Please turn with me to Revelation
chapter five. Revelation chapter five. Our call to worship is gonna
be at verse nine. We're gonna start with five one. And I saw on the right hand of
him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside
sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming
with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the book and to loose
the seals thereof? And no man in heaven nor on earth,
neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither
to look thereon. And I wept much. because no man
was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to
look thereon. And one of the elders saith to
me, weep not. Behold, the lion of the tribe
of Judah, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book
and to loose the seven seals thereof. And I beheld, and lo,
in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, And in the
midst of the elders stood a lamb as it had been slain, having
seven horns, seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God
sent forth into all the earth. And he came and took the book
out of the right hand of him who sat upon the throne. And
when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and 20 elders
fell down before the lamb, having every one of them harps and golden
bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
and they sung a new song saying, thou art worthy to take the book
and to open the seals thereof for thou was slain and has redeemed
us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and
people and nation and has made us unto our God kings and priests
and we shall reign on the earth. And I looked and I heard the
voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and
the elders and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000
and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is
the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and
strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature
which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and
such as are in the sea and all that are in them, I heard saying,
blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him that sitteth
upon the throne and unto the Lamb forever and ever. And the
four beasts said, Amen. And the four and 20 elders fell
down and worshiped him that liveth forever and ever. Let's pray. Merciful Lord, thank you for
gathering us this morning. Thank you for giving us your
word and giving us our brother that you've used to preach your
word to lift up your son. Enable him again to sing the
new song to us, to lift up Christ before us. Give us ears, Lord,
to hear of Christ. Give us eyes to see Christ. Give
us feet to walk in faith. Knit our hearts together, Lord,
for we are one in Christ Jesus, our head. Remind us, Lord, that we are
bought with a price to esteem each other better than ourselves.
Forgive us, Lord, of our foolishness and our sins. Deliver us from evil, Lord, and
give us faith to look to your son. Oh, Lord, enable us to rejoice
in your goodness, in your faithfulness. For it's in his name we pray,
amen. Let's stand together once again,
hymn number 23 in your spiral, gospel hymns hymnal number 23. Cast me not, O gracious sailor,
Sinful, wretched though I be, ? In truth condemn me ? Let your
mercy fall on me ? Love of God so everlasting ? Blood of Christ
so rich and free ? Grace of God so strong and saving ? Magnify
them all in me Cast me not, O blessed Savior,
let me hear your gracious call. I'm a guilty, helpless sinner,
Savior, at your feet I fall. Love of God so everlasting, blood
of Christ so rich and free. Grace of God so strong and saving,
magnify them all in me. Pass me not, O mighty Spirit,
You can cause the dead to live. Speak the word of saving power,
Give me faith and make me live. ? Love of God so everlasting
? Blood of Christ so rich and free ? Grace of God so strong
and saving ? Magnify them all in me ? Pass me not a poor lost
sinner If you will, you can save me. Reach down with your hand
of mercy. Saving others, Lord, save me. Love of God so everlasting. Blood of Christ so rich and free. Grace of God so strong and saving. Magnify them all in me. Please be seated. Let's open our Bibles to John
chapter 4. John chapter 4. We've been looking at this account
that our Lord had with the woman at the well for several weeks
now. Who cannot be moved and hopeful
that the Lord would treat them the way he treated this sinful
woman. With such gentleness and such
love and such compassion, he leads her to himself. And that's always our hope. Our hope is that the Lord would
lead us to himself and do for us what he did for this woman.
