For those of you who read this
letter every week, for those of you who follow continually
in the teaching of the scripture as we go along as a church, I
want to remind you that it's very important that you do that. It's very important because we
aren't gathering here today as seminarians. We're not gathering
here today as professors, as philosophers, or as people who
have come to write papers or dissertations. We've come here
this morning as worshippers, those who know Christ by faith
through the Word of God, those who love Him because He first
loved us, those who are just overwhelmed by His glorious grace. And every day we live by faith
in the One who loved us. Let's change that. Loves us and
gave Himself for us. So we've come here today to worship
together. We worship when we sing songs
that illustrate the truth, as Brother Doug has mentioned, about
who God is and what God's done. About who God the Father is and
who God the Son is and who God the Spirit is. We worship when
we hear the Word of God with our ears, as we heard Luke chapter
4 in the beginning of our service. We worship God when we hear Him
speak to us. We worship God through the exhortation
and admonishment that comes through preaching, when we are challenged
to understand Scripture and to come to a place of realizing
that our Christian life is not something that we just do for
fun, but it is the very essence of our existence. It is who we
are because we are in Christ and he is alive. So we are alive
and we live in him and he and us. It's a powerful existence. We worship God through the working
out of our own salvation with fear and trembling, trusting
in he who is faithful to will and to work for his good pleasure
in our own lives, knowing that the outcome of our faith is not
our own doing, but it is the gift of God and it is the work
of God. So therefore we rest sufficiently
in the gospel of grace that is free and sovereign. We worship
God when we pray together. We worship God in such a way
that we are dependent upon Him, that we understand His supremacy,
and that He rules with sovereignty, and that He has decreed the beginning
from the end, the first and the last, that we don't stand in
a place of determinism so desperately washed away with hopelessness. But we stand in hopefulness. We stand in honor of His glory. We stand here knowing that in
order for God to do that which He wants to do, Be careful how
you hear what I'm about to say. He has purpose that we pray that
he would do the things that he wants to do. So we pray, we worship
in prayer. But even when we're faithless,
God does what he wants to do. But we worship through prayer.
We worship through life together with each other. We're worshiping
God. It's how Paul could write. We
thank God for you, Thessalonians. We thank God for you that he's
done the work in you, that you receive the word of God with
power and with the spirit, not as just teaching from men. It's
sort of like Paul says to them, you didn't just come around us
to gain knowledge and to grow in your theology. You came to
see Christ and to hear him and to know him. And that's a powerful
reception of the word of God. And we thank God for that. For
God mightily worked in your hearing. God mightily worked in your believing.
See, we worship in all these things. We worship the Lord of
heaven, the God of this universe. We worship Jesus Christ, who
Paul says in Colossians is the exact imprint of the nature of
God, is the visible image of God, and that he upholds the
cosmos, the universe by the word of his power. Friends, we're
not worshiping some idea. We're not feeling hopeful because
we have some theory. We're not dealing in the hypothetical.
We are hearing the words that are foolish to the world and
foolish to the unconverted, but are a fragrance of blessing and
honor and life to those who are being saved. We are worshiping
the God who created all things for the sake of His name and
for His glory. When we hear His Word, when we pray, when we love
each other, when we live together, even in the midst of pain, we
worship. When things are good, we worship.
Well, beloved, we're gonna worship today through the hearing of
God's Word. We're gonna worship today when we're challenged to
realize that even as believers, we often put so much effort and
stock in our own ability. Not just to believe, but to maintain
our faith, to stay in the love of God. And friends, that has
been the trick of human minds since the Garden of Eden, when
Satan spoke to Eve and Adam heard it. And he said, did God truly
say? He's saying that today to you.
He says that today in our culture. He says that the day when you
go on the Internet and you hear theologians and philosophers
and professors and teachers and evangelists and others who are
not shepherding God's people, but rather they exist in a vacuum,
not understanding that their work and their teaching and what
they say has direct consequence to the local church. And as a
pastor, it is very much troublesome for me to understand that the
congregation that God has charged me with overseeing and protecting
and feeding and loving could be deceived by somebody else. It's too easy. Years ago, when
I first began in ministry, false teachers had to come to campus.
