2 Corinthians chapter 8, and I just want you to look at verse 9. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich. We looked at this passage some few weeks ago dealing with the subject of Christian giving. We noticed the instruction that Paul gave to the Corinthian church in their taking up a collection for the poor saints in Judea. And in doing so, I made reference to this verse sort of in passing. Then again, this past week in our Ladies Bible Study, we covered this particular chapter, and again, these words just sort of jumped off the page at me. One of my favorite verses, we find here a little nugget, a little gem, lying in the midst of this exhortation by the Apostle Paul for the saints to give of their substance for the relief of their poor brethren. It is interesting to note how Paul goes about motivating the Corinthians to give of their substance. He does not do it by commandment. Notice verse 8. I speak not by commandment. Specifically, he says, he does not lay upon them an obligation, a legal duty. He does not threaten them. He does not say you're damned if you don't. But he does something and something that in fact is far more weighty than laying a legal obligation upon someone. Instead, he points them to the example of Jesus Christ. Now that, of course, is not unique in the New Testament Scriptures, and we've mentioned that many times. It doesn't really matter what you're talking about. The Scripture ultimately will tell you what to do, and then when it comes around to telling you why to do it, it almost always eventually gets back to Christ and what He did for you. If it exhorts you to live a pure, clean, holy life, it is, according to Paul in Romans 12, by the mercy of God, I beseech you to do that. If it is for husbands and wives to live towards one another as they ought, it is because Christ gave Himself for His church. If it is an exhortation to forgive and be kind to one another, it is because God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you, says Paul in Ephesians 4. If it is an exhortation to be humble and meek, it is because the mind of Christ ought to be in you, who being equal with God, yet laid aside and humbled himself. If it is that you ought to suffer without complaining and patiently, it is according to 1 Peter 2, verse 20, because Christ did so, leaving you an example. It just doesn't matter what you're talking about. Eventually, the Scripture will get around to pointing you to Christ and say you ought to do it because of Christ, because of what He did. The good news of the Gospel tells you of what your Savior did for you. And so, to the saint, Paul's not fighting fair. I mean, if you're trying to keep that dollar in your pocket, he has just hit your soft spot when he brings up the example of Christ, because for the saint, nothing moves him as powerfully as does the gospel of Christ. Now, I know we normally don't think of just words as having power, but that's how the gospel is described. It is the power of God to salvation, says Paul in Romans 1. To us who are saved, says Paul, the rest of the world may see it as foolishness, but to us, it is Christ, the power of God. Nothing moves the same like the gospel. It melts his will. It breaks his heart. It constrains his life. The mere mention of Christ's love for him tears down all the barriers, destroys all the obstacles and resistance. Set Christ before His people and their eyes water, their heart race, and their tongue cries out with lots of old, were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small, love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all. That's how the saints respond to the Savior and to his great love for them. So let us look very closely at this little sparkling nugget here before us in our text this morning. Notice that it is stated, first of all, by the Apostle Paul, rather matter-of-factly, that Christ was rich. He used to be. At some point prior to the time of the Apostle Paul, he speaks of a time when our Lord Jesus was rich. He must mean by that, knowing Christ's earthly circumstances, and we'll get around to that in a few moments, but He must mean by that, and must be referring to by those words, Christ's pre-incarnate state, His pre-earth history. It's very clear that in the Scripture, this person that they were expecting called the Messiah, The one who would come and was the very Son of God was not a person whose existence began at his fleshly, physical birth. His life did not start in Bethlehem, in that manger. The Old Testament prophets prophesied of that. In the very verse, Micah chapter 5 and verse 2, that speaks of the fact that the Messiah, when he's born, would be born in Bethlehem, Ephrathah, It goes on to say that out of you will come a ruler who will rule Judah, whose going forth have been of old, yea, from everlasting. That the one who would make his appearance in Bethlehem is not starting out right there. He has always been around from everlasting. We find it in the very words of Christ, his own claims about himself. As he so often