Amen. Thank you, church. You can be seated. Turn to that
last few sentences of 1 Thessalonians. Believe it or not, we have, just
as a way of counting, we have this week and three more weeks
and this letter will be done. Three more after today. Yes,
three more. So that we might expound upon that which is presented. We sang some songs today. I did
not remember until, I mean, I knew Doug and Pam were going to be
out of town, and the little text came through with no song selection
on it. I'm thinking, hey, that's on me this week. So I just thought,
what are some of these songs that continually sing about the
faithfulness of God? Because I mean, are we not in
that position today? That each one of us, as we sit
here, as we anticipate this service, as we anticipate this day before
us, we recollect on the thoughts of yesterday. We look at the
past of the last week or two and we ask ourselves, you know,
how did I make it? And then we see that which is
before us and we think, how am I going to make it? So how did
I make it? How am I going to make it? And
quite honestly, church, the only hope that anyone in this world
ever has is the trust in the faithfulness of God. As we get
through our service today and we take the Lord's table, we'll
end our service singing great is thy faithfulness. It's a song
that we're all familiar with if we grew up in any semblance
of congregationalism and Oftentimes we sing it not realizing that
the truth of the lyrics of those stanzas and verses indeed come
from the Word of God. As Brother Dave prayed, the truth
that we sing in the songs are not just things to entertain
our musical ears, not just to give us the joy of hearing the
resonation of our voices together in harmony, but it is an absolute
reflection of the faithfulness of God through His Word, even
in the small things like giving us hymns to sing. That is why
as a congregation we hold fast. There are a lot of songs in that
book that we do not sing and will not sing because they need
to be removed, but that's a feat, believe it or not. But we sing
that which testifies to the truth of God's Word, because only in
God's Word do we find anything worthy of expression. Only in
God's Word do we find anything worthy of praise, as it points
solely, subjectively to the One who is worthy of it all, Jesus
the Christ. And so as we prepare our hearts
to see the text today, turn with me in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse
23. And as we prepare to hear this
today, I want you to ask yourself, what is faithfulness? How would
you define it? What example exists before you
this very day? What example exists before you
in your own mind? Culture, family, community. When you think of faithfulness,
when you think of the ideal perfection, when it comes to faithfulness,
who pops into your mind? Friends, I know many of us would
have many different answers. Maybe those who are living, It
may be someone who has since passed from this life. We might
have stories about faithful brothers and sisters or faithful loved
ones or faithful heroes who have done their duty. But is that
even the definition of faithfulness? Is one that does a faithful act
truly faithful? Is one that actually rises to
the top of normality or the mediocre really someone to be exalted,
to be adored, to be worshipped, to be idolized in this world.
Is there ever a human being other than the God-man, Jesus the Christ,
who is worthy of any exaltation with the label faithful? And
if so, let he or she be put on the pedestal today. Friends,
I seriously doubt that any of us could come with any history,
with any argument, and with any witness of true faithfulness.
