Well, we're going through the
Minor Prophets, one message a week, at least that's what we started
to do, and we'll carry on. And this week, the text is Nahum,
chapter one and verse seven. Nahum comes after Micah. Nahum,
chapter one and verse seven. The Lord is good, a stronghold
in the day of trouble, and he knoweth them that trust in him. How different from the world
in which we live don't you find increasingly as the news comes
out more and more. In this country we've got a contest
going on to be the leader of the governing party and thereby
to be the Prime Minister of the country. Yet on all sides we
see corruption and lying, deceitful politicians. We live in a world
where there is economic destruction. not only in the seeds of it,
but before long it's bound to come out. We've spent more than
we have. We've been profligate with resources. Economic destruction is on the
cards. Wars and rumors of wars. There's
the increasing trends of globalization, all against the kingdom of God,
all against the rule of God. And it would lead to fear and
despair. it really would lead to fear
and despair. And when we look at it, even
as believers, we have to keep reminding ourselves that as much
as we despair with it, we are not without hope. We have a strong
hope. If this world is all your hope,
then it is vain and empty and barren and hopeless. It is. If
that's all you've got, it's hopeless. However much money you've got,
However many fancy places you go to, whatever the things you've
got, it can't prevent you from dying. You will die. you will
die. It's appointed to man to die
once and then the judgment. And what will all of those things
be for you then? You fool, said God to that man
in the parable that Jesus told, who had a huge harvest and his
barns weren't big enough, so he tore down his existing barns
and put up much bigger ones. And then he thought, I can now
relax. I can sit back and enjoy life. I've got goods for as far
ahead as I can see. And God said to him that very
day, thou fool, this night Your soul will be required of you.
And whose goods will they be then? Because they won't be yours.
But you see, for those whose God is the Lord, is your God
the true God of Scripture? Is your God not the God of religion,
but the God of Scripture, the true God who is revealed in the
Jesus Christ of the Bible? If your God is the Lord, you
have an assurance of comfort. of safety, of an assured end. How do I know? God tells us.
Listen to the words that he spoke via Jeremiah the prophet in Jeremiah
29 verse 11. This is what God says to his
believing people, the people whom he has redeemed in Christ.
He says this, God says this to you. God says this to me. I know
the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord. thoughts
of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Do
you see that? The one making that promise to
you is the God of the universe, the God who controls all things,
the God who created all things, the God because of whose existence
all the things that we see exist. That God is the one who makes
that promise, a promise of peace, thoughts of peace and not of
evil. God is good. The Lord is good.
To give you an expected end, a confident hope, when the world
all around, with all of its things, has no hope whatsoever. And He
is an unchanging God. You know, Jesus Christ, the same
yesterday, today, and forever. I am the Lord, I change not.
He is the unchanging God. When Nahum was written, it was
in the middle of the time of the great Assyrian Empire. He
who dealt with Assyria then, two and a half thousand years
ago, a bit more than that, he who dealt with Assyria then is
the same God today. He hasn't changed. He hasn't
changed in his intentions, in his righteousness, in his judgment,
in his justice, he is the same God today. So look at what he
did to them and see what we can learn for us today. The modern
world, the world all around us, they consider God to be irrelevant. There is never a mention of God,
never. So did Assyria in those days. There was no mention of God.
There was no thought for God. But look what God did to them.
My first point is God's dealings with the nations. This prophecy
of Nahum is very interesting because it comes about a hundred
years after the time of Jonah. We were looking at that two weeks
ago. And Jonah, you know, was sent by God to Nineveh. to the capital city of the empire
of Assyria. God sent Jonah to Nineveh a hundred
years before Nahum, and told him to go and warn them of judgment
coming. and to preach repentance, and
they did. They repented, much to Jonah's annoyance, because
he didn't want these wicked heathen people to be the recipients of
the grace of God. And they found life in him. They
repented. Those thousands and thousands
and thousands of people turned. They repented. They turned to
God. They found God, this heathen nation. Not just Israel, they
found the living God. But the generations went on.
