Well, if you're turning your
Bibles with me to John chapter 13, we just briefly, in the time
remaining, we'll be looking at verses 31 and 32. But I want us to be reminded
of what was going on. This was the Passover night.
They'd had the Passover meal. This was the last time the Lord
Jesus Christ was with his people. Lying before him was the agony
of Gethsemane when he took a cup that his father gave him. And in that cup was all of the sins
of all of God's people. And he took that cup, and on
Calvary's tree he drank that cup, and they became one with
him, and he died under the infinite wrath of God. In that garden
he sweat great drops of blood. As he was saying these words,
Judas has gone out. He who was had Satan had entered,
had gone and joined with those who were the workers of Satan
in that day, the children of Satan, and there they were in
all their religious finery and all of their theological knowledge
and all of their niceties, and Judas had joined with them so
that they could, by deceit in the darkness, put the Lord Jesus
Christ to a trial and then put him to death the next day in
the most horrible way that they could possibly imagine. And yet
at this time, the Lord Jesus Christ says now in verse 31,
when Judas has gone out, therefore when he was gone out, Jesus said,
now is the son of man glorified. and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God
shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify
him. That is five times in those short
words the Lord Jesus Christ uses the word glory. If you turn over
a few pages to John chapter 17, you'll see that glory is on the
very heart and mind of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want us to
be reminded that his glory and our comfort and our salvation
are just intimately linked together. He says in John chapter 17, he
says, Father, verse 1, Father, the hour has come, glorify thy
Son, that thy Son may also glorify thee, as thou hast given him
power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as
many as thou hast given him. And this is eternal life, that
they may know thee, they're going to know God in his glory, the
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. At the end
of that prayer, before he went to the garden, he says in verse
24 of John 17, Father I will, this is his prayer as he goes
to the cross, Father I will that they also whom thou hast given
me be with me where I am that they may behold my glory. that they may behold my glory. In verse 22 he speaks of us in
this day and age who believe through the word of the apostles
proclaiming the Lord Jesus Christ, and he says, And the glory which
thou gavest me I have given them. If you're going to be glorified
in the presence of God, you're going to be glorified with the
glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. His glory matters, brothers and
sisters. His glory matters. The glory which thou gavest me
I have given them. You don't earn it, you just get
it as a gift. You receive it as a gift from
the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. And all of that
glory is that they may be one, they may be one as even as we
are one, that we might have a revealed unity with the Lord Jesus Christ,
flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, married to him in union
with him. So glory matters enormously. The Lord Jesus Christ, when he
knew that his hour had come in John chapter 12, he said, So
what's the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ all about? The glory
of God. The glory of God. The glory of who He is. That word glory in the Old Testament
carries the notion of weightiness, heaviness, substance, and so
it's not some sort of ephemeral wishy-washy thing. The glory
is the glory of God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. It
means honour. and reality. In the New Testament
the word for glory is a Greek word that means splendor, brightness,
magnificence, excellence, majesty. It is the estimation, the real
estimation of who He is. Our glory and His glory on the
cross are just intimately linked together. We are here because
of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are here because we
simply declare the plain truth of God about what happened on
the cross of Calvary. You'll call this name Jesus because
He will save His people from their sins. If you want to find out whether
someone's lying to you about God, God says you have a test. It's a really, really simple
test. It's a really simple test and
you're commanded to test every religious person who ever speaks
to you and you can find out in a heartbeat whether they're lying
to you or not. And the test is, what do they
say about the Lord Jesus Christ and what he did when he came
into this world in his flesh? God sent his Son to be the propitiation
for our sins. He came to bear the wrath of
God so that God could look upon us and be propitious because
all of our sins have been buried in the Lord Jesus Christ and
they are gone. So there are three aspects to
the glory of God and I'll try and be brief but there's a glory
of who he is and we've seen that in Hebrews chapter 1. There's
just a very glory of his being. We worship God in the beauties
of His holiness. We worship Him for who He is. He is God Almighty. As simple
as that. He is God Almighty. He cannot
fail. He came, He created this world
with a purpose and the purpose is for His glory. He created
this world for His Son to be glorified. The glory of who he
is, the glory of what he's done, and the glory of how he did it.
