Psalm 33. Psalm 33. Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous,
for praise is comely for the upright. Praise the Lord with
heart. Sing unto him with the psaltery
in an instrument of ten strings. Sing unto him a new song. Play
skillfully with a loud noise. For the word of the Lord is right,
and all his works are done in truth. He loveth righteousness
and judgment. The earth is full of the goodness
of the Lord. By the word of the Lord were
the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of
his mouth. He gathereth the waters of the sea together as in heat.
He layeth up the depths and storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord.
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For
he spake, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast.
The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to naught, he
maketh the devices of the people of none effect. The counsel of
the Lord standeth forever, the thoughts of his heart to all
generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, and the
people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance. The Lord
looketh from heaven, he beholdeth all the sons of men. From the
place of his habitation he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the
earth. He fashioneth their hearts alike. he considereth all their
works. There is no king saved by the
multitude of an host. A mighty man is not delivered
by much strength. A horse is a vain thing for safety,
neither shall he deliver any by his great strength. Behold,
the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that
hope in his mercy, to deliver their soul from death and to
keep them alive in famine. Our soul waiteth for the Lord.
He is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in
him, because we have trusted in his holy name. Let thy mercy,
O Lord, be upon us, according as we hope in thee. Let's bow
together in prayer. Our God and our Father, we bow
in your presence this evening, begging a great blessing from your mercy
and grace for your people. We pray that you would bless
us tonight with the spirit of worship, that you'd send your
spirit upon us, enable us to learn more of our Lord Jesus
Christ, to see him in all of his fullness, all of his glory,
all of his sufficiency as a savior of his people. Father, how we
thank you for all of your great many blessings that you've so
freely bestowed upon us. We are thankful. We know everything
that we have has come from your hand, and we give you thanks. Father, we thank you for this
place. How thankful we are that you've preserved us a place where
your gospel's preached, where we can meet together in peace
and love and unity and worship to hear your gospel preached.
Father, we pray that you continue to bless your words that's preached
from this pulpit on the radio and the internet Bless it for
your glory. Bless it to the hearts of your
people. Father, we do pray a blessing for those of your people, those
that we know of and those that we know nothing about who are
suffering trial and tribulation at this present time. Father,
we pray that you'd heal. We pray that you'd undertake
on their behalf to comfort and to lead and guide. We're thankful
for the good report we had on our brother Mike Father, we pray
you continue to heal him and strengthen him, bring him back
to worship together with us. Father, again, bless us. Bless
us as we look into your word. Bless us with a word from thee
that we might leave here rejoicing in God, our Savior. For it's
in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray and ask
these blessings. All right, Psalm. 33. I titled the message this evening,
Rejoicing in God's Word. David begins the psalm telling
us to rejoice. He says, Rejoice in the Lord,
O ye righteous, for praise is comely for the upright. David
here is talking to believers, those who are righteous. And
we have so many reasons to rejoice, don't we? Just think about how
greatly that the Lord has blessed us. We have so many reasons to
rejoice. Our God has given us every spiritual
blessing. He's not withheld one spiritual
blessing. He's not withheld one thing that
we need. But He's given His people everything
that He has for them in His Son. The Lord has forgiven the sin
of His people. Think the reason we don't rejoice
more about that. We just don't really know how
awful and vile our sin is. But the Lord has forgiven the
sin of His people. That will make us rejoice always. He's made us what we're not.
