What Bill meant to say was that
the featured speaker couldn't show up. So the pinch hitter
is here. I am delighted to be with you. It's so great to look out and
see so many dear faces, friends, folks I've loved and who've loved
me for these many years. I've been pastor there for 32
years, but before I was pastor there in June of 1978, I was
called in October of that year, I stood
in this pulpit and preached from Galatians chapter 5 and verse
11 on the offense of the cross. And I left here with a whole
set of Spurgeon in my trunk and good wishes and well wishes in
support of the people of this church. And I thank you for it. Turn of your Bibles, please,
to 2 Samuel chapter 15. I'm hoping I'm hitting the right
button here. I'm just gonna take it off and
look. I was fingering the bottom of
it. All right, okay. I want to read
one verse of Scripture. What's happening here in this
passage of Scripture, David, fleeing from Absalom, gather
together those who are his faithful followers, and they're leaving
Jerusalem and heading for places unknown. Is that too loud? Okay. In verse 23 of chapter 15 of
2 Samuel, we read these words. And all the country wept with
a loud voice. And all the people passed over.
The king also himself passed over the brook Kidron. And all the people passed over
toward the way of the wilderness. The title of my message tonight
is Places. Places. There are certain places,
geographical locations in scripture that, by mere mention, provoke
spiritual thought. Eden takes our mind both to paradise
and to ruin, to good and to evil. Ararat makes us think of judgment
and mercy. Moriah takes us takes our minds
to the sacrifice and the substitution of Abraham and Isaac, to God
providing himself with a lamb. That place was said to be by
the Jewish writers the altar that was east of Eden, same place
as Moriah, David's threshing floor, and Calvary. The Jews say all of that, same
place. That's where Abraham offered
up Isaac. The Bible reminds us of man-centered, blasphemous
religion, the religion of human merit. Shiloh causes us to ponder
the titles of the Lord Jesus Christ. Shiloh means peace, and
He is our peace. Shiloh means the Son, and He
is the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth. Shiloh means the sent one, And he says, as the Father
has sent me, so send I you. Shallow means to whom it belongs,
which designates our Lord Jesus Christ as the sovereign ruler
of all that is in this universe. Shallow also tells us how and
where to worship God. And the only place to do that
is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our brother read that Psalm,
give unto the Lord. That's what worship is. You know,
some people say, well, I didn't get nothing out of that worship
service. You wasn't supposed to. You're supposed to give when
you come here. Give praise and thanksgiving
to God for what he's done for you. That's what worship is,
praise and it's giving unto God. When we think of Topheth and
Gehenna, It takes our thoughts to incredible woe, the woe of
hell and the superheated inferno of darkness and eternal burning,
dying and never dead. We think of Jordan, it causes
us to remember deliverance. Egypt causes us to consider rebellion
and slavery and sinful, intractable, legal religion. Calvary and Golgotha
causes us to rejoice in the recollection of what Jesus Christ our Lord
has done for us. And we meet here for the redundant
recollection and rehearsal of our redemption wrought by the
effectual sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Now in this chapter of
Scripture, there are two places here in this 15th chapter. They
are locales that have great spiritual significance in that they portray
specific aspects of what our Lord did for us in the great
work He finished on the earth. And one of those places is Kidron. David and his group crossed across
the brook Kidron. In the New Testament, it's spelled
C-E-D-R-O-N, but it's the same place. The other place is Mount
Olivet or the Mount of Olives. Now, geographically, these two
places are adjacent to each other. They're adjacent to each other
and they picture and prefigure the imputation of our sin to
the Lord Jesus Christ and his groanings in the Garden of Gethsemane
on all of it. Now tonight I want us to look
at the Brook Kidron. It's a place. But it's an important
place. As we watch David crossing the
brook with those few that were loyal to him, the scene is repeated
and revealed for what it means in John chapter 18 and verse
1. So put your Bible marker at 2 Samuel 15 and turn over to
John chapter 18. John chapter 18. It says here, when Jesus had
spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook
Kidron, which was in the garden into the which he entered and
his disciples. So David, fleeing from Absalom,
went across the brook Kidron. And our Lord here is said to
cross the brook Kidron. David in his sorrow prefigures
and the moments preceding the sorrow of our Lord Jesus Christ
in Gethsemane. Absalom was hot on David's trail,
so the rulers and priests and guards were in pursuit of our
Lord Jesus Christ, here in John chapter 18 and verse 1. David
had been betrayed by Absalom and also Ahithophel, his trusted
guide. Our Lord was betrayed by Judas. the treasurer of the church.