When she said in verse 25, I know that Messiah cometh, which is
called Christ. And when he has come, he will
tell us all things. And Jesus saith unto her, and
I'm going to interpret this literally, I am speaketh unto thee. She leaves her water pot, runs
back down into Sychar, and she says to the men of that town,
come, come, meet a man who told me everything ever I did. Is not this the Christ? The Christ. I've titled this message, Messiah
Has Come. And the important question that
you and I have to ask in our hearts is, do we need a Messiah? Do we need Christ? Do we need to be saved? Because That's who Messiah is. He's the Savior of Israel. And
that's what he came to do. And this woman, though she was
a Samaritan, she rejoiced in knowing that the Lord's grace
to her was very particular. She didn't know what had been
said before they went to Samaria, when the Lord revealed to the
disciples, I must needs go through Samaria. I have a lost sheep
there. Matter of fact, I have several
lost sheep there and I must reveal myself to them and redeem them
and give them faith to believe on me. She didn't know what the Lord
was doing for her when he asked her for a drink. And she objected to not knowing
why a Jew would speak to a Samaritan. And she didn't know what he meant
when he said to her, if thou knewest who it is that asketh
thee, give me a drink, you would ask of him and he would give
you living water. She didn't know yet, but he was
gently, lovingly, compassionately doing for her what he does for
each one of his children. He's going to reveal Himself
to her. He's going to say to her, I am
speaketh unto thee. And she's gonna cause her to
confess, is not this the Christ? Is not this the Savior? Oh, every
sinner. represented by this woman who
had been married five times, what a mess her life must have
been. But it's symbolic of the mess
that we've all made in our lives as a result of our own spiritual
adultery and our attraction to the things of this world. She didn't understand that not
only was God's grace particular toward her, but it was persistent. It was persistent toward her,
even when she tried to change the subject. And this is always
the way we initially respond to the gospel. We'll object to
the content of the gospel. We'll reject to the points of
the gospel in order to avoid our need for the gospel. He had
exposed her need for the gospel. Yes, you don't have a husband.
The man that you're with now is not your husband and you've
been married five times. And what'd she say? Oh, I perceive
that you're a prophet. Well, our fathers say that we
should worship in this mountain, but you Jews say we should worship
in Jerusalem. What was she doing? She was debating
what she considered to be an unanswerable question. She was
doing what all men do when the gospel hits home and exposes
us for what we are. We try to change the subject
and think, well, if we can find something to debate and something
else to discuss, we can get that hot light off of the darkness
of our own sin. But the Lord wouldn't let it
be. He wouldn't let it. He continued to pursue her. until his grace was not only
particular and not only persistent, but it was irresistible and it
was personal. You see, that's what we want.
That's what we need. That's what we hope for is that
the Lord would treat us like he treated this woman and that
he would speak effectually to our hearts and say to us, Yes,
when Messiah comes, he'll tell you all things. And I am speaketh
unto thee. Oh, that the Lord would speak. Messiah is not just the theme
of the Bible. Messiah is the purpose of the
Bible. All scriptures speak of him.
The whole purpose of the revelation that God has given us in his
word is to reveal Christ, the anointed one. Messiah is Hebrew,
Christ is Greek, but they both mean the same thing, the anointed
one. The one who's been sent of God
with the full power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the salvation
of God's people. That's what the meaning of Messiah
is. And that's what it always was. And from the very beginning
of the fall, when Adam rebelled against God and bears all the
responsibility as you and I do, we bear the responsibility of
the fall. We were in our father Adam when he disobeyed God. And when he died, we died. Spiritually,
we were separated from God and must be born again. Nevertheless,
God ordained that fall. He purposed it from before time
for the purpose of bringing in Messiah, the Christ, the anointed
one, to reveal his glory to sinners. It was all part of God's purpose.
