Fifth Psalm, Psalm 35. I'll read the first three verses. Psalm 35. Flee my cause, O Lord, We must have someone who will plead our cause. That's what it means there in the book of Timothy, the first book of Timothy, where it says that we have one God and one mediator between God and man, the man, Christ Jesus. The only way we can approach God is through a mediator. through one who understands us and one that understands God. He's a daisman. He can lay his one hand on us and the other hand on God and plead our cause, our case. And it says that he ever lives, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, our Savior, He died in our stead and place and room, was buried, exercised power over himself, rose from the dead, ascended into the heavens on God's right hand, the throne of God, and ever lives to plead our cause and our case to represent us before God. We're in Him, vitally joined with the Lord Jesus Christ, vitally joined, inseparably joined to Him, one with Him. We're with Him. Where He is, that's where we are. In Christ, the right hand of God, He pleads our case. interprets our prayers. We know not how to pray or what to pray for, but He does, and He undertakes for us. He undertook for us on the tree concerning the question of our sin, and He ever lives to undertake for our cause. Plead my cause, O Lord, That ought to be our cry all the time. Lord, remember me. Remember me. Have mercy on me. Lead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive against me. Fight against them that fight against me. Well, I know this is the psalm of David, And David had a lot of enemies. I'm sure that a lot of them were of his own making. But a lot of them were his enemies out of maliciousness of their own hearts, jealousy, and so forth, because the crown was on his head. And a lot of that we can't identify with. If we make the cause of Christ known, if we tell the truth in regard to who God is, and tell the truth in regard to who we are in light of the Scriptures, then there will be people that will strive against us, and there will be people that will fight against us and speak evil of us. But we have one who will plead our cause. We have Him. David said, Plead my cause, those who strive against me, fight against me, and so forth. Fight against them. Fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler. Stand up for mine help. Lord's my shepherd, I shall not walk. Draw out also the spear. and stop the way against them that persecute me. Describe David, please. And this is what I want to talk to you about this morning. Say unto my soul, say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Now, we stand Although we're all sitting here this morning, except for me, I'm standing. But in a figurative sense, we're all standing on the verge of an eternal world. Time has about passed some of us by, and will eventually pass us all. Time will expire. In due time, the angel of death will come where we are and snuff out our lives. So we can say, you know, one day is as a thousand years with the Lord. No such thing as time with the Lord. It's eternity. He deals in eternity. We live in time. And we all stand on the verge, on the brink of eternity to go out into the unseen world, a world that we've heard about. We know nothing about it other than what we've heard from the Spirit of God in God's book. We've heard about His salvation, His deliverance. We stand on the verge of an eternal world unless, now listen to me, and unless God himself says to my soul and says to your soul, I am thy salvation, unless that takes place we shall perish, every one of us. We're all in the same boat. We're all guilty before God. The jury is out. The jury came back. The judge says, what do you find? Read. the finding. And the juror stands up and says, guilty of all charges. That's where we are, guilty. We don't have to. The trial has already been held, and the judge of all the earth has said they're all guilty, all guilty. every single solitary one of them, every mother and every child and every father, all guilty before God. The verdicts end, they are all guilty. And unless God Himself says to my soul and says to your soul, I am thy salvation, we shall perish. God's nature binds him to cast us into outer darkness and everlasting punishment. Now, in light of that, most of the great body of professors of religion are quite satisfied in talking about or hearing of a salvation. And they tell us of what a great salvation God has accomplished for us, if we will do our part. All the efforts of nature will leave a man to perish in his sins, there is not enough strength in an angel to save him. As a matter of fact, if all the angels united together and worked for one common end to save one poor lost sinner, that sinner would be eternally lost if that's all the help they had. These religionists of our day, they all cry out in one voice, a great salvation that God has accomplished for us if we do our part. But I read to you where the psalmist said, O Lord, plead my cause with them that strive with me. Fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler. Stand up for mine help. Draw out thy spear. Stop the way against them that persecute me. Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation." We must have a salvation which none but the Lord Himself is, and none but He can make known. That's the salvation we must have, the salvation of God. Do your part. What part can you do? What part can I do? If they tell me, God has accomplished salvation, a great and glorious salvation, but you must do your part. The condition of His salvation is conditioned upon you doing your part. What part can I do? What part is it that I can do? Where is it that I fit in? this great scheme of God's salvation. The only thing that I can do is sin and lie and cheat and steal and go to hell when I die. That's the only part I have in me. I can supply the sin, but God must supply the salvation and the deliverance. We're talking about God's salvation. There's no ifs or ands or buts or conditions or propositions in regard to God's salvation. Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. And when that takes place, when that transpires, then you'll know that you're saved when God says to your soul, am thy salvation." If we're ever brought to see and to feel the need of such a salvation, if we're ever brought to that place, if we're ever brought to see and feel the need of such a salvation, we'll Find out then, real quick like, that our religion, our religion, that religion that they tell us that we must have a part of, that that religion, if we ever see and feel our need of God's salvation, then our religion won't be worth a thank you. It won't even be worth saying, I thank you. If we ever come to the place where we see ourselves as we are, hopeless, helpless, undone, guilty, vile, corrupt, polluted, Not a single spot in our makeup that has any credibility about it. Nothing in us, nothing, not a single solitary thing, not a thought, not a word, not an action in us, about us, pertaining to us, that would cause God to look upon us in pity and in favor. Hopeless and helpless, when we come to that stage, we'll say, the religion that I have, or I thought I had, is not worth a thank you, because it's of no help to me. I'm in such a desperate, desperate condition and state. We need a salvation that is extensive as the requirements of God's holy law. We need a salvation as extensive as the demands of God's infinite, inflexible justice. We need a salvation that's as extensive as the sinner's awful depth of depravity. Depraved! Not just depraved, but totally, totally, 100% depraved. cannot think a good thought concerning God. The Bible says if we're not for God, we're against God. The Bible says if we do not love God, we hate God. There is no middle ground. It's either you do or you don't. It's either you are or you are not. It's either you're in or you're out. There's no straddling here. There's no one part goes this way and one part goes another. It all goes in one way, and that is hostility towards the God who made us. We lost everything. in the first atom, lost every single solitary thing by way of God-consciousness in atom, lost it all, and can't regain it. We're barred from the tree of life. We cannot force our way back in. There are sermons there with flaming souls to forbid us We don't want to come in. There's no need of God barring us out. Our nature is such that we do not want to come back. We're satisfied the way we are. We need God's salvation, a salvation. And I speak this morning with reverence Reverence to a loving, holy, merciful God Almighty that I know very little of. And I want to be reverent. I don't want to besmirch His name. I don't want to offend this holy God. So I speak here with reverence this morning. The salvation that I need and the salvation that you need, the salvation of every person here, under the sound of my voice this morning, needs is a salvation, a righteousness that the Lord himself cannot mend. or Satan cannot fall, a spotless, pure, holy righteousness. A salvation short of this will not reach the core of your heart, will not reach that place where you really are. Oh, it may cover the outside of the womb. This preaching that you hear sometimes on the radio and television, sometimes it affects you. And you try to mend yourself. You say, well, that is or appears to me to be right concerning myself. that that is an awful sin in God's sight. So therefore, I'm going to try to mend that. I'm going to try to do something about that. You can sometimes cover the outside of the gash, the wound, maybe make an attempt to stop the bleeding. But it's just the wound that you're dealing with, the core, the center of it all has never been reached as of yet. And God, if we're ever to know His salvation, must reach down to the core of our heart and affect our conscience and make us to see the helplessness and hopelessness of our condition. Listen. You say, well, I have never committed adultery or fornication. Well, I say, neither have I, practically. Neither have I, practically. But God, when He deals with the core of your heart, He looks at your thoughts and your intents and count them as done. You say, I've never done these things. Not practically, but down in the depths of your heart. When God visits a man in this business of salvation and deals with him, he lays his heart open and he sees the seeds, the seeds of evil and wickedness and pollution in his heart. And if he ever sees that, he'll quit trying to mend the wounds. He'll quit trying to shore up the law. He'll quit saying, well, I'm doing the best that I can do. The law of God says, he that offends in one point is guilty of all. Have you ever offended in any One point. Any one point. Every jot and every tittle of that law. Have you offended in one of the jots and one of the tittles of it? Oh, listen. This law condemns every evil principle. Every filthy thought condemns it all. Guilty, guilty, guilty. You're