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 for this message from God's Word. As you know, I always try to
direct your attention mainly to the Word of God on this program. And today I'm going to be preaching
from Jeremiah chapter 17, the Old Testament prophet. Jeremiah
chapter 17, beginning at verse five, and the title of the message
is, Who Do You Trust? Who do you trust? Now, of course,
I'm talking about who do you trust or who are you trusting
for salvation, for forgiveness of sin, for cleansing from all
sin, for righteousness to be justified, for blessings and
benefits, for final glory in heaven, eternal life. Who do
you trust? And the prophet Jeremiah, He
was preaching in a very down time. It was a very awful time
in the history of Israel or specifically the kingdom of Judah, the Southern
kingdom. Jeremiah prophesied right up
to the time that Israel, Judah was conquered by the Babylonian
empire and taken into captivity. And he preached his message of
the law of God and seeking to bring the people to repentance
and preach the gospel of the coming Messiah. That's what Jeremiah's
main message is, all the prophets. It wasn't keep the law for salvation,
but it was realize that the law condemns you. and that you need
salvation by the grace of God, righteousness by the grace of
God, that can only come through the promised seed of woman, the
Messiah, whom Jeremiah preached throughout. these prophecies
that he gave to Judah. And that promised Messiah, Jeremiah
identified him. I mentioned this last time, how
in Jeremiah 23 and Jeremiah 33, he identified the Messiah as
Jehovah Sidcanu, which is literally the Lord, our righteousness. And that's what he was saying,
turn to God for salvation, trust in the Lord. He said in verse
five, now this is Jeremiah chapter 17, verse five. He says, thus
saith the Lord, cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and
maketh flesh his arm, the arm being power there. What is the
power? The Bible speaks of the power
of God unto salvation. What is that? Is that your works?
No. Is that your decision? No. Is
that your will? Is the power of God unto salvation
your will? People talk about free will today.
Well, the will of man is not free when it comes to the things
of God. He's in bondage. And when we
talk about free will, you know, people say, well, I make choices
every day. And you do. And you're free to
make those choices. But left to yourself, if I were
left to myself, my choices would not be in line or towards the
glory of God in Christ. Now that may be hard for you
to understand and believe considering the religious atmosphere that
most people are in in our area anyway, but even in some other
places. But here's what I'm saying. It's kind of like this. God has
a way of salvation. It's one way. And it's the way
of his sovereign mercy and grace through the blood and the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the God man. Now man wants salvation. But by nature, he doesn't want
it God's way. He wants it his own way, based
upon his works, based upon his efforts, based upon his sincerity,
based upon his experience, based upon his will. Many people say,
well, I'm saved because I willed to believe God. No, no, you wouldn't
have willed to believe God unless God had given you a new heart.
That's what the scripture teaches. And so when we talk about that,
maketh flesh his arm, anything that proceeds from man, that
man imagines to be his power of salvation. The Bible says
that the gospel is the power of God and the salvation to everyone
that believeth. Yes, everyone who believes has
been an object of the power of God in Christ. So look at it
again, Jeremiah 17, five, that maketh flesh his arm and whose
heart departed from the Lord to make flesh your arm. In other
words, to say that salvation is based upon something you did
or something that came from you is to make flesh your arm and
it's to depart from the Lord. That's a departure. That's what
I'm saying. God draws his people to himself
with cords of love by his power and by his grace in Christ. And
it says in verse six, this man who trusteth in man, for he shall
be like the 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 inhabited. That's a bad place to be, isn't
it? Jeremiah, earlier in his prophecy, made this indictment
against the people of Judah. It's found in Jeremiah 2, verse
13. Listen to this, Jeremiah 2, 13.
He says, for my people have committed two evils. Number one, they have
forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. And number two,
they have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that's like
a well, that can hold no water. Now those two evils comprehend
all that is evil in man. First of all, to forsake the
fountain of living waters is to forsake the God of grace in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Who is the fountain of living
waters? Jesus Christ. Read John chapter four. He is
the living water. And what that is is to forsake
God's way of salvation by His grace based on the blood and
the righteousness of the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then
to hew out cisterns, wells that can hold no water, refers to
man actively engaged in trying to save himself by his works. He doesn't trust God. He trusts
himself. Who do you trust? Who do I trust? Now, as I said, some people trust
in their works. I had a fellow tell me one time,
he said, I'm doing my best to keep the 10 commandments. Well,
should we try to be moral people? Yes. But my friend, you will
not make it based on that. It will not make you righteous.