And most crimes just follow the money. It always leads back to
Judas. David made his journey crossing
this Kidron under the weight of the consequence of his own
sin. He had committed adultery and put out a hit on the husband
of the woman whom he had seduced and stolen. Our Lord crossed
Kidron already bearing the weight of the burden of the great debt
that he had assumed from all eternity as our surety from the
foundation of the world. He would be made to be, and the consequence of drinking that
cup dry, our Lord was made to be sin. David crossed this brook
as the king, rejected the true anointed king of Israel, but
rejected by Israel. Christ crossed this brook as
the king who came to his own and his own received him not.
He is called in scripture the man of sorrows, one acquainted
with grief, as one who was despised and rejected of men. Now this
is the meaning of this single word, Kidron. This is what Kidron
is all about. It is a name derived from the
word Kedar, which means black, or dark, or even gloom. And it
was located between Jerusalem and Olivet, and it emptied into
the Dead Sea. This brook, Kidron, emptied into
the Dead Sea. Now it was just about nine or
ten feet wide, this brook. And it was not a flowing stream.
It would not even be called a babbling brook really. The truth is it
was a dry riverbed. A dry riverbed for nine months
out of the year. for nine months out of the year.
And then during a rainy season, which is called marsh chivan,
cool word, marsh chivan, that's the fall and the winter rains,
it flowed to its basin in the Dead Sea. The rains filled up
the brook and it flowed to the Dead Sea. Now it was a dry riverbed,
but it was not an empty riverbed. Kidron wasn't. Kidron was full
of the foulest, the vilest wreaking refuse imaginable. All the blood and excrement of
every sacrifice offered on the temple altars was dumped into
this gaping gully, this dry gulch. All the blood and excrement of
all the sacrifices and all the sewage, all the sewage of the
city ran into this place, this horrible, intolerable place. Everything about Kidron pictures
sin. Everything about Kidron pictures
sin. Everything about it screamed
collective corruption. Kidron's history was prolific
with this truth. In Leviticus chapter 14, it's
called the unclean place. Twice in Leviticus 14. It is
also the place where godly kings cast the dust and ashes of idols
that were destroyed. When they destroyed idols, they
dumped the ashes into the brook Kidron. That's found in 2 Kings
and also 2 Chronicles. This is a place, this Kidron,
is a place where all that represents the filthiness of sin and the
filthy sin of humanity, this is where it was all dumped. Right
here in this Kidron. Now think about this. For nine
months out of the year, it rotted, corrupted, and bubbled up with
an abominable stench of disgorge putrefaction. except to cast
in more refuse, this place was intolerable. You couldn't get
near it. The stench was horrible. This
precisely pictures our great depraved condition before God,
our sin, our cursed rags of self-righteousness that cost the life of innumerable
innocent victims whose carcasses and excrement were tossed into
this brook. Yet they never put away one sin. A veritable crimson tide flowed
from Genesis to the cross, and no sin was ever taken away until
Christ went on that cross. A river of blood, and most of
it was dumped right here in Kidron. In Kidron. It was discarded. Also, it represents
our wickedness because it was discarded with the mixed ashes
of idolatry. And that's us. We are all ignoble
idolaters. There they formed a sewer. Not
a pleasant thing to think about. But that's the language described.
