order, I recommended Archibald Alexander's thoughts on religious experience. Archibald Alexander was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia. I named my son after him. He is an absolutely tremendous man. He's got another book out there of his I think they're called practical sermons to be read in families, absolutely wonderful. So thoughts on religious experience, practical sermons to be read in families, really anything by Archibald Alexander you can get your hands on is absolutely worth having. And the book, Thoughts on Religious Experience, just give you a little idea of what it is about, big picture. It's about the life of grace and the Christian's experience of God's grace, and it's gonna deal with everything from children and how we view our children and if our children know the Lord, all the way up to how we are to be in our deathbeds. It's got all of that in there, so I highly recommend Thoughts on Religious Experience by Archibald Alexander. Kind of in that same vein, dealing with assurance and Christian experience is By Guthrie, the, the title of the book just went out of my mind. Oh, The Christian's Great Interest, sorry. By Guthrie, The Christian's Great Interest. I highly recommend that book as well. It's very, you know, it starts in the premise of whether or not one has a true saving interest in Christ, and it sort of enlarges upon that. Highly recommend that book. Very, very informative, very thought-provoking. There's a copy in the APC library. There's a copy in the EPC library. But if there's only one copy, that won't be enough. It's printed by Banner of Truth. It's probably $20 in this country. But you should get copies for yourselves. You should have them. Another book I would heartily recommend is John Murray's Redemption Accomplished and Applied. It is all about how God works to save the sinner, and it begins with sort of the, I guess, objective side of what Christ has done, and then it moves to things like effectual calling and how redemption is particularly applied. That's what has the title, Redemption Accomplished, Christ Accomplishes It. The Spirit Applies, excellent book. We got that question about lying. And there is another book that John Murray wrote called The Principles of Conduct. It's a book on ethics. It's actually quite a good book. He also wrote a book on marriage and divorce that's quite good. But it is Principles of Conduct. He has a chapter on lying. If you don't wanna buy the book, I think it's online. You can Google John Murray or Professor John Murray lying. and people have uploaded that chapter of the book on the internet and you could read it if you're curious about that. The book table has disappeared, but there was one book, I mean there's lots of good books, but there's one book that caught my eye, and it was the Gospel Mystery of Sanctification by Walter Marshall. I don't know how much it was, I don't know where it went to, but if you haven't read that book, I think it's the best book in the English language on the doctrine of sanctification, and the book is basically worth it. At least, if this edition has it, it's worth the price of the book for the Appendix, which is a sermon on justification, which is also very, very good. So I highly recommend The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification by Walter Marshall. and that was on the book table, but it's vanished. And I don't know if anybody has this. I encourage every home to have a copy of it, but it's Robert Shaw, I think he was in the original Secession Church, which might not mean much to anybody other than the few of us that are kind of Scottish church history nerds, but he was a seceder minister, and he wrote a commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith. It's been published as the Reformed Faith. It's got a forward by Sinclair Ferguson, It really is the best kind of one-stop shop commentary on the Confession. And there are other commentaries, but they favor the American revision, which obviously we don't love. I'm saying that as an American, so you can say that I did at some point put my own country down. But it's a very good book. I highly recommend it. The other, I guess, book that I was going to recommend to you all that I think is probably be, I guess, profitable, very encouraging, would be the Christian's Daily Walk by Henry Scudder. I don't know if anybody's read that. I'd read it in seminary. Henry Scudder, he was a Westminster divine, lesser known divine, but he wrote an absolutely marvelous book on the Christian's life of faith. It's The Christian's Daily Walk by Henry Scudder. It's a book. I would say it's The Marks of God Through Children by T. Link. And now titles are going out of my head, but it's very similar to Scudder. Isaac, do you know? Pastor Shan? T. Link's a Dutch guy, he wrote a book. Joel Beeky publishes all these Dutch 16th century books. T. Link has a book, I think it's called The Marks of God's Children. Might not be the right name for it. I'll look it up later, and I will tell you all. So anyway, those are my book recommendations. I need to put on my mic really quick, which I've neglected to do, so forgive me. But as I'm putting on the mic, can you all turn your Bibles to 1 John, at 1 John chapter five. And we will read the entire chapter And our text for this morning will be verse 13, but I'll give more of that in a moment. So 1 John chapter five. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God. When we love God, we keep his commandments. and his commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ. not by water only, but by water and blood, and it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and these three agree in one. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God the witness of God which he hath testified of his son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. He that believeth not God hath made him a liar. because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. And he that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things I have written unto you, that you believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us, and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask and he shall be given him and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death. I do not say that he shall pray for it. All unrighteousness is sin and there is a sin not unto death. We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not, but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not. And we know that we are of God and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding that is true, and that we are in Him that is true, even His Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God in eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. Let's look to the Lord in prayer. Most high and gracious God, we come here for the last time this morning in this camp, and Lord, we have looked at how you and your sovereign And now, O Lord, we consider the marks of grace, the marks that all of God's true children bear this morning, as we hope to do. And we pray, O Lord, that we would do this in a Christ-honoring way. But we also pray that all of this teaching would be profitable to this congregation and everyone that hears it going forward. We plead for that, O God. And we cry out and we beg, O Lord, that you would please work in the midst of this congregation, that you would work in the midst of the church in