I'd like to give you all a warm
welcome to our worship here this evening. Let us ask the Lord's
blessing in prayer. Thou most merciful and gracious
Lord God, grant us, Lord, that blessing our dear disciples had
on that first day of the week. Then were the disciples glad
when they saw the Lord. Grant us to see thee in thy word,
in thy sufferings, in thy death, that thou hast granted us a true
spirit of worship and thy blessing, ere we close thy day. We ask
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Hymn, 487. Tune, Diademata 77. Let us read together from the
Holy Word of God, the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 24.
and we'll read the first 35 verses. If you're joining with one of
our free Bibles, it's page 978 in the Ruby Bible. Luke chapter 24 from verse 1. Now upon the first day of the
week, very early in the morning, They came unto the sepulchre,
bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others
with them. And they found the stone rolled
away from the sepulchre, and entered in, and found not the
body of the Lord Jesus. and he came to pass as they were
much perplexed thereabout. Behold, two men stood by them
in shining garments, and as they were afraid and bowed down their
faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living
among the dead? He is not here, but is risen. Remember how he spake unto you
when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be delivered
into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third
day rise again. And they remembered his words. and returned from the sepulchre,
and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest. It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna,
and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with
them, which told these things unto the apostles. And their
words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them
not. Then arose Peter and ran unto
the sepulcher, and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid
by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that
which was come to pass. And behold, two of them went
that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem
about three score furlongs. And they talked together of all
these things which had happened. Then it came to pass that while
they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near and went
with them. But their eyes were holden that
they should not know him. And he said unto them, What manner
of communications are these, that ye have one to another as
ye walk and are sad? And the one of them whose name
was Cleopas, answering, said unto him, Art thou only a stranger
in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to
pass there in these days? And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, concerning
Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and
word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and
our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and have crucified
him. But we trusted that it had been
he, which should have redeemed Israel. And beside all this,
today is the third day since these things were done. Yea,
and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which
were early at the sepulcher. And when they found not his body,
they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels
which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were
with us went to the sepulcher and found it even so as the women
had said, but him they saw not. Then he said unto them, O fools
and slow of heart, to believe all that the Prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered
these things, and to enter into His glory? And beginning at Moses
and all the Prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures
the things concerning Himself. And they drew nigh unto the village
whither they went, and he made as though he would have gone
further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us, for
it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went
in to tarry with them. And he came to pass as he sat
at meat with them. He took bread and blessed it
and break and gave to them. And their eyes were opened and
they knew him and he vanished out of their sight. And they
said one to another, did not our heart burn within us while
he talked with us by the way and while he opened to us the
scriptures. And they rose up the same hour,
and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together,
and them that were with them, saying, The Lord is risen indeed,
and hath appeared to Simon. And they told what things were
done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking. of bread. As for the reading
of God's holy word, may he bless it to us and help us in prayer. Let us pray. O Lord God of heaven and of earth,
our merciful and loving Heavenly Father, we thank thee, Lord,
for the record of thy beloved Son, and of what Thou hast accomplished
in this salvation of Thy people. We do seek, Lord, that Thou hast
blessed us as we look and consider what Thou hast done. O Lord,
do cause us never to forget it. Lord, we thank Thee for the ordinances
of Thy house that constantly remind us and constantly point
us unto thy precious sin-atoning blood, what thou hast accomplished
at Calvary, what thou hast done outside of us, but for us. O Lord, do grant that we might
know that thy work was for us by thy calling, by thy quickening,
by the power attending the word, and by what we see, in our Lord
Jesus Christ. Open thou our eyes, may we see
a beauty, a loveliness, the suitability for our souls of the Lamb of
God that taketh away the sin of the world. Lord, who grant
unto us to have eyes to see and hearts to perceive what the world
does not see, cannot see. The natural man receiveth not
the things of God, neither can he know them. They are spiritually
discerned. We pray for this blessing. We
seek that it might be confirmed to bless each here and those
that join with us online. We thank Thee for the children
here, the young people. Lord, we seek Thy blessing upon
them early in life, that they might truly know Thee, whom to
know is life eternal. I know, Lord, You'll be pleased
to grant that each of us, whether young or old, might truly know
that we are bound up in that bundle of life with Thee. Bless
each that seek Thy face, encourage them, lead them on, leave them
not to give up, leave them not to be discouraged. Lord, we thank
Thee for those blessed encouragements in dear brethren called Later
on in life, those called early in life, Lord, we thank Thee
that Thou art a Sovereign in these matters. But Lord, we do
seek that Thou would remember and come and bless Thy Word.
