If you have your Bibles, please
turn with me to 2 Samuel chapter 7. I want to look at two verses of
Scripture tonight. The title of my message is, A Concise History.
Verses 8 and 9. Now therefore, so shalt thou
say unto my servant David, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I took
thee from the sheep coat, from following the sheep, to be ruler
over my people, over Israel. And I was with thee whithersoever
thou wentest, and have cut off all thine enemies out of thy
sight, and have made thee a great name, like unto the name of the
great men that are in the earth." Let us pray. Our Father, we bless
You and thank You that we can come as Your children into Your
presence. to approach the throne of grace
boldly to make our desires known, to seek mercy and help for this
time of need. We ask, Lord, that you might
be pleased to meet with us with the presence of your spirit to
open our hearts and minds to receive the things that are in
your word. We pray for those of our company
who are sick, We ask, Lord, for your help for them, for your
comfort for them, for Wayne, Laverne, Mickey, and Henry, and
Jenny. We ask, Lord, that you'd be with
them and watch over them. We pray you continue to bless
Peggy and Ralph. We ask, Lord, for Jennifer Crocker
as she's facing this new treatment for her liver cancer, for David
Bird as he's recuperating from this operation he had over in
Japan. And for the others who requested prayer, Lord, we ask
your help. and strength. And Father, may
we understand and know that as your children, no evil shall
come upon us, nothing evil shall touch us. You have indeed put
away all our enemies from us. And those who oppose us are merely
tools in your hand to help us and strengthen us in Jesus Christ. We pray for the others who requested
prayer. Father, we ask the Lord your
help for them. And Father, we ask tonight as we look at this
portion of Scripture that you would give us an understanding
and an appreciation for the great things that you have done. We
bow to your wisdom and your righteousness. We know, Father, that you're
good, that that's essentially your characteristic, you're holy,
and you will make your goodness pass before us. And we ask, Lord,
if You might be pleased tonight to give us worship as we consider
Your Word, that You'd get glory for Yourself and honor the name
of Your Son in our midst. Help me, Lord, to proclaim right
things concerning Thee. Don't leave me here by myself.
Father, help me to say that which needs to be said. We pray in
Christ's name, Amen. Now these two verses of Scripture
that we looked at a little bit last night, or last week, and
might look at again next week, because there's a whole lot in
these two verses of Scripture, and we still have the rest of
the chapter to do. But in these two verses of Scripture, I believe
there's a concise history of our salvation, a concise history
of our salvation. Now those who've been taught
of God, and that's how we know Christ, we are taught of God.
Those who by revelation have learned the gospel, find themselves
often taken up with the meditation of their salvation, considering
the greatness of their salvation. Now to most of religion, salvation
is just a starting place. A starting place. A past experience,
if you will, that sets them on a path towards a righteous life. Their emphasis tends toward stopping
or starting certain behaviors, separation from certain things
thought evil and embracing certain things thought good. Now there's
a basis for this thinking since they believe that they assisted
God by their will or their decision in their salvation. They now
operate on the premise that God assists them in their pious life. They assert that God played the
larger role in their salvation, but now the major role in righteousness
belongs to them with God assisting when they really need Him. Now they firmly believe that
salvation and this thing called the Christian life, which I've
never really been able to define, but I read a lot about it. I
read a lot about it in different books. This thing called the
Christian life, they firmly believe are a kind of partnership or
cooperation between God and man. And that's how religion states
it. And since they hold that salvation
is but a beginning, They have invented quick and efficient
means to, in their minds, accomplish it, get it out of the way and
get on with the more important stuff such as the higher life
or the deeper life or ways to achieve deeper commitment. All
you would have to do if you want to know what I'm talking about
is go to Barnes & Noble and go to the religious section and
see if you find a book on doctrine. See if you find a book on faith.
