Tonight we're in the book of
Proverbs chapter 10. If you'd like to turn there.
I wasn't sure if we were going to allow it to finish out last
week or not, but I wasn't the one in charge. The Lord was.
So he directed me to these two last verses and gave me a message
on these two last verses in Proverbs chapter 10. Many people believe
that they have come to a correct conclusion about what God accepts,
about what God accepts. Many people believe they've come
to a conclusion, a proper conclusion about what God accepts. They
have fabricated many false hopes that hold to tradition, that
hold to what they do outwardly, that hold to what they don't
do outwardly. Tonight, I'm just going to go
ahead and tell you, he says the lips of the righteous know what
is acceptable. The lips of the righteous know
what is acceptable. We'll read the text here in just
a minute, but that's our topic tonight. Lips of the righteous
know what is acceptable. Now, why doesn't it say the heart?
Why doesn't it say the mind? Because that would have been
true also. We know what to say because God has given us the
word to say he's given us the Lord Jesus Christ. We didn't
arrive at this conclusion in and of ourself. A lot of people
that have come to the conclusion that they believe they are accepted
of God based upon what they do when the believers made to know
God only accepts one thing and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. The lie, brethren, is the opposite
of that. The lie says that God requires
something of me to make what he did effective. The lie is
that God is dependent upon man, the creature, to allow him to
do something. Let God have his way. Let God
into your heart. And these things are just not
true. Here's the good news, brethren. The Lord tells us they all shall
be taught of God. Who's all? All of his sheep.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and
I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
Those are the they. They all shall be taught of God. He teaches his sheep. He teaches
his sheep who he is, and he enables us to speak exactly what he speaks. Before we come to the knowledge
of the truth, we could not speak by faith what God speaks. We could have read the scripture,
but now we speak the truth about who He is and about what He's
done and about what we are. Now there's the issues, isn't
it? Because if we don't know anything about how bad we really
are, who He really is, we have no hope of salvation. So He teaches
us who he is. He introduces himself. If I could
put it that way, I love that. He comes to where we are and
introduces himself. What did he do to Saul? Remember
Saul going down on the road to Damascus before his name was
changed to Paul. The Lord shone forth a bright light and a voice
came and He knocked him off of his high horse, didn't he? He
introduced himself to Saul. That's exactly what he does to
all of his people. He introduces himself. And what's
the response when he introduces himself? The response is this,
Lord, what would you have me do? Lord, what would you have
me do? Whosoever therefore hear his
voice, is called by his grace, is taught what is acceptable,
to God. Let's read this, two verses,
Proverbs 10, 31, 32. The mouth of the just bringeth
forth wisdom, but the forward tongue shall be cut out. The
lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth
of the wicked speaketh forwardness. The lips of the righteous knoweth
what is acceptable. This is our subject. This is
our subject. David said in Psalm 19 verse
14, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. That's the desire of the Lord's
people. Let the words of my mouth and
the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. And
how can the words of a sinner's mouth be acceptable unto God?
How can my thoughts be desirable unto him? Can't be in the flesh. Can't be from the flesh. It has
to be from the new man. It has to be by faith. Words
of my mouth. What is the confession? Christ
is all. That's acceptable to God. Christ is all. What about
the meditation of my heart? It's the same thing. Christ is
all. I've got to have him. David said in Psalm 51, after
he had sinned with Bathsheba, purge me with hyssop, I shall
be clean, wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow. The
meditation of the heart is, I'm unclean, Lord, have mercy on
me, the sinner. That's the meditation of the
heart. And is that acceptable unto the Lord? Yes. Yes, because
you're looking for a substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. You're
not looking to yourself. You're not presenting yourself.
You're begging for the one that God is pleased with. This is
acceptable. The desire of every single child
of God, every single elect child of God is that the words of our
mouth and the meditation of our heart be acceptable in the sight
of God because we're thinking, we want to always be thinking
on Christ. We want to always be resting at his feet. We want
to always have his peace that passeth all understanding. We
want to hear his voice. We want to see his face. We want
to be reminded of what grace means and mercy. We need to hear
about the blood again and how it was sufficient in putting
away our sin. This is what we desire to meditate upon, and
this is what David's asking for. Lord, cause me to seek your face. Calls me to come to you again.
Lord, keep me from myself. Keep me from my own thoughts.
