Three Gospel Realities - 7

In the first part of 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, Paul defends his ministry, beginning by denying several false accusations, which are made against him by his critics, and then continuing, as you remember from last Lord's Day, by reminders of his gentle conduct among the Thessalonians. But as we come to our portion for today, we find that Paul is now rejoicing in the Thessalonians' reception of his message.

He is thankful to God that when he came to them with the word of the gospel, they listened to his preaching, and they responded to his appeals, and that caused great thanksgiving in his heart. Now, I am aware that today is Mother's Day. I've already made reference to that, and sometimes on this Sunday, I will compose a special message with mothers in mind. But on other times, I choose to continue in our expository series, which is what we are doing today.

And yet, there will be some very particular applications of this portion to mothers, so don't feel that I'm neglecting the celebration of this day. Today, I'm going to talk to you about three gospel realities from 1 Thessalonians 2, 13 through 16, three things that God wants us to know about the gospel. Number one, the reality of divine revelation. Number two, the reality of divine transformation. And number three, the reality of earthly persecution. Beginning with the reality of divine revelation, we look again at verse 13, where Paul says, For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe. We begin by noticing the connection. The verse begins with these words, For this reason, which clearly connects it with what has gone before, the passage that we have covered in previous messages.

And what is this reason? Well, Paul makes reference to gospel proclamation in verse 9, how that he and the team came to Thessalonica and they preached the gospel. So he's now saying for that reason, because in preaching the gospel, we see refruit, we see results, we're grateful that you received the gospel which we preached.

That would be one connection. For this reason, Paul refers in verses 10 through 12 to his intense labors in the gospel. He not only proclaimed the gospel in Thessalonica, but you remember he worked diligently night and day with arduous toil.

He wore himself out. He wasn't casual in his gospel ministry. He was intense and he was committed and he was fervent and he was energetic and he gave everything he had to the work of the gospel.

And for this reason, we give thanks to God that all of that bore fruit by the power of God and His grace. The connection, thirdly, probably refers to the critics that Paul referred to in the first part of the chapter, those who had all kinds of accusations to hurl against him. They said that he wasn't proclaiming the true gospel and he, of course, denied that and demonstrated that he was. They said that he abused his apostolic authority and he denied that and showed them that that was not true. In fact, reminded them of what they already knew, namely that his demeanor among them had been especially gentle, especially underwhelming, not overwhelming in the exercise of his authority.

And on and on it goes, the various criticisms that were hurled against him. And now he says, in the backdrop of all of these criticisms which you have heard and which could have caused you to not listen to our message, I'm so grateful, I'm so thankful that you received the message which we brought to you. Gospel reception is the reason for Paul's thanksgiving. And what he's talking about, and we remember talking about the reality of divine revelation, and what Paul is talking about is two things primarily. Number one, and this must always come first, the outward reception of the gospel, but that does not avail unless there is also, secondly, an inward reception of the gospel. First of all, he refers to their outward reception of his preaching ministry. We thank God, back to verse 13, without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us. And that first reception has to do with their willingness to listen, their willingness to hear, their willingness to give attention to what Paul was saying, to give a respectful hearing to what he said. That in itself did not bring about the transformation of their lives, but that was the beginning, the necessary beginning. We know that God saves people by the combination of the work of His Holy Spirit with the proclamation of the gospel.

The human element is the proclamation of the gospel, the divine element is the work of the Holy Spirit, but for the Holy Spirit to take that gospel and bring it to life within men's souls, there has to be a reception, an outward reception, a hearing of the gospel, in other words. If you are one of those kinds of people who says, I don't have any time for that, I'm not going to listen to that, I don't believe that, I'm not going to pay it any attention whatsoever, I can promise you, as long as you are in that condition, I can promise you that you are going to hell, because you'll never be saved if you don't listen to the gospel of Jesus Christ, if you don't give it a respectful hearing, if you're not willing to receive it into your ears, into your mind, to consider the truth, to consider what is said. If you're not willing to do that, and many people are not, because the hard pathway here of the parable of the four soils, and the seed of the word is scattered on that hard pathway, and it doesn't penetrate, because there's no attention whatsoever given to it, and if you're like that, and there are a lot of people like that in this world today, then there's only one possible destination for you, and that is eternal damnation.

