Chapter 3: Christ

Well, we've been studying A.W. Pink's book, Profiting from the Word, and learning different ways you can use to examine your life to see if you are doing that.

If you are profiting from the Word, if it's having value in your life, and he's taking various topics. He takes ten topics by which you can begin to evaluate and see, is the Word of God bearing fruit in my life?

And he began with sin. And you know the Word is profiting you if you are convicted of sin, if you're sorry for your sin, if you confess and forsake your sin, and so on.

If the Word is producing these things in your life, then you know it's been profitable for you. We saw it with respect to God. If you have an increasing fear for His majesty, an increasing awareness of His claims on your life, and so on, then you know that the Word of God is profiting you as you study it.

Is it profitable? Is it profitable? When you come and hear God's Word preached, is it useful in your life? Is it changing the way you live? The way you think? The things that you say? The things that you do?

When you read and study God's Word on your own, is it producing any change in your life? Is it having any effect upon you? Well, today we want to see whether the Word is having any profit in our lives with relationship to Christ.

And the order that Pink is following in this book is a natural one. As you become more aware of your sin, and the wretchedness of your sin, and your sense of unworthiness, you become aware of the God against whom you're sinning.

And just how sinful your sin is, and I'm not the first one to say that. Somebody wrote a book, I think, entitled The Sinfulness of Sin. But as you see how sinful it is, it's because it's in light of who you're sinning against.

It's a holy God, and so you begin to see your imperfection in the light of His perfection. Your unholiness in the light of His holiness. Your dread of condemnation before a just judge.

The impossibility of righting the wrong that you've done before this holy God. And so, you begin to wonder, can that broken relationship between sinful man and holy God be bridged?

Is there anything that can be done to make it right? And the answer is yes. And listen to what Pink says. As he learns something of God's pressing claims upon him, and his own utter inability to meet them, he's prepared to hear and welcome the good news that another has fully met those claims for all who are led to believe in Him.

And the answer is yes, there is hope for sinful man before a holy God. And that hope is in Christ. And so we want to see today our relationship to Christ as we seek to profit from the Word of God.

Well, where do we learn about Christ? Well, it's obvious. We learn about Him in God's Word. He's the grand theme of all the Scriptures. You know, Jesus isn't just in the Gospels.

He's in the Law. He's in the historical books. He's in the wisdom literature and in the Psalms and in the poetry. He's in the prophets. He's in the Gospels, of course. He's most clearly seen there.

And He's in the epistles and the rest of the New Testament. As you read through the Bible, you must see Christ because He's there. He Himself explained to His disciples the Scriptures concerning Himself.

All of these things speak of Christ. And so as you read the Bible, our desire should be what Paul's desire was in Philippians 3 and verse 10. I want to know Christ.

Perhaps the way we could sum all of these things up, the way you know you're profiting from the Scriptures with regard to Christ, is do you know Christ? As you read His Word, you'll come to know Him.

And so we should be, as Peter says in 2 Peter 3.18, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

To Him be both glory now and forever. Amen. Are you growing in your knowledge of Christ? That will be the end result of having studied God's Word.

Growth and knowing Christ. It must be our desire. It must be our aim. And so as you take in the Word, what are you learning about Christ? Are you profiting with respect to your relationship to Christ?

We're going to give you six ways today that you'll be able to look at yourself and evaluate, am I profiting from the Word of God? Number one, you're profiting from the Scriptures when they reveal to you your need of Christ.

You're profiting from the Scriptures when they reveal to you your need of Christ. Now to our own fallen way of thinking, we don't need anything more than ourselves.

We live in a do-it-yourself, sort of self-made man world that praises independence and strength. And it is those sorts of people that get the recognition and praise in our society.

People who did it themselves and did it their way. And succeeded and excelled in whatever it was that they were doing. And in a world like that, to admit your weakness, and more than that, your total inability to help yourself, is not going to bring the praise of men.

