All Things For Good: Chap 1 Pt. 2

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All Things For Good: Chap 2 Pt. 3

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We started chapter one last week, so we're going to finish the rest of chapter one tonight.

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And I had an opportunity, I spoke to pastor and I had him review the lesson for us.

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And so he's excited to see it. So we're going to start now. So God's attributes, working for good, for the

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God right. So we're going through God's attributes. So far we've gone through God's power, wisdom, goodness, promises.

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And I think we're up to God's mercies. So Thomas Watson says, the mercies of God humble us, right?

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Then King David went in and sat before the Lord and prayed, who am I, O sovereign Lord? And what is my family that you have brought me this far?

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Second Samuel 7, 18. Lord, why is such honor conferred upon me that I should be king, that I who followed the sheep should be king over your people?

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So says a gracious heart. The Lord, who am I, that it should be better with me than others, that I should drink of the fruit of the vine when others drink not only a cup of wormwood, but a cup of blood or suffering to death?

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Who am I that I should have those mercies which others lack, who are better than I? Lord, why is it that with all my unworthiness, a fresh tide of mercy comes in every day?

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That's so profound to recognize that as the recipients of God's mercy, we get so much more than we deserve, right?

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And why us? You know, why were we picked to live on Long Island? Why were we picked to be in this church?

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Why were we picked with the blessings that we have? And I was telling somebody the other day, look, God could, you read

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Acts 17, God determined the places and where everyone is. We could be in Afghanistan. We could be in Iraq.

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We could be in North Korea. We could be in China. And so we've received this incredible mercy of God, and we're not willing to contend for the faith?

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Really? Gosh, we have to be grateful for what we have and God's mercy upon us, especially knowing where we are right now.

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We're not being physically persecuted yet, although it could happen. Maybe it's monetary persecution, laws, all this other stuff that's going on, but we've got to fight back, right?

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God's given us the power to do it, commanded us to do it. You know, we're in the obedience business, he's in the results business.

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It's the way it goes. So the mercies of God make a sinner proud, but a saint humble, right?

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You can look at these things and say, wow, look what I got. Look at where I'm at.

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Or you could say, why am I here? But for the grace and mercy of God, I wouldn't be standing here breathing, right?

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We're going to be praying for some people tonight who have COVID. Brother Terry Sullivan, he has organ failure now.

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I mean, this is just not good. So, you know, why not us? We could be in that hospital.

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We could be suffering. We could be in any one of a million other different places, but we're here. We all have good health and we have the ability to pray.

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I taught my kids when we were praying in the mornings, you got two options. You can pray for the people on the prayer list, or you could be one of the people on the prayer list.

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Which would you rather? I'd rather pray, right? If you're praying, you're praying for people who need it.

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I mean, not that we don't need, everybody needs prayer, but you know my point. You're not sick, right? We're praying for people who are sick or who need jobs and all kinds of different things that we have by the mercy of God already.

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So, God's mercy should humble us as his people. 1 Corinthians 4, 7 says, what do you have that you did not receive?

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Everything we have comes from God's hand, and we have to recognize that, especially our salvation.

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We can't look down our nose at somebody who hasn't repented and trusted in Christ. Like Jude says, be merciful to those who doubt, snatch them out of the fire.

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Why? Because you've received mercy. If you've received mercy, show mercy. Okay. The mercies of God have a melting influence upon the soul.

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They dissolve it in love to God. God's judgments make us fear him, but his mercies make us love him.

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How was Saul wrought upon by kindness? David had him at the advantage and might have cut off not only the skirt of his robe, but his head, yet he spares his life.

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This kindness melted Saul's heart. Is this your voice, my son David? And Saul lifted up his voice and wept.

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Such a melting influence has God's mercy. It makes the eyes drop with tears of love. Sometimes when

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God hits you in that moment, wherever it may be, and you recognize, wow, I could have been the one who died, or I could have been the one who lacked, but I'm not, it melts your heart.

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The mercies of God make the heart fruitful. When you lay out more cost upon a field, it bears a better crop.

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A gracious soul honors the Lord with his substance. He does not do with his mercies as Israel with their jewels and earrings make a golden calf.

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But as Solomon did with the money thrown into the treasury, build a temple for the Lord. The golden showers of God's mercy cause fertility.

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So the question is, what are you doing with the mercies that God's showing you? Are you storing them up to, you know, further your own agenda?

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Or are you using these things to bless the people of God and build his church?

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Right? The mercy of God should bear fruit in our lives when we're grateful for what he's given us.

