But God

Thanks everybody for having me tonight. We're going to turn to Isaiah 55 verse 1 as our scripture reading. Isaiah 55 verse 1. Everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. And he that hath no money, come ye by, and eat, yea, come. Buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfieth not. Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. incline your ear, and come unto me.

Here in your soul shall live, and I will make a never-lasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that knowest not, a nation that knew not thee, shall run unto thee, because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel, for He hath glorified thee. Wondrous scriptures there.

Okay, if you would, turn in your hymnal to song number 210, and we'll sing Saved by the Blood. 210. Saved by the blood of the crucified one, now ransomed from sin and a new work begun. Sing praise to the Father and praise to the Son, Saved by the blood of the crucified one.

Saved! Saved! My sins are all pardoned, Guilt is all gone. Saved. Saved. I'm saved by the blood of the crucified one. Saved by the blood of the crucified one, the angels rejoicing, it is done, a child of the Father join heirs with the Son, saved by the blood of the crucified one. Saved, saved, my sins are upon me. Saved, saved, I'm saved by the blood of the crucified one. Saved by the blood of the crucified one. The Father, He spake, and His will it was done. Great price of my pardon, His own precious Son.

Saved by the blood of the crucified one. Saved. Saved. My sins are upon thee. My guilt is all gone Saved Saved I'm saved by the blood of the crucified one. Saved by the blood of the crucified one. All hail to the Father, all hail to the sun all hail to the spirit the great three in one saved by the blood of the crucified one saved saved My sins are all pardoned, my guilt is all gone. Saved, saved, I'm saved by the blood of the crucified one.

Okay, now if you would turn to song number 282. Yeah, if you would. Safe to the rock that is higher than I, my soul in its conflicts and sorrows would fly. So sinful, so weary, thine I would I be. Thou blessed rock of ages, I'm hiding in thee. Hiding in Thee, Hiding in Thee, Thou blest robe of ages, I'm hiding in Thee. In the calm of the noon, Tied in sorrow's lone hour, In times when temptation cast o'er me its power, In the tempest of life, on its wide heaving sea, Thou blest rock of ages, I'm hiding in Thee. Hiding in Thee. Hiding in thee, the blest rock of ages, I'm hiding in thee. Awaft in the conflict, when pressed by the foe, I have fled to my refuge and breathed out my will. Often when trials like sea millows roll, Have I hidden in thee, O thou rock of my soul? Hiding in Thee, Hiding in Thee, Thou blest Rock of Ages, I'm hiding in Thee.

I'm out of breath now. All right. We're going to turn and go ahead and turn to Ephesians chapter one or actually chapter two. Let me catch my breath here. I'm not used to playing the euphonium standing up and I'm out of breath. All right. So before we get started tonight, I just want to say thank you to everybody for having me here. I'm not really that great of a preacher. I'm more of a writer than anything, and I've done YouTube stuff, you know, most of my life, but getting up here and preaching, this is a different thing altogether, and I just want to say thanks to everybody for having the confidence in me to actually sit up here and listen to me, and I hope I don't mess up too bad so that you might have me back again someday. But thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure. It's a real honor to be here. Thanks for entrusting me with this privilege.

We're going to go ahead and start in chapter two of Ephesians. We're just going to read the first 10 verses here, and then we'll get into the text. All right. Verse one of chapter two, and you Hethi quickened and who are dead in trespasses and sins, Wherein, in time past, ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath even as others, but God, by God, who is rich in mercy.

For his great love, wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace ye are saved, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Then in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

All right, let's bow our heads in prayer. Oh, Heavenly Father, we are so grateful to be gathered here tonight in your name to be able to open the word once again, to be able to look into the scriptures and be able to see what great things you have done for us, to be able to to know and be able to communicate with the author of all reality, the author of all creation, the author of all salvation. And we have that privilege tonight to be able to come to you in prayer, knowing that you're holding us, you're sustaining us, you're keeping us right here.

You're holding the ground underneath our feet. And Lord, we just, the air that we breathe, even the air that we breathe, it's yours. It's by your sovereign hand. And Lord, you are sovereign. There's nothing that happens in this world that happens without you knowing about it, without you causing it, without you thinking it. Even when a sparrow falls out of a tree, it's by your hand.

And Lord, that gives us comfort, that gives us security, that gives us hope, that gives us hope for the future, gives us hope in Christ. For if you set your love on Christ, then what do we have to worry about? What do we have to fear? We have nothing, Lord. And you've given us that hope, and you've given us that spirit of joy.

