Let's turn in our scriptures
to Galatians chapter 6. As we near the end of this remarkable
letter, I can understand why Paul reminds the Galatians of
how serious this is. And it seems, from what verse
11 says, you see how large a letter I have written unto you with
mine own hand. It actually, it seems, written
this letter out by hand, which is not his normal course of business. He normally dictated his letters. You can read in Romans 16.22
about a man called Tertius who greets them. He was the guy who
wrote it out. Paul dictated them. This is so
serious. The matter before the Galatian
churches is so serious, the weight of it lays so heavy on Paul's
heart that he actually wrote it out and it seems as if He
may well have written the whole letter to Galatians in capital
letters. The whole lot, personally in
capital letters. is the weightiness of the matters
that lie before us, such is the weightiness of all who hear the
Gospel of God's grace. We will and we must meet God,
and we will meet Him as He really is, and we will meet Him as we
really are, and we will meet Him and that meeting And this
gospel that we declare is a gospel that is about eternity. There is no end of heaven and
there is no end of hell. Angus has a birthday today, but
the reality of what this book says, the reality of the truth
of God's word to us, is that he will live forever. Angus Newell,
like all of us here and every other person on planet earth,
will live forever. This is Paul's way of graphically
declaring what the Old Testament writers often described as the
burden of the word of the Lord. It is a burden that God lays
upon his people, the seriousness and the weightiness of the Gospel. And therefore, those who come
to distort the Gospel, those messengers of Satan in this world,
those messengers of Satan need to be opposed as forcibly as
the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ needs to be declared. God will
have his way and his day and he will save his people from
their sins. But it's a fearsome thing to
fall into the hands of the living God. May he cause us to fall
into the arms of grace as we look at these closing verses
in Galatians today. May He be our teacher. May His Spirit again take the
things of the Lord Jesus and reveal them to us. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank
You again for Your testimony in Your Word your testimony of
prophecy, your testimony in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ,
your testimony in the letters of the New Testament, which describe
the impact of the Gospel and describe the world in which your
witnesses must live with such clarity. Heavenly Father, we
pray that You would honour Your Word and bless it to our hearts
today, Heavenly Father, that we might find ourselves at rest
and at peace in the arms of the Lord Jesus Christ, simply trusting
Him, simply trusting Him and absolutely nothing else whatsoever. Our Father, we know that faith
is a gift. We pray your blessing on us this morning that we might,
through the eyes of faith, see your dear and precious Son, see
Him crucified, see Him in His glory. and Heavenly Father see
Him by faith dwelling in His people and amongst them and leading
us in guidance. Without Him we can do nothing.
We are helpless beggars. We pray Your blessing on us.
For Christ's sake in His name. Amen. So it is an emphatic beginning
and then he says in verse 12 He says, as many as desire to
make a fair show in the flesh. And I want again to remind you
as the man unrolled his scroll from Paul with these emphatic
capital letters on it, that that word desire is in the present
tense. And so there were people there
who were involved in the desiring and there were people there who
were feeling the weight of this desire upon them. As many as desire to make affairs
show in the flesh, they constrain you. They are constraining you
right now. to be circumcised, only lest
they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. For
neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law, but
desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.
