Did you catch how that psalm
went right along with our scripture reading? You know, the writer
of that psalm was talking about himself. That's exactly what
the Lord Jesus was saying on that cross when he cried out,
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The Lord Jesus was
saying the same thing. We say that about ourselves when
our sin is exploding in our lives. When the corruptness that is
in this flesh is like a wave splashing over us, we cry out,
Lord, give me peace. I don't need peace from the people
in this world. They can be quite a burden sometimes. But nothing compared to that
which is in this body, this body of death, nothing. In the song, we just sang, Lord,
I'm hiding in Thee. That's what the psalmist was
saying. Saying the very same thing when he was talking about
those who were rising up against him. It was his own sins. He
was the one. He was the evil man within his
flesh. and the only place he could turn to was the rock of
his soul, the Lord Jesus. What is meant by Sovereign Grace? Do you think about that very
often? What does it mean, Sovereign
Grace Movement, Sovereign Grace Church? Our brother Todd Nygren,
over in Lexington, Kentucky. He wrote an article that I just
thought was outstanding, and I'm going to share it with you.
It's titled, What is Meant by Sovereign Grace? Brother Todd
writes these words. He says, Sovereign grace is God's
grace. Folks, there are no other sovereigns.
There's only one who is sovereign. Oh, we call ourselves a sovereign
nation because we don't let anybody other nations tell us what to
do. But that doesn't really truly
make us sovereign at all, does it? We don't have any authority
over the other nations. Are we sovereign? No, we're not. There's only one who's sovereign,
and that's God. He rules everything. He works everything out according
to the counsel of his own will. He doesn't wait for man for anything. Sovereign grace is God's grace. And God's grace is sovereign. If it is not sovereign grace,
then it's not saving grace. Sovereign grace is the truth.
Sovereign grace is the message that declares the electing love
of the Father the redeeming love of the Son, and the invincible,
indestructible love of the Holy Spirit. Sovereign grace is the
content of all true evangelism. Sovereign grace is the gospel. Any message that does not declare
the sovereign grace of God in Christ Jesus is another gospel.
And what does the Bible do? It warns us about that, doesn't
it? It warns us. We talked about this in the Bible
study. We should avoid going to churches where we know don't
preach the truth. And if you're a child of God,
you will avoid it. Because you can't stand to hear
people lie against the true and living God. Sovereign grace is saving grace,
Todd and I agree. With that in mind, I want to
talk to you this morning in our text of Luke. You'll recall we're
doing a series of messages from Luke. And I've titled today's
message, Operations of Grace. We're going to look again at
verses 41-45 of Luke 9. So if you want to turn in your
Bibles to Luke 9, you'll recall in the previous weeks, the Lord,
it came to pass that on the next day, He had come down off the hill.
This was our message last week. Our message last week was mountains
and valleys. We had been on the Mount of Transfiguration
with the Lord. We'd seen the glory of the Lord
in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, the very next
day, as we read here in verse 37, and it came to pass on the
next day, when they were come down from the hill, much people
met Him, and behold, a man, of the company, cried out, saying,
Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son, for he is my only
child." So here we come off of the mountain, the glorious view
of our Savior, to reality once again, huh? They were in the reality of the
world, they went up to see the glory of God on the mountain,
and then they came back down into the valley again. Isn't
that where we find ourselves all the time? I mean, this morning,
we're sitting here this morning. We've come together to worship
the Lord. We're kind of on a mountain this
morning. We're on the mountain of our Savior. We're seeing the
glory of God once again in the face of His Son. The world that
we walk through, the valleys that we walk through all the
time, it's kind of shut out for right now. That's with singing
the songs and reading the Scriptures. In time, that's what they're
for, so we can kind of get our minds off of the world around
us that we've lived in for the last seven days, and put our
mind towards the one who we need all the time. Didn't that give
us encouragement when we leave this building that the Lord has
given us and we go back into that world? Didn't that help
us to get through that world to a certain degree as well?
Oh yeah, all the lights I'm hitting today. Boy, I could be so frustrated.
