Well, we're having a break from
Psalm 119. We've got about halfway through
it, and when or if we'll return to it, I don't know. We'll see
how we're led. But I want to return this week
for a while to John's Gospel. We looked at the Samaritan woman
last time we were in John's Gospel, and I want to come now to John
chapter 5. You know, let me remind you.
of the purpose of John's Gospel. He writes it at the end of the
Gospel in chapter 20 and verse 31. He says, these are written,
this account that he's written, it's written, why? Why John,
why did you write it? That you might believe, what? That Jesus The man Jesus, Jesus
of Nazareth, Jesus the son of Mary, Jesus brought up there,
Jesus who walked this earth 2,000 years ago, that that man is the
unique Christ of God. He is uniquely the Christ of
God. There isn't another. There couldn't
ever be another. He is the only one. There is
none other name. given among men under heaven
whereby we must be saved his name is the only one for he uniquely
is the Christ the son of the living God the Christ of God
is the one who is the representative of his people that you might
believe him and that believing there's a result that believing
it's not just oh yes I think that as opposed to that that
believing you might have life through his name By believing
in Him, you have life. It's not the believing that makes
you have life, it's the believing which is the proof of the fact
that He has given life. What is it to believe? What do
I mean when I say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Believe
that Jesus is Christ? What do I mean, believe? I mean,
be persuaded in your innermost being to trust utterly convinced. You know, there are so many things
in life, there are so many decisions, and you don't know which way
to go, you don't know whether to believe that situation, or
believe that account of things, or believe the story regarding
that article that you want to buy, or trade in, whatever it
is. And sometimes you feel very,
very strongly persuaded. Well, I tell you, when you believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, when the Holy Spirit quickens and
gives you life from heaven to trust in the Son of God, you
are persuaded in the inner man. You are utterly convinced in
the inner man to depend on Jesus. to commit. I am persuaded, said
Paul, I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've
delivered unto him. What? The eternal safety of my
soul is in his hands. He is able to keep it against
that day. What day? The day of judgment.
The day of judgment when sinners should dread the fact that we
must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ and receive the
things done in the body. But if I'm in the Lord Jesus
Christ, persuaded that he has done everything for me, depending
on him to have put the record straight that I am right with
God, that I am accepted with God, that the man who lived 2,000
years ago, that the Christ who is God in flesh, who is the federal
head, the representative head of his multitude, his people
whom he loved with everlasting love, the substitute for them,
if you're one of them, for us, For us, think about it, when
the scripture says in the epistles, us, us, it means the ones for
whom Christ died, the ones whom he came to redeem, the ones for
whom he is substitute before the justice of God, the ones
for whom he stood surety in the reckoning of God, the guarantor
the One who guarantees eternal acceptance, the surety for that
multitude whom He came to redeem from the curse of the law. The
curse of the law is sin's curse, the curse on sin, for all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But He came to
redeem, to pay the price, to pay the sin debt, to pay the
penalty, in his own precious blood, for in the blood is the
life. It was the life of God in the
man Christ Jesus that paid the penalty for the sins of his people,
that you might have if you believe him." Remember, believing is
not the cause, but believing is the proof that you're amongst
them, that you might have life. What do I mean life? Aren't we
all alive, breathing, feeling, touching, tasting? I mean spiritual
life. I mean that life which is from
God. I mean eternal qualification for God's kingdom. Don't you
want to be a citizen of the kingdom of God? That blessed kingdom,
where there is no crying, nor pain, nor death, no sorrow, no
sickness, none of the things that plague life on this earth. No, spiritual life, eternal qualification. It's in this man, 2,000 years
ago, who came from heaven to redeem his people. All of the
incidents in the Gospels, the four Gospels, all of the incidents
are recorded to show a number of things. They show us firstly,
they show us God in the flesh. If you have eyes to see and ears
to hear, you will hear and see God, you will hear what He's
saying. This is God in flesh. When Jesus the man walked this
earth, God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man, God
in flesh. In him, Paul writes, dwelt the
fullness of the Godhead bodily. In the Lord Jesus Christ, the
man that they touched, John says, I leant on his breast, I touched
him, we beheld his glory. Which glory? The glory as of
the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. These
gospel accounts show us God in the flesh. Not just a good man,
not just a moral example, Not as the majority of so-called
Christian religion teaches, somebody whose footsteps we should try
to walk in, but the one who is God, the saviour of his people. The one who came down from heaven.
