Good morning. If you would, turn
with me this morning to John chapter 20. I do apologize, as
I'll repeat some of what Greg already said. The beginning of
this chapter was when the Lord revealed himself to Mary Magdalene
and the disciples. And beginning at chapter 24,
sorry, chapter 20, verse 24, but Thomas, one of the 12, called Didymus was not with them
when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore
said unto him, we have seen the Lord. But he said unto them,
except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails and put
my finger into the print of the nails and thrust my hand into
his side, I will not believe. And after eight days again, his
disciples were within and Thomas with them. Then came Jesus, the
doors being shut, and stood in the midst and said, Peace be
unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, reach
hither thy finger, and behold my hands, and reach hither thy
hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said
unto him, my Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas,
because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they
that have not seen, and yet have believed. And many other signs
truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not
written in this book, but these are written that ye might believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing
ye might have life through his name. Dear Lord, we thank you for this
day. We thank you for the message
and those words which you brought this first hour. We pray, Lord,
that you watch over the men and Greg, which are bringing these
messages this morning, that you give them words to preach, and
that you bless those words to our heart. In your most holy
and perfect name we pray, amen. Let's all stand together once
again. We'll sing hymn number 75 in the hardbacked hymnal,
number 75. Abide with me, fast falls the
eventide. The darkness deepens, Lord, with
me abide. When other helpers fail and comforts
flee, help of the helpless, oh, abide with me. Swift to its close. ebbs out life's little day. Earth's joys grow dim, its glories
pass away. Change and decay in all around
I see. O thou who changest not, abide
with me. I need thy presence every passing
hour. What but thy grace can foil the
tempter's power? Who, like thyself, my guide and
stay can be. Through cloud and sunshine, O
abide with me. Hold thou thy word before my
closing eyes. Shine through the gloom and point
me to the skies. Heaven's morning breaks and earth's
vain shadows flee. In life, in death, O Lord, abide
with me. Please be seated. I was thinking as we were singing
that hymn of Moses' words in Exodus 33 when he asked to see
the Lord's glory and he said, Lord, if you don't go with us,
don't take us up from here. Abide with me. Lord, I can't
do this. I've got to have you. That's a work of grace in the
heart. I'm so very thankful for it. Will you turn with me in your
Bibles to 2 Samuel chapter 19, 2 Samuel 19. I've titled this message, When Victory
is Turned to Mourning. When victory is turned to mourning. We've been several weeks now
in chapter 18 looking at Absalom's rebellion against his father
David. That rebellion has been crushed. Absalom has been killed. Joab has sent word back to David
that his son, that the uprising has been put down and that Absalom
king's son is dead. And the last verse of chapter
18, we hear these words from King David, oh my son Absalom,
my son, my son Absalom, I would to God that I had died for thee,
oh Absalom, my son, my son. David is grieving over the death
of his son without seemingly any regard for the fact that
The battle's been won for David. And it was told Joab chapter
19, behold the king weepeth and mourneth for Absalom. And the victory that day was
turned to mourning. That's the title of this message.
The victory that day was turned to mourning unto all the people. For the people heard say that
day how that the king was grieved for his son. And the people gat
themselves by stealth that day into the city as people being
ashamed steal away when they flee from battle. They acted
like deserters when they should have been treated as victors.
There should have been a parade And they should have been able
to glory in the victory of the battle, but instead they stealth
away as men that are ashamed because they've deserted the
front lines. What a contrast. But the king covered his face
and the king cried with a loud voice, oh my son Absalom, oh
Absalom, my son, my son. And Joab, and Joab is the commander
of David's army, and Joab's gonna have to rebuke the king. And Joab came into the house
of the king and said, thou hast shamed this day the faces of
all thy servants, which this day have saved thy life and the
lives of thy sons and thy daughters and the lives of thy wives and
the lives of thy concubines. in that thou lovest thine enemies
and hatest thy friends. For thou hast declared this day
that thou regardest neither princes nor servants. For this day, I
perceive that if Absalom had lived and all we had died this
day, then it had pleased thee well. You'd be happier if everybody
had died and Absalom had lived. Now, therefore, Arise, go forth
and speak comfortably unto thy servants. That's my hope this
morning. I started to choose this phrase
as a title of this message, but they go together. When victory
is turned to mourning, may the Lord speak comfortably to our
hearts. and return us to the victory. Verse seven, for I swear by the
Lord, if thou go not forth, there will not tarry one with thee
this night, and that will be worse unto thee than all the
evil that befall thee from thy youth until now. David, if you
don't do something right now, you're going to lose everything. Then the king arose and sat in
the gate. Now the elders of the city would
go to the gate of the city and that's where they would hold
their court of judgment says to the regarding the concerns
of the city. We see that often in the scriptures.