guilty. Where are you going to go for help? Where are you going to go? To some church, some preacher? Where can you go? They're as helpless as you are. They come from the same tree. and the tree's rotten. Every stick of that tree's rotten. Listen, when God lays your heart open and He lays my heart open to the eye of God's infinite, inflexible justice and the strictest scrutiny of God's divine law, where then Will you and I look for help? Do the best you can. Do the best. Is that going to be your plea? I'm doing the best I can. My dear brethren and sisters, that's not it. Doing the best you can will send you to hell. God's holy, holy justice binds him and demands of him that the whole world perish, unless you've got something that you can bring to God, that even God himself can't find a flaw in it. You've got to have that. I'd say, where will you look for help? Well, most of them say, we all need salvation. Now listen to me. This is what this world, and in particular the United States of America, has been saturated with this kind of theology, with these thoughts. They say we all need salvation. As far as they go, they're right. We all lost everything in Adam, every man, every woman, President Reagan, President Kennedy, President Clinton, everybody from the highest to the lowest, they're all the same, we're on the same level, we're all lost. No good in any of us. We need salvation, and they tell us we need salvation. But listen to what they say. They say we all that need salvation, we have it in our power. We have it in our power to save our souls if we meet the conditions. I've already said, what conditions can you meet? What can you do? What can you do? You're alienated from God by your wicked works and your wicked nature. What can you do? others come along, I know what I'm talking about. I may not know much, but I know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about God's salvation. I know that. I may not know anything about the computers or anything about psychology or anything about this or about that, but I do know something about this because God's taught it to me. And I take I do not take the responsibility lightly of preaching and teaching the Word of God. I preach and teach what God has taught me. God taught me this. So help me God, He's taught me this. I didn't get it from my mother. I didn't get it from my daddy. And I didn't get it from another preacher. God taught me this. Others say that salvation is full and salvation is free without any conditions. Simply believe in Jesus Christ, and we have no cause to be concerned about the wretchedness of our corrupt nature. Well, some say work. Others say simply believe. Both of these act from their selfish nature. None of them has said anything about God's salvation. They're saying something about what you do and what you don't do. But when the Lord brings man to experimentally know that he can neither, listen to me now, when God penetrates our souls, our intelligence, our mind, and our heart, and makes us to know the truth about ourselves, and about his salvation, he'll make us to know, now listen, that we can neither work or believe. We can't work and we can't believe unless God instigates it. You say, well, tell people to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. They can't believe. unless God, in His mercy and in His kindness, invades their little playhouse, their little religion, and smashes their little God to pieces, and makes them to see how hopeless they are in themselves. Oh, when He comes, and we experimentally know that we can neither work or believe, and that we are brought to feel before a heart-searching God that we need a great salvation that comes from the hand of God Himself, rather than the almighty God's a sinner at the expense of his justice, it'll never be. God will not save a sinner at the expense of his justice. What I'm saying is this, God will not show mercy at the expense of his justice. A fellow told me one time about a wicked man who had just died. He said, I hope that God will show mercy. I said, He won't. I say it now, He won't show mercy, not at the expense of His justice. His nature binds Him to send a man to hell who does not have a perfect righteousness, a perfect covering, a perfect Savior and representative and substitute to stand in His place. If you don't have Him, God's nature binds him to send that man to everlasting punishment. Doom, if it was not for the Lord Jesus Christ, I'll tell you, God would have bound to doom and to eternal misery. Yeah, remember. of Adam's fallen race. You can depend on this. You must either bring a holiness and righteousness that the Lord God Himself cannot find fault with, or His nature finds Him to send you on your mad way to destruction. His nature. God's holiness is the chief attribute of God. He has other attributes. His chief attribute is His holiness. Holy, holy Lord God Almighty. It's hard for me to conceive it, the holiness of God. I can't look upon the scene. knows nothing about sin. That is pertaining to himself. His nature binds him. Sin men to hell. But let me tell you about his salvation, God's salvation. God's salvation is in the Trinity of His persons. The Father chosen, the Son undertook to discharge every liability against those that the Father chose. And God the Holy Spirit said, I'll quicken everyone that the Father chose and everyone that the Son died for. I'll quicken them and give them life. and bring him to the Savior. His salvation takes a poor