Imputation. It's all about do
or decide, and you don't hear the message of imputation much
in a lot of preaching today. Turn with me, if you would, again
to John chapter 11, where we will at least read our backing
text, background text for where we're at. However, we have again I will Say for the record We are not
actually talking about John chapter 11 in exposition as far as verse
by verse and We're using this portion as a backdrop as we've
been going verse by verse through here. But to stop again and to
look at some of these very important, very beautiful doctrines that
we find throughout scripture and this particularly being the
doctrine of substitution. And we've been kind of using
the rest of the scriptures to kind of let us know what was
being said here. as far as the prophecy, I guess
you should say, of Caiaphas. Looking at John chapter 11, and
we're looking at verse 49, it says, and one of them named Caiaphas,
being the high priest that same year, said unto them, you know
nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us that
one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish
not. And this spake he not of himself,
but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should
die for that nation and not for that nation only, but that also
he should gather together in one the children of God that
were scattered abroad. Now we've been looking at this
issue of substitute and we looked at it now from We've seen what
a substitute is, and we've talked about that a little bit. We talked
about who the substitute was, particularly the God-man, Jesus
Christ. and the significance and the
importance or the need for our substitute to be both God and
man. So we've seen that. We've seen
what the purpose of his substitution was. We've seen the accomplishment
of what he came to do. And then his exaltation as the
substitute So today I would kind of like to begin a wrap-up or
conclusion to all of this and one thing I would like to put
forth here is Our substitute was not just somebody who came
in a time in Bethlehem and lived for thirty three and a half years
and then became our substitute when they nailed him to a cross. OK, a lot of times we have the
or at least modern church evangelicalism out there has this thought that
Jesus was the substitute when he was hung on the cross and
that him being hung on the cross, he substituted for us. We should
have been on the cross and nailed there and we should have died.
Well, brethren, nailing anybody to a cross doesn't do anything. There were two malefactors that
was beside him and both of them were nailed to crosses. Before
they were ever nailed to those crosses, there were hundreds
of people before that had been nailed to the cross. So much
so that the place where they were nailed to the crosses was
called the place of the skull, was called Golgotha. There was,
historical reference talking about how there were thousands
of people that were crucified and how the Romans even had people
crucified throughout the streets and all over the place. So, crucifixion
was not the substitution as far as In and of itself, the torture,
the lashes, the crown of thorns, the nails, all that kind of stuff,
that is not what was necessarily substituted. Because, I mean,
to be honest, Jesus could have been killed by other ways besides
crucifixion if God chose to do that. He could have been torn
asunder. He could have been filleted alive.
He could have been burned at the stake. He could have been,
you know, drowned. He could have been, I mean, there's
several ways that God could have ordained that Jesus die, okay? And, any way that Jesus would
physically die, any human being can die the same way. So there
wasn't nothing mystical about Jesus's dying in and of itself
as far as the physical life going out of a physical body because
of some physical torture. That was the substitution because
we could have substituted any kind of death. Matter of fact,
there's actually is a lot of talk about whether or not Jesus
was actually hung on a cross or hung on a pole and a stake
or a stave. And y'all can get into those
discussions. That's not on my radar for now,
at least. But there is nothing necessarily
about that. That had to come. There had to
be a death. But what we find out is the substitution
that Jesus made, and if we can find ourselves to just across,
that substitution was whenever he took the full wrath of God
and God forsaking him in that time period because Jesus had
never been forsaken of God. There'd never been a time where
God had been forsaken. There had never been a time whenever
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit had any kind of division
among themselves. And here we see that God was
in the flesh and he was taking on the full wrath of God. And
in that time period, the man Jesus Christ was forsaken of
God. And that forsaking or that turning
away was what we would have experienced as sinners judged under the judgment
of God, is an eternal separation or forsaking from God. Again, hell, while it has its
torments, the Bible says that they'll be tormented in eternal
flame, the biggest aspect of that whole entire thing is away
from the presence of God. there is a forsakenness that's
there, and it will be an eternal forsakenness. And I'm not putting
to light the fact of physical torment. I can probably imagine
that physical burning in hell or in eternity is gonna be pretty
bad. But my thing is when Jesus took
that, when he substituted on the cross, He not only substituted
a physical death, but he substituted an eternal wrath there. And a lot of times people just
look at that substitution right there. But yet the Bible teaches
us that Jesus has stood as our substitute for all time. And they don't necessarily correlate
his substitution before, during, and after the cross. They focus just on the cross.