Keep me from this flesh. Calls me to seek. You. That's the desire of every believer. Is that your desire? It's my
desire. Christ alone. Somebody might
say, well, I'm just a sinner. God will never be pleased with
me. Not if you look into yourself, he won't. If you're looking to
Christ, he doesn't see sin. He sees his son. He sees the
blood. He sees that which is acceptable
to him. Outside of Christ, outside of Christ, it's true,
God never would be pleased with us, but our desire is to honor
our Savior, not to be a reproach on the church, to be found in
Christ. That's our desire. That's our
desire, to be found in Him, not having my own righteousness,
which is of the law, but having the righteousness which is by
the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for
me. That's the desire of the believer, the Lord's elect. And
is that acceptable to the Lord? Yes. Yes, because we're looking
to another. We're not looking to ourself.
We're looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. Something important to mention
that I think a lot of people believe is that When I had somebody
talking to me about what we believe and they said, well, if I believe
what you believe, there would be no point in coming to church.
There would be no point in anything. Everything's gonna happen because
if God's completely sovereign, everything's gonna happen the
way it's gonna happen. Nothing I can do to change it anyways. What difference does
it make? And I wanna tell you what that's called. That's called a fatalist
mentality. It's not a faith. Do we believe that God is absolutely
sovereign and everything that he has purposed is going to come
to pass? Absolutely. Do we live our lives begging
for him to have mercy upon us? Absolutely. We don't look to
ourself as any part of our salvation or evidence of our salvation.
We look to Christ. We're mercy beggars and we've been commanded
to be mercy beggars. We've been commanded to beg for
Christ. We don't excuse ourself for sin. We don't say, okay,
well, if everything's going to happen, when it's going to happen,
I'm a sinner. So we're just going to sin. Well, our desire is unto the
Lord, the meditation of my heart and the, uh, how did he word
that? Let's read that again. Let the words of my mouth, the
meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. Lord calls me to
look to Christ, not what I'm doing. not justifying myself. There's people and James was
dealing with this a little bit. He said that people were basically
blaming God for their sin. He said, let no man say when
he had sin or he had temptation, the temptation, the sins from
the Lord. No, you're guilty of that. It's on you. It's on me.
The Lord is the remedy for the sin. What's my point? My point
is this, what's acceptable unto the Lord is looking unto Jesus
Christ, not looking to self, not weighing our sin, not looking
and saying, okay, well, it is what it is, whatever's gonna
happen is gonna happen. Look to Christ, that's the message,
that's acceptable. He's acceptable to the Father.
And if you can look to Him, He's given you faith to look to Him,
and He gets all the glory for it, all the glory. The Lord tells us this, let this
mind be in you that is in Christ Jesus. Well, how do I do that?
Ask yourself that question. Let this mind be in you that's
in the Christ Jesus. If you're his, that mind is in
you. That's the good news. That mind is not my will, but
thine be done. That mind that that mind is, is looking to him and not self,
relying on him for everything. not looking to self for anything.
The Lord Jesus Christ was obedient unto the death of the cross,
believing his father's word, believing his father's word that
the Lord would resurrect him. That's what he was doing. And
that's what he's saying we should do. Trust in the Lord with all
our heart, leave not to our own understanding and all our ways
acknowledged him and he'll direct our path. Proverbs three, five
and six, I believe. And the point I'm making tonight
is, is everything that the Lord requires and everything that
I've said, he provides. He provides that which is acceptable.
Faith, without faith it's impossible to please God. That's acceptable.
Why? Because of the substance and the source of it. It's the
Lord Jesus Christ's faith bestowed. So the Lord is, the Lord is,
this is acceptable to him. Now, that was the intro. Now, this is what I want us to
understand. I need us to understand all of
that to understand the rest of this. And this is this is the
message. That's all the message, but you understand what I'm saying.
I want you to notice this lips of the righteous verse 32 lips
of the righteous know what is acceptable. What does he mean
by that? Well, God's people don't talk
like we used to talk. And somebody said, no, wait a
minute. Are you talking about like saying certain words or
doing certain things or, or, or, or, uh, lying or this? And
no, we're still the, our tongue is still, uh, scripture says,
if you're able to tame your tongue, you can tame the whole body.
I mean, it's, uh, full of poison. That's what I believe James said
it was. So what do I mean by we don't speak like we used to
speak? Do you still speak the same way about God as you did
before you heard the gospel? The answer is no. Why? Because
you didn't know who he was, and I didn't know who he was. He
revealed who he was. I don't see him any longer as baby Jesus,
meek and mild. I see him as God, the sovereign
creator of this universe. The Lord, in his righteousness,
made us the righteousness of God in Christ, and therefore
he's saying that our lips, know what is acceptable to speak.
