Tonight we're gonna be in the
book of Proverbs. Lord willing, we'll finish up
Proverbs chapter nine tonight. Proverbs chapter nine. Here in our text, we have a picture
of the false gospel. the gospel of works, gospel of
free works, the gospel of anti-Christ. It's not a gospel at all. It's nothing but the path of
destruction. It's opposite of the path of righteousness, because
the path of righteousness is all by grace. The path of destruction
is all by works. Path of destruction is all about
what you do. Path of righteousness is all
about what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. It's all about what
God's done. That's the difference. And that's the picture here.
This is the conclusion of the opposite of the wisdom of God. We have seen the very first verse
in chapter nine, wisdom has builded her house. Well, we're going
to go back. If you remember in chapter seven,
it talks about the strange woman. Well, that's who it's talking
about again, except this time it's talking about her being the foolish woman. She's likened into a harlot in
chapter seven. which is Babylon, it's found
in Revelation, the one that commits spiritual adultery because they
never come to Christ. They never come to Christ. They
say they do, but it's all false religion is what it is, and men
say that they came to Christ, and yet there's things that you
must do after or before you can come to Christ, and that's not
true. That's not true. This is the lie that was devised
by Satan. and believed by Adam and Eve
from the beginning. And it condemned the entire human
race to death. To death, that's what happened.
Let's read this together. Proverbs 9, 13 through 18 says,
a foolish woman is clamorous. She is simple and knoweth nothing. For she sitteth at the door of
her house on a seat in the high places of the city. to call passengers
who go right on their ways. Whoso is simple, let him turn
in hither. And as for him, as for him that
wanteth understanding, she saith to him, stolen waters are sweet
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth, he
knoweth not that the dead are there and that her guests are
in the depths of hell. It's false religion. It's false
religion. The man that wants understanding
comes to false religion. False religion says to them,
stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. I've titled this message Sweet
Waters and Pleasant Bread. Because even though the false
religion says that their waters are sweet, their stolen waters,
they're gonna be bitter in the end. They may say it's the blood
of Christ. They may say it's all of grace,
but they also add something to it which completely cancels out
grace. Paul said it simply, if it's of grace, it can no longer
be of works or it's of works. But if it's of works, it can
no longer be grace, for grace is grace. You can't mix them
together. And that's what we're hearing
right here in Solomon, in Proverbs rather. Notice he says, whoso
is simple. Whoso is simple. What does that
mean? Those who lack wisdom. Those
who do not have the wisdom that is Christ. Those that don't know
any better. They're simple. Everything has been created by
our Lord and everything either glorifies self or it glorifies
God. Now God is the difference maker
in that he causes us to glorify him. Paul said, If I glory, I
won't glory in nothing but the cross. Nothing but the cross.
Why? Because it was the finished work
on the cross that saved the Lord's people from their sin. It's not
by works of righteousness, which we have done. It's not by works
of righteousness we do now. It's by the righteous works of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the finished work on the cross of Calvary.
This is the message here. This is the opposite of the truth.
She's saying that she's the lie to them. That's what she's saying.
The foolish woman worships self. Notice she's deceiving this person.
She's deceiving her followers. And that's her job, deceiving
others. Does that remind you of anybody? Deception? Lies? Lord told the Pharisees in chapter
five or chapter six of John, he said, you're of your father,
the devil. He was a liar from the beginning. He was a liar
from the beginning, the father of it. That's what he told them.
The reason they believe the lie is because they want a righteousness
of their own. The Lord hasn't revealed himself
to them. We see that so clearly throughout the scripture, don't
we? All false religion deceives. Now this evening, I want to ask
three questions. Three questions. First question is, does my gospel,
does my preaching attempt to rob God of his glory? Does my
gospel, or my preaching, and you're asking this to yourself,
too. This is the gospel that you believe also, and this is
us preaching the gospel right now, do you understand? I won't
preach to an empty building, it wouldn't do any good. I guess
if we're streaming empty, that'd be different, but you understand
what I'm saying. The Lord's ordained this to be worship. This is how
he's made it to be. So does our gospel attempt to
steal the glory of God? Does it attempt to rob God? And the reason I put the word
attempt there in bold print, you can't see that, but I can.
The boldness of it is because that's all we can ever do is
attempt. We can't take God's glory, it's his. It's like saying
you can take God's power. That's just foolish. There's
no way. That's an impossibility. He's
God, and he's going to have all the glory. But does my gospel,
the gospel that we believe and preach, is it God's gospel? And
if it is, then that means it gives God all the glory. The
question is, though, does it attempt to rob God of his glory? This woman is stealing and eating
in secret. It's a picture of false religion.
