Thank you, musicians, for ministering to us with music, that old rugged cross, and that great exchange. But he gives us a cross to bear every day, too, so we can identify that he struggled with that, so that when we struggle with our crosses, we do it knowingly, that even if we complain, our sins are forgiven us. Our sins are forgiven us. You know, from the cross, even when he was, and I think even when he was being stricken on his back with the whips, until he was being laid and nailed on that cross, Jesus continually said, Father, forgive them. They do not know what they're doing. They just don't know. When you look at that in the Greek, it's continuous. Forgive them, forgive them. They don't know, they don't know, they don't know, and they didn't. Nobody knowingly does that. You have to be very demonic possessed to take out revenge like that against a God that loves you. But that's his rugged cross, and he gives us a crown, and then we lay it at his feet. So as you can see, Pastor's not here with us today, but we have Brother Mike with us, one of our teaching and preaching elders of many. This is the church. I'm 20 years older than Mike, and you have no idea what pleasure it gives a pastor like me that I can see the passing of the baton. that I can see young elders coming up and preaching. And this is going to continue on. And they're going to minister to my children and my grandchildren. You know, I remember when I was a young man and my first pastor, Jerry de Avila, saw that I had capacity to preach and gifting and he took me under his wing. And for two years, he would meet with me at his office from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. and teach me how to minister and teach me how to preach and teach me how to study and research and prepared me. And I would always assist them. And I assisted pastors all my life in church and youth ministry and preaching in their absence. Ever since I was 29 years old, it hasn't changed. And then 10 years ago, I was ordained. Today is the anniversary of my ordination to be a minister. And yesterday I turned 60. So praise God, what a wonderful life, a wonderful wife and three kids, eight grandchildren and another one on the way. So what a blessing, what a blessing. And to see talents like Mike and others here that God is granting us, I am overwhelmed. I sit back and I go, God, you're so good. You're so good to us. So Mike, please come up. Mike has a wife. and two children. Hope it is yours, Mike. Thank you. Welcome, church. It's a humbling experience to stand up here. You know, my wife and I, with some friends, Val and Annie, we went to a lot of churches before we ended up here. And it's a humbling, you know, a lot of stuff is preached out there. And it's a humbling experience to stand up here where the word is faithfully preached week after week after week. So I thank God for that. Pastor David asked me to preach. And he asked me to preach because I have a gift. Well, you haven't heard my gift yet. I have a gift. I can read minds. Yeah? I can read your mind right now. You're thinking, is it too late to leave? Darn it. David's not here. I know because it happens to me. Yeah, it is too late. You can't leave. Yeah. So the charge that David gave me, it's called, means of grace. We're gonna use Ryan Davidson's book, Green Pastures, as an outline. It's the same book we use for our introductory means of grace class, right? I think it's important now to also understand what the term means, what it refers to, right? Well, means is the mechanism or the instrument that's being used by God to effectuate growth in the believer. It's similar to how God uses the soil, right? Since the beginning of time, God has used the soil too. We plant, we water, we have fruit, right? And that's how God has nourished man from the beginning. So that's the means and means of grace. And I'm gonna define the entire term in a little bit. You know, many years ago, for many years, I attended a particular denomination where, for many years, the common practice was to ask things like, have you heard from God today? Have you heard from God today? Has he spoken to you? Or, if you had a gathering, was the presence of God there? So, personal spiritual growth was measured by a completely different standard. It's a completely different standard. Growth, God's growth for the Christian is a totally different standard than that, than finding God. So I submit to you that God's not playing a cat and mouse game with us, right? He wants to be known to us. He wants for us to grow in him, draw strength from him. And while many evangelical Christians, he does, You know, many evangelical Christians follow that thinking. He does not leave us to our own devices to create our own means and methods to understand his will, right? You don't come to Christ and say, all right, I'll figure it out. No, he provides many ways and means in order to understand him, in order to grow with him, right? He doesn't just leave us dangling in the wind. Well, the word The preached word is the most obvious, and it'll make up our focus today. And the means of grace, of course, is the sacraments, the baptism, the Lord's table, which we'll talk about prayer a little bit. He also provides prayer, which will make up the other portion of our discussion today. So what does the term means of grace refer to? The Westminster Shorter Catechism, question