read verse 6 of Isaiah chapter
51. Maybe I'll read verse 5 with
it. My righteousness is near, my salvation is gone forth, mine
arm shall judge the people, the isles shall wait upon me, and
on mine arm shall they trust. Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
and look upon the earth beneath, for the heavens shall vanish
away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment,
and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner, but my salvation
shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. I want to talk this morning about
the Lord's salvation and about it being forever. I want to talk
about the perseverance of God's people. Now we're told in verse
1 of Isaiah 51 here that we're to hearken. Those that are followers
after righteousness and those that seek the Lord, they're told
to hearken. They're told to listen to the
words of the prophet. And he says, you look unto the
rock whence you're hewn and to the hole of the pit whence you're
digged. Those that are followers after
righteousness and those that are seekers after the Lord, They
did not always follow righteousness, and they were not always seekers
after the Lord. There was a time when they were
in the wilderness of sin. There was a time when they walked
in rebellion against God. There was a time when they lived
apart from God and had no fellowship with the living God. But the
prophet says, You listen to me, and you look to the rock whence
you're hewing. You were hewing out of a rock,
he says, and there was a pit. And you were in that pit, and
you were dug out of that pit. And all of God's people know,
they know what it means to have been lost. You see, you cannot
be saved until you first are lost. And there are many who
do not understand their condition by nature. They do not understand
that we're lost in the first man, Adam, and saved in the second
Adam, the Lord from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we're
in the condition that we are sinners because of our fall in
Adam. and we're in that high and lofty
position, that glorious position that we're in in the salvation
of our Lord by our standing in the person of God's dear Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ. And I recognize as we begin this
message here at the very outset this morning that each one of
us, we may be in a very different position. There may be those
here this morning that know the Lord, and you have a measure
of comfort in your heart, a measure of assurance that the Lord truly
is yours, that you're truly a believer, that the salvation of the Lord,
that it's come to you, and that you are a possessor of the Lord's
salvation. You have that blessed assurance
that Jesus is indeed your Savior, your Deliverer, and that he belongs
to you, and that you can call him your God. as David did. You remember David said, this
God is our God and he shall be our guide even unto death. The
Lord belongs unto his people. And the Lord would say to his
people, you're my portion. And his people would say back
to him, thou art our portion, oh Lord. And so the Lord is indeed
the salvation of his people and Certainly, there are visions
of rapture that burst on our sight, angels descending from
above with echoes of mercy and whispers of love. If we truly
are walking with the Lord and if we know His salvation in truth,
we have the blessed assurance that we're truly the Lord's people. And in verse 12, he said, I,
even I, am He that comforteth you. The Lord's people are comforted. He said, I'm going to comfort
Zion in verse 3. For the Lord shall comfort Zion. And surely the Lord is going
to speak a word to us that will comfort us. And I believe that
this word is to be found When it says in verse 5, my righteousness
is near and my salvation is gone forth. And then in verse 6 when
he says, but my salvation shall be forever and my righteousness
shall not be abolished. Now the wonderful thing about
the Lord's salvation, it's like God, it is everlasting. It's
like God, it is eternal. God gives the same kind of life
to his people that he possesses himself. And from everlasting
to everlasting, the scripture says, thou art God. God gives
everlasting life unto his people. He said, I give unto them eternal
life. They shall never perish, neither
shall any man pluck them out of my hand, for none is able
to pluck them out of the Father's hand. My Father which gave them
me, he's greater than all, and none can pluck them out of his
hand. But he said, I give unto my sheep
eternal life. That's the kind of life that
God gives to his people, not the kind of life that starts
today and ends tomorrow but the kind of life that will last for
all eternity. But my salvation shall be forever,
and my righteousness shall not be abolished." You see, the reason
why the Lord's salvation is forever is because the righteousness
of God will never be abolished. You see, it's not our righteousness,
it's His righteousness that gives us right standing before God. We have a standing in the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Many people have a difficult
time in understanding the vicarious life of our Lord Jesus Christ. that he came into this world
to live a righteous life, a holy life. He obeyed the law of God.