does in the Gospel of John, there in John 16, he says to his disciples very plainly and clearly, I was with my Father, I have come into the world, and now I leave the world and go back to my Father. He did not begin his life upon his appearance in this world. There was a time before his appearance in this world when he was with his Father. The apostles speak of that same doctrine. The apostle John says in John 1.1 that in the beginning, before time, he was with God. The apostle Paul, and again that passage in Ephesians 2 verse 5, speaks of when he was in his preexistent state, equal with the Father, and yet he emptied himself, divested himself of his glory, and took upon himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man. All of the Scripture agrees that this person that we know as Jesus Christ did not begin his life in a manger in Bethlehem. that from everlasting he had been in existence, and that must be what Paul is referring to here as the time when Christ was rich. Now, what does he mean, rich? How was he rich in that state? First of all, he was rich in power. His hands were the hands, according to the Scripture, that framed the worlds. John tells us in John 1 that by Him were all things made, and without Him was nothing made that was made. All things came about as a result of the power of His own hands. He was God's direct instrument, God the Father's instrument of creation. He was rich in honor. He was a glorious being, dwelling in light, unapproachable by mere mortals like you and I, having the adoration, the homage, the worship of a myriad of angelic beings far higher than you or I, rich in honor, rich in glory. He was rich in favor in the eyes of his Father. He was infinitely pleasing. to His Father, the special object of His Father's love and adoration. In fact, John 1 in verse 18 speaks of Him as being in the very bosom of His Father. As close to the heart of God the Father as you can possibly be, that's where God the Son dwelt in His preexistent state. The special object of His Father's love and His Father's favor. But Paul goes on in our text to tell us that though he was rich, he became poor. Again, this reminds us, and it helps correct some of our thinking and some of the heresies that have crept into the church's doctrine over the ages, is that this is not a new person coming on the scene. This is the same person that was rich. In other words, it's not a new person. It's not there was a rich person back here and now there's a poor person. It's the same person. He's just in another state. This same person used to be rich. He has become Poor, but the same person in both cases. How did he become poor? It's pretty easy to become poor. You don't have to work hard to become poor. What's the old song? One of the old 60s songs says, we never fail to fail. It was the easiest thing to do. That's sort of what life is like. You can become poor in any number of ways. You can become poor by bad judgment. not having enough savvy. You can become poor by being lazy, slothful. You can become poor by circumstances. The market goes sour. There's no end to the ways that people can become poor. How did Christ become poor? He who was rich became poor, says Paul. How'd that happen? Well, the Scripture goes on to tell us that he became poor because he voluntarily gave it up. He gave it away. First of all, his poverty consisted in that he divested himself, and I use that term, we use it, you hear it in politics sometimes that someone gets appointed to a high office in the land and he happens to be a businessman and perhaps his own company because of the office that he's now being appointed to, there would be a conflict of interest, let's say, if he keeps ownership in this company that he has made a fortune in, perhaps, as well as being this appointed governor official. So he has to divest himself of his holdings in certain areas so that he does not have a conflict of interest. I use the word in that sense. Christ became poor because he divested himself of certain things. He divested himself of what I have called before the divine perks. You know what perks are. The little fringe benefits that goes along with an office. He gave up divine perks. He didn't give up divinity. He didn't cease to be the person that he used to be. He's still God, but he gave up the perks, the privileges that accompanies Godhood. I mean by that, that he who was infinite in respect of his being, infinite in respect of time, he was an eternal being, infinite in respect to space, he was an omnipresent being, now surrenders the perks of the infinity of his being and he becomes, shall we say, down to the cramped confines of a finite creature. Do you understand what I'm saying? Jesus in the flesh, the very Son of God, now exists at one point in time, not in all points of time. Jesus in the person of the Son of God in the flesh now cannot be at two points at the same time. He cannot be omnipresent. When He is in Galilee, He's not in Judea. When He's in Judea, He's not in Galilee. He enters within the corrupt