Would you open your Bibles to
the 27th chapter of the book of Matthew? Matthew chapter 27. I suppose I won't have to introduce
myself again, because it looks like the same crowd as was here
earlier. I don't notice anyone new. But I do want to say thank
you. If I didn't say before, thank
you for having me here. Um, it is an honor when anyone
who knows the gospel asks a man to come preach it to him because
they are extending to him a significant amount of trust. And I take that
seriously. Now I realize there's an even
more serious obligation. If God sends a man to preach,
Paul says, he's entrusted me with the gospel. That's what
the word steward indicates, someone entrusted with something. And
yet I feel that I should let you know I feel honored that
you all would have me here, that you think it was worthwhile to
gather on a Sunday morning and listen to what I have to say.
And I certainly do hope that what I have to say is what the
Lord would have said for your benefit and for His glory. One thing is I've been preaching
for 35 years. I actually did some of what somebody
might call preaching before then, but I'm not going to count that.
But when I was about 25, the church where Bonnie and I were
members in Ashland, Kentucky, the pastor there, a very gifted
man, started a preacher's class for some of the men in the congregation
who seemed to show some gifts for preaching. I already had
a degree in Bible. But the Lord had not sent me
anywhere, which I have told people in times past that when He didn't
send me somewhere, He showed some remarkable grace to that
church He didn't send me to. Because I was by no means prepared
to minister to a congregation when I got out of Bible school.
So for six years I sat in that church under the mentorship of
a man definitely called to preach. But in that preacher's class,
after we had been instructed for a while, they began having
Saturday evening services. And during those services, two
of us would preach. We were told to try to limit
our comments to 25 minutes, which most of us were able to do. I
do remember how terrified I was the first time I had to preach.
And, uh, I've gotten over that for the most part. People say,
aren't you afraid to preach? I said, well, or, you know, to
get up in front of people and preach, I said, you know, all
that you're ever afraid of is you make a fool out of yourself.
And I've done that so many times I'm accustomed to it now. And,
uh, but, uh, since that time, uh, I've had opportunities to
preach in 1983. I took a little church in Owensboro,
Kentucky was there three and a half years, then went to Iowa. And one of the things that these
years have impressed on me is the need that when we meet
like this, that we be serious about it. I don't mean that we
be glum. You know, being serious and being
joyful are not mutually exclusive. Some people act as though it
is. The church is so serious, how dare you smile, you know? But what I mean by be serious
about it is when the Word of God is preached, it's not preached
as a performance. It is preached as, well, what
was that one preacher? I can't remember his name now.
He said, I preach as one who may never preach again, as a
dying man to dying men. And you should kind of turn that
around to your own use. I hear as one who might not ever
hear again. a dying man or woman or child
who might not ever get to hear again. And we need to recognize
that the Word of God was not given to us to debate it, to
roll it around as though it's some interesting bit of religious
trivia that we discuss and come to our orthodox opinion about
and then go on unaffected by what's been said. The scriptures
were never given to us to use however we want to. They were
given to us to make us wise unto salvation, and we ought always
to take it as an exhortation to look to our Lord Jesus Christ
for salvation. He said in the book of Isaiah,
look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for
I am God, and beside me there is no other. And in preaching that message
a few months ago, I made this remark. I said, you know, sometimes
we look at Scripture, well, does this apply to me? Well, certainly
that one does, because it says, look unto me, all ye ends of
the earth. And unless you're from somewhere else, that Scripture
applies to you. And this morning, I urge all of you to listen to
this as a sinner in need of Christ. You say, well, I already have
Christ. That doesn't mean you don't need Him. You still need
Him. I've had lots of food in my life.
I still need food. And you young ones, I know what
it's like to try to sit through church as a kid. Maybe you don't
like it. I didn't like it either. I'll
be honest with you. It went longer than I wanted
it to. They talked about things I wasn't interested in. You're
young. It looks to you like you've got
a long road ahead. I turned 60 this year. And I
remember reading on Facebook here recently, someone said,
I thought it was going to take longer to get old. My wife and I have been going
through pictures. I got them from my parents' house
when the last one passed away. We got the family pictures. We're
going through them to scan them. And I'm looking at those pictures.
