Proverbs chapter 3. Very familiar
scripture tonight. Several of us could probably
quote it if not all of us. You've probably heard it if you've
been in a religious affiliation for any length of time. A lot
of people have it as a trinket on
their keychain. A lot of people have it as their
I've seen it as pictures on walls in houses, but a lot of times
it's used in religion without the true meaning being declared.
And that's my hope tonight is that we would hear the true meaning
of what these words mean, what it is to trust the Lord. What
does that mean? Trust in the Lord with all thine
heart. I want to know what that means. So often men try to declare
the truth. But they declare it without wisdom,
without Christ, without knowledge. They have to declare it from
a fleshly standpoint. You remember what the Lord told
Job when Job was, Job got to talk for 30-something chapters,
and the Lord started talking, and Job stopped talking. Didn't
talk anymore after that, did he? Said, I'm gonna put my hands
over my mouth, and he says, I'm gonna answer you because you've
made me, but I'm not gonna say anything else. The Lord starts
out talking to Job and says, who is this that darkeneth counsel
without knowledge. Who is this that darkeneth wisdom,
that darkeneth counsel? Who's talking here? And he said,
where were you, Job, when I laid the foundation of the world?
So without this knowledge, without understanding, without wisdom,
we can't begin to understand at all what the Lord's saying
to his people here. Just as the Lord said, it would
be blind men leading the blind and both will fall into the ditch.
That's what the Lord said. How could one born blind describe
a sunset? Think about that. Someone that's
born blind, ask them, what does a sunset look like? They couldn't
tell you. They've never seen one. I love
the fact that Lord's preachers are not called to be the Lord's
advocate. We're not up here taking up for
God. We're not up here defending God. We're his witnesses. We're
here to testify what he is, what he has done. It's declared. It's not that we're, we are trying,
Paul said, I'm not trying to persuade men or trying to persuade
God. Well, that's obviously a rhetorical question. He's trying to persuade
men, but it's of the Lord that does the persuading, isn't it?
It's the Lord that does that. We're not trying to persuade
in and of ourself, but we are trying to declare this truth.
How could one that was born lame describe running through a field?
Can't do it. Never walked before. They don't
know what it's like to run through a field. And I'm not picking
on anybody in particular, but I'm trying to make the point
we're all born lame. We're all born blind. Matter
of fact, we're born dead. So how can a dead man declare
the truth in that they have understanding? Gotta be made alive first. They
have to be made alive first. So it is, brethren, with all
religious sects. It doesn't matter whether it's
Baptist, Catholics, doesn't matter whether it's Buddhists or Hindus,
all religion stems from the flesh. There's only one true religion,
one true gospel. Now tonight, I wanna ask a simple
question. All these other religions, they
trust in their religion, they trust in their ceremonies, they
trust in what they know, they trust in, they say, trust in
the Lord with all your heart, and that's what we're gonna read
in a minute, and they make it sound like, okay, now I've really
trusted the Lord with all my heart, like it's a work. You
know what, the definition of trusting is the same thing as
resting. Rest in the Lord. That means don't move. Trust
in the Lord with all your heart means don't add to or take away
from anything he's done. Rest in him. That's what trusting
looks like. What does trusting in the Lord
with all your heart look like? Somebody said, well, I was talking
to Steve on the phone today, and I was, I guess, being a bit
facetious whenever I said, well, all you need to do is exercise
your faith, Steve. All you need to do is just trust
more. And I was joking, of course, because it doesn't work that
way, does it? No. No, what we need to be reminded of is it
is finished. What we need to be reminded of is, Lord, cause
me to trust you. Every time I look around me,
I see that I don't see you. I see everything around me, and
I start doubting, and I stop trusting. Lord, cause me to trust. Tonight, I hope the Lord gives
us comfort, assurance, understanding, gives us hope, and gives us peace.