And Lord, it is a joy to be able to come to you in prayer, to be able to speak to you, to be able to know that the creator of all universes is always one word away, one thought away, and we can always commune with you. And Father, I thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ, who came into this world and lived that perfect life on behalf of his people. Lord, I'd ask that you bless the meeting tonight. I'd ask that you bless the word and bless the message. Overcome the infirmity of the speaker. And Lord, open up ears, open up eyes, give us a mind to see. Knit our hearts together in love. In Christ's name we pray, amen. All right.

So chapter two here, I have a habit of coming to Frank after every sermon and saying, Frank, that's a new number one. And he does it week after week. And this is the way I feel about the scriptures. Every time I open up the scriptures and I come to a new chapter, I go, wow. We got ourselves a new number one. And you read Ephesians 1, and you're like, oh my goodness.

This just takes your breath away. And then you get to chapter 2. And then Paul really throws the icing on the cake. And he just goes to show how great the salvation is in Christ. And I tell you, I read, I read chapter two and my, you know, preparing this message, uh, overjoyed knowing not that I'm going to speak tonight, but that I have the Lord and he saved me and he brought me out of the depths of my despair. It brought me out of the depths of, of, you know, my, my awful life and gave, you know, gave me life. He breathed into me. And we're going to start there with verse one.

And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins. Dead, dead, dead in trespasses and sins. What does that mean? It means we were dead. We were gone. Okay. We were gone. We were goners. And how gone? Well, what's a dead man to you? Well, a dead man's in the ground. He's a corpse. He's got worms feeding on his flesh. He is dirt. He's being eaten by maggots. He can't breathe. He can't see. He can't do anything. He's completely dead. And that's what we are in sin before we come to know the Lord. We are dead. We are gone. And dead people cannot quicken themselves. They cannot come alive. They cannot hear. They cannot see.

They are so far gone that it's lights out for them. And, uh, you know, but it says here, and you have, he quickened. who were dead in trespasses and sins. He had quickened. It wasn't you. You didn't quicken yourself. You couldn't do anything. It says here, he quickened you.

And we could spend a whole hour just on this one verse because salvation is the Lord's. If we're going to learn anything tonight, anything from this pulpit is that salvation belongs to Christ from the very beginning to the very end. And that's just breathtaking.

Verse two, where in times past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. Verse three, among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lust of our flesh. Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and we're by nature the children of wrath even as others All right, we're gonna spend a little bit of time on these two TV's two verses here All right in times past We were like everyone we We walked according to the course of this world. That's what it says there in verse two. We walked according to the course of this world. What does that mean? What does that mean? Well, I thought about that and I thought, you know, it's the system, the system. You know what the system is? Have you ever thought about what the system of this world is? What the course of this world is? It's what we're born into. All right.

Now, I don't know about all of you, but I imagine most of you were probably born in a hospital. Maybe some of you might have been born on a farm, I don't know. I know I've got grandparents that were, you know, so times have changed. But we were born in a hospital, and that's our very first introduction to the world around us and the system of the world. You know, we were like most kids. We were brought home from the hospital. We were brought home. And we got introduced to our parents. We had siblings.

If you had an older brother or sister, you were probably introduced to them really quickly. And you started to learn their ways. And you started to learn the system of the family that you were in. And you started to mimic the behavior of those around you. And then, over time, you were introduced to more people and more places. Maybe your parents took you to the grocery store. Maybe they took you to the post office, and in time you entered school, and you got introduced to the ways of the broader world around you, the system.

And boy, what did we learn in school? Yeah, we learned, well, besides algebra. We learned how this world works, and we learned it's evil. It's evil. It's all about living for yourself. And we started to talk like the world. We didn't just walk like the world, we started to talk like the world. And what does the world do? It cares about fulfilling its desires. The world is interested in getting its wants, its needs met.

It's not interested in the things of God. It's not interested in Christ. It's not interested in his gospel. And that's what we were. It says here, in time past, we walked according to the course of this world. That's what the world is. It's against God. It's against the gospel. It's against the truth. And that's what we were.

And in fact, it says here, according to the prince of the power of the air, the devil, Satan himself, the spirit now worketh in the children of disobedience. So when you look out on this world and you see how evil and sinful and rotten it is, and you see the people that walk in that manner, well that's what we were. Corn and Paul here. And we had, we all had our conversation in times past in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And we're by nature the children of wrath even as others.