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If anybody has any questions as we're going along, just raise your hand. The mercies of God make the heart thankful.

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What should I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me? I will take the cup of salvation,

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Psalm 116. David alludes to the people of Israel who at their peace offerings used to take a cup in their hands and give thanks to God for deliverances.

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Every mercy is a gift of free grace, and this enlarges the soul in gratitude. A godly

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Christian is not a grave to bury God's mercies, but a temple to sing his praises.

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If every bird in its kind, as Ambrose says, chirps forth thankfulness to its master, much more will a sincere

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Christian, whose life is enriched and perfumed with mercy. This guy's got such a way of saying things, like poetic and, you know, straightforward at the same time.

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As we receive God's mercy, we should be singing his praises continually, right?

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He doesn't have to give us his mercy, but this should cause our hearts to be thankful. And when you've got a thankful heart, you praise

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God with what he's given you. The mercies of God quicken.

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As there are lodestones to love, so are they whetstones to obedience. I will walk before the

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Lord in the land of the living. So now I'm gonna ask you a question. Who knows what a lodestone is, and who knows what a whetstone is?

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Not you. All right, you. Tell me, what's a lodestone?

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A lodestone is a magnet. A whetstone is something you use to sharpen a knife. Right, so a lodestone has magnetic elements in it, and obviously a magnet draws things to itself.

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It attracts things to it to stick to it. The whetstone is what the guy with the knife uses to sharpen it in order to use it as a weapon.

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He who takes a review of his blessings looks upon himself as a person engaged for God. He argues from the sweetness of mercy to the swiftness of duty.

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He spends and is spent for Christ. He dedicates himself to God. Among the Romans, when one had redeemed another, he was afterwards to serve him.

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A soul encompassed with mercy is zealously active in God's service, right? The scripture that comes to mind is, don't be hearers of the word only, be doers of the word.

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You know, faith without works is dead. You know, especially us, we have to guard ourselves as Calvinists.

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We love to feed on the word of God, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. But if we don't pour out and serve the people with what our theology teaches us, if we don't exemplify the doctrines of grace, we may know them here, but they don't come out through our hands, what are we doing?

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You know, we have to be a people of action. We have to be moved by the doctrine we believe or else we're not being gracious.

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Are we loving our neighbor as ourself? Are we helping, extending a hand, and helping those who can't help themselves? So if we're not moved to good works, we have to ask ourselves why?

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You know, what is it that I'm not doing or should be doing, and why am I not doing it?

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Right? Look at what God has given us. How dare we take what God's given us and not use it to bless others?

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Okay, keep moving. The mercies of God were compassion to others.

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A Christian is a temporal savior. He feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and visits the widow and orphan in their distress.

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Among them, he sows the golden seeds of his charity. A godly man shows favor and lends.

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Charity drops from him freely as myrrh from the tree. Thus, to the godly, the mercies of God work for good.

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There are wings to lift him up to heaven. How many of you have thought of yourself as a temporal savior?

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That could be a dangerous type of thing, but in the context that he means it, think about it.

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Sometimes when we feed somebody, help somebody, you know, we're working that common grace and moving them along in their lives, getting them from one point to another point.

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Temporally, we're acting as savior to them, not on an eternal basis and not for their sin, but sustenance, right?

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We're used by God. Say again? The good Samaritan. The good Samaritan, sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. Spiritual mercies also work for good.

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The word preached works for good. It is a savior of life. It is a soul -transforming word.

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It assimilates the heart into Christlikeness. It produces assurance. Our gospel came to you not only in word only, but in power and in the

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Holy Spirit and in much assurance. It is the chariot of salvation. It's so important that we sit on the teaching and the preaching of God's word.

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God's word does a work in our heart. I love that he says it's the chariot of salvation. It's what we ride upon weekly when we learn and feed on the word of God and then pour it out to the people around us and put it into action to put hands and feet on it.

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Now we get to God's spiritual mercies. Prayer works for good. We're going to pray tonight, right? Prayer is the bellows of the affections.

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It blows up holy desires and arteries of soul. Prayer has power with God. Command me.

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Now, in his book, he had Isaiah 1411, and I looked it up, and it had nothing to do with what he said.

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So I kept looking, and I talked to Jerry, and we found it's Isaiah 4511, okay?

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Which says, thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel and the one who formed him, ask me of things to come.

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Will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands? Prayer is a key which unlocks the treasury of God's mercy.

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Prayer keeps the heart open to God and shut to sin. Prayer assages the swellings of lust.

