We're going to be in Judges chapter
5 again this morning, if you'd like to open your Bibles there
with me. Tricia and I want to thank you
from the bottom of our hearts. Sorry. Your expressions of love
and encouragement have been such a blessing to us, and we enjoyed
our time away this past week. I can say with all sincerity,
there's no place like this place, not to us. We're thankful for you, and we're
thankful to be home and to be here with you and to be able
to worship our Lord together this morning. And we're also
thankful as a congregation for Maile Jane Hardman. She was born
yesterday. I'm sure you all know that. I was talking to Star yesterday,
and she said, one more of God's tiny miracles. I said, yeah,
but not so tiny. Big baby girl. So we're very
thankful. All right, let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we come into thy holy presence,
thanking you for the ability to sing that song with some understanding,
to join our hearts together in worship, to enter into thy presence in
the name of thy dear son. Lord, how hopeful we are this
morning that you'd be pleased to enable us to speak and enable
us to hear. Lord, that we would hear from
you, that you would speak clearly to our hearts, and that we would
be given the gift of faith to rest all the hope of our salvation
in the Lord Jesus Christ, who himself is our life, our joy, our peace, our righteousness,
our sanctification. Lord, cause him to be lifted
up. Thank you for your word. Thank you for the truth and the
power of it. We pray that it would, that it
would be living and effectual in the hearts of your people
this morning. We thank you, Lord, for little Maylee
Jane and ask Lord your blessings on her and Savannah and Ryan.
boys, Lord, that you would enable them to raise her in the nurture
and admonition of the Lord, and that you'd be pleased to call
her out in faith in Christ, which is His name we pray. Amen. You have your Bibles open to
Judges chapter 5. And by way of introduction, I
just want to say that We are preaching the answer to man's
greatest need, and yet it is a need that most men do not even
believe they have. We're preaching the answer to
a problem that men don't think they have. We're preaching to
men who can't hear, except the Lord give them ears to hear.
They cannot see unless the Lord gives them eyes to see. The hearing
ear and the seeing eye are both from the Lord. And I'm reminding
us of our dependence on the Lord to do that for us this morning. We're preaching a message of
life. to men who are by nature spiritually dead. And if the
Lord doesn't give us life, we'll not have any life at all. And I would say to you, child
of God, that if you believe that Jesus Christ is your greatest
need, and if God has made you to see that you are a sinner,
devoid of all righteousness, and that Christ Jesus the Lord
is all your salvation. He's all your righteousness.
He's all your hope. Rejoice. Rejoice. That's a gift of God. And it's
a rare thing. It's few, few people that have
any interest at all in the gospel. If you're able to find rest and
hope for your soul in Christ, what a blessing. The only real
comfort and the only real peace that the child of God has in
this life is when they're able to rest their souls in Christ
and listening to the gospel. Faith truly comes by hearing
and hearing comes by the word of God. And the older we get
and the more of this world we see, the more we realize how
true it is of what Solomon said about everything else in this
world, apart from what we're talking about right now, is vanity. There's no, I mean, we have a
few moments of fleeting pleasure with the things that the Lord
has made and provided, but there's no substance to it. There's no
substance. There's no hope. There's no salvation
anywhere. We're preaching that men are
sinners and yet they don't believe they're sinners. If you believe
that you're a sinner, rejoice. That's a gift of God. We're preaching
a God who is absolutely sovereign over the armies of heaven and
over all the inhabitants of the earth. Men don't believe that.
They believe themselves to be sovereign. They've set themselves
up on the throne of God. They've made their will to be
the final determining factor of all things. If you believe
that God is sovereign and you're able to rejoice in that, oh,
be thankful. That's a rare thing. We believe that our God is just
and that he's holy and that he must punish sin and that there's
no way to approach him apart from being found in Christ. And
if you're able to believe that and to rejoice in that and to
find your comfort and hope in Him, the sovereign, successful
Savior of sinners, who's seated at the right hand of God, who
has accomplished everything that God requires for the salvation
of your soul, that's the substance of life. He is life. And so we pray, Lord, rend the
heavens and come down. Don't leave us to ourselves,
or we'll be just like everyone else. Lord, make us to differ. Don't enable us to find our comforts
and our hope in the temporal, vain things of this world. I've titled this message, The
Cause of Sin and Salvation. And we find it here just in a
few verses in Judges chapter five. Deborah is rejoicing in the victory
that God gave to Israel over Sisera, you remember in chapter
four when when Deborah, as the prophetess, went to Barak and
said to him, that he was to gather up the children of Israel and
they were to go to battle against the king of Canaan, Sisera. I'm sorry, Jabin. And Jabin's
commander over his army was Sisera. And we saw in the last few weeks
that Jabin is a picture of Satan and Sisera is a picture of sin.