How long does it take? 20 years? 30 years? 40 years? Following generations forgot
God and returned to their evil ways. Just look at this land
of ours. Compare its moral compass in,
say, the 1950s, as recently as that, and its moral compass today. You say, what moral compass?
I agree with you. It hasn't got one, has it? It's
thrown it overboard. Nahum pronounces evil on that
kind of society that Assyria had once more become, like the
world in which we live has become. It's a prophecy of three short
chapters. In chapter one, Nahum announces
God's judgment on Assyria, the burden of Nineveh. What's coming
to you, Nineveh, because you deserve it. In chapter two, he
pronounces the sentence of God. The sentence of God's justice,
what their sin deserves and what it's going to get, and chapter
3 is the execution of that sentence, the carrying out of that sentence. And that didn't happen until
a hundred years after Nahum, but surely it did happen. And
Assyria and Nineveh, a hundred years after Nahum, exactly as
Nahum had prophesied, it disappeared from history until archaeology
found its remains in the 1800s. Absolutely true. Absolutely true. So what, you might say. So what? What's this got to do with us?
Why are you giving us an ancient history lesson on a Sunday morning? So what? What has it got to do
with us? Well, Assyria was the second
great world empire after Egypt. There was Egypt, there was Assyria,
there was the Babylonian, Chaldean empire, there were the Medes
and Persians, there were the Greeks, there were the Romans,
those were the great empires of ancient history. And do you
know what they were? They were all following in the
train of Nimrod, that rebellious panther, as scripture calls him,
and Babel. After Noah's Ark, when society
got going again, all the languages of the earth were one. There
was worldwide unity. There was truly globalization. I use that word determinedly. Globalization. And that was Satan's
attempt at establishing a heavenly utopia. You know what they did
at Babel? They built the Tower of Babel to reach up to heaven.
You see, whether it's just a symbol or whether it was a literal reality,
the whole point of it was, we can get to a heavenly utopia
and we need nothing to do with the justice, the righteousness
of God. This is Satan's lie. It always
has been. And these empires arose after
God confounded the languages. Satan was always trying to establish
worldwide empires to destroy the kingdom of God. to make it
disappear from history, to sweep Israel, which was the earthly
manifestation of the kingdom of God in the Old Testament,
to sweep Israel into conformance with the world of Satan's kingdom.
But look, Daniel chapter 2, Daniel chapter 2 verse 34, this is the
dream that Nebuchadnezzar had, the great emperor of the Chaldean,
the Babylonian Empire. And he had a dream that disturbed
him, and none of the magicians could tell him what his dream
was. But they said, well, there's this Hebrew that's been taken
captive, a man called Daniel, and he can interpret dreams. And so he was called for, and
Daniel was set before him. And Daniel prayed to his God,
he said, I don't have the power to do this, but God does, and
God showed him. And Daniel said, what you saw
was a great image, a great statue, with a head of gold, with shoulders
of silver, with a middle of bronze, with legs of iron and feet of
clay. And he said, it's the empires
of the world. It's a picture of the empires
of the world. You, at that time, Nebuchadnezzar, you're the head
of gold. You're the top. But somebody else is coming along.
Shoulders of silver are coming along. And then a middle of bronze.