I must be honest to tell you the truth. If you're in that category, you're probably not even listening to me today, but if God has somehow caused you to listen to this preacher today, then I need to warn you and tell you the truth. Unless you're willing to give the gospel a respectful hearing, you're not ever going to be saved. That was the difference, remember, between the Jews in, say, Philippi and even Thessalonica, many of the Jews in Thessalonica, and those in Berea.

Remember the Bereans? Luke writing about that in Acts said, These were more noble, that's the King James language, these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word of God and considered it carefully. Now, they didn't all go to the next level, but at least all of them were respectful hearers of the word, and that is the first step, and Paul said those of you who are saved in Thessalonica, the ones I'm writing to now in the church, you fit into that category. There was in your hearts a willingness to listen. There was an outward reception of our ministry, a respectful attention, and that was a necessary prelude to what comes next, which is an inward reception of the word, because the verse goes on. When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, now this, you welcomed it, not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God. When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it, not as the word of men, but as the word of God.

Now, this is probably more significant than we see on the surface. Obviously, he's saying that there was an inward reception of the word. Outwardly, they heard it respectfully, but inwardly they received it as the word of the living God.

They believed it to the saving of their souls, but now consider this aspect. The word that Paul is talking about is the word that he preached when he came to Thessalonica. In fact, in the Greek vocabulary in this verse, there's very clear reference to the verbal proclamation of the word. Now, nobody would be terribly surprised if Paul said, I delivered unto you the word of God, because we know that Paul is an apostle. Paul received the word of God in a special way. Paul is one of the authors of Scripture.

He is a divinely inspired instrument to write down the word of God, and we have 13 books in our New Testament written by Paul, all of which we know to be the divine word of God. But Paul is not talking about that which he wrote down. He's not talking about his epistles. He's not talking about divine inspiration. He's talking about his preaching ministry. And there's no reason for us to think that when Paul was simply preaching to a congregation, that those words were necessarily the inspired and errant revelation of the living God.

The Bible doesn't indicate that at all. The only part that we are assured is, in fact, the infallible and errant inspired word of the living God is that which we have written down in the 66 books of our Bible. Paul's not talking about that. He's talking about preaching the word, preaching the gospel. And he said, when you heard that, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God. The preaching of Paul and the others, Paul is not talking just about himself in this, but also Silas is with him, who also preached, and Timothy is with him, who also preached. And as these men preached the word of God, the Thessalonians came to the conviction that this is not just the words of Paul and Silas and Timothy, though in fact it was.

This is the word of the living God. Most of them were pagans who had, before this time, no idea who the true God is. And yet the work of God's Spirit in their heart was such that they were coming to understand who God is, and they were grasping onto this message that came to them as the word of the living God.

This is remarkable. They knew God was speaking to them. They recognized Paul's preaching as God's word to them. There are a lot of implications here, but this tells us when the preacher is preaching accurately, when he's preaching the truth of the Bible and not just flinging off his human opinions. But when he's explaining Scripture, and that's what Paul would have been doing in his preaching, he wasn't writing New Testament Scripture at that time, but he was proclaiming truth, using the Old Testament as his text, and explaining how these Old Testament texts applied to Jesus Christ and to the gospel of salvation. So he was expositing Scripture, and when the preacher is preaching accurately, his message is from God, not simply from him, the preacher, though in fact it is that as well. That was true for Paul, but that's as much true today as it was for Paul and for his missionary team. For every preacher, this is a weighty responsibility not to be taken lightly. You better get it right.

You better be willing to study. You better understand the Bible. You better, by God's help and grace, not say anything that is not true, that is not accurate according to Scripture. You better put in the time to understand it right and then the time to communicate it clearly and correctly, because when you do, it is in fact the word of the living God, and people are to receive it as such, and if they will, it's going to bring about the transformation of soul that Paul talks about here. And if they reject it, if they reject your message, and it is in fact an accurate reflection of the word of God, if they reject that, then they're going to face that in judgment someday.

