Let's go back to the book that
we've been studying on Sunday morning, Zechariah chapter 5. If you would, open your Bibles
to the book of Zechariah chapter 5. I hope that those of you who
are watching by way of the internet, if you have a Bible handy, that
you will also follow as I read and then as I endeavor to bring
the message that I believe God has laid on my heart. Here's the subject that I want
to deal with, is the woman in the basket. That's the subject,
the woman in the basket. Alright, Zechariah chapter 5,
let me read verses 5 through 11. And then the angel that talked
with me went forth. This is the angel of the covenant
now. This is the messenger from God. This is our Lord Jesus, who took
a pre-incarnate form, and he visited with this man of God. It's a blessed thing that the
Lord speaks to sinners like ourselves. Today, you're not going to hear
the voice of the Lord audibly, but you will hear His voice through
His Word. May God give us ears to hear
Him, give us an understanding of His Gospel, and may the Lord
give us ears to hear His servant. Know this, everywhere that God's
servants are standing and preaching to people this morning, sounding
forth the gospel of God's free and sovereign grace to sinners
through the blessed person and the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus
Christ. God speaks through those servants
and through his gospel to people. If you would be, if you would
be a friend, not to me, but to yourself, You need to listen. You need
to listen. So the angel talked with me.
And he went forth and he said unto me, lift up now thine eyes
and see what is this that goeth forth. And I said, what is it? A reasonable question. What is
it? And he said this is an ephah
that goeth forth, a basket, roughly a bushel basket, pretty close. So you can think of a bushel,
you know the size of a bushel basket. This is the largest measure
of dry, largest dry measurement that the Israelites had. So here's
a basket about the size of a bushel. a bushel basket, and it goes
forth. And he said, moreover, this is
their resemblance throughout all the earth. This is what is
looked at. This is what is seen throughout
all the earth. And then the prophet of God says,
and behold, there was lifted up the talent of lead. In other
words, this basket, This basket had a lid on it. Very heavy. Very heavy. A talent, it says,
of lid. And that's about 125 pounds on
top of this basket. Making that lid to be impossible
for anyone to lift it who might be inside. And then when it was lifted up,
the prophet of God, he's listening and he's looking, and there was
a woman sitting in there. A woman in the midst of the basket. So that's where my title comes
from. Who is the woman in the basket? And he said, now he identifies
what this woman represents. He said, this is wickedness.
I enjoy reading other translations from time to time, and I enjoy
reading Young's literal translation, if some of you have Young's Concordance. I enjoy reading his literal translation,
and he reads it this way, the woman is wickedness. The woman is wickedness. That's what she represents. This
is the personification of wickedness, is that woman inside the basket. And he cast it into the midst
of the ether. In other words, she's in the
basket, and then he cast the weight of the lid upon the mouth
thereof. He just pulled the lid off, so
that Zechariah could look into the basket and he sees this woman. And then he's informed she is
wickedness. That's what she stands for. That's
what she represents. You know, the Bible is a book
full of representation, full of symbols. The Lord Jesus, our
Savior, we're going to wind up by singing at the end of our
service, Look to the Lamb of God. Well, He's not literally
a lamb on four legs, but the Lamb represents Him in His meekness,
in His loveliness, in His innocence, and there are a multitude of
other symbols and lots of symbolic language used through the Bible.
So this is nothing unusual. So he puts the lid, the Son of
God puts that lid right back on it. He just pulls it off long
enough so that Zachariah could look and see a woman inside,
but she's not coming out. Because the Lord puts that lid
right back on her. And then, verse 9, Then lifted
up mine eyes, and I looked, and behold, there came two women,
And the wind was in their wings. They're actually going to fly
downwind. For they had wings like the wings
of a stork. Large wings. Powerful wings. Their flight will not be interrupted. And they lifted up the basket.
They lifted up the ephah. They lifted up the bushel basket
with the woman inside and the lid on top. They lifted up the
ephah between the earth and heaven. And then said I to the angel,
I asked the Son of God this, this one who talked with me.
I said, where are they going? That is, whither do these bear
the ephah? Where are they going with this
basket with the lid on top, weighs 125 pounds, and the woman inside
who personifies wickedness? Where are they going? And he
said unto me, they're going to build in a house in the land
of Shinar. That's the same place that they
built the Tower of Babel, same location. not far from the city
of Babylon. And it shall be established.
