Good morning. Thank you, Joy.
I want to ask you to open your bulletin and look at the conference
dates and schedule on the bottom right-hand corner of your bulletin. and take special notice of the
fact that we've changed our schedule on Saturday. We will have a light
lunch here. I don't want to have a great
big spread, just something to tie us over. Otherwise, we may
all get sleepy at 2 o'clock. But then we'll stay and have
the second two messages at 2 and 3. So on Saturday, that way you
don't have to figure out what to do all day Saturday, just
come We'll be here from 10 to 4. And everything else is pretty
much the same. We'll be back Sunday morning
and have lunch after the service on Sunday. So there's a sign-up
sheet in the back. on the shelf near the kitchen
for cleanup schedule for each day of the conference and for
some food items that we need on Saturday for lunch. So please
take notice of that and help out where you can. All right?
Your bulletin, the hymn on the back of your bulletin, I love
the way this hymn begins. Come whosoever will. The wall's
up, there's no breaches in it, but the gates are open. Come,
come. Nor vainly strive to mend, don't
try to mend your life, and don't try to mend the gospel. It's a vain effort. Sinners are
freely welcome, still to Christ, the sinner's friend. Let's stand
together. Burt, come please. Come whosoever will, nor vainly
strive to mend. Sinners are freely welcomed still
to Christ, a sinner's friend. The gospel table spread and richly
furnished too, with wine and milk and living bread and dainties
not a few. The guilty, vile, and base, the
wretched and forlorn, are welcome to the Feast of Grace, though
goodness they have done. ? No goodness he expects ? He
came to save the poor ? Poor helpless souls he ne'er neglects
? Nor sends them from his door ? His tender loving heart ? The
vilest will embrace ? And freely to them will impart ? The riches
of His grace Be seated. Will you open your Bibles with
me to Isaiah 62 for our call to worship, please? Isaiah 62. Verse 1, for Zion's sake will
I not hold my peace. The Lord's not going to hold
his peace for the sake of his church. His preachers are not
going to hold their peace for the sake of his church. And his
children are not going to hold their peace for the sake of his
church. And for Jerusalem's sake, I will
not rest until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness
and the salvation thereof is a lamp that burneth. And the
Gentiles shall see thy righteousness and all Kings thy glory. And
thou shall be called by a new name, which the mouth of the
Lord shall name." So everything's all about the mouth of the Lord
and what saith the Lord, isn't it? And that's all we wanna know. What's God say about it? What's
God, just show me what God says about it. Thou shall also be a crown of
glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand
of thy God. Thou shalt no more be termed
forsaken, neither shall thy land anymore be termed desolate, but
thou shalt be called Hephzibah. My delight is in her. And thy land, Beulah, married,
married. Now the church is called the
Bride of Christ. We are united in Him in the eternal
covenant of grace, the marriage feast of the Lamb, and He calls
us married. You're married to me. Everything that belongs to me
belongs to my wife. For as a young man marrieth a
virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee. And as the bridegroom rejoices
over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over
thee. Usually when we think about rejoicing, we're thinking in
terms of us rejoicing in Him, aren't we? And here He says,
I rejoice over you. I have set watchmen upon thy
walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace, day nor
night. Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silent and
give Him no rest, until He establish, until He make Jerusalem a praise
in the earth. Let's pray together. Our merciful Heavenly Father,
we are thankful that You've declared so gloriously and so clearly
and simply that your church is your bride and that you take delight in
her. Lord, we see nothing in ourselves
that would cause you to feel that way, except that we know
that you've made your bride comely with your comeliness. And so
Lord, by virtue of our union with Christ, We have great hope
of knowing that we not only have acceptance with thee, but that
we have glory. Glory in thy very presence. Lord,
bless us this morning. Speak to our hearts. Increase
our faith. Forgive us of our many sins.