Here we have David going to the gate of the city, the very entrance
into the city. We could see this as the entrance
of the gate into heaven, holding court and expressing judgment. And they told unto all the people
saying, behold, the king doth sit in the gate. And when they
heard that, All the people came before the king for Israel had
fled every man to his own tent. And we can see in this story
clearly what the Lord told the disciples in John chapter 16.
If you'd like to turn with me there in your Bibles, John chapter
16. Verse 20, verily, verily, I say
unto you that you shall weep and lament, but the world shall
rejoice, and you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned
into joy. A woman, when she is in travail,
hath sorrow. because her hour has come. But
as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no
more the anguish for joy that a man is born into the world."
The Lord's using a very common example of a mother giving birth
to a child and the stress that she feels and the fear that she
has and the sorrow in the process of giving birth. But as soon
as that child is born, all that goes away for joy. A man is born into the world. And you now therefore have sorrow,
you have sorrow, but I will see you again and your heart shall
rejoice and your joy no man taketh from you. Sorrow, I'm sorry, victory was
turned to sorrow at the crucifixion of the Lord
Jesus. They could not see the victory
that had been accomplished by the Lord at the cross. They were
filled with sorrow. Their hopes and their dreams
were shattered. They believed with all their
hearts that the Lord Jesus was the Son of God and that he had
come to establish the kingdom of God and to accomplish the
salvation of Israel. Now he's dead. They had invested everything
and now all is lost. They could not see that victory
was one at Calvary's cross. All they could see was what David
saw, the death of his son. All they could see was the death
of the Son of God. They did not know that his death
was the means by which the Lord would defeat death. They did
not know that his death would conquer Satan. that his death
would satisfy the justice of God, that it would fulfill the
law of God, that it would put away sin once and for all. They
did not know that the death of Christ was the glory of God, that redemption had been accomplished,
that God's elect were being bought or were bought and paid for at
the cross. They could not understand that
there was nothing else to be done, that the work of redemption
was finished. Why were they so sad? Why had the victory of the cross
been turned into mourning? because the resurrection had
not yet taken place. We interpret what the Lord Jesus
accomplished at the cross through the resurrection. We look back and we see all those
things that the Lord Jesus accomplished because of the proof that God
gave in the resurrection. They had no evidence, they had
no proof. They had no hope to believe that anything had been
accomplished. Their victory, the victory that
Christ had won had been turned into mourning. But their mourning,
their mourning will soon be turned into inexpressible joy. The resurrection will change
everything and it will explain it all. And it will prove undeniably
that the Lord truly did get the victory over sin and over Satan
and over death, that he was successful in what he went to the cross
to accomplish. But it's the resurrection that proves that. Without the
resurrection, cross, there's no hope. The resurrection proves that
the Lord's Heavenly Father was satisfied completely with the
work that he had accomplished. The resurrection of Christ will
open for them what had been closed. Resurrection opens the grave when the Lord reveals the success
of what he accomplished at the cross and turns our mourning
into joy. We come to this conclusion that
the worst thing that this world has to offer, the worst thing
that this world can do to me is to kill me. That's it. But the worst thing
that can happen will become the best day of my life. There's no more fear. For me
to live is Christ, but to die is gain. His gain. The resurrection opens heaven
when we see the King sitting at the gate of heaven and expressing
his judgment of success over what had been accomplished
at the battle. All of Israel came out of their
houses where they were hiding shamefully and they fled to the
gate of the city where the king was. Is that not what the Lord
does when he shows us by the resurrection, the success of
the cross? Does he not cause us to flee
to the gates of the city where he's seated? He's resting there,
he's seated there. He's taking his rightful place
at the right hand of the majesty on high. He's in the heavens. The cross by itself leaves our
eyes closed as to the hope of our salvation. But the resurrection
opens our eyes. The eyes of our understanding
are open. Now we see. We see what we couldn't see then.
