Turn with me, if you would, back
to Mark chapter 9. Mark chapter 9, this is the story
of a man whose son was possessed with an evil spirit. And the
man brought his son to the Lord, asking if the Lord could help
them. And in verse 23, Jesus said unto him, if thou
canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. In straight way, the father of
the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. I have a message of sincerity.
I have a message that is coming from my sleeve. I'm going to
wear this message on my sleeve. You know, people wear their hearts
on their sleeve. Well, this one's coming from my sleeve. With everything
that's going on, and you all know what that is, I enter in, I personally enter
into that cry like I never have before. Don't turn to any of these, but
1 Peter 4 says, if any man speak, that means preach, if any man
speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. Meaning, with authority. Knowing that it's the very Word
of God. Isaiah 40 says, lift up your
voice with strength. Acts 4 says, speak the Word of
God with boldness. knowing that and feeling the
burden of that commandment. That's God's commandment to me. By God's grace, and only by God's
grace, I desire to do that. I do desire to do that. I strive,
I try to do that very thing. There is only one message to
preach And that message is the absolute
sovereignty of the almighty God. The message of scripture is God's
sovereignty in everything. That's the message of scripture
starting with salvation. That's the whole message of scripture.
Now to God's people, I say, this is directed at God's people,
believers, believers of His word, believers on Him to God's people. I say, that's what we preach. And that is what you and I believe. Those who God has called to Himself
believe Him. They believe His Word. They believe His Word. No matter
how many men try to sway them, they don't believe man. They
believe His Word. They believe that He is who He
says He is. They believe that He has done
what He says He has done. They believe that He is able
to do and He will do what He says He will do. By God's grace, and I mean, I'm
telling you, by God's grace, but for the grace of God. By
God's grace, I believe Him. And here's what I want to say
this morning. You do, too. You do, too. I am not. In humbleness, I'm not asking
you if you do. I'm telling you as the oracles
of God, if you're God's people and he's given you faith, you
do, too. You do. When he says that he
is in absolute control of all things, you believe him. I'm just telling you, just in
case you didn't know, you believe him. Now, I know you do because
God says His people do, but I also know you do because I've had
conversations with you. As I stand here in this pulpit,
we're not a vocal congregation, we're not a draw-attention-to-myself
congregation, but I know when people are in agreement. I see
that mouth say, so I know that you do. When this
word says that our God is in absolute control of all things,
we say, amen. I believe that. When this word
says that God was in absolute control over who He selected
to save, we say, Amen. I believe that. We preach that
He was in absolute control over exactly who would be in His family,
called into His kingdom for all eternity. And at hearing that,
we say, I believe that. When we say that God orchestrated
every detail of the redemption of the cross, all of the events,
everything that happened, it was a particular redemption for
a particular people. It was particular bloodshed for
a particular salvation. Every piece of it was perfectly
carried out according to the Scripture. God said it and He
did it. We hear that and we say, Amen.
I believe that. We have read in this Word that
nothing can happen without God's permission. The devil can't do
anything. Man can't do anything. We have
read that a sparrow cannot fall on the ground without God Almighty
first saying, it's okay. And I know you, you believe that. You do, and I do too, by God's
grace, by His mercy, by His work, by His choice, by His love, by
His doing. You believe that a leaf cannot
fall from a tree outside of God's control, and I do too. You believe that the path of
a lightning strike can only go where God tells it
to go. Isn't that what he told Job?
You tell the lightning where to strike and the lightning says,
here I am. You believe that. I do too. You believe that God, and I say
this with great respect, God air traffic controls every comet
and every asteroid, every rock that is floating in. I say never
ending space. I don't know. You believe that he is the one
who calls a ravenous bird from the east and shows that bird
where to find food. You believe that every fly can
only fly where God tells it to. Every time I'm preaching and
there's a fly in the room or a bug in the room, I think, every
time I think, that's God's fly and he'll go wherever God tells
him to go. Remember that next time you see a fly around me.
That's God's fly and if he wants him to land on his face, he'll
land on his face. You believe, now I'm talking
to God's people. If you are God's people, this
is what you believe. You believe that every germ is His creation, not man's in
a lab. You believe that every germ is
his creation and it is used at his bidding to accomplish his
purpose for which he sends it. You believe every germ is in
his hand. in His absolute control, only
following His direct order, only moving as He moves it. You believe that? And I do too. Now, I say this with humility.
I mean this. I'm trying to speak as the oracles
of God with strength and boldness. But I'm like a duck sitting on
water. I'm trying to be all calm, cool,
and collected up top. But I say this with humility.