I want assurance tonight. As I was studying, I thought,
how often times do I really pray, Lord, cause us to have assurance
this service. And I don't, I haven't unintentionally
done that, but truly I was begging Lord, Lord, give us assurance
tonight of whom we have believed in. And yes, that's what we attempt
to do each time that we come together, but I was begging the
Lord, give us understanding, give us assurance. And I hope
to do that by answering this question, do you trust in the
Lord? Do you trust in the Lord? It's
a simple question, isn't it? Let's read our text, Proverbs
three, verse five and six says, trust in the Lord with all thine
heart and lean not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways
acknowledge him and he shall direct thy path. There is no
gray area with the Lord. When he said trust in the Lord
with all thine heart, he's talking about every fiber of your being,
every, he's talking about completely, he's talking about 100%. He's
not talking about 50% trusting in the Lord and 50% trusting
in your strength or my strength. He's not even talking about 99%
trusting the Lord and 1% in self. He said, trust in the Lord with
all thine heart. This is the declaration. This
is the command, completely trusting the Lord. Now the Lord knows
the heart. The Lord knows them that are
his. The Lord knows those that are his because they that are
his trust him. They take him at his word. You
know, it's a miracle for you to, and for me, to hear the word
of God and believe it, to not kick against it, to not rebel
against it, to not say, yeah, but. If you hear the word of
the Lord being declared, if you hear the truth of the gospel
and you don't kick against it, that's grace, because our flesh
hates it. Our flesh does not like the gospel.
Our flesh despises God. So to hear the truth and to believe
the truth, that's a gift of grace. That's a gift of grace alone.
Lord says in Nahum chapter one, the Lord is good, a stronghold
in the day of trouble. He knoweth them that trust him. He knoweth them that trust him.
He also knows them that don't trust him, but that knoweth,
I love that. That's an intimate knowing, an
intimate knowing. Husband and wife, they know one
another. That's what that's talking about. The Lord knows them that
trust him. And they trust him because he knows them. Ask yourself
this question, do I trust in the Lord? And be honest with
yourself. You ain't gotta be honest to me. The Lord knows
if you trust him or not. And somebody said, well, if I
begin to look at myself and my trusting, I get a little worried. Because every time I start examining
myself, I see that I'm just like Peter, or I'm just like Thomas. Thomas says, I won't believe
until I stick my hand in his side and my hand in his fingers,
and I see him for myself. And he saw him, and the Lord
said, blessed are they which haven't seen and yet believe. If we have to see something in
order to believe, we're never gonna believe it, are we? No,
but we are like Thomas a lot of times, and we want to see
something, and then the Lord allows us just for a moment to start
sinking like Peter did, where we have to say, save me, Lord.
Either we're trusting in ourself, or we're trusting in him. There's
no in between. David, and I love this, David
knew that he couldn't trust himself. Somebody ever looked at you and
said, I don't trust you, or I don't have any confidence in you? You
can just look at them back and say, me neither. I don't trust
myself. My daughter asked me one time,
she was going out with friends. She said, Dad, do you trust me?
And I said, I trust you about as much as I trust myself. Of
course, I trusted her. But I can't, you know, it's true,
isn't it? It's true, I trust you as much
as I trust myself. I don't trust this flesh. I know a little bit
about what this flesh is capable of. Lord, don't leave me to myself.
David knew something of this when he said, search me, oh God.
You remember we read this Sunday, I think it was, maybe. Search
me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts,
and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the
way everlasting. Lord, search me and know me.
See if there be any evil. See if there be any wickedness
in me. Rid me of it. By thy blood alone, that's the
only remedy. Only the Lord's elect truly want His truth. Lord, search me and reveal to
me what I am, reveal to me what you are. Nobody else on the planet
wants the truth, did you know that? Only the Lord's people.