David was so consumed with the death of his son that he could
not rejoice in the victory of the battle. All the fear and all the shame
of the cross and all the mourning over death by the evidence of
the resurrection has been changed. It is now turned into reason for rejoicing. Only the one who is life himself
can do this. In him is life. And the life is the light of
men. And this is the condemnation
that light has come into the world. But men love darkness
rather than light. They won't come to the light. Why? Because their deeds are
evil. They won't flee to Christ. They'll wallow in the shame of
the darkness of death. This is impossible to understand
apart from the revelation that God makes in the heart. That
passage we just read, they just quoted from John chapter 3 said, those who rejoice in the light
flee to the light, they flee to the light that it might be
revealed that God brought this truth in their heart, God gave
them this hope. In Acts chapter 17 the Apostle
Paul comes to the city of Athens and the intelligentsia of the
of the city of Athens, the philosophers of that city invite the Apostle
Paul to come speak to them and they say, let's see what this
babbler has to say. Now, just imagine 2,000 years
ago, we have everything that's happening in the world at our
fingertips all the time. Those people wouldn't have known
anything that was going on outside of their local community. They
didn't travel, there was no news, there was no media like what
we have. The only thing that they could
have that would give them any insights as to what was happening
outside of their own community was for a traveler to come to
town and stand in the public square and tell stories about
his travels. And so you can just imagine how
interesting it was. That's what a babbler was. A
babbler was a person who traveled from another place, who brought
with them stories of a faraway land that these people had no
understanding of apart from what he told them. And everyone expected,
everyone expected a babbler to exaggerate the stories. you know,
to make them more interesting. So let's see what this babbler
has to say. And they listened to the Apostle Paul until he
preached unto them the resurrection. At which point they threw up
their hands and they said, you know, we were following you along
with this story about a man crucified but This is just way too much
exaggeration and they mocked him and they walked away. The resurrection of the Lord
Jesus Christ makes everything that Christ did at the cross. And the natural man can't enter
in to what happened at the resurrection. Everyone who claims to be a Christian
would agree with the historical events of the resurrection, but
that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about what
God was affirming in the resurrection. He was affirming. He was affirming
the success of what the Lord Jesus accomplished in the battle
that he fought at Calvary's Cross. Scriptures tell us that death
is the consequences of sin. The Lord told Adam, in the garden,
the day in which you eat of the fruit of the tree, you shall
surely die. The wages of sin is death. What the Lord Jesus accomplished
on Calvary's cross was to satisfy the requirements that God had
placed on the consequences of sin and that's exactly what he
did. Scripture tells us there's pleasure
in sin for a season but in the end it leads to death. So the consequences of sin is
eternal separation from God. That's the interpretation of
death in the Bible. And that's the consequence that
we all deserve as a result of our rebellion against God. We
deserve separation from God. The Lord Jesus is called the
mediator. between God and man. He suffered
the penalty of sin in order that those of us who cannot possibly
atone for ourselves, cannot possibly reconcile ourselves to God might
be reconciled to God by the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's exactly what he did. He actually he actually fulfilled
what the Father sent him to do, the saving of his people. And I would add at this point
that though eternal separation from God is the ultimate consequence
of sin, There are other deaths that can come or that do come. Sin carries with it a death penalty. And sometimes that death is the
death of comfort and peace. You've seen that. I say sometimes. Talking to you, believer, child
of God, who's looking to Christ for the hope of your salvation
and resting in the fact that he satisfied what God required
for the putting away of your sin. And yet sin is still present
with us. And what happens every time we
sin? Your sin has separated you from
your God. Does not the death of peace and joy and comfort
and rest and hope come as a result of our sin? The wages of sin is death. Sometimes
it's the death of relationships. It can result in the death of
a marriage. It can result in the death of the physical body.
Sin can result in that. God will not be mocked. Sin always
carries with it the sentence of death. The victory that Joab had won
for Israel resulted in the death of the
king's son. But I remind you of our verse
of scripture, and if you go back with me to 2 Samuel chapter 19,
that victory that day was turned into mourning. It was turned
into mourning. We see that with the disciples
in those three long days when they waited hopelessly, hopelessly
there. The victory that Christ had won
for them was turned into mourning. And we see that in our own lives.