The dunghill, if you will, of our deeds of the flesh which
made our refuge and our abode. We lived, according to scripture,
on a dunghill. We were dunghill denizens. That's
what it says in 1 Samuel chapter 2. He takes us from the dunghill
and sets us among princes. What is that dunghill? We've
been living on it a long time, when the Lord found us and captured
us and jerked us off of it and set us among princes. What is
that dunghill? That dunghill is our works and
our righteousness. That's what Paul said in Philippians
3, didn't he? He says, you have reason to take honor in the flesh. I have more reason. I was born,
I was circumcised the eighth day, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a child
of Benjamin, touching the law. I was blameless. He said, every
bit of that. Well, that sounds good. Every
bit of that was done. Manure. That's what it was. That's our works before a righteous
and a holy God. It is it any wonder that when
our Lord looked down from heaven in Psalm 14, that His first assessment
of mankind was that it was altogether stinking, stinking, a revolting,
decomposing, rancid, sour stench of tomain decay and death. This
is Kidron. This is what Kidron is. Nine
months out of the year. This is Kidron. This is you and
I. This is our sin. This is our
death. This is the source of our deluded
self-esteem. But as foul and despicable as
this is and must have been, in the fall of the year, the rain
came and washed away the corruption carrying the deluge to the sea
of death. Nothing lived and nothing could
survive in the Dead Sea. And what a picture this is of
God, by the effectual sacrifice of Christ, burying our sins in
the bottom of the sea. The Lord says a lot about rain
in Scripture. Rain is an important aspect.
Let's look at a few passages. Job chapter 5. Job chapter 5. Job chapter 5 and verse 10. It says of God, who giveth rain.
You ever considered the greatness of God? Next time it rains. Where did that come from? Who
giveth rain upon the earth and send waters upon the fields. Look at one particular passage
of scripture. Joel, the prophet Joel. Just after Hosea. In Joel chapter
2 and verse 23, it says this, Be glad then. Be glad then, you children of
Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for He hath given you
the former rain moderately, and He will cause to come down for
you the rain, the former rain and the latter rain, in the first
month. Now what does that mean? If you
have a marginal reading, the word moderately will have a number
beside it, and it means a teacher of righteousness. And it also means according to
righteousness. a teacher of righteousness and
according to righteousness. The rain was considered a teacher
of righteousness. It was because the rain pictured
the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Marchevan was the
season where the rains came that washed the refuse out of Kidron
down to the Dead Sea. Marchevan was taking place just
prior to Moshavah when all the shepherds began to move their
sheep into the stalls out of the hard range. Moshavah was
the time our Lord was born. No, it wasn't December. It was
somewhere October, November in that general area. Probably about
October the 15th, but that's neither here nor there. But at
the time of Marchevan, our Lord Jesus Christ was born. At the same time, the rains came
and washed Kidron out into the Dead Sea. What did the angels
say when they came? When our Lord Jesus Christ came,
they said, Behold, I bring to you good tidings of great joy. For unto you is born in this
day, or in the city of David, this day a Savior, which is Christ
the Lord. There's two words there, bring
and good tidings. Did you know they're the same
word? I bring good tidings. That's what the angels said.
The heavenly host said, I bring. What's the word bring mean? Preach. We get our word evangelized from
it. I won't say the Greek word because
I don't know that much Greek. But it looked kind of like evangelized
when you read it. But the word good tidings is
the same word. They said, I preach preaching. I preach what it is to preach. And that's what every gospel
preacher does. He brings good tidings. He preaches what is
to be preached. And this is the message. Behold,
this day is born unto you in the city of David a Savior, which
is Christ the Lord. So as our Lord Jesus lay in His
manger, the waters from above came down and washed Kidron dry,
or washed all the refuse down into the Dead Sea. That's the
picture that it is in Scripture. Well, how can this great thing
be? How can our sins be washed away? I want to know. I want
to know, don't you? The one thing I really want to
know in this world is how my sins can be washed away. There's
only one way our sins are washed away, and that's by the substitution
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Christ of the cross our brother
just sang about. By substitution. Several years
ago I was in a meeting down in Tennessee, and it was June, and
it was hot. Scott Richardson was preaching.
