Last week, my message to you
was from Psalm 51. My text was verse 1, and that
verse reads like this. Have mercy upon me, O God, according
to thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender
mercies. Blot out my transgressions. And
we see from the heading of that psalm why David's cry for mercy,
for God's mercy, was so much needed. You remember the heading
of that psalm? To the chief musician, a psalm
of David, when Nathan the prophet came into him after he had gone
in to Bathsheba. God made him king. From being
a shepherd of sheep to being king over Israel. And he just
seemed to fling it all back in God's face. No wonder he cried,
God have mercy on me. I need your mercy. And again,
briefly last Sunday, we ended the message with verse 6 of Psalm
23. We're just going to pick up there.
That verse ends with this sweet note. Did the sweet singer of
Israel ever sing a sweeter song than this? Surely, verily, you
can count on it. Surely goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life, And David says, I will. There's no doubt about it. There's
no question about it. I will dwell in the house of
the Lord forever. The title of my message today
is a blessed life and a blessed end. You have both those things. The mercy of God isn't it a comfort
to know will be at my heels. It will continue to pursue me
until I enter heaven itself. That's what David says in the
first part of that verse, doesn't it? Again, Psalm 32, this is
what David said after God was merciful to him, after that scene
with Bathsheba. David sat down and wrote this,
Psalm 32, verses 10 and 11. Many sorrows shall be to the
wicked, but he that trusteth in the Lord. That's not easy. For a sinner
to trust in the Lord, He's been renewed. He's been chosen. He's been redeemed and he's been
called. But he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass,
shall compass him. It'll surround him. Billy, you
said that to me this morning. God's mercy surrounds us. We
can't escape from it. No matter where we are, no matter
what direction we turn, whether we're going forward or sliding
back, God's mercy will never let us go. It surrounds us. Mercy
shall compass him about. Be glad in the Lord. My soul
will be something wrong with me if I'm surrounded by God's
mercy and I'm not glad, I'm not happy. Be glad in the Lord and
rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy, all ye that are upright
in heart. Now let's consider just the second
clause of verse six here in Psalm 23. This closing note from David. And I will dwell in the house
of the Lord forever. That's more than enough to take
up what time we'll be here today. And I will dwell in the house
of the Lord forever. I like what old Matthew Henry
said about this. He said concerning that clause,
I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. He said, with
what I have, I am pleased. Surely, goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life. What a pleasure to know
that. And he said, with what I hope
for, I am pleased much more. And I will dwell in the house
of the Lord forever. All this and heaven too. And old Matthew Henry said, we
must serve a good master. A good master. There's no exclamation
point at the end of verse six, but there should be an exclamation
point in the heart of every renewed sentence. This should be a wonder,
the greatest wonder really, in his existence, that God loved
him, that God chose him, that Christ gave himself for him.
How can there be anything other than a heart full of gratitude
and adoration that God has shown me mercy, God continues to show
me mercy, and God will keep showing me mercy until I'm in my father's
house. This is what David talks about
again in Psalm 139. Psalm 139. You can turn there,
it won't hurt my feelings. Psalm 139. David, we won't, it's
a lengthy psalm, we're just gonna pick out a couple of verses,
but David is contemplating God's mercy to him. He's thinking about,
he's reminiscing. He's thinking about God's marvelous
providence, God's goodness to him, God's mercy surrounding
him all of his life, and in verse 17, He says, how precious, how
precious also are thy thoughts unto me. David says, God thinks
of me. God thinks of me. And David says,
I just can hardly get over that. How precious are thy thoughts
unto me, O God, how great is the sum of them. Verse 18, if
I should count them, if I should count them, they are more in
number than the sand. Now that's true of all God's
people. That's true of every child of God, not just David.