It's going to bring their scorn. Oh, he's weak, he's helpless. And he admits it. He doesn't even try to hide it. It's not a very popular, very manly thing to do, to admit that you're weak and helpless, that you need someone else to help you.

But not only that, to tell people that they're not good enough, but also that they're downright wicked. That their righteousness that they think they have, any good they think they have, is like filthy rags.

That's not a popular message. To have the sort of attitude that says, I can do it, I'll be okay on my own, is to be a lot like the Pharisees were. They thought they were good enough.

Keeping their version of the law and all of their stipulations would be sufficient to earn them favor with God. But they were sadly mistaken. Jesus tells us in Matthew 9 and verse 12, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

And so as we read the Scriptures, we need to be brought to an awareness of our sickness. And that's what we saw back in the first lesson, the Scriptures and sin. We need to become aware of our sin.

And how we can't right our wrong in and of ourselves. So if you're profiting from the Scriptures with respect to sin, you're seeing just how sick you are.

And you begin to see how much you need a doctor. You begin to see how much you need the great physician who came to heal the sick. All of these things are connected.

Listen to what Pink says here. As the Spirit convicts us of our sins, our ingratitude to God, our murmuring against Him, our wanderings from Him, as He presses upon us the claims of God, His right to our love, obedience, and adoration, and all our sad failures to render Him His due, then we are made to recognize that Christ is our only hope.

And that except we flee to Him for refuge, the righteous wrath of God will most certainly fall on us. And so as you read the Scriptures, you should be seeing your need for Christ.

It goes hand in hand with seeing your sin. I'm a desperate sinner. And so I need a Savior. I need one who has died in the place of sinners. I need one who has come and lived a perfect, holy life.

I need someone else to help me. And the Scriptures make it very plain to us that the one that we need is Christ. He is the one we're in need of. Let me ask you a question this morning.

Okay, a long time ago, I was convicted of my sin, and I saw my need of the Savior. And I ran to Him in faith, and I trusted in Him, and I believed that He saved me.

That's good. But after that, do you still need Christ? Do you continue to need Him? Somebody answered. Do you need Christ after that moment where God saves you by the work of Christ?

Yes. Good. Many people saying yes. Amen. Why do you continue to need Him? The flesh is weak. Okay, good. Why else do you continue to need Christ?

Forgiveness. Forgiveness isn't a one-time thing, is it? Right at the beginning. Have you sinned since your conversion? I have. The flesh is weak.

And so we feel our need. Each time we sin, we're made to feel our need more and more of our Savior. And we come to Him for fresh glimpses of Christ. And we come to Him for forgiveness again and again.

And we find it. And so as we read the Scriptures, we're made aware of our sin again. Perhaps a sin we hadn't seen before. And so again, we're made freshly aware of our need for Christ.

I need the every hour. And so as you're exposed to the Word, ask yourself, are you sensing your great need of the Savior? If you are, you know you're profiting from the Word.

That's the first way. You know you're profiting from the Word with respect to Christ. That you feel your need for Him. The second way that we want to talk about this morning. You're profiting from the Scriptures when they make Christ more real to you.

You're profiting from the Scriptures when they make Christ more real to you. Is Christ real to you? I'm not asking if you know about Christ.

But is He real to you? You can look back at the Israelites and see that there were many who were of the people of Israel who were not truly of Israel. They were of the circumcision, but they weren't circumcised in their hearts.

And they saw pictures of Jesus. They saw the sacrifices that pointed forward to Christ. They knew about a Messiah that was coming, but He wasn't real to them.

They didn't put their hope and their trust in Him. And so many who were of the nation of Israel died in their sins without ever having truly known Christ.

They weren't truly children of Abraham by faith, but Abraham himself and other Israelites like him who looked forward and saw this Christ who would come and put their hope and trust in Him.

Christ was real to them. John 8, verse 56, Jesus says, Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing My day. He saw it and was glad. Abraham saw the day of Christ by faith.

Christ was real to him. It wasn't just a bunch of sacrifices that he was going through the motions of when he saw those things. Christ was real to him because He apprehended him by faith.

