Well, it's so good to be back
with you again. And I'm thankful your pastor
asked me. And I love him dearly and talk
with him often. And I've talked with him since
he's been in Arkansas. My mother is there and my family. And they called me yesterday
to tell me how good the meetings were going. And I talked to Brother
Paul and Brother Gabe called me to tell me how good things
were going. They're having a good time. And
I trust the Lord will give us His grace this morning that we
might share in some of that blessing like they are. Let's turn in
our Bibles to Job. Job chapter 1. I was telling some earlier, in
case anybody's wondering, 20 years of traveling, I have never
forgotten a dress shirt, and I forgot a dress shirt. So I
have a tie, but I don't have a dress shirt. So that's why
I look like a college professor today. And we know the story of Job.
Job was a man of great wealth. More importantly, he was wealthy
in the Lord. leave the gospel. I won't read
everything here, but in the first verse we're told Job was perfect
and upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil. And he
had a great family. He had ten children. He had seven
sons and three daughters. And he had a great multitude
of cattle, a great household, a vineyard, a husbandry. He was
into husbandry and had cattle and sheep and all of those things. And the Lord took it all in one
day. He took everything. Ten children in one day. Ten
children in one day. All his riches, all his wealth,
everything. And we find what Job said in
verse 20. It says, Then Job arose and ran
his mantle and shaved his head and fell down upon the ground
and worshipped. You know his heart had to have
just been broken. I mean, he just, I just can't
even, other than our Lord, I don't know of anybody that suffered
what Job suffered. And yet he humbled himself He
bowed down and worshipped the Lord. And it says in verse 21,
he said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall
I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And all this Job sinned not,
nor charged God foolishly. Then after this, you know, the
Lord touched Job's body. Touched his health. took his
health, he became a leper. Even when that was the case,
Job over in chapter 19 said, in chapter 19 verse 25, he said,
I know that my Redeemer liveth, that he shall stand at the latter
day upon the earth, and though after my skin worms destroy this
body, yet in my flesh I shall see God. whom I shall see for
myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another, though my reins
be consumed within me." Here's a man who lost everything and
was just to the point of losing his life. And yet he said, I know my Redeemer
liveth. I know I'll see him. And he worshipped
him. You see, Job had the one needed
possession. He had the one needed possession. The one thing believers need,
the one thing we need, and the one thing that will never be
taken from us is the Lord Jesus Christ. The temporal things the
Lord gives are temporary things. And they can all be taken away
just as easily as God gave them. The one thing we need, just one,
is the Lord Jesus. And if you have Him, you can
have this assurance, He will never be taken away. Never be
taken away. Temporal things are temporary
things. Temporal things, when I say that,
I mean what we see. Carnal things. Whatever you see,
whatever you touch, all these things in this life, they are
temporary things. Job said, naked came I out of
my mother's womb, naked shall I return thither. We came into
this world with nothing. Absolutely nothing. We're going
to leave this world the same way we came in it. We're going
to leave with nothing. Nothing. Then shall the dust
return to the earth as it was. The dust, he's talking about
us. We're going to return to the dust and the spirit shall
return to God who gave it. And death's not annihilation.
That doesn't mean that's the end. We've got an eternity to
spend somewhere. And we're going to go to God
and stand before God. But we came into this world with
nothing and we're going out of this world with nothing. The
thing to be concerned with is this. This is the thing to be
concerned with. The thing to be concerned with
is that we do not leave this world spiritually naked. The
thing to be concerned with is that we leave this world having
Christ robed in his righteousness. Paul had that pedigree. of all his religious activity
where he thought he was a rich man because of all these works
he had done and he was a Hebrew of Hebrews and Pharisee of the
Pharisees and all these religious works that he had all, you know,
in the plus column. And he was, Paul was a wealthy
man as well. He was a rich man by all accounts. But when the Lord called him
and taught him the value of having Christ Jesus, he said, all those
things that were gained to me, I count them all lost. He said,
I put all that I had in the plus column, I put it in the negative
column. And he said, not only that, I don't even count it lost.