And how Jael took Sisera and nailed him to the floor with
a spike through his temple of his head and how that pictures
for us what the Lord Jesus Christ has done in conquering Satan
and conquering sin by nailing it to the cross and putting it
away by the sacrifice of himself. And that's what Deborah's rejoicing
in. So this Old Testament story is, well, it's It's relevant to us right now,
isn't it? It's not just an Old Testament
story that we read and fantasize about. No, we see it for what
it is, a picture, a depiction of what the Lord Jesus Christ
has done for us right now, today, because sin and Satan, death
and hell is our enemy. And if the Lord Jesus Christ
doesn't conquer our enemy for us, we have no power over any
of them. And so Deborah is doing like
Moses did. You remember in Exodus chapter
15, after the Lord brought the children of Israel out of Egypt
and Moses sings this glorious song of deliverance. And now
Deborah, this is the second time in the scriptures where a song
of deliverance is being sang by the people of God. And Deborah's
writing this song. rejoicing. And if the Lord enables
us to have ears to hear, we will rejoice with her and with all
the people of God. She identifies in verse 8 what
the cause of the problem was. We've seen in our study of judges
in each chapter where the Lord sends a judge and delivers the
children of Israel, a type of Christ. And then they go right
back to their sin again. And they're back in bondage for
so many years until the Lord, till they cry out, they cry out,
Lord, save me, help us. This, this bondage is too great
for us. We cannot, here's, here's your
life and my life. The Lord sends Christ as our
deliverer, which we hope we do once again this morning. And
then we so soon lose sight of him and turn back to the vain
things of this world. And then sin takes its toll and
we find ourselves crying out again and again. So as the people
of God, we're always coming to Christ. We're always in need
of him to deliver us. And so, She identifies the cause
of the problem in verse eight. They chose new gods. That's why they got in trouble.
That was the cause of their sin. And that's the cause of your
sin and my sin. And it goes all the way back
to the garden. When Adam chose to disobey God. And it's the
cause, it's the root cause of all of our problems. When we
choose our way over God's way. And all the consequences that
come from that. And we lose sight of the fact
that God has told us, my way is not your way. My thoughts
are not your thoughts. As the heavens are high above
the earth, so are my ways above your ways. There is a way that
seems right unto man. Oh, it seems prudent. It seems
like this is the right choice to make. And yet we choose against
God and then That's the cause of our sin. James is clear on
that. When he says that we sin, when
we lost has its way, we have our way. And when sin is finished, it
bringeth forth death. And so thankful that sin did
not finish its course in our life. that it finished its course
in Christ on Calvary's cross. Sin brought forth death to him.
And if we're not able to find our hope in Christ, sin will
have its way in our lives. It will bring forth its end because
the end of sin is death is death. And the cause of sin is that
they chose new gods in that that your problem? I know it's my
problem. You know, I just choose, I just
want, you know, it's so prevalent, you know, we see babies come
into the world, you know, just spend a few hours with a one-year-old
or two-year-old, you know, you'll find out that they, you know,
it's all about me. It's all about me, isn't it?
We love our babies, but we have to nurture them and drive that
selfishness out of them, don't we? Teach them. We allow a child
to remain like they are when they're babies, and they're going
to end up being in all kinds of problems, aren't they? But we still have that spirit
in us, don't we? And the ultimate expression,
the ultimate expression of sin is the free will gospel. Free will, it is the lie. I met some people up in Washington,
I was telling the men this morning in the study last Wednesday,
went up to preach a funeral at Arlington. Met a preacher, he
introduced himself as a Free Will Baptist preacher. I didn't
know there was a denomination called Free Will, that they actually
plastered their heresy right on the name of their denomination.
But, you know, he was very proud that he was a Free Will Baptist
preacher. And I had just gotten off the plane and written an
article on Free Will. And I said, well, that's interesting.
