Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles with the message, I'm going to be preaching from
the Old Testament in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah the prophet,
chapter 17, and I'll begin with verse five of Jeremiah 17. The reason I wanted to go back
to the Old Testament is as I read through the Bible, as I studied
the New Testament and the Old Testament, I find that it is
a, A miraculous thing how the Bible in both testaments has
the same message, which is the message of salvation, the message
of the gospel. And people basically are the
same. I mean there are many cultural,
language differences, things like that. But basically at the
heart of the matter concerning salvation concerning the problem
of sin, and salvation from sin, the problem of man's relationship
with God, and how can man be right with God. Since the fall
of man, recorded back in Genesis chapter 3, it's always been the
same, and people haven't changed. Man by nature by nature, and
I always like to qualify this. I don't like to assume that people
really know everything that I mean, all the words and the phrases.
But when we talk about man by nature, we're talking about human
beings as we are born naturally into this world. The Bible teaches
that we all fell in Adam. Now, Adam fell. Adam was the
first man created by God. And he fell by disobeying God's
law. The law, the covenant of works,
which I believe is appropriate to call it. So Adam fell, but
Adam was a representative. And Adam represented the whole
human race. And so when Adam fell, we all
fell into sin and the consequences of sin, which is death. And so
salvation, is salvation from sin and death. And so God immediately,
after the fall of Adam, he revealed the way of salvation, which was
not by the works of man, but it was by the grace of God through
a God-appointed substitute. And that substitute was revealed
in Genesis 3.15 as the seed of woman, which later was identified
as the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, eventually, who is the
seed of woman. He was born of a woman, the scripture
says in Galatians chapter four. but not of the aid of man. His
holy humanity, Christ, who is Jesus Christ. I talk about that
a lot on this program. He is God, the Son of God, the
second person of the Holy Trinity, co-equal with the Father and
the Spirit in every attribute of deity. But he came to this
earth and assumed or took into union with himself a holy, sinless,
human nature that was created for him in the womb of the Virgin
Mary by the Holy Spirit without the aid of man. And that's why
he's called the seed of woman back in Genesis 3.15. And God
revealed immediately after the fall that the punishment of sin
was death, and that death had to be such a death that would
satisfy the justice of God. And the only one who could bring
about that death, that death that would satisfy the justice
of God in the place of God's people was the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why He had to have
a human body, blood and bones and all of that. He had to die.
God cannot die. But Christ, in His humanity,
He did die. And that death is the satisfaction,
or the Bible calls it a propitiation. satisfaction to God's justice
for the sins of his people, those for whom he died. And so, as
we go through the Bible from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, all
the way up through the Old Testament to the book of Malachi, and we
continue on in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, and
go all the way through the epistles of Paul, and John, and Peter,
and well, I don't mean to leave out the Acts, that's Luke, that
story never changes. The people are the same. We're
all sinners, all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. Well, in Jeremiah's day, it was the same. But what people
fail to realize sometimes when you read the scripture and you
see descriptions of the sinfulness of men and women, they fail to
realize that many times, in fact, I would venture to say a lot
of the time, most of the time maybe, it's talking about religious
people. people who are doing their best
to try to be good, not just the immoral, perverted faction of
society. So look at Jeremiah 17 and look
at verse nine, for example. Now, I'm gonna go back to some
verses, but look here, it says, the heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked, who can know it? Now, when you
read passages like that, where does your mind go? What kind
of people is he talking about? Well, surely he's talking about
people who are liars, who are deceivers, robbers, thieves,
immoral people. No, he's talking about religious
people here. What he's talking about, what
this verse describes, the deceitful heart, that's wicked, desperately