False teachers had to walk in the door. False teachers had
to ring your doorbell and drop some literature on your porch.
Now they're on your phones, on your televisions, they're on
your radio. They may be. They may be in your own home. And beloved. Every human who
is saved by grace is subject to the authority of the Lordship
of Jesus as the head of the church. And Jesus Christ, who is the
Living Word, has left the apostles with the instruction on who the
church is, and who she belongs to, and how she has become the
church. and that we are to be subject
to the word of God, thus subject to Christ. And because of that,
God has established elders over the church to take care and watch
over the church, that we might not be deceived and tossed to
and fro. Oh, how I long for the day when every child of God understands
and can experience the intimacy of the beloved through the power
of the gospel. How I pray for the day that even
if persecution must bring it, that great revival begins in
each of our hearts every morning when our eyes peek into the light
and every breath that we take as our feet hit the floor, that
we might do everything for the glory of God and for the intention
of being a blessing to our fellow brother or sister in Christ. As we think of this text this
morning, look at chapter three. I'll read the first five verses.
And though I've preached most of this last week, I want to
focus this morning on verse five. Finally, brothers, pray for us
that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored as
happened among you and that we may be delivered from wicked
and evil men. For not all have faith, but the
Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard
you against the evil one. And we have confidence in the
Lord about you, that you are doing and will do the things
that we command. May the Lord direct your hearts
to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. Let's
pray. Lord, that is my prayer as well.
Father, that you would move our hearts, direct our hearts
to your love and to the steadfastness of Jesus Christ, your son. that
we would recognize that it is all of you that we would see
and hold fast to the truth of the gospel. And that we would
not be tossed around like leaves in the wind or waves in the sea,
but father, that we would be firm and steadfast and trusting
in the fullness of your grace. Lord, the enemy moves at your
will. But we pray this day that you
would not allow him to topple us. Father, that you would keep us
secure. Lord, that we would pray as Paul
prayed to deliver us from evil men. And father, in our day, It is
very realistic. That evil men invade our lives
at every turn. Teaching, twisting, causing doubt. Lord, if your spirit does not
seal us, we are hopeless. So we pray today as we learn.
About what Paul means here. that we would be full of faith
and of hope and of endurance, not within ourselves, but because
of Jesus Christ. And it's in his name we pray.
Amen. Last week, I talked about the
prayer of Paul when he said there in verse one, pray for us, brothers,
pray for us. And I think that the sermon ended
last week with the idea that God is faithful no matter what. And I pray that it was a blessing
to you and an encouragement to you, but more so, because it
is a blessing and encouragement, it is a strength and a power
to you. Paul would say to the Romans,
for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the
power of God unto salvation. First the Jew, then the Greek. Now understand for a moment what
the gospel is. Paul says it is the power of
God. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Paul gives a clear, as a
matter of fact, he gives a confession, if you will, of what the gospel
entails. The gospel entails Jesus Christ
coming in the flesh, living a life of obedience and holiness before
God as a human being, dying on the cross to satisfy the judgment
of God against sinners, and being raised from the dead, and ascending
to the Father, and then giving the message of His gospel and
the power therein to the apostles, so that they may preach it to
the Gentiles, and that many would come to believe, and then throughout
history now, God has preserved His word as we have it today,
that we may also see and believe and be held. I am not ashamed
of the gospel. When you're in the community,
as much as some of us are, and you talk to so many people, you
get a lot of this, praise the Lord. You get a lot of that. You get a lot of amens when you
say something about Jesus. Which means, so be, or it is
so. Truly, truly. Amen, amen. Amen, amen. It is
true, it is true. Jesus uses it before He speaks.
