Good morning. I'd like to start off my message
this morning to tell you a little story, a true story, it's history,
and give you a little background about what we're going to look
at. Before the 1600s, so back in
the 1500s sometime, we didn't have a complete authorized version
of the scripture where it was translated from what was the
original script to something that we can read in English.
There may have been pieces and parts of it, but there really
wasn't a full, complete, what we call today the Bible, we have
it sitting in front of us that we could read. In that day, you
had to rely totally on the church And they told you what to believe,
you see, because they were the only ones that could read it.
And you can consider that today is how many men and women go
to services of place and they don't even bring a Bible. They
don't even know what the message they're hearing. Where is that
coming from? Is that true? So you have to
rely and totally trust the person who's giving you that information
that they're giving it to you in truth. Few men dared to preach
the truth in that day. The same is true today. In that
day, Catholicism set up councils and they would bring in these
men who dared to preach the truth and they would question them.
And basically this was not a question to find out answers. This was
a questioning in order to find them guilty because they didn't
like what they were saying. And there was a man in that day,
his name is really not important, But he was tried by them, and
he was found guilty of them to have preached the gospel. And
they sentenced him to be burned. That word comes off our mouth
pretty easy. We think about, well, he was burned at the stake.
But you think, this man, we don't think of that in terms of today,
but this man was told, you're going to die, and you're going
to be burned with fire in the middle of town, and people are
going to stand around and watch. He spent two weeks in prison
having this on his mind, and the day came for his execution. And they walked him out, and
he had a long way to go, he said, before he got to the center of
town. He wasn't even from this major city where he was. And
he saw, standing right down in front, the whole town had crowded
around, but they had brought his wife and his 10 children.
And they all stood there as he was being walked up there. It's
one thing to have to die and to go through all that, but it's
another to have to go through all that and see your wife and
your children all standing right in front of you. What do you
say? What do you do? He kissed his
wife and he told his children, because they were at that time
crying, saying, Daddy, please come home. Just say what they
want you to say and come home. You can imagine how this probably
tore at his heart. But he said he was doing what
he was about to do, going to be burned because he loved them,
and he didn't come there to deny his Lord. And then the Catholic
priest or whoever the guy was that had sentenced him stood
up and he asked him, he said, do you have any last words? And
you think about this because, you know, your last words, he
had had some time to think about what he was going to say for
those two weeks. that he was locked in prison realizing he
was going to die. What was it that he would say?
Because to some, his last words were the first words they had
ever heard him say. And to his family, these would
be the last words, the last things that this man say, I want this
to be what I'm remembered to have said. You've known my life
and this is what I stand for. And the words that it used when
I read about this story, it was called Psalm Miserere. I don't
know if I pronounced that right, it's Latin. But it's called the
Psalm of Repentance, Psalm of Mercy. And so for some, this
is the only words that they ever heard from this man. And he was
saying, all who know me and many who do not, this is what I want
you to know about me. I've stood for this and I believe
in these words. and now I'm going to die for
it. This psalm is Psalm 51, and if you'll turn over to Psalm
51, we'll read that together in its entirety first. This is a psalm familiar to us
as David's psalm that he gave after he was talking with Nathan
the prophet who told him that, you know, you're the man who
killed, you know, Uriah and took his wife. And he had borne this
grief and stuff inside and hadn't confessed his sin and he had
held this in and, you know, it led David to write this psalm.