I was sitting about four pews back, and somebody turned on
the heat instead of the air conditioner in the church. In about 15 minutes,
got about 99 degrees in there. And Scott had been preaching
for about seven minutes, and the sweat was pouring off his
brow, and he just stopped. He said, it's too hot. I'm done. And just walked off the podium
and out the back door he went. Well, I was sitting there and
he come by me and patted me on the shoulder and said, at least
I said substitution. And he did, he said substitution. You haven't preached the gospel
until you say substitution. Until you set forth the substitutionary
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Only by substitution. This is
seen also in John chapter 18. I love it when the Lord says
something, then tells us what He means when He says it. And
He does this. You remember the chief priests
came to arrest God. They brought their torches, they
brought their lanterns, they brought their swords. They're
tough guys. They're going to arrest God. Well, all God did
was say, I am, ego I may, and they fell to death. They couldn't
even get up. With just words, He put them on the ground. And
then He let them get up and He said, now, who did you say you
was asking about? And I imagine, if I'd have been one of them,
I'd say, well, I forget. But they didn't. They said, we're
looking for Jesus of Nazareth. Then He said, I am. But this
time, He didn't knock them down. This time, He let them take them,
but with a caveat. With a caveat, in John chapter
18 and verse 8 and 9, Jesus said, I have told you that I am. I
am He. If therefore you seek me, let
these go their way. Wait a minute. You can have me,
but if you get me, you can't have my disciples. That's substitution. How do I know? Read the next
verse. He tells us it is. That the saying might be fulfilled
which he spake of them which thou gavest me, have I lost nothing? You can have me but you can't
have them because it's already been written in Scripture that
whoever gets me can't have them. That's substitution. He died
in our room instead. Now, this brook Kidron is a very
important brook in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Turn with
me over to Psalm 110. Psalm 110. It's a very important brook in
your life too. Psalm 110 is a psalm about our
Lord Jesus Christ and His glorious salvation. David, as it were,
is one who sits with his ear against the door of heaven and
hears God speaking to his son. The Lord said unto my Lord. Now
we know it was God speaking to his son because our Lord used
this very same thing when He confronted the Pharisees with
what they thought they knew about Scripture. He said, well, when
David said, my Lord, who was he talking about? When God said, my son, who is
he talking about? And they durst not ask him any
more questions because he had honed to what he was talking
about. But this is a psalm about the greatness of our God. The
greatness of our God in His substitutionary work. Listen, the Lord said unto
my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies
not footstool. You know when that happened. After He had by
one sacrifice perfected forever them that are sanctified, He
sat down on the right hand of the Father. We know He sat down
because He had finished what He came to do. There was no work
to be done. Salvation is a finished work.
I was talking to Brother Bill today. What we do up here as
we minister the gospel to you, we're not telling you to do anything.
We're not trying to get you to do anything. What we're doing
is repeating a report. This is a report. This is the
report, God says. He that hath the Son hath life.
He that hath not the Son hath not life. That's not an argument
to try to get you to do something. That's just telling you how it
is. If you have life, it's because you have the Son. If you don't
have life, it's because you don't have the Son. That's not hard
to understand, is it? If you have breath, you're alive. If you don't, you're dead. That's
not hard to understand. We give a report. I know men
talk about the... Preachers sometimes deepen their
voice and they get a couple of octaves lower and they start
talking seriously about the burden. The burden of the pulpit, the
burden of this sacred desk. You know, they try to talk like
Puritans. What kind of burden we got? I stand up. Cherokee and have
for 30, do you think about this, for 32 years. And some of the
people that started with me are still with me after 32 years. I opened this book Sunday morning,
twice, Sunday afternoon or Sunday night and then Wednesday night
and I did it for 32 years. What have I done? Repeated the
report. They said it over and over again.
What's the burden about that? You know what they did? They
bought me a house. That's a burden ain't it? All I did was just
get up there and say the same thing for 32 years and they bought
me a house? gave me a place to live, took care of my family
for 32 years, and all I did was tell them a report. That's what
we do. We can't get you to do anything. We don't want to get
you to do anything. What we do is tell you over and
over and over again. Our Lord Jesus Christ died on
Calvary's tree. That was not a mishap. When our
Lord Jesus Christ died on Calvary's tree, He actually, really, fully,
completely, forever saved His people from their sins. It happened. You can't change that. I know
religion likes to say, well, I've got to have something to
do with it. You weren't there. You weren't even in existence.
