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. I'm glad
you could join us today. As most of you know, if you follow
this program, this is a message that's brought to you by Reign
of Grace Media Ministries, which is an outreach ministry of Eager
Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. Our goal in bringing
you this program is number one, to preach the gospel. It's an
evangelistic goal. to spread the good news of Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. And the goal is also edification,
that is to build up true believers in the faith. And one of the
main issues in edification is self-examination. So I urge you,
as you listen to this program, to follow along in your Bible,
study your Bibles, to test what I'm saying to see if it's true.
And I don't mind that at all. And the question that I'm gonna
be dealing with today is, who do you trust? Now, the title
of the message is Trust in the Lord. That's the title of the
message, Trust in the Lord. And it's from the book of Proverbs
chapter three, some of my favorite verses here. Proverbs chapter
three, look at verse five. It says, trust in the Lord with
all thine heart. and lean not unto thine own understanding. And it says, in all thy ways
acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Trust in the
Lord. What is trust? Well, trust is
a matter of God-given faith. Those who truly trust in the
Lord are those of faith. They believe. They believe what?
It's not just that they believe, but they believe something specific. Well, what do they believe? They
believe what God says. And this is beginning, this believing
what God says has to do with believing what God says concerning
salvation, concerning how God saves sinners. how God makes
sinners right with himself. That's the issue of the gospel.
That's the heart of the gospel. The heart of the gospel lies
in answering this question, how can a holy, just, and righteous
God forgive sinful people? Because God must punish sin.
God is a just God. He's a holy God. He's a righteous
God. When he judges, he judges according
to truth. God does not deal in pretense.
He doesn't deal in fantasy. That's why when the gospel is
preached, and I want you to understand this, when the true gospel is
preached, you ought to be able to answer that question biblically,
how God can be just and still justify, save, forgive sinners. There's got to be a way. Now,
the simple answer to that, you say, well, it's by Jesus Christ,
but what does that mean? Because when it says trust in
the Lord, it means something specific. To trust in Him means
to believe in Him. It means to rest in Him, rest
in Christ for all of salvation, and rest in all that Christ accomplished
for salvation. In other words, We trust in the
Lord. The word Lord there is Jehovah. That's the transliteration. We could talk about the translations
there, but what he's talking about, he's talking about God,
our savior, God who saves sinners. That name, the Lord, we talk
about the name Jesus. Matthew 1.21, when the angel
came to Joseph, and informed him not to put Mary away because
of her pregnancy, because the baby in her womb was conceived
by the Holy Spirit without the aid of man. This was something
special, something miraculous. And the angel said to Joseph
in Matthew 121, you shall call his name Jesus. And that means
Savior, salvation, God saves. For he shall save his people
from their sins. Now, if I tell you that Jesus
Christ is my salvation, and if you say he's your salvation,
then I have to have adequate, valid grounds upon which to trust
him. For example, if you trust in
me for salvation, which I know you don't, but just as an example,
if you would trust in me for salvation, I can tell you right
now, it's a failure. Because I cannot save you. I
can't even save myself. I can't save anybody. I'm not
the savior. If salvation were conditioned
on me, then there's no salvation for any of us. If salvation were
conditioned on you, there'd be no salvation for any of us. That's
why the gospel is not a presentation of any part of salvation conditioned
on sinners. Now, many, many people who claim
to be Christian to preach a conditional salvation. And here's what they
say. They say, well, Christ died in order to make you savable
or to put you in a position where there is a possibility for you
to be saved if you will meet certain conditions. Now those
conditions vary with various denominations. Some say, well,
the condition is faith. You've got to believe. Well,
it's true you have to believe. But is that the condition that
we must meet of our own power, our own goodness, our own will,
in order to attain or maintain salvation? Is that what the Bible
teaches? Well, the answer is no. And yet,
we must believe. He that believeth not shall be
damned. That's what the scripture says. He that believeth and is
baptized, he that believes the gospel, and confesses that in
baptism, that's an evidence of salvation. Some say, well, it's
faith plus repentance. Well, we must repent. Christ
said, except you repent, you'll perish. You'll perish. Repent and believe the gospel,
the scripture says. Well, is that the condition we
must meet in order to attain or maintain salvation? Well,
that's not what the Bible teaches. I'll explain this in just a moment.