That's why the Lord said to Adam and Eve right after the fall,
the seed of the woman. And he was speaking of that seed,
not seeds, but that seed, which is Christ. The scripture makes
that clear. The seed of the woman's gonna crush the head of the serpent. And when Eve gave birth to her
first child, she said, I've gotten the man. Turned out Cain wasn't the man
at all. To the contrary, he was representative
of all men born of the flesh. He was a murderer, a murderer. And what he did to his brother
is what every single one of us have done by our natural birth
into this world in raising our fist to heaven. It's what we
did 2,000 years ago when the Lord Jesus Christ went to Calvary's
cross. We murdered our brother. And his blood cries out from
the ground to God for us. Oh, there's our hope. You see,
this whole book, that's why Paul said, I determine not to know
anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It's
all about the Messiah. It's all about the Christ. And
when I read these for... I've been thinking about this
for some time and I thought, Lord, this subject is overwhelming. It's where do I begin? What do
I say about the Christ? Every bit of scripture speaks
of Him. And our whole being and our whole purpose in life is
about Him. And so... I want to limit our time
this morning to those three offices in the Old Testament, whereby
an anointing took place. In Old Testament Israel, there
were three offices that were given by God to the children
of Israel to represent the Christ, the Messiah, the one who would come not with
a partial anointing, as were these men, but with a full anointing
of the Spirit of God. And yet they are pictures of
what he would accomplish. Those three offices are prophet,
priest, and king. Now a prophet was one who brought
the word of God to the people of God. A priest was one who
took the sins of the people of God and offered up sacrifices
for those sins and interceded to God on behalf of God's people. And the king was the one who
reigned sovereign over the people of God. So the question for you
and me this morning is, do you need a prophet? Do you need one who is able to
reveal to you the will, the word, the purpose of God Almighty? You have no way of knowing him
apart from a prophet speaking to you. Do you need a priest? Do you
need one who is able to go into the very presence of God Almighty
and offer up sacrifices that will be sufficient to atone for
your sins? Do you need a king? Have you
found that ruling over your own life has turned out to be a mess? that you're not a very good king
over your own life. Hard as you try to be, and you
need a sovereign, you need a benevolent, omnipotent God to reign over
you and to lead you and direct you. That's Messiah. Our prophet, our priest, and
our king. We cannot know God unless he
sends a word by the prophet. The Bible's clear. Creation reveals
to our mind that there is a God. We have to lie to ourselves to
be an atheist. I doubt very seriously that there
are any really true atheists. Now, I don't doubt that men are
able to lie to themselves to the point to where they believe
their own lies. But creation reveals to us that there
is a creator. You can't escape that. And all
the gymnastics that men go through in order to deny the existence
of God which is all evolution is. Evolution is all, all it
is is man's desire to rid himself of the responsibility of bowing
before an almighty creator. That's all it is, nothing more.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And our minds reveal that to
us. Our conscience reveals to us
that this God with whom we must do demands an atoning sacrifice
for our sin. We're not right with that God.
That God is holy. That God is powerful. He's all-powerful. He's omnipotent and he's all-knowing. We know those things to be true
about God. He cannot be God if he's not those things. How am
I gonna stand in the presence of a God like that? I must have
something to atone for the sacrifices of my sins. And so consequently,
the men unenlightened by a prophet have concluded that they can
do something to atone for their own sins. And that's what man-made
religion is all about. And just like the Tower of Babel,
in the confusion of man's speech, there is a plethora of man-made
religions all over the world. And everybody has come to their
own conclusions about what they think God requires for the atonement
of their own sins. They are operating out of their
own conscience. And the conscience cannot know
God. You see, creation does not reveal
the truth. Conscience cannot reveal the
truth. It will only lead us into self-righteousness
and self-atonement. Only a word from God given to
us by the prophet will reveal to us the truth of who we are
and who God is and how it is that God is pleased to atone
for the sins of his people. In the Old Testament, the prophets
were anointed with oil, picturing the Spirit of God that
anointed them with understanding and with revelation to give to
the people of God. but their revelation was partial.
It wasn't full. Hebrews chapter one, turn with
me there, please. Hebrews chapter one. God who at sundry times, different
times, And in divers manners, different manners, spake in times
past unto the fathers by the prophets, half in these last
days spoken unto us by his son, whom he at the pointed air of
all things by whom also he made the worlds. Now turn over a page
or if you have to, to verse nine. To verse nine, this is God speaking
to his son, the Lord Jesus. Thou hast loved righteousness. Thou hast hated iniquity. Therefore God, even thy God,
hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. What does Christ mean? We know
that when Messiah comes, This Samaritan woman, all she had,
all the Samaritans have is the first five books of the Bible.
