In the book of Job, chapter 2,
I want you to listen to verse 3. Verse 3, as I read it, And
the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job,
that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright
man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? And still he
holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movest me against him, to
destroy him without cause. I want to speak on a perfect
and an upright man. A perfect and an upright man. Now this is God's testimony here
that we have in Job chapter 2 and verse 3 of his servant Job. Now Satan has come before God
along with the sons of God and the Lord has He gives us testimony,
and he asks Job. These words, Satan hears them
from the mouth of God in reference to Job. The Lord says to Satan,
he says, have you considered, have you considered my servant
Job? Now, these facts are plainly
stated here, and we won't give them in exact order as they're
giving us here in verse three, but these facts are plainly stated
in this third verse. Number one, Job was God's servant. because the Lord plainly said,
hast thou considered my servant Job. And then number two, Job
was a man that feared God and he was a man that hated evil.
He hated evil, he feared the Lord. Now Job had learned by
the grace of God the fear of God in his heart. If any man,
woman, boy or girl has the fear of God in their hearts, It is
because they've learned that fear by the grace of God. Now, God had been revealed in
his heart. The Lord had been revealed. He
knew something about the majesty of God, the awesome majesty of
God Almighty. He knew something about the sovereignty
of God and the greatness of God, and therefore he feared the Lord. Now, In the Old Testament, this
phrase, the fear of God, And you read about the fear of God
often in the Old Testament. This is used for the whole of
piety or the whole of religion as it is discovered in the Old
Testament. Now this fear of God was not
a slavish fear. It was not the terror. Job didn't
have the terror of a slave who had a hard taskmaster who whipped
him often with with a cat of nine tails, or with some other
type of instrument of correction and authority. But Job here,
he feared God, he reverenced God. But the man who had the
fear of God, before his eyes in the Old Testament was one
who believed God. He was one who worshipped God. He was one who loved God, and
he was one who was kept back from sin by the thought of God,
and he was one who was moved to good by the desire to please
God. Now that's what it means to fear
the Lord. Number one, if you fear God, you believe God. You worship God, you love God,
and you're moved by your love for God and your reverence for
Him. You're moved to avoid that which is evil, avoid that which
is sin, and you're moved in your heart toward that which you know
pleases God. Now that's what the fear of God
is involved with. Now, the term the fear of God
was used for all of this that I mentioned to you here already
this morning, and Job had learned the fear of God and so he hated
He hated all evil in himself and all around him because all
evil is contrary to and it's opposed unto God and it's an
attack upon the throne of God and upon the right and the authority
of God. All sin is an attack upon the
throne and justice of Almighty God. Now God makes this statement
concerning Job. He says that he was a perfect
and an upright man." Now these words, perfect and upright, are
not so much a description of Job's activities and the deeds
in his life, but rather it is a description of Job's heart
and his character. It is a description of his heart
and his character. Now I know this is so because
the Bible says that the Lord seeth not as man seeth because
the Lord looketh on the heart. Man looks on the outward appearance
but the Lord looks the heart and so when God said that Job
was a perfect and an upright man he wasn't talking about now
the outward appearance here is of Job and he certainly was outwardly
he was a good man he was a godly man he was a holy man now when
God looked on Job's heart and Not only his speech now or not
only his outward deeds, he said, this man is a perfect and an
upright man. Now we're not discounting that
Job had a good life outwardly and that he lived good outwardly.
Now we know that Job was a perfect man because God said so, and
that settles the matter. If God said he was a perfect
and an upright man, then we accept that because God said it. Now
our work here this morning is to find out what God means. what
God means by that statement, have you considered my servant
Job who is a perfect and an upright man. Now I'd like to know what
the Bible is talking about in regards to a man being perfect
and a man being upright. Now we know that this is also
by the Word of God. We know also by the Word of God
that Job was not sinless in the flesh. If you read the book of
Job, Job did not claim sinless perfection. He said in Job 40
and verse 4, he says, Behold, I am vile. And in Job 9 and 20,
he says, If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn
me. If I say I am perfect, my own
mouth shall prove me to be perverse. And so Job laid no claim to sinless
perfection. He did not claim to be without
sin in the flesh. Without question, Job was a sinful
man after the flesh. He had many faults, and you can
see it throughout the book of Job. If you've got an eye to
see it, you can see the Holy Spirit makes no effort to cover
it up. Job is indeed a sinful man. Well, God says Job was a
perfect man, and how can both be true? How can a man be a perfect
man and an upright man and yet at the same time be a sinner
after the flesh? How can he be sinful and still
be a perfect and an upright man? Well, to many, this is a paradox. And it is a riddle, unexplainable
riddle, how a man can be perfect and upright and at the same time
have a sinful nature. Now there are others like Job
in the Bible. Let me give you some examples.