See if you find a book on Christ's penal substitution. You won't
find any of that. See if you find a book with the
name Christ in it, especially in the title. But what you will
find is self-help books, ways to be better Christians, and
ways to do this, and ways to do that, and ways to reach a
higher plane of spirituality. Simple plans of salvation is
what men have come up with. Public professions by owl-trotting,
self-help books about how to get started or finding some purpose
in life have little or nothing to do with salvation and little
or nothing to do with the Word of God, but they do serve to
dress Adam's carcass in a saintly suit of self-righteousness. what
Paul called the glorious gospel of the grace of God. And what
Paul called the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ has been
put on a back burner while the mulligan stew of the Christian
life simmers over the heat of personal merit. But the believer,
the sinner saved by grace, knowing what he is by birth, And the
great gulf that has been bridged by Christ in order that He be
saved is ever mindful of the wonder of His salvation. That's why Paul said we preach
Christ and Him crucified. Because no matter what the problem
might be in your life, how you overcome it is by looking to
Him who died in your room instead. You're not going to overcome
it another way. There are no plans. There are no formulas
for you to go from A to B or A to D in the so-called Christian
life. They simply don't exist. They're
man's inventions. There's only one way to do it.
deal with the problems of this life. The only way is to look
to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's it. To recall and rehearse
who God is, what He's done, and what you are, and what has been
done for you. John Newton wrote Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace. Why did he call
it Amazing Grace? He wrote Amazing Grace because
he never got over the fact that God had been gracious to a slaver. A man who sold men into slavery,
and God's grace took that man and made him a fisher of men. He never got over that. And I'm
telling you, if you ever meet the God of this book, and He
does something for your soul, your mind will be spent a great
deal more on what He's done for you than what you can do for
Him. I'm just telling you that's the
case. That's what I'm called to do. I'm called to remind you
of what God has done for you. And I fully believe and am convinced,
based on the Word of God, that is incentive enough to make you
seek to live righteously and godly in this perverse world.
That's enough. Now, I can tell you things to
do, but I would be lying if I tell you I tried them and they worked.
I have tried them, and they don't work, so I'm not going to tell
you to do them. But I will tell you this, you look to Christ
continually, rehearse your salvation, and your life will be full and
will be godly in this present world. But it's the only way
it will be. Because the minute you take your eyes off Him and
put your eyes on you, you're headed down a horrible, painful
experience on that road. You can count on that. The believer
knows. He knows that his circumstances
were so dire. that his ruin was so complete,
that his condemnation was so just, that only an act of a supreme
sovereign power could pluck him from the abyss of hopeless despair,
that which Bunyan called the slew of despair. So at any given
moment, the believer's mind is occupied with this great and
wondrous thing called salvation. called salvation. Now in this
passage of scripture, Nathan, the prophet, is directed to rehearse
in the ears of David just how he came to be at this place of
His happiest state as King over all of Israel. Now this pictures
the salvation of every sinner whom God has sovereignly brought
to Jesus Christ. And as we look at these words,
the first thing to notice is that there is zero action or
even mindfulness on the part of David. You will not find God
saying to David, you take the first step and I'll do the rest. You'll not find Nathan saying,
all you have to do is pray the sinner's prayer. If somebody
else has to tell you what to pray, you've never learned how
to pray yet altogether. You haven't prayed probably.
But Nathan doesn't say, God has built half a bridge across the
river, now you've got to build the other half. People actually
say that and I think, how stupid that really is. Half a bridge
is a bridge to nowhere and it's of no value whatsoever. But there's zero action in the
part of David in this or even mindfulness. The first word tells
it all and sets all things in the proper perspective. It says,
Now therefore so shalt thou say unto my servant David, Thus saith
the Lord of hosts, I. There it is, God saying I. When God says I, you can count
on it, that's the basis and the mode of operation of the whole
endeavor. God says, ìIî, ìIî, and that
is the Alpha and the Omega of salvation. Here the believer
joys to replay his salvation because he knows that the One
who has undertaken his cause is none other than the ìIî, the
great ìI amî, the One that the Greek philosophers called ìensî,
e-n-s, which meant the being, the ìIî. He is the same one who
declared your salvation in this manner. I, even I, have blotted
out as a cloud thy transgressions. Who did that? I, even I. have blotted out thy transgressions. Concerning your salvation, Nathan
and every gospel preacher reports the word of God as to how God
has saved his people by addressing basically five essential truths
here. There are more, but these are
essential things in our salvation. The first one, God says, I took
thee. I took thee. This word took,
It covers a multitude of words that teach the electing grace
of God. Words like buy and receive and
marry and fetch are just a few of the words that this word means.