We ask it in Christ name. Amen. Would you turn to number 17 in
the blue hand mills? You can remain seated. Number
17. ? Come thou fount of every blessing
? ? Tune my heart to sing thy grace ? ? Streams of mercy never
ceasing ? ? Call for songs of loudest praise ? ? Teach me some
melodious sonnet ? ? Sung by flaming tongues above ? Raised
a mountain, fixed upon it Mount of Thy redeeming love ? Here
I raise my Ebenezer ? Hither by thy help I'm come ? And I
hope by thy good pleasure ? Safely to arrive at home ? Jesus sought
me when a stranger ? Wandering from the fold of God he to rescue
me from danger interposed his precious blood oh to grace how
great a debtor I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness like
a feather by my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord,
I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. ? Here's my heart, oh, take and
seal it ? ? Seal it for thy courts above ? We're going to begin this morning
in Isaiah 61. Isaiah 61. By way of introduction, I'd like
to read a verse from 1 John chapter 3 that, not properly understood,
would cause great fear in the heart of any honest person. Here's what John said. Here's
what God says. John was just a pendant, wasn't
he? Here's what God says, whoever is born of God doth not sin. For his seed remaineth in him
and he cannot sin because he's born of God. What does that mean? Whosoever is born of God doth
not commit sin? I could say that if you're an
honest person, you know you've got a lot of sin to deal with
in your life, don't you? What does the Lord, what is He
talking about? He cannot sin. For His seed remaineth
in Him. What is that seed? Well, the
scripture makes it clear that the seed of Abraham is not many,
but one. And that seed is Christ. What John's talking about is
what is referred to and declared over and over and over in the
word of God. It's the heart of the gospel.
It's union with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's exactly what Paul
was talking about in Philippians chapter 3 when he said, I have
suffered the loss of all things and do count them undone that
I might know Him and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness. Now, men ignorant of the righteousness
of God go about trying to establish their own righteousness by, well,
if I can just sin less, I can find acceptance with God. Paul
said that I might be found in Him, not having my own righteousness
which is of the law. but that righteousness, which
is by the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, the righteousness of
God, which is through faith. Union with the Lord Jesus Christ,
having his seed in you and you being his seed in him. I, If you were here two Wednesday
nights ago, you're going to hear some things you heard then, but
it's good that we repeat ourselves, isn't it? The article in the
bulletin this morning titled Federal or Seminole Head is a
summary of the message that I want to try to preach right now. If
you read the commentators of the Bible, They will talk about
Adam and Christ being our federal head. What is a federal head?
Well, let those who hate our current administration
say that our president is not their president unless they renounce
their citizenship He is their federal head. Okay? The President of the United States
is our federal head in that he represents all of America before
the world. And that's what federal means.
It means representative. We have a federal representative
government, don't we? And our federal representatives
are supposed to represent the citizens as they make laws and
policies for the nation. And the writers refer to Adam
as our federal head, that he's our representative before God.
And then when he fell, we fell in him. Well, in Hebrews chapter
4, the scripture speaks of Levi who was long after Abraham. Levi being a picture of the priesthood
paying tithes to Melchizedek which was a pre-incarnate appearance
of the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember Melchizedek, the
priest who had no mother or no father, who was the king of Salem
and he was the prince of peace and Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek. How could it be? How could it be that Levi paid
tithes to Melchizedek? Well, the Lord tells us how it
was. He says that Levi was in the loins of Abraham. So when Abraham paid tithes to
Melchizedek, Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek in Abraham. Now, I know some of you have
submitted your DNA to find out who your ancestors are. And that's
fine. I don't want to know anything
about skeletons in my closet. But if you want to do that, go
for it. You might find out some things
you don't want to know. But the truth is that if these DNA tests
could go back far enough, we would find that every one of
us our ancestors, literally. I mean, you can put it under
a microscope. You can see it. We were in the loins of our father,
Adam. He wasn't just our representative
head. He was our seminal. You see the word we just, the
word I just read in 1 John chapter 5, 1 John chapter 3, his seed
remaineth in him. That's where the word Seminole
comes from. Not Seminole as in Seminole County where some of
us live, but Seminole as in seed. You see, you and I were literally,
physically in the loins of our father Adam when he fell. The President of the United States
may be your federal head, your father and your grandfather are
your seminal heads. You came from them. And that's our relationship with
Adam. So to say that Adam is our federal
head is not, doesn't go far enough. Doesn't go far enough. He didn't just represent us.
You were there. I was there in the garden. When, let me show you that in
the scriptures. Turn with me to Romans chapter
five. Romans chapter five. Verse 12, wherefore, as by one
man sin entered into the world and death by sin and so death
passed upon all men for that all have sinned. You see, you and I sinned in
our father Adam. We were there. God's not just
charging us with our sin. He's not just with Adam's sin. He's not just imputing Adam's
guilt to us. We died. You see, Adam died as
a man and everything that was in him, including all your DNA
and all my DNA died with him, separated from God. And God says,
as in Adam, all died Verse 13, for unto the law sin
was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no
law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses. You see,
this is even before the law was given by Moses. Death reigned. Everybody that was born died.