No one else comes to him and say, Lord, show me that I'm a
dead dog sinner. Lord, show me that I'm in need
of a savior. Lord, show me, I know I'm a leper, I see it, have mercy
on me, the sinner. No other religion, no other,
well, there's no other religion at all, is there? No other, there's
no other salvation. It's just this one salvation
that reveals that we're the sinner and he's the savior. Oh, it's
a miracle. We truly want his truth. We truly
hear his word and we don't rebel against it. A matter of fact,
we hope in it, don't we? That's our only hope is that
he's the successful savior. Our only hope is that we see
him because we see that we're the sinner. We rest in him. Only God's people take him at
his word. God's people. The Lord's people
believe God. Over themselves. Over themselves,
we don't believe ourself anymore, we. You know how impossible that
is? in the flesh to do, not to believe
yourself, that's a gift of grace. If I'm believing God, it's because
he's done a work and no other way would we believe him over
self. You imagine going anywhere else, even think about before
you heard the gospel, somebody points their finger in your face
and they say, you're a liar, you're a thief, you're a murderer,
you're a sinner. How are you gonna respond to
that? Well, if a gospel preacher gets up here and says all that,
you say truth, truth, that's what's in my heart. That's what's
in my heart. I need a substitute. I need a
savior. The Lord said, if you hate your
brother, you're a murderer. If you looked upon a woman to lust after her
and you've committed adultery in your heart, God's standards
are not our standards. I need a substitute. I need a
savior. I have no justification of myself
when I stand before him. I can't trust myself. The question remains, do you
trust in the Lord? Do you trust in the Lord, Jehovah,
the self-existing one? the sovereign creator of the
universe. Do you trust him? We were watching
a movie last night and it had some Greek gods in it, they called
them gods or whatever, and basically they were just bigger versions
of men that could do things that men could not do. But one had
like the ultimate power, and I'm not even mentioning names,
it's unnecessary. But I'm watching this figment
of imagination of man, and I'm seeing, okay, now they've set
this particular character up to be this great, magnificent,
he was the creator. He was really the creator of
the world. And ironically, the world was flat in the movie,
and I thought, man, this is just crazier and crazier, isn't it?
Anyways, he had ultimate power, apparently, or they pretended
like he had ultimate power or whatever, but yet he still ended
up dying at the end. and then he had to get brought
back to life and whatever else. What's my point? I'm not asking
are we trusting in a figment of our imagination, not in a
creator that can be harmed or that's likened to, the Lord said,
you think I'm all together as one of you? He's nothing like
we are, nothing like we are. And yet he became a man, didn't
he? That he would be, what did he
say? It was necessary, it behooved
him to be made like unto his brethren. As we've been going
through Hebrews, we read that. That he might be a merciful and faithful
high priest. He's sovereign over all in the
The description the scripture gives us in certain places is
that he measured the waters in the hollow of his hands. That's
just an example of his magnitude. And that still pales in how big
and awesome he truly is. We can't imagine. We can't imagine
him. Man cannot imagine God. He can't. No matter how much those Egyptian
gods, they thought they had it close to being what God was nowhere
close. Nowhere close. Nobody has ever
imagined. Nobody's ever imagined one time
even a fragment of what God is. It's impossible. He's a spirit.
He's other than we are. Are we trusting in an imagination?
Are we trusting in something that we've convoluted, that we've
concocted in our mind? Do we believe him? Do we trust
him as the sovereign creator? Do we trust him as the sustainer
of life? Do we just trust him as God?
As the Lord? If we are, it's because he's
given faith to believe. He's given faith to believe,
no other way would we. He's the only way, the scripture
says, the truth and the life. Are we trusting the way, the
truth and the life? Are we trusting in our ways?
We do sometimes, don't we? Trust in our ways, but not when
it comes to salvation anymore. No, the Lord's given faith to
his people that believe him. If you would have asked Peter
when he was standing beside that young lady, when she said, you're
with Christ, you were with him, I know you were with him. And
even your speech deceives you, you're a Nazarene. Or a Galilean,
he said, I'm sorry. And he said, I don't know what
you're talking about. I'm not associated with him.
But if she would have asked him, who is he? He would have said
he's Christ, the son of the living God. How do we know? Because
his faith could not fail. Christ prayed for him. Even though
we may wane and waver and our flesh may fall into unbelief
for a moment, thank God for the grace that he just restores us. Isn't that what David said? He
restoreth my soul. That ETH is continual. How often
do you need to be restored during a day? Right now and right now
and right now. Every day I need to be restored.
He restores my soul. This is why we trust in the Lord. This is why we trust in the Lord. On the other hand, if we're not
trusting in the Lord, we're trusting in self and our power, our choice. Our strength. Our life. We trust in our life for his
life. Trusting in our blood or His blood? This may seem like
rhetorical questions, but in all religion, brethren, this
is, if they were to answer these questions honestly, it comes
down to everyone trusts themselves. They don't trust God by nature. Only the Lord's people trust
the Lord with all their heart. Why? The Lord's given them a
new heart that trusts Him. We're not looking to our sacrifice,
are we? You look into the sacrifices
you're making right now to please God. No. I've sacrificed this
much time. I've sacrificed this much money.