So yes, these are the words of David, but these are also the
words that are wordspake on the cross. So yes, they're both,
but this man that stood before all these people about to be
burned and die said also, these are my words, and these are my
words that I want you to hear from me. So we'll read Psalm
51, verse one. He says, have mercy upon me,
O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude
of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions, Wash me throughly
from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge
my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee
and thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight,
that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and clear
when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity. and in sin did my mother conceive
me. Behold, thou desirest truth in
the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me
to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall
be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter
than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness,
that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy
face from my sins, blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me
a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast
me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit
from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy
salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I
teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted
unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness,
O God, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue sing aloud of thy
righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips, and
my mouth shall show forth thy praise. For thou desirest not
sacrifice, or else I would give it. and thou delightest not in
burnt offering? The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, wilt thou not despise? Do good in thy good pleasure
unto Zion. Build thou the walls of Jerusalem,
then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness,
and with burnt offering and whole burnt offering, then shall they
offer books upon thine altar. So these were this man's last
words to all these people in front of him. And there's three
things in this, I have three points to my message, three things
contained in this that I believe what this man is saying that
I must have. And this is why I want you to
hear this as maybe even my only words. I must have mercy, I must
have a sacrifice, and I must have glory. So first, first words
of this song, have mercy upon me, O God." That's saying to
be gracious, show mercy, to show favor. Mercy is not getting what
I deserve, what I rightly do deserve to get. It's not getting
that. And this is the first thing, before he asks for anything,
he asks for mercy. God show mercy unto me. You see,
there's many other things that I need and I'm going to ask for,
but without mercy, they're meaningless. What if you got all these other
things, but if you didn't have mercy, you're lost from the beginning. You have to start here. You have
to start with mercy. If I don't have this, it's over.
You only ask for what you really need. You see, because you can't
provide it yourself. If you could provide it for yourself,
then you wouldn't be asking for it. You would at least try to
come up with it. If He doesn't provide it, if
God doesn't provide mercy to me, who will? Am I going to rely
on somebody else to show mercy unto me? Who can? Can someone else show mercy unto
me? It's not just even an issue of whether they will, they can't.
Only God can show mercy. The scripture says in Deuteronomy
4, for the Lord thy God is a merciful God. So this is part of who God
is, it's part of his character. His character, or his nature,
determines what he will do. God is merciful, so therefore
God will show mercy. So that's why he appeals unto
God, I need mercy, have mercy upon me. Scripture says in Psalm
62, unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy. So not only is it part
of God's character, mercy, it's his right, he says, unto thee. So it's coming from God. And
secondly, he says, belongeth mercy. Belongeth mercy is he
has the power to perform it. So you see, if you are Let's
say that you are convicted of a crime and you come to me and
you say, well, have mercy on me. I can't do you any good.
I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a judge. I'm not the
jailer. I can't help you. So we go to God because he's
the only one who can fulfill this need and he's the only one
who has the ability to do it. This is part of his character.
So I must know where I'm coming. I'm coming to the Lord for mercy.
And because mercy belongeth unto Him, it's up to Him, that's why
I fear God. Because you see, it's in His
hands. Only God can show mercy to me. This is something that I can't
provide and I can't get. Scripture says, I will be gracious
unto whom I will be gracious. And I will show mercy to whom
I will show mercy. So you see, you'll only fear
what you can't control. And worship without fear is not
worship. God, in this case, is not our
buddy. This is the Holy Lord God. And He says, I will be gracious
to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy to whom I will
show mercy. God is sovereign. That means
He can do as He pleases without respect to how I feel about it.
And to some, the fact that God is sovereign and may show mercy
to whom He will This will only ever be unfair. I can't believe
in a God like that. God can't show mercy to everyone
and he does as he pleases. He can choose to pass by some
and give it to others. That's unfair. But yet, these
same people don't hold themselves to the same standard they hold
God to. Do you love everybody? Everybody with that exception?