Some say, well, it's faith plus repentance plus good works or
plus perseverance. There are denominations who claim
to be Christian who say, if you don't persevere, you'll lose
salvation. Is that what the Bible teaches?
The answer is no. We who believe, must we persevere,
continue? Yes, yes. But there's a difference
between claiming these things as conditions sinners must meet
of their own power, their own goodness, or their own will in
order to attain and maintain salvation, and these things as
evidence of one who has been sovereignly empowered by the
grace of God through Christ Jesus. You see, faith is not the condition
that you and I must meet in order to be saved. Faith is the evidence
of salvation by the grace of God wherein Christ Himself by
Himself in His obedience unto death for the sins of His people
fulfilled all conditions. Repentance is an evidence. Perseverance
is an evidence, and you need to understand that. There's the
ground of salvation, and then there's the fruit of salvation.
Now, the question then comes down to this. Trust in the Lord. Who do you trust in? Or in what
do you trust? Some trust in their works. I'm
saved because I did this, or I'm saved because I did that.
Some trust in their feelings and experiences. I'm saved because
I experienced this back when I was a teenager, back when I
was at a church camp, I had this experience and therefore I know
I'm saved. Well, my friend, you may have
had an experience, but don't trust in that experience. Don't
trust in your emotions. Don't trust in your feelings.
Feelings come, feelings go, feelings can be deceiving. You see, our
hope is in the Word of God. It never changed. My feelings
change. I'll have a lot of experiences, some good, some bad. But the
Word of God is forever and ever the same. And the Word of God
that shows me my sinful self, that I fell in Adam, that I'm
born dead in trespasses and sins, and that if God doesn't step
in and intervene, and by His divine electing grace, by His
redeeming grace in Christ on the cross, and by His regenerating
grace, by the power of the Holy Spirit in the new birth, you
must be born again. If God doesn't step in and stop
me and change my mind, my heart, my will, I'll never come to Him. Man by nature will not come to
Christ of his own will. And those who teach that you
can, that the fallacy, the heresy of free will, listen, man is
a free moral agent. You have the freedom to choose
whatever you desire. But the Bible teaches that man
by nature will not desire the things that honor and glorify
God in Christ. For example, man wants salvation. He wants forgiveness. He wants
to be right with God, but he wants it his way, his way on
his own terms. That's the way we all are by
nature. Well, what does God do in salvation?
He changes our mind. He changes our will and makes
it submissive to him and his way of salvation, where we trust
in the Lord. Is Jesus Christ able and willing
to do what it takes to save his people. If he's able and he's
willing, I can trust him. Who is he? How do I know he's
able? Well, I know who he is. He's
God in human flesh without sin. When that angel told Joseph about
the name, you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save
his people from their sins. He went on in verse 23 to say,
His name shall be called Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God
with us. The Word, the eternal Word, the
Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity was made
flesh and dwelt among us. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh.
That's who Jesus Christ is. And that's why I can trust in
the Lord with all my heart. Now, what is the heart there?
Well, the heart is the mind, the affections, and the will.
