Psalm 37. If you like titles,
this sermon's got one. It's called, The Salvation of
the Righteous. If you'll look at verse 39, it says, The salvation
of the righteous comes from the Lord. He is their stronghold
in time of trouble. And we'll get to that verse of
Scripture, but I want to Take a running start at it. Psalms
are very rich in truth. And they are rich in what the
old timers would have called experimental truth. Not experimental
truth in the sense that we think of an experiment in our day where
you try it out to see if it works. But they used that word to mean
truth in experience. that has been experienced. And
the psalmist talks to us about his experiences as one who believes
the truth in this godless world. And he also gives us exhortations
as to how we ought to live our lives in this world as believers
and especially in those things which run contrary to our natural
way of thinking. There is a way that seems right
unto a man, says the book of Proverbs, but the end thereof
is death. And that is true with regard
to matters of salvation. There is a natural seemingly
reasonable way of thinking when it comes to how a man is saved. But that natural and reasonable
way that seems right to a man doesn't lead to salvation, it
leads to death. God's gospel runs entirely contrary
to what we would naturally think about the way in order to obtain
God's favor and approval. And that's what we're going to
talk about, the salvation of the righteous. But also, how we are to live
our lives and the way we are to approach this life runs contrary
to nature. Let's look at some of the things
he says, beginning with verse 1. Do not fret because of evil
men, or be envious of those who do wrong. For like the grass,
they will soon wither. Like green plants, they will
soon die away. Now, if you're paying any attention
at all to what's going on in our country right now, you realize
things do not look good. It seems right now as though
the evil or evil men have the upper hand. Those who would promote
the most godless things are the ones who are in charge, and they
have declared their evil to be good. and insist that we likewise
declare it to be good or face their wrath. And I don't know
about you, but things like that upset me. You know what the psalmist says?
Don't fret. Don't fret. That word means to
get warm, actually. To get red in the face. To get
all hot and bothered about it. He said, just don't do it. Why? Well, it's very simply this,
today, today, they may seem to be getting their way, but it's
only because God is allowing it for the time to serve his
purpose and the day is coming. when they shall wither like the
grass, and die away like all green plants." We see that happen
every year around here. Every spring, we've got bare
fields. Farmers go out there and plant their crops. And in
just a little bit, we say, oh, the corn's in the row. And there
comes that little green plant, and we watch it, and we go about
our business through the summer and do whatever it is we do.
And before we know it, what's happening? Well, that corn, which
I've been told is that corn is actually a form of grass. But
anyway, it withers, doesn't it? Why, that dark green plant standing,
what, is it 10 feet tall? Some of that stuff grows, maybe
even more. You can tell I'm not a farmer. But it's tall, it's
taller than me. And it looks so strong and so
healthy, But come August, the bottom of it starts turning brown
and eventually it's all just dead brown stuff. And that's
what's going to happen to those evil people who now prosper. You know what else? It's what's
going to happen to us in our flesh. And I think we can apply it this
way. If we are believers, We are flesh and we are spirit.
