If you would now, open your Bibles
with me to Psalm 15. Psalm 15. Lord, who shall abide in thy
tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?
He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh
the truth in his heart. He that backbites not with his
tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach
against his neighbor, in whose eyes a vile person is condemned,
but he honoreth them that fear the Lord. He that sweareth to
his own hurt and changeth not, he that putteth not out his money
to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent, he that doeth these
things shall never be moved. Let's bow together in prayer. Our Father, we come into your
courts this evening reverently, but Father, also joyfully, thankfully,
that this is the day appointed where we can gather together
out of the world in the middle of the week, and Father, have
a refreshing from your storehouses of grace, to have a refreshing
to one more time hear of Christ our Savior to have him meet with
us here with his presence. For two or three are gathered
together in my name, he said, there am I in the midst of them.
Father, we've gathered together to be in his presence and to
worship his matchless name. And Father, I beg you that you
would enable us to do that this evening, to truly from the heart
worship. Father, speak to us through thy
word. Reveal one more time to us the glory, the sufficiency,
the majesty of Christ our Savior. Father, give us the faith to
believe Him, to continually, as Peter said, be found coming. To whom coming? Coming unto Him.
Father, I thank you for this place. I thank you for a family
of believers that you've called together. They're so precious
to me, to each other, Father, I pray that you would continue
to bind our hearts together in love, that you would continue
to bless your word preached from this place. Use it, Father, first
and foremost for your glory, to reveal your glory to us and
to our community. Father, that you may be pleased
to use this gospel to go forth and call out your people, bring
them to faith in Christ. cause our hearts to be bound
together with them too. Father, we thank you for your
many blessings to us. Oh, how richly you have blessed
us, materially, physically, and Father, especially spiritually,
how you've blessed us. You've blessed your people with
every spiritual blessing. Father, we're so thankful, knowing
we don't deserve the least of your mercies, but you've given
us everything in Christ Jesus, and we're thankful. And Father, we beg your forgiveness
for the many times that we murmur and complain against your good
providence. Forgive us for Christ's sake, we pray. And Father, again
bless us in this hour as we look into your word. Give us a sight
by faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. For his precious name, for his
sake we pray, amen. I've chosen as my text tonight
Psalm 15, the psalm that we've just read, We've been going through
on Wednesday nights the book of Exodus. We looked at the 11
of the plagues last Wednesday. I wanted to save the 12th one,
the Passover, for Sunday so we can observe the Lord's table
with everyone here. So Lord willing, we'll be doing
that Sunday. But tonight I want to look at this Psalm 15. I've
titled the message The Believer in Christ. Now this Psalm can
only be describing one glorious person, just one, our Lord Jesus
Christ. The psalmist asked him, verse
one, Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell
in thy holy hill? And he talks about your holy
hill and your tabernacle. This is where God dwells. And
the only answer to that question, who can abide there? Who can
stay where God dwells, in God's presence? The only answer is
the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it? It's obvious. The only man
who can stand in God's presence and be accepted on his own personal
merits is the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. But in a wonder,
I can't think of a bigger word, a wonder, an astonishment of
God's creation or God's salvation, these verses also describe believers. These verses also describe what
a believer has been made by Christ our Savior. The Apostle John
wrote in 1 John 4 verse 17, as he is, so are we in this world. And that's what this Psalm's
gonna show us. As he is, how is our Lord Jesus Christ? Is
he holy? Of course he is. Then so are
you who believe. Is he righteous? Of course he
is. Then so are you who believe,
because that's what he made you. Is the Lord Jesus Christ, is
he accepted of the Father? Well, you know he is when he
ascended back to glory. The Father accepted him, said,
sit here on my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.
He's accepted. And so are you who believe. Accepted
in the beloved. Is Christ the Son, is he loved
of God? Well, of course he's loved of the Father. He's loved
of the Father with an eternal, everlasting love. then so are
you who believe, loved of the Father with the same love wherewith
He loves His Son, because that's what you are in Christ. Look
over at Psalm 24, just a couple pages. The psalmist tells us
this again in Psalm 24, beginning in verse three. Who shall ascend
into the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in His holy place?
