Zechariah chapter 13. I want to again read this. We looked at this this morning
and looked at chapter 12 verses 10 through 14. But let's read
chapter 13 again. Zechariah chapter 13 and verse
1. And that day there shall be a
fountain opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants
of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. And it shall come
to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will cut
off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no
more be remembered. And also I will cause the prophets
and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land. And it shall
come to pass that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father
and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt
not live, for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord. And
his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through
when he prophesieth. And it shall come to pass in
that day that the prophet shall be ashamed, every one of his
vision, when he hath prophesied, neither shall they wear a rough
garment to deceive. But he shall say, I am no prophet,
I am a husbandman, for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.
And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thy hands?
Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house
of my friends. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd,
And against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts,
smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered. And I will
turn my hand upon the little ones. And it shall come to pass
that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall
be cut off and die, and the third shall be left therein. And I
will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them
as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried. They shall call upon My name,
and they shall call upon My name, and I will hear them, and I will
say, It is My people, and they shall say, The Lord is My God."
We were looking this morning at this passage and we were thinking
about the cross, the fountain that was opened as the cross
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It certainly would include his
old sufferings, all of his doing and the dying in our stead, but
especially that blood that was shed there. He says you're for
sin and for uncleanness. But as we looked at that this
morning, we were talking about what does the world care? You
know, they have a lot to say about Jesus, the Son of God.
But what does the world really care, brothers and sisters, that
the Son of God has died upon Calvary? They have no need, felt
need, heart need, real need of forgiveness. They have no need
to come to Him. That's why you see men not seeking
Him and women not seeking Him. So we look then there in chapter
12, in verse 10, where the Lord says that He would pour out upon
them the Spirit of grace, a gracious Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a
gracious Spirit. And if Jesus just died and went
back to heaven and said, well, I'm just going to wait and see
what men do with me, then all of us would have died lost. He
says, I'll send the Holy Spirit. I'll send Him and He will reprove,
He will convince the world of sin. And that's where He begins,
isn't it? Before He's our Comforter, He
disturbs us. He disturbs our conscience by
showing us our need of Christ and our awful, awful sin. So we looked at that. And I want
to begin here in verse 2 this afternoon and look at some more
of the effects of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's opened
a fountain and here's some of the effects of that fountain.
Brothers and sisters, I do believe in my heart, I'm convinced of
it, that the cross of Jesus Christ has its effects. I don't think that He could have
died in vain and nothing happened. We see too many places in the
Scripture where the results of the cross. In Isaiah 53, 11,
He shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.
There you have the cross, and you have the effects of it, the
justification of many. Let's look at these then, the
effects of the cross. And here in verse 2, And it shall
come to pass in that day, in that day of salvation, that the
Lord of hosts will cut off the names of the idols out of the
land, and they shall no more be remembered. And also I will
cause the prophets and the unclean spirits to pass out of the land."
Now what is the first thing we see here? There were many false
prophets. There is in our day and there
always have been. Many idolaters. But when the
Lord is determined to cut them off, When He is determined to
stop their idolatry, what's His favorite way of doing it? To
save them. To save them. He says, I'm going
to open this fountain for sin and uncleanness, and one of the
sins and the uncleanness that I'm going to open it for is these
false prophets with their idolatry to save them from it. Now you
and I have got laws in our country, and thank God we are a country
of laws. And we pass laws against certain
crimes, don't we? Against certain sins. We couldn't
live in a country where you didn't have laws. There's the sin of
murder. We've got a law against that.
We punish people for that. The law against rape, the law
against theft, the law against drunkenness. But you know there
are some sins that we can't make laws for. We don't need them,
we don't want them. It would be detriment even to
us if we had them. What if we had a law, the state
tried to enforce the law of idolatry? Can you imagine that? They'd
shut down the Catholic Church and that would be a good thing.
But who would they come after after they shut down the Catholic
Church? They'd start over us with it. They'd say, well, I've
never heard such things as you fellows are talking about. You
must be some kind of cult. We're going to shut you down.