He did it willingly. He came into this world for the
joy that was set before him. He went to the cross of Calvary.
He will see, Isaiah 53, he'll see the suffering of his soul,
and he will be satisfied. When you think of the Lord Jesus
Christ on the cross of Calvary, there are two words that ought
to come to mind so often. He's joyful. and he's satisfied. He's perfectly satisfied. All of the very character of
God is revealed in the most glorious, glorious way. This is why he
came. In John 7 he says, Jesus was
not yet glorified. What extraordinary glory there
could have, he could have declared, couldn't he? What glory of his
coming when the angels sang of his glory. What glory at his
baptism when God the Father spoke? What glory when he did those
amazing miracles? What glory when he healed and
fed thousands? What glory when he stilled a
storm? What glory when he reigned over creation and fed 5,000 people? What glory when he was transfigured
before the apostles? See he says that his glory is
the glory of him on the cross of Calvary. The cross of the
Lord Jesus Christ crucified spans the eternity. If you want to
know what happened before the foundation of the world, Revelation
13 says that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain from before
the foundation of the world. The Lamb having been slain from
the foundation of the world. And if you get to heaven, who
will you see? whose company are you going to
enjoy? You're going to see a real man
who is God Almighty. And you'll see a real man with
the scars on his hand, and the scars on his feet, and the scar
in his side, and all of eternity in the new creation, in the bliss
of being in his presence. is going to be about the fact
that He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
You go back as far as you can in time and you'll get to the
Lamb slain. You go forward as far as your
mind can possibly take you and it's about the Lamb slain. All
of eternity is about the Lamb slain. All of our salvation is
about the Lamb slain. They're singing about Him now
in heaven. And if you get to heaven, you'll
immediately join that choir and you'll be singing, Worthy is
the Lamb. He's washed us in His blood, and that's why I'm there.
and he intercedes for all of his people. And he's there watching
over his church, all of his blood-born children, and all of the trials
and all of the circumstances of all of their life is going
to rebound to his glory. I love what David said, he says,
when I awake in his likeness, I'll be satisfied. Job wrote
the earliest book of human writing we have and in Job chapter 19
he says, I know that my, listen to what he says, this is written
4,000 years ago, I know that my Redeemer liveth. He knew that
the Lord Jesus Christ, as his Redeemer, lived 4,000 years ago,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And
then this is what his confidence was about his life. And he says,
though after my skin, worms destroyed this body, yet in my flesh. in my resurrected flesh, I shall
see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold."
Isn't that remarkable? That was 4,000 years ago. Job
had nearly 4,000 years ago rejoicing in the very presence of God Almighty
in heaven. What glory! The universe exists
because God the Son must come. This universe exists for one
reason, so that the Lord Jesus Christ, the creator and the sustainer
of it, could come to this world and save his people from their
sins and glorify his Father and every attribute of his Father
be magnified on the cross of Calvary. He came to this world
so that he could defeat Satan. who has taken this world captive
and everyone in it who doesn't believe. This universe exists
and remains in existence because of the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Because in this world are the Lord Jesus Christ's sheep,
members of his bride and members of his body, And this world will
exist only until the very last of them has come into this world
and been born again. And then there is no further
use for this world. This world is the stage upon
which the Lord Jesus Christ gets glory for himself and for his
Church. And when this world is wrapped
up, When this world is wrapped up, all of the children of God
are going to be gloriously gathered together in the resurrection
body that Job spoke about 4,000 years ago, and we'll rejoice
in the presence of the Lamb forever and ever and ever. There will
be no more death, there will be no more sin, there will be
absolutely nothing that will take away from the bliss, and
all of heaven and all of the new creation is about one thing,
isn't it? The glory of God in the face
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We'll be seeing him. I wonder
what his voice would be like. I wonder what it would be like
to look at him. Every time you have ever seen a picture, or
ever seen a movie, or ever seen any physical depiction of the
Lord Jesus Christ, it's an absolute and utter lie, and I beg of you
to destroy it if you can. Because they're all lying to
you about him. He's infinitely more glorious than men. The worms of this earth can speak
of. And so... He is glorious and
he's glorious in what he's done and the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ is the centerpiece of all the scriptures. All of the
scriptures. We read that story in Mark chapter 1. That story
is about substitution on the cross. Every story in the Bible
is a story about the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. This is a book about him. This
book is all about the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. He
is the whole counsel of God. That's why we just preach Him.
