Would you now open your Bibles
to the book of Psalms, the 106th Psalm. I did not preach anywhere while
I was gone. Rather, I had the privilege of
sitting and listening to a couple other men preach. The first Wednesday
night I was gone, I attended College Grove Grace Church, where
Chris Cunningham is pastor. That's where our daughter and
her family attend. And he preached from this psalm. And as he went through it, I
took particular note of the eighth verse, and it moved my heart, and my
heart was in need of moving. You ever feel that? You ever
feel dead? You ever feel like the Word of
God has no power in you? You listen to the gospel and
it doesn't move you. David said in Psalm 51, I believe
it was, he said, let me hear joy and gladness. What did that
mean? Why did he pray that? Well, because
he wasn't hearing it. It's not that it wasn't being
said, but it wasn't being heard. And sometimes the Lord will allow
us to go through times that we cannot hear. And I think primarily
for this purpose, that we will learn to cherish those times
we can hear. Particularly if we get careless
about listening. It's as though the Lord say,
okay, you don't want to listen, I'll make it so you can't hear.
Now, He's not being mean. When we were parents, and some
of you still are, with little children in the house, sometimes
when your children act naughty, when they will not listen to
what you have to say, you at least shut them out of your kind
and merciful tone until such time as they crave it. But whether it be through sin
or through mere negligence, through being taken up with the world,
or simply because that happens to be our particular temperament,
times come when we cannot hear And there is nothing more needful
for us than to be able to hear, and nothing that sounds better
to us than the gospel when God enables us to hear again. And
so, I was privileged, particularly
as we read that eighth verse, yet He saved them for His name's
sake. I was able to hear that. And
I said, well, since I was able to hear it, I'm going to tell
it when I get back. I've titled this message, Nevertheless,
and the reason for that is in the King James Version and a
few others, instead of the word yet there in verse eight, it
says, nevertheless, he saved them. Now, both words are equally
good translations. I just like the word nevertheless
because to me it sounds more powerful. It points out with
more force that principle we find declared throughout the
scriptures that salvation is always a product of nevertheless. We find it expressed in the New
Testament particularly by the Apostle Paul with these words,
but God. You could say nevertheless God. There's a description of us,
who we are and what we've done and that leads us to think such
and such will happen Then we read, but God. We change
direction. We go somewhere we didn't expect.
And what we're going to find here in this psalm is exactly
the same principle. You know, in reading people's
comments about various religious issues, when I read them on the
internet, I find that most people make a great mistake in that
they think that there is a difference between the message of the Old
Testament and the message of the New. Brethren, the message
of both Testaments is the same, it's just a different way of
saying it, that's all. It's true that the Old Testament
makes more, so to speak, out of sin, and that's because it
is laying down the law and setting the stage for the coming of Christ.
