If you turn back with me again
in your Bibles to John chapter 18, and we're looking at the cup. He said to Peter, then Jesus
said to Peter, verse 11 of John 18, put up thy sword into the
sheath. The cup which my father hath
given me shall I not drink yet. We've looked at these questions
regarding this cup. Why did the Father give this
cup to the Lord Jesus Christ? What is established about the
name, the character of God and His attributes in God the Father
giving and God the Son receiving? What was in the cup? What happened
to Christ when He drank the cup? What was the result of him drinking
in a cup? But most importantly, in a sense,
how do I know if he drank it to me? It's just so hard for us to conceive
of how sinful sin is. There's a story told of some
missionaries in Africa walking through the forest, and Gabe
and others tell this story better than me, but it's a remarkable
story, but they heard this faint cry from a man saying, help me,
help me. in a very strained voice and
eventually they managed to come upon this man and he was at the
point of death from leprosy with his bones through his skin in
places and just, yeah, an extraordinarily sad
situation and the missionary It was there, thought to himself
as he looked upon this fellow, he said, if somehow I could embrace
this man such that all of my body touched all of his body,
I might have some small understanding of how sinful I am. We just treat sin so lightly
and in doing so we treat God so lightly and in doing so we
create idols in our minds and Satan is actively in the business
of creating idols in the minds of people who have a Jesus but
not the Jesus of the cross. Here we are looking at the Lord
Jesus Christ shedding his blood and he carried that blood from
the garden to the courts of Pilate where he was scourged and he
shed more blood and then that blood was carried with his cross
to the cross of Calvary and as he was lifted up from the earth
the scriptures declare that he was made a curse for us. And we don't know what that means. And yet God so works in the hearts
of his people that as Peter says again and again, This blood speaks of our pardon,
it speaks of our salvation, it speaks of the glories of God. God is greatly glorified in all
of His attributes. And as we look into this transaction
between God the Father and God the Son, I just pray for myself
and I pray for all of us that we would be astonished and astounded
and encouraged and again and again challenged about how incredibly
important it is. How incredibly important. Paul
went to a world like us and spoke to a church in Corinth like us
and he said, I'm determined, 1 Corinthians 2 verse 2, I'm
determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him
crucified. He says at the end of Galatians,
God forbid that I should glory. God forbid that I would have
confidence in, I would have hope in, I would boast in anything
other than the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. All of our salvation
is tied up with all of His glory. And so anything that denies the
things that we are reading from the scriptures here, and anyone
and any organisation that denies it, are just involved in creating
images made in the name of God but denying the very, very heart
of what it is for God to reveal himself in the Gospels. I was
thinking how incredibly significant it was and how grateful I am
that we were made at the very beginning of our time together
to have one issue before us all. One issue, and the issue resolves
around the character of God, but it resolves around the character
of God as He is seen on the cross. Salvation comes, according to
God, through calling on the name of the Lord. You call on His
name. We call on Him in the character
as He revealed Himself. And those who call on another
God will find at the end of their days that they'll have a cup
given them that they'll never be able to drink dry. Because
it's only the Lord Jesus Christ who can drink that cup. And for
it to pass away, for everyone else, it never passes away. The Lord Jesus Christ said, unless
you believe that I am, I am God Almighty, you'll die in your
sins. So this is so critical, isn't it? Which is why every
notion, every notion that denies that there was a real exchange
on the cross, that God the Son suffered exactly and perfectly
and infinitely for all of the sins of all of the people that
he prayed for and he represented in the covenant of grace from
before the foundation of the world, they're lost. They don't know God. They don't
know God. It's a denial. They're denying
the very word of God. They're denying the glory of
God. They're denying the truth of God. They're denying the salvation
and the comfort of all of his redeemed people. They're attacking
us because if they attack our Saviour's character and we are
one with him, they're attacking us. If Norm and Beth are walking
down the street and Beth hears someone saying deceitful and
horrible things about Norm, you would expect her to rise up and
rebuke them. Our husband is our maker and
our creator. I wrote out something about all
this. I said I'm so thankful to our
God for making this the one issue which determined where we stood
before God. We're standing before God declaring
these things to God. We're declaring God's word back
to God. And we stand before God and before this religious world
no matter how many And no matter how ferocious the attacks upon
us, this society is too polite to murder our bodies, but they'll
destroy our characters before men and conspire to stop any
from hearing us or associating with us. I'm just quoting what
people have told me. Would we do it all again? Yes,
we would. And we do it, if the Lord will
allow, we do it with more passion. Here we stand. We can do no other, nor compromise
with any who deny this vital truth. It's vital to the glory
of God, and it's made so to be vital to our eternal souls. We know whom we have believed,
brothers and sisters, and we're persuaded and we've committed
to Him. We've committed everything to Him. If we are His children,
we've committed all of our eggs are just in one basket, I went
on to write, we knew many other sins of the religious world which
were grievous and abominable, but this one issue drove us on
because it was his revelation of this which declared the salvation
of our souls, our peace with God, our hope for the future. To deny this is to deny he whom
we have believed. and to whom we have entrusted
all of our eternal future. This was grace made effectual
in our hearts. All that the Lord has been pleased
to take us through for these many years has never weakened
this resolve to stand on this holy ground. In fact, Its foundations
grew broader, deeper, stronger in the joys of believers in fellowship
and in the trials of friends and foes. There is not a single
word of scripture which causes us any doubt about these things
we are proclaiming. We are just saying what God says.