And so in wrapping up this, I would kind of like to kind of almost
summarize some of the things that we've talked about, but
also kind of hopefully put them all together and give you a little
bit of encouragement, I would hope, at least it's encouraging
to me, how our substitution is never gonna waver because it
has nothing to do not only with us, but it has nothing to do
with time. Our substitution is an eternal
substitution. Jesus was our substitute, and
we're gonna look at several places where he was our substitute,
but Jesus was our substitute in the eternal covenant. In the eternal covenant, Jesus
was our substitute in the eternal covenant. He stood for all eternity. And again, I can't describe eternity
to you because eternity has no time constraints, for our understanding
eternity past, okay? Eternity past, he was standing
as our substitute or another word that we'll find here in
just a minute is our surety in this covenant. Jesus has been
our eternal substitute as long as the eternal covenant has been
in place. For there to be an eternal covenant,
there had to be Two parties. OK, there had to be two parties. The party. For who one person
is represented and the party for whom another is represented,
OK? Jesus stood in that covenant
as our surety. God the Father had given him
a people. God the Son received those people
and stood and said, I will be for them everything. And God, because of this eternal
covenant, because of the truthfulness of Christ, because of his faithfulness,
because of his righteousness, because of all that, viewed those
people in Christ Jesus for all time. Now, with that being said, before I was ever sinner, Jesus
Christ stood as the Savior for me. Before I ever fell in Adam,
Jesus was my substitute. Before Adam ever fell, Jesus
was the substitute. Before anybody ever broke God's
law, before anybody ever became a transgressor, Before anybody
became enslaved to sin before anybody became a debtor unto
God, Jesus Christ stood in the eternal covenant. For his people. So before anything was ever made,
the position of every child of grace was already considered
in the eternal covenant in the surety in Christ Jesus. Turn with me, if you would, over
to Hebrews chapter 7. Hebrews chapter 7. And look with me, if you would,
once you get to chapter 7, down to verse 22. Hebrews 7 verse
22, it says, By so much was Jesus made a surety
of a better Testament. Jesus was made a surety. Now there's that word that I
said, a surety. That word surety means like a
bondsman. Don't know what a bondsman is.
That word surety also means guarantee, is a guarantee. That word there means, and it's
kind of funny, I looked at this word and this word here is comprised
of a couple of things and one of them means connected like a limb, like your
arm, your leg. He's so connected and representative
of somebody that it's almost like a limb is attached. We are so connected to Christ
Jesus and he is so much representing us. It is almost as if we are
exactly him. That's why I read that verse
in Jeremiah. There in this eternal vital union that we have with
the Lord Jesus Christ, there is so much union there that God
considers us the same. That's why he can say that we
are joint heirs with Christ Jesus, that we will be as he is. All
these things that talk about it, that doesn't mean we're gonna
be him. We're not Mormons. We don't believe that we can
become as gods. OK, we're not talking about that,
but we're talking about that. We are so united to him vitally
that there is no in God's vision upon his people. Whenever God
looks upon us, the children of grace, there is no distinction
between Christ and us. And I don't know how much that
has sunk into you yet, brethren. I don't know if we can fully
sink into it, but I don't know about you, but that just blesses
my heart whenever I think of that, especially whenever I'm
in the depths and the bitterness of Gaul, whenever I'm in sin,
whenever I'm at this place where the warfare is in me and fighting
strong with the inward man to know that if weakness prevails, that God in no way makes any
distinction in righteousness between His Son and us. He sees
the righteousness of Jesus, not a righteousness like Jesus, He
sees the righteousness of Jesus, His Son, that's the surety. that's the surety and in that
ever everlasting or as hebrews puts it everlasting covenant
