Tricia and I are very thankful
to be here. It's such a blessing for us to be reunited with so
many of our loving brethren that we've had the privilege and blessing
of being with over the years. We love your pastor and Shirley,
thank you so much for y'all's hospitality. Frank, thank you for that message.
I found myself in my heart needing Christ again. And that's where
I find comfort for myself and I hope tonight that the Lord
will comfort our hearts in enabling us to find our hope in the finished
work and glorious person of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no
comfort anywhere else. Notice in verse three of this
passage of scripture, for the Lord shall comfort Zion. He will comfort all her waste
places. He will make her wilderness like
Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness
shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody. The only time I ever get any
comfort is when The Spirit of God enables me to look outside
myself and set my affections on things above where Christ
is seated at the right hand of God. In Isaiah chapter 40, the
Lord tells the prophet, comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Speak ye comfortably to them. Don't preach at them, don't preach
over them, don't Preach the gospel to them. Tell them that their
warfare is accomplished. Tell them that all of their iniquity
has been taken away and that they've received of the Lord
a double blessing. And I love what Isaiah, Isaiah
says, well, and the Spirit said, cry. And Isaiah said, where do
I start this message? What do I, what do I cry? And
the Lord said, tell them their grass. That'll be a comfort to
them. That will remind them that there's
nothing in them to give them any hope. The only reason that
they would look to Christ is if they can't find any comfort
within themselves. And that's what this passage
of scripture says the same thing. Notice in verse 1, he says, Look
unto the rock which you are hewn and not unto the hole of the
pit which you are digged. Modern day religion would have
us look to the law, look to our sin. The Lord Jesus Christ said,
and I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. As Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of
Man be lifted up." And those children of Israel bitten by
those viperous serpents in the wilderness is a picture of our
condition with our sin, isn't it? And what did the Lord tell
the children of Israel to do? He said, look, look at that brazen
serpent. The one who is bearing all of
your sin and putting them away once and for all. The one who
is satisfying the demands of God's holy justice. Look to him. Modern day religion would have
us have conferences on how to kill the snakes or how to keep
snakes out of your tent or how to heal yourself from the wound
of a snake. But the Lord didn't say that.
But isn't that our tendency? To get so occupied with the snakes
on the ground that we forget to look at the serpent that's
on the pole. As the Lord said, look to me,
look to me and live. He's our only comfort. Comfort
ye, comfort ye my people. And I find great comfort in considering
who it is that's speaking. Notice in verse one, hearken,
To me, I love the way the prophets introduce their message in the
scripture. It's a very simple introduction.
If you've studied public speaking, they'll tell you that you need
to do something very provocative in your introduction. You need
to captivate people's attention within the first minute or so
of your talk or you'll lose their attention altogether. What is
it that captivates the attention of God's people? What did the
prophets use to introduce their message? Thus saith the Lord. Thus saith the Lord. That's it.
I just want to know what God has to say. And now he says,
hearken unto me. God's preachers stand up to preach
the gospel. What do they do? They say, open
the word of God. Open the word of God. And what
happens when God speaks? We're like those children, like
those disciples on the road to Emmaus, aren't we? Slow of heart
to believe, and yet, as the Lord begins to speak, and then as
he breaks open the bread of life, what happens? Did our hearts
not burn within us as he spake with us along the way? as he
revealed himself to us. And he does, he reveals himself
in his word. Hearken unto me, I'm going to
speak to you in my word. For all scripture is given by
inspiration of God, and all scripture is profitable for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,
that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
And no scripture became by private interpretation, but holy men
of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. If you've
got an interest in Christ, you've got an interest in his word,
don't you? What sayeth the scriptures? That's what the Apostle Paul
said. That settles all controversy. Doesn't matter what you think
or what I think. What does God say? And here the Lord takes
his children, gets down like we would do with a small child
and puts our face in his hands and he says, hearken unto me.
Listen to me. I have something very precious,
very comforting, very important to say unto you. when after the feeding of the
5,000 and the Lord told those people, the only reason you're
following me is so you can have your bellies full. You're not really
interested in what I have to say. And they all left. And the Lord said to the disciples,
will you leave me also? And you remember what Peter said?