Secondly, it shows us again and again he came to give us heavenly
truth. How else would we know heavenly
truth but for Him coming from heaven? He came. He is the emissary. He who is God is the emissary
of God, who's come to give us heavenly truth, truth from heaven. Why is that important? Because
it's on so much of a higher plane than the truth of this world.
The truth of this world is lies, compared with heavenly truth.
The wisdom of this world is foolishness, compared with heavenly wisdom.
He came to give us heavenly truth, and the accounts in the gospel
show us heavenly truth. They show us divine power at
work. What is divine power? Creating
power. The power that spoke. Let there
be light. And there was light. And all
things came into being. And the universe. And the things
that we see and we perceive, we look through our telescopes
and we see deep into the heavens and we know that the deeper we
look, the more that there is that we can't see. because it's
the infinity of God, the divine power at work. But not only did
he create it, but we read that he sustains it, he upholds it. How does he uphold it? By the
word of the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what Hebrews
chapter 1 tells us. By the word of his power, he
upholds all things. The laws of science are held
together by him now. These gospel accounts show us
this. The divine power at work, we
see it in this account in John 5. We see also that all of it
was on the way, was a preparation, bit by bit. We saw some of that
in Psalm 119. A preparation for his hour. My hour is not yet come. My hour
is come, he said in John 17. The hour is, which hour? the
three hours when he died in the place of his people, loaded with
his people's sins, that the justice of God might be satisfied in
him. All of it was steps on the way. Mine hour is not yet come,
mine hour is not yet... Then he came to it, his hour,
and he went, and he accomplished what he did. We see also in these
accounts sovereign saving grace. Do you know what that means?
Sovereign? Who's sovereign? God is sovereign. God is over all. He is the one
who rules over all things. He is the one who chooses. Jesus
said, you haven't chosen me, I have chosen you. It is God
who chooses. We're at the mercy of God's sovereign
saving grace. And we need to learn to bow before
that sovereign grace, for without it we can do nothing. It is not
of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows
mercy. God who shows mercy. And finally,
and there may be more, but finally on this list, success. For he
shall not fail, said Isaiah the prophet. He shall not fail, and
he didn't fail. And we see the success that in
the moment when Satan was convinced he had the triumph over the Christ
of God, that he destroyed him, that he had him crucified on
the cross of Calvary, that in that very moment, Satan was completely
disarmed. Without him realizing it, he
had all of his weapons of accusation taken away from him, because
Christ had taken away the sin of his people. And these things
are shown in this incident here, in John chapter 5. And so I want
to consider with you this morning the impotent multitude that was
there, and the man, the certain man. And then Jesus, the Christ
of God. and then the result of that and
its challenge to us today. So first of all, the impotent
multitude and a certain man. There was a religious feast at
Jerusalem. We won't speculate as to which
one it was, but there were feasts when all Jewish males were meant
to go up to Jerusalem to the feast. And here it was at Jerusalem,
so Jesus went up there. You see, all of the feasts and
all of the temple worship of the Jews was typical. It pictured
saving grace. It showed how God saved sinners
from their sins. It showed how God took a people
out of the bondage of the world into his kingdom. It was all
typical, it was all a type, it was all a picture. And, of course,
they'd lost much of it down the ages by their disobedience and
their sinfulness, and they're departing from the worship of
the true God, and they're going after idols, and they're committing
the sins of Jeroboam. If you read 1 and 2 Kings, the
sins of Jeroboam, the sins which took Israel, the northern tribes,
away from the true worship of God, which is Christ. And only
as Christ is pictured can you worship God truly. Well, Jesus
went to the feast to demonstrate the saving reality that had become
shrouded in the Jewish traditions and the Jewish superstitions.
The truth was there, but their superstition and their traditions
had shrouded that truth. It had become mechanical. This
wasn't just a random visit. Jesus was there. Why was he there?