I just count it done. Why? For the excellency of the
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, that I might win Christ and be
found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own, but the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the important thing. We're
in this world for just a little while. I mean just a little while. Time is short and time is too
short for nonsense, really. And everything else is foolishness. You know, the relationships we
have with one another, we ought to value them. We ought to value
the time we have together. And what's the important thing
is, is that we're constantly trying to help each other behold
Christ, look to Christ. Whatever burden we have to take
off of one another, you know, I don't want to be a hindrance
to my brethren in worshiping and we are we sometimes we are
we don't want to be but we are sometimes and but our our joy
and our purpose is to is to if I can help my brethren what I'm
trying to do is I want to help you worship the Lord I want to
help you see him because he's the thing we need All this other
stuff we start trying to accumulate and we get so carried away with
and we think it's so important. It's not important. It's not
important. That's not why God put us here
on this earth. You find me one place in the
scripture where God teaches us to do what we teach our children
to do. God does never teach us, now
you go out and try to get all you can. He doesn't tell us that. He doesn't teach us to try to
accumulate riches. He doesn't teach us to try to
go out and make a name in the world. He doesn't teach us that
stuff. He tells us the opposite. He tells us that stuff will do
us harm. The love of money is the root
of all evil. You want to get to the heart
of everything you see going on in the world, everything you
see going on in government, politics, and business, and countries,
and everything between nations, it's simple. The love of money
is the root of all evil. If you want to get to the heart
of it, follow the money. That's the heart of it. And wherever
there's contention, the Lord just simplifies it for us. You
want to get to the heart of the contention. Only by pride cometh
contention. That's it. That's it. It's pride. And what do we have to be proud
of. And isn't that what trying to
accumulate stuff is all about? It's so I can show, so we can
peacock and strut about and let everybody see our feathers? And
we got nothing to be proud of. There was a lady in my home,
not my hometown, but my dad's hometown, Camden, Arkansas, and
it's not far from where they are down there this weekend.
There was a lady named Maud Crawford. And I heard this story growing
up all my life. It was a mystery. She had a beautiful
home, and she was one of the first attorneys in the state
of Arkansas, female attorneys in the state of Arkansas. And
in the 50s, she went missing. She was sitting at home shelling
peas one night, and they found the peas, and nobody ever found
Maude Crawford. Nobody ever sought her. But they
think it was a relative who was an heir. And she was wealthy,
had a beautiful home, had riches, and they think he had her kidnapped
and killed. And he, I read all these stories
about him, he spent his whole life spending that fortune trying
to buy off police officers and cover his tracks so that he didn't
get arrested, his whole life. And in the end, you think of
all the trouble that that caused this man, all his life just to
have these riches. And in the end, what happened?
He left them all and stood before God. No matter what we accumulate,
it's wasted. if we do not have the one thing
needful. The Lord tells us this, seek
ye the Lord while he may be found. That's the important thing. That's
the important thing. Call upon him while he's near. Job had the comfort of believing
that his sovereign God was ruling everything for him. Oh, that's
comfort. That way, if you ever are in
a place, even just a fraction of what Job went through, but
if you ever go through anything like Job went through, the loss
of a loved one or loss of your livelihood and all those things,
to know God is ruling everything for you is the greatest of all
comfort. It's the greatest of all comfort.
