Turn with me to Exodus chapter
6. Either Sean snuck a look at my
notes or the same spirit that led me to write these notes led
him to pick out those songs. One of those two things are true.
I hope that means the Lord's got a blessing for us tonight.
We're going to begin our reading in Exodus 6 verse 9. And Moses spake so unto the children
of Israel, but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of
spirit and for cruel bondage. And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, Go in, speak unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, that he let the
children of Israel go out of his land. And Moses spake before
the Lord, saying, Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened
unto me. How then shall Pharaoh hear me,
who am of uncircumcised lips? The Lord spake unto Moses and
unto Aaron, and gave them a charge unto the children of Israel and
unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel
out of the land of Egypt. We'll end our reading there.
Let's bow before our Lord together. Our Father, we have gathered
here together out of the world in the middle of the week. trudging
through a dark and dry, barren land from Sunday to today. And Father, we need another refreshing
from your word, another refreshing from your storehouse of mercy
and grace that you have reserved for your people. Father, I pray
that you would speak to each heart here this evening through
your word, that you'd comfort our souls with another sight,
of Christ our Savior, that you'd cause us to come again, as Peter
said to whom coming, that we would come again to Christ our
Savior, trusting Him, relying on Him, casting all of our souls
and all of our cares upon Him. Father, reveal to us the Lord
Jesus Christ tonight. That's our great prayer. Enable
us to see and believe and to worship and to be able to leave
here tonight with our souls thrilled at hearing of the full, free,
sufficient salvation that's in our Lord Jesus Christ. Father,
I thank you for this place. I thank you for this family of
believers that you've called together. Father, I pray you'd
bless us. I pray that you'd bless your
word as it goes forth from here to bless your people, to call
out your people, to reach out into the community around us
and to call your people to Christ. If that's gonna happen, we know
it's gonna be by the preaching of the gospel. I pray you'd make
us faithful to do that, to preach Christ to our generation. Father, we thank you for the
many blessings of this life, how richly that you blessed us,
in every way how you blessed us. Father, I beg your forgiveness
for the times when we murmur and complain against your good
providence after all you've done to us. Forgive us of our sins,
we pray. And Father, we pray that you'd
be with those who are in times of great difficulty. The fire
of trial, the darkness of the deep valley, the darkness of
the night, the stormy waters. Father, be with your people,
we pray. Comfort them, comfort them with
your presence in their heart, till such time as you're pleased
to deliver. All these things we ask of that name which is
above every name, the name of Christ our Savior. For his sake
and his glory we pray, amen. I've titled the message this
evening, A Message for the Unbelieving. And I want to preach right where
we live this evening. to tell the unvarnished truth
about ourselves and our situations and Christ our Savior. We who
believe, we should always believe. We should always, no matter what's
happening, we should always trust Christ our Savior perfectly,
shouldn't we? But we don't do that always.
I mean, let's just be honest, we don't. There's a man one time,
was telling me he never had any problems with these fears and
doubts and wavering faith. Well, I thought some ugly things.
You probably don't need to. One of the things I thought,
that man's not telling the truth. Our faith wavers like that. The unbeliever
should believe, but they can't because they don't have the capacity
to believe with their dead nature, do they? The believer knows and
trusts Christ. No, we do. We trust Christ. I
believe, help thou mine unbelief. But there are times that we still
find ourselves unable to believe, or maybe I should say unable
to rest in the promises of God. And I believe the Lord has given
me a message that will help us when we find ourselves in that
situation. That's the situation the children
of Israel were in here. Remember the Lord had sent Moses
back to Egypt He sent him with a message of deliverance for
the children of Israel. Look back at Exodus chapter four.