I was reading an article about road rage. I'm a truck driver. I've been driving trucks for
a long time, and I've seen a lot of road rage. Well, according
to statistics, it's gotten out of hand. It's happening all the
time. especially with people who are carrying guns to protect
themselves. And I'm not trying to say we
shouldn't do that, but more and more things are happening out
there and people are protecting themselves. The world around
us is chaos. It's a valley, the shadow of
death. After looking at that last week, in verse 41 we read
these words, Now remember, they came to him and they said, your
disciples couldn't cast out the devil that is in my son. And
the Lord says in verse 41, answering, He said, O faithless and perverse
generation, how long shall I be with you and suffer you? Bring
thy son hither. We'll get back to that in just
a moment. Verse 42, And as he was yet coming, the devil threw
him down, and terror him, and Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit,
and healed the child, and delivered him again unto his father. And
they were all amazed at the mighty power of God, but while they
wondered, everyone did all the things Jesus did, he said unto
his disciples. So while they were wondering,
he spoke to a certain group of people, his disciples, he says
here, he says in verse 44, let these sayings sink down into
your ears. For the Son of Man shall be delivered
into the hands of men. Verse 45. But they understood
not this saying, and it was hid from them that they perceived
it not, and they feared to ask Him of what that saying was. Now, though we considered this
text last week in our Mountains and Valleys message, there is
more in this passage of Scripture and instruction and a beautiful
picture of God's mighty operations of grace. And that's what I want
to talk to you this morning. Operations of grace. What do
we see in these verses as God's operations of grace? And I hope,
and it is my prayer, that as you sit here today and hear this
message, that the Lord may speak to your heart, where you can
say, Amen, about the things we are about to look into. You can
say, that's right, I believe that. And I pray that the Lord
will give you comfort and peace with what we have here. Now whenever
God saves a sinner, there are certain things that you can expect
to see. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying
that we're all saved alike. We're all not saved alike. There's
different situations. We'll look at some of these in
a moment here. But there's different situations, all of us. We've
all been brought to different points. One of our brethren was
in a false religion. The Lord convicted him that it
was a false religion. He left religion. God brought
him to hear the gospel through his daughter. Now, I bet that
doesn't relate to any of the rest of you, huh? Or how about
this? Sorrow had just filled one of
our brethren to the point of disparity. And going to go and
cry on his brother's shoulder about how bad things were in
the world, His brother says, you know, church is starting.
Can we talk about this afterwards? You know, you can come in if
you want, but if you want to sit out here in the parking lot, that's fine. No, that's
fine. We'll go in. That was purposed by God as much
as anything that you have gone through. Amen. However the Lord
brought you to hear His Word is personal and between you and
God. But there are certain things
that happened in that purpose, in that experience, that all
of God's people do. We all have to go through it.
Certain things. Five. Five similarities. Let me ask you this. Death, is it not death? We all
have to go through that. Every one of us. had to go through
death. Death to this world is life in
Christ. We all had to go through death.
Life is life. We all had to experience life
in our Savior. We all had to experience Him
giving us life that we would hear His Word with living ears,
ears of the heart. Grace is grace. Every one of
us, no matter how that road, no matter what that path was
that God brought you through to bring you to His Word, you
still had to understand what grace is. I guarantee you that
God's people all know the same grace, and that's in the Savior,
the Lord Jesus. There's nothing I deserved in
it. I didn't do anything for it. He came to me in His own
grace and gave me life. And He did it to you. Salvation
is salvation, is it not? Every one of God's people, no
matter what the path we are on and being put on to bring us
to that situation, we all know that our salvation is in the
Lord Jesus and Him alone. So you see how we have similarities?
We all died. We all were given life. We've
all experienced grace and we all understand what it is to
be saved. This is how God performs. This
is how the Lord God performs His mighty operations of grace
in every one of His children. First, when God saves a sinner,
There's a divine call. It said, he said, bring thy son,
Heather. It was a call. Every one of us
were called. Matthew, we're in the book of
Matthew on our Friday night study for those who can't be with us.
And we just studied last Friday night the calling of Matthew.
