inheritance. God says, when the sun and moon
stop listening to My commands, that's the day I'll leave you.
When a man can measure the earth and measure the vastness of space,
that's the day I'm going to leave you. When will that happen? When do you think that man is
actually going to measure the vastness of space or anything
is going to not obey God? It'll never happen. Read the
will of God for you. Love and peace. Number three,
our inheritance is righteousness. Look at that in the last verse.
He says, the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their
righteousness is of me. Their righteousness is of me. When our Lord Jesus Christ came
down and brought a righteousness, do you understand that He didn't
bring forth and obtain just any old righteousness? There's no
such thing. You see, in our eyes, there's
varying degrees of righteousness. You know, if I'm accused of something
and I get acquitted, then you would say I was righteous about
that. I was right. But see, there is no there is
no variance of righteousness with God. You either have all
righteousness or you have none. You either have the righteousness
of God or you have no righteousness at all. There's no middle ground
here. And when Christ came, He obtained
by His working, His passive and His active obedience to God,
He obtained our righteousness. He obtained our righteousness
for us, the very righteousness of God. The only difference between
your righteousness, hear me, the only difference between your
righteousness as given to you in inheritance and the very essential
righteousness of God, the only difference is yours was given
and His is owned by nature. That's the only difference. Isn't
that something? The only difference. Jesus Christ
has given us the righteousness of God. No, we didn't earn it. We didn't merit it. There's nothing
in us righteous. But He gave it to us. And that's
your inheritance. How righteous are you in the
eyes of God? As righteous as God is. Isn't that something? You, you are righteous. You're righteous. I want to read
this to us. He mentions this in verse, Verse
11, he says, O thou afflicted and tossed with tempest, and
are not comforted, behold, I lay thy stones with fair colors,
I lay thy foundations with sapphire. Verse 14, in righteousness shalt
thou be established. The righteousness of God is like
a foundation of sapphires. Imagine if we just got rid of
this carpet and put down sapphires. Wouldn't that be something? We
were walking on sapphires. That's our foundation. That's
our righteousness. That's what holds us up before
God. That's what holds us up. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. It's yours. It's yours. It's free. And it's yours. It's your inheritance. Number four, we have divine protection. Look at that. Verse 17. No weapon
that is formed against they shall prosper and every tongue that
shall rise against the in judgment thou shalt condemn. Let us not
make any mistake. These inheritance are ours, but
we have enemies. Our enemies are real. These are
not fictitious enemies. These are not fake enemies. These
are real enemies. Real. We have enemies who are
mighty. We have enemies that hate us
and would do everything within their power to destroy us. Don't
make any mistake about that. Don't slip up with that. That's
true. They have weapons formed and
they are fashioned and aimed right at you all the time. All the time. Luther said, "...but
still our ancient foe does seek to work us woe. His craft and
power are great, and armed with cruel hate." Do you know why
Satan hates you so much? I've never met him. Really. I mean, I've never physically
met him. You know what I'm saying? We've
never seen him. Yet He hates us with everything He has. We're
number two on His list. God's number one and you're number
two. He hates you. He would love to do everything
to destroy you. That is a real enemy. We're not to diminish our enemy.
Remember what Jesus said, Satan hath desired to sift you as wheat. How easy is it to throw wheat
up into the air and sift it? Nothing. Nothing. Our enemy hates us. You know
why he hates us? He hates us because he knew God's plan for
you. In Isaiah, when it says, O Lucifer,
thou son of the morning, how art thou cast down to the ground
and did weakest of nations? He says, For thy heart, thou
hast set in thine heart, I will ascend above heaven. Here it
is. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. You see, he was the highest of angels
and he knew God would take man as his crowning jewel. What an
insult to him. It insulted his pride that you
would be righteous and exalted above him. And he hates you for
it. He hates you. You have an enemy,
my friend, and he hates you very much. This is the source of his hatred,
and it's a great hatred, and he will do anything he can to
appeal to your sin nature. He'll do anything to tempt or
to try us or to keep us away from our blessing, even use the
Word of God to do it. He'll try. If it were possible,
he would deceive the very elect, but it's not possible. It's not
possible. You see, our enemies are great,
but our God is greater. Not us. Our God is greater. Our God is greater. How many today are preaching
a gospel that few understand and even fewer love? What is that but the enemy? Taking the precious word of God. and making it so dry that nobody
wants to hear it. That's horrible, isn't it? This
is God's Word for you. His love for you. His grace for
you is in His Word. God keep us from such enemies.