confines of creaturehood, things like you and I are used to. He surrenders the glory that had accompanied His person and His being. One of the old songs, I believe it's O Sacred Head, Thou Wounded, and it's inevitable that when they edit a verse out, they always edit the verse out that I liked. But there is a verse in O Sacred Head, Thou Wounded that says something like this, and it's not in our hymnal. I was looking for it a moment ago. It says something like this, O sacred head, what glory in other days was thine, that when you appeared in those days, men trembled, men feared, men shook in their boots when you came on the scene, when you made your presence known, and now they mock you, they jeer at you, they mock you to scorn. In other words, the glory that once accompanied your presence has been laid aside. Christ became poor in the sense that he who had been absolutely free and independent, needing absolutely nothing from no one, now becomes the absolutely dependent one. Dependent on his mother for food, dependent on somebody to change his diapers. Utterly dependent. The framer of the universe. The independent one absolutely becomes the dependent one. He assumed that stance of dependency. He who was higher than the heavens in office, the object, as I mentioned earlier, of adoration and praise and service by others, now comes in the form of a servant low, mean, despicable in the eyes of others. In practical terms, you see, I've sort of given you a theological definition here of how he became poor, but in practical terms, what does it mean? Well, it means simply this, that all things were once His. He was the maker, the owner of all things, and He has surrendered His rights of ownership to all things. He who once had all power, all power was His, now surrenders the independent exercise of that power. All glory was His, but now He surrenders that glory. and comes into this world lowly and despised. Now I want you to consider for a moment just the depths of his poverty. Think of the poverty of his circumstances. He was born, first of all, into a poor family. We know that from the offering that his parents offered when they took him up to Jerusalem to have him named and circumcised. They offered a pair of pigeons or doves, which was the offering of the poor man back under the law. If they could have offered, if they had substance to offer something else, they would have offered something else. But for those that were absolutely impoverished, here was something the law set before the poor man that he could offer, and that's what Christ's earthly parents offered for him there at the temple. He who framed and made this world, he who was the owner, and I mentioned a moment ago part of his poverty consisted in giving up the rights of ownership, now comes into this world and in his ministry he declares that he has not one place to lay his head. Not one place to call his own. He was a man who was born in a borrowed cattle stall. He crossed the Sea of Galilee in a barred boat. He entered Jerusalem on a barred donkey. He kept the Passover in a barred room. He was buried in a borrowed tomb. He had nothing of his own. He who was the maker, the owner of all, forfeited all rights of ownership. And yet the poverty of his physical circumstances was, if we were going to measure things, that's not a drop in the bucket compared to the poverty of soul that our Lord experienced. He who was the God of joy now comes into this world as the man of sorrows. He whom angels adored and praised is now mocked, ridiculed, scorned by men. Isaiah says, we saw him and we esteemed him not. We esteemed him as nothing. We treated him like you wouldn't treat a dog. He who dwelt in light, unapproachable, is now spit upon, beaten, disfigured, mutilated, stripped, humiliated. And worst of all, he who had always been the special object of his father's love, adoration, and favor, now takes the curse upon himself and becomes instead the object of his father's wrath, his father's judgment, In fact, he even knew that sense of utter separation from God that is the very definition of spiritual death. His fellow creatures had forsaken him. His Jewish countrymen had forsaken him. His beloved disciples have forsaken him. And now on that cross even his father has forsaken him. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That, in a nutshell, is a brief sketch of the poverty of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He became poor. Nothing in the annals of human history can compare with what we have described. We've all seen investors lose their shirts. We've seen rich men lose their fortunes. We've seen noble men lose their inheritance and their estates. But we've never seen one so rich become so poor. And why? Why? Because He gave it all away. As God, He gave up His glory, His independent exercise of power, the dignity that belonged to Him. As man, He gave of His time and His energy. And when there was absolutely nothing to give but breath and blood, He gave that too. We say give till it hurts. He gave till