He obeyed every jot and tittle of the law of God. He honored
the law. He magnified the law. He's the
only one that ever did. He fulfilled it completely with
his righteous life. And that was a vicarious life. It means that he was living it,
he was living it on the behalf of his people. Hear me this morning,
if you would be comforted, the Lord Jesus Christ is the substitute
of his people, and his righteousness is their righteousness. Our Lord Jesus Christ came into
this world to establish and to bring in everlasting righteousness. A righteousness that would last
for all eternity. A righteousness he would make
of it a garment that all of his people, all of his believing
members of his body, that all of them would be wearing. You
know, oftentimes people make a great fuss about what they're
going to wear out in public. Someone's going to quite an event
and they're very concerned about what they're going to wear. And
I know that young people, young ladies and young men, very concerned
about what kind of attire they're going to have when they go out.
Some to proms and some to other places. But I want to ask you
this. Yeah, you're scheduled to stand
before God. You're coming before God. What
are you going to wear? What are you going to wear? Are
you your own tailor? Are you making your own clothes
for that event? My friend, let me tell you, the
only garment which we better appear before God in is that
garment of salvation. That garment that our Lord has
woven from the top to the bottom with His doing and His dying. That garment which He's provided
for all of those that believe on Him. And if you're here this
morning, I want you to understand that you're going to stand before
God. It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the
judgment. We're going to stand before the
Lord, and therefore we need to be attired appropriately and
to be attired appropriately is to have on that wedding garment,
to have on that garment of salvation. And our Lord said, my righteousness,
my righteousness, and I want you to understand that's the
Lord's righteousness, it shall never be abolished. It will never
be abolished. That righteousness will stand
for all eternity. And those who die trusting in
the imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ They will
never, never perish, and they have the salvation which shall
be forever. Now oftentimes, and I mentioned
briefly, that there are different places maybe in our lives here.
There are those that may be saying right now in their hearts, I
rejoice in that truth. I glory in that truth. But there
may be others here who have a blind eye. They're not able to see
that. They're not able to rejoice in that. They're not able to
say, I definitely have assurance. I know in its blessed assurance,
Jesus is mine. What a foretaste of glory divine. They're not able to say that.
They are in a state of darkness and blindness and they're not
able to receive this precious and this blessed truth. And I
know that many of the Lord's dear family, not able to believe
in perseverance or the preservation of God's people or the salvation
of the Lord, shall be forever, or that the righteous shall hold
to his way, and they that have clean hands will grow increasingly
day by day, as Job tells us. But I do know this, that those
who are in that kind of position many times are there because
they do not understand that their condition or their situation
or their standing in this world. Charles Spurgeon said, In a sermon
that he preached back in May of 1887, he said, alas, we find
the old man yet alive within us. The old nature in the Christian,
he says, is no better than the old man in the sinner, no better. It is the same carnal mind which
is enmity against God and is not reconciled, neither indeed
can be. The new nature has a hard struggle
to hold its own against this embodied death. We are, as it
were, chained to a rotting carcass, and we cry, O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me? Now, brother, sister, we're not
to despair because of this experience. It is better to mourn over imperfection
than to be puffed up with the idle notion that there is no
sin in you and me. Now, as God's people, we know,
having been delivered and through the work of our dear and blessed
Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, that we're yet in the old Adam,
in that we still have a sinful and corrupt nature. And there
are many people, when they slip and fall, and the Bible says
the righteous can fall seven times, and yet the Lord will
lift them up. Not that the Lord puts a number
on the amount of times that the righteous can fall, it just implies
that when the righteous fall, the Lord does lift them up. And
the message of the Word of God is that there shall be lifting
up. And wherever you are this morning
in your situation, maybe you feel, well I've committed some
sin, I think I'm a believer, I thought I was a believer, but
I have committed different and various sins, and therefore now
I don't know whether I'm saved or not. Well, beloved, listen
to me. The Bible says in 1 John 1 and
8, it says if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves
and the truth is not in us. And if we say that we have not
sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. I'm afraid
that you do not understand this truth that Mr. Spurgeon was talking
about. how that the old nature is still
with us, even after we have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. And
you know, there's enough sin in, as Paul said, that he said,
I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest that
by any means, when I preach to others, I myself should end up
on the shelf. that I myself should end up being
a castaway. And you see, the Lord's people
have a body that they must bring into subjection. And the Lord's
people do deal all the time. There's a war going on in God's
people. And the spirit lusteth against
the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit. There's a gigantic
war going on in believers. And we need to understand that
that's happening in order that we will not say, well we're not
saved when we have this conflict or when we have this trouble.