Job said the Lord gave, the Lord took it away. The Lord gave,
the Lord took it away. Everything between our birth
and our death is the gift of God, including our birth and
our death. For a believer, it's the gift
of God. A man can receive nothing except
to be given him from heaven. Every good and every perfect
gift cometh now from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness,
neither shadow of turn." God gave us temporal life and he
gives us temporal things. I know we like to brag that we,
you know, we accomplished this and we were wise in the way we
handled that. Listen, God gives us whatever
we have. It gives you the health you have,
it gives you the breath you have, the wisdom you have, the ability
you have. Yes, you go to work, do the things
you do, but at the end of the day, God gave it. God gave it. God gave it. And all spiritual
blessings are the gift of God. All spiritual blessings. Now,
when we give a gift, we know who we're going to give the gift
to, and we go purchase the gift. And we take the gift to the one
we bought it for. And God does everything just
that same way. He knows who He is going to give
His gifts to. He chose His people for the foundation
of the world. He sent His Son who paid the
price of His own precious blood to purchase all the blessings
for us, to give us freely all things in Christ. He gave us
everything by His blood. And He even comes and blesses
us with a new spirit and a new heart to receive the gift. It's all of God. He told Job,
before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. Before you came
out of the womb, I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a prophet.
God had separated us a long time ago before we ever knew Him.
He chose these people in eternity. He sanctified us. He set us apart
for Him. He set us apart in Christ, and
in Christ His people have been holy and accepted in Him from
eternity. Because there's no way Christ is going to fail.
There's no way He wouldn't come forth and lay down His life and
He's accomplished that. And then He comes in the Spirit
and He sanctifies you and sets you apart and gives you a new
heart and purifies that heart through faith in Him and makes
you holy so He can receive you and you can enter into communion
with Him. It's all the gift of God. He's sealed us and He's
given us the earnest of the Spirit in our heart. That earnest is
the Spirit. It's the earnest of the spirit.
It's the spirit who's the earnest, the guarantee, the foretaste
of what's to come. He teaches us everything that
he gives us freely. We've not received the spirit
of the world. We received the spirit of God that we might know
the things that are freely given to us of God. God's like, what
are we going to give to God? What are we going to give to
God? You just think of how foolish it would be for a for a father
and a wife, a husband and a father and a mother to produce a child
and say, now we produced this child. We're just going to leave
it alone so it can give us, just give us things. We want to see
this child give us some things. And we're just going to bring
this child into the world and just wait on it to give something
to us. That's how helpless we are to give God anything. Just
that helpless. The gift of penance. What's going
to make us have a changed mind? I think repentance is easier
illustrated than it is defined. It's hard for me to define what
repentance is. It's a change of mind is what
it is. But you illustrate it, you think
of Isaiah. Isaiah was woeing everybody. Woe is this one, woe is that
one, woe is that one. Lord revealed himself, and I
saw the Lord high and lifted up, and his train filled the
temple, and he heard the seraphim cry, holy, holy, holy is the
Lord God. And that coal touched his tongue,
and he said, woe is me. I'm undone. I'm the man of unclean
lips, and I'm dwelling in the people of unclean lips. That's
repentance. That's repentance. David, when he had sinned, and
don't just think of David's sin as being with Bathsheba and killing
Uriah. You go back and look at the history
of David. David spent a year and four months
down in the land of Philistine. Can you imagine if you heard
one of your brethren had gone over into Afghanistan and had
joined up with some Muslims and was coming to fight against the
Lord's people? That's exactly what David did.
That's exactly what David did for a year and four months. But
you think about when Nathan came to him concerning Bathsheba,
and he told him about that rich man who took the poor man's lamb.
And David heard that story, and he said, who is he? David was
ready to pour out justice on him. He demands justice. We need
to pour out justice on this man. David said, thou art the man.
Here's repentance. I have sinned against God. And
he started begging God for mercy. He started begging God for mercy. He wasn't begging God for justice
then. He was declaring God just to
declare him a sinner, but he was begging mercy. That's the
gift of God. That's the gift of God. Righteousness. We got to have a perfect righteousness. This is what it's all about.
This right here is why God created the world. This is it. To manifest
His righteousness. The world's going around telling
people that God wants to save you, and God's trying to save
you, and God created everything for you, and He's trying to do
everything for you. That's not why God created the
world, and that's not why He saves sinners. God saves sinners
to manifest His righteousness. That's why He saves sinners.
To manifest His glory and the salvation of worthless, hell-deserving
sinners. That's why He created this world. The Lord Jesus Christ came forth.