number 88, it asks the following, what are the outward and ordinary means of grace whereby Christ communicated to us the benefits of redemption? The answer, the outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates us the benefits of redemption are his ordinances, especially the word, sacraments, and prayer, all which are made effectual for salvation. Now we know what the term means, let's see how God uses the means of grace. Let's go to Acts 20, 28, and then we're going to jump to 32. Acts 20, 28. So in Acts 20, 28, He says, I have to get there myself. He says, so now brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I'm also reading through 32. So in this we could see three truths, right? God builds up his people in grace. You come to Christ, you don't know much, you're kind of like a baby who needs milk, and he builds us up in his grace. But it doesn't stop there. You can be a Christian for years. and not have any growth, not have build up, just kinda... The term in Spanish, viendo del cuento, right? Like you're, well, I did this in church, I did that in church, I helped this, I did that, but... There's really no growth, right? There hasn't been any growth in that particular Christian. And the idea is how do we grow? God builds us up in grace. But there is a step we have to take, and that is to utilize his means of grace, right? He provides us with these mechanisms, with these instruments. He provides them for us, right? For his glory. So, God builds us those three truths. As God builds His people up in His grace, He uses the means to grow His people, and God uses specified means to strengthen and increase the faith of His people. If we look at the Second London Confession of Faith of 1689, we're going to get an idea how this verse that we just read becomes like a doctrinal reality. So, the grace of faith whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls is the work of the Spirit of Christ and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word. By which also, and by the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper, prayer, and other means appointed of God, it is then increased and strengthened, right? So, God is a God of order, right? He provides these mechanisms so that we can use them so that we can then know more of Him, right, know more of Him, and then grow as Christian. So, He provides this thing called faith. And faith is a personal expression of hope. Yet, we may not think of faith as a form of grace. I like the way Davidson puts it in the book. He says, we didn't come up with faith. It's God-given. He created it. We didn't come up with faith. It's like, oh, again, going back to my, excuse me. My former Christian life, faith was up to you, right? If you didn't have faith, you had a problem. Like you don't have enough faith. You don't have enough faith, you gotta grow in faith, and it was just term thrown around, you have to grow up in faith. Like if it was yours, like it's your fault, you know? The guilt. It's your fault you don't have enough faith. Oh, you're not well? It's your fault. You're not doing well? You don't have enough faith. Very nebulous, very cloudy, you know, very, I don't know, very chaotic. But it's God given, and if it's God given, he's gonna make it right. If it's God given, it's correct. We're not left to, again, to our own devices. If he gives it, he strengthens it. And he gives us means to strengthen that faith. I spent many years lacking the clarity on this point. But when Christ in the gospel became clear to me, it was because the Holy Spirit had first worked in my heart. I didn't have to just go searching around and looking, how do I increase this faith thing, which I didn't really have a clear you know, grasp of, but it's through the ministry of the word that faith is birthed, right? Sitting here every Sunday, my faith is birthed, right? It's the ministry of the word. It's God using David, the preacher, to preach his word so that my faith could be increased, and it's almost tangible sometimes, right? I sit here, I'm like, Right, Frank? That was it. So, let's go to the Word. Romans 10, 14 to 17. Romans 10, 14 to 17. Romans 10, 14 to 17. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they're sent? As it's written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things, right? but they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report? 17. So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. But it's not just any hearing or any preaching. You know, I visited, before coming here, we visited a lot of churches, right? We visited a lot of churches. And it's a lot of, you know, it's a church on every corner. Word is preached. But is it the right word? Is it the faithful word? And it wouldn't take much for us to figure it out. It's like, oh, this is not the place. When we came here, it was pretty easy to figure out, because the word is preached faithfully. And it's not just about knowing the word. That's what happens to a lot of us. We see a preacher up there and say, oh, he knows the word. One of my favorite authors was, he's dead now, was an atheist by the name of Christopher Hitchens. I really marveled at his ability to recall scripture. He would even quote C.S. Lewis, a well-known Christian author. He wrote the, what's that movie? This is what happens when you get old, you forget names of movies. Narnia, the Narnia series, right? He