They're stealing God's glory. They're stealing God's glory. Does the message that we preach
steal from Christ? Does it steal from Christ having
all power, all authority? Does it steal from His glory
in His blood? Did His blood accomplish something
or did it not? So many men say that the blood
of Christ is not effectual until they do something, and that's
not true. That's stealing from the blood of Christ. No, it's
perfect. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. He saved
his people from their sin. Anytime you hear somebody preach,
ask yourself, is this message that I'm hearing trying to rob
God of his glory? Because that's what's going on
right here in this chapter. Look at verse 17 and 18 again.
Stolen waters are sweet and bread eaten in secret places, but he
knoweth not. And that right there is key to
everything in this part of the chapter. He knoweth not. Why doesn't he know? Because
God has not showed him. See, God is wisdom. Christ is
wisdom. He must reveal or we'll never
see. He knoweth not that the dead are there and that her guests
That's the members of false religion. Do you see that? The members
are in the depths of hell, not on the threshold of it, not coming
towards it. They're in the depths of hell.
That's the point. Unless the Lord reaches and grabs
them out of there, that's where they'll be when they die. The
false gospel said we can add to the finished work of Christ
or we can take away from it. This is stolen waters. Now I wanna explain what they
mean by stolen waters. Back in biblical times, if you
remember, Isaac found the well that the Philistines had buried
that his father Abraham had dug. They would take They would have
wells, and they would, to cut you off from your water source,
they would fill those wells back up. Well, Isaac got everything
back out so he could drink the water. But a lot of times, the
water supply that you had, the wells were on the outside, and
they weren't for public use. They were your wells, because
once they went dry, they're in a desert. Once they go dry, there's
no more water to be had. So people would steal. the valuable
water from others. That's what they're talking about
here. Now, what's more valuable than the fountain of living water?
What's more valuable than that? Men want to steal from the Lord. They want to steal from the fountain
of living water. They want to rob him of his glory in salvation. I should preface that with attempt.
They want to attempt to rob God. Why? Because they believe they
are God. We believe we are God. by nature
coming into this world. I've used this analogy many times,
but did you have to teach your children to lie? Did you have
to teach your children to... How many times did you see, have
you seen a baby, Jonah, you're here right now, man. How many
times does that baby cry and it really doesn't need anything?
You just pick it up and it stops because it wants to be picked
up, right? It's about me. We're born our own God. That's
facts. And so we want the glory. We
want glory in salvation. God says that we cannot have
it. We cannot have it. They're trying
to eat the stolen body of the Lord Jesus Christ. They want
to make it effectual. Make it effectual. They want
the power. They attempt to obligate God by the things that they do.
They say, okay, I've done this, now God is obligated to save
me, or I've done this, now God's obligated to bless me, or I've
done this, now God's obligated to do this. That's not true,
we can't constrain or restrain him, he's God. He's God, does
our gospel, does our message attempt to rob glory from the
Lord's finished work, or does it give him all the glory? Do
we rejoice in God electing a people, in Christ becoming a man? of
their own free will. They chose to do that. They chose
to, their own will and purpose, his own will and purpose, I should
say. It's a beautiful salvation that the Lord wrought. He became
a man and lived a perfect life and his people steadied, died,
satisfying the law, satisfying God's demands, satisfying justice,
and now these people are saved. Now what glory do we have in
that? The only thing that we contributed was our sin and we
didn't even contribute that. He took it. He took it and nailed
it to his cross, the scripture says. We didn't give it to him.
He took it. Why? Because, well, number one,
how are we gonna give that to him? And number two, well, we
weren't even born. But he took it, took it out of
the way, nailing it to his cross, the scripture says, and when
he had by himself purged our sin, sat down on the right hand
of God. So the work is finished. If that's
the gospel we preach, it gives him all the glory, doesn't it?
