Number 62. Number 62, Crown Hymn
with Many Crowns. Let's all stand together. Hymn
number 62 from your hardback timbrel. 62. Crown Him with many crowns, the
Lamb upon His throne. Hark how the heavenly anthem
drowns all music but its own. Awake, my soul, and sing of Him
who died for thee. and hail Him as thy matchless
King through all eternity. Crown Him the Lord of love, behold
His hands and side, rich flutes yet visible above, in beauty
glorified. No angel in the sky Can fully
bear that sight But downward bends his wandering eye At mysteries
so bright Crown Him the Lord of life, Who triumphed o'er the
grave, Who rose victorious to the strife, For those He came
to save. His glories now we sing, Who
died and rose on high, Who died eternal life to bring, And lives
that death may die. Crown Him the Lord of Heaven,
One with the Father known, One with the Spirit through Him given,
From yonder glorious throne. To thee be endless praise, for
thou for us hast died. Be thou, O Lord, through endless
days, adored and magnified. Please be seated. Good morning. Let's bow in prayer and ask the
Lord to do what we just asked him to do in psalm, glorify himself. Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful
that we can call you our Father, we can come before your throne
of grace and know, Lord, that we have not only acceptance,
but that we have your affection, your love, and that for Christ's
sake, Lord, that we have a righteousness that is acceptable in thy sight.
Lord, we ask that you would be pleased now to send your Holy
Spirit. We come before you, Lord, in
and of ourselves as sinners in need of your grace. We thank
you that the means to grace is faith, and the means to faith
is your word. And so we pray that you would
bless your word to our hearts and that you would increase our
faith and give to those who are yet strangers to thy grace, Lord,
faith to believe. Enable them to find their hope
and their rest in Christ. For it's in his name we pray,
amen. I saw an outline this week that
I thought was so simple and so clear that I wanted to share
it with you. It has to do with Christ's relationship
with sinners. Paul put it like this in 1 Timothy
1, verse 15, Christ, this is a faithful saying, worthy of
all acceptation. It's worthy to be accepted by
all, and it's worthy to be accepted in its entirety. Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners. Sinners. He saves only sinners,
and He saves every sinner. Every single one. If God's made
you to be a sinner, that's a miracle of grace. You know that you have
no righteousness before Him of your own. You know that all the
hope of your salvation is bound up in the person and work of
the Lord Jesus Christ. You come before him as a mercy
beggar, a sinner. I want us to consider our Lord's
relationship with sinners. The scripture says that the Pharisees,
the self-righteous, trusted in themselves that they were righteous
and despised others. One thing we know about the Lord
Jesus Christ and his relationship to sinners is that he does not
despise them. He does not look down at them. He does not condemn them. If
you've been made a sinner, you know that there is no condemnation
to them who are in Christ Jesus. There's no despising on God's
part. To the contrary, the scripture
makes it clear that his heart is full of compassion and tender
mercies towards sinners. He remembers our frame. He remembers that we are made
of dust. And the feelings that he has
in his heart are not as those that Isaiah expressed. In Isaiah chapter 65, the scripture
says that the self-righteous stood alone, and they said to
the sinners, stand by thyself, come not unto me, for I am holier
than thou. Now, if there was ever a man
who was able to say that, it was the Lord Jesus Christ, for
he is holier than we are. And yet that's not his attitude
towards sinners. He doesn't say to sinners, stand
by thyself, come not unto me. To the contrary, he calls us
to come into his presence. That woman that was caught in
adultery in John chapter 8, the Lord said to her, woman, where
art thou accusers? And she said, Lord, there are
none. And the Lord said, neither do
I accuse you. Neither do I. accuse you, go
and sin no more. What a compassionate God we have
towards sinners. That's what we need, that's what
I need, and that's what you need. Not a God who stands in condemnation
and judgment, but a God whose justice has been satisfied through
the sacrifice of his own blood and who looks at his people with
mercy. In John chapter 3 verse 17, the
Lord said, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn
the world. We're already condemned. The
law is sufficient for condemnation. But the rest of that verse says,
but rather to save. That's why he came. He came not
in order to bring a message of condemnation and judgment. He
came to bring a message of mercy and compassion and forgiveness
for his people. The Pharisees, listen to what
the Lord said. The Pharisees, this is what he
said to them, he said, the publicans and the harlots enter in to the
kingdom of God before you. And that's what I need. I need a God who will look on
publicans and harlots, and like a thirsty man to a well of fresh
water, sinners are drawn to Christ. He has set the banquet table
and those who are hungry come and they feast on him, the bread
of life. Those actions that we see of
our Lord towards sinners in the scriptures are the same way that
he treats them now. Sinners are still in need of
a savior. Lepers are still in need of being
made whole. The hungry are still in need
of a righteousness beyond themselves. Those who are thirsty need a
drink of water from the well that never runs dry, that flows
from the throne and from the Lamb of God, clear as crystal. My hope this morning is that
the Lord will speak to us as sinners and cause us to realize
that apart from his grace, we are dying men and that he's the
only one that can give to us eternal life. I want to share quickly, young people get concerned when
I tell them how many points there are to this outline. Actually,
there's many more than usual. There are ten. Ten. But I'm going
to go through them very quickly. The first one is that our Lord's
relationship with sinners is that He made a gracious consention
in order to save them. We will never understand how
far the Lord had to come in order to save us. Not in this life.
