Look in Luke chapter 6 and Matthew
chapter 5 if you would find those two places. This is where we're
going to just begin. I want us to look tonight at
three things. And we'll go back next week,
the Lord's Will, to Deuteronomy, the study of Deuteronomy. But
this is the last subject that I want to speak on and the three
things that I wanted to look at with you. But tonight,
first of all, I want to look at this. I want to show us, if
I can, from the Scriptures, that there is a kindness in God. There's a mercy in God. And we
could even say a love in God that is temporary, that's not
saving. I want us to see that. Then secondly,
I want us to look at that kindness and mercy and love in God that
is eternal. towards His people that is saving.
And then thirdly, I want us to see the necessity of distinguishing
between these two things. Now, that is what I want us to
see, and without the hurry, or I will keep you too long. But
let us begin here in Luke chapter 6 and verse 35 and verse 36,
and then we will look at Matthew chapter 5 at the parallel passage. He says in verse 35, he has been
speaking of how to treat those who are our enemies and those
who would mistreat us, and how we should love them and be kind
to them. And he says in verse 35, But
love you your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing
again. And your reward shall be great,
and you shall be called the children of the highest. For he is kind,
to the unthankful and to the evil. He is kind. And then verse
36, Be ye therefore merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful. So He is kind and He is merciful. And look in Matthew at the parallel
passage in Matthew chapter 5 and look in verse 44. Matthew 5 and
verse 44. He had been speaking here of
the Pharisees who were saying, you know, love your friends,
but hate your enemies. You can do good to those that
do good to you, but you don't have to do good to those that
mistreat you. And here is what the Lord said
in verse 44. But I say unto you, love your
enemies, bless them that curse you, and do good to them that
hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute
you. that you may be the children
of your Father which is in heaven, for He makes His Son to rise
on the evil and on the good, and He sends rain on the just
and the unjust. For if you love them which love
you, what reward have you? Do not even the publicans the
same? If you salute or you greet those your brethren only, what
do you more than others? Do not even the publicans the
same? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven
is perfect. Now, the first thing we want
to remember tonight, and I know one of the things that all of
us are concerned about. There is not a one of you here
tonight that I know personally that professes the Lord and fears
His name, that has His grace of fear in your heart. One of
the things you would never want to do is misrepresent God. We're fearful of that, aren't
we? And we don't want to do that.
We love Him. We love His majesty, His honor,
His glory, and His attributes. And none of us want to misrepresent
God. It's bad enough if we misrepresent
one another. Lord, help us not to do that,
but it's worse still to misrepresent God. We don't want to misrepresent
Him in His eternal attributes. We want to look at God as He's
represented in the Word and His in His eternality, in His justice,
His holiness, His goodness, His love, His mercy, His kindness,
all that makes God, God. All He is in His eternal essence. You and I want to know Him and
never misrepresent Him to anybody. He's sovereign, isn't He? And
we love to set forth the sovereignty of God. He does according to
His will. in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of
this earth, and no man can stay his hand or say to him, What
doest thou? He is the Almighty. He made himself
known to Abraham as the Almighty God. Neither do you and I want
to misrepresent God in His ability and His willingness to condescend
to human creatures, fallen creatures, and feel towards them. and act
towards them and treat them as it pleases Him in His own heart. We don't want to misrepresent
Him on that side either. And is it possible for us to
misrepresent Him? It is, isn't it? And here's the
reason why it's so easy sometimes to misrepresent Him. He's nothing
like us. All we have to relate God to
sometimes is ourself, and He's eternally different. than we
are. He is infinite. You and I are
finite. If you and I knew everything
that this Bible taught about God, and the Holy Spirit taught
us perfectly about everything this Bible teaches, we'd still
know so very little about God. Because this is one small book.
It's not an infallible book. And it's sufficient to give us
the knowledge of God and to be saved by Him and to trust Him
and to worship Him and serve Him. But still, this is just
a small book. John said if everything that
should have been written of Him would have been written, the
world itself could not have contained it. So if we knew everything
about God that this book taught, we'd know very little still,
wouldn't we? David said something like this. He said, It's too
high for me. I can't attain unto it. And when Paul was ready to
close that mysterious chapters of Romans chapter 11, he said,
Oh, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge
of God, how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past
finding out. He said, My thoughts are not
your thoughts, didn't He? My ways are not your ways. As
high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways above
your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts. So it is easy,
even though we don't want to. It's possible, let me say, for
us to misrepresent God because He's too big for us. He's too
immense for us. So I want us to keep that in
mind. And I'm aware this evening that none of us, none of us want
to misrepresent our God and our Savior. So with that in mind,
let us look at this. Let's look first at the kindness
and mercy and love of God that's temporary, but it's not saving.