So, I'll tell you what I was like before I came to know the Lord. I was like any other kid. growing up in the middle of rural Missouri back in the 1980s. I was interested in, well, I was interested in cars. I was interested in Star Wars, the movie. And I was also interested in finding a girlfriend, which I was successful in. There was a result of that right there. But that was what was on my mind. I wasn't interested in the things of God. I wasn't interested in the gospel. And I only cared about fulfilling the desires of my flesh. I cared about fulfilling the desires of my mind, as Paul says here.

And that's the way the world operates. And God says that's evil. Why? Going to see a movie Star Wars is not evil. Chasing a girl is not necessarily evil. Or driving down the road in your convertible is not necessarily evil. But when that's what you focus on versus the gospel, versus Christ, versus his blood, versus his free grace, well that's evil. And that's the manner in which we operated, and that's the manner in which I operated.

So, and then we get to this verse here, children of wrath, even as others. This one's tripped some people up before in the past, tripped up some believers. Children of wrath, okay, so some people think that means that God was wrathful towards us. He disliked us very much and hated us even. Some people call that common wrath. But I don't think that's what that means. I think that means that we were wrathful children. And the reason I say that is because we get to maybe the most beautiful pivot in all of scripture. But God. But God, there in verse four. Two of the greatest words you'll ever read.

But God. who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us. I tell ya, our Lord is rich in mercy. Rich in mercy. Rich, I mean, I hate this phrase, filthy rich, okay? He is so rich, you've got the richest father in the world, and he gave you his riches of love. Let's turn back to the scripture we read earlier tonight, Isaiah 55. This is how rich our Lord is.

Oh, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the watchers. And he that hath no money, come ye buy and eat, yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. incline your ear and come unto me. Here in your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you. You in the sure mercies of David."

Alright. He's so rich that his love costs us nothing. We come and eat for free. And he can do that for all of his children. He says, come, come and eat. Come and eat. Come and buy milk. Doesn't cost you anything. Just come to my all-you-can-eat buffet and have as much as you want, whenever you want, as often as you like.

And that's how rich our Lord is. He lays out a banquet for all of us to come and eat. And this banquet is never going to end. We get it now, and we're going to get it forever and ever and ever. All the way, as far as your minds eye can even think, into the future when we get to the marriage supper of their lamb. We're going to enjoy Christ's righteousness forever.

That's how rich he is. And not only that, it cost him a lot. It cost him a lot. All this richness, all this stuff that we get to partake of, his love, his mercy, the faith and the gifts that he pours out on his children, all of that cost. And it cost, it was great. It was unlike any cost that we can even imagine. It was a cost that only the richest man in the world could ever pay.

And I got a foot cramp right now. figures. You know Henry Mahan once was up preaching and a wasp stung him in the middle of a sermon. And he looked up and he said, Lord, why'd you do that? And right now I got a foot cramp. All right, so let's see here. Let's hope that isn't, yeah I think it's gone. All right. The reason I get foot cramps is because I sit on my, you know, in a chair all day and I don't stand as often as I ought to. But anyway, let's go back to the cost.

It cost so much that he gave his blood. That's how, that's how great the cost was. and only a rich man like Christ could pay so much that he became poor in spirit. And it says here for his great love that he loved us. Not only did he love us in the cross, in going to the cross and suffering He loved us from before the foundation of the world.

Let's go ahead and turn to Jeremiah 31.3. Take a look at that passage. It's a familiar passage. 31.3. Okay.

The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. Okay, so he loved us from before the foundation of the world and he loved us with an everlasting love. That's why You know, so his love wasn't just on the cross, it's from all eternity. His love has always been on us.

And then if you look, you know, and then let's turn to Ephesians 1. Let's look at this. Ephesians 1, verses 1 through 4, just one page over from our text. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace be to you, and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. For according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.

And then, let's look at Philippians 2.8, one chapter over. Philippians chapter 2 verse 8. And we could probably spend a whole lot more time on these texts.

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself. He was rich. He became poor. And became obedient unto death. Even the death of the cross, where he poured out his blood. And then gave us the buffet. where we can come eat for free. And he did all this even when we were dead in sins, rotten, maggot infested, on the dung hill. He did all this when we were enemies against him in our own minds, in our own hearts, when we did not like God, when we hated God, when we cared more about our own desires and our own wants rather than what God once. And he did all that because he loved us, even when we were sinners, even when we were dead in sin. And we're gonna go to one more verse here, just so that we can drive this home, because I want everybody to be clear about how sure and how amazing his love is, and that it doesn't change.