Why? Because they were already dead
in Adam. You were literally there. physically
there in Adam. Now in the same way, I said we
were gonna start with Isaiah 61. You have your Bibles open
to Isaiah 61? Verse four. And they shall build the old
waste, and they shall raise up the former desolations, and they
shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations,
that which was lost in our father Adam. The spiritual death that
we inherited from our father Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ declares
himself as the one anointed of God to restore that which was
lost in Adam. He said, I came to restore that
which I took not away. You're responsible. I'm responsible
for Adam's sin. We were there with Adam. We weren't
just charged with his sin. We actually committed his sin. And the Lord says, when I come,
I'm going to restore all those waste places, all that death,
all that destruction. I'm going to declare the year
of Jubilee and the terrible day of the Lord, and I'm going to
set the captive free. I'm going to raise the dead. Tell
John. Tell John what I have done. And
strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of
aliens shall be your plowmen and your bind dressers. That's
me, I'm a son of alien. I'm a Gentile. That's what he's
talking about. The Gentiles are gonna be brought
in. The Gentiles are gonna be brought in. And they're actually
gonna be, they're gonna be your bind dressers and your plowmen. They're gonna be opening up the
mysteries of the gospel to you. So that, so that that seed What
did Paul say? Or Peter said, we're born again,
not with corruptible seed, but with the incorruptible, even
by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever, which by
the gospel is preached unto you. So this seed is called, we're
called the seed of Christ. Christ is called the seed. It's
all, you see, it's a connection. We've got to be in him. Now,
some of you all are aware of some controversy that's going
on with some preachers as to whether or not Christ was actually
made sin or whether he just bore the guilt of our sin. We'll get
to that in a moment. This clears up all that. This
clears up all that. Verse 6, but you shall be named
the priest of the Lord. a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
What does a priest have? He has access to God. How are
you and I going to enter into the very presence of a holy God?
Only if there's no sin in us. How are we going to be without
sin to be found in Him? And we can come boldly to the
throne of grace to find help in our time of need. You see,
God's eyes, Habakkuk says, are too pure to look upon iniquity. He can't have anything to do
with sin. He can only behold that which is righteous, that
which is perfect in his sight. How is God going to have anything
to do with me? I'm going to have to be found in Christ. Just like
I was in my father Adam, so spiritually, not physically, but spiritually,
I'm gonna have to be found in Christ. You see, God put a particular
people in Christ in the covenant of grace before time ever began,
before the foundation of the world. God's never seen his people
outside of Christ. He loved us even before we knew
Him, even before we loved Him. Why? Because just like we were
in Adam, so we were in Christ. We are called His seed. Isaiah
Chapter 53 says, it pleased the Lord to bruise Him and make His
soul an offering for sin. Now, what was in the soul of
the Lord Jesus Christ? It wasn't just our sin. You see,
Christ didn't just bear our sin in His body on Calvary's cross,
He bore us. We're called the body of Christ.
We're married to Him by virtue of our union with Christ. We
were in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why in Philippians chapter
3, Paul goes on to say when he said that I might be found in
Him and then the next verse says, and that I might know Him and
the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering. That I could, that God would
show me that I was in Christ. That's why Paul was able to say,
I'm crucified with Christ. I was crucified in Christ. I'm
in the body of Christ, seminally. And that verse in Isaiah 53,
it pleased the Lord to bruise him and make his soul an offering
for sin, and he, God the Father, shall see his seed. God the Father saw His people
in Christ. You see, it's not... if a judge
punishes one person for the crime of another, that's not justice.
That's not justice. The person who committed the
crime has to be punished. And that's exactly what happened
on Calvary's cross. God's people were in Christ and
when it pleased God to bruise his son and to see the travail
of his soul, God was satisfied because God saw his seed. He saw those who were in Christ. Just like I fell, literally,
physically. and my father Adam, and you did
too. So we were raised in the likeness
of Christ. Let me show you that. Turn with
me to Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6. It wasn't just
that the Lord Jesus Christ was bearing the guilt of our sin.
whether he was, God made him who knew no sin to be sin. Yes,
he bore our sin. There's no question about it.
