Good evening. Let's turn, if
you would, to the book of Hosea, chapter 10. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea,
Daniel, Hosea. We're going to look at a portion
of one verse of Scripture tonight as subject to my message tonight. Isaiah chapter 10 verse 12. We'll
read the whole verse. So to yourselves in righteousness,
reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground, for it is time
to seek the Lord. till He come and reign righteousness
upon you." This first word says, for it is time to seek the Lord.
It struck me, and in reading about it, many of the old writers
said it's high time to seek the Lord. But they said you could
also read it, it's high past time to seek the Lord. And so
what we read here and what he's saying is, first, we're giving
a reproof and a warning to the house of Israel. And secondly,
we're also giving words of wisdom that it's time to seek the Lord.
The implication being that He's not being sought. And this is
danger. If you would, turn back a page
to chapter 8 of Hosea. We'll start in verse 13 here. Because Ephraim has made many
altars to sin, altars shall be unto him to sin. I have written
to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as
a strange thing. They sacrifice flesh for the
sacrifices of my offerings, and eat it. But the Lord accepteth
them not. Now will he remember their iniquity,
and visit their sins, and they shall return to Egypt. for Israel
hath forgotten his Maker." You see the danger of when you forget
something, when you've forgotten your Maker, you don't seek after
Him. Go down into verse 1 of chapter 9. Rejoice not, O Israel,
for joy is other people. For thou hast gone a whoring
from thy God, and hast loved a reward upon every corn floor.
So here, this God of whoring, Israel's left its God and gone
after anything common. On every corn floor, it doesn't
mean anything, holds no value, so he's forgotten God and sought
into other things. Now in verse 9 of chapter 9,
they have deeply corrupted themselves, and it's in the days of Gibeah,
therefore he will remember their iniquity. He will visit their
sins. Verse 10, I found Israel like
grapes in the wilderness. I saw your fathers as the first
ripe in the fig tree at her first time. But they went to Baal Peor
and separated themselves unto that shank. And their abominations
were affording as they loved. So you see here, Israel's not
only left his maker and forgot him, but he's gone after that
which the Lord says is abominable before him. And it turns out
that that's what they really loved. That's what they sought
after and put in a high place. And in verse 1 of chapter 10,
Israel, you're an empty vine. He bringeth forth fruit unto
himself. So can we, each of us, honestly
say in that which we do, are we serving the way we serve unto
the Lord, or are we really serving the desires and the desires of
my flesh and my own heart? So you see, Israel seared my
heart in reading that, because when I look at what I do and
what I say, is there really a motive in it in any capacity other than
serving myself in some way? To be honest, there's not. I
can be honest and say that. The Lord's Word is powerful.
It cuts to the heart, divides asunder soul and spirit. These
things are truth. Whether we like to hear them
or not, it's still the truth. And God's will is not going to
be opposed or thwarted. All He is is holy, true, and
right. And He does His own will and
none will stand against Him. And in Hosea 10, verse 10 of
chapter 10, based on all these things we just read, this is
the Lord God speaking, and He says, It is in my desire that
I should chastise them, and the people shall be gathered against
them, and they shall bind themselves into two furrows. So you see,
can this be said of us? Would the Lord God be right in
saying, I'm going to chastise me, you? Would He be right in
doing that? Would He be right in wiping me
out for my sin? Nobody else considered, just
you examine yourself, your own sin. Would the Lord be right
in punishing you for just your sin and nobody else? Well, keep
reading. And Ephraim is as an heifer that
is taught, and loveth to tread out the corn. So Ephraim knows,
he's got the bucket of corn around his neck when he's plowing, and
he eats the sweet corn, he's got a good life. So he's saying,
that I passed over upon her fair neck, and I'll make Ephraim to
ride. Judah shall plow, and Jacob shall
break up his clods." So what he's doing is giving a picture
of plowing a field here. So you've got Eupraim, he's saying,
no longer are you going to tread along and eat the sweet corn
and have this easy life. You're going to go into the field
and you're going to drag a plow through the earth. saying that
he's gonna, you know, this great, you know, chastisement upon him.