He's given us a new nature. He's made us righteous. He's
adopted sinful men and women like us into His family, given
us a seat at the King's table. Oh, there's too many blessings
to count. He's given us inheritance. He's
promised He'd always be with His people. And on top of that,
he's given so many earthly blessings. When's the last time you went
hungry? When's the last time you worried about the heat bill
or light bill? Oh, the Lord's blessed us, just
rich. But David specifically here is
talking to people who've been made righteous in Christ. Now
the righteous should praise the Lord. It's a miracle of God's
grace that we've been made righteous. And he says, it's coming, it's
fitting, it's a beautiful thing for the righteous to praise the
Lord. And really, they're the only ones who can. Only the righteous
can praise the Lord. They have every reason to praise
the Lord. And he goes on in verse two,
he says, praise the Lord with heart. Sing unto him with a psaltery,
an instrument of 10 strings. Sing unto him a new song. Play
skillfully with a loud noise. Now singing in music, come from
emotion. I mean, you know, when you're
some just having a great day, you sing to yourself, you hum
to yourself, you whistle to yourself, just music. And that's kind of
that come from emotion. And the best way for many people
to express happiness and Thanksgiving and those kinds of thing is by
music and singing. Well, that's what David's talking
about here. Let's let's just what we just
did. Praise the Lord with with song with the with the songs
that we sing. But He's not just talking about
singing the words, you know, looking up the words in the book
and singing the word. David's talking about singing
from the heart. Now, if we're going to praise
the Lord, let's sing from the heart. John Flamming, many of
you remember John. He was going to sing at this
very large convention hall somewhere out west one time, and he was
there practicing. He was going to sing How Great
Thou Art. And he was practicing, you know, the hall was empty.
But there was a music director, somebody who was there. John
got done practicing. The man went up to John, asked
him. He said, that's a good song. He said, who are you trying to
impress when you're singing that? He said, if you're trying to
impress all these people here, it's not going to go very well. But if
you sing it from the heart and praise to God, you're going to
sing that song. John said, I learned a lesson.
I learned a lesson. That's what David's talking about,
to sing from the heart. That's where praise comes from.
And when he says here, sing a new song, he doesn't mean you have
to write a new song to sing every week. You could sing a new song
when you sing an old song, when you sing it with a new heart,
that truly praises God for all of his blessings, all of his
mercies to us. And like I said, we have so many
reasons to rejoice, but there's a specific thing David talks
about in this song, specific reason for us to rejoice. It's
the word of God. He says, talking here about how
we should praise the Lord. He says in verse four, four,
four. Here's why we should praise the
Lord. For the word of the Lord. Now just think about God's word
for a minute. Almighty God is condescended
to speak to poor sinners like you and me. And we can't even
measure how high above us that God is. Yet He condescended to
speak to us. We've sworn war against our God. We've rebelled against Him at
every turn. That's what all of Adam's race
has done. Yet in mercy, God's given sinners His Word. He's
spoken to us by the Word. That's what this book is, the
Bible is. It's the Word of God. It's not up to us to interpret
it and debate it. It's up to us to declare it. The Word is plain and simple. You hear academics give lectures
and things. They can talk over your head,
so you've got no idea what they're saying. Well, think how God could
do that. But He doesn't. He gave us His
word. People cannot misunderstand this
word. Now, they cannot believe it,
but it's too plain to misunderstand. And God in His word has given
us everything that we need to know about ourselves. He's given
us everything we need to know about God. Now, He doesn't tell
us everything there is to know about God, but He tells us everything
we need to know about God. He tells us everything that we
need to know to find out where salvation is, that it's in His
Son. The written Word declares Christ the incarnate Word. God
spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but hath in these last days spoken
unto us by His Son. You can't separate the written
Word and the incarnate Word. So everything we need to know
about redemption is found by seeing the Lord Jesus Christ,
by seeing Him by faith. And that's what the Word declares.
Every line of this book declares who the Lord Jesus Christ is.
It declares what Christ has done, why Christ has done it, and where
Christ is now. That's the whole purpose of the
Word of God, to declare salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. So
David here gives us five reasons to rejoice in the word of God.
I'd like to give them to you briefly. Number one, rejoice
because the word is right. He says, verse four, for the
word of the Lord is right. Now, all of us are sinners, so
that means we're not right. Have you ever told somebody you're
just not right? That's true. We're not right. Everything about
us is wrong, but we can rejoice because God's word tells us There's
a way we can be made right. And it's in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The word right, it means straight. The Word of God declares the
Lord Jesus Christ who is right. He's straight. He's the only
straight man to ever live. The rest of us, we're crooked.
