Okay, turn with me to Matthew's
Gospel. Matthew 18. Let's read verses 10-14. Matthew
18. Verses 10-14. Our Lord is speaking
to His disciples, His apostles, and us. Take heed. Take heed
that ye despise not one of these little ones. For I say unto you
that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my
Father which is in heaven. For the Son of Man is come to
save that which was lost. How think ye if a man have a
hundred sheep and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave
the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh
that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it,
verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep than of the
ninety and nine which went not astray." Even so. It is not the will of your Father
which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. It is not God the Father's will
that one of these little ones should perish. Not one. Now, let me make this clear from
the outset. Whatever is not God's will is
not going to happen. If it is God's will, it will
be. If it is not God's will, it will
not be. Because scripture says that he,
God, worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. In the armies of heaven and among
the inhabitants of the earth, every person, everything is under
the sovereign will and direction of God Almighty." That's good
news. Good news. If it is God's will,
it will be. If not, it will not be. Now he
said, it is not God's will that one of these little ones should
perish. All right, who are the little
ones then? Who are the little ones? Well,
verse 3, he said, except ye be converted, and become as little
children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. But if
you are, you shall. If you are converted, if you
do, by the grace and power of God, become as little children,
you are in the kingdom. And he went on to say, Whosoever
shall humble himself as a little child, Verse 6, he tells us that
these little ones are converted, these little ones are humble,
these little ones, verse 6, who shall offend one of these little
ones which believe in me. These little ones. He kept saying
that. It would be a good title. These
little ones. These little ones which believe
in me. Or they have childlike faith,
a little one. Now, we're all little in God's
eyes. That's a fact. But to be a little one is to
be little in your own eyes. To be a little one is to be small
in your own estimation. To be a nobody. We looked at
this last Sunday. It's to be a nothing. It's to
be a nobody. Like a little child that doesn't
think great things of himself. They've never done anything.
But if I had it all done for them, that's what it meant. To
be a little one is to be weak. If you're little, you're weak.
You're smaller than everybody else. A little one is to be dependent. A little one is totally dependent,
and they know it. And if that parent leaves them,
they'll cry. They'll cry. Because they know, left to themselves,
they're a goner. A little one. And they believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. Everyone that God has chosen,
He gives them this faith. in and upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And you'll only believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ when you're a nothing, when you're a nobody,
when you're weak, when you're little. The Lord Jesus Christ
will truly only be Lord to you if you're little. David. And our Lord said it's
not the will of God Not one of these little ones. All of God's
people, all of them, know they are nothing. They know they're
nothing. They're little. They're helpless. They're like little children.
David, though he was the king, he said, I am poor and needy,
yet the Lord thinketh on me. In Psalm 34, After David acted
like a fool. Remember when he acted like a
fool? He drooled at the Mount. He was
scared to death of the king and Gath. Remember that? Can a great
man act like an idiot? Yeah. David did. And he wrote
Psalm 34 right after that. And he said, this poor man, this
poor man cried. This poor excuse for a man, Poor
excuse for a king. Poor excuse for a child of God. Poor excuse for a believer. Cried,
and the Lord heard him. I'm poor and needy. John was
the greatest man born of woman, our Lord said. None greater. They came to John and said, Who
are you? He said, I'm nothing. He said, He must be in Christ. I'm
getting so low in my own estimation. Paul was the chief apostle. The chief apostle used by the
Lord more than any of them, perhaps more than all of them put together.
He said, I am less than the least, and I'm not fit to be called
a disciple, let alone an apostle. This poor man. It's not the will
of the Father that one of these little ones. Are you little?
You want to stay safe? Stay little. Stay little. Get puffed up, get
shot down. One of these little ones. It
is not God's will that one of them should perish, because they
are given to Christ. Let me go ahead and tell you
the reason that they're saved. They're given to Christ. All
that the Father gives me. They're all given to me, and
I give unto them eternal life. I give them my righteousness.