Lord, where should we go? Where are we gonna go? You alone
have the words of eternal life. We know and are sure that thou
art the Christ, the son of the living God. You've shut us up
to your word. And then when the Pharisees sent
those men to arrest the Lord and bring him back, and they
came back without him, and they said, where is he? Oh, never
a man spake like that man. He spake with authority. We couldn't
put our hands on him. When God speaks, he speaks with
authority. He speaks with tenderness. He speaks words of comfort to
his children. I love the fact that sinners
were never intimidated by the Lord Jesus Christ. They never
felt shunned by Him. They never felt like, well, I
wouldn't be welcome. No, they were drawn to Him. The only people that were ever
offended by Christ were the self-righteous. But the sinners came, why? Because
they heard him say, hearken unto me, hearken unto me, look to
me, I'm gonna give you comfort. Notice what he says in verse
one. Ye that follow after righteousness. Ye that follow after righteousness.
We've heard a lot about that already this weekend, haven't
we? What a wonderful message Brother Bruce brought last night
on the Lord Jesus Christ as our only righteousness. He dealt
with those passages from the Proverbs on treasures of wickedness
and the treasures that men have, that men try to present themselves
to God for approval or for acceptance. And the Lord says, all of your
treasures are wickedness. I thought of an illustration
as he was preaching. Um, a person makes deposits into
a bank, uh, by mail. They're sending their money in
small deposits, large deposits over a long period of time. And
then finally that person proudly shows up at the bank, opens the
door, goes to the teller, says, I want to make a withdrawal.
And he identifies himself, and the teller says, sir, just a
moment. And she calls upstairs to the president of the bank,
and he comes down and confirms that this is the man. And immediately,
he says to the guards, lock the door. Cuff him. This is the one
who's been sending in counterfeit money for the last 10 years.
Now, if you go before God, Try to take a withdrawal on your
righteousness. That's what he's going to say.
Send him to prison. Everything he's put in this bank
is counterfeit. There's but one righteousness.
That's the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. David said,
I will speak of thy righteousness, even of thine only. Men have
a zeal for God. And in their zeal for God, they
go about trying to establish their own righteousness. But
they do it because they're ignorant of the righteousness of God.
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believeth. Yes, the law is holy, just, and
good. But the law has never made a person holy. The law has never
justified a single person. And the law has never added an
ounce of goodness to one person. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness. They that seek after righteousness
are seeking after the Lord Jesus Christ. I spoke with Tony last
week and Tony was asking me about Bible prophecy and we were able
to begin to speak about the gospel. And I asked him, I said, well,
Tony, I said, what do you think God requires of you? And he said,
well, to keep the commandments. And I said, well, how are you
doing with that? And he said, well, I'm doing my best. I'm
doing my best. Well, Tony lied to me. He's not
doing his best. You and I have never done our
best. And even if we did do our best, it wouldn't be good enough.