When they first heard this message, they were so thrilled, they were
so happy, because they believed it. Exodus four, verse 29. And Moses and Aaron went and
gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel. And
Aaron spake all the words which the Lord had spoken unto Moses,
and did the signs in the sight of the people, and the people
believed. And when they heard that the
Lord had visited the children of Israel and that he had looked
upon their affliction, they bowed their heads and they worshiped. They worshiped. Everybody was
so happy. Everybody's heart was so lifted
up because they were going to go free. They knew they're going
to go free because God said they're going to go free. They were going
to go live in the land that God had promised to Abraham hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds of years ago. They wondered about
that promise. And now God was bringing that
promise to pass, and they were so happy. But they didn't get
delivered right away. And instead of going free, the
lives of the children of Israel got worse. Things didn't get
better, they got worse. Now they had to make bricks without
straw, and they had to make as many bricks as they did before.
Now their taskmasters were harsher, and they beat them with their
whips, they laid a lash to their backs, harder and more often
than they'd ever done before. Life got worse instead of better.
And the people were just broken. Verse nine in Exodus chapter
six. And Moses spake so. He took the
message that God gave him to preach and he spake so. That's
what he said unto the children of Israel. But they hearken not
unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage. The children
of Israel, at first they believed God. At first they had such peace
and happiness and joy, and now they couldn't rejoice anymore
because their spirits were just broken. I mean, things had gotten
so hard and so bad for them that their spirits were just broken.
They felt so helpless. The situation was so bad, they
just couldn't bring themselves to believe any good news from
God. They were in such a bad, painful
situation, they just couldn't believe God was going to be good
to them anymore. They couldn't believe it anymore. Ever been there? Yes, if we're
honest, we've been there because we got the same nature as the
children of Israel. And here's where the problem came from.
I know exactly where it came from because I've been there.
What they saw with their eyes didn't match what they believed
in their hearts. That was the problem. What they saw with their
eyes wasn't what they heard from God. What they were experiencing
was not what God promised. They said, we've heard God's
promise. And it sure sounded like he was going to do good
for me. It looked like he was going to, but he must not be
going to do good for me because he hasn't. He hasn't yet. He hasn't yet. This I know. God's still gonna
keep his promise. But our problem comes when the
Lord doesn't do what he promised as quickly as we want. Isn't
that our problem? Our impatience makes it so that
we don't think God will do good like he promised to do. That's
why we can't rest in it because it's our impatience. We always
find ourselves, we get into this situation where we can't believe
God, we can't rest upon his promise when we're walking by sight,
not by faith. That's where we always get into
this problem. We have trouble believing that
God's gonna deliver me when I think the situation can't possibly
get worse. And then it does. God didn't
deliver me before the situation got worse. I think, well, he's
not gonna deliver me. We have trouble believing that
God is only doing good for us when everything we see and everything
we're feeling and everything we're experiencing is painful. Now that's so. That's judging
by sight. That's judging by our limited
vision and not trusting what God said. You know, it's hard
to see past the pain and the hardships of this flesh when
they're so big that we can't see a solution to it, we can't
see a way around it. And we fall into unbelief when
what I'm seeing and what I'm experiencing seem to go against
the word of God. It seems like it's going against,
now we know it's not, but it seems like it, doesn't it? I'll
give you a real good example. Sarah and Abraham, that's how
they got in trouble. God promised them a son and they
believed God was gonna give them a son, but then the son didn't
come. For years the son didn't come. So Abraham and Sarah decided,
well, God must want us to help him out and we'll produce a son
by the power of the flesh on our own with Hagar as the mother
instead of Sarah. They judged by sight. They judged
by what they were feeling. It was their impatience that
made them think God's not gonna keep his promise And look at
the mess they created. What a mess. And that's what
happens when you and me judge God's time by our flesh instead
of waiting on the Lord. Now, we know this. We know and
we believe this. When I read to open the service,
we believe, I mean with all my heart, I believe that all things
work together for good. To them that love God, to them
are they called, according to his purpose. I believe that as
much as I believe anything. But there are times I don't see
the good in a situation. There are times it doesn't feel
good. Now, I believe it's true, but
I've been drugged so far down, I'm hurting so bad, I just can't
see that there's possibly any good here. I'll give you a quick
illustration of that. About 25 years ago, on a Monday,
Jan and I walked into the bank, and we signed a mortgage, bought
our first house, the house we still live in today. That was
Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning, by 8.15, they
had announced the company that I was working for was going bankrupt. going out of business, and maybe,
maybe they're going to keep some people around. You might stick
around for about two more months, but then you won't be unemployed.
