Now, I have heard this morning
two great messages. I heard our pastor preach on
the radio at 8 o'clock, and it was absolutely beautiful. He's gifted, the Lord has gifted
him with the power and wisdom and grace to preach His gospel. I don't hope to improve on the
message you just heard. It couldn't be clearer, plainer,
more glorifying to our God and more exalting to Christ Jesus.
I just want to follow up and bring something that the Lord
maybe will give me to be a blessing to you. But I rejoice in the
ministry of your pastor so very much. And I use the word rejoice. I'm not bragging. I'm proud of
him. I'm not boasting. It's only by
God's grace. But I rejoice. I give thanks
for the way God has blessed him and blessed you under his leadership,
under his pastorate, and under his preaching. Don't you? You're just blessed to have an
able, gifted pastor. I don't think the Lord can give
a greater blessing to a family or to a community or to a congregation. I don't believe you can give
them any greater blessing than to give them a faithful, godly
preacher of the gospel. It's just God's gift to you. And I've watched you the last
14, 15 years grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and my heart is filled to overflowing. in gratitude
to God for you and for your pastor. I want you to open your Bibles
to the book of 1 Peter. I'm going to speak to you this
morning on this subject, the God of all grace. Let's read
the scripture here, 1 Peter 5 verse 10. but the God of all grace, who
hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus. After
that you have suffered a while, make you perfect, mature, establish,
strengthen, and settle you. To him be glory and dominion
forever and ever. Amen. The Apostle Paul wrote
in Ephesians chapter 2, for by grace have you been saved. I know we read it, and it's true
this way, for by grace are you saved, but it says, for by grace
have you been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It's
the gift of God. And it's not of works, lest any
man should boast. And then Paul added in 2 Timothy
chapter 1, God had saved us. God had saved us. God had saved
us. Not we ourselves. God had saved
us and called us. He's called us with a holy calling,
not according to our works, but according to his own purpose. and grace which was given us
in Jesus Christ before the world began. One of the great old hymn writers
said, and this is my own testimony and I'm sure it's yours, O to
grace, O to grace, the God of all grace and the grace of our
God, O to grace how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness, O Lord, like
a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. T'was grace that taught
my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious
did that grace appear the hour I first believed. It was grace
that taught my heart to pray and made my eyes overflow. It was grace that keeps me to
this day, and grace will not let me go. Now, I want to talk
to you a little while about this grace, the grace of our God and
the God of all grace, and to help you Maybe to hang on to
and to remember and to keep what the Lord, I believe, has given
me to say, I'm going to talk about five words. Five words. Now, here's the first one. The
old-timers, the old writers—and your pastor will be very familiar
with this—but they used to talk about, the old writers talked
about, prevenient grace. Prevenient grace, which means,
you can look it up in Webster's Dictionary, which means grace
going before. Prevenient grace is grace preceding
the grace of God, preceding any human thought or human word or
human action. The grace of God which saves
us. grace of God, which saves us,
prepares the way for our salvation. In other words, it's grace before
grace. God revealed to us His grace
before we had the grace revealed through the preaching. God revealed.
Now, let me show you that in the Scripture. Turn to Jeremiah
chapter Jeremiah chapter 1. Grace before grace, prevenient
grace, is grace going before. It's grace before grace. It's
grace that is given before grace is experienced. Jeremiah chapter
1, verse 4. Listen to this. Jeremiah 4.1.
Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Before That's
what we're talking—provenient grace, grace before grace. Before,
Jeremiah 1, 5, before I formed you in the belly, I knew you. And before you came forth out
of your mother's womb, I set you apart. I sanctified you,
and I ordained you. I chose you and set you apart. to be a prophet to the nation.
That grace before he was formed in his womb, God had his hand
upon him, and his eye upon him, and his heart upon him, and ordained
him to be a preacher of the gospel before he was ever born. Now
turn to Psalm 139, and listen to David speak here in Psalm
139. I want you to be sure and look
at this scripture now. Psalm 139, verse 13. Psalm 139, verse 13. For thou hast possessed my reins. The reins here is my mind, my
soul, my being. God possessed me. You've covered
me in my mother's womb. And I'll praise thee, the God
of all grace, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous
are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance,
that is, my body, my strength, my being, was not hid from thee
when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest
parts of the earth in my mother's womb. Listen, thou didst see
my substance yet being unperfect, and in thy book all my members
were written when in continuance were fashioned, when as yet There
was none of them. Grace before grace. Look at verse
seventeen. How precious are thy thoughts
unto me, O God, how great is the sum of them. Here's an illustration
illustrating what I'm trying to say. Prevenient grace, grace
before grace. God working in our lives before
we had life on this earth. Our Lord gave this parable. He
said a sower went forth to sow, and the sower is the Son of Man,
and the seed which he sows is the Word of God. And some of
this seed—this is the preaching of the gospel, the Word of God,
which came from our Lord and through his apostles—and this
seed is scattered and sown, and some of it fell on fallow hard,
unplowed ground. And the birds of the air came
and took it away. He yielded no fruit. Some of
this seed fell among thorns. And the thorn, it sprang up quickly,
but the thorns crushed the life out of it and it bore no fruit.