It wouldn't be good enough. God requires absolute perfection. You that seek after righteousness,
the only way to find righteousness is to find Christ. to seek after
Him. He's the only righteousness we
have. Talking to another man recently
and he was telling me about, he said, he said, I've just had
a, I have a horrible sin in my life that I just don't know if
God will forgive me for it. And I said, well, do me a favor. I said, I want you to think about
the best thing you've ever done in your whole life. He said,
well, what would that be? I said, I don't know, just pick
something. Pick something. He said, OK. I said, you need
to be forgiven for that. Your sin's a whole lot worse
than you think it is. The only hope for righteousness that we
have is to have the Lord Jesus Christ stand in our stead before
God and present himself on our behalf. Now the Lord says, hearken
unto me, ye that follow after righteousness. Ye that seek the
Lord. The only way we're going to seek
the Lord is if he makes us to seek him and in seeking him we'll
find righteousness. We'll find righteousness. Paul
said, Oh, that I might be found in him, not having my own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that righteousness, which is by the
faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hearken unto me. You want righteousness? Seek the Lord. Oh Lord, turn
my heart to seek Thee. Give me eyes to see, give me
ears to hear. The hearing eye and the seeing eye and the hearing
ear are both from the Lord, you know that. We're not gonna hear
His voice and we're not gonna see the truth of the gospel apart
from His free, sovereign, omnipotent grace. Lord, shut me up to depend
upon thee completely for my salvation. And that's what he says. Now,
I love what Paul said in Philippians chapter three when he said, brethren,
I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting
those things which are behind, I press towards the prize of
the high calling of God in Christ. We paralyze ourselves, don't
we? And worrying about our past lots
of times. Paul said, I forget those things
that I trusted in for my righteousness. I forget whatever successes I've
had. But now here the Lord's telling us to look back. Look
back to where I found you. Look back to the rock from which
I hewed you. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ is
the rock of ages, but never in the scriptures are we spoken
of as being hewn from Christ. Our only hope of acceptance before
God is to be in Christ. We've got to be like Moses was
on Mount Sinai, hid in the cleft of that rock and found in Christ. So what's the reference here? Well, one of the prophets, Jeremiah,
said, our rock is not like their rock. We come into this world
by nature, idolaters. We fashion a God in the darkened
imagination of our own hearts that looks like us. We set ourselves
up on the throne of God. And the rock of idolatry is the
rock from which the Lord carves, quarries, if you will, every
single one of his children, every single one of them. He goes down,
where's this quarry located? Well, it's located under the
mountain of the law, the mountain of sin that condemns us. And the Lord goes down and He
quarries out certain rocks, particular rocks, bloodstained rocks, chosen
rocks, not rocks that look better than other rocks. But He said,
remember the rock from which you were hewn. Remember that
mountain of idolatry that held you captive. You couldn't believe
the gospel. Remember where I got you from.
Remember where I found you. You thought that your will was
the deciding factor in your salvation. You thought that your works were
somehow going to earn you favor with God. The Lord had to come. pour you out of that rock, make
you his own. That cold, hard, darkened rock
of unbelief. Remember the rock. There's a
lot of things we ought to forget, but there's things we ought to
remember. The Lord told the children of Israel, remember, you were
in bondage in Egypt. I came and brought you out. Remember
the rock that I hewned you out of. That way you won't take any
hope in yourself. You won't be looking to yourself
for anything. You'll know that I did it. You'll be thankful
to the point of worship. You'll be humbled in knowing
that you didn't have anything to do with it. And you will be
compassionate towards those who are still in the rock quarry
of unbelief and idolatry. And you'll pray for them. You'll
tell them about the one who brought you out. Remember the pit from
which you were digged. You see that? That's a picture
of a clay pit. where the potter goes and digs
out miry clay for the purpose of fashion it into beautiful
ceramics and pottery. And the Lord said, You were clay
in my hands. I'm the potter, you're the clay.
I've got the sovereign right to make out of the same lump
of clay some vessels of honor and some of dishonor. No man
can stay my hand and no man can say unto him, what doest thou?
I'll have mercy upon whom I'll have mercy. I fashioned you out
of the miry clay. And I didn't send anybody else
down there. I understand from reading about these clay pits
that they were muddy, messy places, and they will often send the
slaves down there to get the clay to bring up to where the
potter would work with it. The Lord said, no, I'm going
to go down into the potter, into the clay pit myself. In the previous
chapter, he says, is my hand short that I cannot save? No. Remember where I found you. Remember where you were. Listen to what the Lord said
in Psalm chapter 40. He brought me also out of a horrible
pit. Out of a horrible pit. Out of
the miry clay. And he set my feet upon a rock. There's my only hope. Remember,
remember where the Lord brought you from. It'll cause you to
not look to yourself. It'll cause you to cast all your
hope on him for all your righteousness and all your salvation and all
your law keeping. Look unto Abraham, your father. Now, Romans chapter 4 and Romans
chapter 9 speak of Abraham's faith. And I fear that sometimes
we get the impression that Abraham is being exalted here as a great
man, a strong man, a man who has exemplary character and virtue
about him. But just the opposite is true.