We're perverse. We're everything but straight.
But Christ is straight. Look over at Psalm 40. We're
crooked. But we can be made straight.
We're made straight in the Lord Jesus Christ, Psalm 40, or I'm
sorry, Isaiah 40, Isaiah 40. Verse 3. The voice of him that crieth
in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make straight
in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley should be exalted
and every mountain and hill should be made low. And the crooked
shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. And the glory
of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken." Now, we're crooked. We think we're mountains that
are, you know, so high and we're so full of ourselves and we're
just crooked. But Christ comes and makes everything
straight, makes everything plain. We can be someone as crooked
and perverse as us, can be made straight in Christ. That's what
the word reveals. And the word right also means
equity. It means straight and it means equity. That's what
it means that Christ is equal to God's demands. This word is
often translated righteous. It's equal to God's demands,
but that's not us. We're unequal to all God's demands.
We haven't kept one of them. But sinners are made the righteousness
of God in Christ who kept the law for us. He's the only one
who could. He's the only man equal. So rejoice. Sinners are made righteous in
the Lord Jesus Christ. And the only place you can find
that out is in what you're hoping in your life. The word of God
that he's given us. Second, rejoice because the word
of God is truth. Verse four, the word of the Lord
is right in all his works. are done in truth. Now, you can't
separate the works of God and the Word of God. They're the
same thing. The works of the Lord Jesus Christ, they're true
and righteous altogether. That's the way we're made righteous
in Christ. That's what this book declares.
And it's declared in truth. Everything in the Bible is true. Now, The Bible is not just a
collection of true sayings, although look at any saying in it, it's
true, but it's not a collection of true sayings. Everything in
the Bible is true. It is true because it declares
Christ who is the truth of God. In Christ, there's true salvation
from sin. You know, people, the doctrine
of men, the way men make up for a sinner to be saved is untrue. It doesn't satisfy God's justice.
It doesn't make anybody righteous. But in Christ, there's true salvation
from sin because Christ dealt with the sin of His people. See,
that's a... In man's religion, they never deal with the problem
of sin. How's it going to be taken away?
Salvation in Christ is true because He dealt with the sin of His
people. He took it away from them and put it away under the
blood of His sacrifice. That's a true salvation. In Christ,
there's true grace. There's true mercy. There's true
peace for sinners because Christ earned it all for his people.
In Christ, there's true life because Christ died for his people. If you know the truth, if you
know Christ, if you know the truth, the truth will set you
free. Free from sin, death, and hell.
And every promise of this book is true. It's all relating to
Christ. It's all based upon Him. It's
all found upon Him. So it's all true. Even if we
can't understand how God's going to bring it to pass, it's true. You and I are dead in sins. That's
easy to see. All you got to do is just look
at us. We're dead in sins. But God has promised eternal
life in His Son. No man could ever figure out
how that could be done, but God's promised it. That's a true promise
in God's word. He's going to give all of his
people eternal life. The only place you find that
out is in the word of God. So rejoice. God has promised his people that
they'll have trouble on this earth. That's a true statement. That's truth isn't it? Just look
at our lives. Look at just this little congregation,
the trouble, the turmoil and the problems we have. God has
promised his people trouble on this earth. But he's also promised
in his word, in his word that's true. He's promised grace that's
sufficient for every trial. He's promised that his presence
will be with us always, that he'll never leave us nor forsake
us. That's why David said, the Lord, he is my shepherd. So I
shall not want him. That's true. We can rejoice in
that. Our saviors promised this. He's
promised that soon, this life, with all of its troubles and
trials and heartaches and darkness, it'll all be over. And He's coming
again. He's coming again to take all
of His people to be home with Him forever. Now that's truth. That's the ultimate end of salvation
in Christ. The glorification of His people.