Some of it fell on stony ground, stones, ground that had no depth,
stony ground, no nourishment. And the sun came out and It went
away, but some of it fell on good ground. Some of this seed
which the master scattered with his apostles and preachers today,
I sow in the seed the word of God, and some of it falls on
good ground, and it brings forth some 40, some 60, some 100 folk. And you may say, well, what is
this good ground? Who made the ground good? Where'd
it come from? There's none good, no, not one.
It's ground that is prepared by God. It's ground that is prepared,
turned, turned over, plowed, treated, dealt with before the
seed hit the ground. And when that heart is moved
by God, when that mind is opened by God, and when those thoughts
are turned toward God, it brings forth forty, sixty, and a hundred.
But grace before grace, that's right. Timothy, the Lord said
to Timothy, the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, you have known the Holy Scriptures
from a child. Thou hast known the Holy Scriptures
that are able to make thee wise unto salvation. Timothy was a
young man, young boy, young infant, child, that sat at his grandmother's
knee and on the lap of his mother, and heard the word of God." From
a child, you've known the scriptures that are able to make you wise
unto salvation. And all believers, this one and
all these out here, can say this with this hymn writer, before—listen
to this—before thy hands had made the sun to rule by day,
or earth's foundations laid, or fashion's Adam's clay, what
thoughts of love and mercy flowed towards me and you in Christ
our Lord. Before all of that was accomplished,
the thoughts of God. How long has God loved His children? Well, He's loved them. What did
Jeremiah say? Here's what he said. The Lord
hath appeared, hath appeared from long ago, from afar, saying,
I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, because I loved
you before you knew me, before you loved me, therefore, with
lovingkindness, I have drawn you. Grace before grace. Oh, here's the second word. Covenant
grace. Covenant grace. Turn to 2 Samuel. 2 Samuel, chapter 23. 2 Samuel, chapter 23, verse 1. 2 Samuel 23, verse 1. Now, David, 2 Samuel 23, verse Now David, David was dying. David, seventy-five years old,
seventy-five somewhere around that time, was dying. And these
are the last words of David. Now I want you to listen to it
in 2 Samuel 23. David, the son of Jesse, said,
The man who was raised on high, this is the man God honored,
God blessed, God anointed and made him king of Israel, one
of the greatest kings who ever lived. The anointed of God of
Jacob and the sweet psalmist of Israel. David wrote most of
the psalms, the psalms which we read. David, God used David
to write most of them, and those psalms reveal Christ. They're Messianic Psalms. The
Spirit of God, David says, spake by me, and his word was in my
tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock
of Israel said to me, he that ruleth over men must be just,
ruling in the fear of God. And this was a just king, a faithful
king, a man who ruled in the fear of the Lord. David, David. spoke of Christ as the son of
David, seed of David. And he should be as the light
of the morning when the sun rises, even a morning without crowds,
as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining
after rain. Now, here's his last words. And
you know here, this was an awesome time. David was dying. I bet
there was a hush that fell over that whole city of Jerusalem.
What a great king, what an awesome ministry God gave him, what power. Destroyed his enemies and raised
up the great city of Jerusalem, prepared for the temple that
Solomon would someday build, Solomon would build. And now
everybody's quiet and going about in whispered tones and David's
lying on his bed. Go say his last words. Be very
interesting to hear what he had to say. He didn't brag about
how many Psalms he wrote. He didn't brag about how many
enemies he destroyed. He didn't brag about how much
gold and silver he had accumulated to build the temple, for Solomon
to build the temple. He didn't brag about the things
that he had done in the flesh. one thing was on his mind. Listen
to it. Listen. Here's the last word.