Do you know how Matthew was called? You remember the story? The Lord
was passing through. And he'd come to the seat of
customs. That's what I was trying to think
of. He came to the seat of customs. You know what that is? That's
tax collector. Everybody who passes by, your
taxes are due. Come over here. He was like the
Jewish mafia. Come pay up. Pay me your dues. That's what Matthew was. And
you and I can understand that. I mean, we live for what we can
buy. Isn't that true? Did we not live
at one time for whatever we could afford to buy? And what we couldn't
afford, we worked hard to try to get more money so we could
buy more of what we wanted? Do you think Matthew was any
different? No. He was the same as you and I
are. He probably may have had kids.
Who knows? He may have had a wife. Children?
A couple of wives maybe? Several children? Who knows?
He's just trying to get by in the world the best he can. And
the Lord passed by and he said this, he says, follow me. That is the calling. He called
Matthew with those two words, follow me. And you know what?
Matthew got up and followed him immediately. Over in the book
of Mark, it says he left all. Mark's recording everything.
He left everything. He left all that he had behind and he followed
the Lord Jesus. So we see here that the first
thing the Lord does is he gives a divine call. Now you might
think, well, does that happen with everybody? Well, it happened
with Lazarus. Remember Lazarus? Remember Lazarus
was a picture of exactly where you and I were before God called
us. They had a stone rolled across
his grave so that it wouldn't have to smell his stink. He was
stinking dead. He'd been in the grave for four
days. And the Lord said, this is without even rolling the stone
away yet. He said, Lazarus, come forth. And the dead came forth. And then after he had come forth,
he said, Lucifer, Loose his clothes, his death wrappings, his clothes
wrappings. He was all wrapped up. Back in
those days, they mummified the people. They'd wrap them all
up in some kind of a cloth and coat their bodies so they didn't
smell that bad, and then bury them away in their burial clothes. He's now loose. So that means
Lazarus was called with a mighty power, wasn't it? Well, folks,
that's what it was for you and I. I can only speak for myself. I'm assuming that it was for
you, too, as well. I know every chance or every place that I've
seen in Scripture, that's the way the Lord calls His people. He calls them with the power
of His voice, the power of His Word. Yes, there was a man who
stood in this pulpit and preached from this book. to my heart that day. Was that
not the same with yours? Listen to these verses. 2 Timothy
1 verse 9. You don't need to turn there.
Who have saved us and called us. There's that divine call.
The Lord says he calls his people with a divine call. Who have
saved us and called us with a holy calling. A divine call. Not according
to our works. Not because of something you've
done. Not because of a decision that you made, which is what
most preachers are standing in pulpits saying today. Not because
of coming down to the front of the church. Not because of getting
into some bathtub. Not according to your works,
but according to His own purpose. Aren't you thankful God has purpose
to save a people? Folks, you and I could be just
like everybody else. We are just like everybody else. The only difference is God has
chosen to save a people. And that people that he has chosen
to save, he calls. He calls us I had no idea. I shared this
with the folks Friday night. I had no idea what was going
on. The John Reeves that I knew was one, he'd get on his Harley
and he'd go for rides. He'd take off on Sundays and
go riding. So we'd end up in five or six different bars. By
the end of the day, I'd try to make it home. That was the John
Reeves I knew. What is happening to me? Why
am I, I walked out the door and Kathy said, where are you going?
I'm going to church. Why? Did I not say, I don't know? Did I not say that? I did. I don't know. I'm going to go.