That Christ come and gather them all to be with Him where He is
forever, that they may behold His glory. That's the truth of
the word. Now we can rejoice in that. Sinners like you and me can hang
our souls, hang the entirety of our souls upon these precious
promises in God's word because it's all true. All right. Thirdly, rejoice because God's
word declared the just salvation. Verse five. He loveth righteousness
and judgment. The earth is full of the goodness
of the Lord. God loves righteousness and judgment. God's holy. So of course he does.
He loves righteousness. He's holy. He loves holiness
and he hates sin. God loves righteous judgment
and he hates perverted justice. God hates a so-called justice
where the guilty go free and the innocent die. God hates that. God is holy and he won't overlook
sin. The guilty will never go free.
He'll punish every sin of every person to the fullest extent
of His wrath and His justice. Every sin will be punished that
way. Every sin. Because God's holy. He's righteous. He loves judgment. That judgment
satisfies God's holy character. Sinners like us think, how can
I rejoice in that? We rejoice because this is also
true. The earth is full of the goodness
of God. God is holy. He loves judgment.
He loves righteousness. But this is also true. The earth
is full of God's goodness. And that word goodness means
mercy or kindness. Now, how can God love righteousness? How can he love righteous judgment
and still fill the earth with his mercy? Well, that can only
happen in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what this book declares.
Both grace and truth. came by Jesus Christ. They both
came together in Him. Mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have
kissed one another just in one place, one person, in the Lord
Jesus Christ. When God shows mercy, the whole
earth is full of His mercy. When God shows mercy, He does
it in justice because it's all in Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ
satisfied God's law and He satisfied God's justice. He obeyed the
law perfectly, and he satisfied God's justice. And he did it
for this reason, so that God could be merciful to sinners
like us, to sinners from all over the whole world. See, the
first Adam, he represented the whole human race. But Christ's
second Adam, he represented the race of God's elect. Everyone that Adam represented,
they did what Adam did. That's how we all became sinners.
That's why we're sinners. We did what Adam did. But everyone
that Christ represented, they did everything that the Lord
Jesus Christ did. That's how we're made righteous
in Him. In Christ, He gave His righteousness to His people.
And He went to the cross and He was made sin for His people.
The sin problem still had to be taken care of. So He was made
sin for His people. All of God's elect, became righteous
in Christ and all of their sin became Christ. And he died for
it. He satisfied God. God loved judgment. He loved righteous judgment.
And he poured out that righteous judgment upon his son. And the
precious blood of Christ paid for all that sin. So it's gone. Now God in justice can show this
goodness and mercy to sinners. Now rejoice. all rejoice in that
this word declares a just salvation. Salvation is an act of God's
mercy. It has to be. If any of us are
going to be saved, it has to be an act of God's mercy. But
salvation also has to be an act of God's justice. Judgment has
to be satisfied. That's what happened in the Lord
Jesus Christ and His righteousness and His sacrifice and a just
salvation. can never be lost. Sinners from
all over the world have this salvation and they can never
lose it. Because salvation in Christ is
a just salvation. And that's called for rejoicing.
Right forth we rejoice in the creating power of God's word.
Now the scriptures are full of references that make it clear
that God's the creator. Now scripture is not declaring
that. to debunk the theory of evolution. That's not why that's written.
The scriptures declare that God's the creator for this purpose.
To show us God rightfully rules over everything that he created.
He created it, so he owns it. It's only right that God rule
over it. God owns everything. He owns it all. So he can do
with it whatever he wants. Now that alone, that God is the
creator, that answers the question whether or not God has the right
to choose some and pass others by. People say, well, that's
not fair, that God would choose some and pass others by. It's
not fair that God would love Jacob and hate Esau. Well, it
is if he's the creator, isn't it? If he's the creator, and
he is, he can do with his own what he will. God is the creator. And that's reason for rejoicing.
Look at verse six. By the word of the Lord were
the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of
his mouth. He gathereth the waters of the sea together as a heap.