Will he that hath clean hands and a pure heart who's not lifted
up his soul into vanity nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive
the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of
our salvation. Now, again, obviously, this is
only describing our Lord Jesus Christ. He's the only one who
has clean hands and a pure heart, who never lifted up his soul
into vanity or sworn deceitfully. There's no sin in him. He never
even thought about committing a sin. This can only be describing
our Lord Jesus Christ. But these verses also tell us
what Christ has made his people. That he's made his people just
like himself. See what David says in verse
six? This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek
thy face, O Jacob, or O God of Jacob. That word generation,
it means a description of a heap of people. A description of a
heap of people. Who are those people? They're
all God's elect. And you can describe them just
like you described the Lord Jesus Christ, because he's made his
people just like him. And Psalm 15 shows us the same
thing. I want us to look at that for
a few minutes to see. The first thing I see is this,
it's Christ our righteousness. Verse two says, now who can dwell
in God's presence? Who can go into God's holy hill
where his throne is? Well, he that walketh uprightly
and worketh righteousness. That's the person that can go
into God's presence and be accepted. But when you read that, you know
this. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only one who ever walked
upright. He's the only one who ever worked
out a righteousness by his own obedience to the law. The Lord
Jesus always walked upright. did righteousness, always. He
made righteousness and he made it by his perfect obedience to
the law. And his work of righteousness
is perfect. His righteousness is equal to
God Almighty because he is God. It's a perfect righteousness. He walked uprightly. That word
means without blemish, perfectly. This is the perfection of Christ.
He's the lamb without spot and without blemish. He never sins,
so he doesn't have a single blemish of sin. That's something you
and I can't understand, because all we do is sin. The Lord Jesus
does not have a single blemish of sin. He's beautiful in his
righteousness. And the father will always accept
his son in his presence because his son is what the father loves,
righteous. Now that's understandable, isn't
it? We all understand something at least about the perfection
of Christ. But now here's the miracle. This also describes
what Christ has made his people. He made his people what they're
not. He made them righteous by his
obedience for them as their representative. Now this is one of the great
displays of the wisdom of God in salvation. How he saves his
people through representation. God has only ever looked at the
whole human race in two representative men. Adam, the first man created
in the garden, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the second Adam. These
are the two representative men, and the whole human race is found
in these two representative men. And this is what, Truth of representation
means that all of us are what our representative is. We've
all done what our representative did. When Adam sinned, every
last one of us sinned in him. We sinned in him. We all became
a sinner when Adam became a sinner because we sin in Adam. It's not like God charged us
with something and you know, we weren't there. So, you know,
that's not fair. We were in Adam. So we did do
what Adam did. That's how we became sinners.
God charged the whole human race with sin because of one sin of
the representative man, Adam. And then in the fullness of time,
the father sent his son into the world as the remedy for what
Adam had done unto his people. He sent his son into the world
as a man, the second representative man, the second Adam. and all
of God's elect did what Jesus of Nazareth did as a man made
under the law. When he obeyed God's law perfectly,
so did you if you're in him. When he did not do every thou
shalt not of the law, neither did you. When he did every thou
shalt of the law, you did too because you're in him, you're
in his as your representative. When Christ obeyed the law perfectly,
all of God's elect did too. Now that is such wisdom. No son
of Adam could have ever dreamed that up. Of all the false religions
in the world, none of them come close to that, do they? Because
this is the wisdom of God, not the wisdom of man. God made his
elect righteous by representation. And if you're a sinner, that
thrills your soul to think that I could be made righteous without
any input from me. Oh, that's good news. If you
know you can't do anything but sin, what good news it is to
hear, I could be made righteous without any input from me. It's
all what Christ, my Savior, did for me. And that means I have
a righteousness that I can't lose, because I messed it up.
Because it all depends on Christ, not on me. Now isn't that comforting? That's both comforting and assuring.