He gives us two samples here, two examples in the Scripture
that I read to you. And I want to look at these general
examples. Then I want to look at one or
two more particular examples of this kindness and mercy and
love of God that's not saving. First, in a general sense, he
speaks here in my first text in Luke 35 and verse 36 of chapter
6. He speaks here in a general way,
and he tells us that these three things are manifested from God
towards the unthankful and towards evil people, even those who will
finally die in their unthankfulness and die in their evil. He says
here in verse 35, For he is kind. God is kind, isn't He? He's kind. Who's He kind to? the evil people,
unbelievers, the unthankful. He's merciful. And how is this
mercy and this kindness revealed? In His providential care. In
His providential care. How essential is it to the existence
of any man in this world that the sun come up every morning?
If it didn't, just one morning, we'd be all gone, wouldn't we?
There'd be none of us left. There'd be no crops. There'd
be no light. If the sun, they tell us, come
just a few degrees closer, it would burn us up. If it got a
few degrees away, we'd freeze to death. Who is it that rules
the sun? The Lord Jesus says He causes
the sun to rise on the good and the evil, and His kindness and
His mercy is made manifest. And the Lord Jesus said, Love
your enemies just like this. Be kind to your enemies just
like this. Now, can we be kind and can we
be merciful to the same degree that God is? No, we can't, can
we? Be perfect, not in degree, but
in the same kind. Be kind to your enemies after
the same manner that the Father is kind to His enemies. Be merciful to your enemies after
the same kind of mercy that God is merciful to His creatures. Now, how can a man do that? Well,
if we're born of God, His nature is within us, isn't it? And if
His nature of kindness is within us, we can be kind. I tell you,
all of us, I bet you've been amazed at yourselves. that when
the Lord saved you, how He changed you. And there would have been
times when somebody mistreated you, that person would have been
in trouble, wouldn't they? But now you can not only withhold
your temper, you can go off and pray for that person who cursed
you. You can love that person who hates you. There's one of
you in this congregation tonight, and I know for a fact because
I've been talking with you about it, you're having trouble with
one of your neighbors. And He has burdened your soul unjustly
so. He is causing you to be grieved
in your soul. But this person told me just
the other night, you know what this person told me? He didn't
say, I wish you'd get sick and die. You know what he said? I wish the Lord would save him. How can he say that? Well, when
the nature of God is within us, we can be kind to Him. We can
be merciful and we can love even our enemies. Be ye perfect as
your Father in heaven is perfect. Listen to what the Apostle Paul
said in Romans 12. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather
give place to wrath, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, saith
the Lord, I will repay. If your enemy hunger, therefore,
feed him. If his thirst give him to drink,
for in so doing you shall heap coals of fire on his head. Be
not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." And as the Christian
lives that life, what does he do? The Lord Jesus said, you
are like God in heaven. You will be like the Father which
is in heaven, for He is kind and He is merciful. I want you
to look over here in another place. Look over here in Acts
chapter 14 and verse 15. Acts chapter 14 and verse 15.
The kindness and mercy of God is revealed mainly in the providential
care of God upon His creatures. Look at these two places. Look in Acts chapter 14 and look
in verse 15. I think sometimes we don't stop
and meditate upon this and think about this because sometimes, and I don't
mean this in a bad way, God forbid, this is a good thing, but sometimes
we're so concentrated on spiritual things that we fail to even look
around us at God's natural world that He's created and see how
He upholds it and what that's attributed to in God. And look
here, Al Paul. Paul and Barnabas had healed
this man and this town here of Lister was going to worship them.
They brought these wreaths ready to put around their heads and
necks and bow down and worship them. And look how the Apostle
Paul talked to him out of this in Acts 14. And he was saying,
Sirs, why do you these things? We also are men like passions
with you and preaching to you that you should turn from these
vanities unto the living God which made heaven, and earth,
and the sea, and all things that are therein, who in time past
suffered all nations to walk in their own ways, in their sinful
ways too. Look at this, nevertheless he
left not himself without witness, what was that witness? In that
he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons,
filling our hearts with food and gladness. What is it, brothers
and sisters, when we look around us, that upholds society? What keeps us from starving to
death as a nation? What is it that fills natural
hearts with gladness? What is the cause of that? When
the lost people have babies and they are healthy and they rejoice
in them, We have jobs. We have food. We have more than
sufficient. We have abundance, don't we?