And this mighty, dreadful image, this image which was a symbol
of such huge worldly power, In the dream, a tiny little stone
appeared, and that tiny little stone grew and grew and grew. It was cut out without hands,
it wasn't the work of human hands, and verse 34 of chapter 2, Thou
saw'st in your dream, Nebuchadnezzar, that a stone was cut out without
hands, which smote the image on his feet that were of iron
and clay. And it was a stone, because it
was iron and clay, it broke them, because clay is brittle when
it's set. Then was the iron, the clay, and the brass, and
the silver, and the gold broken to pieces, and became like the
chaff of the summer threshing floor, and the wind carried them
away, that no place was found for them. And the stone, that
little stone, that smote the image, became a great mountain,
and filled the whole earth. What does that mean? The little
stone is the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of God is going
to triumph. You might remember, some of you,
I wrote a book on Revelation called The Kingdom of God Triumphant,
because the kingdom of God will triumph over all the kingdoms,
all the powers that be in this world. Look at verse 44. In the
days of these kings, shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom
which shall never be destroyed. This is the kingdom of God. What
did Jesus come preaching in his earthly ministry? He came preaching
the kingdom of God. Repent, for the kingdom of God
is at hand. And the kingdom shall not be left to other people.
It won't be taken, but it shall break in pieces and consume all
these kingdoms. And unlike them, for they are
only temporary, It shall stand forever. For as much as thou
sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands,
and that it break in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the
silver, and the gold, the great God hath made known to the king,
Nebuchadnezzar, what shall come to pass hereafter. And the dream
is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure. Why? Because God
showed it to him. God showed it to him because
he is God and controls all things. You see, the people of God's
kingdom, in this wicked, godless world, are encouraged not to
be alarmed at the things that we see. The people of God in
the days of the Assyrian Empire were assured not to be alarmed,
for God will judge and will protect and will be good to His people,
and so it is today. Verse 7, the Lord is good. Your God is unalterably good
to you. If you're His child, if you believe
in Him, how do you know you're His child? As Paul says to the
Thessalonians, through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the
truth. It's the fact that He's given you the gift of spiritual
sight, the gift of faith to see the things of Christ. And He
is unalterably good to you. He is not only unalterably good
to you, child of God, believer, He is an impenetrable fortress.
Do you feel vulnerable in these days? What's this economic crisis
going to do to us? What when fuel prices become
unaffordable next winter and the winters after? What's going
to happen? You know, Revelation 6 verse
6, it's going to be hand-to-mouth existence for the vast majority,
but oh, don't worry, the rich will carry on. The rich in their
big powerboats, half a mile away down here, still roaring past,
burning diesel and petrol at a rate that most of us cringe
when we fill up our tanks of our cars just lately, but it
won't bother them, touch not the oil and the wine, touch not
the things for them, but be assured, Don't be alarmed by that. Our
God is unalterably good to his people. He is an impenetrable
fortress when this world seeks to crush us into conformity with
it. He will keep His people to be eternally safe with Him. And
He intimately knows us. He knows us. Not just He knows
about us, but He has ordered all our affairs. He has ordered
in sovereign power all your existence from before the beginning of
time. This is the same God. has dealt with the Assyrians,
as Nahum said, exactly as he said, and he's the God who is
in control today. If you are outside of God's kingdom,
and you know it, and you know it, and it's echoing in your
mind the things that you've heard, but you know you're outside of
God's kingdom, then fear greatly. Flee to the refuge from the wrath
that is coming. The wrath is coming. Look at
verse 2. God is jealous. You know, it's right for God
to be jealous, because He is the only one who is holy and
pure. He's jealous for His holiness.
The Lord revengeth. The Lord will not let sin go
unpunished. He is furious. The Lord will
take vengeance on his adversaries, those who disbelieve him, those
who rebel against him. He reserveth wrath for his enemies.