the eternal covenant uh the covenant of grace whatever terms you want
to put on that jesus christ stood for us and the and the passage
here says that he made a was made a surety of a better testament
Here's a word that we're familiar with, but we don't use much. Anybody know what a testament
is? Don't say there's an old and
a new one. We know that. Whenever we talk about a testament
or one of the scriptures in Hebrew talks about a testament, what's
it talking about? Well, it could be talking about
a couple of things. Okay, a testament can be talking about a will,
but a testament also can be talking about a covenant as well, okay? Now, he is a, and both of them
is actually true in this case. A will is something that somebody,
while living, writes up to leave an inheritance for somebody. And Jesus Christ has given us
an inheritance in this new covenant. In the old covenant, there was
absolutely no inheritance for us, except for the wrath of God
for death, okay? Under that Old Testament, all
that that brought was death. But in this New Testament or
this new covenant, He has made us heirs of all the inheritance
that belongs to him. Also, as far as the covenant
is concerned, in the old covenant, there was no hope. There was
no way that anybody could ever keep that. Matter of fact, the
Bible talks about the law and it says that We were unable to
keep that because of the weakness of the flesh. However, the eternal
or the everlasting covenant does not depend upon anything that
man does. Man is not even considered in
the terms of the eternal covenant because it is eternal. It was
set out before the foundation of the world and We're going to get into this
here in just a minute, but you're going to see the reason that
these things are made sure to us is because it didn't have
any consideration of us. But I'll get to that whenever
we get the opportunity here in a few minutes. So from everlasting,
God has looked upon his people and has said, I will be their
God. And In that, he has always looked
in that covenant to the Lord Jesus Christ as the substitution,
the surety for those people. God's people was planned and
purposed and provided for. It was made sure, it was made
complete. In that covenant, everything
was planned out to a T, before anything had ever happened with
creation. Now I want us to look at a few verses that talk about
this because I want you to see because in particular a couple
of words here that we're going to look at but I want you to
see something here because to me this brought so much great
comfort and especially whenever you're in time here now and you're
dealing with a lot of people that pull at your heartstrings,
that pull at your academic mind, that pulls at somewhat the wisdom
of man and logic. They pull in these ways, or when
you have preachers that preach deceit, you have this grounding
here. Turn with me, if you would, to
2 Samuel chapter 23 and verse five. Second Samuel chapter 23. In
verse 5. Now this passage of Scripture is
being spoken of by David. But remember, all these things
were written for our understanding. what the New Testament says.
All these things of types and foreshadows, things that were
natural, we look at and we discern spiritual with spiritual things. Second Samuel 23 verse five,
it says, although my house be not so with God, yet he hath
made with me an everlasting covenant. Okay, so David as the type Christ
as the anti-type has said that God has made with me an everlasting
covenant, although my house be not so with God. Now, if you
remember, and I'll just brief history lesson here, I won't
get into the whole thing. If you remember his three sons,
they went awry, didn't they? Okay? Absalom, Amnon, and Adonijah,
his third son. All of them children went awry.
None of them followed after God. And what he's saying here, although
my house be not so with God, although it doesn't look like
my lineage is a godly lineage, although you don't see my godly
lineage yet, he knows that there has been an everlasting covenant
ordered in all things and sure for this is all my salvation
and all my desire, although we make it not to grow. David is
saying here as the type of Christ, although you don't see it yet,
there is a covenant that is ordered and is sure, and it will come
to pass. And so I know that it's going
to take place, even though it don't look like it at the time. Now let's think about that spiritually.