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That word arteries is enthusiasm or passion. So it blows up the holy desires, the passions, and enthusiasm of our soul.

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So that's one of the things that we use as a plan. When you're suffering in a certain sin or a temptation, we lift up other people who are going through the same thing.

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And when you start praying for that other person, you start ministering to them, God ministers to you.

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When you're pouring yourself out and focusing on someone else, you're not focusing on yourself. And all of a sudden, the temptation seems to go away, and God ministers to you as you minister to others.

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It was Luther's counsel to a friend when he perceived the temptation begin to arise to betake himself to prayer.

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Prayer is the Christian's gun, which he discharges against his enemies. Prayer is the sovereign medicine of the soul.

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Prayer sanctifies every mercy. Prayer is the dispeller of sorrow. By venting the grief, it eases the heart.

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When Hannah had prayed, she went away and was no more sad. And if it has these rare effects, then it works for good.

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Remember the title of the book, All Things Work for Good. So when we're praying, sometimes we're going through a difficult time.

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But when we pray, God uses it for good and comforts us in the midst of our prayers for other people.

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The Lord's Supper works for good, right? This is a common grace that we get to share in every week. It is an emblem of the marriage supper of the

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Lamb, Revelation 19 .9. And a pledge of that communion we shall have with Christ in glory.

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It is a feast of fat things. It gives us bread from heaven, such as preserves life and prevents death.

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It has glorious effects in the hearts of the godly. It quickens their affections, strengthens their graces, mortifies their corruptions, revives their hopes, and increases their joy.

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Luther says, it is as great a work to comfort a dejected soul as to raise the dead to life.

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Yet this may and sometimes is done to the souls of the godly in the Blessed Supper, right?

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We recognize that the communion meal is a covenant renewal where we're invited to dine with our

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God, to dine with our Savior in remembrance of Jesus and what he's done. It's a reenactment almost of the

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Last Supper where he dines with the apostles, okay, knowing that he's going to the cross and is going to die for their sins.

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So here we are, every week we get this benefit of the common grace, of renewing that covenant vow and looking forward to it.

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When you know that we're going to take communion on Sunday, there's a restraint on the sin in your heart, right?

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Sometimes if you have Sunday in mind, you're like, I'm going to be taking the Lord's Supper, right? Yeah, I gotta watch my step, right?

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It's a common grace. God's graces, okay?

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Grace is to the soul as light to the eye, as health to the body. Grace does to the soul as a virtuous wife to her husband.

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She will do him good all the days of her life, Proverbs 31, 12. How incomparably useful are the graces?

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Faith and fear go hand in hand. Faith keeps the heart cheerful. Fear keeps the heart serious.

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Faith keeps the heart from sinking in despair. Fear keeps it from floating in presumption.

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All the graces display themselves in their beauty. Hope is the helmet, meekness the ornament, love the bond of perfectness, right?

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So grace, remember, is getting what you don't deserve, right? And grace and fear, right?

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Faith and fear go hand in hand. Faith is what? Trusting in the promises of God, relying on Jesus alone for your salvation, right?

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The evidence of things hoped for. Fear, fear of the Lord. Fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You know, fear is good if it's godly fear, right? Fear, when we fear things, that's a warning sign that something could be wrong.

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So we have to recognize that not all fear is bad. The saints' graces are weapons to defend them, wings to elevate them, jewels to enrich them, spices to perfume them, stars to adorn them, cordials to refresh them.

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And does not all this work for good? The graces are our evidences for heaven. It is not good to have our evidences.

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Is it not good to have our evidences at the hour of death, right? So he's likening these things to perfume, cordials, jewels, all the things that people pursue.

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It's like when you have God's grace, you have everything that you need, right? You have the grace of God in your life.

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You have his son, you have the promise and the hope of eternal life. That, to know, if you are going to your death and you know it, to know that you have the grace of God and you have a relationship with him, my goodness.

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You know, it's not blessed in his sight is the death of his saints. God's angels, this is a good one.

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The good angels are ready to do all offices of love to the people of God. Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

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Some of the fathers were of opinion that every believer has a guardian angel. This subject needs no hot debate.

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It may suffice us to know the whole hierarchy of angels is employed for the good of the saints. Whatever position you particularly hold on this, saints offer our benefit, right?

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They're ministering spirits. Sometimes we entertain angels without even knowing it, right? But God sends his angels to minister to us for good.

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The good angels do service to the saints in life. The angel comforted the Virgin Mary. The angel stopped the mouths of the lions.

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They could not hurt Daniel, Daniel 6 22. A Christian has an invisible guard of angels around him.