it quit hurting because he's dead. Why? Why would he do it? Why would he, who was so rich, become so poor? Did he do it as a spectacle? Was he sort of an evil Knievel of the first century that wanted to go and do a stunt so everybody would watch him and see him, get everybody's attention? Was he perhaps got some sort of sick thrill in being poor, some sort of masochistic thrill? Was he doing it to sort of draw attention to his despair like the Buddhist monk pours gasoline on himself and ignites himself? Why did he do it? Well, there are several ways we can answer that question, and we can give one answer, and it's a very good answer. You can say he did it because his father told him to. That is an answer that the Scripture gives us over and over and over again. There was a reason he did it. His father had a plan, had a purpose for him in doing this. I mention that, and I mention that first, because in a discussion like this that so centers upon the glory of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we oftentimes, perhaps, lose sight of the Father, God the Father, behind the scenes. I want to remind you, and never forget it, that behind the Son coming was a Father sending. that in back of the great love of a Savior for His own, and John reminds us that those whom He loved, He loved to the end, there was a Father who loved the world and gave His only begotten Son. Never lose sight of the fact that the Father and Son are one in this work. The Father gave Him a people. but they were an impoverished people. They owed an infinite debt. They were a sinful people, a people who must be redeemed, bought, purchased. Their debt was infinite and so the price had to be infinite. To purchase this people, God the Son must give everything he has, an infinite price, to cover the guilt of infinite sin. He gave. He was rich. He became poor. Why? Because he had to give it. Why did he give it? It was a price that was demanded. by the sin and the guilt of his people. In order to purchase them, he had to give everything he had. That's a principle that runs through the kingdom of heaven. Jesus himself illustrated it by a man walking out in the field one day and found a treasure in it. And for the glory of that treasure, he went and did what? He gave everything he had to get that thing. Another man, a buyer of goodly pearls, saw a pearl of great price, such a wonderful thing, never had seen anything like it, infinite worth, and he went and what did he do? Gave everything he had, sold it all to buy that pearl. That's a principle of the kingdom of heaven, and it is a principle that Jesus himself shows us. He gave everything to purchase his people. Now I know there are multitudes of people today that this very thought scandalizes them. It causes them to be offended at the gospel. They don't like the fact that the Scriptures paint them out as being impoverished, infinitely in debt. You know, they just don't like that. That's not very, shall we say, soothing to the modern man's psychology and his philosophy of life, that he is absolutely, infinitely in debt and hopelessly, helplessly lost and must in fact be at the mercy of one who comes and purchases him. if ever he will find salvation. That just doesn't go over real big in these days. That's not one of those things like David was talking a moment ago that if you sit after a survey and what's the most popular idea out there, that's not it. You know, we like to think, you know, I don't really need Jesus, the man on the street says. I don't need this. I pay my own way. I pay my taxes. I'm self-supporting, self-sufficient. Just tell me the price of this thing called salvation and I'll pay it. I pay my debts. I pay my own way. J.P. Getty, so the story went, a fellow asked him one time how much his yacht cost. He says, if you have to ask, you can't afford it. Well, there's truth in that about yachts. If you have to ask how much one costs, it's out of your league already. My friend, if that's true about yachts, it is absolutely true about salvation. If you even have to ask the question, How rich must I be? What good thing shall I do? Even raise the question, you already admitted you're out of your league. If you don't have infinite wealth, infinite merit, infinite righteousness at your disposal, you can't buy it. If you even have to ask, you can't afford it. You been in some of those restaurants where you open the menu and they don't have prices? Waiter, check. It's time to get out. I'm not sure I can afford this glass of water here." My friend, that's the way we ought to be when we're facing this thing called salvation. If we know anything about what the Bible teaches us of the infinite demerit of our sin, it's that if we've got to have prices, we can't afford it. The price is too high. If you even have to ask the question, how good must I be, you're out of your league. We may strut about like a Donald Trump in the eyes of others and in our own estimation, thinking we have need of nothing, thinking we can pay whatever price comes along, rich in our