Here Christ in the everlasting covenant has a people who is
given to him. And now as creation comes and
time takes place and God and his purposes are set forth to
bring Adam into existence, into his natural self for the purpose
of bringing sin and death into the world. And here we have a
people that is natural, that cannot please God, that cannot
do the things of God, that cannot perceive the things that are
spiritually dead. And so it looks like there's
not a people. And as time goes by, it looks like there's not
going to be a people. But Christ says, even though
it doesn't look, whenever you look at Adam, you say there can't
be a people. How can there be a people? He
says, although my house be not so with God. Just because they
don't look like they're with God, don't mean they're not. See, brethren, all of us by nature
are just like the rest. And when you look at us apart
from Christ, it looks like we be not with God. A lot of times. I think to myself, am I with
God? My life sure doesn't seem like
it. My thoughts sure don't seem like it sometimes. But Jesus
said, although my house be not so with God, yet he hath made
with me an everlasting covenant. No matter how bad my household
looks, he has made a covenant with me. Not with them. It's not based upon them being
with God. It's based upon an eternal covenant
with me. OK. But look at this phrase here,
and this is what I wanted to dwell on a little bit for the
time that we have left. Ordered in all things and sure. Ordered in all things and sure
now at first glance one might read across that and say that
God Ordered the everlasting covenant said okay. We're going to do
an everlasting covenant Trinity get together. Let's talk this
over We're gonna have an everlasting covenant here. Here's the plan. Here's what we're going to do
everybody in Take your places. Okay That's not what that's talking
about That word ordered there is not commanded. OK, is not
commanded. God didn't sit there and the
father didn't look and say, son, get over here, spirit, get over
here. We got something that I got for
you. And this is what we're going to do. And now get to it. OK, this right here is talking
about this everlasting covenant is ordered in all things that
word order. means to be precisely organized. That word order there means to
be put in place, to be done according to order, okay? An orderly arrangement is what
that word means, an orderly arrangement. So that means that the everlasting
covenant is not a second thought because of Adam's sin. The everlasting
covenant isn't a willy-nilly thing waiting on people to respond. Everything, and we see it right
there, ordered in all things, every detail, of the everlasting
covenant, every aspect of the everlasting covenant, every cause,
every effect, every result of the everlasting covenant is precisely
organized and arranged. Not one thing is out of place.
Not one thing is dependent or up in the air or there's a possibility
that it might not happen. Now again, we've already seen
the everlasting covenant isn't just talking about dying on the
cross. The everlasting covenant is that
God has given a people to the son and that that people will
be kept and become the house of God. Although my house be
not so with God, yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant,
ordered in all things and sure for this is all my salvation
and all my desire, although he make it not to grow. And we're
gonna read some more verses here in just a few minutes, but I
want us to dwell here and see the, sure part of this covenant. Now, whenever he says that he
has ordered all things, that means he hasn't left anything
out. All things have been ordered. All things. And this order again
is precisely arranged. So the time that Christ came. Was exactly the time that Christ
was supposed to come. The body that was prepared for
him was precisely the body that God designed for him. the life
that he lived, every moment, every action, every word, every
deed, everything, whether it was for obedience, whether it
was for sacrifice, whether it was for justification, sanctification,
glorification, no matter what it was, everything wrapped up
in that eternal covenant, God precisely arranged All of it,
every bit of it. And then the next phrase here,
ordered in all things and sure. That means not only did he precisely
arrange everything, but he's making sure it's all
gonna happen. He has ordered it or he is precisely arranged
all things. And he has made it sure. It will. Be. Done. Before anything was ever made.
Jesus stood as our substitute in this covenant And this is
what God did in that covenant. He precisely arranged all things
that would be accomplished with this covenant, ordered it exactly
and precisely and made sure that it would be done. How did he
make sure that it would be done? Well, the probably the biggest
thing that is evident that how he made it sure it would be done
is by sending Jesus. By making Jesus the surety. Because the Bible says that he
is faithful and true. The Bible says that he is the
same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not change. Jesus is
the faithful servant. He is the faithful son. He is
the faithful surety. He is the faithful substitute.
He is faithful. He is faithful. So God can say
it's going to be done. It's sure. because the whole
entire covenant is conditioned upon Jesus, not upon the sinner,
not upon the child of grace, who is the elect of God scattered
abroad. The whole entire thing is based
upon the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the substitute for everyone
else. He is the surety for everyone
else. in the covenant. And so that's
how he can precisely arrange all things within the covenant
to come out to be as sure as it can be. Because it's based
upon the faithful and true one. But the other reason he can say
that it is sure is because it Based upon grace. It's based
upon grace, not works. That's why it's called the covenant
of grace. And if it's of grace, then it's
not of works. If it's of works, then it's no
more grace. And the Bible says that that
if it's not of grace, It can't ever be for us because nobody
can work. Nobody will ever be determined
to be righteous by works. That was never the plan to begin
with. The Bible said by the works of the law shall no flesh be
justified. That's not only an accusation
against us, but it's also just a statement of fact that God
never planned ever to justify anybody by anybody doing the
works of righteousness. That was never the plan to begin
with. The plan to begin with was for man to fall into sin
and death and for God to redeem his people made out of the same
lump to redeem his people out of that for his glory. It was
always the plan of God in the eternal covenant arranged precisely
and sure they will fall and they will be redeemed. Every one of
them will fall because I'm going to do it by imputation and every
one of them will be redeemed because it's going to be by imputation.