What a reason for us to trust Christ. But you know, Christ
also made his people righteous by his sacrifice for them. Yes,
God's elect, they did obey the law. In Christ, they're representative,
but they've still sinned, haven't they? Something's got to be done
with their sin. So Christ made himself the sacrifice for the
sin of his people. His sacrifice completely removed
all of the sin, all of God's elect, so they're righteous. That's what 2 Corinthians 5 21
is all about. For he, God the Father, hath
made him, God the Son, sin for us. Him who knew no sin, that
we might be what? Made righteous. Made the righteousness
of God in him. Chip was talking about this before
the service. Now, whatever that means, I can't understand all
the fullness of what that means, that the father made his son's
sin for his people. But whatever that means, I know
enough to know this, God took all my sin off of me and laid
it on his son. And his son put it away, cast
it behind God's back, washed it away by the blood of his sacrifice. And that righteousness, His sacrifice
made His people righteous because it made them without sin. They
have no sin, they're righteous. And that righteousness can never
be lost because it was obtained in justice through the sacrifice
of Christ. Now I said that the Lord Jesus,
He's the only one who ever walked uprightly. But you know, every
believer, this is their desire, to walk uprightly. That's your
desire. Of course it is. And it's not
our desire so we can make ourselves righteous or we can make ourselves
more righteous or we can earn some blessing from God because
we walked uprightly. No, the believer wants to walk
uprightly to honor our Savior, to honor Him. I don't want to
go out and just sin all the more just because I know my Savior
put it away and I know He's gonna forgive me. I don't wanna sin
more when I see what my sin cost my Savior to put it away, of
course I don't want to sin, I want to walk uprightly. Yet I find
all I can do is sin. So how can the believer walk
uprightly through this world? It's by faith. It's by faith. The believer walks looking unto
Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. We walk looking
to Christ. I preached this Sunday. Christ
is our Redeemer. He's our King, He's our Lord,
He's our Master, that's first and foremost, that cannot be
stressed enough. But as the Lord washed His disciples'
feet, He also said, I've given you an example. Now you want
to walk uprightly in this world? Don't look to the law to see
how to do it. Look to Christ. If you're looking to Him, you'll
know what to do. We walk uprightly by trusting
Christ to be our righteousness. Not looking to the law to see
what we should do, but trusting Christ to be my righteousness. You're always gonna go in the
right direction if you're looking to Christ. If you're looking
to Christ, you're following Him, right? He's not gonna lead you
wrong. Just keep walking, looking to Him. All right, that's Christ
our righteousness. Second is Christ our truth. At
the end of verse two, it says that he that speaketh truth in
his heart, he that backbites not with his tongue, nor doeth
evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor.
Now, the Lord Jesus Christ is the truth personified. He speaketh
truth in his heart because he is truth. He is truth. He said, I am the way, I am the
truth, and I am the life. I'm the truth. Now, you know,
God gave in the Old Testament, he gave to Moses all the mosaic
law and the ceremonies for the Jews to follow. And you know
what the law and the ceremony showed us? It showed us the truth
of God, truth of God's salvation, but it was in picture. It was
in type, it was in shadow. And sinful man misunderstood
the law and the ceremonies. Sinful man still today mistakenly
thinks that by observing those ceremonies and trying to keep
those laws that they make themselves righteous before God. That's
what the Jews thought. And then Christ came into the
world and he revealed the truth just by living among men. just
by being there, just by seeing him. We were talking last night
about my nephew, Gavin. He was just a, he was a little
thing. And Holly had married Doug. He's a pretty tall guy. And Gavin
may have thought he's a pretty big guy until he saw Doug. And you know what he did? He
walked up to Doug and he looked. He said, you're a giant. The
way Gavin realized he was real little is just by Doug walking
into Rome. That's how Christ showed us the
truth of God. Just by being in this world as
a man, he revealed what true righteousness really is. By being
himself. When you see His righteousness,
when you see what true obedience really is, you know you're disobedient. When you see what true love for
God really is, that's when I see I don't love God at all. My carnal
mind is enmity against God. The Lord Jesus Christ revealed
the truth about God because He is the truth about God. You know,
people could say, oh, I know God's holy. I know God's holy.