But she knew from that, that the only hope was the Messiah
come. He's gonna tell us all things.
He's gonna settle all controversy. He's gonna reveal to us the truth. And until he comes, we're just
gonna be We're just gonna be pooling our ignorances and debating
issues that are irrelevant. We need to hear from God. Messiah
has come and he has spoken. And the word of God was made
flesh and he dwelt among us and we beheld his glory as the glory
of the only begotten of the father full of grace and full of truth.
God has spoken and God has anointed him. He didn't come with a measure. You see, the prophets of old
only were able to speak in part. God, who at sundry times in diversness,
spake to our fathers through the prophets. Half in these last
days spoken unto us by his son. He's given us a full revelation
of God. Everything that we hope to know
about God. That's what this woman was saying.
We know when Messiah comes, He's gonna tell us everything. He's
gonna be God's prophet. We've been waiting for God's
prophet. And since the days of Malachi,
the last of the Old Testament prophets, it's now been 400 years
since God has spoken. And all that he spoke in the
Old Testament was just part and parcel of what he would fully
reveal in the person of the Lord Jesus. Turn with me to Deuteronomy
chapter 18. Deuteronomy 18. Children of Israel have just
come out of Egypt. Moses, a type of Christ. Moses was a prophet. By the way,
in the Old Testament, there was never one individual that had
all three offices. David was king and prophet, but
he wasn't a priest. Samuel was prophet and priest,
but he wasn't a king. Moses was a type of a king, although
the kings haven't been started until Saul, but he was a prophet,
but he wasn't a priest. He had to have Aaron. Aaron was
a priest. but he wasn't a king and a prophet.
One man is gonna fulfill all three roles, prophet, priest,
and king. And here's the promise that God
gives to Moses in the Old Testament. I mean, in the wilderness. In
Genesis chapter 18, verse 18, I will raise them up a prophet
from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words
in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command
him. And then he's going to expose
the nature of the false prophets. Try the spirits to see whether
they be of God, for many false prophets have gone out into the
world. How do I discern whether or not what I'm hearing is really
from God or it's coming from the lips of a false prophet that
God hasn't spoken to? How do I discern that? And God
gives one rule, one rule for determining that. Verse 19. "'And
it shall come to pass that whosoever shall not hearken "'unto my words,
which he shall speak in my name, "'I will require it of him. "'But
the prophet which shall presume to speak a word "'in my name,
which I have not commanded him to speak, "'of that which shall
speak in the name of other gods, "'even that prophet shall die.'" And the world is full of false
prophets. Job, speaking symbolically, says
that a faithful interpreter is one among a thousand. And I'm
sure that they're more rare than that. How do I know? God's gonna tell us. Look at
this next verse. Verse 21, and if thou shalt in
thine heart, Say, how shall we know that the word which the
Lord has spoken? How do we know this word that's
being spoken is of God? When a prophet speaketh in the
name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass,
that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet
hath spoken it presumptuously, you don't be afraid of him. Thou
shall not be afraid of him. Now, If we speak just of what
the world would refer to as Christendom, what do the false prophets say
about the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus
Christ? Here's what they say. They say
he died on a cross to save everybody. He laid down his life for the
world. Picked up a track in Home Depot
yesterday. You know, some people lay around
tracks, you know, these gospel, false gospel tracks. Sure enough,
Christ died on the cross, you know, but you know, you've got
to do your part. You gotta accept him. Otherwise,
the work that he did is not fulfilled. They are prophesying a promise
that did not come to pass. If there's one single person
for whom the Lord Jesus died that ends up in hell, then he
did not fulfill what he prophesied. He did not accomplish what he
said he would accomplish, the salvation of God's people. And
any false prophet that's breathing this world's air that refers
to a Messiah who did not accomplish what he came to do, the salvation
of all of Israel, he saved everyone for whom he died, is a false prophet. Don't be
afraid of him. Whatever else they say, it's
a lie. He cannot be trusted. That's
so clear, that's so simple, it's such an easy, an easy standard. If they tell you that the Lord
Jesus, now there are, some of you might be thinking right now,
well you know there's some, there's some Calvinists that hold to
particular redemption. They hold to particular redemption.