I've sacrificed this much this or that or whatever it may be. Not going to mount to a hill
of beans when you stand before the Lord, is it? It's going to
be wood, hay and stubble. The scripture says it's going to
burn up. Hill of Beans is an East Tennessee slogan. I guess
we say that up here. A mess of beans, a bushel. You
understand what I'm talking about. It's not going to amount to anything. There's no gray area, brethren.
It's one or the other. David said this. We read this. The God of my rock, in him will
I trust. He is my shield, the horn of
my salvation, my high tower, my refuge, my savior. Thou savest
me from violence. That word rock is strength. We're not trusting in our strength,
are we? You're trusting in your strength? No. No, no matter how
strong I am mentally, no matter how strong I am physically, it's
not strong enough to amount to anything before the Lord. Aren't
you thankful that in weakness, his strength is made perfect?
What does that mean, made perfect? You mean, is it not perfect before?
No, it's revealed to you that it's perfect. That's what that
means. In my weakness, his strength is revealed to be perfect. Lord,
I have to have your strength. David said, in him will I trust.
That word trust also translates flee for protection. You ever
flee unto the Lord? Yes. When? Often. Often we flee
unto Him. We have to, that's what trust
in the Lord means. We're fleeing to Him away from
self, away from what we are, away from our unbelief. Lord,
draw me unto you. Cause me to flee unto you. Flee the law. I can't, I can't
fulfill the law's demands. I can't redeem myself. And we
flee to Christ who is our high tower. God's people are made
to know that He has the sovereign right He has the sovereign right
to send every one of us to hell. He has the sovereign right. Everybody
would say truth, Lord, to that. That's his. You have that sovereign
right, Lord. But we also know that he has
the only means to justify us before his law. And it's found
in one person, Christ. He has the sovereign right to
send us to hell, and he has the only means to justify his people,
and it's found in Christ, and they are justified. They are
justified. I've got to trust him. Can you
say with Job, though he slay me, yet will I trust him? Think
about that statement. Though he slay me, yet will I
trust him. Boy, if you see him high and
lifted up as Isaiah did, you would say, truth, Lord, if you
slay me, I still believe you because you're the only place
I've got to go to. You're the only hope that I have.
You're the only rest. You're the only strength. You're
the only peace. Lord, even if you slay me, yet
I'll trust you. I believe you. Abraham believed
God, didn't he? He took his only son Isaac up
onto a mountain to sacrifice him. He was going to sacrifice
Isaac. He believed that God would resurrect
him. God would keep his promise that he would have a son or that
he would give him another son. You know, that had to be how
it was. Abraham believed God. And the Lord didn't allow him
to harm his son. He did all that to give him a picture, to show
him an allegory of what the Lord Jesus Christ was gonna endure
on the cross of Calvary for his people. That same faith that
Abraham had. People say we need to be more
like Abraham and have faith like he did. That faith is a gift
from God. It's not something that we exercise
or something that we grow on our own. It's something that
God grows according to grace. You have that faith. If you are
in Christ, you have that faith. The same faith as Abraham. You
asked me what I. If the Lord appeared unto me
and asked me to sacrifice one of my children, how would I respond
to that? Well, I think we all know how we would respond to
it. But if the Lord gave grace to believe him in that moment,
we would do exactly as he told us to. How else do you explain
the three Hebrew men willingly going, we're not gonna bow to
this idol. You're gonna have to throw us
in the fiery furnace. You know, I can tell you how I am. I've
been scared to death. I would like to think that I
wouldn't have bowed to that false side. And that's a good point
to make is you and I, we can't bow to any other gospel, can
we? No, we can't bow to any other gospel. This is the truth. This
is the only gospel. We have to have this gospel.
We trust the Lord and his gospel. And that was the same for the
Hebrew men. They couldn't bow to that other gospel and they
threw them in the fiery furnace. And what was the outcome of that?
The Lord brought them out safely, safely and promoted them. Did
they get the credit for that? Do we have plaques hanging all
over the church with the name Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?