I love it. You get a lot of those, yeah,
God is good all the time, and all the time God is good. You
get a lot of verbiage that expressly seems Christian, and a lot of
times it's not, it's cultural. But when we hold to the line
of truth, and when you ask some of these people, how can you
say God is good? The answers that often come,
now it's not all the time, but most of the time, is because
what God is doing for them in their flesh, in their life at
the very moment of time. Is that really what makes God
good? Well, if you think about Luke, it's gospel, and you know
in Luke chapter 4, Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. Who
offered Him the world? Who offered Him the goods of
the world? Who offered Him high positions with a great paying
job? Who offered Him the wealth? Who offered Him the power? Satan. Satan did. So God could be good and is good
by giving good things. As a matter of fact, the scripture
teaches that don't fathers who love their children give them
good things. But Paul would say to the Ephesians, Blessed be
God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ. Wow. So what is the goodness
of God? It's the intrinsic value of His
nature. It's His holiness. It's His perfection. He is the most magnificent being
and everything exists out of Him and from Him and through
Him because He desires it for His own good pleasure. Friends, there's never been a
commentary so troubling as how people have come to believe movies
and books and plays and other things over Scripture as a source
of their love for God. And it is more rampant today
than it has ever been in my lifetime. People are moved by a one-act
play about God more than they are the Word of God. People are
moved by a testimony of what God has given someone rather
than the Scriptures. How? Why do you say God is good,
my friend? Friends, God is good because
God is good. And if God is good in our lives,
it is because He has given us eyes to see Jesus Christ and
to behold that we might believe in Him and have eternal life. This is why God is good. But
what if God sealed us for destruction and decided before the world
began that as men turned their face away from Him and rebelled
against His commands, He would just annihilate us all? You know
what should be on our tongues? God is good. I say we don't like that. We don't like to hear those things.
But that is the very thing that was going on in the midst of
these Thessalonian Christians. Not that God had condemned them,
but the world had troubled them because God was good to them.
God gave them the gospel, and they were born again, and they
lived for Christ, and they loved each other, and the actions of
their transformation got out amongst all the land. And people
wanted to hear this good news that these apostles had because
they wanted to find out exactly. It's more like the gossip column.
It wasn't that they were eager to believe in Christ. They were
eager to find out what was really happening in Thessalonica. But
because these people believed on Christ, their lives were turned
upside down. And they were losing everything
they held precious. They were losing their property.
They were losing their families. They were being harassed. They
were being persecuted. They were being imprisoned. Imagine
this, beloved. We lose sight of the context
and the purpose of the writing of the New Testament. It was
to a struggling, fighting people, not people who were worried about
how they were going to pay their light bills, not people who were
worried about whether they had enough savings for college. These
are people, what are they going to live today? Because they love
Jesus. Oh, how blessed we are in the
United States of America. May we use our freedom to proclaim
and herald the gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations, to our
neighbors, to our households. And as we do, the world shall
come upon us and against us, but they cannot defeat us. Even
if we die, we live, Paul says. These weren't parents worried
could they buy new shoes for the school year. These weren't people frustrated
the weeds in their backyard. These weren't people who were
being picked on because they were Calvinists? These are people
who were dying for the sake of the gospel, whose lives were
gone, but God was good in that. You see? So when a Thessalonian
Christian would say, God is good, and you say, why, my friend,
is God good? They would say, because God loved
me with an everlasting love. And God has given his son that
I might have eternal life. And God's son has lived as I
could not live and died in my place that I might be the righteousness
of God. See, that's the answer, is it
not? And Paul, as we saw last week,
finally, brothers, please pray for us that the Word of God may
continue to go and do that which it had done in you. And that
we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, because not all
who are of the assembly, not all who are in proximity have
faith. But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard
you against the evil one, and we have confidence. Look at that
for a second. This exhortation, as we saw in
chapter 2, to stand firm. We're able to stand firm because
Christ is our satisfaction. Christ is our propitiation. Christ is our righteousness.
So no matter what's happening in our lives, we stand before
God perfectly justified and there is nothing that can take us away
from the love of God who loved us and chose us for Himself from
the beginning that we would be sanctified by the Spirit and
believe in the truth, the gospel that the disciples or the apostles
took to the city. And this love of God is how we
find comfort. This gospel is what empowers
us to have hope through grace. And so therefore, we now can
say our hearts are comforted and established in every good
work and word. And here, Paul argues that God
will establish you, God will guard you, because this is what
the Lord does. Peter writes something very similar,
doesn't he? Peter says that those who are kept in heaven are guarded
by the power of God. You don't remember that. And
what was the context of that scripture? They were dying. As Paul would write to the Hebrews,
you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, for you knew
you had a better reward, an abiding one. An abiding one. What is
that? Eternal life. Life in Jesus Christ. So Paul reiterates this here
for the Thessalonians. The Lord is faithful. He will
produce His salvation in you, and He will protect His salvation.