Although my house be not so with God. And David wept over that
and she had many tears. But his, his, some of his children
and his grandsons and people whom he loved associated with
his court and with his house, they, they weren't They weren't
believers. They didn't know God. Although
my house, so many of them don't really know God, don't know the
God of the Bible. Yet, he hath made with me an
everlasting covenant, an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things
and sure. And this is all my salvation
and all my desire. although he make it not to grow. How long has God loved David? Everlasting. I have loved you
with an everlasting love. I have made with you an everlasting
covenant, a covenant of grace and mercy in Christ Jesus the
Lord through His precious blood and through His obedient work.
I have made with you an everlasting covenant, and it's already accomplished,
already finished, already secure, already given to you, ordered
in everything. This is all my salvation, and
this is all my desire. All right. You know, Paul wrote
this in Romans chapter nine. Let me turn to it and let you
read it But this is what—this is the covenant that Paul's writing
about here with Jacob. And when he spoke about Jacob
and Esau, in Romans chapter 9, verse 10, and not only this,
Romans 9, verse 10, but when Rebekah also had conceived by
one, even our father Isaac, the children being not yet born. Jacob and Esau, neither having
done any good or any evil. They hadn't done anything. They
hadn't even been conceived. That the purpose of God, that
the covenant of God, that the grace of God, according to election,
by stand, not of works now, but of him that called it, it was
said to her, the elder shall serve the younger. Jacob will
serve him. Some of his kinfolks won't. David
will certainly, some of his kinfolks won't. It's a covenant God made. And it says, that next verse
says, as it is written, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. And that's, when David was dying, that was his testimony, that
was his confession. Although my house be not so with
God, he's made with me. everlasting covenant, ordered,
secure, prepared, complete, in all things, settled. This is
all my salvation. It's all my hope. All my hope. All right, here's
the third word. Regenerating grace. Turn with
me to Ezekiel. Ezekiel thirty-six. This scripture here, from the
Old Testament, plainly reveals the regenerating work of God
in calling out His people, in visiting His people, in converting
His people, in convicting His people, in regenerating His people,
in raising them up, in giving them life. awakening them, giving
them life. Now listen to this. He said in
verse 23 of Ezekiel 36. Now listen to it. And I will
sanctify my great name. God's going to always glorify
himself. Whatever God does, he's going to glorify himself. Everything
God does for you and me or anybody else is for his glory. I will
sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen,
which you," you, Israel, and all of true Israel, and all believers,
we profaned in the midst of them. But the heathen shall know that
I am the Lord." This is what our pastor just spoke to us about. The heathen are going to know
that I am, saith the Lord God. When I am sanctified, when I
shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. God's going to sanctify
himself in you right in front of them. Now here's how he's
going to do it. Now watch this. I will take you
from among the heathen. I'll gather you out of the countries. I'll bring you to your own land. That's what our Lord said to
his disciples. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again and
receive you into my own land, unto myself. That's God's promise
to his people. You're going to be with me. You'll
be with me forever. Now watch verse twenty-five.
I'll sprinkle clean water on you, and you'll be clean. That's what the top lady was
talking about when he said, Rock of Ages cleft for me. Let me
hide myself in thee." Let the water and the blood. Let the
water and the blood. When they pierced our Lord's
side, he came forth water and blood. Water to sanctify, blood
to justify. Let the water and the blood sanctify
them, justify them, cleanse them, make them holy. Sanctify, justify
that water and the blood from thy wounded side which flows.
Be of sin a double cure. I need the double cure. I need
to be sanctified. I need to be justified. You and
I need to be cleansed. We need imparted grace, imparted
righteousness, as well as imputed righteousness. Imputed through
the death of Christ, imparted by the work of the Spirit. Well,
I'll sprinkle clean water on you, and you'll be clean from
all your filthiness, from all your idols. I'll cleanse you. I'll do it. This is the work
of God. This is regenerating work, purifying
work, sanctifying work, redeeming work. Now watch this, verse 26. A new heart will I give you,
and a new spirit will I put within you. Now listen to me, just a
minute. Brother old boy Hughes, you say,
don't move a hand or a hair. You sit real still and listen
to me. The religion of the world, the religion of works and human
merit, starts outside and tries to work its way in. It starts
outside of us, but the regenerating work of God, the redeeming work
of God, the saving work of God, It doesn't start with the outer
man, it starts with the inner man. A new heart I'll give you. Not a new doctrine or a new direction
or a new lifestyle. I put a new heart in you. It starts on the inside. Christ
said, first cleanse that which is within, and then the outside
will be clean. But the Pharisees tried to do
it differently. They said, They cleansed the
outside and looked like white as sepulchers. But he said, I'll
do a work in you. I'll put my spirit in you. And
watch, I'll take out the stony heart. I'll take out the stony
heart and give you a heart of flesh. What is the stony heart? It's the natural heart. It's
the heart of pride and arrogance that God takes out of us. You
know, I did a little study on this one. I think I preached
on it maybe here somewhere. What is a stony heart? It has three characteristics.
