There's an old proverb which goes something like this. When a man is 40 years of age,
he is either a fool or a physician. That is, the man is saying that
when a man reaches 40, He either doesn't know anything or else
he's beginning to understand what is good for him. He either is a fool or to himself
a personal physician. By that time he either doesn't
know anything at all or he has begun to understand something
of what is good for him. Well, I hope I'm not a fool.
The Bible has a lot to say about fools. Fools make a mock of sin. Fools boast themselves of tomorrow. I do believe that God has taught
me two things that are good for me. I borrow it from the words
of David. The first is found in Psalms
119. I believe I have learned two
things that are good for me. I believe that I can serve as
a physician to myself. In Psalm 119, verse 71, the Scripture
says it's good for me, it's good for me that I have been afflicted. It's good for me that the providence
of God has dealt with me and tribulation, trouble, trial,
difficulty, it's good for me. It's good for me that I've been
afflicted. Whatever valley I've come through, it's good for me.
Whatever darkness I have had about me, it's good for me. That
I might learn thy statutes. Now, I'm not saying that affliction
is good for everybody, but it's good for me. I'm not saying that
affliction is good for every person in this world, but it's
good for the believer. Affliction and trial make some
people sour, mean, and more rebellious than ever. For some people, affliction
is not good, and they cannot say, it's good for me that I've
been in trouble. Trouble hasn't helped them. Trouble
has made them worse, made them more difficult to get along with,
made them more difficult to live with, made them more rebellious
and ungrateful before God. So I'm not saying that affliction
is good for everybody. It's not. But it's good for me. And that's what David is saying
here. It's good for me that I have been afflicted for several reasons. It's good for me that I've been
afflicted and that God has dealt with me in trial and judgment
and trouble that I might learn the frailty of human flesh. That's
good for me. I've learned the frailty of human
flesh and I've been given a longing and a desire for that perfect
body that I shall have when Christ comes again. I've learned that
in affliction. I've learned my weakness. I've
learned my frailty. I've learned that this flesh
is grass and the goodliness of man is the flower of the field.
The grass withereth and the flower fadeth. The glory of the Lord,
the word of God endureth forever. There's nothing here. And the
only way to learn that for the believer is affliction, to learn
there's nothing here. Secondly, it's good for me that
I've been afflicted because I've been able to see the sinfulness
of my own heart, the wickedness of my own heart. It's good for
me that God has brought me through the things through which He has
brought me that I might learn that I am a sinner. capable of
any sin if it were not for his grace, and I've been brought
to see and rejoice in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. A man will not
look for the robe of righteousness until his own self-righteous
rags have been stripped off of him. A man will never reach for
the foundation Christ Jesus until the foundations of flesh have
been swept out from under it. He'll never cry, God be merciful
to me, a sinner, till he sees he's a sinner. He'll never look
to God for help till he's in trouble. That's good for me.
It may not be good for you. It may drive you farther away
from God. It may make you hardened in your sin. It may make you
sour and rebellious. But for me, it's good that I've
been afflicted because I've been enabled of God to see the wickedness
and sinfulness of my soul. And I'm sure glad Christ died
for sinners. I'm sure glad that he died for
the ungodly. I'm sure glad that the robe of
Christ's righteousness is able to cover and make holy the most
wretched of Adam's race. It's good for me that I've been
afflicted thirdly because I've been able to see the justice
of God in condemning me. I preached a sermon one time
on why did God permit David to sin. And I gave several reasons,
among which was this. David was able to see that if
God condemned him and damned him and sent him to hell, he'd
be just in doing it. That's what he saw. He saw that.
He said, my sins are ever before me. My wretchedness, my guilt,
my corruption is so clear to me. which makes this clear, that
when God judges and when God condemns, that God is right.
I ought to be condemned. I ought to be judged. I ought
to be sent to hell. Any man who thinks he ought to
be saved isn't. Any man who believes that he
merits God's mercy doesn't have it. It's only those who can say,
I'm the chief of sinners, worthy to be a child of God, an apostle
of Christ. So my affliction has done that. It's made me see that if God
sent me to hell, He'd be just. I don't want Him to. I hope that
He doesn't. I hope that He doesn't. I really
do. I pray that He won't. But if He did, I wouldn't have
a complaint coming. I wouldn't have an argument.