And yet, as you read it, you find that even as the law is
being laid down, there are continual references to what God does in
grace to remedy the problem that the law brings by our sin. And right here, let's just go
ahead and read these first eight verses. Praise the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord for he
is good, his love endures forever. Who can proclaim the mighty acts
of the Lord or fully declare his praise? Blessed are they
who maintain justice, who constantly do what is right. Remember me,
O Lord, when you show favor to your people. Come to my aid when
you save them, that I may enjoy the prosperity of your chosen
ones, that I may share in the joy of your nation, and join
your inheritance in giving praise. We have sinned, even as our fathers
did. We have done wrong and acted
wickedly. When our fathers were in Egypt,
they gave no thought to your miracles. They did not remember
your many kindnesses, and they rebelled by the sea, the Red
Sea. Nevertheless, he saved them for
his namesake, to make his mighty power known. Now, if you have
been saved by the grace of God, you know the power of that word
nevertheless. It's written in your heart as
with an iron pin, branded upon it. Here is one way that we can
detect the testimony of someone who's born of God, who has experienced
the salvation of God. Such a one will always speak
of himself in terms of his sin and follow up with the testimony
of God's salvation based upon, nevertheless, I was this, I did
that. Nevertheless, God saved me. And that is not simply the beginning
of his testimony, nor is it merely the testimony of the beginning
of his salvation. It goes on and on because if
you continue to read this psalm, And most people think David wrote
it, because portions of it can be found in some things recorded
in 1 Chronicles that David wrote. So they assume the whole psalm
was written by him. But you find here that it talks
about their rebellion in Egypt, and then there at the Red Sea,
and it says, nevertheless he saved them. And then what is
the following testimony of the conduct of Israel? More sin. It's not like, yet He saved them,
and from then on, they were a faithful nation. From then on, they walked
in meekness and humility before the Lord. No! He saved them. And then they forgot about what
He did. And in forgetting about what they did, they became ungrateful. And in becoming ungrateful, they
became self-centered and began to act upon those things which
are in the natural heart of man. And they gave themselves over
to all kinds of wickedness. All across the wilderness, they
complained and grumbled. You say, well, if the Lord had
opened up the Red Sea before me, I'd never say anything against
the Lord. You think not? Why, the Lord's
done much greater things for you than open up the Red Sea.
And anytime we grumble and complain about our lot in this life, we
are grumbling and complaining against the Lord, aren't we?
After all, it's He that ordains our life. You say, well, I've
heard you grumble and complain. Yes, you have. I'm not up here pretending like
I'm innocent in this thing. In fact, you'll notice David,
if he's writing this, he doesn't say they have sinned. He says
we have sinned. And brethren, we have, haven't
we? Does anyone deny that? We have sinned. We sinned before
the Lord opened our eyes to the knowledge of our sin, and opened
our eyes to the knowledge of the Savior, and we've sinned
ever since then. A friend of mine wrote a song
once, he's all to me, and one of the stanzas began with, My
life began in sin. And hasn't changed much. And
changed at all, has it? Oh, it may be that through dent
of our will, we've been able to corral some of the expressions
of it, or at least keep them hidden. But aren't we the same people
we were when God saved us? Don't the same motions work in
us? Don't they break out? This psalm begins and ends with
the Hebrew word, hallelujah. I say the Hebrew word, it's two
words, really. Hallel, or hallelu, meaning praise,
as a command, praise. And then the word Yah, which
is a shortened version of God's name, Yahweh. Hallelujah. And it's a command. Praise the
Lord. And as one of my professors,
I was listening to a message of his, it was on the internet
one time, and he said, it's the only word that is, or the only
command that is fulfilled simply by making the command. By saying,
praise the Lord, or hallelujah, you have fulfilled the command.
And it begins with hallelujah, and then if you'll look there
in the last verse, praise the Lord, or hallelujah. And it's
only fitting that a description of the works of God's salvation
should begin and end with the word hallelujah praise be to
Jehovah and I'm certain of this anyone who has experienced this
salvation the testimony of his heart begins with and ends with
hallelujah praise to Jehovah, the God of my salvation. Any testimony that finds room
for praising the sinner for believing, you say nobody do that, oh yes
they will. I was raised in a religion that
while they may have never said it in so many words, yet you
could not Get away from the idea that if you believe, they thought
well of you. That there was some kind of virtue
or merit in it. I even heard a preacher one time
in giving what they call the invitation, and it was near Christmas
time. And they said, unsaved man, why
don't you give that believing wife of yours a Christmas present,
a Christian husband? You say, that's ridiculous. Well,
I tend to agree with you. The testimony of God's people,
hallelujah to hallelujah. It's not to the praise of the
believer. It's not to the praise of the preacher. Now I rejoice, I do. I'm so glad
that God lets me do this. And I find it very gratifying.