He is God's righteousness. He is the righteousness of God.
The righteousness of God is not a doctrine. It's not just a system
that we learn about legality and how this and that happens
in legal matters. Christ is the righteousness of
God. He is the Lord, our righteousness,
Jehovah Sidcon. We've got to have Him. And He
came into this world took our nature, took the nature of his
brethren, made like unto us, without sin, the only other man
that ever walked this earth besides Adam that had no sin to begin
with. And Adam plunged us all into
sin and death by his disobedience, but the last Adam came forth
and by his obedience made his people righteous. He purged the
sin of his people. He took all the sin upon himself. He completely took the place
of his people before God and became the one the one who by
bearing our sin was worthy of the justice of God being poured
out on him. God wouldn't even, to show his
righteousness, God wouldn't even pour out wrath on his son until
he laid our iniquities on him. He's innocent. He couldn't. God
will not pour out wrath on an innocent man. And he laid the
sin of his people on him. He made him sin for us so that
God would be just in manifesting his righteousness to pour out
his wrath on him. And He did, to the full. And
our Lord Jesus Christ drank damnation dry. He drank the dregs of the
cup of the fury of God's wrath till it was empty and wrung aloud
for His people. And then He came out of that
grave and He sat down at the right hand of God. And you want
to know where the righteousness of God is? You want to know who
the righteousness of God is? There He is, seated at God's
right hand. And when He comes and makes you
know Him, and makes you really know what he did. It makes you
see how much of a sinner we are by what he had to die to put
it away. When you see how thoroughly when
sin was on him, God, holy God in righteousness would not even
spare his own son. but poured out His wrath. When
you see that's what kind of sinner you are, that it took God coming
in human flesh to put away your sin and make you righteous, that's
when we'll stop boasting about some pretended righteousness
that we've worked out. When you see Him, you can't keep
boasting. You just can't. You have to start
boasting Him. And that's all of him. That's
all of him. He says in Romans 5, he says
three or four times, he says, it's the free gift. It's the
free gift. The gift by grace, by one man,
Christ Jesus. It's the gift, the free gift
of justification. Over and over, the gift of righteousness. It's a gift. It's all a gift. Even God sending us this gospel
is a gift. That's what Paul said. All things
are of God who has reconciled us to himself and has given us
the ministry of reconciliation. Reconciled us to himself by Jesus
Christ and has given to us this ministry of reconciliation. It's
a gift. Beginning to end, everything
is a gift. This is how Paul wrapped it up
in 1 Corinthians 1. He said, I thank my God always
on your behalf for the grace of God which is given you by
Jesus Christ. Now listen to this, that in everything
you are enriched by Him. In all utterance, in all knowledge,
even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that
you come behind Him, no guilt, waiting for the coming of that
unspeakable gift, our Lord Jesus Christ. who shall confirm you
all the way to the end. That you may be blameless in
the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul in that one statement right
there just took from, he went from our naked birth to our naked
death and showed how the Lord has totally enriched his people
and preserved us and brings us to God blameless. And he is all
the glory. Every bit of it. Oh, it's all the gift of God.
That's why Paul said, who makes you to differ from another? What
hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now, if you received
it, why glory? Why do we glory as if we didn't
receive it? And let me let me say this. I don't think we realize some of
the things we say and do is glorying in ourselves. You know, if If
I find a fence with you and take a fence with one of my brethren,
you know what I'm doing? I'm glorying in myself. I'm saying
I just haven't done what you've done. That's just glorying in
myself. That's all it is. You know, when
we start to put confidence in our bank account, put confidence
in what we have, what we don't have, that's just glorying in
our sin. When we're fearful of men and
we're fearful of things and we're fearful of providence, that's
putting fear and sanctifying a man or a thing rather than
sanctifying God in our heart and seeing him as being holy
and in control of everything. And he is in control of everything.
Job didn't blame second causes. He didn't blame the devil. The
Lord is the Lord. You can read right there in the
first chapter. The Lord said, have you considered my servant,
Job? Satan said, I can't touch him.