In other words, that house where I'm going to have these two servants
put this bushel basket with wickedness inside, with a heavy lid on top,
that house, that establishment is going to last forever, and
it will sit upon her own base. It won't be moved. The basket
with the woman inside, the woman who is wickedness, it's got a
place reserved all for itself. And from that location, it will
never be moved. I've said the woman is the personification
of wickedness, as such, She can represent all of us, all of mankind. Because that's what we are. We're
wickedness. We're wickedness. Genesis chapter
6 and verse 5, just before the Lord instructed Noah to build
an ark, preach and build for 120 years. The Lord saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth, and that every, every imagination
of his heart was only evil continually. You know what that word imagination
means? Look it up. It means the very
framework of everybody. What you're made up of on the
inside, That's you and me and everybody. Our framework is only
wickedness and evil continually. So in a very real sense, that
woman in the basket, who is the personification of wickedness,
she represents or she could represent all of mankind, all of us. because we're definitely wicked. Over in the book of Jeremiah
chapter 17 verse nine, the heart is deceitful above all things
and desperately, what's the next word? Wicked. Desperately wicked. Well, what does the word wicked
mean? If you look up that word, it
has the idea of a malignancy that cannot be cured. If you have cancer, or they suspect
you have cancer, I've shared this with you before. My dad
got sick many years ago, couldn't figure out what was wrong with
him, and they went in and had surgery to just kind of look
around. And the surgeon came back and gathered my brother
and my sister and me and our mother together with our spouses. He said, Mr. Bird is desperately
ill. I knew what that meant. There's
no hope. There's a malignancy there. from
which he cannot be cured. Now you hear me. Oh, may God
give you grace to hear me. There is within every, every
daughter and son of Adam, a malignancy, a guilt, wickedness, and God's law That's the lid. It holds us in captivity. And the law of God says you're
guilty. You're wicked. Your evil is nothing but malignancy. You're not getting out by any
effort of your own. That lead's too heavy for you
to move. And here's another sad thing
about our condition. We don't even want to get out.
We have no idea of how bad off we are. And so therefore, we're
not even looking for a cure. We're not interested in the bloody
sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're not interested in being
made the righteousness of God in Him. Because that malignancy,
it's just affected all of our bodies. All of the soul. You're talking about a cancer
that has spread. It's affected every part of us. And as far as we're concerned,
there is no hope. There's no hope. I put this article in the bulletin
about weighed in the balances and found wanting. I used that
as an illustration yesterday at the funeral for Mike Sturm. Bill Shasser, full of arrogancy,
decided he had defied God had a bunch of his nobles of
his kingdom together. They was going to get drunk and
honor their gods. And he ordered the vessels of
the temple that had been stolen by Nebuchadnezzar, his father,
to be brought in. And everybody drank wine. They
poured wine in all those vessels and toasted one another and praised
their gods. the gods of wood and silver and
gold and stone. They was having a merry old time. But then all the merriment came
to a sudden end because a hand appeared and wrote on the wall, And that teakale means, of course,
he didn't know what it meant. His magicians didn't know what
it meant. They brought in Daniel and he knew. And on that word
teakale, Daniel said to the king, you've
been weighed in the balances and you're found wanting. You're nothing but just full
of malignancy, death. Wickedness. That's everybody. That's all of us. You don't want
God to put you on the scales of His justice. See, they had
scales back then, and they had certified weights. Established. This is a real thing. And I gave
you an illustration of those. Say five pound weight. They put
it on there. That's certified. That's law.
If somebody comes in to buy five pounds of sugar, five pounds
of flour, then they'll add it to this side till it finally
balances out. And the Lord said to Belshazzar,
I put you on the scales. You don't even move the scales.