merit, able to buy and bribe our way wherever we want to go. And in the day of judgment, we're sure we're going to get out all right. If we don't have enough, we can at least buy him off, slip him a little bit under the table. My friend, I don't care if your name is Ford, when you come to this judgment day, you can't buy your way out. Your friends won't be able to go back for you in that day because our God is no respecter of persons. He doesn't care what your name is. He doesn't care about your pedigree. He doesn't care how highly esteemed you are in the eyes of men. There's one thing He cares about and that's the righteous standard of His holy law and whether you measure up or not. The price is infinite and the judge can't be bought off. He's not impressed with how other people are impressed with you. He's not impressed with how you've impressed others with how impressed he's supposed to be with you. You may think yourself rich in power, rich in ability. You're surely going to wiggle out. But in that day, the cry from the mighty men of the earth is, who shall be able to stand? Oh, my friend, don't you get it? Don't you get it? Paul says that if there had been a commandment that could have given life, God would have given such a commandment. Brought about the salvation of God's people, that God would have spared His Son? Doesn't the cross seem to tell us that this must be the only way? That if there had been any other alternative, surely that would have been the chosen alternative. My friend, the only hope is that in that purchase, in that infinite price that Christ paid, we were included. Our sin was covered with His blood. Now let me close by saying, what must we do? What is my response, my responsibility in all of this? Chuck and I went to see the fellow down at Millington, and a couple of weeks ago, we had both sent in little forms to the prison system to have you always send these things in so they can check you out and make sure you're all right before they let you in to see the prisoners. And through some mishap, and this is so usual given our prison system today, we got in there and signing in to see this fellow, and my name was on the list. They pulled it up on the computer, and there's my name right there. She said, yeah, you can go in. Chuck's name wasn't up there. Chuck, he's far more efficient than I. He'd send his thing in real quick. And I told him, that's your problem. You're too efficient for these people. Should have waited a few days like me. But anyway, I'm telling you, from that moment on, that fellow was persona non grata in that place. I mean, the fellow we were coming to visit came over there to shake our hands, and they said, uh-uh. You stay away. You, you've got to leave. Pointing at Chuck. You've got to go. And he said, well, I'll just go out here and wait in the car. And they said, uh-uh. You can't do that. You've got to leave. You've got to get off these grounds." And I said, well, wait a minute. How am I going to get out? I was with him, you know. How am I going to get out? And they said, well, you can come back and get you, but he can't stay. Can't talk to him. Can't have anything to do with him. And I told Chuck later, I said, now this is a perfect illustration of election. Many are called, but few are chosen. I mean, you could say, well, wait a minute, Chuck, but I'm more deserving. I mean, I sent my foreman first. It doesn't matter. Your name's not on the list. But I ought to be seeing him. It ought to be me that's going in. It doesn't matter. And so it is that there's coming a day, a day of judgment when there's going to be some names on the list called the Lamb's Book of Life. And I don't care how much more deserving you might be than the ones in that book, but folks, you, persona non grata, if your name's not in that book. But you say, well, if that's true, then, you know, I'd better sit around here and wait and see if my name's in that book. No, the Bible tells you some other information. It tells you that Christ in His ministry put His blessing upon those who were, He calls them, the poor in spirit. He says to them belong the kingdom of heaven, blessed are the poor in spirit. And to be poor in spirit has nothing whatsoever to do with how much you've got. It has to do with how much you think you've got. It's not actual possessions, it's attitude that we're talking about. It's whether you think you're rich towards God. You'll notice one thing about the ministry of Jesus Christ. He always deals with men upon the basis of their perceived need. Sometimes when that need was very obvious, I mean, you've got sometimes blind folks trying to get to Him, and they come in begging for mercy, and He simply asks them, what do you want? Seemingly, the only one who knows what He wants. Don't you know what He wants? Of course He knows what He wants. The question is, does He know what He needs? Does He perceive His need? Do you perceive your need? It's on that basis that Christ deals with men, the basis of their own perceived need. For He never gives sight to the