So if you turn in the book, the second
last book of the Old Testament, Zechariah chapter 5. So you go
from Matthew back to Malachi back to Zechariah. And we're
in chapter 5 and it's one of the reads, these four verses
for us. He had been given glorious vision
of the church. and the way the Lord pours out
His Spirit to His church. And then he says in verse 1 of
chapter 5, Then I turned and lifted up mine eyes, and looked,
and behold, a flying scroll. And he said unto me, what seest
thou? And I answered, I see a flying
scroll, flying roll. The length thereof is 20 cubits,
a cubit's about half a meter, so it's 10 meters. And the breadth
thereof, 10 cubits. And then he said unto me, this
is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth
for everyone that stealeth shall be cut off. as on this side according
to it, and everyone that sweareth shall be cut off on that side
according to it. And I will bring it forth, saith
the Lord of hosts, and it shall enter into the house of the thief
and into the house of him that sweareth falsely by my name. And it shall remain in the midst
of his house and shall consume it with the tinder thereof. and
the stars thereof. Now that you've just read that,
you need the Lord to help us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we pray that you would open our eyes to see the glory of your
dear and precious Son in all of the scriptures and may we
be taught again of God in that teaching Well, here we are, Flying Scroll. This is the sixth of these nine
visions that Zechariah had in this one night, so what a remarkable
night it was, and what a remarkable God we have that records them
for us, and what a remarkable spirit we have that reveals them
to us. He turned, he turned from that
vision of the Lord Jesus Christ and his church and the glory
of feeding his church and nourishing it, nurturing it. And then he
lifts up and he sees, beholds a flying roll. And he says unto me, what seest
thou? And I answered, I see a flying
roll. So it's a huge flying roll, isn't
it? It's maybe as long as this building
and not quite about a third as wide, so it's a huge flying roll. The length thereof is 20 cubits
and the breadth 10 cubits. And we don't have to guess what
the flying roll is, do we? He says, is the curse that goeth
forth over the face of the whole earth. And the scroll, the roll,
has two sides to it. It's like the one in Revelation
chapter 5. They are written on the front
side and the back side, and that means that there is no space
for man to add anything to it. And also if man takes anything
from it, you'll see where it's taken from. So it's completely
described, isn't it? It is the Book and the Word of
God and the Law of God. This is the curse that goes forth
over the face of the whole earth, for everyone that stealeth shall
be cut off on this side according to it, and everyone that swears
shall be cut off on that side according to it and the Lord
is the one who brings it forth. And I want us to see that this
is a message which brings hope to the thief and to him who swears
falsely by my name. The people in Zechariah's day
were people who lived under the law of God. And if you go back
and read their dealings at Mount Sinai, they were an extraordinarily
proud people who should have been an extraordinarily humble
people. They did absolutely nothing to get themselves out of Egypt. And yet, in the in the presence of and having
borne witness to the holiness and the majesty of God in all
of those plagues that destroyed the superpower and in walking
through the Red Sea with a huge wall of water on either side
and you walk through on dry land to have all of those remarkable
things come upon you and then you turn up at Mount Sinai and
you say that God Just tell me what to do and I'll
do it. As if obeying God to the satisfaction
of God was something within the realm of man's possibility. That's
why this law is a curse. God's law. God's law goes forth over the
face of the whole earth. It's extraordinarily broad, God's
law. It's extraordinary in its holiness. God's law was written on stones. It's extraordinary in its inflexibility. God's law blesses people materially
and curses them materially. God's law in Deuteronomy 31,
26 is a witness against the people. God's law was given not to bring
righteousness but to cause people to fear, as Deuteronomy 28, 58
says, to fear this glorious and fearful name, the Lord thy God. And God's law reveals how far
we are from God and how fallen we are it just says sinner. Every mouth is shut before the
law and the law and its holiness and its inflexibility and its
curses is there to magnify the blood-bored grace of God in the
Lord Jesus Christ. Shows us what he bore in his
own body on the tree. Nehemiah, who was writing at
the same time as Zechariah, and he wrote, as they entered into
a covenant to keep the law of God, Nehemiah says, as they put themselves willingly
and openly and under the hand of God, back under the law, he