They refused to hear God, and they might say, well, I didn't refuse God. I just didn't pay any attention to the preacher, the word of men. I didn't value what he had to say, and God is going to say, but that faithful preacher that I sent to you who was truly preaching the word of God, that was not his word alone. That was my word. And you rejected that, and you are held accountable to that, and because you did not believe it, you will be cast into outer darkness.

That's a pretty serious responsibility, isn't it? Paul tells us about the high position which preaching holds in the work of God, God's means of grace by which he brings people to salvation. The word of God and prayer are the two primary means of grace, but in the delivery of the word of God, it is primarily the preaching, the public preaching of God's word, which God uses as a means of grace. This is an amazing claim, that a verbal proclamation by men is actually the divine word of the living God, but that's what Paul is saying. Just this morning, as I was going back over my notes, I got the email that I get every Sunday morning from my preacher friend in Richwood, West Virginia, Brent Sechrist, and there were two quotes in his email today that were appropriate for my sermon today, and this quote by Francis Grimke is the following.

He says, the business of the preacher is to state the truth of God clearly, fully, simply. The rest the spirit will take care of. We need not trouble ourselves about the survival of Christianity.

God will take care of that. That's quite an insightful statement. What are we talking about? We're talking about the reality of divine revelation. Three things God wants us to know about the gospel, and the first one is the reality of divine revelation. God has spoken to men. We have revelation from God, and God uses men to communicate that revelation. It is true that the human element in this communication is often a barrier to the skeptical because there is not a perfect human instrument anywhere. Paul wasn't, Silas wasn't, Timothy wasn't, and there isn't a preacher in all of history whose life has been perfect, whose construction of sermons has been perfect, whose everything about him has been perfect, of course not.

Nobody but Jesus Christ fits that category. And so if somebody is inclined to be skeptical and unbelieving, they can always find something to criticize. They can always find something that's wrong, and they can point to that and point to that to justify why they don't pay any attention to what the preacher says. But if the preacher is a faithful preacher of God's word, it is God's word speaking to you, not just the preacher.

Criticize him if you will. As they criticized all the prophets, as they criticized preachers like Paul, many critics he had, as many criticized John the Baptist, and on it goes. Criticize all you will, but if you will not receive the word of God that comes to you from that flawed human instrument, you will be held accountable before God someday. Yes, the human element is a barrier to the skeptical, but the human element becomes a blessing to the true believer. Those who receive it as the word of God, in spite of the flaws of the messenger, they are blessed. They hear the voice of their shepherd in the words of that faithful preacher, and they are immensely blessed from that human instrument that God uses to communicate His word. And so first of all, the reality of divine revelation. Secondly, the reality of divine transformation because verse 13 concludes by saying this, which also effectively works in you who believe.

The whole verse again, for this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe. The reality of divine transformation. And there are two areas of transformation that I think Paul has in view here. There's first the work of regeneration, and secondly the work of sanctification. The word of God received works regeneratively in the lives of men.

It brings life to those that he's writing to in Thessalonica who are members of the church. He's talking in this sense about a past event, the remarkable transformation that we call the new birth, a miracle of grace accomplished by God's Spirit in connection with the proclamation of God's word. Again, fallible human messengers proclaiming the infallible gospel of Jesus Christ become instruments of transformation in the lives of sinners who otherwise would go out into a Christless eternity. It's quite an amazing thing, this work of transformation. Though we understand that no human being has the power of transformation in his hands or in his words or in anything that he does, it's in the hands of the Holy Spirit.

By God's design, it's always in concert with the proclamation of God's word. And so there is a human element that is necessary, and no wonder how beautiful are the feet of those who proclaim the gospel of glad tidings because that's the message that transforms men's lives. That's the message that births people out of darkness into light. That's the message that changes people from sons of darkness to the sons of Jesus Christ and puts them forever on the road to heaven and forever with the Lord.