The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, but will not
at all acquit the wicked. No, he won't. His justice must
stand. He is God and he must maintain
his holiness. The Lord hath his way in the
whirlwind and in the storm and the clouds are the dust of his
feet. He rebuketh the sea and maketh it dry. He dryeth up all
the rivers. He isn't complete. control of
this world. Beshan languisheth, and Carmel,
and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. The mountains quake at him, and
the hills melt. The earth is burned at his presence,
yea, the world and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before
his indignation? You can't. I can't. Anybody outside
of Christ can't. And who can abide in the fierceness
of his anger? It is a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God, for our God is a consuming
fire. Our God is holy and just and
must punish the wicked. He will by no means acquit. His
fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down
by him. This is the message of this book,
that God is the same God today in this world as He was in the
world of Assyria, that great empire. But look, verse 7, the
Lord is good. The Lord is good. You say, what
about all of this viciousness that we've just been reading
of? He's just. He is opposed to sin, he cannot
abide sin, he is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, his
justice demands its punishment and the payment of the debt that
the sin has incurred, but he is good. The Lord is good. God
is the very definition of good. Think about it. What is good? How do you define good? Well,
you know when I say, if something is a mile long, or something
is a kilometer long, you say, well, all right, but against
what? What are we going to measure
it against? Where's the objective standard? You know, like in the
metric system. I don't know whether it's still
the same, but when I was at school in Paris, there was a particular
piece of material that was the standard one meter. There was
a lump of material that was the standard one kilogram. Everything
else was measured against that absolute standard. What about
good? How do we define good? Oh, you
say, well, the world we're living in, somebody's good, somebody
else is evil, and vice versa, and it's all relative, it's all
down to whatever suits you. As it says in the scripture,
everyone, when the goodness of God departed in the Judges, in
the book of the Judges, when the standard of God departed
from Israel after it had gone into the promised land, it said,
the mark of it was, everyone did that which was right in his
own eyes. Relativism. But God is the very
definition of good. Without God, there is no objective
notion of what good or bad is. You see, evolution, the theory
of evolution, can't produce inherent objective goodness, can it? How
can that define goodness or badness? According to their theory, it's
whatever survives, that's the only thing that matters. It's
whatever thrives, that's the only thing that matters. It's
all just random relativism. Every idea of goodness in this
world, in truth, can only be measured against the objective
standard of God's goodness. There was a young man came to
Jesus in Matthew chapter 19, Matthew 19 and verse 16. And behold, one came and said
unto him, good master, what thing shall I do that I may have eternal
life? Well, of course he was right
in calling Jesus good, because Jesus was good. But Jesus said
to him, Why do you call me good? All you see is a man, a teacher,
sitting before you. Why do you call me good? There
is none good but one, that is God. If thou wilt enter into
life, keep the commandments. You see, he said there's only
one who is good. He's the objective standard of
goodness. Everything in this world, all
that happens is ordered for the eternal good of God's kingdom
and its citizens. That's the fact. Romans 8, 28.
All things, we know all things work together for good, for God's
good, to those who love God, who are the called according
to his eternal purpose. Everything he orders for the
good of his people. Think about Joseph. the son of
Jacob and his older brothers and they committed evil against
him and they sold him into slavery and pretended that he'd been
killed to get him out of the way because they hated the fact
that their father Jacob loved Joseph more than them. And the
evil committed by his brothers against him, he went through
dreadful things, he was put into prison, he was treated atrociously,
but then he became ruler in the land of Egypt. When they had
been reconciled at the end and the brothers were so fearful
as to what this powerful man that was the brother that they'd
so badly treated might do to them now to get his revenge,
this is what Joseph said to them in Genesis 50 verse 20. He said
to his brothers, you thought evil against me, you planned
evil against me, you committed evil against me, but God. But God. But God meant it unto
good. Why? To save much people alive
through the famine that came. To save a nation through whom
the Messiah would come, the Lord Jesus Christ. This God doesn't
change. He's the same God today, exactly
the same God. Malachi 3 and verse 6, I am the
Lord, I change not. Therefore, what's the consequence
of the fact that God doesn't change? Therefore ye sons of
Jacob, you believers on the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore you are
not consumed. You will not be lost. You will
be taken to eternal glory. That's the result of it. Oh for
the faith, From God, to continue to see the goodness of God to
me when all around me seems to be against me. No, whatever the
situation. Yes, it's easy to trust God and
say, isn't God good? When the sun's shining and the
