All of us seek that which we
love. All of us do. Even when we have
that which is the object of our pursuit at hand, we continue
to seek that which we love. I've had my The wife now is my
wife for nearly 30 years. I still court her. I still seek
her. I still seek more and more of
her affection, more and more of her care, more and more of
her time, because I love her. Indeed, we will sacrifice most
anything for that which we love most. Those who love money will sacrifice
their time their families, even their character to get it. Those
who love fame will sacrifice honesty and principle in the
pursuit of it. Those who love pleasure will
sacrifice their very health and physical well-being for one more
thrill. Just keep pushing closer and
closer to the age, get one more thrill. willing to sacrifice
everything just to get a little elation. What sacrifices men
and women make pursuing the bubbles of this world. And when they've
got them, all they've got is just a fistful of air. Nothing else. What vanity, what vanity, what
vanity. But our text this morning talks
about some folks who love something so dearly, who value something
so highly that they are willing to sacrifice anything and everything
in the pursuit of it. Turn with me, if you will, to
Psalm 70 and verse 4. I was reading something else
this week in the first part of the week and came across this
text, must have been Tuesday or Wednesday. And I thought immediately
that's going to be what I'll preach on Sunday. I figured I'd
be preaching down in Madisonville, but I said, that's, that's the
message for today. And I'm convinced that it is
the message for today and for this hour and for you. May God,
the Holy Spirit, be pleased to speak through these lips of clay,
through his word to your hearts. I want to talk to you this morning
about such as love thy salvation. Look here in Psalm 70, verse
four. Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee. Let such as love thy salvation
say continually, let God be magnified. Now hold your hands here and
turn back to Psalm 40, the passage we read just a little bit ago. You will see that this fourth
verse of Psalm 70 is almost exactly the same as the 16th verse of
Psalm 40. Now this, Psalm 40, is the intercessory
prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ as he suffered as our substitute.
The scriptures make that abundantly clear where he says, sacrifice
an offering thou hast not desired. He says, my ears have you opened?
He said, lo, I come to do thy will, O God. All of those things
are quoted in Hebrews chapter 10 by the Apostle Paul, and he
tells us this is Christ speaking. So our Lord Jesus, as he was
dying as our substitute, as he was bearing our sins in his body
on the cursed tree. Here makes intercession as our
great high priest. He's speaking to God, his father,
and our father. And he says, now father, on the
basis of what I am here doing, on the basis of my blood atonement,
on the basis of justice satisfied, on the basis of sin put away
by me for these my people, I pray for them. I'm praying for them.
Now he doesn't pray for everybody. You read the two preceding verses
and you'll see he calls down divine judgment upon those who
are his enemies. But he prays for his people.
And this is what he prays. Let those that seek thee rejoice
and be glad in thee. Let such as love thy salvation
say continually, the Lord be magnified. Now, with this prayer
in Psalm 40 and again in Psalm 70, our Lord Jesus describes
God's people, those who are truly born of his spirit, those who
are called by his grace with these two things. First, he says,
they are those that seek thee. And then secondly, he says, they
are those that love thy salvation. Let all those that seek thee
rejoice and be glad in thee. Believers are a people who, by
the grace of God, had been taught to know their need of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Believers are men and women who
have learned by the effectual teaching of grace, I must have
him, so that in their souls they cry to God, give me Christ or
else I die. And because they know their need
of him, Believers seek him listen to what the prophet says in Lamentations
3 and verse 25 The Lord is good to them that wait for him to
the soul that seeketh him The Lord's good to those who seek
him Now, this religious generation acts like, and they've been convinced
they've got God in their pockets. You know, everything's all sewed
up, everything's fine. We took care of that 20 years ago when
we said the sinner's prayer. We took care of that this morning
when we got into waters of baptism. Our mama and daddy took care
of that when I was a baby, and they dedicated me to Jesus. That's
a bunch of nonsense. Believers are not men and women
who think or behave as though they've got God in their hip
pocket. They're men and women who recognize their constant
great need of God and His grace in Christ Jesus. And so they
seek Him. They seek Him. So, well, you
mean they used to seek Him? No, they seek Him. Those who
seek Him know their need of Him, and they believe Him. Believing
Him, they seek Him, not what He has, not what He gives, but
Him, they seek Him. And believers seek Him sincerely
and earnestly. Not many folks know anything
about that, not many. Most folks take religious fits
by spasm, you know. I've got folks in my family,
when they take a notion, they get a little religion, they start
going to church, and then everything gets better, you know. The kids
start to behave, or they get grown, and not carousing around
in the middle of the night anymore. At least Mama and Daddy don't
have them under the roof and have to worry about them, so everything's all right
now. Well, we don't need to go to church too much anymore. We
don't need to be too concerned about religion. Ah, but believers
need him. They need him. They need him. They got to have him. And so
they seek him, sincerely and earnestly, in his word, in his
house, among his people, by prayer, by supplication, they seek him. And they're dead earnest about
that. don't do it much anymore because
I'm supposedly watching things, you know, but sometimes in the
middle of the night I get up hungry. You get up in the middle
of the night hungry, and my wife can have more stuff in the house
to eat, have it best hid. I mean she can stick stuff in
the back of that pantry that you couldn't find in six months.
