I just wanted to prepare for the Lord's Supper
by looking at the work that John the Baptist is going to perform
as a prophet. Verse 76 of Luke chapter 1, And
thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the highest, for
thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his way. And what are his ways? What does
the prophet of God, what does God use from the men who speak
in his name like John the Baptist and all the apostles? What's
the message? We clear the way to the city
of refuge. We raise up the brazen serpent upon the stake. We lift
up the Lord Jesus Christ and he will draw, as he's promised,
he'll draw all to himself. He will draw all to himself and
we want the city, the way to the city of refuge to be raised. up before us as a place where
we can go and find our safety and our refuge. Lord Jesus Christ
is a person and he is a place and he is a destination, isn't
he? All those who are in the ark were saved and all outside
of the ark are lost. All those in the city of the
refuge are safe from the avenger of blood. All those who were
in the house that had the blood on the doorposts and lintels
were saved from the angel that came in destruction. God brings
his people and he puts them in a place, in him. That's Paul's
desire, isn't it, Philippians 3? I want to be found in Him.
I want to be found in Him. And I want the Him that I'm found
in to be exactly the Him that is described in these verses
that are before us, described throughout the Scriptures. All
the Old Testament Scriptures are saying the same thing. But
listen to what John the Baptist's charge is going to be and what
the promise of this mercy to be performed is. To give the
knowledge of salvation unto his people. To give the knowledge of salvation
unto his people. When was salvation accomplished?
before the foundation of the world? When was it enacted in
time by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ? When does it happen
in the lives of people when they are born again to see the Kingdom
of God? And when people are born again,
what do they see? They don't see salvation that
they have to put something to to make it work. They see salvation
as Him. It's a person. It's His work
to give the knowledge of salvation, to give the knowledge of the
Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And the only people who will
have it are His people. It's unto His people. As we go
through John 6, we are struck again and again in John's Gospel
how there is, as John 7 says, there's a division among the
people because of him. And they cannot cope with him
declaring himself to be God. And it didn't matter how familiar
they were with him. Apart from a visitation of God
and apart from a declaration of salvation accomplished, they
cannot cope with God being God. They cannot cope with a God who
is absolutely sovereign. They cannot see His beauty They
cannot see his glory, they cannot see his promises, and therefore
these tender mercies that he speaks of here mean nothing to
the unregenerate person, nothing to them. They can hear him speak,
they can know a lot of doctrine about him. But they find his
person offensive. But to all that he comes to in
tender mercy, when he gives knowledge of salvation by the remission
of their sins, he's glorious. Because their big problem, their
big problem that only God the Holy Spirit can bring to people
is for them to know that they are sinners. When the Holy Spirit
comes, He will reprove, He will convince the world of sin and
righteousness and of judgment, of sin because they believe not
in Him. What's your greatest problem? According to the Holy
Spirit, it's your unbelief. Unbelief is the sin. of righteousness
because I go to the Father and you see me no more. Judgment
for the Prince of this world is judged. But he comes to give
knowledge of salvation. It's salvation accomplished.
It's salvation perfectly completed. It's salvation all in the glorious
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is It is a necessity that
God visits his people. And God's people cry out to him,
come Lord Jesus, come. The gospel doesn't say go away,
the gospel says come. But those who come, will come
because they're drawn of the Father to him. And He shows His
people. The love of Psalm 25 verse 14
says, the secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him. So it's not generally known by
people. It's certainly not generally
known by people in religion. The secret of the Lord is with
those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant. He will
show them His covenant. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
covenant. That's why when John the Baptist proclaimed the Lord
Jesus Christ, he says, Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away
the sin of the world to give the knowledge of salvation unto
his people by the remission of their sins. Verse 78 is the verse
that I love, isn't it? Through the tender mercy, through
the tender mercy, the loving kindness of our God, whereby
the day spring from on high has visited us. And once again, I
just love how the scriptures declare the work of God in the
past tense as a completed activity. You read Isaiah chapter 53, it's
all in the past tense. 720 years before the Lord Jesus
Christ came, it's all in the past tense. Romans 8, 28 speaks
of us being glorified, it's all in the past completed tense.
All of God's works are finished in the foundation of the world.
When God speaks, the works are done, brothers and sisters in
Christ. When he declares his people holy
and righteous, it means that they are holy and righteous.
When he declares that his people serve him and worship him in
righteousness and holiness, he's saying what is a reality. He
speaks reality into existence. When he visits, when he visits,
his people will see him and all who see him will love him. All
who see him will be seeking him. All who see him will see themselves
as sinners. All who see him will see that
salvation is perfectly and completely finished. He says, I will come
to you, says our great God, I'll come to you. He'll come. He's visited us. As I said earlier,
Simeon saw that little baby, eight days old. They're tiny,
aren't they? They're tiny, little tiny toenails.
I've held my granddaughter just recently and she's so tiny and
you can't help but gaze upon the tiniest fingernails and toenails. Tiny. Simeon saw a baby like
that. in human flesh. How do you do
that? How do you do that? It's a spiritual
sight that he saw. Verse 79, to give light to them
that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our
feet into the way of peace. To give light. The Lord Jesus
Christ is the light of the world and in His light we see light. In His light we see the scriptures. We don't see what the scriptures
are saying unless we see them in the light of who the Lord
Jesus Christ is. We see Him as the Anointed One of God, a King
to perform His promises. a priest to bring us into the
very presence of God, and a prophet to bring us the very Word of
God, which is Himself, the Son of the living God, to give light,
to give light, not to earn it, but to receive it as a gift. The entrance of His words give
light. And He gives light to them that
sit in darkness. That's where He finds us all.