And my heart for us today is to see that. First and foremost,
that there is no such thing as faithfulness when it comes to
our world. And as faithful as each of us
may be in areas of our lives, there are areas of our lives
where we are absolutely faithless. There are areas of our lives
where we are not dependable. There are areas of our lives
where we are failing every moment of every day. And there are seasons
of our lives, even in those places where we remain steadfast and
determined, without fail, those too will fail. Either by choice
or not so choice, whether our bodies fail us, our minds fail
us, our hearts fail us, we will let those around us down. We
will fail in this life in every aspect of everything that we
do. even in our belief in Jesus Christ, if it is up to us. And so we come to the end of
this text this week. We come to this doxology. We come to this expression. Now
Paul has written and preached and taught and prayed, and there
is now the word, now. Now may the God of peace Himself
sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul
and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it." Paul then
concludes to say, brothers, pray for us. Greet all the brothers with a
holy kiss. And I put you under oath before the Lord to have
this letter read to all the brothers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you. Friends, I don't know if you hear the words that
I hear. But as a pastor, as a father,
as a husband, these are, within this text, the continual war
that rages in my soul. How shall I succeed? How shall
I be faithful? How in the world, in this cosmos,
will there ever be any sustenance to the person that I am with
any expression of any eternal value whatsoever? And our exclamation
to that is, now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. Beloved, is your sin wicked in
your heart? Do you hate your flesh. Do you long for the day when
Christ shall return, not just to set aside our struggles, but
to set aside our sin? It is for sin that Christ died. It is for righteousness that
Christ was slain. It is because inside of our minds
we are idolaters and adulterers and wicked and all of these things
that we long for and cling to and fear and worry about, all
of which are absolute unbelief in the person who has it all
in his hands. As a child, I remember many songs
that I learned in Sunday school. He's got the whole world in His
hands. You remember that? He's got the
whole wide world in His hands. He's got the whole world in His
hands. He's got the whole world. We
get it, okay. We got it. Sing it one more time, knock
teeth out of it. I mean, you know, but when the kids sing
it, it's great. If we sang it, it'd be like,
that is monotonous. He's got you and me and brother, and then
we keep on going. It's like the bus song, the wheels
on the bus. He's got the whole world. But why is it that children
see that so clearly? You tell a child that God is
bigger than all the cosmos, which is ineffable and immeasurable.
You tell a child that God, in His absolute supremacy, spoke
and everything we know to exist leapt into being. You tell a
child that God has created all things and there is not anything
that is created that He has not created. And then they begin
to question, what about my glasses? Think about it, child. Wow, plastic,
petroleum, glass, sand, God made it all. God made the steel that
goes into the cars, because all the core concepts, the core materials,
the raw foundations of everything that exists comes from God. They just believe it. But then
there comes a time in our lives where the overwhelming, pressing
urgency of not even calamity, of just the mundane, Expression
of our existence shadows out that type of faith. And we say,
oh, the Lord's got it, and then we sit in our closets and we
writhe our hands together and we grit our teeth and we wonder,
what shall I do? And sadly this day, I wish I could say that
all of us, at the sound of my voice, are most concerned with
what shall we do with our wickedness. But I'll be straight. Very, very
seldom is the church of Jesus Christ really overwhelmed with
sin. And we should be. Not overwhelmed as in overcome,
but we ought to be overwhelmed in our spirits and in our mind
with the reality of the sin that still remains and indwells around
us, and the flesh that continually fights against the Spirit within
us. Our biggest concern should not be the wind that shall blow
down the dwelling of our home, but our biggest concern shall
be the wind of righteousness that shall blow our body and
our soul into hell, lest we believe in Jesus Christ. We should not
be concerned about the rain that floods and drowns our children,
but rather the flood of fury, the wrath of God that comes upon
those who do not believe, and the recompense that righteously
will wash over all wickedness. without fail. We should be more concerned about
the mediocre mindset that we place before us when we consider
our faith and our faithfulness toward Christ, when He was absolutely
faithful toward us to die for our sins and to satisfy the wrath
of God the Father instead of us. Instead of us, Christ has died. We ought to be more concerned
with how we're growing in the depths of the knowledge of grace
through the Word of God, about how much and often that we pray
for each other, about how we cry out to God instead of living
this easy-peasy Christianity that is absolutely overcome by
worldliness. That we care more about the paint
on our porch than we do the soul of our neighbor. That we're worried
more about the bahia grass in our backyard, and the pets that
we so awesomely love, than we do about our very own marriage,
glorifying and honoring Christ above all things. That we care
about our 401Ks and our 403Bs and all of the finances that
we can acquire, so that we can say, dare lie to the face of
God and say, that which I need is for you. When we know, according
to James 4, it is not. It is that we may spend it on
our own passions, which are idols set before us to stand in the
way of the absolute beauty of Christ. We ought to be weeping
over this. We ought to be weeping. Because
until we see the severity of what the Scripture teaches, every
letter of the New Testament is an exhortation to hear and to
listen and to heed the beauty of the Gospel. It's an admonition
to warn that we need not take it lightly. And it's an exaltation
to the one who is faithful to procure it and to secure it. through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Church, we gather each week that we may be a people like this. We don't gather that we may come
to fellowship and say we've done Christian things. We don't gather
so we can hear good news and we take it to our cars and drive
home with it and it satisfies us. We don't gather so that we
can be fed this ambiguous message. We gather that we might hear
the same, learn the same, live the same, love the same, intertwined
and exalting God together. that we might minister to each
other intimately, that we might be intimate with the Word, who
is Jesus Christ, together. Because friends, if there were
a power for each of us to look into each other's eyes and to
see the pain and to see the sin, we would sit in a great horror. Friends, God looks in our eyes.