He didn't just know about a Messiah who was coming. He knew Him. Sadly, it's this way with many Christians today, many so-called Christians. They know who Jesus is.

They know about Him, but they don't know Him. They don't know Him in a saving way. He's not real to them. Again, Pink says this, They have no personal dealings with Him, enjoy no spiritual communion with Him, should they hear one speak in rapture of His excellency.

They regard Him as an enthusiast or a fanatic. To them, Christ is unreal, vague, intangible, but with the real Christian, it is far otherwise. And so as we read the Scriptures and we see more and more of Christ revealed to us, He ought to become more and more real to us, where we really are enraptured with Him.

I hope you never find yourself when you hear somebody speaking of the glory of Christ and how they love their Savior and all that Christ has done for them and they speak in glowing terms of their Savior. I hope you don't sort of look at them and go, He's crazy.

He's a fanatic. He's a little bit too excited about His Savior. Then if that's your attitude, you're showing that Christ isn't really real to you.

You don't really know Him. You just know about Him and that it's just a rote knowledge. But as we find more of our Savior revealed to us in the Word, that should not be our attitude.

We'll be more and more enraptured with His presence, comforted by His communion with us. And if we're not profiting from the Word, this blessing won't be ours. And so beware of a cold formalism that knows about Jesus, can tell you all the facts, but without any heart, without any desire to know that those things are true of you, without any desire for a real, genuine relationship with that Savior.

If you're profiting from the Word, you'll find that Christ is made real to you. A third way, you know that you're profiting from the Scriptures with respect to Christ.

You're profiting from the Scriptures when you learn more of Christ, and so He becomes more precious to you. You're profiting from the Scriptures when you learn more of Christ, and so He becomes more precious to you.

As we first begin to learn of this Christ, Christ, we're attracted to Him as our Savior. We see in Him, we felt that need for Christ, and we see in Him the solution to our problem of sin.

We find in Him forgiveness of sin, and a right standing before God, and we're rightly attracted to Him as our Savior. But we find out as we go that He's much more than just the answer to our problem of sin before a holy God.

You all help me out here today. What are some of the things that Scripture tells us about Jesus? What He is to us beyond a Savior? That's of the utmost importance, that He is a Savior.

But what more is Christ to us than just a Savior? What other titles does the Scripture give to Christ that describe His relationship to us? He's our King.

One that we're to serve and worship. Okay, good. Dennis? A mediator. A mediator. One who intercedes for us. He's at the right hand of the Father, praying for us by name.

Good. Jim? A prophet. He's a prophet. One who speaks to us in His Word, and so He's a teacher for us. He's the great physician. The one who heals the sick.

Good. Roger? A friend. A friend. Friend. A friend of sinners. We could be without any friends in the world. And if we have Jesus as our friend, we have one who sticks even closer than a brother and have more than we need in Christ.

Good. Comforter. One who walks through our trials with us and gives us strength in the midst of that. Good. What else?

What else? What more can be said? He's our everything. And so as we read the Scriptures, we begin to see these truths about Jesus.

We begin to see more of who He is. That He is our friend, our counselor, our guide, our high priest, our king. He is everything to us. And so He ought to be becoming increasingly precious to us.

If you're in a financial bind, you're in a tight spot, and there's no way you can get out of it, and you receive an anonymous gift in the mail, and it's enough to cover your expenses, you're relieved.

It's a great blessing to find the answer to your problems, but how much better to have attached to that gift a friend to come alongside of you and to encourage you in the midst of that difficult time, to show you how to order your finances so to avoid that problem in the future, to encourage you to walk along that path with you.

Jesus is much more than just the answer to our problems. He is a friend. He is our everything, as our brother has said, and we're the better off for it.

And so as we learn more of Jesus, Pink puts it this way, we should be more engrossed with Christ's perfections. We should be more consumed with all of these things about Jesus that are true and true for us.