Tasmania, and that, oh God, you would return to your vine and that you would revive us, for we are left utterly desolate and vulnerable. And we plead, oh God, that this series of lectures might be an occasion used by thee, O Lord, in the reviving of your church here on this little island at the bottom of the world. And we plead, O Lord, that you would use this work as well as the faithful ministry of many men in our churches, in the EPC, in the SPC, in the PCEA, O Lord, to revive Tasmania and revive Australia. And we pray this, O Lord, and we confess that it seems so It seems so unlikely, and Lord, we ask that help thou our unbelief, O God, and forgive us of it. And we ask the forgiveness of all of our sins, in Jesus' name, amen. Our text for this morning is verse 13, and particularly the words. These things I have written unto you that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God and the particular words that ye may know that ye have eternal life. And so what we're going to be looking at is we're gonna be looking at what is popularly called the marks of grace. And actually I think it's best we start off in chapter 18 of our confession of faith as we dive into this and there's a particular reason And that is because in chapter 18, we find a chapter on assurance. And the marks of grace are related to assurance. And I think we sort of have to approach it very, very carefully. And I should have already marked this out in my confession. And so I apologize that I did not. So it's gonna take me a moment to flip there. And I want us to look at Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 18, Paragraph 2, and I'll read the entirety of the paragraph. This certainty, and that is the certainty of assurance of salvation, this certainty is not a bare, conjectural, and probable persuasion. fallible hope, but an infallible assurance of faith founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the spirit of adoption, witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God, which spirit is the earnest of our inheritance whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption. And paragraph two, my friends, it gives, if you will, what do you think of a stool? It kind of gives us three legs to the stool that is our assurance that we are in Christ. So let me first explain to you the first leg. is the divine truth and the promises of salvation, right? So one must believe on the promise of the gospel, that Christ Jesus is the savior of sinners, that he's your savior. You must, I'm using a big word, but it basically means to take hold of, you must appropriate those promises to yourself by the empty hand of faith. is not at work, it merits nothing, it's an empty hand, it's a gift of God that purely reaches out and receives benefits. So you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you have taken those promises to yourself. Now once you do that, obviously in the course of this study, we've understood that when you believe, The Spirit is working effectual calling and you're brought into union with the Lord Jesus Christ. And I lament that we couldn't have a lecture particularly on union with Christ, but suffice it to say, in union with Christ, all of these wonderful benefits flow to the Christian. Benefits like justification, adoption, and sanctification. And that leads us to our second point in assurance. So you're brought into union with Christ by way of the Spirit of God indwelling you, You've believed on the promises and then the spirit immediately begins that work of sanctification. And that's the second point here is speaking of, so we move from founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation to the inward evidences of those grace unto which these promises are made. So we speak about the inward evidences, we're speaking about what we call the marks of grace, and that is what the Spirit of God is doing in the believer to sanctify them, and the marks, as it were, that the Christian can look to and see that that is with them, in fact, the case. Now there's more to be said about that, but we're gonna stop there and we're gonna move on to the third leg of assurance. So you have belief, and then you have the spirit working in you, these marks of grace, and our third leg of assurance is the testimony of the spirit. Now I confess, this is the most mysterious leg of this stool. If you believe on the promises, there's certainty. And you need to understand the Spirit absolutely does work in every Christian, not necessarily in the same measure, but in every Christian, there are marks of grace present. And I believe in every Christian, there is this witnessing of the Spirit that you are a child of God, but that cannot be demonstrated. It's only something that you know, if that makes sense. it's for lack of a better word it's quite a mystic thing and I think we have good grounds for believing this to be the case from Ephesians chapter 1 Ephesians chapter 1 verses 13 and 14 and there we read in whom he also trusted that after ye heard the word of the truth of the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, this is what the confession's basically quoting after it speaks about the inward testimony, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of his glory. and a seal makes an impression. So our confession, I think the scriptures are teaching that in the life of a believer, in a most mysterious way, the spirit of God impresses and makes this seal. Now, I want us to understand that you need, I've got phones ringing and kids crying, it's my kids. No worries, no worries. But you need to understand, we're speaking about this stool, right? You can't really, the same way you have a three-legged stool, you have to have all three legs to be able to sit on. So I want you to understand that you need to have all three of these legs in order to have assurance. And so you need to believe the promises, you need to see the Spirit's work in you, and you also need that inward witnessing of the Spirit that you are a child of God. And if you lose any one of these legs, the stool will fall over, and you will not be sitting, as it were, comfortably in a state knowing that you are the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, believing on the promises, I suppose, is the most objective of them all. So you have to believe. Secondly, the marks of grace or the inward work of the Holy Spirit, I think that, and we're gonna dive into this a bit more, but I think there's good reason to believe that the Spirit of God illuminates that work in us. But it's the third thing, that inward testimony, that I suppose it's objective, it's objectively true, the Lord does it, but it's subjective in our own experience. And let me just say this, that if you're living in sin, that one will go away or be greatly diminished, right? So just understand that, that inward witnessing of the Spirit of God, if you're living in sin, that will be greatly diminished because you're grieving the Spirit of God. So he's not going to be comforting you in the same measure. Now, we're gonna look particularly at the marks of grace, particularly at the marks of grace. And I said that this is what the Spirit works in us, and that's very important for us to understand if we're going to understand the marks of grace. Sometimes people are called to examine themselves, and the scriptures give over and over again, for example, to work out our calling and make our elections