If I should count God's thoughts of me, they're more in number
than the sand on the sea, and when I awake, I'm still with
thee. Paul was of much the same mind
when he wrote, many years after David, in Romans 8, for I reckon,
Paul said, I reckon, I did my homework, I did my homework,
I've done some arithmetic, Like David said, multiplying God's
thoughts, and Paul wrote in Romans 8 and 18, for I reckon that the
sufferings of this present time, and there are sufferings in the
present time. Every child of God, in the world
you'll have tribulation. That's a promise we don't like
to claim, but Christ said claim it, because I'm telling you it's
so. Paul says, I reckon that the sufferings of this present
time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be
revealed in us. I imagine David and Paul now,
at this very moment as we gather here in the church below, they're
in the church above beholding King Jesus. Do you think they
have any thoughts about anything they suffered while they were
here? They're not worthy to be compared. And you know that Peter
and Paul, they learned their arithmetic from the same instructor. in the school of grace, and there's
no higher learning than that, sitting at the foot of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Because Peter sounds just like
Paul and David. In 1 Peter 2, he wrote, Grace
and peace be multiplied, 1 Peter, or 2 Peter, I'm sorry, 2 Peter
1, verse 2. 2 Peter 1 and 2. Grace and peace
be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus
our Lord. according as his divine power
hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness,
through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory
and virtue, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious
promises, and they're all good, they're all good, that by these
ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped
the corruption that is in the world through lust. And I believe
Peter, and Paul with David. I'm sure they did this before
they went to glory. And I think this is a good question
for every child of God to ask themselves. What David said in
Psalm 116 verse 12, what shall I render unto the Lord for all
his benefits toward me? You've asked yourself that. What
shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? David said, I can't add them
up. Paul says they're not worthy to be compared to whatever we
suffer here. Peter said they're multiplied
again and again. With that being so, it's only
natural for a child of God to ask himself, what shall I do
in return? What shall I render unto the
Lord for all his benefits toward me? And David answered his question. In that same Psalm 116, verse
17, he said, this is what I'll do. I will offer to thee the
sacrifice of thanksgiving. That's what I'm going to do.
And I will call upon the name of the Lord. Verse 18, I will
pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people.
Verse 19, in the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of
thee, O Jerusalem, praise ye the Lord." David is saying there,
this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to worship God. I'm
going to worship God. And by God's grace, I emphasize
that, by God's grace so am I. So am I. Let us bow down before
the Lord our maker because it's he that has made us and not we
ourselves. So will each of us that know that I am his and he
is mine not join with David and Peter and Paul and every redeemed
sinner and shout that God be the glory, great things he hath
done. I've been sharing, and I think I mentioned this, but
I'll soon be 71 years old. If I could forget things and
repeat myself, just bear with me. There's no spring chickens
in here, so y'all probably, if I did repeat myself, y'all probably
hearing it for the first time. But I've been blessed by reading
the writings of a lady named Annie Johnson Flint. She wrote
some great poems. I've been sending them to Bobby.
And I read one verse of one of her poems last Sunday in the
message, but I didn't read this one. New Every Morning was the
title of this poem. She said, yea, new every morning,
though we may awake, Our hearts with old sorrow beginning to
ache, with old work unfinished when night stayed our hand, with
new duties waiting, unknown and unplanned, with old care still
pressing, the pret and the vex, with new problems rising, our
hearts to perplex. In ways unfamiliar and paths
yet untrod, old knew every morning the mercies of God." Knew every
morning. Grace is always the forerunner
of grace. It is. If you've got grace, that's
evidence and proof you're going to get more grace. Because he
giveth and he giveth and he giveth more grace. God does not need
to change. He's perfect. He cannot change.