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He shall give his angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways. The angels are of the saints life guard.

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The angels are of the saints life guard. Yes, the chief of angels. Are they not all ministering spirits?

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The highest angels take care of the lowest saints. It's pretty incredible to know that when we worship, there are angels about us.

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And how that all works, I have no idea, right? But they're there. God tells us that they're there. We're joining the heavenly host and worshiping

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God with the angels. Amazing. And they're there to take care of us. Okay, moving on.

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The holy angels do service at death. Angels are about the saints' sick beds to comfort them.

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As God comforts by his spirit, so by his angels. Christ in his agony was refreshed by an angel.

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So are believers in the agony of death. And when the saints' breath expires, their souls are carried up to heaven by a convoy of angels.

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Now, I don't know if that's necessarily true. I didn't look up Luke 16 32.

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Somebody wants to look that up and let me know. Okay, okay.

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So that's what Mr. Watson says. The holy angels also do service at the day of judgment. The angels shall open the saints' graves, shall conduct them into the presence of Christ.

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And when they shall be made like his glorious body, he shall send his angels and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

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The angels at the day of judgment shall rid the godly of all their enemies. Here the saints are plagued with enemies.

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They are my adversaries because I follow that which is good. All right, so angels do have a pertinent role in the life of a believer and the actions and the things that happen here on earth.

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In fact, if you go on the Reform Rookie, I did a whole one hour teaching on angels right from Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology.

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He had a really good section on angels. So if you're interested in something like that, check it out because it definitely will help you understand what's going on here.

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Okay, continuing with the angels. Well, the angels will shortly give God's people a writ of ease and set them free from all their enemies.

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The tares are the children of the wicked one. The harvest is the end of the world. The reapers are the angels and therefore the tares are gathered and burnt in the fire.

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So shall it be in the end of the world. The Son of Man shall send forth his angels and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things which offend and then which do iniquity and cast them into a furnace of fire.

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That's serious, right? And that's the angel's job to take the tares away. At the day of judgment, the angels of God will take the wicked, which are the tares, and will bundle them up and throw them into hell furnace and then the godly will not be troubled with enemies anymore.

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Thus the good angels work for our good. So angels have a function and a role that we can't do ourselves.

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They're assigned to do this. See here the honor and dignity of a believer. He has God's name written upon him, the

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Holy Spirit dwelling in him and a guard of angels attending him. Think about God's created order.

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The angels are above us, right? We're beneath them right now, but we're gonna judge them.

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They're not created in the image of God. We are, right? And God uses those angels to minister to us.

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So he has angels who have much, much more power than us to minister to us for our good.

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So God's taking care of us even with using the angels to do it. Okay, God's church.

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We are helpers of your joy. One Christian conversing with another is a means to confirm him.

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As the stones and an arch help strengthen one another, one Christian by imparting his experience heats and quickens another.

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Let us provoke one another to love and to good works. How does grace flourish by a holy conference?

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A Christian by good discourse drops that oil upon another, which makes the lamp of his faith burn brighter.

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Isn't it so important to be involved with a healthy body of believers who love one another, who spur one another on to love and good works?

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If you're in a position where you're not helping your fellow

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Christian in church and spurring him on to love and good works, pray that God would put somebody in your path that would spur you on to love and good works.

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All right, we need that. And I was hoping that the prayer meeting would be a little bit more full tonight, but we got what we got.

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You know, we're here. We're here to pray. It's not about the numbers, but I'm trying to move people to do more things than they're accustomed to doing.

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You know, we're in a situation now, it's all hands on deck. You know, we have to fight together. We have to contend together for the faith.

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So, and I like our chances. You know, God says his, you know, the gates of hell are not going to prevail against the church.

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So I'm going to stand on his promise, move forward and trust him with the results. God's intercession.

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Christ is in heaven as Aaron with his golden plate upon his forehead and his precious incense, and he prays for all believers as well as he did for the apostles.

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My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me.

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When a Christian is weak and can hardly pray for himself, Jesus Christ is praying for him and he prays for three things.

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Now, just knowing that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the father and interceding for us and praying for us.

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Oh my goodness, right? If Jesus was in the next room praying for us, like what would we think?

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Be like, oh my goodness, he's right there. But he's omnipresent. He's right here right now and he's interceding for us.

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Even though we just can't see him, right? He's still interceding for us. You have to understand that that's a reality.

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I know sometimes it's difficult when you can't see someone, but Jesus is real and he's interceding for us.

