Good morning. If you would open
your Bibles to Psalm 72. Psalm 72. as I was sitting there this morning
and listening to who's going to be here in the future and
who will be able to preach here. And we talked about the weather
holding off and it made me to think, and you'll understand
a little more once I get into this message, but how the things
that happen that we worry about, how we all had to spend a little
extra time this morning, making sure our car was cleared. If
we looked out the window to see if we had too much snow, we're
going to be able to make it, all those kinds of things. and the
trouble that we're caused by this issue. And then, as typical
with the things we go through, it made me to think how wonderful
it is that a child of God is worried about can they clear
the snow off their car or if they can drive to worship. And
they don't have to be worried about is there a place to go
worship? Is there someone who can preach to us? Are we allowed
to use this Bible to talk about it? And it makes us to realize
how blessed we are as a people. But we, everybody in Kingsport
sends their best. Everybody's, you're in our thoughts
and prayers. And I'm excited to be here with
you this morning. About 400 days ago, a little
over 400 days ago, we began the year 2020. And it didn't take
long before it felt like it might be a little different year than
some in the past. We were just a few months in
until people started saying, this is a really bad year. We got about six months in, and
we already started seeing things about 2020's awful. 2020's the worst. And the further
we got in the year, we kept seeing things that were happening. And
we started getting hashtag 2020's awful. It's the worst. 2020, by the end of the year,
was thought to some to be maybe the worst year we've ever had.
Every time something happened, it was blamed on the year. Someone
famous died and people said 2020 strikes again. And there was
a message that I heard that quoted a verse in Psalm 72. Look at verse 18. Psalm 72 verse
18. Blessed be the Lord God, the
God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. After hearing
that, verse, it made me have a little different opinion when
everyone was talking about the year 2020. And I don't, I'm a
stubborn person and sometimes I speak in hyperbole or I speak
in extremes, such as when I go to a restaurant with someone
or there's a restaurant I don't enjoy or don't like. but they
think it's great and they say, this is the best restaurant.
Well, the nice me or the kind person just says, I'm glad you
like it. Or is very neutral about it.
Nah, it's okay. I have a tendency to go the other
direction. And I might say something like, well, I think it's the
worst restaurant. I'm not trying to be that way,
but I'm gonna make a statement and title this message something
that is definitely an extreme statement. And I hope that you'll
bear with me. And by the end of the message,
you might agree with me. The title of this message is
2020 was wondrous. Now, I understand that there
were plenty of things that happened in the year 2020 that weren't
good. I understand that as a group,
we might have gone through things that were difficult. Individuals
went through difficult things. But I hope that we will see at
the end that for the child of God, 2020 was wondrous. In this
verse, I'll read it again. Verse 18 says, Blessed be the
Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things.
Spurgeon is a great place to go to look and find a lot of
details about the Psalms. In almost every verse throughout
all 150 Psalms, there are three, four, five references. and other
writers and things they've said to help explain it. Well, this
is one of the few verses that there isn't any. And instead,
this is what he says about this verse. He says, this verse explains
itself. It calls for a profound or an
extreme gratitude and emotion rather than trying to expound
upon it or to understand it. You should use this verse for
adoration, for love, instead of trying to add to it. It is
and ever will be the peak of our desires and the object of
our prayers to behold Jesus Christ, exalted King of Kings and Lord
of Lords, that He has done great wonders such that no one else
can match them. leaving everyone else so far
behind that the Lord remains the sole and the only wonder
worker. That last phrase means he does
things that are so wondrous and everything he does is so wondrous
that no one else can even say that they have ever done something
wonderful. David is the person who said
these words. Now, under Psalm 72, their title,
my Bible says, A Psalm for Solomon, but the writers all say that
this was a verse that was spoken or talked of by David and Solomon
wrote it out. And when you see these words,
the Lord God who only doeth wondrous things, I thought, man, I want
to be in the mindset of this person. I want to look at everything
that happens in this way. It's always wondrous. And so
I wanted to see where was David when he said this? This had to
be one of his triumphant moments, one of the moments he won a great
battle or when he stepped upon the throne, or maybe when he
threw the rock and it hit Goliath and slayed the giant. Well, when
he said this, look at verse 19 and 20. And blessed be His glorious
name forever, and let the whole earth be filled with His glory.