And on that sweet foundation of our unchanging God, He said,
I change not therefore. This is the reason you'll never
be consumed, because I don't change. You change with the wind. You're as fickle as water, but
I can't change. Underneath you are my everlasting
arm. I will bear you up. What a comfort
that is. Last Sunday, Billy mentioned
that he just had a birthday. He said, Pastor, I just can't
stop him from coming. If you find out how, no, I was
gonna say, Billy, if you find out how, tell me. No, I don't
want him to stop. I don't want him to stop. Like,
was it Job that said, when a few more days are come, then I'm
going where I shall never return. I'm not coming back to this,
so just let them roll on. The sooner I'm through here,
the sooner I'll be beholding the king and his beauty. Delilah,
I was talking with her not long after she came out of the hospital
the first time, and I said, Delilah, you've been telling me for years
that you needed to slow down. You said, Larry, I just can't
do the things I used to do. And I said, well, Delilah, now
God's fixed it to where you don't have a choice. You don't have
a choice. He maketh. Is that not what the
psalmist said? He makes me to lie down in green
pastures. And we ought to thank him for
it. Because if he didn't make us lie down in green pastures,
rest in his adorable providence, just roll back in the arms of
our great God and Savior, Our Redeemer, if He didn't make us
do it, we wouldn't do it. We wouldn't do it. I mean, we're
all guilty. I've got to take care of this.
I've got to take care of this issue. I can do it. And God says,
no, you can't. Christ said, without me, you
can't do anything. I wonder if we ever believed that. Christ
said, without me, if you don't abide in me, go ahead and try
to go out on your own. See what you accomplish. David
in one psalm said, wait on the Lord. He said, I'm going to repeat
this because it needs repeating. Wait, I say, on the Lord. It's
the last thing we want to do, isn't it? We want to take matters
in our own hands and make a mess of it every single time. Oh,
just to wait on God. Thank God that he makes us to
lie down in green pastures. By his sweet, constraining grace,
he makes us sit at his feet like Mary instead of running around
like Martha, just making a lot of noise. Now, who was most honoring
to God? Martha thought she was. Out in
the kitchen, rattling them pots and pans. Man, I wish I'd had
a little notice here. Here he comes and these disciples,
and my soul, a little warning would've... And she got frustrated.
She got flustered and frustrated. And the Lord said, Martha, you're
troubled, you're anxious, you're a cumbered. You're just tangled
up. Martha here, she was honoring
God. She was sitting at his feet.
Someone would have looked at that picture and said, well,
look at Martha. She loves the Lord so much. Look at her. She's
so busy. And look at that lazy sister. What did Christ say? She's chosen that good part.
She's sitting in the green pasture of my grace and my mercy. Yes, I'm thankful that he makes
us to lie down in those green pastures of his quite comfortable
providence. Oh, for grace to trust him more.
Billy, I wish I could trust him more. It honors God to trust
him. And I dishonor him because I
don't trust him as I should. Each morning, since we moved
into the church just about each morning early, I'm sitting out
back here with a cup of coffee. I love the yard at the Parsonage.
But even here, it's even more peaceful because the highway's
further away. And I just sit there and listen
to them birds chirp and look across at that pond and the breeze
and the leaves on the tree and so forth. And I think, man, that's
so comforting. I feel so good when I'm sitting
there. I'm so at peace, John. It's well with my soul. I wish
I could continue my day like that. I wish I could continue
my day like that, because often two hours after that, two hours
after that sweet, comfortable time spent alone with God, I'm
running around like mad. Oh God, don't allow me to do
that. I'd like to be more like old
Father Abraham, wouldn't you? In Romans 4, turn there if you
will. I think this is a beautiful passage,
and especially what we're told here, Abraham's faith did, not
just for himself, but what it did for his God. In Romans chapter
4 verse 17, Romans 4 and 17. As it is written, I have made
thee a father, this is God speaking to Abraham, I have made thee
a father of many nations, before him whom he believed, even God,
even God, who quickneth the dead. That's what he did for Isaiah.
and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Abraham,
who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the
father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, so
shall thy seed be. He believed God. And being not
weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when
he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness
of Sarah's womb. He staggered not at the promise
of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory
to God. He believed God. That pleased
God. That gave glory to God. That
honored God, verse 21, and being fully persuaded that what God
had promised, God was able to perform. Why can't I do that? Why can't I honor my God like
Abraham did? That honored God. His trust His
faith, his confidence, Abraham's, in his God, that was honoring
to God. I think my son's sitting there,
Roger, I think he trusts me. I think he does. God forbid if
I give him a reason not to. And if he tells me that, if any
of my children, and you're the same way, You don't have to write
something out and get it notarized. If you say, son, daughter, I'll
do this, I'll do this for you, they trust you. That honors you,
doesn't it? That honors a parent when their
children, their sons and their daughters trust them. And that's
exactly what our Lord said, didn't he, in his Sermon on the Mount.