How can you change it? I heard a lady in politics the
other day say, we need to change history. How can you do that?
That's the dumbest thing anybody could say and yet she's called
an intellectual. That's just dumb. You can't change what we're
given a report. So we say it is finished, it
is finished, it is finished. That's a report. Can't be changed,
can't be undone. Our Lord sits at the right hand
of God having finished the work of salvation. He sits there because
there's nothing left to do in salvation. What's what I got to do? You
can't do nothing. Pray God give you faith to believe it. Because
that's what you believe. You don't believe that something
is going to happen when you believe the gospel. Our brother read
a while ago in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. We are given the spirit
of understanding that we might understand what things have been
freely given to us by God. That's why we have understanding. Our Lord It's told by His Father. See it. In verse 2 it says, The
Lord shall send the rod out of the strength of Zion. That's
the Lord Jesus Christ. His gospel. Rule thou in the
midst of thine enemies. Where does Christ rule? Right
in the midst of all that oppose Him. All that oppose Him think,
well we're running the show. They're not. Christ is running
the show. He's ruling in the midst of all
those who oppose Him. Those who oppose you when you
tell them the truth about God. Christ is ruling them. He's manipulating
them. Using them. Our Lord's a user. He uses people
exactly like He wants to use people. He's like a cow puncher
punching the doggies to get them in the corral. They're acting
just like doggies do. And you act just like depraved
humanity does, but you're being manipulated and moved to end
to do the purpose that God has set before you in this world. Preachers like to say, well,
God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Listen, God
may hate you and still has a wonderful plan for your life. Because you're
going to do what exactly you were ordained to do when you
were born into this world. Don't like that? Get over yourself. Barney, you say if you think
God's a monster, get ready to meet a monster. He's God. Rule that in the midst of thine
enemies. And he says this, thy people,
thine elect, those I've chosen with the foundation of the world,
thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power. Whenever he acts, his people
are willing. They do what they do voluntarily.
They want to do it. People don't come to Christ out
of being gang-saved or dragged down some aisle or persuaded
by some man's clever way. They come to Christ because they're
made willing when He exerts His power. And they come. Just don't get in their way.
The kingdom of God suffereth violence. And the violent take
it by force. Don't get in people's way. Preach
the gospel. Tell them the truth. Stand back.
Stand back. The Lord is sworn and will not
repent, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
The Lord at thy right hand will strike through kings in the day
of his wrath. He shall judge among the heathen. He shall fill
the places with dead bodies. He shall wound the heads over
many countries. Now here I want to get to verse 7. He shall drink of the brook in the way. Now just think about that. Just roll that over in your head
for a moment. This psalm is about the glory
and the power and the sovereign rule of Christ because in the
end, it is a graphic declaration of our Lord's substitution for
His elect. He shall drink of that foul, corrupt, vile, idolatrous mess he shall
drink of the brook. What glorious words can describe
this voluntary act? No poem, no prose can mark the
measure of the wondrous imbibing that is revealed in this one
verse of scripture. He shall drink of the brook. What is that brook? What's in
that brook? Our sin. Our death. Our putrefaction. That's what's
in that brook. Scripture says he shall taste
death for every son. He shall taste death. He drank
of the brook. Saying the same thing in 2 Corinthians
5.21. He was made to be sin, who knew
no sin. That we might be made the righteousness
of God and He was made to be sin for us. What does that mean? Much more than I can ever say.
What does it mean? Was He made a sinner? No. He was made sin. That's worse
than a sinner. Whatever sin is, it's a lot worse than being a
sinner. Was he made corrupt? No. He's the perfect Lamb of
God. He was made to be corruption. I don't know. That's beyond this
poor old boy's ability to understand, but I'm so glad it took place.
Our Lord, when He came to the Kidron, He drank from the brook.