That's why we're here, to preach Him. We're here to preach Him
because we couldn't find a place that would tell us the plain
and simple truth from the Word of God about what happened at
the cross. We hear the stories of religion
all around this world and we see it again and again and I've
spent this last week studying a sermon and studying the notes
and reading some delightful things that refutes one of the famous
teachers of this world. But you know what they say. You
just know. You go on their websites and
you listen to them. God loves everyone and the proof of God
loving everyone is that Jesus died for everyone. Well let me
tell you from the basis of the Word of God, he shall not fail.
If the Lord Jesus Christ shed his blood for you, you are saved
and you were saved from before the foundation of the world.
And in this time and place there will be a time of love when he'll
come and reveal himself to you and reveal yourself to yourself. And you'll rejoice. You'll rejoice
in a crucified Savior. If you go on the websites of
most of the churches, or if you go to their Bible colleges, they'll
tell you that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient
for the whole world if the whole world would believe. That sounds
nice, doesn't it? That sounds like it's exalting
him, doesn't it? It's a really big death they're
talking about. If his death is sufficient for the whole world,
and God the Father put him to death for the sins of the whole
world, then all of the world is saved. You have a very, very
hard time dealing with the rest of scriptures. Because when he
went to the cross, billions of people were in hell. Billions
of people. So why did he not save them if
he shed his blood for them all? What's happened? They're just
lying about what he did. In modern churches now they say
Jesus died for all those who would believe in him. Now that
sounds really nice doesn't it? That somehow God looked down
the tunnel of time and he could see the people who would believe
in him and they're the ones he chose and they're the one he
chose to die for. That's just not what the Bible
said. I've been much exercised this
last week reading a sermon by a world-famous American pastor,
and I can give you the message if you like, but seven times
at the end of his message where he speaks a lot of wonderful
truth, he said it's on the cross, it's as if Christ was made a
sinner. He never was a sinner, but God
treated him as if he was a sinner. And God treats us as if we are
righteous. Do you see what he's trying to
say? There wasn't a real transfer of sins. There wasn't a real
punishment for those sins. And yet the Lord Jesus Christ
said again and again and again, that he bore our sins in his
own body on the tree. The great transaction of the
cross is a transaction between God the Father and God the Son. As I said earlier, God the Father
gave that cup into the hands of the Son, and the Son drank
that cup, and in that cup were all the sins of all of God's
people. And if the Lord Jesus Christ drank them, they became
one with him. And if he drank them and dealt
with them, you cannot drink them and deal with them yourself,
because he's dealt with them and they are gone. The transaction
of the cross is a great transaction revealing the absolute justice
of God. The absolute justice of God Almighty. God does not play as if games
with his son on the cross of Calvary. God doesn't play let's
pretend. When God speaks, he speaks reality,
doesn't he? Father, glorify thy name. Give unto the Lord, three times
in the Old Testament, give unto the Lord the glory due His name,
the glory due His character, the glory due His holiness, the
glory due His absolute sovereignty, the glory due His justice, the
glory due His mercy, the glory due His grace, the glory due
Him. Give unto the Lord and bring
an offering and come before him and worship the Lord in the beauties
of holiness. So the cross is a declaration
of the glory of God. The cross is a declaration of
all of the character of God. If you want to know the character
of God you go and see the cross. But the cross also reveals what
man is. The cross reveals what you and
I would do with God Almighty if we were not restrained by