And it is that remarkable transformation that only God can do, but he does it through the proclamation of his word, the reality of divine transformation. But there is, along with that, the reality of the work of sanctification, which we generally call, we mean by that what we call progressive sanctification. The word sanctification itself has the idea of being set aside, and sometimes in the Bible it's actually used of salvation. You have been sanctified, meaning have been set apart by God unto salvation, referring to that Bible doctrine of election. Sanctified, set apart by God, set apart for special operation of God's spirit in your soul. But most of the time when we're talking about sanctification, we're talking about what we call progressive sanctification. It applies to the work that goes on in the lives of believers after they have been born again. It is a present ongoing work of transformation by God's spirit.

It is molding believers into ever greater Christlikeness. Believers are a great mystery, they're a great enigma. They are at the same time saint and sinner. They are at the same time perfectly righteous and abysmally unrighteous, if you understand how to apply each of those thoughts correctly. They are on the one hand saints, having been saved by the grace of God. We're saints, we are as much saved as we'll ever be, and we are saints, a word that means set apart, a word that means holy. We are saints, we are holy, we are completely justified before the judgment bar of God. And in that courtroom of heaven, every born again child of God is perfect.

He's righteous, he's just, he is as righteous as Jesus Christ himself. That's an amazing thought, I don't think I've ever quite fully comprehended that as it applies to me, because I know the reality of my own life and I know that I'm not righteous, I'm still a sinner. I know that, that's who I am on the earth. But I also know who I am before the throne of God in heaven. I am a saint, I am righteous, I am perfect, and that'll never change.

But what am I here? I am, though redeemed, I am still a son of Adam who is not fully sanctified, and I am struggling with prevailing sin. And the closer I get to God, the more I'm aware of sins in my life, sins that didn't used to bother me, now they do. I wish progress and sanctification meant that I get to the place where my sins don't bother me.

Well, the truth is, some that used to be larger by God's grace have become smaller, and I'm not bothered by those the same way I used to be, but lo and behold, right in their train come along some more. And God says, well, what about this and what about that? And he starts fingering particularly those sins of the inward man, the sins of the soul, sins of pride, sins of covetousness, sins of envy, sins of anger, and so forth and so on, that other people can't see, but God sees, and I begin to see them more and more clearly in my soul, and I wrestle with them, and I rue them, and I confess them, and I desire to be rid of them, and God helps me with that, and what he's doing is gradually working in my heart to do what? To do exactly what he says he's doing in Romans chapter 8, to conform us unto the image of his son. He's making his children a little bit more like Jesus Christ day by day. Now, we never get all the way there until we're with the Lord in heaven, but we are making progress. And that's a gospel reality as well.

This wonderful reality that those who are saved by the gospel are transformed. They're not the same. They can't be the same. Things are different now. Something happened to me. I'd been born again. That was a complete change of nature, a complete acquirement of a new nature. I am a new creature in Christ Jesus, and I am being gradually transformed day by day.

It's an ongoing work, and that's what Paul is referring to. This word of God which effectively, effectively works in you who believe. Sometimes we use a slightly different word, effectually, which is basically the same thing as effectively. It effectually works in you who believe. God's grace is always effectual.

It always works, and that ought to be an encouragement to believers. We can't get discouraged because we do become increasingly aware of our sins, and sometimes the sense which we have is, I'm getting worse, not better. I'm more sinful than I used to be, and it feels like that sometimes as we become more aware of our sins. But what an encouragement to know that God's still working in me. The word of God is effectively working in me.

He's not done with me yet. I'm still being operated on by the Spirit of God to make progress in Christlikeness. That ought to also be an encouragement to the needy, those who are aware of their neediness before God.

They're not even certain of their salvation standing before God. But this tells us God's able to change your life. Give yourself under the word of God, give it respectful attention as much as possible because God uses that word to transform lives, to save people, and to sanctify people.

