So I'd like to turn to Jonah
chapter 2. Jonah chapter 2. Let's just read it through first,
Jonah chapter 2, and then I'll make some comments. Jonah chapter 2, then Jonah,
I might start at verse 17, verse 1. Now the Lord had prepared
great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of
the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed unto
the Lord his God out of the fish's belly, and said, I cried by reason
of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me out of the belly
of hell, cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hast cast
me into the deep, in the midst of the seas and the floods, compassed
me about, all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then
I said, I am cast out of thy sight, yet I will look again
to thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about,
even to the soul. The depth closed me round about,
the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms
of the mountains. The earth with her bars was about
me forever. Yet hast thou brought up my life
from corruption, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came in unto thee, into
thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities
forsake their own mercy, but I will sacrifice unto thee with
the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. And the Lord spake unto the fish,
and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. What a remarkable
story that is in and of itself. And by way of introduction we
can summarize what happened beforehand in Chapter 1. The Lord calls
Jonah, this prophet, to go to a place called Nineveh, but he
runs from the presence of the Lord. He boards a ship in the
opposite direction, but the Lord pursues him. and sends a great
storm so that the ship is in peril, in peril of breaking up.
And the Mariners tried a row to safety, but they couldn't.
They could not. The storm was too great, so they
sought out Jonah. And his instruction is to throw
him overboard so that the Lord would relent in his anger. And
they did. And the sea was calmed. And he
is swallowed by a great fish. Three days and three nights.
And some will simply look at this story of Jonah and try to
find things that we can do in our life that make us better
Christians. The book of Jonah, to many, is
about Christian obedience. If you obey God, he'll be pleased
with you. If you disobey God, he'll be
displeased with you. But that's not the message of
this book, is it? It's not the message of this book. It's not
the message of the gospel. The gospel is not how that I
can please God. The message is how that another
pleased God on my behalf. But we've seen amazing parallels
in the story, haven't we, between how the Lord our God raised Jonah
up for this very purpose, didn't he? Just as he does all the men
of this world and all the people we see recorded in the scriptures,
either to show his mercy or to show his condemnation. The Lord
said to Moses concerning Pharaoh, For this cause I have raised
thee up, for to show in thee my power, and that my name may
be declared throughout all the earth. We saw how Jonah was a
type of our Lord Jesus Christ and the most compelling evidence
was the words of the Lord Jesus himself and we looked at those
passages In Matthew chapter 12 the Lord said, For as Jairus
was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall
the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart
of the earth. And in John chapter 2 we looked at that where the
Lord had been speaking to those religious leaders. He said, Destroy
this temple in three days. I will raise it up. But the meaning
was hidden. The meaning was hidden from them.
Their great knowledge of the scriptures was of no use. They said it took 46 years to
build this temple. How are you going to build it
in three days? And the answer to his question is found in John
chapter 2 verse 21. He said he was not referring
to that building, that physical building, but he spake of the
temple of his body, the temple of his body. And so Jonah demonstrates
the life of the Lord Jesus Christ as that one who would come as
a substitute, a substitute. Now someone might ask how can
this man Jonah be a type of our Lord Jesus when we
see in chapter 1 how Jonah sinned against the Lord. He sinned against
the Lord and he fled from the presence of the Lord. And I'm
so thankful that the scriptures never, ever hide the sins of
men. They're never glossed over, especially
when they're called of God, because we see ourselves, don't we? We
see ourselves in these people. They are sinners like us, and
we're sinners like them. And if the Lord is merciful to
them in their sin, then I have a hope, don't I? I have a hope
that the Lord might be merciful to me. So their failings are
well documented and yet woven into these accounts, embedded
into the scriptures, embedded into the text we see a righteousness
provided for them as if it were their own. A righteousness, indistinguishable. We need to be reminded that there
is a union, a union between Christ and His Church, between Christ