He said, you want to honor God? You want to honor your father,
which is in heaven? Quit worrying about what you're
going to eat, where you're going to live, what clothes. He said,
would you look at the sparrows? Does your father forget the sparrows?
Does he forget to feed the birds? Who do you think taking care
of them? Are you not of more value than they? Oh, ye of little
faith. Seek ye first the kingdom of
God. That honors God. Just trust your heavenly father.
And all these other things will just fall into place. God has
a way of doing that, okay? Jesus knows what he would do.
He knows exactly what he would do. Your heavenly father knows,
our Lord said. You have need of these things.
When we read that, I read that and I say, amen, amen, I believe
that. And the first trial that comes
along, it just seems to go flying out the window. Oh God, give
me grace, not to do like the disciples did on one occasion,
but I have and I will. But his mercy will still surround
me. Remember when they said to him that night on the stormy
sea when he was asleep? He was an example of how they
should have been acting. But they wake him up and said,
Master, don't you even care? Don't you, aren't you even concerned
about us? Don't you care that we're going
to drown? We're about to perish? My, how
dishonoring that was, did the Lord Jesus cry. My, so how much
had he already brought them through? Did they not learn anything?
Did they not hear anything? How that must have cut him to
the quick. How dishonoring. When I was thinking
along this line, I couldn't help but think about my pastor, Don
Fortner, about the last Christmas before he died. On Christmas
Day, Robin and I were at her son's up in Muncie, Indiana,
and I thought about Don. I said, he's in the hospital
in Cleveland. Oh, I'm a long ways from Danville,
so I called him. And, you know, it wasn't long
after that, about four months, God took Don home. And I said,
Don, I'm sure sad, I'm sorry, you've got to spend Christmas
in a hospital in Cleveland Clinic. And he said, Larry, don't you feel sorry for
me? He said, God's been so good to me. God's been so good to
me. He said, Larry, if anybody asks
you, he told a lot of people this, I found out afterwards.
If anybody asks you how I'm doing, you tell them everything's all
right. Everything's good. God has worked all things after
the counsel of his own will. He works all things for my good.
And then he said, Larry, before we hung up, he said, He said, thank you for being
a friend. God enabled me to honor him that
way. God has never for one moment,
not for one moment of my life, ever given me cause to doubt
him. No excuse. No excuse. Not for
one moment has he ever forgotten me. Not for one moment. Before he created the heavens
and the earth, he thought of me. That's just too much for
me to get a hold of. He loved me. He sent his son
for me. His son wants me with him in
glory. God forgive me to dishonor him
when I doubt. When the children were all still
little toads at home, There's only about two years difference
in their ages, but one day I gathered them up in the car, and we just
went for a drive. And we pulled off the road at
this creek, pretty strong creek. Y'all call them creeks. They're
creeks in West Virginia. You people need to, anybody that
calls it a creek don't know how to talk right. You call it a
creek, it's a creek. But it dumped into a river. But
I'm sitting right here. And we took off our shoes and
socks, and we got our feet hanging in the water, you know, as it
goes by. And here's Misty, and here's
Larry, and here's Roger. And we're just having a good
time there, you know. And next thing I know, here comes a white
head by me in the water. And I managed to reach down and
grab him. And it was him. It was you. You scared me to
death. But I reached out and grabbed him. And I said, boy,
I can't take my eyes off you for a minute. You know what? My father, my heavenly father,
has never taken his eyes off me for a minute, never taken
his love, his heart, his hand off me for one minute. And you
know what? He said, Larry, I never will.