You believe that He kills. You just do. You believe that germs are His
pawns. accomplishing His bidding, just
like diseases are His pawns accomplishing His bidding, just like wicked
men are His pawns accomplishing His bidding. You believe that
the wicked man who took Him and beat Him and spit on Him and
cursed Him and hung Him on a cross and mocked Him and made fun of
Him, You believe that those wicked men only did what He predetermined
for to be done. You believe that. You believe that He raised up
Pharaoh for one reason only. 430 years of hard bondage on
His people. And you believe that God raised
up Pharaoh for one reason only. To show His power and to show
His glory. in accomplishing everything he
purposed to accomplish. You believe that? I do too. By God's grace, I do too. We
believe that all of these things are his means that he uses to carry out his
purposes that he has purposed to do. But ultimately, we believe
that he is the one who kills. He is the one who does that. Someone we know gets cancer,
some type of disease, and we're horrified when we hear the news.
Every time I'm notified of somebody I love who has it, my heart sinks. I'm just horrified by the news,
but ultimately we know and we believe He sent it. We say, we will actually say,
you will hear each other say, the Lord sent this trial. That's
what we say. A man named Shimei one time was
cursing King David. David was walking through a valley
and there was a man up on a hill named Shimei just cursing David
and cursing David. And man, that soldier of David
said, do you want me to go take his head off? David said, nope.
God said to him, Go curse David. We know and we believe that he
is the one who does all these things. We know and we believe
that he is the one who wounds. We desperately desire. We want
that loved one who we find out is sick. We want that loved one
to go to the doctor. What do you think ought to do?
Go to the doctor. We want that loved one to take medicine. If
chemotherapy is necessary, I want you to take chemotherapy. But we know that the Lord uses
these means and has raised up these means and purposed these
means in bringing His accomplishment to pass. And we believe that
if remission comes from a disease through one of those means, the
Lord was the one who healed. He kills. He makes alive, He
wounds, and He heals. We know and we are sure and we
believe that the Lord is the one doing all these things. We believe that God is in absolute
control from the greatest thing all the way down to the least.
We believe that he is before all things and by him, all things
consist. You don't have to convince God's
people of that. All you have to do is say it
and God's people say, amen, amen. They know everything is
by him and for him. Everything. Everything. We believe
that. We believe that. Let me just
go ahead and just say it. We believe that. But here's the
problem. All right, here's the problem. I have a problem. I have a problem. Now I'm just
gonna speak to you concerning myself. And that's not code for
I'm really not speaking about myself, I'm really talking about
you. I will sincerely speak to you on my own behalf. I'm being
as honest as I can possibly be. I'll just tell you what's in
my heart. I'll tell you what goes through my mind. I believe, I do believe, that
my God, the God of all heaven and earth, the Lord Jesus Christ
is His name. I believe that He is in absolute
control of all things. But I still live in sinful, doubtful
flesh. That's my problem. If I didn't,
there wouldn't be a problem. But I do. I do. And even though He has put the
Spirit of His faith in me, and He's caused me, He did it. He
caused me to believe. I believe. And He has caused
me to believe. But my sinful flesh is constantly
warring against His faithful Spirit. There's a struggle just constantly
taking place. There's always a conflict in
here, always. And it causes my flesh to not
be able to just freely walk after the Spirit He's put inside me. My flesh struggles to live in
the way of the Spirit that He's put inside me. And what that
creates is having both the Spirit of God and the sinfulness of
flesh, because I have both. The result of that is I believe
the Spirit of God will see to it. He will for me cry, Abba, Father,
I believe. The Spirit of God will see to
it that I believe. But my flesh has trouble trusting
what I believe. I do. I have a lot of trouble
in that area. I believe He's sovereign. I believe He's in absolute control.
But my flesh can't help it. It wants a backup plan just in
case. It just does. I believe that
lightning, I honestly do. I honestly do. I believe lightning
has an exact, ordered, predetermined strike point. Every bolt. Every single bolt. I believe
God Almighty is the one who ordered it. And I believe that in Christ,
He loves me. I believe He does. I honestly
believe He does. And I believe that in the Lord
Jesus Christ, He means me no harm. And I believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ, He will protect me as one that He loves in the
same way I would protect them. I believe He will protect me
as one that He loves. But when the clouds start rolling
in and the lightning starts striking, I go running. I go looking for
shelter just in case. I'm scared. I'm just scared. This is where
false religion goes wrong. Oh yeah, Jesus came and died
and saved, but just in case we better do some works. This is
the way of man and it's still in me. I believe. I believe. I just have a little trouble
trusting what I believe. Now here's a question that I
ask myself. I ask this to me. If I just stood
out there, here come the clouds and here comes all that lightning.