It will not cleanse you from sin. It will not give you a new
heart. The only thing that'll make a
sinner righteous is the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The only thing that'll wash away my sins is the blood of the Lamb
of God. What can wash away my sins? Nothing
but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? The only one who can give me
a new heart is the Holy Spirit through Christ as life comes
from Him by the person of the Holy Spirit and the power of
the Holy Spirit in the new birth. Give me a new heart. And that's
it. Some trust in feeling and experience. I have so many people who when
you talk about salvation, they always go to their feelings or
their experiences or something that happened to them years ago.
And that is so tragic. I have preached on this program
and we offer the book, What Is Salvation? If you don't have
that, you need to get it and read it and study the Bible.
It's a guide to study the Bible. It's free of charge. Just go
to our website or write us or call us and get that book, What
Is Salvation? and read it and study it. Examine
yourself. That's what, when I write these
things, I write them as to be a process of self-examination. You claim to be a Christian.
I claim to be a Christian. And the Bible says, examine yourselves.
Who do you trust? Who do you really trust? You
say, well, I trust Christ. Do you really? Examine yourself. There's nothing wrong with that.
You shouldn't be offended at that. Have your faith tested.
I want my faith tested. The Bible says saving faith will
be tested. And that's a good thing because
if what I find that my faith is founded upon the Word of God
in the gospel and that I'm truly trusting Christ, then that causes
me to grow in grace and in knowledge of Christ. Now, if I find that
my faith is not founded upon the Word of God and truly in
Christ, then I've learned something. I need to seek the Lord. I need
to seek salvation God's way. So some trust in feeling and
experience, some trust in riches. And the way people trust in riches,
I believe mainly what the Bible talks about, is that they see
riches as a blessing from God. Now, riches, material things,
can be a blessing from God. Abraham was a very wealthy man. He had riches galore. but he
didn't trust in the riches. You see, riches can be a curse.
You know about the proverb of the man who, in Luke chapter
12, who, yes, Luke chapter 12, I believe, where he was rich,
he had lands, he filled up his barns, and what was he gonna
do? Gonna build more barns to get more stuff, and then he neglected
his soul. So riches can be a curse too.
So don't trust in riches. If you're a believer and the
Lord's made you rich, that's all right. Then you honor him. You see them as something you
didn't deserve and didn't earn, ultimately. And you use them
for his glory. But my friend, don't trust in
riches. And then some trust in their faith. And I believe that's
one of Satan's greatest deceptions today. Trusting in your faith. Now what is that? Is faith necessary
for salvation? The answer is absolutely yes. Without faith, it's impossible
to please God. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall be saved. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. God's elect people, chosen before
the world began in Christ, are those who come to faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ, resting in Him, submitting to Him as their
righteousness. That's what they do. They see,
though they have faith, that Christ is their Savior, the God-man,
God in human flesh, and that He accomplished for them what
they themselves or no other human being could do, that He as their
surety and substitute went to the cross for their sins imputed
to Him, and that they stand before God justified by His righteousness
imputed to them, charged to them. And so they can by faith say,
God forbid, God forbid, that I should glory, save in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ. They can say by faith, who shall
lay anything to my charge? It's God that justified me. Who
can condemn me? It's Christ that died, yea rather,
is risen again. In other words, they recognize
by faith. And faith means believing God's
word now. It doesn't mean just believing.
It means believing God's word, what God says. So they, by faith,
recognize that the only difference between themselves and the lost
is the sovereign grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
the only reason they believe and others don't is because of
the power of Christ through the Holy Spirit to give them a new
heart. They realize, by faith, because this is what the Bible
says, that if left to themselves they would have never believed
They would have never made a right decision. But now there are others
who believe that salvation came about based on their believing
or based upon them meeting condition or making the right decision.
