I'd like you to open your Bibles
and come back with me to John chapter 18, but we're going to
spend some time in Psalm 110 as well. But the Lord Jesus Christ,
after he'd spoken these words, after he'd prayed this remarkable
prayer that we've been studying for some time, You know, I have
been just continually amazed by how deep it is and how simple
it is and how complete it is. It's a glorious, glorious prayer. It is the high priestly prayer
of our great King before he goes into the Holy of Holies with
his own blood. We read last week about the oil
of anointing that runs down Aaron's beard and down his clothes and
to the hem of his garment and one of our prayers is that as
we come to the Scriptures we will have something of that anointing
which teaches us all things and reminds us again and again of
who our great God and Saviour is. So I want us to look this
morning at what it is for him to have crossed over the brook
Cedron. And it could sort of be put aside
as just another historic note in the scriptures, but in fact
there is, as we see in Psalm 110, something very profound
about this particular brook Cedron. When Jesus had spoken these words
of John 17 and the previous chapters, he went forth with his disciples
over the brook Cedron, where was a garden into which he entered
and his disciples. He now takes the elect children
of God, the disciples represent all of the chosen children of
God, he takes them across this brook, Kidron. As we saw in Psalm
110, We have a psalm, like so many
of the psalms, a psalm of a triumphant savior who comes and rules. The
Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. Just think of
the triumph of these verses in Psalm 110. You sit at my right
hand in heaven until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The Lord
shall send the rod of thy strength out of thy own. Rule thou in
the midst of thine enemies. What are the enemies to the Lord
Jesus Christ? He just has to blow on them and
they disappear, doesn't he? No matter how big we see them
to be. Thy people shall be willing.
Thy people shall be volunteers. They're not coerced by anything
that man does. They are made willing in the
day of his power. In the beauties of holiness,
from the worm of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth.
All of what the Lord Jesus Christ was promised is going to be given
to him. All that was promised in the
eternal covenant of grace is going to be given to him. The
Lord has sworn and will not repent. Don't you love that? The Lord
promises and he makes an oath and then he says, I'm not going
to change. Nothing's going to take this away. The foundation
of God remains sure and will not repent. Thou art a priest
forever. Here we have another priest,
not a priest like Aaron. All of those priests died all
the time and every time they finished their sacrifice they
had to turn around and get the next lamb ready for the next
sacrifice. Morning and evening, morning
and evening, morning and evening. And then the great feast days
they had to prepare even more. This priest. After this priest,
after the order of Melchizedek, after he had finished the work,
after he purged his people from their sins by himself, he sat
down. He sits, our great king, our
great priest, and our great prophet. The Lord said, the Lord at thy
right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.
He shall judge among the heathen. He shall fill the places with
the dead bodies. He shall wound the heads over many countries.
How is he going to do all of this? How is he going to be triumphant? Verse seven tells us how he triumphs. If you want to read Colossians,
you'll see that he triumphed over Satan and all of the dominions
and all of the principalities, making a public mockery of them
by the cross. But verse 7 says, He shall drink
of the brook in the way. That's the title of my message,
the brook in the way. Therefore shall he lift up the
head. Everything in geography and everything
in history and everything in the scriptures all has a deep
and profound meaning. Our Lord, as we see, and our
Redeemer, was found in this garden having crossed the brook. As
we saw earlier, he has a cup in his hand given him by his
Father, and that cup broke his heart and brought him into the
agony of hell. And he began, and that ground
was covered with the great drops of blood. I've been farming and
done a lot of things which are silly in my life and I've cut
myself many, many times. Those of you who have cut yourself,
you know if you scratch yourself on a blackberry bush or a lantana
bush or some other thing, scratch yourselves on rocks and things,
the blood just pours out, doesn't it? And it goes everywhere and
it covers everything. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
was arrested by those men, All of the pictures we have of him
from all of man's activities in trying to present him are
wrong all the time, aren't they? How do you get rid of the blood?
It was everywhere, wasn't it? It stained, as Isaiah said, it
stained all of his raiment. His beard was stained, his arms
were stained. with all of that blood. His hour
had come. This is the hour that had finally
come. It was the hour when he says
to his father, thy will be done. He was going to be made sin. He was going to be in the sins
of his own body on the tree. He was going to be made a curse.