What's that attributed to? God's goodness. That's showing
His kindness to His creatures. And let's be honest. Are they
thankful? Are they appreciative to Him?
It's no thanks to them, is it? And he doesn't seek for anything
in return. He doesn't do it for the reward
that he may get. He's good. He left not himself
without witness, his kindness and his mercy. He does give this
exhortation here that he does this, that we should
turn from our vanities to the living God. This kindness of
God towards His creatures is a witness to them You should
turn to this God. Now, can they without the gospel?
There's not enough light in nature for that. But I tell you, there's
enough here to remove the prejudice of a man's heart, isn't there?
God is kind and He's good. Look at one more passage just
over here, right in chapter 17. Here's where Paul was on Myers
Hill, and look here what he says. Here's where he found this altar
where they were worshiping all their gods, and they had this
unknown altar, had this altar to the unknown God. And then
He confronts them with a God of heaven, and look what He says
about it. Look what He tells them about the God of heaven.
God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He
is Lord of heaven and earth, He dwells not in temples made
with hands, neither is worship with men's hands, as though He
needed anything. Now look at this. He gives to
all life. Stacey's little baby came into
the world this afternoon. God give that child life. And
breath, and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations
of men to dwell on the face of the earth. He's determined the
times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation. that
they should seek the Lord, if actually they might feel after
Him and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us.
For in Him we live." Now, he's not just speaking of spiritual
life. We know that, but this is natural life, isn't it? Who
is it that brings us into this world and upholds us, upholds
our spirits and our souls, and gives us strength to move? to
work and to play and to eat and develop our senses and our bodies
and to have our being, whatever that being is. As certain also
of your poor self said, for we are His offspring. You know what
that word offspring means. Near kin. We are God's near kin. Now, sometimes we cast contempt
upon man, upon fallen man, upon ourselves, and rightfully so.
But, brothers and sisters, even though that image has been defaced
in man, man is still in the image of God, isn't he? And we're God's
offspring. We're not cows. We're not horses. We're not monkeys that used to
swing in trees. We're God's offspring. He created
us. And He won't treat us like animals. He doesn't hold cows and horses
and monkeys responsible, but He does us, doesn't He? He's
appointed a day, He went on to say, in which He'll judge the
world in righteousness. We all must give account to Him.
That's the dignity He's put upon His humanity. And He will assign
every man his long home. And here in this life, He gives
our being He upholds our movement, all the development we have in
our natural faculties. It's God that does that. He feeds
us. He sends rain. He gives us everything. And the Lord Jesus said this
was a manifestation that God is kind and God is merciful. Let's look at the love of God. in a more particular sense. I
want you to turn to two places. Look in Luke chapter 13. We've seen His kindness and we've
seen His mercy, His goodness, even over those who will perish
at last. But look in Luke chapter 13 and
verse 34 and then Luke chapter 19. Look at these two places. This is where the Lord Jesus
was speaking of Jerusalem. It had left. Well, you know what
it had done. It's in awful condition at this
time. But Luke chapter 13 in verse 34, look at these two scriptures. as a hen doth gather her brood
under her wings, and you would not. Behold, your house is left
unto you desolate. And verily I say unto you, you
shall not see me until the time come when you shall say, Blessed
is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Now, let's be honest
with this, with other Scriptures. The Lord Jesus said here, how
often would I have gathered thy children? Let's not be so Naive
to think that he and his sovereignty could not have gathered them.
He could have did that. Could he have not? He did not
force them against their wills to be gathered. But he could
have, by his sovereign power, made them willing. Could he not?
He could have brought Sodom and Gomorrah to repentance. If he
so willed, could he not? He said, if the works I've done
in your day would have been done in Solomon and Gomorrah, then
it would remain. So let's not say, well, God must
not have been sovereign. Our Lord must not have been sovereign.
But He's saying here, I would have. It wasn't me who kept you
from gathering. It was your own stubborn, rebellious
will. That's where He lays it to. And
look now what He says when He comes back the second time here
to Jerusalem in chapter 19. Luke chapter 19. He comes back
here again, and He comes by the way of the plains of Jericho.
