In our Sunday school, we're looking
at the story of Joseph and this morning we were considering when
he reveals himself to his brothers and he invites them to come down
from the land of Canaan to the land of Goshen, which means draw
near. He tells them in chapter 45, verse 20 of Genesis, also
regard not your stuff for the good of all the land of Egypt.
is yours, which is what our Lord tells us in coming to Christ. Turn with me please to Matthew
chapter six. Read this for our call to worship. Matthew six, verse 25. Therefore I say unto you, take
no thought for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall
drink, nor yet for your body what you shall put on. Is not
the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold
the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap,
nor they gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feedeth
them. Are you not much better than they? Which of you by taking
thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye
thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow. They toil not, neither do they
spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so
clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow
is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you,
O ye of little faith? Therefore, take no thought, saying,
what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall
we be clothed? For after all these things do
the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth
that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you. Take therefore no thought for
the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought of the things of
itself, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Let's go
to the Lord in prayer. Our Father in heaven, Lord, we
ask that you would call us unto yourself today, that you would
continue to call us, that we might hear your voice, Lord.
We ask that you would grant us entrance into your kingdom, which
has been bought, paid for by the blood of your Son, for your
elect chosen people, Lord, we ask that you would give us no
regard for the things of this world that we might seek you
first and only. It's in Christ's name we pray,
amen. Number 11 in your spiral hymn
book, number 11, O God, be merciful to me. Let's stand once again.
? With broken heart and contrite
side ? A trembling sinner, Lord, I cry ? Thy pardoning grace is
rich and free ? O God, be merciful to me ? I smite upon my troubled
breast ? ? With deep and conscious guilt oppressed ? ? Christ and
his cross my only plea ? ? O God be merciful to me ? ? No works
nor deeds that I have done ? ? Can for a single sin atone ? ? To
Christ the Lord alone I flee ? ? O God be merciful to me ? And when redeemed from sin and
hell, with all the ransomed throng I dwell, my raptured song shall
ever be, God has been merciful to me. Please be seated. I love the thought of knowing
that our God is much more inclined to show us mercy than we are
to seek it. And that's a comfort to me because
when I believe not, he remaineth faithful for he cannot deny himself. And he delights in showing mercy. There's any limitation to the
mercy that we enjoy. It's on our part, isn't it? Not
on his. I want to open this message by
trying to quote some verses from the book of Job. You don't have
to turn with me. Oh, by the way, I announced in
the first hour that we will not have our regular Wednesday night
service this week because of all the activities around Thanksgiving.
So hope y'all enjoy your family time together. We'll forego our
Wednesday night service this week. One of Job's miserable comforters,
One that was accusing Job of hiding his sin as the reason
why God was doing what he was doing to Job. And his name was
Bildad. And Bildad's name translated
means mixed love. Mixed love. In the first album,
we were talking about the character of God being love. God is love. And when we look at our own love,
it's so mixed. It's so mixed with our own selfishness. And so much like Bildad, we find
ourselves trying to explain the circumstances of our lives in
a way that's just mixed. It's not true, it's not pure. And only as the Lord reveals
to us the simplicity of the gospel in Christ, who he is and what
he's accomplished, Can our mixed love find a place of comfort,
a place of hope, a place of peace? And I hope that the Lord will
do that for us this morning. Bildad said in Job 25, how then
can man be justified with God? That's a good question. He went
on to say, how can he be clean that is born of woman." We, by our natural birth, inherit
the nature of our fathers and how can we be clean? How can we be justified before
God? He goes on to say that the angels who have never sinned,
he's talking about the angels in heaven, the innocent angels
God charges them with folly. If God charges them with folly,
what does he charge me with? The moon and the stars are not
pure in his sight. If the moon and the stars aren't
pure in their sight, where does that leave me standing in the
presence as a sinner of a holy God. How can one who comes from the
womb speaking lies and drinking iniquity like water be made right
with God? How can it be? If I contend with
him, he's always going to be right. If I try to justify myself, I'll
only be speaking as a fool, one without knowledge. Job went on to say, oh, if I
could find a ransom, if I could just find a ransom, one that
could deliver me from going down into the pit. If I have to stand
in the presence of a holy God, bearing the shame and the guilt
of my sin, I'll be condemned. And if I look to my repentance,
And to my faith, I find nothing but hypocrisy. If I look to my repentance and
my faith, I find myself trying to do penance to atone for my
own sin. I find myself trying to bolster
my faith to get the hope of my salvation. I need an advocate. I need a
sin bearer. I need a substitute. I need one
who can bear the shame and the sorrow of my sin sincerely and
sufficiently before God. One who is able to offer up an
atoning sacrifice that God's pleased with. One who is able to justify me
before God. It's been said, and it certainly
is true in my experience, that the thing that bothers me most
about my sin is how little it bothers me. We get used to it. We lived for four years in the
flight pattern of OIA, just a few miles north of the airport and
the planes came over our house pretty frequently. And I remember
when we first moved there, I thought, how in the world are we gonna
live here? This noise is intolerable. And before long, we found ourselves
not even hearing it. And if we were in conversation
and a plane came over, we just stopped talking and wait for
the plane to go by and then we picked up our conversation again
and didn't think a thing of it. We got used to it. drive through the countryside
of Alabama where we used to live and every once in a while you'll
come up on a paper mill. The stench is unbelievable. I mean, it's so bad it feels
like if you breathe through your mouth you could taste it. And
there's people living in that area. People, the homes around
there. How in the world could, you've
got to get used to it. We're like the proverbial frog
in the kettle, aren't we? The water just gets a little
warmer and a little warmer and before long we're cooked and
we never knew it was coming. That's how we are with our sin.