And so He's made increasingly precious to us. He should be like a pearl of great price that we're willing to give up everything if we can just have Him. We should be able to say, that had I nothing else in this world, nothing else, if I had Jesus, that would be enough for me.

Are you so consumed with Christ that that is your heart, that He is that precious to you, that you can say with Paul in Philippians 3 and verse 8, What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.

I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ. Can we say that? If we're profiting from the Word, that will be increasingly our heart.

That the things of the world fade. That they are no longer precious to us. And you know that Satan holds those things out. Those things that he tries to make appear precious to us.

Sin and its pleasures. And the things that go along with it. But we must stand firm against such folly, resisting such efforts that would drag us away from our first love and say, Christ is all the world to me.

I need nothing else. And so we count everything that the world has to offer, whether it's something even legitimate that we might legitimately enjoy, or the illicit pleasures of sin.

We say, I count it all rubbish that I might gain Christ. Peter speaks of Jesus as the chosen and precious cornerstone in 1 Peter 2. And he says, Now to you who believe, this stone is precious.

It is Jesus precious to you. As you read his word. As you hear Christ preached. Is he becoming more and more precious to you?

You have a genuine acquaintance with and love for Jesus. Pink says, Where real and daily fellowship is cultivated, the Christian will be able to say with the psalmist, Whom have I in heaven but thee?

And there is none upon the earth that I desire besides thee. Do you know Christ like that? It's one thing to attend services each week, to give your money, and to have every outward form of religion to know about Christ and to pay him lip service, but it's another to truly know him, for him to be real to you and to be precious to you.

If you don't have an experiential knowledge of and love for Christ, then all of your forms of religion are for nothing. I want you to listen to a quote.

A little bit longer one from our author, but he pleads with his readers. And so I want you to hear his plea. Our great need is to be occupied with Christ, to sit at his feet as Mary did, and receive out of his fullness.

Our chief delight should be to consider the apostle and high priest of our profession, Hebrews 3.1. To contemplate the various relations which he sustains to us. To meditate upon the many promises he has given.

To dwell upon his wondrous and changeless love for us. As we do this, we shall so delight ourselves in the Lord that the siren voices of this world will lose all their charm for us.

Ah, my reader, do you know anything about this in your own actual experience? Is Christ the chief among 10,000 to your soul? Has he won your heart? Is it your chief joy to get alone and be occupied with him?

If not, your Bible reading and study has profited you little indeed. Now what do you think when you hear that? Oh, he's a fanatic.

A little bit too excited about Jesus. I hope not. Because that would be a sign that Jesus isn't real to you. I hope that's your heart. Ah, my reader, do you know anything about this in your own actual experience?

What it is to know who Christ is as our friend, a brother, our helper, our savior, our Lord, our King. And so to have him become increasingly precious to you, take time to sit at his feet.

To hear him teaching you as our your prophet. And have your heart run out after him in love and adoration. And you'll find that the time spent in his presence and his word has been for your profit.

You're profiting from the word if you learn more of Christ and so he becomes more and more precious to you. A fourth way you can know you're profiting from the Scriptures.

You're profiting from the Scriptures when you have an increasing confidence in Christ. You're profiting from the Scriptures when you have an increasing confidence in Christ.

Or we could say a growing faith in Christ. We learn in Scriptures that there are degrees of faith. There is little faith.

There is weak faith. And there is great faith. There is trusting with all one's heart. There is the full assurance of faith. We pray that our faith might be strengthened. And it should be plain to us from reading the Gospels that Jesus is pleased with strong faith.

And as we read and we learn more and more about Jesus, our faith should be increasing. And we should know that Jesus is pleased with such faith. Recognizing that even that faith is a gift from God.

But Jesus is pleased with strong faith. You all help me think of some of the times in Jesus' ministry when He expressed His pleasure at the strong faith of those who came to Him.

Think of some occurrences where somebody came to Him and He was pleased with their faith. Jim. Okay. The centurion comes to Him and He has a servant that wants to be healed.