We're in darkness. Darkness in this world's enticements,
the darkness of this world's inducements to follow the things
of this world, the darkness of this world's religion that keeps
saying to people, you can add your little bit, that God has
begun something and you can complete it by your own activities. He
gives light, gives light. See, light must come from outside
of us in that darkness and in the shadow of death, the shadow
of death. Why is there death? Why is there
death in this world? There's only one reason for death.
There's only one reason for death and that's sin. There's only
one reason. The anointed priest alone can
take away the cause of darkness. When the darkness fell upon the
Lord Jesus Christ, and the judgment of God fell upon him, and God
shut the world's eyes to see what was going on. Because the
transaction of the salvation of our souls is between God and
God. the promise of that covenant
made before the foundation of the world and fulfilled so gloriously
in the life and the death and the resurrection and the glorification
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The shadow of death covers all
this world. I want us to be reminded, if
that's reality. God's children have passed from
death to life. There is no more death for the
child of God. There is no more death. It's
just a moment of sleep and then immediately into the presence
of the Lord Jesus Christ. How do we get How do we get into
these glorious promises? How does all this happen? Listen
to what John's command is, to guide our feet. This is the work
of God, the Holy Spirit, through the word of God, to guide our
feet into the way of peace. See, those who sit in darkness,
in the shadow of death, have no way to find a way out of there,
isn't it? The king must come, the way must
come, he must guide. He must take us off the path
that we have set ourselves upon. God has to interrupt us on our
road to hell, and that's what he does. And he guides us. I
love the fact that he guides our feet into the way of peace.
I've only ever guided my feet by my own activities into the
way of all sorts of a mess here and a mess there and another
mess there and then I'm running around trying to fix the mess
I've made. He guides our feet into the way of peace. To guide
means to make straight. It also means to remove all the
hindrances out of the way, to remove all of what obscures the
glory of the Lord Jesus Christ from us. to remove all the hindrances
from us coming to Him. And it's the way of peace. He is our peace, the peace between
us and God, the peace between us and God's law, the peace between
us and God's requirement that we have to have a holiness without
which we cannot see God. The peace that he brings between
each other. Be ye kind, he says, tender-hearted,
forgiving one another as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
us. He guides, you see, we go back
to what we've been looking at, these tender mercies, are all
blood-bought mercies, and they're covenant mercies, and they're
mercies that come because God comes and reveals himself, and
reveals his salvation, and reveals himself as light. And he doesn't
leave us, brothers and sisters. He continues that guiding. I
love what 2 Thessalonians 3.5 says. Now God, direct your hearts
into the love of God and into the patient waiting for Christ. He says in 1 Thessalonians chapter
4, you are taught of God to love one another. Daisy's gone to
America and she's been amongst her brethren over there, and
just last week she left her time in Kingsport with Gabe and the
others, and as they parted, there were tears. Why? God had created a bond of love
between them, and it's a love in the gospel. Now God direct your hearts into
the love of God and into the patient waiting for the Lord
Jesus Christ. I do pray, I do pray that the
Lord will bless our little fellowship and bless our witness to the
Lord Jesus Christ. in this world. And then as we
look around, as we look at ourselves, we might be led back to these
glorious verses that are the foundation preaching in the New
Testament. And there's nothing different
between any of them and the Old Testament scriptures. And there's
no difference between them and all the rest of the New Testament
scriptures. They speak of the tender mercies of a God who performs
and performs and performs and carries his own into the very
presence of God. I do quote Colossians chapter
1 often. There are some glorious things
said in Colossians. He makes us. He makes us partakers
of the inheritance in the saints, in light. He's delivered us from
the power of darkness and he has translated us into the kingdom
of his dear son. And in that kingdom we have redemption,
we don't earn redemption through his blood. And the work of our
God in all of these tender mercies that come to us is to present
you, brothers and sisters in Christ, holy, unblameable, and
unreprovable in his sight. There'll come a day when only
one person's sight matters. That day's now. It's always now,
isn't it? What a glorious, glorious Saviour
we have. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we do thank you again for your Word and we thank you, Heavenly
Father, for the foundations of the Gospel that reveal a rock
upon which we can rest our eternal souls. A rock. A rock. split open that brings
the water of the Word of Life to the hearts of your people
to refresh us in our wilderness journey. That reminds us yet
again, Heavenly Father, of the shed blood of your dear and precious
Son and his broken body. Oh our father we thank you that
you call upon us to remember him and we pray that as we eat
and as we drink you will cause us to have sweet memories of
the glories of your dear and precious son that we might find
your word sweet to our taste and comforting to our souls And
as we walk through the journey that you have laid before us,
Heavenly Father, we praise you, that our Saviour doesn't leave
us to ourselves, but he comes, he visits, he reminds us of redemption,
and he guides our feet into the way of peace. Oh, our father,
you alone can make his blood precious. You alone can open
our eyes to see the glories of your dear and precious son. We
thank you that we are utterly dependent upon our triune God
for all of our salvation. And we thank you, heavenly father,
that it's all about him. and we are but the recipients
of your tender mercies. Make your son precious, our Father,
for we pray in his name with thankfulness. Amen.