And here is probably one of the most important verses in all of scripture. Malachi 3.6. The last book of the Old Testament. Malachi chapter 3, verse 6.

For I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. So, God's love never changes. He's immutable. And so, he never hated us. He never was wrathful towards us and then changed his mind when Christ came into the world and started loving us. Oh no, no, no, no, no. He's loved us always. He's always loved us because he doesn't change his mind.

God does not change. His actions do not change. His love, his affections, his emotions, they do not change. His thoughts do not change. He is eternal, which means he encapsulates time, okay? He surrounds time and time flows from him. Okay, he is the eternal God and what he thinks and what he predetermines is what happens. And he's never changed his mind about anything.

And Malachi 3.6 drives that, that one verse drives that home. And then when you read verse three and four, well then that helps us interpret children of wrath because God's not wrathful, we were wrathful. And he's always loved us because he doesn't change his mind.

If he loves us now, that means he had to love us before when we were children of wrath. So that's an important thing I think we need to draw from the text. And let's go on. Let's go ahead and go to the next verse here. And by grace we are saved. We'll come back to that.

Verse six, and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." And oh my, what a verse here. When you sit and think about that one for a minute, it's almost mind-blowing when you sit and think about it because, well, first off, he's raised us up together, okay, with Christ. and he made us sit in heavenly places in Christ.

Now, does it feel like you're sitting in a heavenly place right now? Well, it doesn't to me. I mean, there is a heavenly aspect of what we're doing right now, but we're not in heaven. Christ is at the right hand of the Father right now, in heaven, interceding on our behalf.

But, from God's perspective, we're sitting there with him. Because when The Father looks at the Son. When He looks at us, He sees the Son. And when He went into the ground, we went into the ground. And when He was raised from the dead, so were we. And you've probably heard that quite a bit from this pulpit, but we keep going up. All right, we keep going up to heaven. Not only are we raised in Christ Jesus from the dead, But in God's perspective, we're also seated in heavenly places. Seated in heavenly places means in God's mind, we're already glorified.

You've heard of the doctrine of eternal justification or justification from eternity. It was preached here this weekend at the conference. But I also believe in eternal glorification. Everything is eternal from God's perspective and he hasn't changed his mind about anything. So he sees all reality, all from the beginning to the very end. and he sees us together in Christ. Now, I don't feel glorified right now, but I know that God sees me perfect in Christ, glorified, no sin, completely spotless, because I've got the spotless blood of the lamb covering me, and he's given me a new heart, a new nature, and, you know, I'm a new man, and it feels good, but, so yeah, God views us in him, and that, You know, that quickening that we get in Christ, it's inevitable for every one of His children. Every one of His people that are born into this world, they're going to wake up. They're going to be quickened. They're going to come to know who Christ is. God's going to breathe down.

He's going to reach down into the ocean of death, which is what we all were in. We were down at the bottom of the ocean, unable to breathe, unable to save ourselves. And He doesn't just throw us a life raft and say, go save yourself. No, no, no, no. He jumps off the boat and dives all the way down to the bottom of the ocean and pulls us up out of the water, puts us in the boat, breathe CPR into our mouth and breathes life into us and gives us eyes to see and gives us ears to hear and causes us to rejoice.

Rejoice in what God has done. That's what our Lord has done for us. He didn't just throw us a life raft and say, hey, here's some platitudes, memorize them and, you know, fill out the card here at the back of the, at the pew and turn it in and put it in the in the basket on your layout and we'll send you a Bible in the mail. No, no, no, that's not how it works. God gives us life. Spiritual life. He doesn't give us, you know, He doesn't give us a formula. He gives us life. And that's wonderful.

Alright, so let's see where I was right here. Let's go to verse seven here. All right, here we go, here's the why. Here's the why of this passage. Verse seven, the why. Why did Christ do all this? Why did he do it? That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. That's why, that's why.

Because forever and ever and ever he's gonna be glorified. All right? And forever and ever, we're going to sing his praises. He's going to be your Savior. And we're going to gather around the throne and we're going to sing of his loving kindness, okay, right there. He's going to show the riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. We're going to sing about that. And we're going, you know, one day we're going to have the marriage supper of the lamb.

We're going to, after we go into the grave and we cross the seam, that is death, and we wake up because death is nothing for the believer. Death is nothing for us. This time that we're experiencing right now, it's just a short moment, fleeting moment, as James says, life is a vapor.

Gone tomorrow. Any one of us can be. We could be in a car accident on the way home, or the Lord can just say, okay, it's time, time, Brandon, let's go. And I'm not afraid of that at all, because I know where I'm going. I'm going to the other side. I'm going to the other side.