Not in this life. Why? Because we overestimate
our own value and we underestimate His glory. But His condescension was much greater than we can
imagine. But it was a gracious condescension. We normally think of the word
of condescension as being somewhat judgmental and somewhat patronizing. And it's offensive when we think
of one person condescending to another. And yet our Lord's condescension
was not that way at all. It was willing, it was gracious. The scripture says in Romans
chapter 8, what the law could not do in that it was weak through
the flesh, God sending his son in the likeness of sinful flesh,
condemned sin in the flesh in order that the law might be fulfilled. He was born of a woman, born
under the law to redeem those who were condemned by the law.
He had to be made a man in order to suffer the judgment of God.
What a condescension! The veil of his glory and the The veil of his deity and his
glory was covered with human flesh. There was a moment in
time when the Lord gave the disciples a peek into his infinite glory. You remember there on the Mount
of Transfiguration when Peter, James, and John saw the veil
of his humanity taken back for just a moment. And the brightness
of the light that came from him was too great for them, and they
were forced to the ground. And what a condescending Savior
we have. That's what we need. We need
one who's willing to step down off his rightful throne and be
made in the likeness of sinful flesh. In doing so, he identified
with sinners. He identified with sinners. He
identified with us in his life. The scripture says that he was
tried and tested in all ways as we are, yet he was without
sin. In his life, he knew what it
was like to experience the onslaught of this world, the condescension,
the contradiction, I'm sorry, of sinners against him. He knew
more about the trials and troubles that we go through than we could
ever imagine or that we could know of our own. And so the scripture
says that he was touched. And he is touched with the feelings
of our infirmities. He identifies with what we're
experiencing. He identifies with sinners in
his death. He was, the scripture says, numbered
with the transgressors and he bore the sins of many. So in his condescension, he doesn't
just condescend, but he identifies with us, treated by God as guilty,
bearing in his body the sins of God's people, suffering, as
we're going to see in the next hour from Psalm 69, all the shame
and all the guilt that comes with sin. He identifies with
that. He knows. He knows your shame. He knows your guilt. He knows
the feelings of your infirmities. And He identifies with us. Thirdly, He seeks sinners. He seeks them out. He knows where
all of His sheep are. He leaves the ninety and nine,
he'll go into the wilderness to find one sheep. Like Mephibosheth
being sought out by David, go fetch him, bring him to me. So
the Lord fetches his people. He crossed the Sea of Galilee
because he knew that over there there was a man in the Gadarenes
possessed with demons and it was his purpose to deliver him
and to save him. He went over there, there's no
evidence that he did anything else other than delivering that
one man from those demons and then came back. And he's doing
the same thing today. He knows where his sheep are.
He gets them to the gospel, the gospel to them, one way or the
other. He said, I will not lose one. So that it's not of him that
willeth. It's not of us that's seeking after God. The scripture
says, no man seeketh after God at any time. It's he that seeks
after us. That's what we're in need of.
If he doesn't seek us, we'll never seek him. In seeking us,
he calls us. He calls us. He said, I did not
come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners. The well need not a physician,
but them that are sick. When he calls effectually, his
sheep come. All that the Father has given
unto me shall come unto me. And he that cometh unto me, I
will in no wise cast him out. Oh, what a powerful call that
is. He shuts us up to himself, leaves
us no other option, brings us to himself with an effectual
call of grace. He only does that for sinners.
If He's made you to be a sinner, you've got no place else to go.