I shed my precious blood to pay for their sin. I give unto them
eternal life, a free gift, and the gifts of God are without
repentance. I give unto them eternal life,
and they shall never perish. Never. I'm their shepherd, and
they are my sheep. They will go astray. That's what
they're prone to do. But I am their shepherd, and
they will not perish. You want to hear the rest of
the story? That's good news if you're prone to wander. If you're
not little, Not one of these little ones,
not God's will, which believe in me. What is it to believe
in Christ? It's to believe that Jesus Christ
is your salvation. And I put this in simpler. How
can I make this as simple as possible? The simplicity that's
in Christ. You know how you'll be saved? Jesus Christ. I mean everything. From everything, you'll be saved
by Jesus Christ. Whatever it may be. The law,
wrath, yourself, Satan, sin. He's the Savior. If you believe,
if you trust Him. Christ said, none of them that
trusted me. Those that believe in Me, the
simplest faith in Me, they will not perish. Oh, that's a good
thing. They will not perish. Those that
believe in Me, those that believe Christ is all, that Christ is
all their salvation, Christ is all their wisdom. You know, after
all these years, I ought to know something. You ought to know
something. Right? Do you? How many verses of Scripture
can you quote? I find myself in talking to people,
trying to witness to people, and I try to think of one verse. Christ is our wisdom. He's our
wisdom. By His knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify me. It's not my knowledge. Thank
God it's not because I know Him, it's because rather I'm known
of Him. He is my righteousness. Everything about me is wrong.
You know what my hope is? Everything about Christ is right.
And He's made unto me righteousness. That's my hope, righteousness.
Sanctification. You know what sets me apart?
Nothing about me. Nothing about me. Jesus Christ, because I'm in
Christ. And redemption. I have no redeeming qualities.
Still, to this day, I feel like I have no redeeming qualities.
Well, what's your redemption? Your hope of being bought? I've
got a Hosea. I've got a loving husband who
will pay the price. Those that trust and look to
and depend upon, our Lord said, not one of these. shall perish. I'm finding somebody that needs
this. I'm looking for somebody that
needs it. Believe on me. The Lord never has, the Lord
never will disappoint any person who's ever looked to Him and
trusted in Him and depended on Him. He will not disappoint you. You will disappoint Him. You
have, you do, and you will, but not He. No one has ever looked
to Him and depended upon Him and trusted in Him and called
upon Him to save them at any time ever that He did not save
them. You will not be disappointed
by your Lord. Not one of these that trust in
me, that believe in Chip Perry. It's not my will, and it's not
going to happen. Can I keep... Old Brother Scott
used to repeat things until you thought, okay, I get it. It's over and over again. It
is not His will. What's your hope? What's your
salvation? This is why when men talk about
the free will of man, you better not believe in the free will
of man. There better not be an ounce
of truth to that or we're all goners. If it's up to our will,
You see, we will not come unto him that we might have not. We
will not. No man can, our Lord said, come
unto me. He said it twice. He said, I
said it to you before, and I'll say it again. No man can come
unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him. And all
that cometh to me. All that the Father gives me
and draws and calls by the gospel. When? In the past? No, every
time they're called. Because like sheep they go. And
like the shepherd he is, he goes after them. And he calls them.
And if they're called, they'll come. They'll come back. And
I will no wise guess them now. I will never at any point, the
Lord said, say unto them, you've left for the last time. That's
the last time. That's it. You're coming back,
and I'm not going to have you. Never will it be said that. Not one. Not one. If you're the weakest sheep in
here, I want to find the weakest sheep in this room. Whoever the
weakest believer is in this room is. Whoever feels like they're
less than the least and not deserving to be in this room. That's who
I'm talking to this morning. That's who I want to talk to this morning.
I've got a message for you from the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
not the will of your father that you should marry. Look at verse 10. He said, They're
angels. Every one of these little ones,
they're angels. do always, day in, day out, hour,
minute after minute, behold the face of my Father which is in
heaven." The Lord Jesus Christ said they're angels. Every one
of these children, these little ones, have angels hovering over
them. Every little child of God, there's
an angel hovering over them, an angel of God, one of which
will be sent by God to destroy a quarter of this earth, and
every single one of God's children has an angel watching over them. That's not an old wives' fable.
That's not religious superstition. That's not old mountain lore
or doctrine. That's Jesus Christ sitting there.
That's the psalm, Psalm 91. Listen to this. Psalm 91. It
says this. No evil shall befall thee, neither
shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling, for he shall give his
angels charge over thee." Maybe more than one. Watch over each
one. "...to keep thee in all thy ways." Do you hear that? This morning's
Bible study, we're talking about our lack of faith. And I'm trying
to do everything. Nothing I do is not by might
or power, is it? But I'm trying to read every
scripture and quote every scripture I can this morning, shooting
arrow after arrow, promise after promise after promise out there,
hoping one of them will hit somebody in the heart until they say,
what have I to fear? Whom have I to be afraid of?