seeing. He never gave healing to a healthy man. He never filled the bellies of any that weren't hungry. He never loosed those who weren't bound. And so I asked you the question this morning, are you rich towards God? Are you? Are you rich in your own eyes? Are you able? Are you sufficient? Are you able to pay your own way? Then I declare to you on the authority of God's Word, Christ has nothing for you. Are you rich in the works of the law? Paul wrote the Galatian church who thought that somehow being circumcised would advantage them in the eyes of God. And he writes and says these words, I write to you that think, you know, somehow circumcision is going to do you some good. Christ shall profit you nothing. In other words, you can either cleave to this little work of the law or you can cast it away and have Christ, but you can't have both. Are you clothed in your own righteousness? In the old filthy rags of your own doings? Then I tell you, Christ will never cover your old naked soul with the robe of salvation. Are you filled, satisfied, fat and sassy? Then I declare to you, you will never taste of the bread of life. You will never drink that water of life. I call upon you today, if you have not done so, declare yourself a pauper. Declare yourself, and publicly so, bankrupt in the eyes of God. Publish that bankruptcy abroad and cry out to Christ for charity. Become a charity case. Sue for mercy at the back door of God's grace. And I tell you, come to Christ in that attitude, that poverty of spirit, and you'll find one who will make you rich. Really rich. No, I don't mean this old green pieces of paper we carry around in our pocket. Boy, we get excited about green pieces of paper, don't we? I'm talking about real rich. Really rich. Rich in blessing. My friend, is it not true that in this old cursed earth that a lot of things we call blessings are actually curses and sometimes the more we have, the bigger the curse is. I'm not sure we have things or whether they have us. The females in my family, all of them, insisted on getting these old four-legged critters out there in the pasture. They ride them once in a blue moon. But every day, you've got to go out there and take them something to eat, go to the feed store, buy a bag of feed, go out here and get some bales of hay. Who has who? Who owns who? I just sort of hear those horses laughing at us sometimes. You wouldn't believe what I got him to do today. And we think we're the ones in charge. Is that not so, that the more you have, the more trouble you've got? Because you just can't have things And they take care of themselves. You've got something now. You've got something new. You know what? You've got to go take care of it. Things don't take care of themselves. Now you've got something you've got to insure. You didn't have to insure it before. Now you've got to insure it. You've got to take care of it. Make sure somebody doesn't steal it. Make sure it doesn't rust. Mock it to it. Isn't that true? I remember thinking about folks that had two homes, two houses. What a wonderful blessing to have two homes. You know, you can live over here, you can live over here. My friend, we went through a year coming here to Maranatham. We had two homes. A millstone about your neck, if ever there is one. I tell you, you can't live in two houses at the same time. And one of them you're not living in, isn't going to stand there on its own. The roof's going to slide. I tell you, there's something about houses nobody lives in. They'll fall down in a year's time. These things we call blessings and possessions are just possessing us in so many cases. I'm talking about real riches. I'm talking about blessing and blessing that is all out of proportion to any labor you might have expended. That's one thing the parables teach us when Christ rewards His servants. It's all out of proportion to anything they've ever done. Ten times, a hundred times. Blessings that won't rust, won't fade away. The moth won't ruin them. The thief won't steal them. Things that are eternal in nature. Things, saith Paul, that are not even worthy to be compared with the sufferings of this present day. Rich. Rich in honor. My friend Christ will make you rich in glory. Do you realize, you know, some folks get rich because they inherit. a lot of riches from their families, right? They get enriched because they inherit a lot of things. My friend, do you realize what Paul is teaching you in Romans and in Galatians? He's teaching you that through Christ you are made an heir of God Almighty. You are co-heirs with Christ His Son, the One to whom all things belong. is the one whose inheritance you shall one day receive. You've already got the first fruit, says Paul, in the life, the blessing that has come to you now, but it's just the earnest money. It's just the small little foretaste of what lies ahead. We shall enjoy in that day a status that no other being, no other creature in this universe can approach, of being called the sons of God. And rich, rich in comforts. Right now, you remember