From His Heart

Speaker 1

If you're redeemed by the blood of Christ, does that have an expiration date? Here's Pastor Jeff Shreve.

Speaker 2

If a Christian has fallen into terrible, horrible sin, what happens to that Christian is they start to wonder if they're saved at all. They really begin to doubt their salvation because they're not doing right. And they're thinking, you know, I don't like me because I'm doing these terrible things and there's no way God could like me if I don't like me. How could God like me?

He loves you because you're accepted in the beloved, because you've given your heart and life to Jesus. God puts you in Jesus. Jesus is the beloved. You're accepted in the beloved, and God loves you.

And I don't care what you do. He doesn't stop loving you. He can heal every scar with real truth, real love, real hope from his heart.

Speaker 1

Jesus said, "If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you." You see, the child of God is definitely going to have trouble in this world because we don't march to the drumbeat of the world. We march to the beat of the Lord's drum. And that is why it is so very important to not forget the benefits package that the Lord gives those who are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

Welcome to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, where today we'll hear part two of the lesson called the Lord's Benefits Package. It's from Pastor Jeff's nine-message series, "Life is Hard, but God is Good." This series, plus the companion booklet "Strong Faith for Tough Times," are our special thank you gifts for your support this month to the ongoing outreach of From His Heart.

And you can find out more at fromhisheart.org. Now, though, if you can open your Bible to Psalm 103, here's Pastor Jeff again to reveal the great advantage of the Lord's benefits package.

Speaker 2

David says, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of his benefits." Here's a problem that you have, that I have, that David had, and that everyone who's ever walked on the face of this earth has had: we have a tendency to forget his benefits. I mean, the Christian life can be hard, and we can forget his benefits. So let's look at the five benefits that David tells us. Don't forget any of these.

Benefit number one: the Lord forgives all your sins. When you come to Christ, when you begin to follow the Lord with all your heart, the Lord forgives all your sins. He says in verse three, "Who pardons all your iniquities." God is the God who forgives from the guttermost to the uttermost. So the Lord forgives all your sins. That's the first benefit of the Lord's benefit package.

Benefit number two: the Lord heals all your diseases. "Who pardons all your iniquities, who heals," verse three, "all your diseases." What a great benefit! But now somebody may say, "Well, hold on, time out. I mean, Jeff, we know that that's not true. I mean, there are a lot of Christians who have ailments and difficulties, cancer and leukemia, and this issue and that issue, and they're not healed." Well, maybe not in this life. It doesn't say he heals all your diseases in this life. It just says he heals all your diseases.

What's on the benefits plan? The Lord forgives all your sins. Secondly, the Lord heals all your diseases. Thirdly, the Lord redeems your life from certain destruction. Verse four: "Who redeems your life from the pit?" God is the redeemer. Anytime in the Old Testament where you talk about redemption, the Hebrew mindset would immediately go to Egypt because God's people were slaves in Egypt for 400 years. They were under the thumb of Pharaoh. Pharaoh is a picture of the devil, and Egypt is a picture of the lost condition, enslaved to sin.

What did the Lord do? He sent Moses to Pharaoh. Moses said to Pharaoh, "Thus says the Lord God, let my people go." And Pharaoh said, "I don't know the Lord. I don't know this Yahweh. Neither will I let his people go. Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice?" See, Pharaoh thought of himself as a god. So you're telling me about this God? I've never heard of this Yahweh God. I've never heard of him. Who is he that I should obey his voice?

Then the battle was on because Pharaoh was going up against God, who is the Lord. The Lord said, "Well, I'm going to introduce myself to you, Mr. Pharaoh." And he does so in a series of plagues. The plagues come and they get more and more severe. Finally, the tenth plague comes, which is the death angel. The death angel is going to go through Egypt, and he's going to kill the firstborn of every family in Egypt. But God told Moses, "Hey, you tell the people to take a lamb, an unblemished lamb, a spotless lamb. You slay that lamb and you take the blood of the lamb and you put the blood on the doorposts and on the lintel, on the sides of the door and on the top of the door, the lintel. When my death angel comes through, he's looking for one thing and one thing only: the blood. If you don't put the blood on the door, the death angel is going to come in and kill your firstborn."