Amen and Amen. The prayers of David, the son
of Jesse, are ended. David said this on his deathbed. In Samuel, it writes that another
thing David said that would have been very close to this, would
have been, though my house not be okay with God, meaning his
house, his family, his inner house himself, in this moment,
David realized how poorly he had performed, how awful he was,
how horrible his children were, how internal everything was,
yet his phrase is, the Lord God doeth only wondrous things. These are other verses that David
said, For thou art great and doeth wondrous things, thou art
God alone. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto
him, talk ye of all his wondrous works. Make me to understand
the way of thy precepts, so shall I talk of thy wondrous works. And I will speak of the glorious
honor of thy majesty and of thy wondrous works. I wrestled with
this idea when I was thinking of speaking on this subject and
titling it what I did, because I'm saying something very contrary
to popular opinion, contrary to what we all think. And don't
get me wrong, there were plenty of times last year that I agreed
with everyone. There were plenty of times where
I thought, this is awful, I don't want to go through this. And
what made last year as a whole seem so much worse to us, Well,
there weren't any less number of bad events. I'm sure that
we could all name things every year that's happened to us that's
been difficult. But most trials present themselves as something
that an individual or a small group is going through. Something
happens to you, and maybe I hear, maybe I don't hear about it.
But I'm not going through it, so my sinful nature ends up having
the same effect. I just don't relate to it and
I don't think about it because I'm not going through it. And
that's shameful to say, but if I'm not dealing with it, I have
a tendency not to let it bother me that much. But there were
events that happened last year that you or I could say, ah,
this is awful. I have to do blank. And everybody
else said, me too. I'm going through that as well.
And misery loves company. As much as we would love, and
I mean that, we would love to be able to empathize with each
other. When you tell me something you're going through, or if I
tell you something, how much I would love it if the Lord would
make me to not just see what you're going through, but to
pray for you, to empathize with you, and to love you through
that. When we're going through the same thing, we all do that.
So the whole year gathered momentum, and we all kept agreeing with
each other about how bad it was. And when you look at this word
that's used here in verse 18 that says, wondrous things, I
looked it up and I gained a lot of clarity to what that word
means. There are three main translations
that that word is used throughout the Bible. The first is marvelous. That makes sense, doesn't it?
The second is wonderful, like it's used right here. The third
is the translation difficult or hard. Now you may think what
I thought when I read that. So how in the world can you take
a word and define it as wonderful or marvelous and also define
it as difficult? That seems almost to be more
opposite. In Job, it says, hearken unto
this, O Job, stand still and consider the wondrous works of
the Lord. Just because something is wonderful
that happens to us, the Lord's providence does not mean that
it won't be hard on us. It won't be difficult for us.
Is there anyone in the Bible, in the Old Testament, that when
we think of going through a difficult time, that we think more of than
Job? You know, losing everything he had, all of his children dying,
a trial that most of us can't even imagine. Yet it says, consider
the wondrous works of God to Job. I think those were difficult
things. They were hard things. And when
we use this word thing, we say wonderful things. What does that
encompass? When we say the word thing, what's
under that umbrella? Well, let me go through and show
you the different things all from Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John in the New Testament and see what key word is before things
every time. All things were made by him,
and without him was not anything made that was made. They wondered,
everyone, at all things which Jesus did. The Father loveth
the Son and hath given all things into His hand. When Christ has
come, He will tell us all things. All things are delivered unto
Me of My Father. He hath done all things well.
For with God all things are possible. Behold, I have foretold you of
all things. All things are delivered to me
of my Father. All things that are written by
the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished.
That all things which are written may be fulfilled. Come see a
man which told me all things that I ever did. Is not this
the Christ? And Jesus, knowing that the Father
had given all things unto his hands, and that he was come from
God and went to God. If you haven't figured this out
yet, this message isn't just about the year 2020. It applies
to that, but we're always going through trials and difficulties.
This is more about us not being able to see clearly. The Lord
said, my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not
your ways. We see events and we try to figure
out where they're going or why something happened, and we're
always wrong. Even the times we're right, we
ultimately come a little later and realize, well, I wasn't even
right when I thought I was right. A good example of this is Jacob
in the Old Testament. Jacob has many sons, and Jacob
had sent or had lost his oldest son, Joseph. He thought Joseph
was dead, and he sent his other sons to Egypt to get food. They didn't have any food. And
they came back, and now he thought he didn't have Joseph or Simeon.