Well, of course not. then why would we try to hold
God to the same standard that we ourselves don't hold ourselves
to? This just speaks to the fallen state of man. God's not like
us. He holds us to the same standard
He holds Himself. And He proved that when He turned
His back on His Son, when sin was found on Him. To some, this
will only ever be unfair. But to those who have seen His
face, they'll cry, Lord have mercy upon me because only with
thee is found mercy. Mercy is only mercy if you're
guilty. If you're not guilty, you don't
need mercy. It's very simple. If mercy is
only for the guilty, Don't you think we should understand a
little bit more about what being guilty is? We can't just assume,
you know, if we don't understand what guilty is that we can say
that it applies to me. Well, apart from understanding
sin, we'll never understand ourselves as being truly guilty. See, sin
is two things. It's what you are and that it's
your nature. It controls your desires. It
controls your thoughts. It's the reasons behind you do
what you do. And this is what we were born
in. Scripture says we're born in sin. And that's why in verse
10 of our text, David, the psalmist asks, create in me a clean heart,
oh God. And what can we infer by looking
at this? Create is, it's not there. I'm
going to have to have you create it or else I would have done
it myself. God has to create in me a new heart because what
I have is not clean. I can't come up with it. The
one I have is unclean. I can't come up with a clean
heart. It's perverted. It's unclean. It can only sin. This is why it controls my natures. It can't decide to be clean part
of the time and then unclean the other time. It's only one
or the other. So sin is what you are. Sin is
also what you do. These are the results of having
an unclean heart. Your actions, your works, And
that's why in the rest of that verse 10, he says, renew a right
spirit within me. Right there actually means firm,
stable, established, fixed. That's why we feel sometimes
caught between one way or another. There are times we feel so full.
You come, you hear the gospel preach, you think, I couldn't
believe this anymore at this moment than I ever have in my
life. and you think right now if I died I feel like you know
the Lord would save me and I would go to heaven and you know I just
my feeling but then we pull out of the parking lot and curse
the first guy that's going too slow in front of us down Todd's
Road. You know, we're not even out of here five minutes. And
we see, and all that spirit just fades. You catch yourself. You
just, you know, you're so disappointed with yourself. And it's only
ever this way. We don't ever get beyond sin
because our flesh is always here when we're in this life. But
yet, to those who have a clean heart created in them, you have
some awareness of the sin. That doesn't mean we can control
it, but we can see that it's there. But without that clean
heart, you'll never see that it's there. But to those who
do, this right spirit, the psalmist is saying, renew a right spirit
in me. It's gone again, and I can't
make it come back, and only the Lord can. So what these two things
are is, one is, we call this renew a right spirit. This is
called what we'd say is conversion. So when, you know, Peter, when
the Lord told Peter, you know, when thou art converted, strengthen
thy brethren. It's not that Peter wasn't saved
at that time, but Peter, a man subject to the nature of the
flesh, still fell. You know, we fall daily and the
Lord has to renew and thus restore our spirit. So this is something
that occurs daily, renew a right spirit. Regeneration is this
one-time only act of create a clean heart. When you create something,
it is there. It's not that it's created, destroyed,
created, destroyed. It's created, it's there. So
this is what we call regeneration and the one-time act and conversion
is something that happens every day. So this thing of a right
spirit, firm and established, I kind of was trying to think
on that a little bit, so I looked at where that word right was
used elsewhere in the scripture. And this blessed me. It's the
same word, this firm, established, as when the ark was being carried
by the priests over the River Jordan. And at that time, the
River Jordan parted, and the priests went in and said they
stood on firm, dry ground. Fixed so you see when that Right
spirit is renewed within me. I'm so firm. I'm so fixed. I can see Christ I can believe
in him and they stood in there and they were unmoved unmoved
apart from Christ But as soon as they crossed over all that
firm dry ground that disappeared, that River Jordan, which you
can use that to represent what sin is in our flesh, it came
back over and over spilled its bounds and you can't stand in
that river. There's no firm fixed dry ground
there. If you're standing in there with that river flowing,
if you've ever stood even in the ocean, you know you can't
stand there. You can try to stand on the sand,
but you start going sideways and the sand comes under your
feet. It's not firm ground. And so That's what this word
is, renew a fixed, firm spirit in me. Don't take it from me.