And he owned it as his own because he was owning his people as his
own. He was owning us as his bride. He cannot forsake his bride.
He cannot forsake his people. He said, I'll never leave you
nor forsake you. And he didn't leave us or forsake
us on Calvary's cross. He owned us. on Calvary's cross. He suffered the wrath of God's
justice because he was bearing his seed in himself on the cross. And God was exercising his justice
against all of his people. Every single one of them. Romans chapter 6 verse 3 Know ye not that so many
of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His
death? He said that's what we represent
here. When a person submits to baptism,
they are publicly declaring that when Christ died, I died. I was in Christ. He didn't just
bear my sin, He bore me. And now the Lord's saying, do
you not know that if you've been baptized, you've been baptized
into his death, wherefore we are buried with him by baptism
into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by
the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness
of life. The only thing that gives the
child of God any power whatsoever over their sin is to see themselves in union
with Christ. That's it. Look what he goes on to say,
for if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death,
we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. He was offered
up for our offenses and raised again because of our justification,
knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the
body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not
serve sin. The only thing that makes me
not want to sin is to know that my sins, I'm dead in Christ. My sins have been put away, all
of it. There's such liberty in that. The strength of sin is
the law. You put a person under the law
and all it does is excite their passions for sin. That's all
the law does. Grace is the only thing that
takes away the power of sin. It's the only thing that takes
it away. Every child of God, I don't know if you're a believer,
you're interested. You see, Michael, you mentioned this the
other day when you read scripture and it's such a good point. When the children of Israel were
in the wilderness and they were being bitten by snakes, those
snakes represent our sin. You know, if the world was full
of viper serpents today, the religious organization would
be having conferences on how to kill snakes, and how to tame
snakes, and how to defang snakes, and how to control snakes, and
you know, all that kind of stuff. What'd God say? What'd God say? You got snakes crawling around
your feet, it's kind of hard to take your eyes off of them, isn't
it? And it's hard to take your eyes off your sin, isn't it?
It is, I know it is. What did the Lord say? Look at
the brazen serpent on the pole and thou shalt be healed. Healed
of what? Healed of those snakes on the
ground. You see, you don't conquer the
snakes on the ground by stomping on the snakes. You conquer the
snakes on the ground by looking at the serpent on the pole. The
Lord Jesus Christ is that brazen serpent who was made sin for
us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
And here he says we were actually in Him. We were crucified in
Him. So sin's been, it's been put
away. The penalty of it has been put
away. And if you've given faith to look to Christ, the power
of it and the glorious truth of knowing that one day the presence
of it Knowing this, that our old man
is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed. Sin was destroyed, every bit
of it. It's already been paid for. For he that is dead is freed
from sin. Have you ever noticed in your
own life how When people have low expectations of you, all
of a sudden the pressure's off and you can do better actually
at whatever you do, whatever it is. Whereas when somebody
has a really high expectation of you and then all the pressure's
on, well what I'm saying to you, what God's saying is the pressure's
off. The pressure's off. All sin's been put away. You've
already been put to death. The law has been fulfilled. God's
justice has already been satisfied. It's done. You're free. Now I know the unbeliever will say,
well, you're just giving folks a license to sin. No, we're not. It's the only thing that makes
me not want to sin is looking to that serpent on the pole and
knowing that God put him to death and I was seminally in him. He's
not just my federal head. He's not just my representative.
I am in the body of Christ and His body. That's why the Lord
Jesus Christ had to be made flesh. He had to be made flesh because
we are His body and that body had to be punished. And what the Lord is saying is,
you're free. You're dead. Now, if we'd be
dead with Christ, we believe that we should also live with
him. Verse 9, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth
no more, death has no more dominion over him, for then in he died,
he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto
God. Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead. To be dead, indeed. understand you already did since you're no longer have dominion
over you you know this word reckon it means well every time you
use your GPS on your phone that phone is dead reckoning your
position off of various different satellites triangulating your
exact position. We use that word reckon in the
south to say, well, you know, I reckon it could be this way
or I reckon it could be that way, meaning, well, you know,
I don't know. It means just the opposite. This
is God saying this is a dead reckoning. It's true. Reckon
ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin? How can I reckon it
to be so when sin is ever so present with me? Because it is
so. It is so. If you are in Christ,
you died in Him, and God saw the travail of His soul, and
God saw His seed, and God is satisfied. And sin has no more
power. It's been put away. Does that not free you up? That's why the Lord said where
the Spirit of God is, there is liberty. And if the Son hath
made you free, you are free indeed. Indeed. The Gospel of God's free grace
in the finished work of our seminal head, our Savior, is freedom. Freedom. It's not based on your
performance. It's based on His performance.