I just signed a mortgage. I had a one-year-old and a four-year-old
at home. And the house we bought, we could
just barely pay the mortgage. But it needed so much work, oh
my goodness, I thought, how we ever? And Tuesday, I watched
security come in and escorting people out. I mean, just Wednesday,
went to work, same thing. And I went to service Wednesday
evening. And I was in the hallway outside
of Henry's study, and he asked me, he said, Frank, pick us out
something to read tonight. Now, he'd always given me, this
is the first time he ever said, pick out something to read. And
I said, me? And he said, yeah. And then he turned and walked
off, and he stopped and he said, You know the last part of Romans
8, that's always good. And that's what I read. That's
what I read that night. All things work together for
good. It sure didn't feel like it. But Rick, you know what I found
out? God works all things together for good. To them that love God,
to them that are called according to his purpose, it didn't happen
on my time, it happened on his. But when now this is happening
to me and it doesn't feel good, it didn't feel like I don't see
how God's going to keep his promise from here. What am I supposed
to do? Well, I'll tell you, go back
and listen to the gospel over again. Go back and listen to
what God said. Some more. That's what, what,
uh, when Moses said, Lord, the people, they're not going to
hear me. I mean, they already haven't
believed me. Pharaoh's not going to hear me. What am I supposed
to do? In verse 13, the Lord spake unto
Moses and unto Aaron and gave them charge under the children
of Israel, under Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring the children
of Israel out of the land of Egypt. God said, you go back
and tell them I already told you. You go back and tell them
again. If they don't believe it, you
tell them again. If they don't believe you, you tell them again.
You keep telling them again. That's what we're to do. Go hear
the gospel again. And aren't you thankful? that
our deliverance and us receiving the promises of God doesn't depend
upon the strength of our faith, but it depends on God's faithfulness.
It depends upon His power to be able to do what He promised
to do. It depends upon His faithfulness to do what He promised. So if
what you really believe, if you find it's not blessed in your
heart and it's not giving you rest and peace like it has in
the past, go back and listen again. and pray that the Lord
will make it a blessing to you. You believe, you do, and you
know it's true. Well, ask the Lord to make it
a blessing to your heart so that you can rest in him again. And
tonight, what I want us to do, let's go back and listen to Moses'
message of deliverance that the Lord gave him to preach, and
let's listen to it again and see if maybe it won't encourage
us to trust the Lord. First is this, and this is a
truth to God's people forever. Our God saves his people from
all of their sin. In verse three, Exodus six, the
Lord says, and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto
Jacob by the name of God Almighty. But by my name Jehovah was I
not known unto them. Our God is Jehovah. That name
means God my Savior. God, the self-existent one. Jehovah is God's name of redemption. Our God is Jehovah, who is to
be believed, who is to be depended upon. He will save his people
from their sin. Now, I want to tell you, if Jehovah
is the one that saved you, then your plums ain't, because the
self-existent one cannot fail to do his will. His blood has
come Completely redeemed his people from all of their sin
Their sins gone the debt is paid God's law and God's justice is
not punishing you now and making you go through through this this
trial and these fears and these doubts Because of your sin, that's
not happening if Jehovah saved you because he put your sin away
His blood has completely cleansed all of his people from all of
their sins Now you trust Christ. I know you do. I know you trust
Christ. Now rest in Him. Rest in Him. Don't try to find rest in your
circumstances, because there's none there. Don't try to find
some rest in making yourself more savable, doing some things
right so that God will relieve this pressure from you. Just
rest in Christ. Don't look to the flesh, to yours
or anybody else's, to find some evidence that Christ has saved
you. If you look to the flesh, all you're gonna find is fear
and disappointment. Look to Christ. Look to His person. Look to Jehovah, the self-existent
one. If that's His person, He's not
failing you. He's not abandoning you. Look
to His word. Look to His promise. Look to
His gospel. You know, when a believer's not
blessed, when we hear how the Lord Jesus Christ has saved His
people from their sin. He was made sin for us, that
we might be made the very righteousness of God in Him. Now, when that
does not thrill our hearts, the problem almost always is this. We're looking at our earthly,
fleshly circumstances instead of looking to Christ. We start
to value our fleshly circumstances more than we value our soul that
Christ has saved from sin. Now, when I'm saying this, I'm
not trying to diminish our trials and the difficulties of this
flesh. I'm not trying to diminish them at all. They're significant,
they're real, they're painful, or they wouldn't be called fiery
trials. They wouldn't be called heavy
burdens if they weren't difficult. I'm not minimizing them at all.