One, it's hard. It's a hard heart. It's hard. You strike it and it'll bounce
back at you. You can soak it with tears, but
it won't melt. It won't give. It won't be changed. It's hard.
It stays hard. Secondly, the stony heart is
cold. It's cold. You can build a fire
on it and heat it for a little while, but move the fire, and
it's stone again, hard stone. A lot of things can be done,
but it can't change that stony heart. It's hard and it's cold,
and then it's dead. is dead. Speak to it, it won't
hear. Cut it, it won't bleed. Teach
it, it won't learn. Fatten it, it won't respond. As if one thing can be done for
a stony heart, take it out. Look at that again. A new heart,
verse twenty-six, will I give you a new spirit, a new attitude,
a good, a new countenance. a new way. I'll put within you. I'll take your stony heart out
of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I'll put my Spirit
in you and cause you to walk in my statutes to keep my judgments
and do them. And here's the result. And you'll
dwell in the land I gave to your fathers. And you'll be my God,
and I'll be your people. Aren't we thankful? God did a work of grace in our
hearts, took that old stony heart out, just threw it away, and
gave us a heart that responds to the need of others and to
the desire of others. Look not on your own things,
but on the things of others who's yielded to God, who loves the
Word, rejoices in the Word, rejoices in the fellowship, rejoices in
His goodness to us. Regenerating grace. God says,
I do that. I, the Lord, do all these things.
And then the fourth word is restraining grace. And this is something
we all experience. And in early life and all the
way through our life, God restrains us. God restrains us. And God sustains us. Now let's
turn, if you will, to 1 Samuel 25. Let me show you something
here, 1 Samuel 25. In 1 Samuel chapter 25, restraining
grace, David was fleeing from his enemies. This goes back before he was
king. He was fleeing from Solomon, fleeing from his enemies. And
he had a group of good men with him. I forget how many, two or
three hundred, something like that, that came to David and
they followed him. But he was sort of a fugitive. Saul was still king, and a lot
of people didn't like David, and he was running from Saul.
And his men were in need, and they were hungry. He said, you go down to the house
of Nabal, Nabal, N-A-B-A-L, and he's a powerful man and a prosperous
man, and he's got a whole lot of servants and a lot of food,
and he'll give us—his wife's name's Abigail—and he'll give
us the food to feed our men. So they went down, and David's soldiers talked to Nabal.
And he got angry. He said, I don't have food and
provisions to provide a renegade and a fugitive like David. I
don't plan to give him anything. You just go back and tell him
that. Well, they came back and told David. And look at verse
2 Samuel, 1 Samuel 25, verse 13. And David said to his men,
1 Samuel 25, 13. David said to
his men, gird on your sword. Every one of you fellows, gird
on your sword. And they girded on every man's
sword, and David girded on his sword. And this is what David
said in the latter verse. He said, I want you to go down
to the house of Nabal, and I want you to kill him and kill all
his sons and kill all his babies. Everyone that pisseth against
the wall, kill every man in that entire settlement, kill them
all. And those men buckled on their
swords, and David did suck buckle on his, and he started toward
that man's house. But that man had a godly wife.
He was a renegade and an evil man, but he had a godly wife
who loved God. And she heard about it. She knew
David and his men were coming. They were going to wipe him out
and all of them. And she came and met David. And
here it is in verse 23. And when Abigail saw David, she
hastened and lighted off the ash, and fell before David on
her face. And she bowed herself to the
ground, and she fell at his feet. And she said, Upon me, my Lord,
let this iniquity be. And let thine handmaid, I pray
thee, speak in thine audience, and hear the word of thy handmaid. Let not, my Lord, I pray thee,
regard this man of Baal, this evil man, Baal, the son of the
devil, even Nabel. For as his name is, so is he. Nabal, son of the fool. That's what he said. He's a fool. His folly's with him. But I,
thy handmaid, saw not the young men of the Lord. I didn't know
those men came here. Nabal dealt with them. I didn't
know them, dear, which you did send. Now, therefore, listen,
listen to this godly woman. Now, David, my Lord, as the Lord
liveth, And as my soul liveth, seeing the Lord hath withholding
thee from shedding, coming to shed blood, and from avenging
yourself with your own hand, now let thine enemies be, and
they that seek evil, be as my Lord." Let them be just like
Napalm. Deal with them as you will, but
don't avenge yourself by your own hand. Don't avenge your enemies. Let God do it. Let God do it. Let Him do it in His own thing.
