I was thinking there as Brother
Al was teaching from Deuteronomy, how the Lord has demanded that
we keep His law. And there is a keeping of the law
that the sons of God presently do and perfectly do by His grace. When we think of keeping the
law, and there is a measure in which this is told in the Scripture,
Many times, men, when they think about keeping the law, they're
speaking about performing the law, being obedient to the law,
and that is a keeping of the law. But we imperfectly keep
that law. In fact, we don't keep that law.
For he that has broken in one point has broken it in all. All
men are lawbreakers. But the sons of God, by the grace
of God, are law keepers. And what I mean by that is that
we confess and we can't help but believe that the law of God
is the truth, that it is precious, that it is holy, just, and good. We keep it. David was a law keeper,
yet David broke. the law many times, did he not? But if you look at the life of
David, you understand by the grace of God that he was a law
keeper. Because he said, thy word if
I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. And so
he kept the law. Now he did not fully obey the
law, nor was he perfectly in obedience to that law every day
of his life. But there was never a time when
he cast the law off. when he said, the Word of God
is not true. The Word of God is that which
I rebel against. I hate it. Now, we do rebel against
the Word of God, but not in the manner in which I'm speaking
here. We don't cast it off. We can't. See, the man whose
heart's bound unto Christ, he can't cast Christ off, can he?
I mean, Peter said it and the Lord turned to him and said,
well, will you also go away? But Peter said, Lord, to whom
shall we go? Thou hast the word of eternal
life. And so even if we might in our flesh say, you know, I'm
just tired of all this. I'm just going to cast it all
off. You can't do that. If the grace
of God is at work in your heart and He has given you a love for
Jesus Christ, you cannot turn away from Him. It's impossible. Why? Because he's bound you with
cords of love. And he's caused you to keep the
law. That is, to love the law. Even though many times we turn
our back on it, at the same time we keep it. We know it's right,
do we not? But we can't escape from it.
You know the law's right. I know the law's right. And in
that fashion, we do keep it. Praise God that He has made us
to be law keepers. And otherwise, those that do
not keep the law will perish. That's an absolute fact. We're looking in Psalm 116. Psalm
116. And David begins this psalm and
says, I love the Lord because He hath heard my voice and my
supplications, because He hath inclined His ear unto me. Therefore
will I call upon Him as long as I live. The sorrows of death
come past me, and the pains of hell get hold upon me. I found
trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of
the Lord, O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord, and righteous. Yea, our God is merciful. The
Lord preserveth the simple. I was brought low, and he helped
me. Return unto thy rest, O my soul,
for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. For thy has delivered
my soul from death and mine eyes from tears, my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in
the land of the living. I believe, therefore have I spoken. I was greatly afflicted. I said
in my haste, all men are liars. What shall I render unto the
Lord for all his benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation
and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto
the Lord now in the presence of all his people. Precious in
the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. O Lord,
truly I am thy servant. I am thy servant and the son
of thine handmaid, and thou hast loosed my bonds. I will offer
to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call upon the name of
the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord
now in the presence of all his people. In the courts of the
Lord's house, in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem, praise ye
the Lord. Now, as we have said, as we look
through these Psalms, David is the penman, but the Lord is the
speaker. And these are indeed the words
of Christ, I believe, And he begins this, even as David would
say the same thing, I love the Lord. Now, you know, sometimes
we're reluctant to say that, are we not? I love the Lord, because we know
that in a measure we're speaking hypocritically. Do we not? I mean, you know, it's hard to
say I love you, Lord, knowing that we have not acted like we
did. And many times we've shown the
opposite of that. And I think about Peter. You
know, the Lord came to him and he said, Peter, do you love me? Peter didn't want to say he loved
the Lord. Because he knew that he just
demonstrated a very evident lack of love to the Lord. But because
the Lord loved him, he pressed him. Peter said, Lord, you know I
love you. And the Lord told him to feed
his sheep. And he asked him again, he said, Peter, do you love me?
Now why did he do that? Because you see, he knew the
weakness of Peter's flesh. He knew the doubtings and the
fears. That was in Peter's heart. But he wanted Peter to declare
his love for the Lord. And he asked him, and he asked
him again. And so it is that the Lord would
have us to confess our love to Him. Let the redeemed of the
Lord say so. I love the Lord. See, sometimes,
I mean, that's a hard thing to say, is it not? Because we know
other people look at it and say, in their mind, well, he doesn't
really love the Lord. I mean, if he did, you know, he would
be better at this or better at that. I mean, that's how we think,
is it not? And yet the mercy of God and
the grace of God is such that He would have us to declare our
love for Him, even though it is an imperfect love, yet in
Christ, You see, He's the one who has loved the Lord perfectly
for us. And He said, I love the Lord.
