and endeavour to look into that
particular passage of scripture in any detail this morning. But
if you go away and study it closely, you'll find it's a glorious declaration
of the Gospel, it's a glorious declaration of the finished work
of the Lord Jesus Christ, that He would come. But I love what
it says, the Lord God, in verse 68, He says He has visited. He visits His people and He has
redeemed us. with John declaring his record. First Isaiah begins, this is
the record of John. That word record is the word
testimony and it's the word witness and in the Greek it's the word
martyr. John as you'll remember died
for his is he died at the hands of Herod. It's the record of John. Verse
32, and John bear record, saying, in verse 34, and I saw and bear
record. And it's good if the Lord would
allow us to pedimise some of the things we read in Luke chapter
1, verse 19 of John's Gospel, chapter 1. This is the record
of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to
ask him, who art thou? And he confessed and denied not,
but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, What then?
Art thou Elias? And he sayeth, I am not. Art
thou that prophet? And he answereth, No. Then said
they unto him, Who art thou, that we may give an answer to
them that sent us? What sayest thou of thyself?
And he said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaiah. And they which were sent were
of the Pharisees. And they asked him and said unto
him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor
Elias, neither that prophet? John answered them, saying, I
baptize with water, but there standeth one among you whom you
know not. He it is who coming after me
is preferred before me, whose shoe-latchet I am not worthy
to unloose. The next day John seeth Jesus
coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After
me cometh the man which is preferred before me, for he was before
me. And I knew him not. but that
he should be made manifest to Israel. Therefore am I come baptizing
with water. And John the Mayor records saying,
I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and a bird
on him. And I knew it not that he that
sent me to baptize with water. The same said unto me, upon whom
thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same
is he the Holy Ghost, and I saw and bear record that this is Gospel preaching begins, or the
Word of God begins, in the beginning God. In the beginning was the
Word. But the Word is revealed by God's
service. The Word is revealed by those
who bear testimony is revealed in a particular and
extraordinary way to John. You know the story. He was revealed
to John and baptised by John in Jordan, then immediately went
away into the desert. And I'm sure that when John says,
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, it's
when the Lord Jesus has returned, because John had kept on baptising John is declared by God to be
a man sent from God. We know his history from the
book of chapter 1, and we know the Lord's testimony of him,
so we have absolutely no doubt about John the Baptist being
the Lord's servant and the Lord's witness. He bears testimony of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so in many ways John is a
pattern And that is the greatest need
of everyone, isn't it? That they will hear of the Lord
Jesus Christ. They will hear that we would
bear witness by our lives, but mostly, as all God's witnesses
do, they bear witness by what they testify of the Lord Jesus
Christ. So in this passage of Scripture
before us, we have a description educational and very, very helpful. I trust the Lord might give us
insight into it. I want us to have a look in the
first section of our time together, looking at what it is that John
was to be a witness. How did John become to be a witness? We know that he was filled with
the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb. We know that when Mary
arrived with the Lord Jesus in her womb, For me, the spotless lamb agreed,
his father's wrath to bear. For me, his precious blood he
shed, my guilty soul to spare. Thank you. Is it too hot in here
for other people? It's not. It's just me. I'll
get some more water. For me his precious blood he
shed, my guilty soul to spare. I see his head, his hands, his
feet, I hear his groans and cries. ? King Christ rose, O blessed day
? ? In triumph over grave ? ? He rules, O peace, with sovereign
strength ? ? I hope the soul to save ? ? A mighty advocate
and priest ? ? Church, peace for me above all ? His name is
written on His breast, inscribed by grace and blood. We need my Savior's blood of
heaven, almighty to atone. The hands he gave to his inmates
shall lead me to his throne. And when I stand before my God,
not sin, not need, but free, I'll praise him for his precious
blood, so freely shed for me. It is the gospel in a few words,
isn't it, when the Lord said to the people of Israel, it's
amazing, he says, when I see the blood, when I see the blood,
I'll pass over you. It's what God sees. It's what
God sees. They were inside the house. And
I'm sure some of them on that day, had lived in terrible wickedness. As they shut the door that evening,
they must have been wondering what on earth all this means. again and again. He does twice
in this opening chapter of John's Gospel. He says, Behold, behold
