We are born into this world living,
and as we, we're born in sin and shape it into iniquity as
we well know, but as we grow, things offend us in our flesh,
and one of the things would be called being a beggar. That would
be a very offensive thing to call somebody. I would begin
to defend myself if somebody would have called me that, certainly
according to the flesh, but did you know that's what the Lord's
people are, is mercy beggars? We literally spend our entire
time on this earth begging the Lord, begging the Lord for his
spirit, begging the Lord for his will to be revealed. We know
it's going to come to pass, but we want to know what the Lord
would have us to do. And a lot falls in the lap, but
the whole disposing is of the Lord. And there is no more. There is nobody that's that begs
more than the Lord's preacher, because if I stand here and do
not declare the gospel of God's free and sovereign grace to you,
I am to blame for it. I have to have the Lord Spirit
to blow. I have to have his words given
to me and study and I have to have him allowing my heart to
continue to breathe, reminding my body to breathe as I'm speaking
to you and I do it all in vain unless he sends his spirit. We
just sung a song called feel me now. That's what I want from
the Lord tonight. That's what we beg for right
now is that the Lord would descend in power and feel us with his
hallowed spirit. We are in the book of Nehemiah
again tonight. If you'd like to turn there, As I began to study Esther, I
realized we'd only brought one message from Nehemiah, and I
did not make a promise that we would bring two messages from
each book. I said that we would bring a message or two. Nonetheless,
as I departed Nehemiah, the Lord gave me a message from chapter
one, and I feel like that in the prayer of Nehemiah, and I
mentioned this on Sunday, but he was a mercy beggar. It starts
out as him being a mercy beggar, completely dependent. He was
about to approach the king, as we'll read here. His prayer is
where the message comes from tonight. And it's the heart that
the Lord gives to all of his people to beg for mercy. He's
gonna have to go before the king. He is the cupbearer to the king,
as we're gonna read. He's wanting to go back and build
the walls of Jerusalem back up. And yet he begins by praying
unto the Lord that the Lord would have mercy upon him, and that
the Lord would cause the man, the king, to have mercy upon
Nehemiah as well. And so let's look at, we're gonna
read the whole chapter. It's a few short verses, but Nehemiah chapter
one. The words of Nehemiah, the son of Haikaliah, and it came
to pass in the month Cheslu, in the 20th year, as I was in
Shushan, the palace, that Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he
and a certain men of Judah, and I asked them concerning the Jews
that had escaped, which were left of the captivity, and concerning
Jerusalem. They said unto me, The remnant
that are left of the captivity that are in the province are
in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem also is
broken down. and the gates thereof are burned
with fire. And it came to pass when I heard
these words that I sat down and wept and mourned certain days
and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven and said, I
beseech thee, O Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God that
keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe
his commandments. Let thine ear now be attentive
and thine eyes open that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy
servant which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children
of Israel, thy servants, and confess the sins of the children
of Israel, which we have sinned against thee, both I and my Father's
house have sinned. We have dealt very corruptly
against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes,
nor the judgments, which thou commandest thy servant Moses.
Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandest thy
servant Moses, saying, if you transgress, I will scatter you
abroad among the nations. But if you turn unto me and keep
my commandments and do them, though there were you cast out
under the uttermost part of the heaven, yet will I gather them
from thence and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen
to set my name there. Now there are thy servants and
thy people whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power and by thy
strong hand. O Lord, I beseech thee, let now
thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant and the
prayer of thy servants. who desire to fear thy name and
prosper. I pray thee, thy servant this
day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man, for I was
the king's cupbearer. This chapter tells us how all
believers approach the Lord in prayer. There's four things that
we see about who God is to begin with. As he approaches the Lord,
there's four things that he declared that God is. Then he confesses
that there's five things about man, what man is, and the very
last thing is what God has done for his people in redeeming them.
That's what he said, he redeemed them with a strong hand. So we
see who God is to begin with, and then we see what man is And
then how God did it. He redeemed them, and so that's
what we're going to look at tonight. I've titled the message sovereign
successful Savior. The sovereign successful Savior. The first four things of God
is declared if you want to look. As he begins to speak in verse
5. He calls him the Lord God of
Heaven, the Lord God of Heaven, and then he says that he's the
and terrible God. The third thing he says is he's
the God that keepeth covenant. And then the fourth thing is
he's merciful for them that love him and observe his commandments. Now, anytime we see the word
Lord in reference to our God, that's capital L, capital O,
capital R and capital D. That's a reference to Jehovah.