He layeth up the dead in storehouses. Now we can rejoice in the power
of God to create this world so we can live on it. Now that took
wisdom. It took power and it took wisdom
to create a world, to create an atmosphere, to create a globe
that would produce plants and life and this What wisdom it
took. We can rejoice in that. The only
reason we've got any place to live in the power and wisdom
of God. And we can rejoice in the power
of God to sustain this thing to keep them spinning in space
and keep everything right where it's supposed to be. That's the
power and the wisdom of God. But God is so powerful this you
know this is all all written to to seize redemption in Christ,
salvation in Christ. God is so powerful that all it
took to create this world was the breath of His mouth. The
breath of His mouth went out and accomplished God's will.
Just the breath of His mouth. And these worlds were created
from nothing. God is so powerful, He heaped
up the waters of the sea. Now just go home tonight, fill
up the bathtub and try to heap up the waters in it. You can't
do it. God heaped up the water to the
sea like we heap up bricks. He just heaped them up and there
they stayed. That's the power of God. God is so powerful. He's so good to the earth. He
stores up water in the clouds to water the earth. But you know,
you go up there in an airplane and you can fly right through
those clouds like they're not even there. But yet they're holding water
to water the earth. I can't understand that. But
that's the wisdom and the power of God. That's His goodness to
the earth. Now here's the reason that all
this is written for our understanding. God uses that very same power
to create spiritual life in His people. Look at James chapter
1. The same power that God used
to create the world from nothing is the same power that He uses
to cause a new birth. cause new life to be born in
the heart of a man or a woman where nothing ever existed there
before. That happens from the same will, the same power, the
same creative power. James 1 verse 18. His own will begat he us with
the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of
his creatures. See that life that he begat in
us, that life is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is the Word
of God. Christ is the one who spoke all
of this into existence. All things were made by Him and
for Him. Without Him was not anything
made that was made. That's true of this creation.
Christ is the Word of God. He's the one who spoke and put
all this into existence. Well, that's true spiritually,
too. All spiritual life is created by the same Word, by the same
power, created by Christ and for Christ, for His people that
are in Him. And he's going to create life,
new life that never existed before. The new birth doesn't take the
flesh and change it. You don't give it light and life
and spiritual understanding. No. The new birth is the birth
of a new person, a new man, a new woman who never existed before. That takes the power of God.
Only God can do that. And when God does it, when he
creates new life like that, I can tell you how he does it. He uses
the seed of this word to do it. That's what James says, if his
own will begat he us with the word of truth. And Peter tells
us more about that over a couple of pages in first Peter chapter
one. Peter expounds on that, he says
in verse 23, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth
forever for all flesh is his grass. And all the glory of man
is the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower
thereof follows the way. See, that's why I say the new
birth is not the changing of this flesh, because it's just
grass. It's just going to wither and
die away. The new birth is a birth of a
new person who never existed before. It happens by the seed
of the word of God. The word of the Lord endured
forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached
unto you. God takes that word preached to his people and uses
it as a seed to give spiritual life. It's creating power. Now rejoice in that. God has
given us the seed that he uses to produce spiritual life. Many
of you have mentioned loved ones and different things that they
don't know the Lord, they have no interest in these things.
And whenever we talk about it, we say pray for them, let's pray
for one another. You know I do every day. I pray for for the
people that God brings to my mind. I pray for everybody here. I pray that the Lord be merciful.
I pray that the Lord save them. Well, if He's going to do it,
I can tell you how He's going to do it. He's going to do it through the
preaching of the word. So let's stay faithful to preach this
word. Do you have loved ones you'd like to see saved? Would you like to grow in grace?
Would you like to be saved? I can tell you how it's going
to happen. through the preaching of the word. Let's be faithful
to keep preaching the word. This is the word that God uses
to give spiritual life. And there'll be no spiritual
life without it, without this seed being planted. God's given
it to us. Let's rejoice. Everybody doesn't
have that, but we do. Now look back at Isaiah chapter
40. Let's stay faithful to preach
the word. As this we know, God is so powerful
and He is so good, He will not fail to give life to His people.