says, That was Neal Myers estimation
of what they were doing when they were making their promise. It's extraordinary, isn't it,
how the Bible writers see the law of God and how it is seen
by people in this world today. If you get hold of the famous
Confessions of Faith, I'll tell you that you are to go back to
the law of God to work out your sanctification. Because how else
do you measure progress in holiness unless you have it written down
somewhere? And yet the Bible, the Scriptures
again and again and again declare that it is absolutely impossible
for any man ever to keep the Sabbath. And so in this curse
we see that this flying roll is an open roll. The books are
opened and sin is exposed. And in this open roll we have
both both tables of the law of God. Verse three, it says, this
is the curse that goes forth over the whole face of the whole
earth for everyone that stealeth. God owns everything. Everyone that stealeth. Everyone
that stealeth shall be cut off. You are not to steal, but we
steal God's glory again and again and again. and we hold on to
things as if they are our possession and they actually belong to God
Almighty. And then he says, everyone that
swears shall be cut off on that side. So this is written on both
sides and everyone that swears, for see you know the commands
of God in Exodus chapter 20, just read them with me. So you
are not to steal. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt
not bear false witness. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt
not commit adultery. But he begins by saying, I am
the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt,
Exodus 20, and out of the house of bondage. You shall have no
other gods before me. And what have we done? In our
imagination we create images of God which are false all of
the time. And ye are not to make any graven
image or likeness of anything that is in heaven above, that
is in earth beneath, that is in the water under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. For
I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of
the fathers upon the children until the third and fourth generation
of them that hate me. And that's what it is, isn't
it? To create these false notions of God. But he says, in showing
mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments,
thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,
for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh my name
in vain. And then he says, you remember
the Sabbath day, declaring falsely in his name. Have you
in your imagination an image of God which is so unlike him? This religious world declares
lies about God's character, it declares lies about Lies about God's Christ, particularly
his lies about how God saves sinners. And there are four big
lies that pervade this world, don't they? God loves everyone. Well, he hated Esau. So you have
a very serious problem. God wills the salvation of all
men. And they misquote a verse in
2 Peter 3, verse 9. They leave out the first half
of the verse and quote the second half. God's not willing that
any should perish. The first half of the verse is,
God is longsuffering toward us. And he describes who the us are
as the children of God. They say that the Lord Jesus
Christ shed his blood for all humanity. And they say that the Holy Spirit
is knocking on the door of every heart. And the Blessed Holy Spirit,
God Almighty, the Holy Spirit, is powerful in remarkable ways
until he meets the impenetrable fortress of man's If God loves everyone exactly
the same, and he loves Judas as much as he loves Peter, and
he has shed the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ for Judah as
well as for Peter, and God willed the salvation of Judas as well
as Peter, and God, the Holy Spirit, is knocking at the door of the
Judases of this world as well as of Peter, then you must necessarily
have diminished the love of God operations of the Holy Spirit
to complete another failure. It means, ultimately, that his
love, his will, the blood of his Son, and the operations of
the Holy Spirit are not enough to save you. So what have you
got left? Salvation by works of men. You have dethroned God And God says that that's a curse. So the law exposes and the law
does not heal. The law is administration of
death. It cannot pardon. It curses. It cannot justify. It condemns. It cannot sanctify. It kills. It cannot cleanse. It destroys. You cannot offer hope. Paul thought
that he was a man obedient to the law of God. Listen to what
he says about himself. He said, I was alive. I was alive. I was alive in religion. I was
alive in the righteousness of religious men. I was alive in
my knowledge of the scriptures. I was alive in my obedience.
He says, I was alive without the law once. But when the commandment
came, sin revived and I died. There is this flying scroll. And the dimensions of that scroll
are used two other times in the scriptures, and I want us to
leave here with rejoicing in our hearts for our great God.