That's a reference to his sovereignty. That's a reference to him being
the self-existent one, the self-sufficient one, the creator and sustainer
of all life. He's the one that's eternal.
He is seated in the heavenlies, the scripture says. Now, I don't
understand the realms that the Lord describes in heaven. We
have the third heaven and where the Lord abides, that's where
heaven is, no doubt. So I'm not gonna begin to explain
unto us where that is, but we believe that God's in heaven.
And we believe that there's a place there at his right hand called
the Lord Jesus Christ, the cleft of the rock where his people
are, and his people rejoice in that. But Nehemiah is acknowledging
that it's God, it's the Lord Jesus Christ, it's Jehovah, it's
the sovereign one that he is talking to, and his position
is high above everything else. It's in the heavens, it's higher
than the earth, it's higher than anything on the earth. He's acknowledging
who God is. The second thing he confesses
that it's the great and terrible God. The scripture tells us that
God's ways are past finding out. His ways are not man's ways.
He is the great God. He is the terrible God. If we
were to look upon him, we would die. No man can look upon the
Lord and live, the scripture says. And we know that it's because
of his holiness. This shakes terror into our hearts. Having been made sinners, this
is how we approach. Lord, you are high. You are holy,
and just as Isaiah said, in the year King Uzziah died, I saw
the Lord high and lifted up. That is how the Lord's people
see him, as high and lifted up. They see him as the great God.
They see him as the terrible God, the Lord, that is higher
than the heavens itself, seated in the heavenlies. Scripture calls him the ancient
of days. He had no beginning. He had no
end. Me and Mac were talking about
that. You can't explain that. That doesn't make any sense.
Everyone in here was created in time, were they not? Everything
around you was created. We know that it was created for
the Lord's glory and the Lord's honor, but God was not created.
Explain that. We can't, can we? We believe
it, don't we? We believe that he is the self
existing one. He is the one that is the creator
and sustainer of all life. Yet he himself was not created. This is who Nehemiah is praying
to. He sees his condition. He sees his need and he sees
God as God is. And that's exactly what the Lord
does for his people is he reveals God is God. God is God. And that might sound like a rhetorical
thing to say, but men don't believe that God is God. They believe
that they themselves in some way, shape or form are God. They
have a figment of their imagination that they're worshiping. They're
letting God do something that makes them God, not God. The
believer, the Lord's elect, the Lord's people believe God is
God, the God. It's our only hope is that he
was God, that he wasn't created. Scripture says in Revelation,
thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power for
thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure they are. and were created. They are and
were created. Everything was for his pleasure,
according to his own will, by his own determinant counsel."
Who did he counsel with? Himself. He doesn't counsel with
man or ask us our opinion, does he? He doesn't look down and
say, well, what do you think about this? Should I do it this
way? He's God. He reigneth. And I love the,
Old English in that regard, the ETH means continual. He's seated
and he just reigns continually. He keeps reigning. He reigneth
forever and ever and ever. So number one and number two
was the Lord God of heaven, the great God and the terrible God.
All things are at his disposal. All things are ordered according
to his purpose and his will. He orders all things. And none
can stay his hand or say, what doest thou? None can reply against
God because he's God. Somebody told me recently, whenever
you preach, and it was a dear brother and I look up to him,
but he told me, he said, when you preach, you can't preach
God high enough and man low enough. And he's right. I wish I could
preach the Lord as high as he deserves. There's an impossibility
for us to do that. We can't fathom. We can't fathom
how awesome, how wonderful, how amazing. There's not even words
to describe him properly. But he is so high and yet, He
chose to condescend and become a man and save a wretch like
you and I. He chose to come and save his
people from their sin. Is that not glorious? The sovereign
creator of the universe became a man to save his people from
their sin. This is what Nehemiah had to
recognize in order for him to be communing with the Lord in
this regard. He's unapproachable. Men believe
that they can do something for God, that they can do something
to please God, but the Lord is sovereign. He's supreme. He's
superlative. He's past finding out. There's nothing we can do to
please Him. Everything required in salvation, everything required
to please God, He provided in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
So to say, well, if I look to the Lord Jesus Christ for my
salvation, I've pleased the Lord, It's the cause and effect, isn't
it? We look because we've been made to. We look because we have
to. He's made us at that need. He
made Nehemiah cry out, did he not? And that's exactly what
we do. The third thing we notice of
the Lord is that he keeps his covenant. The Lord cannot lie. When he could not swear by any
higher, he swore by himself, didn't he? The Lord cannot lie. For all those whom he lived,
for whom he died and whom he was resurrected, they are seated
in the Lord Jesus Christ and they are perfectly righteous
right now. He cannot lie. If he said something, he meant
it and he does it. There has never been a time,
there has never been a space in eternity, there's never been
a space in time where the Lord has said something and not done
it. He's done everything he said he would do. And what did he
say he would do? Call his name Jesus. for he shall
save his people from their sin. And he did, all by himself, by
his own blood, when he had purged our sins, he sat down on the
right hand of the majesty on high. This is our hope, brethren. Our hope is that the Lord delights in keeping his covenant
to his people. He said, I am the Lord. I am
the Lord, capital L-O-R-D. I am the Lord, I am Jehovah,
I am the sovereign one and I change not. Therefore, you sons of Jacob
are not consumed. I am the Lord and I change not.