I've just talked to someone this week that said, well I thought
I was saved but then I have this problem and I've fallen into
sin and therefore I don't know now whether I'm saved or not.
We need to understand, beloved, that we have this old nature,
and we need to confess the truth, and that is that we've got this
sin that 1 John 1, verse 8 and verse 10 speaks of. Now, there's
enough sin in us Even in our tongue itself I want you to turn
over with me to the book of James chapter 3 if you can turn there
quickly And I want you to listen to what these verses say there's
enough sin in your tongue To send you to hell if there's no
sin in any part of you and any other part of you There's enough
sin in your tongue look at verse 6 of James chapter 3 or verse
5 first even so the tongue is a little member of And it boasteth
great things, and behold, how great a matter a little fire
kindleth. In other words, you know, you
can take a little book of matches and pull just a little match
out, and you can strike that little match, and you can set
a forest on fire. You can set a great fire. And
it says here that the tongue boasteth great things. It's a
little thing, but it can set a big fire whenever people start
going out and wagging it around. And verse 6, and the tongue is
a fire. The tongue is a world of iniquity. Listen to that. The tongue is
a world of iniquity, so is the tongue among our members, that
it defileth a whole body, and setteth on fire the course of
nature, and it itself is set on fire of hell. And then in
verse eight, but the tongue can no man tame. Verse seven says
that you can take every beast and the birds and the serpents
and things in the sea, and you can tame them. And they have
been tamed of mankind, but the tongue can no man tame. It's an unruly evil. It's full
of deadly poison. I read those verses just simply
to show you that as a believer that you've got enough hell in
your tongue and enough sin in your tongue to damn you for all
eternity. And there's corruption in this
body and in this old nature of ours and we need to be aware
of it. Now a believer does not love
sin. A believer does not excuse, a believer does not justify sin,
but they grieve over sin. They mourn and lament their old
sinful nature and their desires, and they desire to be without
sin. And if they could be, they would
live above sin, they would live without sin. Yet the believer
does not deny that it exists in him. An old writer once said,
sin is my name, sin is my nature, and to deny it is to deny the
word, it's to deceive myself, and it's to call God a liar.
My own nature is such that I will sin until I die, for sin pollutes
the very best thing that I do. Might I say that I've never preached
a sermon in which there was not sin in it. Might I say that I
never prayed a prayer that was free entirely from sin. Every time we pray, we must pray
that the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ would cleanse away even
the sin that is in our prayers and in all of our holy duty.
that the blood of Christ would cleanse it in order that it might
be received by a holy God. Romans 5 and verse 12 says, Wherefore,
as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin And
so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. All
did what Adam did when he sinned because we were in him. Now I
want to try if I can to help you tie this together. Inasmuch
as I was not originally condemned by my own works. So am I not
justified by my own works. And if I want to have some security,
and if I want to have some assurance of my salvation, I must understand
this truth. I was not originally condemned
by my own sin or by my own works, and so therefore I'm not justified
by my own works. In Romans 5 and 19 it says, For
as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, and so
by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. And that's
not you, my friend, or me. That's the obedience of the Lord
Jesus Christ. So by the obedience of one shall
many be made righteous. And so what I'm attempting to
do is to help you to see how it could be that you can be a
sinner and still have the salvation of the Lord, which is forever,
and be preserved forever in the eternal covenant of grace, and
that you can belong to God today and tomorrow and forever, even
though there is a sinful and weak nature about you. Now then,
the works that I do merely reflect the nature of him in whom I stand. If I'm in Adam, I do the works
according to his nature. As to the spirit, every believer
is in Christ, but as to the flesh, every believer is yet in Adam. Therefore, as long as I'm in
this life, I shall express the nature of both regrettably."