If you say, "Well, I don't like bloodshed. That just doesn't sound right. I'm going to put some poetry. I'm going to write some poetry. I'm going to tack that up on the door. Surely the Lord will love my poems." The death angel will come in and kill your firstborn. You tack sacks of money on the door. Put that on there. The death angel is coming in and killing your firstborn. You write up all your good works, everything. "Well, Lord, I did. I memorized a scripture verse and I gave my money and I went to Sunday school and all these good things. I wasn't, you know, bad to my parents or, you know, all that stuff." You put that on the door, and the death angel comes in and kills your firstborn.

God was looking for one thing and one thing only: the blood of the lamb. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you. They put the blood on the doorpost and on the lintel. The Lord said, "Every year, you remember this occasion; you celebrate the Passover." When Jesus came on the scene, what did John the Baptist say before he baptized him? "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." Jesus gave his life at Passover. He is the Lamb of God.

At three o'clock twilight on Friday, the priests would slit the throats of the Passover lambs. At three o'clock on Friday, Jesus was hanging on the cross. We call that Good Friday. He breathed his last and said, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." He is our Passover lamb. You take the blood of the Lamb and you apply it to your life through faith. Then the Lord sees the blood on you, and the Lord redeems you.

Now, redemption and forgiveness are tied together. So who pardons all your iniquities? Who heals all your diseases? Who redeems your life from the pit? From the pit of destruction? Colossians puts it this way: "For he delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption." What is that? The forgiveness of sins, the forgiveness of sins. Redemption and salvation, and the forgiveness of sins. Those go together like iniquity, transgression, and sin. Those are synonyms, and they come together in the person of Jesus and what he did for us on the cross.

So the Lord redeems you from certain death, from certain destruction. Now, you know, in our world today, people don't like to hear about a place called Hell. They don't like that at all. You hear this quite often: "Well, there's no such thing as an eternal hell. I mean, if God is a God of love, there's no way that he would send anybody to hell." Well, God doesn't send anybody to hell. You send yourself to hell. God does all he can to keep you from going to hell.

But you need to remember something: everyone in this world is born with a terminal disease called sin. We're sinners by nature, we're sinners by birth, we're sinners by choice, we're sinners by practice. We are sinners, as the song says: "I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore. Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. But the Master of the sea heard my despairing cry, and from the waters lifted me; now safe am I." It's not the Lord's fault. Nobody's ever going to stand at the Great White Throne and point their finger in the face of God and say, "God, you're not fair, because you sent me to hell." No, you sent yourself to hell. You rejected the love of God.

God did not send His Son into the world, John 3:17, to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He's done everything that he can do to keep you from going to hell. But if you bypass the cross and say, "No, thank you, God, I'll do it my own way," all that's left for you is Hell. People say, "Why is Hell such a terrible, horrible place?" Because Hell is where God is not. That's why it's so terrible.

Second Thessalonians, chapter one says, "And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction." Those who reject Christ. "These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction." What is eternal destruction? Away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. You are out from the presence of the Lord, not by his choice. I think at the Great White Throne, the Lord is going to say, with a broken heart, to those who rejected him, "Not my will, but yours be done. You didn't want me. All that's left for you is away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power."

Hey, what's the Lord's benefits package? He redeems your life from the pit. Number four: not only does he forgive all your sins and heal all your diseases and redeem your life from the pit and from certain destruction, he crowns you with his love and compassion. "Who crowns you with loving kindness," verse four, "and compassion." Loving kindness is a great word in the New American Standard. Not every Bible has that word. It's the Hebrew word "hesed" (H E S E D), translated loving kindness, loving kindnesses. It's used 183 times in the New American Standard, the Bible that I use. It's talking about God's loyal love, God's faithful love, God's covenant love for his people. A love that will not let me go.

"I've loved you," he says in the book of Jeremiah, "with an everlasting love." The word compassion, in the Hebrew mindset, is like the seat of the emotions. One of the translations for compassion is the womb. It's the bowels. It's inside. You just feel it inside. The Lord has compassion for his people. The English word compassion, "calm" means with, and "passion" means suffering. To have compassion means you suffer with someone. It's like saying when God says, "I have compassion for you," God is saying, "I feel your hurt in my heart. I feel that with you because I have compassion for you."