It was very purposeful. He went there on purpose. He
went to this feast on purpose. Why to this feast? And why to
this particular gate, the sheep gate, where they brought in the
animals for the sacrifices and for the food markets and all
that sort of thing? It was very purposeful. As with the Samaritan
woman, you know, he must needs go through Samaria. Why must
he go through Samaria? Well, it was on the way, but
there was a reason. There was a woman there. There
was a woman and there were some people there, in that city of
Sychar. They were the elect of God. They
were among the elect of God. He must go. These are the lost
sheep of the house of Israel, and He's on the trail of the
lost sheep of the house of Israel. So He must go there, and He must
proclaim gospel-saving grace. And so it is here. He comes to
this pool of Bethesda, this house of mercy, because there's a certain
man there. A certain man. There are many,
many sick people waiting there. There's a multitude in verse
3. In these, these five porches of Bethesda, in these lay a great
multitude of impotent folk. A lot of people who were, it
must have been an absolutely pitiful sight. You can just imagine
TV cameras recording it and rolling it in their news bulletins. You
know, what a dreadful sight it must have been. you know, before
the sort of medicine that we have in recent years. Impotent
folk, blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the
water. This is the house of mercy. That's what the name Bethesda
means. It means the house of mercy. The house of mercy. Many
sick people were waiting there. They were waiting, hoping to
be healed. hoping to be healed, relying
on its reputation. Look at verse 4. An angel went
down, so it was said, an angel went down at a certain season
into the pool and troubled the water. Not always, just at a
certain season, and troubled the water, stirred the water
up. Whosoever then first, only one, only one, after the troubling
of the water, stepped in, was made whole, was made well, was
recovered, was healed of whatsoever disease he had. it had a reputation, and presumably
deservedly. If it never happened, why would
so many gather there? It is quite likely that there
was some miraculous thing. You know, there was a period
of silence from Malachi until the father of John the Baptist
prophesied. There was a silence of prophecy
for 400 years. Go back to 1621, and that's how
long ago You know, that's a long period
of our history, and it's that period of time when there was
no prophecy given from God. And it could well be that this
pool of Bethesda had this reputation that God kept alive. an indication that the Spirit
of God and the reality of God is true, in that sick people
were miraculously cured of their illnesses in this pool. And so
it had a justified reputation. And there were many people waiting
there, hoping to be healed. They were relying on its reputation.
Likely, some had been healed there, but it would be very rare.
And it was only one at a time. It was only the first that got
in the water after it was troubled. There are five porches there
for shade and shelter. Five porches, colonnades. No
doubt there's significance in that and various commentators
get lots of information out of that, the significance of the
five. I'm not going to digress with
that at the moment. The key point, the key point
that you must understand, is that there were sick people there
who were trusting in the possibility of being healed, and they were
prepared to wait for it. They were prepared to wait. In
one case that we read of, this one man, verse 5, a certain man
was there which had an infirmity. We don't see here what it was,
we don't know what it was. Presumably it was some infirmity
of bodily strength because he couldn't get into the water when
it was stirred. He needed somebody to help him
and he didn't have anybody to help him. He was 38 years waiting. You would have thought after
about, how long would you have been prepared to wait? One or
two years? Oh, it's not gonna happen. It hasn't happened so
far, so therefore it's not gonna happen at all. 38 years. Imagine that, 38 years waiting. And look at the case of all of
these people. Look at the case of all of these
people. It says that they were, in verse three, they were impotent. Do you know what impotent means?
It means lacking in physical strength. They didn't have the
strength in their bodies to help themselves. They were lacking
in physical strength. They were, in that society, in
a bad case because they were unable to work. That must have
been a miserable condition. If you were physically incapable
of working, there was no welfare state, there was nothing other
than begging and charity handouts upon which they could rely. Secondly,
we read that they were blind. blind. We don't know how blind,
from total blindness to imagine what it must have been like.