And the person who had all the food said, now you've got to
send Benjamin. So Jacob says many things, and he can't wrap
his head around it. He said, is it better that I
don't go get food so that I can keep my son Benjamin? Can you
imagine losing your son and then another one is gone and they
say, the only way you guys can eat is if you send me your youngest
son? What Jacob didn't realize and
what we never see, we're just blinded by all these things and
everything that goes on. Jacob didn't realize, first off,
that all his sons were okay. He had taken his one son and
put him beside the king to provide all the needs that his family
would need eventually. And all the things that were
done were all perfect and well thought out and particularly
pointed to be a certain end. We just don't think the same
way the Lord does. And thankfully, His way is what
happens. Now, the main thing I want to
do is I want to go through five points that describe this process,
that describe why 2020 or any single event that happens is
wondrous to the child of God. And I'll use examples throughout
the scripture to explain each one of those. The first one is,
the Lord Jesus Christ is in control and we aren't. Am I the only
one here who goes about their daily life acting as if I'm in
100% control of everything? Everything I do, I do it with
the mindset that I'm gonna get it done. When I get up in the
morning and I'm going to work, I determine which of two ways
I'm going to go to work. And if I pick one, I don't have
any idea if it's the right one. I go through everything in my
head and I think I'm going to go this way. And what happens? I get
behind a wreck or a police officer pulls me over. If I had gone
the other way, that wouldn't have happened. We always think that
we're in control. And let me give you this example.
When you go to do something and it messes up, you don't get it
done, what do we always do? We find something to blame. Either
a person or an event or something. Which, by definition, we're admitting
we don't have control, right? If I go to do something and I
get in a car wreck and I say, this person pulled out right
here and it just caused everything. Well, what I'm saying is I couldn't
control my vehicle. I couldn't control where this
car was going. We, in our heads, know we don't have control. Thankfully,
the Lord does. Whose will will win out? Whose
will is going to win? Is it my will? Is it your will?
How many times have you determined to do something that you don't
even get to the first step of doing it, let alone getting it
completed? There's a definition that I heard, I think it was
Aaron Greenleaf, say about power. That all power in the world is
from God. He is power. And anyone that
has power, anyone that looks as if they have power, or they
have power on this earth, is simply because the Lord has loaned
it to them to fulfill whatever He wants them to do. And the
moment they fulfill that, He pulls the power out from them.
We don't have power unless the Lord gives us power. What's a
good example of that? How about Peter in the New Testament?
Does anybody here think when Peter woke up the day he denied
the Lord that he thought to himself he was going to do something
like that? The Lord told him, and this is a great testament
to us, the Lord said, you are going to deny me three times.
And Peter said, nah, not me. I'm not gonna do that. Do we
not look at the things the Lord says and the Lord does and we
just have a tendency to be like, that won't happen for me. Good
or bad. A trial's gonna come and I think,
well, I can avoid that. Or something good's coming to
me. And I have a tendency to be like, nothing good ever happens
to me. But Peter said that wouldn't happen. And when it did happen,
how did he not understand and see? Or he did understand and
see. I don't have any power. I don't have any control over
anything. Another one is Nebuchadnezzar. This is a man who became king
over most of the world. He had amazing power. He had
so much power that he decided to build a statue of himself
like 300 feet tall and everyone had to worship him. He had so
much power that when three men didn't bow down to it, he determined
he was going to kill him. He was going to throw him into
a fiery furnace. And you know how much power he had? They threw
him in, and he couldn't get fire to hurt the men. And a little later on, Nebuchadnezzar
made the comment, and he said, look at what amazing things these
hands have done. And in that moment, the Lord
clouded his mind, and for years he wandered in the fields eating
grass, and his fingernails grew like claws, and he didn't even
know who he was. And who has the power? In a single
moment, the Lord opened his eyes and he saw it's the Lord who
has the power. And the Lord took this man who
was chewing grass in the fields and that day raised him back
up on the throne, gave him his power. So the first is the Lord
is in control. The second is the Lord has a
purpose. It's not enough that the Lord
has the power and has the control, but there has to be a purpose.