They have faith in their faith, not faith in Christ. You see,
the Bible says in John chapter six and verse 37, the Lord said,
all that the father giveth me shall come to me. and him that
cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. So basically to have
faith in your faith is to trust in man and not in Christ. Look
back at Jeremiah 17 and look at verse seven. Now the issue
is who do you trust? What do you trust? Do you really
trust Christ? Verse seven, blessed is the man
that trusteth in the Lord and whose hope the Lord is. Do you
trust in Christ? My trust is in Christ. Proverbs says, trust in the Lord
and lean not to your own understanding. You say, well, that's not the
way I understand. Don't lean to your own. Read the word of
God. Trust in the Lord. That's Jehovah
our salvation. That's Christ. Trust in his blood
to wash away all my sins. Trust in His righteousness imputed
to justify me before God. Trust in His power to give me
life, to make me willing in the day of His power to come unto
God. That's who I trust. Trust in
Christ, not only to save you, but to keep you, preserve you. People today, many people, they'll
say, well, you can be saved one day and then by sinning, lose
that salvation. Well, you're not trusting in
Christ then. You're trusting in the arm of the flesh. You're
trusting in self. You're trusting in the fact that
you think, well, I'll keep on doing this, or I'll keep on doing
that. You see, Christ is the ever-living mediator. He, ever-living intercessor. The ever-living high priest.
The ever-living advocate. He is seated at the right hand
of the Father, ever-living to make intercession for his people. And that's why Paul wrote in
2 Timothy 1.12, I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that
he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against
that day. Now, what have I committed to
Christ? Here's what I've committed to
Christ. I've committed to him my whole salvation. From the
beginning of it, in the new birth, all the way to the culmination
of it, the finalization of it in final glory in heaven. None
of it's conditioned on me. I'm just telling you the truth.
You see, whatever part is conditioned on you as far as you're concerned,
that's who you're trusting in. I trust Christ for my whole salvation. And the only reason I do is by
the grace of God in Christ. It wasn't because I'm better
than somebody else or I was less obstinate or less rebellious.
No, sir. In fact, when I really came to
understand the gospel, I was fighting against it every inch
of the way, trying to prove it wrong. in the Bible, reading
the Bible, trying to prove the true gospel, the sovereign grace
of God, to be wrong. But I found out it was right,
and God got my attention, and he brought me to saving faith
in Christ. So that's the issue of trust. Blessed, verse seven of Jeremiah
17, blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the
Lord is. What is hope? Hope is an expectation. a certain expectation. It's not
wishful thinking. It's not just wishing something
may or may not come true. It's a certain expectation. I
expect to enter heaven's glory. Why? Because my hope is the Lord. My hope is not in me. I've quoted
quite often on this program one of my favorite hymns, probably
my favorite, My hope is built on nothing less, now listen to
this, than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the solid rock
I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.
Now look at verse eight. Now for those who trust in the
Lord and whose hope the Lord is, he says, for he shall be
as a tree planted by the waters that spreadeth out her roots
by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, that is the
drought, but her leaf shall be green, life, you see, and shall
not be careful in the year of drought, that is anxious, worry,
unbelief, in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding
fruit, there'll always be fruit. Many times in scripture, A tree
is used to represent life and even to represent God's people.
Back in the Garden of Eden, there was the tree of life. That's
a symbol of Christ. Christ is the tree of life. Believers are represented as
trees. Isaiah chapter 61 calls them
trees of righteousness whose planting is of the Lord. That's
what a believer is. He's a tree of righteousness.
And who planted him? The Lord did. Who gave him life?
The Lord did. It's all of grace. Salvation
is all of God, all of the Lord. That's what Jonas said. Salvation
is of the Lord. So here he is. He shall be as
a tree planted by the waters. And his leaf shall not fade,
it'll always be green. That means life will always be
there. He'll never be dead again. He was born spiritually dead.