He'd be perfectly just in doing it. You see that? And the only
way for God to shut a man's mouth is to afflict him and let him
see what he is by birth, by nature, by choice, by practice, by attitude
and motive. We're no good. We're no good. In our flesh dwelleth no good
thing. Even our tears need to be bathed in the blood of Christ.
Even our repentance needs to be repented of. And then another
thing, it's good for me that I've been afflicted because I
see from experience the burdens which others bear. I can see
from experience the difficulties that others experience and the
troubles through which they go. And I am enabled of God to sympathize
with them and to pity them. There's nobody who can weep with
those that weep like a man who has wept. There's no man who
can enter into the sorrows of others like the man who has gone
through great sorrow. There's no man who can stand
by the bedside of a sick person and sympathize like the man who
only recently has lain there. And there's no man who can pity
and show mercy and forgive a fallen sinner like a man who knows he
is a fallen sinner. There's no man who can be quite
as sympathetic with a man who is blind like a man who has known
the darkness of being blind himself. And God's been good to us. It's
good for me that I've been afflicted because rather than sitting in
judgment on one who fails, I can sympathize with him because I
am a failure. I can pity him. I can forgive
him. And then it's good for me that I've been afflicted in the
next place because I can see the plan of God. I see what God's
doing. I see what God's doing. I see
why He's doing it. A lot of folks see God's trials
and God's afflictions and God's judgments, and they even acknowledge
they come from God, but they cannot see why He's doing it.
I know why He's doing it. He's been merciful in telling
me why He's doing it. He's taking all of the confidence
out of the flesh. and bringing me to rest in Him.
I see why He's doing it. He has to do that. He has to
destroy all my confidence in myself that I might rest in Him. He has to destroy all my confidence
in you and yours and me that we might have no confidence in
the flesh. The best way in the world to
take all confidence out of the flesh is to show you there's
no reason for which to have confidence in the flesh. I see the wisdom of God in preparing
His chosen vessels to be used for His glory, I can see that.
For example, here stands the Apostle Peter. Now God intends
to make Peter the greatest preacher, one of the greatest preachers.
God's going to use him to preach the first sermon to the general
public after Christ crucified and buried and rose again. He's
going to use the Apostle Peter. He's going to use him. He's got
a chosen vessel unto the Lord to be used as a preacher to sinners. He's going to preach to those
men who nailed Christ to the cross. He's going to preach to
those people who spat upon him and who laughed at him and ridiculed
him and who denied him and rejected him and despised him. Now, before
he went to that cross, he said to the disciples, he said, now,
all of you are going to be offended because of me. Now, there stands
God's chosen preacher. There stands the apostle Peter.
He's right there with that whole crowd. And Christ said, all of
you will be offended because of me. And he spoke up, Cecil,
didn't he? And he said, not me. That's exactly what he said.
He said, these other fellows may, but not me. Now, Lord, I'll
go to the death with you. I don't know what they're going
to do. They could fail. They're pretty weak fellows anyway, but
I'm not. I'm pretty strong. And I don't care what they do
or what they say, I'll die with you. Now, what kind of preacher
would he have made at Pentecost? How would he have had any concern
or compassion or how would he have any type of spirit to preach
to those people who did deny Christ, who did reject Him, who
did crucify Him? So in order to make Peter the
kind of person God wants him to be, the kind of vessel in
order to use him for his glory, he's got to whittle him down,
he's got to cut him down, he's got to strip him, he's got to
shut his proud mouth. And that's exactly what he did.
He's the only one out of the whole bunch that publicly denied
Christ. The only one. And he did it to
a little girl. It wasn't the chief scribe, it
wasn't the chief Pharisee. God humbled that fellow. He humbled
him in the most awesome and severe fashion. He was sitting there
by the fire and a little girl came up and said, well, you're
one of the disciples. No, I'm not. I don't know that
man, Jesus Christ. And he realized what he had done
and what he had said and the proud, boasting, Simon went out
and cried like a baby, and cried like a baby. And boy, when he
got up to preach at Pentecost, he looked out there at those
people who had denied Christ, and he knew in here, I did too.