And there is a struggle going on, a constant struggle, an inward
civil war within our minds about which nature shall dominate. And the fact is, neither one
ever wins once for all, right? Some days it seems like your
mind is on spiritual things, and the spiritual thoughts that
God has put in your mind have the ascendancy, and all is well,
and then there's those days the flesh gets hold of you, and it
just seems, oh, you're so miserable. You just can't believe you think
those things and do those things. And you know what God says? Don't fret. Don't fret. Don't look upon that evil man
of your inborn fleshly nature. Don't look on those days when
he seems to have the ascendancy and suddenly fret and worry and
get all red in the face thinking that in the end he shall dominate
and you will perish. You who believe Christ understand
this is not you in your spirit that shall someday perish. It
is that old man in your flesh that will someday perish and
wither up like so much dead grass. And when Christ comes, he will
raise up that vile flesh and he will change it. And it will
be like a stalk of corn that never goes dry. It will stand
forever. So, yes, we do what we can to
avoid outbreaks of sin. We try to resist that nature
within us. But when he gains the ascendancy,
don't go fretting. Don't go trying to run back to
the law to fix the problems in the flesh. Be patient. He says in verse three, trust
in the Lord and do good, dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord
and he will give you the desires of your heart. To trust in the
Lord and do good, see Hebrew poetry, we think of poetry, and
I think the English language is maybe the only language that
does this, but we think of poetry as line upon lines where the
last syllable rhymes. But most languages are structured
in such a way that there are specific endings put on words
to let you know what part of speech they are. Consequently,
you cannot make rhymes like you do in English, or it's impossible
not to make rhymes. So they didn't go for a repetition
of sounds. In Hebrew poetry, they went with
a repetition of thoughts. And so often when you're reading
the Psalms, Realize like here he's just saying the same thing
twice in two different ways Trust in the Lord and do good dwell
in the land and enjoy safe pasture to trust in the Lord Was the
same thing as dwelling in the land? Now for us who are not
Jews and who have no promise of real estate in this life what
this means is the trust in the Lord for that eternal inheritance
and dwell in Christ Jesus and He is our inheritance. He is the land in which we dwell. Trust in the Lord. Commit in
everything to Him. We'll get to even more of that
here in verse 5. But trust in the Lord and do good in the good
thing that we do. Now He didn't say trust in the
Lord and do righteousness. Why? Because we can't. We can't do righteousness. Not
in this life. We can do what is called good
and it is good, it is good to trust Christ and dwell in Christ
and stay there. Not going off into some useless
religious activity or veering off to some other confidence
than Christ himself. Delight yourself in the Lord
and he will give you the desires of your heart. Now some people
read this and think, okay, if I delight myself in the Lord,
then he'll just give me anything I want. And so they try to come
up with some delight in the Lord and then turn around and ask
for the things that fulfill their fleshly desires. That's not what
he means at all. You know what? If you delight
yourself in the Lord, what's going to be the desire of your
heart? Fellowship with him. Communion
with him. I delight myself in my wife. She is one of the delights, the
primary delight in this life. Therefore, what is the desire
of my heart? To be with her. All right? Isn't it the same with you? And
it's the same in our relationship with the Lord. If we delight
ourselves in the Lord, if who He is and His characteristics
are a joy to us, then He will give to us the desire of our
heart by making Himself known to us. He promises to be with us and
in us. And if our delight is in the
Lord, that is the desire of our heart. Commit your way to the
Lord, verse 5. Trust in Him. Now, it's one thing to say, I
believe in the Lord. I trust the Lord. It's another
thing altogether to actually commit your way to Him. Now,
this goes with regard to the things of this life. I find the
greatest amount of peace when I am most ready to say, Lord,
here's what I'd like, but I prefer whatever it is you like. Here's
what I think would be good, Lord. But if you think something else
would be better, we'll go with that. When I am enabled by the
grace of God to look at the works of God's providence, whatever
they are, and accept them from the hand
of the Lord, and to commit my way, my life, to whatever He
decides to do. Now therein is peace. But this means something even
much more important than that. As I said at the beginning, there
is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof is
death. Brethren, what way do you want? Your way of salvation, your way
of favor with God, or his way? Committing our way to the Lord
is a surrender to Him to save us according to His will and
His work and His way. And not to try to establish our
own righteousness or try to earn salvation for Him. Verse 7, be
still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Oh, the hardest
thing in all the world for us to do is wait, isn't it? That's
true with the things of this life and the troubles we get
into this life. And we immediately, we think, I got to find a way
out of this trouble. And the best thing to do is just sit
and wait for the Lord to come in his appointed time and deliver
us from the troubles we get ourselves into or the troubles that simply
come upon us in this world. But how much more does this apply
to this eternal trouble of sin? And if we're not safe from it,