It can mean also to draw as a net or a sword. We know that our
Lord said, No man can come unto Me except the Father which has
sent Me, draw him. John 6.44, that was the impetus
for the great work of Arthur Pink, The Sovereignty of God. When he wrote Dr. Pettingill and wanted him to
publish this book he had just written called The Sovereignty
of God, Dr. Penningill said, what does that
mean? Now this was a doctor of theology
writing to Arthur Pink and said, what does the sovereignty of
God mean? And Pink sent him back a letter and it had one thing
on it, read John 6, 44. No man can come to me except
the father which has sent me draw him this word I took can
mean I drew you to myself now that word draw has nothing other
than to mean that an inanimate object is grabbed by someone
with life and taken from one place to another and Peter drew
his sword and smote Malchus, trying to kill him and cut off
his head, but he wasn't that good a swordsman, and he cut
off his ear instead, which the Lord put back on his head. But
he drew his sword. Now what action did the sword
have? What initiative did the sword have? What will did the
sword have? None! It took Peter's hand to
reach down and grab it and draw it out. Our Lord said in that
great chapter which previewed the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ in Jeremiah chapter 31. He said, I have loved thee with
an everlasting love, therefore, with the cords of Cadiz, I have
drawn thee. I have drawn thee. He says to
David, I took you. People say, won't you take Jesus?
You can't take Jesus. You better hope Jesus takes you.
You better hope God takes you. Better hope He jerks you up by
the nape of the neck and pulls you out of that miry clay and
sets your feet on the solid ground and you're going to stay right
where you are. The word, the Greek word for draw is heilko
and that means to drag. Now we know that God doesn't
drag you screaming and kicking into salvation. He just messes
with your will and messes with your nature and then you come
willingly. But the word is that this takes
an act of God to reach down to a dead thing and give it life
and bring it to Him. He says, David, you was nothing,
you was nowhere, you was a shepherd on the side of the hill and I
took you. I took you. The sinner does not
fetch himself, God takes him. God apprehends him. The old song,
Hail Sovereign Love says, Thus the eternal counsel ran, Almighty
love arrests that man. That's what happened in your
case. Paul said, I want to apprehend that which I was apprehended
for. I was arrested on the road to
Damascus. God reached down and put me out
of business. and put me in a whole other course
of life. That's the first thing. And if you know anything about
salvation whatsoever, your salvation, if God has saved you, you know
that one day He took you. He took you. I talked with a
man last night. I've been talking with Sam and
Ed over at the car place. And he said he was a Baptist
all his life. He was raised in a Baptist church,
but he was a drinker and a hell raiser and a rotten person all
his life. Just shy of the penitentiary
most of his years. And he said, one day God took
me. He said, that was my experience
of grace. Because I wasn't looking for Him. I wasn't thinking about
Him. I didn't care about Him. But he grabbed me by the nape
of my neck and brought me into the fold. He jerked me in. And
he said, then I began to listen to the man in the Baptist church
that I grew up in and I realized he wasn't talking about God saving
people like that. He was talking about God doing
something and standing back and hoping man would do something.
He said, I know that didn't happen to me. God saved me. I wouldn't
save myself. I had no interest in it. And
so he went and joined the Presbyterian Church, because at least they
talked about the sovereignty of God and the salvation of sinners.