And this reality is just so great. I don't have to worry about it at all. I wish I could just share this with the world and show how excited I am just so they can see how great this is, that we don't have to fear death if you're in Christ. You wake up, and you wake up in the marriage supper of the Lamb, and you get a new body. This body is just gonna, you're gonna get a new one, it's gonna be better.

I can't wait, I really can't. And I look forward to it, and I wanna sit down, and I wanna sit down and meet my Savior. And I'll look at Him in the eye, and I just wanna hug Him. And I wanna sing His praises forever. That's what we're going to do. And I can't wait. And we're going to sing of His loving kindness. His loving kindness. And let's go ahead and look at verses 8 and 9. This is probably the most famous verse in all of scripture.

I don't know, John 3.16 might be it, but for us, it may be the most famous one. For by grace are you saved through faith, and not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Oh my. Not of works, lest any man should boast. Whole sermons could be written just on these two verses. Salvation.

We're saved by grace, salvation's a gift. And it's not a gift we went looking for. We were on the bottom of the ocean, dead. God just found us, said, here you go. Here's life. Enjoy. It's a gift that went looking for us. All right, we didn't go looking for it. He found us and gave us life. And when you're dead, You didn't pry your eyes open. Okay. Somebody opened them for you. You didn't light the lamp that showed you the room. No, no, no. The light was lit for you. And you didn't pull yourself off the dunghill. You didn't do that. No. No, it's a gift. It's a gift.

And, you know, we know to avoid trusting our outward works for salvation. We know that here. But it's dangerous to fall into that trap, even with all the right doctrine. You know, we sometimes think to ourselves, oh boy, I've got my doctrine right. I got it all lined up just right. I know everything. I've got it all figured out. I've learned the words of Paul. I'm doing a good job defending this text against all the other religious out there. I'm definitely saved now because I can quote the scriptures. I can defend the gospel.

That's the danger we have to be careful of. It's called pride of grace. We can be very prideful people. We can be proud about salvation. How can we do that? Why are we like that? Because, well, we're evil. We drink iniquity like water. And you know what water is? It's something that, well, first off, your body is 80% water, I think.

It may be higher. I don't know. It could be 90%. I don't know. It's up there. But like this water here, for me to take a drink of this, it tastes good. But I drink water all day long. I drink water. I reach for it. I reach for water because it's what my body needs. And it's nothing for me to reach for water, just like it's nothing for me to reach for iniquity and sin. And so I'll find, you know, if I'm thirsty, my body is thirsty, I'll find water wherever I need it. I'll go looking for it. I'll find a water fountain.

You know, I'll get, you know, I'll even, you know, get water out of the sky if I have to, you know, because your body needs it. You need it to live. Well, that's why sin is to us. I mean, our body desires it. We drink iniquity like water. We drink it down. And so there's a real danger here of even studying God's word and turning it into pride.

And I'm guilty of that myself. I'm your first offender of all of this stuff that I'm pointing out. I'm probably, if there's an error, to have been committed by anyone in the church, well, I've done it, all right? I've done it, I've done it all. And the mystery of his grace just keeps on surprising me and he comes to me over and over and over again and says, it's covered, it's covered, Brandon. You've messed up. Yeah, you did that. Yeah, you really did that. But you're saved. You're safe in Christ.

Grace is free. Grace, this is a buffet. It's been spread out for us. Come and eat. So, it doesn't matter what you do. You could be the worst, biggest Pharisee in the world. Come eat. Come eat. Come and drink. Come to the riches of Christ. Let's see where I was. Alright. The gift keeps on coming. And let's go ahead and close out.

Actually, let's see, verse nine. I told you I'm not used to preaching up here. All right, verse nine. Not of works lest any man should boast. Okay. Okay. First, let's just go ahead and skip to 10. I got lost. Forgive me. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Okay. So one thing I want to notice here is we are his workmanship. Okay. It's not our workmanship, it's His workmanship right there.

It's what verse 10 says, which means any good work we do, well, it's not us performing it, it's the Lord, because we are His workmanship. And what are good works? Well, a lot of people like to skip this verse, but, you know, especially in gray circles, some people say, well, we shouldn't talk about good works because Well, you know, that means you're turning grace into law and you're perverting the gospel. No, no, no, no, no, no. We're gonna walk in good works. Now, you know, I don't know what my good works are. I'll just tell you that. Sometimes I look in my good works and I don't think I got any.