And I remember being your age. I see those pictures, I can remember
the events. There's a picture of me, two years, eight months
old, standing in a little pirate uniform for Halloween. I remember
that picture being taken and it seems so recent. And here
I am 60 years old now. And if I go the length that is
normal for my family, I got about 24, 25 years left and I can tell
you, it'll be gone. Everybody here is someday going
to stand in the presence of God. I'm quite possibly the oldest
person here. I'm looking around and I don't see anybody that
looks older than me. If you're older than me, you're holding
your age real well. It doesn't take long, believe
me. And even if it did, what if you could live like those
fellows before the flood? It still ends the same way. And
how long that road to the grave is, is pretty much irrelevant
when you are absolutely certain that's where it ends. And as
we mentioned in the Bible class hour, it's a point when a man
wants to die. That's bad enough. The next line's
worse. And after that, the judgment.
What I want to speak on this morning is how, we might say,
how to face the judgment. A story most of you are familiar
with. Let's read the first 10 verses of Matthew chapter 1.
Early in the morning, that's the morning of the day on which
the Lord was crucified, all the chief priests and the elders
of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death. They bound
Him, led Him away, and handed Him over to Pilate, the governor.
When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned,
he was seized with remorse and returned the 30 silver coins
to the chief priests and elders. I have sinned, he said, for I
have betrayed innocent blood. What is that to us, they replied? That's your responsibility. So
Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went
away and hanged himself. The chief priest picked up the
coins and said, it's against the law to put this into the
treasury since it is blood money. Didn't seem to bother them that
it was against the law to bear false witness against their neighbor
and have him crucified. But you know, we're not going
to take this dirty money. So they decided to use the money
to buy the potter's field as a burial place for foreigners.
That is why it has been called the field of blood to this day.
Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled. They
took the 30 silver coins, the price set on him by the people
of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter's field, as
the Lord commended me." Of all the stories ever told, the story
of Judas must be one of the saddest stories. Let me make sure you
young ones understand what Judas did. When the Lord Jesus Christ
began to go from place to place to preach, He chose 12 men to
kind of be on His inner circle. Now there were many that followed
Him around, but these 12 men, He spoke to them sometimes when
He wouldn't speak to anybody else. And He taught them more
about the truth than anybody else ever got to hear. And they traveled with him for
three years, and they saw him work miracles. They saw him defend
them. Oh, what a friend he'd been to
them. Among them was this man called
Judas. Judas was the treasurer of the
group, because like every other group of men, it takes money. to live. And there were those
who contributed to Jesus and his disciples so that they could
see to their day-to-day needs and somebody had to take care
of it. So Judas had the bag with whatever money they had he carried
around with him and it was his responsibility to see to it whatever
bills needed paid got paid. But after he traveled with the
Lord Jesus for three or three and a half years somewhere in
that neighborhood, he got greedy. He was always a thief in his
heart. And he saw, I believe that Judas understood, that Jesus
was on his way. Falling out of popularity, things
weren't going to work out like they thought. And he thought
to himself, I've got to set things up to protect myself. So he went
to the religious leaders of that day. Now I say religious leaders,
that doesn't mean they were good men, they were very wicked men.
were the leaders. And they said, Judas said to
him, you give me 30 pieces of silver. And that's what a normal
slave cost, 30 pieces of silver. He says, you give me 30 pieces
of silver, I'll show you where Jesus is and you can catch Him.
Now that tells us something about the Lord Jesus, doesn't it? He
didn't look any different than anybody else. He didn't walk
away. Maybe you all have seen pictures of people, you know,
pictures and people are saying, well, that's Jesus, and He's
got this little light around His head, a halo. He didn't look
like that. If He'd had that halo around
His head, they wouldn't have needed Judas to point Him out.
But Judas knew where He'd be, and He'd be among His disciples,
and Judas knew which one. was Jesus. And He could point
Him out to the guards so the guards could arrest Him. As a
little aside, I read here recently that the average height of a
man in Palestine in that day was 5 foot 1 inches tall. I mean,
because they've got the skeletons to dig up. They can, you know,
this isn't some speculation. They've got... Our Lord was not
6 foot tall. Again, they wouldn't have needed
Judas. They'd have said, go to Gardening Gethsemane, the tall
guy, that's Him. But see, that's how we vision.