And he called me and said, I think I'm going to come over and hear
you. I've been listening to you on tape. He said, you're telling
it just exactly like it is. It is God that saves sinners.
That's what I want to hear. Saves sinners want to hear about
God saving sinners. What's more to tell it? Would
I embrace? I'm only a sinner saved by grace.
Only a sinner saved by grace. The second thing is this. The
Lord said, I took thee from the sheep coat, from the father of
the sheep, to be ruler over my people Israel. God establishing. He's saying,
I established thee. I established thee. When our
Lord speaks of taking David from the sheep coat to the throne,
He's speaking of extremes. Speaking of great extremes. He's
speaking in terms that generally are not considered except in
dreams and fantasies. Rags to riches stories. few and
far between, and generally speak of the determination of the man
in rags that bring him through much effort to the place of riches."
This man's riches were because God took him from one place and
put him in another place. That's our salvation. And it's
an extreme situation. Every saved sinner will tell
you that he deserved hell. and in and of himself in this
very hour, he still deserves heaven. There's nothing about
him that could recommend him to God before salvation or after
salvation save Jesus Christ. That's the only thing that could
recommend him to God. These words declare that it is
God who takes the sinner from rags to riches. And he does. What conceivable distance describes
your happiest state? Have you thought? If you're a
child of God, you have. Now, to some it may seem equidistant
to the condescension of the Son of God who laid aside His glory
to become a man and to be made sin for His people. But as far
as we've been brought from our depravity and our sainthood,
that doesn't compare to our sainthood. That doesn't compare to what
God did for us. We can't imagine what Jesus Christ,
the sinless, eternal Son of God, what a distance He traveled.
to come down and become one of us, that He might die in our
room and stay. A great gulf fixed is what it's
called in Scripture, and Christ spanned that gulf for us. And
in doing so, He took us from our filthy rags to the riches
of the throne. The riches of the throne. We
are what we are by the grace of God. That's the only reason. That's the only reason. Christ
spanned that gulf and has established us, wretched, vile sinners, unclean
and undone, established us as kings in this earth. Kings. To reign with Him on earth. That's a big distance. That's
a big distance. He has made us kings and priests
unto our God. He's established. He says, David,
I took you from the sheep coat. That's a long way out there in
that pasture, watching them sheep. I took you from there. And I
didn't set you on a road of progression where you would go to school
and become this and that and then reach to a higher level
until you finally reached where you qualified for king. He says,
you as a shepherd, I made you a king. And when I made you a
king, I qualified you as king by the righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's how it happens. This idea
of progressive sanctification and progressively growing more
and more holy is baloney. Oscar Mayer, all meat baloney
is all it is. I was a sinner and am a sinner.
I was a rebel against God. I hated Him. I mocked him. I laughed at my parents and my
brother who believed. I didn't care for anybody that
did believe. I was going to live my life. And I pretty well did. Till God showed up. And I ran
into something I couldn't overcome. Something that would overcome
me. And in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, I was taken from the
cesspool of sin. and set in heavenly places in
Jesus Christ. Just like that. I didn't have
anything to do with it. That's grace. Pure, unadulterated
grace. Then our Lord said, not only
I took thee and I established thee, He said, I escorted thee.
I escorted thee. Look back at our text. I took
thee from the sheep coat, from father of the sheep, to be ruler
of my people over Israel, and I was with thee whithersoever
thou went. Whithersoever thou went. God
didn't just take him from one place to another. He was with
him the whole way. He was with him when he was a
sinner. He was with him when he was in the sheep coat. He
was with him when he was on the throne. That's the way it is
with you too. He is with His people in every
station no matter what it is. God is with His people. Look
over in Isaiah chapter 43. But now thus saith the Lord that
created thee, O Jacob," that's us, "...and he that formed thee,
O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed thee." Not I'm going
to or I've fixed it where you can redeem yourself. I have redeemed
thee. I have called thee by thy name, which Christ said He would
do in John 10. I call my sheep by name. Thou art mine. You don't belong to anybody else.