Those of you that have got severe short sight, as I once had until
I had my eyes changed, you know how disabling it is. Without
your spectacles, you can hardly see a thing. It's really, really
bad. Unable to see clearly. These were blind people, they
couldn't see. Think how that would limit their
ability to earn a living and to operate in society of that
time. They were halt, means that they
were lame, that they were crippled, that they were unable to move
themselves. They were withered, withered,
meaning, I think, prematurely old. and weakened, they had all
the signs of severe physical weakness, and they were waiting,
they were waiting, patiently waiting. They'd been there years,
some of them. In the House of Mercy, Bethesda, for God to be
merciful to one sick person and heal them, and then wait again
until the next time, and maybe, you know, as the national lottery
says in this country, it could be you, they're thinking all
the time, it could be you, it could be you, maybe this time
it's going to be you, maybe it will be this time. And they were
entirely dependent on events beyond their control. You know
what this is? It's a picture of us all spiritually
in our natural state. In relation to the life of God,
true life, the true life, for God is the source of all true
life. In our natural state, the natural man, can't see the things
of the Spirit of God. He's blind to them. He's impotent
to commune with God, blind to the light of God's truth. This
is you and me as we are in our natural state in the flesh. As
the children of Adam, fallen, deceived by Satan, we're blind
to the light of God's truth. We're unable to move ourselves
towards God and His kingdom. I think I'll get up and I will
go to... No, you won't. You're incapable. You're a sinner. You fall far short of the glory
of God. Nothing that defiles shall enter
in there. And you're dying the death. However
young you are, do you know today you are dying the death in your
flesh that is due to sin against God. And it will end one day
when you do die. You say, oh, what a shocking
thing to say. Oh, there are children present. Do you think you really
ought to say that to them? I'm only being truthful. This
is what the word of God says. You might be aware of the truth
of God. You might be aware that, yes,
God is true, and His testimony is true, and you've heard it
often enough. You might even acknowledge your sin, and it's
just dessert before the justice of God. And you might be aware
that God does save individuals, and He does give some assurance
of eternal life, that they know that it is well with their souls.
but you're waiting to get the right feeling about it, like
these people were waiting for that water to be stirred, and
for one of them, perhaps, to be healed. Do you know that every
time that we meet to worship like this, and other groups like
us, and other churches, the ones we know, and the many more that
we don't know, where Christ is uplifted, where Christ is proclaimed,
we meet to worship, to honour God, who is the God of all, who
is a God of salvation, to preach the Gospel. Preaching, preaching,
preaching. This is so important. Please,
don't underestimate it. The Word of God says, by the
foolishness of preaching, it pleased God to save those who
believe. Whosoever shall call on the name
of the Lord shall be saved. Whosoever shall do that shall
be saved. But how shall they call on the one that they've
not believed in? And how shall they believe unless
they've heard? And how shall they hear without
one preach to them? You say, oh, well, they'll just
go and read it. No, there's something special about preaching. Preaching
the gospel of grace. Every time we meet to preach
the gospel of grace, to uplift the Lord Jesus Christ, to extol
him for the salvation he has accomplished, this is Bethesda,
the house of mercy. But the key difference is this.
There is no limit to one. There is no limit to one person.
This is Bethesda, but there's no limit to one. All who hear,
all who come, all who desire to be spiritually healed by coming
to Christ, All are accepted. Stop looking for the water to
be stirred if it might happen. Hear the call of the Lord Jesus
Christ to come and come now as you are, trusting Him. Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and trust the redemption He has paid
with His own precious blood. Here's the multitude and here's
the certain man. But look who's there. This is
so important. It's not just anybody. It's not
just a prophet. It's not just a preacher. Though
God empowered many of his prophets down the ages to perform great
acts in his name to authenticate his truth. This is Jesus. Saviour,
Jehovah Jesus, God the Saviour. This is our Saviour God, the
Christ of God, the Messiah, the promised seed of the woman, the
one whom God said would come in the middle of time, when God
sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem
those who are under the law, that we might receive the adoption
of sons. This One, Jesus, He went there. He went there. He, for a while,
made a little lower than the angels, for a short time, was
made, for that period, lower than the angels. He went there,
to that place. God clothed in human flesh, the
fullness of the Godhead bodily in Him. The One whose glory those
disciples beheld, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth. the only manifestation of true
God to fallen man. As Philip said, it's a few weeks
since I've said this, isn't it? Show us the Father, show us the
true essence of God and that will suffice us. We want to know
the true God who has made all things and upholds all things.
And Jesus said, Philip, Have I been so long with you and you
have not known me? He who has seen me has seen the
Father. Here he is, the only manifestation
of the true God to fallen man. Many had seen his miracles. Many of them had heard his wonderful
words. Many knew of his reputation that
went before him. Look back in chapter four towards
the end of it, verse 47. And there was this, there was
this, certain noblemen, verse 46, whose
son was sick at Capernaum. And in verse 47, when he heard
that Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto him. He'd heard his reputation. He
knew about him. He besought him that he would
come down and heal his son, because he'd heard that reputation. But
it seemed that none of this multitude at Bethesda We don't hear of
any of them crying out to the Son of David, you know, like
blind Bartimaeus, Son of, O thou Son of David, O that I might
have my sight. Nobody recognized him here at
Bethesda among this multitude of impotent folk, of blind, of
halt, of withered. None of them recognized Him.