And there was no shadow of turning with Him. And so if we be in
Christ, we know for a certain certainty that we do love the
Lord. Because He is that one who's
our substitute. And what is lacking in us, He
has provided for us. What a glorious thing. I love
the Lord because He hath heard my voice and my supplications,
because He hath inclined His ear unto me. Therefore will I
call upon Him as long as I live. We love the Lord because He first
loved us, but we love the Lord because He has delivered us.
We can testify that He has delivered us. He's brought us out of darkness
and into the light. He heard our prayer and that's
caused us to love Him. He caused us to love Him. But
He demonstrated to us by all those things that He's done for
us. And we will call upon the Lord as long as we live. Now, how long is that? These
old fleshly bodies, it's not very long. I mean, you can, you
know, the older you get, the less time you realize you have
on this earth. How much more important is it
then to declare our love for Him and our thanks to Him? Therefore
will I call upon Him as long as I live, but yet We shall call
upon Him forever, will we not? I mean, there's never going to
be a time in the ages to come when we will not call upon the
name of the Lord. Why? Because He is our strength. He's our help. He's our life. When the Lord put Adam in the
garden and He told him not to eat of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, But he also planted the tree of life in that
garden. Did he not? Adam, in as far as
men think on these things, man could hypothesize, well, Adam
could have eaten of the tree of life. Now we know that was
not the purpose of God in that setting for Adam to do that. But we get the picture and we
see the thing that man in that, that place of restoration which
the Lord brings His people to in the day of the resurrection
when we rise and mortality is swallowed up in immortality.
And then in that time as we live, we will praise the Lord because
we will eat of that tree and live forever. Now, that won't
be a thing where you go and you take one bite and you live forever. But see, this is a living tree
that was in the garden and it was a constant thing. But yet the Lord is a constant
supply, is He not? So we live forever because He
lives forever. We don't live forever because
we live forever. See, what men often think of
which gives rise to many false doctrines, is that men live forever,
and once they get that eternal life, then they're kind of like
separate from God. No, because you don't have life
apart from Him. The Scripture says that the Lord
has given to the Son to have eternal life. He has life in
Himself. He doesn't have created life.
He has life. He is life. We are made to live
in Christ. And therefore, as long as we
live, we will praise Him. And we will praise Him forever
because He is pleased to give us life. What a glorious thing. The sorrows of death come past
me and the pains of hell get hold upon me. I found trouble
and sorrow. Now why we believe this psalm
is the words of the Lord Jesus, if you go over and read Psalm
22, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but as you read
Psalm 22, the language is strikingly similar. It says, many bulls have come past me
about, strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round about. They
gaped upon me with their mouths as a ravening and a roaring lion.
I'm poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of
my bowels. My strength is dried up like
a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws. Thou hast brought
me into the dust of death." And so the sorrows of death that
indeed can pass the Lord about, and he speaks of that. And you
know, the glorious thing is that though no man looks forward to
dying because the Lord has given us a desire to live and He's
caused us to do what we can to preserve our life, yet the sting
of death is taken away in Christ. Even though the sorrows of death
are all around us. I mean, you know, when someone
we love dies, that's the sorrow of death, is it not? It comes
around us because we realize that they're taken from us. The sorrows of death come past
me. This is the Lord Jesus speaking.
The pains of hell got upon me. I found trouble and sorrow because
He was our substitute. He bore that for us. And therefore
death does not have a sting for the believer because of the fact
that he has borne it. And then he said, Then called
I upon the Lord, the name of the Lord, O Lord, I beseech thee,
deliver my soul. Was that not the cry of the Lord
upon the earth? as he hung upon Calvary's cross
and he cried out unto the Lord. Even when he felt forsaken of
the Lord, yet he called upon the Lord. See, that's what perfect
faith does even when it is in a situation that by natural thinking
would be a time not to call upon the Lord. That's the time that
the child of God calls upon the Lord. And in His perfection,
that was how when the Lord got hold by the pains of death, He
called upon the Lord. Now, the Lord got hold by the
pains of death before He ever went to the cross. When he was
in the garden and he prayed, and the sweat were as drops of
blood pouring from him, the sorrows of death did not hold upon him
then. He was in great agony of soul, and he cried out unto the
Lord. Who did he pray for? He prayed
not specifically for himself, but he prayed for Who? Those whom Thou hast given Me.