But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me. and
I unto the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision
availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as many
as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy,
and upon the Israel of God. From henceforth let no man trouble
me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Brethren,
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. I just want to look at the first
few of those verses today. There is an ongoing and powerful
work in religion, isn't it, to constrain people, to compel people,
to put people under a burden. We've been in religion, all of
us brothers and sisters, we know what it's like. We can do it
with sincerity, we can do it with zeal, we can do it with
a Bible in our hands, we can do it with a sense that we are
really loving people and that we are really honouring God. And it's only, it is only the
supernatural sovereign grace of God that will rescue people
out of that. I'm so thankful to God that we
have here, we have people who just love the truth of God. They love the truth of God about
who God is. They love the truth of God about
who we are. And they love the truth of God
about how He saves sinners. And they love the truth of God,
which is the only protection that we have. His Spirit taking
the things of the Lord Jesus and revealing them to us is the
only way anyone is going to be rescued out of religion. No amount of arguing and persuasion
is going to do it. Such is the nature of the depravity
of the heart of man. Such is the nature of the power
of Satan. Such is the entrapment that comes
through religion. They constrain you, they are
now constraining you to be circumcised. Only lest they should suffer
persecution for the cross of Christ. You see, to avoid persecution,
to avoid the suffering of Christians throughout history, all you have
to do is compromise. All you have to do is compromise. Part of the history behind this
may well be that the Jews, through their zealous obstinacy, had
won for themselves a peace with Rome. Rome was happy for you
to worship anyone you like as long as you still served the
Roman Empire and you served the Emperor. But the Jews had won
a special dispensation to have a freedom to practice their religion
in the Roman Empire. Those who just preached Jesus
Christ and Him crucified, and the Christians were a gathered
group outside of that, and they wouldn't, the Christians in the
early days of the Church and for the first 300 years, they
wouldn't compromise. Again and again they suffered
persecution. They had a simple test for some
of them. All you had to do is just drink
a little bit of wine and put a little bit of incense on some
sort of altar as some way of honouring the Emperor. And then
you could go off. You could turn around and go
off to church and you could do whatever you like in church as
long as you obeyed the Emperor, as long as you did that little
bit. But God's children, God's children
in those days died. They died under those Roman Emperors. They died rather than giving
any allegiance to the Caesars at all. But there was a way out,
wasn't there? There was a way out where you
could claim to be following the Lord Jesus and still be part
of that peace that the Romans had with the Jews, and that was
that you put people back under the law, and you circumcise them,
and you say, well, we're Jews. We're Jews, and we are just Jews
who practice Christian activities. People talk a lot about these
days, don't they, about the Judeo-Christian ethic. The reality is that if
it's a Judeo, it is not Christian, and if it's Christian, it's not
Judeo at all. God's children are made by the
grace of God not to be compromises. If any man preaches the cross
of Christ, he will be persecuted, and persecuted by zealous religious
people. As Paul said in Galatians 5,
if I yet preach circumcision, then the scandal of the cross
is ceased. They constrain you to be circumcised,
only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of
Christ." And then Paul describes them. They are compromisers,
and then in verse 13, they are compromisers and hypocrites. That's what the Word of God says
about them, isn't it? Verse 13. For neither they themselves
who are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised,
that they may glory in your flesh. The reality is that everyone,
anyone, you ever meet who can speak to you of anything that
they have done, any spiritual achievement that they have done
with their hands, is a liar and a hypocrite. their goodness. They come with their goodness
and their obedience and their morality and God says they are
wearing a mask. They are wearing a mask. That's what hypocrisy is. It's
to wear a mask. It's to present a face of being
something when really underneath that is not the case at all. They don't keep the law. They never have kept the law. They think that they have, and
they are deluded and deceivers. They are actors. There is no truth in them. The Spirit is not in them. If
you are led of the Spirit, you are not under the law. If you put people under the law,
you are not led of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God honours
the Lord Jesus Christ. We have kept the law, brothers
and sisters. He has kept it for us. It's Christ and Him alone and
Christ and nothing else. It's not Christ plus anything
else. He is our atonement. Christ crucified is our atonement. His obedience is our righteousness. And our works Our works have
nothing to do with our acceptance before God. We're accepted in
the Beloved. We're accepted in the Beloved.
We're not accepted in the Beloved and then a little bit more accepted
because we do something. We are complete in Him. We're
not complete and then we can polish completeness. You can't
make perfection any more than perfection. All of the scriptures bear witness. to the glory of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Those that put people back under
the law have neither met him or know him, and they do not
know themselves." The Declaration on the Mount
of Transfiguration. Five living people witnessed
the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration.
Five living people. It was Peter, James and John
and Moses and Elijah. Now what brought Moses and Elijah
back to earth? And what were they talking about
when they came back to earth? What was their testimony? And behold, there talked with
him two men, which were Moses and Elias, who appeared in glory
and spoke of his decease, which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. That's what people came back
from heaven to earth to bear witness to. That's what Moses
was bearing witness to. And then in that glorious moment,
where did they go? They disappeared from sight. Moses had finished and all, the
only one left there before Peter, James and John was the Lord Jesus
Christ. to bring Moses back up again
is to deny what Moses said he was talking about on that mountain. It's remarkable, isn't it? It's
a decease which he should accomplish. It was a death that he should
accomplish. Our great God in Christ accomplishing
all of the salvation of all of God's children completely and
forever. It's God in Christ making peace,
reconciling himself and chosen sinners. That's what he has accomplished
by his death, isn't it? It's God in Christ in his substitutionary
sacrifice. He took my place, Isaiah 53,
we've just read it. And it's God in Christ making
a once for only offering for sin. Why on earth would anyone
other than someone deceived want to turn from that Christ? So these men were preaching Jesus. They must have been preaching
Him from the Old Testament, and yet they denied the very essence
of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. They desire to have you circumcised. They desire to have you join
with them in their law keeping. And circumcision of course is
but an entry in to the obedience of the whole law. You go back
to the law in one tiny place and you go back to it in every
aspect of all of your salvation and all of your relationship
with God. And when you go back to it, you have no Christ. That's why it's so serious, isn't
it? Paul is deeply troubled. Paul is greatly confident that
our great God would move the hearts of these Galatians. They
want to have you circumcised that they may glory in your flesh.