You've got a hatch about him. The Lord said, well, I'm going
to take it down. And I'm going to let you touch
his family and his children. But you still can't touch him.
And then the Lord finally said, OK, now I'm going to let you
touch his body. But you can't kill him. The devil can't do
anything without God's permission. But Job knew that, and he had
comfort knowing God was in control of this. He didn't blame the
Chaldeans, the Sabeans. He didn't blame the tornado.
He didn't blame the fire. He didn't blame none of that.
He said God gave it. God took it. That's the Lord
killeth and the Lord maketh alive. He brings down to the grave and
he brings up. He makes poor, he makes rich,
he brings low, he lifts up, he raises the poor out of the dust,
takes the beggar from the dunghill and sets him among princes to
make him inherit the throne of glory because the pillars of
the earth are the Lord. He's holding all this thing together.
He's holding it all up. He set the world upon the pillars.
He'll keep the feet of his saints. He will keep the feet of his
saints. And the wicked shall be silent
in darkness, for by strength shall no man prevail. Oh, Lord,
make me remember that. Make me remember that. When good
comes, the world says, oh, I'm so blessed. I'm so blessed. My faith's so strong. I watched
one of these documentaries one time of a plane that the window
blew out of this plane, and the pilot got sucked out the window.
And he was just hanging on by like his feet or something caught,
and he's just flapping on the outside of the plane. And then
the other pilot landed that plane, and that pilot lived. And when
they interviewed people about it, they said, he's just so strong. He was dangling on the side of
that airplane like a dishrag. And he's just so strong. If his
toe had not got caught up in the wind, he'd have went back
into the engine. I'm so blessed and I'm so strong,
but then you let something bad happen, something terrible happen. Oh, God wouldn't do this. You
know why they say that? You know why they say God didn't
do this? You know why they say that? Because if they give God
the credit for that, they got to give God the credit for the
good that happened. And they ain't doing that. So
God didn't cause the evil. God's in control of the good
and the evil. Don't you want to be God and
not the devil? I'm thankful. Shall we receive good at the
hand of God and shall not we receive evil, Job said. And God
brings good out of evil. Just look at the cross. The worst
thing that ever happened in this world as far as wickedness goes,
as far as man's wicked intentions and Satan the devil's wicked
intentions. The worst thing that ever happened
was in those three hours of darkness on the cross. And the best good
that ever happened was in those three hours of darkness on the
cross. God brings good out of evil. There's our redemption.
There's our salvation in what was happening there. Men meant
it for evil. Satan meant it for evil. The Lord called, in Isaiah, he
called the Lord Jesus the trap. He was the bait. The devil saw,
I'm gonna put him on the cross. And that was the trap. And that's
how God broke the yoke off his people. The devil took the bait, fell
in his own trap. And that's how his head was crushed. God said, my counsel shall stand,
I'll do all my pleasure. He said, I've spoken and I'm
going to bring it to pass. They will gather together just
to do what he determined before to be done. Let me say this last
thing and I'm going to end. And I pray God give us grace
to thank God all the time. Thank him all the time. I've had some brethren, dear
brethren, they're with the Lord now and I used to talk to them
and I'd be bent out of shape about something that wasn't anything
to be bent out of shape about. And they had real troubles. And
they would always say to me, there's always so much more to
rejoice in than there is to murmur about. So much more. You know, we're
like the, you get a sore tooth and you just can't focus on nothing
but that sore tooth. And sadly, that's how we are.
But there's much more to rejoice in. Rejoice that all the other
members are well. Why do we thank God when we suffer?
Because God's bringing glory to his name. That's what he's
doing. He's working good for his people
and bringing glory to his name. I don't care what it is. I don't
care what's come in the past. That's what Job's saying here.