Therefore, you elect of God, who shall separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus, is the way Paul put it.
He said, the sons of Jacob are not consumed in Isaiah because
of who God is. The good news in the Lord keeping
his covenant is that we had no part in this covenant. See, I
can't do anything to break God's covenant. It was between the
Father and the Son. Do we see that? That's my hope,
because if it's between the Father and the Son and me, and there
is one thing that I have to do, I will break God's covenant every
time. You've been made to believe that, haven't you? The same as
I have. Thanks be to God, it's His covenant. and fulfilled in
the person of Christ. It's finished. The work is done.
The covenant has been fulfilled. The Lord keeps His covenant. The Lord kept His promise in
redeeming His bride unto His Father. Our hope is it's not by us, but
it is to us. It is for His glory. It's not
for our glory. It's for His. Our hope is that
it's not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according
to His mercy. That's our hope. Not by our merits, brethren,
we've been made to know that, it's by His grace alone. For
by grace are you saved through faith. We have nothing to do with it.
Nothing to do with it. Do you rejoice in that? Or does
that bother you? I spoke to a man yesterday, that
would really bother him if he had a conversation I had with
him. Knowing that he has nothing to do with it would really bother
the man I spoke to. I rejoice that I have nothing
to do with it. We didn't have anything to do
with it whenever it started in the covenant of grace before
the foundation of the world. We didn't have anything to do
with it whenever Christ Jesus became a man and lived a perfect
life, fulfilling the law of God, honoring his father in every
word, thought, and deed. We didn't have any part of that,
did we? We didn't have any part whenever the Lord laid down his
life for his people. If I was required to be present,
I would not have been present for that. But thanks be to God,
when he shed his precious blood, it was not anything required
of me, in me. Because in me that is in my flesh
dwelleth no good thing. When Christ Jesus died and he
was resurrected, everything required the Lord accomplished for his
people. It wasn't required anything of
me then and it's not required anything of me now. Everything
is through the Lord Jesus Christ and his precious blood. We're
just the recipients of God's covenant of grace and God keeps
his covenant. God, in a world full of politicians
that lie to you, in a world full of We're all liars by nature.
I'm not gonna try to make some sound worse than others. We're
all liars by nature, aren't we? In a world full of liars, we
have a sovereign savior who cannot lie. Is that not good news? We
have a God that keeps his promise. What was his promise? I will
never leave you. I will never forsake you. Why? Because you're
in Christ seated in the heavenlies. He'll give abundant grace to
them which call upon him and you will call upon him if you're
his. He'll cause you to beg. See, we have promises, brethren,
that the world don't have. We have rejoicing that the world
don't have. We have a place of rest, a city of refuge, a cleft
of the rock. We have the Lord Jesus Christ
in His precious blood. This is what Nehemiah is crying
out for, isn't it? We have a sovereign, successful
Savior. That's what we have, a sovereign,
successful Savior. Turn with me to Isaiah 43. Look in verse 10. We actually
have been turning to Isaiah 43 a couple of times in the last
month. I don't know if anybody else has been paying attention, but
this time we're going to go about the middle of the chapter rather
than the beginning. This is the promises of the Lord.
