Now it's my turn. Thank you for that song. I love
that old song. Jeremiah chapter 50. Darius, bless my heart, through
the gospel he's preached for many, many years. And he's done it again twice
since I've been here. I'm glad it's a four-part message
just because we get part three and part four tomorrow. So I
can't hardly wait to hear what he's got to say yet. He's about
to cover the whole Bible. Maybe he'll preach from Gil's
Commentary or something like that. Isaiah chapter 50. Verse 19. Let's read along with verse 18. ìTherefore
thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, ìBehold, I will punish the king
of Babylon and his land, as I have punished the king of Assyria.
And I will bring Israel again to his habitation. He shall feed
on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon
Mount Ephraim and Gilead. And in those days, and in that
time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for,
and there shall be none, and the sins of Judah, and they shall
not be found. For I will pardon them whom I
reserve." Now this passage speaks of the historical deliverance
of Israel from Babylonian captivity. And as all deliverances in scripture
in the Old Testament are all about the Lord Jesus Christ and
His work, revelation of His successful work on Calvary's tree, and the
deliverance of His people by His grace. This passage teaches
that the salvation wrought on Calvary is a done deal. It's a done deal, and it's eternal
for the elect of God. Most religions that we know of
speak of a thing called eternal security, and all but one of
them is a false hope in eternal security. Their hope is based
on free will and decision-based, aisle-trotting, altar-hitting,
praying-through, never-doubting, man-exalting religion. That security is hatched by man's
insatiable penchant for self-deception and his stubborn desire to willfully
rest in a false hope and a refuge of lies, as Isaiah describes
in Isaiah 28. But there is a real confidence. There is full assurance of faith,
full assurance of knowledge, full assurance of faith based
on understanding. And it has to do with God and
what He has done by the bloody death of the Lord Jesus Christ
on Calvary's tree. If Christ is the author and finisher
of faith, you can rest assured, quiet and peace will follow. and that his work was successful
and perfect and did what it was supposed to do. And nothing can
be taken from it and nothing can be added to it because what
God does, he does forever. I love this passage of scripture.
I loved it since the first time I read it. It makes me happy. It dang near makes me giddy when
I read it. It is poetry and prose. It is rhyme and reason. It is
melody and lyric. It is stanza and refrain. And all about the accomplished
redemption that our Lord made on Calvary's tree. It declares
a sure salvation wrought by Christ. And this glorious report of the
salvation that belongs to God is a record of the method of
grace. The method of grace. it is entirely and overtly and
adamantly void of human fingerprints. Untainted by human will or disqualified
by the creature's participation, man is revealed to be one who
is not the actor, but the one who is acted upon by sovereign
will, as our brother's been telling us for the last two nights. exercised
in free and effectual, eternal grace and mercy. This is salvation. That word
is bandied about quite a bit. Almost every religion uses it.
They use words like deliverance and escape and salvation and
redemption and ransom. But those words actually mean
something. They actually mean something.
And primarily each of these words presupposes in a state where
freedom is non-existent, where the will may desire something
but cannot accomplish what it desires. Why even use words like
deliverance if a person is free? Why bother? Religion uses words
like these but they have no value because religion has put man
in a state of freedom and salvation and redemption and deliverance
actually have no meaning at all in religion if you just go logically
by what they say. But the Bible, however, uses
these words always in concert with words like captivity. or
words like bondage, or words like fetters, and words like
chains, and words like prison, where freedom does not exist.
Salvation means nothing if a man is already free. It means nothing. There's no wonder why you have
such a hodgepodge out here of things going on in religion because
they're talking about something that doesn't mean anything. And
when you talk about captivity in the Word of God, that's ordained
of God, that's part of God's plan. He's going to deliver you
because He's made you captive. Now that's just so. He told Abraham,
He says, your seed's going to be great, it's going to be mighty,
and I'm going to send it to this strange land, and they're going
to become slaves in that strange land, and they're going to be
slaves for 430 years, and then I'm going to deliver them by
my mighty hand. That's all part of the plan,
it seems. And we are captive by nature. You're captive to
our sin. We're captive to Satan. That's
the language of scripture. God who is stronger than Satan,
Christ who is stronger than Satan must enter his house and bind
him up in order to deliver us. But what are we doing in his
house? He's the prince of the power of the air. What are we
doing in his house? It's where we belong by nature,
by nature. in this passage of scripture,
in the first place of the language, needs no doubt concerning the
accomplishment of what our Lord says He accomplishes here. God
says, I will. Our brothers made that clear.