For He who began a good work is faithful to what? watch you
fulfill it. He who began a good work is faithful
to encourage you along the way by slapping you when you fail.
He who is faithful to begin a good work in you is faithful to complete
it. So we believe on Christ for salvation
and we believe in the same message of the gospel for sealing and
preservation. So what does that mean? We just
sit around in a bowl and didn't know. God produces works which
He began beforehand for us to walk in. That's Ephesians 2. The problem is that many people
can walk in good works. I know a lot of good Christian
walking people who are unbelievers. Do you? And that's why John is
so perplexed when he writes his first epistle. How is it that
so many among you are walking in darkness but professing the
light? Our intimacy is with God. It's a supernatural thing that
we have proclaimed to you because He, from the beginning now, that
we heard, touched, and saw with our eyes, we proclaim to you
that which was manifested to us that you may have fellowship
with us and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with the
Son, and this is the message we have heard from Him, that
God is light and in Him there is no darkness. So therefore,
we who say we are in the light but walk in darkness, what does
it say? We lie and we do not practice
the truth. And we know the commands of Jesus. What does He say there?
That we are commanded to do what? We are commanded to love the
Lord your God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength
and whatever else your version of Scripture might add to it.
It's all encompassing. And we're to love our neighbor
as ourself. And Jesus actually argues that these two laws entail
and encompass the obedience of all the laws of Moses. So that
the Ten Commandments are bound up in this. What does that show
us? The law of God is perfectly seen
in loving God with all that we are and loving each other as
ourselves. Now, I don't know about you,
beloved, and we'll talk about this later, but I can't do those two. Can
you? I wouldn't embarrass you, because
I know there's some perfect people in here, but if you have kept
those two commandments so perfectly today, just slip your hand up
and let's talk about it. You see, we can't do it. We can't
do it. So even the command that's given
after we are born again is not a perfect It's not able to be
perfectly fulfilled. Maybe it is, but I don't think
it's ever been done. I personally don't think that
it's possible. So because the Lord will produce
his salvation, because he will protect it, because the Lord
is faithful to establish and guard you, verse four, and I'll
get to where we're going, he says, and we have confidence
in the Lord about you. We have confidence in the Lord about
you, that you are doing and will do the things that we command.
Now, what is it that Paul has commanded these Christians? Well,
if you flip back and you look at this letter and you look at
the letter before, the letter before says that he commands
them to do what they are already doing, which is to love each
other and to grow in the knowledge of hope and grace through love
and to continue to be deeper in their love for the Lord and
their love for each other. Sound familiar? And also not to be
discouraged by the persecutions, but to stand firm, trusting in
the one who is faithful. And then also we see then don't
believe all these false doctrines and don't worry about those who
have died, but encourage each other with these truths. What's
the truth? That Christ has not come yet. So He's commanded them to continue
to love, continue to hold fast, continue to pray, continue to
encourage one another, continue to hold fast to sound teaching.
And over here, He's prayed for the same thing. He's commanded
them to do the same thing. Except now, in verse 6, where we get
to next week, He's going to command them directly, explicitly, about
specific people and about specific things. And this is where we
get to some practical understanding of the exhortation of the Apostles
to the New Testament Church. We're going to start seeing next
week some things that we can bite into. You know why we can
bite into them? Because we can do them. Let's
give an example. We command you, brothers, look
at verse 6, we're not going to preach this today, I'll just give an example.
We command you, brothers, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,
that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and
not according to the tradition that you received from us. There's
a command. You know what that means? Don't
talk to him. Don't fellowship with him. Don't eat with him.
You see him coming, walk the other way. Don't fellowship with someone
who walks in idleness. Now I have to explain that next week. But there's a command
there. How do you do that? Well, Paul
knows that We could probably do that. We could say, okay,
if he calls, block the number. If he Facebooks, block the Facebook.
If he shows up, hide. I mean, we could do some silly
stuff. Turn out the lights. Change the locks of the gates.