The Bible says in Psalm 103:11-13, "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his loving kindness toward those who fear him. Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him." And God crowns you, like a crown on your head, with his love and his compassion. He cares about you. He cares about me.

How many of us have difficulty really believing that God loves us? And it's not based on performance. I think many of us do. We struggle when we're not performing well, when we're not doing very well. We really struggle to say, "How in the world could God love me?" And listen, if a Christian has fallen into terrible, horrible sin, what happens to that Christian is they start to wonder if they're saved at all. They really begin to doubt their salvation because they're not doing right. They're thinking, "You know, I don't like me because I'm doing these terrible things, and there's no way God could like me. If I don't like me, how could God like me?"

God doesn't love you because of you. He loves you because you're accepted in the beloved (Ephesians 1:6). Because you've given your heart and life to Jesus, God puts you in Jesus. Jesus is the beloved. You're accepted in the beloved, and God loves you. I don't care what you do; he doesn't stop loving you. Now, you can break the heart of God, you can displease God, but you can never get God to quit loving you because he's just chosen to love you.

With my three girls, Jill, Amy, and Sarah, I love them because they're mine. If they did something terrible, something horrible, something that would cause them to spend the rest of their life in prison, my heart would break, but I would still love them. And I'm just a sinful, fallible man. How much more? The perfect, holy, righteous God who is the God of love. How much more does he feel about you and me? Jesus said, "If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him?" God has a heart that's a million times, trillion times bigger than yours, bigger than mine when it comes to love.

So he crowns you with loving kindness and compassion. You know, the apostle John, in his Gospel, referred to himself not as John, but as the apostle whom Jesus loved. Isn't that interesting? See, people at first were like, "Who's he talking about?" He's talking about himself, the apostle whom Jesus loved. Now, there are two ways to look at that. You could say, "Well, look at that, John. I mean, he's just stuffed full of himself. He thinks he's a big shot. Who are you, John? Well, I'm the apostle whom Jesus loved. Don't you know me?" That's not how he meant it. He was saying, "Can you believe this? This is the greatest news of all. I am the apostle whom Jesus loved."

Wow! I like what is said about the apostle Paul. He was saved, and he never got over it. That's the way John was: the apostle whom Jesus loved. Wow! That he would love me. It's amazing that he would love me, as George Beverly Shea used to sing: "Oh, the wonder of wonders that thrills my soul is the wonder that God loves me." Because I know me, and if I were God, I wouldn't love me. I'm so glad I'm not God. I'm glad God is God, and God loves me. And I can say with the apostle John, "Unworthy me, little me, the apostle, or I'm the disciple whom Jesus loves." Paul said, "I've been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me." I asked Jesus how much he loved me, and he stretched out his arms and died.

Hey, he crowns you with his loving kindness and compassion. And lastly, he satisfies your life and renews your strength. The last benefit of the Lord's benefits package is verse five: "Who satisfies your years with good things so that your youth is renewed like an eagle." Hey, remember this about God: God is a good God. He's a good God. The devil works overtime to try and get you to think that God is not good, that you can't trust God, that God is going to throw you a curveball just when you think things are going right. Then God's going to throw you a curveball to watch you squirm like a worm in hot ashes. He gets some kind of sadistic glee from watching you suffer. That's not God. God is a good God.

God uses suffering in our lives, but God doesn't get any sadistic glee from watching you suffer. He has compassion. God is good. Second Chronicles 7:3: "Truly he is good. Truly his loving kindness is everlasting." Those two things are critical: to know that God is good and to know that God loves you. Some people get the idea that following Christ is kind of like taking bad medicine to get well. Because you know that you're in the pit of destruction and you don't want to go to hell. So you receive Christ so you don't have to stay here. But receiving Christ is just hard, and the Christian life is just no fun. And that's just offensive. No, God is a good God.