If you ever look this up on the map, He goes up to the Mount
of Olives, and from that Mount of Olives you can overlook the
city of Jerusalem. And the Lord Jesus was ready
to descend down into Jerusalem, and He stops there, and I want
you to know, I want you to see His emotions as He looks over
this perishing city. Look what he says in verse 41. And when he came near, he beheld
the city, and he wept over it. And he said, If thou hadst known
even thou at least in this thy day the things that belong unto
thy peace, but now they are hid from thy eyes. And then he goes
on to tell them about their destruction from the Roman empire. But notice there in verse 41,
"...he beheld the city, and he wept over it." What was it in the Son of God
that stirred such emotion that tears began to gush from His
eyes? It was this perishing city. How would you represent the Lord
Jesus here? How could we identify with him? Would we be offended if we were
standing there and seeing the tears gush from his eyes over
a city that was ready to be destroyed? Would we turn away? Surely none
of us would say with a wink in our eye, it's pretense. God forbid,
brothers and sisters. This is the incarnate Son of
God, and He is beholding the city that is ready to be destroyed.
And the tears begin to gush from His eyes. What is it in Him that
causes such emotion? You and I cannot dictate to the
Son of God how He can condescend to feel and act towards His creatures. We can't do it, can we? And all of this was a temporary
kindness. All of this was a temporary mercy
and a love that I can't explain, but I know this, it wasn't saving. Let me show you one more passage
and then we'll go on to our second point. Look in Mark chapter 10. Mark chapter 10 verse 17. This is the story of the rich
young ruler that came to the Lord Jesus in Mark chapter 10
verse 17 and asked Him what good thing he had to do that he may
have eternal life. And the Lord Jesus confronted
him with a law there in verse 18. In verse 19, you know the
commandments. Don't commit adultery, don't
kill, don't steal, don't bear false witness, don't defraud
anybody, honor your father and your mother. And verse 20, And
he answered and said unto him, Master, all of these have I observed
from my youth up. Then Jesus beholding him, loved
him, and said unto him, One thing thou likest, go thy way, sell
whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven, and come and take up the cross and follow
me.' And he was sad at that saying, and went away greed, for he had
great possessions. And Jesus looked round about
and said to his disciples, How hardly shall they who have riches
enter into the kingdom of God." Here was a man, I sort of amused
when I read John Gill's account of this, about Christ loving
this man. And Spurgeon did give us a little
warning about Gil. He said, and he could do that
because he pastored the church after Gil left. But he said,
you have to watch dear brother Gil. He puts his blinders on.
And he's looking at something with his blinders on and he don't
get the big picture. And dear brother Gil said this
was human emotions that he felt. These were human emotions that
he felt. All right, Christ was human. But then he went on to
say he felt these human emotions because this man was so honest
and that he had labored to keep the commandments. I thought,
oh, dear Brother Gil, dear Brother Gil, the Lord Jesus saw through
this man, didn't He? He saw through this man. But He loved him. He loved him. But he went away. And as far
as we know, as far as we've got a right to believe, he never
came back to Christ again. He perished. So here is a love
that will look out over a city and weep over it. Here is a love
that will look upon a man that will let him go away, but never
save him. That's why I call this the temple.
Mercy, the temporal kindness, the temporal love of God. And
I don't understand that, brothers and sisters, except to say, there
I see it. There I see it. Let's quickly,
let's go to the second point. Just as there's a temporal love,
a temporal kindness, and temporal mercy of God, and it's manifested
in these things, there is that love, there is that kindness,
there is that mercy that is everlasting. And that is saving. It's covenant
mercies. It's covenant love. It's covenant
kindness. And it is towards all God's chosen
people. I preached a message a while
back, if you want to. We don't have time to go into it here,
but I preached it just the other day on the love of Christ from
Ephesians 3.19. If you want that to explain about
the love of Christ, you're welcome to get that message from Brother
Larry. But tonight I've just got three quick scriptures I
want to show you. I want to show you this. First of all, look
in Isaiah 54. Isaiah 54. I want you to, in your own leisure,
consider the context here because he's speaking of the church.