We respect Him so much. We think of Him as this larger-than-life
person. Well, He was, but not in the
flesh. He was just a Jewish man. And
you know what Judas did? You think about how awful this
is, you young people. He went to the Garden of Gethsemane,
and he's got, would you say, policemen with him. That's essentially
what they were. Men with weapons and chains. and he walked up to the Lord
Jesus, and you know how he betrayed Him? He went and gave Him a kiss
on the cheek. He didn't even have the decency
and the sense of conscience to just stand back and say, that
one over there, second from the right, that's Him. With a token
of friendship, a sign of friendship, he betrayed the Lord Jesus. and they arrested the Lord Jesus.
They had a trial, an unjust trial, but a trial nonetheless, and
it ended with our Lord being beaten so badly that any normal
man likely would have died. And then they took Him out to
a little hill outside of Jerusalem, and they nailed His hands and
His feet to a cross and left Him to hang there until He died.
That's who Judas is. His name, talk about a name of
infamy. I tell you, nobody named their
kid Judas these days. By the way, it's the same name
as Judah. And this Judas went to hell. He went to the place made for
him. He's called the son of perdition, the son of destruction. What
privileges he had. He was among what would have
been called in that day the covenant people. He was raised in the
household of those who at least outwardly believed God. He had
in his hands or had at his disposal these scriptures. I'm sure he
grew up going to synagogue just like you young kids. Your parents
are bringing you to church. Well, Judas grew up like you.
They called church synagogue. And he went there and he had
to listen. And when he was 12, he went through his bar mitzvah.
He became an adult responsible under the religion he was raised
in. And he was religious enough that he showed an interest in
the Lord Jesus Christ. He had a good name, Judah, which
name means praise. And it's also the name of the
tribe that the Lord Jesus came from. I realize a particular
name doesn't mean a whole lot, but nonetheless, think of it.
He had a glorious name. He had a glorious privilege.
He was chosen by the Lord Jesus Christ and called to be a disciple
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's a man who saw it all. I love science fiction. And one
of my favorite kind of science fiction stories is the time travel
stories. And I just think, boy, where would I like to go back
in time? I'll tell you what I'd like to go see. I would love
to go back and just stand on the outskirts and watch. See our Lord and His disciples.
See the things that went on. Watch Him turn five loaves and
two fishes into enough food for 5,000 men, their wives, and their
children. Wouldn't you love to be in Bethany
when they roll away the stone and he speaks and a dead man
walks out? You say dead men can't walk. They can if the Lord tells
them to. I'd love to stand by in that
garden on that Sunday morning and watch when Mary sees the
Lord. Wouldn't that be great? Well, he didn't see that one,
but he saw the other ones. He saw the five loaves and two fishes.
He saw the walking on the water. He saw Lazarus come out of the
tomb. He saw it all. He heard it all. As to His outward
conduct, He was of such character that no one but the Lord Jesus
Christ knew what kind of man He really was. The Lord said,
Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? And
you know what I believe? The scriptures don't say it plainly,
but I get this impression. Not even Judas knew what kind
of man he was. It says he held the bag, but he was a thief.
And he kept helping himself out. You know, he just keeps them
up for himself. You say, well, certainly he knew he's a thief.
I know how thieves operate. After all, we all are thieves.
You know, virtually every thief justifies his theft. They rob
a bank, well the bank isn't treating us right, it isn't treating people
right. Rob your employer, my employer ought to pay me more.
Cheat on your taxes, isn't right they're taking this much taxes. How few people say, I'm a dirty
rotten thief. No, they just think they're balancing
unbalanced scales. And I can hear Judas now, well,
I mean, I do all the things the other apostles do. I preach.
I helped pass out those five loaves and two fishes. I was
rowing the boat when He came walking on the water. I was doing
everything all those other apostles do. Plus, I've got to deal with
the money. And it's only right that I get
a little something extra. Only the Lord knew what kind
of man He was. And only the Lord knows what
kind of person you are. You don't even know. Oh, we know
the doctrine. We talk about total depravity.