Here's the righteousness of the Son of God. Over here on this
side. And the scales are down. That
side scales down. In order to be safe forever,
you've got to balance out. Well, wickedness This awful malignancy
that we have will never balance out with righteousness. That's
an impossibility. Well, is there no hope? Must
we live and die and perish and go into outer darkness? By the
way, one of the meanings of the word ephah is darkness. Must
we abide in darkness forever and ever? Thank God the Savior came. He came to establish righteousness
for His people. He came to do something about
our malignancy. Oh, the cancer of sin. How awful
it is. It's just permeated our whole
being. And our Lord Jesus came and on
the behalf of His people, all of the malignancy, all of the
guilt, all of the transgressions was transferred from us to Him. And then He died the death that
the offended law of God demanded. Here's why I told folks yesterday,
this is why Mike went to glory. And if you go, this is why you'll
go. It's because the Lord Jesus Christ died in your room, standing
in place. That's the only reason. Because
my friend, you can't get out of that bushel basket. Not by
yourself, you can't. Something's got to be done about
your sin, and you can't do anything about it. And if you spend forever
in hell, I don't know what God has in store for you, but if
you spend forever in hell, you'll never pay for one sin. You'll never establish any kind
of righteousness. Because all you do in this life
is just unrighteousness on top of unrighteousness. Just sin
on top of sin. That's the reason this woman
is a personification of wickedness. That's all of us. Don't you see
that? Oh, how blind the natural man
is that he can't see I'm all wickedness, Christ is all righteousness. I need Him. He doesn't need me. I need Him. It's not about me
doing something for Him. It's about Him doing something
for me. And I bless His name that 2,000
years ago, He took all of my malignancy. He took all of my
defilement. He took all the sin of this poor
sinful creature. He took it upon Himself and then
bore it away, the whole bushel basket full. He bore it away
into a land uninhabited. And it will never be found. See, that's the good news of
the gospel. Not what you've got to do for the Lord, but what
the Lord's got to do for you. You see, the law of God, like
a tremendous weight, it holds you in, and the law says, perfection,
that's all I'm going to accept. Well, I'll try to do the best
I can. You won't even budge the lid. I'm living by the Ten Commandments.
You're a liar, or else you have no understanding of the Ten Commandments. They hold you in. And you're
not going to remove the weight. Well, my faith will remove the
weight. No, it won't. Because your faith can't do anything
about sin. Well, my repentance will move
the weight. No, it won't. Because your repentance won't
do anything about sin. Is repentance toward God necessary? Absolutely. Is faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ necessary? Absolutely. But repentance and faith are
not your contributions to the equation of salvation. Those are gifts from God. Christ
has been exalted for to give repentance. That's what the Scripture
says. To give repentance. You don't
have it. And faith is a gift of God. You
don't have that either. And if we had any spiritual sense
whatsoever, we'd be breathing a prayer to the Lord even right
now. Lord! Oh Lord! Give to me repentance and faith. I don't have them. They're gifts
from You. Please give them to me." And if you offer that prayer,
there's something going on already. You say, God be merciful to me.
Be propitious to me. I'm the sinner. Well, the law of God says the
soul that sinneth shall die. God placed a value upon his law. And he says, you break my law,
this is what's going to cost you. Death. Adam, you break my law, of every
tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but don't you eat
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for in the
day you eat thereof you'll surely die. and Adam seeing his wife eat,
then he considered the cost. Though he did not know really
what death was. You know that? Nancy and I talked
about that Wednesday night. He had no idea what death was. But after weighing what he did
know, He said, I'm willing to pay that price. Whew. Death's an awful price for defying
God. But that's what you merit. That's
what I merit. Death. You want to get paid? I am so interested in somebody
else who paid the debt for me. Because I owe a debt I can't
pay. Oh God, make us serious about these things. Cause us to understand. I'm in
a bushel basket. And there's nothing but darkness.
And there's a lid on top of me. It's the holy law of God. It
says, Be ye holy, for I am holy. And I can't do that. And I hear
of the Holy One. the only Savior of sinners, who
came and by His life and by His death, He established for a whole
bunch of people, for all of His people, He established righteousness
before God. And God enabled me and He continues
to enable me to just keep on coming back to Christ. He's the
only hope of God. You see that, don't you? Surely
you do. Oh God, show us that. Well, let
me look at this in three ways, and I'll see if I can set these
before you. Number one, remember this bushel
basket is a measuring basket. So number one, the sins of the
wicked are measured. If you're an unbeliever, I don't
know anybody's hearts. What I said to people yesterday
at the funeral, I don't know anybody's heart but mine. Sometimes
I ain't so sure about mine, because the heart's deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked. But, the Lord has shown me that I'm
nothing but wickedness. And I know this, the sins of
the wicked are measured. They're measured. Every transgression, hear me
now. I'm talking to you who are watching
by way of the internet or who are listening to this later on.