There's no room for error in that. God is God, and salvation
is of the Lord. Now, the second question is this,
if you want to know who is getting all the glory in preaching, the
Lord gave me a very simple example to use, and I hope it's not complicated,
so it should stick with us, but all you gotta do is ask yourself,
what is the finger of the message that they're speaking pointing
to? What is the finger, is it pointing to God? Is it pointing
to the Lord Jesus Christ only? Is it telling us Christ is all
or does it point to this? Does it point to this? It's one
or the other. It's one or the other. Either man is saying work
and do or it is finished and it's done. There's no in between. Where is the finger of the message
being pointed? To man, to works or to self or
to the Lord Jesus Christ? So if our message, if we're not
robbing God's glory, if we're not trying to steal from him,
if we're not trying to belittle the blood of Christ or act like
it's not effectual on its own, ask yourself, what does the finger
point to of the message the man is saying? If it points to the
Lord Jesus Christ only, it's given him all the glory, but
if it points to me, it's not glorifying him. Only when it
points to Christ does it glorify God. This is the only place that
the glory of God can be seen. It's the only place. Can't be
seen anywhere else. Understand this, understand,
under no circumstance can it point to me and point to Christ. Salvation's of the Lord. If the
gospel I preach points to me, unless it's calling me a sinner,
I'm saying anything for righteousness sake, ask you who you're being
told to come to. Do you need to clean up your
life? It's pointing to you. Do you need to make a decision? It's
pointing to you. Do you need to do more works? It's pointing to you.
Do you need to keep the law? It's pointing to you. Christ is all,
it's pointing to Christ. Salvations of the Lord, it's
pointing to Christ. And if we are preaching the message
that just points to the Lord Jesus Christ, it glorifies him,
it honors him. And he promised to honor his
word. He said, my word will not return void. This all started in the garden,
this pointing to me thing. Boy, we're an entitled society,
aren't we? You can order something and it will be at your house
the same day. Now, I remember as a young man, you would order
something and have to wait a month. Not anymore. You can order it
in the morning, you have it in the evening. Sometimes two or
three hours later. I don't know how they do that,
but it's what they do. What's my point? We're entitled and
we want instant gratification. That's us as a society. That's
Western culture. And we get that from our father,
Adam, and our mother, Eve. That's where we get it from.
How do I know that? Well, it all comes down to these
three things, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and
the pride of life. And you know what that is? That's power, popularity,
and pleasure. That's the three things that
men contend with that they cannot beat. in their self, the Lord
can give grace, but they cannot beat that within themselves.
It started whenever Eve, I'll read this to you, Genesis chapter
three, and when the woman saw the tree was good for food and
that it was pleasant to the eye, a tree to be desired to make
one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and gave
also to her husband with her and he did eat. That's the lust
of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life. She
saw that the tree was good for food. What is that? That's pleasure. And that it was pleasant to the
eyes and the tree was desired to make one wise. Well, that's
power. And that's just power, popularity and pleasure, isn't
it? Why is it that we always, why does it always come back
to that? Because it's our nature. It's our nature. But did you
know that's what they, Satan tempted Christ with the same
thing. Did you know that? He tempted him with, The bread, remember he said,
command these stones that they be made bread. And I'd remind
you, he was fasting for 40 days whenever he was told that. He
was hungry. He hungered and thirst just like any, he was a man.
He was the God man, but he was a man, 100% man, 100% God. He
said, I have meat that you know not of, to his disciples, didn't
he? Satan said, if you be Christ, if you be God, command these
stones that they be made bread. And what'd the Lord tell him?
Get behind me, Satan. For man, it's written, I love
the Lord's response every time, it is written, it is written.
He used the word, didn't he? He used the word, man shall not
live by bread alone, but by every mouth that proceedeth out of
God. Well, he took him up on a building,
and he said, okay, if you be God, then jump off of here, because
don't the scripture say, and he tried to use scripture, you
can imagine he is the word of God right in front of him, and
he's gonna use that against him, But anyways, he said, jump off
here. And it says the Lord gives his
angels charge over thee to keep thee. And the Lord, the Lord
say, well, it is written, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy
God. Well, he took him up onto a mountain after that, a pinnacle,
it says, and he showed him a city and all this land. And he said,
if you bow down and worship me, I'll give you every bit of this.
I'll get what number one, it's already his, you know, it's,
The only thing I could come up with to understand is he would
give them, he would give the people to the Lord. I'm thinking
maybe that's what he was saying. I'm not really sure, but if they're
his, there's, I mean, you understand what I'm saying. The Lord was
the one that decided that to begin with. He didn't have no power over
God. Oh, that's power. Do we see that? Pleasure is the
bread. Popularity is the angels catching him. Or that's power,
I'm sorry. Power is the angels catching him because he's now
in control of the angels. And then popularity, all these people.