He looked out there at those people who rejected him, and
he thought, I did too. He looked out there at those
people who had failed so miserably, and he said, I did too. He looked
out there at those other disciples who couldn't cut it, who forsook
the Lord and fled, and he had to say, I did too. You see what
I'm saying? I see the wisdom of God. I know
what the Lord's doing. I know what He's doing. Not all that He's doing. I know
something of what He's doing, and it's good for me. Barnard
said one time, don't ask God to use you. He might. He might. And God always sharpens
His his instruments that he uses. He sharpens them. He hones them. He always polishes his gold.
He always puts it in a fire and gets all the slag off of it.
And that fire is hot, and that fire hurts, and that fire burns.
But God's doing for me what needs to be done. He's doing for my
spirit and attitude what needs to be done. Now, I don't say
that affliction is good for all men. Any more than the gospel
is good to all men. Some people are gospel heartened.
And some people become sour and bitter and cruel and harsh and
rebellious under God's afflicting hand. Why'd God do this to me? I've always been a good boy. I paid my dues and attended church
and served the Lord. Why me? See? Affliction wasn't
good for that fellow. But it's good for the believer.
The second thing is in Psalm 73 in my text. It's good for
me, secondly, that I've been afflicted. And then it's good
for me, in the second place, to draw nearer to God. To draw
nearer to God. Now, these words, you heard it
while I read Psalm 73. These words were born out of
a distress of mind. David was distressed. He looked
out and saw the prosperity of the wicked. It seems like, David
said, the more wicked a fellow is, the more he's prospering.
It seems like that the man who takes God's name in vain and
blasphemes the Holy Ghost and afflicts God's people and spreads
his venom of blasphemy and profanity all over the community, it seems
like that he's got more money and prosperity and health. Their
eyes stand out in fatness and prosperity. They've got everything
their heart could want. while the godly seem to have
nothing but sorrow, trouble, affliction. Look at verse 12
and 13. Behold, these are the ungodly,
he said, who prosper in the world, increasing riches. Verily, have
I cleansed my heart in vain, washed my hands in innocency
all the day long? I have been plagued and chastened
and troubled. I hear preachers say, well, come
to Jesus and your troubles will be over. Not necessarily. They might just be beginning. Make a profession of religion
and God will prosper you and give you good health. I don't
find that in God's Word. It just might be that a week
from now you lose everything you've got. Job did. wind up in the lion's den. Daniel
did. You might wind up in a pit sold
into slavery. Joseph did. You might wind up in jail. Paul
did. So these preachers are lying
to us. They're lying to us. That's all
they're doing. They're hucksters making merchandise of men's souls,
and they're lying to us. And no such thing in the Bible
taught as a health and wealth prosperous religion. Our Lord said, my brethren, the
world will hate you. They'll think they're doing God
a favor when they kill you. In this world you shall have
tribulation. It's good for me. It's good for
me. Some of the most disturbing discoveries
that a new believer makes when he's truly redeemed, when he
comes to Christ, when he comes to trust and believe and rest
in Christ, he makes some startling discoveries. When he comes to rest in the
sovereign Christ who redeems sinners by His blood and by His
power and by His grace and for His glory, he makes some startling
discoveries. The first of which is this. Here's
a man who all his life has been a drunk or a rebel or a blasphemer,
and he comes to know the sovereign Christ. He comes to know the
Lord of glory. He doesn't just get religion and join the church
and shake the preacher's hand and say, please, a few doctrines,
but God saves him. He comes to worship the Lord
and believe that God's done something for him in power and in grace. He's got a new heart and a new
spirit. He loves God. He loves His Word. And he thinks,
now everybody, all my family and my friends, and my religious
friends especially, are going to rejoice with me. No, they
don't. No, they don't. If you believe
in a sovereign Christ and you preach a sovereign Redeemer and
witness to the regenerating effects of God's power and His Spirit,
they'll like you better when you are drunk. and they'll welcome you into
their homes a lot quicker when you were drunk than now. That's
right. I know what I'm talking about. A man's foes, Christ said, shall
be those of his own household. Even his brethren didn't believe
on him. And this is shocking to a new
believer. He comes to know who God is, that God's not the Mickey
Mouse that's being presented today, that God's not the old
grandpa up in heaven that wants somebody to let him do his will,
that he's a sovereign God, that Christ didn't come down here
to make an effort to save, he came to save, that Christ died
for his people and he redeems them and he changes them and
he makes them his own and he's their Lord. And you go to preaching
and teaching and witnessing to that effect, and your greatest
enemies will be the religious people. Now your old buddies
down at the saloon, they'll welcome you. They'll say, now that's
real religion. I know this is hard to figure out, but it's
so. It's so. The old fellows down there on
the street, they'll say, well, if I ever get saved, that's the
way I'll have to get saved because I can't do what they say do.