I mean, there's a lot of things we can do to avoid people, so
we can work in that. When people say, well, the second
commandment, you know, to have no other gods before me. Oh,
we can work on that one, can't we? We can work on it. We can make sure there's no idols
in our house. We can make sure there's no pictures of Uncle
Billy looking like Jesus, banging on the door, wanting to come
eat. We can take those down. That's what we call the picture
of Jesus. Luke and I call him Uncle Billy, anyway, because
that's not Jesus, nor a representation thereof. We can take those down. We can avoid things that may...
But we're still going to have idols. And see, that's what we
like as people. We love the don't do's. We love
the don't do's and we enjoy putting them up on our refrigerator and
say, okay kids, today we're not going to covet. Hey, how come she got a biscuit?
Boom! Don't you covet your sister's
biscuit. I mean, you see what I mean? We can work on that stuff,
right? Kid will never eat a biscuit again. I mean, he's damaged now.
Is it hard if somebody ordered a biscuit? PSD, he falls down,
have to call the ambulance. Every time I say biscuit, I get
hit. But we like those things. And
Paul knows that these commands are going to drive these Christians
to the possibility of actually feeling a little bit self-righteous
because they're avoiding that brother. It's just like church
discipline. What's the purpose of church discipline? Honoring
the Lord Jesus Christ and the purity of His church in prayerful
hope of restoration. We removed that we might restore,
you see. But oh man, we can puff up. Oh
my goodness, we obey Jesus Christ. We're a church that exercises
church discipline. We're a church that uses the
Scripture. We're a church that doesn't do that. And we don't
do that, you see. Even though the things that we
may do or may not do may be honoring and somewhat respectful to the
commands given in Scripture, Why do we harp on those things
so? Where's our hope? In doing or not doing? In eating
or not eating? No. Our hope is in the work of
Jesus Christ and what He's done and what He didn't do. And that
everything that He did and everything that He didn't do was for the
glory of the Father in obedience perfectly. He is the righteousness
of God and His work is our hope. Paul knows that what he's about
to say can cause these Christians to really get into a rut. So
before he commands, he explains. We have confidence in you, about
you, in the Lord. You notice he didn't say confidence
in you. I said it by mistake because it's natural. I got confidence
in you. You can do it. You go get them, boy. You walk
with Jesus. Paul didn't say that. Paul's
going to say you walk this way because I command you in the
Lord Jesus. Therefore, God is commanding
you to do this with this brother. But he says it's confidence in
the Lord. Husbands, love your wife as Christ
loved the church. All right, husbands. Let's have a conference on how
bad we are at that. It would be a conference on anthropology. How unable we are to love our
wives as Christ loved the church. And we try, and then they don't
receive it. And then we're mad at them again. How dare you not
submit the way I love you, woman! I mean, you know. We love verse 22 of chapter 5
of Ephesians. Men do. That's where it says,
woman, wives, submit to your husbands. We love that. We don't
like the latter part. Love your wives. But we can't.
Perfectly. Now there'll be seasons where
we seemingly love them. And there'll be times where it will be loving
and God gets the credit for those things even then, but are they
permanent? Are they full? Are they absolutely
righteous? No, they're all tainted with
fleshly things and fighting. I mean, we may exercise restraint
and it look like love, but it's really just tolerance. I mean,
you know what I'm saying? Wives, you know what I'm saying?
How you love your husband. Children, obey your parents in
the Lord for this is right. Matter of fact, Paul tells Timothy
he groups disobedient children with murderers and sexually immoral
people. There's murderers and haters
and sexually immoral and disobedient parents. I used to love that
scripture in California when my children would act up during
service. And I'd get down there and bring them to the front row
and I'd just open it up and read it. God ought to kill you for
your disobedience. I mean, you know, he ought to
kill me too. But he killed Jesus for our disobedience. How can we do it? Because he
has confidence in the Lord. Paul said he has confidence about
you in the Lord. What does that mean? By the virtue
of your union with the Lord Jesus Christ, we walk with faith that
God will do the work he's purposed to do. That's it. How are we
supposed to do this? You walk with Christ. You believe
in Christ. Christ will do the work. But
aren't we obeying? Yes and no. Yes and no. I mean really, what is obedience
anyway? What does it look like? What does the word obedience
mean? Perfectly following. Let's just
simplify it like that. To do what you're told to do
at every point. Now imagine Do you know that
hesitation is disobedience? Son, I need you to clean the
dishwasher. Disobedience. Begrudging as you're walking
to the place. Disobedience. The act of following the command
and not desiring it. Disobedience. I want to put you on the cross,
Jesus. To suffer for sins that are not
yours. No hesitation. No reluctance. There is no real obedience. I
mean, we may obey right there, or we may obey this, but it's
not obedience. It's not righteousness, is it?