The Lord is my salvation. I fear, why am I so afraid? Why
don't I trust him? I'm a sinner, yes, but He's a
Savior. That's His name. I'm unrighteous, yes, but His
name is righteous. Oh, my. The angel of the Lord
encampeth round about them that fear Him and delivereth them
always at all times. The angel of the Lord who is
the Holy Spirit. You want to turn with me to 2
Kings? 2 Kings chapter 6. There's so many, so very many stories
throughout the scripture of God's sovereigns keeping power over
his people, just a few. Israel itself, their whole story
from beginning to end is a story of how God watches over them,
though they're surrounded by a multitude of enemies, greater
and stronger than they, and yet God's angel like those unarmed
Israelites walking through the wilderness. The angel went before
them and guarded them. That was their hope, and it's
our hope. I love this story. Elisha, there's a whole host
of Syrians coming after Elisha, one man, mind you. Verse 14 says
they sent the Syrian king, the most powerful man on earth at
that time, sent horses and chariots and a great host, and they came
by night and compassed the city about. Well, when Elisha's servant
went out early in the morning to get water or wood or something,
and he was risen early and gone, behold, and the host, the enemy,
compassed the city both with horses and chariots, one man
and one young fellow in a little hut. I should say one child of God.
And his servant went running back in. Alas! Can you hear him? What are we
going to do? How shall we do? You remember
Jehoshaphat? We're at our wits end. We don't
know what to do. We have no power. We look to
you. And Elisha believed God. And he answered and said, Fear
not. And what he says, this young man, he says to us, they that
be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha
prayed and said, Lord, that says what I'm praying as I speak.
Lord, I pray that pray thee open his eyes, open my eyes that we
may see. And the Lord did. He opened the
eyes of the young man, and what he saw was, behold, the mountain
was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. And the Lord smote him off. Is
that a fairytale? Oh, no, we've not followed cunningly
devised fables, Peter said. This is true. It's all true.
And our Lord, I remind you, our Lord Jesus Christ is the one
that said this back in Matthew. He said, they're angels. Every
little one of his, everyone that trusts him, they're angels, have
charge over them to keep them in all their ways. And they're
immortal. Nothing and no one. Nothing moves and nothing harms
us except what God allows. That's right. Like Job. Heads
to bow. There are many, many more scriptures.
I was going to have you turn to a couple more, but we have
stories, don't we? We have our own stories. I was
just admitting to my mother the other day, telling her a couple
of stories about when I was a young teenager of some perils, some
dangers I got myself into, a buddy of mine and I. Miraculous deliverances. You remember me telling you that?
Miraculous deliverances. I just, after all these years,
told her about it. And that was just a couple. And
we all have many, many stories. We have experienced this. And
there's no way to explain it except the sovereign saving power
of our Lord. The only one. Years ago, let me give you a
wonderful example of this. Like the Psalm 91 that I quoted
to you. It says, A thousand shall fall
at thy side and 10,000 at thy right hand, but it shall not
come nigh unto thee. Many years ago, the World War
II, there was an 18-year-old boy that joined the Navy when
he was 17. He lied about his age and joined
the Navy, and he was on a ship, put on a ship right away and
sent into the Pacific Ocean to Okinawa, Japan. And he was thrust
into the middle of the largest naval assault in the history
of the world. It still is. Most ships, the
greatest, longest battle ever fought. Eighty days. Thousands
of ships. The largest assault in history.
Eighty days it lasted. The battle raged. Airstrikes,
that's when he heard of kamikazes. I forget how many ships were
sunk by Kamikaze airplane. The United States knew that they
needed that island, Okinawa, with which to land their planes,
with which to take over and drop a bomb on Japan and wipe it out
at the end of the war. They had to have it. And the
sailors lost, there were more naval men lost then than any
other branch of the service. Thousands of sailors died. Hundreds
of ships sunk and destroyed. This 18-year-old boy sitting
in a ship, out in the middle like a duck in the middle of
the water, while bombs were dropping, a thousand at his side and 10,000
at his right hand. The ship in front of him got
sunk. The ship behind him got sunk.