Because when I'm standing on it, I'm fixed. How must I look
to God? I kind of put that as I was preparing
the message. I was like, you know, I'm so
unstable. I'm one minute one way, one minute another. I can't
see, I mean, it's just, I'm a mess. And that's why I can easily look
to Jesus Christ as my rock. See, if he's the foundation,
the foundation doesn't move. The foundation's firm and it's
settled. And that is whom I stand upon,
Jesus Christ, my rock. Not upon what I do, my faith,
my thoughts, my anything is a mess. And I think if you're honest
with yourself, you can say yours is too. And this, I was considering
this as I was Preparing this I could easily look upon someone
like David a man after God's own heart Even though he was
a murderer. He was an adulterer God told
him not to number Israel. What did he do? He numbered Israel
this guy which is full of in terms of worldly, you know sin
and mistakes is somebody who is better than me if you had
to say to me I You or David, which is one that's gonna get
in heaven? That's an easy choice for me. I can look upon me and
say, there's no way me over him. But yet, how does David see himself? The man after God's own heart.
Well, in this passage we wrote, he says, have mercy upon me. Blot out my transgressions. Wash me. Cleanse me. Against thee and thee only have
I sinned. I was shapen in iniquity. I was
conceived in sin. Purge me. Hide thy face from
my sins. Cast me not away." You see, there
can be no mercy without confession. This thing of confession, if
you don't have it, if there's no confession of sin, there's
no ownership of sin. And therefore, I'm not guilty.
And this is not certainly saying you confess every single sin,
but this is confessing what I am. I'm a sinner, and I've sinned
before God, and I'm guilty. In 1 John 1, 9, it says, if we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So you see,
He's faithful in that He'll do it. And second is He's just. I'm going to expand a little
bit more on that in a second. When Job saw that he was a sinner,
that all he could do was sin, how did he come to that? He came
to that by seeing who God was. It wasn't that he saw himself
to be, I'm so sinful, and then he saw, well, God's holy. It's
only in seeing God as holy that he saw himself to be what he
was. He said, behold, I'm vile. He
said, I put my hand over my mouth. I'm not going to speak again
to justify myself. David says in this passage, verses
3 through 5, he says, I acknowledge my sin. My sin's ever before
me. I can't deny it. It's not there.
It's there. And against thee, God, and thee only, have I sinned
and done this evil and I sighed. that thou mightest be justified
when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest." So what he's
saying there is that you're going to find no fault in passing judgment
upon me because I am guilty. He has no excuse. There's no
argument. There's no technicality. We're
big on technicalities here. We try to find some mitigating
reason as to why I had to do this. I had no choice. So therefore,
it's not my fault. So none of that is found here. He's saying, I acknowledge my
sin and my transgression. And if you exact divine justice
upon me, nothing will come to you for it because I'm guilty.
It's what's right. Doesn't say that he wants that,
but he's saying, I don't find fault in you if you do. Has God
brought us to this point? If I'm honest, only a few times. Only a few times can I honestly
say that I felt that I'm a sinner and the Lord has every right
to blot me out. I do feel that. I am aware of
my sin. I ask for mercy. I ask for forgiveness,
but sometimes it's just the words that come out of our mouth. And
I ask the Lord to bring me to a place where I have an understanding
of my sin. I don't want to be always down
and downtrodden by it. It's horrible, the weight on
your shoulders. But yet, apart from us seeing
that, we can't see, apart from him revealing his face to us,
we won't see that. And yet, Lord, we say, reveal
your face to me. Can I be forgiven in a way and
the stain be removed in a way where God is just? And this is
the only way God can help. because I can't just hope that
God's going to help me and hope these things are going to go
away without God. God has a reason and a purpose
behind everything that he does. And God will not violate who
he is in order to save my skin. So, the example I give you is,
if I'm, let's say that, you know, if you catch me on a Monday morning
on the way to, I fly a lot, I'm driving to the airport, I'm usually
driving way too fast. And I'm very fortunate at times
that I haven't got a ticket. And let's say that there's a
time that I get pulled over and I get a ticket. I was driving
too fast and I got a ticket and, you know, you usually pay the
ticket. Well, what if I knew somebody that I could call and
say, hey, that worked for the police force and said, hey, can
I, is there anything you can do to help me out with this?