Here is God, who upholds all things by the word of His power,
who spoke and it was done. Here is God. In all of the power
of God, in saving power, working miracles of authentication, You
know, to prove that He is who He said He was. That when Messiah
comes, these things will happen. The blind will see. The lame
will walk. This is what will happen when
Messiah comes. He authenticated by His miracles, His mission.
But nobody here at Bethesda was aware of it. Why did He go there? Why was he there, of all places? Surely he would have got a much
better hearing if he'd gone where people had already heard of him,
wouldn't he? No, he was there because of sovereign
grace. Because there was a certain man. Verse 5, a certain man was there. You know, several times in the
Gospels. You read about a certain man. It means one out of the
crowd. It means one out of the ordinary. It means one chosen of God for
gracious purposes. A man of God's sovereign choice. One who we know was chosen in
Christ before the foundation of the world. One who was loved
before time began with an everlasting love. One who will be qualified
for heaven and taken there. A dying sinner in a terrible
physical condition, but one whose name, as we read elsewhere in
Scripture, was written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Oh, books
are going to be opened that show everything we've ever done to
break the law of God and for which we must give an account
and pay the penalty. But, but, but, not those whose
names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Don't you want
your name to be written in the Lamb's Book of Life? To find
that your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life? For
for those written in the Lamb's Book of Life, the justice of
God is satisfied in the Lamb of God. The Lamb of God who came
to die in the place of His people. This one was one for whom Jesus,
the Christ of God, was to pay sins penalty within the next
couple of years to the justice of God on the cross of Calvary,
that he might be saved from his sins, that his sin debt might
be paid to the justice of God, that he might be given eternal
life. He who believes in me has eternal
life. Well, why not the rest of them
too, you might say. The world would say that. This
is unfair. I'll tell you why. It's sovereign grace. It's the
prerogative of God, and God alone, to save whom he will. It's His
will that determines who will be saved. His will. He is the
one who makes His people willing in the day of His power. Don't
think any of it is of us. Not of our volition. We cannot
choose. In and of our flesh we cannot
choose the things of God. We're not good enough. There
was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. We can't. We
can't pay the price of our own sin. Only Him. It's all at the
prerogative of God. We're all at the mercy of God,
in Bethesda, the house of mercy. And what can we cry then, you
might say? What that hymn says. Saviour, dear Saviour, hear my
humble cry. Whilst on others Thou art calling,
with that effectual call of saving grace, do not pass me by. Whilst
on others you are calling, do not pass me by. It's not of him
that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy. So ask him. "'Will thou be made
whole?' when he says, "'Will thou be made whole?' he asks
this man. "'Of course! Why else would he
be here, other than wanting to be made whole?' There's no other
prospect of healing, and virtually no prospect here at this pool
of Bethesda either, because it's very rare that the water's stirred,
and then only one, and only the first one that gets in is healed."
But will you, sinner, condemned, hell-deserving, be made whole? Think of that question posed
to you by the Saviour. Will you be made whole in relation
to God? Will you be made right with Him?
Will you be justified from your sin debt, that which you owe
to the justice of God which must condemn you and which must bar
you from Heaven? Would you be made whole? Would
you be qualified for Heaven? He makes his people willing in
the day of his power. Wilt thou be made whole? He makes
his people willing to be made whole. And he hears the immediate
command. Look at it, verse 8. Jesus saith
to him, see, he says, yeah, of course I, but you know, it's
a hopeless case. I can't get in the pool myself
and I've got nobody to help me. And somebody always beats me
to it and they're healed and not me. Jesus said to him, and
this is it, so simple, rise, take up thy bed and walk and
listen. And when, when, oh, a few days
later he started to feel a little bit better. A few months later,
a couple of years down the road, he wasn't feeling too bad actually,
he didn't have much of a limp. No, immediately, immediately
the man was made whole. Because why? Because this is
the Son of God. This is God, here, performing
a miracle. He who upholds all things, all
natural laws, by the word of His power, for His purposes,
amends them to authenticate His message of saving grace. For
His immediate purpose, He amends those laws. And this man that
should have been there and withered away until he died, the one who
upholds all the laws of nature, he amended them in his case and
he was made whole immediately from that moment and he was strong
and he stood up and he picked up his bed and he carried it
on the Sabbath day, oh dear. Oh dear, in that society, in
the Sabbath day, how could this Jesus be a true emissary of God
if he's telling somebody on the Sabbath day to pick up his bed
and walk? He couldn't possibly do that?