Isaiah 43, verse 10, ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and
my servant, whom I have chosen. Why are we his servant? Because
he chose us, period. That's the explanation. That
you may know and believe me. "'I've chosen you that you may
know and believe me "'and understand that I am He. "'Before me there
was no God formed, "'neither shall there be after me. "'I, even I, am the Lord, "'and
besides me there is no Savior. "'So besides Him there is no
God, "'and besides Him there is no Savior. "'I have declared
and hath saved, "'and have showed when there was no strange God
among you, "'therefore you are my witnesses, saith the Lord,
"'that I am God. Yea, before the day was, I am He, and there
is none that can deliver out of my hand. I will work, and
who shall let it? He says, I have chosen, I have
redeemed. We have been made to know and
believe that, haven't we? We've been made to know and believe
it, because the reason that we've been made to know and believe
it is because it's been revealed. He literally tells us right here,
I am the one that did this. I have called thee, I have redeemed
thee, I have saved thee, and then I've revealed to you what
I have done. He saved us, then he called us, just as Paul said. In time, he regenerates us, regenerates
us for the preaching of the gospel, regenerates us by his Spirit. This is the washing of water
by the word. He says, I am the Savior. I like what he says. In verse 12, I have declared
and have saved. What did he declare? I will have
mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and whom I will, I'll hardeneth.
I have saved thee, I have droned thee with an everlasting cords
of love, I have bought thee by my own blood, I have spread my
skirt over thee, thou art mine. That's what the Lord says. Isn't
that glorious? And he can't lie. He keeps his
covenant. If the Lord said it, it's true,
isn't it? That's why he said, my beloveds and my beloveds,
mine forever and ever. He said, I have showed, I have
revealed. What does the Lord reveal every time he reveals
himself to a sinner? First of all, he reveals that
you're a sinner. Second of all, he reveals that God is the savior.
God is sovereign. God is holy. This is how Nehemiah
is approaching God here. He's approaching him as the sovereign
Holy One of Israel. He is standing, He's bowing before
Him. And that's what the Lord has
caused Him to do. And He's begging for God to save
Him. He knows that it's the Lord that
works and who will let Him, as He says right here. He's sovereign
in all things. He's not just sovereign in salvation.
He's sovereign in the apple falling from the tree when it does. He's
sovereign in the bees buzzing around, pollinating the apple
to begin with. He's sovereign in the seedlings, He's sovereign
in everything, everything in this world, the Lord hath done
good. It's His world, it's His earth
created for Him and His glory. And thanks be to God, He is gracious
and He is long-suffering to His bride. Peter said it this way,
He's long-suffering to us, we're not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance. I've heard men talk about that
verse and say that he was talking to everybody then. If God wills
for everybody to be saved, they're gonna be saved. God wills for
everybody to be saved, they're gonna be saved. We can't manipulate
or change the will of God in any way, shape, or form. But
you have to go back to the very first chapter of that book, and
it says, to the beloved of God, that's who he's writing to, to
the beloved of God, scattered abroad, the stranger, scattered
throughout, and he says that God is not willing that any of
you that Christ died for any of us to perish, but that all
should come to repentance. And if God wills it, it's going
to be so, isn't it? That's our hope. He said, I change not. I keep my covenant. This covenant
that we're speaking of here, the covenant is the covenant
of grace before time. We know that this is what we're talking
about, that we would not perish, but that we would come to repentance,
that we would come to know him, that we would see him high and
lifted up to see ourself as the sinner and see Christ as the
savior. This is salvation, brethren.
We've been made to know that it's by the blood of Christ alone,
that it's by his body alone and by his blood alone. That's our
only plea, that's our only hope, and that was only, that's Nehemiah's
only confession in coming before the Lord, that he had no righteousness.
He had no righteousness whatsoever to even approach God. Now go
back to Nehemiah chapter one, I'll show you what I was kinda
getting ahead of myself there on. But this is what Nehemiah's
praying. First he says, Lord, this is you. And then he says,
this is me. And he goes and tells us five
things, what man is. It's found in verse six of Nehemiah
one. The first thing that he says,
let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou
mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before
thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel, thy servants,
and confess thee what sins. confess these sins of the children
of Israel, which we have sinned. We have sinned against thee,
both I and my father's house have sinned. So he's confessing
the sins, then he confesses we have sinned, and then he confesses
I and my father's house have sinned. That's the first thing
he confesses. You know what it means if you've
sinned? You're a sinner. You're a sinner. But we are not
sinners because we sin, we're sinners because of what we are.
And only the Lord can make a sinner see that. Only the Lord can make
us know can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots.