We would gather each time with that expectation that it might
be today, it might be this evening, it might be this service, that
thou art pleased to apply the word with power, open our eyes,
make us to be like the Ethiopian Yuna, make us to be like those
that thou didst visit and bless with saving faith in thee, and
send on their way rejoicing. O Lord, do grant that set time
to favour Zion. O Lord, do visit the friends
here, with thy salvation. And Lord, renew us again where
we have known the sweetness and power and loveliness of Christ. Lord, do visit again with those
blessings that we might taste anew. Help us to tread underfoot
the poor, vain, empty things of this world. Deliver us from
every snare. Lord, we do pray for those in
authority over us and for this, our nation. O Lord, do deliver
us from wicked and unreasonable men and give wisdom to those
that have authority to make laws. And Lord, do grant that thou
hast overturned the designs where the laws are sought to be made
that are contrary to thine. We do pray a real spiritual revival
in this land. Pour out thy spirit upon us. May we really notice a difference.
that we notice men, women, children having a real concern for their
souls instead of such apathy and lovers of pleasure more than
lovers of God. We commit unto thee the events
in the world, the elections to take place in America. Lord,
we do pray that thou wouldst grant stability in the world. We know that thou art in control
and we do thank thee for that. blessed truth, but we do pray
that Thou wouldst lengthen our peace, even to our guilty island,
and Lord, that Thou wouldst remember areas that have conflict, we
pray for Thy ancient people and those in that area in Palestine,
we do pray that Thou wouldst send relief and help to those
in distress, those who have lost homes and loved ones, and those
who fear for their lives. O Lord, we do thank Thee for
the many blessings that we have in this land, and especially
that we can gather this evening, and we do seek Thy blessing on
Thy Word. Be with those not with us, those
away, watch over, keep them, give them journey mercies and
a blessed time with friends, and we do seek that Thou remember
those that are connected with us. Lord, those that meet, As
we do this evening, grant thy blessing on each assembly. We pray for our dear aged friends
in Pilgrim Home, who ministered to this afternoon. Lord, do grant
thy blessing to be upon them in the even tide of life and
the word brought to them. Lord, may it bear fruit and be
a real strength and help to them. We thank thee for that provision
for our age. We thank Thee for the Bethesda
homes. We pray for all that seek to
run them and to work in them. Lord, we pray the continuance
of that blessing. Now, Lord, do wash and cleanse
us in Thy precious blood. Grant unto us the help of Thy
Spirit. Shine upon Thy word. Bless us
with spiritual life. We commit this week unto Thee. gatherings in thy name we commit
unto thee the young people's meeting on Saturday at Heathfield
and do grant thy blessing to be upon our young. Our Lord we
ask thee these things through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen. The announcements, God willing,
I'm expected to preach here on Thursday at seven o'clock and
next Lord's Day at 11 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. The collections
taking during October for which we sincerely thank you for the
cause of truth here, 981 pounds and five pence, the free Bible
fund, mostly taken during our Thanksgiving services, 440 pounds
and 56 pence. And also thank you, thank those
who've given so kindly through the pastor's box. Hymn, 536. Tune, Gethsemane 336. Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayer for attention to Luke 24 and reading from our
text, verse 26. Ought not Christ to have suffered
these things and to enter into his glory? Luke 24 verse 26. These words are to the two that
our Lord joined with on the road to Emmaus. He listened to what
they had to say, how they had viewed the crucifixion, how they
had viewed what had happened at Jerusalem. And these two would
not be The last, to view what happened at Calvary in an incorrect
way. Really, all of us, until the
Lord is pleased to show what He accomplished and what He did
at Calvary, do not view it in a right way. One that is truly
brought to believe and to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and
in His finished salvation and what he accomplished at Calvary
