Turn back to our reading this
morning there in Psalm 145. We read there of the greatness
of God. All His works shall praise Him. But I want us to look this morning
especially at verse 20. Because what is stated in verse
20 is stated many times in Scripture. Actually, a number of times in
the Psalms. The Lord preserveth all them
that love Him, but all the wicked will He destroy. I thought about a number of titles
for this message. But I think I've settled on preserved
or destroyed. I could have asked another question. Do we love the Lord or not? I know that Christ asked Simon
Peter that question. He said, Lovest thou me? more
than these. And I know also that the Apostle
Paul makes a very serious and sobering statement to the Corinthians. He says, if any man, meaning
any person, love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema
maranatha. Let him be accursed. Jesus is
coming. And so we have to ask ourselves
whether or not it will be for us preservation or destruction. I don't know how many times in
the Bible, in one verse, We find the Spirit of God contrasting
between God's beloved people on the one hand, and the great
mass of fallen humanity on the other. Verse 20 is just one such
verse. And this conjunction, but, but,
distinguishes and contrasts between the true groups here as elsewhere. Let me read you another verse
out of Psalm 1. For the Lord knoweth the way
of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish. And that second group mentioned
there that are described as the wicked, before we get our minds
associated to what we think we know that means, what it means
actually is simply condemned, guilty, ungodly. And we find the distinction made
by our Lord Himself in the Gospel of John in chapter 3 where He
says, "...he that believeth on him is not condemned, but he
that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not
believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." And then
he says, the wrath of God abideth on him. And so what this actually
means is every unbeliever, every sinner in Adam, every unjustified
child of Adam, and there is no level of degrees, There is no
second chances. He simply says, all the wicked
he will destroy. And this destruction that he's
talking about here, it's not total annihilation, but it is
the destruction of God's wise and severe wrath. He says, they shall perish. But what we have need of more
than so much understanding about that, I believe, is knowing the
deceiver to be what he is, and knowing how easily we are deceived. I want us to think mainly about
that first group. And especially those of us who
say we love Him. There are a lot of people who
say that they love God. And they are highly offended
if in any way you were to suggest that they don't. But what I want
us to see is if we can truly and really find ourselves in
that first group. These who are said to be preserved
and who are said to be those that love Him, that love God. You see, this is a promise of
God. This is one of those many, many
unfailing promises of God. But as it is with every promise
in this book, and I do mean every promise in God's Word, there
is always with that promise in some measure a description of
the character or the one to whom these promises are made. Here is the Lord's preservation. And I love that word, preservation,
because in truth, that is what perseverance is all about really. The Lord's people will all persevere. And they will do so simply because
of His preservation. They don't persevere in order
to be saved, as is sometimes slightly indicated. But they
will persevere because of God's preserving grace to them. And those who are described here
are these that love Him. Plus, it's not only here that
it's said, but throughout all the Scriptures, we find these
blessings, we find these promises are given to these who love God. You say, that can't be the basis
of our salvation. I know that, and I'm sure that
God knows that. But nevertheless, we find this
in the Bible, and we find it, not as what they do in order
to be saved, but these are those who are characterized by this
because God has saved them. Let me give you some of them.
In Exodus, where we find that clear and distinct declaration
of His sovereign grace and mercy. He goes on to say, and showing
mercy unto thousands of them that love Me. They love Me, He
says. This is Jehovah. And then in
Proverbs, He says it by the wise Solomon in this way. He says,
I love them that love Me. All God's people, all these that
He loves, they're going to be brought to love Him. They're
not going to wake up sometime in eternity and find out that
they somehow love a God they know nothing about. But they
are going to be brought in time to the experience of loving God. In Nehemiah, he says, I beseech
thee, O God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth
covenant and mercy for them that love Him." Not a flute thing. They love Him. And then it says
in Romans 8, I know we're familiar with this one, Romans 8 and verse
28, "...and we know that all things work together for good."
People use that, state that, just generally accept it, everything's
going... No! The whole of that verse is,
"...and we know that all things work together for good to them
that love God." to them who are the called according to His purpose."