I just got to go. My own nephew was killed. And
the day that we were gathering at my brother's house the next
morning after he was killed, where are you going? I'm going
up to church. Why? I don't know. I just know
I got to go. That's the divine calling of
John Reeves. Can you remember when the Lord
called you? Listen to these words in 1 Peter
5, 10, and 11. But the God of all grace, who
hath called us into His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after
that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, established,
strengthened, Settle you to Him. Be glory and dominion forever
and ever. Amen. We don't have any problem,
do we? We don't have any problem saying,
I was called by Him. I didn't make a decision. I was
called by the power of God. One more, if I could, if you
don't mind. Second Thessalonians, two more. 2 Thessalonians 2 verse
13-14, but we are bound to give thanks always to God for you,
brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning
chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the spirit
and the belief of the truth, whereunto he called you by our
gospel. There's that holy calling. It's
not the guy who stands here before you that has anything holy. It's
the holy calling of Christ. It's the calling of Christ Jesus
through the preaching of His Word. In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was God. And the Word was manifest in
the flesh. Was made flesh. What a calling. One more. Galatians 1 verse 15, But when
it pleased God, Notice it didn't say, when I exercised my will,
when I made a decision, when I did this. No, it says, but
when it pleased God, when it made Him happy, who separated
me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace. What a gracious call the Lord
sends out to all of His elect. Our Lord, the Lord of all grace,
orders providence to bring each and every one of His chosen people
to Him, to see our Redeemer under the sound of His gospel. He sends
forth His Spirit to call his chosen to himself with an irresistible,
effectual calling of grace. Psalm 65, 4, blessed is the man
whom thou choosest and causest to approach unto thee, that he
may dwell in thy court. Psalms 110, verse 3, thy people
shall be willing in the day of thy power. Secondly, whenever
the Lord Our Savior calls sinners unto Himself. As they are coming,
there is usually a satanic throw. What? I don't remember that. Look in verse 42 that we read
here. And as He was yet coming, the devil threw Him down and
terrored Him. And Jesus rebuked the unclean
spirit and healed the child and delivered Him again to His Father. is now in a rage. You see, Satan
has deceived himself. He's the master of deceivers. I know, you thought you were,
didn't you? I sure thought I was. No, Satan actually thinks, knowing
who the Lord God Almighty is, that he can take one of God's
people away from him. And he's got himself believing
that he can. He doesn't realize that he's a dog on a leash. And God has control of that leash.
That's what we read in Job, isn't it? The Lord allowed the devil
to do this, the Lord allowed the devil... Isn't that what
we read on the two demoniac men? In the book of Matthew, we're
studying that. And the two men lived in the tombs filled with
devils. The Lord cast them out. They
asked Him, the herd of swine. Okay, go. But he didn't say okay, he said
go. That was all he had to say. That
was plain. Satan thinks that he can take
people away from God Almighty and here we see the rage of Satan and wisdom and thanksgiving and
honor and power and might be unto our God forever. Satan is learning that right
here, right now with this boy. When the Lord took John Reeves
out of this world, Satan threw a fit. I've lost another one. You know
what? The Lord Jesus will never say that. All that the Father
giveth me shall come to me. Satan unleashes upon the sinner
God is about to save all of his hellish power. I'm not going to go into details. You may have some of your own. But that was the case with me,
when the Lord called me with his power. Five years, I knew who the Lord was and my
bride of, I don't remember how many years it was now, knew nothing
of it and thought I was crazy. And thought I was brainwashed. and hated a man that I loved
for what he preached. Thirdly, when the Lord comes
to give eternal life, there is a hopeful slaughter. A what? There's a hopeful slaughter.
God always brings down before he lifts up. What do you mean by that, John?
Well, all I can do is relate to you
what happened with me. I was a pretty proudful guy.
I used to think a lot higher of myself than I do now. And
I was not a very good guy. But I had a lot of pride in that
I wasn't as bad as that person was, whoever you want to point
at, whoever you might think, whatever you might think. I wasn't
as bad as them. Before the Lord could show me
to look up, he had to bring me low. He slaughtered. He slaughtered the old John Reeves.
He killed him. He killed the old man. He always stripped before he
closed. Adam and Eve had to know that
they were naked before the Lord taught them what it was to be
clothed by Him. They were out. Remember what
happened? They were running around in the garden, and they knew
not that they were naked. And then as soon as they ate
of the apple, the first thing it said was, and they knew they
were naked. You've got to be brought to the
point of being naked before God. I have nothing to hide. I have
no place to hide anything. And I can't do anything myself
to cover up what I am. The fig leaves that I'm using
to cover myself up, they don't do it at all. God still sees
through that. We have to be made naked before
God. brought to the point of knowing
there is nothing in us, tearing down all of our pride, all of
our self-worth, that we would see our only place
to turn is to Him. How are you going to turn to
somebody if you think you can do it on your own? Why would
you turn to somebody if you thought you could do it on your own?