You belong to me. You are bought with a price,
therefore you are not your own. When thou passest through the
waters, it doesn't say if. So expect this. When thou passest
through the waters, I will be with thee. And through the rivers,
they shall not overflow thee. When thou walkest through the
fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle
upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the
Holy One of Israel, thy Savior. I gave Egypt for thy ransom,
I wiped out a nation for you. Ethiopian Sheba for thee, I wiped
out them for you. Since thou wast prescient in
my sight, thou hast been honorable. Think of that, God looking at
you and saying, you're honorable. And I have loved thee, therefore
I give men for thee and people for thy life. Fear not, I am
with thee. I will bring thy seed from the
east and gather thee from the west. I will say to the north,
give up, and to the south, keep not back. Bring my sons from
afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth, even every
one that is called by my name. For I have created him for my
glory. I have formed him. Yea, I have made him. This is
the Lord God saying, you're going to go through trials, but you're
not going through alone. Not going through alone. I remember
the famous martyr, I can't remember his name, may have been Ignatius,
but I'm not sure. They had put the faggots down
below his feet and they were getting ready to light the fire
and they said, if you'll just recant Christ, will not light
this fire." And he said, I've served him 60 years, he's never
forsaken me. He'll not forsake me now and
I most certainly will not forsake him. Light the fire. Burn me to death. I'm fine. Thank
you very much. You're going to go through trials.
Put you not alone. He said, I'm with you. Whithersoever
you went, I was with you. The steps of the good man are
ordered by the Lord. And the distance from ruin to
the reign of the Christ seems like a long way. In a matter of extremes, it is
a long way, but it's not a long way, because you don't travel
it. You don't travel it. Our Lord
said this to, I forget who asked Him, it might have been Philip,
who asked the Lord when the Lord told His disciples that He was
getting ready to go away in John chapter 13 and 14. They got upset
and one of them said to Him in John 14, Lord we know not whether,
or as Thomas said to Him, Lord we know not whether Thou goest
and how can we know the way? We don't know where you're going.
Our Lord has just told His disciples, look, I'm going to be leaving
you guys. I'm going to the cross, and I'm going to ascend to heaven,
and I'm going to send my Spirit to take care of you. He said,
and not only that, when I go away, I'll come back and get
you again, because I've prepared a place for you. And He said,
but we don't know the way. And the Lord said this, and this
is just as clear as you can get. I am the way, The truth and the
life, no man can come unto the Father but by me. That word way is a really an
interesting little word. It's not a little word, it's
a small in number of letters, but it's a big word. It means
basically four or five things. First of all, it means the road. So whatever road this direction
takes from here to glory, Christ is that road. It's not a real
road, it's a person. Christ is the road. Not only
that, it means the progress made, however far we get along that
road. It's not real progress, it's a person. It's a person. Not only that, it means the means
by which we travel. But the means are not an automobile,
or horseback, or even walking on our feet. The means is a person. I am the way. I am the way. And not only that, it means also
the journey, the journey itself, whatever that journey is. It
may, for us, seem like ups and downs, and ins and outs, and
sadness, and horror, and joy, and peace, and all those things
mixed together. But it's none of those things
in and of themselves. It's a person. Christ said, I'm
the journey. I'm the journey. Then the word
means the distance. That's my favorite part of that
whole thing. The distance. However far men
may think it is, if they're in Christ, they're already there.
