We come today to remember the
Lord's death till He comes again. What a glorious privilege we
have to be given such a remembrance. In Psalm 104, we're reading of
the glories of God and the sovereign purpose of God, to do all things
according to the good pleasure of His will, and to be that one
who has provided all things for His creation. And all of the creation of God
is not the same, for He has created some vessels
under honor, and some unto dishonor, as it hath pleased him. Now some
people think about election in the sense that God created a
bunch of people and then he lined them all up against the wall
and he went in him in a mighty moat and picked out some to be
saved. That's not what the scripture
teaches. For we were chosen in Christ
before the world began. We were created to be the sons
of God. We were not created as men and
then chosen to be the sons of God, but we were chosen in Christ
before the foundation of the world. Now that's a glorious
thing. And some would say, well, you
mean then that some folks don't have a chance, and to that I
would say, well salvation is not by chance. Because if it
was, then who would be saved? I mean, if the Lord said, I'm
gonna give you a chance to be saved, would you like that? You
got a chance to be saved? I don't like that, those kind
of odds. I need a Savior that saves to
the uttermost. That purpose is the same, one
who has designed and determined the salvation of his people.
And so when we read in the scriptures about the creation and we rejoice
as we look around us, as we've said, and we see the creation
as it is, and it is a glorious creation, but we need to understand
that God created the world for the purpose of demonstrating
the glory of His grace in the redemption of His people. If
we understand that, then we can make sense of all the things
that go on in the world because the Lord has designed all things
to work together for good to those people of whom we're speaking
of here, those vessels under honor. He said He caused all
things to work together for good to them who love God, who are
the called according to His purpose. That's a glorious thing. Now,
if a man sits around and thinks that he's done something to earn
that favor. then he's missed the whole glory
of salvation because God's not a respecter of persons. He doesn't
choose men based on what they've done or what He saw that they
would do. I mean, that's what a lot of
people tell us, you know, that God chose men based on what He
knew they would do. Well, how foolish is that? How'd
He know what they would do? I mean, if God knew what they
would do and He created them, didn't He create them according
to the good pleasure of His will to do what He wanted them to
do? So, what does all that mean? Well, it just means this, that
all we can do is fall on our face and thank God for the grace
that drew salvation's plan, for the grace that brought it down
to man. I mean, what can we do about it? What can we say about
it? We can't boast in anything. We
don't have anything that sets us apart from anybody else in
the world except the grace and mercy of Almighty God. And that's
what we come to remember when we remember the Lord's death
till He comes again, that He died for sinners and that He
has redeemed sinners. See, He didn't try it. He didn't
shed His blood and say, I'm going to do as much good as I can.
But He came into the world to save His people from their sins,
and that's exactly what He did. He obtained eternal redemption
for us. And that's what we remember until
He comes again. We read in Psalm 104, we looked at some of this last
week and probably some of these verses we might have looked at,
but we're gonna read them again. As we spoke about the fact that
the Lord calls the waters to rise above the mountains. That's what it says, He calls
that. And then the flood, He calls the water to rise up above
all the land. There was no dry land. to be
found on earth. Now men have scoffed at that
for ever since it first began to be told. Men said, ah, that
couldn't ever happen. Because the only ones that could
bear witness that it happened was the ones that was in that
ark. Because there wasn't anybody else left, was there? But they
bore witness that that is what took place. And most certainly
we believe that's what took place. He sendeth the springs into the
valleys which run among the hills. They give drink to every beast
of the field, and the wild asses quench their thirst. By them
shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which
sing among the branches. He waters the hills from his
chambers, the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works.
He causes the grass to grow for the cattle and the herb for the
service of man, that he may bring forth food out of the earth,
and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make
his face to shine. and bread which strengtheneth
man's heart. The trees of the Lord are full
of sap, the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted, where
the birds make their nests. As for the stork, the fir trees
are her house. The high hills are a refuge for
the wild goats and the rocks for the conies. He appointed
the moon for the seasons and the sun knoweth his going down. Thou makest darkness and it is
nigh, wherewith all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.
The young lions roar after their prey and seek their meat from
God. The sun ariseth, they gather
themselves together and lay them down in their dens. Man goeth
forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening. O Lord,
how manifold are Thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made them
all. The earth is full of Thy riches. So is this great and
wide sea wherein the things creeping innumerable, most small and great
beasts. There go the ships, there is
that Leviathan whom Thou hast made to play therein. These wait
all upon Thee, that Thou mayest give them their meat in due season. That thou givest them, they gather.
Thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good. Thou hidest
thy face, and they are troubled. Thou takest away their breath,
they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy
Spirit, they are created, and Thou renewest the face of the
earth. The glory of the Lord shall endure
forever. The Lord shall rejoice in His
works. He looketh on the earth, and
it trembleth. He toucheth the hills, and they
smoke. I will sing unto the Lord as
long as I live. I will sing praise to my God
while I have my being. My meditation of him shall be
sweet. I will be glad in the Lord. Let
the sinners be consumed out of the earth and let the wicked
be no more. Bless thou the Lord, O my soul.
Praise ye the Lord. Now we have a great contrast
in this psalm. And the contrast is between God
and all that He made. And all that He made is absolutely
dependent on Him. There's not a flea crawling on
a dog's back somewhere that doesn't get his life from the Lord. that doesn't know where the source
of his next meal is coming because the Lord provided it for him. See, I mean, did the Lord make
the fleas to aggravate the dogs? Or did he make the dogs to feed
the fleas? I mean, I don't know. Which he
did, but I know this, he did all things well and good in his
own time. And he made all these things
to work together. It's just incredible. Brother
Ed and I was talking about this yesterday. You know, it's just
incredible when you pause and think about all the different
things that go on in the world just right now. All the different
processes and different animals going about their thing and birds
flying through the air and men doing this, that, and the other
and making this choice to go there and do that. And all of
them operate in their own realm. In other words, they're each
one doing what they're doing. I mean, when I got up this morning,
I did what I did. Nobody did it for me, I did it.
But the glory is that the Lord, in His sovereign purpose, has
ordered all of these things to transpire according to the good
pleasure of His will. And He has provided exactly whatever
part of His creation needs. Now men think they know better
than the Lord a lot of times, and they think they know what
the creation needs and what men need, but the Lord knows what
we need. Just like there's a lot of folks
that think they know better than the Lord did about what we needed
for a president. And some folks haven't got over
it yet. But I'm here to tell you the Lord knew exactly what
we needed. Now, I didn't say that the Lord
gave us the president to cause us all to prosper, because that
might not be what he raised him up for. I don't know. I'm not
smart enough to figure all that out. But I know this. that all men who reign and rule
in any office, whether it's a county commissioner right on up to the
president of the United States, or if there's a higher office
than that, I don't know what it is, but if there is one, even
that, everything, every one of them is exactly where they are
because God put them there. And He either put them there
unto judgment, or He put them there unto blessing. but it's
all in his time and in his way. Just like he gives the animals,
as we read about all these, you know, it's said here that he
give us them what they gather. Now, you know, birds, they make
nests. And they'll go out and they'll
find all kind of little twigs and everything and make a nest. I was riding along yesterday.
I looked up on the top of a light pole and there was a big old
nest up there that an osprey or some kind of a bird had went
out and picked up sticks and stuff and carried them up there
and built this huge nest up on top of this light pole. Now,
we look at that and we say, well, you know, he was really smart.
He went out there and he got all that stuff, and the Lord
made him to know that, know how to do that. He made him to do
it. But you see, the Lord's the one
also that put the sticks there where he could get them. I mean,
what if there wasn't any sticks? He wouldn't have got any, would
he? He wouldn't have been able to have done it. He couldn't
have done it. That's what he says right here. Thou openest,
thou givest them they gather. Now, you know, men often boast
about how smart they are in doing whatever they do in life. I mean,
you know, one guy, he does some great thing. I mean, Elon Musk,
he builds this electric car and this guy has this business that
he built from the ground up and he's done all this stuff. And
there's a measure in which we can say that he did. But at the
end of the day, we must confess that he only gathered what the
Lord put there for him to have. Because he certainly could not
have made it. I mean, I think about it every day. You know,
when at the store, I mean, you wonder, I mean, is any customers
going to even come in there? What if they didn't? What could
you do about it? I mean, what could you sell to
people that don't come in the store? You can't do it. I mean, what you have is what
the Lord gives you together. I mean, that's what it is. And
He's the one to be praised for it. How wondrous it is. But by the same token, it says,
thy openness, thy hand, they are filled with good. The Lord
does that. But then it says, thy hide is
thy face. They're trouble. Oh my. Not anything to eat. What are
we going to do now? You know, sometimes there's famine
in the land and the animals that knew how to survive out here
in their habitat, all of a sudden they can't do it. Why? Because
the Lord has taken away the things that they needed according to
the good pleasure of His will. Same way with men. I mean, when
the Lord takes something away from you, you can't get it back.