No. There were men just like you and I, just flesh and blood
like you and I, but they trusted God. Did you know you trust God
the exact same way with your eternal salvation? If you're
his, you do. Do you believe that Jesus Christ
successfully redeemed his people? Do you have any doubt that no
matter how much you have sinned and how wicked you are and all
the things that you've done wrong, every thought that you've had,
the wickedness of your heart, no matter how bad you've been,
do you believe that the blood of Christ is sufficient to put
that away? Yes, it's my only hope. It's my only hope. I trust that
he put away my sin. I believe him. I believe him. Why do you believe him? He's
made me to do so. It's my only hope to believe
that he did. If he didn't put away my sin,
I have no hope. Someone says, yeah, but I. I
see the sin that's in me, I seems to be. My sin seems to be growing
more and more. My evil seems to be getting worse
and worse, you ever feel that way? Matter of fact, every second
seems like it's flesh wants to rear its head up more and more
among belief. You have good days and bad days, they say. Well,
when it comes to sin, it seems like it's always a bad day, right?
Stop looking at yourself. The question isn't what do you
see in yourself? The question is, do you trust
the Lord? That's the question. Don't ask
do you trust self? The answer should be immediately
no. Every time you look at yourself, we should be disgusted with ourself. We shouldn't love ourself. And
that's the message that's being preached in society. Just love
yourself and all this nonsense. The Lord says we love him because
he first loved us. We love him. We trust him. I can't trust myself. I trust
him. Do you trust that he was sufficient
to put every sin away he died for, to redeem everyone that
he died for? Yes. Yes. Do you trust him as all your
acceptance before God, or are you looking for some other kind
of acceptance? Do you trust him? Do you trust him as all your
acceptance? Do you trust him for your righteousness
before the throne of God, or do you have some kind of a righteousness
outside of him? Do I have a righteousness in
and of myself where I've never really admitted it, but I believe
him, but yet there's something good about me or something that
I have done, and I'm talking about a tiny thing. Maybe it's
a prayer I've prayed, and I say that a lot, I know, but I remember
clinging to that in false religion. Well, at least I did this. No
matter how bad things got and how much I didn't feel like,
you know, I was never a believer at the time, just to preface
that, but no matter what, I can always go back to that one time
that I had that one experience and I felt that one certain thing,
and I know that that's okay, I got that down. No, it was a
lie. I was trusting in what I had
done. I'm not asking, do you trust
in what you have done? Do you trust in the Lord and
what he has done? Are you leaning to your own understanding?
Boy, we like to lean to our own understanding, don't we? Sometimes
it's harder than other days, I suppose,
we get in our own way. Even in preaching, I feel like
I can't get out of my own way. You feel like you, you ever had
a day where you were clumsy and you just kept tripping all over
yourself? It seems like that's how it is all the time whenever
it comes to spiritual matters, isn't it? Every time that you're,
you start praying, Try to start praying sometime, even going
down the road, and the first thing that happens, somebody
cuts you off or something. Well, I can't even think about praying
now. It just seems like that's how
it happens. The flesh is so prone to wonder,
so prone to leave the God that we love. But we trust him. Even in those
moments of unbelief, that new man still trusts him 100% perfectly. The Lord sees that new man. He doesn't see this old rotting
corpse on our back. And, you know, I love this, brethren,
what I'm about to tell you. You can't let him down. Think
about that. He's not going to come up before
you and shame you. And say, well, I knew you would
let me down. I knew the Lord's not going to look at you and
say, I knew that you would abuse my love. I knew that you would
take advantage of my grace and mercy the way that you have.
And I'm so disappointed in you. Aren't you glad that he doesn't
do that? No, he just he just tells you
forgiveness. What sin? It's all gone. It's
been put away. There's plenty of grace with
him to be found. Everlasting mercy. It's never
going to end. It's never going to get smaller.
It can increase because it's everlasting. You trust him. You trust the
Lord, you trust his love. Yes, I don't trust my love. Not
my love, I want to love him more, don't you? Continually. There'll be moments where we
take our eyes off of him. But even in those moments of
weakness, brethren, you know, he was still successful. He's
still seated. He's still God. And you still
trust him with your salvation. He makes his people trust him. You who know Him as Lord, you
trust Him for your holiness, don't you? You don't trust Him
to sanctify you a little bit at a time so that you can start
seeing yourself getting better. You trust Him as all your holiness,
all your sanctification. You trust Him as all your wisdom,
don't you? You don't claim to know anything. Now when it comes
to Him, not coming before Him and saying, okay, Lord, this
is what I know. No, we don't go and debate with God. Who is this that darkeneth counsel?