We don't need laws against idolatry and against false prophets. But
you know how the Lord stops that? He saves them, doesn't He? That's
the best way to stop it. You save a man. You wash him
from his idolatry. You give Him the TRUTH! The way
you stop a man from preaching lies is tell him the TRUTH! Convince
him of the TRUTH! You remember when the Apostle
Paul hated the Lord Jesus? I mean, he HATED the Lord Jesus!
And Larry was talking about it this morning, and we were wondering
if in some of that crowd, where the Lord shut those Pharisees'
mouths and embarrassed them, if Saul of Tarsus wasn't in some
of those crowds? Because he was raised upright
in that area, wasn't he? And that may have been why he
hated the Lord Jesus so much. He hated his gospel. All he knowed
to preach was Moses, circumcision, all of his tradition. But you
know how the Lord brought him out of that? He washed him. He washed him from that filth. Washed him from those sins. And
when Paul was writing about it, talking about his past life and
how he persecuted believers preach circumcision? And he said, people
were amazed when the Lord saved me. He said, all they heard was,
He now preaches the faith which once He destroyed. And they glorified
God in me. But how? How did He stop Paul's
mouth? How did He bring him out of his
idolatry? I'll tell you how He did it.
He washed him in this fountain. And he says right here in verse
2, he said, I'm going to cut off these idols from the land,
and I'm going to cause these false prophets to pass out of
the land. And he said that right after
he said, I'm opening a fountain for sin and for uncleanness. We preach against sin, we preach
against all sins, but I tell you, We concentrate on this fountain,
don't we? This is what we preach. We preach
the Gospel. Jack Shanks was telling, I thought
he told something one time that was very interesting. And it's
these old men like that, these old preachers, boy, that helped
us young preachers when we first started preaching. Because it's
easy to get sidetracked on it. You pick up an issue that's a
good to fight against. But if you ain't careful, you'll
quit preaching the gospel and abortion was one of the issues.
And I heard Jack Shank say one time, he said, there's nothing
in this world that a woman could do that would be more repulsive
to me than to think she would kill her unborn child. And I feel the same way about
that, and I bet you do, you guys do too. It would be like, what
would you think little Annabella, a year old, this turned one year
old, what would we think about Stacy, her mother, if while little
Annabella was in her nursery asleep, and she invited some
murderer to go into little Annabella's room and cut her to pieces and
put her in a bag and carry her off to sell her parts. What would
we think about that? And yet it's done all the time,
isn't it? A mother will invite a murderous doctor to go up in
her womb, a place of safety, and cut her little child to pieces
and suck it out and sell his little body parts. That is the
vilest immoral act I think that a woman could do. But Jack Shanks
made the statement that I am not going to get in the pool
pit and give my time to preaching against abortion. He said, here's
what I'm going to do. I'm going to preach the gospel
of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to get at the
root of the problem. I'm going to write at the heart
of the problem. And then he said, if a woman believes this gospel,
she'll never kill another infant. And that's what the Lord does.
There's no sense passing laws against false prophets or idolaters. The Lord will put a stop to it
if He's pleased. And the favorite way that He
puts a stop to it is going right to the root of the problem. Here's
how you get rid of it. Wash them in this fountain. Teach
them the truth. And it'll pass away then. That's
the first thing we see here, the effects of this fountain.
Boy, it washes. It turns men. from the root of
the problem, sin itself. And here in verse 3, we see something
else. And it shall come to pass in
that day, it come to pass, when any shall yet prophesy, his father
and his mother, that begat him, saying unto him, Thou shalt not
live. And they thrush him through.
Now this shows just how much people love the truth. When it
gets in your heart, I mean, boy, I mean to tell you, you're not
going to because old Aunt Sadie believed it or my Grandma Martha
believed it or my Daddy Luther believed it. When the Lord teaches
a man the truth, it doesn't matter if his own household rises up
against him. He's going to stand for the truth,
ain't he? We were studying in the book of Deuteronomy, if you
remember, I think it was the thirteenth chapter where the
Lord talked about this very thing. If you had a friend, a bosom
buddy, that tried to entice you to go worship other gods, or
if you had a brother or sister or the wife of your bosom that
tried to entice you to go worship other gods, you were to thrust
them through. You were to kill them. Now we
don't do that in our day, and thank God we don't do it. But
listen, you let your closest companion, Come and tell you
that Jesus Christ is not the only Savior, and it's by Him
alone, and it's by His grace alone, and His Word alone. And
you let Him try to convince you different? You'll withstand Him,
won't you? My dad was a pre-Webb Baptist
preacher, and many of us had some pretty heated discussions.