I mean, you can try all you want to do, but if the Lord takes
it away, I mean, think about your memory. What can you do
to preserve your memory? Now, I know you can read all
these books and they tell you to eat this and eat that and
do crossword puzzles and all that kind of stuff, and I'm not
saying there's not some benefit in all of that, but If the Lord
takes your memory away, where are you going to go to get it
back? I mean, what are you going to do? I mean, there's not anything
you're going to do about that. That's just in the hand of the
Lord. He gives you what you have. Religious men are not real happy
with that sort of line of thought, are they? Because they would
rather put more of it on men to say what you can do. But the
ultimate thing is you can't do much of nothing. Or you can't
do anything, as a matter of fact, unless the Lord is pleased to
give you that which wherewith to do it. And that's just exactly
what the psalmist is saying here. He said, thou hidest thy face,
they are troubled. When the Lord removes his hand
from a nation, what are they gonna do about it? Oh, well,
we'll get us a bigger army. We don't have to worry about
China or whatever, cause buddy, we got enough missiles, we'll
blow them up if they come after us. Well, you know, what about old,
what was his name? The Benedib, or what was the
one over there that had all the chariots of iron? Was it the
Benedib? I don't remember what his name was, but he had 900
chariots of iron. I mean, he figured, man, I can
take on anybody. The Lord caused him to be, the
whole bunch of them was slain. According to the Sennacherib,
was that who it was? No, was it, who was it? It was
a guy that the woman drove the nail through his head. I can't think of what his name
was. It was one of those guys. But in any event, you see, it
doesn't make a difference what a nation has. We're the greatest
nation on earth as far as men can say, as far as military might
and power and all of that stuff. But do you realize that if the
Lord saw fit, He could cause Mexico to rise up and overthrow
us if it pleased Him? And what would we do about it?
You know, I mean, you could go out there and you ever went to
shoot a gun and you had something in your sights, a squirrel or
something, and you pulled the trigger and it went click. Now you had a good bullet in
there. I mean, there was no doubt, you know, that that thing came
out of the same box of the ones that you just shot. ten times
and you put it in that gun and you've been shooting that gun
and you've never had a problem until that moment when it doesn't
work. Dear brethren, the Lord can cause
the chariot wheels to fall off just like He did with the Egyptians.
And He can cause the Red Sea to close back in upon them as
He sees fit. Thou hidest thy face, O trouble,
thou takest away their breath. They die. Now we've talked about
this before. Some people think it's morbid,
but I think it's just the truth. You've got a certain number of
breaths that the Lord has allotted to you. And every one that you
take is one that He gave you. You didn't make it. I mean, when
you're laying asleep at night, are you thinking about breathing?
I mean, you don't even ever think about breathing, really, unless
you get a cold or something, and you're getting, you know,
you can't hardly breathe, and then you're gasping for breath,
and you're trying to breathe. But even those, only the Lord
can give it to you. Because when the Lord takes a
man's breath away, I mean, the Lord gave him his breath. He
breathed into man. And man became a living soul.
And when he takes that breath away, then that's all there is. I mean, you can't get another
one. They can hook you up to a machine. You know, they got
breathing machines. Well, we'll keep him breathing.