There has to be a point. There has to be a design for
everything. Now, we think we have a purpose.
We think that we have a plan, but We struggle, and maybe this
is just me, I struggle to write down a plan for where I want
to go forward. With business, with a budgeted
home, all these different things we write down. Well, I'm not
going to spend this money on this, or I'm going to make sure
I do this, or I'm going to start getting up in the morning. All
these things we do. How about New Year's resolutions? Anybody
in here ever said at some point in their life, I'm going to stop
doing this? We can have the most mundane and silly thing that
we can say we won't do. One of the most popular I've
ever heard is people say things like, I'm not going to eat chocolate.
I have yet to meet the single person ever that has stopped
eating chocolate forever. The Lord has a purpose. An example
of this is the prodigal son. The prodigal son was raised in
a very wealthy family. His family provided everything
for him. And he thought to himself, when he got old enough, he thought,
you know, I'm going to do this on my own. I don't like it here.
I don't like what they do for me. I don't have the freedoms
I want, whatever the reasoning is. And he said, give me my money,
Dad. I'm out of here. And so his father gave him what
was rightfully his, though it wasn't really at this point,
but he took it and he left. And it was a very short period
of time that he'd squandered everything he had. And he was
watching the pigs thinking, man, if I had just what they had to
eat. And he thought to himself and
he said, you know, a servant in my father's house is so much
better off than where I am. We wonder, and if we ever realize,
and the Lord opens our eyes and realize that a servant, a street
sweeper in heaven and glory is infinitely better off than a
king on this earth. And what happened to the prodigal
son? Every person that will go through in here, the Bible is
very predictable. The word of God is very predictable.
The prodigal son. came home and he thought to himself,
he came up with what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell his
dad, I'm sorry, I know it's my fault, I shouldn't have left
you, I love you, please just let me be a servant. Before he
could get a word out, his father said, bring out the robe, bring
out the ring, this is my beloved son, kill the fatted calf, we're
celebrating, my son is home. That's what happens to the child
of God. We run away, we spend everything we have, we're frivolous
in every way, and yet our father keeps us, holds us, and he says,
you're my son. It doesn't matter what you do,
you're my son. All right, he's in control, he has a purpose,
and thirdly, he knows the outcome. This is very much where we lose
any argument about we can do these things. We might say we
have the power, we're in control. We might say that we've got a
plan, we've got a purpose. But the moment it comes to the
outcome, we can't even kid ourselves. How many people have looked at
their children and thought, this is what I think they're going
to do. Or I think I'm going to do this for them. Or we look
at ourselves. I think back to the things when
I was a kid. When I was doing this, I thought, what did I want
to be as a kid? And I went through, I want to be a race car driver.
I want to be a garbage man. You're just going through all
these things. And I've had three or four jobs in my life, or careers,
I should say, and none of them were ever on my list of what
I would have. We don't know the outcome. Thankfully,
our Lord does. What about Joseph? Joseph, as
a young man, was sold by his brothers. He was betrayed by
his family. And they decided, you know, we
shouldn't kill him, but we'll sell him off and we'll act like
he's dead. Joseph, everything that went through Joseph's life
felt like it was going the wrong way. He was sold off, he was
a slave, he got thrown in prison, and even when things looked like
they were going well, somebody would lie on him or someone would
accuse him if something happened. All of that so that he would
get and he would immediately go and sit at the right hand
of the king and provide for the rest of his family. And it says,
though his brothers did it for evil, the Lord meant it for good.
What about the woman at the well? A person whose whole life could
be described in very bad words. It seems like someone who every
time they came to a fork in the road chose the wrong one, which
we can relate to that. Every decision she made was just
awful. All of that, every single thing
that happened throughout her entire life led her to one place.
To the place that she couldn't go get water when anyone else
was getting it. Because if she showed up and
someone else was there, they were going to make fun of her,
they were going to ridicule her, and she didn't want any part
of that. So all the things that happened in her life brought
her to a place where she went in the heat of the day to the
well to draw water. And what do you know, when she
did that, that's where she met the Lord, or the Lord met her.