If the preaching that I do, God uses it to help somebody else,
especially is it a cause of joy when through the preaching that
I have done, someone is brought to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But I know this, if God has saved you, I don't deserve any credit
for it. I don't. I suppose we have a
natural tendency to have special affection for that preacher through
whom the gospel was made known to us. My friends, I can tell
you right now, God could use a block of wood to teach you
the gospel if He wanted to. When our Lord was coming into
Jerusalem and everybody was praising Him and saying, blessed is He
that comes in the name of the Lord, and the children were running
around saying, Hosanna, which was a word of praise to Him and
all this, they said to the Lord Jesus, everybody to be quiet. And he said, don't you realize
that if these were to be quiet, the stones themselves would cry
out in praise. Now friends, if God can make
a rock, a stone, cry out in praise, he can even make a man like me
tell the truth. And if you heard the truth from
my lips, hallelujah. Praise Jehovah for that, because
I'm just an old rock by the side of the road, whom God miraculously spoke through. No, it's hallelujah from beginning
to end. We come to realize that this
word nevertheless, or some equivalent of it, belongs to every aspect
of our salvation. One will never find a description
of the works of men followed by, therefore God saved them. In the sense that what they had
done moved God to say, I should save those people. There's some
pretty good folks there. Yeah, they made some mistakes,
but you know, there's something redeemable about them. They have
some redeemable qualities. It's become popular ever since
my generation, I believe. The generation of the baby boomers.
They were fed this idea and then it just went to seed in them.
That there is some essential good in every person. And the
best thing we can do for our children is to tell them how
good they are. And even preachers fell prey
to this. and saying, nobody else may be
able to see something worthwhile in you, but God does. No, He
doesn't. He's the one person in all the
universe that knows there's nothing good in you. We get a little
bit of a sense of that, and once in a while, we can fully comprehend
it for a moment that there's nothing good in us, but most
of the time, we see something good in us, and God's saying,
no, there's not. I didn't save you because of
anything good I saw in you." He said, My salvation is always
a nevertheless in every aspect of it. We were rebels who rejected
Him. Nevertheless, He chose us in
Christ before the foundation of the world. We were sinners. worthy of His condemnation. Nevertheless,
He redeemed us by the blood of Christ and forgave us by His
sacrifice. We were poor and needy. Nevertheless, He caused us to
inherit all things in Jesus Christ. We were ignorant. Nevertheless,
by His Spirit, He made known to us the mystery of His will. We shook our fist in his face.
Nevertheless, he drew us to his bosom and called us child. You cannot find one part of salvation that can be attributed in the
least to the natural abilities of a man. It has been said that
a good definition of the word grace is in spite of. And that's kind of the same meaning
as the word nevertheless. Now, God is to be praised in
everything. In the book of Revelation, look
at chapter 19 with me, if you turn over there. Interestingly
enough, even though hallelujah is a Hebrew phrase, We don't
ever find that in an English translation of the Old Testament,
which was written in Hebrew. The only place you'll find the
word hallelujah in the Bible is in the New Testament. And
the only place you'll find the New Testament is here in Revelation
chapter 19. But John was merely taking up
this Hebrew word as a well-known and understood declaration of
praise to a particular God, Jehovah. Why do we praise God? For what
things? Look at verse 6. We give great praise to God for
His absolute sovereignty. Verse 6, then I heard what sounded
like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters. and
the like loud peals of thunder. Have you, have you all, any of
you all ever been to Niagara Falls? And I know we got some falls
up there in Sioux Falls and they're okay. But once you've been to
Niagara, you know, nothing else is going to impress you. And
if you get close to those falls, you can't hear anything else.
And it says this praise in heaven was like the roar of a waterfall,
rushing waters, drowning out everything else like peals of
thunder for their power. And they were shouting what?
Hallelujah for our Lord God Almighty reigns. You talk about the sovereignty
of God and people say, you know, we don't need that deep doctrine.
Heaven sure thinks it's an important point. Those in heaven say, Hallelujah! God is sovereign! Hallelujah!