Jesus in one of the accounts where Peter, after he had talked to the rich young ruler and told him to sell everything, and Peter comes along and says, well, Lord, we've done that. What are we going to get? And he says in one point, I believe it's in Mark's account of that passage, he says that you will receive a hundredfold. You've given up father, mother, son, daughter. lands, houses, whatever, you'll receive a hundredfold in this life with sorrow, with affliction, with trouble, and in the life to come, everlasting life. Blessing in this life, but The blessing in this life, as we well know, is a mixed blessing, a mingled, mingled with sorrows, mingled with tears. In that day, there will be no more sorrows, no more tears, no necessities to press in upon us, nothing but the unmingled, unmitigated joy and gladness. And then finally, rich in God's favor, Even though you and I, if we are in Christ, are as justified at this moment as we will ever be, even in glory, we'll be no more justified than we are right now. I mean, if you're justified today, you're justified for the sake of Jesus Christ. You're justified because of your standing in Him, not anything you've done. You'll be a whole lot more holy than you are now, but you'll be no more justified. Because Christ's righteousness, the basis of your justification, doesn't get any better. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. So my friend, in one sense you can say that I'll never be more just than I am right now in the eyes of God. If I stand before Him right now dressed in the spotless robe of His own Son's righteousness, I'll never please Him. I'll never be any more in appearance glorious than I am to Him right now. But my friend, my sense of that waxes and wanes. I don't know about yours, but do I always sense that? Do I always, am I always knowledgeable of my standing in Christ? Do I always have that firm sense of assurance before God's throne, the sense of His love and favor that's directed towards me? Or are there not times that Paul even describes, within were fightings, without were fears? All things, the circumstances of life, press in upon us. And we would say that even the measure of assurance that we enjoy as Christians is not unmingled with doubt. The blessing is not unmingled with uncertainty. My friend, right now we see, but we see through a glass darkly. It's a fuzzy picture that we have. There's coming a day when we shall see clearly, when we shall know even as we are known. Then we shall bask in the sunlight of God's favor. the sunlight of His love forever and ever. My friend, if you are without Christ, my advice, I'd declare bankruptcy if I was you. I'd bail out. I'd get off a sinking ship. Rats know to do that. Learn from them. Get off this sinking ship. Judgment is coming. God will settle accounts. As unlikely as it seems to our eyes as we look about us at the events of this world, there is a day of reckoning coming. Who shall be able to stand? Will you be found in Christ that day? He came. He was rich. He became poor. He gave it all to make a purchase. And the fact that that purchase was effectual is seen in your presence here today. He bought some people that day at Calvary. He purchased them with His own blood. He redeemed them. And the Holy Ghost has gone out into this world and He is calling those He purchased to Himself. And we congregate in little communities like this, little families, little assemblies all over this planet And we congregate not around a man, not around a name, not around even a fellowship as David mentioned a moment ago. We congregate around this One who was rich and became poor for our sakes. Let us pray. Father, thank You for Christ. Oh, thank You for these wonderful words that remind us of what He did for poor sinners like us. May we never forget it. May we never misestimate the sense of our indebtedness to Him. Not a debt of law, but a debt of love. May His love constrain us. May His life move us and motivate us. May the mention of Jesus Christ cause our hearts, our pulse to race as we think and get excited about One who would do such for us. Father, thank You that though our debt was infinite, and there was only one way that infinite debt could be paid, You chose that one way. You gave Your Son, gave Him up for us all, that we might be Your purchased people. Father, cause us to remember that if You spared not Christ, oh, surely You'll spare nothing for us, for our sakes. Thank You for that. Thank You that we are the objects of Your love and affection, Your special objects, because we are in Christ, Your Son. Thank You, Father, for the tokens of Your love and Your forgiveness, the sense of assurance that we have before You this day. But, O Father, we anticipate more and more as the day grows closer, that day when we will know it in unmingled, unmitigated fashion. Father, in that day when we will know and see with clear eyes, clear mind, clear heads, we will see our Savior as He is. Bless us today, Father, as we seek to honor Him. For it's in His name we pray. Amen.