And then Jacob, he's saying, Jacob, you're gonna break up
the clods. That's gonna be, or Judah's gonna
plow, Ephraim's gonna have to be ridden, and then Jacob is
gonna break up the clods of the earth after it's already been
tilled up. So if you've ever tried to walk through a field
after it's been plowed, there's big clods, and you try to step,
and it's really hard to walk. So, but still, you have to break
up all those clods before you're able to use that good ground,
because you can't plant good seed when the quads and the ground
aren't broken down. But yet, someone has to do it,
and he's putting his chastisement upon Ephraim, Judah, and Jacob,
the tribes of Israel. So, we're giving a warning and
words of wisdom to turn and to repent and to seek the Lord.
It's time to seek the Lord. So, one thing that struck me
as I was preparing this message You're only going to seek what
you have to find. See, you're not going to seek
after it if you're just told to do it. You're only going to
seek that which you must have, that which you must find. And
what is it that I'm to seek the Lord for? I've got five points
in my message tonight. First, we seek to the Lord for
the forgiveness of sins. Secondly, for life, the quickening
of the Holy Spirit. Third, His presence. Fourth,
His will. And fifth, to abolish my false
refuges. So first we're going to deal
with seeking unto the Lord for the forgiveness of sins. But
what about joy, peace, love, assurance, all the fruits of
the Spirit, all the things that when we look at the many people
in this world who would call themselves religious, these are
the things that they seek after. They seek after these outward,
earthly things that you and I can see and experience. But what
about those things? Well, we do need all those things.
But without forgiveness of sins, all those things are meaningless.
I must have my sins forgiven, you see, because my sins are
what separate me from God. My sins are what require payment.
Payment must be done to have justice. Now we live in a day
where foreclosure is a word that we all know and understand with
what we're seeing in our economy and the housing market. If I
can't pay, I'll just start over. So that debt's now gone because
I can't pay for it. Well, there's no foreclosure
and there's no bankruptcy with God. You see, He requires payment
down to the last mite for every sin and every trespass and every
iniquity that's committed against Him. And there's no way that
we can ever pay that for anything that we can do. So I need forgiveness
because sinning is what I do. It's what I commit because it's
really what I am. It's what's in my heart. It's
my nature. I'm corrupt, and all I do is
sin. This is what we call the flesh.
I'm a servant of sin. Scripture says that man drinketh
iniquity like the water. All of which, those who sin,
whose nature is sin, and who commit sin, who are guilty before
God, they'll stand before the judgment seat of God, and they'll
be found guilty for their sins. There's no more glory left in
me at that point. When you stand, we may think
ourselves to be something in and amongst each other here,
but there'll be one day when I may be brought to a reality
of standing before God, I'm going to have to answer for what my
sins are. So I must have the forgiveness of these sins because
I can't stand before God. My only hope is the sinner's
hope in Scripture. And it turns out, The sinner's
hope is the only hope. There is no other hope. And that
hope is that His name is Jesus. For He shall save His people
from their sins. Not the Jesus who did His part.
Unless I do my part to act on what He did for me, then I'll
accept that offer and it'll work and then I'll be forgiven. That's
another Jesus. I'm speaking of the Lord Jesus,
the Christ, the Son of the Living God as He's revealed in the scripture. I'm to seek Him for the forgiveness
of sins. Ephesians 1-7 says, In whom we
have redemption through His blood. The forgiveness of sins according
to the riches of His grace. So you see, this forgiveness
of sins is not just an act. The forgiveness of sins is found
in whom? The forgiveness of sins is found
in Christ and what He did. So salvation is not a what, but
a who. And in seeking the Lord for forgiveness
of sins, we confess and we believe in the substitutionary death
of Christ. We have redemption through His
blood. His death signified sin. The wages of sin was death. That's
the only way He could have died, is sin had to be present. Well,
we knew that He never committed sin, but the sin of all those
whom He stood for in eternity, whom the Father gave Him, those
became what He was found guilty of, and it actually became His
sin. In 2 Corinthians 5.21, Scripture says, He hath made Him, God the
Father, hath made Christ, to be sin for us, us being the elect,
all those who were in Christ, who knew no sin. This was the
transferal of guilt. So the illustration that we look
in this substitute is the priest, when he put his hands on the
head of the sacrifice, he transferred all the sins, all the guilt,
all the iniquity of Israel onto that sacrifice. And when that
sacrifice was slaughtered, God was appeased with that sacrifice
for sin. And so this is what went on for years and years and
years, all the slaying of bulls and goats. But when Christ was
slain, there was no more need for any more sacrifice, because
it was a much more excellent sacrifice that God was satisfied
with. If Christ died for sins, they
are no more. He paid for the sins of His people.