The Lord God Omnipotent reigns! I'm glad. I'm glad that the One
who set forth His salvation to me is the One who's in charge
of everything. Now, if I said, Hey, I'll save
you. You might say, that's awful nice
of you to think that way, but I don't think you can pull it
off. I don't think you have the power. I don't think you have
the authority. You don't reign and you'd be right. If I'm your
savior, you're in a lot of trouble. But if God is your savior, You
are in absolute safety because the Lord God Almighty reigns. You know, here in America, we
don't know much about what it means to reign, and that's a good idea.
I'm glad of that. I'm glad politically, at least
the guys in political positions are not supposed to reign. They're
supposed to govern, but not reign. Kings reign. Kings say what the
law is. Kings execute the law. Kings,
their word is law. I'm glad that we don't have that
kind of system. At least we're not supposed to. But I'll tell you, when it comes
to this universe, it's a monarchy. There's one in charge. And when he speaks, that's what
happens. He reigns absolutely. And that means then that whatever's
going on right now, whether we like it or not, whether we count
it pleasant or not, we can say this, it is the purpose of our
Lord God Almighty for this to happen for the glory of His name
and for the salvation of His people. Even if we can't make
sense of it, we trust there is sense in it. Even if, whether
it be in the time of our trial or the distress as we see here,
as Americans in particular, see our culture just degrading like
it is, and even seeing our liberties being, well, they're not even
just fading anymore, they're just wailing away at them, aren't
they? You know, I read the other day, this will concern you, since
we're a church, that in Iowa, They contacted the Civil Rights
Commission about this whole thing of gender and the use of restrooms. And here's what the response
was. If the church opens the doors to the public, then it
falls under the requirement of public accommodations. Now, we
were resting for a while and thought this mess had never come
in here. The day may come. when it's troublesome,
difficult to worship God according to conscience. I sent out an
email, I don't know how many of you get it, I don't trust
email completely, because it doesn't always get to everybody,
but did you all get that email that I forwarded from Brother
Sergei? Trouble. And don't think it can't
happen here, but you know something? The Lord God is in charge in
Russia, Just like he's in charge here and in England and in the
Middle East, everything that's going on, it's his will, it's
his purpose. He reigns. Hallelujah. And then you just back up a little
bit here in Revelation. Look at verses three and four. And again they shouted, hallelujah,
the smoke from her goes up forever and ever. And the twenty-four
elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God,
who was seated on the throne, and they cried, amen, hallelujah. What are they saying hallelujah
about? Judgment. Now we are being told
by the people of our day that we should not find any satisfaction
in judgment or justice. Heaven does. Because here it
speaks in chapter 19 about how God condemned the great harlot
that he corrupted the earth by her adulteries and he avenged
on her the blood of his servants. This is the world and all of
its seductive powers and all the way it seduces the world
to come out against believers. And God judged the world. And
God destroyed the great harlot. And heaven said, hallelujah,
hallelujah. Oh, certainly we would want God
to save everyone. And we don't resent God saving
even the worst of our enemies. He saves the worst of his enemies.