There are two places in the scriptures where this dimension is used,
and one of them is in 1 Kings 6, verse 3, and that's the porch
of Solomon. the temple where the law is read,
this curse is read. And the other one is in Exodus
26 and it's the holy place, it's the place where the candlestick
is, where the light of the Lord Jesus Christ is, where the table
of showbread is, where the bread of life is displayed, it's where
the altar of incense was, it's where the sweet odour of the
sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ goes. There was a place, Zechariah
saw that scroll. There was another time when that
scroll was unrolled over this earth, over the face of this
whole earth, and that was that darkness that came upon the Lord
Jesus Christ. Just let me read. We read about
the curse. It's the curse that goes forth
over the whole 3 verse 10, for as many are as
of the works of the law, as many who can attribute anything in
their salvation, anything in their righteousness, anything
in their sanctification, anything in their rewards, anything in
their beginning, anything in their doing, anything in their
end, as many as of the works of the law are under the curse. For it is written, cursed is
everyone that continueth not in all things which are written
in the book of the law to do them, to have done them. But
that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident
for the just, the righteous live by faith. They live by the faithfulness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the law is not of faith,
but the man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ has redeemed
us from the curse He made a curse for us. As it is written, curses
is everyone that hangeth on a tree. That curse of that broken law came upon the Lord Jesus Christ
and he was nailed to that tree and he became that curse. This
is talking about the law in Deuteronomy 21. Both sides, according to it,
the Lord Jesus Christ was the perfect offering to God as a
sacrifice, wasn't he? Because he was the only person
who ever perfectly kept that law of God. He was the only person
that ever did not swear falsely by the name of God. He was the
only person that ever walked this earth who wasn't a thief.
And Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believes. This is as far as the law goes.
For the children of God, the law terminates in the Lord Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. That flying scroll darkened the
whole earth and it revealed God's holiness. It revealed the darkness
of sin. It revealed the one only person
who ever truly confessed sin, the one person who was ever truly
sorry for sin was the Lord Jesus Christ. God made him who knew
no sin to be sin for us. He was never a sinner, he never
sinned in himself, otherwise he couldn't be a perfect sacrifice.
But on the cross of Calvary, that flying scroll darkened those
skies and the Lord Jesus Christ And there was in that darkness
a revealing of that law, and I just love the fact that in
that darkness there was a transaction, an amazing transaction, with
the Lord Jesus Christ for all of my sins in his own body. person in the very robe of the
righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Substitution and satisfaction
because of a union with him is at the heart of the gospel. So
the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary fulfilled all the requirements
of the law for righteousness, didn't he? He was faithful unto
death. The righteousness he brings in
is an everlasting righteousness. He was faithful to his Father. We live now by the faithfulness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We owe God perfect faithfulness,
perfect righteousness from womb to the grave. And in Christ we
are found faithful. And in Christ we have all of
our faithlessnesses justly punished for sin short
of the glory of God. That's why sin's ever before
us, brothers and sisters, and that's why we just love the fact
of free and sovereign grace. All of the curses of the law
of God fell upon the Lord Jesus Christ. The flying scroll and
its law and curses, they fell on the thief fell on the false
swearer. And now that flying scroll which
reveals the holiness and the justice of God is our friend. God's justice, the very character
of God is the great comfort of God's people. It is impossible
for God to remain God and holy and just, to punish his son for
my sins and then to punish me again. It's impossible. There
is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We shut up to the Lord Jesus
Christ. But I love what it says. It says at the end of verse four,
just read it with me. by his name, that shall remain
in the midst of his house, and shall consume it with the timber
thereof and the stones thereof." Don't you love the fact that
the Lord Jesus Christ and his glory is continually causing
our house to be removed? The stones, everything that we
build, so that we're left, we're left as mercy beggars at the
foot of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are left As Samuel did at
the end of his life, in 2 Samuel 23, he says, my house is being
consumed, isn't it? My house is not so with God,
and I'm sure he's talking about the house as his very existence
in this world in his flesh. He says, although my house be
not so with God, not as it ought be with God ever, yet he hath
made with me an everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure,
For this is all my salvation, and this is all my desire. Although he make it not to grow,
there is no change in the everlasting covenant. It's ordered and secure
in every detail. That's how Moses died, didn't
he? Moses finished his life saying,
the eternal God is thy refuge. He shall thrust out the enemy
from before thee and shall say, destroy them, destroy them. Isn't
it wonderful to have our house that we build in our Adam flesh
continually torn down and torn down and torn down so that we
are left rejoicing in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. but are perfect in the blood. The flying scroll has done its
work in us and over us in the Lord
Jesus Christ.