I said, I just wrote an article on Free Will. Would you like
to read it? And he said, sure, I'd love to. So I gave it to
him and he never spoke to me again after that. I don't know
if that article is in your bulletin this morning. I didn't think
so. But anyway, it's the ultimate expression of sin is when man
stands in rebellion against God and he says, I will. And he thinks
he can save himself by his own will. They chose. That's the problem,
isn't it? They chose. It really is the root cause of
all sin. Notice in verse 8, they chose
new gods, then was war in their gates. Now here's, if choosing new gods
is the cause of our sin, having war in our gates is the result
of sin. The gate is the last barrier
to a city. And once the gate is broken down,
then the city is overthrown. We see that when the Lord Jesus
Christ said of himself when he told Peter upon this rock, The
confession that you just made that I am the Christ, the son
of the living God, I'm going to build my church and the gates
of hell shall not be able to prevail against it. The Lord
Jesus Christ will go into the very belly of hell and bring
out those who are held captive by sin by taking down their gates. That's the picture of Samson
going into the Philistine city. And the scripture says that he
took the gates of the city with its hinges and put them on his
back and carried them away. So the children of Israel had
free access into that city. Here's the cause of our sin. Your life is your little city.
And sin is crouching at the gate, at the door. Isn't that what
the Lord told? Who was it? The sin was crouching
at his door. Anyway, that's, you remember
the, That's where, that's where sin is. It's at the door. You
know, the first time gate is mentioned in the Bible is in
Genesis chapter 19, when the angels went into Sodom to deliver
Lot out of the city of Sodom. And the scripture says that Lot
was sitting at the gate of the city. Now that's where the elders
sat. That's where the decision makers of the city were. Lot
had made himself at home in Sodom. Solemn is a picture of this world.
And, um, and the Lord says that, uh, the, the scripture says that,
that lot sat at the gate of this city. He was part of the decision
makers of the city, but had not had much influence in that city.
Had he, you know, the truth is you and I haven't had much influence
in this world. No, we haven't. Oh, influence
your children best you can. Influence the few people around
you. You know, be a good example and be faithful, but our influence
is so. We're like Lot sitting at the
seat of us. The word Sodom means burning.
That's the translation of that word. And so here's a picture
of this world that is already slated to be consumed by fire. And we're sitting at the very
gate of it, and yet we're not having much influence in this
world. And when the angels brought Lot
out the next morning, the scripture says that Lot lingered He was
reluctant to leave Sodom. He lingered in the city. But
here's the irresistible grace of God. The angel took him by
the hand and drew them out. And the fire could not fall from
heaven until Lot and his family was taken out of the city of
Sodom. And so it is for you and I. We sit here at the gate of the
city. We really don't have much influence on anything in this
world. The world's going on its way. And and yet there's something
about the comforts of this life that caused us to linger in the
city of burning. God, by his grace, takes us by
the hand and pulls us out. He makes us willing in the day
of his power. He causes us, and if He doesn't,
we won't. We won't. We'll be consumed with
the city. So we see here in verse 8, the
cause of our sin is our will, our free will. Our will is free. It is free. It's free to do whatever. Matter
of fact, I would say that you've never done anything against your
will. Ever. Every choice you've ever
made was what you wanted to do. Every choice that I've ever made,
I willed to do it. Somebody puts a gun to your head,
and you've got money in your pocket, and they're robbing you,
I promise you when that experience is over, you're not going to
say, well, they forced me against my will to take them, to give
them my money. Because in that moment of truth,
there's nothing that you want to do more than for them to have
every penny that's in your pocket. You will them to have it. Now
your circumstances, trust me, I'm speaking from experience. So my point is that you've never
done anything against your will. Everything you've ever done was
consistent with what you wanted to do in that moment. And so
in that sense, your will is free. It's free to do whatever it wants
to do. And therein lies the problem with our salvation. Unless God
makes us willing, unless he regenerates us and gives us a new heart,
Regeneration necessarily precedes faith because if God doesn't
make us willing, we don't come to Christ because we don't want
to come to Christ. We have no will to come to Christ. We have
no desire for Christ. So yeah, you see, the will is
free, but what it's free to do is sin. And what it always wills
to do. You see that? God has to make
you willing. Men think, well, you know, I'm
free to make choices every day of my life. That's, they chose
new gods. That was the root cause of their
problem. And the root cause of your problem and my problem is
my will, my choices against God. Your will's free. It's just not free to act against
itself. Your will can't act against itself.
