Transcription downloaded from https://sermons.heritagesermons.org/sermons/8705/acts-quality-very-poor/. Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions. Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt. [0:00] God died, buried, decayed. Christ died, buried, but not decayed. That's the context. But in that context, these words, David, after he has served his own generation, bowing on the will of God. [0:25] There's something in the very name, David, that we should not pass by. It means beloved or dear. Now, while that was true of David, it's true of every child of God. [0:43] They are the beloved of God, called to be saved, as we read of in these hills and arose, and all to be beloved of God. [0:55] I do not wonder if a real God is working, shaking his or her head and saying, never, never. You know, it's not that simple endorsing of a text of Scripture that constitutes a real experience of the truth. [1:17] Thousands of people will agree to a word of Scripture, as far as that goes. But all when the thousands of great deeds have opened up, i.e. in the deep of our hearts, when we stand before God in our own eyes, just as we really are. [1:39] And don't it take some years to find it out. We are only now beginning to find it out. That will make us save me a very sovereign soul. God love me. Never. Never. Be calm. [1:57] I would not encourage that. But I do endorse the experience of it and appreciate it. And I would say to all such that are still made and candid and driven to the borderline of despair by reason of that this they know goes on in this festival of the human heart. [2:21] And I would say to all such that God is God. If God is in love that He told me where? Where is the gospel be? Then we are God. That is the good news. Good news, remember. Not doubtful. Not bad. Not drooly. Good news. That is the gospel that God's soul remains before. [2:48] But love is the gospel that God is in love. Yet love is not the same. You save me from my lost extent, His loving kindness. Oh, how great! But, brethren, that greatness of the loving kindness has grown, grown to such a point, and yet along the journey, that you can't have charge,負ensità, take you on a mother's stir, to a magnetic balance. It gives you that heart of compassion. [3:16] Unfortunately, failing laziness before my focus revenir and eiw höher, it offers a confidence, and commitment. Still ensuring to have been faithful. Not to hate them. It gives you our voices. slackены knows all the pressures of whom you see away who do not should. And they areestrams to what kind of Phillies can do to betray. [3:28] Who in death via interest? I do not choose. Yeah, as long as CD of Christ I came forward towards high should never have done either in his dungles, repeatedly dungles, and still keep on doing them, and you will say then you are a blabber. [3:50] We say amen, let our names, let our character in Thigh ear, and yours in No-Seth. If you don't know it, it's because you are blind, and for God the love of man, like that. [4:04] What if that isn't a good news, that's what happens. I persuade you there's no news outside of that. The second ebedience is so expressed for it, where it reads, When God's people were walking according to the cause of his world, according to the truth and the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children is obedient. [4:29] Do you realize what he's talking about? Walking according to the cause of this world, which lies in the wicked one, Governments the prince of the power of the air, the devil. [4:42] He was your master, tyrannically ruling over you, and you walked according, went on in, to progress in, and with progress to the sixth, that God who is risen, which grows in love. [5:00] What a word, in such a connection. For his great love, where wicked life is, had quicken us together with Christ, no wonder the next sentence, by grace. [5:16] God said, Bravering, all those people are dangerous. And they are dear to God. So dear, the dearer they cannot be, for in the first of the time there is dear to thee. Do you believe it? Do you agree to believe it? [5:42] You've got nothing else worth having, you've got a lot of that. Nothing worth having. Got that? A dram of it? [5:53] Just a little drop of a teaspoon of it in the heart? Why man, you're the happiest creature under heaven. God loved us when dead. [6:07] Well, so was David, but he served his generation. You know, the apostle calls the Holy Ghost speak of the object that God had in calling his beloved David in. [6:27] How did he turn from idols to serve the living and the true God? Oh, what a poor service we've done. [6:42] I can't do anything good in my service of him. I can't, honestly. I'm ashamed of you. You don't believe it. You would if you knew what I had done. [6:57] You believe it. You may say what? After all these years, it's worth it. Sixty-two years of it, we try and speak it to our minds. [7:09] But there's nothing worth it. It's worth it. Our best is staying and dying with sin. Our best is nothing worth it. [7:23] Amen. Nothing would please us more than to serve