I'll give you all this. Isn't that? Did the Lord fail? The Lord couldn't fail because
he was God. Was it possible for him to sin? No, he was God. If
anybody else says otherwise, they're telling you a lie. He
could not have sinned or he would not have been God. God cannot
sin. I'm thankful for that. Aren't you? He was our example,
but he was our substitute. More importantly, he was our
substitute doing that under that pressure that he was under. Uh,
it was, it was nothing for him to continue to look to the father
because he was perfect. You and I would have buckled.
I don't doubt that at all. I mean, we know what we are, don't we?
You don't come to us and tempt us whenever it's a convenient
season and we're on We have joy and peace. It's when we're down
in the darkness, when we're in the valley. That's whenever the
temptations for unbelief happen, isn't it? That's when it happens.
Well, this is and always has been the temptation because men
want to be their own God. Men want to be their own God. Is the gospel being preached
pointing to me or is it pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ? Because
if it's pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ, then we're not
robbing from God. We're not trying to steal from
him. We're saying all glory and honor and praise to the lamb
that was slain. And The reason I said earlier
that we attempt to take it from God is because the Lord said
this, and when God says something, he can't lie, so we know this
is the truth. Isaiah 42, eight says, I am the Lord, that is
my name. And I love how he says that.
I'm the Lord, that's my name. And my glory will I not give
to another, neither my praise to graven image. I won't give
my glory to another. I won't give my praise to graven
images. My preaching's not pointing to
God giving him all the glory. It's altogether vanity because
it's the lie. Now let's read our text again
here. In this light, before we go to
the last question. Verse 13, a foolish woman is
clamorous. She is simple and knoweth nothing.
For she sitteth at the door of her house on a seat in the high
places of the city to call passengers who go right on their ways. Who
so is simple, let him turn and hither "'And as for him that
wanteth understanding, "'she saith to him, stolen waters are
sweet, "'and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. "'But he knoweth
not that the dead are there, "'and that her guests are in
the depths of hell.'" I'm reminded in the scripture, the Lord was
wroth with the children of Israel on many occasions. This particular,
when he told them, he said, you've committed two evils, not just
one, but two. Number one, you've forsaken the
living God, forsaken the true God and you've hewed yourself
out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. So even
if somebody could steal from the Lord, their cistern's broken. It's not going to hold the water.
Do you understand that? The Lord is the doer in all of
his salvation for his people. He's the one that accomplished
it. He's the one that secures it. He's the one that provides
it. He gives it freely by his grace and he gets all the glory
for it. All the glory. Last question
I had, and I've already answered these. I answer my questions
two or three times the whole time because I need to hear it. I believe in hitting the nail
on the head over and over again, and I pray the Lord allows us
to remember it. But the last thing is, does my
message declare do or done? It's one or the other. Does it
declare it is finished or there's work to do? Is it finished or
there's work to do? Does it declare do or done? Every gospel that is preached,
and there's only one true gospel, we know that, but they call theirs
gospel even though it's not. You know what the word gospel
means? Good news. Good news, that's literally the
definition of gospel. Is it good news if somebody tells
you that Christ was a failure and that you need to do your
part? That's not good news to me because I'm a sinner. Not
because of what I do, but because of what I am by nature. I need
a substitute. I need a surety. Is it good news
if I tell you that Christ Jesus by himself purged the sin of
everyone that he chose to love in the covenant of grace before
time ever began and you had nothing to do with it? He just did it
by grace alone. That's good news, because I can't do anything to
mess it up, because I didn't do anything to earn it. Everything
you earn, you could lose. Did you know that? Think about
it. Everything that's earnable, you could lose money. You earned
your money. You could lose a house if you get a house. I mean, there's
all kinds of things that can happen. So if I earn this salvation,
I could lose it. Well, those are called freewill
Baptists, just so everybody knows. They're out there. They literally
have their apostate on the sign. It's apostasy on the sign. Does my message declare do or
done? If it says do, then it's just stealing the sweet water
of the Lord. It's trying, it's attempting
to take, it's attempting to, and I want to say this reverently,
dilute the blood. Like it's not enough. It's not
strong enough. That word dilute, that's what
that means is to cut it down, water it down. And oh no, the
Lord's people rejoice in the blood, the power of the blood,
the way that it is. No, nothing, what can wash away
my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
That's our hope. That's our hope. If our message declares do, well,
it's just stealing the pleasant bread of our Lord has taken the
offense of the cross out. Did you know you can almost preach
the gospel and not preach the gospel and you're preaching a
lie? Did you know that? If we don't preach the whole truth,
the truth and nothing but the truth, we're not preaching the
truth. We're preaching almost the truth.