I know God can't even look on sin. And then you see the Lord
Jesus, God's son, going through his earthly ministry, always
accepted of his father, until he was made sin. And the father turned his back
on him. His father wouldn't even look on him. I know God's holy
because of how he treated his son when his son was made sin.
It quit being a doctrinal, point and became real in a person when
I saw the father turn his back on his son. People could say,
oh, I know God is just. I know God always punishes sin
with death. But I'll tell you where the rubber
met the road. When the father made his son sin for his people,
what did the father do to him? He slaughtered him without a
hint of mercy. If you and I were the judge and
our child was standing before us, we would find a way to get
him out of it, not the father, because he's just. See, that
truth, you can only see that in Christ. People can and do
often say God is love. Well, that's true, God is love. But Christ is the truth of that
love. Herein is love, not that we love but that God loved us
and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sin. When the father
slaughtered his son so he could save the likes of you and me,
oh, that's love. That's love that can't be explained
and can't be comprehended. We say God is gracious and he
is. God is gracious. But tell you
where I truly see God's grace is when he slaughtered his son.
so he could give me what Christ earned, what Christ deserved
as a man. That's grace. And it's in truth, isn't it?
See, we only see that in Christ. When we see Christ, the other
thing we see is this. We see the truth about man. Now,
I can know that man is dead and sinless. Matter of fact, I can't
remember a time I didn't mentally know that and mentally give assent
to that, Man is dead in sin. You want to know when I found
out I was dead in sin? When I saw Christ. When I saw
Him who is life, I saw I'm dead. I need Him to keep me alive.
We can say man is lost in sin and I've always known that. Always up here. I've always known
man is lost in sin. But I tell you, when we find
out how lost we are, is when Christ, the good shepherd, comes
and finds us, lays us on his shoulders, and carries us back
to the fold. Now I know what it is to be lost
and found. The only way I can know what
it is to be lost is when Christ finds me. But it's by seeing
him. Then Christ reveals the truth
about himself. He reveals the truth about the
Father. He reveals the truth about us, and He reveals the
truth about Himself. When we see Christ, we know He's
the only Savior. He's the only one that's got
the righteousness and the holiness. He's the only one that's got
pure, sinless blood to pay for my sin. He's the only one that's
got the love. They would love a dead sinner
like me, so that He'd suffer and die in my place to save me.
He's the only Savior. It's so obvious that there is
salvation in no other name under heaven, given among men, whereby
we must be saved. I see the truth of that if I
ever see Christ. It's obvious. He can't fail to
save. He accomplished all of the salvation
of all the people that the Father gave Him to save, and I'm gonna
run to Him. He's the truth. And you know, by nature, You
and I don't know any truth. Before we know Christ the truth,
here's what we think. We think we're pretty good. We
think we're pretty good because our mamas and daddies have told
us that from, you know, we're just little teeny tiny guys,
you know, telling us how good we are, you know. We think we
got some righteousness of our own and here's why we don't come
to Christ. Because we don't think we need.
We don't think we need to. We don't know the truth. And
by nature, we don't tell the truth. Yeah, we lie even to ourselves. We lie to ourselves so much,
we start to believe our own lie and really think we're good enough
to please God. And we lie to others. We put
on this big religious veneer to others. We try to make them
think the same thing. We try to make them think how
good we are so we can get some glory. And that's a great big
old lie. We don't deserve any glory whatsoever.