And that's all about grace. See, we don't have nothing to
do with grace, do we? We don't have anything to do
with unmerited favor, right? We don't have anything to do
with gift-giving. Now, you can hint all day long,
you know, it's my birthday in a couple days, you know, we can
hint about somebody giving us a gift, but we can't make them
give us a gift. If I would say, all right, Loretta,
next week's my birthday, I'm going to take you down to Walmart
and I'm going to show you what I want. Then I'm going to get
out your pocketbook. Then it really isn't Loretta
giving me a gift, is it? Or if out of nowhere I get a gift
from Tom, There is no way. If I get a gift
from Tom and let's just say that I came over and trimmed these
bushes and pulled these weeds and mowed his lawn and fixed
his roof and did all that and then out of all that he had the
kindness to make me some lemonade. Okay? You can say the lemonade was
a gift, but really it wasn't. Because I trimmed his trees and
pulled his weeds, cut his grass, fixed his roof, and he gave me
some lemonade because I was hot, thirsty, sweaty, while he sat
there and watched me on the back porch all day. Okay? That's what's called a wage. No matter what you want to call
it, it's called a wage. If you do anything as a condition
to get something, it's called a wage. Even if it's faith, which
a thousand hundred people want to say is not a work. I don't
know about you, brethren, but if you read God's word, God's
word says faith is a work. They want to go to Ephesians
2, 8 and says, for by grace are you saved through faith and that
not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of words,
lest any man should boast. And they say, there you go. Faith
is a gift of God. It's not works. But the Bible says this is the
work of God that you believe. Faith is a work, but it's not
your work. It's God's work. And if you place
faith as a condition to be quickened or to be saved, then that faith,
whether you want to call it a work or whether you don't want to
call work, it don't matter what you call it. That faith is now. A condition. It's a work. And whatever you receive on the
other end is a wage. And if it's a wage. Not grace. It's not grace. Every year my boss, which I have
not been accustomed to from my previous job, but every year
my boss is very gracious in giving me a Christmas gift or a Christmas
bonus. And sometimes throughout the
year gives me things. not things that I've worked for.
He pays me a wage. I go to work, I'm at a set salary. I go to work, I do this work,
and it's all for a wage, okay? If my boss would show up and
say, hey, man, glad you installed that x-ray equipment. Here's
a gift for you. Just out of the kindness of my
heart, I wanted to give you this gift. And I said, well, what
is it? He said, it's your paycheck. Well, that's not a gift, I earned
that. I'm owed that. That belongs to me because we
had a covenant of works. You said if I would do this work
for you, you would compensate me with this amount of pay. That's
a covenant of works. Between me and my boss, I am
owed that paycheck. That money actually belongs to
me. Because I work for it. But whenever my boss comes and
says, you know, you've done a really good job throughout the year,
here's a Yeti ice chest. And he gives me a Yeti ice chest,
which he did give me a Yeti ice chest a couple years ago. Which by the way was a $500 ice
chest. I didn't deserve that. I didn't
work for that. I wasn't expecting that. I can't
demand that. It was something outside of our
agreement of work. That was grace. He was gracious
to me. He gave me something that I didn't
work for, that he didn't owe me, that I didn't earn or that
I didn't deserve. He gave that to me for nothing,
for free. I can't demand it. I can't do
any condition to listen. I couldn't have worked any more
harder. And demand he give it to me. But yet for the Armenian
who believes that salvation comes by them making a decision and
choosing Christ and coming to him and exercising their faith
or whatever the case might be, whenever they say that if I do
that, then he is Faithful to give me that. Well, there ain't
no faithful nothing. There ain't nothing faithful
to that. You've earned that you've worked for that you did that
you deserve that. Although my house be not so with
God, yet he hath made me an everlasting covenant ordered in all things
and sure there is no unsurety about our salvation. It isn't
by works, it's by grace, and it isn't based upon us, it's
based upon Jesus. And he said, for this is all
my salvation. Not just the initial part, and
then you gotta do good, keep the law, be obedient, whatever,
tithe, go to church, Cross your hearts and hope to
die. Whatever. Light your candles, baptize people,
whatever it is. No. For this is all my salvation. All my salvation is in the everlasting
covenant ordered in all things. Precisely organized. Intricately... Precisely arranged. I should
have stuck with my phrase I already could say. In every intricate
detail. That's what you get when you
get an uneducated preacher. Mutilate the English language
and make up words. But not to take any seriousness from what I'm saying
here, but brethren, David said, this is all my salvation. Christ
is saying, this is all my salvation. All my salvation to my house
is wrapped up in the eternal covenant that has been precisely
arranged and organized and is as sure as anything. And he says, and it's all my
desire. And we know that the Bible says
that all that the Lord desires he will accomplish. That he will
not be thwarted, that he will accomplish all his pleasure. We read the verse last week.