we'll see clearly or clearly enough to realize what was done
on that most auspicious and important time. That lamb slain from the
foundation of the world in the purposes of God was there slain
before their eyes and yet they did not fully realize what had
happened. We trusted that it should have
been he that should have redeemed Israel. And beside all this,
today is the third day since these things were done. I wonder
how many here have things that don't seem to quite add up. They knew. about Israel being
redeemed, or these God's people being redeemed. They knew something
about the third day, and yet these things, they didn't seem
to all fit together. Sometimes it can be like that
with us. We view different parts of the
Word of God, and they don't seem to quite fit together. We struggle
over them. Ethiopian eunuch, he also could
not see the Lord in the passage that we now in the gospel day
are so familiar with. We say of course we can see that
he's pointing to Christ's sufferings. It was a blessed thing to have
the Lord himself come to us to draw out from us what is our
problems, our difficulties, and may the children be helped to
pray to God those things you can't understand and you want
to explain, ask the Lord and then watch in the ministry, you
might have your answers to your questions through the ministry. It is a salvation for the youngest
through to the oldest. While there is life, there is
hope and the word of God is that which sets forth before us what
our Lord Jesus Christ has done. So our Lord says to these too,
ought not, should not this have been so, that Christ should have
suffered these things, that is, his own disciples forsaking him,
his, one of his disciples betraying him, his being brought before
the judgment, His being arrayed as guilty, even though Pilate
says, I find no fault in him, yet brought to be crucified and
slain and killed. Why should all of these things
have happened unto Jesus of Nazareth after all that he did and all
that he preached and all the miracles that he did? Why should
this happen to him who said that his father was God? All those things that they had
seen and heard, our Lord said, he sums it up really, suffered
these things and they are truly the sufferings of our Lord Jesus
Christ. May we never minimize what our
Lord went through. Especially when Satan would say,
well, he was God as well as man, and therefore his pains couldn't
have been as much. They would have been more so.
They would have been more so. Especially in his soul with that
laid upon him. Now if we are spotless and pure,
and maybe it's a mean illustration, but say if you were dressed up
to come to the house of God and then someone put mud on you or
dirt on you, you'd really feel that because it marred what you
were wearing then. If you were dressed to work out
on the farm and in the pigsty and amongst the hens and then
someone splattered mud on you, you'd just shake it off, it wouldn't
matter at all because you're already dirty and you're already
wearing dirty clothes. Our Lord was spotless, pure and
holy. And that which he bore, the filthy
black sins of his people, he felt in his soul. And then when
his father hid his face from him, he felt that. Those sufferings,
inward and outward, more than what the outward sufferings of
the two thieves were. We indeed justly, this man hath
done nothing amiss. But our Lord then joins to it
to enter into his glory, not just the glory of heaven, but
the glory of the finished work, a lamb in the midst of the throne
as it had been slain. That glory of being the king,
who has accomplished all that his father sent him to do. His
prayer in John 17, Father, I will that they whom thou hast given
me be with me where I am that they may behold my glory. Very different than on earth,
when he comes again the second time with power and great glory. It is with great majesty, great
power, great grandeur, But he comes as king, as one that has
accomplished, one that has triumphed. And our Lord then says to these
two disciples, ought not Christ to have suffered these things? He then goes right through the
Old Testament. He expounds, he opens them out. Now I'm not going to do that
this evening, but what I do want to look at and base each of my
remarks upon Scripture, one in the Old Testament, but the rest
in the New, where this is opened up, answered, why Christ should
have suffered. Ten reasons, in fact, why Christ
suffered. has set forth in the Word of
God, and our text really sets forth this. It must be so. It