His absolute power. Pilate gave the Lord Jesus to
the will of the people. And many of us will instantly
say in our hearts, like I have many times, well if I was there
I wouldn't have done it. What a proud, proud thought that
is. This very chapter in John's Gospel speaks of Peter saying,
I will. They're all going to forsake
you. I won't, I won't, I won't. My will will prevail. I know
how dodgy those other apostles are, but I will. Every time anyone
in the Scriptures says, I will, they are falling. They're in
the process. They've already fallen because
of their pride, and they're in the process of falling. For those who are saved, part
of what God does in the hearts of his people is to make us like
that leper, see what we are. We're sinners by nature. We're sinners by desire. We are sinners by practice. We are sinners again and again
and again. And the religious man is a sinner
by nature and by desire and by practice. Those Pharisees that
were plotting the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on that night
were the most righteous, knowledgeable, law-abiding people that the Jewish
nation had ever known of. And yet that night they gathered
together, as they had for three years, and they had plotted the
murder of God Almighty in deceit. Man is not just a sinner. He's
a sinner when he fell in Adam in the garden. 100% of humanity
fell. 100% of humanity fell. And when you come forth from
your mother's womb, speaking lies, and when you sin, as you
do all the time, we sin, we practice sin, because we are sinners. We need a glorious Saviour, because
not only are we sinners, but we are captive to Satan. In the
Garden we said to Satan, I will have your reward and your
promises, and we said to God, I will not have you to rule over
me. I'll believe the lies of Satan
and I will take his promises. 100% of humanity disobeyed God. 100% of humanity believed the
devil's lie. 100% of humanity accepted the
devil's reward. See the cross reveals the depths
of the fall of man. It reveals the fact of how depraved
we are. It reveals the fact of how dark
we are. It reveals the fact that light
came into this world and men loved darkness because their
deeds were very evil. It reveals the fact that when
we fell in Adam we fell into a very, very deep pit and a very,
very dark pit. And the chains that held us there
are very, very strong. And the one who holds his people
captive is very, very subtle and very, very deceitful and
he's just as happy with you being religious as you living in depravity. He's happy with anything other
than the Lord Jesus Christ glorified. You read Isaiah chapter 14 and
Ezekiel 28 about how extraordinarily proud this man, this being was,
this angel who fell was. And yet on the cross of the Lord
Jesus Christ, God says, He made a shell of him openly and he
triumphed over him. How do you get free from Satan's
captivity? You've got nothing to pay for. You don't even know you're bound
in chains. There's a great price to pay
and you've got nothing to pay. In fact, all of your doing to
try and wash yourself clean from your sins is actually just being
more sin. It's like taking a dirty mop and wiping a dirty floor,
it remains just as filthy at the end of it as beforehand.
You are, we are sin, and what we do and what we touch is sin. We have nothing to pay and we
are captive. And we're kept in darkness. What
a glorious, glorious gospel we have to declare, isn't it? The
Lord Jesus Christ is glorified in salvation. He defeated the
devil. And he took him captive and he
went to Satan's palace and he said, I'll have them. every single
one of them, I'll have them, and they're coming out, and Satan
said no, and the Lord Jesus Christ says they're mine. All that the
Father gives me will come to me. All that I died for will
come to me. Salvation, because of our fall,
salvation is all of what God did. It offends the pride and
the wisdom of man, doesn't it? Because we cannot understand
it unless God reveals it to us. We can't see who we are until
God reveals us to ourselves, and we can't see the glory of
the Lord Jesus Christ until God reveals. We're absolutely and
utterly dependent on God shining a light into that darkness. And
he does. That light shines in the darkness.