And what He performed, you performed. And what He suffered, you suffered. His life is our life. Every bit
of it. Why? Because God's people have
been in Him from the foundation of the world. Everything He did,
everything He is, we are. And that's why John said, as
he is so are we in this world not we're gonna be like him in
that day that's gonna be a glorious day but he said in this world
right now right now You know, the first time seed
is mentioned in the scripture is found in Genesis chapter 1
on the third day of creation when God says, the fruit yielding
tree whose seed is in it bringing forth the same likeness. What a picture. That's the first
time seed is mentioned. You take a seed off a tree and
you plant that seed, you're going to get the same tree that seed
came off of. And then the second time it's
mentioned is in Genesis chapter 3 when the Lord said, I, speaking
to the serpent, to Satan, said, I will put enmity between thy
seed and her seed. And you will bruise his heel,
but he Gonna crush your head. And then when Eve gave birth
to Cain, she said, I've received the man. She thought the one,
the seed of the woman now, that he's our savior. He's gonna restore
us back to Eden. He didn't restore them back to
Eden at all, did he? Matter of fact, the first man
ever born turned out to be a murderer. And he's a picture of every man
after him. Verse 11 in Romans chapter 6,
likewise reckon ye yourselves also to be dead indeed unto sin,
but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin
therefore reign in your mortal bodies that you should obey its
lust thereof, neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness
unto sin, but yield yourself unto God as those that are alive
from the dead. Adam, you've been put to death.
You were put to death in Adam? Man, I guess you were named after.
And in the last Adam. You see, the Lord Jesus Christ
came to do spiritually what the first Adam did physically. For sin. shall not have dominion
over you, for you're not under law. You want sin to have dominion
over you? Just get some idea in your mind
that your acceptance before God is performance-based and sin
will have dominion over you. It's just that simple. but to know that all of your
acceptance before God is because you were in Christ and that God
poured out the fury of His wrath on all your sin. You see, look into that serpent on
the pole. It's the only way to conquer
the snakes on the ground. Verse 15, what shall we sin?
You see, here's what some people are gonna say. Are you giving
us license to sin? What then? Shall we sin because
we're not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. You
missed the point altogether. Know ye not that to whom you
yield yourselves servants to obey, servants you are whom you
obey, whether sin unto death or obedience unto righteousness,
but God be thanked that you were servants of sin. It's all you could do. Unable to believe God, unable
to see yourself in Christ, unable to know that God was satisfied
with the justice that He punished the Lord Jesus Christ with. You
couldn't do it. Why? Because sin had dominion.
All you could see was the law. All you could see was your performance.
All you could see was what you do. You couldn't see what he
had done because you were thinking there's something you had to
do. But you have obeyed from the
heart the form of doctrine which was delivered unto you. And that's
all my heart's desire this morning is to deliver unto you the doctrine
that will set you free. Free. being then made free from sin. Free. You become the servants of righteousness. Whosoever is born of God doth
not sin. For his seed remaineth in him,
and he cannot sin. He cannot sin. For he is born
of God. Born of God. Now you know the truth, that
has absolutely nothing to do with your performance. It has everything to do with
his. Our Heavenly Father, we're. We're
hopeful that you will speak peace and comfort and truth to our
hearts and enable us to trust the Lord Jesus Christ. For all
the hope of our salvation. For it's in his name we ask it.
Amen. Number 3232 in the spiral hymnal. You okay? All children of wrath, in bondage
and sin, we helplessly lay, condemned and unclean. God's law in its infinite justice
and wrath Demanded we suffer an eternal death But long before
time had ever begun, once stood in our place God's glorious Son. He offered himself to go live
among men and give his own life to atone for our sins. The great substitute, behold,
he has come. The price has been paid. The work is all done. Christ took on himself the great
load of our sin. He poured out his blood and he
put away God's justice and law are now satisfied. And all who believe have been
justified. Through faith in the blood of
the Lamb, we are free. from sin's condemnation, eternally
free. Amen. you