And at the end of that, she said, you've got to come see about
this man. He told, he knows everything about my life. This must be our
Lord. The Lord knows the outcome. And
then next, He knows best. Our Lord knows what is best for
us. When we say our thoughts or his
thoughts are not our thoughts, his ways are not our ways, that's
because we wouldn't do it the right way. It's not that he's
doing it a different way. It's that we would do it the
wrong way. He does it the right way. And
it's as simple as that. There's never been a way that
we would choose that's the right way. We just don't have that
ability. We can't do it. With our sin, that's just who
we are. But thankfully, the one who's in control is the one who
knows the best way. In Ecclesiastes it says, for
who knoweth what is good for man in this life? What about
Abraham and Sarah? The Lord appeared to them and
said, you're going to have a son and through that son will be
a great line and a great nation and it will prosper. Well, it
took a few years and they thought to themselves, well, maybe we
need to do our part. Maybe we need to get involved
in this. And there are a lot of levels of what Abraham and
Sarah did that were awful. And I don't say that to judge
them, but just that that's how we do things. The Lord tells
us what he's going to do, which he does in this book. He tells
us what's coming to us, what we will get, what we have in
the Lord. And yet we feel like there's
a better way for us to get there or we can help or do our part.
And ultimately, they had Ishmael. And can you imagine how difficult
that was? They had to cast out his son. You can't have anything to do
with him. You have to cast him out. And when we do things and
we get involved and think that we know what's best, we always
come to the realization that the Lord is in control and we
don't have any idea. And finally, so we go through.
He is in control. He has a purpose. He knows the
outcome, He knows best, and the final nail in it is He finishes
it. The Lord Jesus Christ finishes
what He started. He finishes what He says. The
alternate to that is we don't finish things. Now, I could use
a lot of humanly speaking types of things on this. I have started
many a projects and never got finished. Whether it's because
I realized that starting it was a wrong, was a bad idea, or whatever,
but we don't finish anything. Let me give an example of something
that might hit home to you. Have you ever been by yourself?
And somewhere that this is, sometimes at night I'll do this. Have you
ever been by yourself and closed your eyes and start praying?
and you realize that you didn't finish the prayer, you realize
that you might be 10 seconds into it, and then all of a sudden
you're just sitting there and you're like, huh, what is for
dinner? And you just, you can't even, we can't even finish a
prayer to our Lord. Thankfully, our God finishes
it. He finished it. Whenever the
Lord died on the cross, what did the disciples do? They went
back to fishing. Peter and a couple of the other
men said, well, I'm just going to go back to the boats and fish.
Think about that real quick. Those men, the disciples, which
I look up to them, I think about how much they must have known
and must have seen and everything. They quit preaching because they
mistook the Lord for finishing the work on the cross as it being
over and He failed. Is that not a great example of
what we do? In the greatest moment of triumph, in the greatest,
the one situation in this world that's ever existed, of it being
done, it's finished. The Lord finished the work. Our
salvation is complete. His own disciples who had been
told what He was going, for years He'd been saying, I've got to
go to Jerusalem. I've got to die. And yet when it happens,
they all thought, it's over. It's done. And of course, the
Lord came to them and brought them back. So to finish this,
I want to use those same five things. OK, the same five things.
And I'm going to use one illustration that goes through all five of
them. The most important event that happened in the scriptures,
the Lord dying on the cross. And I'm going to use a couple
of chapters. If you'll turn over to the book of John. John, chapter 18. The child of God has everything
in the Lord. And I hope I've explained to
this point that we just don't understand things. We can't see
it. We don't we can't imagine how
a global pandemic or a specific event to us, how that could be
good. You know, have you ever been
something really simple as, you know, you're going to work and
you get pulled over and you get a ticket. Have you ever thought
to yourself, like, how could this possibly be good? You know,
that's the way we look at things. We always just see anything and
we find fault with the providence of God. And again, this word,
wondrous, also means difficult. So I'm not being harsh and I'm,
I get upset. I cry. I get frustrated. I blame
things when they happen on the Lord. I do it. That's our nature.