wicked, above all things. What he's talking about is the
heart of every one of us by nature. You say, well, you know, from
my youth up, I've tried to be a good person. I've tried to
be moral and all of that. Well, and that's good and you
should do that. But what this is talking about
is in the matter of salvation and how to attain and maintain
a right relationship with God in that specific matter, Every
person who is born into this world, fallen in Adam, born dead,
the Bible says spiritually dead in trespasses and sins, in this
matter, your heart, my heart, will deceive you and deceive
me. And it deceives us into thinking
that our being good enough, our efforts to be good enough, our
works are good enough to establish and maintain a right relationship
with God. Now that's the state of all of
us by nature, as we are naturally born. I quote a verse on this
program all the time, 1 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 14, which
says, the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God, neither can he know them, they are spiritually discerned
or understood. Now the natural man is all of
us as we are naturally born. And that ought to make, if you
know anything about the Bible, that ought to make sense to you
because what did Christ tell a religious man in John chapter
three? He said, you must be born again
or you cannot see the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. You see, salvation involves a
new birth. And in that new birth, that also
involves God giving His people a new heart. Now here in Jeremiah
17, 9, it says the heart is deceitful above all things. Well, if my
natural heart deceives me, then what do I need? I need a new
heart. And that's what God does in the
new birth, in regeneration and conversion. Now what is the heart? Now understand that now. We have
to define our terms, don't we? The heart is the mind, the affections,
the will, the conscience. It's what drives you. Sometimes
it's called the reins. Look back at Jeremiah 17 verse
nine. The heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Now what you
have to understand is that wickedness that Jeremiah is speaking of
is man trying to work his way into God's favor and God's salvation. Works salvation. You see, salvation
conditioned on sinners. Salvation conditioned on our
works, on our will, and that's wicked. Now why is that wicked? Is it because we're not sincere
enough? Or is it because that we not trying hard enough? Why
is that wicked? I'll tell you why it's wicked.
Now listen very carefully. It's wicked because it does not
glorify God. The glory of God is the issue
in salvation. God must be glorified. He must
be honored. And that means he must be true
to himself. He must be glorified and honored
so that you can understand who He is and what He is all about. I just realized that I haven't
given you the title of this message yet, but we'll put it on the
first of the message. But it's the same message, the
same message of grace. That's what the title is. The
same message of grace. It's always been the same, and
it'll never change. And until Christ comes again,
it'll be the same message of grace. So when we look at this,
we see the wickedness of man, not only in the immorality and
the perverted acts of man and thoughts, that's wicked, but
we see the wickedness of man in his efforts to save himself
by his own work. That doesn't glorify God. It
glorifies the sinner. You see, that's why Paul wrote,
God forbid that I should glory or boast saving the cross. And
secondly, it's wicked because it denies the reality of my problem. My problem is this, the heart
is deceitful, my natural problem. The heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. Who can know? See, it's the same
old problem. And that's why we say it's the same message of
grace, the same old message. And so when we look at this,
we see that Jeremiah is speaking to the religious people of his
day. Jeremiah prophesied around 450, 500 years before the coming
of Christ. And he prophesied in the southern
kingdom of Judah, specifically in Jerusalem. And he speaks of
these people as those who are religiously and constantly trying
to appear before God based upon a righteousness of their own.
Now let's look back at verse 5 of Jeremiah 17. Jeremiah writes,
Thus saith the Lord, Cursed be the man that trusteth in man. and maketh flesh his arm, and
whose heart departed from the Lord." Now, that verse tells
us a lot. The man or woman who trusts in
themselves. I can do it. I make the difference. Salvation is conditioned on me.
You hear this message today that God loves everybody and Christ
died for everybody. Now, you're the deciding vote. You say, well, you're trusting
in yourself. You're not trusting in Christ.