Number one, Noah in Genesis 6 and verse 9. These are the generations
of Noah, the Bible says. Noah was a just man and he was
perfect in his Allow us to forget. that Noah
had his faults because Noah, if you remember, did fall into
a drunken stupor after the great flood came. And Noah got off
of that ark and he fell into a drunken stupor. And so therefore,
Noah was a man who was perfect in his generations, but yet he
also had his faults. He was not sinless, he had faults. Now Abraham also God commanded
Abraham and he told him, he said, you walk before me and be thou
perfect. That's what God told Abraham
to do. He said, you walk before me and you be perfect. Now, beloved,
the walk of Abraham, as far as his walk and his deeds and his
life were concerned, they were anything but perfect. The life
of Abraham? Study the life of Abraham and
you will find that even though God said, you walk before me
and be perfect, Abraham was not a perfect man. He was not a sinless
man He was not a man who was without fault and another thing
Let me mention this Zachariah and Elizabeth in Luke chapter
1 in verses 5 through 20 We know that Zacharias he was a priest
and these and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron and they
were the parents of John the Baptist and And you remember
that the angel came and told Zacharias that he was going to
have a son. He was going to be John the Baptist.
And you remember that there in verse 6 of Luke 1, the testimony
concerning Zacharias and Elizabeth was this. They were both righteous
before God. walking in all the commandments
and the ordinances of the Lord blameless. That's what the Bible
says about them. They were righteous people and
they were walking before God in the ordinance of God and they
were blameless people, Zacharias and Elizabeth. Yet God, if you'll
read that chapter in verse 20, He struck Zacharias speechless
for nine months because of his terrible, sinful unrelief. When the angel told him what
was going to happen, he just didn't believe it. And so he
was struck speechless until the baby was born. Somebody said,
well, we'll name him Zacharias. And boy, he wouldn't have that.
And so he wrote down, his name shall be John. And as soon as
he wrote down his name shall be John, he was able to speak
again. But beloved, because of his unbelief,
it was a man who was blameless. It was a man who was righteous.
But because of his unbelief, God struck him speechless all
the days that his wife, even before his wife conceived. and
all the time that she was carrying this child. And it was because
of unbelief. So you have the examples in the
Bible of men whom the Bible speaks of as being blameless, perfect,
upright men, but yet they were not sinless men. Yet they were
not men without faults. They all had faults. Now, I've
said all of this to say this, that the Bible does not teach
the doctrine of sinless perfection in the flesh. It does not teach
that. Such doctrine is contrary to
everything that's taught in the Word of God, and it's contrary
to everything that we experience in this world day by day as the
children of God. Our experience is not one of
sinless perfection. Perfection now in first John
chapter 1 if you have your Bible you should turn there first John
chapter 1 I want us to read here from this chapter beginning with
verse 8 first John 1 and verse 8 and it says this that if we
say That we have no sin. This is present tense if we say
that we have no sin right now Then we deceive ourselves and
the truth is not in us. 1 John 1 and 8. Now then we go
on. It says, but if we confess our
sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now look at verse 10. If we say
that we have not sinned, that's past tense. if we say that we've
not sinned in our lives and before this time we make him a liar
and his word is not in us. Now John is talking here about
believers he's talking to the children of God and he says this
he says that if we say that we don't have sin we make him a
liar and his word is not in us. Now then the man who claims Sinless
perfection is a proud, he's a vain, he's a wicked, he's a perverse
liar is what he is. A man who says that he has no
sin. A man who says that he doesn't have any faults. What could be
more wicked, what could be more obnoxious to God than for a proud
sinner to stand in the face of God and tell Him that he doesn't
know what he's talking about, that he doesn't know the truth,
and that God is lying when He says that all men have sin and
that there's not a man on the face of the earth that doeth
good and sinneth not? And so Spurgeon said this, he
said, nothing discovers an evil heart more surely than glorying
in its own goodness. He that proclaimeth his own praise
publisheth his own shame. Now someone said, I never met
but one perfect man in my life and that one man was a perfect