man from the dust, a beggar from the dunghill, and sets him among princes. That's what God's salvation does. It makes him inherit the throne of glory. takes him from the lost state of degradation. That thief, that thief. The lowest thing that a man can be is to be a child abuser, a molester, a thief. When you're a molester, child abuser, You're a thief. You take something that's not yours. And God more than frowns upon that. God hated the workers of iniquity. Those that dishonor father and mother, God frowns. that he takes from the lost state of degradation, that molester, that sinner, that thief out of hell, that blasphemer, that adult and adulterer, that fornicator. God takes him from that lost state, that poor, miserable sinner, in the dust and exalt Him high above the angels. He does more for the sinner than He's done for all the angels in heaven. He's done more for the sinner than He's done for all the angels put together in heaven. These angels, these angels, who knows the count, the number of God's angels? In all probability, there's angels somewhere near us this morning. There! There are gods! messengers, not to deliver the message. They are the protectors of God's people. God sends them on errands of mercy and other errands. Well, listen, these angels, heaven's full of angels, but God's done more for the sinner, more for one poor sinner. a degraded center, a center to the core. God's done more for him than he's done for all the angels put together in heaven. Now listen, these angels, they were predestinated to a holy state by God and confirmed in that state, but they never were redeemed. They know nothing about redemption themselves. But here is a poor sinner, ungodly, unholy, unprofitable sinner, who's cursed God from his very first breath, who's never had a good word to say for God. Poor sinner, a hell-deserving sinner, a pauper, a beggar, a lawbreaker, here he is, redeemed, quickened, consecrated, removed from the lost state to the high state of glory. What a salvation is this that accomplishes all of that! Say to my soul, I am your salvation. God's blessed salvation, it saves from the guilt of sin. It saves from the damning power of sin. It saves from the curse connected with the damning power of sin. Oh, it saves from the reigning power of it, from the love of it, and at death, the in-being of it. That's what God's salvation does, a salvation completely from sin. That's God's salvation. Salvation completely from sin. Sin, that monster. Sin's a monster. S-I-N, three little O letters, comprise a monster. We're not talking about Godzilla, which we can't even spell. We're talking about this monster, sin. It's a monster. There's not a man or a woman or a child under God's heaven, under God's Son, who has not in some way given their hearts and their affections any embrace, sin. The front row, the babies, the little children, the grown children, the old people, Not one of us under the sun. We embraced it. It's a monster. A monster. Sin. Sin killed us all. Sin's going to send us to hell. The wages of sin's death. Thanks be unto God. Thanks be unto God. Let God's salvation even delivers us from death. Listen, all under the sun, given their hearts and affections, they've embraced it, and they would, that includes you and I, would be eternally lost before we'd part with it. That's a monster, isn't it? That's a monster. They talk about habits. Habits got you bound. By God, the biggest habit that any man has is sin has him bound. If he can break that habit, he'll be all right. It's got him bound. Bound, tooth and nail. Got him tied up. Now, he loves it. Loves it. And if the Lord God himself did not quicken our souls and give us divine light, where would we be this morning? We wouldn't be here. Such is the violence of human nature, and such is that great love of sin that Adam's fallen race has. that monster. But this salvation not only raises the beggar from the dunghill and inherits the throne of glory, but it's also a salvation from death and all its bearings. Everything pertains to death. The wages of sin is death. This is a salvation from death. That's what I'm saying. Wages of sin is death. Will not his people die? You ask me. Shall we not all die? Wages of sin is death. Well, I'll tell you how it is in God's salvation. God's people go to sleep. God's people go to sleep. They sleep in Jesus. You've read that in the Bible, haven't you? They sleep in Jesus. Death to one of God's children who is saved by the grace of God through the substitutionary work of God's Son whom He sent, who made an end of sin, who paid the penalty due sin. against us, clothed us in His righteousness, took us by the hand through time and through space, and made us accepted before God in all of His acceptability. Death to that man, to that woman, to that boy, to that girl is no worse than a loving mother, a gentle loving mother rocking to sleep a stressful child. They're rocked to sleep in the cradle of love, rocked to sleep in the cradle of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Bible says, they that sleep in Jesus, God will bring with Him. When He comes, they can't And Christ shall rise. Those that sleep in Jesus, God will break them. They're going to awake from that sleep. They're sleeping in Jesus' name. And there'll come a time that they'll be eventually raised from their sleep. This is the salvation from every appearance of death. Every one of them. God in himself, in the trinity of his person, is this salvation. The