crops are growing and everything's rosy, isn't it? But what about
when things feel so adverse, feel so difficult? What about
when the good weather stops and the foul weather comes? Oh, for
the faith to continue to see the goodness of God to me in
all circumstances, in prosperity, you know, in the promises made
in marriage. You know, it's not about everything's
always going to be rosy and when things get difficult, well, we
can all decide to go our own separate ways. You know, the
whole point of marriage in the economy of God is stability and
the promises made in sickness and in health. Whatever the circumstances,
in sickness and in health, whether it's good or whether it feels
on the surface bad, God is good to his people. Surely, says the
psalmist in Psalm 23 verse 6, surely goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever. What a comfort that is. Take
comfort. you who seek the Lord, you who
aspire to His heaven, you who trust in Christ and His redeeming
blood to have redeemed you from the curse of the law, to have
taken your sins away, to have put the record sheet right concerning
the justice of God. The empires of this world are
evil. They've always been evil since
they first came. But our benign God is in total
control for the eternal good of His kingdom and its citizens. Isn't that comforting? You know,
as that great empire of Assyria kept rising up and trying to
subsume Israel, Those who truly knew their God were strong and
did exploits. They knew that God would keep
them and preserve them because they knew that Messiah must come
from them. So then, how does God express
his goodness towards his people? We read it earlier on, right
at the start of the service, but just look back with me again
now in Ephesians chapter one. And verse three, you say, how
is God good to his people? How is God good to those whom
he has redeemed in Christ? He's blessed because he has blessed
us, verse three, with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places
in Christ. Not most, all spiritual blessings. He's given us everything that
we need. Why? Because, what, look, The
goodness of God and the good intentions of God were set upon
His people before the beginning of time, according as He has
chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before Him in love. He's made a way
whereby we who by nature in the fall are sinners, the sons of
Adam, we are made the righteousness of God in Him by Christ. he who knew no sin, being made
the sin of his people. And he makes us holy and without
blame before him in love. And thereby he qualifies us to
see him in heaven, for we are to pursue, to follow holiness,
righteousness, without which no man shall see the Lord. But
with this righteousness, with his righteousness, we are qualified
to see the Lord, to be with him. This is the destiny of those
who are in Christ, who are the chosen according to his sovereign
electing grace, who have had the truth of the gospel of grace
revealed to them, and who have been given faith to believe it. He's predestinated us unto the
adoption of children, not waifs and strays spiritually, but children
and the family of God, our Father which art in heaven. Our Father. I go to my God and to your God,
to my Father and your Father, said Jesus when he'd risen from
the dead to his disciples. The adoption of children. You
know, you read about children who are orphans, let's say, and
they're desperate for some love and some security, and a family
adopts them, and the wonderful feelings they have towards that
situation in some cases. Because of sin, of course, it's
not always the case. But you know, just imagine the
really good cases that there have been in the past. Well,
in a spiritual sense, the people of God are adopted. How good
is God to his people? It's according to the good pleasure
of his will that he's done this. To the praise of the glory of
his grace, wherein he has made us accepted in the beloved. The Lord is good to us. He's
made us accepted with God. He's given us peace with redemption
through his blood, a forgiveness of sins. Oh, the blessedness.
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute iniquity.
According to the riches of his grace, God is infinitely rich. And in accordance, in proportion
to that infinite richness, he's forgiven the sins of his people.
He's abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, and made
known to us. Look, He's not only blessed us
with spiritual security and salvation, but He's given us knowledge of
the mystery of His will. He's given us an understanding
of what's going on in this world, and a solid rock on which to
stand when the waves buffet of this world. that in the dispensation
of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things
in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in earth,
in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated
according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after
the counsel of his own will. Oh, the Lord is good. But not
only that, the Lord is a stronghold in the day of trouble. There
are days of trouble in Ukraine at the moment. How much of what
we see is genuinely true, how much it's just a one-sided presentation,
I'm not sure and I'm not going to get on a political soapbox
to talk about it, but undoubtedly There are days of trouble in
that country of Ukraine. There's bombardment, there's
a feeling of vulnerability that a rocket will come from out of
the sky and land on your house and kill all the occupants of
your house. And what you need in that situation
is a stronghold for protection and defence. Proverbs 18 verse
10, the name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous runneth
into it and is safe. He is a stronghold for his people.