They love God. And then 1 Corinthians 2, Paul
says again, he says, "...but as is written, I hath not seen
nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things
which God hath prepared for them that love Him." Always this description. many more, but always this one
also." And then in James, he says it like this, "'Blessed
is the man that endeareth temptation, for when he is tried, he shall
receive the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them
that love Him.'" To them that love God. And so if we have any
honesty about us, and especially if the Spirit of God quickens
our heart and enables us to ask and answer truthfully, then the
real question is, do I love Him or do I not? We might even, as
old John Newton did, right in thinking his hymn, as he wrote
down this hymn or poem, he said it this way, "'Tis a point I
long to know. Oft it causes ancient thought. Do I love the Lord or no? Am I His or am I not?" That's
a pretty good question. That's a serious question. We could even call that an eternal
question. But the best way, I think, to
begin in some measure to answer this question, to determine whether
we're among the preserved or those who are to be destroyed,
is to examine a few things. And the first thing that we have
need of examining is this, do I have true knowledge of Him? We're not talking here, God's
not talking here about one we imagine. or a myth, or a fable,
or a fairy tale kind of God. You see, the Apostle John, who
has himself been called the Apostle of Love, in his own epistle there
in 1 John, he speaks of love many times, and then he closes
that little epistle with this warning. He says, little children,
keep yourself from idols. You see, do we know truly who
He is? Because we cannot love one that
we don't know. Brother Mahan said one time,
probably said a lot of times, but he said one time I know,
he said, you can't love someone you don't know any more than
you can come back from where you've never been. And it's easy
for a fallen sinner to love a God of our own making. A love that
we feel, though, no matter how sincere, no matter how emotional
we are, no matter how often we express it, if it be for one
other than the true love, the true and living God, it's not
the love that's spoken of here. Any sinner can, and many, many
do. Sincerely, love. A God who is not God. If I make something, you know,
we all like our own work, don't we? Wonder when you fix some
flowers, you stand back and you look at it, you like what you
see. You men, when you build something,
when you repair something, whatever you do, if you do it, you never
seem to see the faults and the flaws of it like others seem
to do. You just stand back and look
at it, and you like it, because you did it. And that's the way
it is with a false god. We like the god of our own imaginations. We like a god of our own creation. But the truth is, it's nothing
but idolatry. It's nothing but the love of
a false god. And that one true and living
God can only be known and is known by that revealing work
of the Spirit of God. So what does He do? Does He come
whisper in our ear or take us by the hand and lift up our hand
and point to this Jesus or this God or whatever? How does He
do that? Well, it says that he reveals
the glory of God, especially as it is in grace, the glory
of Christ as our mediator in the face of Jesus Christ. But what means does he use? He
uses the Word. He uses the truth. You shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. The only
way that anyone ever comes to know the true and living God
is to know Him as He reveals Himself by His Spirit in the
pages of Holy Scripture. This is God. He's not how you
say He is. He's not how I say He is. He's how He says He is. And He not only is how He says
He is, He does what He says He does, and He's not ashamed of
it. He doesn't mind taking credit
for it. We've got a bunch of preachers
running around who are so ashamed of what the God of the Bible
has said and done, and how He has done everything to the glory
of His own self. They've got to make up for Him.
They've got to dress Him up. But He is how He is. He won't
change for you. He won't change for me. He won't
change to save one of my children. He's the unchanging God. And He says in Christ, all things
are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son, not
one, but the Father. And neither knoweth any man the
Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal
him." There was a time in my life when I knew a few things. I didn't know nearly what I thought
I knew. There was a time when I had knowledge
of some things about the Bible. I could quote facts. I could
quote verses. I could identify characters in
the Bible. I knew all about these things,
but it was not until God revealed to me what this book is about
and how His salvation is in Christ and Him alone, and only by His
free grace I found out who He is. I wasn't born knowing who
God is. You're not born knowing who God
is. The lady said, I've been a Christian
all my life. The preacher said, that's a little
bit too long. We don't find out God. No man by searching can find
out God. But we have to ask ourselves,
do I have knowledge, a biblical knowledge, of who God really
is? You did, you didn't get it by
that Bible storybook likely that was read to you when you were
a child. You didn't as I didn't get it from a preacher who preached
fervently but didn't know the gospel. You see, do we know,
do we have an understanding of that great question of questions
as to how God, being the just God that He shows Himself to
be, says Himself to be in this book, how He can be a just God
and at the same time, without any contradiction, be a Savior? I'll guarantee you in this county
this morning, You could ask a thousand people that you meet out on the
road, or on the street somewhere, and there wouldn't be a half
a dozen, hardly, that would have any idea what you're talking
about. Do I know Him as the absolute
Sovereign who loves whom He will, and does what He will, and saves
whom He will? They say, well, He's trying to
save everybody. He loves everybody. You don't
know Him. That's not true knowledge. Do
I know this One who must punish sin, who will by no means clear
the guilty? Do I know this God who's a covenant
God, who entered into a covenant within His blessed Trinity and
purposed to save a people all by His grace and all for His
glory in Christ, a people that He chose to save out of Adam's
race? Now, preacher, I never heard
anything about that. You don't know Him then. Do I know that
He became flesh, this One who was the Eternal Son, God, the
very God, in order to go to the cross of His own justice and
therefore His people to die the death of the cross in order to
satisfy every claim of God's justice against them and them
only? Well, preacher, I believe He
died for all. Well, you don't know Him then.