It shines in the darkness in the preaching of the Gospel.
By one act and one man we became sinners and we died. We died
spiritually. We lost complete sight and knowledge
of who God is and we died naturally. We had no idea of who we were
as sinners. And we'll die eternally unless
the Lord Jesus Christ comes and intervenes. We were in Adam by
a birth and we're in Christ by a new birth. In Adam, we were
far off. In Christ, we are brought near. In Adam, we disobeyed God. In
Christ, we were obedient to him. In Adam, when we fell, we were
naked and ashamed. In Christ, we are clothed and
robed with the very righteousness of God. Don't you love that story
of the prodigal son when he comes back? Get the best robe, and
what do you do with the best robe? You put it on him. He doesn't
even have to put it on himself. You put it on him. You put a
ring on his finger. You put the symbol of the everlasting
covenant of love upon him. We were, in the garden, just
innocent. And you can be innocent of an
awful lot of things, but God requires a whole lot more than
innocence. He requires absolute, perfect obedience. He requires
holiness. How good do you have to be to
get into heaven? You have to be as holy as God
is holy. No one who is not holy gets into
heaven. You have to be perfect. It has
to be perfect to be accepted. In Adam we were captive and made
captive to our fallen will. In Christ we have a new heart,
a new life. We are set free. We are set free. The glory of the cross is that
the Lord Jesus Christ did it and he did it all. He did it
all. The Scriptures make so many glorious
statements about who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what he did
on the Cross of Calvary, revealing his glory. I love when Elijah
and Moses were on that Mount of Transfiguration. What were
they doing? They were having a conversation, the Law and the
Prophets, all of the Old Testament. They were having a conversation
about the death that he should accomplish at Calvary. That was the conversation. What
a remarkable conversation. As we close, I'd like us to turn
to 2 Corinthians 5. I want you to be encouraged to
ask some simple questions. We kept asking these simple questions,
again and again and again, out of verses like this, and there
are multiplied hundreds of them throughout the scriptures that
speak of what happened at the cross. In 2 Corinthians 5.27,
For he hath made him, and in our translation the to be is
not there, and it's really good to leave out the italicised words.
For he hath made him sin for us who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him. So who was made sin? It's a good
question to ask, isn't it? Who was made sin? Well the Lamb
of God was made sin. The Lord Jesus Christ was made
sin. Who made Him sin? The verse is really simple isn't
it? God the Father laid on Him the
iniquity of us all. One of the things that is absolutely
essential for the glory of God and for the comfort of God's
people is that we see that the cross is an activity, a transaction,
a covenant between God the Father and God the Son. People think
it's about God offering His Son to humanity. That's not what
the Bible says. Quickly turn with me to Hebrews
9. He speaks of what it was like
to be under the law and to be washed and to be clean and talks
about the blood and he says in verse 12, but by his own blood
he entered in once into the holy place. What did he get when he
died? Having obtained eternal redemption for us. And then in
verse 14 he says, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who
through the eternal spirit, please listen to these words, they're
so, so important in understanding what happened at the cross, and
for the glory of God, and for your glory and your comfort,
through the eternal spirit, offered himself to whom? Without spot to God. and listen to what he does, he'll
purge your conscience from dead works. What are dead works? any works you ever think that
you might ever do or have done or be able to do to please God
and to cause God to be more pleased with you. He's perfectly pleased
with the work of his son. Right now in heaven he gazes
upon his son with absolute and utter delight. The offering was
to God the Father. And so to play silly word games
about it is to deny the simplicity of what he did. God doesn't play
as if games. Listen to what he says. He made
him to be sin. The Lord Jesus Christ has made
him sin. God the Father made him sin. What did he do when
he made him sin? He was crucified under the infinite
holy wrath of God Almighty. My God, my God, says the Lord
Jesus, why have you forsaken me? We can understand why he
forsakes him. Why have you forsaken me? Because
he was made sin. And all of the infinite wrath
of God Almighty was poured out on the Lord Jesus Christ. For
whom was he made sin? That's a simple question, isn't
it? That's not very complicated. For whom was he made sin? Just turn over the page in 2nd
Corinthians and you'll see who this letter is written to. When
you write a letter to someone, you address them, don't you?