And there's not an event in this religious world has challenged
what we say, but all have strengthened this resolve. Here we stand with
our brethren around the world, and as we do, the Lord lays before
us as he's promised in Psalm 23 verse 6. He's laid a table
of feasting for us in the presence of our enemies. Abraham had one
task when the covenant was cut in Genesis chapter 15. Abraham
asked, how shall I know? And God says, you bring to me
my sacrifice. And Abraham had one task while
he waited for the Lord to come. And that was, you can read about
it in Genesis 15, you have one task. You keep the foul and unclean
birds of the sacrifice, because God will only and must only accept
a perfect sacrifice and a whole sacrifice and a complete sacrifice. And that's what he finds in his
dear and precious son. There has to be, in the courts
of God, a perfect balance between the punishment exacted by God
the Father on His Son and all of those who were represented
in Him and who were crucified together with Him. We finished asking the question,
what was the result of him drinking the cup And the glory of the
Gospel is that sin cannot be in two places at once. If God
laid all the sins of all of his people on the Lord Jesus Christ,
he can't put them anywhere else. And if God punished them in the
Lord Jesus Christ, he cannot possibly punish them a second
time. Which is why any notion that
the Lord Jesus Christ died for those who end up in hell is blasphemous. It's blasphemous, a denial of
the very character of God, a denial of the word of God. Sin cannot
be punished. He's a righteous father. That's
what he prayed in John chapter 17. God accepts Christ's offering
for sin. The resurrection proves and declares
that the sins of all of God's people are gone and they'll never
be found again. We're accepted in the beloved. We are made holy and unblameable
and unreprovable if all of our sins are gone in the death and
the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ and what is left. God
must love that which is holy and unblameable and spotless. God must care for and protect
that which reflects what His Son has done. Our God is a jealous
God. He won't tolerate people playing
games with Him regarding His cross. The offering of the Lord
Jesus Christ was an offering to God. That's what we read in
Isaiah chapter 53. God made his soul an offering
for sin. Let me read Hebrews 9 verse 14. This is so significant
because people think that the offering is an offering to man. God's not offering anything to
mankind. He's a Saviour who saves. How
much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
Spirit offered himself without spot to God? Our God's not put up on some
auction block for anyone to have Him. Our God is sovereign. Our God is holy in all He does. If Christ died for someone, that
person is saved. They were saved from the foundation
of the world. They were saved by the Lord Jesus Christ on the
cross. They are saved in the experience of their lives when
the Lord gives them life from above and they see who the Lord
Jesus Christ is. And they're continually saved
and they will be saved at the end. We're always being saved.
We're accepted in the Beloved. The cup is in the hands of the
Lord Jesus Christ. It was given to him by his father.
It's in his hands and it can't be in ours. And he drank it dry. He drank it dry and there is
nothing left. That's why he says the Lord in
Numbers 23.21, the Lord has not beheld iniquity in Jacob or perverseness
in Israel. Why hasn't he beheld it? Because
it's not there. Jeremiah 50 verse 20 says, they'll be sought for,
the sins of God's people shall be sought for and they shall
not be found. We have a new life, we have a
new record before God. What's the record of my life
before God? born holy, obeyed for 33 and
a half years every single law of God with all of my heart,
with all of my soul, in willingness and in love. Love God. That's my record. I walked before
God and I loved Him. And I loved my neighbour as myself.
And I perfectly obeyed God in everything I did. That's the
record of everyone, isn't it? The record of Angus Fisher is
not that he was born all those years ago, too many to count
almost. And he did all these stupid things. The record of
Angus Fisher is the record of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
my testimony. That's my life. That's what God
says it is. We should be rejoicing. I want
to rejoice. The gospel is good news. If the
gospel doesn't come to us as good news and a cause for rejoicing,
we haven't heard the gospel. He took my sins and my sorrows
and he made them his very own. He bore the burden to Calvary
and suffered and died alone. He felt the guilt. He felt the
shame of sin. and he never committed a sin,
but in that cup were all the sins and all the wrath of God
Almighty on them. I love what he says of himself
in Psalm 18 verse 23. He says, I was also upright before
him. Who can say that? No one would
dare think that, would they? I was upright before him. Psalm
18 verse 28. It's just beautiful. He says,
I was upright. There's only one person this
possibly can be speaking of. I was upright before him. And
all of the people who were in union with him were upright before
him, but their only uprightness is his uprightness. I was also
upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity." Isn't
that remarkable? We've never kept ourselves from
one iniquity. The Lord Jesus Christ declares
all the iniquities of all of his people to be his iniquities. That's what he says in Psalm
40. It's my sins. Such is his union with his people. He was guilty. He was guilty. Why didn't he
open his mouth? He opened not his mouth. Why?