Quorum Deo. In the face of God we sit this
day, not one thing hidden from His gaze, not one thing hidden
from His knowledge, not one thing hidden. And if we were to measure
our lives against the righteousness of His being, we are still in
every sense absolutely worthy of judgment. But in His mercy,
and His love and His absolute glorious wisdom, we are forgiven. We are forgiven. And there is
no hope for us outside of Jesus, who is the faithful one. What
is this faithfulness that Paul so passionately closes? Imagine
the closing of a letter, if you will, not the way we close letters.
See you later. Sincerely. Regards. Those are
meaningless. Do you really even use the word
regards? Except on a letter? Do you ever say sincerely? Are
you and your spouse or your significant other or your friends or your
loved ones, do you sit around and say, I sincerely love you?
No, you don't. We don't use those types of words
except on paper. But the problem is we impose
that type of just frivolous, it's time to get out of here,
talk to you later, TTYL mindset on the writings of the apostles.
Paul was thinking, I have no more time. have no more paper,
I must leave them with the most glorious, most magnificent thing
that can be possible to leave them with. Of all the teaching
that I've ever said in this letter, in this writing, I must leave
them with something that overcomes it all. I must leave them with
the power of God that they might see everything that I've told
them and commanded them is absolutely and perfectly done in the person
of Christ. I need to depart with the magnus opus. It's not the
meat of this letter that is so magnificent, it is this close
that is so magnificent. It is probably something that
we have never even considered as a person, as a people. Is that the closing of the letters
therein is a reminder of the supremacy of God in all things. And how we as the church are
subject to God's preservation of us and power over us. And most importantly, power in
us to accomplish His will for His glory. Now may the God of
peace Himself. Let's think about that for a
minute. We think about the steadfastness of love that God has, the steadfastness
of patience, the faithfulness that God is. Know therefore that
the Lord your God is God. The faithful God who keeps covenant
and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments
to a thousand generations. And we see the second reading
of the law, we see in Deuteronomy 7 and 9 those words and what
they must have meant to the people of Israel. Who in everything
they could see was hopelessness. Even though they had been sent
out of slavery, taken out of the land of Egypt, and were promised
things, there was not anything tangible for them to hang their
hat upon. There was no army. There was
no plan. No map. No food. No water. But just God. Just God's faithfulness. and how they whined, how they
cried, how they labored over the angst of, oh, we had it better
in Egypt as slaves. At least we had a place to live,
at least we had something to eat, at least our children. Have you ever contemplated what
the Scripture teaches about why then, instead of going to the
land of promise, they remained in the desert for 40 years? It's
so that all those unbelieving, complaining generations would
be dead before they went to the land of promise. And interestingly enough, there
were only two people who had lived amongst that generation.
Caleb and Joshua. of all those that escaped Egypt
and grumbled against the Lord, of those people only two remained,
Caleb and Joshua. So that when they heard that
God is steadfast and He keeps His covenant to a thousand generations,
they were satisfied. God is faithful. Remember Jesus
Christ, Paul would tell young Pastor Timothy. Risen from the
dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for
which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the
word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure everything
for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation
that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is
trustworthy, for if we have died with Him, we will also live with
Him. If we endure, we will also reign
with Him. If we deny Him, He will also
deny us. If we are faithless, He remains
faithful. For he cannot deny himself."