Faith is not one's ability, it's God giving them the ability to
acknowledge their absolute total inability. Faith is a last resort. Faith is what you do when you
can't do anything else. And the Lord says, remember Abraham. I had to get Abraham to 100 years
old and Sarah to 90 years old before they gave up on trying
to fulfill my promises themselves. They didn't have any place else
to go. They were shut up. Now, contrary
to what most folks believe, faith is not the cause of our salvation.
It is the result of it. When a baby is born into the
world and that baby comes forth and takes its first breath, that
breath does not give that baby life. The breath of that baby
gives evidence that the child is alive. If the child doesn't
breathe, it's a stillbirth. And so it is in our salvation.
Faith is not the cause of our life. Regeneration is the cause
of our life. The Lord taking out that heart
of stone and putting in a heart of flesh. Faith is what the regenerate
heart does. Faith is what the believing person
does. Why? Because they can't do anything
else. They're desperate. They've got
no place else to go. That's what faith is. It's not
being strong and brave and courageous. When the Lord said, consider
Abraham, consider the fact that Abraham was a pagan in the Ur
of the Chaldees, that I brought Abraham out and I gave him a
promise, and then he messed things up trying to fulfill that promise
himself. And I had to wait until he was, until his body, the scripture
says, Romans chapter nine. Turn with me there. Turn with
me to Romans chapter nine. I'm sorry, let's look at Romans
chapter four. Romans chapter four. Verse 18, who against hope? believed in hope that he might
become the father of many nations according to that which was spoken,
so shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith,
he considered not his own body now dead when he was about a
hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb.
He staggered not at the promises of God through unbelief, but
was strong in faith, giving glory to God." Paul said, His strength
is made perfect in my weakness. When I am weak, then I am strong. Faith is an acknowledgment of
one's complete inability to do anything for themselves. And
that's why the Lord said, look at the rock from which you were
hewn. Look at the pit from which I got you out of. Look at Abraham. Go back with me, tar text. Look unto Sarah that bare you.
Sarah laughed. She didn't think it was possible,
did she? For I called him alone. Now, that verse can also be read,
and probably is a better reading of it, I alone called him. Either way, it's true. But it
fits the context of what the Lord is saying to us here in
this whole passage. I alone called him. He wasn't
coming out. He wasn't going to believe. I
called him. I blessed him. I caused him to
increase. Abraham didn't do that. Consider
Abraham. Abraham's not some great superhuman,
bigger-than-life figure. Abraham, the Lord is saying,
is just like you and me. He couldn't do anything except
cast his hope on the promises of God. He was shut up. That was the only option he had.
And that's the only way that faith will ever believe God.
If you've got an option to believe God or do something else, you'll
always do something else, won't you? That's why coming to the
Lord Jesus Christ is not a choice. It's a work of grace. God leaves
us with no place else to go. For the Lord shall comfort Zion. Where's your comfort? We're grass. The Lord's spoken. His words,
powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, able to divide us under
the soul from the spirit. The thoughts and the intents
of the heart are all exposed by God's word. And what does
God say? Look unto Jesus, the author and
the finisher of your faith. All our hope, all our salvation,
all our comfort, all of it is in Him. Now, I want to tell you
a familiar story that I think will illustrate this point. And I want to use Absalom, Absalom
as a type of Christ. You say, well, Absalom was the
enemy of the gospel. Yeah, he was. Cyrus was a pagan
king and in Isaiah chapter 45, he's clearly a type of Christ.
Pharaoh had no interest in the things of God, but his relationship
with Joseph, he's clearly a type of the father, isn't he? You
see, this book is a spiritual book. It's a book about the Lord
Jesus Christ. In the volume of the book, it
is written of me. Think about Absalom with me for
just a moment. His name, first of all, is a
conjunction of two words you know, Abba, Father, and Shalom,
Peace. My father is peace. You're going
to have peace with God? It'll be through the Son of God,
the Lord Jesus Christ, alone. Alone. Absalom, stole the hearts
of the people. That's the reason he had to die.
And all you have to do is go to John chapter 11, after the
resuscitation of Lazarus, some of the Jews came back to Jerusalem
and reported to the Pharisees what had happened, and the Sanhedrin
met. The chief priests and the Pharisees,
they got together for a special meeting. And they said, what
shall we do? If we let him continue, he's
going to steal the hearts of the people. And the Romans are
going to come. Everybody's going to follow him.