If all we have is the shame and the sorrow and the separation
that sin causes without the hope of the resurrection, then our
victory is turned into mourning. We have to be careful because
You know, the Puritans used to have what they called a mourning
bench in the front of the church. And so they would encourage people
to come and to weep and to cry and to pour out their souls in
sorrow for their sin in hopes that that would somehow be sufficient
to prove their repentance before God. That can very easily be
turned into penance, can it? That can very easily be turned
into a work. No amount of... You see, if all
we have is the cross without the resurrection, then we're
left with nothing but shame, with stealth into our houses
like those who have run from battle, We can't come to the king at
the gate of the city and rejoice in what he has accomplished.
We're just left with the shame and sorrow and separation of
our sin. That's what the Lord Jesus experienced
on the cross and that's what the resurrection proves. No amount
of sorrow on our part will be sufficient. bring to the believer's heart
a sense of sorrow, a desire of separation from sin, a shame
for sin and a desire, yes, yes. But coming to a mortar's bench
or somehow wallowing in that guilt and shame, is that going
to in any way be able to atone for that sin? No. That's what
Christ did. And that's what the resurrection
proves. The victory of the cross will
be turned into mourning if we get any idea that what the Lord
Jesus did on Calvary's cross was not sufficient in and of
itself. That there's something more that
has to be done. We acknowledge before God that
we're sinners. 1 John chapter 1 verse 9 says,
if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive
us of our sins and cleanse us of all of our unrighteousness.
What does that mean? Does that mean we have to make
a list of all of our sins and somehow express sufficient sorrow
for every sin? Time doesn't permit for that.
Plus there's no way for us to There's no way for us to be able
to acknowledge all our sin. Everything about us is infected
with it. I love the word confess in 1
John 1, 9. If we confess, it's two words
that you're familiar with. It's the word homo, which means
same. And it's the word logos, which
means word. Homologia is the word confess. What is God telling us? If you
say the same thing, you speak the same words to God that he
spoke about you, that's what it is to confess. What does God say? Every thought and imagination
of the heart is only evil and that continually. The first hour
we were talking about good works and dead works. And as soon as
we look at a work that we performed, what do we see in it? We see
the selfishness and the hypocrisy of it. We see the sin that's
in it so that we can't glory in anything that we've done.
Lord, when have we done those things? Everything I've ever put my hand
to has been infected with my sin. Lord, I confess. Taking sides with God against
yourself. That's what it is. It's not just
to stay at the cross, it's to say, Lord, yes. Lord, I don't
want to turn the victory that the Lord Jesus accomplished at
Calvary's cross just into mourning. The gospel turns mourning into
victory. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter
61. Isaiah 61. This is the passage of scripture
that our Lord read from when he began his public ministry
at Nazareth. He went back to his home and
as was his custom, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath,
place where he had lived for 30 years. Everybody knew him. He was accustomed to reading
scripture there before. And he read this passage of scripture. And after reading it, he closed
up the book and he said, this day, has this scripture been
fulfilled in your ears? And everyone in that synagogue
knew that this was a promise of the Messiah. And everyone
knew that what the Lord Jesus was saying was He was claiming
to be the Messiah. And they wondered. They wondered
at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth. They thought,
could it be? Could it be that this is the
Christ? We've been with Him all these years and we didn't know?
And then he interpreted for them what it meant to be the Christ.
And basically what he said was, I'll have mercy upon whom I will
have mercy, and I will harden whom I will harden. It is not
of him that willeth. It is not of him that runneth.