God protect us. That's why I ask you to pray
for me. Pray for me as often as you think about me. Pray for
me. Because the enemy is aiming at
me and at you, and their weapons are aimed at us, their swords
would pierce us, and their arrows would fly and wound us mortally
if they could. What then must we do? Look to
the Word of God for your comfort. Yes, you're surrounded by enemies.
Yes, they're mighty and they hate you. But read God's inheritance
promise to you. It said no weapon formed against
you shall prosper. Didn't say it wouldn't hurt you.
Didn't say it wouldn't touch you. Many times God allows these
things to hurt us, doesn't He? But it won't prosper. It won't move us from Christ. That's what He's saying. I'll
never let you go. I'll never let you go. I have
prayed for thee in righteousness. Are you afflicted and tossed?
Are you times without comfort? Behold, God laid a foundation
of stones of color, a righteousness of Christ for us. O believer,
we are heirs of divine protection from all men and devils. We are
told that He has set us far from oppression, far from the law,
far from the fear of man and Satan, far from the terrors of
the wrath of the Lord. He set us far away from those
things. Far away. Behold, dear child,
if God be for us, who can be against us? Who can be against
us? I love this verse in 2 Chronicles
20, 17. He says, You shall not need to
fight in this battle. The nation of Israel is getting
ready to fight. He said, You don't need to fight. Set yourselves, stand
ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you, O Judah
and Jerusalem. Fear not, nor be dismayed. Tomorrow
go out against them, for the Lord will be with you. This is
your inheritance. And lastly, number five, we are
taught of God. Look at that in verse 13. And
all the children shall be taught of the Lord and great shall be
the peace of thy children. You see, this is one of the marks
of a child of God is that we are taught the things of God. How do we know these things are
ours? How can we enter into this inheritance? How can we express
the fullness of this inheritance in our life every day we wake
up? You see, in order to understand
these things, the Spirit of God must teach us. See, if I'm teaching you these
things and you're only hearing me, you're going to walk out
that door and you're not going to remember anything. But if the Spirit of God teaches, we shall be taught. We shall
be taught." How many times have you known something mentally,
and then somebody, a preacher comes along and preaches, and
all of a sudden, the light bulb goes off. And yeah, I knew it,
but now I know it for sure. You see, heaven, when I was lost,
I knew there was a heaven. But when I knew Christ, when
I was taught of the Spirit of God, heaven was more real than
earth. I knew hell was real, but I didn't
really know it was real and that people fall off into it every
day. I didn't know that until the
Spirit of God had taught me. And I didn't know anything about
being a son or being an heir until the Spirit of God taught
me. May the Spirit of God teach us. But how many times have you been
taught only once? Is there any of these things that I've mentioned
tonight that you've been taught once and you said, that's enough?
I've had people tell me that. Well, preacher, you know, you
preach the same thing all the time. You know, I know that. Well, that was easy. He just
keeps saying the same thing. You see, you're learning from
me. Don't learn from me. The Spirit of God must teach
you. And when He teaches you, He'll show you that there's no
bottom to these things. There's no end to them. There's
no end. We are taught of God. This is
a blessing of our inheritance. Praise God, for we that believe
in Christ alone are heirs to all his benefits, mercy, righteousness,
love, joy, peace, meekness, temperance, faith. All these things are ours
and much more in Christ. Robert Hawker says this, and
I'll close with this. What more can we ask for? Can you ask for anything more?
Is there anything greater than the things I've mentioned tonight?
Is there anything in this world that you would place above wanting
those things? What more can we ask for, he
says? Let us look to these for our joy and comfort. Do you not
know? Have you not felt? Hath God not
the Holy Spirit opened our eyes to see that we were once afar
off, aliens to the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the
covenants of the promise, having no hope and being without God
in the world? That's what we were. Hath the Spirit not taught
us these things? And are now brought nigh by the
blood of Christ. married to Jesus, made heirs
of God and join heirs with Christ. And shall we not sing the song
of salvation unto God and of the lamb? Oh, for the grace to
enter into the full personal enjoyment of this sweet scripture.
and to take part with the Gentile church in breaking out on the
right side and breaking out on the left, expanding with joy
at every time you hear it. Oh, my friends, may God give
us grace to enjoy these things every day. every day. You have been made an heir. You've
been made an heir and joined heir with Christ. What more can
we ask? Let's stand. We'll be dismissed
in prayer.