But when God saves His people, and He causes them to be born
again, and He reveals His Son to them and in them, now they know the truth. They
know the truth about themselves, and the only reason God would
save me is because of who the Lord Jesus Christ is. Now I see
the truth of that, and God gives me faith to truly trust Christ. to truly trust Him without hypocrisy. It's what the Apostle Paul called
faith unfeigned. Now our faith is unfeigned, it's
genuine, it's the real McCoy. It's never strong as we want
it to be, is it? It wavers up and down, mostly
down, but it's always unfeigned. It's always genuine faith in
Christ, if it's faith in Christ. If you've seen Him, you know
the truth, the truth of the Father, the truth of yourself and the
truth about him. He's the only savior and your faith is unfeigned. You wouldn't trust anyone else,
would you? Then thirdly, our savior is the one who judges
honestly. He says in verse three, he that
backbiteth not with his tongue. He doesn't be backbiting and
talking about people and carrying tales about evil. He doesn't
do evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against
his neighbor, in whose eyes a vile person is condemned. but he honoreth
them that fear the Lord. You know, our Savior always dealt
with people and judged people honestly. And he did it face
to face. He was never backbiting. He wasn't
carrying tales against people. He always dealt with people honestly.
He never called sin righteousness. Never. He never excused sin. He never overlooked sin. He forgave
sin. He forgave, but he never overlooked
it. That word backbite means to slander. Christ didn't come to slander
people. You think of how he dealt with the scribes and the Pharisees.
Pretty harshly. He never dealt harshly with sinners,
but he dealt harshly with the self-righteous. But even in that
harshness, in that just, bare light honesty about what they
are and what they were doing. He never slandered them, did
he? He never told something that wasn't true on them. And Christ, he wasn't a backbiter
in the sense he's a carrying tale. I mean, I just, oh, I just
hate that. Christ knows everything. He knew
the hearts of men. He knew the secret sins of men. But he didn't go carrying those
tales. He came to cover the sin of his people with his blood. He didn't come to expose them. He didn't come to do evil to
his neighbor. You think of all the evil his neighbors did to
him. He didn't do evil to them. He didn't come to do evil to
his neighbor. Christ came as the good Samaritan who came to
save his people from dying in a ditch. by getting down there
in the ditch with them and pouring in the oil and wine of the gospel. He didn't come to reproach men.
And that word reproach means to shame. He didn't come to shame
his people. You remember that woman who was
taken in the very act of adultery. They brought her to the Lord
to shame her, didn't they? It's the scribes and the Pharisees
and the legalists who are trying to shame somebody. Our Lord didn't
shame her. He ended up telling her, well,
where are those nine accusers? Neither dry continue. Go in peace. Go and sin no more. He came to
take the shame of the sin of his people away from him. He
didn't come to shame them. The Lord Jesus Christ was not
judgmental. You've been around people that
are judgmental. It just makes you nervous, doesn't
it? The Lord Jesus Christ is the judge of all the earth, but
he was not judgmental. The scribes and Pharisees were
not comfortable in his presence, but sinners, publicans and harlots
were, because he wasn't judgmental toward them. But yet he is the
judge of all the earth. The fathers committed all judgment
unto the son. It's the Lord Jesus Christ who
will be the judge of this world. And when he judges his people,
it will be in righteousness. It'll be in truth. When the Lord
judge, and I don't wanna use the word judge, he's not gonna
judge his people. He's not gonna pour out all this
evidence of our sin and the humiliation of our lives. It's not a judgment
in that sense, but he will pronounce a sentence. And this will be
the verdict. You're innocent. You're righteous. Come, you blessed of my father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world. Come dwell. in the presence of God. Come
dwell before my throne. Now that will be a true and a
righteous judgment because it will be what every single believer
deserves. Now the only way the judge can
give that honest, true verdict to the likes of you and me is
if he, the judge, has already suffered and died in our place.
He already suffered the condemnation that we deserve. I can't tell you how much I want
to hear the Savior say to me, come, ye blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom, prepared for you from the foundation of
the world. I don't want to hear him say, depart from me, I never
knew you. How do I know what Christ the
judge will say to me? Because he's given you a nature
that's just like his nature. It says here, in whose eyes a
vile person is condemned, but he honoreth them that fear him."