nuisance. Now beloved, it is so. Anybody
that you meet that lays claim to being perfect is indeed a
perfect nuisance. And if you have to live around
them and live with them, you will find out that they're a
nuisance indeed because they claim to be without sin and they
claim to be without fault. Now then, We know that the doctrine
of sinless perfection in the flesh is a blasphemous heresy. It is heresy and we must not
for one minute believe that the Bible teaches it. Now I do not
think that many here will have any trouble with the statement
that I've just made that this doctrine is indeed heresy to
believe that you can live without sin and that you do not have
any sin in this life. Yet the root Now you listen to
me carefully here. The root and the essence of this
doctrine is so pleasing to our proud flesh that it is common
for us who know better to embrace it in some areas. Our talk, our
speech betrays us that we have embraced this erroneous blasphemous
heresy in some areas of our spiritual constitution and thinking. How often have you said or heard
someone else say such things as insinuate the possibility
of sinless perfection? Let me give you some examples
of this. We listen to what religious people say. I've heard a lot
of preachers talk in my time, and I've heard some on the television,
I've heard some on radio, I've heard some on tapes, and I have
heard preachers say when they counsel those who are in trouble
and they have trials in their lives, and they say to those
people, they say, you have any sin in your life then confess
it now then this implies when they say if you have any sin
in your life this implies the possibility that there is no
sin in their life now beloved listen there's no need for if
there is no need for if there is sin in your life and you best
acknowledge it this morning, and if you will not acknowledge
it this morning, then you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ. There is sin in every one of
our lives. I heard a man say that a believer
does not have to sin. He said a believer doesn't have
to sin. He can live in this world. He don't have to sin. Well, you
say this, but now listen to me this morning. It is not compelled
by any law of God that you sin. It is not compelled by any word
from God in the Bible that you sin. But beloved, it is sure
enough compelled by what you are and by your perverse nature
that you will sin and you cannot live in this world apart from
sin. As long as we live in this world,
we live in the flesh, and as long as we live in the flesh,
we live with sin, it's a continual part of our being. It is a continual. Did you get that? part of our
being. There's no escaping sin not for
a moment in this world. Now we talk as though that we
could get away from sin by just getting away from the television
or getting away from the movie theater or getting away from
literature, certain literature and books and magazines and so
on. If we could just get away from
certain influences in the world, we could get away from sin altogether. But beloved, listen to me this
morning. Sin is mixed with everything that we do. It's mixed with everything. There is not one of us here right
now. And here you are in a religious
service. Here you are this morning and
you're sitting here listening to somebody try to preachify
the truth of God, preach the word to you, and you're sitting
here and listening. And as you do so, there is not
a one of you here, including the preacher and the pulpit,
that right now is not full of S-I-N. Every one of us are full
of sin. In our worship, sin, self-righteousness,
is mixed with that worship. You call upon a brother to read
the scriptures. And as he's reading the scriptures,
he's thinking about, well, what's people going to think about my
reading ability? What's people going to think?
Can they tell the degree of education I have by my reading? And then
you call on a brother to pray, and he stands up, but who is
he concerned about? Many, many times he says, well,
I just wonder what the brethren will think about this prayer.
I wonder what people will think about it. I mean, my public prayer. Will it be acceptable? Will everybody
think it's okay? Will there's somebody find fault
with it? And all the time they're trying
to address and trying to carry our hearts off to the throne
of God. But you know I'm telling you the truth. We're thinking
about something else. And every time that the preacher
gets up to preach, Every time he begins to preach, he's constantly
aware of the people to whom he's preaching. And he wonders about
their opinion. And maybe he thinks more of their
opinion than he does the opinion that God has of what he's saying
and how he's saying it. And with what kind of a heart
that he's saying it. He's more concerned about that.