We get used to it. And we're much more bothered
by the fact that another man might
discover our sin than we are by how it offends God. We're more bothered by being
caught. And yet, God demands sorrow for
sin. He demands repentance. And yet my mixed love in this
Bildad can't seem to find sufficient
sorrow and sufficient repentance and sufficient brokenness over
my sin. What do I do? He said, well, doesn't the Bible
say that Lot, Abraham's nephew, vexed his righteous soul day
by day by the unlawful deeds of Sodom? And isn't that the way we're
supposed to be? We live in this dark, sinful world. Are we not
supposed to be vexed in our soul day by day over the wickedness
of the sin of Sodom? Well, by God's grace, we are
more vexed over the sin in our own hearts than we are by societal
sin. That's why we can't preach against
societal sin. If we do, all we'll do is gender
self-righteousness in our own hearts and we'll come to the
conclusion, well, we're sure we're not like those folks out
there. I remind you, though Lot was vexed
in his righteous soul over the evil deeds of those who were
in Sodom, that when the angels came and told him he needed to
leave, the Bible says that he lingered And they had to take
him by the hand and drag him out of Sodom. So just how Becks
was his righteous soul over the, over the wickedness of Sodom.
He had a hard time leaving. God had to make him leave. Apologies, in order to be accepted, must be sincere amongst ourselves. Someone comes to you and says,
well you know, if I offended you, please forgive me. Well
that's no apology. We require from one another a
sincere, willing apology. Does God require any less? Somebody in the news recently
that was exposed for doing something unlawful and finally they dropped
the case and instead of showing some remorse, he went out in
public and celebrated. Maybe you saw that. You know,
there was no remorse, there was no sorrow. Even though his case
got dropped, he just... You know, he acted like he was
justified. No, we require a sincere sense of shame and sorrow if someone does
something to us. We want them to be sincere about it. And yet we hear false prophets
say this... If you confess your sin and you
really mean it, God will save you. You heard somebody say that? Come before God and confess your
sins and if you really mean it, well, exactly how sorrowful do
I need to be? And when this Bildad checks the
motives of his heart, he finds them always mixed. And so how can I find any comfort
in the sincerity of my apology? How can I find any comfort in
the sincerity of my faith and my repentance? How can I hope
to be made right with God based
on that? Turn with me. Have I asked you
to open your Bibles yet? 2 Samuel. Chapter 15. David's son, Absalom, has launched a rebellion against
his father's kingdom. David knew that it was the hand
of God for Nathan the prophet had told him this was going to
happen. David loved his son and grieved
over what Absalom was doing. And let me say this, the Bible
says, let none of us say my parents, my fathers ate sour grapes and
therefore our teeth were set on edge. Let none of us blame
our sin on the previous generation. We bear full responsibility for
the decisions that we make in our lives. That having been said, the real shame that David felt
was not over what Absalom was doing, but over what he had done
in bringing that about. Though we cannot look at our
parents and accuse them of our sin, what parent, what parent
has not felt the shame and sorrow of their children's sin as a
result of the contribution that they made? Some of you have young children,
you haven't experienced that yet, maybe. But I would say this
to you who have young children, the thing that aggravates you
the most about your children when they misbehave is when they
act like you. Is that not true? David entered in to this to this
sin and felt the shame and sorrow of what he had done in bringing
this about. And so in 2 Samuel chapter 15
verse 23, all the country wept with a loud voice and all the
people passed over and the king also himself passed over the
brook Kidron. Now, Kidron translated means
dark. And the Brook Kidron flowed between
the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives. It's still there today,
mostly dried up. In rainy season, the water will
come through there. The only time that the water's
clean is when there's a deluge of rain that comes down the valleys
and washes through there. Otherwise, it's just a stagnant.
Creek. The only time that our lives
are ever going to be clean is if God opens the windows of heaven
and sends the showers of his blessings and his grace into
our lives. Otherwise, we're just stagnant.