sure, to examine ourselves and see whether we'd be in the faith. In Hebrews 6, I think it's verse 11, calling the Hebrew Christians to come to a greater persuasion that they are, in fact, in Christ. So there's all of these calls to examine oneself. And that's calling us to look to the marks of God's grace. But be very careful here, because there is a very subtle danger that arises in the life of the believer. And that subtle danger is this, that you start looking at the marks of grace, and instead of conceiving those marks of grace as what the Lord Jesus Christ is doing in you, you make it sort of a scorecard about how good you are. And that is a very, very dangerous place to be. So I want to make it very clear, when we think about the marks of grace, we're not looking at what we're doing, we're rather looking at what Christ Jesus is doing in us. And that has to be, and I'll say it again, it has to be absolutely understood, it's absolutely vital. Now secondly, when we examine these marks of what the Lord Jesus is doing in us, we have to understand something I think that is very, very important. We are prone to hypocrisy. We are prone to deceive ourselves. And because we are prone to hypocrisy and prone to deceive ourselves, if we're going to be looking at the marks of grace, we have to rely upon the Spirit of God to show us. And I'll give you a scriptural example. Jeremiah 17, 9 and 10. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? the Lord, I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins. So understand this, that we are at risk of deceiving ourselves, and so we must have God show us this. It must be the work of the Spirit of God to show us the arts of grace. I think it was Hermann Witzius who said, I thought this was a rather, A wise comment, he said, in the same way that we see the sun by its own light, so we see what the Spirit does in us by the Spirit. You see what I'm saying? So you wouldn't know the sun apart from the light that the sun puts off. The same thing is true for these marks of grace. You're not gonna know the Spirit is working these things in you unless you see them in light of the Spirit. So it comes, to have the marks of God's work is a work of the Spirit, and to discern them is a work of the Spirit. And that needs to be clearly in our minds. So I wanna say again, I'm not putting you in a sense to work. I'm not trying to call you to any sort of morbid introspection where you will lose the hope of what God is doing in you. Rather, I'm trying to call you to understand that it's true, that where the gospel, I've said it many times, where the gospel takes root, there is fruit. That fruit is worked in you by the Spirit of God, and I'm calling on you as a Christian to use the Spirit of God to show you the work that He's doing within you, right? That's what I'm calling upon you to do. So I'm not putting you to work. I'm not calling you to look in a way to your own deeds and see if you're in Christ. Rather, I'm calling you to plead with the Spirit of God to show you His work in your life. Now, all of that being said, that's really what the epistle of John is written about. John's epistle is written to the church that they may know that they know the Lord Jesus Christ. Right, so understand that's very significant that for John he wants He wants his audience to be assured of their salvation. And that's really what I want for you all as well, right? There's a desire that John has, the same desire I have, hopefully, in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you would be assured that you know him and you love him. And throughout John's epistle, and there's other places in the scripture where this happens, there are these marks given, where John is basically saying, look, if you love the Lord Jesus Christ, you're going to have these marks of grace. If you love the Lord Jesus Christ, These things are going to be present, and they're gonna be present not because you're such a good person, but because the Spirit of God is working them in you. And so we're gonna look this morning at a few of these marks. And I've got six marks, and I'm gonna tell you, three come from 1 John, and three come from the Beatitudes. Last night, I remember in our lecture sermon, whatever you want to call it, we were talking about the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5. Those fruits of the Spirit, we can also take them as marks of grace. The marks of grace are found throughout the scripture, but two of the most notable places are 1 John and the Beatitudes, so I'm going to go there. So first, From 1 John chapter two verse three, there is a call that if you love the Lord Jesus Christ, you are to keep his commandments. And I think this is a very good place to start in terms of understanding God's work in your life. Because understand that if you are outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, The law to you is as a broken covenant of works and you desire to keep it to justify yourself. But when the Lord Jesus Christ comes and redeems you, all of a sudden you're brought into a new relationship with the law. And I'll recommend another book. John Calhoun has a treatise. on the law. And in John Calhoun's treatise on the law, he's speaking about the old covenant dispensation, the time of Moses. It's absolutely beautiful. And this is a picture of the Christian's relationship with the law. He says, in the same way that the Ten Commandments in the Ark of the Covenant are laid below the mercy seat, and the mercy seat covers over them, that's how it is with the Christian. The mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ covers over the Christian's need to keep the law perfectly. And now that law is as a testimony and a rule of life to the believer because they are in covenant with God. If you understand that, you understand how important it is to keep God's commandments. The Christian doesn't keep God's commandments, again, to justify themselves or to merit anything for themselves, but they keep them out of love to the Lord. In fact, it's... It's providential that we sang Psalm 1, because I have it down as one of the sort of examples of this, that in Psalm 1, the believer's love to the law is exemplified in the meditating on the law day and night, right? So the commandments of God, instead of being a burden, instead of being grievous, They become an object of love. They become something to the Christian that they are delighted to keep. We see something very similar in Psalm 119, verse 97, where the psalmist declares his love to the law of God. May I ask you, and be honest with yourself here, do you love God's law? Do you strive to keep God's commandments? because that's a mark of the Christian, a mark of true Christianity is loving God's law and striving to keep God's law. It's the hypocrite that has no love for the law and doesn't wanna keep it. Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. So my friend, do you love God's law? That's not to say that you don't struggle against an old man. That's not to say that you're not like the Apostle Paul in Romans 7, where you cry out, the good that I would, that I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do. That's not to say that there's not a struggle within you. But it is to say, in principle, you look to God's law as something that is a rule for your own life, something that you love, and you don't see that you have to keep it in order to justify yourself, but rather because you love the Lord Jesus, because you want the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, because you want to be a witness to the world around you, you keep that law, and you dedicate yourself to that law, and you love it. And you know, really, the Christian loves the law of God, Because the law is a reflection of God's character. So the law is a reflection of God's character. And when the Christian is reconciled to God, they love God, and so they love God's character, they love the reflection of God's character in his law. It would be no other way. True Christianity does not despise the law, it loves the law of God. It loves keeping God's commandments. The second one, is from 1 John chapter two as well. And I think it's frankly one of the more challenging marks of grace in our own day. But there we read verse 15, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not. Worldliness is probably the greatest problem facing the Christian church in the Western world right now. And I don't care if you're in Tasmania, Australia, or you're in the United States, worldliness is in the church. But I think we have to define it in terms, you might say, what is worldliness? Well, worldliness, when we speak about worldliness, what we basically mean is we mean an intrusion of the world's pattern of thinking, of the world's morality, of the world's ideas into the Christian church. So the Christian church should be dominated by what? The scriptures as our rule of faith in life. And everything that we believe and everything that we do and everything we practice should be on the basis of the scriptures. But when we have worldliness coming into the church, we find counter-scriptural attitudes, so attitudes that are against the scriptures, that are common in the culture around us, coming into the church. And that is a very, very present danger. So you might say, okay, you've defined it, what does it look like? My friend, can I ask you honestly, how do you entertain yourself? How do you entertain yourself? Because I think there's something, actually I'll say this, that's probably one of the greatest areas of intrusion by the world. And I recently read a book, and I've watched a couple documentaries on this that have enforced this to me, and I want you to understand something. Every time you watch a show or you watch a movie, it has an agenda, okay? And I'm not saying that because I want to sound like some grandiose conspiracy theorist. I'm being honest. They have an agenda. Things that are approved of in the movies and the shows that you watch, the reason why those things are being approved of, particularly things that are against the ethical code of the Bible, they're being approved of and they're being shown publicly because powerful people want those things to be approved of. And I'm not saying, again, not the conspiracy theory, but look at the morality of Hollywood. It's terrible. And those people are all activists, and they have all wicked agendas, and they want that stuff propagated and promoted throughout the Western world. Every time you watch a film or a show with sexual immorality, I want you to understand, if you watch it, I think you're sinning. I think you're breaking the seventh commandment. And I will not, that is a position, it's a hill I will die on. But secondly, I want you to understand that you're being shown that in order to normalize it. You're being shown that in order to normalize things like extramarital affairs and sex. outside of marriage. And when you watch that and you internalize it after a certain point, you begin to think it's okay, and all of a sudden the world is intruding in the church. It's a very dangerous place to be. Another example, I think, of the world intruding into the Christian church is how the church views the culture around it, right? We had a wonderful devotion from Nehemiah chapter one on Saturday night, and I referenced it, I think, yesterday morning in my prayer. But the idea of these walls of Jerusalem, those are literal walls in Nehemiah, but I wanna speak about spiritual walls, right? that there's a separation between the church and the world. That the way the church obviously thinks about things, the way the church interacts, it's different. And when those walls become broken down, cultural ideas that the world around us has all of a sudden become very common in the Christian church. So I think to give you a good example of this, I've seen it in the debate around abortion, right? So there's a lot of pressure on the Christian church to sort of soften its view, to soften its stance on abortion. I've seen this, by the way, more in the United States than here. But in the United States, there's a lot of pressure on the church not to speak out so loudly against abortion and not to be offensive about it. And I think that's the ethic of the world coming in and trying to silence the church and say, you know what, when you call abortion murder, it's really unseemly. You can hurt people's feelings. When you speak about it so strongly, you're really doing something dangerous, right? You don't wanna offend people. The walls are lower, the church is weak, it's unprotected, and all of a sudden the world comes in and the world tries to bring its customs I'm thinking on the same example of the book of Nehemiah. Prior to the book of Nehemiah is the book of Ezra. And in the book of Ezra, they're not building the walls. Nehemiah's where they build the walls. In Ezra, they rebuild the temple. And as they're building the temple in the book of Ezra, there comes along the Samaritans, right? And the Samaritans are really a mixture of people. There's some Jews that were left in the land, and there's foreign settlers that were brought in, and when the Samaritans came into being, there was some old Jewish priests that were, I think basically they were sent there, and they developed this syncretic form of worship. And the Samaritans come to the Jews, and they basically say, we have the same religion, As you do, let us help you build the temple. This was a ploy by Satan. It was a ploy by Satan to sabotage the works of his remnant people of rebuilding the temple and re-establishing the worship of God. Thankfully, they realize what's going on and a stop is put to it. But the world continues to do that. The world continues to encroach upon the church and try to find common cause with us or to try to influence us so that we do not have as effective of a gospel witness. I want you to be aware of things, and I use the term Yesterday morning, I think syncretism, right, the blending of pagan religious practices with the true religion. We have to be aware of syncretism. We have to be aware of this subtle danger of subterfuge, of subversion of God's work. Now, I've given you some big picture stuff, and I've already given you the example of entertainment, but I think going along with entertainment is how we use our time. We're told by the Apostle Paul when he writes to the Ephesians that we're to redeem the time. And there's so much entertainment that is sort of readily accessible to ourselves that it's very easy for us to just waste massive amounts of time. And when we waste those massive amounts of time, quite often we're just bringing the world in wholesale through worldly entertainment. So I wanna ask you something. I know that all of you have free time, right? I know that you all have free time. What do you do