You and I have been involved in religion with that, unbeknownst
to us in many ways, was but a great description of religious activity,
isn't it? Look how God is using me to change
these people's lives. Look at all this work that I
am doing. You better do it as well. Look
how I'm getting these people to be more devoted to reading
their scriptures, more devoted to their wives and their family.
Look at this. As Henry Mahan said, every religious
person glories and rejoices in something. These false teachers
glory in the flesh, in the outward form, in the noise they make,
in the work they do, and in the souls they have won. Religious activity is always
external, always done to be seen, always done in a way which is
compelling and constraining people. I don't have the energy to do
that, and those who have the Gospel have no desire to do it
either. The Gospel of God is the power
of God under salvation, and our Gospel is the power of God under
sanctification as well. In contrast to all of that, Paul
makes this great statement, doesn't he? But God forbid, may it never
be, is what he's saying. May it never happen to me. May I never be joined with them. May the Lord protect me from
ever being part of that again. God forbid that I should glory. The word glory means to boast.
It means to rejoice in. It's what you have confidence
in. It's the object of your boasting.
It's what you give credit to. It's remarkable, isn't it? how
the religious world responds. You know what they cling to when
you take it away from them. You know how much they cling
to it and how much it is their confidence, it is their glory,
it is their boasting when you remove it from them, when you
remove their moral virtue from them and tell them that all they
have ever done and all they can ever do is sin. You remove their
religious attainments from them. You remove their devotion, their
learning, their morality, and you see how they respond, and
you'll know, you'll know where, and you'll know to whom their
glory belongs. I love what William Gadsby said.
He said, when God brings Christ and the sinner together, there
is an alarming blaze of the whole of the sinner's lumber. All of
what you have built as the edifice of your life is burnt up. That's what Isaiah did when he
met the Lord, isn't it? He says, I'm undone. It means
that I'm unraveled. All of what made Isaiah, in all
of what his remarkable activities were beforehand, All of that
was just unraveled. He had seen the Lord Jesus Christ. He'd seen Him high lifted up. He'd seen Him upon His throne. He'd seen Him in His temple. God forbid, may it never be that
I should glory in anything of my flesh." When you think of
Paul, what remarkable opportunities he had to glory. What remarkable
opportunities he had to glory. In Philippians 3 he gives the
list of his category, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, tribe of Benjamin. He was one of the two tribes
that didn't fall into apostasy with the top ten tribes of the
northern part of Israel. There he was, a Pharisee. There
he was, trained by Gamaliel. There he was, this remarkably
brilliant man, the like of which the earth has seldom seen. Remarkably brilliant man. He
had all of that, and then, having been converted He then had, by
the grace of God, this remarkable ministry of proclaiming the gospel
throughout Turkey, and Greece, and Italy, and Jerusalem, and
the places in between. And he got to write scripture,
brothers and sisters. He got to write scripture. He had a lot to glory in before
he met the Lord Jesus Christ. He had a lot to glory in afterwards. God forbid, God forbid that I
should glory in anything. Not in any of his achievements,
any of his attainments, any of his learning, any of his religious
activities. He glories in one thing. He glories in the cross. Faith. The faith that God had
given him had brought him to the Lord Jesus Christ and brought
him to his feet. And in him he now saw all of
his life, all of his hope. Faith had brought him to cling
to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's interesting, isn't it, what
he goes on to say. But God forbid that I should
glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. He could have
said, couldn't he, God forbid that I should glory save in the
person of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he did glory in his person. He could have said, and God forbid
that I should glory in the life of Christ. He did glory in his
life. But he says, God forbid that
I should glory except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is where he found his confidence,
which is why in 1 Corinthians 2 he said when he went to those
intelligent Greek Worldly people, with all of their wisdom, he
sought to know two things amongst them, which is Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. That's all he wanted to know.