No place else to go but to Him as your Savior. His relationship
with sinners is that He makes you a sinner so that you can
hear His call. It's the only people that hear
the call of God. The only people that hear the call of God are
those who have no righteousness of their own. Those who have
been condemned by the law. Those who have no hope of saving
themselves. Those whose will is bound by
their own sinful nature. Lord, if you don't call me. Oh,
but my sheep do hear my voice, and they do follow after me. What a glorious promise that
is. This is the relationship that
the Lord Jesus Christ has with sinners. Psalm 69, our Lord said,
Save me, O God, for the waters are come nigh unto my soul. Lord, if you don't save me. We do call upon the Lord. Call
upon the Lord and thou shalt be saved. But we know that our
call is only a response to his call. He's the one who initiates
that relationship. So his relationship with sinners
is that he condescends, he identifies, he seeks sinners out, he calls
them effectually, irresistibly, by His grace. And then, fifthly,
He forgives sinners. Oh, that's what I need. I need
a God who forgives me, who would separate my sins from me as far
as the east is from the west, and remembers them no more. That's what you and I are in
need of. Not one sin being held to our charge. A God who is able
to forgive. Always, all sin, no exception. And that's what he does. In Luke
chapter 7, there was a woman who came in to Simon, the Pharisees'
house. We dealt with this a week or
two ago. And the Pharisees that were there said, She's a sinner. We know her. We've seen her on
the streets in our city. And she, you remember, washed
our Lord's feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair
and anointed his head with oil. And the Lord rebukes those fair. The Pharisees thought that that
woman was the worst sinner in the room. And she would have
agreed. But in fact, she wasn't. She
wasn't. The self-righteousness of those
Pharisees was worse than the sin that this woman was notorious
for. And yet they couldn't see it.
They were blind to their own sinfulness. By sins, the Lord said, be forgiven
thee. And what did the Pharisees say?
Who is this that forgives sin? Only God can forgive sin. And
the Lord told that woman, go in peace. You have peace with
God through the Lord Jesus Christ. All of your sin has been put
away once and for all by the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary's
cross. No charge to be made, no account. Some say, well, that sounds like
a license to sin to me. No, it's a deliverance from sin. That's what it is. Sixthly, Christ justifies sinners. He justifies sinners. He doesn't
just forgive them. The law of God's got to be satisfied.
God's justice has to be upheld. The scripture says that he's
just and the justifier of sinners. That's what he did on Calvary's
cross. Through his life of perfect obedience,
he offered to the Father a righteousness on behalf of his people. Through
his willing sacrifice, he laid down his life for his sheep. And the Father, God Almighty,
sheathed the sword of his own justice into the heart of his
own dear son. It pleased God to bruise him. He wet the sword of his justice
in the blood of Christ. And as a result, God's satisfied. He's satisfied. Justice has been
met. How do we know that it's meant
for us? Well, the Lord told a story about a publican and a Pharisee
who went to church one day to pray. They went into the temple
and they bowed in prayer to God, one of them feigning his self-righteous
prayer and one of them a mercy beggar. The publican said, smote
himself upon the breast and would not so much as even look up,
but cried, God have mercy upon me, the sinner. The Pharisee,
on the other hand, looked around, said, but for the grace of God,
there go I. I thank thee that I'm not like
other men. Lord, I fast twice a week and I give tithes. And
he went down through his litany of good works and how better
he was. And the Lord asked this simple
question, which of these two men went to his house justified? You know the answer. You know
the answer. The Lord Jesus Christ justifies
sinners. He doesn't justify the self-righteous.
He justifies those who would smite themselves upon the breast
and cry, oh God, have mercy upon me. Now if you look up that passage,
you'll see that the word a is right before sinner. A sinner.
But if you look up the original language, it's the definite article,
the. He's not just identifying himself
as a sinner, he's identifying himself as the sinner. And that's
what the Lord does when he makes you to be a sinner, you see yourself
as the sinner of sinners, the chief of all sinners. Christ
justifies sinners. Christ welcomes sinners. Don't
you love the story of the prodigal son? who had taken his inheritance
and wasted it on riotous living and found himself in the pig
pen feeding swine. What a picture of how men end
up. What that prodigal did was when
he ran out of things to indulge himself in the pleasures of the
world, he got religion. He got religion. He joined himself
to a church. And he became a Sunday school
teacher, and he was feeding the other pigs with the same husk
he was eating himself. And he thought, you know, this
is not satisfying my soul. In my father's house, the servants
have got it. I'll go home, and I'll plead
my father's forgiveness. The father knew exactly when
he was going to come home. Don't think that the father was
out on the end of the street wringing his hands and waiting
day in and day out for his son to return. He knew exactly when
he was coming home. And he knows when you're going
to come home and when I'm going to come home. The scripture says
he saw his son, he ran to him and he lavished him with kisses.
Oh, what a picture of the father receiving sinners. God receives sinners. He puts on them the robe of righteousness. He puts on them the ring of authority.