Now what I'm trying to say is that sin is mixed. with everything
that we do, and we cannot get away from it. It comes into the
house of God with us. It goes with us every place. This whole perverse, sinful nature
that we were born with, that we received, that was passed
down to us from our forebears. and so therefore sin is mixed
with everything we do. Now the doctrine, hear me out,
I'm talking about how that somehow or other the root and the essence
of this doctrine of sinless perfection is so appealing to our flesh
that we incorporate it into our spiritual constitution and we
act as if it was true even when we know the Bible teaches it
is not true. Now the doctrine of progressive
sanctification That is the teaching that we can progressively, gradually
become more and more holy in the flesh. It's rooted in the
notion that sinless... Don't turn me off before I get
done here. If I can by my deeds, If I can
by my diligence, if I can by my dedication and devotion to
God become more and more holy in my being, more and more holy
in the sight of God, if I can do so gradually, then I can do
so perfectly. Can I not? If I can day by day,
new heights I'm gaining, as that song says, and there ain't much
truth in it, new heights I'm gaining, if I can daily get better
and better and better, then why not, sooner or later, become
perfect, completely perfect and free? from this thing called
sin. If I can get a little better
today, a little better tomorrow, then I can eventually get rid
of this thing called sin. sinlessly perfect. Well, it's
not so. We know that the Bible does not
teach the possibility of sinless perfection in this life. Yet
the words perfect and perfection are used throughout the Bible
to describe the people of God in this world. And how can it
be said that a true believer in Christ is a perfect and an
upright man? Well, now let me make this clear.
These are things that are very important that I say, and I hope
that you this morning will have a clear enough mind to hear what
I'm saying. I want to make this clear to
you this morning that we must not excuse our sin, ever, in
anything, in any way, we must never excuse our sin. We do not make any excuse for
it. There is no excuse. for evil thoughts and for deeds,
actions, these are all due to our own perverse nature. They're due to our own natures. And we cannot make an excuse.
There is no, what's the word? Well, I can't
get it right now, but it's, what is it? It's right. There is no extenuating circumstances. It's in there just isn't any
excuse for it We cannot say we cannot blame anybody for it.
It's ours. Our sin is our own It comes from
our own nature beloved. This is why we preach constantly. I Want you to get this? This
is why that I'm preaching all the time here that as sinners
and That's what we are that we must trust Christ alone, Christ
only, as the all in all of our hope, the hope of our salvation. There is no possible way that
we can make a contribution to our salvation. Salvation's got
to be entirely all together of Jesus Christ and Him alone. Now
listen to me, we do not come to God first of all as a sinner,
an out and out, down and out, hopeless sinner and trust Christ
to save us and then we come the next day a little less sinner
because we got a little better and then a little bit better
next week, next month, a year from now, two years from now
we're getting a little better so we keep coming as a little
less sinner all the time Larry until finally we come as a perfect
saint unto the Lord. No, my friend, that's not the
way it is. That's not the way it is at all.
We come to God in the beginning. We come to God the next day and
all through our pilgrimage here as a hopeless, as a helpless,
as a guilty sinner, trusting Christ and Christ only for our
acceptance with God. We do not get rid. We do not
get past. being sinners in this world. You never get past being a sinner
in this world. There is no place from the gate
of hell to the gate of heaven where a child of God can in my life. There is no place
you can ever look back to and say when I was there I really
deserved the merit of God, the favor of God, the goodness of
God, the love of God. No, no place from the gate of
hell to the gate of heaven can a child of God lay claim to any
merit of his own. You know it's true and I know
it's true. Now there seems to me to be five biblical definitions
of this word perfection that we can find in the Word of God
that will explain to us how that a man can be perfect and upright
and yet still be a man who has a sinful nature, a corrupt nature,
a man with faults, a woman with faults here in this world. Now
first of all And I don't know whether I'm going to make this
or not, but first of all, in Philippians chapter 3, if you
want to turn there with me, Philippians 3. And I'd like to read verses 7
through 15. And here's my first statement.