Even in losing ten of his children in one day. Even losing all his
riches. Even his wife telling him, just
cuss God now. Job is saying, God's working
this for His glory. And God's working good for His
people. And here's another reason we
glory in it. Through the suffering, God's teaching us Christ is our
only strength. We don't learn that if we think
we're strong and we think we're doing everything. And it's when
God brings us to the end of ourselves to see, I don't have any strength. I just don't. Sometimes God does
it, but just, he just takes his hand off a little while and lets
you see what a sinner you still are. or he brings you into some
impossible trial that you can't deliver yourself out of. There's
nothing you can do about it. And he makes you know this. It
hurts. You're sorrowful. Your heart's
breaking. You'd change it in a minute if
you could. It's not pleasant. You'd love
to get out of it. But he makes you know, in the
middle of that, even, and you're just full of unbelief when you're
in those places. We are, we just, we are. But
yet, inwardly, he just keeps you looking to him and he keeps
you knowing, I don't know how he's going to do it, but he's
going to work good through this. And He's the only way I can believe
Him. He's the only reason I'm sitting
here now believing Him. You get to looking at your past
sins and you get down and you start questioning your faith. Do I even know the Lord? Lord,
please don't cast me off. Save me. Have mercy on me. And
He keeps you knowing this. You wouldn't have that warfare
going on in you if he wasn't keeping you. You wouldn't even
have that if he wasn't working grace in you. And he comes and
he makes you to know. Just like Paul, Paul prayed for
that thorn to be removed. That wasn't asking for the right
thing. And I'm telling you, brethren,
I know we pray for it to be removed. And I'm not saying don't ask
God to remove it. And you want to get your brethren
out of the trial, but sometimes we don't. We're doing the wrong
thing to try to get one another out of the trial. You've got
to go through the trial. And the Lord didn't take the
thorn from it. He taught him, my grace is sufficient
for you. My strength is made perfect in
your weakness. What does that mean? It means
you're going to see God's strength when you've got no strength,
when you're just weak. And so Paul said, now I know
when I'm weak, when I'm weak, when I can't look to me, when
I can't look to all my good works and all my wisdom and all that
I am willing to do, when I can't look at me, I can only look to
Christ. That's when I'm strong. Because
he's my strength. He that spared not his own son,
but delivered Him up for us all. How should He not with Him freely
give us all things? We don't have to worry about
the temporal things. We don't have to worry about them. He's
going to provide them. He gave His Son. He'll give you a loaf
of bread. Turn over with me to Luke 10.
I'm going to end with this. Luke 10. Now if there's anybody here this
morning that does not believe on Christ, please hear me. I want to ask you a question.
If Christ Jesus the Lord is not your only righteousness, just
think about if as soon as this service is over, your life's
over and you're going to stand before God, what's going to be
your confidence God's going to receive you? Can't be your works. The law
says we're guilty. Can't be anything in us. What's
going to be our competence to stand before God? Now listen
carefully. If you don't have Christ, what
do you possess? If you don't have Christ, what
do you possess? If you don't have Christ, Your
life up until this moment right here has been nothing but vanity. Now listen to this, Luke 10,
38. This is where we all are right here. This is what we all
are doing by nature. It came to pass as they went,
they entered into a certain village. There was a woman named Martha
that received our Lord into her house. And she had a sister called
Mary, which sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. That's Mary
just sitting there hanging on Christ's word. But Martha was
cumbered about much serving. She was up, she wanted to, and
she wanted to please the Lord. She wanted to do some things
for the Lord. And she came to the Lord and she said, don't
you care, Lord, that my sister's left me alone to serve? She just
left me serving alone. Don't you care, Lord? Bid her to help me. Bid her.
Command her to get up and help me. Now if you don't have Christ,
all your life up to this point has been just going about being
covered about not serving. Listen to what the Lord said.
Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, you're careful
and you're troubled about many things. But one thing is needful. Just
one. And Mary hath chosen that good
part which shall not be taken from her. The gifts and calling
of God are without repentance. Temporal things, He gives, He
takes away. Temporal life, He gives, He takes
away. Christ and all blessings in Him, He gives, and He never
takes them away. If you have Christ, you have
all.