And could you at least call that officer and see if you can throw
that ticket away or get rid of it? Now, that may be so that
I could get that done. But would justice have been served
in doing that? No, justice is not served in
doing that. You see, I'm still guilty. The
ticket is still issued and somebody has to pay it. So I can't just
hope that everything's worked out and call somebody to bail
me out. there's no debt paid. That's not justice being served.
That's why David says in verse 7, purge me with hyssop and I
shall be cleaned. Wash me and I shall be whiter
than snow. And this word purge means to
purify or to atone. So you see, in order for God
to remove my sins there has to be an atonement. And that only
happens with a blood sacrifice. This purge me with hyssop, hyssop
is what they used to dip in the blood and put the blood over
the door when God told the Israelites to do that. So for an atonement
with God and for sin to be forgiven, I must have a sacrifice. And
not just any sacrifice will do. Ask Cain. Ask Nahab and Abihu
who burned strange fire before the Lord. He wouldn't have it. He wouldn't accept the sacrifice.
And not just anyone can bring the sacrifice. Ask King Uzziah. He tried to come into the presence
and offer the sacrifice and the Lord struck him with leprosy. Sacrifice must be one that God
will accept. And secondly, it can only be
brought by one who can come into his presence. And I can't. I'm a sinner. In Genesis 22,
God told Abraham, you bring sacrifice. You bring your son and you offer
him up as a burnt sacrifice. Now if you remember this story,
Abraham and his wife couldn't have children. God promised to
him in his old age a seed, a son. And God worked a miracle upon
Sarah and she conceived and they had a son. But yet, Israel was
supposed to come through this son, and now he's saying, I've
got to kill him? This is the boy I love. You think, this had
been a topic of conversation in their house. They had gone
a hundred years without having a child, and you know they wanted
to. And yet now, God's telling me I have to kill the son that
we've waited this long for, that he's made this promise for? He
had a few days to think about this. This was on his mind. Yet,
despite how things may have seemed, how devastating this was? Hearing
he had to kill his child? Abraham demonstrated his faith
to God with knife in hand. He had thought about this. Part
of him says that I'm going to obey God, I'm going to do what
he asked me to do, but yet part of him saying, is there a way
out of this? I don't know. I mean, he's had
days to think about this, but he had faith and was doing what
God told him to do. And with knife in hand and the
sacrifice, his son bound to the altar, ready to be slaughtered,
the angel of the Lord called unto him. He said, Abraham, Abraham,
lay not thy hand upon the lad. And Abraham looked and he saw
a ram caught in the thicket. God had provided himself a sacrifice
for sin. And he offered that ram up as
a burnt offering in the stead of, or in the place of, his son.
And he named the place Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord will provide. He provided
a substitute sacrifice. And you can imagine this, how
precious that ram was to Abraham's side. You see, he was ready to
have to kill his son, knowing that when I strike down, this
is going to take his life away. But yet, in that moment, just
before, the Lord stopped him and provided what he needed.
And how precious that sacrifice was to Abraham. All the sorrow,
all the heartache, I guarantee you, was followed by tears of
joy. I don't have to kill my son. The Lord provided me a sacrifice. But God did. God had to kill
his son through divine justice. That's the only way the sin could
be removed. If I'm not punished for my sins,
which I am guilty of, that require a payment for God to be just
and remove that sin, he had to kill his son because his son
took on my sin. What love God the Father has
for his people, he sacrificed his son, his only son. And how precious was that ram
to Abraham? How much more precious is Jesus
Christ unto me and to all those whom he has died for their sins.
And unto all who look to him to fulfill God's requirement
of a sacrifice for their sins. This is personal. This is not
just sin in general. This is my sin. And that's why
I can look upon him and see him as precious. He offered himself
one time, one sacrifice, and satisfied God forever. They had
sacrificed how many millions of animals before that that couldn't
satisfy God. But yet this man offered himself
once and satisfied God completely. If his blood was shed for you,
it is impossible for you not to be saved. Now that is, impossible
is a strong word, but we can say with this, impossible. If
the Lord died for me, I must be saved because sin is paid.