When the bombardments of this evil world come upon the people
of God, God is a stronghold. But note also, he's a stronghold
in the day of trouble. It's only a day in the grand
scheme of things, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians
4.17, a light affliction which is but for a moment. It's a short
time, only a day in the grand scheme of eternity, whose length
is under God's sovereign control. All of us, sooner or later, will
come through a measure of trouble in this life. It will, absolutely
guaranteed. And that trouble might threaten
to destroy us at the time. What we need is a stronghold. God is that one. He is that one. Assyria came as a day of trouble. Sennacherib, the emperor. You
can go, again, I've told you many times, you can go to the
British Museum and you can see artifacts from the time of Sennacherib
and the other emperors of Assyria. And he came against Judah. He
caused them, in the days of Hezekiah the king of Judah, he caused
them a day of trouble. Just turn with me to Isaiah 37.
It's in Kings and Chronicles, but in Isaiah chapter 37, because
Isaiah was the prophet at the time, who gave assurance to King
Hezekiah not to be afraid. There were letters from them.
There was a man called Rabshaker who sent terrible, terrifying
letters to Hezekiah and the people of Judah that they were going
to be utterly crushed. And in verse 14, Hezekiah received
the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it. And Hezekiah
went up into the house of the Lord. and spread it before the
Lord. And Hezekiah prayed unto the
Lord, saying, The Lord of hosts, God of Israel, that dwellest
between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of
all the kingdoms of the earth. Thou hast made heaven and earth.
Incline thine ear, O Lord, and hear. Open thine eyes, O Lord,
and see it. And hear all the words of Sennacherib,
which he hath sent to reproach the living God. And he prays
that God will be vindicated in that. And then in verse 21, Then
Isaiah, the son of Amos, sent unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith
the Lord God of Israel. You know, thus had said Sennacherib,
the emperor of Assyria, with all his forces arrayed outside
Jerusalem, he's going to crush them. But if God be for us, who
can be against us? Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib, king of
Assyria. Yes, Hezekiah, you've done right.
You've prayed to the Lord. This is the word which the Lord
has spoken concerning him, Sennacherib. The virgin, the daughter of Zion,
hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn you with your armies
outside my gates. The daughter of Jerusalem hath
shaken her head at thee. Whom hast thou reproached and
blasphemed? And against whom hast thou exalted
thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes? Against Jerusalem and Hezekiah?
No, even against the Holy One of Israel. By thy servants hast
thou reproached the Lord, and hast said, By the multitude of
my chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains. And
I'll stop reading it there, but basically it was a message of
assurance that he was going to be defeated. Do you know he heard
a rumour and he went away? He heard a rumour and he went
away, and the army withdrew. And when he got back to Nineveh,
his sons murdered him in the temple of his God, and that was
the end of Sennacherib. He was the mightiest political
force on earth at that time. And yet, if we'd read the last
verse, God says, you'll be like a wriggling fish on a hook. when
I get hold of you. He was a weak, wriggling fish
on the hook of God's line. You justifiably could consider
the world in which we live today as fermenting a day of trouble
to us with all of the lies and the corruption and the economic
destruction that's happening. the untrustworthiness of political
leaders, the march of globalism's Tower of Babel, Nimrod, it's
there again today, globalism's empires to restrain people's
freedom, I mean the World Health organization, the net zero organization,
all of these different things, the possessors of massive wealth,
you know, these weird faceless organizations that control the
vast majority of the wealth in the world. It's all globalism,
it's all in the line of that which the Tower of Babel represented,
and the empires of the world, and it's all seeking to destroy
and to subsume the people of God. But God is his people's
stronghold. They put John Bunyan in Bedford
Jail for 12 years to stop him, they thought, from preaching
the gospel of God's grace. We can't let him out because
he'll preach on the street corners, therefore let's lock him up in
Bedford Jail. Let's lock him up in our stronghold.