The believer says, yes, yes, the vile person absolutely should
be condemned. But when the believer says that,
he's taking sides with God against himself. I'm not talking about
others who are vile. They should be condemned. This
is business done between God and me. I'm the one that should
be condemned because the vile person is me. God would be right
and just if he deems me. He'd be right to do it because
that's what my sin deserves. And if Christ brings me to heaven,
that will be right and just too, because that's what I deserve
in Christ. See, that's condemning the vile
person and honoring those that fear him. The Lord will always
honor those that fear him and he's the one that has to
give us the fear of him. And then he honors us for having
it. Now that's a good hope, isn't it? All right, so here's the
fourth thing. Christ, our covenant head. At
the end of verse four, he says, he that sweareth to his own hurt
and changeth not. Now in eternity before creation,
the father and the son entered into a covenant of grace. It
was a promise, the promise of God to save his people by grace. And in that covenant, in that
promise, the son agreed. He promised, Father, I will be
the surety for all those people that you gave me. I will come
as a man and I will do everything that's necessary to save them
from their sin and bring them back to you. I promise you I'll
do that. Now, when the time came to actually
do it. He never pulled back. When it
came time for the Son of God, the glory of heaven, to humiliate
Himself, to take off His glory as the Son of God and clothe
Himself and hide His glory in the weakness of human flesh,
He did it, even though it would cost Him such humiliation. When
it came time for Him to keep His own law, this is the lawgiver. and he made himself born of a
woman, made under the law. When it came time for him to
obey his own law, he didn't change his mind. He didn't back off. He didn't say, you know, let's
amend this agreement. No, he did it. When it came time to be made
sin, a transaction, if that's what
you want to call it, more awful than we will ever realize. Just the thought of being made
sin, made the savior think he was gonna kill his body before
he ever got to the cross. It was so horrible. And he didn't
change his mind. He didn't change his mind. He
said, father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless,
not as I will, but thy will be done. It was God's will and he
didn't turn his back. He didn't turn away from it.
When it came time for him to be beaten, when it came time
for him to suffer, he didn't run from it. He gave himself
to that mob to take him. He gave his back to the smiters. He gave his cheeks to those that
would pluck out his beard and smite him in the face. Even though
it was to his own hurt and his own humiliation, he didn't change
his mind. He kept his word. He willingly
went to the cross. He willingly went to all of that
suffering and all of that humiliation. You know why? For the joy that
was set before him. He promised he'd save a people
that he loved. It was his joy to do it, even
though it cost him. At Christ the Savior, he's proven
his honesty, has he not? By keeping that covenant, hasn't
he proved himself? He's proved himself to be trustworthy. Now I tell you and me, trusting. Trust him. Trust that he is enough. Trust his word. Trust his gospel. Trust his precious promises.
He is the very one that stood up and said, if you're weary
of the burden of the law that you can't carry, come unto me
and rest. If you're weary, come unto Him.
He'll give you rest because He promised He'd do it. He's the
one that stood up and cried at the last day of that feast if
you're thirsty for righteousness. You know, when we're thirsty,
it's our body's way of telling us we need something we don't
have inside of us. If you're thirsty for righteousness
because you don't have any, you know what the Savior said? Come
unto me and drink. Come drink. If you're hungry,
he said, come, I'll give you the living bread. Trust me, you
trust your soul to me. And when this thing's over, I'm
gonna glorify you together with me that where I am, there you
may be also. Now that's his promise. That's
a promise that God has made. Now, whatever it is that God
has promised to do, I can tell you this, he's gonna do it. He
will do it. Don't let circumstances that
you don't understand and they're causing you pain and causing
you suffering and you don't see how this thing's gonna turn out.
Don't make those circumstances make you doubt the Savior. You
trust Him and don't look for another. Don't look for anything
you can do to help the situation along and improve your situation
with God and make it more sure just Trust Him. I can't think of words to say
how blessed it is to be able to go through this world of sin,
this world that's constantly changing. It seems like it's
constantly changing for the worse. To go through this life in this
body of sin that I find more and more and more disgusting
every day, to be able to go through all of that, to go through this
world and this sinful body, trusting the promise of God. I can't tell
you what a blessing that is. Now, don't give it up. You trust
Him because He's trustworthy. He's the covenant God. He'll
keep His promise. Many years ago, there was a young
boy, two young boys, and their parents, when they would bring
them to the service, this is what they did with their boys. They always made the boys on
the way home tell them one thing that the preacher said. Just
one thing. Nothing more complicated than
that. And this little fella, he's a daddy now. And they got
in the car, he didn't even wait for it. I had preached that night.