and His elect people. It is a union that has always
been so. And David, David is a wonderful
example of this. His sins of adultery and murder
are recorded in the scriptures. He did them secretly, didn't
he, for his own gain. And he was confronted of them
by Nathan, you remember. And in 2 Samuel 12 he says, And
David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. I have
sinned against the Lord. But immediately he received the
provision of the Lord on his behalf. And Nathan said to David,
The Lord also hath put away thy sin. Thou shalt not die. Thou shalt not die. And so we
see David as the author of many of these psalms, but in that
union, that union with Christ, those psalms contain the cries
and declarations of the Lord Jesus Christ. I neglected to
pass around a sheet. I might do that now while I think
of it. So David is a wonderful type,
but he's also a wonderful explanation of our union with our Lord. So one of the commentators, the
old commentator said of the Psalms, and let me read it to you. One
can scarcely tell whether it is David or the Lord Jesus Christ,
or both of them whom the writer is referring. Often times you
lose sight of David altogether and are quite certain that he
is not there, while at other times the words seem equally
suited to either David as the type or to Jesus as the anti-type. I think that this fact is very
instructive to us. It is as the Holy Ghost intended,
even in those ancient times, to let God's saints know that
there is a mysterious union between Christ and his people. so that
almost all things which may be said concerning him may be said
also concerning those who are in him. They are so completely
one, they are so intimately united in bonds of mystic, vital, conjugal,
eternal union that it would not be possible always to keep the
sayings concerning them apart. My hope today is that we would
see the Lord Jesus Christ in the account of Jonah, that we
would see him in his affliction as one who stood in our place. When he walked this earth in
perfect righteousness, his people also walked in him in perfect
righteousness. When he entered the bonds of
death, he took his people with him. And when the wrath of God
fell upon him, all his people were kept in him, secured in
him. He endured hell so that his people
didn't have to. This second chapter of Jonah
has a great challenge. It describes the time of affliction
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Three days and three nights in
the belly of the fish. It's full of picture language,
picture language. And this is how the Lord in his
wisdom is pleased to reveal this great work of his son. When God
made him sin, We are speaking of a supernatural work of God. The events. of these scriptures,
these events and these texts that we read can give us a sense,
can't they? They give us a sense of what
transpired, a sense of the sorrow of it, a sense of the despair
of it. But how can we comprehend such
wonderful things with these puny minds? And so we readily say
amen when we read them, don't we? We say amen. But only the
Lord knows, only the Lord truly knows what it was like to bear
the iniquities of many. Our comprehension of the horror
of it will be grossly insufficient and our comprehension of the
glory of it will be insufficient, woefully inadequate. Only our
Lord truly knows all that transpired. I'm reminded when the tabernacle
was erected in the wilderness for the Israelites. And there
was a high priest who went into the Holy of Holies once a year,
once a year, not without blood, so that any given time there
was just one man who went into that place and knew exactly what
had happened, exactly knew what had transpired, never without
blood. He was the only man alive at
any one time. that could describe what it was
to enter into the holiest of holies into the presence of God
with a sacrifice. No other man was permitted to
go in. And our Lord Jesus Christ, he went in, he went into that
place, into the presence of God, didn't he? But not with the blood
of animals. He went in with his own blood.
The priest himself was the sacrifice. Hebrews 9 says, neither by the
blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered
once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for
us. Our high priest himself, the
Lord Jesus, went in knowing that he himself was that offering.
And he is the only one who experienced all that that truly meant. And
this story and this passage we're about to read, this story is
an illustration of what our Lord did at Calvary. The judgment
of God was upon him. And it was considered his responsibility. It was considered his responsibility. How can it be? Why? Because from the foundation of
the world, the Lord Jesus stood as our surety. The title of my
message is Our Union in the Surety. Our Union in the Surety. Our Lord has many fitting titles,
doesn't he? He has the title of good shepherd.
He's the good shepherd of his sheep. He's the substitute, the
substitute of his people. He takes the place of his people.
He is our advocate before the Father. We need an advocate.