I tried to respect him the best I could. But I tell you, when
the Lord began to open my heart to see His grace, His free and
sovereign grace, I told my dad, ìYouíre not my master! Christ
is my master, and I follow His Word!î And you feel the same
way. I know some of you have had trouble
in your own family because of the Gospel. Well, you see here
why. The Lord Jesus said, ìA manís
enemies shall be they of his own household.î They of his own
household. I tell you, the Gospel is the
most dogmatic, the narrowest thing that you ever read in your
life. Here in verse 4, this tells us
something else. Not only how they will withstand
their own family if their family tries to rise up and lead them
astray from the Gospel, but it tells us how man really feels
about his sin and his past life. once he is washed in this fountain.
Look in verse 4. And this shall come to pass in
that day, that the prophet shall be ashamed every one of his vision,
when he hath prophesied, neither shall they wear a rough garment
to deceive. You see how the Lord stopped
His Idolatry? See how he stopped his preaching
lies? He gave him the truth and when
he gave him the truth here, he said, made him ashamed. Can you
look back upon your past life when you were in nature and joke
about it? Do you look back and brag about
what a sinner you were? We're ashamed, aren't we? We're
ashamed. When I first met Wayne, I knew
the kind of religion Wayne was in because we listened to the
fellow that Wayne senator for a long time, and I didn't know
where Wayne came out of, what his religion was or anything,
but I know he never did talk about it. And I kept thinking,
why don't Wayne talk about it? Well, I found out why he didn't
talk about it. He'd come out of a mess, and you're ashamed
of it, just like I'm ashamed of where I came out of. Paul
was talking there in Romans 6 about You've been ashamed. After you
believe the truth, you look back upon your life, and you're ashamed
of those things. You may have been in religion,
but if it was just religion, you're ashamed of it. Religion
without Christ is a shame, as well as a sham, and sin. I look back on my life, brothers
and sisters, and I'm honest with you. I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed. I don't want to go back to it.
Do you? When the Lord saves a man, He makes him ashamed. What fruit
had you then in those things whereof you are now ashamed? And when the Lord saved the Apostle
Paul and he looked back on his life, so strict, and what did
he say about it? It's done. I'm sick of it, he
said. I can never embrace that again.
In Ezekiel 36, when the Lord is talking about giving us a
new heart and a new spirit within us, And He said, I'll sprinkle
clean water upon you from all your filthiness. Will I cleanse
you? And then what did He say? You're
going to be ashamed and you're going to abhor yourself for all
your iniquity that you had committed against the Lord. No, our past
life, boy, we're ashamed of it. Absolutely ashamed of it. Usually
the only way we'll talk about it is if somebody forces us to. And I love the last part of verse
4. Neither shall they wear a rough
garment any more to deceive. What this means is the old prophets
of God, they were usually poor people. They had to depend upon
the charity of those they preached to to support them. Remember
Elijah and Elijah? Those fellows had rough garments.
John the Baptist wore that old leather girdle and ate locusts
and wild honey. What these fellows here were
doing, they were mocking these false prophets. They were wearing
this rough clothing and it made them look so humble and so self-denying. And these people thought, Boy,
that man's a prophet. Look how he's dressed. He's dressed
like old Elijah. And the Lord said, When I wash
you, You're going to quit that. You're
going to quit putting up a front to try to make somebody see how
self-denying you are and what a great prophet you are. You're
going to quit wearing those clothes like that. Boy, the Lord Jesus
came to those Pharisees, and remember what He told the Pharisees?