You have no clue. We have no clue just how bad
we are. No matter how bad we perceive
ourselves to be, I'll guarantee you we're worse. And if we could
see ourselves as God sees us, we would try to hide under rocks.
we would loathe ourselves. Job said, I've heard of you with
the hearing of the ear. And isn't that all you and I've
had? Hearing of the ear? But Job said, now I've seen you
and I abhor myself and repent in sackcloth and ashes. The Lord knew what he was, knew
he was a devil, but he was still a man of conscience. Say, how
do you know that? Because when he found out that
the Lord was going to be crucified, It pained him in his heart what
he had done. He saw the wrong of it and felt
the guilt of it. And do you realize that that
would be enough for most churches to say he's repented? Let's pull
him back in. While they'd have him on the
church rolls once again, probably be treasurer again. If not right
away, maybe some probationary period, but he'd be back on top
again. You know, you think, and we all
think, that when we feel bad about sin, that that's praiseworthy. It might be. But Judas felt bad
about his sin too. And he went to hell anyway. For
all of his privileges and all his outward morality, and turn
over now to Acts chapter 1. For all of that, note how his
life ends. Now we read one account of it
there in Matthew. Let's read this account of it. Acts 1, verse 18. The disciples are gathered together.
The Lord has ascended back to glory. And there's going to be
ten days before the Holy Spirit comes. And so the disciples are
gathered together. And Peter, as is typical of the
Apostle Peter, he has an idea and he thinks it's a good one.
He says, we've got to pick another apostle. Isn't it interesting?
The Lord didn't tell him to do that. Take this lesson from this. If the Lord hasn't said do it,
don't. Don't venture out until you find some reason to do so.
But it seemed good to everybody else. And describing all of this,
Peter says concerning Judas, with the reward he got for his
wickedness, Judas bought a field. There he fell headlong. His body
burst open and his intestines spilled out. Now that's kind
of gross, isn't it? You young kids, do you all use
the word gross anymore? That's the way we described really
nasty things when I was a kid. I mean a dead animal on the side
of the road, been laying there several days, that's gross. This
sounds gross, but that doesn't sound like what they said back
in Matthew, because it says he went out and hanged himself,
and then the priests bought the field, and he was buried in it. Well, it's not like they're contradictory
stories. Some just tell some details,
some the other. Here's what happened. Judas went
back because he felt so bad. The very men who had sent him
out to do the wicked deed, he thinks, go back there and make
it right with them and it'll be alright. And he tries to give
the money back. And he throws that money into
the temple and they say, we can't keep this money. We can't use
it for temple stuff. It's dirty money. And so they went out and bought
a field. Meanwhile, Judas goes out and
hangs himself, commits suicide, and nobody notices it for a while. I don't know where he was, but
I know that day they were all occupied with the crucifixions
going on outside Jerusalem, so they don't see Judas. And then
the next day was the Sabbath, so nobody's paying any attention,
nobody's doing anything, and there Judas hangs and begins
to decay. Finally, somebody sees him. And
I guarantee you, even if it was these guys from the temple, they
weren't going to cut him down, because a touch of dead body
made you unclean. So they probably got some more money out of the
treasury, paid some poor soul to go out there and untie or
get this dead, rotting carcass off of that tree. And they took
him to that field. that had been bought, they dug
a hole and they threw that rotting body in there. And when he hit
the bottom of that grave, he was so far gone already. It's
just a mess. He just fell apart. Judas, a
man with so many privileges, the man to whom so much had been
handed, ends up a rotting mass in a grave, his soul under God's
wrath. Why? He felt bad for what he did. In fact, King James put it this
way, he repented himself for what he had done. Well, if you
repent, doesn't that make you saved? Other people say, well,
it wasn't a full repentance. You know, he only repented, he
only felt bad about the consequences of his sin, not the sin itself. Let me cue you in on what is
the whole point of this message. The only thing wrong with Judas'
repentance is where he went with it. Where did Judas go? Right back to the law. He had that repentance which
the Bible calls the sorrow of the world that leads to death. You say he went back to the law.
I don't see the law mentioned. He went back to the temple. He
went back to those men who represented the law, who were the mediators
of the law in that day. And he had that 30 pieces of
silver in his hand. And they are representative of
his sin. Can you imagine how that must have, in a sense, burnt
in his hand? He felt, what a miserable wretch
I am. What an awful man I am. I've got to get rid of this.
And he went back to them and tried to fix things. And he went to those guys from
the law, and he said, I've done something,
I've sinned. Well, this man made an open confession.
He didn't say, I made a mistake. He didn't say, I've made some
poor decisions. His confession was every bit as forthright as
David's was in the face of Nathan the prophet. I have sinned. Not
only that, he named it. I have betrayed innocent blood. He called Christ innocent. And named his sin as a betrayal
of one who deserved no betrayal at all. If somebody betrays us,
it may be they didn't have particular justification to treat us bad,
but somebody does. None of us are innocent. He said,
I've betrayed innocent blood. And you know what they said to
him? They said two things. They said, what is that to us?