God. That's what everybody says before in the Spirit. I, he says, Paul, I in myself with his flesh serve sin. [7:40] Ah, I can see that. I can see I've done that. That's what I want to do, my telescope. He stands out like great mountains. [7:53] The fleshly mind of the child of God serves sin in his hour. But he had another, another truth. [8:04] But with his mind renewed for the Holy Ghost, he served the law of God. He delighted in the law of God. I am so thankful. [8:16] We have that chapter. Aren't you? So clearly are the two aspects, flesh and grace, portrayed by the pedagogues, and showing that the more one hands of the reign of power of grace in his heart, the more he's aware how much he serves his sins. [8:41] Don't you talk to me about as a man grows in grace the further he gets from sin? Not he. He wishes he could. Sin is it. [8:52] It's around him. It's about him. And the Lord God loads him with grace. That grace only showed up the more. What sin he's got. [9:02] Sin lurking in the folds of his heart that he never saw before, never dreamt of before. He used to be offended by his preachers and preach like this. But even now, no fear. [9:14] Why? The majority of the day know nothing about this conflict. They're not aware of it. They're just your lovely, beautiful Christians. [9:25] So known, with nothing of the burden and waste and misery of sin in their folds. And the result? There's nothing Jesus craves about either. [9:36] They don't know him. They don't want to know him. And they're not likely to know him. And he makes them know what sin is. Ah, we've turned to serve God. [9:51] But we find that though we love the service and would do it, he knows we would. He knows we would. He knows in our hearts. He knows we would. [10:02] He knows that we would never commit sin again. Never have a rolling thought. Never a wrong desire. He knows it. Aren't you, lad? He knows I am. [10:13] He knows where your heart would be. Well, in this matter then, we have turned from where we were. And if we hadn't got to the top of the service and we hadn't, God knows we would be serving him. [10:35] Now, there's a precious thing required before we can really enter into the beauty of the service of God. [10:48] And that is what the Apostle speaks of in the ninth of the Hebrews. He purge your conscience from dead work to serve the little God. [11:01] Now, what does he mean? Well, conscious is God's voice in you and me, telling us when we've done right and when we've done wrong. [11:14] When that conscience is enlightened by the Holy Ghost, he's ever to tender, ever to tender. Then he begins to know what you've been singing about, that there are an untuous light to all that's right, a bar to all that's wrong. [11:32] Well, now that conscience of yours is loaded with dead works. Dead works there meaning sin, guilt, the guilt of sin. [11:44] It's this that holds the dear man and woman of God's hands. They can go to chapel, they can appear all right in the public service, and many a time they go, oh, not a whither better. [11:58] That's why I'm still in conscious of God's voice. That's why. They're unhappy. They have no freedom, no limit. They're in chains. [12:10] We call them dead works, holding the means to the dead. Now, says the Apostle, of the sacrifice of Christ, of the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offering himself to God, purge your conscience. [12:29] Ah, if he would have done that. If he would have come now at this very moment, and purge your conscience and mind from all the sin and guilt that he needs, what then would serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. [12:51] A man may keep up the outward appearance of obedience, of what Paul calls the letter. He can be strict and rigid and hard. [13:03] I won't do this, I won't do that, I will do this, I will do the other. Because God said it. True. But what's operating in the man? Not the newness of the Spirit. [13:17] He's got a secret hope that by doing this he'll get God's favour. You are serving as a slave, not as a slave. Your obedience is not worth having. [13:28] It's one of your worst sins. Because it's deceiving us all. Real, right obedience. Springs with conscience, purged by precious blood. [13:42] And the man, the woman that's got it, serves now with one predominating feature in his or her heart. God is love. [13:54] God is saved. God is blessed. All you must can do now either. He's no hope for salvation's father. It's because his heart beats God's voice. [14:08] When she was born, what you think you could have made Margaret Wilson? When time-eared at stake in the old covenanting days, only about 18 years of age, if I remember her age right, and tides there, with the tide coming in, so that gradually and painfully, to see death swallowed up. [14:33] And when she was asked, Barnett would go, just say, God save the king. Now, she had her own reasons, and a good reason too. [14:45] There was more than saying the words involved in that word. No. And as the water came up to her lips, then they untied her, bring her back. [14:57] And then again texting