Because he was guilty. What is the greatest motive for
personal holiness, love and obedience for all the children of God?
The greatest motive is that all of our sins are gone forever
and we have a new personal record with God. Perfect righteousness,
the very righteousness of God, is what they're made by God to
be, made and sustained by God to be. And they live in this
life here on this earth in this human body, tempted and tried
and harassed by Satan, mocked by men, misunderstood by family
and friends, hated without a cause as promised, And yet, in the Lord Jesus Christ,
we are perfect and holy and unblameable. Such is the union between the
head and the body. When he took the cup to Calvary,
he was made a curse for the sins of his elect. There are so many
wonderful, wonderful results of that out there. He prayed
that God's name would be declared. He prayed at the beginning of
John 17 that God's name would be glorified. And in this transaction
we see the sovereignty of God. We see the holiness of God, the
wrath of God, the fiery wrath of God on those sins fell on
the Lord Jesus Christ. And he consumed the wrath. The justice of God demands that
all of his people go free. You can have me, he says to the
justice of God, but all of these must go free. We see the wisdom
of God. What a wise God to do that, to
construct that extraordinary purpose where he magnifies all
of his glorious attributes that could never be seen without the
fall. He magnifies all of them and
he saves his people and draws them to himself. We see the faithful
father and we see the faithful son. He's faithful to his promise. He was faithful unto death. He
died believing God perfectly. It's amazing, isn't it? Never
once did he not believe perfectly and never once in him did we
not believe. We see love. We see the real
love of God, the love that's stronger than death. This is
a love that must have its object's love returned to it. When He
loves someone, they'll love Him. We love Him because He first
loved us. This notion that God loves someone
and then finally they'll end up in hell because they haven't
done something in response to it is blasphemy. That's all it
is. It's another God. If He loves
someone, they're saved. If He died for someone, they're
saved. He chose someone, they're saved. We see the glory of His
grace in this, isn't it? He saves all. The election of
grace. He saves all of them and He does
it by grace. He does it all. All of it. We see peace. We have peace through
His blood and we see union. What a substitute, what a saviour. If you seek me, you let these
people go. And because the sins of all of
God's people are gone, God the Holy Spirit can come and in grace
and mercy give them new life. And God the Son can come and
dwell in them. and have no affront to his perfect
holiness and righteousness and justice. He does it willingly,
he does it lovingly. Psalm 110 speaks of this saviour
who lifts up his head, he lifts up the head, he drinks from the
brook and he lifts up the head and he draws all of his own to
himself. Finally and briefly, how do I
know? We know that he died for a particular
people and only died for them. We know that that cup measures. Our cups measure, don't they?
You go cooking and you get cups out, don't you? And you measure
with cups. It contained an exact measure. Turn with me to Romans
chapter 10 and we'll see if the Lord will send us home rejoicing
with the joy and peace of believing. Romans 10 starting in verse 6. In the first few verses he talks
about the people who want to go about to establish their own
righteousness, and the reason they do is because they have
no notion of the righteousness of God, otherwise they wouldn't
even try to establish their own righteousness. But let's start
from verse 6. But the righteousness which is
of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall
ascend into heaven? That is, to bring Christ down
from above. Get rid of those thoughts out
of your heart, is what the Apostle Paul is saying. When someone
says, what can I do to make Christ's work effective for me? What can I do to get Christ to
respond to me? Just get rid of the thought.