Now I'm reading out of the NIV. I'm not sure what translation
you have in your hands. But the non-translation says,
you will see to it for yourself. Which, to translate the meaning
of it, that's a Greek way of speaking. He simply was saying,
you see to that for yourself. You take care of it. And if you go back to the law
with your sin, that's exactly what the law is going to tell
you. The law will look at your repentance and your tears and
your full and open confession and say, what is that to me?
What is that to me? Now if somebody wrongs us and
comes to us, and expresses their regret for what they've done.
We kind of have an obligation to forgive them. Why? Because
we have sins that need forgiven. Right? The law's got nothing
to be forgiven for. The law doesn't care about your
tears. Tears don't answer justice. Do
they? Your children do wrong. And when
you confront them with it, suddenly they get a little fearful or
they start to feel bad. You know, they're made to understand
they've broken mom and dad's law. If they start to cry, does
that mean you're not going to do anything about it? You say,
okay, tears are good enough, fine. You might insist they cry
a few more. Justice does not recognize tears. Justice does not recognize emotions. They do not answer to sin. For
the answer of sin is what? The wages of sin is death. The
soul that sins, it shall die. Cursed is everyone that does
not continue in every point of the law what? To do it. Not to
admire it. Not to try it. Try to do it.
Not to feel bad when you don't do it. The only thing the law
recognizes is obedience. Everything else, what's that
to me? And then the second part of the
law is very simply this. You see to it for yourself. In English, we have two voices
in grammar, active and passive. Greek has a third one called
the middle voice. It's what's used here. The middle
voice means do this to yourself or in your own interest. That's
why strictly it says, you shall see to it. But it's written in
the middle voice, so really to get it into English, you have
to say, you'll see to it for yourself. This is your problem. You take care of it. And you
know what? Judas did. Judas did exactly that. He had
sinned, and the law says, the soul that sins, it shall die. And the scriptures say, cursed
is everyone that does not continue to obey the law in every point.
And it says, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. So Judas
went out and sought to things for himself. And in the end, And this is something that this
story, the parallels with the doctrines of scriptures put out.
Did you notice that when the chief priests and the elders
say we got to buy, we're going to buy a field to bury what? Strangers in. That word stranger
doesn't mean a strange person, like he's weird. It doesn't simply
mean someone you don't know. It means an alien. Someone from
somewhere else. Guy comes, say, from some Gentile
nation. And he comes into town to do
some business. Has a heart attack and dies. Well, they're certainly
not going to... I mean, they can't refrigerate
him. They can't embalm him. They're not going to try to get
him back to wherever he came from. They might not even know where
he came from. What are they going to do with this dead man? Alright,
we'll buy this field and we'll put non-Israelites in there. Paul described the Gentiles as
aliens to the covenants of promise. Outsiders. He referred to them
as those that were far from God. And where does Judas the Jew
end up? Dead. Alienated from the covenants
of promise. A stranger. Dead in his trespasses
and sins. It says that the priests Chief
priests, the elders bought this field. Acts says Judas bought
it. So how do you reconcile those
two? Well, Judas went in there and he had that money representative
of his sin. He tried to separate himself
from his sin. Oh, and don't we do that? We
try to get rid of our sin, don't we? You know something? He threw that money in there,
but it was still his money. All that the chief priests and
the elders actually did was act as real estate agents. They picked
up Judas' money and used Judas' money to buy a field. Therefore,
Judas bought the field. And I think it's very telling
that Peter describes it this way. With the wages of unrighteousness,
essentially he bought a grave. the wages of sin is what? Death. And for all Judas' efforts to
separate himself from his sin, all he got was a grave to rot
in. Are any of you trying to take
care of things yourself? Are you hearing in your heart
the testimony See to it for yourself. Are you trying to get rid of
your sin? You notice he threw it in the
temple. You can just see it now, people putting money in the plate,
trying to get rid of their sin. The Bible says your sins are
separated for you from your God. And so what we think is the right
thing to do, try to separate ourselves from our sin, and that
will bring us nearer to God. It doesn't work that way. Why?