couldn't have been any other way. It had to be like this. It wasn't an option. The first one is in Jeremiah,
where in Jeremiah 23, we read the satisfying of justice In
verse 5, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise
unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper,
and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. What is justice? Well, you know,
if someone was to do something terrible to us, They were to
break into a home if they were to injure someone. Then the natural
thought of man is they want justice. They want that person to be punished. The giving of the cities of refuge
in the Word of God was so that those that killed a man unawares,
they could flee to those cities of refuge because the families,
the relatives, of that man that had been killed accidentally,
they wanted justice. And it may be that they wouldn't
take any notice it was an accident, they just want justice. Sometimes we can mistake it for
being revenge, it might be revenge. But justice is a right answer
to a transgression. The justice of God is from when
man sinned, In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely
die. For justice to be done, then
man must die. He died naturally and spiritually,
and unless there is any change, then must die eternally under
the punishment of God, the just, righteous judgment of God. If God is to save any, he must
do it in a just, righteous, good way. He can't just waive the
debt and say, it doesn't matter. We'll just forgive your sin and
we'll take you to heaven anyway, without any punishment being
meted out. And the way it is done in what
the Lord did in his sufferings, was the substitutionary offering
of our Lord. Without the shedding of blood
there is no remission, but with Christ's suffering there is remission,
because justice is served not on those that have sinned, but
upon their substitute, upon their near kinsman, upon the Lord Jesus
Christ. So when we read our Lord saying,
ought not Christ to have suffered these things? For any to be saved,
he must, that justice must be done. If justice was to be done
upon us, we would perish eternally. If justice is done according
to the gospel, it is he instead of we that receives the punishment
and pays the debt. and has the wrath of God laid
upon him, which our Lord did endure and did bear away. If he did not, he would not have
raised from the dead. And we've sung of that in our
first hymn. It's vital not only that Christ
died, but that he rose from the dead so that we may say justice
then has been served for those for whom he died. Then I want to come for the next
three points to the Gospels. Firstly, to Matthew 5 and 17,
where we read of the fulfilling of the law. Our Lord says this,
Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets, I am
not come to destroy, but to fulfill. Or not Christ who has suffered
these things. The law of God must be fulfilled. And you can look at it in a few
ways. Certainly the ceremonial law
needed to be fulfilled. I'll touch that on another point.
But we think of the moral law, the law that was broken, the
law that man could not fulfill, the law itself that demanded
the shedding of blood. The Lord Jesus Christ must fulfill
that law. We cannot, we've already broken
it in Adam. And the scripture is very clear
that by the deeds of the law shall no man living be justified,
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But here
is the Lord, and He is to enter into His glory, and what He is
to do and what He ought to do and must do is to fulfill that
law. To completely honor Him in His
own life, making a righteousness to impute
to his people, but also so that he could be that spotless lamb
of God to lay down his life. And the whole of the work that
our Lord did was to fulfill the law, not to destroy. Then we have later on in the
Gospel according to Matthew, that the reason why he came was
to fulfill the Scriptures. And we have this in nearly every
account of the crucifixion of our Lord. In Matthew 26 and verse
54, we read of the Scriptures being fulfilled. Our Lord in
the Garden of Gethsemane, they had a sword, And the Lord said
to Peter, put up, gain thy sword into his place. Thinkest thou
that I cannot now pray to my father, and he shall presently
give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall
the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be so? So one of the clear reasons why
Christ ought to suffer was that the scriptures be fulfilled.