Isaiah 40, verse 25. To whom then will you liken me,
or shall I be equal, saith the Holy One? Lift up your eyes on
high, and behold, who hath created these things, that bringeth out
their host by number? He calleth them all by names,
by the greatness of His might, for that he is strong in power,
not one failure. Now why sayest thou, O Jacob,
and speakest, O Israel, my way is hid from the Lord, and my
judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard that the
everlasting God, the Lord, there it is, the creator of the ends
of the earth, fainteth not? Neither is weary. There's no
searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint,
and to them that have no might, he increases strength. Even the
youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly
fall. But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and
not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. God is so good, he'll not fail
in his word to give strength and life to his people. He'll
never fail, so rejoice. Now look at verse eight back
in our text. Here we're talking about the power of the Creator,
the creative power, creating power of God's Word. In verse
8, David says, Let all the earth fear the Lord, that all the inhabitants
of the world stand in awe of Him. Now here we're talking about
our Creator, the one who gave us life, the one who sustains
our life. Now, this ought to be so obvious
that David doesn't even have to say it, but this shows you
how dead and sinless we are. He has to say it. David has to
tell us to fear the Lord. Everyone should fear the Lord.
Everyone should honor the Lord. He's our creator. We depend on
Him for our next breath. It's He that made us, not we
ourselves. And we should stand in awe of
God. I look that word awe up, and
you know, part of the definition of it means to shrink back in
fear. Now that kind of awe, to shrink
back in fear, can only come from an understanding of who God is. Now how are we going to know
who God is? He tells us in His Word. God is not someone that
we have an unholy familiarity with. Like false religion, the
way they speak about God and about Jesus, He's just like a
little buddy. He's like a, you know, good luck charm. They pull
out their pocket and rub when they need to get a promotion
at work or something, you know. Oh, somebody's going to the hospital. God's not just some little buddy
we keep in our pocket and pull out whenever we want to. Let
all the world fear before the Lord. Stand in awe of Him. Yet in His Word, God whom we
are to fear, to shrink back in fear, God whom we are to stand
in awe of, tells us, Suffer the little children to come unto
me, he said. He said, come now. Let's reason together. Come unto
me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. I'll give you rest.
Be man thirst. Let him come unto me and drink.
He rejoiced. The one whom we're to fear, the
one whom we're to stand in awe of, says come. And if we nap, we don't. We have
nobody to blame but ourselves. He says come. So rejoice. All
right, the fifthly, rejoice because God's word will stand forever. Verse nine, for he spake and
it was done. He commanded and it stood fast. Now all of the truth, all of
the goodness, all of the mercy, all of the grace that God has
commanded for his people. You know, he didn't say, well,
this is a good idea. It didn't sound an invitation
to it. No, he commanded. All of His grace, His mercy,
His truth, His goodness to His people, He's commanded, shall
stand forever. It'll last forever. It will be
true forever. You take everything in this book
and you believe it. It'll never let you down. It's
the Word of God. God who cannot lie. You just
believe it and you'll never be disappointed. You know, there
are too many truths revealed in God's Word to list all of
them, but just think about some of these. These are truths of
God's Word. This is the truth of God's Word
that will never change. God will always love his people. God set his love upon a sinful
people and he will never cast them out. Never, never. God will always keep his people.
He called them. He's gone out as a good shepherd.