in your free time? If I can put it like this, when you come home from work and you have dinner and you put the kids in bed and you've got a couple hours before you need to go to sleep, what do you do in that couple of hours? Do you sit down and you just turn on your television or play around on social media? Or is there a hunger that you have for something greater, for something spiritual? Do you ever use your free time? Now, you have to, I'll be clear about this, I think every Christian should daily have a time or times, preferably, of prayer and of Bible reading. So you should be doing that every day. But do you ever have, when you have free time, do you ever have such a hunger after the things of God that you think, well, in my free time, I'm just gonna read this Christian book. Or, you know, I'm reading through the book of Judges this morning, I'm reading through it in my devotional, and I realize that there's something I didn't really think about, and I'm kind of captivated by the story, so I just want to sit down and get ahead in the book of Judges, because I love reading the Scriptures. Do you ever have free time, and you pray? Do you ever think, well, you know, I don't, the kids are not here whenever they're doing something, or I, you know, I have the evening to myself, There's a lot going on in my life, and so I just wanna come before the Lord in a special time of prayer and plead my case. The lack of prayer, the lack of reading of Christian books, the lack of reading the scriptures, and the lack of, if I may say these things, or if I may say this, and I mean it reverently, but the lack of using godly things as a form of our entertainment really shows how worldly we are. Because in days past, Christians would basically be just devouring Christian books. If they had free time, they were reading Christian books, they were doing Christian things. Now, we have more free time, I think, than generations past, and I'm not saying that there's not lawful recreations, I'm not saying that, but I am saying that there appears to be a lack of hunger in our day for the things of God, and it's because I'm convinced that the world has intruded upon the church. So in the same way, that if you love God, if you love the Lord Jesus Christ, you'll keep his commandments. In that same way, if you love the Lord Jesus, you're brought out of this world, and you become a pilgrim, and you become a stranger to it, and that's increasingly the tenor of your life, and you wanna forsake the world, and you look more and more forward to heaven. So loving not the world is something that's a mark of God's grace, and I'll conclude this second point by simply drawing your attention to Hebrews, and Hebrews chapter 11. And in Hebrews chapter 11, in verse 12, Verse 16, but now, speaking of the patriarchs, they desire a better country, that is, unheavenly. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city. That's the Christian. The Christian is looking forward to a heavenly country. The Christian is being brought out of this world by way of a pilgrimage in order to look forward to heaven. There should be a forsaking of the world in your own life, in your own heart, and I guess we could say the negative duty, if you will, the thing you're to be mortifying is the love to the world, and the thing that is to be vivified in you, the thing the Spirit is to be making more alive is a looking forward to heaven and a love for the things of God. Now, our third mark of grace is love to the brethren. And that's in 1 John 3, 14. And we read there, John says, we know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. What's interesting, by the way, about this particular example is out of all the examples we have, it's the only one that's introduced with that strong of a thrust, right? That we know we have passed from death to life. He's really saying we know that we're no longer spiritually dead and we've been made alive in Christ Jesus if we love the brethren. If we love the brethren. Now, let's think about for a moment the church. The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is full of controversies and different types of personalities, and I understand that at times it can be very difficult to get along with everyone. But may I ask you, do you love your brothers and sisters in the Lord? Do you desire their spiritual well-being? Do you pray for them? And I understand, and this is something I've learned about the EPC, is you're all related. And so it's a bit of a web, but. Do you love each other? I mean, do you really, when somebody sins against you, do you honestly plead for their repentance? Do you try to treat them with love and charity and look past their faults? Or rather, do you hold grudges? Do you love each other? I mean, do you earnestly desire good for every member of your congregation? It's really a good question to ask ourselves. It's really, I think, a very worthwhile question, because true love is one of the distinguishing marks of a Christian. They might say, all right, fair enough, we need to love each other, but define love. I don't know that I can really define it that well, but I'll give you, I think, a key mark of love, of scriptural love. And the key mark, I think, of scriptural love is desiring the best and godliest outcome for anyone in any circumstance or situation. So that's different than how the world sees love, right? Because the world, love is unconditional acceptance. That's not what I want to see in the Christian church. Because when the Christian church becomes unconditionally accepting, we tolerate all manner of sin. So we speak about loving the brethren, we want what's best. for them in the Lord Jesus Christ. We want them to be walking closely with the Lord Jesus Christ. We want to see the fruit of God's work in their lives. We want them to be brought to greater measures of faith and of repentance. We want to see them as well as ourselves living peaceably with all men. But fundamentally, true love in the church, I am convinced, is tied to this desire that everyone would be walking near to the Lord and that every outcome in their lives would be honoring to God and it would all be based on the basis of the Holy Scriptures. So maybe a good question for a very tight-knit congregation is, are you willing to love even when someone is going astray. And when I say, are you willing to love even when someone is going astray, I'm basically asking, are you willing to do the loving thing and call them to repentance? Are you willing to do the loving thing and plead with them that they do not forsake the Lord's ways? And by the way, there's to be a mutual encouragement in this. It's not just about rebuking, right? You know, Lord's Day is a good example. Last night we talked about how we're not to speak our own words, but everybody, every Sabbath day, you're gonna say something that's not in line with the Lord's Day. And you know, one of the most loving things you can do, I think, is when you hear a couple of people kind of having a worldly conversation on the Lord's Day, you kind of politely interject yourself and you start talking with them about the things of the Lord, right? That's an example of true love. You see them in their sin, you're not rebuking them, you're not despising them for it, but you're rather coming to them and you're saying, let me encourage you to speak about the things of God. That's the kind of love that the Christian church needs, is