And he is our surety. He was our surety before the
foundation of the world. What an amazing thing to contemplate. When Christ became our surety
before the foundation of the world, we were then and there
redeemed and justified and pardoned and made righteous in the sight
of God. There and then. Hebrews 7.22 says, Our Lord Jesus
was made a surety of a better covenant. And listen to these
words from Proverbs 6, a picture, if you will, of the father speaking
to the son. Proverbs 6 verse 1 says, My son,
my son, if thou be surety for thy friend, the Lord Jesus called
his people his friends, didn't he? If thou be surety for thy
friend, if thou hast stricken thy hand with a stranger, if
you have vowed to be surety for them, thou art snared with the
words of thy mouth, thou art taken with the words of thy mouth. So the author is saying that
because you vowed to be surety, everything required of your friend
will be required of you. And so you are snared, in effect,
voluntarily. Our Lord Jesus Christ did all
these things voluntarily. Snared, and you are responsible
for them by the words of your mouth. The Lord Jesus Christ
voluntarily placed himself into this agreement with his father
until his service was performed. There are many examples in the
scriptures of our Lord being surety for us. You might recall
that story of the good Samaritan who came upon a man who was robbed
by abandons and left for dead on the side of the road. The
Samaritan came along and he had compassion on him and he bound
up all his wounds and he put him on his boost and he took
him to an inn. And he told the innkeeper, he
took care of him first, and he told the innkeeper, take care
of him until I return. And any money you spend, I'll
come and gain, and I'll repay it. He went surety for that injured
man. He went surety, and this is what
the Lord does for his people as their surety. He assumes all
the responsibility for them, and he pays all their debts.
And that is what a surety does. A surety is one who takes on
the responsibilities of another, including their debts. And so
we can understand, can't we? We can understand someone paying
a debt for us. Someone paying a debt for us
as an act of kindness. And we can understand how a debt
can be transferred. If I sell a car under finance
and that debt goes with that car and the new buyer incurs
that debt, and so that debt is transferred to the buyer and
the buyer is made aware that he's incurring a debt in that
transaction. All men are in debt to God for
righteousness, because all men have sinned and fallen short
of the glory of God. God requires perfect righteousness
under his holy law, and that is a debt that we cannot even
begin to pay. We have no righteousness to offer,
and so our surety does. Our surety pays it for us. All men are in debt to die. That is a debt we owe God, having
sinned and broken every law, for the wages of sin is death.
That is a debt we are to pay. Death is a debt we earned. A
debt that came from our unbelief in the garden. The Lord had warned
of the consequences of eating the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. Thou shalt not eat of it, and
in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt surely die. That is the debt we incurred
in our father Adam, but mercifully and graciously our God has provided
a surety for chosen sinners. The gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord. What an amazing gospel we have.
Before we ever sinned, before man was created, before The Garden
of Eden, before the foundation of the world, before creation
itself, our trying God made provision for a people of his own choosing
and he entrusted all those people into the hands of his son, the
Redeemer. Knowing that they would fall,
he knew that they would fall. But he knew and entrusted himself
to that Redeemer to bring them back to God. And the Lord Jesus
Christ pledged himself as their surety in the covenant of grace. He pledged to undertake everything
necessary to redeem them back to God, that he would cover them
with his righteousness and that he would pay that awful debt
of death. If you recall, the scripture
says that one man's obedience was the first man, Adam. that
one man's disobedience was the first man Adam, but that one
man's obedience was the second Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5 says for us, by one
man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience
of one shall many be made righteous. and that obedience of the Lord
Jesus Christ was unto death. Christ died for our sins according
to the scriptures. He died not for his own sins,
he died for our sins. When God looked upon his Son,
and saw our sin upon him, he dealt with those sins as they
justly deserved." That's the union. That's the union we have
with our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the sin debt we owe God,
the debt we have no hope in paying. Even when these bodies die, that
debt remains unpaid. Those that believe that the death
of this body is a payment to God are mistaken. The death of this body is not
sufficient to pay for our offences against the Holy God. Those who
die apart from the Lord spend eternity paying for a debt they
cannot pay. That is an awful thing. But here
is the good news. Our surety took on all our responsibilities
before God. He took on all our debts and
He paid all our debts for us. And we know, don't we, we know
from the scriptures time and time again that our Lord was
sinless, a sinless saviour from time to time. From that time,
I beg your pardon, from the time he was conceived to the time
he gave up his spirit, the Lord never once sinned. He never committed
sin. His sinless nature never changed
throughout his entire earthly life. Our Saviour committed no
sin, he had no sin, and he thought no sin. he was a sinless saviour. But having said that, here's
what we need to consider. And it's a very important point,
an amazing thing to understand as our surety and sin bearer. Not only was the Lord caused
to suffer punishment for our sins, He was also made to experience
those sins. The weight of those sins, you
remember, the weight of those sins began to take their toll
in the garden, in the Mount of Olives. The Lord said, Father,
if thou be willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not
my will. But thine be done. And that cup
referred to the cup of all sins, contained all the sins of God's
people. And such was the weight of it
upon him, an angel, you recall, and the text, an angel was sent
to strengthen him. And being in agony at that time,
this is the night before, and agony in that time, the scripture
says, his sweat were, as it were, great drops of blood falling
to the ground. So our Lord was made to experience
the sins of his people. So closely were the sins of his
people laid on him that those sins were considered to be his.