So, if I come and you have a debt, let's say you go buy a car, and
you go to the car place, you say, I want this car, and then
they say, okay, let's walk you in the finance office, and then
you give them all your information, and they figure out everything
about you, and you get a loan. So you have a loan in your name,
and then you start paying off. This is a debt that you owe,
and if you don't pay your debt, they're gonna come get your car
or take something else from you to pay for that car. But what
happens, let's say if you have a rich relative or someone bestows
kindness upon you and eventually pays that debt off for you, say
I'm going to do something nice for you and now that's gone.
And then you decide to say, well, you know, I know you said it's
a zero balance and I know they paid it off. I'm going to get
on here and check and just make sure that I really don't owe
anymore. Well, I got to the point where I paid off a car once and
I knew I made my last payment. In the back of my mind, I kept
sitting there thinking, well, what if there was like a penny
that I didn't pay, or a dollar I didn't pay. And then all of
these charges are going to rack up. And then it started going
through my mind like three months later. And I think, I'm going
to owe $1,000. It's going to hurt my credit, all this stuff.
So then I log into my computer. I can't get in there. I can't get into the account.
Every time I log into the account, it says, no account. So you see,
it's not just that Christ paid for your sins, where you had
this debt, up to a zero balance. And then everybody knows you
had that debt, but you're at zero balance, so you don't owe
anything, but we can look at you and know you had that debt
at one point. You see, there's no account. Because when Christ
paid for sins, it never happened. You're not guilty. It's not just
that you're acquitted of it and can't be found punishable. It's
not guilty. There is no account. So I have
nothing to feel guilty about before God if Christ paid for
my sins and stood for me. And this is the foolishness of
preaching a Jesus who partly says either He did or He didn't. There's nothing left over. This
is my justification that I will be found not guilty because Christ
bled and died for me and all those whom were in His Son. It
is time to seek the Lord for the forgiveness of sins. We must
have this. And secondly, it is time to seek
the Lord for life, for quickening power. This only comes from the
Holy Spirit. And remember, you only seek what
you really need. So, who really needs it? Who
really needs life? Who needs this quickening power?
Well, not everybody does, or everybody will seek it. But,
as we read this morning, I thought it was great that the passage
that Todd preached from, where he talked about the blind, and
the lame, and the lepers, and the dead, and the deaf. All these
people can't provide for themselves. You see, they can't see. I can't
see the Word. I have to receive my sight to
do that. The lame man, he can't walk. The lepers, they have to
be cleansed. The deaf can't hear. And the
sad part is we say we only seek what we need to find, but what
about the man who's dead? who's dead, he can't even get
to the point where he's going to say, I'm going to seek unto
the Lord. Well, there's help for those
that can't seek Him too, because when he came to Lazarus, he said,
Lazarus, come forth. You see, Lazarus had no ability
to decide to ask the Lord to come help him. The Lord came
to where he was. Lazarus was not seeking Him to
come to do anything for him at that point, because he was dead.
How much power or choice did Lazarus have when he came forth? Could he have laid there and
said, no thank you, I'll just stay right where I am. I'm going
to stay here. I don't want to live any longer.
It was tough enough and I've had enough. He did not. He had no choice. When the Lord
said live, he lived. He opened his eyes, he sat up.
This was a command from God and he had to respond. He had no
choice but to live. The dead was made alive. This
is the power of the Holy Spirit. When the Lord God spoke to Ezekiel
in the valley of the dry bones, He said, Son of man, can these
bones live? Well, I'm looking at them. It's
just a valley full of dry, dead bones. They're old. He said the
valley was very dry. So we know that they've been
there a long time. He says, O Lord God, thou knowest. The next thing
he said to Ezekiel was, prophesy, preach to them. Thus saith the
Lord God, behold, I shall cause breath to enter into you, and
you shall live. So you see, this is the act.
This is how God acts on the dead. This is the quickening power
of the Holy Spirit. He says, I will, and you shall. He tells you to live, you're
gonna live. The other thing I saw from this, when he asked Ezekiel,
said, a man can eat bones live. When we look at him from the
outside, it certainly does not appear that they can. And this
struck me to, I asked the Lord to do this for me and for everyone. When we look at someone else
and say, well, they can't be a believer, you know, they don't
attend church enough, or they don't act just a certain way.