It can't will something it doesn't want. It can't love something
it hates. It can't desire something it
has no interest in. You see that? They chose. Men are going about their lives
just choosing whatever they want. And therein lies the problem. God has to give us a new nature
and make us willing. And when we do, Oh, we come gladly,
gladly. We come because he's given us
a new nature, but that old man, the old man that every child
of God still has is still choosing against God. Isn't it still choosing
against God? And that's our, that's our problem. And because of that, there's
war in the gates. There's war in the gates. Oh, I'm so thankful
that Revelation chapter 21 ends with telling us what that new
Jerusalem looks like when it's coming down from heaven. And
there's 12 gates representing the 12 tribes of Israel. And
all the gates are made of a single pearl, the pearl of great price,
the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the door into the sheepfold.
He is the gate into heaven. And the gates are open. Turn
with me to Isaiah chapter 26. Isaiah 26. Look at verse one. In that day
shall this song be sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong
city. Salvation will God appoint for
walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates. The Spirit
and the bride say, come. You see, right now the veil is
rent, the gates are open, and God is calling on his people,
come, come into the city. It's the place of safety. Because of your choice, there
are wars in your gates. You are battling sin in your
gates, but here's a city whose gates are open in which there
is nothing but peace and righteousness and life and salvation and hope
and love and grace. Here's the city with the gate.
Open ye the gates. It's a strong city. God has appointed
for her walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates that the righteous
nation would keep it. The truth may enter in. What
is it to keep the truth? It's to believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. It's to rest all your hope on
Him. that will keep him in perfect
peace, whose mind has stayed on me." Oh, what a promise. What a promise. Lord, put our
affections on things above. We're so prone to, to wander
from the God we love and to choose the things of this world over
the things of God. But perfect peace belongs to
him whose mind is stayed on thee. And there's only one mind that's
ever been fully stayed on God all the time, perfectly. And that's the mind of Christ.
And the scripture says, you have the mind of Christ. If you have
Christ, you have the mind of Christ. And so, he keeps bringing
our minds back, doesn't he? You can't go far. If you're a
believer, you know this by experience, you can't wander far. The Lord
won't let you. He just keeps bringing you back,
doesn't he? Trust ye in the Lord. Look at
verse four. Forever, for in the Lord Jehovah
is everlasting strength. Go back to our text. By the way, 2 Peter chapter two
says that righteous Lot was vexed in his soul against the filthy
conversation of the wicked in that city. You know, for the child of God,
both those things are true. There's something about the city
of Sodom that causes us to linger, from which God has to pull us
out. And at the very same time, the soul of the righteous man
is vexed by the wicked conversations of this world. And then they're
vexed by the influence that it has on them. Oh, the war. The war that's in the gates. Look at the rest of verse, we'll
get back to our text in Judges chapter five. Was there a shield or spear seen
among the 40,000 of Israel? Now you know what that's a picture
of. What is the shield? It's the shield of faith. Deborah's
asking a rhetorical question. When we choose against God and
we find there to be war in our gates versus the gates of the
New Jerusalem where we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus
Christ, Scripture says, was there a shield? Was there faith? Faith is a gift of God. For by
grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. If
the Lord doesn't give us faith, we won't have faith. And the believers always cry,
and Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. Is that not our
experience? So we're always struggling with
this thing called faith. You said, can faith and fear
exist together? I suggest to you, as long as
you have two natures, yes, they will. They will. They'll always be together. The
spirit will always war against the flesh, and the flesh will
always against the spirit, so that you cannot be what you would
be. If it wasn't for the new nature, we'd all be perfect devils. And if it wasn't for the flesh,
oh, We'd be as we will be one day when this flesh is put back
in the ground. There was war in the gates. Was
there a shield or spear among the 40,000 in Israel? Now you
know what the spear is, that's the sword of the spirit, which
is the word of God, which by the gospel is preached unto you.
And so, Was there, was the gospel there? No. Was the shield of
faith there? No. That was the problem. Lord,
give me the, make the sword alive in my heart. Make it a double-edged
sword. Make it an effectual sword. Lord,
make it a living sword. Make it a sword that cuts in
both directions. It convicts and it converts. Lord, I need the sword of your
spirit. We're not talking about words printed in a book on a
page. We're talking about the living word of God, that the
spirit of God has to make effectual to our hearts, causing us to
believe. We bow and we believe. And you see, that's when we're
brought to that place where, Lord, it's not my choice, not
my choice, your word. is the only place I find my hope
and my comfort and my peace is in the sword of the spirit, which
is the word of God. And the only thing that quenches
the fiery darts of the devil is the shield of faith. So here we find the cause of
sin. Now, we have just a few minutes left. Look at, oh, I
wanted you to go with me to the end of chapter five, to verse 28. Sorry, I'm not sick. I've just got a tickle in my throat or
something. I know you're all looking at me thinking, I wonder
what he brought home. Actually, we had to get a COVID
test yesterday before we could leave Dominican Republic, and
we tested negative as of yesterday. Judges chapter five, look at
verse 28. You remember the story in chapter
four. Cicera is nailed to, he's a picture of sin. JL nails him
to the ground, a picture of our sin being nailed to the cross.