The distance. He's the distance. Hell, I've
been going this road a long time. No, you ain't. Christ has. And you've been in Him. You've
been in Him. He said, I escorted you. I escorted
whithersoever you went. I was with you. Not only that,
He said, I've cut off all your enemies. All your enemies. Eliminated every one of your
enemies out of your sight. Now you say, don't we have those
who oppose the gospel? They're not really enemies. They're
chaff, which when the king gets on the threshing floor and waves
his fan, the chaff will float away. They're not much to them. They're just like us. They're
not going to last very long. You might get all upset and all that
about them. If they give us a hard time, call us names or something,
we might get upset, but they're not really anything. The real
enemies have been defeated. He said, I've wiped out all your
enemies before you. He bruised Satan's head, didn't
he? He defeated Satan. He was our
enemy. He's the accuser of the brethren. He's defeated. He fulfilled the law and abolished
its rights over you. Did you realize the law was your
enemy? It was. It was your enemy. Look at Colossians chapter 2. Now it wasn't that the law wasn't
good. The law was good. The problem was, you was bad.
You was real bad. And nothing you could do before
the law said anything to you but you were condemned. So our
Lord said this in verse 13 of chapter 2 of Colossians, And
you, being dead in your sins, and in the uncircumcision of
your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven
you all trespasses? That word always encompasses
everything. Look at what it says, blotting out the handwriting
of ordinances or laws that was against us. which was contrary
to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross. It took care of that enemy. Jesus
Christ fulfilled the law for us. We owe the law a death. We
could not pay that death, except we die eternally and never really
pay it off. Jesus Christ died in our room
instead, and when He died, He paid off the debt that we owed. And God's law was completely
satisfied and the law could no longer look at Julie and say,
look, you owe me something. You don't owe anything. It could
no longer look at you from top to bottom and say, I found one
fault in you. Because there is no fault in you before God. You
can find no law that you've broken because you've broken no laws.
The law has been fulfilled. What do you mean? You died. In Christ you died. And what
law, what does the law have over a dead person? Go to the graveyard
tomorrow. Get out your book of jurisprudence
if you want to. Go to Lee Harvey Oswald's grave. Go to Jeffrey Dahmer's grave.
Go to any criminal's grave that you want and open up that law
book and say, this is what the law says to you. This is what
the law says you are. What are they going to do? They're
not going to do anything. The law don't have anything on them.
They're dead. And if Christ has died my death,
the law cannot accuse me one iota on any level. It has no right to rule over
me either. The right of rule over me has
been removed. We are not under the law, but
under grace. Paul said in Romans chapter 6
and verse 14. And what that means is that the
law can no longer rule over you by right. Now we might stupidly
go back to the grave of our dead former husband and ask advice,
but I'm telling you, that's kind of sick. Because the law is dead
and buried. Best you can do is honor it by
putting flowers on his grave, but listen, don't go back and
ask advice. That's kind of a sick thing, that's kind of necrophilia
or something like that, that's weird. But people do it all the
time, and we may do it too. Paul did. To try to please the
Jews, he went back under the law for a little bit and ended
up horribly far. And it's that way. Peter did
it. Peter did it at Antioch. The Jews were sitting over here.
The Gentiles were sitting over here rejoicing in freedom. And
the Judaizers came down from Jerusalem to begin to get in
with these Jews. And Peter was sitting over there
with the Gentiles laughing at them like a fool, like he was
a free man. And the Jews with their long flowing robes went
over to Peter and said, Is that pork chops I smell on your bread?
Are you breaking God's law? You're sitting over these people
who haven't been circumcised. They're unclean. They haven't
been circumcised. And Peter just sort of said, embarrassed, and
kind of just saddled on over and sat down with the Jews. That
didn't make a big deal. It didn't seem to be, but Paul
saw it, and you know what he said? He said, I faced him down eyeball
to eyeball, face to face, and I told him, you despise the grace
of God. With that action, you despise
the grace of God. We're free from the law. Oh,
happy condition. How come we are free from the
law? God did it. I have destroyed all your enemies
and the law no longer has rights to rule over you. Christ put away the penalty of
sin. by suffering under it. He put
away the guilt of sin because if the sacrifice is perfect,
there is no more conscience of sin. He silenced our conscience. Our conscience is not our friend,
it's our enemy. It was something we inherited
in the fall. There's no mention of conscience prior to it, but
certainly, and it's not even mentioned in the Old Testament.