Thine they were. So when the Lord prays for His
deliverance from death, He is in reality praying for our deliverance
from death. Because He is there for us, you
see. He's entered into that place in our behalf. The sorrows of
hell came upon Him. I found trouble and sorrow. I
beseech thee, O Lord, deliver my soul. Why would he cry out,
O Lord, deliver my soul? Because he's praying that for
our sake. Now he as a man desired the same
thing, but yet he did that for us. Deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yea, our God is merciful. Now in the midst of his complaint about the sorrows
of death coming upon him, he speaks about the graciousness
of the Lord, the goodness of God. What a glorious thing. Gracious is the Lord and righteous.
Yea, our God is merciful. Now, men kind of take that for
granted. Unfortunately, much error has
been divulged over the years, and the powers of darkness have
used the mercy of God to make a caricature. You all know what
a caricature is. It's something that is kind of
halfway based in what the truth is, but it looks, it's not really
the truth. It's something that's painted
to look sort of like it. You can see it, but it's not
really the object. And so it is that men think of
the mercy of God in an erroneous fashion. They read in the Scriptures
where it says, His mercy endureth forever, and they consider that
that has respect unto God in a general fashion, just being
merciful. and that men can always expect
that God will be merciful. But the mercy of God can't be
grasped and understood apart from a man coming to the place
to recognize that mercy is sovereign. See, mercy is not just generally
dispensed. Mercy is dispensed by God. He will do right. He may show
mercy. See, mercy is not a thing that
men are owed. It's not a thing that men can
count on from the standpoint of the fact, well, I'm a man,
I know God's going to show me mercy. No. The Lord said, I'll
show mercy to whom I will show mercy. And if you don't have
that understanding of the mercy of God, then you cannot possibly
understand what the Scripture means when it speaks about the
mercy of God. The mercy of God is sovereignly
dispensed. Now that's a glorious thing when
you pause and consider that the Lord would show mercy. See, most
people just think, well, He ought to show mercy. I mean, don't
we deserve it? I mean, isn't it just the right
thing for God to do to show mercy? No, that wouldn't be mercy. See,
if a man could somehow or other be worthy of mercy, then that
wouldn't be mercy, that'd be a payment. Mercy's sovereign
dispense has to be, or there's no such thing as mercy. And so
it is that he says here, our God is merciful. Now that's a
glorious thing. When a man comes to the place
where he understands what man is by nature and who God is,
and then he reads that God is merciful, that's a glorious thing.
When you understand that God doesn't have to show mercy. He
doesn't need to show mercy. He's not bound to show mercy.
But He does show mercy. Now that's a glorious thing.
And so it is. That's what we rejoice in. You
see, that's why we declare the gospel unto men that God is a
God of mercy to sinners, undeserving, unworthy. God shows mercy. There is forgiveness with thee
that thou mayest be feared. The Lord preserveth the simple.
I was brought low and He helped me. That is the man who's in
the lowest estate, the simple man. Man doesn't have anything. He's a simple man. The widow
who cast in her two mites into the treasury, she was a simple
woman. She didn't have anything. But
the Lord, He preserveth the simple. I was brought low and He helped
me. The Lord Jesus Christ, though He owned the cattle on a thousand
hills for our sake, the Scripture says what? He became poor. He became as one who had no possessions,
that He might be identified with us. Now what could we bring to
the Lord? See, religious men and men in their religion, as
Brother Al spoke about there, as these Athenians had that statue
or that monument, altar, whatever, to the unknown God. Now what
they were doing, you see, is they were covering all the bases.