the Lamb of God. Do you see the Lamb of God? By the power of the Spirit of
God, you'll be held by Him, and then you'll be held. That's what
Gospel preaching is all about. And so, Let's just go quickly
through some of these opening verses, and this is the record,
verse 19, of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from
Jerusalem to ask him, who art thou? And he confessed, and he
denied not, but confessed, he says, I'm not the Christ. What could he have said to that
question, who art thou? He could have said, I'm the miraculous He could have said the Father
Gabriel, the angel Gabriel came to my father. He could have said
that my mother was way past childbearing age. I'm a miracle child. I'm a miracle child. Like Isaac,
like Hannes, Samuel, I'm a miracle child. He could have said, I'm here as a witness to Christ. I'm not Christ. I'm not the Elijah
they are expecting the Elijah to come. Verse 21. What then,
aren't thou Elias? They thought that Elijah was
coming back. And he says, I'm not. Are you the prophet? You
can read about the prophet in Deuteronomy chapter 18. There
was a prophet to come, like Moses. A prophet who would speak the
words of God. Then they asked him again, who
are you? Who do you think you are, John? Who do you think you are? You
claim to speak for God, yet we don't know you. You claim to
speak with God's authority, and we, the religious elite of Jerusalem,
don't know about you. We who sit in Moses' seat don't
know who you are. And I love what he goes on to
say in verse 23. He says, I am the voice of one
crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord,
as said the prophet Isaiah. remarkable in Isaiah 40, we often
read Isaiah 40 verse 1, and so often we miss the extraordinary
context of it. Isaiah 41 is the command to all
of God's people, isn't it? Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
saith the Lord, speak comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her
that her warfare is her comfort, that her iniquity is her pardon,
for she has received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. to 39 is about the fact that
they are going to go into Babylonian captivity for 70 years. And Hezekiah's
foolishness. He showed them everything that
was in Jerusalem. And the prophet says, well, it's all going to
be and the voice of him, then verse
three, the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare
ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway
for our God. Every valley shall be exalted,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked
shall be made straight, but the rough places plain, and the glory
of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall sit together. Might strike, might strike the
wine of the Lord. Might strike. We begin our messages by going
to the Lord Jesus Christ. We make straight to him. We go
straight to the cross of Calvary. We go straight to the Lamb of
God, the slain Lamb of God. We go there straight all the
time. And the mountains and the hills and all the other things,
we want them out of the way. It's a reference in some sense
to the cities of refuge. You know the cities of refuge
in the days of Jerusalem, Israel, there were three on either side
of the Jordan River and the people in those cities of refuge had
an obligation to keep the way straight. At every crossroad,
at every junction there was to be a sign saying refuge, refuge,
refuge. We want to make straight the
way of the Lord. We want the things, the mountains and the
hills, to be made lower. We don't want to make crooked
places. We don't want to make it a twisty way. John the Baptist
not only speaks as Isaiah told him to speak, but also he actually
does it himself, doesn't he? Where did you go to hear a word
from God? Where did you go to hear a word
from God? The one place where you didn't
hear a word from God was in Jerusalem. You didn't hear a word from God
in that place. like the eunuch who came to Jerusalem
in Acts chapter 8. He came to Jerusalem, spent that
time in Jerusalem, no doubt for those two feasts that are nearby. And Philip is sent to him. And
the eunuch, a man who had every reason to be proud in the world's
eyes, is asked, what are you reading? Do you understand that?
And he says, I can't. I can't understand it unless
a man showed me. Jerusalem was an empty shell
of religion in those days. The voice of God is to be heard
in the wilderness. The voice is heard and not seen. God's servants, like John the
Baptist, they seek no glory for themselves. And they seek no
claim for themselves. They are just servants. A voice, you hear a voice. You
can hear a voice without seeing the person. That's what John
says in John, John the Baptist says in John chapter three, he
says, he must increase. and read in Isaiah chapter 14,
you'll really put the voices to cry. And the voice didn't
cry, he said, what shall I cry? And then he says, all flesh is
grass, which is exactly the way that John the Baptist treated
the Pharisees who came to him. All flesh is grass. You don't
know who he is. You could write treatises on
the Messiah and the Christ of God. You could give us all sorts
of theological discussions about who, All flesh is grass, and the goodness,
says Isaiah, the goodness thereof is of the flower of the field.