But you know, those trials and those heartaches are no indication
that God hasn't saved us. God sent Moses with a promise.
He's going to deliver Israel. He's going to deliver them from
their bondage, and then their lives got so much worse. No,
they didn't. Their lives got worse. But that
was no indication the Lord wasn't going to deliver them, was it?
He still ended up delivering him, he did it in his time. And
the same thing is true about all of our fleshly troubles.
The Lord's gonna deliver us even when it doesn't look like he
will. And the cure for this problem, not being able to rest in Christ,
is to pray that the Lord enable us to look past this flesh and
look to Christ. We've got to look past the flesh
because there's no comfort in looking to the flesh. But oh,
there's comfort when we look to Christ in there. You know,
if we look to the flesh to find some ability to save ourselves,
to deliver ourselves, we're gonna be so discouraged, aren't we? But when you forget about yourself,
and you just trust Christ, isn't that peace for your soul? That's
peace. Well, we need to pray, Lord,
enable me to look to Christ. I'll not find any indication
that God saved me if I look at my flesh or my fleshly circumstances,
but I sure will if I look to Christ. I'll see every indication. That's how I know God saved me,
by looking to Christ. Christ the Savior, Jehovah. All
right, number two. God's a covenant God. In verse
four, he says, and I have also established my covenant with
them to give them the land of Canaan. the land of their pilgrimage,
wherein they were strangers. And I've also heard the groaning
of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage.
And I have remembered my covenant." You know, God had promised he's
going to deliver Israel from Egypt. Now, nobody ever should
have doubted he's going to keep that promise because God's a
covenant God. And what that means is this,
everything that God does in time, is what he promised to do before
he created anything. You know, God doesn't make, he
doesn't see what's going on in his creation and then make spur
of the moment decisions to try to correct things and keep things
going the way he wants them to go. Bob, that's like autopilot
on a plane, isn't it? He doesn't have this thing on
autopilot. God is doing what he promised
to do before he created anything. God's not reacting to something
in his creation. God's not reacting to what you
and I do. God is doing what he promised
to do when only God existed. So all we have to do is just
wait. Wait until God's time comes to
do what he promised to do. It may take a while, and it normally
does. A lot of things we don't like
may happen first, and they probably will. But sooner or later, God's
gonna do what he promised to do. He's gonna deliver his people. And you can see that in this
picture of how God delivered Israel from Egypt. He did it
in his time, didn't he? In his way, in a way that brought
him all of the glory. And God does the same thing when
he saves his people today. Now, don't give up hope. God's
going to save his people. That's what he promised to do.
That's what his covenant of grace is all about. He's gonna save
his people. Just keep praying and asking
the Lord to do what he promised to do. And God's gonna comfort
his people too. He is the God of all comfort.