her, just say this. And in your right, the Marguerite wouldn't, and did, and if she took her out, through in the water, by the soldiers at the end of the rifle, is but pushed her under the floor. [15:15] Incarna devil. Ah, yes, that's easily said. That's the truth too. They were. But what made her Marguerite differ from those incarnate devils? [15:31] She got a clear conscience through the blood of Christ. She knew him. She loved him. She obeyed him unto the death. Her living conscience or something. [15:45] She soon as it would seem if God does not even approach. Our propitious privileges will be gone from our land. Well friends, a purged conscience to serve the living God. Now how did David serve God after all he's had? Let me remind you just two or three things in his life. We'll only have time or less, at least on this occasion. I want to say in one thing that you may not have noticed. [16:51] You know, David had in his heart fulfilled a house of God. How he came there we don't know. He had it in his heart to build a house of God. He planned it, he worked it all out, not the slightest doubt about that. [17:14] He detailed how it should be built of this, that and the other and who should build it. No doubt in his imagination you've got the whole edifice complete and rejoiced anticipation of doing the world when God said to him, thou shalt not build. Thou art an animal of war, but thou didst well, thou didst well that it would in thy heart. That's the point. He served God his heart with a good intention. [17:56] So you will probably be saying in your mind, yes, a certain place is renowned for being paid with good intentions. [18:10] That's true. But on the other side, it's equally true. The Lord's people have got good intentions and you can't deny it. [18:21] They've got things in their heart they would do. They want to do. They are not allowed to do. They cannot therefore do them. But God said you did well. It pleased God that it would in David's heart to build the house and God accepted that he'd done it. For if there be furlzed a willing mind, it is accepted according to what a man had, not according to what he had not. Now, that doesn't feel to me a good deal that does. [18:57] It's in his heart. It's in the heart. It's in the heart that the child of God taught in the spirit to believe in God's dear son right up to the hills. This is the work of God. That he should believe in him whom I have saved. And this willing day, that's the day, sending in our hands. Just what I want to do. [19:22] And here's my heart, Lord. You can read it. You notice there. Among the many things that are wrong with it. There is this one thing. I would believe in the name of thy dear son right up to the hills. [19:41] And God said, is it so? Thou doth so? You're not conscious of it? No. But that is appreciation. Of that fact. Yes. And with that, you know, goes the criterion, not the merit, but the agent of one day possessing the celestial city with all that lies in that blessed term, free that you need it on the summer, everlasting life. [20:13] You learn by that remark of God to David. In so many ways, as you go along the journey, there's things that you would do to take somebody else. You can't do. You would. God knows you would. [20:33] You can't. He accepts the will to be healed. It isn't everyone to circumdo what they speak. [20:44] He didn't prepare out of his poverty as he read that wonderful amount of stone and silver and gold in all that the house should be built. And when he done all that, then he went and sat in the house of the Lord. [21:06] It's a beautiful bit of how the day is like that is. God said to him, you shan't build it. It was well in your heart to be there, but you're not going to do it. So then my son, my son shall. [21:21] Not to make old nature say, oh, God's turned me down and put the son up in my house. He's going to put my son up on a higher level than me. And a father could be jealous of his son. [21:35] Don't doubt me. Could we do. You don't know much. Oh, David. Could have been jealous of his own son. He won. And why not? The grace of God made over his heart. This is what David did we read. [21:49] He went into the house of the Lord straight away and sat before the Lord. And like that, he sat before the Lord. Quiet, mental, nothing in a hurry here. [22:03] Now, with David. He's got the petition right now. I'm not to do it. God's told me I'm not. He said it was good that's in my heart that I should do it. [22:15] He's going to put Solomon, my son, before me. He's only a boy twenty years old. But he's going to be before me in this particular. And yet, look how great he's going. [22:27] He's got to be more of the Lord when he says, Home of art. And what would my father have? But thou shalt do thus and thus unto David thyself. [22:39] For thou hast not only spoken to me of oppression, but for a long time to come. And what should I say after this, O Lord my God? [22:51] He's very heartily tried. In love and adoration to God, Lord, for to call and see you in a tent. Yes. [23:02] So that while it may be in the heart to do