Listen to Mark 9, verse 25-26. This is the same story, but it's
given by Mark, who gives a little bit more detail. It says, When
Jesus saw the people running together, he rebuked the foul
spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge
thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. And the spirit
cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him. Now that's what
we just read about there, and only ours is in verse 43. or
42, says where the devil threw him down. Mark's giving us a
little more detail. And the spirit cried, wrenched,
sore, and came out of him. And when he was, and he, speaking
of the boy, was as one dead, insomuch that he may say it,
he is dead. We don't have time to. I was
going to take you over to Ezekiel and go through the Valley of
the Bones. Are you familiar with the Valley
of the Bones? Most of you are shaking your
head, yeah, yeah, I remember that one. Well, let's recall
a couple of points, shall we? We won't go through it. I'm going
to turn over there so I can speak without messing up the words.
The hand of the Lord was upon me and carried me out in the
Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of the valley
which was full of bones." That's the world. That's exactly where
you and I were. Remember, we're talking about
grace. We're talking about operations
of grace. And what a picture the Lord has
given us in Ezekiel, this valley of bones. We see the world. Remember
it's the valley, the shadow of death that we go through. Ever since Adam sinned against
God, we have been in the valley of death. Death to some, but
only a shadow to others. And by God's grace, there are
some who He will give life to. And as we go on through that
story of the valley of dry bones, this is what it's all about,
is that the Lord would raise up some of those bones to be
His. He would give some life. He would
give some the ability to breathe. And over in verse 11, we read
this, that He said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole
house of Israel. all of God's chosen people. That's
what the house of Israel is. And ye shall know, it says in
verse 13, that I am the Lord when I have opened your graves,
O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, and shall
put my Spirit in you. Do you see where the Lord kills
and makes alive? He kills and makes alive. Blessed
be His name when the Lord Jesus comes in His saving power. Because
in that power there is a resurrection from the dead. Turn over to Ephesians
chapter 2. And you... Now, I want to cut
out these next three words. It says, haphi quicken. I want
to cut that out of there because that's not in the original language.
I want you to read it without that. We'll get to the quicken
part here in a moment. But it says, and you, speaking
to you and I, speaking to the saints at Ephesians, See how the Lord has to kill
us? You didn't know you were dead until the Lord called you
out of darkness, did you? I didn't. If you'd have told
me I was dead, I should have pinched me. Ow, that hurts. Don't
tell me I'm dead. Oh, how dead I was before the
Lord called me, I know now. Once I was blind, but now I see. And you, who were dead in trespasses
and sin. Verse 2, where in times past
ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the
prince, the power of air, the spirit that now worketh in the
children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation
in times past in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires
of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children
of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy,
for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were
dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ by grace
you are saved. Operations of grace. Notice the
last part of Mark 9 verse 27. In Mark chapter 9 verse 27, the
last part it says this, but Jesus took him by the hand and lifted
him up and he arose. Our Lord by his grace. His effectual
grace. And that's the last part of what
our operations of grace that we're looking at this morning
is that operation of lifting us up. He's killed us. He's taken the
pride that we came into this world with and dissipated it.
Oh, that doesn't mean we don't still fight with it. It doesn't
mean we don't still battle between the flesh and the spirit, but
our spirit knows this, we have no confidence in that flesh,
don't we? John, what is it you're trusting
in? Are you trusting, John, in something that you have done
now? You've been saved. You've heard the Word. You've
been called with the divine call. You've been lifted up. You've
been killed. You've been lifted up. What are you trusting in
now? I'm still trusting in that. I'm
still trusting in that. Oh, but don't you have to be
a better person? Folks, I'm never going to get
any better than I am right now. I'm still a sinner. I'm still
the tough, mean, ugly person that my wife married 47 years
ago. Except for the spirit that dwells
in me now is one that loves my Savior for what He's done for
me. I love Him because He first loved me. What are you trusting
in? I'm trusting in the same thing.
I'm trusting in my Savior. The one who lifts down and picks
me up when the waves crash over my head and I stop looking to
Him and I look down Wow, look at this! Things are going really
good for me! And the Lord, when I start to
stumble, when I start to sink in the sea, He reaches down and
grabs ahold of me and He says, it's not you, John. It's me. It's my love. It's my faithfulness,
not yours. It's my righteousness, not yours. It's my love, not yours. Amen? Folks, it never tires me to talk to
you about grace. And I know as children of God,
it never tires you to hear about grace.