2 Timothy 2, 8 and 13. The steadfast love of the Lord
never fails. It never ceases. His mercies
never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. Friends, this is not found in
a song of celebration. That text that we so often quote,
His mercies are new every day. Great is the faithfulness of
God. Great is Thy faithfulness. It's not found in the annals
of celebration. It's found in the midst of the
chronicles of lamentations. Lamentations 3, 22 and 23, is
where we find these great words of exaltation about the faithfulness
of God. This exulting coming from the
writer of this text, who in every way possible is lamenting, weeping,
crying, longing for freedom. And yet they hope that this Lamenter
has is that the steadfast love and the faithfulness of God never
fails. Back to where we are. Now may
the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. The God of peace
Himself. Who is this God of peace? This
God of peace, of course, as we know, God the Father. God the
Son, God the Spirit, one God, three persons, eternally distinct,
eternally around, never changing, and yet we see that God is the
only one. who brings such peace. Paul starts
this letter when he says, to the church of the Thessalonians,
in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and
peace. Remember these words. Blessed
is the Lord. We give thanks to God. Always,
for all of you, constantly, mentioning you in our prayers, remembering
before our God and Father your work of faith, and your labor
of love, and your steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus. For we know, brothers loved by
God, that He has chosen you, because our gospel came not only
to you in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit. and with
full conviction. Paul reminds them in this closing
that this peace that you now have with God is not something
that you have accomplished. Paul reminds them, and in doing
so reminds us, beloved, that we are not at peace with God
because of what we have done. We are not at peace with God
because of how we have walked. We are not at peace of God because
we've repented of our sin. Well, friends, if we measure
ourselves, we recognize that repentance is somewhat short-lived
in our lives. Therefore, it is a necessary
continual reality. For if man, woman, or child could,
after believing on Christ, turn from all sin, then we could stand
here today and say, I am without sin. And John tells us very clearly,
he who says he has no sin is a liar. But if we sin, if we
sin, we have an Advocate. We have an Advocate with the
Father, for the Father brings His righteousness and His judgment
upon all wickedness. But we have an Advocate with
the Father who paid for our sins and satisfied the judgment of
God. And the word we see there in
1 John is we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous, who is our propitiation. There's no more debt to be paid.
There's no more judgment to be feared, for Christ has taken
it all. So this God of peace brings peace
through the blood of Jesus. He brings peace. Why do we need
peace? The Bible says that we are hostile.
The natural man cannot seek after God, cannot know God, but yet
we are hostile. The Scripture calls us dead in
our sins and trespasses against Him. We're not just wicked little
things that are dirty we don't want to dig hands in. We're not
like things living in a trash can that we can just stay out,
we avoid. We actually, in our sin, are
an affront to God. We are hostile. We are His enemies
without Christ. And God is the God of peace.
God is the One who brought us out of the domain of darkness,
out of blindness, out of death, out of bondage, out of slavery
to the flesh and sin. And He has set us into the kingdom
of light and brought us into the righteousness of His presence
through Jesus Christ, His Son. This God of peace is working
here in this text. May the God of peace Himself
sanctify you completely. Now think about this. What does it mean to be sanctified?
To be sanctified at a basic level and understanding that word is
to be set apart for God. We see in the Old Testament,
we see the sanctified things, the sanctified relics, the sanctified
places. Nothing else is sanctified like
that. For we are the temple. Within us indwells God the Holy
Spirit. We are the righteousness of God. Christ, in John chapter 2, says
that He is the temple. He actually is the one who will
be rebuilt in three days after He is destroyed. Scripture teaches
us that to be sanctified is to be set apart for the use of God,
for the righteousness of God. Sanctification also includes
that which is declared to us, similar to justification, that
we're set right before God through a legal verdict. But sanctification
in that same way is that God has transformed us. We have now
new minds. We have new hearts. We have new
desires. We have new affections. We have
new drive. We have new goals. We have new
lives. The Scripture teaches us that
we are not old people with new paint. The Scripture teaches
us that we're not just people who are getting better and better,
but that we've been taken by God, and in His absolute power,
through His gospel, He's taken us from death to life. Friends,
we can animate dead tissue, but it doesn't make it living. Necrosis
is irreversible. Decay is for the dirt. And yet God has made us alive
in Christ Jesus. Therefore we are now what? New
creations. Paul would go on to express this
very clearly in his own life and ministry, that he is not
himself living. He says, but I live, what? It
is not I who lives, but Christ who lives within me. And I live
my life by faith. And the One who loves me and
gave Himself for me, the One who gave Himself for me to bring
peace between me and God, the One who gave Himself for me at
the cost of His own life, the One who gave Himself for me who
had no sin but He became sin, that I now am the righteousness
of God. And church, this is the God of
peace who is sanctifying us completely. not just for the preparation
of His presence, not just to be set aside for His glory, but
to be changed and transformed from one state of glory to another.