I fully believe what this book says, that he died for a people
out of all kinds of people. I fully believe what it says,
that he died for a people out of all peoples of all times. But to say He died and shed His
blood for every person in this world when He died on the cross
would make Him an utter failure, would be an utter calamity in
the matter of His justice, and would not even be true to the
Scriptures which say that He laid down His life for the sheep.
Do we really know Him? that He came to redeem these
people and to fully and eternally and exclusively save them by
remitting or forgiving their sins through the shedding of
His blood? Do we know Him as the One who
laid down His life for them, bore their sins in His own body
on the tree, and who completely finished the work of redemption
and put away all their sins by the sacrifice of Himself? I'll
tell you there's a lot of people who think they know Him, but
they don't have a clue, and they'll never have a clue. until the
Spirit of God brings them under the sound of the truth. Not just some special preacher,
some special feeling, but brings them under the sound of the true
gospel, brings them to look in God's Word as to what He says
about Himself and His salvation, and brings them to the knowledge
of Christ. Or is the one that I love another
one? A weak, pathetic figment of my imagination, or the product
of some man's false religion, which has need himself of being
helped and who cannot save? This is serious. You see, all
hope and all confidence and all blessing in His, in Him, and
so we must know Him and not another. Why would we have warnings like
Antichrist? You realize in John's day, I'm
talking about the Apostle John. In his day, he said, even now
there are many Antichrist. Here's a bunch of folks. I saw
somebody on Facebook, I believe it was, so thrilled that their
preacher had begun this study in Revelation. They're going
to find out when, they're going to look at all the beasts and
the monsters and all this kind of stuff, when the book says
it is the revelation of Jesus Christ, that He sent these things
to His servant and signified something. It's not about the
tribulation or a rapture or such as that. This book, when we have
seen it and come to know the truth of revelation, it is simply
that God in Christ triumphs over all His enemies and all His people
triumph in Him. That's not very exciting to the
flesh, is it? I'm going to describe this multi-headed
creature and how it relates to something in current events.
I know of a preacher on television, he's made a lot of money simply
taking current events, relating them as far as eschatology is
concerned to something in Revelation or Daniel or Matthew, one of
these things. But the truth is, he doesn't
have anything to say about the Lord Jesus. You see, if we don't
know the true gospel, which is the gospel of His free, free
and sovereign grace in Christ. And we don't know Him. In John
17, He says, "...and this is life eternal, that they might
know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast
sent." You can't know God without knowing the Christ. You can't
know the Christ without knowing God. You can't know the Christ
without knowing Him as that One that God sent, and why He sent
Him. But it comes down to this. Do
I really have true knowledge about Him, the One I'm supposed
to love? I've seen people who thought
that they loved somebody else, only to find out Richard, when
they really got to know him, they said, ooh, I don't love
her anymore. I don't love him anymore. You
never loved him to start with. So you never took the time to
know him. Do I know him? And then the second thing might
be considered is this. If I do have knowledge of him,
true knowledge of him, What is it really to love Him? What is
it to love God, to love the Lord Jesus Christ? You see, the act
of love can only be known when we know the object of love and
how He loved us. If He loved me to the same degree
that He loved those who are going to perish in hell, some of which
already are, a multitude who already are, If He loved all
them and all that will die and go to hell in the same degree
of love that He loved me, what in the world does the love of
God have to do with salvation then? That's a weak love. That's
a pitiful love. You see, knowing the true God
and coming to see and experience how He loved us is what begets
love for Him in us. John again. And we have known
and believed the love that God hath to us. How's a finite creature
going to experience love for the infinite God, only by faith,