There's hope for you, whoever you are, however much you've sinned, however far you have fallen into disrepute. He's able to save you, to cleanse you, and to make you Christlike. His word does that. That's a gospel reality, the reality of transformation. It's also a warning to false professors, those who claim to have been saved, but there's no change in your life. Where is the evidence of the work of God's word in your life to change you, to make you more Christlike, to make you more sensitive to your sin, to give you a greater hunger for the word, a greater delight in things eternal?

Where's the evidence of that? God says this is what He does. If there's no evidence of that in your life, then you need to go back to the beginning, the need for the new birth, and plead with God to give you a new heart, to change your soul. But there's a third reality in this text, and that's the reality of earthly persecution. And Paul gives three verses to that. Verse 14, For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea and Christ Jesus.

For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Judeans who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us, and they do not please God and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they also may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. For wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. The third gospel reality, the reality of earthly persecution.

Now Paul begins by commending the Thessalonians for imitating their persecuted brethren in Judea. And Paul evidently sees that as an evidence of the working of God's Word effectively within them. People aren't willing to suffer persecution for the gospel if they haven't truly been saved. That's why I told you recently that a poll showed a decline in the number of professing Christians in America over the last decade or so, a decline in the number of church members in America over the last decade or so.

Why is that so? Because persecution is increasing. It's ramping up. It's becoming less and less popular, less and less commendable to call yourself a Christian. And those who found calling themselves Christians advantageous in a previous United States of America, where everybody pretty much was considered a Christian and expected to be a Christian, are now finding that it's disadvantageous to be a Christian. There's opposition. There's persecution. There's scorn. There's ridicule.

So people are peeling away. But not real believers. And Paul says this is an evidence of God's work in your heart. This is an evidence of the reality of your conversion, that you are willing to suffer persecution for Christ's sake, just like the Christians in Judea were willing to suffer persecution. You are imitating them in this way. It's interesting, as Paul describes this, he talks about the persecuted churches of Judea.

Did you notice that? You, brethren, verse 14, became imitators of the churches of God, which are in Judea in Christ Jesus. It's more common, I think, in our day to talk about the church in Judea, singular.

But Paul doesn't. He talks about the churches, plural. When we talk about the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Judea, what are we talking about? Well, we're talking about all true born-again believers in Judea who assemble probably, could be in one church, could be in a number of churches scattered throughout that particular area, as people talk about the church in America, the church in Africa, the church in Asia, and so forth. But you don't find that kind of language very often in the Bible, if at all.

What you find is this kind of language, the churches, plural, in Judea. Paul is thinking about individual local churches, and it's clear that the people he's talking about, who are being persecuted for the sake of Christ in Judea, are people who belong to one of a number of different local churches. Paul isn't even considering that anybody would be persecuted for Christ's sake if they weren't attached to a local church.

Ding-dong, but we move on. But it tells us that in spite of all of its shortcomings, God has designed the local church. God, at that time, was using local churches, imperfect though they be, just kind of like the imperfect human messengers that proclaim the word of God. There's not a perfect church anywhere. If you're a critic, if you're a skeptic, if you're an unbeliever, if you're looking for justification not to be committed to a local church, you can find all kinds of flaws with churches, every one of them. You can find some things wrong with every single church, no matter how sound it is, no matter how committed it is, no matter how godly it is. It's not perfect.

You can find things wrong with it. As you could have found in all these churches, to which Paul is making reference, these churches of Judea. But in spite of the flawed human element, God has ordained that he is going to carry out his work of the advancement of Christ's kingdom in this world, primarily through local churches.

I'm sorry if you haven't come to that conclusion, but again, to be faithful, I've got to remind you of this truth. It is so, whether you see it or not, it is so, excepted because the Bible indicates that, churches of Judea. And those who were part of the local church in Thessalonica were imitating the persecuted believers in the churches, the various churches of Judea.

And they suffered with their fellow countrymen. In Judea, Christians who were suffering at the hands of unbelieving Jews, and he says the Thessalonians were suffering at the hands of their countrymen also, like those in Judea. And the question is, in Thessalonica, were these persecutors unbelieving Jews? If you go back to Acts and read about the history of the church in Thessalonica, that first persecution was instigated by unbelieving Jews. And so, he could be referring to Jews who were fellow countrymen because they were part of the dispersion, they were now living in Thessalonica, many of whom had probably been born in Thessalonica, they were fellow countrymen to these Thessalonian believers, and yet they were persecuting these believers the same way that unbelieving Jews were persecuting Christians in Judea.