As God works in us through His Word and the power of the Spirit
that indwells us, we are no longer bound to the sin that once choked
the life out of us. We are free to walk away. We
are free to put off the old man. We are free to resist the devil.
We are free from sin and death. We are free. But there's a third aspect of
sanctification here in which this text is speaking, or to
which this text is speaking. Look at the continuation here.
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and
may your whole spirit, and your whole soul, and your whole body
be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus. Look at that. This is a theme that has been
occupied already in several different places in this letter. The coming
of the Lord Jesus. The second coming. And as we'll
see in the weeks to come when we're in the second letter, it was a big issue for the Thessalonian
Christians. They were scared that the resurrection
and the second coming of God had come. And they'd missed it. Why? Because false teachers had
come around them and began to perpetrate such error. And Paul
is now telling these Christians, you are ready for that coming.
You do not need to hide. You do not need to worry. You
do not need to labor in such a way of fretting the coming
of the Lord. Because friends, when the coming of the Lord Jesus,
when the coming of the Lord Jesus is upon us, judgment. Listen. Judgment is here. Judgment is here. But we, according to Paul in
Romans 8, have no condemnation because we are right in Christ. We are justified before God because
God in His mercy satisfied His debt, His justice in Jesus. We are sanctified and we're not
just sanctified in statement. Beloved, our lives
ought to be a testament of sanctification. Our lives ought to be a daily
progression of being more and more like Christ. Because God,
as Paul would say to the Philippians who began a good work, he said,
I'm confident in this. I'm certain of this, he tells
the Philippian church. I am absolutely holding on to
this very reality that is yours in Christ Jesus, that He, God,
who began this good work in you, is and will be faithful to complete
it. So that there is sanctification
that God is doing and sanctification that God will complete. God will
complete us. We will be holy. We sing that
song often. It's one of my favorite hymns.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Worthy, worthy,
worthy. Holy, holy, holy. No mortal man can see. The holiness
of God. Friends, Scripture teaches that
at His appearing, at the appearing of Christ, we will be like Him. We will be righteous completely. Not just extreme makeover. Extreme
power and recreation. The temptations are gone. The
evil is gone. The harm is gone. The suffering
is gone. All is gone. And we stand equally
righteous with Jesus Christ, who is the God of heaven, not
because we made it, but because He did it. And it's not just in our actions. Because friends, I do believe
that most of us who are maturing Christians are able to resist
the actions of sin. We're able to stop our mouths
from speaking in sin. We're able to withhold our hands
from touching sin. We're able to turn off that things
which our eyes might desire as sin. We're able to not engage
in those activities that our feet may take us in sin, but
the sin of desire. The sin of omission, the sin
of unbelief, the sins that are difficult to see are still there. And one day, God will completely
take those away. We will be ready. For when Christ
comes for His church, He will only take those who are completely
righteous. Hear me. He will only take the
righteous. He will not take the wicked.