I never will. Isaiah says, God speaking through
the prophet says, even until your old age, that's where I
am right now, even until your old age, I will carry you. So Larry, just rest easy. Just
calm down and honor your God. Stand still. That's what Moses
told the children of Israel. That's what God told them to
tell him. Man, there was between a million and three million belly-aching
Jews blaming Moses for bringing them out there to die. And God
went to, or rather Moses went to God, what should I do? God
said, Moses, tell them to shut up. Go tell them to shut up and
see the salvation of God. Because I'm going to fight for
you. Tell them just to shut up and
hold their peace. Stand still and see the salvation
of the Lord. Old George Whitfield said, let
us never despair while we have Christ as our leader. Huh? We sing, he leadeth me, he leadeth
me, O blessed thought, he leadeth me. Isaiah 43, but now thus saith
the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel,
fear not, fear not, I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy
name, thou art mine. When you pass through the water,
I will be with you. And through the rivers, they
shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire,
you won't be burned. Neither shall the flame kindle
upon you. For I am the Lord thy God, the
Holy One of Israel, thy Savior. I gave Egypt for thy ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba for thee, since thou was precious in my sight."
This is God talking about his people. You're precious in my
sight. Thou hast been honorable, and
I have loved thee. Therefore will I give men for
thee and people for thy life. That old hymn on page 268 of
our hymn book. How firm a foundation, ye saints
of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellent word.
What more can he say than to you he hath said, to you who
for refuge did Jesus hath pled? In the original, there were six
verses instead of five. This one is not in our hymn book.
In every condition, in sickness and health, in poverty's veil
or abounding in wealth, at home or abroad, on the land, on the
sea, as thy days may demand, so shall thy strength be. The
soul that to Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I will
not desert to his foes. That soul, though hailed, should
endeavor to shake, Christ says, I will not, I will not, I will
not forsake. Psalm 23 verse 6 says, surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and
I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Notice that
little connecting word between the two clauses, and, and. There's more to follow. After
everything that the psalmist said about the Lord being his
shepherd and therefore lacking nothing, being with him when
he walks through the shadow of the valley of death, preparing
a table before him in the presence of his enemies, anointing his
head with oil, his cup runneth over, not just full but running
over, mercy and goodness following him all the days of his life,
and you mean there's more? Oh yes, there's more. The best
for last. and I will dwell in the house
of the Lord forever." That reminds me of our Lord's higher priestly
prayer in John 17, you know, before he was betrayed. He prayed
that God his Father and our Father would keep those he had given
him. He prayed that they might be
one. He prayed that they would be protected. And then there
was this, Father, I will also that they be with me where I
am, that they may behold my glory. How about that? And mercy, mercy
great, grace free, but there's more. I will dwell in the house
of the Lord forever. Several years ago, this may be
another story that I've told you before, but it's been a while,
I think. Several years ago, when Larry's
two daughters And he and his wife Donna were down here visiting.
They were just little toads. Laura will be 17 years old tomorrow,
John. 17. But they were just little
toads. And they were here, and they
came to service. And we had lunch that Sunday here at the church
after service. And then a month or two later,
I was in Kentucky where they lived. And Laura said to me,
Papa, I liked your church, but she said, You pastor a little
church, don't you? And before I could answer, Allie
piped up and said, yeah, la la, but they got big desserts. They got big desserts. This little
word, and, introduces us to some big desserts. Two precious promises
of our great shepherd that assures us we're going to the father's
house and sit down at the master's table with him And we're going
to feast on some big desserts forever. And we'll never need
to worry about gaining any weight. Robin's lost weight. Everybody
knows it. I've lost weight, too. Nobody ever says nothing. I'm
going to just start eating. I'm going to start porking out.