They were lost. Going the wrong way. He went
out and found them where they were. Picked them up and took them
home. And He'll keep them. He'll keep them by the power
of His grace. He told us, He told His children,
come unto Me. Come to the Father. And we can
always come to the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ and be
accepted. Always. That truth will never
Change. Whatever it is that troubles
your heart. Come to the Father. Come to Him
through the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be heard. What is
it that thrills your heart? What is it that you think of
that makes you want to rejoice in the Lord? Come to the Father
in Christ and you'll be accepted. You can offer your sacrifices
of joy and thanksgiving before the Father. Now the thoughts
and the ideas that men come up with, they're not going to last
long. The spiritual things that men
come up with, well, I think God's like this. I think this is the
way God ought to do things. Those things are never going
to last. Verse 10. The Lord bringeth the counsel
of the heathen to none. He maketh the devices of the
people of none effect. The counsel of the Lord standeth
forever, and the thoughts of his heart to all generations. Now the message that men have
made up, this other gospel, talking about this other Jesus, That's
not going to last. The salvation that man has devised,
that's not going to last one second past the end of this life
because it's false. There's no truth to it. But the
word of the Lord endures forever. His salvation, His purpose, His
counsel shall last forever. I know men have a purpose. They
have things that, you know, they purpose to do. And the very day
they die, That purpose is forgotten. But the word of the Lord will
always accomplish its purpose. And what is the will of God?
God's purpose is the redemption of his people. In all generations,
in all generations, God's word will never return to him void. It'll never return unto him empty.
It'll always accomplish the purpose that he sent it to do. It'll
always bring his people to him. to all generations, all generations. You know, this summer, another
pastor and I were talking about the beginning in the 50s
and through the 60s, just things that growing up, we heard, you
know, Rolf Barnard coming through town and Brother Henry beginning
his ministry. The things that happened, what
the Lord did and how the Lord blessed and Oh, you know what? We'd have loved to have seen
that we're talking about. I'd have loved to seen that.
Well, I'm sure that was something else. Sure, it was just spectacular. But there's a new generation
now, the new generation. If God's going to save them,
he's going to do it the same way that he caused that great
revival to happen back in the 50s. And just all these great
grace preachers get raised up. If God's going to keep Blessing
his people. You wonder how he's going to
do it? He's going to do it to his word. The gospel never changes. Our need never changes. The gospel
never changes. So rejoice. You know, all we
have to do to be successful as a church, whatever somebody wants
to call, you know, successful. All we have to do to be successful
is this. Preach the word. Just believe the word, just believe
God's word, just deal honestly with the scriptures. If we do
that, God's sheep will be fed. They'll grow in grace, the saints
will be blessed, and the sheep will be saved. Man's thoughts
and ideas and plans are always going to pass away, but God's
word never will. Our Lord told his disciples,
heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass It's
the only thing that endures. So let's just go preach it. It's
so simple. Just preach the word. And we
have such reason to rejoice. A people who have the word of
God are people who have been blessed by God himself. Verse
12. Blessed is the nation whose God
is the Lord and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.
Blessed are the people that have this word and have an understanding
of You know, the Bible is, I don't know if you'd say it's in every
home in America anymore, but it's in most, isn't it? I mean,
anybody can have a Bible anywhere. You can buy one at the dollar
store. You know, it's just a lot of people have a copy of it,
but they don't have any understanding of it. The blessed person is
a person who's blessed. to have some understanding of
the Word. God's given some understanding that this Word shows us salvation
in Christ, shows us the glory of Christ in salvation. If we
have any understanding of that at all, we'll rejoice. Rejoice in the message of the
Word of God. All right, let's bow together
in prayer. Our Father, how we thank You
for this Word, Your own Word, that you preserved and protected
all these years. The word that you put in the
hearts of the prophets and the apostles to write, you preserved
it for your people to read and to find life, to find rejoicing,
to find salvation in our Lord Jesus Christ. Father, how we
thank you. I pray, Father, that you would
apply the word preached to the hearts of your people. That you'd
cause us to leave here this evening rejoicing in the message of the
Word of God, the message of salvation that's certain and full and free
in our Lord Jesus Christ. Cause us to see something more
of the glory of Christ through the preaching of your Word this
evening. For the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, for his glory,
we pray and give thanks.