If I just stood out there, just stood there, would that be faith
or fatalism? Here's my sleeve answer to you.
I don't know. I don't know. David, King David,
as a young boy, he ran out to fight Goliath, this great warrior
giant, undefeated, great warrior giant. I hear this young lad. Now, before anybody knew what
the outcome would be, David was a human being just like we're
human beings. 2,000 years from now, things
could be written about us and they could go, man, look at him.
But here we are. And they were just men and women,
boys and girls, like everybody else. David had the books of
Moses and maybe Job, and I don't know what else might have been
there, but he had the Word of God. But the whole nation of
Israel is lined up against the Philistines. And here goes this
young boy, the outcome of a whole nation is riding on this moment. We're on the fence. This is a
pivotal point. Either they're all about to be slaves or free
men. If David loses, they're all slaves.
We're about to lose the whole country. So David runs out. He's running
toward this giant. Humanly speaking, was that faith
or fatalism? When it works out for us, we
say it's faith. And when it doesn't, we say it's
fatalism. Was what he did trust or presumption? I don't want to presume on the
Lord. I'm being serious. David still as a young boy, he
attacked and he fought a lion and a bear with his bare hands. A lion came in and got a sheep
and David attacked, ran and jumped on that lion with his bare hands. Was that courage or was that
tempting the Lord? If you were to see a lion and
you ran and jumped on that lion and said, here we go, is that
courage or is that tempting the Lord? Abraham tied up his son. Think about it in the moment.
He was committed to plunging a knife in him. And here's the
reason why. The scripture says, it tells us what was in his heart
and his mind. It says, he believed in his heart that God was able
to raise him up again from the dead. He was ready to do it because
he thought God's going to bring him back from the dead. Humanly speaking, for the life
that they were living in this world, just like us. You know,
again, it's so easy when you have the end of the story. We know what God said about it. We see the picture of Christ
in it. But as human beings living on
this earth in that moment, would it have been said of Abraham
that he was being faithful or tempting God? I honestly don't know, but I
do know this. I can with confidence tell us
this. Every one of those instances had an ordered, secure, purposed
outcome. Every one of them. By the all-controlling,
almighty God of heaven, in every one of those instances, it was
only going to go one way. No matter what Abraham was committed
to do, it was only going to go one way. No matter how hard David
slung that or where he released his fingers, it was only going
to go one way. One predetermined way. The same thing can be said and
will be said about us. Our actions, our reactions, our
situations, our conditions, all of it has been predetermined
by God. We are a predestinated people. And the purpose of this message
is just to encourage our trust in what we believe. We believe. We believe. There's no doubt. I've spoken to you. We believe. May God help us to trust more
in what we believe. Lord, help our unbelief. Now,
I'm going to be brief. But let's see if the Lord will
increase our trust in seeing three things. God's absolute
sovereignty in our salvation, the order of every detail of
it. God's absolute sovereignty in
our death, the death that we're going to have to go through on
this earth. and God's absolute sovereignty in our life. Every
step of our life that we live on this earth. I'm going to be
brief. Go with me to John 6. John 6 concerning our salvation. Our Lord Jesus Christ said in
verse 37, All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Period. All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise
cast out. For I came down from heaven not
to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And
this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which
he hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it
up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that
sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth
on him, may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up
at the last day." Romans 8 says, "...whom he did foreknow, he
also did predestinate." And it goes on to say, "...whom he did
predestinate, them he also called, and whom He called, them He also
justified, and whom He justified, them He also glorified." Christ
said, I came down to accomplish the work of my Father. I came
to redeem the sinful souls that He gave to me. I came to willingly
shed my blood in order to make their payment. pay for their
sin and set them free. And in John 19 30, he said, Father,
it is finished. It's finished. I by myself finished the work
that you gave me to do. And he bowed his head and he
gave up his ghost. Our Lord was in absolute control
of our salvation. And we can rest our eternal souls
on that. we can rest our souls on what
he did. The last words of David were,
although my house be not so with God, yet he hath made with me
an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, for this
is all my salvation and all my desire, although he make it not
to grow. Because God has caused us to
believe on Christ, In Him, because of that blood and that payment,
in Him we can trust that our eternal salvation is secure.
It's secure. I mean, when it comes to salvation,
don't worry about it. If you're looking to Him, if
you believe, then don't worry about any unbelief. Trust Him. It's secure. It's secure. All right, that's the first thing.