That's what he's saying. Don't think that way. Or, who
shall descend into the deep? That is, to bring up Christ again
from the dead. Don't say, what can I do in order
to get what he did to work for me? He said, get rid of those
thoughts. banish their thoughts when they arrive. But what says
the righteousness which is of faith? The word is nigh thee,
even in thy mouth and in thy heart. That is the word of faith
which we preach. We're preaching about the faithfulness
of God. That, verse 9, is wonderful,
isn't it? That if thou shalt confess with
thy mouth the Lord Jesus. To confess means to say the same. That's all it means. You say
the same as God. If thou shalt confess with thy
mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God
raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. This is what
God says. This is not me saying this. I'm
confessing with my mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. He's Lord
of all. He's the Lord. He has power over
all flesh to do as He sees fit. He's the potter and we're the
clay. All that He does is right, always. He's the first cause
of all. Jesus Christ is Lord. Do you believe that? That's the
first word that came out of the thief's mouth on the cross. Do we believe Him to be the Lord
that the scriptures declare Him to be? I'm confessing with my
mouth, on believing in my heart. People get wishy-washy notions
about what the heart is, but the heart is just another term
for the whole man. It includes our understanding,
our affections and our will. On believing in my heart, that
God raised him from the dead. Not just the fact of the resurrection,
people can believe in the resurrection as history, but that God raised
him from the dead because he accepted what he did. All of
what we've been talking about this morning, that he drank that
cup and he drank it dry, he was made a curse, he was made sin
that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. This is what we understand from
the scriptures. This is our heart, isn't it? This is what God says
plainly. These aren't hidden in the depths
of the scriptures. These are on the surface of the
scriptures if God will give us light to see. With our affections,
the heart's our affections. I love God's salvation. I love
the way God saves sinners. I love the way God does it all. He comes to His own in the time
of love and He opens their eyes and opens their hearts, opens
their minds and He reveals, the Blessed Holy Spirit reveals the
Lord Jesus Christ and He becomes precious and His blood becomes
precious. And this will, isn't it? I wouldn't
have it any other way. I wouldn't want to be saved.
This is the best news that I have ever heard. I can live with this
news and I can die with this news. I'm believing in my heart
that God raised him from the dead because he accepted. what he did. I believe that God
raised him from the dead because all the debt was paid. That's what he says on the cross,
isn't it? It is finished, the debts are paid. God's children
owe God nothing and they owe him everything, all at the same
time. I believe that when he was raised
from the dead, God is declaring that all my sins are put away It's the word of faith that we
believe. Verse 10, for with the heart
man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession
is made unto salvation. I believe in my heart that the
righteousness of Christ is the only righteousness there is.
It's the only righteousness I have. It's the only righteousness I
want. I have none of my own. I'm believing in my heart that
God is righteous in saving someone like me by the death of the Lord
Jesus Christ. This is a declaration of the
righteousness of God, what's going on here. I'm confessing
with my mouth and I'm believing in my heart, and I pray that
you are as well. I love that God saves sinners
this way. Our affections are aroused when
I hear the good news. I want to hear about the Lord
Jesus Christ. Don't tell me about what I've done or what I have
to do. Tell me about what He's done. So many people struggle
because we're looking for something that's happened within us when
we should be looking for something that's done in heaven for us.
We're looking in the wrong place. There's no point looking inside
here. I've got a heart that's deceitfully
wicked and beyond cure. I don't want to go there. But
I have in heaven my substitute and my representative, my husband
and my saviour. My will is that God would only
save this way. This is all the assurance you
ever need. Thank God he drank that cup dry. Thank God as he went to that
cross he said, you can have me. And he let these go free. And he goes on to say, For the
scripture saith, Confession is made unto salvation. For the
scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. We're going to have the Lord's
Supper. Listen to what is said by God
about this. The cup of blessing, 1 Corinthians
10, 16, the cup of blessing in which we bless, is it not the
communion of the blood of Christ, the common union we have with
him and in him? And the bread which we break,
is it not the communion of the body of Christ? He says to Jerusalem, I wake
up. Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem,
which has drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury.
Thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and you've
run them out. And that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ did. What shall I render? Let's close with Psalm 116. What
shall I render unto God for all his benefits towards me. I will take the cup of salvation. That cup that he drank dry now
becomes for all the children of God the cup of salvation.
and call upon the name of the Lord, I will pay my vows unto
the Lord now in the presence of all of his people. Precious
in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Their death
was died 2,000 years ago on the cross of Calvary. It's a precious
death, which means that God Almighty says that they cannot die again. We lose a body, which is the
impediment to our sweet, sweet fellowship with Him. We cannot
die. There's no more death. He's drunk
it dry. Heavenly Father, please bless
your words to us. Give us hearts that believe,
give us mouths that simply confess, and give us, Heavenly Father,
the grace and peace of simply believing what you say about
who you are and how you save sinners like us in your dear
and precious Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. May your name be magnified Amongst
us, Heavenly Father, and may you send us out into this world
with the joy and peace of believing and with the desire on our hearts
that we might honour Him in all that we do, that we might be
used of you, Heavenly Father, to proclaim the glories of your
dear and precious Son in this world. Heavenly Father, cause
us just to walk simply by faith and not by sight. to behold the
Lord Jesus Christ in all of the glories of his resurrected reign
and rule over all of his people. We praise you, Heavenly Father,
that eternity will be a reminder continually that we are bought
with a price, the price of the life, the body, and the blood
of your dear and precious Son. Cause us to drink worthily, Heavenly
Father, that we might do so simply by drinking in faith, resting
our eternal souls in who He is and what He has done, your dear
and precious Son. Bless us for His sake, our Father,
for we pray in Christ's precious name. Amen.