It's acceptable to say Christ is God. It's acceptable to say
Christ was sufficient in the salvation of his people. These
things are acceptable unto the Lord. These things are what the
Lord's people have been made to say by faith. So I got three
points this evening. You and I, by God's grace, if
we're his, we've been made to speak what God says. But, and
the three points are this, we've been made to speak what God speaks
about the Lord Jesus Christ, about salvation by grace, and
about his gospel. Those are the three things I
want to look at tonight. We've been made to speak what God speaks
about the Lord Jesus Christ, about salvation by grace, and
about his gospel. So the first one, and it's kind
of on its own, too, because if I said that we've been made to
speak what God speaks, that's the truth right there. You could
just stop. But the three things are that I want to, because there's
a bunch, a bunch of things that the Lord has made us know and
speak because he's given us faith to believe God. But three of
them tonight are going to be the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ,
what God speaks about the Lord Jesus Christ, what God speaks
about salvation by grace alone, and what God speaks about the
gospel. So the first one, God's chosen people are made to speak
the truth about Christ. What do I mean by that? Well,
we no longer refer to him as a failure. Did you know that
every single false religion that bears the name Christian, that
says salvation is dependent upon man, is literally saying Jesus
Christ is a failure. We don't speak that way anymore,
do we? Now, as I'm saying this, we don't get a pat on the back
because of this. I'm not puffing us up saying, look at us. I'm
saying God has given us faith and caused us to not speak what
we used to speak. We don't talk about the Lord
Jesus Christ like we used to. We've seen him high and lifted
up and seated upon his throne. That's how we see him, like Isaiah
has seen him. We see him as God. We see him as sovereign. We see
him as the creator and sustainer of all life. We see him as the
alpha and omega. We see him as the author and
finisher of faith. We see him as he is by faith. So we don't speak about him as
those who are ignorant still of the truth. We don't speak
about him as those who make salvation dependent upon man when the truth
of the matter is when Christ said it is finished, it's finished. There's no more work to be done.
Somebody said, well, you have to believe. Well, believing is
passive. You don't believe in order to
become saved. You believe because the Lord
saved you by his grace and gave you faith to believe him. That's
a very unpopular statement I just made. People don't believe that.
But we've been made to speak the truth about God. We've been
made to know the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that this is true, but
men say that we have to choose to let God save us, and that
that means we have total control in God's salvation. And we used
to believe that garbage, some of us, didn't we? How embarrassing
is that? But in mercy, the Lord came.
In mercy, he introduced himself by his gospel. The I am said,
I am, live to us. And now we seen him as he is
and it's like David said he pulled me out of the mire he put me
on the solid rock he established my goings and he put a new song
in my mouth I don't sing what I used to sing I don't speak
what I used to speak he's God he's God he is sovereign he is
holy and I am not he is truth and I am false and full of sin. Another lie that men say about
the Lord Jesus Christ is that he wants your depraved, deceitful,
wicked heart. No, he does not. Doesn't want
my heart. He doesn't want yours. He's going
to give us a new heart. Isaiah said he's going to take
out the heart of stone. and put in a heart of flesh, one that
looks unto Him as all of our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. We don't look to self anymore
for our own wisdom or our own righteousness. God has made us
look to the Lord Jesus Christ alone for these things. This
is the miracle of grace, which we're about to get to in just
a minute, that the Lord does in the heart of His people. We've
been made to speak what God says. And what does God say? God says,
Christ Jesus finished the work. Lord Jesus Christ in John 17
said, Father, I have finished the work that thou hast given
me. How do we know the Lord was satisfied
with the work of the Lord Jesus Christ? Because he resurrected
his son. He was resurrected because of our justification. This is
how we know that he was successful. We speak the same thing God speaks.
Christ is all. Christ is all. That's why he
was named Jesus to begin with. Call his name Jesus for he shall
save his people from their sin. That was the reason he was named
that. The reason he was named Christ is because he was God's
son. He was not trying to become something. He was born something. You and I can never become something,
because we're a bunch of nothing. So our only hope is that something,
which is the Lord Jesus Christ, makes us into a bunch of somethings,
or we're going to remain a bunch of nothings. He changes what
we say about him. We see him as the something now,
the everything. And we see ourself as the nothing. I could probably write that in
a bulletin article, but that's a little bit of a tongue twister,
isn't it? But oh, it's the truth. We're no longer our own, but
we've been bought with a price. He owns us by his own blood.