Well, we're going to see more of Kidron when we get to the
New Testament. David here is passing, is leaving
Jerusalem. And he crosses over the brook
Kidron and all the people passed over toward the way of the wilderness. David is fleeing and grieving
over what's happening with Absalom. And then in verse 30 of that
same chapter, and David went up by the ascent of Mount Olivet
and wept as he went up. He's grieving over the shame
and guilt that he's feeling for what's happening. He knows it's God. He knows that
his son is wrong in what he's doing. And he wept as he went up and
had his head covered, a biblical sign of sorrow and contrition
and repentance. And he went barefoot. And the people that was with him covered every
man his head and they went up. Weeping as they went. Weeping as they went. Now, I don't want to suggest
in any way that the Lord Jesus Christ had anything to do with our sin as far as causing it. as David
did with Absalom. God made him who knew no sin. Sin. That we might be made the
righteousness of God in him. What I am suggesting is that
the sins of God's people became so owned by the Lord Jesus Christ,
that he and he alone, not like us, not with a mixed heart, not
with mixed love, not with shallow feelings, not within sincere
sorrow, not getting over our sins so quickly as we do, but
he and he alone felt and was able to express to God the sorrow
for sin that God required for that sin to be put away. You and I can't do it. When the Spirit of God convicts
us of our sin, what do we say? Truth, Lord. My problem is my
unbelief. When the comforter comes, he
will convict the world of sin because they believe not on me. Lord, there's my real problem.
My real problem is that my sin doesn't bother me as it ought
to. What bothers me most about my sin is how little it bothers
me because I don't believe as I ought to. Lord, there's the
root cause of all of it. I need an advocate. I need a
sin bearer. I need one who is able to express
to God with head covered and with shoes
off his feet. I need him to not only wade through
the brook Kidron, but I need him to drink from it. And a thousand
years after the time of David, The city of Jerusalem had grown. David, it was a new city when
David was there in our text. By the time the Lord Jesus, the
son of David, turn with me to John chapter 18. By the time
the Lord Jesus, the son of David comes, he's going to fulfill that which
David typified, that which David pictured in the sorrow that he
felt over the shame of his son's rebellion. The Lord Jesus is going to experience
that. And God's going to put our sin
on him in such a way that he's gonna feel it like you and I
never felt it. He's going to experience it.
What is the consequence? It's separation from God. Only
the Lord Jesus was able to cry, my God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? He made him sin. That was the cup. He's going to the garden now.
John chapter 17, he's prayed his high priestly prayer. He's
met with the disciples in the upper room. They've had the last
supper. And now he goes from there, chapter
18, verse one, when Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth
with his disciples over Brook Kedron, Cedron and nearby, same Brook, where there was a garden. into
which he entered and his disciples. Now we know what happened in
the garden. He sweats drops of blood. He
pours out his heart to his father and he calls on his disciples.
Could you not pray with me one hour? And every time he goes
back to them, they're asleep. Can you identify with the disciples?
If their salvation depended upon the sincerity and the commitment
of their sorrow and their prayers, he had already told them, my
hour has come. Much grief had taken hold of
his heart. He's pouring out his soul to
the father. He crosses over Brooke Kidron. Now by the time of the Lord Jesus
Christ, The Brook Kidron was an open sewer in Jerusalem. All the refuse of the city and
particularly the dung and the blood and the guts of the sacrificial
animals in the temple came down to the Brook Kidron and flowed
through the Kidron Valley into what's called Hinnon, which was
the city dump. which burned with a perpetual
fire. And when the Bible talks about
hell, it relates it to that dump, that city dump. The smell would
have been putrefying. Now, perhaps they had some boards
laying across this brook. I don't know. Did the Lord Jesus
take off his shoes and walk through the sludge of that sewer? I don't
know, Bible doesn't tell us. But I know this, spiritually
speaking, he drank from it. He drank from that river. He took that sewer water of our
sin and he drank it. And he felt the shame and the
sorrow of it like you and I have never been able to know. And
that was the sincerity of repentance. And that was the sacrifice that
he made when he laid down his life for his sheep. He crossed over the brook Kidron
and like the prophet Elijah, he drank from the brook. You
look up the Brook Kidron in the Old Testament, there are several
occasions where the ashes of dead bodies were thrown into
the Brook Kidron. And it was just a place of refuse. And after
it passed through Hinnon, it ended up in the Dead Sea. That's where the Brook Kidron
finally ended up, in the Dead Sea. Now the Dead Sea is called
the Dead Sea because it's dead. There's no life in it. And it's
interesting, it's amazing to me that the Dead Sea right now,
today, over there in Israel, 660 feet below sea level, it
is the lowest point on the face of this planet below sea level,
the Dead Sea. And everything flows there and
nothing flows out of there. and everything in it is dead. What is the Lord telling us? If I don't drink from that river,
if I don't drink from that brook, if God doesn't impute to me your
sins so that I can present myself a holy sacrifice unto God, you won't be saved. Turn with me to Psalm 38. A psalm of David. And as is with
all the psalms, David is speaking prophetically of the Lord Jesus
Christ. When he says in verse 3, there
is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger, neither is there
any rest in my bones because of my sin. Now I don't pretend
to understand this but I believe it. There are three imputations spoken
of in scriptures. In Adam all died. You'll read
men that will tell you that Adam was our federal head. And he
was. As the President of the United
States, as our federal head. But Adam was more than that.