Regrettably. That is true. That we still,
as long as we're in this life, we will reflect the nature of
both natures, that divine principle of grace and also the old Adamic
nature. And so I say those things in
honesty to your soul. I'm not going to stand up here
and lie to you in order to somehow or other appear to be more pious
than maybe some others around and to try to lead you to believe
that the Lord's people, that they finally arrive at a place
where they're without sin and where they never have any problems
dealing with their flesh. It never happens. It doesn't
make any difference how old you get. Sin will die in you when
you die. When your body of flesh dies,
the old man of sin will die. But until that time, there will
be a war going on in you as a believer. Now the dictionary says concerning
perseverance that it means continuance. in a state of grace until it
is succeeded by a state of glory. Now this doctrine that the salvation
of the Lord, that it shall be forever, this doctrine, it means
that it's called the perseverance of the saints by some, and this
word means to keep from injury, destruction, defend from evil,
to protect or save. Psalm 37 verse 28 says, the Lord
forsaketh not his saints, they are preserved forever, but the
seed of the wicked shall be cut off. And so we believe that the
child of God will continue in grace because his God keeps him
from destruction and protects him and saves him so that he
will finally live in a state of eternal glory. Now I'm not
responsible for what others may preach. about this doctrine or
about this matter which is at hand. I preach here what I believe
the Word of God teaches, so I alone am responsible for what I shall
say. I desire to believe what the
Bible teaches and be sincere in my convictions. I want to
be faithful to declare the truth the best that we know it. Now
there are many professing Christians who do not agree with us. Many believe that you can send
and send away the day of grace. They say you can be saved today,
you can be in Christ today and out tomorrow. I say to you that
you may be out of Christ today and in Him tomorrow, but you
cannot be in Him today and out of Him tomorrow. You cannot.
There are many, I say, that believe that you can send away your salvation. and of their deep sincerity and
their love to God and their zeal and their devotedness in holy
things, I do not question their zeal and their deep sincerity. I give them as much credit for
sincerity as I claim for myself, yet we differ. Differ on what
the Word of God teaches on this doctrine that we're discussing
here this morning. Oh, do we differ. You and others
must examine each one for yourself. You must become a student of
the Word of God and decide in your own heart and soul which
view is taught in the Bible, for certainly both are not taught
here in this Bible. This view that you can be saved
today and lost tomorrow, or that Whenever you are saved, you're
saved for all eternity, because the work of God will abide forever,
and nothing can be added to it, nothing can be taken from it,
which one is true? The question is of no small importance. Is it possible for a sincere,
believing child of God, truly regenerated by the Spirit of
God? You know, the Bible says, not
by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to
His mercy, He saved us by the washing of regeneration and the
renewal that's brought about by the Holy Ghost, which was
shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, beloved,
if one is truly regenerated by the Spirit of God, and can it
be that they can finally be separated from Jesus and lose the favor
of God, their Father, and be eternally shut out from His smile
and His home? Can it be that that could happen?
Well, it cannot be, and it will not happen, because God is the
Savior of His people, and they're saved by what He's done for them,
not what they have done for Him. His salvation, my friend, is
forever, and His righteousness shall never be abolished. And
I'm glad to have a standing this morning in the perfect righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now this question involves issues
I think of the most momentous nature and cannot but be of interest
to every believer in Christ. And I say it without any fear
of being successfully contradicted, that of all the dead, that you
can think of, those that went on before, and those who have
been renewed in heart, born again, and called to Christ, I say to
you that every one of them who died in the faith of the gospel
You remember in Hebrews 13 it talks about all those who died
in faith. These all died in faith. Anyone
who dies in the faith, they will at last be with our Lord in heaven. And that reconciliation with
God on earth through Christ Jesus will in every case end in the
everlasting salvation of the soul. Now then, the question
is, am I in relationship with Christ here? Am I a believer
of the gospel? Do I truly trust the Son of God? Do I truly believe that all that
God demands of me, that Christ provided for me, do I truly believe
that the Lord Jesus Christ has died in my place, that he was
buried, God raised him up, from the dead, seated at the right
hand of God. And when he did all of this,
I did it in him. Do I truly believe it? Now, beloved,
if I truly believe it, then that will end in everlasting salvation
for my soul, and I'm kept for the power of God through faith
in Christ Jesus unto eternal glory. Now our text says, that
the salvation of the Lord shall be forever. I quoted Job 17,
where it says that the righteous shall hold on his way. And though
the outward man perishes day by day, yet the inward man is
renewed by and through the power of God day by day. Now the righteous,
that is the one made righteous by Christ, shall not may, but
shall hold on his way. So what do we really mean when
we're talking about final perseverance? We mean that those whom God has
chosen in eternal election, redeemed and effectually called, cannot
totally nor finally fall, but shall be eternally saved. Now isn't that blessed? John
6 and verse 37 it says this, All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me, and they that come to me I will in no wise
cast out. I will in no wise cast out. Jesus
said, those that the Father gives to me in that eternal love covenant
from the foundation of the world, when they come to me, once they
get to me in faith, true heart faith, once they get to me, I
will never cast them out. Now it doesn't bother me, you
see, to go over these verses. They're simple and but you need
to hear the simple word of God and you need to hear it expounded
until God reveals it to your heart, makes it clear to your
heart, makes it clear to your soul. He said that if you can
get to me, he said, I will never cast you out. You say, but preacher,
I'm weary. Preacher, I'm weak in faith.