That's our sin. And I don't mean to be difficult. I'm talking
to myself with you in this. But we need to have the mindset
of the Lord's in control. His providence is perfect for
us. So let's start with the Lord being in control. It says, My
time is not yet come. When the time was come that He
should be received up, He steadfastly set His face to the cross, to
Jerusalem. Alright, John 18, look at verse
5. They answered Him, Jesus of Nazareth,
Jesus saith unto them, I am He, and Judas also, which betrayed
Him, stood with them. As soon then as He said unto
them, I am He, They went backward and fell to the ground. How much
control is the Lord in? That when He says His name, we
can't even stand up to it. When he said, I am, these soldiers,
this isn't some frail child or anything, these soldiers who
were probably in an aggressive position to him thinking, what's
he gonna do? He says, I am, and they just fell back. I've read
writers that it was almost like their feet were in quicksand
or in cement, and they literally just fell back as in like a piece
of wood just falling back. Look at John 19 verse 10. Then said Pilate unto him, Speakest
thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have
power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? Jesus
answered, thou couldest have no power at all against me, except
it were given thee from above. Therefore, he that delivered
me unto thee hath the greater sin. Pilate, who would have been
a very powerful man, said, you're not gonna answer me right now?
He's like, I've got your life right here in my hand. I can
say crucify him or not. I have control over that. And
the Lord said, you don't have any power. except what's given
you from above. You're just a token here. You're
just saying these words that need to be said. You're fulfilling
a role of a purpose and of a plan that was set before the world
began that the Lord's not going to say anything because He must
go to the cross. And then next we see that He
has a purpose. Remember as just a boy our Lord
said, I must be about my father's business? As a child He said
that. He also said, for the Son of
Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost. You want
to know what his purpose was? To seek and to save that which
was lost. Look at John 18 here in verse
10. John 18 verse 10 says, Then Simon
Peter, having a sword and drew it, and smote the high priest's
servant and cut off his right ear, The servant's name was Malchus. Then said Jesus unto Peter, put
up thy sword unto thy sheath. The cup which my father hath
given me, shall I not drink it? This is a great example of the
Lord showing Peter, and as he does to us so often, that there's
a purpose to this. Don't you try to stop this. And
they say that he cut off his ear, but Peter actually was trying
to cut off his head. And as he swiped the sword, the
man ducked, and it went and cut his ear off instead. And the
Lord picked the ear up and put it back on the man and said,
that's not how we're going to do this. I'm the one who's going to do
this. I'm the one who must die. Not you do anything, Peter. In
Romans 8, we all know the verses. And we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them who are called
according to his purpose, for whom he did foreknow, he also
did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that
he might be the firstborn among many brethren. It's so important,
and most of us have heard that story of Henry when he was younger,
and Ralph Barnard asked him to read that, and he did, and then
he said, what's the rest of it? And he read, who are called according
to his purpose, and Ralph just screamed, purpose. If you find
out what that word purpose means, you'll understand the gospel.
Everything works together for good to them that love God, to
them that are called according to his purpose that he predestined.
And then another verse there in Romans says, For the child
being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the
purpose of God, according to election, might stand not of
works, but of him that calleth. The scriptures repeat multiple
times over and over again that it not, as it said in this verse,
the child not being yet born. A person who has not been born
cannot claim anything. They can't say they've ever done
anything. They can't say anything like that. And that's where the
Lord's purpose comes in in his salvation. We don't have any
part to play. We have no role or anything.
Our Lord has a purpose that was set before time began. He said,
I set my face like a flint and we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God. And then thirdly, he
knows the outcome. So he's in control. He has a
purpose. He's going to die on the cross
to save his people. And he knows the outcome. Think
for just a second on what the Lord went through from the time
he was born until this day where he's going to die. He knew what
was going to happen. Now, we think sometimes that
we would like to know what's going to happen. There's a famous
saying that people have asked, would you like to know the day
that you would die? Would you like to know your future?
All those things. Mercifully, the Lord doesn't
let us know these things. He doesn't let us know what's
coming. He doesn't let us see those things. And though we struggle
through trials, can you imagine what it would be like to live
your life knowing when and what the most difficult things to
come are? Can you imagine that? The Lord knew His entire life
what was coming. Look at John 18 verse 4. Jesus
therefore, knowing all things that should come upon Him, went
forth and said unto them, Whom seek ye? How wonderful it is
our Lord knew what was coming, knew what He had to do, and He
said, I'm still going forth. I said I'd do it. I'm going to
do it. Look at verse 9 in John 18. that
the same might be fulfilled which he spake of them which thou gavest
me have I lost none. When it says he knows that when
I say he knows the outcome, he's fulfilling the outcome. We struggle
in we struggle in time. in chronological order with things.