But of course, the Gentiles also got involved, the Jews stirred up Gentiles. And so, unbelieving Gentiles were also fellow countrymen who were persecuting the Thessalonian believers. I mean, this is pretty widespread persecution. You've got unbelieving Jews who are persecuting you, you've got unbelieving Gentiles who are persecuting you both, and yet you're willing to endure that for the prize of salvation in Jesus Christ, for the prize of eternal life, for the prize of being forever with the Lord.

You're willing to endure that for His sake. But persecution is a reality, it was for them, it is for us as well. And Paul describes the persecution of verses 15 and 16.

In verse 15 it says it was a prevailing hostility among the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus, that was their greatest crime, who killed their own prophets, they had a history of that up through the Old Testament into the New Testament. They persecuted Paul and other gospel proclaimers continuing this hostility that had been going on for centuries. They were displeasing to God. Well, they didn't think so.

Now, Paul's right. They were displeasing to God. What they were doing was tremendously displeasing to God. But if you had talked to one of them, their perspective would be, we are serving God, we are pleasing God, we are defending the faith, we are only persecuting heretics.

They thought they were pleasing God and they were 100% wrong. Is it possible to think you're saved and be lost? Yes. Is it possible to think you're serving God and to actually be serving the devil? Yes.

Who are you serving? And how you answer that question is not necessarily an indication that your answer is correct. You're going to have to find the answer in the Bible. They were displeasing to God. They were contrary to all men in general. They were general obstacles to humanity's greatest need, which was for the gospel, and they did everything they could to hinder the proclamation of the gospel, particularly to Gentiles. Why? They were just particularly hostile to Gentile evangelism.

Why? Because they resented a gospel that bypassed Jewish distinctions to allow people to be identified as the people of God. The Jews of Paul's day didn't mind Gentiles becoming Jews. In fact, the Bible tells us that they were willing to travel land and sea to make one proselyte.

What did they do with the proselyte? First you've got to be circumcised. Then you've got to keep the rest of the law of Moses. You've got to keep the dietary laws. You've got to keep the feast days.

You've got to keep these Mosaic regulations. In other words, you've got to become a Jew. That's the way to become a member of the family of God. They considered themselves members of the family of God because they were sons of Abraham, and they were happy for other people to join them as long as they cast aside their Gentile distinctives and adopted Jewish distinctives and became, in essence, in all of their behavior and cultural patterns and their lifestyle, became a Jew just like them. They were happy with it. They applauded that.

They devoted great energy to making that happen with a very limited degree of success. But what was Paul doing? He was going out among the Gentiles and saying salvation is by grace alone through Christ alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. It's not by circumcision. It's not by keeping the dietary laws.

It's not by the feast days. It's not by becoming a Jew. You don't have to become a Jew to become a Christian, to become a member of the family of God. You just have to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, all who do that, Jew or Gentile. No Jew becomes a member of God's family unless he believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. No Gentile is excluded from God's family if he will not add to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, circumcision, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If he does that, he's probably not believing in Christ at all.

Salvation is through faith in Christ. That they hated. That they resented. Paul said they do everything they can to stop our preaching the gospel to the Gentiles. And in doing so, they are adding, Paul tells us in verse 16, adding to the accumulated total of their sins. It's like they've got this great big bucket. And every time they sin, they throw another sin in the bucket. And little by little, the level is rising in the bucket. And eventually, when it's full, God's wrath is going to fall. Do you remember in the Old Testament how God indicated that one reason he didn't bring the Israelites immediately from Egypt into the Promised Land was because of the cup of the iniquity of the Amorites was what?

Not yet full. They weren't quite ripe for judgment. But when they were, when that cup got to the brim, then judgment would fall. And how it fell.

And they were virtually exterminated from the face of the earth. You see, God allows a certain measure of wickedness before judgment falls. Which unbelievers take as great encouragement that judgment will never fall. I've been hearing my parents talk about the judgment of God that hasn't fallen. I've been hearing the preacher talk about the judgment of God that hasn't fallen. I've been living my own life, doing my own thing, ignoring God, and judgment hasn't fallen.

I don't believe there's anything to it. No, all you're doing, God is so merciful, He hasn't wiped you out immediately. God's giving you space to repent.

But as you continue on with His attitude, all you're doing is filling up the bucket. It's getting higher and higher and higher and higher and higher. And when it gets to the brim, bang, judgment's going to fall. Why are things the way they are in America today?

I think this probably explains it as much as anything. We probably reached the brim. We're pretty close to it if we're not there already. God's judgment is falling.

Well deserved. How long we had opportunity to repent, to change, and how long we scorned God's mercy. How we insisted upon our own way. How we insisted upon continuing slaughtering innocent children by way of abortion. How we have continued flaunting the moral laws of God. How we have thumbed our nose at God's prohibition to adultery and fornication.

How on and on and on it goes. We just keep adding. We just keep throwing in the bucket. And the level of sin keeps rising and rising and rising and rising and rising until... God has no obligation to the United States of America. Why should He preserve us? Why should He make an exception for us?

This is how He operates. Graciously giving space for repentance. He will allow a large measure oftentimes of wickedness before judgment falls. But you can mark it down, judgment will fall. It will fall. It will fall. Hear the voice of this preacher.

It will fall. That's not only true for the United States of America, that's true for you. There's some here today who are thumbing your nose at God and continuing in your sinfulness and thinking you're getting by with it. No, you're just throwing more sins in the bucket of your iniquity. Now, if evidently God hasn't cut you off yet, so there's time to repent.

Thank God there's time to repent. Come to Jesus for the cleansing flood. Be washed in the blood of the Lamb. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. There's a way you can empty that bucket of iniquity and cleanse it out by the grace of God. But if you won't do that and it keeps filling up and filling up and filling up and filling up, one day, I'm afraid, dear friend, you're going to be cut off by the perfect, gracious justice of a thrice holy God.

Well, I said I had some applications from others, so let me make them quickly. First of all, God's words are your instructions. The words, God has revealed His word to men. God's words are instructions for marriage. Follow them. God's words are your instructions for child rearing.

Follow them. It is the word of God, not the changing wisdom of the world, nor the fickle opinions of your family and friends. That is of no value. Ignore those things and be guided by the word of God in your role as a mother because you will ignore God's word to your sorrow. It is the word of God. You must be treated as such. Another lesson from others. Pray for God to convert your children. You can set a godly example and you can teach them the word of God. You can and you should. It's very important that you do, but only God can transform their hearts.

You're shut up to Him. You're helpless in converting the souls of your children, but God is able to do it. He has the power, the transforming power, and God is merciful. He's done it for millions of others.

Why not for your children? And God is exceedingly gracious to His own beloved children. He has been gracious to you. He has made you one of His children.

Why, therefore, shouldn't you expect that He will show similar grace to your children? There are some wonderful encouragements and promises in God's word along those lines. Hold on to them. Hold on to them with both hands of prayer and ask God to convert your children. And my third lesson from others is prepare yourself for societal opposition.

Expect it. Don't surrender to it. Seek God's approval above all else. Not everybody's going to approve of your biblical role model in marriage, of accepting what the Bible says about your relationship to your husband. Not everybody's going to approve of what the Bible says about how we should rear our children. People have other ideas of how that ought to be done.

And sometimes it's just simple disapproval and scorn, and sometimes it becomes more heated opposition. Why shouldn't you expect that? Should you be spared that? Should I be spared that? Should we be spared that? Why should we? Are you willing to bear reproach for the sake of Christ?

If not, why not? If you are, hunker down, prepare for it, and look to God for His help and grace. Let's pray. Father, help us. We are needy. We are weak. But you have given us your word. Help us, we pray. Amen.