He puts on them the shoes of the gospel. Shods their feet
with the preparation. Oh, he just, he receives them. With open arms, with open arms,
he says, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. laboring to try to do something
with your sin problem and that labor has become such that you're
a heavy laden. Lord, I've got to wait that I
can't... I've made this statement before, I want to make it again.
It's so simple and so clear to me, but it's so important. People
have a lot of reasons for coming to God. They really do. Most of the time folks get in
trouble or they suffer the consequences of bad behavior and they get
religion and they have a need for God. And then when those
circumstances are relieved, then that's when their need for God
goes away. If you come to God for any other
reason other than the fact that you're a sinner, that reason
will change and your need for God will change. If you come
to Him because you're a sinner, that's a problem that's never
going to go away. As a matter of fact, by the grace
of God, it's going to get worse. You're going to need Him more
tomorrow than you need Him today. Oh, Lord, bring me to thyself and
receive me into thine arms as a sinner. The Lord said in that
passage, learn of me. Take my yoke upon you, for my
burden is light. I'll give you rest for your soul. It's the only place I can find
rest for my soul. is to find Christ to be my Savior,
to put away my sins. And when He receives us, there's
no probation. There's no proving of ourselves.
He receives us fully and completely. Now, I want to use this as an
illustration. I know that everything that has happened, everything
that's happened, happened according to God's divine purpose. And
there's so many gospel stories to be drawn from David's relationship
with Absalom, but I've thought oftentimes when Absalom killed
his brother Amnon for having assaulted his sister Tamar and
Absalom was forced to flee and Joab pleaded with David because
it was a just retribution for what Amnon had done. And Joab
pleaded with David to receive Absalom back into his home, into
his rightful place as the king's son. And David finally conceded
and allowed Absalom to come back into Jerusalem, but the scripture
says for two years David refused to see him. He wouldn't receive
him. What Absalom do during those
two years, he stood at the city gates and he stole the hearts
of the people away from David. As I said, it all happened in
God's perfect providence, but what if David had received his
son instead of making him stand outside the king's court? How would that story have turned
out otherwise? Oh, he wouldn't have been crying,
oh, Absalom, Absalom, my son, Absalom. Absalom wouldn't have
been killed. You know, things would have been...
I just use that as an illustration to say that the father's not
like David. When his children come back,
when they come home, he doesn't keep them at arm's length. He
doesn't cause them to sit outside the king's court. He receives
them into his presence. And he lavishes them with his
love. The Pharisees said, this man
receives sinners and eats with them. They thought they were
condemning Christ for that act, but in fact, they were declaring
his badge of honor. That's exactly what he does.
He receives sinners and he eats with them. Blind Bartimaeus,
shut up. You're embarrassing yourself,
you're embarrassing us, you're embarrassing the Lord. You're
just a blind beggar. And what was the next thing?
Be of good cheer, Bartimaeus. The Master calleth thee. Oh,
they didn't understand the heart of Christ when they thought that
old, dirty, blind Bartimaeus was an embarrassment. No, to
the contrary. He's exactly the kind of person
that the Lord Jesus Christ receives to Himself. Ninthly, Christ befriends sinners. He befriends sinners. The Scripture
says that He is a friend of sinners. He said to the disciples, no
longer do I call you my servant, but rather I'll call you my friends,
for a servant knoweth not what his master does. I have revealed
to you what it is I'm doing for you, and greater love hath no
man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Oh, that's what I need. Abraham
believed God and it was imputed to him for righteousness and
he was called the friend of God. The friend of God. Is God your
friend? I mean, you're a friend. Moses,
the scripture says in Exodus chapter 33, the Lord spake unto
Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend. Now by that I mean we come into
his presence with welcomed arms. We come into his presence not
Fearing his condemnation or his judgment or his judgmental attitude,
we come and speak to him as a man speaks openly and freely with
a friend. Scripture says he's a friend
of sinners. He's the only people he's a friend of. He condescends,
he identifies, he seeks, he calls, he forgives, he justifies, he
welcomes, he receives, he befriends, and he saves. We started with
1 Timothy 1, verse 15. This is a faithful saying and
worthy of all acceptation. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save, to save sinners, of whom I am chief. I am chief. Save us from the wrath that is
to come. Save us from the judgment of God against our sin. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we're thankful for the revelation that you've given us in thy word
as to the relationship that the Lord Jesus Christ has with sinners. We pray, Lord, that you would
make us a sinner, and then we pray that you would enable us
to experience these gracious, gracious acts that the Lord bestows
upon sinners. For we ask it in Christ's name.
Amen. th th