it's an eternal trouble. But in trust and in confidence,
we simply wait for Him. You see, salvation is a broad
topic. And we who have been saved by
the grace of God, in reality, salvation has just been begun. God has begun a good work in
His people. He hadn't finished it yet. And there are some religions,
some versions of Christianity, which will say that God by grace
began this good work in you, but here you must do these things
to perfect it. And they put believers, or at
least professed believers, they put them on a fruitless and frustrating
path of trying to bring to pass in themselves what only God can
do. Be still before the Lord. Quit
working. Quit wrestling against His gospel
of grace. And just be still. In another
place the Lord says, be still and know that I am God. And all the God things that must
be done, He'll do them. He'll do them the right way and
at the right time. And our salvation will be perfected
the right way at the right time, if we'll just be still. Rest. Enter His rest. Believe that
through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, we will be delivered
in time from sin in all its aspects, in all its effects. We are delivered
from condemnation, we are delivered from punishment. We are delivered
even now from being wholly given over to it because we have a
nature within us that resists it. But blessed be the name of
God, a time is coming when we will be delivered from the very
presence of it. And just as everything we've
experienced up to this point, has been done by God, so everything
which shall be done from this point forward in our salvation
must be done by God. Wait on Him. Wait on Him. It will happen. It will happen. Refrain from anger, verse 8,
and turn from wrath. Do not fret. It only leads, or
it leads only to evil. This word anger means to be agitated,
to be enraged. Well, I can get enraged about
some things. And when we get enraged, we think
we got to fix it. We think we got to take action. We turn away from wrath. We leave
room for the Lord. If there's something that needs
taking care of, the Lord himself can take care of it. And there
are some more things in here. If you look at verse 34, once
again, we're urged, wait for the Lord and keep his way. What is his way? His way is his
son who said, I am. The way. Now there are people
who will say, well you gotta keep his way, that means you
gotta live this way, live that way. You know there's ways we
ought to live, there's no question about that. But that's not what
he's talking about. Brethren, if you and I could
live the way God requires human beings to live, we would not
need a Savior, would we? If we could do righteousness,
we wouldn't need Christ, who is our righteousness. If we could do righteousness,
we would not have to come to know our God under this name,
Jehovah, our righteousness. He is our righteousness because
we don't have any of our own. We can't walk what people like
to call the straight and narrow. But you know the straight and
narrow has nothing to do with how you live? The straight and
narrow is Christ Jesus. The broad road is the road of
human religion, of which there are many lanes and many kinds,
and many people walk on it. And they walk on that road thinking
they're on the way to heaven, but they're going to be like
so many lemmings and they're going to get to the edge of the cliff
and be pushed off, as it were, by the people behind them. And
there are all kinds, as I said, there are all kinds of lanes
of traffic on the broad road that leads to destruction. Because
there's all kinds of religion. But here's something that all
those various lanes have in common. They all depend on what you do. Every one of them is a religion
of works. There's all those religions of
the false gods. But I don't worry about those
religions nearly so much as I worry about those lanes of traffic,
as it were, on the broad road that lead to destruction. Those
lanes of traffic that have a sign over them that say the Christian
way. But it's not the Christian way. You got Presbyterian lanes,
and Baptist lanes, and Reformed lanes, and Catholic lanes, and
all these lanes, and they're all saying this is the way that's
right. And not all of them are. In fact,
none of them on the broad road are. If you're in a lane of traffic
that is saying, do this, you are on the wrong road. You are
not on His way. You're not on His road, His path.
You're on your own. Wait for the Lord and keep His
way. One of the ways to know that you're on the way that leads
to life is you're on a road where you move real slow. You're waiting. It's not like rush hour traffic,
there's not that many people on that road. Because it is so
contrary to the way we naturally think. We think the way to please
God is to do the right thing. And the gospel says the way to
please God is to simply trust Him and stop doing anything. Just rest. If that doesn't make
any sense, good. Because the Lord said my ways
are not your ways. So if the idea of resting runs contrary
to your natural way of thinking, if the idea of simply trusting
God to take care of every bit of it runs contrary to your natural
thinking, good. That's a clue to you it's the
right thing. It's the right thing. Now let's
go over here to verse 39 now. The salvation of the righteous
comes from the Lord. He is their stronghold in time
of trouble. Now what is the salvation of
the righteous? Most of the time if you talk
to folks and say, are you saved? What they are thinking of is
Have you ever believed the gospel? Has God ever given you the new
birth? Has he ever testified to you
that your sins are forgiven? They're talking about that point
in time in which the Spirit of God revealed the things of Christ
to you. And they'll say, you know, that's
when I got saved. Have you ever been saved? And
that's okay to talk that way. The scriptures sometimes do.