He's going to comfort his people. In every trial, in every heartache,
God's going to comfort his people. And when you find yourself in
that situation where that trial is so bad, you so desperately
need comfort, just keep praying and asking the Lord to do what
he promised to do. I can't think of a better way
to be sure our prayers are answered than praying and asking God,
do what you promised to do. I can't think of a better way
to pray because our God's a covenant God. He's going to do what he
promised to do. If you want some comfort, just
go through this book and start reading all the promises of God
to his people. That'll give you some peace. Number three is this. Our God
has brought his people out from all of their burdens. Verse six. Wherefore say unto the children
of Israel, I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under
the burdens of the Egyptians and I will rid you out of their
bondage and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm and
with great judgments. God has brought his people out
from all of their burdens, all their spiritual burdens, just
like he brought Israel up from their physical burdens. He delivered
his people from the burden of sin in the most unexpected, miraculous
way possible, by being made sin for them. He took the sins of
his people into his own body on the tree and he put them away
by the sacrifice of himself. He's delivered his people from
the burden of the law by being made flesh, by being born of
a woman, by being made under the law so he could do what his
people can't do. The laws put a burden on you
and me. The law requires us to obey God's law and we can't do
it. So Christ came in the flesh as a representative of his people
and he obeyed the law for them. If you belong to Christ, the
law never looks to you for obedience. It always looks to Christ and
finds perfect obedience in you. He took that burden of the law
off of you. Now look to Christ, depend upon Him. Don't look to
the law to see how you're doing. Don't look to the law to see,
well, can I keep a few laws and do some things to relieve myself
of this pressure? That's putting a burden on you.
Look to Christ. He's taking that burden away. Christ has delivered his people
from the bondage of death by dying in the place of his people
so that they will never die. The writer of the Hebrews said
in Hebrews 2 verse 15, and deliver them who through fear of death
were all their lifetime subject to bondage. People in this flesh are subject
to this bondage. We fear death. We fear death. But Christ came to deliver his
people from that bondage, to deliver his people from the fear
of death. Now, it's not that you won't
die. I mean, unless Christ returns, we're all gonna die. Every one
of these bodies is gonna die. They're gonna put them in a casket
and put them in the ground. But for someone that trusts Christ,
there's no fear in that whatsoever. No fear at all, because to be
absent from this body is to be present with the Lord. I praised
a funeral one time, and I talked about all the different emotions
that's going on with the family, with those who loved the dear
man who had passed away. There's all these different emotions.
One of them's not fear. There's no fear in this thing
for anybody who trusts Christ. God's people are delivered from
those burdens because Christ bore those burdens for us. He
carried the burden that we can't carry and took them away from
us. So you know what he says? It's not just that he carried
the burden away. Now he says, come unto me, all
ye that labor and are heavy laden. You're trying to carry a burden
that you can't carry. You're working so hard at it,
it's too heavy, you can't carry it. And the Savior himself says,
come unto me and I will give you rest. Isn't that sweet? I'll
give you rest because I've already carried your burdens for you. Now, I know that. I believe that. I believe that to be true and
you do too. But when the burden of a trial or a trouble, it seems
so heavy, it feels like it's not going away, I feel like I
can't go on. It's so heavy, it just is making
the gospel not be a blessing to my heart. It doesn't feel
like the Lord's carrying my burdens away. Now, I believe he has,
but it doesn't feel like it. What should I do? Come hear the gospel again and
again and again and again. You'll find this to be true.
When you're in this shape, this trial, it seems like it's all
you can think about. It's just always right here.
And you come to the service. One of the men opens up God's
Word and starts reading it. And we bow together in prayer.
We bow before the Lord. We sing those songs of praise
and worship. The preacher gets up and he opens
God's Word and he starts going verse by verse. telling us, here's
Christ, here's Christ, here's Christ. And you find your heart
is calmed. Now, that calmness may be gone
by the time you get home, but at least while you were here,
there was calmness, wasn't it? There was calmness and peace
of heart. And you just keep coming again and again and again. And sooner or later, the Lord
will build on that. He'll build on that and give you peace of
heart. The Lord will deliver you. Now I'm here to tell you,
based on the promise of God, the Lord will deliver you. I
don't care what trial this year in, the Lord will deliver you. Just as surely as he delivered
Israel from bondage in Egypt, he will. But now listen, it'll
always be on God's time. It will never be on our time.