And he couldn't, by power of angels or by power of God, escape
the cross and not go through with those sufferings, because
if he did, all that was written in the scriptures would not be
fulfilled. You think of the Psalms, Psalm
22, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? We think of
the Psalm 69 with his, body pierced with the vinegar
that was given to him, the very descriptions of his sufferings,
they pierced my hands and my feet. The 53rd of Isaiah, speaking
of the Lord as a lamb led to its slaughter, or a sheep before
her shearers is done, those scriptures that right through speak of the
Lord as a suffering saviour, those scriptures must be fulfilled. And many times in the accounts
of the crucifixion, we read that the scripture might be fulfilled
and even his utterances, his utterance, I thirst, his utterance,
my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? All these things
were to fulfill the scriptures. The scriptures cannot be broken. It's a real reminder to us, isn't
it? The Lord said, heaven and earth
shall pass away. My word shall not pass away. The Lord is a God that when he
speaks, He fulfills the Word. He does what he says. He doesn't
go back on his Word. And even for those things that
are in front of the Church, those things still promised to the
Lord's Second Coming, those things in Gospel days, the promises
to his people and the blessings that are written in the Scriptures,
You know, Satan, when our Lord answered him with the Scriptures,
he tried to use Scripture to tempt our Lord. But that didn't
stop our Lord rebuffing Satan with Scripture. He said to him,
it is written again, comparing Scripture with Scripture. We
ought to have a very, very high view of Scripture. A very high view. always humble ourselves beneath
it, never above it, never draw into the thoughts of those who
are critical or will undermine the scriptures. Yes, there might
be those that would say, well, this should have been translated
this way or that way. We believe the Lord has given
us a very accurate translation But the best way is to be comparing
scripture with scripture to find the real meaning. Otherwise,
we can just fall into it just like Satan, who would use scripture
out of context. Now, there's some that will say
and have said, you cannot ever go wrong in quoting scripture.
As long as you're quoting scripture right, you can be wrong, very
wrong. When you quote it out of context,
and perhaps leave out one word and makes a very big difference.
Or perhaps just change a comma. Do you think of how the Roman
Catholics are able to bring in purgatory our Lord's words to
the dying thief? Verily, verily, I say unto thee
today, thou shalt be with me in paradise. That allows a gap between the
day when the Lord says to the dying thief, and the time when
you'll be in paradise. You move the comma, verily, verily,
I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise.
It is just what Paul says, absent from the body, present with the
Lord. And you see just moving a comma,
and you've changed the meaning. But when you compare it, not
only moving the comma, but you compare it with what Paul says,
you say, yes, what the Lord is saying, yes, he's going from
the cross into paradise. And that thief will be with him
instantly that day. And so scripture, one reason
ought not Christ to be suffered these things to fulfill the scriptures, Going back a chapter, Luke 22,
from our text, the fourth reason is to do his father's will. In verse 42, we read how that
he was withdrawn from them in the Garden of Gethsemane, and
he's praying unto his father. And these are the words that
he prays, if thou be willing, Remove this cup from me, nevertheless
not my will but thine be done. Our Lord Jesus Christ ought to
have suffered because it was the Father's will. May we bring that into all things
that we do, how we act, how we walk here below. that we seek
to know and do the will of our Father which is in heaven. And
we have our Lord set before us as that blessed example. If our
Lord did not do the Father's will, he would not have suffered,
but he must suffer. He ought to have suffered because
it was the Father's will that he should. And that is established,
that he was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the will. that
it is the purposes and counsels of Jehovah right through the
Word of God. May we be able to discern in
all of our lives a Father's will, a Father's hand. Our flesh, as the hymn writer
says, our flesh dislikes the way. And when our dear Lord,
he said, if it be possible, You might say his flesh also
shrunk back from those sufferings that were before him. But it
was not possible. He ought, he must suffer. Now the next three reasons I
want to bring from the letters of Paul. When he writes to the
Corinthians, His second epistle, he opens the epistle in chapter
one and he says in verse 20, for all the promises of God in
him are yea, and in him, amen, unto the glory of God by us. All the promises of God in him
are in Christ. In one sense, you might say,
God could not promise anything to sinful fallen man outside
of Christ. Because you take away Christ's
death and sufferings and nothing could be given to a sinner out