You who, you do not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the grace
of God really doesn't interest you. The bloody sacrifice of
the son of God is That's not imperative to you. It's not vital
to you. You say, well Jim, I can see
you mean business. I just don't see it like you
do. Well, you may not. But I'll tell you this. Every
one of your transgressions, every one of your sins, God has numbered. He knows the full measure of
your wickedness. And you die in unbelief. You're going to be like the woman
in the basket. The angels of God are going to
carry you away in your darkness and in your wickedness and put
you somewhere way away from everybody else. condemned forever. And you will remain in your darkness
forever and ever without the light of God's presence, without
the light of Christ's grace. There's nothing but darkness
that awaits you. You will be consigned by God
Himself to the very dark abyss of divine judgment. and receive from God's offended
law the justice that you deserve. And it will be forever. I'm telling you, the lid of justice,
the lid of God's law is too heavy for you to lift. I'm going to do better, preacher. I promise you I'm going to do
better. Well, if you've been being, you know, immoral, do
better. You've been drinking too much,
do better. Been using foul language, do
better. Fine. But that doesn't affect
your relationship to God. That doesn't lift the lid off. If you die and unbelieve, Christ
said, where I am, you can't come. Secondly, the sins of God's people
are also measured. Because the people of God are
also filled with wickedness. And our wickedness has also been
weighed. But the terrible weight of the
wickedness of all of God's people They've all been laid upon the
shoulders of the Son of God. Put on Him. How refreshing that
passage is in Isaiah 53 and verse 6. All we like sheep have gone
astray. We're all wicked too. And we've
turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord hath laid on Him
the iniquity The wickedness, the sinfulness, the malignancy of all of the sheep of the Lord
laid it on him. All of it. Jim, don't you think
the Lord is going to judge us for our sins? The people of God
that will be judged for our sins when we get to heaven? We have
no sins. What are you talking about? Our
sins have been taken away. And you see, it's like our Lord,
our sins are like in that basket. But we're not there. And our
Savior took our sins, the darkness, the blackness, the putrid filth
of our wickedness. The Lord Jesus Christ took it
upon Himself and bore it away and locked it up in a house that
will never be heard from again. Bless His name. Never again heard
from. They're not going to be raised
against us at the judgment. You say, is he able to do that?
Psalm 89, 19 says that God laid help upon one who is mighty.
And one of his names is, in Isaiah 9, the mighty God. Who could
bear such a weight? Who could carry the enormity
of the guilt of millions of sinners and carry them away into a land
uninhabited, satisfying God's justice? Who could do that? Only
the God-man. Do you wonder why I love to preach
Him so much? Because He took my weapon for
me. He took the penalty of sin for
me. He took on Him the transgressions
of all of His people. And that meant He had to die. That's why He died. To satisfy
God's law. And for the people of God, I
know this earthly tabernacle, it's going to get weak and and
the soul will have to depart from it. But our departure is
not death. It's called sleep, isn't it?
It's sleep. There's no death for the child
of God. The body sleeps. The soul goes
back to Christ. Thirdly, the woman is the personification
of false religion. It's obvious in this vision that
every eye is upon this basket with the woman inside. She is wickedness, and she represents
false religion. It turns with me to Proverbs. I'm going to give you just a
couple of references. Proverbs chapter 7. In the Bible, false religion,
and that's every religion except the religion of the truth. It's
the religion that praises man's will, man's works, man's worth. Proverbs chapter 7. Any religion
that praises man's will, makes salvation dependent upon
man's will, or upon man's worth, or upon man's works, hear me
well, run as fast as you can away from it. It's deadly. Because those who teach that
salvation is determined by man's will, They're trying to steal
God's glory. When God has said, it's not of
him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
showeth the mercy. You get wrapped up in any kind
of religion other than God's religion, true religion, true
salvation in Christ by grace, you're in trouble. Chapter 7
of Proverbs, Solomon sets forth this woman who is the personification
of wickedness. She is false religion. Verse 1 says, My son, keep my
words and lay up my commandments with thee. Keep my commandments
and live in my law as the apple of thine eye. In other words,
here's what he said. Keep the word of God in front of you. You ought to be like the Bereans
who search the Scriptures daily to see if the things that the