So I want us to ask and answer a few questions. was this brook. What was the brook Kidron? Why? Why did Christ come to drink
from that brook? The cup was filled from the brook. And quite simply, before we go
home, I trust with joy we'll look at what was the result of
him drinking. So the brook Kidron, as I said, it's 11 times it's
mentioned in the Old Testament. And it flows on the eastern side
of Jerusalem. It flows just from above Jerusalem,
and it flows between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. So if
you left Jerusalem and went east, you went down into a valley,
and then you went up a hill to the Mount of Olives, and then
from the Mount of Olives you went down again to Bethany. And it finally ended up flowing
into the Dead Sea, and that means an awful lot, I reckon, in time
we'll see, maybe. Most of the year it was a dry,
it was called a dry wadi, and what kept it as a stream And
as a brook, and when we think of a brook, we think of the things
that you see when you go bushwalking in the bush, and you just love
the beauty of what surrounds them, and you love the noise
of the water flowing over the rocks, and if you're thirsty,
you love to drink from them, don't you? And it's all sweetness
and light. This wasn't that sort of a brook
at all. In fact, What it did was it took
all of the waste from the temple, and there was a channel that
they built from the temple down into the brook Kidron. It was a dark, putrid, rotting
sewer. and it was rotting continually
and it was being added to each day. Every part of the sacrifice
that wasn't burnt would flow down into this sewer. You can
imagine what it was like, continually being topped up to make it more
and more filthy. The word Kidron means to be dark.
It means to darken, it means to grow dark. It means black
is what the word means. It means to cause to mourn. The Kidron was a sewer. We don't
have many open sewers, but in India sometimes you would go
into slums and other places and you'd meet with an open sewer.
And they never flowed. They were just so thick and so
foul. They just sort of oozed along
like treacle. and they were bubbling within
themselves and they sort of festered and grew on themselves and the
smell of them was just unbelievable and people had to live next to
them. To fall into it was basically to die. They are so foul smelling. So the brook Kidron, this brook
Kidron, it pictures the sin that we are. It pictures the judgment
of God upon that sin, those sacrifices when you went up there and you
took your lamb. You were saying with each of
those sacrifices, I deserve what this lamb is due to now suffer. My sins have brought me to a
place where before God I am deserving of death. It pictures the sin
that we are. Because it festers and grows
on itself, it pictures the fact that the sin that we are is not
going to be fixed by anything external to it. Those sewers
bubbled, and this one was a sewer rather than a brook. All the
sacrifices and all the sins were there. And the only time it was
ever washed clean is when God sent a storm and flushed the
whole thing out. But immediately the next day
there was more blood and more offal and more waste put into
it. It was the place where the prophets
of old in 2nd Kings, when there was a king that brought reformation
and they found all of the defilement in the temple, they would take
all of those things that defiled and all of the sacrifices and
things they'd done to Baal. They'd bring them forth out of
the temple, 2 Kings 23 speaks of them often. And they'd bring
them out of the temple of the Lord, all the vessels that were
made for Baal and for the grove and for the host of heaven, and
he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kedron. And
they sprinkled those ashes in that brook, which signified sin. And he brought out the grave,
verse 6 of 2 Kings 23, from the house of law without Jerusalem,
under the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stabbed
it to small powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves
of the children of Israel. The brook Kidron, pictures sin. It pictures sin under the law. It pictures what sin has done
to us, how we are polluted. The foul smell that comes from
the brook Kidron is a reminder of how God sees everyone outside
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We think we're clean and we think
we're sweet-smelling, But, and we think our religion does us
the world a good and it's a stench in the nostrils of God Almighty. David crossed this brook when
his son Absalom betrayed him and his son Ahithopel betrayed
him. Ahithopel, like Judas, had betrayed
someone who was his close friend. And David crossed this brook,
Kidron, with his clothes torn, with no
shoes on his feet, with earth on his head, mourning as he went. And David took his wives across
the book of Kidron, and he came to the top of the mount, and
he worshipped God. to cross Kidron and to go up
into these valleys to worship God. When God speaks of worship,
it is so much different to what people think of worship. Abraham
worshipped God by taking his son up that mountain. And in
his own heart and in his own mind, he had plunged that knife
into his son. The Brook Kidron, it was continually
foul smelling. It was continually black. It's
a reminder that if something is going to be done to fix what
we are, to fix the sin that we are, something from outside has
to be done to us and something outside has to be done for us.
You can't take anything out of Kidron and make it any better. Man wants to reform his life
and it would be good if people did. But it only changes the
outside of the cup. Kidron pictures what we are. It's oozing and bubbling and
festering. Religion is like pouring good
water in the brook Kidron. You can pour a whole bunch of
good water in that brook Kidron and it's still black and it's
still filthy and it's still vile. and it still stinks. Salvation
comes only from outside. There is no reformation of man
which brings salvation. The heart of man is black and
ungodly. Can the leopard change his spot
or the Ethiopian the color of his skin? Man doesn't need reformation. We ought to be reformed in so
many ways. There's so many things that we
do that we shouldn't do. And we have no reason for continuing
in them. But man doesn't need reformation
in spiritual life. Man needs a new life from God. We need to be made a new creation. The natural mind cannot receive
the things of Christ. They're foolishness to them.