You know, they had all these other gods. I don't know the
names of all of them, but Zeus and whatever, whoever they were,
they had all these different gods. And then they said, well,
just in case, You know, we'll cover all the basics. We'll put
an altar up here to the unknown God. Well, the unknown God was
the God. Remember last week we read, our
God's in the heavens. Paul said, this is the one I'm
telling you about. He says, all these other gods,
they don't have any power. But he said, our God's in the
heavens. And he said, this is the unknown
God. Men cannot know Him. He dwells
in the light, the Scripture says, to which no man can approach. Now every man believes he knows
God, doesn't he? Huh? I mean, every man has his
own little... I mean, men will get mad at you
if you tell them they don't know nothing about God. Because, oh
yeah, I talked to them this morning. Everybody talks to God, don't
they? Because they know He's always there. If we've got trouble,
we just call on the Lord. And they just think they're just
talking to God. The Pharisee, he went to the
temple. He was going to talk to God. The Scripture says he
went there and there to pray. But when he got there, what did
he do? He prayed thus with himself. Dear brethren, I would venture
to say that most of the prayers that men pray, while they think
they're praying to God, they're just talking to themselves. The Lord preserveth the simple.
I was brought to know that He helped me. I mean, when a man
knows he has nothing and he can't bring anything to God, and he's
like that old publican, he said, oh God, Be merciful to me." See,
he didn't have anything to offer. He knew that mercy was in the
hand of God. He knew that he had no right
to even ask God. The Scripture says that he didn't
so much as look up his eyes into heaven, but he smote upon his
breast. He said, Lord, I'm not even worthy
to ask You for mercy. But I can't do anything else
but call upon You. The Lord does preserve the simple.
He helps those that are brought low. Return unto thy rest, O my soul,
for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. Oh, what a glorious
blessing the Lord has brought upon us. And this is the place
of our rest, is unto the Lord. We thought we had nothing, but
yet we're like a moth flying around a lamp. I mean, they're
just flying around. We're like that moth flying around
the lamp. We can't go anywhere else. We
want to be there and the Lord. And we want to return unto our
rest. That's the place we want to be.
See, that's the place where God's children want to be is with the
Lord. They're not content with all
the things of this world. These things don't fill their
longings and their needs. They're temporary. They're passing. They're like a child. You know,
you take a child, you can buy him a brand new toy and he's
just got to have it whenever he's looking at it in the store.
We got this rack of these Hot Wheels up there in the store.
And boy, every kid that comes in there They've got to have,
oh, you know, and they'll carry on and whatever. And fortunately
for us, most times the parents break down and finally buy them
one. But anyway, but they've got to
have that toy. And I venture to say that probably
20 minutes after they get home with that toy, they've already moved on to something
else. They forgot all about it. It didn't mean anything to them.
They thought it did. And so it is. That's the way
that this world appears to the children of God. There's toys
in it, things that we think, oh man, if we just had that,
we'd be happy. If we could just do that, we'd
be happy at all, you know? Like all these people, they win
the lottery. And they think, oh, man, this
will be great. I was reading about somewhere up the country,
I forget, some person or group of people, they don't know who
because they can remain anonymous. When they win the lottery, they
won $731 million. I mean, they didn't get that
much, but they only got like $360 million, so it wasn't that
much. But anyway, they wanted to remain
anonymous. Now, I'm sure, just stop and
think about that. They got all this money, but
you can't go out and buy a new car. Why? Because everybody in
town knows you're the one that bought it. I mean, you're the
one that got the money. You couldn't build no new house,
everybody knew. And the reason they didn't want
to remain anonymous is because everybody comes around asking
for money. Because they figure, well, you
didn't do anything to get it, so you ought to give me some
of it. In fact, a lot of the people in the town was mad because
they hadn't come forward, you know, and hadn't, you know, done
a bunch of things for everybody. And that's the way people are.
That's the way we are. But all those things don't mean
anything. They're not lasting. I mean,
if you had all the money in the world, what good would it do
you? When you're on your deathbed, that's of no use whatsoever. Doesn't mean anything. For thou
hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my
feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in
the land of the living. Because that's the place the
Lord has called us to be. In the land of the living. See,
we're not walking among the dead. We're walking among the living.
Now, when you're walking out here in the world and all these
people are clamoring for all the things that the world has
and that's their life, you're walking among the dead. They're
dead. They don't know it. They think something's wrong
with you. But by the grace of God, the Lord has delivered you
from death. I believe, therefore have I spoken.
I was greatly afflicted. I said in my haste, all men are
liars. Now some have looked at that
passage as though he's making an apology. I don't think that's
what it says at all. In other words, some have said,
I said in my haste, I shouldn't have said it. All men are liars. Some think that's what he said
there. I shouldn't have said all men are liars. But I don't
think that's what he said at all. I think he said, I said this quickly. Because it's true. All men are
liars. I looked around me in the world.