He said, you make broad your phylacteries. You know, these
phylacteries was little skins. They killed skins of animals
and wrapped the Scriptures up in those skins and put them right
here between their eyes. They wore some on their hands,
but they put them here between their eyes. The Lord told them
to always remember. Remember. They were to take these
for remembrance. Sometimes they did it in prayer,
and they started to do it all the time. But instead of having
little animal skins with the Scripture in it, about four inches
long, they'd have them all the way out here. Can you see a Pharisee
coming down the street, and he looks like he's got these horns
sticking out? And a man looks at him and says, boy, is he ever
holy. Boy, does he really remember the law of God. And then the
Lord said, not only do you make your phylacteries that way, you
enlarge the borders of your garments. The Lord told them to make little
fringes on the borders of their garment, and on that fringe put
a ribbon of blue. And He said, when you look down
upon that fringe, you'll remember to be holy unto the Lord. Well, what these Pharisees and
scribes started doing, man, they'd make them broad. What is that
they used to call it? I know some of you ladies may
have worn them. The things where they made the dresses stick away
out. What was those? Can cans? Was that what they
called it? You know where the dress really stuck out? I've
seen them. Now you ladies know what I'm
talking about. The old whatever they call them. That's the way
these Pharisees looked. They'd come down the street and
instead of having little fringes, they'd have them that wide. And
a big ribbon that wide. And people would look at them
and say, And you know why they did that?
For a show. To try to teach me. And I am
a holy man. And I remember God's law. And
I don't want to remember it. I practice it. Just look at me.
Look at me. Can you imagine Nicodemus when
the Lord told him, Nicodemus, you must be born again. I wonder
if Nicodemus was sitting there with a big phylactery and his
can can on. And the Lord looks at him and
said, Nicodemus, Until you're born again, you can't see and
you can't enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And I wonder if next
time you saw Nicodemus, somebody said, I wonder where his phylactery
is? Where's his can-can? Man, he shed all of that. Why? He's been washed. And they're
not going to say, look at me anymore. I love what he says here in this
next verse. Look what he says in verse 5. But he shall say, I am no prophet. I'm just a farmer. For men taught
me to keep cattle from my youth. I ain't a prophet, he says, and
I ain't going to dress like one. All I am is a farmer. I left
the farm where my daddy and my older brothers taught me to farm,
and I left that and went trying to be a prophet. I should have
stayed on the farm. That's what he said. Well, I
was a truck driver, and sometimes I feel like I should still be
driving a truck. I knew much more about driving
a truck than I do about what I'm trying to preach now, trying
to do now. I'll be honest with you. Sometimes
I feel this way. Boy, when the Lord saves you,
when He washes you, You quit this old front, don't you? You
come out of that stuff. You quit trying to impress people,
make them think you're something that they're not, to deceive
them. That's what He said. And now verse 7. He goes back
now to the cross. Boy, Zechariah is sort of like
Paul, the apostle. He can't get away from the cross
and its effect. Now he goes in verse 7. The Lord
Jesus quoted this in Matthew 26, 31. If you remember when
He was going to the cross, He said, all of you are going to
be offended in Me this night because the Scripture says, I
will smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered. And
what this is talking about right here is smiting the shepherd. And notice how the Holy Spirit
writes this. Awake, O sword, against My shepherd, and against
the man that is My fellow, saith the Lord God of hosts. Smite the shepherd. and the sheep
shall be scattered, and I will turn my hand upon the little
ones." Here is God talking. And here is what God is saying,
smite the shepherd. And here is the mystery of this,
brothers and sisters. You know what the Bible teaches
us? That God smote Him Himself. God not only let them smite Him,
driving the nails through his hands and his feet and putting
the hole in his eye. But you know the Bible says that
God smote him. He was smitten of God and afflicted. And somebody asked the question,
I love to read these commentators, and you get some strange views
from these commentators sometimes. But one of the commentators was
saying, he was talking about, don't believe that God actually
smote him. If I didn't believe that God
actually smote him, how do I look at Isaiah 53? We beheld him smitten,
stricken of God, and afflicted. And the man asked the question,
how could God smite his beloved son? This was his fellow. He was commenting on this verse.
This was his fellow. Well, here's why God smote his
son. I preached on this bright the other night down at Brother
Don's. Sin has to be punished. If God leaves it on us, we die. We die under His wrath. If He's
going to save us from our sin, He has to take it from us and
put it on somebody else. Another commentator says it's
impossible to transfer sins from one person to another. With man
it's impossible, but not with God, you see. God can do it and
God did do it in great love and tender mercy. And then when He
put Him on His Son, then His Son stood responsible for that
sin. God dealt with Him just exactly
like He had dealt with you if He saw your sins on you. We beheld Him smitten stricken
of God and afflicted. Why? Because God had transferred
all the sins of every elect soul and put them on His Son. And then He punishes him. I was
reading Psalms chapter 69 and verse 5. And this is the Lord Jesus speaking.