In the scripture, that is. When I was younger, I always
used to think, how can you say that in the Old Testament about
something happening that hasn't happened yet? I don't understand
how you can do that, because I can't do it. The Lord doesn't
have a time. Our Lord is so powerful and so
holy that whatever was determined before the foundation of the
world, the names that were written in the Book of Life and the events
that would come to happen, come in place, they were just as good
as done the moment it was decided what would happen. So it's easy
in the Old Testament to say the events that would happen. There's
predictions of, and we'll see this in a minute, about him drinking
the vinegar, about they would not tear his robe, they would
cast lots for it. All these things that were said
thousands of years earlier that came exactly to place. And that's
because our Lord, when he says something, it's done, it will
happen. And that has a great amount of
comfort in it. One of the reasons we struggle
is that we don't know what's going to happen. Everybody has
a different level of worry or fret or anxiety, but we all have
it. There's nobody that doesn't sit
around and sometimes think, I wonder how this is going to go or I
hope it goes well. We struggle because we don't
see it and we can't see what's coming. Thankfully, not only
are we not in control of it, but we're not the ones who can
determine it. Thankfully, when we see the things that are written
in this book about the child of God, about A person that is
saved by the Lord Jesus Christ is saved. We don't have to worry
about that. It says that a person is saved. They're saved. There's
nothing you can do. There's nothing we can do to
mess anything up. We don't have any power. And
that's wonderful. Most people struggle with that.
But most people want power. We reach for fame and power and
influence and control. But we don't have any. And one
of the greatest things the Lord can do for us is to make us see
that. to see that we're dependent upon Him, and we want to be dependent
upon Him. Have you ever been good enough
that you can depend on yourself and it work out right? All right,
we know He's in control. He had a purpose going to the
cross. He knew the outcome of going to the cross, and He knows
best. What about the outcome, though,
with the thief on the cross, before it was over? He said to
that thief, Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with
me in paradise. The Lord knows best. Look at
John 17 verse 1. These words spake Jesus and lifted
up His eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify
Thy Son that Thy Son also may glorify Thee. As Thou hast given
Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to
as many as Thou hast given Him. And this is life eternal. that
they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
Thou hast sent. What is eternal life? To know
the true God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn over to John chapter
20. In verse 11, John 20 verse 11. But Mary stood without at the
sepulcher weeping. And as she wept, she stooped
down and looked into the sepulcher, and see of two angels in white
sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet, where
the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman,
why weepest thou? She said unto them, Because they
have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid
him. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back and saw
Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. And the Lord
said unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? She,
supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, This is great,
though. Think about when I say we don't
see things clearly. This is a woman who knew the
Lord. She knew Him. He had been in her house multiple
times. She followed Him. She saw Him dying on the cross. Three days later, she doesn't
know who He is. Now, whether you wanna say that
she just didn't know or the Lord put a veil over her eyes, it
doesn't matter. We can't see Him until He reveals
Himself. All right, keep going there,
verse 15. She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto
him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou
had laid him, and I'll take him away. Jesus said unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith
unto him, Rabboni, which is to say, Master. One word, he called
out her name, and she immediately knew who he was. The Lord does
that for his children. Now look down at verse 19. Then
the same evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors
were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the
Jews, the disciples, three days later, are hiding in a house,
scared something bad's gonna happen to them. Came Jesus and
stood in the midst and said unto them, peace be unto you. And
when he'd said, he showed unto them his hands and his side.
Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. Then
said Jesus to them, Again, peace be unto you, as my Father has
sent me, even so send I you. And when He had said this, He
breathed on them and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost."
These disciples were hiding. They were scared. They didn't
know what to think of the events and the crucifixion. The Lord
Jesus Christ had just finished His work. He had done what He
told them He was going to do, but they still couldn't see it.