Darkeneth, who is this? Without knowledge, that's what
the Lord told Job. That's us, isn't it? If he is not our holiness, we're
not sanctified. You believe that, don't you?
If he's not my justification, I'm not justified. If he's not
my righteousness, I have no righteousness. If he's not my redemption, I
have no redeemer. If he's not my salvation, I have
no salvation. It's really that simple. We trust him alone. We know nothing
save Jesus Christ and him crucified. Someone says, Preacher, I trust
him, but I'm constantly, constantly in unbelief. Do you know the
Lord calls us, his people, to see less and less of themselves
and more and more of him? Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth.
That's what the scripture says. And he says, if you chasten,
you're not your bastards and not sons. That's what the scripture
says. You don't have a father then.
What does chastening mean? Does that mean he gets the whip
out and starts beating you into shape? That's what religion taught.
Does he start hitting you over the head with the law and say,
do better? No. Have you ever had an experience
where you really deserved, probably, I remember several times, deserving
to be whooped? And every once in a while, it
may be that I was shown mercy, but I was taught a lesson in
love and compassion. There's been times where I've
tried to scoop my daughters up and say, we don't need to do
that, and here's the reason why. And I would explain it to them,
and I would teach them. Don't throw rocks at that bee's
nest. That's a good example. That's
gonna cause you harm. I'm teaching them. What the Lord
does is he takes us unto himself and he teaches us. And how does
he do that? He leaves us to ourself a little
bit. He never removes his hand from
us. He never removes his grace and
mercy from us. He never removes his love from
us. But he allows us to be that child throwing rocks at the bees
nest. And maybe we need to get stung
to learn a lesson. And who do we run to? Run to
mom and dad, right? Whenever we were little. That's
who we run to now. We run to the Lord. He's all we've got.
We're made to trust him. Lord, this hurts. Fix it. Lord,
save me again. He says, if I don't do that for
you, he said, you're not my son. You're not my daughter. You're
going to have to be taught. And what's the lesson? Look to
Christ. Cody Groover was a missionary
to Mexico. I don't know if you're familiar
with him or not. His father's name is Walter Groover. Walter
was the one that went down initially to Mexico and started establishing
churches all over Mexico. We still have several churches
down there, missionaries that Todd's Road Grace Church. Todd Knobbert goes down and preaches
for them and they help them financially. But one story that Walter told
one time that I heard, actually it was Cody telling it about
his dad, his dad adopted some children. Specifically this time
it was a little girl. And so the siblings, the biological
children, Cody being one of them, was saying how that his dad would
come down pretty hard on them whenever they would do something
wrong, and he would take them into the other room, and he would
spank their bottom, but the adopted daughter, he never would spank
her. Never would spank her, because she's adopted. So she gets the
idea one day that she's gonna throw a temper tantrum, and she
throws the tantrum. And he says, you need to stop
that. And she says, no, and she keeps
throwing this tantrum. And he says, you need to stop
that. And she said, no, and she keeps throwing this tantrum.
And he says, if you don't stop that, I'm going to spank your
bottom. And she keeps doing that. So he jerks her up, takes her
in the bedroom, pops her on the behind three times, and she smiles
really big and says, now I know you love me too. Is that not
the truth when it comes to our Lord? that we must be chastened. We must be chastened in order
for us to understand and know that He loves us. We see it when
He, in His, it's not pleasurable, the scripture says, but that
doesn't mean we don't trust Him. We trust him whenever he that
chastening comes and we're kicking, we're fighting, we're, we're,
we're fussing. And then he rebukes us, he humbles
us and we cry out, Lord, save me. And what is that moment?
You know what I'm talking about that moment of embrace that moment
of peace, that one, that moment of rest, just for a moment, you
see him, you see his face. That's when you know, Lord, you
love me too. You love me too. In Christ, he loves his people. Growing in grace brethren is
not up. You see somebody talking to you.
We're still talking about chastening. You see somebody talking and
say, well, I've really grown in grace. I'm really, I've, I
mean, I can quote scripture. I can do this and I, they haven't
grown a bit. Growing in grace is seeing less of yourself, seeing
less of myself, and seeing more of our Savior. Growing in grace
is down, it's not up, it's down. And growing down is painful.
Sometimes we get pruned, don't we? Get cut back a little bit. But doesn't the prune tree produce
more than the ones you just leave alone? Is that not true? Don't
you have to prune something in order, eventually, if you don't
prune it at all, become fruitless. Lord prunes his people. We trust
him. We trust him in salvation. We
trust him in chastening. We trust him in keeping his people.