Because we've failed. Someone that steals when they're
six is still a thief when they're 96. Someone who disobeys their
mom at three is still a disobedient, rebellious person at 93. We're
guilty. But our confidence is not in
what we can do. Our confidence is in the work
of God, in Jesus Christ. And even when we do follow the
admonishments and the exhortations and then we walk in what many
of us would call obedience today, just like Paul would say, we
pray that you will obey the command or walk in the things that we
ask you to do. We have confidence that your
union with the Lord, the power of the gospel, Romans 1 16 is
our hope in you. The Lord will do that which he's
purposed to do in you. I take it so far back to say
that God has decreed his church to look a certain way and that
we as the church and some of you have had this conversation
with me through the years. So you mean to tell me that you
cannot forgive somebody because of why? Why can you not forgive
them? Because of what they did? Because
of how bad it hurt? You know, God decreed His people
would be a forgiving people. Are you saying God's a liar?
I mean, I've gone there before. Well, I just can't. Absolutely.
That's right. You're telling the truth. You can't. So how do we do it? Well, that's what Paul says in
verse 5. or to love each other. What are
the commands that we know? What are some other commands
Paul gave them? Live quietly, mind your own business,
work with your hands. Verse five, may the Lord direct
your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.
Paul prays here that the Lord will do the work. Did you hear that? Paul prays
here that the Lord will do the work. May the Lord, he's not
hoping. Oh, I hope the Lord. He's praying,
Lord, direct their hearts. Direct their hearts to your love
and to the steadfastness of Jesus. What does that mean? Well, beloved,
this is something that we need to understand. Because without understanding
this, we live not in freedom and joy. We live in condemnation
and fear. Do you hear me? And it's such
a fine line that many people teach it ignorantly
and understand it ignorantly. Well, let's take a stab at it.
God, please direct their hearts to your love so that they will
fulfill your purpose in their lives so that they will maintain
their joy so that they will stand fast under trial and persecution
so that they will rejoice and worship. to the love of God." You notice
it doesn't say, to our love for Him. He doesn't say, God, direct
them to their love for you. Remind them of how much they
love you because, friends, are we always in love with God? I mean, be honest. Well, yes, I am. Oh, really?
You've never read anything in the Bible that you just despised?
You've never read anything in the Bible that you just did not
want to hear? We're not loving the Lord at
that time. Our hearts and flesh and minds don't even love sometimes
what the Scriptures teach us. So how have the words that we
hear drive us from passion to, I don't know, aggravation? Is
that not our affection toward God waning? Yes. So we are going to have to have
the Lord to remind us of His love. What is the love of God? See, here's a confusing thing,
and I don't have time to deal with it today, but the scripture
teaches that God has a love, and that God's love is seen toward
things and toward people, but that God's love is not a feeling.
It's a movement, it's an action, it's something he does in response
to his love. Paul would say to the Ephesians,
you're once dead in your trespasses and sins, but God, because of
his what? Great love, calls you to be born
again. We learned three weeks ago that
God has loved us before we were. God does not start His love for
us, He loves us. And we learned that the love
of God is evidenced and physically seen in the giving of Jesus Christ
the Son as the mercy seat, as the atonement, as the satisfaction. We then live by faith in Jesus
Christ, in union with Him, by faith, the work of God and the
Gospel that's powerful enough to snatch us from the domain
of darkness and to take a dead brain and a dead heart and to
bring it to life. Take blind eyes and let them
see. And we believe. The love of God for
us is eternal. It is from the beginning. The
love of God toward us in the giving of the Son Jesus. The
love of God that is everlasting. And as Paul writes so eloquently
in the last few verses of Romans 8, that we cannot be separated
from the love of God for any reason and through any means
whatsoever, ever. Jesus says the same thing in
John 6, that no one can snatch them out of my hand. The love
of God is seen in the fact that there has been an offering. of the Son on our behalf. The
offering that satisfied God's judgment. The offering that continued
to display God's righteousness in Romans 3. The offering that
effectually paid for the sin debt of all who believe and only
all who believe. That's love. And beloved, if
you don't understand this, the love of God is central to the
gospel. May the Lord direct your hearts to his love. It's central. God would still be loving had
he saved no one. But oh, the love of God is manifested
and seen so beautifully in the fact he saved people who are
not worthy of salvation. Hear that. Not worthy of salvation. William Young's new theology
book was released this weekend. He refutes that truth. Many people refute that truth.