And we're taught of him to speak that which is acceptable to him.
What is acceptable? That Christ Jesus is all. What's
acceptable? That it's not by works of righteousness
that I have done, but according to his mercy, hath he saved me.
It's not by my will or my blood or man's will, but by his own
will begat he us. This is acceptable. Redemption is entirely based
upon God pleasing God. We speak of the Lord Jesus Christ
as he is the fullness of the Godhead bodily fullness of the
Godhead bodily we speak of the Lord Jesus Christ is King of
kings and Lord of lords, the conquering Savior of his people,
he conquered Satan, he conquered death, he conquered hell, he
conquered the grave, and he conquered us, conquered us. He owned us already, but this
flesh is in subjection to him. Oh, it's the elder shall serve
the younger. That's good news, isn't it? This is speaking that which is
acceptable to God that Christ is all. Now look at the second
point I was going to make. God's elected people are made
to speak what God speaks about salvation by grace alone. A lot of people talk about grace.
As a matter of fact, there's churches around here that have
grace on the sign. The problem is is that men use
the word grace and say, yeah, that's how God did this and how
God does this, but if you want to be saved, you have to do that,
which completely negates the word grace. Paul was very simple
with this example. He said, if it's grace, then
it can't be of works, otherwise it's no longer grace. And if
it's of works, it cannot be of grace because it's of works. That's simple, isn't it? And
that's what we're going through with Galatians also, went through
with Hebrews. But it's the same thing. We learned
by God. We're taught by God, by grace
alone, that God's salvation is completely, totally, 100% Unapologetically,
all by grace, all by grace. For by grace are you saved through
faith, in that not of yourself, it is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. God saved us and called us, not
according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace,
which was giving us in Christ Jesus before time ever began,
but is now made manifest by the preaching of the gospel. men preach speak of grace and
say you have to do this or that that just makes it a work. That
just makes it a work. No, we don't even choose to believe. We believe because we've been
chosen. We don't choose to believe. We believe because we've been
chosen unto eternal life. Believing is the free gift of
faith. So what does this salvation hinge
upon? If it doesn't hinge upon us, it hinges upon God, completely
pleasing God. It hinged upon the Lord Jesus
Christ finishing the work given to him of his father. It hinged
upon the father electing a people and giving them to his son before
the time ever began in the covenant of grace. It hinges upon the
Holy Spirit regenerating everyone that the father elected and the
son redeemed. And it hinges upon the spirit keeping us by his
power. That's what it hinges upon. It's
completely and totally dependent upon God in every way, and it's
not dependent upon you and I in any way, shape, or form. There's a couple reasons for
that. Number one, if we could do something to merit, earn,
or gain salvation or favor with God in and of ourself, then we
could surely and certainly lose that favor or that gain with
God. And we would lose it, wouldn't
we? You say, well, I don't know. Maybe I could keep it. What about
Adam and Eve? How long did they last in the garden? I'm telling
you, I don't think it was long. You know how you and I are, so
why do we think that that would be any different? I mean, it
could have been the same day as they were created. I don't know.
But that's the truth of the matter. Lord leaves us to ourself. We're
gonna go back to our own way, our own way, not the ways of
the Lord. We're gonna leave grace and go back to the law. That's
what Galatians is all about, we're dealing with on Sundays.
But oh, he tells us the truth, that salvation is all by grace.
It's all by his free and sovereign grace to his people. Without
grace, there is no salvation. Without God choosing to completely
save, then we would all be doomed forever. So salvation is completely
by God's grace alone. David said this, although it
be not so with my house. This was his last words before
he dies. Literally, the scripture tells
us that. Although it be not so with my house, yet the Lord hath
made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, ensure
this is all my hope and all my salvation, even though the Lord
maketh it not to grow. What is our hope? Salvation by
grace. The everlasting covenant of grace. That's our hope. It was between
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And who are the
benefactors, the beneficiaries of this? The Lord's chosen people. Salvation is all by grace. To have this hope is to know
what is acceptable to God, to know what is acceptable to God.
Now, lastly, God's people are made to speak what he speaks
about his gospel. I have been confessing some things
to you about whenever I was in false religion for the simple
fact of making a point, and what I'll confess to you tonight is
whenever I was in false religion, I couldn't exactly tell you what
the gospel was. I could tell you that it was
the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, but
that's not the complete gospel. It's how that Christ died according
to the scriptures, how he was buried according to the scriptures,
and how he was resurrected according to the scriptures. It's not just
that he died, was buried, resurrected, it was why and how, and what
did that accomplish? That is where the nail gets hit
on the head. What did he accomplish when he died? What did he accomplish
when he was buried? What did he accomplish when he
was resurrected? That's where the truth of the gospel lies.