this mutual encouragement. And they don't even have to know that you're encouraging them to do it. Ideally, when you come in and you interject yourself, you would do it in such a way that they wouldn't really think, like, oh, he's getting us back in line. They would think, oh, wow, he's being quite kind. He's redirecting us. But that's what we should see. We should see this mutual encouragement. We should see brothers and sisters in the Lord coming to each other and saying, hey, I saw this in your life, or whatever, and I'm concerned about this, and I love you very much, and I want to see this, I'm not trying to offend you, but I love you, and I wanna see this worked out, or maybe you're not aware of this, and I can see the danger of this. And love, by the way, it's vulnerable like that. You know, you're never really gonna love someone until you're willing to sort of attract their ire by telling them you think they're wrong. I think that's absolutely a true thing. Now, we'll move on to our fourth mark, and we're moving from 1 John now to the Beatitudes. And that is, blessed are the poor in spirit. And you know what, let me stop there. Let me go back to love the brethren. There's a point I missed, and I'm not content just to leave it, sorry. But understand, the Lord Jesus Christ, he loved his people enough to die for them, right? He loved his people enough to die for them, and he works, by his Spirit, that love in the church. So I want you to understand, this isn't a love. Yes, you can cultivate it, you can plead with the Lord for more of it, but fundamentally, when we talk about fellowship, and this is something that I've tried to emphasize to my own congregation, We talk about fellowship, we talk about enjoying each other's fellowship. I think we sometimes get that confused. We kind of misunderstand. We talk about fellowship, we talk a lot about how we actually enjoy each other's company and how well we get along. But I think true fellowship is on the basis of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done in two people's lives. And true Christian fellowship is seeing Christ in them and them seeing Christ in you. I think we need to capture something of that, because that's really what we're talking about, true fellowship, it's a spiritual bond. It's on the basis of what Christ has done and Christ is doing. Now I'm gonna move on to the Beatitudes. I'm looking first at Matthew chapter five, verse three. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The Lord Jesus isn't speaking of physical, or I guess you'd say, liberal poverty. He's not saying that those that are poor and oppressed will inherit the kingdom of heaven. Rather, he's speaking of spiritual poverty. And one of the things I think is a key mark of grace, something that we need to discover, is when we think about the marks of grace, sometimes some of the greatest marks are actually what we feel we lack. So when we are constantly lacking and we feel that we are poor spiritually, that's a pretty good indicator that God is doing a work in us. Because what the Lord is actually doing in that is He's bringing us to an end of ourselves and He's calling us to look to Him for He alone can fill us. So when you think about this idea of being poor in spirit, you're speaking of one that knows there is no good in them. And dear Christian, may I ask you that? Do you know there's no good in you? Do you know that outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, it's not well with you, it's all sin, that you're displeasing to God? Do you realize that poverty of spirit? And I'm not trying to make you despair, but do you realize how really frankly hopeless it is to you? And then do you look out in your poverty to the giver of all good gifts, the Lord Jesus Christ, and do you look to him to fill you? And you might say, is that really a mark of grace? Well, I'm convinced that it's not only the fruits of the Spirit that are marks of grace. It's not only these positive things, but sometimes it's what we feel. We feel the acute awareness of our sin. We feel our spiritual poverty. Those are signs that the Spirit of God is working in us. I'm reminded of Isaiah. 66, chapter 66, in the second verse, and there we read the prophet says that, he says, to this man will I look, that's the Lord, the Lord is speaking to the prophet, he says, to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at my word. Spiritual poverty, being poor, of a contrite spirit, right? This idea of being brokenhearted over your sins, knowing that you are a sinner. That's the type of man that the Lord looks to. And I mean, you might be surprised by it. You might say, well, does the Lord, does He really want me to feel my poverty? Does He really want me to feel my sin? Well, I can give you two examples of why I think He does. He wants you to feel your physical needs. That's why he instructs us to pray every day for our daily bread. So I'm convinced he wants you to feel every day your spiritual need. But secondly, think about what the scriptures say elsewhere. When the Lord says, for example, that he goes and works in the humble, but he resists the proud, right? The Lord resists the proud. The Lord is not pleased with pride. So who is the one that the Lord looks to? It's the one that is brokenhearted over their sins. It's the one that realizes they're spiritually poor. And that's a sign of God's work. And if you'll, I suppose, humor me for a moment, I've recommended a lot of books. Another book I'd recommend. The first sermon in the book is on Isaiah 66.2. It's a book of sermons by Theodorus Frelinghuysen. He was a Dutch pastor in America, and the book is called The Forerunner of the Great Awakening. It was actually through the ministry of this Dutch minister that kind of the Great Awakening in the United States got underway. And Frelinghuysen, there's a biography of him in the book. He's an absolutely galvanizing character, and he was prone to his excesses. But that book of sermons was particularly blessed to me, and particularly his sermon on Isaiah 66, verse two, where he's talking about, it's about the marks of grace, it's about the marks of the poor and the contrite and the humble and the one that trembles at God's word. And moving on, though, from verse three, a couple of verses later, and this brings us to our fifth mark of grace. Lord Jesus speaks of those which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall Be filthy. I think you would take that in a pretty broad sense, and I'll give you a couple of aspects. So first, there's this hungering for a righteousness that's external to you to save yourself. This goes back to spiritual poverty. You realize that there's no good in you, and so you need the Lord Jesus to come and to save you because you are fundamentally unrighteous. But that same desire carries on throughout the life of the Christian, right? So I guess we could begin with understanding justification, that God does impute the righteousness of Christ to the sinner, that he gives them the righteousness which hopefully that sinner realizes they're in need of and really is thirsting after. But in the Christian life, there will be a greater hunger and thirst. after righteousness. There will be a greater desire in the Christian, goes back to keeping God's law, right? The law is God's righteous standard. The Christian will love God's law and they will desire to keep it. Now they're not self-righteous, understand