No, no, no, no, no. God, you know, God is, He's loving,
He doesn't, He will not punish people for sin. That's not loving,
that's wicked. A dad that lets his child stick
a fork in a light socket is wicked. A judge that lets a murderer
go free is wicked. God would be wicked if He did
not punish sin. Well, why is He going to punish
me, you might ask? Because Jesus took it. Somebody
takes it. As a matter of fact, do you know
Jesus could not be legally crucified under Rome's law? You know that,
don't you? You remember the narrative? Pilate's
like, I'm washing my hands. This man is innocent. He says
that. This man has done nothing wrong. He's innocent. He's done
nothing wrong. I don't know what y'all's problem are, but I'm
not going to have a revolt in his mind. I'm not doing this.
Why did Pilate do that? For God had decreed it before
the foundations of the world. And the high priest said, it
is better for one man to die than for the whole nation to
perish. Because the Pharisees knew, the Sanhedrin knew, that
if Jesus was not stopped, that Rome would put an end to Jews.
Because they're not going to tolerate this. So working together
by the decree of the Lord, God purposed before the world began
that Jesus Christ would be crucified. But wait a minute, Rome was not
about breaking their own laws. Because they hung you out to
dry, literally, when you messed up. The 40 lashes minus one was
not a joke, y'all. You wonder how big, you know,
when you're growing up, you can eat some meat on those bones,
they took it off of you. When you stole, blasphemed, drunk
in public, they whipped it. So how did they crucify Jesus?
Because Pilate said, well then some guilty man's got to go free,
because I cannot punish an innocent man. Whose place is he going
to take? They said, give us Barabbas.
And they let a murderer go. Beloved, if that's not prophetic,
I don't know what is. What do you mean by that? We're
murderers. And Christ died in our place. Because God loved us. with an
everlasting love? How do we follow Him? By faith. How do we obey what we're about
to hear? Because Christ has obeyed God. Because God has loved us with
an everlasting love. The love of God is active to
us and toward us and through us. He is faithful. His love is our motivation. His love, His Spirit, His work
allows us to worship through the hearing of the Word and to
worship through the singing of hymns and to worship through
prayer and to worship through fellowship. We can worship because
God loves us. And because He loves us, now
we love Him. May the Lord direct your hearts
to the love of God. Secondly, and finally, may the
Lord direct our hearts to the steadfastness of Christ. Christ has endured temptation. Christ has endured suffering.
Christ has endured and he has succeeded in obedience. Listen
to this. So we are confident in the Lord
about you. Because you have union with the
Lord, because the Word of God has come to you in power, we
are confident the Lord will continue to do the work that He began
in you. So therefore, I pray that God would help your hearts
be tuned and drawn to the steadfastness of Christ. May your hearts be
affixed to Him. May you look to Him in everything. The author and the perfecter
of our faith. Can you look to Christ, not without the Lord?