He drank from the brook. He drank from the brook. He came
to do that, to do the will of God. He called our iniquities
His. In Psalm 40, He says, mine iniquities
have gone over my head. Was He a person full of iniquity? No. He was a person covered with
it. Covered with it. He drank of
the brook and drank it dry. He drank it dry. The teacher
of righteousness according to righteousness by his blood washed
the sins of all the elect down the trough of Kidron into the
sea of deadness. He swallowed up our dirt in the deluge of his righteous
death. Jesus Christ died in the room
instead of His people. God was propitiated. God was satisfied. And God does
not change. You say, well, what if I sin?
What if? What are you talking about? You
don't do anything without sin. I don't do anything without sin.
What I'm doing right now What I'm doing right now, standing
up here as a preacher of the gospel, what I'm doing right
now has enough sin in it to condemn 10,000 worlds. Well, how are you saved? By the
substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how
I'm saved. That's the only way I'm saved.
Christ drank of that brook for me. That foul, wicked, full of
idolatry, full of old sacrifices that could never take away sin,
blood, excrement, dung, manure, sewage, all of that, that's me. That's my depraved condition.
And when He went over the brook, He stopped and drank of it. He
stopped and drank of it. And from this, He arose victorious. He's not in the brook no more.
He didn't drink the brook. He drank the brook, but he don't
drink no more. Look in verse 7. He shall drink of the brook
in the way, therefore shall he lift up his head. He couldn't
listen. He couldn't lift up his head
if he didn't drink of the brook. You don't know who Christ is
unless you know him as substitute. You can't tell me anything about
Jesus Christ unless you tell me about substitution. You just
can't. He's Christ the Anointed. He's Jesus the Savior. Christ
the Anointed. You ever wonder why they called
early believers Christians? You ever wonder why they didn't
call them Jesusians? Or Lordians? Because everywhere the disciples
went, they had one thing to say. That man is the Christ. Christ alone is my salvation.
Christ alone is my hope. Christ alone is my peace. Christ alone has satisfied God
for me and God is satisfied with me because what he's done for
me. Christ alone. And what they were really saying
is all these people talk about is Christ. They're a bunch of
Christians. That's what they say. That's
all the message is. Christ and Him crucified. But
remember how that's worded. Our brother read it from 1 Corinthians
chapter 2 in the office a while ago. 1 Corinthians chapter 2,
Paul said, I determinedly know nothing among you save Christ
and Him crucified. There's a chronology here. Christ,
now. That's who I'm telling you about.
The one who sits at the right hand of the Father. Perfect. Holy. God Almighty. And that's where you're going
to meet Him today. You ain't going to meet Him in kindred,
and that's taken care of. You're not going to meet Him on the
cross. It's not the cross of Christ, it's the Christ of the
cross, just like our brother said. You're not going to meet
Him there. You're going to meet Him where
He is. He's on the throne. That's the one thing I can tell
every person here, whether you know Him or not, I can tell you
a truth that's absolutely true about you right now. Every one
of you. Jesus Christ is your Lord. One said, does He love me? I
don't know. I hope He does. Did He die for me? I don't know.
I hope He did. But this is so. He's your Lord. Because He's Lord over all. He
earned that right. For He both died, rose, and revived
that He might be Lord of the living and the dead. He's your
Lord. He drank of the brook Kidron, but He lifted up His head. He
lifted up his head. He saw the travail of his soul
and was satisfied. He ascended on high and led captivity
captive. The word therefore gives us reason
why he lifted up his head. His glory was due to drinking
in the brook. I will divide him a portion of
the great because he was what? Numbered with the transgressors
and bore the sins of the transgressors, bore the sins of many. That's
why he's exalted. Because he's a substitute. You
don't know Christ except in that capacity. That's why the book
of Revelation, He's described more than any other way as what?
The Lamb. The Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of the world. He's the Lamb. Philippians chapter
2. God, He was obedient even to
the death of the cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted
Him and given Him another name. It was that death And that death
was not passive. It was not passive. It was an
active death. It was a death which he should
accomplish at Jerusalem. He meant to die. He came to die. And when he died, he died of
his own power and his own will. I don't know how that's possible.