We have this book and we have heard, many of us have heard
thousands of messages and explanations and books read and written and
all those things. The people who knew Him the best
and were told exactly what was going to happen couldn't see
it. The Lord is the only one who can make us to see anything.
We will go back and forth, and we will believe, and then moments
later, we'll just forget it. It's a faint thought. It'll be
an hour after a service, and I'll go days without thinking
about the Lord, about anything, about that kind of thing. The
Lord said, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from
me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. We need to
go through our daily lives as if the same way that a small
child goes through watching a movie sitting next to their parent. My daughter, who is seven, loves
watching movies with me. But it doesn't matter what movie
we watch, that we are barely five minutes into it, that I
get a turn and say, I'm scared. Is this going to be okay? And
I've seen the movie, and I tell her it's going to be fine. And
that's all it takes. She immediately is comforted
by the words of her father. She completely trusts what I'm
saying. She trusts that I know exactly what's going to happen.
And that by me saying that, I've told her the outcome is going
to be okay. And that's how we need to go
through this life. When we have moments and we get scared, when
we have moments that we're anxious, when we're angry, when we're
sad, whatever it is, The first thing we need to do is we need
to look to our Lord and say, please make this okay. Please
help me. Now, he's told us it's going
to be okay. No matter what path we go through
on this earth, salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ is everything.
So whether we are someone that we read about in the scripture
that might have had just a few trials, or we're someone like
Job who had their entire life turned upside down, or we're
someone like David who goes from being at the lowest of lows to
the highest of highs and back and forth many times, our path
is determined and the outcome is for sure. So when we get in
a moment of trial or tribulation, we just look to the Lord. He
will reassure us, I promise. It doesn't mean it's not gonna
be difficult or hard, but everything that happens to us is wondrous.
And finally, the Lord was in control when he went to the cross.
He had a purpose of why he was going. He knew the outcome, and
he knew that that was best. And finally, he finished the
work. Look at John 17, verse 4. This happens before He actually
is on the cross. He says, I have glorified Thee
on the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me
to do. It's done. I haven't even done it yet, but
it's done. It's finished. Look at verse
22 of the same chapter. In the glory which thou gavest
me I have given them that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and thou in me that
they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that
thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me. A
child of God can read this and it says that thou sent me and
hast loved them. He loved us as he loved his son. Can there be a greater thing
said about you? That God Almighty loves His children in the same
way that He loves His Son. Now, that's the same thing. If
I say I love my children just like I love my Son, I'm saying
the same thing, right? That's because we're in Him. He doesn't love us. He loves
His Son, and we're in His Son. Which means He does love us.
But He doesn't love us for who we are. He loves His Son. Look
at John 19. We're almost finished. John 19, verse 28. And this is the moment where
He finished the work. At least we see it, the action.
Verse 28. After this, Jesus, knowing that
all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled,
He said, I thirst. It's wondrous that He said everything's
done. But I have to fulfill the word of God. So I'm going to
say I thirst. Verse 29, Now there was set a
vessel full of vinegar, and they filled a sponge with vinegar
and put it upon hyssop and put it in his mouth. And when Jesus
therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished. And
he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. It's important to
know that it is finished. The work was done. But that last
part shows how truly finished it was. And it shows what purpose
he had. He said, it's finished. And at
that moment, he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. He said,
I have completed the work of salvation. That's all I'm here
to do. That's what I'm going to do.
Now, the Lord Jesus Christ saving his people is wondrous. When I first wrote that out of
my notes, I wanted to use the phrase, the Lord Jesus Christ
saving his people is more wondrous blank. But I thought, that's
not right. That's not true. Because the
definition of the word wondrous, of wonder, is not a degree. There are no degrees of wonder.
Either something is wondrous or it's not wondrous. The Lord
Jesus Christ is wondrous. Everything he does is wondrous. Everything he touches is wondrous. Everyone found in him is wondrous. Everything that he does and everything
that goes on in our lives is wondrous because it's all done
by him, through him, for him, in us. Now the year 2021, it
might bring changes. It might be different than last
year. But let me guarantee you something. It cannot be any more
wondrous than last year was or any other year. For the child
of God being in Christ is everything. And as long as we are in the
Lord Jesus Christ, every moment, every day, every event, and every
year are as wondrous as anything can ever be.