And then the second thing, the second discovery that a believer
makes is he finds out that his fleshly appetites and his sinful
thoughts are not totally curved. He thought when he came to Christ
that he'd never think anything but pure thoughts from then on,
but he found out different. He thought when he came to Christ,
when he was saved, when God saved him, that God would eradicate
that old nature and leave him with nothing but a holy, pure,
immaculate, and righteous nature. But he found out that he still
got that old nature and those old fleshly appetites. And the
battle, rather than subsiding, goes on, and the conflict becomes
even greater. And he's got conflicts he didn't
even have before. And that's a shock. And he begins
to sit off in the corner thinking, well, maybe I'm not saved at
all. Maybe I just thought I was saved. Maybe I just thought I
was a Christian. You see what I'm saying? He finds
out that the old fleshly appetites, like Paul said, the things that
I would do, I don't do them. And the things I would not do,
that's what I do. Oh, wretched man that I am, I
find when I would do good, evil is present with me. And that's a shock. Because, and
here's the reason, it wouldn't be a shock if preachers and other
Christians would tell the truth. But other Christians and preachers
act so all-fired pious and claim to be so all-fired holy that
new believers think that they're the only ones that have any trouble. You see what I'm saying? We don't
share with one another. James says, confess your faults
one to another. He didn't say confess your sins.
We confess our sins only to God. But we ought to be fair with
one another. The average preacher puts on such a pious front that
people think that he has no conflicts and no troubles and no sins,
that he's as good as God. And he's not. He's a human being.
He's flesh like anybody else. And the deacon, he acts so pious,
you know, bless his heart. You only see him at his best
state. Ask his wife. She knows him. But he puts up
a front, and this is what we shouldn't do. I'm not saying
we should parade our weaknesses and parade our infirmities, but
at least don't parade your holiness. Don't parade your holiness. It
gives new believers the wrong impression. They're trying to
attain a height that they think you've attained, and you really
haven't reached that point. You just give the impression
that you have. Let them know. Let them know. Because this is
a real conflict with a new believer. It's a real abrupt discovery
that shakes his whole, if he didn't have Christ, it'd shake
his whole foundation. That he comes to believe and
he trusts Christ and rests in Him and embraces Him, and the
next day, that very thing is still there. and he becomes distressed. And
if he doesn't have someone to guide him and someone to which
he can turn who tries to help him, you know, I've heard people
say someone falls or errs and they say, I thought he was a
Christian. Well, he may be. He may be. The third thing, you
know, is this. We discover, we discover, we
discover that our reasonable and sincere prayers are not always
answered. Now that's a real shock. We're taught that God hears and
answers prayer. We come to know Christ, we're
saved, we're born again, we know him, we rest in him, and then
we have a real burden and and we have our mother or father
brother sister husband wife or child or close friend is sick
and we go to God we say now Lord in the name of Christ I Pray
that you'll restore them and God the heavens seem like brass Or perhaps we've gotten into
some difficulty on the job, and our business has hit a snag,
and we're new believers, and we turn in the Scripture and
say, Whatsoever things you ask in my name, they shall be done.
Asking you shall receive. Seeking you shall find. Knocking
it shall be opened. What thingssoever you desire
in your heart, when you pray, believe, and they shall be done.
We say, I claim these promises. We get on our knees. We say,
Lord, help me meet this obstacle. Help me get over this barrier.
Go back out to work and it's still right there in front of
you. And you pray about it for days and it's still right there.