It can't be done. We are made to see that we are nothing but
sin and nothing that we can produce is good in any way. It's sin.
That's what Nehemiah is confessing. I am a sinner. My father's house
has sinned. We've all sinned. I'm confessing
we are nothing but sin. Then he tells us the reason why
in verse seven. We have dealt very corruptly. Now what does corrupt mean? It
means to destroy. It means to spoil. It means to
bind. Oftentimes at weddings, the preacher
will announce what God hath joined together. He'll quote the verse,
what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. What
Nehemiah is confessing here is that, well, we were free, but
because of our unbelief, we are now bound up. We have put ourself
back under the law. We put ourself in bondage. And
that's exactly where this starts at with Nehemiah. They're in
the Persian captivity. Babylon had been taken over by
the Persians this time. They were in captivity, and that's
where it starts. He says, I've bound it all up.
He said, everything I've tried to do good, it's nothing but
bad. It's nothing but sin. Everything
that I tried to fix, I've destroyed. Everything that I would try to
help, I've spoiled it. It's rottenness. That's what
he's confessing of himself. That is the same as our confession,
isn't it? That we've dealt corruptly. Then he goes on to say in verse
seven, corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments,
nor the statutes, nor the judgments which command us, thy servant
Moses. We have been disobedient. We
have that confession too, don't we? We've been disobedient when
it comes to honoring God's law. We can't keep God's law. There's
not one law that we can keep. And if we have broken one, we've
broken them all in the sight of God. See, he demands perfection.
We've been disobedient. transgressors for that reason.
Do we see that? We've transgressed the law of
God. And what do we do by nature whenever we hear of these things? Well, we try to fix it, don't
we? Men by nature try to fix it, not the children of the Lord. What do they do? Lord, have mercy
upon me, the sinner. Lord, I'm confessing to you that
I'm nothing but sin. I'm confessing to you everything
I've ever done is transgression of your precious law. We love
the Lord's law. We don't want to break the Lord's
law, but we do over and over and over. And we confess that
we are nothing but sin, nothing but committing a transgression
of God's law. So we're sinners by nature, sinners
by practice is what I'm just saying. And then we try to fix
it by our own iniquity. And that's what we're confessing.
Lord, I'm false. I'm full of sin, as David said in Psalm 51.
Yeah, Psalm 51, when he was praying his prayer for the sin of Bathsheba,
he said, have mercy upon me according to the multitude of thy tender
mercies, blot out my transgressions. He said, in sin hath my mother
conceived me, born in sin, shapen into iniquity. See, that's what
Nehemiah's confessing. That's what we come here confessing
as, Lord, I have no righteousness in and of myself. I know that
I can't do anything that would please you. Give me Christ. Give
me mercy. Give me grace. Keep your covenant,
Lord, as you promised you would. That's our hope, isn't it? He
did. Everything that we ever produce, not just us, but every
man that ever lived beside the Lord Jesus Christ, besides the
Lord Jesus Christ, without exception, all we can produce is sin in
thought, in word, and in deed. That's the three ways we sin,
in thought, in word, and in deed. Thanks be to God, we have a substitute
that everything that he thought was under his father perfectly.
Every deed that he did was under his father perfectly. Everything,
whether it was thought, whether it was word, every word that
he spoke, his words were sweet, were they not? His words were
precious. His words were the word of God. He is the word of
God. Everything that he thought, everything
that he spoke, and everything that he did was unto his father
for his people, for the glory of God, for the glory of his
father. He goes on to say, if you transgress,
I will scatter you. If you turn unto me and you keep
my commandments and you do them, then I'll have mercy upon you.
That's what Nehemiah is praying unto the Lord. He said, Lord,
remember your words that Moses said. If we do this, then you'll
do this. But understand, brethren, this
ideology of keeping the Lord's commandments, Nehemiah's confessing
we're nothing but sin. We can't keep the Lord's commandments.
So the cause and effect happens. I love that the Lord puts the
cause and effect sometimes in different orders, not to confuse,
but because how glorious it is whenever we realize that there's
no way that we would keep God's law lest we be found in the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Have you kept the Lord's law
perfectly? If you're in Christ, you have. That's our hope. Have
you ever sinned one time? Not if you're in the Lord Jesus
Christ. If you're in the Lord Jesus Christ, you've never sinned
one time. His life was your life, and our life is hid in Him. He goes on to say, I will bring
them into the place where I have chosen to set my name there.