If the offense of the gospel that Jesus Christ did not die
for everybody, that he does not love everybody is not clearly
declared, we're not preaching the gospel. There's a reason
that this building isn't packed out tonight. People don't want
to hear that because they want to hear do, they want to steal
God's glory, they want to rob from Christ, and they want to
say that the blood was not effective, that I've got to do something
to make it effective. No, it was effective in redeeming
the Lord's people by itself. The Lord did it. He saved his
people from their sin with the sacrifice of himself. His soul
was made an offering for sin to his father and the father
was satisfied. The father was well pleased. How do you know?
He was resurrected. He was raised because we were
justified. That's our evidence. All this stealing of the Lord's
sweet bread, or sweet water, and pleasant bread, or secret. Bread eaten in secret is pleasant.
Yeah, pleasant bread. It's just taking the offense
out of the cross. It's dethroning God, or attempting to dethrone
God is what it is. That started it before time ever
began. Who was the one that did that?
What did Satan, what did Lucifer say? I will, that's the worst
thing a man can say. He's not a man, I know, but that's
what we say, isn't it? I will do this, I will do that. The
Lord said, don't say that, say Lord willing. Lord willing. What he meant, what he's saying
though, I will, is he's gonna have the power to do something. He said, I will ascend above
the heavens. I will become like the most high. And if you look at that and read
it, he's saying, I'm gonna become God. I've decided, I've made
my decision, I'm gonna become God. You can't become God, there's
only one. Besides his, there is none other.
There's only one God, one Lord, one mediator between God and
man, the man Christ Jesus, the scripture tells us. Look at verse
18. Man that tries to set up man
on a throne is dethroning God or attempting to dethrone God.
He doesn't know what he's doing, but he knoweth not that the dead
are there. Walking dead men. Have you ever
been in public before? I don't care where it's at, but
there's people around you and all of a sudden you feel grieved
because you're looking around seeing these people and you don't
know who the lords are. We don't want to be presumptuous that
nobody is whenever we're walking around like that, but just to
know that they're dead men dying. And there's nothing you necessarily
can do about it. I mean, there's really not anything
we can do about it. We can tell them to come to church,
but the Lord has to be the one that makes them, gives them the
desire. But that's grievous sometimes. To know, you look at somebody,
you're like, Your sins not been put away to my knowledge. You
know, and maybe it has, and maybe they'll bring you to the truth,
but how sad. This is as good as it's going to get for them.
This world? How many times have you heard
people talk about this earth being hell? Oh, I'm living in
hell. You ever heard that before? They
have no idea what they're talking about. Hell is a real place of
torment. This is as good as it gets. And you know, the amazing
part about the Lord's people is we can say this is as bad
as it'll ever get. It's not bad either, is it? Why?
Because the Lord's given us grace, given us mercy, given us his
spirit, given us his truth, given us his word. If that's as bad
as it gets, we've got it really good, don't we? He's given us
salvation, full and free, all by grace. That's something to
rejoice in, isn't it? That's something to be thankful
for. Oh, these men don't know that there is nothing but death
there. They don't know they're entangled
in the web of hell itself. What a sad state for these men
to be in. I believe it was Hawker that said this one time. He was
weeping in the street. And I could be wrong, so I'll
have to look it up if anybody wants to know. But he was weeping
in the street, and his friend said to him, why are you weeping?
And he said, because I hear the footsteps of dying men. I hear
the footsteps of dying men. They don't know that they're
dying. They don't know that there's, here's the saddest part is they're
thinking these stolen waters are gonna keep them and that
this pleasant bread is going to help them and that all it
is is death. The wages of sin is death. That's
all we can produce is sin. That's it. We sin when we pray. We sin when we preach. Why? Because
we're the ones doing it. No, he has to take us and take
our prayer and wash it in his blood and present it perfect
to his father. To say salvation is by man in
any way, whether it's by his works before he saved or after.
It's his choice, it's how he lives. It's loudly to declare
the blood was not sufficient. That's what it declares very
clearly, very clearly. But it was sufficient, wasn't
it? It was sufficient. When the Lord Jesus Christ hung
his head and said, it is finished, number one, he's God and cannot
lie. But that meant it was finished.
It was finished forever, forever settled in heaven. The people
that are written in the Lamb's book of life, they're forever
there. They're forever there. What did the Lord say? None shall
take them out of my hand. My father, which gave them to
me is greater than all. And no one's able to take him.