what we cannot do, and God accepts that with pleasure, yet we are humbled at the fact that we cannot do it. [23:18] He serves. He's got well there. Now, there's another extra stone in his life that brings out very much his serving God in another form. [23:35] Now, Saul was one of David's greatest opponents. I want you to look at Saul as a man that stands between you and promotion. Do you know that man? [23:52] Saul was king. Yes, but David had been told by God that he, David, would be king. In fact, he'd been anointed by Samuel to be king. So are there two kings? [24:06] Either David's girl or Saul go, which David would put his hand against the Lord's anointing. Now, on more occasions than one, in David's life, you find that Saul comes right close to where David and his men were. [24:25] Saul is lying in the trench. There is spear and his crew lying there, past the sea. David's men. David's men. In fact, David's girl. [24:37] He takes the spear. And the crew. He cuts all the pieces of his garment, too. His bodyguard of a good day, they say, my Lord. [24:48] This is the Lord. The Lord put your enemy in your hand. Slice him. If you will, tell me to do it, said one. And I won't be described twice. I'll be sure to die. [25:00] He's allowed. I will not touch the Lord's anointing. So he returned. But presently, he called out, who are these things? [25:12] And Saul said, Is that the voice of my son David? He said, Thou art more righteous than us. [25:23] I know the value of the kingdom. Thou art more righteous than I. Now look. Here's the point. David served God. [25:34] And his own generation by the good of God. He's not laying his hand on his enemy. And don't you? No. He can't look. [25:48] Oh, I know that thing. I'm not an angel. I make no pretence that he's a goody-goody. And half the past will do. I'm not one of that sort. He's going, I know I'm not good. [25:59] Oh, yeah, well. Oh, there's time when you can wring the neck of your enemy as easy as ADC. If you tell me you haven't got that murderous feeling, I shouldn't believe you. [26:11] I know you do well, thank you. Well, but isn't it nice when the grace of God, after subjecting you to the temptation, here's your phone. [26:24] Now you could, on occasion, give him a proper dig in the roof, as we say in Bungal language. You could tell him really and truly by something you did that you were in master. [26:39] But you do not do that. And there is, there is only one reason. Jesus said, you are friends. [26:51] Bless them that do this bustling you should hear, Saul. He heard his gathering more than once at David to murder him. [27:03] Now, the prominent seem to put it right in his wrath. No. The grace of God so ruled and reigned that David did not try it. [27:18] You know, they're the sort of evidences of religion you want to look for. Not so much of those subjective ones that people are all the time harping about, which leave people a bundle of emotions and nothing more. [27:33] It's this practical, this hard part, this most difficult part, friends, where you shall oppose the pleasant blood. Anybody can cry, sometimes. [27:48] Water is not far off, sometimes. But water is no evidence. Tears is no evidence of grace by themselves. Father, you look for that ability God may grant you of loving your enemy, blessing those that curse you, praying for those who look different against you. [28:10] And in those things, cherish, cherish, my friends, the marks of railing grace. That's where you are serving God. [28:20] Far more than sometimes when you are attending chapel. Maybe. Maybe. Ah yes. I'm not ashamed to say that. We can attain chapel and no real religion in it. [28:32] But to serve God practically in this difficult way. Nothing but the grace of God can enable us to do it. We serve God in that loving disposition. [28:48] Now, once more, you go back to where you were the youth. Only a youth. And he's with his presence on the battlefield. [29:00] And that great good night comes. He's defying the armies of the living God. And they're all afraid. Even so, the danger of a youth. [29:14] A mere youth. That there's no man be afraid of it. And you know how to sling and fool. Now, that was a cheap outfit of stuff. I'll guarantee you. [29:26] What was the value about that he made himself when he was a shepherd boy? Well, this sling, the prize stone. He approaches Goliath, who despised him. [29:40] Who am I? He says, you should come out like this. And he threatens what you were doing. And he says, you come to me. In the name of your strength. [29:54] In the name of the Lord God. In the name of the Lord God. He is jealous of the honor of God. [30:07] That's the great point. I serve his own generation and God. The honor you have to cry. May I repeat dear faith. [30:18] Look for that in your heart and love. Don't look so much for those emotional evidences that people talk about. Look for this. [30:29] Is God's honor dear to you? Sacry to you? Is that? Is it? Is it? Is it? Never mind how you feel. Never mind what you think. [30:40] Is this point clear? That for God's honor, you would, as he enabled