Do you know something? Bunyan was in God's stronghold. He was the stronghold for Bunyan
in that situation, and look what preaching he was enabled to do
there on his own via his writings. But be warned, you know, God
is good to his people. It's to his people that he's
good. The Lord is good to his people, a stronghold for his
people. Don't presume on the goodness of God to yourself without
sure confidence that you are amongst his people. It's only
his people, the elect in Christ. And how do we know them? How
do you know if you're one of them? You trust in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Look there at the end of the
verse. He knoweth them that trust in him. His knowledge of his
people, finely and quickly, he foreknew them in electing grace
in Christ before the beginning of time. We read that in Ephesians.
He predestinated their conformance to the image of Christ. He determined
their redemption from the curse of sin by the blood of Christ,
and Christ came, a body prepared. He came, we're going to remember
it at the end of the service, bread and wine symbolizing that
real physical body of the Lord Jesus Christ by which the redemption
of his people was accomplished. the names of his people written
in the Lamb's Book of Life, them standing with him on Mount Zion
in this evil fallen world, protected by him, for he is the ruler over
all. Though sinners by birth, though
children of wrath even as others, yet, as Jeremiah says, loved
with an everlasting love. betrothed to Christ, united with
Him, justified with His blood, sanctified, set apart, made holy
for His service, regenerated by His Spirit, destined to hear
at the end when that great day comes. And oh, that day is coming. What do we pray? What was the
prayer the Lord taught His people? Pray this, Thy kingdom come.
Oh Lord, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven. Destined to hear there when that day comes.
Come. You blessed of my father, inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
And not, see that's because he knew them. He knew them. He knew
them in sovereign predestinating grace. He knew them because he
ordered all their affairs. He says, come, you blessed of
my father. And he doesn't say, as he does
to those who are outside of him, depart from me. I never knew
you. When brought to life by the Spirit,
they trust the Lord. Do you trust the Lord? When brought
to life by the Spirit of God, we trust the Lord, we trust in
Him. We believe the gospel of His grace. They trust in His
eternal safekeeping of them, as they trust a chair to sit
on. I won't demonstrate it now because
you watching won't see, but you know, I mean I know there are
dodgy chairs that you shouldn't sit on because they might collapse
under you, but the majority of them we trust. We trust them.
You sit on them. You completely, assuredly trust
your weight to that chair. You trust your eternal soul to
the safekeeping. I know whom I believed. I'm persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day. We
trust him. We fear no condemnation at the
bar of divine justice. We know that Christ has removed
the sins of his people. that we would have had to pay
for, for someone has to pay for them, but He has paid for them,
and the debt is cleared. They know it is His blood that
has opened the way into the holiest, where the high priest used to
go with blood of animals, just symbolically, but Christ entered
with His own precious blood. And as a result, the people of
God, if you believe in Him, if you trust in Him, you fear no
rejection, but you come boldly, as He tells you to come, to the
throne of grace, to receive the reward of grace. And what comfort
that gives us, that as we grow older, and some of you will know
more than others, but as we grow older, it's common for mental
capacity to diminish as we age. But isn't it a comfort that it
is not us that knows the Lord, so much as the Lord that knows
his people. He knows them that trust in him. I remember Morris Montgomery
when he was starting to get dementia and it was taking away his mental
capacity. And whilst he still had the mental
capacity to say it, he said, I'm so glad that it's the crucial
thing is that God knows me and not the other way around. So
do you trust in God? Do you trust in his Christ and
his finished work? Is he your stronghold in that
day of trouble that this fallen world will surely bring to us
all in some measure? Have you felt anything of his
goodness? If you have, how blessed you
are. If not, what can we say? Seek
him while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way and turn to God. Amen.