But one thing I do know is I've been given a new nature. I've been given the heart of Christ. And he's put his law in my heart. And now I can look around and, you know, I'm just overcome with emotion and love for God's people and love for God and his gospel. And now I have a new way of living from what I used to live like. I used to, you know, I was just interested in cars and girls. But now, all of a sudden, I'm interested in the truth.

I'm interested in just living out the best that I can for the Lord, wherever that may be, whatever that may be doing. God put that on my heart, and I want to worship Him, and I want to praise Him, and I want to help others, and I don't want to live for myself anymore. Now, I'm not saying that's a good work, but I think that's a pretty good sign that the Lord is working in you.

So examine yourself. See if you have that desire. See if you want to worship, to see if you want to help others, and if you care about how others feel, and if you care about what they think and what they do. Do you care about the lost religionists? Do you care about the criminal on the street corner? Do you care about those who don't know the Lord? Well, I think those of us who do, I think the Lord puts it on our heart to care for them. Because we know what we've come from.

And we know how great it is and what joy we have. And we want others to experience that. So we go tell others of what Christ has done. That's what this is all about. This is why we're here. We're preaching the gospel so that others can hear the great news and rejoice with us.

And then God can open up the eyes of his sheep wherever they may be. And I don't know. There could be one out there that's on the internet listening to this sometime. And they're going to be like, oh my goodness. Look at this. He really means what he says. And I hope that whenever we get up to preach, that's the way we are.

All right, but I would just say that our rule for living, it's not the law, it's Christ. Christ is the rule for living and he's written his love on our hearts and we obey him because we love him, because we want to, not because we have to. I don't feel a burden just because, oh, you know, the Lord's told me to do something and I gotta go do this. Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm here tonight because I wanna be here, because I love it here. Because I love you all, and I love the truth, and I love the Lord.

And that's why we get up here and we do this. All right, and these works that we do, which I'm not exactly sure what they are, and I'm not very good at exegesis on this, but these works that we do, what I love about this verse here is we were ordained then we should walk in them. Okay, so we're going to walk in good works. And these works were ordained for us to walk in before the foundation of the world, before our very first breath.

The Lord had planned it all out in intricate detail. He knew that we would be here tonight. He knew that we would be, He knew that I'd be preaching. He knew that you'd be listening. He knew that we would sing the songs. And it's all planned out. Not, you know, everything is just beautiful because he's ordained it. And we are his workmanship. We are his workmanship. We're his poem, if you will. We're his poem. We're his handiwork, not our handiwork. And every poem, it has an author. And we aren't it. We're not the author. He is. He's the author.

So I would just say, stop measuring yourself against others and rest in Christ. And then we're gonna go ahead and close here soon. I'd say, you know, seek his word, seek his people, look for rest, rest, rest, rest in Christ, don't work in Christ, rest. Come by, eat and drink, and don't bring any money, come to the buffet. And that's about all I got for tonight, so let's go ahead and close.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for a wonderful time of worship tonight. I thank you that you've given us wonderful, wonderful bounty that we can come and eat. We can come to you and enjoy your grace, enjoy your mercy, enjoy your loving kindness, your love towards your people. Thank you, Father, for giving us your spirit. Father, we thank you that you've given us your love, that you saved us, that you sent your son to the cross for us, that you caused him to live that perfect life, that you caused him to go to the cross and suffer, suffer the indignity of it all. And Lord, that he took our sins and now we stand before you guiltless and blameless and we can walk into your sight without worry or without fear. Thank you, Father.

Father, I'd ask that you bless the meetings on Sunday, that you bless our lives throughout the week, and that you be with us as we go throughout our day-to-day. We thank you, Lord, for everything, because all things are at your hand. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Still have one. Yeah, I'm still warm. Yeah, 315. I was going to say you can take a break if you want. Yeah, no. Let's see how good I am at sight reading.

My faith looks up to thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary, Savior divine. Now hear me when I pray, take all my sin away. Oh let me from this day be wholly thine. May thy rich grace impart strength to my fainting heart, my zeal inspire. As thou hast died for me, O may my love to thee. Pure, warm, and changeless be a living fire. While life's dark maze I tread and griefs around me spread, ♪ Be thou my guide ♪ ♪ Bid darkness turn to day ♪ ♪ Wipe sorrows, tears away ♪ ♪ Nor let me ever stray from thee ♪ When in life's transcend dream, When death's cold, sullen stream Shall o'er me roll, Blest Savior, then in love Fear and distrust remove. Oh, bear me safe above our ransom.

But God

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