So what we're to do, is to pray and ask the Lord to enable me
to wait on the Lord. I preached a funeral last week
to a dear brother. And then we went to the cemetery.
And I ended reading from Psalm 27. Where David says, wait on
the Lord. Wait, I say, on the Lord. wait i say on the lord he'll
deliver he'll deliver then number four is this and this is so sweet
this is sweet our god has made himself to be our god our god
verse seven the lord says and i will take you to me for a people
and i will be to you a god and you shall know that i am the
lord your god which bringeth you out from under the burdens
of the Egyptians." There's such a sweetness here of the relationship
between God and His people. He says, I'll be to you a God.
I will be your God. I'll be your God. Now that enables
a believer to call the God of heaven and earth, my God, my
God. I can call the Lord mine. because
he made me belong to him. He made me belong to him. And
if he's my God, there is a reasonable expectation that if I call on
him, he'll answer me. If I call on him, he'll hear
me. If I call on him, he'll save me. It's exactly what David said
in Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want because the
Lord is my shepherd, my shepherd. I don't know if I've used this
illustration here or not before. If I did, I apologize, but my
grandson. A couple of weeks ago, he learned
the word my. He never knew the word my before.
He's learned the word my. He knows what my means. And he's
with us this week. He and his mama came to, to cheer
Janet up, and his mama was doing, I mean, the most ridiculous thing.
She was changing his diaper and getting him dressed for the day.
I mean, it was so horrible, just this horrible thing. He's wailing
and crying, and you know what he knew to cry that would get
him deliverance? My papa. Now take that sweetness and that
love and that absolute dependence and trust. Think how sweet it
is to be able to cry out, my God. I'm in trouble, my God. I'm going down for the last time,
my God. My Lord and my God. Oh, the sweetness
there is in that. The confidence that there is
in that. If God Almighty, Jehovah, if He's my God, He's gonna take
care of me. Now He will. He's already chosen
me in divine election and electing love. He's already redeemed me
with the blood of His Son. He's already come in the person
of His Spirit. He's given me life. He's already blessed me
and fed me my whole life long. Even when I didn't know the Lord,
I can look back and see how the Lord was protecting me and leading
me and guiding me. then he's going to take care
of me now too. He sure will. He's going to deliver me from
this painful trial that's caused me to be so focused on the flesh
that I can't find joy and rest and peace in the gospel. He's
going to deliver me from it. He's either going to deliver
me from this trial or he's going to deliver me from this trial
by using this trial to kill the flesh. But one way or another,
I'm going to be delivered. And if the Lord is pleased to
use this trial to kill this flesh, you know what he's gonna do?
He's gonna give me dying grace. He's gonna give me dying grace.
He gave grace to see me through that too. And that's fine by
me because then you know what's gonna happen? I'm gonna wake
in glory face to face with Christ the Savior and be made just like
him. And then I'm gonna know by experience
what it is to be plumb saved, to be plumb delivered, because
God is my God. And that's what God's gonna do
for all of his people. And the Lord does something so special
here. He gives us an example of this.
This is how I'm gonna deliver my people. They're God, they're
my people, they can call me my God. If you start in verse 14
and read down through the end of the chapter, it's a list of
names, a list of names. The Lord told Moses, now you
write down this list of names, and you take these names to Pharaoh,
and you tell him, these are the people I'm bringing out of Egypt.
He told him beforehand, I mean, the exact people that he's bringing
out of Egypt. He said, take them to Pharaoh,
so Pharaoh knows I'm bringing them out, because they're my
people, and I'm their God, and I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna
deliver my people. And he's gonna do the same thing spiritually
for everyone who believes on him. Now you just rest in Him. You just rest in Him. He's my
God. Just keep calling on Him. I promise
you He'll hear. I promise you He will. He's got
a heart of love that's way bigger than
mine. I mean, it doesn't even compare,
does it? He'll hear. And here's the last thing. Our
God will. give his people rest and glory.