I will. That settles it. Just like He
said to Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4.35. He does according to His
will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of
the earth. Who's that? That's everybody and everything and none can stay his hand, or
say unto him, what doest thou? Now sadly for the most part,
the term God's will today is used as some kind of hook, used
in the world as an afterthought, usually found in the tongue of
men after something has happened that's outside their realm of
control. Something they can't take credit for. The Lord is
in the whirlwind, and men can't take credit for that, so they
talk about God's will when the whirlwind comes. I expect there
was a whole lot of talk about God's purpose and God's will
when Matthew came along shore. People talked about God. Why?
Because it's something they can't control. It's out of control. Matthew was just out of control.
He was big and huge and monstrous and brought in a storm surge
of 20 feet in some places, a monstrous thing. Why didn't we stop that?
Because we can't. I was talking with one fellow,
I don't know if it was Jerry or not, he said, I remember when
I was a boy, they used to try to seed hurricanes with dry ice,
you remember that? Because they knew it cost strength
off of warm water and they put dry ice down in it and it didn't
work. And the fellow said he was talking to one Air Force
captain and was asking him, have you ever thought about exploding
a nuclear bomb in the middle of one of those things and see
if it works? He says, yeah, we did that way back when, small
nuclear device, we exploded one of them. I said, what happened?
He said, it just made it real mad. Everything's out of our control.
God's in control. His will will be done. Scripture
declares that God's will is sure for accomplishment. is never
a case even a moment in which God's will is not done or is
frustrated or disannulled and here in this passage His will
is wondrously demonstrated in the complete complete salvation
of the elect. He says I will and they shall. You can count on it. This is
how it is and this is how it shall be. I will bring Israel,
he said. I'm gonna bring them. I will
bring Israel again to its habitation and he shall feed on Carmel and
Bashan and his soul shall be satisfied upon Mount Ephraim
and Gilead. In Deuteronomy chapter 6 and
verse 23, our Lord said, I brought you out to bring you in. I brought you out of Egypt to
bring you into Canaan." And that's where they ended up, in Canaan,
because God said that's what he'd do. Now I know that some
religious derelict is going to shoot off his mouth and say something
like, well, I might not want to come. Stupid, stupid language. You know why? Because they've
never been captive. They don't know where it is to
be in captive. You ever been in jail? I want to ask for a show of hands.
I spent a couple nights in the hoose, gal. It's tough and stir,
I'll tell you. I was so glad when somebody opened
up the door and let me out. But that morning when they came
with the keys and let me out, I didn't say, well, you know,
I don't know whether I'll accept this or reject this. Stupid kind of language. I remember
seeing on TV a car wreck one time. It was a horrible wreck. A mother and two children were
actually hit from a broad-sided and spun up and was caught between
two edges of a bridge on each side of a lane. And they were
just hanging there by the one bolt on each bumper. The two
children were still in baby seats and the mother taking the impact
of the crash and she was pretty beat up. And they gathered around
all the policemen and the firemen. They were looking. They didn't
know what to do because They if there was afraid if they moved
anybody this thing is just gonna fall down to the highway beneath And as the Lord would have it
a group of army men were going from base to base and one of
the Army men was an engineer and he came he said I've got
a machine. I think we can use As it went back in his in his
group of trucks there brought forth this some kind of crane
and locked on to this and held that car in place while they
went down and got those babies out first, and the mother was
severely injured. And just as they were about to take her out,
she said, I don't know whether to accept this or reject this. No, she was weeping. When that
hand reached down for her, and pulled her out and saved
her children. Not one person who was rescued from that dangling
vehicle ever thought that when the merciful hand of the rescuer
reached out to him to slap it away until he made some decision
to accept or reject it. Religion is stupid. It's stupid. It's nonsensical. nonsensical. I never heard that
woman in that wreck whose children were saved say,
I know you want to save me, but it's always been up to me. Stupidity knows no bounds when
it comes to religious presumption. How deep is the delusion that
even would be harbored such a thought? God says, I will bring Israel. and Israel shall be brought.