I can't be found guilty for anything. No person that he died for, who
as the scripture saith, for there is none other name under heaven
given among men whereby we must be saved. You see, there's no
option in this. and this is the only way that
I can be saved, and the only way that I can truly rest in
Christ, that when he did it, it's so sure, it's impossible
for it not to be so. How must have Abraham rejoiced
over that ram? Now you think about this. Would
he have rejoiced if he'd have known it was there or that God
was going to provide it when he got there? Let's say, you
know, we're going to go through the motions. Isaac, I'm going
to offer you all the time. You know, he's looking. Where's
the ram? You know, would that have been
a faith? No, because he's going through the motions. He didn't
know that God would provide that. So it wouldn't have been out
of faith because faith is the substance of things hoped for.
the evidence of things not seen. If he had seen and known that
Ram was gonna be there when he did that, it wouldn't have been
a faith, but yet God used that experience to bring faith in
Abraham. God provided what he needed,
which was that precious sacrifice, when he needed it, and not before,
or else it would not be rod of faith. And the same is gonna
be true of our experience. how clear my view of Christ is
when I have no strength. But He had to bring me down so
that I would look up. It's that process of being brought
down that's our experience. We have to go through that. You
want dying grace? You won't have it until you're
dying. And so we're not going to be given grace before it's
needed. We'll only be given grace when it's needed and not before.
In verse 16, David said, for thou desirest not sacrifice or
else I would give it. I'd offer you a sacrifice if
I knew you'd accept what I brought. And we must get this, what we
bring is just as important as who brings it. You see, because
we make deals with God, well, if I give up this, then maybe
I'll get that. Or, you know, you find yourself
pretty well caught in some sin or something you've done, and
you think, oh, if you get me out of this one, I'll never do
it again. We start making promises. And, you know, you think about
sacrificing your time, or I've given a big offering this week.
God must have some of you kind of pleased with this. Let's not
be confused. This makes us feel better. but
not God. I'm interested in the sacrifice
God will accept, not the one that I've decided I think I want
to give that makes me feel better about me, or that God should
feel better about what I gave. It's the sacrifice God will accept.
This is the only thing I'm interested in. We'll read on. Verse 17,
the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite
heart that will not despise. You can't buy those. and you
can't provide them. That's God's work and to whom
he reveals himself. This is how he works on our spirit
and on our heart. He gives us a new heart and a
new nature. It makes me see and aware how
evil I am. Apart from that, I'd never see
it. You ask somebody, anybody that denies that there's two
natures, it's because they only have one. They've never seen
the other one. You hate yourself. We never get better. But the
new heart yearns, the new heart desires holiness, righteousness. It takes sides with God against
myself. It yearns to please Him. I don't
appear how I would be, having these two natures. It's not how
I want to be. And the broken spirit, it mourns over my sin,
yet sees I'm enslaved to this flesh and there's nothing I can
ever do to get beyond it. It takes a clean heart to see
the stony one. My will is torn between what
I would do, as Paul said, and in the flesh where I have no
strength. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken
and a contrite heart. We require much from the Lord. And we ask much from the Lord. And there is much we must wait
upon from the Lord. And by His grace, ask Him to
make you willing to put aside yourself, to crucify your flesh,
your will, and to trust His will, to look away from what's around
me and to look to Christ. And for anything I need and everything
God requires, and to cast away everything else outside of that,
just simply to look to Christ for what I need. I must wait
upon the Lord to provide all that I need. Now, in eternity,
these things have been done and are done, but in terms of my
experience in this life, he still has to bring these things to
pass. We still have to go on, we still have to live until the
Lord comes back or we die. The Lord said to his disciples,
when I sent you without purse, without script, without shoes,
lacked you anything? Is there anything that you needed
that you didn't have? Their reply was, nothing Lord,
nothing we didn't have. You provided everything we needed.