Second thing is our death. In Christ, we can trust that
our death on this earth is secure. It is secure. Don't worry about
it. It's secure. It's totally secure. As secure as salvation to eternity
is, your death that you're going to have to go through is secure. Turn with me to Job chapter 14. Verse 1 in this chapter tells
that He's speaking of man, mankind. Man that is born of a woman is
a few days and full of trouble. That's Job 14 verse 1. Now if
you look at verse 5, and if your Bible's like mine,
the heading at the top of the page may say, certainty of death. Okay, the certainty of death. Verse 5 says, talking about all
men and women that are born of a woman, seeing his days are
determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast
appointed his bounds that He cannot pass. The number of our
days on this earth have already been set. They're being kept
with the Lord. That particular moment is bound
on both sides. It's bounds. It's bound on both
sides. God is the one who has appointed
our bounds. And we cannot pass over those
bounds either way. Either way, what that means is
not one soul has ever lived longer on this earth than God's appointed
time for that soul. We talk about doing things to
extend our life. We talk about making healthy
choices to extend our life. It's not a possibility. It's
just not a possibility. Not one soul has ever passed
the bound that God has set. If the soul did, then God wouldn't
be sovereign. And He wouldn't be all-knowing.
And He wouldn't be all-powerful. And He wouldn't be all-decreeing.
But God is sovereign. And He is all-powerful, and He
is all-knowing, and He is all-decreeing, and not one soul has ever passed
the bound that He has set. Either way, no one has ever lived
longer. No one has ever died early. Not one soul has ever died before
God's appointed time for that soul. Revelation 1 says, Christ
holds the keys of hell and death, and not one soul has ever accidentally
slipped through His fingers. Not one soul. There are no accidents
with God. I'm preaching to myself. There
are no accidents with God. There is no chance with God. There are no unfortunate, untimely
deaths with God. Every soul dies on purpose, appointedly,
at the moment that the soul is required to go back to the God
who gave it. There is no such thing as a senseless
death, meaning death that just makes no sense. Man's days are
determined. The number of his months are
with God. He has appointed his bounds.
He cannot pass. And until that sovereign moment
comes, we can rest and we can trust that he will sustain us. He will. That moment is secured. totally secure. So our God's
in absolute control of our eternal salvation. He is in sovereign
control of our death from this earth, and he's in absolute sovereign
control of every step of our life on this earth. I am so aware
of the fact that I'm running long, but you'll be glad we turned. Go with me to Daniel chapter
three. Daniel chapter 3. Daniel 3. Boy, I love this story. I love this story. This is the
story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were told to bow
down to the statue that Nebuchadnezzar had made and worship it. And
they were told if they didn't, they were going to be thrown
into the fiery furnace. And they didn't do it. Verse
13. Then Nebuchadnezzar, in his rage
and fury, commanded to bring Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Then they brought these men before
the king. Nebuchadnezzar spake and said
unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Do not
you serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have
set up? Now if you be ready, at what time you hear the sound
of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbutt, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all
kinds of music, You fall down and worship the image which I
have made well, but if you worship not, you shall be cast the same
hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace, and who is that
God that shall deliver you out of my hands?' Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar,
We are not careful to answer thee in this matter. They said,
we are not full of care over this. They said, we're not anxious
about this. Let me ask you a question. Do you think they wanted to go
into that fiery furnace? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You think they were taking that
fiery furnace lightly? I'm sure it didn't even hurt
that bad anyway. Absolutely not. They weren't taking it lightly
one bit, not one bit. They knew the threat was real. But God gave them the ability
to trust the One in whom they believed. That's what happened
right there. They believed in Him and at that
moment they believed on Him. They believed and God helped
their unbelief. And this is what they said, verse
16, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king,
O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this
matter, if it be so. We're not saying it's not a possibility.
If God is pleased to allow us to come in contact with the fiery
furnace, if God is pleased to allow you to throw us in. Verse 17, if it be so, our God
whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace,
and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O King. They said, we trust that He will
deliver us temporarily through it or eternally through it. But either way, He will deliver
us. That's trusting in the One whom
we believe. That's what it is to have God's
help in our unbelief. Job said, Though He slay me, yet will I
trust Him." I would love to be able to say
that. I personally would love to be
able to say that and mean it. Not just lip service, but mean
it. But in order for me to be able
to say that, He is going to have to help my unbelief. So that's my prayer. That's my
prayer. Lord, help my unbelief. I pray that for me. I pray that
for all of us. Help our unbelief. Lord, you have sent faith to
us and you've caused us to believe, not just in you, but on you. Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief. Those apostles kept saying, Lord,
increase our faith. Increase our faith. Cause us
to trust you more. Cause us to look to you more.
Cause us to honor you more. We believe. Help our unbelief. May He do that. All right, let's all stand