And He will. He will. And you know, David
heard her. Look down at the next, verse
thirty-two. And David said to Abigail, Blessed
be the Lord God of Israel. Oh, thank God you came, which
sent me, sent thee today to meet me, and blessed be thy advice. Oh, I wish I could give good
advice, don't you? I want to. I want to. I want to be as a handmaid of
the Lord like Abigail, yet to come with a message of peace. Don't avenge your enemies. Let
God do it. He does a better job of it. He
takes care of the whole situation. He will, in due time. You wait
and see. I've seen it through fifty-some-odd
years of pastoring churches. I've watched God deal with His
enemies. He deals with them. Blessed be
your advice, blessed be you which kept me this day from coming
to Shedron and from avenging myself with my own hand. Thank you. You know something?
He married her later. When her husband, God killed
her husband, he gave her, he gave her David. Restraining grace
and sufficient grace. Like David, like Paul, the apostle,
he prayed God. The Lord gave him a thorn in
the flesh. He prayed three times. He prayed three times. The Lord moved this. He said,
my grace is sufficient for you. I'll move it in my own time.
But my grace is restraining and it's sufficient. Now here's the
last, my last word. Dying grace. Dying grace, and
I'm older than most of you here, so I can really apply this to
myself and let you apply it to you wherever you are in this
journey of life. Dying grace. A man came to Spurgeon
one time and he said, Mr. Spurgeon, I've got to confess
to you, I don't have dying grace. I don't pray for death. I don't
have dying grace. Spurgeon said, he was such a
wise man. We like his writings. He said,
are you dying? He said, no. He said, you don't
need it. If you're not dying, you don't
need dying grace. The Lord gives dying grace to
those who die. And you and I have experienced
this. When our loved ones and our close loved ones come to
die, God gives dying grace. I've watched it. I've seen it. So peacefully they go out to
meet the Lord because he gives them that peace in his own time.
And I want you to turn to 2 Timothy 4, and this is where Paul was
contemplating and anticipating. Paul was not only contemplating,
he was anticipating his death. And here in 2 Timothy 4, verse
6, this is it, and I'll close with this. 2 Timothy 4, verse
6. The apostle Paul says, I'm now
ready to be offered. I'm ready to be offered. Time
of my departure is at hand. It's here. Just a matter of days. When he said that, he looked
at the past without regret. What did he say? I fought a good
fight. I don't have any regrets. I fought
a good fight. And that's what your pastor's
doing now. He's fighting a good fight. And some of these days
when he gets old like his daddy, he's going to say, I fought a
good fight. Thank God. I fought a good fight. And secondly, Paul looked at
the present with no complaints. I finished my course. I finished what God gave me to
do. I finished my course. That's when our Lord said, I
finished the work He gave me to do. Glorify thy son that thy
son may glorify thee. No complaints. I finished my
course. And then he looked to the future
with a good hope. I've fought a good fight, I've
finished my course, I've kept the faith. Henceforth, there's
laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
Judge, shall give me in that day." And listen, here's Paul,
what a gracious man, not to me only. I'm not talking about me,
I'm talking about us. And not to me only, but to all
of them. that do love our Lord Jesus Christ,
that do love His Word, that do love His gospel, that do love
His people. God's going to give you a crown
of life. The righteous judge is going
to give to all His people, because He's the God of all grace. He giveth more grace when the
burdens grow greater. He giveth more strength when
the labors increase. To added affliction he adds his
mercy. To multiplied trials is multiplied
peace. His love has no limit. His grace
has no measure. His power has no boundary known
to men. And out of his infinite riches
in Jesus Christ, he giveth, and he giveth, and he giveth, and
he giveth, and he giveth more grace, because he's the God of
all grace. Alright, the Lord bless you,
thank you. Turn to hymn number 236. Stand
please. We'll sing verses 1, 2, and 4. Number 236. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that
saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see Was grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed When we've been there ten thousand
years Bright shining as the sun We've no less days to sing God's
praise than when we first begun. All right. Okay. Okay. Okay.