And He says, Don't even come to My house. Just speak the Word and it will be healed. And we read in Luke 7, When Jesus heard this, He was amazed at Him. And turning to the crowd following, He said, I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.

Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well. pleased with their faith. Jim. I thought the lady who touched His garment would be healed.

Okay. She comes up and He feels the power has gone with Him. And He declares her healed. And she did have great faith. Just that she would have to touch the hem of His garment.

Jesus pleased with such faith. Good. What else? The Canaanite woman. A Gentile woman who comes and her daughter's possessed by a demon.

And Jesus tries to put her off. He says, I've come for the Jews and it wouldn't be good to throw what's for them to the dogs. The Gentile dogs.

And she says, But even the dogs feed from the crumbs under the table. And Jesus says to her, Woman, you have great faith. Your request is granted. And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

Good. The four men that come carrying the paralytic on the mat. And they dig a hole in the roof and let them down in front of the Savior. And Jesus says, When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven when he saw their faith.

And so we know that Jesus is pleased with great faith. And so we ought to be growing in faith. That ought to be our desire, our prayer, that our faith would be strengthened. And even as we see these accounts, we see what great faith they had.

They believed that Jesus could, and would help them. And they trusted Him to do that. And so we're encouraged to trust Him for the same. And at the same time, as we read through the Gospels, we see weak expressions of faith.

And Jesus' displeasure with that. Help me think of some times where Jesus expressed a displeasure with the weak faith of His followers. Chuck?

Peter starts off well. And then he looks around and he sees the wind and the waves. And he begins to sink. And immediately, Jesus reached out His hand and caught him.

You of little faith, he said, why did you doubt? Why did you doubt? Jim? When they were on the boat with Jesus and the waves, the storm come up, it's all from the boat.

Okay? Yeah, and He rebukes the wind and the waves. And they're made calm. And we see their weak faith. Why did you doubt? Why do you fear? The disciples, He says, you of little faith, why are you so afraid?

So why are you afraid? Why do you fear? Why do you doubt? You have the Savior of mankind. You have the great King who's on the throne as your friend, your brother, your helper to the end.

You need not fear. You need not doubt. But rather, be growing in your trust of Him and your faith in Him, your confidence in Him. We must come to know Him as He's revealed in the Word and as we learn more of Him.

You see, all of these things go together. You learn more about Christ and so He becomes more precious to you. And as you learn more about Christ, one of the things you learn about Him is that He's trustworthy. He's never yet let His people down.

He's never failed them. He's never forsaken them. And as you read the Scriptures, you see that. You see that He's faithful again and again to His people. And so you begin to trust Him more and more. Psalm 9 and verse 10, those who know Your name will trust in You.

For You, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek You. You see the psalmist's progression? Those who know You will trust You. For You have never forsaken those who seek You. And that's what we begin to see.

We see more of Christ. And Pink says, as Christ becomes more real to the heart, as we are increasingly occupied with His manifold perfections, and He becomes more precious to us, confidence in Him is deepened until it becomes as natural to trust Him as it is to breathe.

It's the way our friendships work here on this earth. You first meet someone, and you're pleased with them on first impression, but you're not about to trust them with your life because you don't know them.

You just know a little bit about who they are. You've just met them. But as your friendship develops with them, as your affection for them deepens, as you see them prove time and again to be faithful, and you hear others speak of their faithfulness, your confidence in that person begins to grow.

And you arrive at the point where you would put your life in their hands, where you can trust them fully as you know and learn more about them. So it is with the Savior. You ought to be, as you read the Scriptures, as you hear them preached, increasingly aware of what Christ has done, of who He is, that He is faithful.

And so your confidence in Him is deepened, and your fear and your doubt begin to shrink, and your worry begins to fade away as your confidence in Christ grows stronger and stronger.

That's one of the ways you know you're profiting from the Word, that your confidence in Christ is growing. A fifth way you can know you're profiting from the Scriptures. You're profiting from the Word when it produces in you a deepening desire to please Christ.