Preacher, I fail day by day. You may fail day by day. But your Lord is strong, your
Savior is successful, and He will not lose a case. Have you
come to Him? Are you believing on Him? Is
your heart's trust in the Son of God? Is He the anchor of your
heart and your soul? And if He is, He said, I will
never cast you out. I will never cast you out therefore
my friend you can rest you can rest in his bosom he said I and
my father are one and no enemy human or hellish shall wrench
them out of my hand or out of my Father's hand. No enemy, neither
men nor demons, shall be able to overthrow the purpose of divine
grace and the purpose of the covenant, the everlasting covenant,
concerning my people. I will not cast them out. These are the words of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He makes it as plain as possible
that there's no power in heaven or earth which is able to pluck
the people of God out of his grasp, out of his hand. Now we mean by this doctrine
that though at times the child of God may walk in the dark and
not have a sensible sight, of God's eternal love, still the
Lord does never actually forsake his people. Now did you get that? We mean that even though at times
we may not be conscious of it, we may feel that the Lord is
not with us, we may feel that the Lord has forsaken us. But
he never does, he never actually forsakes his people. In Isaiah
chapter 49 and verse 14, we read, but Zion said, now notice this,
who's doing the talking, but Zion said, the city of God, the
people of God, those that belong to God, they said, the Lord hath
forsaken me and the Lord hath forgotten me. Now, as we said,
this is what Zion said. The Lord had not really forsaken
his people, but they felt forsaken. And many, many times the truth
is that we have forsaken him, he has not forsaken us. And the
Lord will not forsake his people, because it pleased the Lord to
make you his people. Now there are seasons when the
child of God walks in darkness, the clouds are hanging overhead,
and he's not able to look up and see the smiling face of his
Savior as in the days that are past. and he feels that all hope
is gone, and he feels that the Lord is not going to be gracious
anymore, that the Lord has left him. But the Lord replied to
Zion and said, can a woman forget her suckling child that she should
not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget,
our Lord said. This woman may forget her son,
the son of her womb, and go off and leave him in a garbage can,
go off and leave him on the doorstep of some building, yet God said,
will I not forget thee? I will never forget you because
my salvation is forever and my righteousness shall never be
abolished. I will not forget thee. Behold,
he says, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands and thy
walls are continually before me. Now, beloved, it's hard to
imagine that a mother would forget her own child, that looks to
her for nourishment and protection, and yet it says that it's possible
for her to forget. But still the Lord will never
forget or forsake his own children. Now, David one time declared,
he said in Psalm 31 and verse 22, I said, in my haste, I'm
cut off before thine eyes. David felt that way, and you
may have often felt that way, but have had to conclude with
the psalmist that you spoke in haste, that you spoke too quickly. The Lord hath not really cut
you off. The Lord has not really cut you
off. He will never cut off his people until he would have to
cut off Christ before he would ever be able to cut off his people.
He'd have to cut off his own son, his own beloved, his only
begotten son. Cut him off before he could cut
off his people. He might have withdrawn his comforts
for a time, but still, he's there. The Lord is there. He's protecting
you, upholding you by his grace, even when you were not sensible
of his presence. Now then, the third thing I'd
like to say about this final perseverance is that the saints,
we mean truly the people of God, this doctrine of final perseverance,
means that though sin and disobedience is in the child of God, they
may lose the joy of their salvation that the relationship to the
father as a son, it can never be severed, but they can lose
their joy and they can have times when they feel that their bones
are broken and that their life is all out of kilter and all
out of shape. Now David prayed in the 51st
Psalm, he said, restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. David had the Lord's salvation,
but David had sinned against God and he lost the joy of his
salvation. He was still the son of God.