Because sins are not just what we do, it's what we are. We have
to separate ourselves from ourselves. Moreover, we do not have what
is required or what would be necessary to separate ourselves
from our sins. We can't do it. We can throw
them if we want, but they're still ours. And all our sins will get us,
and all our attempts at making a remedy for our sin in the presence
of the law, whether it be God's law or some church's law or a
bunch of sermons, it doesn't matter. If it's you doing it,
if it's you seeing to it, it's coming before God in the law.
And all that will get you is a grave. A grave outside the covenants
of promise. And your sin will forever stick
to you and you will forever be separated from your God. See to it for yourself. Now this
happened a couple of thousand years ago. I want you to rewind
another couple of thousand years ago and an old man and his son
are climbing up the side of a mountain. The old man is about 114 years
old. I don't think anybody here is
going to be climbing a mountain at that age, if we're breathing
at all. But he's got a 14-year-old son.
He sired a son when he was 100 years old. It's his only son. And God has told him, you take
your son to such and such a place. And you offer him as a burnt
offering unto me. You kill him. You slit his throat. And then
you burn him to ashes. Abraham believed God. Now people say, wow, that was
a real test of Abraham's devotion. And it was. But you know what
it was more of? A test of his faith. You know
why? Well, God had told Abraham, through
that boy, your seed will come. Well, he's 14, he doesn't have
any children. Abraham said, well, God said he's going to have kids. So if I kill him, God's going
to raise him from the dead. That's why when he gets to that
mountain, he leaves the servants behind and he says to the servants,
you stay here, me and the boy, we're going to go up and worship
and we're coming back. Nonetheless, you're going up
that hill. The boy doesn't know what's happening yet. Abraham
hadn't told him. Any of you young people around
14 here? Anybody that age? Well, but just imagine this.
You're going up the side of the hill. And your dad has put a
bunch of wood in a bundle on your back. And in his hand, he's
got this little box that's got some coals in it. And so Isaac,
looked at his father Abraham, and he said, Father, I've got
wood. You've got fire. I see what's
going on here. You said we're going to go to
worship, and I know you can't worship God without a sacrifice.
So we've got the wood to burn to sacrifice. We've got the fire
to get the burning started. Where's the Lamb? Where is He? He says, Father,
I realize we're supposed to have a lamb and not just any lamb.
We've got to have a spotless one. We've got to have a perfect one.
You didn't bring one. Where is he? How can we worship
God? How can we approach God without
a sacrifice? And Abraham said, Son, God will
provide for himself a sacrifice. Now, that word provide. Even in the English, it indicates
more than what we think. We think provide just means to
make available. But it's made, it's a really
good translation, by the way, of the Hebrew word there. Because
it's made up of two Latin words. Pro, to, video. Everybody knows what a video
is. It's something you see. Something you watch. To provide
means to see to it. That's why later it was called... The mountain was named Jehovah-Jireh. For in the mountain of the Lord,
He will see to it. And so, what Abraham was telling
his son was this. Son? When it comes to sacrifice,
God will see to it. When it comes to dealing with
sin, God will see to it. You go to the law, the law says
you see to it. You go to the gospel, and God
says I'll see to it. And therein lies the whole difference.