And when it talks about Israel and the Word of God, the Old
Testament is talking about the Israel of God, true Israel, the
church of the living God. Where will they be brought? They'll
be brought to His habitation. Brought home with God to His
habitation. He said He built His temple and
the Word of God is His habitation. God's lovely house, God's temple,
God's pasture, God's dwelling place, God's sheepfold, God's
habitation, God's flock. That's where they'll come. They'll
come to God's house. What shall they do when they
get there? Well, they'll work till Jesus
comes. They'll build a bridge to glory. No. They'll press on
to higher ground perhaps. No, they're not going to do that
either. They'll suffer for the cause. It doesn't even say they'll
do that. It says they shall feed and they shall rest. I will bring
Israel again to his habitation and he shall feed on caramel
and beshan and his soul shall be satisfied upon Mount Ephraim
and Mount Gilead over in Zephaniah. Zephaniah chapter 3 is one of
the finest chapters in scripture denoting the gospel in the Old
Testament. But in Zephaniah chapter 3 verse
13 it says this, The remnant of Israel, and that is that small
scrap of humanity that God has chosen out of every kindred nation,
tongue and people. The remnant of Israel shall not
do iniquity. And if you are a child of God,
before God you don't do iniquity. This is what God says. You say,
wait a minute, I know what I am. I know what you are too. But
before God, and listen, how God sees it is how it is. No matter how you see it, but
however God sees it, that's how it is. The remnant of Israel
shall not do iniquity. Isn't that what John said in
John chapter 3? And he wasn't talking about some
list of things that we're to try to be. He said, this is how
God sees these sons. My children don't sin. He said,
that can't be right. It is too. The remnant of Israel
shall not do iniquity nor speak lies. Neither shall a deceitful
tongue be found in their mouth. How come? For they shall feed. And lie down. That don't sound like much. Sounds
good to me. Especially the older I get, that
sounds better all the time. To feed and lie down. And none
shall make them afraid. They shall feed and lie down.
There's no iniquity. They have no iniquity. There's
not a deceitful tongue in their mouth. Because they feed and
lie down. They feed on the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ. They rest in His finished work,
and that's it. They're do-nothings, really.
Because everything they do, they mess up. So they look for a time
when they can just stop doing stuff. That's the child of God. My mother, bless her heart, 92
years old, still tougher than nails, still smart as a whip.
I used to make her so upset, I'd say, Mom, if there's nothing
to do, I'm not going to do anything. She'd say, you need to find something
to do. I said, no, you need to find something to do. I don't
need to find something to do. I like to work, but I don't like
to exercise. I enjoy doing things when something
needs to be done, but if it don't need to be done, I'm not going
to do anything. You're going to find me in my lounge chair
reading a book or sitting out under a stump somewhere, under
a tree somewhere enjoying life. Why? Because that's what it's
all about. Eat, sleep, rest. God said, this is what my people
do. They rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. Where shall they feed? They'll feed on Carmel and Bashan.
Carmel means a planted garden, a garden, an orchard, a vineyard,
a park. It means it's full and green. But full ears of corn,
a plentiful and fruitful field. My daughter is a garden enclosed,
the Lord said. Our Lord said in Ezekiel 36,
I'm going to do all this for you, not for your sake, but for
my own sake. And one thing I'm going to do is I'm going to bring
on the corn and the wine. I'm going to make sure you have
a plenty. Bashan is a place of a defeated
enemy. So they're going to eat, they're going to lie down, they're
going to feed a plenty, and they're going to do it where the enemy
has been defeated. The enemy, of course, is Satan
and sin and self. The elect feed and live in a
derived domain of the prince of the fire and the air. We're
here in his domain, but that's a derived domain. He's on a chain.