this. They have no desire to justify themselves or appear to be good, but rather, they've been imputed the righteousness of Christ, and they've been reconciled to God, who is a righteous God, and the image of God is being made in them. They are being made anew in accord with the image of their Savior, and so they are going to reflect something of the righteousness of the Lord. And they're going to reflect, you, dear Christian, are to reflect that righteousness. in the way that you treat others. You treat others in accord with a righteous standard. You, Christian, are to reflect that righteousness in the way that you live your life, in the way that you love God's law. You, Christian, are to reflect that righteousness in how you look at injustice. This world is full of unrighteousness and injustice. And I'm convinced that the true Christian is never really content with these things. But the true Christian thirsts after God's righteous dealing with themselves, with their fellow men, and with nations, right? That's a mark of the true Christian. They recognize God is righteous, they are not, and they've been given righteousness, and they want that righteous God to deal in righteousness with all men and with all nations. That's true Christianity. And they're never satisfied. in a sense, I think. Now they will be filled, but I think the Christian is not fully gonna be filled until they're perfected in eternity. So there's a promise that one day the Christian will be perfectly righteous. Now it'll be the free gift of God, but in the meantime, in this life, the Christian is to be constantly thirsting after greater and greater righteousness. Again, not to justify themselves. but they're to see it reflected in their own lives. They're to be hungering, by the way. If Christ is our wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification, there's to be a hunger after the Lord Jesus Christ. There's to be a hunger to know more of him and to know his righteousness. But I wanna conclude, well, before I ask you if you have the right, just let me say, you should understand there's a promise there, that those that do truly desire to, that hunger and thirst after anxious, they will be filled. And the Lord does that, right? And the Lord works in the lives of his people. And so we can't, in a sense, I don't think we can leave this mark and say, well, you shouldn't be hungry and thirsty. We have to draw ourselves to the promise that God says that you will be filled. And the Lord will, I think, ultimately fill his people in glory, right? When everything is perfectly righteous. But understand, dear friend, as you live in an unjust, unrighteous world, and you yourself still struggle with the unrighteous deeds of the flesh, there's a promise that if you're in Christ, you will be filled. But I have to ask you, do you hunger and thirst? Now when you're hungry and thirsty, you feel it, right? You know what it's like to have the dry mouth, to have the dry tongue, to know that you need water. You know what it is to have that growling belly. And it's amazing that you will, if you are hungry or you are thirsty, you will take time out of what you're doing to seek after the things that will quench your thirst or satisfy your hunger. Do you take, if I can put it this way, do you take time out of your life to seek after what's going to fill that hunger and thirst after righteousness. Does the Lord stir you up to look more fully on the Lord Jesus Christ, to know Him more, to seek more after the Lord, your righteousness, the Lord Jesus Christ, your righteousness? Because that's part of this mark of grace. There's the lack, right? There's the lack of righteousness, there's desire for more of it, there's the promise for it, but there's also the seeking after it. There's this looking to the Lord and striving to find the Lord. And finally, I'll give you our last mark of the Lord's grace, and I'll just zero in on Matthew 5, 11. are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. That's a very hard mark of God's grace, isn't it? And the reason why I say it's a very hard mark of God's grace is because when you really realize what it's saying is you're gonna be persecuted, you're gonna be reviled. If the Lord is really and truly worked in your life, you will feel the resistance of the world. As the Apostle Paul writes to Timothy, all who desire to live godly will suffer persecution. All who desire to live godly will suffer persecution. And so my friend, may I ask you, Have you felt that tension between yourself and the world? And I'm afraid that a lot of people, going back to what we were saying about worldliness, I'm afraid that we don't feel that tension as much as we should. I'm afraid that we know so little of the reviling of the world because we are so much like the world. But true, biblical Christianity will always be brought into conflict with the world when it's faithful. Faithful, true, biblical Christianity always is brought into conflict with the world. And that can take many forms, right? I mean, there's all sorts of persecution, there's all sorts of reviling, but I chose Matthew 11 to speak about the reviling, right? That particular sort of, that hatred, that despising, that tension that the Christian feels with the world around him. Have you ever felt that? I remember one time I walked into a meeting here in Tasmania. And it was with a government official. And there was a poster on the wall that was promoting, basically, sexual immorality. And when I walked into that office and I sat down and I saw that poster, I felt something of that tension. I felt something of the distance. I felt, although nobody was reviling me, I understood that by that poster, the ideas that I believe, the things that the Bible reveals about how man is to live, I understood that those things were reviled by society, and as I was coming to meet with this man, that was right in front of my face, and I said, oh Lord, I see it. I see that the world is against us. Have you ever had something like that? where you've really felt, it can be in a personal interaction, whatever, but you've really realized that the world does revile true Christianity, that the Lord does revile what the Bible reveals about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and it reviles those that bear the image of the Son of God. And to be honest, This is our last, of course, day here, and this is my last study. And so I'll say this as I close. The church's, I think, most effective witness is when it's holiness. The church is the strongest, frankly, when it's nearest to the Lord. And so as we think about these marks of grace, We should understand that these are things that the Lord Jesus Christ has worked in us. And as we look for them in our own lives, we see our spiritual health. And if we sort of expand that out and we think about things that I think we can know with some measure of certainty, things like worldliness, things like knowing that the church is reviled by the world, we get a picture of how strongly the church stands against the world as well as how well we are doing spiritually. And that's a very, very sobering thought. And so my friend, don't be at peace with the world. Don't be at peace with the world. But secondly, and more particularly to what we've been discoursing on today, I've given you these marks, I've asked you, do you have these things? So what are you to do now? for you to go and you