It is of God that showeth mercy. I am sovereign in salvation. And those who wondered at the
gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth tried to take
him to the brow of the hill and murder him. They would not have,
they would not have him reign over them. They would not bow
to him, submit to him. What did he read? Here's what
he read, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me, I am the anointed
one. I am the Christ. I am the one
sent of God to go to the cross and to accomplish the salvation
of God's people. The successful savior of sinners. Because the Lord hath anointed
me to preach good news, the gospel, Oh, what good news it is. David
couldn't hear the good news of the victory of battle because
he was just overwhelmed with the death of his son. If all we see is the consequences
of sin, the death associated with sin, the sorrow associated
with sin, apart from the victory proven by the resurrection, then
it's not good news. But the good news is the resurrection
declares the cross as good news. Good news is finished. This gospel is good tidings to
the meek, those who are without strength. Christ died for the ungodly. He has sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, those whose hearts are broken, those who cannot
present a heart to God that would be pure and sinless. To proclaim liberty to the captives,
Those who are held captive by sin, the Lord Jesus sets them
free. The opening of prison to them
that are bound, those that are chained to their sin and can't
possibly set themselves free, he sets them at liberty. To proclaim
the acceptable year of the Lord on the day of vengeance of our
God to comfort all that mourn. The day of vengeance took place
at Calvary's cross when God Almighty poured out the full fury of his
wrath for the sins of his people on the sin bearer, the Lord Jesus
Christ, our substitute. That's the day of vengeance.
It's the year of jubilee. It's the year when all prisoners
are set free and all debt is canceled. To appoint unto them that mourn
in Zion. The gospel turns mourning into
victory. The law turns victory into mourning. to appoint unto them that mourn
in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for
mourning, the garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness,
that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting
of the Lord, that he might be glorified. He gets all the glory. This is
his work. You see, all the law can do is
condemn. All the law can do is put us
in shame. All the law can do is point to
death and judgment and condemnation. Their victory was turned to mourning
because they couldn't see anything beyond the death. David's victory
was turned to mourning. He could not see anything beyond
the death of his son. So what do we do? What do we
do? Well, we make new commitments and we
try to restrain the flesh and we try to keep the requirements
of the law. And the Bible says the strength
of sin is the law. Now I want to use an example
that maybe some will be able to relate to, some will not.
Hopefully, it's a simple example. I like to fish occasionally. I have a fishing knot that's
never broken on me. I've had fish break my fishing
line but they've never pulled that knot out. It's a clinch
knot. The harder you pull on it, the
tighter it gets. Now, that's the way the law is. The harder you pull on it, the
tighter it gets. The strength of sin is the law. If all we have is mourning and
regret and judgment and wrath without the hope of victory,
that law is just going to get tighter and tighter. Now I've got another knot that
I use to tie the boat to the dock and it's called a bowline
or a bowline. It's a very good knot, it's a
very strong knot but as soon as you release the tension from
that knot and pull on one string it comes loose just like that.
Two completely different knots. One, the harder you pull on it,
the tighter it gets. The other one, as soon as you
let it go, it comes right loose. The cross without the resurrection
is nothing but sorrow without satisfaction. It's nothing but
shame without hope. It's nothing but sin without
salvation. The Lord Jesus accomplished the fulfilling of the law. He
accomplished the putting away of sin. He accomplished the opening
up of the grave. He seated at the gate of the
city, that heavenly city, that new Jerusalem. He is that gate. We're never going to have victory
as long as we try to just look to the death of the Son. We've got to see his death in
light of the resurrection. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly
Father, thank you for your word. Lord, we struggle with our sin and
with our flesh in this world. And oh, what death we see that
comes as a result of it. Lord, we pray that you would cause us to find our hope in the accomplished
work of thy dear son and that we might in faith flee to him
and bow to him, submit to him, that our mourning would be turned
to joy, not that the victory of the cross
would be turned to mourning. Lord, might it be so, we ask
it in Christ's name. Amen. Tom, you come, please. 143 in the hardbacked hymnal.
Let's stand together. Rejoice, the Lord is King, your
Lord and King adore. Rejoice, give thanks and sing,
and triumph evermore. Lift up your heart. Lift up your voice, rejoice again,
I say rejoice. Jesus the Savior reigns, the
God of truth and love. When He had purged our stains,
He took His seat above. Lift up your heart. Lift up your voice. Rejoice again. I say rejoice. His kingdom cannot fail. He rules o'er earth and heaven. The keys of death and hell are
to our Jesus give. Lift up your heart. Lift up your voice. Rejoice again. I say rejoice. Rejoice in glorious hope. ? Our Lord the Judge shall come
? And take his servants up to their eternal home ? Lift up
your heart ? Lift up your voice, rejoice again ? I say rejoice
Please be seated. For the Lord's table now, let's
sing hymn number 17 in the spiral hymn book, number 17.