You write a message to someone. You say, Dear Daisy, Hi Daisy. Well, listen to this. This is
what God says about this letter, isn't it? He says to the Church
of God, which is at Corinth, verse 1 of 1, and all the saints. All the saints? What's a saint?
It's a holy one. It's one that's set apart for
God. They are grace. They are the
recipients of grace and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ. All the letters in the New Testament
are written to the churches and they're written to saints. Other
people can look over their shoulder and read them, but they're written
to the saints. That's who he's talking about.
For us. For us. For us, that word for means on
behalf of, as if he was, the picture is in the Greek, is of
him hovering over his people to shield them from the wrath
of God which fell on them. And it fell on them in him. He made him sin for us who knew
no sin. The Lord Jesus Christ had no
sin. He was the perfect, holy, spotless
Lamb of God. What did he achieve? What did
he achieve? Did he achieve anything or did
he try? Well you listen to what it says,
that we might be, and don't think there's any doubt about that
word might doesn't mean there's any possibility of any failure
with our God, that we might be made the righteousness of God. And how are you made the righteousness
of God? Just listen to the words, in
Him. If you're righteous, your righteousness
is all His righteousness, and all of your righteousness is
in Him. All of my righteousness is in Him. All of my salvation
was done completely and utterly outside of myself. And completely and utterly regardless of my works. That's what it is to be saved
by grace. The wonder of what he did on
the cross is that we are made to see how sinful we are, we're
made to see how glorious God is, we're made to see how glorious
his holiness is, how wonderful his sovereignty is, how deep
his love is, what wonders of mercy and grace and what wisdom.
And our God, in closing, is a just God and a Saviour. The very justice and righteousness
of God is now the defence of God's and the comfort of God's
people. The greatest comfort believers
have is from the character of God and from the glory of God
in the Lord Jesus Christ being revealed. a just God and a Savior. Turn with me to Romans chapter
3 and we'll close. Verse 21, but now the righteousness
of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and
the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of
Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe. And there
is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the
glory of God, being justified, listen to the word, freely. What's the cause of you being
justified? He's the cause of you being justified,
freely. By His grace, through the redemption
that's in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth, God set forth
His Son to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to
declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are
passed through the forbearance of God, to declare, and this
is a declaration of the Church of God, isn't it? To declare,
I say, at this time, we're declaring His righteousness, we're declaring
His glory for the remission of sins, that he might be just and
the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. not just as if I had never sinned.
Justified people have never sinned because the Lord Jesus Christ
owned all of their sins and he bore them in his own body to
the cross of Calvary and they're gone. The wrath and the holiness
of God has been poured out upon those sins and they are gone.
Free, free, free salvation. Who gets the glory? God gets the glory. Who gets
the comfort? When God gets the glory, this
leprous sinner gets a lot of comfort. May it be so with you. May He just cause us to believe.
Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we pray
that You would bless Your words to us, that You would reveal
Your glory Your glory revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ and
him crucified. Your glory revealed in your word
coming to the hearts of your people with power from on high
to show us yet again the wonders of our Creator, our Redeemer. Bless us as we go into this year,
Heavenly Father. Lead us to that fountain, lead
us to that altar. Cause us to rejoice in the Lord
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And may we, Heavenly Father,
publish Him abroad, blaze it abroad. Cause us to make Him
famous. amongst ourselves, and if you
will, Heavenly Father, in this world. For the glory of his name
and for the good and comfort of your people, we pray in Jesus'
name. Amen. Amen.