Apostle Paul was preaching was so. I don't ask you to believe
what I preach to you just because I'm preaching it. I certainly
desire you to take the Word of God and see if these things are
so. Don't believe it just because
I said it. Believe it because God said it. That's what he's
talking about. Keep the Word of God in front
of you. That's why he says in verse 3, bind them upon thy fingers,
write them upon the table of thine heart, and say unto wisdom,
Thou art my sister, call understanding thy kin's woman, that they may
keep thee from the... Watch this. This very strange
woman. She's an alienated woman. She's false religion. She's a
harlot. And here's what she'll do. She'll
flatter you with her words. I'll tell you one thing, a gospel
preacher, there's several things a gospel preacher won't ever
do, but this one's for sure. He won't ever flatter you. Somebody
said they were sitting behind somebody yesterday, and I got
on the subject of sin, and then they began to wiggle. Well, I'm not going to flatter you. And I'm not going to tell you
that I'm unlike you. I'm telling you we're all in
the same boat together. We're all guilty. But some of
us in here have been forgiven. Some of us in here stand in the
righteousness imputed to us by our great glorious God. And he says in verse 6, For at
the window of my house I looked through my casement, and I watched
there as a simple people, foolish people, that's what simple means,
foolish people, and I discerned among the youth a young man void
of understanding and false religion focused on him. She goes after him. And in the
end, she'll get him. Because false religion is beautiful,
has something to offer to everybody. That's how churches are today.
They offer you everything. We've got something for everybody
in your family. From the wee ones to the elderly ones. And
we have meetings every night. We'll keep you busy. We'll keep
you active. We'll do this. We'll do that.
We'll do something else. They do everything in the world
except preach the gospel of God's grace to sinners through the
Lord Jesus Christ. They're full of entertainment. Like some of the stuff we heard
yesterday. Just foolish entertainment. Well, I don't have time to read
all this, but drop down verse 21. With her much fair speech,
she caused this young man to yield. With the flattering of
her lips, she forced him. And he goes after her. As an ox, that's going to the
slaughter. Or as a fool to the correction
of the stocks. Until something happens. Here
comes the judgment of God. A dart strikes through his liver. As a bird hasted to the snare,
he doesn't know that it's for his life. See, she has many paths. How many ways are there to glory?
How many ways are there to Christ? One. He said, I'm the way. I'm the truth. I'm the life. No man cometh unto the Father
but by Me. But false religion, she's got
many paths. Just believe there's a God. That's
good enough. Do the best you can. We'll all
wind up in heaven one day. That's her lies. Don't go astray in her path.
Don't you listen to what she says. She preaches down grace
and up works. She brings Christ down and lifts
us up. Lifts man up. Don't you listen to her. It says in verse 26, for she's
cast down many wounded. I tell you, she's got people
smarter than you. Tripped them up real easy. Watch
this. Strong men. Strong men. And she's killed them. What's so serious about this?
Look at verse 27. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of
death. She's in the basket. False religion. She's deadly. One of these days,
God's going to carry her away too. And you can read Revelation
17, 18, and the first part of 19, where that harlot church,
harlot religion, Babylon the Great, and all of her appearance
of glory. God's going to cast her down
to hell. But before He does, He's going to issue a great call
to all of His people. Come out of her! Come out of
her! That's the effectual call of
grace. I was in her. I was in the Harley
church. I was in false religion. Sure
to perish, but the Lord wouldn't let me perish. He said, come
out of her. And that's the effectual call.
See, Babylon's not going to be destroyed. The woman, the personification
of wickedness, she's not going to be carried away and all who
are in her carried away into a land uninhabited, that is,
to hell itself where there's everlasting destruction. She
is not going to perish until all of God's people are pulled
out of her. And that's the grace of God. Has He pulled you out?
He pulled me out. Showed me nothing could help
me but the Lamb of God. Nobody could save me but the
Lamb of God. And I bid you Look to the Lamb
of God. He's the only hope. He's the
only hope. Us sinners. Is that okay if I say us sinners? Because we are. We're all bad. We're all malignant. We've got
that malignancy in us, but look to the Lamb of God. That's our
final song. Turn to hymn number 216. Look
to the Lamb of God. And we'll sing the first and
the last verses. Don't forget what you've heard
this morning. Take it home with you. Kind of chew the cut on
it, so to speak. Serious things here. All right. Let's stand and sing. 216.