He was still God's son. He belonged to God. He was in
Christ, even though Christ had never came yet, but he had been
given to the Son of God in the eternal covenant, that covenant
that's ordered in all things and sure, he was in that covenant. He did not pray that his salvation
might be given to him again, but he prayed because he was,
as we said, still a child of God, but he prayed that the joy
of his salvation would be restored, that he had lost through disobedience.
His heart was broken because of his sin, and he cried unto
the Lord. Now, beloved, there are many,
many times when sin robs us of our legitimate joy. And an illustration of that is
found in the book of Judges, chapter 8 and verse 9. I won't
have you turn there. But I just want to mention this.
How that we lose, oftentimes, the joy of the Lord in our hearts
that we should have and are entitled to legitimately have. Gideon
had 70 sons. The Bible says that he had many
wives. He had three score and 10 sons,
70 of them. Legitimate sons. And he had one
son by a concubine, by a prostitute. And he called this one son, his
name was Abimelech. And Gideon became an old man,
and after he died, why this one illegitimate child, this one
illegitimate son murdered, slew all of the 70 legitimate sons
of Jerubial, namely Gideon. Slew every one of them on one
rock. killed them all. And what that
is a type of is how that one sin in the life of a believer
can rob a believer of every legitimate joy that was in their lives. And you think about that. It's
a serious thing to sin against God. It's a serious thing for
a believer. Someone says, well, that preacher
preaches like that we got a license to sin. I don't preach any such
thing. I don't preach that. I say it's a serious, serious
thing to sin against God. And David found out what a serious
thing it was. And he prayed earnestly, restoring
to me the joy of thy salvation, because he had lost That joy.
But the sonship was still there. He was his son. He was God's
son. But he lost his fellowship with
the Lord. Now, there's a certainty about
this perseverance. I want to say just a few words
about it and we'll close. The certainty of this perseverance. It is sure because of the covenant
and the decrees of God. Now, many times you've heard
us talk about the doctrine of election, that God chose a people
before the foundation of the world. But if some of those whom
he had chosen out of the world could finally be lost, then the
purpose and the covenant of God would be without any meaning.
And if a single one for whom Christ died could be lost, then
the death of the Savior would also be meaningless. If the Spirit
could call a man and then he'd be lost and not live with God
in eternal glory, then the calling of God would mean nothing really. But my dear friends, the covenant
was ordered in all things and sure, so to us as it was to David
and it shall be fulfilled and the whole redeemed family shall
be brought unto glory. Every one of them shall be brought
into glory now. I want us to bring this to a
conclusion and I want to say I'm going to leave I just had
too much material this morning, but I want to say that those
that are loved of God Those that are purchased by the Son those
that are called by the Spirit of God They're safe and they
shall live forever because they have the Lord's salvation. And
they shall at last be safe in the home in that better world,
in that upper world. And the righteous shall indeed
hold on to his way. God's people hold on in spite
of everything. Not a demon in hell can put a
child of God into hell. Not a demon can rob the people
of God of the true riches which the Lord has given them. There's
an old hymn that I want to read here in closing that puts it
in a unique way, and I want you to listen. Ye pilgrims of Zion,
and chosen of God, whose spirits are filled with dismay. Since
ye have eternal redemption through blood, ye cannot but hold to
your way. As Jesus in covenant love did
engage a fullness of grace to display, the powers of darkness
and malice may rage. the righteous shall hold on his
way. This truth, like its offer, eternal
shall stand. Though all things in nature decay,
upheld by Jehovah's omnipotent hand, the righteous shall hold
on his way. They may on the main of temptation
be tossed, their sorrows may swell as the sea, but none of
the ransom shall ever be lost. the righteous shall hold on his
way. Surrounded with sorrows, temptations,
and cares, this truth with delight we survey and sing as we pass
through this valley of tears. the righteous shall hold on his
way. May the Lord bless you this morning
and may all of us give thanks unto God that salvation is indeed
of the Lord and that his salvation is forever. I hope that God will
be pleased to own this and give you a blessing from it. Let us
have a word of prayer. Father, we're thankful for your
truth. We're thankful for the Word and
for the privilege of speaking, preaching this morning. And may
your Spirit work in and through the voice of the Lord today and
bring, our Father, those that are without our salvation to
that place where they crave it and desire it with all their
heart. and where they would seek it. And Lord, that they should
become followers of Christ, believers on Him, and in spite of their
weaknesses and in spite of their failures, they may rejoice in
full hope of the glory of God and of eternal salvation. We
pray it in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen.