R765 The Seven Blessings Part 4

And what God is saying about all the saints, He is saying, their righteousness, which was their faith righteousness, which was acceptable to God, was and is only made perfect in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who paid the price upon the cross. The encouraging Word. Moments ago, Dr. Wilton was talking about this perfect righteousness. We'll discover the blessing of that righteousness in just a moment.

But no, we're here for you. Connecting right now at TheEncouragingWord.org and 866-899-WORD. The Encouraging Word And now, Dr. Don Wilton. We find ourselves in Hebrews chapter 12, and I would like to invite you and encourage you to take a copy of God's Word, the Bible, and open it to Hebrews chapter 12, a remarkable study that we are engaged in entitled The Seven Blessings. I want to readily admit to you that despite my being in the ministry for many years and growing up under great Bible teaching, I have never heard of these things until we arrived at this point in our study together. And even that first message that I preached where I included this just in the fabric of that particular message and God just stopped me dead in my tracks. Because in Hebrews chapter 12 and verses 20 through through 24, we find the most extraordinary things about what God does for us. Beloved people today, I have come to understand and to appreciate that when as a believer, I come to understand what it is that God has done for me, that my heart is blessed to a point at which I can't even begin to imagine. Because quite frankly, I'm so much concerned about what I can do for Him.

I'll tell you that readily. I'm always asking myself, Lord, am I doing enough? Am I saying enough?

Am I giving enough? Am I going to church enough? And all those things are very important.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water here. But friend, I believe that as believers, we need to understand that this is about God. I've come to a fresh understanding that when people say to me, why should I become a Christian? Amongst many other things, I can sit down and say, well, let me give you seven reasons why. In fact, these seven things that I'm going to tell you got nothing to do with you. When you give your heart to Jesus, God will bless you with these seven things. You can write them upon the tablet of your heart, and then you cannot write them because only God can write them there for you.

He's the one who does it. Let's just remind ourselves, Hebrews chapter 12. We've looked at four of these blessings, and I'm going to try God willing today to give you the remaining three.

That's always interesting as I shared with our ministry team at seven o'clock this morning because I get to studying this every time I study it. I just never seem to be able to get to the bottom of the well. It seems to me that the deeper that we dig into the heart and mind of God, the more we understand that you'll never actually ever get to the bottom of the well because God himself is endless. He's timeless. His reservoir never runs out. The abundance of his grace is so magnificent.

It's everlasting. And so I just simply ask you to forgive me if I rob you because there is so much more to be said, and you would be justified every Sunday to leave this place and say the pastor never scratched the surface. I just, I cannot imagine pastors who preach sermonettes, folks. I just cannot conceive of it. I cannot conceive of people who get up and take little shots at the word of God here and there, a little doob, yeah, a little dab there.

Take a little bit of this, take a little bit of that. We do that, I think we insult the height of God's love and the depth of his glory and the vast extent of his most marvelous grace. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 22, talking about Christian people. You have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the city of the living God. Those of you that believe in Jesus, you have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly. Number three, given your life to Christ, verse 23, you've come to the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven. Number four, all believers have come to God who is the judge of all men. Number five, you've given your life to Christ, you've come to the spirits of righteous men made perfect. Number six, if you have come to Christ, you have come in verse 24 to Jesus Christ, the mediator, of a new covenant. And number seven, you have most definitively come to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Let me remind you of the first four blessings. Blessing number one, we are guaranteed a place in heaven.

God gives it in fact three names, Mount Zion, heavenly Jerusalem, and the city of the living God. That just strikes a chord in my heart to the extent I'm trying to put it into a book right now as I speak to you. It opens the vast array of the glory of God, the eternal authority of God concerning that place where we all will be forever.

I want to know about that. Number two, blessing number two, we are guaranteed participation in the heavenly choir. Steve loves that one. I'm relieved to understand it's not just about singing in the choir, it speaks to my full participation with all believers in all the activities that God gives to us to do forever.

I want to know what I'm going to do forever, don't you? Number three, third blessing, we are guaranteed full partnership as heirs with Christ. According to verse 23, we are given a guaranteed membership, if you please, in God's club. Number four, we are guaranteed the presence of God according to the second part of verse 23. Surely impossible.

How can an unrighteous man come into the presence of a righteous God? What an audacity. How impossible even the concept that somebody as filthy as I am, a sinner by nature and a sinner by choice, that God would guarantee to me his presence forever, beginning at the instantaneous moment I give my life to Christ, but we've discovered why.

It's incredible. Number four, number five, all right, now we're going to get into some things. This is exciting.

I can't wait to get into this. Number five, here's the fifth blessing. We are guaranteed an eternal partnership with the saints. Now just a point of clarification and relief.

This is not talking about the New Orleans saints here. Look at verse 23 with me. God's word tells me, tells you, tells these people back when this was written that as a believer, I have come to the spirits of righteous men who have been made perfect.

Now let's just clear up some things here because we need to do that. Who are these people? Who are the righteous men?

Well, in context here, we know who they are. In fact, our study in Hebrews talked about them ad infinitum, let alone the hall of faith that we discovered. But if you were to go to any Jewish person back in this day and age, in fact, I'm going to submit to you that you go to any Orthodox Jew today, I would not be surprised if you were to say to them, tell me, who do you consider to be the father of all spirituality, the most spiritual person you could possibly imagine, the one that you would revere and honor more than anything? I would not be surprised if they immediately said Abraham because Abraham was a righteous man. The Bible tells us that. And if you wanted to get a Jewish person's attention about Abraham, in fact, that's why Abraham is even used in Luke chapter 16 as the one who is in heaven. When the poor man dies and goes to heaven, he resides as it were in the bosom of Abraham, in the womb of Abraham, God here using that metaphoric image there about a real person in a real place in order to let people understand because the Jewish people would have no problem understanding that if Abraham's there, God's there, which means if God's there, that's heaven. So if you went to them and said, who would you like to be around?

They'd say Abraham. Now folks, I'm no different to that. I like sport. You know that I like all kinds of sport. Ask Steve here. I have beat him so badly at ping pong.

He can't stand it. I'm going to hear more about that at a later date. Listen, folks, I like all kinds of sport. If I love golf, for example, I wish I was better at it, but if you came to me and said to me, Don, what would you like to do? You know what I'd really like to do? I'd like to play a few rounds with Jack Nicholas, if you don't mind.

I think Jack Nicholas, I mean the golden bear. Can you imagine, folks, if my phone rang this afternoon? Sam, you need to listen to this. If my phone rang this afternoon, the man on the other side said, Don, this is Jack. Sam Davis sent me the tape of your message, and I just wanted to call you and ask you if we'd fly you up to the old house and come and play five days of golf with me the next week. Now, folks, let me tell you, I would go and consult my calendar to see if I could fit it in. Let me tell you something, folks, I'd cancel next Sunday.

I mean, can you imagine to a nobody like me to play a round of golf with Jack Nicholas? Now, friends, we've got to understand something here because God makes an announcement about something that affects us. This is one of the blessings that I'm going to give to you. I'm going to guarantee you an eternal partnership with all the people that you ever considered to be the ones who are it as far as God is concerned. That's all the martyrs. That's all the great people. That's Abraham, Isaac.

Just think about them. Think about Moses. Who wouldn't want to be around Moses? What about Noah? And I want to meet, Noah took the very first Caribbean cruise that was ever designed.

I want to be around Noah. You think about all the great men of faith. God commended them for their faith.

But there's something very interesting here that I really want you to see, folks. This is important because there is a statement made here that I am going to be given a partnership with the spirit of righteous men made perfect. Now, if they were righteous, why do they need to be made perfect?

Isn't that redundant? What is interesting here is that God is reminding us of the faith righteousness of mankind, which is accepted in the presence of God. Let's take Abel, for example. We're going to talk about him in a minute because that's the seventh blessing. Abel and Cain, two brothers, we've discussed this, came together.

They knew they had to worship God. Cain brought what? Vegetables. Offered vegetables, God said, I don't accept it. We also discovered there's nothing wrong with vegetables.

God made them. Abel, on the other hand, offered a blood sacrifice. God accepted his blood sacrifice, but he did not accept Cain's vegetable sacrifice.

Now, we're going to get into this in just a moment, okay? What was it about Abel's sacrifice that made Abel's sacrifice acceptable to God? It wasn't the fact of Abel's sacrifice that was accepted by God, who in time through Jesus Christ declared him to be righteous. He accepted him as righteous at the time at which he made that sacrifice, but he was declared to be righteous through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross.

And what God is saying about all the saints, he is saying their righteousness, which was their faith righteousness, which was acceptable to God, was and is only made perfect in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who paid the price upon the cross. Please forgive the interruption. We'll be opening right back to God's Word, Hebrews chapter 12 in a moment, but Dr. Don insists I interrupt for this reason only. You need to know we're here for you.

Right now, we're taking calls. We're connecting online at theencouragingword.org. And this phone number, I pray you jot it down, store it in your cell.

It's 866-899-WORD, 866-899-9673. We stand ready to pray with you and for you and connect with great resources that'll help you grow in your faith. But right now, let's get back to today's message, The Seven Blessings with Dr. Don Wilton. My friend, that puts a whole different perspective on me. Now watch what happens here. If I'm gonna have equal partnership with all these giants of the faith yesterday, today and tomorrow, it means that what God has done at this point is he's leveled the playing field.

That's what he's done. God has said, listen, they're no favorites as far as I'm concerned. Red and yellow and black and white, all people are precious in God's sight. It doesn't matter how rich you are, how poor you are, how up you are, down you are, in you are or out you are, I want you to know that because of my grace, I have declared you to be righteous in my presence. And on that basis, I want you to know having trusted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, you are going to share in an equal eternal partnership with all believers forever, forever. See folks, we admire and we appreciate great men and women of the faith.

Let's not make little of that. Man, there are people who have paid a price. I think of someone like Mother Teresa.

I think of the martyrs of the faith, people who've laid down their lives. But God says to me that because of the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, I am made righteous and that I am going to be guaranteed an eternal partnership with these people. I am gonna sit at the same table with them. I am not gonna have to go and stand in line at Outback Steakhouse and get my name written down and get called later so that I can get the half side of a cow that was killed in the Outback somewhere.

Not a man of my caliber. I'm just gonna arrive there and God in Christ Jesus is going to say, welcome, please be seated at the feet before the throne of grace together with all people, together with all people. What does it mean to have equal partnership? Number one, it means we will share a common destiny. Hebrews 12, 28 reminds us of that.

Our first blessing reminds us of that. We will share a common destiny. We're all going to the same place.

It's called heaven. Number two, we will share a common identity. Say, wait a minute, pastor. What are we gonna look like after we die? Well, in 1 Corinthians 15, 48 and 49, the Bible tells us what we're gonna look like. Tells us in verse 48 that Jesus Christ on earth looked like earthly man. We are going to look like he looked after he rose from the dead according to verse 49 when we get to heaven. That's why after Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to over 500 people for what reason? I believe the prime reason why Jesus appeared to so many people after he rose from the dead was to show everybody what we, they were going to look like after we have, watch this, risen from the dead. So we're gonna share a common identity.

Number three, what does it mean to have equal partnership? It means we will share a common recognition. Go back very quickly to Matthew chapter eight. You must know about Matthew chapter eight, folks. This is a very important passage. Matthew chapter eight and verse 10, talking about the faith of the centurion at Capernaum, Jesus made this statement in verse 11. Matthew chapter eight and verse 11, this is what he said. He said, I say to you that many will come from the east and from the west, watch this, and will take their places at the feast, hello, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

Any questions? We will share common recognition. Now just by the way, so we can get this one out of the way. Do you think Jesus for a moment sitting up in heaven said, listen, why don't we just throw a few names in here to spice the story up, get people's attention? Folks, I just don't believe that God does that. I don't believe that God would give to us his precious word and would concoct and make things up and slip names in just to try and impress a bunch of people.

I'm one of those people, my friends, I literally believe what the word of God literally means. And Jesus said, you're gonna sit down, not with someone who might remind you of Abraham, but you're gonna sit down with who? Abraham, now I've got good news for you today. You love the Lord, you're gonna sit down there with Don. You're gonna sit down there with Larry. You're gonna sit down there with Ken. You're gonna sit down there with John Sorrow.

You're gonna sit down. Folks, we share a common recognition. Number four, we will share a common reward. Bible says we're all gonna be at the table.

The word of God tells us about the blessings. Number five, we will share a common purpose. We've discussed that as the second of the blessings. Number six, we will share a common membership.

We've discussed that together. We're all gonna be members of God's club. We gotta be members of the body, the church of the first born. Number seven, we will share a common presence. We've discussed the presence of God made available to all people because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Number eight, we will share a common righteousness. See, we look at people like Abraham and we say, man, that was one righteous man.

There is no way that I can live up to that level. God says our righteousness is made perfect the same as his righteousness has been made perfect because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Now friends, I know this is deep, but it'll bless your heart.

Think about this. You might say to me today, pastor, I'm struggling to understand this. The spirit of God is gonna open your heart. He's gonna open the eyes of your understanding. You're gonna begin to see things from God's perspective. All right, blessing number six. We are guaranteed a perfect savior.

Oh man, this is just so powerful this. We are guaranteed a perfect savior. Now, how is this made possible? Why is he the perfect savior? Let me just get this out the way because it's foundationally important to this blessing. How is it made possible that Jesus Christ is the perfect savior? Number one, because he's the son of God.

That's how it's made possible. In fact, you remember at his baptism in Matthew 3.17, for example, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. God said that. Number two, because he is the sacrifice for sin. You know, we've studied this folks, but if you just page over to Hebrews chapter nine and verse 14, just flip your page back there.

It sounds like angel's wings. Turn back to Hebrews chapter nine and verse 14. Here's what the Bible says. How much more then will the blood of Jesus Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living God and it is for this reason that Christ Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant. Now, what is the sixth blessing? We are guaranteed a perfect savior.

Why? Because we have come to Jesus Christ who is the mediator of a new covenant. When it comes to the mediatorial role of Christ Jesus, it is interesting for me to note that in John chapter 17, the Lord's prayer in verse seven, that Jesus confirms and celebrates the nature of his commission as mediator. Jesus does that when he talks to the father. And he says in verse seven, for example, he says, I have revealed you. In other words, I have made manifest.

I have declared your name to those that you have given to me. Why did Jesus say that? Because he is not only the manifestation of God, but he is the manifesto of God. And friend, listen to me today.

This is so important. In so doing, we're talking about the perfectness of Jesus Christ as savior. In so doing, Jesus makes a statement of divine acceptance of his role as mediator between God and man.

What was he doing? Number one, he accepts divine responsibility to discharge his duty to God. Now, what was Jesus duty to God? Here it is, to reveal the name of God.

Watch this, to make God known to people like you and me. That is the divine duty of Jesus Christ, the son of God. The God man was his duty because of his sacrifice. That's why he came. His role, purpose, intent was to reveal God to me.

I go through Jesus Christ to get to God, but it doesn't stop there. It means that he also accepts his divine responsibility. Watch this, to give an account of his discharge duty to God. Now, listen friends, listen to me.

This is unbelievable. God not only, Jesus not only tells me about God, but when I respond to God, Jesus reports back to God about my response to God. He goes and he reports and he says, God, my father, Don Wilton has accepted what I have revealed to him concerning you. That's the mediatorial role of Jesus Christ.

I pray you hear that truth. You are covered in the love of Christ, the blood of Christ, if you belong to him. If you belong to him, then stop accepting anybody else's opinion about who you are because you are perfect in Jesus.

Now, that doesn't mean your actions are perfect. We need to grow to become more like Jesus, not just covered in Jesus. But if you don't know Christ, let this be the day that you say yes to him so that you can take on his covering. We'd love to pray with you, talk with you about it.

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Write to us at Post Office Box 2110, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 29304, or call us toll-free at 866-899-WORD or visit online at theencouragingword.org. Thank you for your support. Your generosity will be a tremendous blessing to The Encouraging Word ministry as we continue full speed ahead in 2019, bringing hope and changing lives through God's Encouraging Word. Our time's gone today, but the blessings continue tomorrow with the final message called Sharing the Blessings. I hope you'll join us for more of The Encouraging Word with Dr. Don Wilton. ...