He's speaking of the church in the Old Testament. Paul quotes
verse 1 in Galatians chapter 4. And the church in the Old
Testament felt so barren sometimes. They felt so alone. There were
so few in numbers. And the Lord kept encouraging
them, saying, you better get a bigger tent. You better lengthen
your cords and drive your stakes down deeper because I am going
to add a great number to the church. And he was talking about
the Gentiles. You'll see that in there. In
verse 3, look at this, Isaiah 54, For thou shalt break forth
on the right hand and on the left, and thy seed shall inherit
the Gentiles, and he's speaking there of Christ, and make the
desolate cities to be inhabited. Fear not, for thou shalt not
be ashamed, Neither shalt thou be confounded, for thou shalt
not be put to shame. For thou shalt forget the shame
of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood
any more." Bless her heart you feel for her, don't you? I mean,
she was a widow, and she was reproached, and she was ashamed. But he said, I tell you, I'm
going to change some things. I'm going to add to your glory.
And here's why. For thy maker is thy husband. The Lord of hosts is His name,
the Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of the whole
earth. For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken, and
grieved in spirit and wife of youth when you were refused,
saith God. For a small moment have I forsaken
thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee. In the little
wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting
kindness Well, I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. For this is as the waters of
Noah unto me. For as I have sworn that the
waters of Noah shall no more go over the earth, so have I
sworn that I would not be wrought with thee, nor rebuke thee. For
the mountains shall depart, the hills be removed, but my kindness
shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace
be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." He talks
of kindness to all of His creatures and shows us His kindness. But
when they die, what happens to that? The year is an everlasting
kindness. It's to His own people. His covenant
people. He says here that, I've called
you. I'm your Redeemer. I've called
you. And my kindness shall never depart from thee, saith the Lord. Now, that's a different kindness,
isn't it? That's not a temporary kindness at all. That's an everlasting
kindness. And who's that for? He's talking
to His church, isn't He? However God treats the world
in kindness, brothers and sisters, it may well be temporary kindness.
But He has no temporary kindness for His people. That's everlasting
kindness. That's what I'm interested in.
And you, look in Psalms 103. Psalms 103. Look at the mercy. Well, I tell you, I value temporal
kindness. I value temporal mercy. I mean,
if we didn't have it, what would we have? Wrath? That's all that
would be left, wouldn't it? Would be wrath. But boy, there's
something eternally better. That's that everlasting mercy.
And you'll see how David says here in Psalms 103, he's talking
there in verse 2 about the Lord's benefits, and he tells us in
verse 3 what they are. "...who forgiveth all thine iniquities,
who healeth all thy diseases. He redeems your life from destruction. He crowns thee with lovingkindness
and with tender mercies. And then he goes down in verse
11 and says, For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great
is his mercy towards them that fear him. As far as the east
is from the west, so far has he removed our transgression
from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth
them that fear him. He knows our frame, he remembers
where it doth. As for man, his days are as grass,
and the flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind
passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof knows it
no more." But look at this, but the mercy of the Lord is from
everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness
unto their children's children." Do you fear the Lord tonight?
Is His grace of fear in your heart? Has He put it there? Then
you know something. You are under everlasting mercy. You cannot find out when His
mercy began to you because it did not begin. And you'll never
figure out when it ends, because it'll never end. Everlasting
mercy. When this earth will need no
more rain. When it won't need the sun to rise upon it. When
there's a new heaven and a new earth, His mercy upon you will
still be there. Everlasting mercy. And look at this love. Look in
Jeremiah chapter 31. A very familiar passage. Jeremiah
chapter 31. I'm just giving you basically
hints to this that you can look at these things and study them
out for yourself. I love the context of all three
of these passages. Verse 2, chapter 31, Thus saith
the Lord, The people which were left of the sword found grace
in the wilderness, even Israel, whom I went to cause him to rest. The Lord, at the period of old,
saying unto me, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with lovingkindness
have I drawn thee." Everlasting love. Had no rise and it'll have
no end. Everlasting love. And therefore,
what's the effects of such love? I'm drawing you. Aren't you glad,
brothers and sisters, it's not just that I drew you, but I'm
drawing you? I'm drawing you. That rich young ruler came to
Christ. He went away, didn't he? He went away. Those hundreds probably of people
in John chapter 6 that said, this is a hard saying, they went
back to walk no more with Him. What keeps you from going back?