of a deserved hell, not consistent with the justice and holiness
of God. So when we have the first promises
in the Garden of Eden, that the seed of the woman should bruise
the serpent's head, is pointing to Christ. And then we have again
promise after promise, promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, promises
to the Church of God, and all of them, they center in Christ. That's why Christ ought to have
suffered, otherwise all those promises all fall to the ground. It all hints there. You can see
Why, when we come to the Lord's table, when we look at what the
Lord has given to the Church of God to remember, to think
of this word, ought not Christ to have suffered, and what is
bound up with Christ's sufferings and his death, what this means
to the Church of God. Those promises in the word, the
promises that the Lord has given to us, that he's made precious
to us, that he's spoken to us, in our souls. Then in the sixth place, it is
to redeem his people. When Paul wrote to the Galatians,
he says to them in chapter three and verse 13, Christ hath redeemed
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for
it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. Redemption
setting free by the payment of a price. Lord Jesus Christ must,
he ought to. And when we think of what the
disciples had said, that they trusted, we trusted that it should
be he which should have redeemed Israel. What were they thinking? How
were they thinking that redemption? Was it like just before the Lord
was to be taken up? Wilt thou at this time restore
the kingdom unto Israel? Is that what they had in mind?
But the Lord Jesus Christ is the Redeemer. We think of the
near kinsman, Boaz, and his right to redeem, right to take Ruth
to himself and to Redeem her from servitude, from poverty. Redemption, the beautiful theme
for the people of God. You are not your own, says Paul. You are bought with a price.
Wherefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which
are his. Then we have the seventh reason
when Paul writes to the Philippians. And I always like this chapter,
it's a beautiful chapter, the second chapter of Philippians. And the reason is to be obedient
unto death. I read it from the few verses
before, speaking of our Lord Jesus Christ, and it is, let
this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being
in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with
God, but made himself of no reputation, took upon him the form of a servant,
and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion
as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly
exalted him, given him a name which is above every name that
at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. Our text says, ought
not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his
glory? And Paul emphasised that entering
into his glory, but the need of our Lord to suffer, ought
not him to suffer, is that he be obedient, and the obedience
is not just so far and then stop, but obedience right unto death. What a reminder for us. The obedience
is not just part of the way, it's all the way, it's not partial
obedience, it's full obedience. That is what our Lord sets before
us here. Don't be partially obedient.
What would you think of a child who said, well, they're obedient
in some things, but they're not in others. They're not fully
obedient. You know, it's apparently required
to be obedient in all things. And as God's children, we are
to be obedient in all things. And our Lord Jesus Christ was
obedient even unto death, and this is why he had to die. If
he stopped short of that, stopped short of obedience up
to that point, where would the hope of the church be? Where
would our salvation be without that obedience? May he be a blessed,
example and lie to us as to the way that we are to go, obedient
unto death. I want to look then at the last
three from the book of Hebrews. In Hebrews chapter 2 and verse
9, we read that one reason why he
ought to suffer was to taste death. In one sense, it's a hard
verse to understand. We read this, but we see Jesus,
who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering
of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace
of God, should taste death for every man. For it became Him,
for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing
many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation,
perfect through sufferings. Ought not Christ to suffer these
things? Perfect through sufferings, tasting
death. Now in one sense, the Lord has
tasted death for every man, woman, and child, because He has gone
through what all must go through, but He has not in the way of
putting away sin and in saving everyone. Because in verse 10,
we read that it is bringing many, not all to glory, but many sons
unto glory. But that taste of death, of passing
through death, was a vital aspect of Christ's We have the type in the passing
through the river Jordan with the ark there. The ark was in
the midst of Jordan. Jordan is a type of death, and
there it remained until the children of Israel were all passed over. The Lord went from this world
as we also must go from this world that is through death.