Bible says, let me read this to you before I forget it. And, well, I hope I know where it's at. Book of Timothy, I think. I'll read it. I think it's in the 2nd Epistle. Yeah, 2nd Epistle, chapter 1, verse 9. Listen to this. He says to old Timothy, he says, Timothy, God hath not given us the spirit of fear. Spirit of fear? Afraid of dying? You're sleeping in Jesus. Don't be afraid of dying. Huh? Oh, I know we don't understand everything about it. He hadn't given the spirit of fear. Oh, I'm so afraid I'm going to get sick. Oh, I'm afraid to go to the doctor. He's going to tell me I've got cancer. Cancer of the blood. Cancer of this. Cancer of that. Oh, I dread to go. Listen, God has not given us the spirit of fear. but of power, and of love, and of sound mind. Timothy, be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me as prisoner? But he said, Be a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God. According to the power of God. Then you pick up on that ninth verse. Who hath saved us? Who hath saved us? Saved us. Who hath saved us? Who did He save? He saved the election of God. He wrote down in the Lamb's Book of Life, He wrote their names down. And the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, He said, whatever is against them, I'll discharge every liability against them. God the Holy Spirit, in this covenant, when this transaction was made before the world began, God the Father put their names in the Lamb's Book of Life. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I'll save them. The Holy Spirit, the Trinity of the Persons, 3 in 1, 1 in 3, they've seen all your sin from the time you was born until the time you died. They've seen everything that you've ever done and ever thought about doing, whatever it was, every obscenity of your heart. Seen it all! And God, in the Trinity of His persons, hates sin with a deadly passion. But God, in the Trinity of His three persons, said, I see it all. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I'll die and pay the penalty for all of them. Ask sinners, I'll pay it all. I'll suffer. I'll suffer a million hells for these that you've chosen. And the Holy Spirit said, I'll quicken every one of them and bring them to Him who's the resurrection and life. Give them life. I'll do it. Huh? Listen. "...who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling." You see that there? He saved us before He called us. He saved His people before He called them in He is eternal purpose and grace. See that? Who hath saved us, called us with a holy calling, not according to our works? We didn't have any. And what works we had were as filthy rags, as God viewed them. But listen, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, listen now, which was given us. His own purpose and grace was given us in Christ Jesus, when? Before the world began. Now, that's what God says about it. That's what He says about His salvation. It says that they are sanctified by God the Father. That is, set apart by God the Father. And where God the Father put them, you turn over to the book of Jude. I read this to you the other night. The book of Jude, chapter 1, verse 1. Sanctified by God the Father. That means He set them apart. That means He wrote their names down. That means that He set them on this side. He put a mark on them, sanctified by God the Father, set apart by God the Father. Where God the Father put them, where did He put them? He put them in Christ before the world began. Now, you see, James, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, set apart by God the Father, and what else? Preserved in Jesus Christ and called. What's he talking about? All right, where God the Father put them, they are preserved. in that state. Preserved. The nearest definition of that that I can think of is when you preserve strawberry jam. Put it in a jar. You preserve it. Spoiler. Is that right? It lasts for years, doesn't it? Preserved. Preserved in that state. Now, there Jesus Christ preserves them. They're preserved in Christ Jesus. God the Father put them in Christ, and Christ never lost them. He never lost them. All the power, give it to me, shall come to me. All that you give me, I have lost none, He said. Save Judas, the son of perdition. He is the son of the devil to begin with. preserved in Christ Jesus, and Christ never lost one of them. They were lost in the first Adam. Remember, I told you that. Lost in the first Adam. He's our representative. He was standing by himself, one man, and he represented the whole human race. And the whole human race fell in him. All fell in him. They were lost, you and I, who are partakers of the grace of God and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We was lost in the first Adam. But we was, now listen, but we was never lost in or by the Lord Jesus Christ. We were secured. We were preserved. where the Father put them, and where the Father put them, He preserved them in Jesus Christ. A great salvation! Say unto my soul, say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Anything short of that. Won't get the job done. Anything short of that. Has God said to you, I am thy salvage? I can't say it to you that it would be effective. I can't do it. I can't say it to myself. God's got to say it to me. And God said to me, says to me now, and he says to me in days gone by, I'm your salvation. I'm your salvation. So I say, my hope is built in nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. This stand will be dismissed.