But if I'm hungry enough, I start pulling it out. Now, if I just
got a little hunch for some munchies and I open the door, close it
back and go to bed. But if I'm hungry, I open the
door and I start pulling it. If I have to empty the thing,
I'll empty it because I'm hungry. And I'm telling you, if you ever
come to need God and his grace in Christ, you're gonna seek
him. You're gonna seek him. Believers
seek him continually. The apostle Paul, when he was
about to be executed for his confession and preaching of the
gospel, said in Philippians 3, I seek him, oh, I pursue him,
I want to know him. And believers seeking him find
him, they find him. I recall years ago, you've heard
me tell the story before, Sandy Parks, like most folks raised
in religion, shortly after she and Moose were married, I was
preaching for Moose's dad down in Western Salem, and they were
going somewhere out of town. They got out of the driveway
about 10 minutes later before anybody got going from church,
they drove back in. And Moose said, Sandy wants to
talk to you. And so I said, fine. I went back and we chatted a
little bit. And she said, Brother Don, I'm lost. What am I to do? I said, seek the Lord. Seek the Lord. And she looked
at me for a few seconds, kind of like, you know, is that all
you got to say? I said, seek the Lord. Moose
told me later, he said, I left and I thought, well, he ought
to have said something besides that. But I'm telling you, you
seek it. And if you seek Him, you'll find
Him. Listen to what it says in Jeremiah 29. Turn over there.
Jeremiah 29, verse 11. Now you play games with God and
He'll ignore you. You play games with God, He'll
send you to hell. You play games with God and pretend
with God and fake with God and you say, I'm gonna do this, I'm
gonna do that. You have no sincerity, not a
sincere bone about you. I'm telling you, you're playing
with eternal damnation. But if you're concerned about
your soul, if you seek Christ, you'll find it. Look here, Jeremiah
29 verse 11. The Lord God says, for I know
the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord. Thoughts
of peace, not of evil. To give you an expected end.
Then shall you call upon me, and you shall go and pray unto
me, and I will hearken unto you. And you shall seek me and find
me. Look at it now. When you shall
search for me with all your heart. That's the difference between
religious folks and folks who need Christ. That's the difference
between folks who are satisfied with the husk that the swine
eat and those who've got to have the bread of life, you was talking
about earlier. They seek Him with all their heart. And when
you seek me with all your heart, you'll find me. He says in verse
14, and I will be found of you, saith the Lord. Believers then
are men and women who seek the Lord. Now look at this next sentence. Let such as love thy salvation
say continually, the Lord be magnified. Salvation is God's. This generation
needs to find that out. Salvation is not something that
God owes you. Salvation is not something you
have in your hand. Salvation is not something that
God offers you if you're pretty please take it. Salvation is
God's prerogative. He gives it to whom He will.
Salvation is God's property. It's His possession and He gives
it as He sees fit. Salvation is God's gift. Salvation
is God's work, only His. that such as love, look at it,
thy salvation, thy salvation. Now we all need it. It's God's
gift. It's his work. It's his property.
It's his prerogative. But we need it. The wages of
sin is death. We've earned that. But the gift
of God is eternal life. The gift of God, Bill Raleigh,
is God's salvation. And we need that gift. But most
people neglect and despise it. Most of I preach the gospel in numerous
countries. I preach the gospel 35, 40, 45
different places every year. I've been preaching for 30 years,
a little more than 30 years. And most of the people I preach
to despise what I preach. I preach on radio every day.
Most people who hear it despise it. Most of them despise it.
They neglect it because it's of no value to them. It's useless
to them. Many of you sit where you are
and you neglect it. God gives you warning, how shall
we escape if we neglect so great salvation? You shall not escape
if you neglect and despise God's salvation. But most do. And here's
the reason why. Most of us don't need it. Most
of us don't need it. You're doing all right. You're
okay. You've never been lost. You don't
need anybody else's righteousness. You don't need somebody else
to make you righteous before God. You don't need atonement
for sin because you don't have any. So you sit smugly where
you are and you listen and you speak politely as you go out
the door, but you think to yourself, shoot, I don't need him. I don't
need God. I don't need God's salvation.