Sometimes when the scriptures use the word save, it's only
talking about one part of salvation. But you know what salvation is?
Salvation is the entire range of works which God does in making
dead, rebellious, wicked sinners like His Son, the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, I imagine I'm pretty sure
that you all would agree I'm not like the Lord Jesus Christ
and neither are you. So the best that we can hope
for at this time is that God has begun a work which will in
time end with us being like the Lord Jesus Christ. But that's
why the Bible doesn't talk about us being like Christ, it says
that his elect are predestined to be conformed to the image
of Christ. Salvation is not just a change
in my destination, it's a change in my destiny. It's not a change
in so much where I'll be, but what I will be. I was born a rebel against God. I was kind of a goody-two-shoes
rebel, but I was a rebel nonetheless. I was able to keep most of my
outward sins in check so that most people didn't see them. And people thought I was a good
little boy. And I went to church. From as
far back as I can remember, some of my earliest memories are of
being in church. And I learned my Bible verses,
and I filled out my Sunday school quarterly. And when we had quizzes,
I could always answer all the questions they gave. I was known,
and I went to public school, I was known there as a Christian.
Our church had lots and lots of rules, and I didn't get to
go to the movies. I couldn't even go watch Walt Disney, that's
how good we were. I couldn't go to dances. My mother
got me out of square dancing in the sixth grade. And when
a boy's in the sixth grade, he's just as glad to get out of square
dancing. So I thought it was a benefit to me. Lots and lots
of rules. I would have appeared to most
people to be a righteous person. But like the Pharisees of old,
I was nothing but a whited sepulcher. A grave painted white on the
outside, looking pretty, but full of dead men's bones. But someday, this man you see
before you is going to be like God's own son, the Lord Jesus
Christ. You might say, I can't see that
happening. Neither can I. That's why it's called faith.
That's why it's written, we live by faith, not by sight. We have
a hope such that men cannot naturally understand. I have no hope of
a everlasting life in the present condition I'm in. That would
be a pretty sorry hope. to be forever like this, forever
getting older, forever getting sicker, forever wrestling within
myself between those contrary ways of the flesh and spirit. But the Lord God says, be still,
wait, the time is appointed, and I will deliver you. I will
deliver you from every vestige of that which troubles you and
brings your heart to tears. It brings your eyes to tears
and your heart to grief. You will be delivered from that
principle that works in you and makes you wonder if you've ever
known me at all, he says. You will be delivered. You will love even as you are
loved. Paul says you will be known or
you will know even as you have been known. The time is coming,
child of God, when everything that hinders your complete and
perfect fellowship with the God of your creation and the God
of your redemption, all those hindrances are going to be out
of the way. Oh, we meet for worship like this week by week, and it's
a good thing we do, and for me it's the highlight of the week,
isn't it? To be able to come together and think of Christ
for a little while, to get away from the world. to come, as it
were, inside the closed chambers of the Lord, and there meet intimately
with Him, and yet we try to do it, and oh, it's so hard, the
flesh, the Spirit's willing, but the flesh is weak. We come
to worship sometimes, and we just don't seem to be stirred.
We want to hear, but it doesn't seem like we're hearing anything.