And so he says, cursed. That man or woman who trusts
in themselves is cursed. They're not blessed. They may
have a lot of good things. They may be rich. They may be
healthy. They may have healthy children. But in God's eyes,
they're cursed. The Bible says, cursed is everyone
that continueth not in all things which are written in the book
of the law to do them. You see, blessings from God. The blessedness of salvation
is the blessedness of His grace. And He says, the man or woman
who makes flesh His arm. That means His power. The arm
is a symbol of power. Whenever Isaiah spoke of the
arm of the Lord, you know who he's talking about? The power
of God? He's talking about Christ. Salvation that comes by Christ. Salvation conditioned on Christ,
who fulfilled all those conditions. 1 Corinthians chapter 1 talks
about Christ being the wisdom of God and the power of God unto
salvation. Gospel, Romans chapter 1 verse
16, Paul said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it
is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to
the Jew first and the Greek also. So the person who trusts in himself
and makes his own works or his own will, his arm, his power,
it says his heart departs from the Lord. And there's a great
image in the book of Jeremiah where he speaks of the people
looking toward the temple. That's the temple that Solomon
built. That was the place where God
would meet with sinners in the Holy of Holies. And the people
are outside the temple and they're looking toward the temple and
they've got their hands raised and they're praying to God through
the temple, but their minds and hearts are not right with God
because they don't trust in the Lord. They don't believe salvation
by grace, conditioned on Christ, who fulfilled those conditions,
who brought forth all the righteousness that I must have and need in
order to be right with God. And as they're praying, they're
backing up. In other words, their prayers, their worship, their
thoughts, their heart, they think is drawing them near to God,
but it's getting them farther and farther away from God. So
if you're a person who is trying to work your way into God's favor,
earn God's blessing, earn God's salvation, You're cursed, the
Bible says, and you're actually departing from the Lord. You
may feel in your heart that you're getting closer to God. But, what
does he say here in verse nine? The heart is deceitful above
all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? Now this person
who trust in themselves, and who make flesh their own, and
whose heart departs from the Lord, look at verse six. He says,
for he shall be like the heath in the desert, like an animal. The heath, I believe, is like
an animal, like a rabbit or a jackrabbit. He said, like a heath in the
desert, and shall not see when good cometh, but shall inhabit
the parched places in the wilderness in a salt land, and not inhabit
it. See, that's the opposite of the
plush, well-watered, places that God has for his people. Those
are symbols, you see. But he says in verse 7, now here's
the opposite. Blessed is the man that trusteth
in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. Now that's a believer. That's one who's looking to and
resting in the Lord Jesus Christ for all salvation. You see, that's
the same old message. And what a message it is. Salvation's
of the Lord, it's not of me. If God were to leave me to myself,
to my natural deceived heart, I would never come to Him. These
people today, they talk about free will. Well, free will is
not the fact that we make choices. We make choices every day. You
get up in the morning, you start making choices. What the Bible
teaches is that man's will is in bondage to sin and the deceitful
heart. And what the Bible teaches is
that if we are left to ourselves, to our own desires, natural desires,
and our own wills, we will not make the right choices when it
comes to salvation and a right relationship with God. We'll
always make the wrong choices. That's what the Bible says in
John 6, verse 44. No man can come to me except
the Father which has sent me draw him, and I will raise him
up again at the last day." Why is it we cannot come to God in
our natural state? It's because we don't want Him.
We don't desire Him. Our wills are all set on exalting
self, making ourselves to be something when we're not. And
so what does God do in salvation? Again, He gives us a new heart.
And that new heart means a new will. He gives us a desire. Somebody
asked me one time, are you saying that God brings us to Christ
against our will? No, I'm saying that God powerfully
changes our will. That's what He does. He gives
us a new will. He makes us willing, the psalmist
said, in the day of His power. And that's what salvation is.
Well, he says in verse 7, blessed is the man that trusteth in the
Lord. Now what is it to trust in the
Lord? It's to look to Christ for all salvation. His blood
alone for the forgiveness of my sins. His righteousness alone
for my justification before God. I don't stand before God in a
righteousness that I worked out or contributed to. I stand before
God in the righteousness of God in Christ, the merits of His
obedience unto death as God has charged or imputed it to me.
My sins were imputed to Christ. His righteousness is imputed
to me. He is the Lord my righteousness. Jeremiah spoke of that two times
in his prophecy, Jeremiah 23 and Jeremiah 33. His name is
Jehovah Sidkanu. That's the transliteration from
the Hebrew, and it means the Lord our righteousness. You see in the gospel, there
is the righteousness of God revealed, not the righteousness of men.
Not a cooperation. It's not what Christ did plus
what I do. It's not what Christ did plus
what I desire. It's Him alone. Salvation's all
the Lord. Now that person who trusts in
the Lord, his hope, the Lord is. That's the certain expectation
of salvation. And it says in verse eight, for
he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth
out her roots by the river, and shall not see when the heat cometh,
but her leaf shall be green, and shall not be careful in the
year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. That's
the case. Now, the person who is blessed
of the Lord, whose hope the Lord is, that's the person who has
been given a new heart. The heart, which is deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked, has been taken out. Ezekiel prophesied of that in
Ezekiel 36. Look at verse 10. He says, I,
the Lord, search the heart. That means the word of God tells,
the state of my heart is not based upon what I think or what
I feel. It's based upon the Word of God.