only by faith. You see, he says, and we have
known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love,
and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. We love him because he first
loved us. You see, the most of religious
people in our day They have it in their minds that they took
the first step, that they made the first decision, that they
experienced the first act of love. They decided on Him, therefore
He decided on them. They decided to love Him, so
He decided He loved them. That's not the way it works,
folks. Because believers are brought to love Him because they're
brought to know that He first loved them. fountainhead of every
blessing, the great source of every good thing that ever happens
to a sinner, flows out of the love of God. Love of God. It's
a love of faith more than it is a love of feeling. not a passionate
fleshly affection. We love Him because we believe
what He has said He's done for us. We believe the record of
God's Son, that He loved us and gave Himself for us as our substitute
before God and as our sacrifice to God. that God was in Him reconciling
us to Himself, that He loved us as the Father did the prodigal
son, and wrapped us in the best robe, that best robe being the
robe of God's imputed righteousness in Christ. He put it on us. He
provided it for us. He put it on us. And it will
never be separated from us. And so men can walk around and
they can talk like this religious generation does around us, talking
about how much they love God, they're so passionate and so
enthusiastic and so animated, but it is obvious that they do
not love the Him that the psalmist speaks of. Where's the love of
God? Paul said the love of God. which is in Christ Jesus. That's why God's people are never
going to be separated from the love of God. I recently heard
a man say that he had gotten saved two years ago for the second
time. And then he said, and I hope
for the last time. Who do you think could change
all that? Do you think the unchanging God
is going to alter any? So if he entertains the possibility
in his mind that he might get lost again, it must all depend
on him, something he does, something he doesn't do. Paul said, nothing
shall separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. An old writer said, our love
may not be always glowing, or fervent, or passionate, for we
are poor, variable, fickle, capricious, changeable creatures. But we
cannot but love Him when we discover that He first loved us. We ought
to love Him with a perfect love, for that which is born of the
flesh is flesh. We cannot love Him perfectly
any more than we can keep His law perfectly, So what are the
evidences of our love for Him? Say, I love God. I just asked
you that question. You love God. You love the Lord
Jesus Christ. Well, I sure preach. Are you
crazy? Well, for the most part, the only evidence, the greatest
evidence that we might love God is if we believe God. Now, you
can go and you can take all these outside evidences, and I can
take you somewhere in the Bible probably where somebody fail
for a time at least to demonstrate these evidences. What is the
evidence of love for Christ? I tell you, it is faith in Christ
alone and abiding, continuing, trusting, reliance upon Christ
and only Christ. We believe God. You wake up some
mornings and you Or in a mood, as we say. I'm sure you don't
ever open up, wake up that morning like that. But folks like me
sometimes, they just wake up in a mood. Not always a good
mood. So what would give me any comfort? What would make me, for a second,
imagine that I love God? As a matter of fact, when I began
thinking about this, and I remember what our Lord said to Peter,
I remember that other part too. He said, Peter, lovest thou me
more than these? Feed my sheep. And I thought,
Lord, poor as I am at feeding your sheep, as slack, as sorry
as we say in the South, as sorry as I am, how could I ever think
that I truly do love you? But I believe God. I trust the
Lord Jesus Christ and only Him for all my salvation. I can't
look for one second at myself to try to find a little assurance. It's like digging in a bag of
wormy flour. Meal. I'm just going to try to
scrape away the obvious worms that are on the top, bugs. I'm
going to try to get down to where I can find something good enough
to eat and live off of. Dig all the way to the middle
and you pull out a handful of that meal and you look real close
at it. And there's still worms crawling.
They've got in the whole part. We haven't got anything in ourselves
that we can rely on or gain any confidence in or assurance in.