Here's what the word perfection in the Bible. I'm trying to give
you a Bible definition of the word perfection. What was God
talking about when he told Satan? He said, have you considered
my servant Job? He is a perfect And an upright
man. Well, here's what I'm saying. Perfection, number one, is the
goal. It's the G-O-A-L of our lives. The goal of our lives. Philippians 3. Now listen to
what Paul says here. He says, but what things were
gained to me, in Philippians 3 and 7, those I counted loss
for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do
count them but done that I may win Christ, and be found in him,
not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that
which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith, that I may know him, and the power of his
resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings, being made
conformable unto his death, if by any means I might attain unto
the resurrection of the dead." Now listen to verse 12 here,
and he says this, not as though I had already attained, either
were already perfect. But I follow after, if that I
may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ
Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself
to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting those
things which are behind, reaching forth unto those things which
are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as
be perfect, be thus minded, and if in anything you be otherwise
minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Now then, the
goal of the believer is perfection. Now let me explain something
here. We do not pretend that we are perfect. Nor do we hope
to be perfect as long as we live here in this world. But if we
are believers and we're in union as true believers are with the
Lord Jesus Christ, we cannot be satisfied with anything short
of absolute perfection. You just simply can't be satisfied. David said he would be satisfied
only when he would awake in the likeness of God. When I'm like
God, David said, I'll be satisfied, and I won't be satisfied until
I do awaken his likeness. Now, if I could speak for you
today, and speak also for myself, I would say that if we could,
if we could, we would not sin. And this is the attitude of a
true believer. If we could have what we desire
from God this morning, if we could have it in our hearts,
it would be that from this day on, that we would never again
commit another sin. If we could truly have, that's
the attitude of a true believer before God. They would, that
they were perfect, and that they never made a mistake, and that
they never caused anybody to stumble. that they never hindered
anybody. They would, but they could be
perfect. That's what they want. That's what they desire. Now,
sin is an attack upon the throne of God, as we said before, upon
the throne of God and our Father and the true child of God. He
hates sin in his heart of hearts. He hates it. He doesn't like
it. And yet, I recognize, after saying these things to you this
morning, As long as I live in this world, in this body of flesh,
I will sin. I will sin as long as I'm in
this body. Perfection is the mark we set
for ourselves, what we're seeking after, what we're longing for,
and what we're praying for. A.J. Gordon said this. He said,
I would rather aim at perfection and fall short of it than aim
at imperfection and fully attain it. Now, as believers, we're
aiming at perfection with the full knowledge that we will never
attain perfection in this life. We will never be perfect. It's
a goal for us, but we're never going to be perfect in this world
in the flesh. Now, all I know about Christ
and all I know about the gospel of his grace, all that I've experienced
of him and of his divine mercy and all I hope for in eternity
continually compels me to seek after three things briefly. Let me get to you quickly. Now
I'm speaking on point number one that perfection is the goal
of the believer. There are three things that I
want to Three things I'd like to have today right here in this
world. Number one, and that is perfect
communion with my God. I don't have that now. There
are times when I can pray. There are times when I can seek
the Lord. There are times when my heart is as cold as any stone
you can find out here in this parking lot this morning. There
are times when I don't have any communion at all with God, don't
feel like I do. And there are times when it seems
like I'm going backwards instead of forward spiritually and I'm
not making any progress. But what I'd like to have is
perfect communion with my God. I'd like to be able to everything
be all right, never for Him to hide His face, always be able
to come into His presence and to be able to speak with Him
as a friend to a friend. I'd like to be always able to
do that. But we can't do that, can we? But I'd like to have
that. And another thing, I pray and
seek after if God will give it to me, and that is a perfect
submission to the divine will. a perfect submission to God's
will, never to murmur, never to murmur anymore, but to be
perfectly submitted unto God and to what He does in His providence,
never to complain, just submit myself unto God and whatever
He does, and say, Amen, it is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth
Him good. Now the third thing is this,
I want perfect conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ. I want
to be like Him. I want to be like Christ. And
the day will come when we will be like Him, because the Bible
says we're going to see Him as He is, and when we see Him as
He is, then we're going to be like Him. We're going to be like
the Lord Jesus. And we've been predestinated
to that end, to be conformed to the image of God's Son. And
these are the things I want. I desire, I'm aiming at them
and that's my desire is that I might attain these. But I know
in my heart of hearts that I will never have these things in this
life. I know I'll never have perfect
communion with God. I know that I will never be fully
surrendered and submissive to the will of God where I never
open my mouth regardless of whatever happens. I know that in this
life I'll not be completely like Christ. I won't! Not in this
life. Baxter said this, that life,
this life, he said, was not intended to be a place of perfection. Here's what he said, but a place
of our preparation for it. This is a place where you discover
your imperfection. This is a place where you have