When we look at somebody, we don't know. We don't know from
the outside. You look at me, you might see
somebody and say, he's got nothing in him. Nothing God would ever
have anything to do with him. We don't know. But yet, we have
a God who is able to take the most dead, dry bones with no
life in them and make it a trophy for His grace. We seek unto the Lord for life
because we're spiritually dead. There's nothing in us that has
the ability or desire to seek unto God. He has to do something
for us. We have to be quickened. And
that's done through the preaching of the Gospel. No man, by himself,
just instantly starts studying and is acted upon. The Lord does
this through the preaching of the Gospel. We see that just
through the example He gave us in the Scripture. He told Ezekiel
to prophesy, which means, and this is the means, preaching,
by which God operates on a man. If you'll turn back to Ezekiel
chapter 36, you'll see that. Ezekiel 36, 25. Then will I sprinkle clean water
upon you, and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, and
from all your idols will I cleanse you. This sprinkling of the clean
water is being washed in the blood of Christ. This is the
forgiveness of sins. He says in verse 26, a new heart
also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you,
and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and
I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within
you. This new heart, this new spirit is the quickening of the
Holy Spirit. This is the new man, the new
man Christ in us. It's what wasn't there before
that He had to put there. And what are the results of this
new man? What are the results of this
quickening power of the Holy Spirit? Keep reading. I'll put
my Spirit within you, and I'll cause you to walk in my statutes,
and you shall keep my judgments, and you shall do them. That's
the work of the Holy Spirit. You see, without the Holy Spirit,
without the quickening regenerative power of it, none of those other
things would happen. You can't, you won't choose those
things. That He says, and even if we won't, I'll make you. I'll
cause you to do it. Because My Spirit's in you. And
that's the way, and that's how His Spirit is. When the Holy
Spirit calls, you have no choice but to live. Well, how do I know
if I've heard the call? How can I know if I've been touched
by the Holy Spirit? How can I really know? Well,
I don't know. But I can tell you something
that I do know regarding those who have, because I can't speak
for you. Blind men receive their sight. Their eyes have been opened
to the Word of God. You've read passages before,
maybe they don't mean anything, but yet the Lord gives you something
another time you see it, another time you read it. lame men walk. He makes me willing to serve
God, to walk in His way and not mine. Deaf men hear. You may have heard the message
before, but then something clicks and you hear something that you
didn't before and you say, what was that? You may have sat for
years underneath the preaching of the gospel even, but yet at
some moment it clicks with you. That's the Holy Spirit. The dead
are made alive. Something's different. It's Christ's
Spirit dwelling in me. I've seen and I've heard my Lord
through His Word. I believe, and I'm sure, that
if I'm saved, it's only by His grace, and it's only by His mercy. Where I didn't do anything, and
He did it all. He saved me, just an unworthy sinner. I'm a trophy
of His grace. And that's the only way that
I'll ever have a part in the Kingdom of God. And I'm satisfied to
leave it right there. My life is hid in Christ. As
He lives, so do I. And I'm seeking unto the Lord
for life. So we sought unto the Lord for the forgiveness of sins,
we sought unto the Lord for life, and the third point is we're
seeking unto the Lord for His presence. Now there's no one
that ever came into contact with the Lord who wasn't changed.
So you see the woman reached out and she just touched the
hem of his garment and all her disease went away. He healed
the leper. He gave the blind man scythe
and cleansed lepers. So these people are just in contact
with the Lord, His presence. Something's changed. Zacchaeus,
the Lord didn't tell him to do anything. He just said, come
down, I've got to be at your house today. And Zacchaeus said,
Lord, if I've defrauded anyone, I'm going to give them back all
their money and I'm going to give half of what I own to the temple. So the Lord didn't tell him anything.
So what happened? This is the Lord's presence.
I'm going to give you a few things about His presence. His presence,
it uplifts the broken hearted. The broken hearted over sin.
You see, His presence says, there's no work to be done. All has been
forgiven. There's nothing I have to have
to be broken hearted about because, you see, if He's forgiven it
all, it's put away. His presence gives life and faith
to the lost. He said, I'm the vine, and you're
the branches. And He is the vise, and me, and
I am Him, bringeth forth much fruit. And without me, you can
do nothing. See, He is my life. His presence
is what restores my soul and gives me life. And without Him,
I can do nothing. I can have everything I've got
up to this point, and if the Lord leaves me, I'm left with
nothing. That's why He's the vine and we're the branches.
Our life is found in the vine. His presence resists the proud,
you see, because pride exalts self. And there's only room for
one on the throne in heaven. His presence exalts the poor
and needy, and His presence is precious to those who know Him.