He tasted death. He is to be a sympathizing high
priest over the Church of God. Those facing death, those having
terminal illnesses, they have the Lord Jesus Christ who has
gone before them. He went into death. He faced
death like they are facing death. He saw it before them. He knew
what he was to go through. And he went before for his people. May each of us be helped to,
especially approaching death, to view the Lord go before us
into it and as our high priest to sustain. We think of Stephen
in with the first martyr with the stones falling upon him and
he looks up and he sees the Lord Jesus Christ standing to receive
him. In one sense he was in death
and the Lord was with him in death. and he would have known
fully that the Lord before him had died in the agonies of the
cross and entered into death in that way. Then still in Hebrews, to go
to chapter nine, in the ninth place, we read in verse 26 that
one reason why he ought to suffer was to put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself. We read him from verse 25, Nor
yet that he should offer himself often as the high priest entereth
into the holy place every year with blood of others. For then
must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world,
but now once in the end of the world he hath appeared to put
away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Ought not Christ who
suffered What about sin? What about the sins of his people?
As far as the East is from the West, so far Hathori removed
our sin from us. When the debt is paid, when sin
is atoned for, sin then is put away, blotted out, cast behind the
back of our Lord. That is why Our Lord had to suffer. Do we know our sin? Do we feel
it? Do we groan under it? May we
view our Lord Jesus Christ and what he did to put away sin. But the last, and this is in
the 10th chapter and the first verse in Hebrews, is to answer
to the types and shadows of the Old Testament. The Old Testament
was full of the Gospel, but it was shown in types. The sacrifices,
the tabernacle, or the furniture of the tabernacle, all of those
ceremonies, they were the Gospel in its day. Those that were true
spiritual worshippers, they looked past those things. And they saw
Christ. Our Lord says of Abraham, Abraham
saw my day and rejoiced at it. And that was as he took Isaac
from the altar. as the ram put in its place,
as God blessed him. And Paul says, in thee and in
thy seed, thy seed, not of many, not of seeds, but that is Christ,
shall all nations be blessed. So we read in this first verse,
Hebrews 10, for the law, having a shadow of good things to come,
and not the very image of the things, can never, with those
sacrifices which they offered year by year continually, make
the comers thereof, or thereunto, perfect. We read later in verse 6, In
burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin there has no pleasure.
Then said I, Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written
of me, to do thy will, O God. Above, when he said, Sacrifice,
and offering, and burnt offerings, and offering for sin, thou wouldst
not, neither has pleasure therein which are offered by the law.
Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away
the first, and he may establish the second. And so all of that
which the Lord Jesus did was to do away with all of these
sacrifices, all of these types, all of these shadows, Here's
the great anti-type, here's what they all pointed to. So when
we read, ought not Christ to have suffered these things and
to enter into his glory? Yes, he ought to do so. Otherwise,
that was all vain and empty and meaningless over all those years. But with our Lord come, he came
to fulfill. And he came to show what all
of these things, were pointing to and this is what we remember
in the ordinances of the house of God. This is what we remember
as the reason why Christ must suffer and it would have been
in something of this vein that the Lord filled the discourse
from Jerusalem to Emmaus and filled it in such a way as made
their heart burn within them while he opened up to them the
scriptures. We have the New Testament, the
writings, those that we appointed to, that opened to us and explained
to us some of those things that doubtless our Lord spoke to these
two of. May we know them, may we know
the preciousness of them and know how much hung upon the reality
of our Lord coming and suffering as he did. Ought not Christ to
have suffered these things and to enter into his glory. The Lord add his blessing. Amen. Hymn, 19. Tune, St. Stephen 229. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit
be with you all now and evermore. Amen.