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What a comfort that is. First, this is the three things he prays for. First, that the saints may be kept from sin.

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We learned about being kept in Jude in John 17. I pray that you should keep them from the evil one.

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We live in a world as in a pest house. Christ prays that his saints may not be infected with the contagious evil of the times.

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Second, for his people's progress and holiness. Sanctify them. Let them have constant supplies of the spirit and be anointed with fresh oil.

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So first he's praying to keep us from evil, not from evil happening to us, but from us doing evil, because evil does happen to us.

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And he's praying to sanctify us. So even though evil happens to us, that evil can be used to sanctify us.

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He used everything, whether it is good or evil, to sanctify us. Sanctification is not fun.

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Third, Jesus prays for their glorification. Father, I will that those which you have given me be with me where I am,

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John 17, 24. Christ is not content until the saints are in his arms. This prayer, which he made on earth, is the copy and pattern of his prayer in heaven.

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What a comfort is this. When Satan is tempting, Christ is praying. This works together for our good.

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So we have Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father, praying for us regularly. Christ's prayers take away the sins of our prayers.

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As a child who presents his father with a posy goes into the garden and there gathers some flowers and some weeds together, but coming to his mother, she picks out the weeds and binds the flowers, and so is presented to the

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Father. Just so, when we have put up our prayers, Christ comes and picks away the weeds, the sin of our prayer, and presents nothing but flowers to his

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Father, which are a sweet -smelling savor. God, Jesus sanctifies our prayers.

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So then when we pray, and we probably end in using wrong words and all this different kind of stuff, he weeds all that out, and he prays exactly what we're supposed to pray to God the

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Father. He brings it to them. The saints pray for all the members of the mystical body.

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Their prayers prevail much. They prevail for recovery from sickness. Your prayer faith shall save the sick, and the

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Lord shall raise them up. James 5, 15. They prevail for victory over enemies. Lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left.

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That night the angel of the Lord went out to the Assyrian camp and killed 185 ,000 Assyrian troops.

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So when we pray, and we pray for reformation and revival to sweep across our land, we're praying for the church, all the people in the church throughout

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America, throughout the world. They prevail for deliverance out of prison. But while Peter was in prison, the church prayed very earnestly for him.

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The night before Peter was to be placed on trial, he was asleep, chained between two soldiers with other standing guard at the prison gate.

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Suddenly there was a bright light in the cell, and an angel of the Lord stood before Peter. The angel tapped him on the side to awaken him and said, quick, get up.

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And the chains fell off his wrists. Acts 12, five. The angel fetched Peter out of prison, but it was my prayer which fetched the angel.

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They prevail for forgiveness of sin. My servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept him.

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So here we have the church praying for Peter. And what does God do? He sends an angel, like we learned before.

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Angels are for our good. So the angel comes by the prayer of the church sent by God. So he's working all these things together for good.

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Our prayers are for the benefit of the saints. So as we pray for the saints, other saints across the world, and other 1689 churches are praying for us.

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So just know that when we're praying for other people, they are also praying for us. This is how, right?

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This is the oil that God uses to smooth out his church. Thus the prayers of the saints work for good to the mystical body.

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And this is no small privilege to a child of God, that he has constant trade of prayer driven for him.

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When he comes into any place, he may say, I have some prayer here. Nay, all the world over,

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I have a stock of prayer going for me. When I am indisposed and out of tune, others are praying for me who are quick and lively.

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Thus the best things work for good to the people of God. So it's always a comfort to know.

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Sometimes I'll be in my chair in the morning praying and it's just not happening.

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My mind is distracted. I'm just not praying what I should pray. My mind starts wandering.

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And then I just sit and say, okay, Lord, make me quiet. Bring me to that place where I'm just quiet.

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And I know that there's other people praying for me because then I start to pray again. But to know, like when I tell you guys or I text you, hey,

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I'm praying for you, I'm praying for you. Like it's a comfort. And then when I get a text and somebody says they're praying for me, it's like, thank you,

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Lord. Like there's prayer going out. And I think this is one of the areas in most

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Christian's lives that is probably weak. We could always improve upon our prayer life.

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And I think when we get to the other side, we're gonna recognize just how powerful our prayers really were. And we're gonna regret not praying it more now when we're there.

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And I think this is, we're coming to the end here. All right, questions. Are you convinced that all things work together for good?

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ATFG, that's me and Jerry's little thing, like something goes wrong.

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ATFG, all things for good. Look, if I hear ATFG one more time,

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I'm gonna punch somebody. All right, that's it.