It can't be without Him. You see, when the Lord withdraws
His presence, the first thing your presence cries out to is,
I've got to get back to Him. You know, I've got to have His
presence. It's the most disconcerting thing, I think, is having seen
the Lord and experienced His presence when it's taken away.
That's truly when we think descriptions on TV, you know, hell, is this
burning like a fire? I don't know if there's fire
or not. But it's certainly the Lord's presence is not there.
And that enough, after having seen the Master's face, That
in itself, having that withdrawal would be a torment to someone
who'd seen his face. His presence is an oasis in the
desert when found. You see, everything about an
oasis is opposite to what a desert is. That's why Paul said, all
that I can for gain, I can't have a loss for the knowledge
of excellency of Christ. It's other, it's not what is
supposed to be there, but yet when the Lord does something
with it, it becomes all that's important. We seek the Lord's
presence in public worship. There's no power, and there's
no regeneration without it. That's why we pray. When men
get up there and read, and they ask for the Lord's presence,
for His Spirit to be here, without that, it's just words. It can
do nothing for you. But if the Lord's presence is
here, He said, where two or three are gathered in My name, I'll
be in the midst of them. For His glory, for His honor,
and for His praise. That's what worship is. We seek
the Lord's presence in our private worship, in prayer, where I commune
the issues of my heart to the Lord, the only one who can understand.
I have confidence in Him to provide what I need. In my private worship,
where I study the Scriptures. You see, if He doesn't reveal
what's in the Scripture to me, it's just me making stuff up.
And that's not going to do me or anyone that hears me any good.
He has to reveal the scriptures to me or it's just words. You
see, and it won't come without His presence. There may be days,
there may be moments where we feel especially touched by His
presence. We're so full of joy, so full of contentment, so full
of assurance, we feel like we couldn't be closer at that moment
when we feel touched by His presence. But then there's also times when
He withdraws His presence. and I believe just sharing something
about me. I remember when I felt like,
you know, the process of, you know, coming to believe the gospel,
I would see, you know, I knew growing up, you know, in a gospel
church what, you know, what, you know, these things were true,
but I didn't feel them here in my heart. And I knew them up
here, but I didn't feel them here. And I knew that I would
watch men pray and say how much they needed Christ, how much
they needed the Lord. And I knew that was true here,
but I didn't feel it here. And I asked the Lord to, Lord,
make me feel the way they do. I want to feel a need for Christ.
And I found that all He did is He just closed my ears. He closed
my eyes. I couldn't see. I couldn't, I'd
sit here. I didn't hear anything. And then
I couldn't see Him in the Word. I'd try to study. I'd try to
pray. I didn't feel like I could commune with God. And He showed
me that through, just through that trial, that experience of
that, how much, how quickly I am dead, apart from His presence.
And how much I need Christ. How much I need His presence.
Or else I can't worship. I can't pray. I can't do anything.
And so He exposed to me how weak I really am. And that was quite
a trial, but I wouldn't trade the experience for having felt
the need for His presence. So we're to seek the Lord for
His presence. And fourthly, we're to seek the
Lord for His will. First, to be done. Christ did
in the garden. He said, not my will, but thine
be done. Why? First, because it's what's
best. even if I don't understand why.
And there's often times, most of the time, I don't understand
why, but yet we pray the Lord's will be done. He said, My thoughts
are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, for as
the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher
than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. You see,
what I think, the way things should go, is not necessarily
what's best for me, because I can't see the end result. I can't see
what the Lord's doing. But yet, He has a purpose and
He has a plan. And if I'm one of His people,
we know that all things work together for good. To them, the
love God who has be called, be called people according to His
purpose. And His purpose is His will.
The Lord's prayer, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven. So we're to seek the Lord for
His will to be done, and we're also to seek the Lord's will
to be made manifest to us. Who has known the mind of the
Lord? We certainly take a lot of shots at it, but we speculate
in vain and speculate very wrong most of the time. There's much
that we don't know, and there's many things that we cannot understand.
We may have problems in our homes, in our families. We have sickness. We've had a lot of people that
have been sick in this church. Some sickness, that's the sickness
they get better from. Some people, the sickness that
takes their life. You have a loss of a job, you have trouble paying
your bills. We think, you know, why are things
the way they are? These are all questions that we all have living
in this life, but we're not owed an answer. But yet, God's still
on the throne, even if I don't have an answer, executing all
of His pre-appointed purposes that were purposed in Himself.