And the scriptures speak of this so wonderfully. You'll notice
on the sheets I've printed off, and I will refer to them a little
as I go through here. And Lord willing, they'll be
a help to our understanding as we look at some of these texts
because these texts are beyond me. I can only read them and
make very meager comments. And so I use these cross-references
as a help to us. Look with me, if you will, at
the first reference taken from the book of Lamentations. Lamentations
was written by the prophet Jeremiah, but with an eye to the Lord Jesus
Christ. He says there in Lamentations
112, is it nothing to you or you that pass by? Behold and
see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow which is done
unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his
fierce anger. Before time began, the Lord Jesus
Christ had eternally existed with his Father in perfect harmony
and joy. And so we can only read these
words, can't we, read these words and only imagine the sorrow that
came upon him as the father turned his face away and brought affliction
upon his son. There's no one that experienced
sorrow like our Lord did. He's called the Man of Sorrows.
Verse 13, in Lamentations, from above hath he sent fire into
my bones, and it prevaileth against them. He hath spread a net for
my feet, he hath turned me back, he hath made me desolate and
faint all the day. And look at the words of this
next verse. Verse 14, the yoke of my transgressions
is bound by his hand. He calls them my transgressions,
my transgressions, and they are bound by his hand, by the hand
of the Father upon him. And they are wreathed and come
upon my neck. They are, as it were, tightly
woven around him and entangling him and strangling him. He hath
made my strength to fall. The Lord hath delivered me into
their hands from whom I am not able to rise up. and then continue
on looking down on that sheet. Psalm 40 verse 7. So the writer
of Hebrews tells us plainly that these are the words of the Lord
Jesus Christ. This is our Lord speaking these
words. This is our Lord. He says, I delight to do thy
will, O my God, yea, thy law is within my heart. I have preached
righteousness in the congregation, lo, I have not reframed my lips,
O Lord, thou knowest. I have not hid thy righteousness
within my heart. I have declared thy faithfulness
and thy salvation. I have not concealed thy lovingkindness
and thy truth from the great congregation. Who else but the
Lord could say these words? Withhold not thou thy tender
mercies from me, O Lord. Let thy lovingkindness and thy
truth continually preserve me. And here's the verse I want to
look at. Verse 12. For innumerable evils
have compassed me about. Mine iniquities have taken hold
upon me so that I'm not able to look up. They are more than
the hairs of mine head. Therefore my heart faileth me. He says mine iniquities. Mine
iniquities. Can we fathom? Can we absolutely
fathom what that means? Simon referred to Proverbs 17.15,
I think it was last week, which tells us that it is an abomination. It's an abomination to the Lord
to condemn the just. If a just person is condemned,
that's an abomination. That is an unjust ruling. The condemnation meted out by
our God cannot be upon an innocent man. The Lord didn't say, well,
I'm actually innocent, but I'll take the punishment anyway. He
calls them mine iniquities. They have taken hold upon me
so that I'm not able to look up. They are more than the hairs
of mine head. Have you ever been so overwhelmed
by sin that you feel overcome by them, that you're nothing
but sin, that your sins are innumerable, sins that press down on us so
that we can't even look up? I'm reminded of that story of
the publican who went to pray. You remember, he was so pressed
down with his sin that he would not even dare look up to heaven.
And standing far off, he would not so much as lift his eyes
unto heaven, the text says, but smote upon his breast, saying,
God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Our Lord felt the sin. He felt
all the wretchedness. all the awfulness, and being
the eternal Son of God, he felt it infinitely more than we could
ever feel it. We dismiss our sins so easily,
don't we? We drink down iniquity like water.