that appetite created in you by God for perfection. Here is the place where you struggle
for it. Here is the place where you pray
for it and seek it and desire it with all of your heart. But
it's not the place of perfection. You'll never find it here in
this world. And when I drop this robe of
flesh and rise to meet my Savior in the sky, then shall I attain
this perfection and not till then. Now the second of these
five definitions or descriptions of perfection is found in 1st
Kings chapter 15 and if you would turn back there with me 1st Kings
chapter 15 and let me make this statement And that is this, that
perfection describes the sincerity, the sincerity of the heart of
the believer. Now this is what God meant about
old Joe when he said he's a perfect and an upright man is that that
man is sincere. That man is not a fraud. He's not a fake. He's real. This man is sincere. Now here
in first Kings chapter 15, Let me begin here in verse 3
And it's talking about Abijam who is mentioned in in verse
1 of 1st Kings 15 And it says he walked in all the sins of
his father Which he had done before him and his heart was
not perfect with the Lord his God Now you listen to this as
the heart of David his father Abijam's heart was not perfect
toward the Lord his God as the heart of David, his father. And then let's skip over here
to verse 11. And Asa, here's another character,
and Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord as David,
his father. And he took away the Sodomites
out of the land, removed all the idols that his father had
made, And then we see that his mother, in verse 13, even her
he removed from being queen in Israel because she had made an
idol in a grove and Asa destroyed her idol and burned it by the
brook Kidron. You see, this fellow was very
zealous, went right into his own mother's house, took her
off the throne and burned her idol. Got her idols out of the
house and took them and burned them. In verse 14, but the high
places were not removed. But the higher places where the
Israelites practiced their idolatry, they were not removed. Nevertheless,
Asa's heart was perfect with the Lord all his days. Now then, I'm not surprised about
Abijah, that his heart was not perfect before the Lord. The
thing that surprises me, I guess, is that God says that King David's
and Asa's heart were perfect before the Lord. That's what
surprises me. Well, what does it mean? Well,
David's life was not perfect, you know that. He was a man,
and we ought, now listen, he was a godly man, David was, and
we ought to covet the life of David, and I'm in no position
to find any fault with David. I'm in no position to criticize
David, and I know what he did, and the Spirit of God doesn't
cover up and hide and conceal what he did, but in the general
tenor of life, I would to God that every one of us here in
this room could live like David lived. I would to God we could
live that way, with a heart of sincerity toward the Lord, and
we could live in faith as David did. Now, Asa was a godly man.
He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and we explain
what he did. He did what was right in the
Lord's sight, and the Bible says his heart was perfect. Nevertheless,
there were some things that he didn't do. And so, we see here
that God's people, none of us are perfect in our actions, none
of us are perfect in our deeds. or in our thoughts but the Lord's
people are sinners right down to the very last of them and
you mark it down if we are God's people we have, if we're truly
the Lord's sheep if we have truly been united to Him in faith if
God has come to live in our hearts if the Lord has set up His Spirit
and Kingdom in our very souls we are on a We are sincere in
our hearts. In our heart of hearts, we are
sincere before God. And we are not trying to kid
God, fool God. We talk to God, we tell God. Listen, a true child of God has
things in his heart. There are things that go through
our minds that we wouldn't tell anybody but God Almighty. We'll tell Him. We'll talk to
him about various things that we imagine and thoughts that
we know that wouldn't be acceptable maybe to our brethren and sisters
in the Lord, but we're honest before God. Lord, you know what
I am. You know what my situation is.
You know the things that go through my mind. And I'm not hiding anything
from you. If it wasn't for the blood of
Christ, then I'd have no hope. You know what I am by nature.
You know my nature. You know how sinful I am and
imperfect I am. So a true child of God is sincere. They have a perfect heart before
the Lord in this regard. The believer knows himself to
be a sinner as if he was the only one on the face of the earth. You know what that publican said?
He said, God be merciful to me, the sinner. I'm the only one
for which I'm concerned. I'm the only one there is. The
sinner. God be merciful to me. And that's
the way every true child of God deals with the Lord is God. Lord,
you know what I am. I'm not talking about what my
brother is. I'm not talking about my sister in the Lord. I'm not
talking about somebody else. You know what I am. And you know
the truth about me. And Lord, I wanna be honest with
you. You know my true state. You're
my only hope. The believers sincerely trust
Christ only. That's how his heart is perfect
for the Lord. He trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's sincere
about that. And he doesn't have any fake
trust. Excuse me. People stand around and talk
about, well, we trust the Lord. God knows whether you do or not,
whether you truly trust the Lord or not. The believer sincerely
rests his soul upon the merits of Christ. I hear people talk
about righteousness and And sometimes I wonder if they know anything
about where the merit comes from that saves the soul from everlasting
hell. The merit that saves your soul
is the merit to the Lord Jesus Christ. They're not my merit,
your merit, somebody else's merit. They're the merit of a true believer
sincerely trusts the merit of the Lord Jesus. The true believer
loves Christ, but he won't brag about it. You can't get him to
brag about it. He won't brag about it because
he knows that even if he loves Christ, his love is so foreshortened. What it ought to be, that he
don't dare brag about it. He won't brag about it. Now you
remember old Peter? The Lord Jesus said, Lovest thou
me, Peter, more than these? Talking about the other disciples.