In verse eight, he says, and I will bring you into the land
concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac,
and to Jacob. And I'll give it to you for an
heritage. I am the Lord. Every believer, we'd all be better
off if we'd always keep this in mind. We're just traveling
through this place. We're just traveling through
here. This isn't home. We're traveling through here
on our way home. We're traveling through this
veil of tears right now, on our way to glory. Now the trip's
gonna be hard. It's gonna be so full of painful
experiences, but the Lord will bring us through every single
one of them, because he's bringing his people home to be with him.
He prayed in John 17, in his great high priestly prayer, Father,
I will. that all those whom thou has
given me be with me where I am that they may behold my glory.
Then they will because that's our God's will. He's going to
bring his people through. You're going to go through this.
And in the end of it, you're going to see the glory of God.
You're going to see the glory of Christ. You're going to see
him face to face. The Lord is going to bring his people into
a land. Flowing with milk and honey, just like he promised
that he would. Now, you and I don't have the
slightest idea. I mean, we don't have the foggiest idea what a
glorious place heaven is. We can't even start to begin
to commence to think how glorious it is to see the Lord Jesus Christ
face to face. I mean, however glorious you
think it is, I promise you it's exponentially greater than that.
But that's how this thing's gonna end up. I don't care what it
is we go through down here. That's how this thing's gonna
end up. Look back at Romans chapter eight. We're gonna end where
we began. Romans chapter eight. I know the road is so rough.
We think we're never gonna get there. We just think there's
no way for me to get to glory for where I am now. But we will. If we belong to Christ, we will.
Look at verse 18. For I reckon, and Paul's not
using that reckon like we do. Jan asked me something, I said,
well, I reckon, I mean, I guess. This is a mathematical term.
Paul's added this up. This is a mathematical equation.
He's looked at this thing. That the sufferings of this present
time, Paul put on one side of the ledger, the sufferings of
this present time. On the other side of the ledger,
He put those things in glory which shall be revealed in us,
and he said, I reckon, I've added this up, this is an exact calculation,
that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared
with the glory which shall be revealed in us. And if we keep
that in mind, that the sufferings of this present time, as difficult
as they are, as hard as they are, that they're not worthy
to be compared with what the Lord has in store for us, with
what He's bought for us, with what He's promised us, with what
He's purposed for us. I'm telling you, it'll comfort
our hearts to keep looking to Him and trusting to Him and find
comfort in these sorrows and in times of trouble now and keep
depending on the Lord to bring us through. And we find ourselves
in that situation, that's what we're to do. Keep listening to
the gospel of Christ. Keep looking to him over and
over and over again. Hope that'll bless you. Hope
that'll be a blessing and help to you. Let's bow together. Our Father, how we thank you
for this precious portion of your word, where you show us
you know our frame, you know that we're dust, and how you
take such pity on us. You give us help and instruction
for all the troubles and the trials that you send your people
here below. How thankful we are, Father,
that you will do what you promised to do, that you will save your
people from their sin. Father, we cry out to you. Oh,
would you save your people? Would you save those that we
love? Would you save those that we
care about? We hold them up to thee, Father, and pray for your
tender mercy to be upon them. We cry out to thee for comfort,
for ourselves and for others who feel like they're being crushed
in the time of trouble and trial. We hold them up to thee. Father,
you promised your grace is sufficient. We ask that you give them grace
that's sufficient for the trial. You promised that you'd never
leave nor forsake your people. We ask you that you keep that
promise. Give them a fulfillment of it. Comfort their hearts with
your presence. And whatever it is that you send
to us, Father, give us the faith to constantly
look to and depend upon the Lord Jesus Christ, to hold him up
for each other, that we might in some way be a help and a comfort
and encouragement to one another. Father, we thank you. It's in
Christ's name, for his sake and his glory, we pray. Amen. All right, Sean.