You read that Psalm and you'll see this is the Lord Jesus speaking.
And He's talking to His Father. And He says, You know My foolishness.
And My sin is not hid from you. We know Jesus Christ had no sin. He could not sin. It was impossible
for Him to sin. Then how could He say, I have
sinned? It was our sins. He so took them
in a real way that He said they're Mine. Now what does God say? Smite Him. And one commentator said, there's
no way that you can twist this and get it to say that God transferred
our sins and then punished our sins in Christ. He said, there's
no way you can twist that. He's ashamed of that gospel that
the Bible teaches. The world calls it foolishness.
The world calls particular redemption, an actual substitution, foolishness. But you know something? The angels
marvel at it. The angels desire to look into
it. They can't grasp it either. How did God do this? How did
He transfer sins and punish it? And they desire to look into
it. And the world says it's foolishness. But you know what God's people
says? You know what the believer says? This is the power of God. The preaching of this cross is
the power of God. God took my sins, put them on
His Son, and smote Him in my stead. Now I go free. That's
the gospel, isn't it? And we're saved in a way that's
consistent with justice as well as mercy. Smite the shepherd. Smite the shepherd. And what's
the effects of that? Then I will turn My hand upon
the little ones." Now what does that mean? You know the Bible
is the best interpreter of the Bible. If you will hold that
right there, I am almost finished, but turn and look what that means
over in Isaiah chapter 1, the very first book of Isaiah, and
he tells us what it means by turning your hand, turning His
hand upon the little ones. In chapter 1 and look in verse
24, Look at this, talking about the
cross and its effect. Therefore saith the Lord, the
Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, Oh, I will ease me
of mine adversaries, I will avenge me of my enemies. And I wonder
there if he's not speaking about sin itself. That's the enemy
of God, isn't it? And look at this. After I've
done this, I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away
thy draughts, and take away all thy tin. I will restore thy judges
as at the first, and thy counselors as at the beginning. Afterward
thou shalt be called the city of righteousness, the faithful
city." So turning His hand here means I'm going to show you mercy.
I'm going to deliver you. So what does he mean over there
in our text when he says, smite the shepherd and then I will
turn my hand upon the little ones? It simply means open this
fountain, my son, for sin and for uncleanness. I will wash
my people in that fountain. I'll have mercy upon them. I'll
turn my hand on the little ones and I will save them. Ain't that
wonderful? That's wonderful. Here in verse 8, look in verse
8. And it shall come to pass that
in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts shall be left therein,
and be cut off and die. Two parts shall be cut off and
die, but the third shall be left therein. Two thirds are going
to be cut off and die, and one third is going to be left therein.
And what's He saying here? He's saying, Zechariah, listen.
Not all of these people are going to be saved. Two-thirds of them
are going to be cut off and die. And I'm going to save a third
of them. Now, here's the question I want
to ask you. Who was it determined who was going to be cut off and
who was going to be saved? We know why these two-thirds
were cut off. It's obvious. They're sins. It's
obvious when a man's damnation is made sure, it's made sure
because of his sins. There's no other reason that
God will ever damn anybody. It's because of their sins. But
who determines who's not cut off? Who determined about these
one-thirds? And if I asked you that question
this afternoon, here you sat. And how many people do you know
that you went to school with and was your co-workers and you
worked around and neighbors that you knew were cut off and died
in their sins? And here you are saved. Who made the distinction in that? I bet there's not a single person
in here this afternoon that knows the Lord that would say, I made
the distinction. I made the difference. I was
better than my neighbor. I was better than my co-worker.
I was better than my childhood friend. I made the difference. Nobody would say that with me. Men are lost because of their
sins, but why are men saved? That's the Lord, isn't it? God
has not appointed you to wrath, Paul said. He could have. You
deserved it. But He's not appointed you to
wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Saved by sovereign grace, by
the will of God, by the appointment of God Almighty. Oh, that's wonderful, ain't it?