And the Romans are going to come and take away both our place
and our nation. The Lord Jesus Christ is still
a threat to religion, isn't he? The gospel is a threat to all
self-righteousness. The scripture says about Absalom,
from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, he was
without blemish. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world without spot and
without blemish, without sin. The only one that's ever been
able to please God. How did Absalom die? Hanging
in a tree, didn't he? and hanging by his hair. And when the scriptures describe
the Lord Jesus Christ, hair is a picture of glory in the Bible.
Women, your hair is your crown of glory, isn't it? And it is
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He had hair like wool. His glory
in Absalom is hung in a tree by his glory, and the Lord Jesus
Christ, by his glory. is hung suspended between heaven
and earth. And then what happened? Joab
came by and pierced him through with a sword. And he died there
in that tree. And then Joab got a messenger
and told the messenger to go back to David and report to David
what he had seen. And so the messenger leaves. And after he leaves, Zadok's
son, who was obviously a very fast runner, wanted to go. And so he came to Joab and said,
let me go, let me go. And Joab said to him, you can't
go, you don't have a message. You don't have a message. And
so he just insisted, and Joab said go. And the young man, Zadok's
son, outran the messenger that Joab had sent. Got to David first and he reported
the war's over and we won and David asked him What about the
young man? Absalom and he said well There
was a tumult But what became of it? I don't know You see the
king was only interested in one thing What about my son? What think ye of Christ? And so the messenger that Joab,
David, when the messenger that outran David, Joab's a messenger,
could not answer David's question about Absalom, David said, step
aside. You know, it's just like a false
preacher. You've got churches in this town,
we've got them in Orlando, a whole lot bigger than this. A whole
lot bigger. Got a lot more money and bigger
buildings. I mean, they're outrunning everybody,
aren't they? But they don't have a message.
They don't have a message about the Lord Jesus Christ. They can
tell you, well, he died on a cross. They can tell you what happened,
but they can't tell you why it happened. Now, the second messenger,
the one that Joab sent, he said, the war's over. We've won. And David said, what about the
young man Absalom? And here's his answer. Let all
the enemies of the king be like that young man. Now you and I
were born into this world at enmity with God. Idolaters by
nature, unbelieving, God hewed us, he quarried us out of the
rock of unbelief and made us to be his own. He dug us out
of that miry clay and fashioned us into a vessel, an earthen
vessel, that the treasure that's within the vessel would get all
the glory, not the vessel itself. And what did he say? Let all
the enemies of God, of the Lord Jesus Christ, The father said
to the Lord, sit thou here at my right hand until I make thine
enemies your footstool. And so by a sovereign work of
grace, those of us who are by nature at enmity with God are
made to sit at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ and do what
Mary did. She sought that one thing that
was needful, didn't she? To hear the words of the Lord
Jesus Christ. So he makes his enemies his footstool.
And what did the messenger say? Let all the enemies of the king
be like that young man. What did Paul say? I am crucified
with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not
I. Christ liveth in me. The life
that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son
of God who loved me and died for me. What did John say? As
he is, so are we. I'm hid in Christ. His life is
my life. His death is my death. His righteousness
is my righteousness. His law-keeping is my law-keeping.
His ascension. was sent in with the Lord Jesus
when God said, my word will accomplish the purpose for which I sent
it. It will not return unto me void. Now that's true in preaching
the word of God, preaching the gospel. God's going to accomplish
his purpose. But it's true with the living
word. The Lord Jesus Christ returned back to the Father, not void. But he returned to the Father
with the names of those for whom he lived and died. And he ever
lives to make intercession for them right now. Right now, let
all the enemies of the king be like that young man. And unless
you're like that young man, unless you're found in him, unless his
life is your life, his death is your death, his ascension
is your ascension, his righteousness is your righteousness. See, we
were carved from a rock, dug out of a miry clay pit, grass. That's why Paul said, Christ
Jesus the Lord is all and in all. May God give us the faith
to look to our Absalom, to look to our Absalom for all our acceptance
before God.