I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the rains, even to give
every man according to his ways. Now, what is your way? Is yours
the way of Cain, salvation by works, or the way of Abel, salvation
by the grace of God? You see, Abel had that same old
story, that same old message. And he said, and according to
the fruit of his doings. What are the fruit of your doings?
The Bible says that those who are in Christ, looking to him
who walked by faith, based upon his blood and his righteousness,
they bring forth, they bear fruit unto God. But all those who are
working, trying to work their way into God's favor, they bring
forth fruit unto death. What do you mean fruit unto death?
I mean this, the best you can do when aimed at attaining or
maintaining salvation cannot end in anything but eternal death. That's what the Bible says. For
by grace are you saved, through faith, that not of yourselves,
the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Ephesians
2, 8, 9. And that's the same old message, isn't it? It's the
same old message in Genesis, it's the same old message in
Jeremiah, it's the same old message in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
and all the way up through Revelation, never changes, and it never will.
God saves sinners one way, and all other ways are products of
the deceitful heart that is desperately wicked. Who can know what he
says? Who can know it? You can't even
know it except God reveal it to you. That's the case. And
so God searches the heart. How does he do it? He does it
through His Word, and we'll talk about that next time a little
bit, in a little bit of other scriptures, how the Lord searches
the heart. It's through conviction, and
it's through bringing sinners by the Holy Spirit in the new
birth, when He gives life, when He gives that new heart, and
He brings them to see their sins, and brings them to see Christ
in all of His glory. That's what Jeremiah was preaching.
See, he was pointing the people of Jerusalem in that day to the
future. Same old message though. Later on, he calls it a new covenant,
but that's talking about something else we'll get to. But it's the
same old message. It's the same gospel. It never
changes. And that's the glory of it. God
never changed. You know, he said in Malachi
chapter three, I believe verse six, he said, I am the Lord,
I change not. Therefore you sons of Jacob,
sinners saved by grace. That's what sons of Jacob are.
Therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. You see, if God
doesn't change, when he first, this message of salvation, was
actually in the mind of God, the mind of the Father, the Son,
and the Spirit, one mind, one God, three persons, but it was
in the mind of God before the foundation of the world, before
this world began. How old is it? There's no age
to it. It's eternal. Christ, what he
did on the cross for his people is the product of an everlasting
covenant of grace. And it speaks, Paul spoke of
a salvation that was given to us, his people, believers, before
the world began. Isn't that amazing? That's how
old it is. And when Adam fell, the message
didn't change. When God gave the law to Moses
on Mount Sinai, the message didn't change. Oh, there's that law
to show them their sin, but salvation was always the same way. When
God brought in the prophets, Jeremiah, Isaiah, all of them,
Ezekiel, Daniel, go on and on. The message didn't change. And
when God concluded the Old Testament scriptures, the message didn't
change. When Christ came into the world, the message didn't
change, it was confirmed. That same old message was confirmed
by His coming into the world. And He told them that. And so
when He died on the cross, The message didn't change. That death
that he died was the beginning of a new hope, but the same old
message. When people saw that he died,
he was buried, he arose again the third day. Why? Because of
righteousness brought in. Sin was purged away. He paid
the debt in full. That's what God revealed to Adam
back in Genesis chapter three. And then when Paul and the apostles
went out, and spread the message and wrote those letters, the
message didn't change. And when John sat down on the
Isle of Patmos, and wrote down the book of Revelation, the message
didn't change. The same old message of God's
grace in Christ, salvation based upon His blood alone. Salvation
based upon His righteousness alone. Grace reigns through righteousness
unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Same old message, same
old truth, same old gospel. But I'll tell you what, if you
ever learn it, each time you hear it, it'll seem like it's
new, new every day. I hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, Write us
at 1-1-0-2 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia 3-1-7-0-7. Contact us
by phone at 229-432-6969 or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you. you