We pray, and we feel it's lucky if our prayers make it to the
peak of the ceiling here. We have the promise of God that
no matter how we feel about things, the truth of the matter is the
Lord meets with us and his blessings are upon us if we meet in his
name. But we don't always enjoy it, do we? Like we'd want to. Oh, the day is coming when we'll
be able to worship our Lord as we'd like to right now. We shall
see his face as we would like to. now. We will behold his glory
as we'd like to right now and we will be just like him
in all those things that pertain to his humanity utterly and completely
without sin. Here we must read do not fret
there we'll never fret Here we must read, wait. Then we'll not even ever be in
a hurry. Then we'll have to read, trust. Excuse me, now we have to read,
trust. Then we shall see him face to
face. The salvation of the righteous.
Now that may sound strange. You might say, I didn't think
the righteous need salvation. Well evidently God thinks the
righteous need salvation because he talks about the salvation
of the righteous. Why do the righteous need salvation? And we're talking about salvation
from sin. Here's the simple reason. When you understand what the
Bible means by the righteous, you'll understand why the righteous need salvation. Look at verse 28. For the Lord
loves the just. So that's the same thing as the
righteous. Just, in those old languages, the just and the righteous
meant the same thing. The Lord loves the righteous
and will not forsake his faithful, that is, his believing ones. Remember how I said Hebrew poetry
repeats principles? That's the kind of repetition
it has. So, what is the love of the Lord? Well, the love of
the Lord is certainly revealed in this. He doesn't forsake the
objects of his love. He will never give them over
to the sin. that frustrates them. He will
never give them over to the sin that would condemn them if it
were left on them. But here's a point I want to
make here. The Lord loves the righteous, and who are they?
The believing ones. Brethren, we're not righteous
by works. Anybody here want to claim any righteous works? What
does a work have to be in order to be righteous? It has to be
good enough for God to accept it. Have you ever done anything
good enough, righteous enough that God would say, that's good
enough for me? People have this silly idea in
their minds that the judgment's going to be God, you know, taking
our good deeds or our righteous deeds and put them on one side
of the scale and take our evil deeds and put them on the other
side. Here's the big problem with that. We don't have any
righteous deeds. Not one. There is none that doeth
good. There's none who are righteous.
No, not one. Now that's pretty clear, isn't
it? I don't know why people fight that. Why people would go on
and say, well, you know, I've done some sins, but I'm not like,
wait a minute. The Bible doesn't say that there
are people more or less righteous. The Bible doesn't say nobody's
perfect, but there are some better than others. The Bible says there's
no difference among men, for all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God. Notice that? It didn't even mention
what kinds of sins. It didn't say, for all have done
various kinds of sins, some worse than the other. He just said they sinned. And from the time we were conceived
in our mother's womb, we have done nothing but sin. I'm up here doing all I can.
to preach the gospel to you. I so desperately want to make
it clear to you, and I hope it's made clear in your minds and
that you'll believe the saving of your soul. But you know what? I would not dare to take this
message in the presence of God and say, God, determine my eternity
by this message, by this sermon. The righteous are those who believe
him. Abraham believed God and God
counted him to be a righteous man. And he says in the book of Hebrews,
be careful that there is not in you an evil heart. Of what? unbelief. The righteous need salvation
for this very reason. They are righteous through faith,
righteous through Christ, but in themselves they are still
nothing but filthy, vile sinners. I need God's saving today as
much as the first day he revealed his salvation to me. And I will need it every day
from now until he's done saving me. I will need the grace and mercy
of God to forgive my sins to keep my spirit alive and sustain
me until such time as He removes from me every vestige of sin. Am I a righteous man? Well, by
the Bible's definition, I am. Because I believe God. Not very
well, but I do believe Him. I trust Him. And therefore, by trusting Him,
I shall have that salvation which is from the Lord. Now, the salvation
of the wicked, if they are ever to have it, that is the salvation
of the unbelieving, if they are ever to have salvation, it's
going to have to come from themselves. Those who trust in themselves
and look to themselves and look to their works and their ceremonies
and their religion, their salvation must come from them. And you
know what salvation from a man looks like? It looks just like
condemnation. Because that's what it is. A
fellow came up to the preacher Spurgeon one time, a drunk on
the street. And he came up to Mr. Spurgeon
and he said, He says, I'm one of your converts. Mr. Spurgeon looked at him and
says, you look like my work. You look like the kind of saving