Men will talk about the gospel and say that the cross was an
offer to men to make it effectual based upon what they do. And
the truth of the matter is, is the cross was an offer unto the
father in order for you and I, the Lord's people, to be redeemed
freely by his grace. That's the difference. That's
the difference. The gospel is how he died according
to the scriptures. Why? Why did he have to die?
To save his people from their sin. So that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him. Why couldn't we do anything to
help ourselves? Well, the gospel's clear on this because we were
completely and utterly depraved. We had no hope of getting to
God, no hope of becoming alive. We were born dead in trespasses
and in sin. We are the corrupt creature. that needed to be saved. This
is why he had to die in order to redeem us. We're made to believe that he
didn't make a way, that he is the way. God's gospel reveals
I'm a sinner and I deserve hell for my very best deed. My very
best deed, not my very worst deed, my very best prayer, I
deserve hell for that because I'm in the flesh. This is what
the gospel reveals how bad we really are. And you start telling
people this, you know, there's no other church you can go, well,
maybe there is, I don't know, but I don't know very many, but
believing churches before you tell everybody there that you
were born a liar and they don't want to fight you after service.
They're like, no, that's true. I believe that. You go to some places and
call them liars. They get really mad at you. We're
liars by nature. That's what we are. We lie on
who God is. We lie on what salvation is. We lie on what the gospel
is. We lie on who Jesus Christ is until the Lord teaches us
what is acceptable to him. Christ is all. When he does that,
we're no longer liars when it comes to the Lord. When it comes
to the Lord, we believe the truth. What the Lord say, you shall
know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Set you free. Oh, brethren, it's true. I deserved
hell and you deserved hell for our best deeds. Yet God chose
to elect a people in the covenant of grace, chose to save his people
from their sin. What is he? I just told you that
we're sinners, but listen to the beauty of the Lord's gospel. God commended his love towards
us in that while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. He didn't wait till we were living
better. He didn't wait till we started doing better or trying
harder. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. This is what he teaches us. It's
acceptable to him. We look to him as all in salvation. We look to his gospel as our
only hope of salvation. His gospel, his gospel. Christ died for every one of
his chosen people. God's gospel reveals what is
acceptable to God, that Christ is all sufficient, that the blood
is still sufficient, that his death is still sufficient, that
nothing's ever gonna change about that. The Lord's people, because
he was made to be sin for us, who knew no sin, his people were
made to be the righteousness of God in him. Lastly, the gospel reveals this.
If I am to be kept, he's going to do all the keeping. He's got
to do all the keeping. Gospel revealed that we're sinners,
that we had to be saved. The only way we'd be saved if
God chose us, God chose us freely by his grace. In time, he calls
us according to his will. And, uh, He only died for his people.
He didn't die for everybody, but for those he died, he put
away their sin. And lastly, if I'm going to be
kept, he's going to be the one keeps me. I won't keep myself.
I can't keep myself. I didn't save myself. I couldn't
call myself and I can't keep myself. But that is what he does
for his people. And we say truth, Lord. And that's
acceptable. That's acceptable. The good news
is this. You are kept by the power of
God. through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed at the last
time. When the Lord Jesus Christ reveals himself to us, he reveals
these truths of his gospel to us, that salvation is completely
and utterly dependent upon the Lord, that the Lord Jesus Christ
is God, the sovereign creator and sustainer of everything,
and he reveals that this gospel is the only way God saves sinners.
Paul said, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it
is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to
the Jew first and also to the Greek. And the reason he said
Jew and Greek there was it's the religious and the irreligious.
It literally encompassed the entire world saying it doesn't
matter whether you're a Jew or you're a Greek. It doesn't matter
whether you're a Jew or you're a Gentile. If you believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, you'll be saved. And if you find yourself believing,
he's the doer of it. When the Lord brings all these
glorious truths to pass and we're able to believe it, the Lord
has already brought them all to pass. When he makes it come
to pass and enables us to believe it. then we'll know what is acceptable
in his sight. We'll know what's acceptable
in his sight. The Lord Jesus Christ, nothing more and nothing
less. The Lord Jesus Christ, nothing
more and nothing less. Let's pray. Father, we ask that
you would take this and bless it to our understanding for your
glory. In Christ's name, amen.