The Bible says God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation. Why, Lord? That's the question,
ain't it? Why? Couldn't have been anything
in me. All that was in me was sin. God
has chosen you in Christ before the foundation of the world. The only thing I can say when
I look at myself while I've been spared, while I've been left,
while I've been saved, even so, Father, or so it seemed good
in Thy sight. And I bow to that. I bow to that. And you do too, don't you? You
do too. And then verse 9, we'll close
with this. Look at this. Here's what He's
going to do with this one-third. He said, I'm going to bring them,
the one-third, I'm going to bring them through the fire, refine
them as silver is refined, and try them as gold is tried. And
they shall call on my name, and I'll hear them, and I will say,
this is my people, and they shall say, the Lord is my God. Boy, salvation is a difficult
thing, ain't it? It's difficult to obtain it.
You go yonder to the cross. You think it wasn't difficult
to obtain salvation? Listen to the Son of God groaning,
and you'll see, man, man, this is tough. But I'll tell you something
else. It's not easy applied either.
It takes the Holy Spirit to apply it. It takes Him coming in mighty
power and making us willing in the day of His power. And you
know as well as I do, living the Christian life, working out
your own salvation with fear and trembling is a difficult
thing. But I've been there and you have
too. I thought it was going to be a rosy walk, but I found out
different about a year later or so. This is tough. This self-denial
business, this taking up your cross and following Him, this
endearing temptation, keeping your eye upon Him, this is tough
business. And I tell you, it's so tough
that you ain't going to do it by yourself. The Lord save you
and leave you to yourself. You know what you're going to
do? You ain't going to do nothing. You can't walk. You can't do
nothing without Him, can you? It's too tough. You're going
to put yourself in the fire. You won't do that physically.
That would be silly, wouldn't it? You're not going to do it
spiritually. We avoid the heat, don't we?
We don't want to be melted down. But when He saves us because
He's chosen us and redeemed us, here's what He said, I've chosen
you and I've redeemed you, I've called you, and I'm going to
put you through the fire. I'm going to melt you down. I'm
going to bring the blind by way that they know not. When you go through the fire
and through the water, who brings us there? He does. He does. Boy, that's rough, ain't it?
That's rough. And if it was left up to us,
we would lay unrefined and polluted in our sinful nature. And we
wouldn't be fit for earth, let alone heaven. But boy, He works in us. He works
in us to refine us and put us in the fire. And hopefully, He
brings us to this place where we lift our hearts to Him and
say, Oh, Father, I'm nothing. I can do nothing. Give me grace. Give me grace and then put me
in the fire and burn away everything that does not resemble Your dear
Son. That's what I want. Don't you
want that? That's what I want. None of me
and all of Him. That's what we've got to have.
And if you're a Christian, if you're a Christian, you might
as well set yourself. He's going to put you in the
fire. Spurgeon wrote a little article in our bulletin. He wrote
a little article on this verse 9 here. I printed and put it
in the bulletin this week. Here's what he says. Let me read
it to you again. Grace changes us into precious metal. And then
the fire and the furnace follow as a necessary consequence. We
would sooner be accounted worthless that we might enjoy repose like
the stones of the field. No, Lord, we will gladly be cast
into the furnace rather than cast out from your presence.
The fire only refines, it does not destroy. We are to be brought
through the fire, not left in it. The Lord values His people
as silver, and therefore He is at pains to purge away their
dross. If we are wise, we will welcome
the refining process. And this is what He says, ìO
Lord, You test us indeed. We are ready to melt under the
fierceness of the flame. This is your way, and your way
is the best. Sustain us under the trial and
complete the process of our purifying, and we will be yours forever. He's going to bring us through
the fire. God do your work. That's the
effects of the cross. If He's redeemed you, If He's
opened the fountain for you, then be sure of this, He's going
to wash you and He's going to begin to bring you out of your
sins. He's going to make you ashamed
of yourself and your past life. And He is going to continue to
lead you and try you and refine you until finally you're just
like Christ. That's what salvation is all
about. It's not just forgiveness. Thank God it is that. But He
never stops there. He's going to save us, save us
from this world, save us from ourselves, save us from our sin,
and take us to Heaven, and be just like Jesus Christ, and bless
us with that eternal inheritance. And we bless Him for that. Let's
pray.