Adam was our seminal head. We were in the loins of Adam
when he was sinned in the garden. And just like your father is
your seminal head. So Adam is our seminal head and
what Adam did, we did. And we couldn't keep one law.
One simple law, we couldn't keep it. And in Adam, all died. The imputation
of death passed on to me from my father, Adam. The second imputation that the
Bible speaks of is when God made him who knew no sin, sin for
us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
And it begins here in John chapter 18 when the Lord Jesus crossed
over Kidron and went to the Garden of Gethsemane just like David
did, weeping, head covered, feet uncovered, drinking from that
sewer of our sin. He's bearing our sin in his body
to satisfy what God requires for a holy sacrifice, a willing
sacrifice, a sincere sacrifice. And now he's calling our sin
his sin. I don't know what that means. Am I defiling the Lord Jesus
as the sacrifice of God? No, He's the Holy One of Israel. But somehow, mystically, in a
way that we can't enter into, Christ made sin. Now, if it was more than just a legal
thing, If I take someone else's punishment for a crime that they
committed, then I have two options. I can either be proud that I
made such a sacrifice, or I can be resentful that such a demand
was made of me. One thing I can't feel if I take
someone else's guilt, someone else's crime, and get punished
for it, I can't feel guilt. I didn't do it. I can't feel
shame. There is no soundness in my flesh
because of thine anger, neither is there any rest in my bones
because of my sin, for my iniquities are gone over my head. Psalm
38 verse four. And a heavy burden, as a heavy
burden, they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink. and are
corrupt because of my foolishness. I am troubled, I am bowed down
greatly. I go mourning all the day long
for my loins are filled with loathsome disease and there is
no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken.
I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. Lord,
all my desires before thee and my groaning is not hid from thee.
My heart panteth. My strength faileth me. As for
the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me. My lovers and
my friends stand aloof from my sword. And my kinsmen stand afar off,
forsaken. They also that seek after my
life lay snare for me. They that seek my hurt speak
mischievous things and imagine deceits all the day. Look down
at verse 17. For I am ready to halt and my
sorrow is continually before me for I will declare mine iniquity. I will be sorry for my sin. Can we present ourselves sufficiently sorrowful? Can we
repent sincerely enough? Are we not like the person who Loses sight of,
I mean, you know, you hear a noise until you don't hear it anymore.
The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins, no question about that,
but here's the thing about it. Wallowing in guilt and doing
penance for sin will never satisfy the demands of God. When God
convicts you of your sin, flee to your only Savior. Look to
Christ, run to him because he's the only one that can offer a
sacrifice to God that will satisfy what God requires. And that's
exactly what he did. And the third imputation, Adam's guilt imputed to us, our
guilt imputed to Christ, Christ's righteousness. imputed
to us. I've separated your sin from
you as far as the East is from the West and I remember them
no more. As He is, so are we in this world. We can come boldly before the
throne of grace, the throne of grace confident that He is able
to save to the uttermost them that come to God by Him and find
help in our time of need. It's all in Him. It's all in
Him. He drank from that brook. He
crossed the brook. And He went from there to Calvary And because of what Christ suffered, our sins have been put away. May God send a rain to wash that
sewer clean. Oh. All right. Our Heavenly Father, thank you. for thy dear son. Thank you for
the success of his redemptive work. Thank you that he was able
to make to you an offering of himself that satisfied all that
you required. Seeing the travail of his soul,
Lord, might we be given faith to look to him. For it's in his
name we pray, amen. 125, let's stand together, 125. I hear the Savior say, Thy strength
indeed is small, Child of weakness, watch and pray, Find in me thine
all in all. Jesus paid it all, all to Him
I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow. Lord, now indeed I find Thy power
and Thine alone. ? Can't change the lamper spots
? And melt the heart of stone ? Jesus paid it all ? All to
him I owe ? Sin had left a crimson stain ? He washed it white as
snow For nothing good have I whereby thy grace to claim. I'll wash
my garments white in the blood of Calvary's Lamb. Jesus paid
it all, all to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow. And when before the throne I
stand in Him complete, Jesus died my soul to save, my lips
shall still repeat, Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. Thank you.