And he says in verse 18 of that same chapter, for the preaching
of the cross is foolish, is to them which that perish foolishness. But unto us which are saved it
is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy
the wisdom of the wise and I will bring to nothing the understanding
of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the disputer of this
world? Hath not God made foolish the
wisdom of this world? For that after in the wisdom
of God, the world by wisdom, the world with all of its wisdom
knew not God, it pleased God. by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign and
the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. Unto the Jews a stumbling block,
and unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called,
both Jews and Greek, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom
of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men. And
the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling,
brethren, that not many wise men are after the flesh, not
many mighty and not many noble are called." While I'm on that
verse, there's a remarkable story of one of the queens of England,
and she was asked what she was thankful for. She said, I'm very
thankful for the letter M. Because God could have written
not any wise after the flesh, not any mighty, not any noble. She said, I love the letter M. I love the letter M. But God
has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound
the things that are mighty. And the base things of the world
and the things which are despised has God chosen, yea, and the
things which are not to bring to naught the things that are. The result of all of this, to
put human wisdom where it really belongs, in the rubbish bin. to bring to naught the things
that are that, verse 29, no flesh, no flesh should glory in his
presence. No flesh will ever glory in the
presence of God. Flesh glories only when it's
not in the presence of God. But of him of Him, of His work
alone, are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us. Wisdom. A simple childlike faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ makes you the wisest person on planet
earth. A simple childlike trust They
can write all their books and have all their philosophy. A
simple childlike faith makes you the wisest person in the
world. You are in Christ Jesus made
of us wisdom and righteousness. You have the very righteousness
of God. Let other men parade any righteousness
they like. God's children by faith. have
the very righteousness of God, and sanctification. God's children,
by simple faith in the Lord Jesus, are as holy as God is holy. He cannot add to it, and God
won't let it be taken from His children. And redemption. that as it is written, as according
as it is written, he that glories, let him glory in the Lord, let
him glory in who the Lord Jesus is, let him boast, let him find
his confidence there, let him rest in who the Lord Jesus Christ
is. God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, for
those of us who know anything of it, the cross is not referring
to that piece of wood. In fact, it's more likely that
it was a pole rather than a cross. Crosses came into being, it seems,
in about the 3rd century, not earlier. Deuteronomy talks about
those who hung on a tree. But every time you see one of
those wooden crosses, you're seeing a bit of idolatry. And
if you have any jewellery, do as Hezekiah did with the serpent
of brass. Anyone looked to be worshipping
it, he ground it up, and pulled it away as Noah did the golden
calf at the foot of Mount Sinai. It's not the sign of the cross.
You see these footballers doing this stupid nonsense, picking
up a piece of grass and somehow blessing themselves before they
run onto a football. It's ridiculous, isn't it? It's nonsense. It's
pagan idolatry. And it's not the symbol of the
cross. It's not the sign of the cross. What is Paul meaning? What does God, the Holy Spirit,
want us to take away from these verses? It is, of course, a reference
to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And of course there are
so many things about the cross. Obviously it was prophesied,
we read in Isaiah 53 and the Old Testament from Genesis 1
to Malachi is speaking about the Lord Jesus Christ and Him
crucified everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of prophecies
of the Lord Jesus Christ. But there is of course the fact
of the cross, isn't there? In Galatians 3.13, Christ hath
redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for
us. For it is written, Cursed is
everyone that hangeth on a tree. In preparation for this I actually
read the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion again and it's quite
remarkable and astounding to me that there is this event which
is at the centre of all of human history. All of the history of
this universe revolves around that one particular event, everything. in time revolves around that
one man. And yet when you read the New
Testament accounts, it's just given in the most matter of fact
account. There's not one hint of emotion
involved in it. There's not one hint, is there?
Just read what they said. Matthew, and they crucified him. Luke, when they had crucified
him, there they crucified him, where they crucified him. It
is just put there as a simple fact of history, as if in a sense
people's response to it is left between them and God. As you know, lamentation says
in a Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? It is made to be nothing to so
many that pass by. It speaks of our Lord Jesus.