We are so calloused to sin that they just come and go and pass
us by. We don't even know most of them. We don't even know. But for the
Lord Jesus Christ, think of this, every sin of every one of his
chosen people upon him was an affront to everything that he
is and everything that his father was. Not one sin. Think of the smallest sin. Think
of the largest sin. Not one sin of his people was
a small thing in this suffering, affliction of our Lord. He felt
the condemnation of that sin. Our Lord felt those things like
no other man. There could be no sorrow like
under his sorrow. And he experienced multitudes
of these wave after wave. So with these things said, let's
begin where we took up Jonah in verse 15 of chapter 1, and
we'll just move quickly through the text. Verse 15, chapter 1. So then
they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea
ceased from her raging. Notice how Jonah didn't get up
and jump overboard himself. The sailors took him up. They
took him up with their hands and cast him into the sea. And
I'm reminded of Peter's address to the people in Acts chapter
2. which says he was delivered by the determinate counsel and
full knowledge of God, Peter says, ye have taken and by wicked
hands have crucified and slain. And then after that was done,
what was there? There was peace, wasn't there?
Then the sea ceased from a raging. Colossians tells us that he made
peace through the blood of his cross. The Lord Jesus Christ
is the only peacemaker. He is the only pointed peacemaker.
Peace is found in no other and there is no other name under
heaven by which men must be saved. And then in verse 17 of Jonah
chapter 1 we read that the Lord had prepared a great fish to
swallow up Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three
days and three nights. Evidently, this is always prepared
of the Lord to have happened. Jonah was swallowed up and held
by this fish. He was held by it. We know death. Death held our Saviour for a
time, didn't it? And yet even this death must
give him up at the command of God. And that's what we see in
verse 10 of chapter 2, that the Lord spake unto the fish and
had vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. This is what Peter
was saying in chapter 2, that God had raised him up, having
loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that he should
be holden of it. We know the significance of those
three days and three nights, but look at me at the amazing
verse on your sheet from Hosea. which speaks to this very thing,
speaks so wonderfully of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so the context of these verses in Hosea is that the people of
Israel and Judah had sinned against the Lord, but the prophet writes
with an eye to Christ concerning these things. He says in Hosea
6.1, Come, and let us return to the Lord, for he hath torn,
and he will heal us. He hath smitten, and he will
bind us up. That's the truth, isn't it? He hath torn in order that we
might be healed. He was smitten that he would
bind us up. But look at me in the next verse
in particular. Isaiah 6 verse 2, after two days he will revive
us. In the third day he will raise
us up and we shall live in his sight. There is a time of death,
isn't there, and then there's a time of revival. And the third
day, he will raise us up, raised up in our surety, in union with
our surety. And we live in his sight. We
live now in his sight, by faith, but soon we will see, face to
face. Let's go back to our passage,
Jonah chapter 2, verse 1. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord
God out of the fish's belly. The psalmist in Psalm 130 says,
Out of the depths I have cried unto thee, O Lord. Verse 2, And
he said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord,
and he heard me out of the belly of hell, I cried I, and thou
heardest my voice. The Lord Jesus Christ didn't
just take a sip of that cup, did he? That cup that he took
contained all the sins of all God's people. And he took that
cup and he drank it dry. And he went to the very belly
of hell. Everything that it means to die,
everything that it means to die, Christ endured it. He experienced
it. Everything that God meant when
he said to Adam, in the day you eat of it, you shall die. Our
Lord experienced that. And because he experienced it,
because he experienced it, his people never will. For thou hast
cast me into the deep in the midst of the seas, and the floods
compassed me about, all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.
He likens the belly of that fish as the belly of hell. He speaks
of floods surrounding him and overcoming him, and God heard
his cry. Look at the words of Psalm 18
on your sheet. Psalm 18 verse 4, These are the words describing
this time, this time of affliction of our Lord. In my distress, I called upon
the Lord and cried unto my God. He heard my voice out of his
temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears. Our
Saviour, our Saviour experienced hell itself. He went down to
the pit. Down to the pit. Why? Why did
he do that? Why must this be so? Because
that's exactly what our sins deserve. And here's the surety
paid their debt. Look at Psalm 88 for me, with
me on the sheet. Psalm 88 verse one, O Lord God
of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee. Let
my prayer come before thee, incline thy ear unto my cry, for my soul
is full of troubles and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. I am counted with them that go
down to the pit. I am as a man that hath no strength. These are the words of the Lord.
Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave,
whom thou remember'st no more, and they are cut off from thy
hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest
pit, in the darkness, in the steeps, The truth is we have
no idea, do we? We have no idea of the horror
these verses speak of. These are solemn words, solemn
words, and we ought to reflect upon them. Psalm 116 says, the sorrows of
death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat upon me. I found trouble and sorrow. Psalm 69, Psalm 69, now shoot. Verse one, save me, O God, for
the waters are coming unto my soul. I sink in deep mire where
there is no standing. I am coming to deep waters where
the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying, my throat
is dry, my eyes fail while I wait for my God. Verse 4 of our chapter says,
Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight, yet I will look again
toward thy holy temple. Did not the Lord cry, My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Can you imagine, imagine
what it was, what it was like for the beloved Son of God to
be cast out of the presence of his Father. And yet, and yet,
we see his resolve remaining, don't we? To look to his father
in his holy temple. But this affliction continues
on. Verse five, the waters compassed me about, even to the soul. The
depth closed about me, round about. The weeds were wrapped
around my head. And I'm reminded of how the scriptures
speak of the entanglements of sin. which only served to weigh
him down deeper and deeper. The waters can pass me about
even to the soul." Infinite sorrow and separation was his experience. The scripture says, he shall
see the travail of his soul, Isaiah 53, and shall be satisfied. Verse 6, I went down to the bottoms
of the mountains, the earth with her bars was about me forever.
Yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God. Lord God, Lord Jesus went down
to the very depths of hell on our behalf. How can we not be
a people that praise him? But we know, don't we? We know.
We know that it was impossible. It's impossible for death and
hell to contain our Saviour. Our promise of God is to revive
his Holy One. Psalm 1610 says, Thou wilt not
leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One
to see corruption. There was no possibility that
the Lord would remain in that grave. He would not see corruption. The scriptures declared it and
God saw it through. Verse 7, When my soul fainted
within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came in unto thee,
into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities
forsake their own mercy. There is no salvation in lies.
There's no salvation in lies. Those that believe a lie concerning
this salvation, this gospel, are forsaking their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee,
verse nine, with the voice of thanksgiving, I will pay that
with that I have vowed. I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. And the Lord spake unto that
fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. What can we
say? What can we say concerning these
things? Everything that it means to die, Christ endured it. Everything that God meant when
he said to Adam, in the day that you shall eat of it, you shall
die. Everything that that meant, the Lord experienced it. And
because he experienced it, his people don't have to. And look
at the words of our Lord here. He says, I will sacrifice unto
thee with the voice of thanksgiving. Amazing to me. He went to the
cross. He endured its curse. He endured
its shame. It pleased the Lord to crush
him, to crush him. And he gives thanks to God for
the privilege of doing it. Is there anyone like our Saviour?
He says, I will pay that that I have vowed. That's the work
of our surety. I will pay that that I have vowed. He vowed to save his people from
their sins. He vowed to face his Father with
our sins upon him that were made his. He experienced the condemnation
of my sins. But not only my sins, he experienced
the condemnation for the sins of all God's people at one time,
a multitude of men. A multitude of men with a multitude
of sins compounded. And he fulfilled his vow, the
only one who ever did. Salvation is of the Lord, he
says, completely accomplished. by our Saviour before time began,
when our Lord bowed to be sure of it. Such was the certainty
of it. It was done there and then, wasn't
it? It was done there and then. The works of God, the works were
finished before the foundation of the world. And never, never
were we in danger of the wrath of God because he stood as our
surety, our surety vouched for us. He was our guarantor. He paid all our debt to God so
that nothing remains outstanding against us. We approach the throne of God,
the throne of grace with confidence, don't we? How can we do that? We approach
that throne of grace with confidence because He accomplished it all
in our room and in our stead. Amen. I pray that those words
will be a blessing to us.