Now, if I get in trouble, I'll call on him, but salvation, righteousness,
grace, Christ, substitution, no, I don't need that. And when
the gospel's preached and we point you to the crucified lamb
of God and say, look yonder to Christ the lamb, look to him
and be saved, all the ends of the earth, you think to yourself,
well, That's all right for those bad folks, but I'm not so bad
God sent me to hell. I'm not so bad God would judge
me for my sin. Now I'm not perfect, mind you,
but I'm not that bad. I'm not that bad. And presuming
that you can make yourself acceptable to God by the whim of your will,
by a decision of your mind, by a prayer you say, by a work you
do, presuming that you can, you stumble over the stumbling stone,
Jesus Christ crucified right into hell, and God takes the
gospel away from you. That's what Paul teaches in Romans
chapter nine, the latter verses of that chapter, and first verses
of chapter 10. He said the Jews, They were ignorant about God's
righteousness. They thought they could do it. They presumed they had God in
their hand. They presumed they could save themselves. But the
Gentiles who did not have the law, but sought righteousness
by faith, when the gospels preached to them, they said, that's what
we need. And they believed on Christ. For Christ is the end
of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes. But
blessed be His name, there are some people in this world who
are here described as those who love God's salvation. Do you? And Merle, I've mulled this thing
over all week long. And I'm here to tell you that
God's people love His salvation. They love it. They love it. The
Puritan Thomas Goodwin made this statement about this verse of
scripture. He said, they love it because it's his, thy salvation. It is the character, he said,
of a holy saint to love salvation itself, not only as his own salvation,
but as God's, as God's that saves him. Now let me show you why
we love God's salvation. I'll make several statements
and I'll give them to you very briefly. You can jot them down
as we move along. We love God's salvation because
of the sheer pleasure of it. because of its performance in
us by God Himself. You see, salvation is not just
something that was decreed by God outside of us in eternity. Salvation was not something that
was purchased and accomplished for us at Calvary without any
experience of our own, though both of those things are true.
Salvation, in our first knowledge of it, is that which we have
experienced in our hearts and in our souls. It is the experience
of God's transforming, amazing grace, whereby He takes the lost
sheep and picks it up as it's slipping down the brink into
hell, lays it on His shoulders and carries it to glory, rejoicing. Salvation is that which God works
in you, according to Philippians 1.6. But God will perform that
which he, or God will perfect that which he has performed in
you until the day of his glory in Christ Jesus. Salvation, as
we've experienced it, gives sheer pleasure to the believer. Turn to, I got many passages
here, but let's just turn to one, 2 Timothy chapter one. Have you ever been in prison?
I mean, sure enough, in prison. I recall when I was a boy, I
got arrested. Fortunately, in God's providence,
the man who arrested me, his daughter kind of had a shine
toward me, and he was just wanting to scare me. He took me downtown,
locked me up, I mean, he locked me up. I sat in the middle of
the night in jail. And I knew if I got out, somebody
would have to come get me out. Because I didn't have any money.
I didn't have any claims. I didn't have any means to escape.
And there I sat in jail. One day, Bobby, God put me in
jail. under the curse of his law and
I sat down on death row condemned waiting for God to execute me
with terror in my soul and I knew if I got out God was going to
have to get me out and he did He came and opened the prison
door and said to the lawful captive, you're free. And I walked out
of that place and I've been free ever since. And I'm gonna tell
you something, I got no interest in going back. None at all. I've
been made free. And this is the experience of
God's grace. This is the pleasure of it. Look
in 2 Timothy 1. God has saved us, verse nine,
and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but
according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us
in Christ Jesus before the world began. Now, that's God's purpose.