It speaks of the historic reality of it. It speaks of course of
the intensity of the pain. The Romans who were no strangers
to cruelty and suffering, when it came to the cross they had
to find another word to describe pain. And it's our word, excruciating. It was invented as a means of
describing the pain of the cross. But when it comes to the cross,
we are talking about something regarding the Lord Jesus Christ
which is much, much more, more and more remarkable. We read
in Isaiah 53 that the Lord was pleased to bruise him. The essence
of the cross is the transaction between God and God. That's the essence of the cross,
that the Father was crushing His Son, and the Father had laid
on Him the iniquity of us all. One of the problems, as Peter's
editorial in the Focus magazine mentioned, is that we live in
sin as fish live in the salty water of the sea. And it becomes
so much around us and in us that it becomes no big deal. And it's only on rare occasions
does anything of its deceit, its offence, its consequences,
the utter vileness of it, The utter vileness of one made in
the image of God, treating God's person, God's possessions, God's
gifts, God's word, God's son with such utter contempt. When he was made sin, he bore in his body on that tree
all of the iniquity and all of the filth of all of God's children. And when God found sin on His
Son, His Holiness demanded that He be punished. He suffered all
the wrath of hell's punishment. My God, my God, why hast Thou
forsaken me? He was crushed by his father's
holy justice until his life was extinguished. There was no life
like his life, and there was no death like his death. And he was there, alone, alone,
bearing all of that in his own body on the tree. Jesus Christ, according to the
Word of God, was made sin. He was made sin. He was made
to bear the sins of His people. He did it willingly. He did it
for His Father's glory and for the love of His people. the cross that Paul is speaking
here. It's the whole counsel of God. And the cross is the place where
God reveals himself with the greatest clarity in all of creation. That's where he is exposed, as
it were, before men. And the cross is where we are
exposed before God to be what we really are. When Paul speaks of the cross,
he's talking about the glorious Gospel, the soul-saving doctrine
of the cross. He's talking about blood atonement. He's talking about a legal putting
away of sins. He's talking about substitutionary
redemption. He's talking about free justification. He's talking about the full revelation
of our God's saving activities. He washed us in His blood. He saved us by His death. God put our sins on Him, and
God has, in remarkable wisdom, found a way to honour every attribute
of God, and yet take sin away from the children of His love,
such that God doesn't even remember it anymore, and it's gone. You
see on the cross, we see all of the character of God in full
display. We see His holiness. If you want to see the holiness
of God, you go to the cross of the Lord Jesus. You see the holiness
of God, His hatred of sin and His necessity of it being punished
completely. God is holy. and you'll see the
holiness of God in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. People talk
about the sovereignty of God. You want to see the sovereignty
of God, you go to the cross of the Lord Jesus. He was put to
death because of the determinate counsel and full knowledge of
God. It was no accident. It was purposed by God. Our Lord Jesus set His face like
a flint. He was the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world. Literally He was the Lamb having
been slain from the foundation of the world. Every divine sovereign
purpose of God has its culmination on the cross. It wasn't an accident
of history. It wasn't men who somehow overpowered
God. It was the sacrifice of a willing
substitute. We see the love of God. If you
want to see the love of God, you go to the cross of the Lord
Jesus Christ. For God so loved the world. He so loved the world. I love the way the Shulamite
in the Song of Solomon is caused to speak of the love of God.
the love of her bridegroom, she says, set me as a seal upon thine
heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death,
jealousy is cruel as the grave, the coals thereof are the coals
of fire which has a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench
love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the
substance of his house for love, it would be utterly condemned,
it would be treated with contempt. Many waters cannot quench this
love, neither floods drown it. So much for that pathetic love
of God which is paraded around in the religious world today.