Many looked at Jesus, who in His own words fulfilled prophecy
that everybody knew. Many looked to Jesus in His teaching. Many heard the words that He
said, and they could not see past the man. Romans 5.3, you don't have to
go there. I'm just going to rip off about eight for time's sake. It talks
about the endurance in the midst of tribulation. Romans 15, the
endurance in the midst of reproach. Jesus did not, Peter says, return
with revile, but entrusted Himself to the One who is faithful. See,
Jesus in His humanity knew where His strength was. Jesus did not need to be vindicated,
even though everything that was happening to Him was wrong. in the context or the economy
of fairness. It drives me nearly to sinful
anger when people want to argue with me about God's fairness. How dare we question God? Well,
that's just not fair. You're right. What's fair is
that we all are condemned. What's fair is that God would
look upon us and see the iniquity of our being and our existence,
much less the acts of rebellion and sin, and just blow us all
away for all of eternity. That we would all be a party
to the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God, which Jesus
himself will tread for all of eternity. That's the picture
we see in God's apocalypse. But Jesus did not return reviled. How about the endurance of Christ
in the midst of suffering? How about affliction? And Paul
teaches the Corinthians these things and the Romans these things.
How about what we've seen just in this letter in chapter 1 verse
14? I mean, verse 4, endurance in
the midst of persecution. May the Lord Tune our hearts
to the steadfastness of Christ. May we see that though we have
a model before us, Jesus is not a model that can be followed.
He must be the model that is believed in. And the model is
the wrong word. I don't like the word, but you
know what I'm trying to say. He is the essence of righteousness. He is the perfect man. Stop forgetting
that Jesus was perfectly human. The endurance in the midst of
the good fight of faith, Paul tells Timothy. And that we should
endure, he says, be strengthened, young Timothy, by the grace which
is yours in Jesus Christ. And therefore endure in this
suffering. How can we stand and endure in
suffering? Because Christ is our endurance. Look to the one who is faithful. Look to him, that Hebrews 12,
that hall of fame of faith. How did they stand? They looked
to Christ. What is looking to Christ? Trusting
in Him. Believing in Him. Striving in
Him. Holding fast to Him. Faith. It's
all one word. Faith. Faith. We hold. And as we run the race, we do
not do so perfectly. But we do so without failing
in the end because Christ has finished. Christ has finished
it. God is faithful and our hope
is in our faith. Did you catch that? Our hope is in our Lord and Savior
in whom we believe by faith. Our hope is not in our faith.
Our hope is in our Lord by faith. As we run, we run in vain to
be pitied if we do not hold fast to Christ. As we try, we fail,
but Jesus did not fail. As we strive, we give up. Jesus did not give up. So we find ourselves at the end
of our ropes wondering, how am I going to stay and stand and
strive? We pray that God would direct
our hearts toward his love and to the steadfastness of Christ
and be reminded. Of his mercy. And of his power. And of his love. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for this
truth. We thank you, Lord, No matter
what we are experiencing, no matter how difficult things appear,
no matter how close we are to throwing in the towel. Lord,
you do not give up on us. You will not let us fall. You will keep your children in
your love. And Lord, I pray that most of
all this sermon would be an encouragement to each of us as we continually
measure our ability and our obedience and our following and our serving
and our love for you. As we continue to compare and
contrast it, we with each other. And with the apostles. Lord, it's very easy for us to
just throw hands up. Father, we we need you to strengthen
us. We need more than counsel. We
need to hear the gospel every day. We need to understand. That Christ
has finished the work of redemption. And that you will keep us in
him. And we need to recognize that our love for you, given
to us because you've loved us first, causes us to live and
to love and to learn the way the scripture reveals that we
will. Father, I pray that as we continue
to close out this letter, That we do not fall into the ditches
of self-righteousness. And Lord, that we do not fall
into the practice of feeling justified because of the way
we walk before you. But that our faith will always
and forever be in Christ's righteousness. And that Lord, His righteousness
is enough. His righteousness is enough to
satisfy you and your holy commands. His righteousness is enough to
satisfy your wrath against our wickedness. And His life and
His power and His place and authority is enough to seal us and to bring
us home to you. Until that day, Lord, let us
rest. in Christ alone. Let us be able
to say with every fiber of our being, no matter how hard the
road or how easy it may appear, it is well with our soul because
Christ has saved us. In Jesus name. Amen. Lord, that
many, if not all of us father, this coming Sunday could fellowship
around a meal together simply and purposefully. And we thank
you for the grace and for your love and for Jesus Christ. And we ask you, Lord, to continue
to hold us and keep us as a congregation. from the evil one to hold us
together, Lord, in unity and to let Your name be praised and
glorified through the power of Your Word in us and through us.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Love You, church. Fellowship
as you have opportunity.