In his hands, the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished all the pleasure
of God. So we see here. that we have a salvation that
is an eternal salvation, and Jesus is that eternal substitute,
or mediator, or surety that is in place for us. Now, we've read
these verses, and I'm gonna cut it off here. Ephesians chapter
one, verses two through 14, I'm gonna start reading. If you wanna
turn, turn. But these are verses we've read
here millions of times. Grace be to you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ. According as he has
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before him in love. OK, the reason that
he did the eternal covenant and orderly arranged it was so that
we, before we even fell in Adam, would be, what does it say there? Before him as holy and without
blame. See, there has never been a time
in time that the child of grace has ever, ever been considered
apart from the surety. Even before our understanding,
even before our experiential salvation took place. where we
was converted, where we were quickened, and we were converted
by the gospel and learned of our salvation, we learned of
our sin, we repented in our heart of our own righteousness and
looked to Christ's righteousness. Before any of that took place,
and while we were yet sinners, and while we were still wrathful
against God and at enmity against God, and while we were still
haters of God, We were never viewed as such. We were viewed
as the righteousness of Christ. That's why the Bible can say
that he has not beheld iniquity in Jacob or perverseness in Israel. There's no way you can ever say
that. There is no way that he could ever say that he has loved
us with an everlasting love because his love is predicated upon the
fact that Jesus Christ is our surety, is our substitute. The only way that God can love
a sinner is through a substitute. He cannot love us. That's why
John 3, 16 says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have everlasting life. How did God show his love for
the world? By sending the substitute. And
only because of that substitution can God love the world. Which
he was loving and dying for. According as He has chosen us
in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before Him in love. Here it is, having
predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to
Himself according to the good pleasure of His will. How many
of y'all here has ever tried to discuss election to anybody? And someone ever asked you, well,
why does God choose one and not the other? Yeah, they say it's not fair.
That's not fair. Upon what basis does God choose
one and not the other? There's only really one answer
that you can give them. And that's right here in Ephesians
chapter one, verse five, because it was to the good pleasure of
his will. That at that point is where we bow the knee. We
submit to God's word. We submit to the sovereign of
creation, who has said, it is my pleasure to give these people
to Christ. It has nothing to do with us,
again. Now a lot of people says, how does he find Paul? How does he find fault if he's
created this group of people and they're the only ones that's
ever going to be safe and he's created this people to be this
reprobate that's going to be nothing but sinful all their
life and not always be accounted as sinful all their life and
never have a chance of salvation, never have a chance of getting
out of their position or changing their destiny or whatever, then
how does God find fault Whenever they didn't have a chance, whenever
they didn't have a choice, whenever God determined before the foundation
of the world those who would be His and those who would not
be His, how can God find fault? What do we say? What can we say? What do you say to your friends
and family when they make the accusation? And I know they make
the accusation, because mine does. You tell them what the
scriptures say. You don't have the right to ask
that question. Who art thou a man who replies back to God? That's
not that which was formed, or that which is the creator, the
potter. Doesn't he have the power over
the clay to make? out of the same lump, one vessel of honor,
one vessel of debt. Doesn't he have the right to
do that with whoever he wants to make it that right? You see,
the question is, how can God choose one and not the other?