As a matter of fact, if we ever do, that's when we're really
in trouble. He has to be our all. Our only
hope of acceptance before God. We're to totally rely on that
work of righteousness which He accomplished in our behalf, and
to believe that we are made the righteousness of God in Him and
only in Him. When you love someone, you renounce
all others. You say, well, I love God, but
He's really the same God that I loved in false religion, believing
lies about. No, no. If I go home today and
I say to my wife, I really love you, honey. But I found this
24-year-old gal over here, and I love her too. As a matter of
fact, there's another one down the road there that I think I
love her also. That's not going to work, is
it? No, when we love someone, we renounce all others. And we
renounce every false god, every god that we embraced in days
past when we lived as a religious idolater. And we repent of every
one of those false notions that we once had of him and of all
the foolish rituals and ceremonies and doctrines that blasphemed
him. You're either dead, or you're
alive. You either love Him or you hate
Him. You're either in or you're out. And we love Him because
we love His Word. We love His Word. We love the
Gospel of His glory, which exalts Him as the only Savior of sinners. We've received the love of the
truth. We're jealous for His glory. When you love somebody, you're
jealous for their glory. I'll be talking about those I
love. I'm a peaceful man. Don't be talking about the one
I love. We love the truth. We seek by His grace to earnestly
contend for the faith once delivered unto us. We're grieved in mind
and heart to hear His name blaspheme, to hear His word handled deceitfully,
and to see His enemies appear to prosper and triumph. We hate
every false way. All those religious hucksters
who are His enemies, we hate them with a perfect hatred for
Christ's sake. And we love the way He saves
as a just God and the justifier of all who are in Christ. I love
that way. I don't want any other way. Grace
is good. Free is wonderful. Christ is
all. We love how it's a display of
God's righteousness. And we delight to think about
the wisdom of Christ's cross, the righteousness of His cross,
the justice of His cross, the mercy and the love and the grace
of His cross. The Christ of the cross. He that hath my commandments,
and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth
me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will
manifest myself to him." And we love him if we love his people.
We love the people he indwells. John said that we know that we
have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. If any man say, I love God and
hates his brother, he's a liar. For he that loveth not his brother
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And then maybe quickly we ought
to consider this. What is it to be preserved by
him? Well, if you have to be preserved,
That obviously means that you are as deserving of destruction
as the wicked were. You had to be preserved. And
if we are preserved, that means that He has to deal with us in
grace. Someone outside of ourselves
has to preserve us. But this doesn't mean that those
who love Him will be preserved from troubles or afflictions
or trials or persecutions in this world any more than it means
that the wicked will be destroyed in this world. The wicked aren't
always destroyed in this world. As a matter of fact, they look
like they're doing pretty good to me. That's why all these arguments
on these health, wealth, and prosperity preachers look around
you. All their arguments won't work.
These folks who hate God, they look like that as far as the
things they're offering, they've already got more than most do. But it means first that He preserves
them that love Him in this life and through this life. Many are
the afflictions, the troubles, the trials of the righteous,
but the Lord delivereth him out of them all. He preserves them
in danger. He preserved them through the
maze of false religion, through their natural unbelief, through
all things until He brings the gospel to them and to them to
Christ by faith. But I think what it mainly means
is that this preservation is chiefly to everlasting life and
eternal glory. He preserves them through this
life, through death, and presents them unto Himself to the praise
and glory of His grace. He preserves them for all eternity
in a state of indescribable glory in His presence. Jude says, now
unto Him that is able to keep you from falling and to present
you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. To the only wise God our Savior
be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and for ever."
He preserves them. Paul said in the Lord, "...shall
deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto His
heavenly kingdom, to whom be glory for ever and ever." It's
just two people. The wicked, and those that love
Him. There are two promises concerning
them. The wicked will He destroy, and them that love Him, He will
preserve. But that's not the reason why
He'll preserve. The fact that He brings a sinner
like me or like you to truly love Him, that means He's already
acted to preserve us. He's been preserving us from
eternity. He put us in Christ. and therefore
preserved it. I read once of a king. You know,
every king has the symbols of his kingdom. And he had on his,
the shields of his soldiers, he had painted on every one of
those shields a sword and an olive branch and marked every
one of them with one or the other. That's what it's going to be,
one or the other. Peace through the blood of Christ's
cross, or the sword of God's unending justice and judgment. Are we preserved, or will we
be destroyed? Do we love Him, or do we love
the flesh? Self, fleshly idols. all around us came out from us
all this great blessing to them that love God. And they are the
first to confess that the reason that they love Him is because
He first loved them. Our Father this day we pray for
grace that we might truly be found among them that love you.
We have every reason to love you and yet we have no ability
or faculty to love you unless you give it to us. Our natural
minds are enmity against you, and only when you give us the
open eyes of faith, teach us true knowledge, quicken us by
your Spirit, and enable us to believe you, do we ever love
you. Never like we ought, Never like
we will one day, but we love you. Thank you for your grace
and your saving mercy to us in our savior. We pray and we ask
everything through him and we pray in his name. Amen.