would quote C.S. Lewis, he knew the word, and Christopher Hitchens was the biggest atheist there is. He would give you a run for your money in his knowledge of the word. recall the scripture like that. But he would learn it so he could speak against it, which was interesting, right? So it's not just the knowledge of the word, it's the Holy Spirit that convicts us, that convicts us and pushes us to grow and to learn more and more. The Bible's not going to save you. The Word's not going to save you. He's an example of that. Christopher Hitchens, the atheist. It's not going to save you, neither is baptism or the other means of grace, the Lord's table, prayer. What all these things do is point you to the one that will save you. It's Jesus Christ. You know, the author Davidson couldn't be clearer when he states that every corner of our spiritual life is about God's grace. Right? Every corner of our life. We're sanctified by God's grace. We're justified by God's grace. And we're glorified by God's grace. We only go to heaven because Jesus took the penalty that was rightfully ours. So the gospel's not about doing better. Right? Doing better to earn a better standing before God or even man. Right? It's not about that. Someone recently told me that they just wanted to be a better person. I just want to be a better person. Right? We do want to be better, but we can't if we're left to our own schemes and devices because we are wicked sinners. We're wicked sinners, but once the sinner places their faith in Christ, that person is forever changed, redeemed by Christ. So he redeems us, but he doesn't leave us there. He grows us, and he strengthens us in faith and his word. So the means of grace are not the only things he uses us to grow us. Some people call it, say, fellowship is also another example, but the ordinary means of grace, he has identified as specific ordinary means that he will use consistently to grow believers in grace. Just like the soil example I gave you, you put something in the soil, it's going to grow, it's the same thing. You put your head in the word, faithfully, you will grow, right? So what is the definition of means of grace? Nicholas Batsig defines a means of grace like this. The means of grace are God's appointed instruments by which the Holy Spirit enables believers to receive Christ and the benefits of redemption. And there's a lot of benefits. In 2 Timothy, Paul is reminding Timothy that he's rooted in the word. He's trying to encourage him in 2 Timothy 3, 14 to 17. If you go to 2 Timothy 3, 14 to 17, you'll see what I mean. 2 Timothy 3, 14 through 17, yeah. He's reminding Timothy, his protege, his son in Christ, his adopted son in Christ, right? He's trying to encourage him as he is now in charge of the church, right? He says he's reminding him. Sometimes we have to be reminded, especially as we get older, right? We have to be reminded of all the things that God has done for us. David had to be reminded continually. of what God did for him as he continually tripped up. He had to remind him as a young boy how he helped him to kill Goliath, right? He had to remind him of all these things that God did for him. Same thing that Paul's doing here. But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of. knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. So, how then do we mature? How do we mature or grow in the faith, right? In Romans 10.17, Paul says, faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. In ancient times, people didn't have access to a book, to the written word. They had to hear the word. They had to memorize the word. They had to hear it, remember it, and apply it. Nowadays, there's a million Bibles. You go into a bookstore or online, and there's a Bible for every color. for every age, every gender. Well, maybe not every gender these days, but there's girls and boys. Pretty much anything, any Bible you're looking for, right? But we've got to get in the Word. There's a lot of Bibles being sold, but we have to get in it. So, the Westminster Short of Catechism, question 85 asks, what does God require of us that we may escape His wrath and curse due to us for sin? The answer is to escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin, God requires us faith in Christ, repentant unto life with the diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption, right? He accepts us into his kingdom, right? We repent, we have faith in Christ, but then we use those outward means, right? so that Christ can then communicate to us the benefits of that redemption. It's a pretty simple thing that a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of evangelical churches misuse. They skip a lot of parts. You accepted Christ, they got that part really good. The only issue is how to grow in Christ. It's not about stomping around and screaming the name of Christ. It won't get anywhere that way. We must be diligent in the use of those outward means. That is, coming before the Lord with a heart of faith and purpose of repentance, setting no preconditions on him. Right? Jesus says, ask and you shall receive. Ask for that faith. Ask for that understanding. Utilizing those ordinary means of grace. So, let's consider the words of Peter when he's referring to the word. We're gonna go to Peter 1, or 1 Peter 1, 22 to, 22 to two, let's see. 1 Peter 1, 22 to two. All right, so since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth, Peter says, through the spirit and sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, right? Having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible through the word of God, which lives and abides forever. And then he tells us why, right? Because all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away. But the word of the Lord endures forever. Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you. Notice that Peter compares us to grass and to the flower that blows away. Yeah, sometimes it's hard to understand, especially when you're young. Us older guys kind of get it a little more. But the grass is gonna blow away. We will blow away eventually, right? We will be forgotten, the distant memories. But the word of God won't. The Word of God was here before us, we didn't invent it, and it's gonna be here after us. And God will still be as consistent as He was in the beginning. He doesn't change. We change, the winds change, the culture changes, right? People change. The word of God will not change. We'll blow away. The culture will blow away. This country will blow away. The world will eventually blow away like the grass that withers, right? It will wither. As I'm getting older, I'm seeing a lot of, you know, like actors and maybe singers that I used to follow way back when. Next thing you know, you see a picture of them. You're like, what happened to them? It's all the hair. What happened to them? They got old, just like you, right? They got old. And I'm thinking, wow, they didn't take care of themselves. They didn't stop the clock, right, from getting old. No, it happens. We will wither. The grass withers, right? Our clothes, our homes. our families, we will all wither, right? Doesn't mean we don't take charge of all these things, we do, but with a certain mindset that it's all God's, it's all his, right? And we're just caretakers. So, we've been discussing the importance of the word, and what's required to participate in the word, it requires hearing and listening, right? This idea of listening to God kind of clashes with our modern culture. It seems that everyone has an opinion, and so listening to one another is almost like a sign of weakness. You're listening to, oh, okay, right? Instead of being encouraged to listen and think deeply, even our children are encouraged to form opinions about things they know very little about. Long ago, I used to be a teacher, sixth grade. And the kids would start, and of course, politics was starting to rise up in civil society. And the kids would want to talk politics. It was a history class. And I would say, stop it. You're just repeating what your parents are saying. They're like, yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right. Yeah, we don't really know what we're talking about. My son used to play soccer, and during the soccer practice, I joined a couple of parents on a walk for exercise, kind of walk while they practice. I said, all right, let's go take a walk. And topic of conversation was the children. That's usually the topic of conversation on the soccer field, the kids. In this particular instance, I know that the parents were just kind of going back and forth talking about their own kids. My kid did this. Well, my kid did this. My kid did this. My kid did this. And I'm like, I'm getting a little dizzy. I'm like, oh, this is what we're doing. OK. This is the conversation. Well, and my kid needs to speak up more, and he needs to be a leader on the team. Yeah, my kid, too. Yeah, yeah. If I want to participate in this conversation, my kid's got to participate. He's got to talk up. That's right. He needs to do this, this, and this. By the end of that walk, I was exhausted, not from the walk. My head was spinning. We don't listen. We don't like to listen to each other, right? It's difficult. We like to talk, right? We prefer to talk more than listen. The thing about the word of God is that when you come before the throne, how could you possibly have anything to say? The thing about coming to Christ is that when we come to God, we have to shut our mouths. And that's the challenge today. Shut my mouth and listen to you. Oh, yeah, well, let me check my phone. I know somebody's texting me. Right? It's very difficult to now stop and listen to God, right? Isaiah didn't have that issue. In Isaiah, let's go to Isaiah 6, 5, so we can see what he says. Isaiah has an experience, a vision, he comes before God, right? and he has a very fast reaction, just a few words that Isaiah says. It's funny because the book, the title, the author is Isaiah, but he doesn't really say much. He doesn't really say much in this passage, right? The rest of it he does, but when he comes before God, He says, woe is me, for I am undone, right? Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. That's really true today. I am a man of unclean lips, and everywhere I go, everybody's got unclean lips. I don't know, like curse words are more like a young people thing, like a curse thing. Now I go to work and everybody's cursing up a storm. It's the way we talk now. And it's the way they talked back then. This is nothing new. I'm just realizing it. Isaiah realized it too. When he came before the throne, he says, I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For I have seen the king, the lord of hosts. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal, which he had taken with the tongues from the altar, and he touched my mouth with it, because he had to purify his mouth, and said, behold, this has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is purged. And also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Isaiah says, here I am, send me. Maybe you're asking that question, like how should I think about the word, right? There's so many stories, there's so many things to think about. How should I think about the word? I like the answer that Sinclair Ferguson gives in his lecture about the means of grace. He gives the answer that he thinks Jesus would give. Remember when Jesus was being tempted in the desert by Satan and he responded? In Matthew 4.4, you don't have to go there, but that's where it is. Matthew 4.4, it's written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. We fight for that bread every day, right? But God says, yeah, you're gonna have bread, but you can't live by that alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So do I have to listen to God, the mouth of God? He's gonna talk to me? Yes, through his word. Through the word, he will talk to you. You wanna know what God has to say for your life? He'll tell you, it's in his word. When you open the Bible, you're reading God's thoughts through human authors, right? You should say to yourself when you read it, this is where God speaks to me. Oftentimes we're like, okay, where's that verse? Here it is, let me read it. But it's so much more than that. It's God's thoughts. How many of you want to know what God's thinking, especially about you, right? That would be easy, right? That would be nice. Well, it's right here. He tells us what exactly he's thinking. We should say what Samuel was taught to say. Speak, Lord, for your servant hears, right? And when God was calling him, speak. For your servant hears, we listen, we listen for God. We read it and we listen to what God is saying. We hear the preached word and we listen. We have to hear it and our hearts have to be open, right? For what God says to us. Just like Isaiah says in 54, chapter 50, verse four. The Lord has given me the tongue of the learned. He wasn't, he was, He's given him the tongue of the Lord, he's given him skills that I should know how to speak. A word in season to him who is weary. He awakens me morning by morning. He awakens my ear to hear just as the learned hear. Just like when we went to university, some of us a long time ago. We heard, we heard what was being given, we applied it. It's the same thing, God was rising him every morning and he would awaken his ear to listen. I also like the illustration of Jacob wrestling with God in the Old Testament. And that really is how we should approach the word. We wrestle with the word until he blesses us. Jacob wouldn't let go of the angel until he was blessed, right? and he walked away with a limp. We should be walking away with a limp, humbled, humbled by the word of God, humbled that God would provide his thoughts for me. His thoughts, his history of his people, the history of redemption from the very, very beginning to the very, very end, Jesus Christ is in this book. when he was talking to the two travelers on the road to Emmaus, he talked to them, right? Jesus talked to them and they were astounded by what he knew. But remember, there was no New Testament. He was talking to them about the Old Testament, where he was, everywhere within the Old Testament. So God's story doesn't deviate. It's consistent, right? I think the illustration of Jacob walking away with a limp is that he prunes us. He cuts away the bad. Have you ever pruned a tree? You cut away the bad, the fruit. Tree fruit is not the fruit. The tree's not giving any good fruit, you gotta prune away those branches. That's what God does to us. He prunes us. He cuts away those branches, but he cuts deeply into your heart. And if you don't walk away with a limp, there's something missing. If you don't walk away with your head down, you miss something. In Hebrews 4.12, He says it very succinctly, very clearly. For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Have you ever read the word, you're like, And then you think about what you thought of before, you're like, how did I have those thoughts? Wow, who was that? Don't worry, he's coming back. But sometimes you read the word and I'm impressed by who that, who was that? What was I just thinking, right? Because that's what he does. It's a two-edged sword. It's a discerner of thoughts and intent of the heart. But once you come before the Lord, He cleans that all up. My prayer for you today is that you can feel that sword cutting deep into your joints and marrow so that God can do the work in you that he's been waiting to do. Paul refers to the word as God breathe in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. In 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, He says, all scripture, all of it, not some of it, oh, you know, maybe a couple of books, no, all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. He equips us. He doesn't leave us dangling in the wind. He equips us with the Word. He equips us with the sacraments, with prayer. He equips us so that we are then equipped for every good work. And that's my charge to you today, that you can see the Word in a new light. In the name of Jesus we pray, amen. You're dismissed, thanks.