I would do. He said, would that you were one of the Lord's converts. Oh, the salvation of the unbelieving,
they must look to themselves for it. And to look to yourself
for salvation is to guarantee yourself condemnation. The salvation of the righteous
comes from the Lord. Now here's the question. Just
how much of their salvation comes from the Lord? Every last bit
of it. From beginning to end, it is
from Him. As one of our brother preachers
said, The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that
required it. That's all I've contributed. For by grace, free, sovereign,
divine grace have you been saved through faith. And not even that,
the faith is of yourselves. It's the gift of God. Salvation
is not of works, lest any man should boast." You say, well
preacher, then what is works so that I can avoid trying to
be saved from them? Works is anything that you would
naturally be inclined to boast about. It can be anything from
some supposed conformity to the law. It can be how faithful a
church goer you are. It can be... Ceremonies of the church. Some
will look back to their infant sprinkling. Those of us who have
Baptistic convictions, there are those who look back to their
immersion in water, and they think that that had something
to do with whether or not they were saved. There are some who
look to the Lord's table, which we shall observe here in just
a few minutes, and they think that actually by drinking the
wine and eating the bread, they've received grace unto themselves.
and nudge themselves a little closer to heaven, and they boast
about it. And they say, I go to the Lord's table every week,
or some of them call it mass, or whatever they call it. Brethren,
anything you might boast in is a work. And I know this about
us. Anything we do, we'll boast in.
So anything you can do is a work. Therefore, nothing that you can
do can have anything to do with whether or not you're saved.
It is entirely the work of God from beginning to end. And I'm
standing up here saying that, and I guess I'd have to confess
I believe it, but there's a lot of me that still doesn't believe
that. Because I still find myself struggling with doubts because
I've not met the standard I think I should meet for salvation.
Any of you all feel that way? Well, here's the standard for
salvation. The realization that you can't
meet one. That only one could do that.
How much of salvation of the righteous is from the Lord? It's
all from Him. Let's just take a couple of minutes
at 1 Timothy chapter 1. Now this is radical. This goes
to the very root of truth. The truth of the gospel. Not 1 Timothy, but 2 Timothy. Beginning in verse 8, Paul says
to Timothy, so do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord or
ashamed of me as prisoner, but join with me in suffering for
the gospel by the power of God, who has saved us and called us. And let's change what the NIV
says there, they missed the point. God has called us with a calling
of holiness. not because of anything we have
done. He has called us to be his holy
ones, not because of anything we have done, but because of
his own purpose and grace. Where did this business of salvation
start? with God's purpose and grace. It began right there. Before the world began, says
the old hymn, God loved me then. He chose me for His own to be
an heir and sit with Him on the throne. In pure and sovereign grace,
Jesus took my place. Thank God. He included me. Before God did anything in the
creation of this universe, He purposed the salvation of a chosen
people. His grace was upon them, not
for anything they would do, but entirely because that's what
He wanted to do. The beginning of salvation, the
purposing and ordaining of it, the salvation of the righteous
is from the Lord. But let's read on now, 2nd Timothy
chapter 1 verse 9, the last part. This grace was given us in Christ
Jesus before the beginning of time. He explains it this way
in the book of Ephesians. Praise be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in the heavenly realms in Christ according to his choice
of us before the foundation of the world. He chose us and then
blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ and he did
all this before he ever said let there be light. The Bible tells us in six days
God created the heavens and the earth and before the first of
those six days He purposed His salvation and He gave us His
blessing in Christ Jesus. But this, now verse 10, this This salvation of the righteous
that is from the Lord, it begins in what we might call eternity
past, but verse 10, it has now been revealed through the appearing
of our Savior Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought
life and immortality to light through this gospel. Now we're
talking about our salvation here, and we're living around 2000
AD. It was purposed before there
was time. It was accomplished long before
anybody here even drew a breath. It was brought to light. It's
been revealed in Christ. He came, God in human flesh,
and He did for us what we could not do. He lived that righteous
life that we could not and still cannot live. He lived it in our place. And
then he endured the kind of death we dare not endure. He endured
the death of the cross, but it wasn't simply a death of physical
agony. He cried out, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? And the answer, we know the answer.