And in seeking the Lord's will, I'm in seeking His will to be
done, and that He might be pleased to make it manifest. You see,
I don't want to act hastily, and I don't want to act without
the Lord's counsel whenever I endeavor in anything. I'm to pray for
the Lord. Lord, please guide me. Lord,
give me direction. I don't... We're to ask for direction.
We're to ask for guidance. So there's two parts to this.
To ask for direction, and the second part is to wait. And the
waiting part is the hardest portion. It's easy to ask. It's hard to
wait. His timeline most often does not coincide with mine.
So if we're to seek the Lord, back in this Hosea chapter 10
and verse 12, it says, for it is time to seek the Lord till
He come. You see, that's the waiting part.
We have to wait till He come and reign righteousness upon
you. We're to wait on the Lord. Proverbs 20, 22 says, say not
thou, I shall recompense evil, or I'm going to repay evil. Something's
been done to me. I'm going to, you know, get back
and make it even. But wait on the Lord, he shall save thee. We're to wait on the Lord in
all things, in the little things and the big things. The Lord
will give direction if he's in it. And my fifth and last point
is we're going to seek the Lord to abolish all my false refuges. We're full of them. It's going
to be different for every person. But my false refuges regarding
my salvation, so full of doubt, full of unbelief, but I'm saved
by Christ's faith. I'm not saved whether I doubt
or whether I don't believe one moment versus another. We're
saved by the faith of Christ, not my faith. Feeling more or
less the elect of God based on how strong or weak my faith is
that day. I'm elect by God, not by my faith
that day. Take comfort in that. We're going
to go through moments and difficulties where we're going to... We've
still got this flesh here. Even though we have the new spirit
of Christ, the man in us, we've got this flesh and we're going
to waver from day to day. But yet, I'm elect by God and
I'm saved by Christ's faith. So not how I feel that day or
even if I felt more secure in it, it doesn't make me any more
or less saved. Thinking or feeling that if I
were a believer, I wouldn't do this or wouldn't do that. You
know, well, if the Lord will give me grace to get through
this, I won't do that again. I'll do it again. you're still
in sinful flesh. There's no excuse for sin, but
thank God he paid all my sins. And not up to just when I believed.
So there's part of you that thinks that, you know, well, you know,
you come to a knowledge, you come, you believe, you confess
Christ in baptism, and then there's always that, I speak from my
own experience, I guess, after I was baptized, you know, somehow,
then, like, you have some searing condition of sin that you realize
and you think, Part of you thought, well, maybe this has been over
with, but it's not. We're in this life still and
it's still going to happen. The longer we go, the more we've
been a part of understanding the gospel and believing, the
more our sin is exposed and the more we're aware of it. We just
weren't as aware of it before. It's not that we're sinning more,
we're just more aware of it. Abolish my false refuges and
taking comfort in my church. I'm thankful for this place.
I'm thankful for a faithful pastor. I'm thankful for this building
that we have. We have plenty of room to sit
here. We're not, you know, I talked to a man this week that talked
about growing up in Russia, saying that, you know, religion is illegal
and you go to jail for doing certain things. You know, we
don't have to deal with that here. I'm thankful for that.
But if God removes his candlestick, The Lord delivered me from this
place. What if God allowed a false prophet to meet Him? And what if I was sitting here?
I don't want my refuge to be in this place or a building.
My salvation is in Christ. It's not in a creed. It's not
a denomination. It's not in a building or even
a relationship. were to seek the Lord to burn all of our bridges,
all of our false refuges to be destroyed. Salvation is of, by,
and through and in Christ. And in seeking the Lord, I'm
to ask, believing that I'll receive what I've asked for. Deuteronomy 4.29 says, but if
from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find
him. if thou seek Him with thy heart,
with all of thy heart and with all of thy soul. So it's time
to seek the Lord for forgiveness of sin, for life, for His presence,
for His will, and to remove all my false refuges. And I'll close
with a verse from the last verse of Psalm 119. David said, I've
gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek thy servant, for I do not
forget thy commandments. Lord, seek me. I know you tell
me in your Word, it's time to seek the Lord, but Lord, if you
don't seek me and do something for me, I'll never do it. So
we'll pray, Lord, seek me, Lord, and give me the grace, and give
every heart and soul in here the grace to seek the Lord. Let's
bow our head.