And he didn't even wait for his mom and dad to ask him. He said,
oh, oh, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. God always keeps
his promise. Now, can't we remember that?
Like, that's so simple a child can understand it. Oh, if Lord
would give us that childlike faith to trust him, what a blessing
that is. And here's the last thing. Christ
who saves freely by his grace. Verse five says, he that putteth
not out his money to usury, he doesn't charge interest nor taketh
reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall
never be moved. Now, eternal life requires a
perfect righteousness. And if we have any sin, it requires
a perfect sacrifice. Being accepted into God's presence
requires a perfect nature. That's what it requires. You
and I can't provide any of those things. So Christ came and he
provided all of that for his people. He came out and he came
to this earth as a man and produced a perfect righteousness by obeying
every jot and tittle of the law. The big stuff and the little
stuff. The stuff's so little, we wouldn't even notice it. He
still obeyed it. And then he took the sin of his
people away from them into his own body on the tree, and he
put it away by the sacrifice of himself. Now, can you imagine
what that cost him? What it cost him. It cost him
to leave heaven and come to this earth made as a man. the Holy
Son of God to be made seen. It cost him unspeakable suffering
of both body and soul. He made his soul an offering
to God. It cost him death, suffering
unto death. He earned salvation by paying
the price in full. And you know what he turned around
and did? Gave it to his people freely. Not only did He not charge
him interest on it, He didn't charge him any of the principle.
He gave it to him freely. Look at Isaiah chapter 55. Isaiah
55. Verse 1. Ho, listen up, everyone that
thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and eat of half no money, Come
ye buy and eat. Yea, come buy wine and milk without
money and without price. Come and have it for free. Don't try to pay a thing. The
price has already been paid. Do you want salvation? But you
got nothing to offer? You're spiritually bankrupt,
but you need this bread of life. You need this water of life.
Do you need this milk and wine without money, without price,
because you've got nothing to pay? Tell you what, come to Christ
and have it for free. Have it for free. Now I'll tell
you what that makes us. It makes us mercy beggars. Just come beg God for mercy. Not because you deserve it, but
because he said come have it for free. You know, God doesn't
charge us usury. for salvation. He didn't charge
us anything for salvation. And we don't try to pay it either.
Don't be careful now. Don't try to pay interest on
salvation. Just depend completely on the
mercy of God. How could I try to pay some interest
on salvation? It's by trying to do something
that will make God so happy with me that I'm more savable than
somebody else. I pay interest on salvation by trying to do
something that's so good, God will bless me for it, instead
of depending entirely on Christ. Don't pay interest. God's not
going to have it. What an insult to the Father. Don't do that.
The way you honor the Father is by begging for mercy. Come
beg for mercy. And that person who depends completely
on Christ, they'll never be moved. Because Christ will never be
moved. And if our Savior, we're in Him, He's never moved, we
shall never be moved. And it's all because of who He
is. Now I can trust Him. That's the
Savior that I need. All right, I hope you can too.
Let's bow together. Father, bless us for Christ's
sake. We beg your help, your mercy,
Father, that you bless your word as it's been preached. That you
would cause your people to overlook the stammering tongue of the
speaker. And Father, that you would apply
your word to each heart here. That we would see something of
the glory and the majesty of Christ our Savior. That we would
have some idea that he is all we need. and that we'd forget
everything and everyone else and run to him. Father, it's
a great blessing. It's a great blessing to ask
that you would be merciful to such sinners as we are. But Father,
for Christ's sake and for his glory, we cry out to you for
mercy. Father, it's in Christ's name.
For his sake and his glory, we pray. Amen. All right, Sean.