You're profiting from the Word when it produces in you a deepening desire to please Christ. if all of these other things are happening, then you'll surely long to please this one that you've come to know and that you've come to love and who has become so precious to you, the one in whom you've placed your faith, your confidence.

Our goal will no longer be to please ourselves because that's what our goal is until God comes and changes our heart. It's to please self. It's looking out for number one.

Wanting to do what's best for us, but as we begin to see how great Christ is and how worthy he is of our service and praise, pleasing ourself becomes less important.

Pleasing Christ becomes more important. Paul said to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 15, and he died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

That's our goal. To live for Christ and as we become increasingly drawn out to him in love, we'll want to please him. And again, isn't that the case with our earthly friendships?

As we come to know and love people, we want to please them. We want them to be happy with us. We want them to be thankful for us and so we seek to please them. And so it will be with our Savior on a much deeper level.

Again, Pink says, Love delights to please its object. And the more our affections are drawn out to Christ, the more shall we desire to honor him by a life of obedience to his known will.

If a man love me, he will keep my words. John 14, 23. And it's not just enough to just say that we love Christ. With our lips, with our words, it's love that must be demonstrated in actions.

And in truth, that's genuine love. John tells us in 1 John 3, 18. And here's where our profession of faith begins to be tested. Do we really hate our sin and love our Savior?

We'll hate our sin because we see what it does to the one that we love so much now. Our love has been deepened for Christ and we begin to see that it's my sin that put him on the cross.

It was for my sin that he suffered. For my iniquity that he was bruised. And so, we begin to hate our sin more and we begin to long to please our Savior more.

You see how all of these things go together? You can't really separate out profiting from the Word and to sin and God and Christ. It's helpful to do that, to see these things, but they all run together. We learn more of our sin and we see what it did to our Savior.

And we're drawn out in love to our Savior and a desire to please Him. Again, here our author, it is impossible, seriously, to believe that it was my sins which caused the Son of God to shed His precious blood without my hating them.

My sins caused His death. And so, I must hate my sin. And so, as you read God's Word, do you find yourself more and more hating your sin and more and more longing to be like your Savior?

More and more seeking to please Him by the way you live? If that's the case, then you're profiting from the Word of God. Do you desire to be like Christ?

Do you desire to please Him? Do you hate the things that you know caused His pain and suffering? Oh, in the last place, you're profiting from the Scriptures when they cause you to long for the return of Christ.

You're profiting from the Scriptures when they cause you to long for the return of Christ. When you're absent from one that you love, think in human terms for a moment.

Writing and reading letters or emails is good. Talking to them on the phone is good. But there's nothing like seeing them face to face where you can embrace them and kiss them and show your affection for them and see their affection for you in their eyes.

You long to be face to face with them. If you all know anything about my wife and I, our relationship prior to moving to California was all long distance. I lived in Kentucky and she lived in lots of places.

New York, Massachusetts, Canada. Anyway, all over the place. And we were thankful for email in those days. Email was just starting to be a popular thing way back in those days.

And we were thankful for it because you could communicate instantly as it were. You send and it's right there. I was glad when I saw her email address in the inbox.

And it was good to read notes from her. And talking on the phone was even better. And we would have time where we talked on the phone. But the very best was when we could travel and see one another face to face.

And there was no kissing back then. But it was good to be in the presence of one another. And we longed for those times. And as our relationship became more serious and it became more apparent that this was the one for me, we began to aim to try to be together at least once a month even though we lived so far apart.

And sometimes we cheated and we were together at the end of the one month and the beginning of the other all together. But we got both months. But it was the great desire at least of my heart to be with her. I wanted to see her face.

And I think she would say the same of me. But letters and phone calls and emails were good. I was thankful for those things. But there's nothing like being with the one that you love.

And maybe you all have had long distance relationships and you can relate to that. Or maybe if one of you goes away on a business trip and you're away, it's good to talk on the phone at night. But you long to be with them.

You want to be with them face to face. Well, take that and multiply it. And remember that if all things on earth are to be counted as loss, even our relationships with our family pale in comparison to our relationship with Christ.