He will not take the marginal. He will not take those and give
them eternal life that have played with faith, played with church,
played with the Word, played with prayer. He will not take
those who believe that He was a genie in a bottle to give them
their earthly desires. For that is not the work of God
and His people. The work of God and His people
is righteousness. And no matter how far we have
come. We are still far away from the
righteousness of God. We still have fallen short of
the glory of God. And so the only hope we have
is the work of God. The only hope we have is the
power of God. The only hope we have to stand
blameless, not just in our actions, but in our soul, in our mind, is the work of God. Blameless. Look at that word there. What
in the world that your whole self be kept blameless? What shall be said of us when
we stand before the King of Kings? What shall be said of us as we
stand if He were to come this day before this next word had
come out of my mouth and we stood before Jesus Christ the living
God? What should be said of us? Are we ready? Are you ready? We misalign the fear of judgment
by embarking it on death. If you died before the day was
over, that's hogwash. If you stood before Christ today,
living or dead, where would you stand? Where would we stand,
church? Without His grace, without His
work, without His hope, without His cross, without the mercy
of God, we'd stand eternally damned. But because of Christ,
we stand eternally sanctified. And the very sin that embarked
upon our trip to church this morning is worthy of eternal
condemnation. The hesitation, do I really want
to go to church, in our spirit, is worthy of judgment. The very worry, what am I going
to do about that tire? God, I can't take anymore of
this, tires. I'm not picking on anybody, I
don't know of any tire problem. Worthy of wrath. But God is keeping us blameless.
So if we were to stand before Jesus Christ, in whom we've believed, and the
enemy of God, the devil, were to stand right there and list
those things that came from our heart just moments before, Jesus
would look at him and say, those were my sins, and I've paid for them. Friends,
this is glorious. Kept blameless at the coming
of the Lord Jesus. See, John talks about not shrinking
back, not hiding from the coming of the Lord. We see in the writer
of Hebrews, talks about going before the throne of grace boldly,
presenting ourselves into the throne room of God as our children
would just run around this room if we let them. No fear, they're
not going to die. We're not going to die standing
before the presence of our Father, who suffered His only Son, that
He might purchase us for Himself. We're being kept blameless by
the power of God. And at the coming of Christ, the
judgment of God will be revealed. How will you stand? What will
you say? There's only one thing to say. Nothing. For Scripture teaches
in Romans that all mouths will be shut. No one will be able
to give a defense. No one will be able to argue
with God, for God's judgments are true. His justice is righteous,
interchangeable in definition. So what is our hope? The God of peace. The God of
peace is our hope. Because God has called us to
Himself. How? Through the Word of God
that you're hearing this very day. Now may the God of peace
Himself sanctify you completely. Friends, the Gospel is in that.
That's good news. It's good news. That God Himself
is the only hope for our sanctification, for our preparation for glory,
for our existence with Him in all of eternity. Pure, holy,
blameless, righteous, beloved. God is our Savior. He calls us through the Word. He calls us to the Christ. He calls us and He is faithful. Look at that text. Look at verse
24. He who calls you is faithful. How will God sanctify us? He
will call us out of death. There's never been a man saved
by grace who's been convinced to believe on Christ. There's never been an argument
on the apologetic stage of this world that has won over the consciousness
of a man that he had salvation afterward. Ever! The only thing that brings salvation
is that we hear the words, Now may the God of peace Himself
sanctify you completely in the Lord Jesus, who suffered in your
place, became sin, that you might be the righteousness of God.
Don't you know, sinner, that you were not destined unto judgment,
but unto eternal life. You were not destined for wrath,
but you were destined for life in Jesus Christ. And when someone
hears that good news, and they say, not for me, they reject
the only love that God has ever had for them. It's good news. God calls us
through the Word to Christ and it says He is faithful. He will
surely do it. God is faithful. He is faithful to complete that
which He began, being confident of this, Paul says, as I've already
stated. He is faithful to secure His people. He is faithful when
the Word of God goes out to every ear in all the world. And the Scripture says that His
Word does not return void, but goes and does all that it was
intended to accomplish. And when God's Word comes to
your ears and you believe, praise God. When God's Word comes to
the ears of some and they don't believe, pray to God. Because
only God is going to change their hearing to hearing. How is God faithful? I started
to look at this and I thought, this is too much. There's too
many things in here to think about and consider about the
faithfulness of God. We could literally do an entire
25 to 30 sermon series on God's faithfulness. If we just looked
at the Word in the Old and New Testament. If we looked just
at the allusion of the New Testament to the Old Testament. If we just
looked at the principles of God's faithfulness found in text, we
could teach a year better. If we took every Segment. And so, I believe that every
sermon, every jot and tittle, every text is just surrounded
and encased by the faithfulness of God. Every circumstance in
our life. If God is faithful to save us,
friends, He's faithful to sustain us. He's faithful to bring... What is the worst that could
happen in our lives these days? What is the worst? We lose everything? We've got everything. We die? Praise God! I beat you. I beat you there. Dear brother down in Los Angeles,
Dr. Eddie Dalkor, we talked last
night until wee hours of the morning. He's lost four brothers
in the faith in the last three weeks. Unexpected. Deaths. All around the age of 30. We chatted about that a little
bit. And I'm like, hey, we just talked about that. We just talked
about that. About those who had fallen asleep. What does it say? It said, concerning those
who had gone to sleep, beloved, Do not mourn like those who have
no hope. Paul says, encourage each other
with these words. Then we are alive, it goes on
to say, for the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with
a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, with the sound
of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.