Jesus Christ is the only sacrifice God will accept and His sacrifice
doesn't just get us in the door either. You see, it's all that
is required. Now, double it. All my sins have
been removed and I made the righteousness of God by Him. So you see, He's
given us not only what God required, but that and double. We got more,
more out of Christ. Now I ask you, in all of this,
in all these things, Him redeeming me from my sins, taking away
my sinful nature, giving me the new nature, and giving me the
righteousness of Christ. Who gets the glory? Who gets
the glory in this? If you're saved, how shall the
glory, the honor, and the reward be distributed? Don't you think
we ought to ask someone who's already on the other side of
this life? Someone who's peered into heaven? Well, a few have. And here's what they saw and
what they had to say. Isaiah saw the Lord. Ty lifted
up, sitting on a throne, and his train filled the temple.
And above it stood the seraphim, and this beast had six wings.
With two, he covered his feet, because he was ashamed of his
walk. And with two, he covered his face, he said, I'm not worthy
to look upon him. And with two, he did fly, means
he was ready to do God's will. And they cried one to another,
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is
full of whose glory? His glory. And in Revelation
4, what we read this morning in Sunday school, it said even
more about these beasts. It said they rest not day nor
night, giving glory, honor, and thanks unto him that sat upon
the throne. And the 24 elders who were around
the throne, the apostles and the prophets, They fell down
before Him and worshipped Him. It said they cast down their
golden crowns, this idea of a reward. It said they threw it before
His throne. And they said, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive
glory, honor, and power. Any glory I have, it's because
He gave it. It's all His glory. If there
is any glory, it's His, and only His. To whom does mercy belong? Who washed you? Who cleansed
you from your sins? Who purged your iniquity? Who
made it his own? Who gave you a heart to believe?
Who gave you faith? Who gave you a clean heart and
a right spirit? Who will never cast you away?
Who alone hath delivered you from the penalty, what I'm guilty
of, the power, the nature, and one day the presence, when I
die, of sin. Who's delivered you from that?
Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. And who would dare rob him of
his glory, wanting some sort of credit and salvation, saying,
I chose, I did, I, no. This is, this is the work of
the Lord. I wouldn't dare rob him of his glory in my salvation,
a sinner unclean who can only sin and who's guilty before God
in saying that I had any part in it. He sought me and he bought
me and he redeemed me. The Lord's church says unto him
in Psalm 115, not unto us, not unto us, O Lord, but unto thy
name give glory. This is what his people say.
They entreat him to glorify himself in their midst. We want none.
And that's why David said in verse 18, do good and I good
pleasure unto Zion, saying, thy will be done, Lord. You do as
you will, Lord. All things are yours. Well, what
did this man have to say about himself? The man who we talked
about when we started, when he stood up in front of everybody
and said, This is who I am and what I believe and maybe all
you know about me. He said I'm a sinner in need
of mercy and I'm confessing my sin and my inability. He's faithful
and he's just forgiven me and the reason is it's because of
his sacrifice, Christ Jesus, who satisfied the law for me.
And if I'm saved, there's only one reason, Jesus Christ my Lord. unto whom I'll spend eternity
praising His name and beholding His glory." Now, we don't know,
but just maybe, the Lord used this terrible tragedy for one
family, this man dying, to reveal the gospel to another, the good
news of the gospel. It's glorious to consider that
all events in time, understood or not, and most, almost all
are not understood as to why God did what He did. But one
thing we do know, is that they are centered around an order
to bring all of God's people to a saving knowledge of His
truth, no matter what we're going through or can see. I can't see
as far as anything I know as to why God's done what He's done,
but all I know is He'll use it, and He'll use it for His glory. Not one sheep will be lost. This
struck me. If you were chosen in Christ
Jesus before the world began, So before any of this started,
why would that change during or after this world is over?
It's not. I was chosen before it, I'm gonna
be here during it, and I'll be chosen in Christ after it. There's
nothing that can take those whom the Father gave Christ out of
Him. May we be given the faith to see our great need, not just
of mercy, sacrifice, and glory, but given the faith to see His
mercy, His sacrifice, and His glory as all we need in our salvation. Let's stop there.