Now, is man's heart by nature a trusting heart? The answer
is no. The scripture teaches us that
the heart is deceived, desperately wicked, the heart of man. The
scripture teaches that in order for me to trust in the Lord with
all my heart, I have to be given a new heart. Do you have a new
heart? Well, if you do, then the terms
of scripture in the gospel will not offend you, that you embrace
them. The new heart is a heart made sorry and contrite over
sin. Not just sins of action, but
sins of thought, motive, the sins of all the things that are
within us and evil thoughts, motives, desires, the things
that inspire us. But the new heart, the regenerated
heart, The heart that is truly repentant and contrite over sin
is also the heart that is sorry for even thinking that I could
do anything to make myself right with God. As one old preacher
said that when the scriptures talks about repentance, it talks
about repentance of sins, plural, That's all that I think, say,
and do without Christ. It brings repentance of sin. That's the sinful human nature
that manifests itself in evil thoughts, evil desires, evil
motives. And it means repentance of our
own righteousness. You see, when sinners go about
trying to work their way into righteousness, work their way
into being right with God, that's an evil thing because it denies
the glory and wisdom and power of God. It denies the person
and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. If I can work my way to heaven,
into God's favor, then I don't need Jesus Christ. What He did
was in vain for me. That's what Paul wrote in Galatians
chapter 2. If righteousness come by the
law, then Christ is dead in vain. Why? Because Christ came, the
Lord came, to establish the only righteousness whereby God could
be just and justifier. Justify a sinner like me. You
see, the forgiveness of my sins is not based upon what I do for
God. It's not based upon my prayers.
It's not based upon my confession. Now, should I be a praying man?
Of course I should. If I know Christ, if I know the
Lord, I should be a person who continually prays, an attitude
of prayer. I should pray often. It's like
breath. Should I confess my sins? Well,
I do, continue, I'm a sinner. And here's, let me tell you the
blanket confession of all sins, and I'm not, you know, people
say, well, you ought to deal with individual sins. Well, we do
as we know them. The Psalmist said, forgive me
of my secret sins. There's sins I commit, there's
sins of omission. Do you know the fact that we
cannot love God perfectly, continually, without interruption is a sin? But yes, we confess our sins,
but here's the confession of all sin. My friend, I am nothing
as far as my character and conduct before God, as far as attaining
righteousness. Now I want to glorify God in
the things that I say and think and do. I want to express love
for Christ and love for his people and love for my neighbor. But
if God were to judge me based on any of those things, I would
be damned forever. Why? Because I have no righteousness
but Christ. I trust in the Lord. Do you trust
in the Lord? There are people who actually
trust in their riches. And I believe mainly it comes
this way. People believe, well, if they have a lot of money or
a lot of possessions, or even if they have health, they think,
well, that's the Lord blessing them. But my friend, those things
could turn out to be a curse. Trust in the Lord. There are
people who trust in their faith. I mentioned earlier about those
who believe that they're saved based upon the fact that they
believe. Well, see, salvation is not based
on your faith. It's based upon the work of Christ
on the cross. What are we to believe? That
Christ fulfilled all the conditions, all the requirements, all that
all that God required for my salvation. It's His blood alone
that washes away my sins. My faith doesn't wash away my
sins. His blood does. And that's where my faith is.
I trust in the Lord. There are a lot of people who
have faith in their faith. But you see, Christ is the end
of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. He
says, lean not unto thine own understanding. Well, people can
sit around and speculate. They can opine, as one of the
commentators on TV says, that means give your opinion. But
that doesn't mean anything. You see, the Bible teaches us,
like for example, over in the book of Jeremiah 17, I quoted
part of this earlier. But look at Jeremiah 17 in verse
five. The prophet Jeremiah is speaking to the people of Judah
and Jerusalem. And he says in Jeremiah 17 5,
Thus saith the Lord, Cursed be the man that trusteth in man,
and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the
Lord. To trust in man is a foolish thing. That's a curse. To trust
in man for salvation, to trust in man for righteousness, to
trust in man for forgiveness. Make flesh his arm. That flesh
refers to anything that comes from us as human beings, whether
it be moral, religious, or not. To make it your arm is to make
it your power, your way of salvation. And in those who trust in man
and maketh flesh their arm, their heart departs from the Lord.
That's a departure from the Lord. So that if you say salvation
is conditioned on me, then you're trusting in man. You're making
flesh your arm. You're departing from the Lord.