He can't know them. He can't believe them. Man will not, according to John
6 and 5, man will not and man cannot come to Christ that he
might have life. The natural mind cannot receive
the things of the Spirit of God. It needs an overwhelming flood. to wash kidron clean. Our only hope, God, who makes
his people to be sinners, when the Holy Spirit comes and convicts
the world, John 16.8, convicts the world of his elect of sin
and righteousness and judgment, of sin See, what would you think
sin is? You would normally think, well,
sin is the awful things I do. I'll sin because they believe
not on me. How foul is our unbelief. How
foul is our breaking of all the commandments of God. We have
other gods before him. He shall not have another god
before me. We make an image of God in our own mind. We idolatrous
by nature and practice. We are kidron, left to ourselves. Nothing fixes Kidron. Nothing fixes Kidron. It needs
something new. And what and why did the Lord
Jesus Christ drink of this brook in the way? Why and how did Christ
come to drink? He drank, I love what Psalm 117
says, He drank of the brook which was in the way. to the garden,
but it pictures what's in the way of us, isn't it? Sin is in
the way. Righteousness required of us
is in the way. What does God expect and demand
of you? Holiness. Perfect holiness. Don't think
that being good can be good enough. Justice is in the way. Everything that's in the way
has to be removed by him so we can be with him. This is what
salvation is. The brook Cedron was the way
into the garden by the Lord Jesus Christ. This brook must be crossed
and all that Cedron represents must be taken out of the way. all of what man says must be
taken out of the way. If we are like the brook kidron,
foul and black and smelly and vile, then all of the things
that we think we have to do have to be taken out of the way. If
I just do something, something, something, then this obstacle
will be removed and I'll be right and I'll be in the place. If
I achieve this, I've spent a whole bunch of my life, naturally speaking,
thinking if I get these things done then I'm going to attain
some sort of place. I'll attain some sort of level
of comfort and I'll attain this physically. But we do the same
spiritually all the time, don't we? If I do this and I do this
and I do this, then I'm going to be right with God and God's
going to look at me and say, wow, he's polished himself up
and he needs a reward. If you've seen the book Kidron,
You know that that's all in the way. And that's all got to be
taken out of the way. And you've got to be made to
be a sinner. And that's what Kidron represents, doesn't it?
It represents the broken law of God and the sacrifices required,
the blood that's required in the broken law of God. The biggest
obstacle I have in all of my life is me. I'm in the way all
the time. I can't get out of my own way. Sin is in our way and it must
be removed. It must be removed and it must
be removed completely and you can't do it. You cannot do it. Our Lord Jesus Christ was sent
for this eternal purpose. He was sent there to drink that
brook dry for all of his children. For all those he prayed for,
for all those who were represented in John chapter 17 that the Father
gave him, for all those who were in his care from the foundation
of the world, he came to drink the cup the Father gave him. It was in his hands. He came
to Kidron and drank of Kidron for all those who know themselves
to be nothing but the Kidrons in this world. He didn't come
to call the righteous, he came for sinners. He came for sinners. Just sinners. No adjective attached to sinners,
sinners. They're the ones he came for.
They're the ones he came for. His chosen sinners saved by the
Lord Jesus Christ. The one here who was praying
righteous father came in righteousness. He went forth in righteousness.
He went across this brook in righteousness and he drank in
righteousness. Righteousness between he and
his father. A righteous transaction where
all of the sins of all of God's people were righteously given
to him and righteously punished. and he was righteously raised
from the dead because of our justification, because our sins
are taken away. God must be just. There must be just. How black
was my sin. How deep is his agony. How precious is his blood. His blood is not common blood. It's not common to all mankind. His blood is precious. drank. He drank that which represented
the broken law of God and the wrath of God on that broken law.
He drank, and justice demands punishment. The holy, harmless,
spotless, perfect Son of God drank in all the sin of all His
own. He has laid on Him the iniquity
of us all. He made His soul an offering
for sin, An offering to who? An offering to all humanity?
Not according to the scriptures. Not according to the scriptures.