to think about these marks of grace. You're to ask the Lord to show you in what measure you have these things. And by the way, where you lack, it doesn't mean you're necessarily gonna save. Where you lack, it means you need to grow. It's a beautiful thing, by the way, about what our standards in larger catechism says about preparation for the Lord's Supper. You need to know if you're going to the Lord's Supper if you're saved. You need to know whether or not you're in Christ or outside of Christ. But it goes on, it says, you need to examine yourself for where you lack and what graces you need to grow in. And that's a key point of examination and looking at the marks of grace in the Christian life, is you need to look and you need to see where you need to grow. But also, as we've looked at this work of conclusion, now I'm really gonna try to land the plane. As we looked at this work of conversion, we began with the necessity of it. We saw how God works. If we can say it this way, we saw how God works conversion in the heart of a sinner by effectual call. We saw that on the sovereign side of God, when we looked at Ephesians 2, that man is dead and trespasses sins, but the Lord has quickened him together with Christ. And then we saw, as it were, from the human side with the Philippian jailer, what it was to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we also looked at the danger of the counterfeit work. and we saw the risk of the counterfeit. And we saw, hopefully, you can't fully know these things in this life, but we saw some distinguishing marks between a true work of grace and a counterfeit work. And now I've explained to you that assurance is a three-legged stool. And we've looked at the leg of the marks of grace very, very closely. And I plead with you to examine yourselves and see whether you have these marks. See whether you're in Christ and see what you need to grow. And I plead with you to take all of this seriously. And I plead with you that you would make your calling and election sure. And I do plead as well that you would not live like the world and that you would be separated from the world. Let's pray. O gracious God, I pray that, O Lord, by the gospel you would come and renew our hearts if we have not the work of your grace. I pray that you would strengthen our measure of faith. I pray, O Lord, that you would separate us from the world. I plead, O God, that you would ultimately build the walls of Zion, that you would build up your church, that you would draw us away from dead works into new life in the Lord Jesus Christ. And, O God, I plead that he would forgive our sins, particularly our spiritual lethargy and worldliness. And Lord, I plead that the marks that I have gone through and enumerated, I do plead that this congregation as well as myself, that we would see more of these marks in our own lives, that Lord, that we would love your law, that oh Lord, we would not be like the world, that oh God, we would love the brethren, that we, Lord, would know our spiritual poverty, that we would hunger and thirst after righteousness, and we'd remember the blessing that it is to be reviled by an unbelieving world. And I ask, O Lord, that you would please have mercy on us as we leave this place. And, O God, I plead that you would please lay up these feeble, probably poorly delivered messages. I plead, O Lord, that you would lay these things up in the hearts of these hearers. O Lord, I plead that you would use them for some good, even in spite of me, O God. And I ask this all in the name of Jesus Christ, the righteous. Amen. What, sing? Oh, questions. So I think there's, and I should have mentioned this, forgive me, but there's two temptations, or sorry, there's a temptation that everybody will feel, and then there's the proper course of action. So let me first talk about the temptation. When you examine yourself and you find a lack, the temptation will be, what I talked about in the very beginning, to invent that sort of scorecard. And basically, to go about and say, all right, I see a lack in this grace, so I'm gonna try to keep up with it, and I'm gonna try under my own strength to sort of develop this in myself. That's the temptation, and that's exactly what you are not to do. When you see a lack of God's grace, when you see a lack of one of these marks, Instead of trying to develop a scorecard and a system to cultivate it yourself, you're to go to the Lord Jesus Christ, and you're to repent of your lack, and you're to plead that he would fill you up. That's what you're to do, because you cannot, none of these marks of God's grace can be worked in you by your own strength and by your own power. It simply does not happen. But in line with that, there is another temptation that the devil particularly likes to play in that sphere, and that is for us then to doubt our salvation, and to think, well, I mustn't be a child of God because I see this light. So the answer is to say it's to run to the Lord and to confess and to seek His grace and assurance. But just in line with your definition of love, that would be my understanding in this world. But just a secret clarification for you, you said that you can't view it as unconditional. But I think you said there's not unconditional acceptance. I meant unconditional acceptance. unconditional acceptance is going to be your bigger so love is unconditional we're to love our neighbors as ourselves we're The world says that unconditional love is not desiring the godly outcomes or godly course for people. It's accepting them as they are, and that's what I was trying. So I'm sorry if that was confusing at all. It's just so common that if you don't accept someone's sins, that they will accuse you of not having unconditional love. And that's the reviving of the world right there. Bounce. Do we want to sing? Oh, sorry. Yes. It's not so much a song, but just a question you created. Well, in corporate prayer, I guess, you'd be praying we. If I said I, I probably misspoke. But so if I'm praying like personally myself, I'm going to be praying, you know, I. But if I'm speaking on behalf, like, so corporate prayer, you have one representative that's speaking on behalf of the whole body, and then I would use we. You know, Lord, we desire this, or whatever it might be. So in family worship, I would pray with we, just for example. Anything else? We wanna sing. As we close, is that a normal thing, or is everybody... Yeah, I see some nods of heads. Well, I will admit I feel a little slighted from this morning, so I'd like to sing Psalm 130 to martyrdom. Those of you who don't know, the song for devotions this morning was 130, and I looked at Sam and I said, you better put it to martyrdom, and then he just went against me. I'm not really content to let that stand. So probably what he's gonna do is he's gonna choose another tune, but I'll just, I'll do martyrdom and see where it goes. Lord, from the depths to Thee I cry, my voice, Lord, do Thou hear? Unto my supplications voice, ♪ Give hand again to him ♪ ♪ Lord, we shall stand in awe, O Lord ♪ ♪ Chose not iniquity ♪ ♪ But yet with me forgiveness is ♪ ♪ That fear Thou mayst be ♪ ♪ I wait for God to come to me ♪ My shoulder quake, my hope is in his word. More than they that for morning watch, for the lord I say the morning ♪ Obey the Lord ♪ ♪ For in him mercy's being ♪ ♪ And plenteous redemption ♪ ♪ Is ever found ♪ And from all his iniquities Israel shall redeem.