And then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together
with Him in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we
will always be with the Lord. Therefore, encourage one another
with these words. And I said it to him, and I said, Brother,
be thou encouraged. That's all that's needed. Our
hope is in the sovereignty and the faithfulness of God who exercises
His supremacy for that which is absolutely right and just
and pleasing to Him. And thankfully, by His mercy,
we are pleasing to Him because Christ in His wisdom satisfied
His wrath. That's the gospel. That's good
news. That's what that means. Evangel,
the Greek word. Good news. God is speaking that
to us. We are called. God is calling
us to that. God is faithful in life. Isaiah
understood the faithfulness of God. Therefore the Lord waits
to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy
to you. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are those who wait for
Him. God is faithful in keeping His people. God is faithful,
1 Corinthians 1.9, by whom you were called into the fellowship
of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. God is faithful in preserving
us through discipline. I know, O Lord, that Your rules
are righteous, and that in Your faithfulness You have afflicted
me. Psalm 119, 75. So what is this ultimate blamelessness? If this is what God is doing
in us, if God is preparing us, presenting us, and keeping us
blameless, fully blameless before Him and the return of Christ,
what does it really mean? Well, we would go to one of our
favorite passages of Scripture in all time. One that most of
us in our fellowship go to often. And in closing, we can see the
summary of such things. In Romans chapter 8, starting
in verse 28 through the end of the chapter, we hear the Word
of the Lord. And we know that for those who
love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called
according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He
also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, righteous. It is what God is doing with
His people. "...in order that He might be
the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined,
He also called. And those whom He called, He
also justified. And those whom He justified,
He also glorified." Yes, I'm emphasizing the D. Because in
those words, those are past sins. Paul's security and the faithfulness
of God's sanctification in his own life and in the lives of
all who believe on Christ is so solid, it's done. It's done! It is His purpose, it is His power,
it is His decree, therefore it is done. When Jesus said, it's
finished, your glorification was purchased. Your glorification,
though it is subject to the time in which we live, and the barriers
of what time does, it is a finished work that will culminate at the
return of Jesus. That's how certain it is. That's
how glorious it is. But after Paul gets through with
these words in Romans 8, he asks some questions. Listen to these
questions, beloved. Listen to these questions. He
said, What shall then we say to these things? If God is for
us, who can be against us? He, listen, who did not spare
His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also
with Him graciously Give us all things. Who shall bring any charge
against the elect of God? It is God who justifies. Who
is to condemn? Jesus Christ is the one who died. More than that, who was raised,
who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for
us. Who then shall separate us from
the love of Christ? Listen. Shall tribulation, shall
distress, shall persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger,
or sword? For it is written, For your sake
we are all being killed all the day long. We are regarded as
sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are
more than conquerors through Him who loved us. What things? All this bad stuff. And we are more than conquerors
in the calamities of life, in the malaise of living. We are
more than conquerors against sin. For I am sure. Here's Paul. He's certain. Some texts say, for I am convinced. that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor principalities, nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all of creation shall be able to separate us from the
love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Beloved, there is hope in the
faithfulness of God, there is power in life in the faithfulness
of God through Jesus Christ, and there is nothing you or I
can do to separate ourselves from the love of God in Christ
Jesus. God is faithful to save, God is faithful to seal, and
God is faithful to sanctify, for His glory and His name and
His majesty depend upon it eternally. So if God be a liar, He be not
God. and He's not, and we can take
it to the bank. What else do we need? We can
just quit. This is the last sermon we'll
ever preach. We're done. Love y'all. Go live for Jesus. I mean,
that's how I feel about this text. God will do the work that He's
purposed in us. So how do we stand in this promise?