He said, You love me more than these? And Peter said, Well. He said, Lord, you know all things.
And Lord, you know about that episode back there when I was
talking to that maid. You know what I said to her.
And you know that I cursed you and cursed your name and denied
that I ever knew you. You know that. You know all things. But Lord, you know this too.
You know that I love you. You know it. You know it, Lord.
Maybe nobody else in all the world knows it, but you know
that I love you. Now that's sincerity. That's the kind of heart David
had. That's the kind of heart Asa had. There was things missing
in their life, all kinds of problems and sins and weaknesses and faults
and failings. Their heart was sincere toward
God. They knew God and they knew and
they trusted the Lord. Now the believers sincerely trust
God. I know that we murmur, but would
you in your heart of hearts, would you really, now I mean
when you really get down to it, in your heart of hearts, knowing
what you know about God, Knowing what you know about his sovereignty
about his wisdom Would you have God to change anything in your
life? Would you have him to change
anything really? Would you have him to to really
now to go back and to make a difference for you? You knowing what you
know now beloved a sincere soul before God would say well I Now
if I could live my life over, I'd do it different. But being
as it's been lived, and I can't do anything about it, I'll have
to trust it with God. I just leave it right there,
and I don't want God. Now you know sometimes when our
loved ones are taken out of this world, and they're gone, and
we can't bring them back, and there are times whenever this
bereavement, they cause us a great deal of agony and pain, And loneliness
is the ultimate poverty. And when you're brought to where
you have no one, and you get the last one of your close ones,
loved ones, and they be taken out of the world. But after they're
gone, you just could not bring yourself
to say, Lord, I just wish they could have lived here forever.
I just wish they could have been here forever, because we know,
we know with what God has taught us, that man was not made to
live here forever. He cannot live here forever in
a body of sin. Because of sin, a man, woman
cannot live here forever, and it's right for God to take them.
And a true believer is sincere. Lord, I wouldn't have you to
bring them back. I wouldn't have you to. I know
you're gonna bring them with you when you come, but I would
not have them to be here under the conditions that they were
living in here in this world. Now, then a believer is sincere,
heart of hearts, really, we are submissive unto God. And the
words of the old song says, all to Jesus I surrender, all to
Him I freely give. I would ever love and trust Him,
and in His presence daily live. Well, now that's two of the definitions. It's 10 minutes till 12. And
there's three more. There's no way in the world I
could ever get through them. And so, what I'm going to do
is I'm just going to put it away, and we're just going to stop
right there. And then, by the grace of God, whenever the Lord
permits, we'll take it up again, and we'll try to get through
the rest of it. And so, The Lord willing, we'll
do so just as soon as we can. But the two things that we discussed
was that perfection is not in our flesh. And we showed you that perfection
is to be the goal of the child of God, and we showed you that
perfection lies in a sincere heart toward God, not in our
being perfect after the flesh. It lies in the sincerity. Now
there's three others that we're going to mention, and that it
has to do with our maturity as the grace of God matures in our
souls, and that it has to do with our standing before God,
and it has to do with our ultimate perfection in ultimate glorification. It has to do with that. And so
we're going to discuss those things later when God enables
us to, and maybe we'll do it next week. Maybe I'll just start
over again. I don't think there's anybody
here who couldn't afford to listen to this again. I mean, you listen
to reruns, don't you? And a lot of folks, they get
videos four and five times and watch movies, and so there wouldn't
be anything wrong listening to a sermon like this more than
once. Because this is very important.
I wish I could have heard this years ago when I was a young
man. I wish somebody would have preached this to me. I'd just
love to got a hold of this when I was about 18, 19, 20 like David
there and like these fellows here. If they can get this, they
got something that most people in the world don't know a thing
on earth about. Most people, if you ask them
this morning, how, well, what about this perfect and upright
man? What kind of man is he? And they
just tell you, well, he's just a man that don't have no sin.
And there ain't a bit of truth to it. It's not true. It's not
true. Well, may the Lord bless. Let's
have prayer. Father, we thank you for your
word, your truth this morning. We ask that you will bless this
message and that you will use it. Kindle in our hearts a desire
to know you better and to seek after you with all of our hearts.
We pray it in Christ's name. Amen.