He's God's ape and can only do what God says for him to do.
Because he was defeated on Calvary Street. Satan bruised his heel,
but Christ crushed his head. We live in peace in the midst
of our enemies just like our brother just read. Because Christ
rules in the midst of his enemies and his people shall be willing
in the day of his power. How will they fare in this wicked
world? They'll be just fine. As long as they don't watch too
much TV about what's going on. So it won't be toxic for their
poor brains. But they'll be alright. God's
children will be alright. Don't worry about them. They
will have satisfied, sated, fooled to the brim, packed down and
running over souls. They being complete in Christ
will want for nothing. They'll want for nothing. They
will possess all things because the Lord is their shepherd. And
they shall not want. David said, Blessed is the man
whom Jow chooses and causes to approach unto thee. You'll be
satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even thy holy temple.
The finest thing that ever happens to a child of God is something
like this. Where they can get together with their brothers
and sisters in Christ and hear somebody tell them about Jesus
Christ. Over and over and over again. They're satisfied with
that. That'll do. That'll do. That'll do. One fellow said,
that'll do when the world's on fire. And it will. What could possibly bring about
such peace and satisfaction in a doomed and dying world? Only one thing can bring peace
and calm and fill the soul with fatness. Just one thing. And
how blessed it is for our God to be so wonderfully, kindly,
tenderhearted to just narrow it down to one thing. I know some people say, well,
it's just one way. There ain't no other way. Thank
God. Just one way. The gospel is the
doctrine of reduction. It's the doctrine of reduction.
All things are brought down to one person and one act that he
did and one thing he accomplished on Calvary Street. And that's
all our hope and all of our salvation and all our desire. One thing. We don't have to be looking over
here and over there. And don't pretend that you don't understand
if it's just one thing, because it's just one thing. Enemies
understand that it's one thing, and that's what bothers them.
It makes them mad, but they understand it's just one thing. Our hope
is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. This is what we have. And this
is the news that has been given to the child of God whom God
has brought to an understanding and a realization of Jesus Christ
and what he did on Calvary Street. My sins are gone. Roll that over in your old noggin
for a minute. Let that go all the way down
to your heart. He says this, in those days, and in that time,
saith the Lord, capital L-O-R-D, Jehovah, the iniquity of Israel
shall be sought for, and there shall be none. N-O-N-E. The iniquity of Israel shall
be sought for, and there shall be none, and the sins of Judah,
and they shall not be found. They shall not be found. And
these are not the musings of some religious zealot or some
inane scribblings found on the wall of a rubber room in some
insane asylum. These are the words of Him who
cannot lie, whose word is truth, whose gospel is the power of
God unto salvation, who upholds all things by the word of His
power, who speaks, and it shall be done. Thus saith the Lord. This means that that's the end
of it. When God says it, enough said,
nothing more necessary to be said, the iniquity of Israel
shall be sought for, and there shall be none. That's good news. Think of it. None. It'll be sought
for and not be found. Were these words not spoken by
God Himself, we might have reason, indeed wouldn't have ample reason
to discount them experientially and experimentally. We know that
we are sinners. We feel it every day. That's
why we're told to reckon the old man today, because he ain't
dead yet. He was crucified with Christ, but we're to reckon Him
to be dead, because that's the best we can do. Because He just
bothers us all the time, doesn't He? The flesh, the old man. But God says, in God's economy
and according to His sovereign grace, because of the substitutionary
work of Jesus Christ, When God looks, and God who sees everything,
and knows all things, and controls all things, when God looks and
searches for sin, He finds none. He finds none. And if He can't
find any sin, listen brother, Sin is gone. My sin. Oh, the bliss of this
glorious thought. My sin not in part, but the whole
was nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord always. No sin. It's God. None. Not a blot. Not a blemish. He looks at you, whoever you
are, as His bride. And He said, My love, thou art
lovely, there is no spot in thee. None whatsoever. Put away. Sins put away. So perfect and complete was the
sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ that no sin is found upon His
elect. They are gone, vanished, annihilated, put away, separated,