Now that's something to think about. Our reasonable and sincere
prayers are not always answered in a favorable way, as we think
they ought to be answered. Now there's where it is. God
knows what I need. God knows what I need. And God's
going to meet that need according to his purpose and his plan for
my good. Not for my temporal good, not
for my present good, for my eternal good. Prosperity is not always
good. Health is not always good. It's
good for me to be afflicted. I'd never pray for affliction.
I'm not made that way. I pray for solutions and I pray
for comfort, and I pray for peace, and I pray for joy, and I pray,
I don't pray for hurt, I don't pray for tears, I wish I could.
You see, when we, all of our prayers, all of our prayers are
always in this direction, Lord bless me, aren't they? Alright,
let Him bless you like He chooses. Let Him, if you mean it, if you
say, if you pray, if I'm praying and I say, Lord, now bless me,
and bless my family, I'm going to bless your family in a long-range
fashion. I'm going to really bless your
family for its eternal good." And he reaches in there and takes
the firstborn son out. That's what I asked him to bless
me, didn't I? And he did. But he didn't do it like I thought
he ought to do it. Huh? I wouldn't have planned it that
way. But he did. He blessed it. He blessed it
in a long-range fashion. He blessed it like it could never
be blessed any other way. He didn't answer my prayer. I
said, Lord, let my son come home from war. He came home in a box. That's a reasonable prayer. Isn't
that a reasonable prayer for a believer? It seems reasonable
to me. God answered it. He brought him home. So you'll run into this now when
you're redeemed, when you know God, when you embrace Christ,
You're embracing a sovereign. You're not embracing a ballet
or a servant or somebody sitting on the corner waiting for you
to snap your fingers. He's God. And he'll direct your life like
it pleases him. Now if you don't want to come
to him in that fashion, don't come. It's good for me to draw
near to God. Not a robot, to God. Not an idol,
to God. Not a ballet, to God. Not a granddaddy,
it's a God, a God, a sovereign Lord who knows what's good for
me, I don't know. Who knows what's best for me,
I don't know. And who will do it in his own
way, in his own time, for his own glory and for my eternal
good. It's good for me to draw near
to God. There's only one God. There are many idols, but only
one God. I'll tell you another thing that shocks the new believer. I tell you this, his spiritual
growth seems so slow. That's shocking. And most of
us, when we're saved, a fellow told me this morning about a
young man that was saved in December and he started preaching in April.
That's plum foolishness. That's foolishness. That's a novice. A man doesn't
know anything about preaching. He doesn't know what to preach. Our spiritual growth is a slow
thing. What we say, we have such an
appetite for the knowledge of the Word, and we just dive into
this Word, and we dive into the books, and we want to grow, and
we want to mature, and we want to study, and we want to be leaders,
and we want to be theologians, and we want to know something
about God, and it comes so slow. It comes so slow. You don't take
a crash course in theology. There are no 90-day wonders in
God's kingdom. It takes a lifetime, a lifetime. God has to move here and move
there. We don't always learn the lesson. When we read it,
we have to experience it. That's the thing, you see. I
can study electricity and I can read a book that somebody else
wrote. This wire goes here. Well, there's nothing to that.
This one's red, and that one's blue, and that one's white, and
this wire goes here. I can read that by now. Faith, love, joy, meekness, humility,
godliness, righteousness, justification, sanctification aren't red, white,
and blue wires. You can't learn from somebody
else's writings, you have to learn from experience. God has
to teach it to your heart, not to your mind. He goes through
your mind, through your eyes, through your ears. But God has
to take you to that point by experience. You don't believe
anything until you experience it. That's the reason so many
people fall along the wayside. They're riding on somebody else's
words. They're trusting somebody else's
theology. They're resting in somebody else's
experience. They're doing what somebody told
them to do. But when Saul of Tarsus met God,
God crippled him. God smote him. God dealt with
him. And God saved him. He heard that voice. He didn't
hear it from a fellow that heard it. He heard it. He didn't learn the gospel from
the other apostles. He learned it from God, he said.