you, be prepared to live and die. Not your own honor. [30:52] Not somebody else's honor. But God's honor and glory. Where that is sought in the heart. The man may never speak a word of religion. [31:02] That doesn't matter. For the reason why. Words are not always the echo of the heart. No, the man who is brought by grace to study carefully. [31:19] The honor and the glory of God. That man will get to heaven. He may never make a profession of religion after this, but he's making one all the time. [31:30] He may not be the one. In the fact that his life is guided and shrouded by that one thing, Lord, help me to honor thee. [31:42] It may be only in some small thing that you help me to honor thee. Let that be more to me than the honor of everything else besides. [31:54] And after he served in their own generations, he fell asleep. Just before he fell asleep, there was another piece of service that he did. [32:08] And that was in counseling his son and charging him what to do when he's gone away with all the earth. And that showed his concern for God's cause after he should be gone. [32:27] There's some of the only concern, as it seems to me, I'm not that capable of anybody personally. Let me keep it clear about that. I'm not that capable of anybody. [32:39] But there is that thought with some people that only can serve just for the servants. Their time, while they are at the mark, no matter how it is, what happens when they are gone. Excuse me if you can play, but I can't help it. [32:53] I say this God is not sufficient. Not sufficient. But I'm not sufficient. Jacob, therefore, as serving God in his generation, called his son. [33:05] And he said, Follow me. When I'm done, you do this, and you do that, and you be sure to keep the statutes of the judgment of the Lord of God. [33:16] God will be renewed, and God will bless you. And he prepared of his abundance what we've already read as a starting point for him, his son, to build on afterwards. [33:31] Now, supposing, supposing that you could see someone falling onto your steps when you are gone. Your children, children's children, by the grace of God, ready, willing to follow in your steps. [33:55] Well, you'd be like old days. You'd lie down on your dying bed, and you would say, Although my house at the moment is not with God as I have had it, yet he is made with me, and ever loved his covenant, Lord, in all things and sure, this is all my salvation, and all my desire. [34:19] It must have been a tremendous cordial today. After a rough life it has to be, and yet such a blessed life, then at the end of it, God will be able to receive his son. [34:35] Promising, well, for the grace of God to carry on the work. And, we do that, we do that, we do it. And, could David receive his greatest son, the Lord Jesus Christ? [34:53] And, actually, in Nazareth, reading the book of Psalms, which David has taken. [35:04] And, I'm not stretching the imagination, it's a fact. The Lord Jesus used the book of Psalms much. [35:16] As a man, he derived encouragement for his faith and hope in God's Father, through the book of Psalms. And, when our blessed Lord actually hangs on the cross, he quotes from David and says, My God, my God, why hast thou for sin? [35:44] And, as the agony of his sacrificial death proceeded, when he came to the last drop of his precious blood, he said, He again quotes David and says, Father, in thy house, I commit my spirit to have it said this to David and say, If David could only have seen all that, coming out of his writing for Psalms, that his blessed Redeemer, blessed Savior, should find such comfort and help and blessing in his dying hours, through something that he'd written. [36:33] What ever David did? He served God when in that he was served his dear son. [36:44] And, after his resurrection, yes, the evening of the resurrection day, Jesus, David's son, is walking on the Emmaus road with the two disciples. [37:01] And, again, he brings out the book of Psalms and says, Well, do you not think you should have understood that what David wrote in the book of Psalms concerning me should be called him? [37:19] From his throat to the last, our blessed Redeemer was living in the book of Psalms, with David in the instrument of life. [37:30] Now, I must have been very long. Haven't you and I gathered a lot from the book of Psalms on occasions? Yes. What would the Bible be without the book of Psalms? [37:43] There's not an experience of a child of God, from his first sighing grace to his first sighing glory, but what's covered in the book of Psalms. [37:55] And David served his God in then and his generation, yet an all-generation to the very end, through the book of Psalms. [38:06] God bless you, God. May God help you. God bless you, God bless you, God bless you. God bless you. God bless you Maya, God bless you. God bless you, God bless you. God bless you. God bless you, God bless you. [38:16] ... God bless you today. God bless you, God bless you. I will rule you again soon. [38:29] Peace you, God bless you, God bless you. It's alright글стро to you. God bless you. He won you soon.