Well, you can keep him breathing, but you can't. I mean, you can
cause his lungs to go, but you can't keep him alive. Because
when the Lord takes the breath away, that's it. and return to their dust. It's
appointed unto men once to dine, after this the judgment. Now
all of that would not be very conducive to happiness in the
flesh, it's not. I mean, men do just about anything
to avoid talking about dine. We don't want to talk about dine,
do we? I mean, you know, people that talk about dine all the
time, we think something's wrong with them. I mean, what's wrong
with him? All he wants to talk about is dine. Well, dying is
as real as living, dear brethren, because it's an appointment that
the Lord has given. And we return to the dust from
which we're made. If a man died, Job said, shall
he live again? And of course, that's usually,
a lot of times men will use that scripture at funerals and they
speak of it in a positive sense. But what Job was saying was not
in a positive sense. He was saying if a man die, can
he live again? Has he got any power to live
again? Now you can cut a tree down and
it'll sprout back up. You can cut some weeds or some
grass down, and it'll sprout back up. But when a man's cut
down, he won't sprout back up. See, it takes the supernatural
work of Almighty God to cause a man to live again. Men don't
live again just because they're men. Now, a lot of people think
that men can't die. That was the first lie Satan
told to Eve. Yes, God said, you can't die. Look, the Lord's just trying
to scare you. You can't die. But the Lord said,
in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And such
has been the case with men ever since. And so we return to the
dust, and what can we do about it? I mean, when a man's been
put in the ground, And ever how many years it takes, I mean,
eventually he'll come back to the dust. Now, you know, they
embalmed some of those pharaohs and stuff and they dug them up
and got them and they're, you know, there's still a form there. It's just dust. I mean, it's
really nothing. It's just dried as like beef
jerky. I mean, it's nothing of any... You can't do anything with it.
There it is. And that's what we've become,
dear brethren. If time goes long enough, you
can dig up anybody in the cemetery and they will be turned back
to dust. And do you think that there is
some power that there is in that dust? to cause it to live again? No, absolutely not. Apart from the
grace of Almighty God, dust will be dust. But the Lord is that
One who sends forth Thy Spirit. They are created. Whether they
are created to begin with or whether they are created as new
creatures, See, that's what's gonna happen in the day of the
resurrection. For this mortal must put on immortality. The Lord said, unless a seed
fall into the ground, it's gotta die before it will sprout again. And the seed won't sprout apart
from the grace of God to cause it. to be raised to eternal life. What a glorious God we have.
The glory of the Lord shall endure forever. The Lord shall rejoice
in his works. There's nothing that's disappointed
God. Now, you can listen to some preachers and you'd almost get
feeling like that the Lord is just shaking his head every day
wondering, well, what's he gonna do next? You know, what's man
gonna do that he's got to solve this problem and solve that problem?
Well, the Lord can solve problems. He makes problems. I mean, the
Lord makes problems for men. He said, I make peace and create
evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.
It's up to Him. It's in His hands. And we, dear
brethren, by the grace of God, have been caused to have some
understanding of that. And most especially as we come
to remember the Lord's death till He comes again. Because
we're not celebrating something that might have happened or something
that the Lord did in order to try to get some folks to take
advantage of. But what we remember is what
the Lord actually did. He redeemed His people. And this
right here is the evidence of it. We remember His death, till
He comes again. Why is He coming again? Because
He has a people. See, the concept that men have
that salvation is by chance, what if the Lord had done all
of that and nobody received Him? I mean, what would He come back
for? See, it can't, it's just, I mean,
thank God that He's the one who's ordered all things to come to
pass and that the redemption that we rejoice in is real. See, that's why we preach the
gospel, is that life and immortality might be brought to light to
the sons of God. That we might rejoice in what
Christ has done. Not what we've done, but what
He's done. See, because He wouldn't give
us a desire to know Him if He wasn't pleased to reveal Himself
to us. He wouldn't give us a rejoicing
in the fact that He shed His blood for sinners if He did not
shed His blood for us. That's a glorious thing, dear
brethren. See, the Lord doesn't play games with people, but He
calls His children unto Himself. And He causes them to believe. I can't make a man believe, I
can't persuade a man to believe, but thanks be unto God, I can't
keep him from it. I mean, you know, what would
somebody have to tell you to cause you to quit believing?
I mean, is there somebody could come along and tell you something
that would save you? You say, oh well, that's a bunch
of baloney. I mean, is there anything anybody
could tell you that would cause you not to believe that Jesus
Christ died for sinners? Now in the flesh we're weak and
that could happen in the flesh, no doubt about it. But it can't
really happen. Why? Because the Lord preserves
His own. And those for whom Christ came,
He will preserve unto the end. He said He was going to prepare
a place for us. He didn't say, I'm going to prepare
a place and hope some folks are going to be there. He said, I'm
going to prepare a place for you, speaking to his disciples. He prayed for them. He said,
Father, I don't pray for the world, but I pray for them whom
thou hast given me out of the world. Thine they were, and thou
hast given them to me. And those are those who are called
to this table. And we come here this morning
to remember his death till he comes again. may give us a mind
and a heart to rejoice in that which He has done.