And that's the only way you can learn anything. I can tell you
what God taught me, but He'll have to teach you too. And He
will in His own good time. Don't rush the Lord. Wait on
the Lord. Well, I'm going to get Brother
Mahan aside here, and I'm going to find out what God's taught
him, and that means that I'll know what he knows. No, that
doesn't come that way. God has to teach you. The only
way you'll know that the desert's hot is for God to take you there
Let you feel it. And then you won't say, well,
Brother Ronnie Lewis said it was hot. No, I know it's hot.
The only way that you can know the darkness of human depravity
is not because Ronnie said he knows it, but because God took
you one day into the deep darkness of your own corruption, and he
let you see what you were. Job said, I've heard of you,
Lord, by the hearing of the ear. I've heard different ones tell
about you, but now I see, and therefore I hate myself." Now
this is God, this is the way God teaches. I hope you understand
what I'm saying because it's so. It has to be learned by experience,
and a man can't tell what he don't know any more than he can
come back where he hadn't been. He can tell what he thinks, he
can tell what he surmises, he can tell what he has learned,
he can tell what somebody taught him, but he can't only preach
with power when he's preaching what he's experienced. That's
right. And then here's the next thing
that the new believer runs into. He runs into being disappointed
in other Christians. I run into this so often. Why
did you quit church? Well, we had a deacon there,
or a Sunday school teacher, and I just lost confidence in him
and I just quit. My friends, the Bible says man at his best
state is altogether vanity. And I'll be honest with you,
I wish no person in this congregation would put any confidence in me. I don't want you to. I want you
to put confidence in the Word of God, in the Lord Jesus Christ,
in the truth of the Gospel, in what Christ did on the cross,
because if you look to a man, God will have to show you that
that's what he is. God will have to do that for
that confidence to ever be destroyed. And you're putting that person
in a precarious position. Yes, you are. And this is what
we're greatly disappointed in. But remember this, that a believer,
he's a sinner saved by grace. The Bible talks about the, actually
it gives us paradoxes. The believer is a holy man, but
he's the first to admit he's the chief of sinners. The believer
is wealthy. in spiritual riches, but he'll
admit that he's the poorest of all people. He's full of the
Spirit of God and the grace of God, but he'll admit that he's
empty. That's right. And he's happy,
but he'll admit that in here he sorrows with a great heaviness
of heart. I can't explain that, I just
know it's so. And the psalmist here doesn't give us the answers
to these problems. He just simply says that I was
foolish. I was foolish. I was like a beast. Look at him there in verse 22.
I was foolish. I was like a beast. I was ignorant. That's a good place for a man
to come. I love... Oh, I just... I listened to a
preacher this afternoon on television. I got tired of him pointing his
finger in my face and saying, you. I thought, oh boy, I wish
you'd talk about yourself a little while instead of pointing your
finger at me. I just love to hear folks preach like David
here, so foolish was I, so ignorant was I, so like a beast was I. And then he says, it's good for
me to draw near to God. When I remember this, in drawing
near to God, he says, it's good for me to draw near to God, not
to the law. Now, when you come upon these discoveries that the
old nature is still there and that your spiritual growth is
so slow and that you can't put confidence in anybody's flesh,
yours or anybody else's, and that your prayers and your reasonable
and sincere prayers are not always answered and so forth, don't
run to the law. Don't run to a preacher. Don't
run to a creed. Don't run to another believer.
Run to God. Draw near to God. Draw near to God. And always
remember this, that the only way that a man can draw near
to God is through a mediator. A man is foolish to seek to draw
near to God except in Christ. In the blood of Christ, in the
priestly work of Christ, in the intercession of Christ, in the
person of Christ. A moth might have well run to
the flame as a sinner run to God without Christ. I used this the other night up
in Michigan, Detroit, and I was preaching the Friday night. I told about Isaac and Abraham
when they went to the mountain, and Abraham and Isaac were going
up to the mountain where Abraham had been told by God to sacrifice
his son, and they started up the mountain, and Isaac I just
can visualize this in my mind. Abraham and Isaac were walking
along, and Isaac was carrying the wood for the fire, you know,
and Abraham was carrying some things to make an altar, and
Isaac stopped him. And he turned to him and he said,
Father, and Abraham said, Here am I, son. He said, Father, here
is the wood. And here's the fire. Abraham
was carrying, you know, they didn't have matches or lighters.