But if God is not pleased to save them by His grace, there
is yet a hallelujah to be uttered for His judgments according to
justice. And then, hallelujah is spoken because
salvation is the sovereign right of God. Look in verse 1. After
this I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude
in heaven shouting, hallelujah, salvation and glory and power
belong to our God. Most of the religious world today
would be glad to say that God has power, God has glory, but
they will not grant to him the authority of salvation. They
say, wait a minute, no, it wouldn't be fair for God to decide who
to save. Wouldn't be fair of God to send his son for some,
but not for everybody. God's got to treat everybody
equal. He does? No, he doesn't. He's God. He's allowed to treat
people however he wants to. Now, because he is God, because
of his nature, he will treat everyone with justice. But for
some, that justice will come as they experience it themselves
in everlasting punishment and destruction from the presence
of the Lord. That's one way he will express justice against
people. And here's another way, through
the work of salvation in Jesus Christ. You see, we are saved
with a just, a righteous salvation. God doesn't set aside justice
in order to save his people. Rather, he satisfies his justice
in a substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. When God forgives sin, it's not
like when you and I forgive sin. When we forgive sin, we merely
have to just let it go. God doesn't let it go. He's never
let a sin go. It's going to be punished. He
says, I will by no means clear the guilty. That's what He told
Moses and declared that as part of His essential glory. He'll
not clear the guilty. What's that mean? It means that
if He's going to clear us, it means that if He's going to declare
us to be not guilty, then there must be some way He makes us
not guilty. Because He will not clear the
guilty. And the way He makes us not guilty is by making Christ
guilty in our place and dealing with the guilt there. And Jesus
Christ bore within himself all the just and righteous anger
of a holy God against the sins that he bore. And that is a righteous,
that is a just salvation. So yes, God will treat all people
the same because he's God. He will treat them all with justice,
but some will feel that justice, and some others, by sovereign
grace, will merely see that justice fulfilled in the person of Christ. Salvation belongs to God, and
He gives it to whom He will. Now we say that, And we say it
kind of sternly, and that's simply because man in his natural rebellious
state rebels against the idea that God has authority over his
destiny. And so sometimes we say it with
sternness to kind of come up against that rebellious spirit.
But you who've been saved by that sovereign grace, isn't that
good news? Isn't that worthy of a hallelujah? Salvation belongs
to God. What if He had just gone to every
house and set out a little box of salvation, if you will, and
said, OK, if you want it, it's there in the box. You take it,
get it out, and use it. What would have happened? Every
box would have remained unopened. We'd have gone about our lives
serving ourselves, working out our own righteousness. We would
have said, oh, that's nice of you, God, but I've got a salvation
thing going of my own. I go to church. I've observed
the ceremonies. I read my Bible and pray every
day. Thank you, but no thanks. But he didn't just leave a box
of salvation sitting out by the door. He owns salvation and he applies
it according to his will. And it is a sure and certain
thing for everyone for whom he determined it. Hallelujah. All right, back to 108. I mean
106, Psalm 106. Praise the Lord, give thanks
to the Lord for he is good, his love, traditionally translated
mercy. I don't know which is a better
translation. But his love, his mercy endures forever. And that's the only kind of mercy
that'll do. Who can proclaim the mighty acts
of the Lord or fully declare His praise? Salvation is a display of His
mighty power. Who can proclaim the mighty acts
of the Lord? Isaiah said, who have believed
our report? Who can believe this report?
Only those to whom grace has been given to believe it. Those
to whom the arm of the Lord has been revealed, they believe the
report. But I can assure you this, if
a man by nature cannot believe it, neither can he declare it
by nature. How many preachers do you think
there are out there? There's a lot of guys this morning
opening up this Bible, saying things. I don't know what percentage,
I'm not even going to try to speculate. But I know this, there
is only a percentage of them, a portion of them who are actually
proclaiming the mighty acts of the Lord and fully declaring
His praise. Blessed are they who maintain
justice, who constantly do what is right. Salvation is a display
of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't see
Christ in that. Well, he's the only one who ever
maintained justice and constantly did what is right. He's the one
and only blessed one under that description. You say, yes, but
it says blessed are they. So it can't just be singular. Well, here's the wonder of the
gospel. It sets forth Christ as the only one who maintains
justice and the only one who constantly does what is right,
yet through Him there's an untold multitude who have been reckoned,
who have been considered to have done this very thing. You might
say to yourself, I would never say that I had worked justice.
Well, you might not ever say it, but God did. If you're in
Christ, God has declared that you maintain justice and you
constantly do what is right. Why? Because that maintaining
of justice and constantly doing what is right by the Lord Jesus
Christ was charged to you as though you yourself did it. And
therefore, the blessings which belong to Christ because of how
good He was are given to us in spite of how bad we are. The declaration of God's salvation
is a declaration of His sovereignty. Looking here at verses 4 and
5, Remember me, O Lord, when you show favor to your people.