as far as the east is from the west, behind God's back, at the
bottom of the sea, however you want to describe it. It means
they're vanquished. They do not exist before God. But now, once into the end of
the world, have He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice
of Himself. Please God to bruise Him when
He made His soul an offering for sin. He shall see His seed
and the Lord shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the
Lord shall prosper in his hand. And he shall see of, that is
the product of, the result of, he shall see of the travail of
his soul, and shall be satisfied. For my righteous servant, who's
full of skill and knowledge, shall justify many, for he shall
bear their iniquities. Gone. No sin. No sin. And why has God been
so gracious to such wretched sinners? He said, for I will
pardon whom I reserve. Reserved. God will pardon. That means to spare, forgive,
be propitiated for. Who? Them whom I reserve. You see, somebody is in for standing
before God without sin. Somebody's in for saving. He must be speaking good folks
and religious folks who are morally upright folks who have made a
decision for Jesus, who let him save them, who invited him into
their hearts. Now you can scan the passage
and study this passage and peruse it upon length. Search hard and
long for a hint of even an intimation of faith. It ain't there. to
find some, even a dollop of repentance, it's not there. Read Jeremiah,
you'll know that's the case. Search diligently for any action
of man, dig down deep for human inclination, delve the depths
for the mourner's mind, and if you will, salty tears on faulty
altars, you're not gonna find any of it. Long before faith
was given, before man existed, long-air repentance was granted,
Back yonder in the secluded annals of eternal purpose, observe the
lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Blessed sovereign,
blessed substitute, blessed sweet sacred offering, the suffering
one, I see a full and eternal justification purposed and to
be revealed and realized in time. Hear the word of the maker, sustainer,
and consummator of all. You can set your teeth on this,
this heavenly edict, this sacred vow, this immutable oath uttered
by the triune Godhead. No if, no might, no shoulda,
no coulda, no oughta. I will pardon them whom I have
reserved. Who are they? The reserved ones. I will pardon that remnant, that
remnant. Their blessed ones, their names
are on heaven's list, ordained to eternal life before the world
began. A reserved place at the wedding supper of the Lamb. Their
name engraved on the seating chart, eternally earmarked for
emancipation, picked out, selected, elected, severed, chosen, spoken
for, betrothed, and all anticipating the judgment when the Lamb's
book of life will be opened and their name will be called. We
don't fear the judgment. Why? Why should we? Search for the sin. There is
none. It can't be found. It's been
put away. Revelation 20 talks about the
judgment, talks about God opening up books to judge men out of. Graves will be opened and men
will be resurrected and stand before thrice holy God. And I
know it makes for good writing when people say, oh, what a horrible
day it's going to be. You know, people talk like that.
Oh, how afraid people ought to be. Not God's child ain't afraid. Because those books don't have
anything to do with the child of God. They're already standing
with the Lord Jesus Christ. There's another book, a roll
book. We like to sing it also, when
the roll is called upon you, I'll be there. If you're on a
roll, you will be. When your name is called, you're
not going to tremble and hide behind a rock. Because your name
has been written in the Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation
of the world. And though men are judged out of those books
for their sins and their deeds, you're judged based on the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ and what He's done for you. And here's
what you'll hear at the judgment. Gary Shepherd. And he'll say,
I'm here, present and accounted for. That's the Lamb's Book of
Life. You afraid of that? Present. Present. Why? No sin. No sin. I will bring Israel again to
his habitation. He shall feed on Carmel and Bashan.
His soul shall be satisfied from Mount Ephraim to Gilead. In those
days and at that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel
shall be sought for, and there shall be none. The sins of Judah,
they shall not be found, for I will pardon whom I reserve."
There ain't but one thing in this world that's a sure thing, and that's that the work of Jesus
Christ accomplish salvation for every one of His elect. That's
a sure thing. And if you're His, I'm looking
at people whom God can see no sin in and will remember no sin for. That's good news. If you're a
sinner, that's good news. For everybody else, it's just
bad news. God bless you. Thank you very
much.