between the law and the gospel. Both demand justice. Both demand
righteousness. Both demand payment for sin. But the law says, you see to
those things. In the gospel, God says, I'll
see to it. And I ask you, which route you
want to go? In Judas' experience, he looked
like everybody else, and quite frankly, he was like everybody
else. There is no difference. He didn't go to hell because
he's a thief. He came to a crossroads. A crossroads
that every one of us comes to. And at that crossroad, there's
one road that breaks off and it's very wide. It's so wide,
it's got many lanes on it. It's got pagan lanes. It's got
Christian lanes. It's got Baptist lanes. It's
got Reformed lanes. It's got Catholic lanes. It's
got Mormon lanes. It's got them all on there. And
many there be that find that road. And everyone on that road
thinks he's on the road to life. There's a way that seems right
to a man. There's a road that seems right
to him. But the ends there are of death. And what's so funny
is they're all on the road to death, yet all in those different
lanes are pointing at the other lanes and saying, you're going
to hell. And all the roads go in the same place. People say
all religions lead to the same place. All of them but one do. But at that crossroads, there's
one little winding path. And so few people find it. Why? Because that's not what they
were looking for. They were looking for a big wide road where everybody
else is. And Judas came to that crossroads
and he chose the broad road that led to destruction. Every lane
on that road, no matter what the name is on it, every one
of them, says, you see to it. You see to it for yourself. Whether
you see to it by observing the sacraments, or you see to it
by observance of the law, or you see to it by charitable works,
or you see to it by this, that, or the other, somewhere or another,
you're seeing to it. And if the testimony in your
heart and that which drives you to do the things you do approaching
God is that testimony, you see to it for yourself, you are on
the broad road that leads to destruction. I don't care what
your doctrine is. That narrow winding path is where
God says, I'll see to it. You say, but I am a sinner. And the gospel God says, I'll
see to that. I'll take care of that. Your heart cries out and said,
but I need a sacrifice. That says, I'll take care of
that. He did. Abraham said, God will provide
for Himself a sacrifice. And about 2,000 years later,
John the Baptist, standing in the middle of the river, sees
Jesus pass by. And he said, there He is. There's
the Lamb of God. There's the Provided One who
will actually take away sin. This is God's, I'll see to it. I need a sacrifice. You say,
but I need to die. God says, I'll see to it. I'll take care of that. And he
who was a provided sacrifice died. Died the death that you
and I dare not die. He's the only one in all of history
to ever completely die. You know why hell's forever?
You're never done dying. You never get it finished. You
never die in such a way that God can say, okay, I'm satisfied. Jesus Christ did. He fully died. And God said, that's all I require. His anger is gone. Why? Because
He's going to forget about our sin? No. But because the death
of Jesus Christ satisfied the demands of His justice. You say,
I need a righteousness. God says, I'll take care of that.
I am the Lord your righteousness. Of God are you in Christ Jesus,
says the Apostle Paul. Who of God has made unto us wisdom
from God. Yea, our righteousness, our sanctification,
and our redemption. You say, I've got to be holy. Well, good luck with that. That
is, if it's going to depend on your effort, He is our holiness. He is our redemption. He is our
righteousness. What is our argument in the presence
of God? Or are we going to go up and say, well, you know, when
all them free willers are down there making a mockery of your name,
I was a five-point Calvinist. That's not going to get you anywhere. Augustus' top lady wrote, Nothing
in my hands I bring. Simply to Thy cross I cling. Wretched, come to You for grace. Naked, come to You for dress. Foul, I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die. And he says, I'll see to it.
I'll take care of that. I need redemption. Got it. I'll handle that. I need a dwelling
place. for this tent is collapsing.
I'll take care of that, he says. I suppose you take a little group
like this that goes to the trouble of meeting together week by week.
You believe there's something here that you can't find elsewhere.
Because if you could, you could go elsewhere and get it a lot
cheaper. That's all good. Glad you're here. Now let me
ask you something. What testimony is in your heart?
See to it for yourself, or I'll see to that. God will see to
that. For all the other distinctives,
and I'm not saying they're not important, I'm just saying that
they all fall before this distinctive. all the other doctrinal distinctives
they have, all the other things that you believe are important
in the worship of God. Are you looking to yourself?
Or are you looking to Christ? Or are you trying to do that
even awfuler thing, if there's such a word as awfuler? Are you
trying to look at yourself and Christ? God says in the Gospel, I'll
see to it, May God grant you and me that exceptional grace
that is necessary for us not to be Judas and try to take care
of things for ourselves, but to be humble and say to the law,
I'm sorry, I can't do it. I just can't. And turn to God
in Christ and say, you're going to have to do it for me. And if your cry is for mercy,
you know, that's the one cry from which our Lord has never
turned his ear. The psalmist said, listen to
my cry for mercy. And if mercy is what you want,
you may have it. Trouble is most of us don't want
that. That's embarrassing. I need mercy. Come on. Yes, you
need mercy. You need the same kind of mercy
Judas needed. All that Judas would have taken
those 30 coins and gone out there to Golgotha and pled his case before the
one dying there. Though he would have said, you
dropped them there. I'll see to it. I'll take care of it.
But he didn't. He went back to Moses. It wasn't
Moses' fault, but nonetheless, that's where he went. and his
sins stuck to him. His sins bought him a grave.
His sins got him a hanging. His repentance got him all those
things. Repent toward God in Christ and your sins will disappear
for they shall be put upon the only one who could ever separate
you from your sins and thus join you back to your God. The Lord
bless you.