So the Lord is, Nehemiah's quoting the Lord's conversation that
he had with Moses, is what he's doing, quoting from Exodus. Men
will hear that and say, OK, if I if I transgress, but yet I
come back and I keep the commandments of God and I keep his law, then
he will bring me to the place where I've chosen, where he has
chosen to set my name there. So men say this, all that we
have to do is blank, fill in the blank, whatever you choose,
because that's what all religion amounts to. It amounts to nothing. Paul said, I counted all things
done that I may win him. Paul is the most educated man
in religion, probably one of the most of all time. He was
so intelligent. He gives his pedigree by saying
he was circumcised the eighth day of the tribe of Benjamin.
He was sat underneath one of the smartest men when it came
to biblical principles of the Old Testament and different theologies. And yet when he met God, what
was his confession? I know nothing. I know nothing. Save Jesus Christ and then crucify.
That's what he told the Church of Corinthians. He said, I'm
determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ is crucified.
Is that your hope? Are you holding onto something?
Am I holding onto something where I think I'm keeping a law or
I think I'm keeping something to please God? Or is your confession,
Lord, I'm nothing but sin and word, thought, deed, and action.
And I need a substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ, who kept your
law perfectly for his people. And I count all things but dung
that I may win Christ." Notice he says, do them. If you
keep my commandments and do them, I find that really interesting,
don't you? How do you keep the Lord's commandments
and do them? We can't do them all the time.
We can't. There's no way, but Jesus Christ, think about this.
Every second of his life upon the earth, he was doing the will
of God. He was keeping the commandments.
He was doing them constantly. constantly, not wavering in any
way, shape or form. We sin in our sleep, don't we?
I mean, truthfully, our dreams that we have sometimes are terrible
dreams. And yet the Lord never sinned,
even in his sleep, he was still honoring his father. Isn't that
amazing? Every heartbeat he had, every breath that he took, every
drop of sweat that came off of his brow was unto his father
for his bride. And He is our substitute. When
the Lord sees us, He sees the Lord Jesus Christ. This is our
hope in the gospel. This is our hope in the gospel. It is the Lord. It is the Lord
that makes us to differ from other men. And He gets all the
glory in it. It is the Lord that put this prayer in Nehemiah's
heart. Men are egotistical by nature. Men think too highly
of themselves, don't we? We do. Somebody was talking to
me the other day and said, well, I don't think too highly of myself.
I said, well, have you ever gotten to an argument before? And they
said, well, yeah. I said, well, arguing with somebody means you're
trying to prove your point. You think that your opinion is
better than their opinion. Isn't that exactly what that
is? It's because we're egotistical by nature. We're number one.
We're number one in our own eyes. We're always looking out for
old number one. But yet when the Lord shows us we're a sinner, we need
the one. We renounce ourself, don't we?
And we need to be brought back to that time and time again.
This is not a one-time thing where we've marked her down,
we've crossed the T's and dotted the I's, we're good to go now.
No, this isn't, Paul said, I die daily. I die daily. Brethren, our heart is deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked. And we would deceive
ourself if we could. Did you know that? We would deceive
ourself. I was thinking about that the
other day as I was studying. I've never really thought about
us deceiving ourself, but left to ourself. Left to ourself,
our heart goes after what? The lust of the flesh. We would
deceive ourself. And then we would make excuses
for what we've done and justify ourself before God. Have we not
cast out demons in thy name, Lord? Have we not done all these
wonderful works in thy name? We would deceive ourself. What
mercy it is just to be this, that the Lord would not leave
us to ourself, not allow us to be deceived by our own self.
Certainly we're gonna be contending with the world and contending
with Satan, but I'm talking about being deceived by ourself. The
Lord doesn't allow us to deceive ourself right into hell. Isn't
that glorious? He passed by our way and spoke to us and did not
allow us to deceive ourself. And it is the Lord that make
us to differ from others. It is the Lord who gets all the
glory. It is he that has made us and not we ourselves is what
the scripture says. Then it goes on to say, we are
his people and the sheep of his pasture. See, he owns all of
it. And if we're there, it's because he's put us there. He
did all the work in doing so, and he gets all the glory for
it. Otherwise, we're nothing but a bunch of goats with no
hope. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. He said,
I chose you. You didn't choose me, we are
his chosen people, not the other way around. We didn't choose
God, he chose us and had mercy upon us.