So what's the use? But when God gives grace, as
I said earlier, it's the assurance of more grace. Once given, he'll
never stop giving. He'll never stop giving. Paul
in Romans 5 said grace comes through one man. God's deposited
everything in one man. It's not Adam, it's Christ. Grace comes through one man. Oh, but what a man. What a man. John, you told me about a message,
I think, maybe Brother Henry Mahan preached years ago and
said somebody, but you said the message was there's a man in
heaven. There's a man in heaven. If one man, why not another,
and another, and another? Christ is that man, and he's
the firstborn among many brethren. When Solomon ascended the throne
of his father David, God blessed him with wisdom, and peace, and
riches. Oh, he was so wealthy. The cups
they drank from were gold. The plates were gold. The steps
leading up to the throne of Solomon were laid with gold. You can
read that. And you know what it says? It
says in those days, in the reign of Solomon, silver was counted
as nothing. Everything was gold. Every step
this sinner has ever taken has been paid, laid under my feet
with pure, unadulterated gold grace. Jesus Christ sits upon
a throne of grace. John said, we beheld him. That
eternal, everlasting word that was made flesh, he came down
here and dwelt, he tabernacled among us. And we beheld his glory. What struck you about him, John?
He's full of grace. The law was given by Moses, but
grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. So when I read grace
comes through this man, I can calmly, I should calmly lay down
with the sweet assurance that it's well with my soul. The very
fact that he's given me grace is proof. How much proof more
would I need? He's going to keep giving me.
He's going to give me all the grace I need. He's going to give
me grace until I'm in glory. Someone said grace is really
the forerunner of glory. Grace is glory in the bud. And glory is grace in full fruition. Oh, look at him setting upon
his throne of grace. Every step up of that throne,
we shout grace, grace, grace. You remember Don telling the
story, he told it here one time when he was preaching. When he
was a young man, he was a shoe salesman. He was trying on a
pair of shoes, or this lady was trying to choose a pair of shoes,
and Don was getting different pairs down and trying them on
her feet. She asked Don his name, and he told her, and he said,
what's your name, ma'am? And she said, Grace Grabs. Don said,
what? Grace Grabs? He said, lady, do
you know your name describes exactly God's grace? What God's
grace does, it just grabs you. And she said, it sure do, honey.
That's the kind of grace I need, don't you? I need this kind of
grace that can only come through this man, the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't get it anywhere else.
I need that kind of grace that old John Newton wrote about.
That notorious sinner, that captain of a slave ship, that's pretty
love. He dealt his goods, his embargo,
we're human beings. Stacked in a ship. Stacked in
a ship. So packed in. So they could haul
more. They could drag them from where
they were to another country. That's what John Newton did for
a living. They would calculate how many
they would lose before they reached their destination. They would
figure that in. Say, well, we're going to lose
so much money because so many will die. They always do. They
won't make the journey. Newton wrote in his biography,
Out of the Depths, which is from Psalm 130, Out of the depths
have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let thine
ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication. Newton said
this, March the 21st is a day to be remembered by me. I have
never suffered it, allowed it to pass wholly unnoticed since
the year 1748, because that was the year, the day, that God spoke
peace to that old slave trader. And John Newton said, it's amazing.
It's amazing. He died in London on December
21st, 1807, having served the Lord there for 60 years. And
you've heard this told about him toward the end of his life.
He said, my memory is nearly gone, but I can remember two
things. I'm not thinking about John Newton
right now, I'm thinking about Larry Creel. My memory is nearly
gone, but I can remember two things, that I am a great sinner,
and that Jesus Christ is a great savior. He sure is. He sure is. On his tombstone,
Newton's tombstone, he wanted this inscribed in the churchyard
where he was pastor. John Newton, clerk, once an infidel
in a libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the
rich mercy of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, preserved, restored,
pardoned, and appointed. I am thinking of him again. Pardoned and appointed to preach
the faith that he had long labored to destroy. What about that? No wonder he sat down and wrote
Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound that saved
a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found, was blind
but now I see. The Lord has promised good to
me, his word my hope secures, he will my shield and portion
be, as long as life endures. The earth shall soon dissolve
like snow, the sun forbear to shine, but God, who called me
here below, will be forever mine. When we've been there 10,000
years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing
God's praise than when we first begun. Yet and, and. Surely goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life, and I will. I will. Is that not icing on the cake?