How do I live in this? What am I supposed to do? Okay,
this is good, I heard some doctrinal stuff, that means teaching. Heard
some theological things, that means knowing God, which is what
Scripture is, all of it. Now, what do I do? Well, you
hear Paul crying out. You read the Word and you see
it. You see the lamenter, lamentations. His mercies never end. They are
new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Church,
at the foundation of resting in the faithfulness of God is
to express it. When Paul would tell us, do all
things without grumbling and complaining, this is one of the main steps. and trust in the faithfulness
of God. For if we can't stop moaning about the minutia of
life, how will we ever make magnificent His power in eternal things? Do you hear me? Our minds need renewal. In Romans
12, not be conformed, but be transformed by the renewal of
our minds. What do we do? How are we an
approved workman? We study the Word of God. We study the Word of God. I've harped on this, and I will
continue to harp on this, because therein lies the power of God's
grace. As we see, skip down to verse
28, The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. How was the
grace with them? Because Paul said it was. How
was the grace with you? Because Paul said it was. Don't forget, God's Word is true. And if it says it is, it is.
So how are we reminded of that in the renewal of our mind? We
read the Word of God. How is God going to be faithful
in my body? How is God going to be faithful to keep me from
sinning? How is God going to be faithful to keep me from anger?
How does God read the Word and let Him show you that He is faithful
and then we believe it? Our minds must meditate on His
faithfulness. Our hearts must love Him for
His faithfulness. Our mouths must proclaim Him
for His faithfulness. And our eyes, and our ears, our
affections, and our actions must display the power of His faithfulness
as we strive and hold to the One who is faithful to bring
it all to conclusion. Brothers and sisters, we are
those who are being glorified. Let us reveal the work of God
in His faithfulness. Believe on Christ this day, for
He is the only hope you have against the judgment that is
surely yours. Let's pray. We worship You, O Lord. We worship
You, and we praise You, and we love You, and we celebrate You. Thank You so much for Your power
in us, for Your grace, for the hope
that we have in Christ, for salvation. And Lord, these
things sometimes you can't really explain them well, but Father,
when You give us ears to hear, at the minimum, The beginning
and the end of our understanding is that we worship You for Your
greatness, for Your mercy, for Your glorious grace. So Father,
I pray that the Gospel would come powerfully to the hearts
and to the ears and to the minds of those who hear this message
and have not believed, that You would give them understanding,
that You would bring conviction of sin, that You would bring
hope and joy and peace to their lives, to their souls, to their
hearts. Father, help us to trust in You.
You killed Your Son. You sacrificed the righteous
one of God, the holy one of God, that we might be Your righteousness,
a display of Your glory, a picture of Your perfection, and a witness
to Your manifold wisdom. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Imagine that day when Jesus was
betrayed. Right before that took place,
He sat in the upper room with His twelve. And he took the bread
and the cup that was normally used during these Passover feasts,
a general staple of wine and bread, something they ate every
day, every meal, all the time, commonly. Nothing special, nothing
holy. And he took that bread and he
broke it as was customary. And instead of just blessing
the bread and enjoying the bread as coming from God for the sustenance
of the body, he actually taught what it really pointed to. He
said, this bread is my body. And it's broken for you. Eat
it and remember the body of Christ that was broken. Please eat.
He took the cup and did the same thing. A common cup, wine, and
instead of saying, thank you, Lord, for the vineyard, thank
you, Lord, for this joy which wine represented in the Scripture,
He called it for what it represented. For us to remember that when
we take of this cup, we are to remember the blood of Christ.
This new covenant, this blood that was shed to bring the remission
of sins that we might be at peace with God He said, drink this
in remembrance of the blood that was shed. Please drink.