I mean, through your struggles, through your fears and your doubts
and your trials, what keeps you from leaving Christ? When you're
so cold and indifferent sometimes in your heart that you scare
yourself to death, what keeps you from going back? His love. He's drawing you. He's wooing
you, sometimes so secretly you can hardly detect it. But He
said, I love you. And because I love you, I am
drawing you. I'll never cease to draw you
until I drew you all the way into heaven to myself. So there
is that in God which is temporal, and there is that in God which
is eternal. Now thirdly and lastly, why must
we distinguish between these two things? We have to distinguish
between these two things. And why? I think the first is
obvious because there are people who
are hoping in the temporal kindness and goodness and mercy of God. How many people do you and I
talk to and they say something like this? You know I was sick
and I prayed that the Lord would heal me. And you know He has. He's used the doctors, I think,
but I'm well now. Or they say something like, you
know, I was without a job, and I asked God to give me a job,
and you know He did. Isn't God kind to me? Yes, He
is. Or we were without money, or
something like this had come up on the family, and they saw
The kindness of God to them. The goodness of God to them.
The mercy of God to them. And what else do you attribute
it to? But here, here is what they go ahead and do. They make
this temporal kindness, the temporal mercy. They make God as the Creator
treating them in such a good way. They make that the foundation
of the hope of their souls. They live in a false refuge. and that which is temporal. That's
why we have to distinguish between these two things. We can go ahead
and say this, yes, God is kind to you. I've got a neighbor I'm
having to tell this to all the time. God has been kind to you. God has been good to you. But that's temporal. Your body
is temporal. Your mind is temporal. Your job,
your family is temporal. You need to concentrate on the
redemption that's in Jesus Christ. And therefore, we draw the distinction. We make a distinction. Now, it's
not always easy to do, is it? Because when we look at these
things like we have tonight, some of us are going to say,
and I've said it myself, man, this is confusing. This confuses
me. This is too hard. He never told us it would be
easy to dig these things up. As a matter of fact, he said,
when you search for me as for hid treasure, it's not easy labor
to get these things from the Word of God. But if we're going
to distinguish between these things, we have to. And brothers
and sisters, listen to this, and I believe this is so. If
you and I don't accept the first, these temporal things that I'm
talking about, if we don't accept the general mercy and kindness
and love of God, Whatever degree that may be, we're going to lose
a portion of our credibility when we try to talk to people
about the eternal life and the eternal kindness. Because you
know what they're going to say? All the kindness and love that
you fellows think God has is for the elect people. And you
won't even admit that He has any feelings towards anyone else.
So we lose our credibility. If we'll go ahead and yield this
first point and say, there it is, I see that, then we'll say,
there's something else we need to talk about. And that's this
eternal aspect, this everlasting kindness, this love that has
no end in our beginning, this love that sent Christ from heaven
to hang on the cross and bear our sins and pay our debt. A mercy that when we were dead
and trespassed and sinned, God who is rich in mercy for His
great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in
sins, has quickened us together. That's deeper than the mercy
that brings the Son up, isn't it? A mercy that will raise the
soul from the dead. That's what we're interested
in. A love that will not let us depart from our Savior's side. That's what we're interested
in. We don't want this love. When we're looking at eternity,
that will let us come and ask Jesus Christ, what must I do
to have life? And then to be permitted to leave
Him, never to return. We want the eternal. We want
that which is everlasting. I hope this study has helped
us. It gives you something to think about. I don't tell you,
I never demand that you have to agree with me. I don't even
want you to think about agreeing with me. Go home and study these
things for yourself. and seek these things of Saul.
For I have erred, forgive me and pray for me. But where you
can find it in the Scriptures, I expect you to receive it. And
pray and ask the Lord to give you the assurance of it. And
while we bless Him and worship Him and praise Him for the temporal
things that He gives to everybody, and let me say this, You and I cannot figure God out,
brothers and sisters. What He's permitted us to know
about Him, but still we cannot. One of the things I despise about
hyper-Calvinism, and if you want to know my definition of hyper-Calvinism,
it's simply a system that wants to hem God in, hedge God in,
put Him in a little pigeon hole. and say we've got him all figured
out. He acts this way or that way. That's what I hate so much
about hyper-Calvinism. You can't put God in a system.
He'd be easy figured out if you could do that. But you can't
fit Him. He won't fit in anything. He's
too big. So when you and I have studied
our best and we've studied with one another to try to find out
more of our sovereign, immense God, we'll have to say with David,
Lord, it's too high for us. You are past our finding now. And we humble ourselves before
Him and adore Him that He is that immense. And I don't want
a God that I could get my hands around and cage Him up and put
Him in my little system. Do you? None of us want that,
do we? Lord, teach us what we can know about You and help us
to be content to wait until we see His yarn. God bless His Word.