Let me just encourage you to do this. Go home and in your
private time devotions when you're alone with God. Just take each word after that
little connecting word and in the verse and consider it. And I, I, I will live in, in
the house of the Lord forever. All that There's a message in
each and every word there isn't. With such a promise as that,
with such a great big dessert waiting for us, when God says,
welcome home, welcome home. Been expecting you. Come on in. Enter into the joy. My son and
I have prepared for you since the foundation of the world,
and just like Gomer, They walked down the street with Hosea after
he had redeemed her off of that auction block. God's people are
going to march right into heaven, boldly, because Jesus Christ
has given me a right to be there. That's exactly right. That's
what Paul says in Colossians 1. He has made us meet, fit,
given us the right, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever. What a joy it will be to hear
the captain of our salvation, the firstborn of his many brethren,
speak to his God and our God and his Father and our Father
with these marvelous words, Father, I. Wow. Wow. Father, I. People here, you believe
election? Oh, you think one or two will
be saved? No, I believe there's a multitude that no man can number.
not know maybe about it, not dependent upon their will, but
his will. And because that's so, you'll say, Father, I, and
all the children you gave me, they're all here, but one. I
lost Larry Criss. What a dishonor. No, no. Father,
they're all here. I lost none. One of those Headlines from Apple
News caught my eye the other day. I usually just read the
headline. I told you about them coming into my inbox. But this
one caught my eye. I thought, I'll use that as an
illustration. It ought to be good for something. But these
words were under a picture of a young man as he's standing
with a pike on his back and a staff in his hand. He's looking over
mountains and so forth. And the headline said this. For
two years, an adventurous college kid organized a game filled with
riddles and puzzles, but when it was time to reveal the final
clue, he went missing. He went missing. That won't happen
to King Jesus, will it? He appears now in the presence
of God for us, and he's going to appear again to take us home
to be with him in glory. He gave me his word on that.
He'll never go missing. He'll never leave me. He never
has and he never will. He's promised. He gave me his
word on that bill. He promised me. He said, Larry,
let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me. In my father's house there are many mansions. If it were
not so, I would have told you. I'm preparing a place for you,
and if I go again, and prepare that place, I'll come again,
that where you are, I am rather, there ye may be also." Let me
wrap this up by asking you, as we said earlier, to take this
precious clause from Psalm 23 with you and highlight each word. In Revelation chapter 19 we read
verse 5, and a voice came out of the throne saying, praise
our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him both. And
I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, and as
the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thundering
sang, hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let
us be glad, and rejoice, and give honor to him, for the marriage
of the Lamb has come, and his wife, had made herself ready. And to her was granted that she
should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine
linen is the righteousness of the saints. I read this by a
fellow I wasn't familiar with, an old puritan from the 1600s,
a man named William Secker. I think I pronounced that name
right. He says, although believers should be mournful because they
have infirmities, yet they should be thankful because they are
but infirmities. It is true they have sin in them,
and that should make them sorrowful. Oh, but they have a Savior. It
is just as true, they have a Savior for them, and that should make
them joyful. The heavenly bridegroom will
not be put out, will not put out a believer's candle because
of the dimness of its burning. As Alexander's painter, you remember
Alexander the Great, he sat for a portrait and he had a scar,
and the painter's place the finger over there so his scar wouldn't
be shown. This man said, as Alexander the
painter could find a finger to conceal the scar on his master's
face, so when Jesus Christ draws the picture of the saint's excellency,
he can find a covering for all the scars of his infirmities. God will not throw away his jewels
for every speck of dirt which they may have on them. And I wrote amen to that. And let me add this, that we
are dwelling in the house of the Lord forever because Jesus
Christ loved his church, his bride, and gave himself for it. Here's the result. He will then
present it to himself a glorious church, not having a spot or
a wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and
without blemish. Amen. Amen. God bless you. God
bless you.