If all things are to be lost that we might know Christ, then how much more should we be longing to see Christ face to face? To be in His presence.

To be longing for Him to come back so that we might be with Him. One of the great glories of eternity will be that we get to see Christ.

Theologians call it the beatific vision, the blessed vision where we see Christ, where we're in His presence. And so we're thankful that God has left us His Word.

We can read the words of Christ to us in the Scriptures. And we can speak to Him in prayer. And we apprehend Jesus by the eyes of faith. We're walking by faith in this world, not by sight.

And we understand that. But I hope that you're longing for the day when you can be face to face with Christ. When you can be in His presence. As you're profiting from the Scriptures, that longing will be deepening in your heart.

We long for that day for one thing because when we see Him, we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him. For we shall see Him as He is. 1 John 3, 2. When we see Him, we'll be transformed into His image.

No more struggle with the sin that we hate. We'll be able to please Him as we ought to serve Him. No sin will hinder our communion with Him.

The devil can't reach us there. And so we long for Him to come again when we see His face. So if you find yourself saying, Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Or you say with a psalmist, And I, in righteousness, I will see Your face.

And when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing Your likeness. Then you know that the Word of God is doing you good. You know that it's profiting you when you long to be with Jesus.

Now, I don't want to in any way disparage the Scriptures and say that these words aren't sufficient for us. They aren't good enough. No. God's Word is sufficient. He's given us everything that we need for life and godliness.

And so this side of glory, this is all that we need. And we don't need a picture of Christ or an image of Him to help us in our way.

That's not what I mean by saying we long to see Christ face to face. We see Him in the pages of Scripture. But we see in the Scripture as well those that long to be in His presence.

They long for His coming. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. And so if you're longing for the coming of Christ, you know that your study of God's Word is doing you good. So here are six ways you know that you're profiting from the Word with respect to Christ.

One, you feel your need of Christ. Two, Christ is more real to you. Three, you learn more about Christ and so He becomes more precious to you.

Four, you have an increasing confidence, a growing faith in Christ. Five, you have a deepening desire to please Christ. And six, you long for the return of Christ.

Are you seeing those things in your life? If you are, then you're profiting from the Word. And so as you come to the Word, as you go to study God's Word, as you pick it up each day and read it, don't let it become just a rote process where you do it because you know it's the thing that you should do.

See to it that you're profiting from it. As you read and you read something about your sin, you say, am I being convicted for my sin? Is it producing sorrow on me? When you read of the glory of Christ, we're going to hear of the glory of Christ this morning from Philippians chapter 2 and what He's done for us.

Don't go out from this place having heard the Word of God preached, having seen Christ portrayed before us, and be unaffected by it. Say, God, let this Word take root in my heart.

Don't just assume that you're going to profit from the Word when you sit down to read it and when you sit down to hear it preached. Pray that it will be so. Say, God, make this Word beneficial in my life.

Make it useful to me. Make it profitable to me. And then expect that God will answer that prayer. We've talked about ways to profit from preaching. Precommit to hearing and obeying the Word of God.

And so, when you've heard the Word preached this morning, you have a moment there in the pew to pray and to contemplate. Pray that God wouldn't let it just flee away.

That Satan wouldn't steal it away. That the cares of the world wouldn't cause you to forget the things that you've heard. Pray that it would take root in your life and that it would do you good. And then go home and pray over the Word that you've heard.

And throughout the week, remember the Word that you've heard preached and pray that God would cause it to have these desired effects in your heart. And He will. And so, may we be a people that profit from the Word.

Let's not just gather together because it's the thing to do. Because it's what we've always done. We've always had Sunday school and Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night. And that's what we do. Come together so that you might be profiting.

So that you might be growing in grace. Don't just read your Bible every day because it's the thing to do. Do it that you might grow from it. That you might learn from it. That it might do you good. And so, may we honor God in our study of His Word.

I've still got a moment. Any questions or any comments on profiting from the Word of God? may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may