Bless God for that. I'll deal with that in just a
little bit, but that's not the experience of it. Salvation began
back in eternity, but insofar as I am concerned, in my pleasurable
enjoyment of it, in the experience of it, salvation came to me in
time. as Paul describes it here in
verse 10, but now, now, is made manifest by the appearing of
our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath
brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. And now, here I am. I've got
the book of God. And I read by faith that the
Lord Jesus Christ speaks to me and declares that I'm forgiven
of all sin forever. And I shall never come into condemnation. Did you hear what Jesus said
to me? You remember the chorus? They're
all taken away. Your sins are pardoned and you're
free. They're all taken away. Secondly,
we do rejoice in God's salvation and love it. because of the plan
of it. Turn to Philippians chapter four
for a second. We love God's salvation because
of the beauty, symmetry, and perfection of his plan and purpose
of grace. Now I'm not going to attempt
to expound that statement. Let me simply declare this fact
plainly revealed in Holy Scripture. Our great, glorious, sovereign
God, in absolute predestination by infinite wisdom, planned and
purposed to save us from eternity, laying up for us everything needed
for the honor of His name and the everlasting good of our souls
in the store and reservoir of His free grace in Jesus Christ
the Lord. And now He supplies all our needs
according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Look at this
in verse 19, 2 Timothy chapter four, verse 19. But my God shall,
he shall supply all your need, temporal, eternal, carnal, spiritual,
physical, and heavenly. My God shall supply all your
need." Look at this now. According to. What a word. What a word. Let's see if I can
illustrate it. If I had some need, some real need,
I was hungry. And Jay Rockefeller found out
about it. And he sent me a $100 check.
Now, I would appreciate a $100 check. I'd go buy some groceries
and see if I couldn't stretch it as far as I could. I'd appreciate
it. I'd sit down and write him a thank you note. I try to be
courteous. But if he gave me a $100 check, and the check was
good, and he sent it to me out of his kindness and his benevolence
toward me, he has supplied me a little bit out of his riches,
because he's got a bunch. He's got a bunch. He bought the
whole state of West Virginia. He got a bunch. He got a bunch.
But if I got a letter from him and he said, Mr. Fortner, I know
your plight and your need, and I've decided that I'm going to
take care of you and your family for the rest of your life. according
to my riches. Now that's another story. That's
another story indeed. That's not a hundred dollar check.
That's not a meal once in a while. Oh no, that's lifetime prosperity. Now you listen to me, children
of God. Our God supplies our needs. of forgiveness and salvation
and grace and eternal life and righteousness and atonement according
to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Now that ought to sail your little
boat. That's good enough. He supplies all our need according
to his riches in glory. We love God's salvation also.
because of the price of it. Look in 1 Peter 1. Now let's go to chapter 3, 1
Peter 3. For Christ also, verse 18, had
suffered for sins the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.
Not that he might possibly bring us to God. That's not what the
text means at all. But he died the just for the
unjust, Lindsay, to make a way to bring us to God. He died the
just for the unjust in order that he might stay holy and just
and righteous and still bring us to God. The Lord Jesus Christ
died under the justice of God as our substitute, bearing our
sins in his body on the tree to the full satisfaction of divine
justice to bring us to God. Look at it now. Being put to
death in the flesh and quickened by the Spirit. He bore our wrath. I sat down late last night and
tried to think, how can I express this? Salvation's free to sinners. Oh, it's so free. It's so free,
it's all right to say it's cheap. It doesn't cost you anything.
It doesn't cost you anything. But it's not free. It costs the
Son of God everything. Ron, he was made sin and he bore
the wrath of God. And now, And this is how I thought I'll
express it. Once it was mine, the cup of wrath, but Jesus drank
it dry. When in my place he bore God's
wrath and for my ransom died. No mortal knows the wrath he
bore, so justly due to me. But all the hell that I deserved,
Christ suffered there for me. Now, Not one drop of wrath remains. It's finished was his cry, and
with one tremendous draft of love, he drank damnation dry. It's done. It's done. We love
God's salvation also because of the perfection of it. The
apostle Paul tells us in Colossians 2 verse 9, In him dwells all
the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And then he makes this, oh, this
marvelous, glorious statement in verse 10. And you are complete
in him. Complete. What on earth does
that mean? Well, to make a long sermon short,
it means this. Everything's done. that there's
nothing lacking. God didn't leave, he didn't leave
one little thread, one little stitch in the garment of righteousness
for you to thread with your hand and fix it up. Nothing left for
you to do. Nothing left for you to make
up. Nothing left for you to finish. Jesus Christ is made of God unto
us. Wisdom and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption. We love God's salvation because
of the promise of it as well. He said, I give to them eternal
life and they shall never perish. This is not a gamble. This is
not something we're kind of betting on. This is not something we
say, well, we hope this will work out. Oh, no, no, no, no.
I cast my helpless, sinful soul flat down on Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, and I cling to him with this confidence. No matter
what hell does, I'll never perish. Never perish. And this confidence
as well. Blessed be His name. No matter
what I do, I'll never perish. This is God's salvation. This
salvation is Him. Christ is my salvation. Now because I've experienced
it and I love it, I say continually, God be magnified. God be magnified.