He keeps us. I can't keep myself. I can't
trust myself to keep myself from walking from here to the car.
I can't keep myself from myself. Lord keep me. Keep me. There's no pride. There is zero
pride in crying out, Lord, save me, Lord, keep me. There's zero
pride in that. We don't brag about crying, do
we? We don't boast that we believe we don't we don't brag. We're
trusting. Yeah, I'm trusting the Lord right now. I'm I really
am. I'm I've Started trusting him
more and more every day. I'm just doing that more and
more. And saying things like that's so silly, isn't it? Because
you know, we want to, we want to, but truthfully, when it comes
to the things around us, what's the first thing we do? We don't
fall down and say, Lord, save me. As soon as we hear news,
we try to take matters into our own hands. We try to fix it.
And that's human nature. Now, we say with the father of
the possessed child in the scripture that came to the Lord, Lord,
I believe help them unbelief. Lord, I trust cause me to trust
you more. You notice he said, I believe
help thou my unbelief. He owned his unbelief. We own
our unbelief, don't we? It's my unbelief. He ain't the
problem. I'm the problem. Lord, you're
going to have to take away this unbelief. I'm the problem. You're
going to have to fix it. Do you trust the Lord? If you
do, then you know if you're going to be saved or I'm going to be
saved, he's going to have to do all the saving. If you are going
to have to be called, he's going to do all the calling. If you
and I are going to be kept, he's got through all the keeping. You want to know how you can
know. If you trust him. Because you believe his gospel
and not yourself. You know that you're the chief
of centers. You know that you're false and he's true. You don't have any room in your
heart for any other gospel. I can't find any rest in any
other gospel, can you? Can't find any other hope, there
is no other gospel, this is it. Can't find any other good news,
but this good news. You know how you know if you
trust him, you can't find any hope inside yourself. You can't
examine yourself and find something that you can be confident in.
You're trusting in him. Trusting in him. Can you find peace whenever you
examine yourself? No, I can't. There's no hope
in me. I'm a hopeless case, but the
Lord is my hope. The Lord is my hope. In me dwelleth
no good thing, but there is a Redeemer, Jesus Christ, whose blood can
cleanse the deepest stain and make this center whiter than
snow. Do you believe that? Yes. I'm trusting him for that. Now, in closing, I want to read
verse five again. Trust in the Lord. With all thine
heart. And lean not unto thine own understanding.
All religion quotes this verse as a work, you need to give your
heart to God. That's what they talk like. Give
your heart to God. Only the believer that truly trust in the Lord
says, Lord, create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew in me a right
spirit. Purge me with hyssop and I shall
be clean. Wash me and I shall be made whiter
than snow. That was David's prayer after he had sinned with Bathsheba
in Psalm 51. That's the prayer, isn't it?
Lord, I want to trust you with my whole heart. I want to not
lean to my own understandings ever again. Lord, let it be so. Keep me from myself. If you want to know if you're
trusting, ask yourself this simple question. Am I working? This is how we started this message,
how we're going to end it. Am I working? Because if you're
working, you're not trusting. If you're working for salvation
in any way, you're not trusting. Resting is the evidence of trusting,
and only those who are given faith can rest in Christ Jesus
alone. Lord, give us that faith. Calls
us to rest, calls us to trust. That's all faith does, doesn't
it? Is rest in Christ, trust in Christ. Although our flesh
might not like the trials, the struggles, the chastenings, we
know, you know this, you that are trusting the Lord know this
to be true, what I'm about to say, that he worketh all things
after the counsel of his own will for your good and for his
glory. Can you say amen to that? I know
that. I believe that. Now, sometimes
I get frustrated because of my circumstances, but I trust him
in that. He worketh all things after the
counsel of his own will for his people's good and for his glory. I bow to that. I bow to that. Although chastenings may be grievous
for a time, we bow to them as the Lord's people. Because whom
the Lord loveth, he chasteneth. Do you trust him? Lord, I believe.
Help my unbelief. Yes. Yes, I trust the Lord. We trust the Lord, don't we?
Let's pray. Father, cause us to trust in
you more. And forgive us our unbelief. In Christ's name, Amen.