The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, because the Spirit
of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass. The
grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, but the word of our God. So I want us to look at it in
terms of how we can tell. about our scriptures, aren't
they, that they are grounded in historic facts and realities. He sees the Son coming, verse
29. John sees Jesus coming unto him. He saw and he bear a good. Firstly, multitudes saw the Lord Jesus
Christ in the flesh. They saw things that no other
man had ever seen on this earth before. Countless multitudes,
even these Pharisees, they came to examine and in some sense
there's some wisdom in what they did that someone speaks for God
needs to be examined. revelation. He's only known as
he causes himself to be made manifest in the preaching of
the gospel. So even John, look down with
me, even John who was filled with the Holy Spirit says in
verse 31, and I knew him not. He'd known him as his cousin
for 30 years and he says, I knew him not, verse 33, and I knew
him not. How did he come to know that
this was God with us, this was Emmanuel? He came to see Verse 33, he says, I knew him
not, but he that sent me to baptize the water, God the Father sent
me to baptize the water. The same said unto me, he that
had a word from God, upon him thou shalt see the Spirit descending
and remaining on him. The same is he. No one in this world has seen
the Lord Jesus Christ in any physical way without them having
been deceived. John has this record. You can't
witness to something you haven't seen. You can't bear record to
something that you haven't been a witness to. And that's what
it means. And how did John see him? He saw him, didn't he? He saw
him as a lamb. He says, behold, verse 29, as a lamb of God, and I'm going
to declare him to you as a lamb of God. If you're going to see
him, to bear witness to him, you'll behold him as a lamb.
Behold him as a slain lamb. You'll see him as a lamb, a substitute
and a redeemer. You'll see him foretold in all
the Old Testament prophets from land, to him give all the prophets
witness. That whosoever believeth in him
shall receive the remission of sins. He saw him as a promised
redeemer. He says, Behold the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sins of the world. You see, when you
see him, offering to take away the sins
of the world, he actually takes away the sins of the world. We don't have time this morning
to look into it in great detail. The reality is that the word
world is an extraordinarily misunderstood phrase in all of the scriptures.
And it's not for nothing that God has written his book so that
if people want to see the world as all of humanity together, Jesus used that word world in
John chapter 1 verse 12. He was in the world, and the
world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He has,
in one verse, three descriptions of the word world. People think
the word world and the word all is a description of the Lord
Jesus Christ dying for all of humanity. There's a verse in Luke chapter
1 where it says, and it came to pass in those days that there
went out a decree from Caesar Augusta that all the world should
be taxed anyway. That all and the world should
be taxed. Have you got your receipt from
Caesar John Henry? If all the world is all of humanity,
that means the Eskimos and the Aboriginals and the inhabitants
of South America bought all the tax. They weren't. It's all,
it's all without meaning, what people think it means. He didn't,
and also that verse says, doesn't it? He taketh away. If your sins are taken away,
then you are saved. And the reality is, as we see
in all the gospel accounts, these Jews They will not submit to the baptism
of John, and they'll go on. And as John's gospel unfolds,
these men become more and more and more enraged against the
Lord Jesus Christ. And he says to them in John chapter
8, you're children of the devil. And he says, unless you believe
that I am, you'll die in your sins. The most frightening, one
of the most frightening sentences and the Lord Jesus Christ takes
away. How did he take them away? How did he take them away? By
the sacrifice of himself on Calvary's tree, by bearing the wrath of
God. He took them away by satisfying
the justice of God. He took them away in such a way
that every single attribute of God is magnified in him taking
them away. He didn't try and take them away.
God doesn't try and do anything. God is God. So John saw him because
he came to him. John saw him as a lamb of God. That lamb that was slain in the
garden, that lamb that Abel brought, the lamb that was on the ark,
the lamb that was the substitute for Isaac on Mount Moriah, the
lamb that was typified in every single sacrifice of all that can't take away, can't take away
sin, but the blood of this lamb takes away, he takes them away. By mercy and truth he's iniquity
purged. He was made flesh, says John,
he's made of a woman, he's made under the law, but he could be,
as our And he cried, it is finished.