That's not the question. The question is, how come you
do not submit to the God of Scripture? Who says, I make one for one
purpose and one for another. I am God, I am He, none can stay
in my hand. And say, why doest thou this
thing? See, the problem is, is how come
you have a problem with the sovereign God of creation? How come you
don't like the sovereign God of creation? That's the question.
Why are you not submitting to the biblical teaching that God
has that right? And he says that in that right. He is just and righteous. Matter of fact, that's why Paul
in Romans Chapter 9 made the case as the foundation, as his
clenching point said, that is why God said unto Moses, I will
have mercy on whom I will have mercy. I will harden whom I will
harden. Why? Because God has the sovereign
right to do with his creation whatever he wants to do. Adam don't like to hear that.
I don't know like to hear that. See, it's hard to say that. The brethren, it's the truth,
and if we're not going to be deceitful, if we're not going
to preach guile, if we're not going to be, you know, subversive,
sneaky snakes in the grass, if we're going to be truthful with
people, we're going to tell them what does the Bible say? according to the good pleasure
of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein
he hath made us accepted in the beloved, in whom we have redemption
through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches
of his grace, wherein he hath abounded towards us in all wisdom
and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will,
according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself. that in the dispensation of the
fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in
Christ both which are in heaven and which are on earth even in
him in whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated
according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after
the counsel of his will that we should be to the praise of
his glory, who first trusted in Christ, and whom he also trusted
after that he heard the word of truth, the gospel of your
salvation, and whom also after that he believed you were sealed
with that Holy Spirit of promise, that doesn't mean the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit, by the way, that's for another day, which
is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased
possession under the praise of his glory. 2nd Timothy 1 9 sums it a little
bit better, who hath saved us and called us with the holy calling,
not according to our works, but according to his own purpose
and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world
began in that everlasting covenant, but is now made manifest to us. See, what was already done in
eternity, already finished in eternity, is being made manifest
in time by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath
abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light
through the gospel. The good news is telling us what
had already taken place. So brethren, all the blessings
of this everlasting covenant, this New Testament, this eternal
covenant, whatever you want to call it, all the blessings of
that and all of God's people were given to the Lord Jesus
Christ as a surety, and he voluntarily took upon himself the responsibility
of y'all. And I don't have time to go through
the whole illustration of this, but if you remember back, remember
Judah went as a surety for Benjamin. And I'll just read the one verse
where he talks about this, but it's so beautiful to see what
Jesus, because this is, listen, whenever we talk about it being
done and sure, this is how we know it's going to be sure. Listen
to what he said, Judah said unto Israel, his father, Send the
lad with me, and I will arise and go, that we may live and
not die, both we and thou, and also our little ones. I will
be surety for him. Of my hand shalt thou require
him. If I bring him not unto thee
and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame forever.
Ain't that beautiful? In the everlasting covenant,
Jesus stood as our surety. And in so much word said, if
I don't bring forth that which you purpose. Then lay it in my
hands. Let it be my blame forever. That's why it's ordered and sure.
Because he's not going to fail. He's not going to fail if Christ
does not bring one person for whom God has given him back to
the Father, then here he himself has made an oath unto God, an
oath unto himself to say, if I don't bring unto thee and set
them before thee, then let me bear the blame forever. That is how order and sure your
salvation, child of grace is. With Christ as our substitute,
as our surety, our salvation has been from eternity and everything
is complete. God does not have people running
all over this world trying to get his people saved. Christ
has accomplished that already. We know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them who are on
the call according to his purpose, for whom he did foreknow. He
also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that
he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom
he did predestinate, them he also called, whom he called,
them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified. We could read Ephesians again.
We could read 2nd Timothy again. But we we come away from this
knowing that Christ was slain as our substitute for the before
the foundation of the world and we are accepted in him as our
substitute and it is an eternal substitution. Now, we're going
to keep looking at this next week and make our final dissent
and conclusion of this. We will look at a couple of other
things about his substitution. It was not only eternal, but
his obedience was our substitute as well. All right, let's stay
and have word of prayer and we'll be dismissed.