The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all, and God, who is just
and of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, could not bear, as
it were, to look upon His Son with favor when His Son bore
those sins. And the God of eternal justice
poured out on the Lord Jesus Christ all the pent-up wrath
of God. Right there. on Mount Calvary. Nobody saw it but God. Nobody but God and the Lord Jesus
Christ really knew what was going on there. And the only reason
we know is because God told us. To everybody else it just looked
like the crucifixion of one more social religious reformer. But it was not the Roman soldiers
or the Jewish religious leaders that tortured our Lord that day.
It was God. And he said at the end, our Lord
did, it is finished. It is perfected. It's done. There
would be nothing more necessary for the redemption of God's people. And that was all done. before
my great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather,
however far back you'd have to go, was even thought of, much
less me. But that salvation which God
has worked must be applied, and who does that? The Spirit of
God. I wasn't looking for God's salvation
when he gave it to me. Part of his work of salvation
was to make me look for it. And if you have ever found God's
salvation, it's because He worked in you to look for it. And before
you ever cried out for His forgiveness, you had it. Do you remember that
story of David and his sin with Bathsheba? And he thought he'd
kept it hidden. Oh, he'd rebelled. What a miserable
mess he made of things. But he thought he'd found a way
to kind of keep things quiet. Nobody knew. Well, God did. And
God sent the prophet. And the prophet made it clear
to David of the great sin of which he was guilty. And David cried out, he said,
I have sinned against the Lord. All what blessed words came from
the prophet next. No if. He just said, and the Lord has
forgiven your sin. He didn't say the Lord will forgive
your sin if you'll only. He was saying, David, before
I ever came to make a point of your sin, before you ever owned
up to it, before you hung your head in confession, the Lord
had already put away your sin. Do you need to know anything
else? Do you need any better news than that? To live happily
and patiently in this life. To know of a certainty that through
Christ Jesus, God has put away your sin. He put it away before
you ever did it. He put it away before you ever
realized it was sin. He put it away before you would
admit it. He put it away before you confess
it. Because His reason for putting
it away was not what you do, it was what Christ has done.
We have redemption, the forgiveness of sins through His blood. Salvation of the righteous is
of the Lord. From beginning to end. And he that began that work,
he's not going to quit. There is a doctrine among us
sovereign grace people which has been given the name the perseverance
of the saints. And that's okay, the saints do
persevere, but that's missing the point of the doctrine. It's
not the perseverance of the saints that ensures our salvation, it's
the perseverance of God. He has put his hand to the work
of saving his elect and he will not stop saving them until they
are beyond the possibility of condemnation. Until they've been
made new and live in a universe made new
in which there is no sin, neither in them or in anything else. He will keep working on them
and working in them until they are with Him and like Him. And you and I, who are recipients
of His salvation, have the privilege of living our lives in this world
in perfect peace and tranquility, knowing this, no matter what
happens in this world, no matter what happens in my life, whether
it's long or short, pleasant or unpleasant, whether I peacefully
die in my sleep or die in agony of an illness, of severe pain,
whether I am a man of strong and confident faith or a man
of such weak faith that I hardly know whether I have it or not, my salvation is of the Lord. And though I be like Jonah, in
the belly of a whale at the bottom of the ocean. I can say like
Jonah did, salvation is of the Lord. Heavenly Father, these
things are beyond us. We preach them and still cannot
fully grasp them. We hear them, but we see a dim
reflection. But Lord, give us added light
today. Not added light in the sense
of new things, but clearer light on the same old things. For Lord,
our salvation is in him of whom it is written. He is of old,
even of everlasting. We want that truth that is as
old as eternity, that is as old as the God from whom the truth
comes. And we seek nothing other than
this. to know Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.