The justice of God is perfectly satisfied. The very righteous
character of God demands the absolute salvation of all for
whom the Lord Jesus Christ died. He died for all their sins. Did
he die for unbelief? He did, didn't he? Should we
repent? Did he die for our lack of repentance?
Should we love God with all of our hearts, all of our souls,
all of our mind, all of our strength? Should we love Him from our hearts
and should we love our neighbours as ourselves? all that God's children owe to
God's justice and his holiness. to redeem a people, to buy them
back. That's what it is, to redeem,
isn't it? He paid a price to have them back. That's what it
is, to ransom them, isn't it? He didn't try and ransom them,
he ransomed them all. Which is why, which is why when
he comes and makes himself manifest That's what Paul says, isn't
he? He went to the Galatians and
said, Christ Jesus was evidently set forth crucified among you. That was his ministry, wasn't
it? In 1 Corinthians chapter 2 he said, I determined, I made
it my determination to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and
him crucified. You see, I saw him. Redeemer of him, of all of his
people. I love what Romans 3 says, isn't
it? Being justified freely by his
grace. You're not freely, mate. It means
without cause. The cause for your justification
before God, the cause for you to have no sin before God, is
free. It's not because of something
you do, it's because of his work entirely. That's what he says.
Justified freely. To be justified is to have no
sin. in God's court, and to have never sinned in God's court,
because all the sins of all of God's people were imputed to,
and were the Lord Jesus Christ in reality because of his surelieship. He took on full responsibility
for all of God's people before the foundations of the world. Every time we say that, we want
to say as quickly as possible, let no one ever hear us and think
that we're ever saying that the Lord Jesus set forth in his flesh. God setting forth, right back
to Romans 3.25, God setting forth to be a propitiation through
faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness to the remission
of sins of the past through the fair forebearance of God. To
declare, see John is declaring, and we trust the Lord would cause
us to be declaring as well. To declare, I say, That's why he's bearing witness,
isn't he? He saw him coming. He saw him coming. He's been
coming since eternity. He says, behold, he says, I'm
coming. That's how revelation begins, doesn't it? He says,
I'm on my way back. I'm coming. Just as he came at
that time, unexpectedly, in a remarkable way, he's coming. He's coming.
It's a great hope of God's children, isn't it? He's been coming since
eternity. He's been coming since the creation
of the world. He says, lo, I come. Hebrews 10, it's written in the
bottom of the book. I'm coming. John sees the Holy
Spirit descending and abiding on him. John sees a trinity.
John sees God the Father. He's God the Father speaking.
God John sees the Holy Spirit descending as a dove upon the
Lord Jesus Christ. to come down from heaven and
to abide on the Lord Jesus Christ. So you won't see the dove without
seeing the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the work of the dove, isn't
it? John 16, he says, you'll take of mine and you'll reveal
it to you. You'll take the deity of the
Lord Jesus Christ, the glory of his work as a lamb, and you'll
reveal it to you. And that's exactly what this
spirit does. until you see the Lord Jesus
Christ. And you can't see the Lord Jesus Christ apart from
seeing Him as the Lamb slain. God manifests in the flesh. A true servant sees I've seen Him, my God the Father,
I've seen Him in promise, and in covenant, and in glory, magnifying
the law of God and making it honourable. And magnifying the
law of God, I may have taken my sins in honouring God's character,
but bearing them upon Himself. So John, like all people sent
to God, He saw, therefore he didn't have an agenda. He had a Christ's agenda. John
wasn't trying to build a reputation. He was there in all of his answers,
wasn't he? He just says, this is who he
is, and this is what he's doing. He's going to baptise people
with the Holy Spirit. He's going to immerse them in
the Holy Spirit. servants of the servant of God. It's my great prayer that the Lord would
make us to be witnesses to the Lord Jesus. That he make us faithful
to one thing that matters, one thing that is necessary I've seen Him through the eyes
of faith, and He's given me a heart, a new heart to love Him, and
to adore Him, and to seek to reclaim Him wherever. A witness
sees the Lord Jesus Christ as God. In all the glory and all
the days in God, we see Him because He comes.