All men are liars. The wicked come forth from the
womb, the Scripture says, speaking lies. They go astray as soon
as they are born. Speaking lies. All men are liars. Oh, you know, men don't like
to think of themselves as a liar. But you know, the one we lie
to the most is ourselves. I mean, we've told more lies
to ourselves than we've ever told anybody else. Because that's
the nature of men. All men are liars. What shall
I render toward the Lord for all His benefits toward me? What
will we do? What can you do? I mean, how
can you bring anything to the Lord? What will you give to the
Lord? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name
of the Lord. I will receive it. By the grace of God, I rejoice
in it. What shall I render unto the
Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation
and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto
the Lord now in the presence of all His people." I'll confess
His name. With the mouth, confession is
made unto salvation. See, we confess. that we are
the sons of God. We rejoice in being the sons
of God. It's a glorious thing. Why? By
the grace of God we're made such. Precious in the sight of the
Lord is the death of His saints. The Lord has marked out the death
of His children as much as He has marked out the death of all
men. He doesn't say precious inside
of the Lord is the death of all men, does he? He said precious
inside of the Lord is the death of His saints. Because He has
designed death to bring us from this world into that redemption
which He has purchased for us. And so it is precious. Now it's
not precious to us. Like I said earlier, we kind
of want to shrink back from it. And I wouldn't tell you that
death is precious to me. Although, as we understand, that
death is a necessity. Death has lost its sting. But
precious is the death of the Lord's saints to Him. O Lord,
truly I am Thy servant. I think of Lazarus in the Scripture. says that when the Lord came
to the tomb of Lazarus that he wept. Now there's a lot of things
been said about that, and I think that is somewhat described in this
passage of Scripture here. Now, did the Lord not know that
he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead? Yeah, he'd already
said Lazarus was sleeping. It's just temporary. He says,
I go. I go to raise Lazarus from the
dead." Now everybody thought he was crazy, but he knew. But you see, precious, the death
of a saint of God is precious unto the Lord, even as the resurrection
of the saints are. And he knows where each one is.
Just like, you know, I used to have an old dog that loved to
bury bones. I mean, well, he'd bury all kinds
of stuff, but he'd have an old bone and he'd go and bury that
in the yard. And you might forget all about
that he did, but he didn't forget. He'd go out there and a month
later, he'd dig that bone up. He'd just have it seasoned just
right, I guess. He'd go out there and dig that
thing up. He knew right where it was. Well, the Lord knows
exactly wherever one of His children are. Precious is their death. There's not one of His saints
in that graveyard over there that He doesn't know the exact
place. Now think of all the graveyards
in the world where the tombstones have vanished. I was reading
something the other day about over in England that they're
constantly digging up bones of people when they do excavations
and stuff for construction. Because just the millions of
people that's been buried over the years. Now men don't know
anything about it until they dig them up. The Lord knows if
there's one of them that's his, the Lord knows exactly where
he is. Because precious. in the sight of the Lord's the
death of His saints. O Lord, truly I am Thy servant, I am
Thy servant, the son of Thine handmaid, and Thou hast loosed
my bonds. I will offer Thee the sacrifice
of thanksgiving and will call upon the name of the Lord. I
will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all His
people. In the courts of the Lord's house
and amidst of Thee, O Jerusalem, praise ye the Lord. As I read
those words, I'm thinking about when the Lord's final words on
the cross. He says, Father, into Thy hand
I commend my spirit. Did He not at that time pay His
vows unto the Lord? In our behalf, He committed Himself
unto the Father in the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst
of the people. Oh, Jerusalem! Right there on
the outskirts of Jerusalem, the Lord confessed that one in whom
His trust was. Father, into Thy hands I commend
my spirit. Now if He commended His spirit
into the hands of the Father Himself, He also did it for us. What a glorious thought. Can any be lost? who belonged
to Him. He said, of all that the Father
giveth me, I shall lose none. He said, my sheep hear my voice,
I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal
life, and they shall never perish. What a glorious Savior we have.
Praise ye the Lord. May the Lord give us a mind and
heart to praise Him. to be mindful that all that Christ
did, all that He underwent, all the sorrows that He bore was
for us. And when the sorrows of death
come past us about, may we be able to remember that He has
bore those sorrows for us. Whether we're facing the death
of someone we love, or whether it's our own, Those who are in
the Lord are precious in His sight.