For life to cease. For life to die. I have never
been able to understand that. But after our Lord went through
what man could do, Man, when he turned himself over and he
said, I'm he, here I am, take me but you can't have these.
Men did horrible things to our Lord Jesus Christ. He suffered
horribly in the flesh. In his physicality, he suffered
great pain. Written in scripture, they plucked
out the hair of his beard, they smote his back, they put a crown
of thorns on his head, they whipped him and cut him and beat him.
That was horrible. But that didn't save us. That didn't do anything about
our sin. What did that do? That revealed what we thought
of Him. The one time God let men touch
Him, that's what they did to Him. That revealed what men think
of Christ. Then He went into those three
hours of darkness and was pummeled by God Almighty I'm consumed by His blow, Christ
said in the Psalms. I'm consumed by the blow of His
hand. We don't know what went on there, because none of us
have ever known anything about wrath of God. Do you know that? You never know anything about
wrath of God. You think a hurricane, a tornado, and things like that
are the wrath of God? The clouds are the dust of His
feet. He's in every whirlwind. But is that His wrath? We don't
know anything about His wrath. You know why? Because the one
time He drew that sword out of its scabbard and plunged it into
the heart of the shepherd, His fellow, that one time He cut
the lights off so nobody could see. What a merciful thing that
is. You don't know what God's wrath
is. You've been in the hands of a mediator. He has authority
over all flesh to give His life, eternal life to as many as God
has given Him. We don't know anything about that wrath. For
three hours, God poured out His wrath on him. He drank the cup
of God's vengeance dry, but it didn't kill him. He came out on the other side
talking, didn't he? My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? And then John 19 says, seeing
that all things were now accomplished, He said, I thirst so that scripture
might be fulfilled. And when they gave him the sponge
and vinegar and so forth, then afterward he said with a loud
voice. Now he was hanging there in agonies
and blood ripped up. He didn't look like one of these
little pictures you get at Walmart at Easter time. He wasn't wrapped in a cannon
tea towel with a trickle of blood here and there. He was buck naked
and ripped to shreds. He looked like a slaughtered
beast. His visage was marred more than any man. And for anybody
looking at me, I think, this guy's gone. He ain't gone. He
got something to do. He's got a law to satisfy. He's
got God to propitiate. That darkness was our hell. That
was what we deserved. That's the punishment. It didn't
kill him. Hell ain't gonna kill you either. Hell's just going
to be an eternal punishment. Then our Lord said, it is finished. And it was. Then it says he died. He gave up. He didn't die like
we're going to die. He died voluntarily, willfully. He died. And in that moment,
The law could never touch one of God's elect again. It was
absolutely and completely satisfying. I know I'm a sinner. You know
you all want to. You know in and of yourself you're
vile and unclean, but I'm telling you the holy searchlight of God's
law can stand beside you, Jim Eccles. All the life you've lived,
all the sins you've committed, it can go from the top of your
head to the bottom of your foot, cannot find one fault The law
says, ain't nothing wrong with Jim Eccles. Wait a minute, I
know him. Shut up. Ain't nothing wrong
with Jim Eccles. Why? Jim Eccles died. When? 2,000 years ago on Calvary
Street. He died. He lifted up his head. It's done. Three days later,
he rose from the grave. This is Kindred, just a place. And as our Lord did, it is a
place we much often resort to. God has forgotten our sin. He'll
remember it no more, never hold it against us, never charge us
with it if we're His. But, He's fixed it so we'll never
forget our sin. In glory, our song will be worthy
is the substitute, the lamb that was slain, that has redeemed
us from our sins by his blood and made us unto God kings and
priests. He drank of that brook. Thank
God he did. But he lifted up his head. If
you're going to meet him, take your headquarters up in
the dust. because you're approaching the Lord enthroned who was crucified. We've preached Christ and Him
crucified. Old Ross Scott used to say, if
you're in the dust, when you fall, it don't hurt
as bad because you're already on the ground. That's a true
statement. God bless you, brother.