That's what the Jews thought. But you know, this is the Lord
Jesus Christ. This is the one who said, the
Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. He is
the one who is the fulfillment of the Sabbath, the rest from
all our works. He is the one. This is no legalistic
thing that we need to bow to. No. That impotent, blind, halt,
withered body, whatever it was he had, was made 100% well in
a moment. And do you know, it was witnessed.
You say, how do we know that? Do you believe it? How do you
know that? I don't know that. It was witnessed by many. And not
only was it witnessed by those that wanted to believe it, like
the disciples, it was witnessed by those that didn't want to
believe it, like the Jews who were accusing Jesus of breaking
the Sabbath laws. They couldn't deny it either.
Look in verse 10. The Jews therefore said unto
him that was cured. We don't believe you're cured.
They didn't say that, did they? They said it's the Sabbath day.
How hard-hearted. It's a Sabbath day. It's not
lawful for thee to carry thy bed. They couldn't deny that
he'd been healed. The ones that opposed Jesus couldn't
deny that a miracle had truly been performed. As Jesus went
that day to Bethesda and healed that man, by His Spirit, He is
here today. He is wherever you are, whenever
you are listening to this message and others like it. He told us
so. You say, how do I know He's here
today? What did Jesus say? Where two or three are gathered
together in my name. Are we here? I believe so. We're
extolling the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we're seeking to
worship God. He said, I am in the midst. I am there with you.
He in whom is the power of eternal life, the power to save your
soul, the power to take you safely to eternal glory. He who alone
can give you life. He who alone can remove your
sin in God's judgment. He who alone can fit you for
His kingdom, His eternal kingdom, He is here. Will you ignore Him? Will you continue to deny Him?
Will you refuse to trust your eternal soul into His safekeeping? Perhaps you think that you'll
wait for a more convenient time. Do you know there was a man that
said that, wasn't there? When Paul was speaking to Felix
in Acts 24 and verse 25, and he pressurized him, and Felix
trembled when Paul spoke about judgment and all of those things,
and Felix trembled. But you know, you know, In his
flesh, he said, when I have a more convenient season, I will call
for you again. He put it off. Do you know in
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, if I remember rightly, one of
the characters is Mr. Putitoff, because he puts it
off. Don't be like Mr. Putitoff. He
waited for a convenient season, and that season never came, and
he died in his sins. Like those poor folk waiting
for the waters to move, don't wait and wait and wait. Now is
the call. When you hear the message of
gospel grace, when God's Spirit persuades you, I am fully persuaded
that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him
to this day. Today is the day to believe, to come to the Lord
Jesus Christ. So rise now. This is the final
point. Rise now. In verse 8, Jesus said
to him, rise, take up thy bed and walk. Rise now. Rise now
is the call. Think about Noah. When was he
saved from the destruction of the flood? When was he saved?
I'll tell you when. When he went into the ark and
God shut him in. That was it. when God shut him
in the ark. Think about the Jews in Egypt
on the night of the Passover, the first Passover. When were
they saved from the slaying angel? When was it that they were saved
from the slaying angel? The moment the blood of the sacrificial
Passover lamb for their house was painted on the doorposts
and the lintel. As soon as that blood was painted,
they were saved. from the destruction of the slaying
angel? When was that penitent thief who'd been cursing Jesus
one minute with the colleague on the other side of him, when
was he saved? Answer, as soon as he called
on the name of the Lord. Lord, remember me when you come
into your kingdom. Verily, verily, I say to you,
this day shall you be with me in paradise. What about the Philippian
jailer, that rough man and his household? When was he saved?
What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
said Paul and Silas, and you shall be saved and anyone else
in your household. As soon as he believed and declared
it in baptism, he was saved. Do you see here the Christ of
God in his mission to save his people from their sins? For that's
what Jesus means. You shall call his name Jesus.
For Matthew 1, 21, he shall save his people from their sins. Do
you hear the truth testified by God's Spirit that Christ's
death and shed blood has paid the sin debt of a multitude whom
he loved with everlasting love? Have you heard that? Do you see
the free grace of God in salvation for eternity clearly displayed? Do you see it? Do you see it?
Well, will you cry? And if free grace, why not for
me? That's what we're going to sing
in our closing hymn, which we'll do now. Amen.