He had a fire. He had evidently a treated stick
with fire on it going up top of that. He said, here's wood
and here's the fire. But Father, where's the lamb? Now Isaac knew
that there's no way for a human being to come before God in worship
or prayer or communion without a blood sacrifice. That boy knew
that. Do you know that? A lot of preachers
don't know that. But that boy knew it was useless, utterly
useless, to go on top of that mountain without that lamb. He
knew that. His daddy had taught him that.
At least in his head he knew that. Where is the lamb? And
so I say to you, a man who draws near to God, he knows three things.
He knows who God is, the holy, sovereign, immutable, eternal,
infinite God of heaven. Holy! He knows what he is, sinful
in his heart and mind and spirit and nature. But he knows who
Christ is. He's the Lamb. He's the way to
God. He's the door to God. He is the
high priest before God, and he draws near to God. Now, let me
point this out. Turn to Matthew 8, and I'll close
in Matthew 8. We draw near to God through Christ,
only through Christ. God won't hear a sinner except
in Christ. He won't receive a sinner except
in Christ. No man cometh to the Father but
by me. There's only one way that I can approach a holy God, and
that is because Christ is my Savior, Redeemer, sin-offering
sacrifice, my intercessor, my great high priest. But now, chapter
8 of Matthew, when Christ was come down from the mountain,
multitudes followed Him, and behold, there was a leper. And
that leper worshiped Him, and he said, Lord, if You will, You
can make me clean. Now, there's a fourfold way to
come to God. We come through Christ, but we
come as a sinner. This man was a sinner, an unclean
sinner. Actually, the law doesn't allow
him in the camp, in the presence of people. He was an unclean
sinner, and that's how I come. Secondly, I come as a seeker. This man was seeking something.
He was seeking cleansing. He was seeking healing. I come
as a seeker. You shall seek me and find me
when you search for me with all your heart. Thirdly, I come as
a servant. Lord, he said, if you will, you
can make me clean. You don't owe me anything. Now
you note that there carefully. This man, unclean, he came and
fell and worshiped the Lord at his feet. And he said, Lord,
if you will. God doesn't owe me anything.
God's not obligated to this race. David said, when I consider the
heavens which thou hast made, what is man that thou art even
mindful of him? God doesn't owe us a thought,
let alone a blessing. And so this man says, Lord, if
you will, it's in your hands. Salvation is something you give. It's not something that I do. If you will, you can make me
clean. I come as a sinner. I come as
a seeker, I come as a servant, and praise God, I come as a son. The Holy Spirit has removed all
of the enmity and I concry, Abba, Father. I want to give you something
in closing that I found years ago and discovered it. I looked
for it and finally found it. It was Something that I read
many, many years ago and jotted it down. It goes like this. How do the well-known religions
tell us to approach God? For acceptance. That's good for
me to draw near to God. How do the well-known religions
tell me to draw near? The Mohammedan says this. Repeat
these words. There is no God but Allah. And
Mohammed is his prophet. Read the Koran, pray five times
a day, make a pilgrimage to Mecca. That's the way to draw near to
God. Well, let's see what the Hindu says. Now, don't laugh
at this. This is what they say. Observe
the rules of the caste. Worship the monkey and the cow. Crawl through the dust to the
temple. erect a shrine to one of the many divines, and then
you may escape reincarnation as a snake, a beast, or a woman." What does the Buddhist say? Well,
he says, sit with your arms folded. Forget that you have a body.
Become totally indifferent to all things, either pain or pleasure. The Confucius, he says, study
the sacred classics. Learn all the rules of righteousness,
for Confucius shows the path to duty as you save yourself."
Well, they can't help me, can they? All right, I turn to the
words of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He stands and says, come
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, I'll give you
rest. He stands and says, O everyone
that thirsteth, Come to the water and drink, and out of your belly
shall flow rivers of living water." That's what Christ said, come
to me. Not to me, to Him. Not to the front, not to the
baptismal pool, not to the table, not to the law, not to the doctrine.
Come to Christ. Ah, it's good for me. I found
in Him a resting place, and He has made me glad. What's that
song we sing? I found in him a resting place
and he has made me glad. It's what? Don't we? That's so pretty. But that's
the thing to do, is come to Christ, flee to Christ.