The word conscience is not mentioned in the Old Testament because
there was no remedy for it then. In fact, the old covenant system
of rites and ceremonies and laws actually fed on the conscience.
The conscience operates in the realm of the law and therefore
in the realm of sin and the realm of death. And the conscience
is always telling you that you're wrong because if you look at
yourself, you are always wrong. And that's what the conscience
has reason to do. But Christ put our conscience to sleep.
He stuffed our conscience's mouth He stopped the mouth of our conscience
from accusing us how? By saying, a perfect sacrifice
has been offered. Therefore, there is no more guilt. Sin has been put away. There can be no charge laid against
one of my elect. Not one of them can ever be condemned. The conscience cannot condemn
me unless I let it. My conscience is quiet. Why?
It has to be. He doesn't have anything to say.
What can he say? Tim, you're a sinner? Uh-uh, not for God. You're guilty? Uh-uh, my guilt
has been removed. What about the penalty for sin?
It's been suffered by my Lord Jesus Christ. He died in my room
instead. Our Lord says, no weapon formed
against you shall prosper. No weapon. No weapon. He eliminated your enemies. And
then the last thing is this. He says this, I have made thee
a great name, likened to the name of the great men that are
in the earth. I have exalted you. I have exalted
you. Turn back to the prayer of Hannah
in 1 Samuel 2. She knew something about this.
She knew something about being exalted and being abased. She
said this in that great prayer in 1st Samuel chapter 2, look
at verse 6. The Lord killeth, the Lord maketh
alive. He bringeth down to the grave
and bringeth up. The Lord maketh poor and maketh
rich. He bringeth low and raiseth up. He raised up the poor out of
the dust and lifted up the beggar from the manure pile, the dung
hill. Why? "...to set them among princes,
and make them to inherit the throne of glory. For the pillars
of the earth are the Lord's, and He has set the world upon
them. He will keep the feet of His saints, and the wicked shall
be silent in darkness. For by strength shall no man
prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall
be broken to pieces. Out of heaven shall He thunder
upon them, and the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth.
And He shall give strength unto His King, and exalt the horn
of His anointed, I have raised you up to be the King." I'm going
to give you a name that's above all the great names of men in
the earth. And He has. How much so? Look over to Ezekiel 16. Ezekiel
16. The Lord has taken this discarded
girl who is still connected to her
placenta, born along the travels of some tribe, cast out into
the field to the loathing of a person neither swaddled nor
washed with water nor salted, left for dead, and He says, when
I saw you in your blood, I said, live. And she lived. And then he said, when I saw
you in your blood, it was a time of love and I made you grow up
and formed into a real woman, a beautiful woman. I clothed
you with fine stuff and put bracelets on you, put a ring in your ear
and a jewel in your forehead. What was she before? She was
an outcast. She was dead. She was totally unwanted. And
here's what the Lord says about her in verse 14. And thy renown
went forth among the heathen for thy beauty. Thy beauty. Why? For it was perfect through my
comeliness. which I had put upon thee, saith
the Lord, saith the Lord." He has exalted us and made our name
something. Made us the name of a beautiful
woman. Not only that, renowned for her beauty because He put
His beauty on us. Robed in His righteousness The
old poet said, with God's, with the Son's holy garments on, I'm
as holy as God's own Son. In Hebrews chapter 13, and I'll
finish up with this. Hebrews chapter 13, just want
to read a few verses. Paul ends this great epistle
by saying these words in verse 20 and 21. Now the God of peace that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd
of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working
in you that which is well-pleasing in its sight through Jesus Christ,
to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. I took thee, I established
thee, I escorted thee, I eliminated your enemies, I exalted thee. That's the history. of our salvation. Father, bless us through our
understanding, we pray in Christ's name, Amen.