He goes on to say, verse six of Jeremiah 17. 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 inhabit it. You see, he's showing there the
death. that results in trusting in man. The dryness, the futility. Verse 7 of Jeremiah 17, blessed
is the man that trusteth in the Lord and whose hope the Lord
is. The certain expectation of salvation,
of forgiveness, of final glory through Jesus Christ. Verse eight
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,
but her leaf shall be green and shall not be careful, not be
anxious. In the year of drought, neither
shall cease from yielding fruit. You see that? That's the issue
of trusting in the Lord with all your heart. Back over in
Proverbs three, he says in verse six, in all thy ways acknowledge
him. and he shall direct thy path."
In other words, those who trust in the Lord attribute their whole
salvation not to themselves, not to their works, not to their
emotions and experiences, not even to their faith. But by faith
they attribute it all unto Christ. All of Him. Salvation is of the
Lord. And this is the understanding
that God the Holy Spirit gives a sinner when he brings that
sinner to faith in Christ, to trust in the Lord, over in the
book of 1 John. where John is talking about what
it means to trust in the Lord. In verse 18 he says, 1 John 5,
we know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not, what he means
there in the context is that they do not forsake Christ. They cling to Christ. But he that is begotten of God
keepeth himself and that wicked one toucheth him not. If you're
born of God, you'll keep yourself in Christ, not by your own power,
but by the grace of God. And he says, and we know that
we are of God, that's verse 19, in the whole world life in wickedness,
or in the wicked one. And verse 20, we know that the
Son of God has come and have given us an understanding that
we may know him that is true, we know God who is faithful,
and we are in Him that is true, we are in Him that is faithful,
even in His Son Jesus Christ, this is the true God and eternal
life. This is what it means to trust
in the Lord. And so I would ask, in whom are
you trusting? This is one of the main points
of self-examination. Examine yourselves, Paul wrote
in 2 Corinthians 13, whether you be in the faith. Are you
truly trusting in the Lord? Am I truly trusting in Him? Or
am I looking elsewhere? The scripture says in Hebrews
chapter 12 and verse 2 that we who are saved are to run the
race of grace, this Christian race, looking unto Jesus, the
author, that is the originator, the beginner, and the finisher,
the completer of our faith. In other words, we're never to
look to ourselves for salvation. We're never to look to ourselves
for righteousness. We're never to look to ourselves
for assurance. We're never to look to ourselves
for reward. We're to look to Christ. the
author and the finisher of our faith. That's what it means to
trust in the Lord with all thine heart. Now, should we strive
to be obedient, to be loving, to be kind, to be generous, charitable,
to be helpers of people? Should we strive to be all of
it? Yes, but we don't trust in those things. We don't trust
in our obedience. We don't trust in our love. We trust in the love of God.
Herein is love, 1 John 4, 10. Herein is love, not that we love
God, but that he loved us and gave his son to be the propitiation
for our sin. The us, there's his people who
believe. Propitiation means a sin-bearing sacrifice that brings satisfaction
to all the requirements and conditions of God's law. Christ is the propitiation. So yes, every true believer should
strive to be like Christ in his attitude, in his motives, in
his desires, in his actions. We should strive to be the best
people we can be, but not in order to be saved, not in order
to establish our own righteousness before God by which we're justified. True believers who trust in the
Lord with all their heart and lean not to their own understanding
should do all those things because Christ has already accomplished
everything that God requires to attain and maintain the salvation
of His people. Trust in the Lord. And in doing
that, that's when a sinner, by grace, by God's grace is brought
to faith in Christ and acknowledges Him. In other words, don't acknowledge
me. You see, people say, well, I
want to make a name for myself. Well, not in this area. You see,
I don't want to make a name for myself. I want you to look to
the name which is above every name, the name Jesus Christ. I want to point you to Christ.
I don't want to point you to me. I'm preaching to you and
you know my name, but I'm not pointing you to me for salvation. I don't want you to acknowledge
me. I want you to acknowledge the Lord God for all salvation,
for all forgiveness, for all righteousness, for all glory. For He is salvation. Trust in the Lord. 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 1102 Eager Drive. Albany, Georgia, 31707. 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.