And now Deborah is lamenting in the voice of Cicera's mother. And look what she says. The mother
of Sisera looked out a window and cried through the lattice.
Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels
of his chariot? Her wise ladies answered her.
In other words, they agreed with her. Isn't that the way? That which gives birth to sin
is the false gospel. And here's the mother of the
freewheeler. And they're all agreeing together.
Yes, he should be back by now. All her wise ladies answered
her. Yay, she returned and answered to herself. They all agreed.
Cicero should be home by now. This war should be over. Have they not sped? Have they
not divided the prey? To every man a damsel or two,
to Sisera a prey of divers' colors, a prey of divers' colors of needlework,
of divers' colors of needlework on both sides? Meet for the necks
of them that take the spoil." What are we reading here? This
is the spirit of man-made religion, looking in vain. to the victory,
to that which it gave birth to, believing to the very end that
their will and that their works will prevail." Isn't that what our Lord said
in Matthew chapter seven? That when he separates the sheep
from the goats, the goats are gonna say, but Lord, we've done
many wonderful works in your name. We've cast out demons in
your name. Where is our reward? We did this
and we did that. That's Cicero's mother. She's
pleading for the reward of her son, that which she gave birth
to. And his reward was death. The people of God are like the
Israelites. who enjoyed the spoils of the war that their representative
got when David killed the giant. The Lord Jesus Christ shares
the spoils of war with his people, and they give him all the glory.
He fought the battle for us. He put away sin by himself. We
didn't have a shield. We didn't have a spear. All we
have was our free will and our free will brought nothing but
war to our gates. If we're going to get into the
gates of heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ is going to have to be
that gate. Look at verse nine. Here's the
cause of salvation. Oh, this is glorious. My heart is towards the governors
of Israel that offered themselves willingly among the people. Bless
you, the Lord. Now, back in chapter four, when
Deborah told Barak to gather up the children of Israel to
go battle against the king of Canaan, the scripture says in
verse six that there were only Men from the tribes of Naphtali
and Zebulon. 10,000 men went with Barak and
they only came from two of the 12 tribes. Naphtali translated
means wrestling. And Zebulon translated means
exalted. And here's the two natures. When the Lord, he's talking,
she's saying my heart and she's speaking on behalf of the Lord,
his heart. The first cause of our salvation
is the love of God. That's the first cause. If the
first cause of our sin is our free will, the first cause of
our salvation is the love of God. The scripture says that
he has loved us with an everlasting love. He's never seen his elect
outside of Christ. They've always been seen in Christ.
They've always been loved in Christ. And the Lord himself
said, nothing shall separate us from the love of God, which
is in Christ Jesus. So here we have the first cause
of our salvation, his love, his effectual love, his love. We love him because he first
loved us. His particular love, Jacob I have loved, Esau I have
hated. This idea that God loves everybody
and wants everybody to be saved and Christ died for everybody
and he's doing his best to try to get everybody to love him
back. That's just a lie. That's man choosing his way and
bringing war into his cage. That's Cicera's mother. That's
Cicera's mother waiting for her son to come home. No. God's love is particular. It's effectual. It's holy. It's eternal. And it's the first
cause of our salvation. And the scripture says he loved
them to the end. Hearing his love, not that we
love God. We do love him, but we don't
define love by our love. Our love is so up and down and
so hot and cold and so fickle and so sinful. Hearing his love, not that we
love God, but that he loved us and gave himself as a propitiation,
gave his son as a propitiation for our sin. Here's the love
of God demonstrated, the sacrifice of Christ, bearing the sins of
his people, putting them away, destroying sin, conquering Satan,
opening the grave, taking away the war from our gates and opening
up the gates of glory and saying to his people, come, come. Our heavenly Father, we ask that
you'd be pleased to bless your word and cause us, Lord, to find
our hope and our salvation in thy dear son. For it's in his
name we pray, amen. Thank you.