The Bible says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." He's good. He satisfies your life as you walk with him. The book of Ecclesiastes says, "Vanity of vanity, says the preacher. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity." You're never going to be satisfied with the things of this world. They're passing pleasures. They'll fill you up for a little while, but it's like drinking salt water to quench your thirst. Blaise Pascal, the great French mathematician, philosopher, and theologian, said, "In every human heart, there's a God-shaped vacuum." There's a hole in every human heart, kind of like a missing puzzle piece. And the only thing that fills that hole is God.

You can try and fill it with all sorts of other things, and it's just going to leave it empty because God is the only thing that can fill that hole. Augustine said in the fourth century A.D., "Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you." Hey, he satisfies your years with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. Years ago, I heard this statement, and it's so true: the devil doesn't have any happy old people.

You know, as you get older, life gets harder. Can anybody say Amen to that? When you're young, you don't realize what it's like to be older, and your body is going to start to suffer. But hey, your spirit doesn't have to; your heart doesn't have to. You can be satisfied in him, and you can know that the best is yet to come. An older person who doesn't know Christ? The devil doesn't have any happy old people. The best they have to look forward to is, "If they die? Question mark. Maybe I go to heaven." There's no assurance of salvation. They're not a Christian, so they can lie to themselves and say, "Maybe there's life after death. Maybe the Lord has something for me."

A believer doesn't have to live with a question mark in eternity. It can be an exclamation point. Say, "That's what's waiting ahead for me, and I am excited to meet the Lord. My future is so bright I have to wear shades." And in the future, as Paul said, "The Lord has laid up for me a crown of righteousness." I can't wait to see him face to face, whom I know heart to heart. So he renews your strength like the eagle inside. "They that wait upon the Lord," Isaiah 40:31, "shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not get weary. They shall walk and not faint."

Hey, what are eagles known for? They're known for soaring. And God says, "I'll renew you like the eagle. You'll go to new heights with me." Hey, the Lord's benefits package: have you been forgetting some of his benefits? Forget none of his benefits. He has that all for you. And listen, if you're here and you've never given your life to Christ, then none of this is true for you. But it can be. For God so loved the world that he turned his back on His Son and let his son die for all your sin and all my sin so he could be the Savior, so He could pay the price that we couldn't pay.

If we'll put our faith and trust in him, he'll save us and he'll transfer us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his glorious light. And all the benefits become yours the moment you repent and believe.

Speaker 1

Have you honestly and truly repented of your sin? Are you ready to surrender it all to Christ? If so, we've created a special section on our website to help you begin your journey with Christ all the way to eternity. Simply go to fromisheart.org. Click the link that says "Why Jesus?" And there you're going to discover what it really means to repent and believe and live a life that glorifies God and brings you peace and joy and purpose. These are the great benefits that we receive from the Lord's Benefits Package.

The Christian life is not always easy. In fact, it's hard. But God is good and faithful. This month we're airing messages of that theme from Pastor Jeff's nine-lesson series, "Life is Hard But God is Good," with lessons like today's lesson, "The Lord's Benefits Package," "When Trouble Comes Calling," "How to Pray in a Crisis," "Why Do the Wicked Prosper," and many more. The series is available on CDs, DVDs, USB flash drive, or immediate MP3 download, and it's our thank you gift for your support this month.

Request yours when you give today to help us meet our pivotal financial year-end need by June 30th. Thank you for your generous partnership to help us share the truth of it with more people. Call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-BIBLE) or go to fromisheart.org and request the series "Life is Hard But God is Good" and the booklet "Strong Faith for Tough Times."

So thank you for investing in Kingdom Work through From His Heart. Thank you for joining us today too. I'm Larry Nobles with a special invitation for you to be right back here on Friday for a lesson that will surely pull no punches. Join Pastor Jeff Shreve tomorrow for the challenging and transparent truth lesson called "Consider Yourself Warned." That's when we'll open God's Word and share real truth, real love, and real hope. From His Heart.

Speaker 2

There is treasury, there is bless There is hope that you always bring love he can heal every scars of it. Real truth, real love, real hope from his heart.

Speaker 1

From His Heart is the listener-supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve, speaking the truth in love to a lost and hurting world.

Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Find out more. Go to promisheart.org.