They believe that the Lord died particularly for his elect and
that he accomplished their salvation. And then they lead you down a
road of a works gospel when they talk about progressive sanctification. Now you got to do your part in
order to become more holy. What are they saying to you?
They're saying that Christ Jesus the Lord is your righteousness
before God, but he's not all your righteousness. You got to
do something. You see, if any prophet tells you that you've
got to do anything to make perfect what the Lord Jesus did, whether
it be in redemption or whether it be in sanctification, then
they're telling you that it did not come to pass what he promised
he would do. He's a false prophet, clear and
simple. I want us to look at one verse
quickly in Proverbs. Would you turn to me to Proverbs?
Because the question that I'm asking now is, where do we hear this word from? Where do we go to find out? Well, what sayeth the scriptures?
What sayeth the scriptures? And someone asked me recently,
You know, they wanted to read the Bible and wanted to know
how to do it. And I met someone recently that
said, you know, I read through the whole Bible seven times and
they didn't know the gospel. And they think that somehow taking
on large portions of scripture is going to be the means by which
God speaks. And it's not so. It's not so. The Bible's a big book. There's
66 books in here. But my encouragement to you is
don't try to hear from God by taking on large portions of the
Bible. Look what God says in Proverbs
25. Proverbs 25. Look at verse 16. Now we know
what honey is. It's consistent all throughout
the Bible. The honey is the word of God. It's sweet to the taste
and it's bitter to the belly. It exposes the flesh for what it
is but have you found honey? Have you found honey? eat so much as is sufficient
for thee lest thou be filled therewith
and vomited." I feel like I've done that in
my preaching too many times. Tried to cover far too much scripture
in one message. And I apologize to you for that,
you've had to be on the receiving end of that vomit. Let us take one little bit of
scripture and concentrate and meditate
on that and draw from that all the nourishment. Look at verse
27 in this same chapter. because the Lord's gonna tell
us why we're prone to want to take on large passages of scripture. Prepare thy work therewith. I'm
sorry, where are we? Proverbs 25 verse 27. It is not good to eat too much
honey, So for men to search their own
glory is not glory. Why is it that we want to take
on too much of God's Word? Why is it that we want to impress
other men with how much we know? Is that not true? Knowledge puffeth
up. And to seek your own glory is
not glory. Oh brethren, start your day,
ask the Lord to give you a verse, a verse. Meditate on that verse. Suck all the nourishment out
of that verse. And let God speak to your heart
through one small passage of scripture. I want to preach that way, I
hope that I'll be able to be more faithful to do that. We know that when Messiah comes,
he'll tell us all things. Messiah, which is called Christ,
he'll tell us all things. He'll tell you everything you
need to know. Eat that which is sufficient for thee. And one little bit is sufficient.
If you try to eat too much, you're just gonna throw it up. You're
gonna lose it. David said this in the Psalms. He said, be not silent to me. Lord, be not silent to me. For
if thou be silent to me, I'll go down into the pit. Lord, speak. This is the means by which God
speaks. Line upon line, precept upon
precept, little by little, verse by verse, he speaks truth and
peace and hope to the heart. Do you need a prophet? One who's able to speak to your
heart, the word of God, that's Messiah. That's Christ. That's the anointed one. And
he's been anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows.