Come to my aid when you save them. You notice this, it talks
about the Lord has a people. And they weren't His people by
their choice. In fact, he says, that I may enjoy the prosperity
of your chosen ones. You know, David looked at the
doctrine of election and he did not say, I don't like that. I
don't, I don't think that's fair. That's not what he said. He said,
well, if God's chosen a people, I want to be among them. I want
to enjoy the prosperity of those who he has elected. And what
is their prosperity? Praise be. to the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, according as
he has chosen us in him. Brethren, that's prosperity.
Now I'll admit, I get impressed with rich people. I don't know
why, but I, you know, we see somebody that's been successful
with money, and for some reason or another, we kind of think
special things about them. But I tell you, there's no one
so rich as the man who is blessed with all spiritual blessings
in the heavenly places in Christ. And me, he may not be able to
rub two nickels together in this world, but he has an inexhaustible
treasury of eternal blessing. He possesses what Paul called
the unsearchable riches of Christ. I guess Bill Gates is still the
richest man in the world, but you know something? They can
count his money. They can search it out. It's a big number, but
they can arrive at it. They can add it up and tell you
how much he's worth. Paul says the riches of Christ
can't be added up. Get out your computer and set
up an equation. Try to figure it out. For eternity will be
drawn on that and never run it out. Verse six, we have sinned
even as our fathers did. We have done wrong and acted
wickedly. When our fathers were in Egypt, they gave no thought
to your miracles. They saw those 10 plagues that
God visited on Egypt as he showed his control over all the aspects
of the natural world. And all 10 of those plagues was
aimed at one of the gods, that Egypt worshipped. The sun god,
the river Nile was a god, he turned the waters into blood,
all these things. They all were a point of attack
at one of the Egyptian gods, proving that Jehovah is God alone.
And they saw all that happen, and they saw that Passover thing.
and how that throughout Egypt there went up a cry of mourning
as the firstborn in the household died all over Egypt and yet not
one firstborn of the house of Israel died because of that blood
of the Lamb. And they saw how God worked in
the hearts of the Egyptians to act favorably towards the Jews
and bestow great wealth on them as they were leaving. They did
that. They handed them gold articles
and jewelry and all that as they were leaving Egypt. And they
got there to the Red Sea. And they didn't remember the
many kindnesses, and they rebelled by the sea. Now I want you to
think of all that they had seen happen. And now they're here
at the Red Sea, and the sea's in front of them, and the Egyptian
army's behind them. And did they consider what God
had done to that point and say, well, I don't know what God's
going to do, but I'm sure he's going to do something. They said,
Moses, better we should have just stayed back in Egypt. I mean, it was tough back there,
but we were alive. And now we're just going to be
overrun. They rebelled against the Lord. Have you not done the
same thing? You have experienced within yourself
the grace of God. To put away your sin, you've
seen time and time again how He's provided for you in your
natural life, but as soon as something goes wrong, what do
we do? We start to grumble and complain.
We start to fear that the Lord will not take care of us when
He's done so over and over again. And they said, oh, what are we
going to do? Maybe we can go back and make
an agreement. Maybe we can put up a flag of truce or something,
go back and serve Pharaoh. And Moses said, you just stand
still and see the salvation of the Lord. And they did, they just, for
a minute they stood still and Moses put his staff out over
the waters and the Red Sea just opened up and they crossed the
Red Sea like they were crossing a desert. And when they got to
the other side, It says, verse 9, He rebuked the Red Sea and
it dried up. He led them through the depths
as through a desert. He saved them from the hand of
the foe, from the hand of the enemy. He redeemed them. The
waters covered their adversaries. Not one of them survived. Our Lord said to them, stand
still and see my salvation. You look, turn around, take a
look at those Egyptians. This is the last time you're
going to see them. And He opened up the waters and
they walked through. And he put himself, God put himself
between the Egyptians and the Jews to give them time to get
across. And then the Egyptians tried
to go through the same way that the Israelites did, and when
they got down in the water, God just covered them up. They're
gone. And the only thing that the Jews
ever saw of the Egyptians again, if they even saw this, was pieces
of horse tackle and broken chariots floating at the top of the Red
Sea. Then, verse 12, they believed
his promises and sang his praise. When do people believe God? After
he saves them. You say, wait a minute, that
doesn't make sense. I thought he saved you because you believed.