He wasn't laid out there to make an offering for all. He wasn't
put up there to be taken by anyone and have him as a bride. He made
an offering to God. How much more shall the blood
of Christ, who through the eternal spirit, listen to it, offered
himself without spot to God? What was the offering? The offering
was the offering of the Lord Jesus Christ to God for all of
the sins of all of those that he was responsible for, that
he was in eternal union with him. He laid on him the iniquity
of us all. When God saw this sin, this polluted
blackness in his son, did he show him any mercy on the cross
of Calvary? Justice demands ultimate and
complete payment. That man in Luke 18 who was in
hell, he said, can you just send someone to send a drop of water
down to me? The Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's
tree says, I thirst, I thirst. And no mercy was shown. What was the result of him drinking
of this brook in the way? Who shall lift up the head is
the promise of God. God the Father shall lift up
his son, the head of his body, the church, the elect, the good
shepherd of all the sheep, the head of all. We are members of
his body, bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. He'll have his people willing
in the day of his power. He will come in the day of his
power and he will exercise his power through the preaching of
the gospel. And the Good Shepherd will speak and the sheep will
hear a voice. But they'll hear more than a
voice, they'll hear their name called. He'll call them personally
to himself. And the sheep have a cry. Not
unto us, not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name
give glory for thy mercy and thy truth's sake. We will say,
our God is raised up, isn't he? Wherefore should the heathen
say, where is now their God? But our God is in the heavens. He has done whatsoever he hath
pleased. That's what our God has done,
isn't it? And what's the cry of the sheep? help me Lord save me from what
I am and what I do Lord save me and glorify all of your name
in doing so he's highly exalted by God isn't he God gave him
a name which is above every name Philippians chapter 2 He became
obedient, being found in fashion as a man. He humbled himself
and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore, because of this, God hath also highly exalted him
and given him a name which is above every name. This is our
head, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things
in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and
that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father. What do the children of God do? Psalm 116 tells us what we do. We take the cup of salvation
What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits to
me? I will take the cup of salvation
and call upon the name of the Lord. I'll call upon his name. I'll call upon his name. We have a lamb who is worthy. Go back to John 6, John 18, and
I just wanted to say two very, very special things in closing. before we take the Lord's Supper.
Who crossed the brook with him? Listen to what he says. When
Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples
over the brook, where there was a garden into which he entered
and his disciples. They're both mentioned twice
as being with him, just in these short verses, aren't they? He
drank of that brook in the way. Who else drank? We're in him, we're one with
him. Who suffered the wrath of God
in that cup when he drank that cup and it became with him? He
did, and I did. Such is the union of God's children
with him. When he goes, he goes with his
disciples. Jesus, the disciples, spoke about
suffering with him, and he said, you don't know what you're asking.
Are you able to drink the cup that I shall drink of and be
baptized with the baptism I am baptized with? They say unto
him, we are able, and he saith unto them, you shall indeed drink
of my cup and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with. Who paid the wages? of Kidron's
sin. Christ did, and so did I. Who was buried? Christ was, and
so was I. Who rose? Christ was, and so
do I. Who now is lifted up with this
head? All of his people are exalted.
We sit together with him in heavenly places. Who's returning in glory? Christ is. enter into the new creation.
Christ will and so will I and all with him for whom he drank
Kidron dry. He is one with his people. That's what he prays in John
chapter 17, that they might be perfected in one. What an amazing
thing for God to say about his people. He goes with his disciples. He takes his people with him.
I'm crucified with Christ. I am dead. Under the law of God,
I am dead. I drank, and I was kidron. For through the law, I am dead
to the law. that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless
I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which
I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God,
the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself
for me. Wherever he goes, as the head,
his body goes with him. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we pray that you would bless your word to our hearts. You
would cause us by your spirit's work to know what we are as sinners,
that we might continually run to the one saviour for sinners,
the one offering for sin, your dear and precious Son, our Lord
Jesus Christ. We praise you, Heavenly Father.
that in him all of the sins of all of his people are gone forever,
that we might live in this world to your glory. Heavenly Father,
we pray that you get glory by the way you work in our hearts,
to live in faithfulness, to live in obedience, to live in love
and in fellowship with our Lord Jesus Christ and with all of
his family. Not a bone of his shall be broken. We're bone of his bones and flesh
of his flesh. Heavenly Father, may you cause
us to rejoice in the glorious eternal union we have with your
dear and precious soul that brought him to this earth, that took
him to Gethsemane's garden, that caused him to take that cup and
drink it. and drink it dry on Calvary's
cross, that we might live free of what we are and rejoicing
in who he is, now and forever. Bless your word. Give us the
simple childlike faith that rests in your arms. Now, God and Saviour,
we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.