Oh, go to him and test every word that you hear from a man,
every audible voice that you hear, including mine, tested
by the word of God. And if it's not consistent with
God's word, discount it, disregard it, pay no attention to it whatsoever. Matter of fact, I would not only
say including mine, I would say especially mine, especially mine. Test this, test. The Bereans, the scripture says,
were more noble than the Thessalonians, for they received the word of
God with gladness and searched the scripture daily to see if
what they said was true. Search the scripture, see if
this is not true. Is this not this woman's hope,
Messiah, the Christ? But not only is he prophet, but
he's priest. He's priest. Now, what is a priest?
A priest is one who goes before God and makes a sacrifice that
is sufficient before God to atone for our sins. Now, men become
their own priest when they try to present the works of their
hands or the intents of their hearts to God or their prayers
or anything that they've done. They become their own priest. And then, in religion, men set
themselves up as the priest of the people. Priestcraft is very
popular in man-made religion. Every religion practices it.
Islam practices it with their imams, and the Catholic Church practices
it with their priests and popes, and everybody practices it. You gotta go through a man to
get, no. No, God may use the voice of a man to audibly declare
what he has said, but you don't have to go through that man to
get to God. In the Old Testament, Aaron was
the priest. Moses wasn't a priest. And Aaron wore a breastplate
and on that breastplate were 12 precious stones. And in each
one of the 12 stones was the name of one of the 12 tribes
of Israel. And the scripture says that they
anointed Aaron with oil and it went on his head and down his
beard and dripped off his skirt. And that's what we're hoping
for. That Aaron is Christ. He bears in his heart the names
of all of his people. Tim, you just read it from Revelation
chapter 5. Those 24 elders, that's the 12 tribes of the Old Testament
and the 12 apostles of the New Testament. That's the whole church
of God. That's all of God's elect. It's
also represented as 144,000 in the book of Revelation. That's
not a literal number. That's every one of God's people. And the Lord Jesus bears the
names of His people in His heart. And though our hope is to be
like that woman with the issue of blood who's crawling through
the crowd and might just touch the hem of his garment, if I
could just touch the hem where that oil drips off, that I could
receive a portion of the Holy Spirit. Because he's my Aaron
who has been anointed with the Spirit of God completely. And he's the one who doesn't
like those Old Testament priests bring blood sacrifices and put
them on the mercy seat in the holies of holies. God said to
Aaron and to Moses, here, I will meet with you at the mercy seat. Yesterday was Yom Kippur. And
all the Jews celebrated the day of atonement when in the Old
Testament, Once a year, the high priest would go into the Holies
of Holies and make a blood sacrifice, and the Shekinah glory of God
would come, and God would pass over their sins for another year,
but they had to do it again. And between the Yom Kippur, between
the days of atonement, the priest would have to make sacrifice
after sacrifice after sacrifice in the Old Testament. Judaism
was a bloody religion. hundreds of animals slaughtered
every day, blood flowing freely from that temple. And when the Lord Jesus bowed
his mighty head at Passover, he said, it is finished. It's finished. No longer are
those Old Testament types which pointed to me necessary. And no longer am I like those
priests. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
seven. Hebrews chapter seven. Look at verse 26. Hebrews 7, 26. For such on high
priests became us, speaking of Christ, who is holy, harmless,
undefiled, separate from sinners and made higher than the heavens,
who needed not daily as those high priests to offer up sacrifices
first for his own sins and then for the people's, for this he
did once when he offered up himself. When the Lord Jesus went to Calvary's
cross, he was acting as our high priest. offering up himself as
the Lamb of God that was without spot and without blemish. And
God received that offering for the sins of those for whom he
died. He did it once. For the law, you know, priest is mentioned, I think,
26 times in the book of Hebrews. And the entire book of Hebrews
is comparing that Old Testament ceremonial religion to the fulfillment
of what the Lord Jesus did. And he's saying, he came as the
priest of God. Yes, those anointed priests in
the Old Testament, they got a portion of the anointing, but he came
with the full anointing of the Spirit of God to offer up himself. For the law maketh men high priests
which have infirmity, but the word of the oath which was since
the law, or before the law, he's talking about the covenant of
grace, where the father promised to his son to accept his offering,
and the son promised to make himself the offering for the
sins of his people. We know that when Messiah comes,
he's not only come as our prophet, but he's gonna come as our priest.