No, we believe because he saves us. I agree that there's aspects
of salvation which follow upon believing. But no man believes
till God gives him a new birth. No man believes until God exercises
the power of the resurrection in him to give his spirit life
that it might believe. And then the mouth opens, or
the heart opens in faith and the mouth opens in praise. When
do we believe? When God has worked his redemption
in us. All what sinners we are, going
back up now to verse eight, just a couple of minutes. Nevertheless,
he saved them. Now, let me apply this in just
a few ways. Is there someone here who has
not yet been saved. That is, they have not yet experienced
the grace of God in the forgiveness of their sins. And maybe you have not called
out to him because you believe that your sin is too great. You think that you must first
improve yourself. before you can call upon the
name of the Lord. Maybe there's some habits you think you need
to break. Maybe there's some great sin in your past that weighs
heavy on your conscience, and you can't imagine that God can
forgive you of that until you do something to make up for it.
I don't know what. I know that it's in our natural way of thinking
to believe that we have to make ourselves look good before God
will save us. I want you to put this thought
in your mind, this word, nevertheless. If you want God's salvation,
then you present yourself before Him as one whom He must save
nevertheless. You confess to Him not how hard
you're trying to be good, but you confess to Him how bad you've
been. You make it a point that if He
is to save you, it's going to take a big nevertheless to get
it done. And you will find that God is the God of nevertheless.
He glories in nevertheless. He honors himself in the salvation
of those for whom there is absolutely no good reason to save them. And then if there's anybody here
who believes that they're good enough for God to save them,
understand this. God only saves them whom he must
nevertheless save. If you can say in your heart,
God, I have done such and such, therefore you must save me, you
will not have his salvation. If your plea for salvation does
not begin with nevertheless, you ain't gonna get it. Nevertheless, and then I'd like
to speak to those of you who have believed to the saving of
your soul. And yet you find yourself over
and over again brought into sin, dragged into those very same
things from which you thought you had been delivered and would
never trouble you again. I'd like to speak to any of this
morning. whose conscience, any believer this morning whose conscience
is under a weight of guilt. I don't know if it's something
done recent or something done long ago and you just, it's so
heavy on you. And you really wonder, have I
been saved? Look down here. Let me find it here real quick.
Verse 44, but he took note of their distress. Now this is after a long description
of all the great evil that Israel had done since he put them through
the Red Sea. And I mean it is a litany of
horrible things. And right there where it says
but, the same word is back here where it says yet or nevertheless.
Nevertheless, he took note of their distress when he heard
their cry. In the beginning, God saved you
nevertheless. And it is still on the basis
of nevertheless that he keeps you and doesn't cast you aside. There's nothing wrong with feeling
bad about your sin. We should. Sin's a bad thing.
We need never fear that our sin is a testimony that God has not
saved us, because he saved us nevertheless. And he continues, nevertheless,
to see our distress over our sin and hear our voice when we
cry out. The power of nevertheless. If we can ever really get that
concept in our minds, we will know what is meant by the joy
of the Lord. I have sinned. Nevertheless,
the Lord saved me for the sake of his name. I continue to sin. Nevertheless, the Lord sees my
distress and hears me when I call. Nevertheless,