No man's able to take them out of my father's hand. Then he
says, I and my father are one. So the picture there is you,
whenever you have him talking about being one with the father
in John chapter seven, the picture there is a hand, the Lord Jesus
Christ hand and us in the hand. And then the father's hand over
top of that one, who's going to touch. Paul said it this way. I'm persuaded that nothing I'll,
You know the verse, he says, death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall
be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ
Jesus. You can just put anything right there. That'd be just fine.
But these individuals are saying that God's love is conditioned
upon you, or God's love is conditioned upon me. God's love is conditioned
on one thing, the Lord Jesus Christ, what he accomplished
on Calvary. That's what it's conditioned
on, not you and I. Gospel is clear and simple. The
sweet water and pleasant bread of the gospel, it suffices the
Lord's people, don't it? They're talking about sweet bread
that's stolen, pleasant bread that's stolen and sweet waters.
Lord gives it freely to his people. Whosoever will let him come,
take up the water of life freely. Christ said, I am the bread of
life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger. He that believeth
in me shall never die. Lord told us, this is my body
broken for you. This is what he did for us. This
is my body broken for you. That's why we take communion
is to, we do it in remembrance of him. We do it to confess him
again. There's nothing that satisfies
the longing heart of a sinner, one of his elected sinners, but
the blood of the Lord, but the body of the Lord, but his righteousness,
his holiness, his goodness, his grace, his mercy, his peace,
his love, his joy. Scripture says it's unspeakable
and full of glory. His joy is unspeakable and full
of glory. He gets all the glory in this. All the glory in this.
Our gospel don't try to steal his glory away. And our gospel
doesn't point to self, it points to him. It points to him. And our gospel doesn't say do,
it says done. It is finished. It was finished
before time ever began. That's what he said, my works
were finished before the world began. We don't steal from God. He gets all the glory in this
great salvation. We say stolen water. They say stolen water
is sweet and stolen bread is pleasant. They've never had the.
the real thing, have they? Because, oh, that water gets
sweeter and sweeter as time goes on. Does it change? No, we change. How do we change? Well, we see
ourselves as the sinner more and more and more. Worse and
worse and worse. Oh, wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from this body of death? And he becomes sweeter. Our need of him grows and our
need of self decreases. We don't we cannot save ourself. And the Lord teaches us that
there's nothing we can do to save ourself. He gets all the
glory. There's nothing like this bread that satisfied it satiates
satisfies the Lord's people. We don't steal from God. He gets
all the glory in this salvation. His people have been made by
His grace to do exactly what the scripture says, oh, taste
and see that the Lord is good. The Lord's good. Who is He good
to? Truly, He lets it rain on the
just and the unjust. Why don't He just, why didn't He just make a world
that He just had His people in for His glory? For His glory,
and we leave it at that. I don't need the answers, do
you? Faith believes Christ. Faith looks to Christ. I'm just
thankful when the scripture said, Jacob, have I loved Esau, have
I hated? It doesn't surprise me he hated
Esau. It blows my mind that he would
love Jacob. It blows my mind that he would love me. It blows
my mind that he would love you. Really, at any point in time,
a man saying that, though, really means that The only reason the
Lord would love anyone is because of his son. I'll just say it
that way. The only reason the Lord would love anyone is because
of his son and what he accomplished. No other can satisfy. The woman
at the well, Lord told her, said, if you knew who had asked you,
give me a drink, you'd asked of me. And I would have give
you living water. I would have given you living
water. And it would have been a well
springing up in your belly unto eternal life. And what did she
say? Lord, give me this water. Most people try to steal it,
it can't be stolen. It has to be given of the Lord freely by
grace or it'll never be received. It has to be given by grace alone.
And thank God he promised to give it to his people. And he
enables us to drink it. He enables us to drink it. Do
you remember the impotent man couldn't get to the pool of Bethesda?
He said, sir, will thou be made holy? He said, sir, I have no
man to help me get in the pool. I can't get to the water. And
he was talking to the fountain of living water, wasn't he? The
Lord said, take up your bed and walk. And immediately, he received
his strength. This is what he does for his
people and gets all the glory for it. He came right to where
that man was, passing up how many people, we don't even know.
This is what the Lord does for his glory. We say with the woman,
give us this water. Lord, give us this water. Give
us this bread, lest we die. Oh, these are the sweet, true
sweet waters and pleasant bread of our great Savior and God.
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.