And no more sacrifices will be made. But the word of the oath, which
was before the law, maketh the son who is consecrated forevermore. From now on, we have one priest. Now the things which we have
spoken, this is the summary of it. We have such a high priest
who is set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty
in heaven. One piece of furniture that is
conspicuously missing in the Old Testament temple was a chair. There were tables, there were
altars, there were labors, there were all sorts of things. There
was no chair mentioned, why? Because the Old Testament priest's
work was never done, he never sat down. One piece of furniture
is most conspicuous in heaven, a chair, a throne. And our high priest has sat down,
he's finished. It's finished. The work is accomplished. You can't atone for your sins.
And you don't need to atone for your sins. They've been atoned
for. Why? Because Messiah has come,
which is called the Christ. And he has spoken and said, I
am speaketh unto thee. And the last anointing, And as
I said, this subject is so overwhelming, there's so much more that can
be said. But let's move on to the third,
the king. The king. Samuel anointed David
king. The kings were anointed to reign
and to rule benevolently and sovereignly over the children
of Israel. David was a good king. Solomon
was a good king. Some of the kings weren't so
good kings. Nevertheless, they were anointed
of God as a picture of the reigning king. There's a place in John, I think
it's in John chapter 6 where the scripture says, and the people
tried to make him king. And when he perceived that they
would take him by their hands and make him king, he went away. You'll make him king? Yeah, well,
people are saying, well, let's make Jesus Lord of our life.
Too late. God's already done it. He reigns
sovereign. He's in the heavens. You can't
make him Lord of your life. We crown him Lord because we
rejoice that he's Lord. Why do we rejoice that he's Lord?
Because we've come by God's grace to this conclusion. We can't
reign over our own lives. And every time we take control
of our lives, we'd mess it up. We need a king. We need one that
we can bow to. We need one that will take our
spears and make plowshares out of them and take our swords and
make pruning sporks out of them. We need one that will cause us
to lower our fist of rebellion, which said, I will not have that
man reign over us. And say, Lord, what would you
have me to do? Lord, reign over me. Lord, show
me. Show me what I should do. And we go to him as our king
knowing that he is benevolent and that he is able, he's loving. He's got nothing good for his
people, but that which is good. We are his subjects and we rejoice
in being his subjects. No longer do we stand with a
voice of rebellion against God with the rest of the world and
say, no, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna do it my way. No. Oh, we do that enough every day
to be reminded of our need for a king. And we keep coming back, bowing willingly to our sovereign,
asking for forgiveness and for him to show us and provide
for us. Lord, I need a king. I need a
king. I need a prophet to speak truth
to my heart. I need a priest to intercede
for me and I need a king. And we know that when Messiah, which is called Christ, come,
he will show us all things. I am, I am, speaketh unto thee. What was the time? 18, in the spiral hymnal. Let's
stand together, number 18. We'll sing straight through,
no refrain. ? God gave His holy inspired Word
? For only one great end ? The prophets and apostles too ? Revealed
the sinner The Bible is the book of Christ. It only speaks of Him. On every page it shows us Christ. It only speaks of Him. of prophecies, of old record,
God's wondrous mighty deeds. Those deeds of power and of grace
set forth of woman's seed. The prophets all reveal our Lord
as prophet, priest, and king. The types the great redemption
show, Christ's blood and grace now bring. Behold the Lamb, the Baptist
said, the sin-atoning One. As it was promised long before,
God saw a past man has come. Obeyed the law, then died and
rose again. And in His word our Savior said,
Rejoice, I come again.