You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.
But he's been made alive by Christ through the Holy Spirit in the
new birth. And that life will never fade.
That's what he says, her leaf shall be green. When the heat
comes, when the drought comes, when the troubles come, when
the trials come, when the opposition comes, the leaf shall still be
green. He's bringing forth fruit and
that fruit is of God. Over in the book of Romans chapter
7 it speaks of that. And it's all based upon what
Christ did. Look at verse 4 of Romans 7.
He says, wherefore my brethren, you also are become dead to the
law by the body of Christ. That is the law cannot condemn
you. Now you're dead to it. How? By the body of Christ, the
death of Christ. That you should be married to
another, even to him who's raised from the dead, that we should
bring forth fruit unto God. We don't produce, we who are
saved do not produce fruit. Christ produces the fruit. He
said that in the book of John. John chapter 15, when he says,
I'm the vine, you're the branches. The life comes from the vine. The branches bear the fruit of
the vine. Christ produces fruit, but we
bear it. The works of believers, they're
produced by God through Christ, through that person, and they
are washed in the blood of Christ to be accepted before God. Because
coming through us, they're mixed and contaminated with sin. And
so he brings forth fruit. Now look at verse nine, back
in Jeremiah 17. He says, the heart is deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it? Now
the heart, the mind, the affections and will of the natural man is
deceptive. You can fool yourself. I can
fool myself, you see. We can be deceived. Satan is
the great deceiver. And one of the areas in which
man by nature is the most deceived is in the area of salvation. You can fool yourself into judging
yourself to be saved when you're not. I can do the same thing.
Therefore, how can we know? How can we get out of that deception?
Well, we can't do it ourselves. We don't have that power, we
don't have that wisdom, we don't have that knowledge. But look
at verse 10. Here's the issue. I, the Lord, search the heart.
God must search my heart. I try the rains. Now, what is
that rain? That rain is what drives you,
the direction you're going. I test them, God says. Even to
give every man according to his ways. What are man's ways? Well,
there is a way that seemeth right unto a man. It's a way of destruction,
the broad way that leads to destruction. It's the way of salvation by
works, by will. And he says, and according to
the fruit of his doings. If the fruit of your doings is
nothing more than the fruit of self-righteousness and unbelief,
then what is it? That's what the Bible calls fruit
unto death. Fruit unto death. So how does
God search my heart? How does he try my reigns? Well,
look at Hebrews chapter four and verse 12. And here's what
it says. For the word of God is quick,
that means life-giving, and powerful. and sharper than any two-edged
sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and
of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner, a judge of the
thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature,
verse 13, that is not manifest in his sight, but all things
are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do."
God He searches the hearts of His people and tries to test
their reigns by the Word of God. You see, my claim of salvation,
my faith, my assurance must be founded on what God's Word says,
not what I think, not what others think, not what I feel or experience,
but what God's Word says. And what does God's Word say?
It says that salvation and everything that's included in salvation
is totally, totally by the sovereign mercy and grace of God based
on the blood and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ who
is God with us. Christ is the only way. Christ is the one way. Christ
is the sure way. There is no other way. None other
name given among men whereby we must be saved. Who is Jesus
Christ? What does God's word say? God's
word says his name is Emmanuel, God with us. There are people
who claim to be Christian, who claim to be saved, who deny the
deity of Christ. You see, they will not allow
the word of God to test that because the word of God says
Jesus Christ is God and man in one person. Who is Jesus Christ? His name shall be called Jesus.
For He shall save us from our sins. His people. His name shall
be called Emmanuel. God with us. Great is the mystery
of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh.
The Word made flesh. How does God save sinners? Not
by their works. not by their will, but by His
works and His will through the Lord Jesus Christ based upon
His blood, His shed blood, and His righteousness imputed. Now, who do you trust? Who do
I trust? That's the issue. Test your faith,
test your assurance, test your claim by this Word. Study it. Use the right rules of interpretation. I've got a series of messages
on that, but you do that. Who do you trust? 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.theletterofgrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.