A love that loves, but can't even love people out of hell. A love that loves and can't save
them. Can't save them from themselves. Who is sovereign in that situation? Who is sitting on a throne in
that situation? We speak of a love of God that
is real love. Love that gets its desired object. A love that's driven by holiness
and sovereignty. Where do we see the grace of
God? Where do we see the free, unmerited favour of God for sinners? You go to the cross to see the
grace of God. As I said earlier, we see the
wisdom of God. We see His wisdom and His power. God, what remarkable power. In Ephesians 2, in those prayers,
He likens the power of raising the Lord Jesus Christ to being
something greater than the power of creating the world. What power is involved. in putting
sin on his son and dealing with it and him being raised to glory
again. God found a way to be satisfied
and for sin to be dealt with and treated as it really is in
all of its vileness. the justice of God. Our great
God will not let sin go unpunished for any reason whatsoever. We see the eternality of God
and remarkably and wonderfully we see the great mystery on the
cross of the union of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul spoke of it
so wonderfully, didn't he? I am crucified with Christ. When he was raised from the dead,
I was raised from the dead. God is satisfied, perfectly satisfied
with his son's sacrifice and he's perfectly satisfied with
all of his people. He's got nothing to stop him
loving his people passionately with all Our sins are washed white as
snow. We are accepted in the Beloved. Perfectly accepted. We were there. Brothers and sisters in Christ,
we were crucified with Him. It speaks of a union. It speaks of success. So the true and living God is
not known apart from the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. For
those who don't and haven't been led by God and brought to bow
before the truth of the scriptures describing His Son and what He
did on the cross, don't know God. You cannot know Him except
you know Him in His Son on the cross. As I said, we will only know Him when we
see Him crucified. We will only know ourselves when
we see what we did to the Saviour and what God did to the Saviour. taking away and dealing with
all the sins of his people. And it's only the preaching of
the Gospel that can unmask people. It's only telling the truth of
what happened at the cross will take the boasting glory in the
flesh away from people. Where do God's children find
confidence? Where is your boasting? Where
do you find your rest? You see, you'll only glory in
the cross if you actually glory in an accomplished Atonement. You can only glory in the cross
when you glory in the cross where the Lord Jesus really did sovereignly
reign and really did put away the sins of all his people and
really did, again and again, as Paul has described his work
in Galatians and throughout the rest of the New Testament, He
gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from this
present evil world according to the will of God and our Father.
He comes to His people and He reveals Himself and reveals what
He did at the cross because of His revelation. No wonder Paul
said, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should
not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been evidently
set forth, crucified among you? He spoke again and again of particular
redemption, of particular attainment, of successful attainment. What
does he say in Galatians 3.13, we read it again, Christ hath
redeemed us. Not that he tried to do something,
not that he created an opportunity, he hath redeemed us from the
curse of the law being made a curse for us. For it is written, cursed
is everyone that hangeth on a tree. Our great Saviour really saved. you call his name Jesus, he will
save his people from their sins. That's why Moses and Elijah on
the Mount of Transfiguration are talking about a decease that
he should accomplish at Jerusalem. I love how Hebrews speaks of
him, doesn't it? When he had by himself purged
our sins. He sat down. He sat down. The work was finished and we
had nothing to do with it. It was a perfectly satisfactory
atonement for our sins 2000 years ago. My works have got nothing
to do with it. My good deeds add to it or detract from it. I wonder why Isaiah said so beautifully,
I think, For thy maker is mine husband, the Lord of hosts is
his name, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of
the whole earth, shall he be called. So the cross is everything
in our salvation. It's everything in our salvation.
We are elected in Him, We're justified in Him. We are redeemed
in Him on the cross. We are called by Him. We are
preserved. We are granted faith to look
to Him because of His work. And everyone that's in heaven,
everyone that's in heaven is glorying in one thing. They're
glorying in a Lamb who still now bears the worms of their
cross and will bear them for eternity. It's the cross, to go back to
Galatians 6, it's the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul is again saying there
is an hour. There is an hour for whom he
died. He was successful in what he
did and he is our Lord. He is God in human flesh. God was in Christ reconciling
the world to himself. The Lord of creation The Lord
of Providence, the Lord in whose hands is salvation and who holds
this world and all of its people in His hands. He is sovereign. That's the question, isn't it?
Where do we find our confidence when everything else is stripped
away, when we are battered by life in this world, when we are
beaten down by circumstances, where do we rest? Where do we
lay our heads at the end of our day? Where do we find a place,
a rock, a rock that's higher than ourselves? Where do you rejoice? Where do
you find your rejoicing? In the quiet moments when it's
just you and God. Where do you find your rejoicing?
That's the same word that Paul used in Philippians 3, isn't
it? It's glory. It's the same as rejoicing in
Philippians 3. We are the circumcision. We are
the true Jews. which worshipped God in the Spirit
and rejoiced in Christ Jesus, glory in Christ Jesus, and had
no confidence in the flesh. God has ordained it that His
people will be a remnant. God has ordained it God has ordained it that His
people will bear the cross for Christ's sake. God has ordained
it that those who are His will find, as He promised, that His
yoke is easy and His burden is light. And we'll have a glorying
that the world won't know about. As he says in Romans, we glory
in tribulation. He glories in his infirmities
and he glories in Christ Jesus on the cross. It's where all
of his hope is, where all of his confidence is, it's where
all of his rejoicing is, it's where all of his hope is. By whom? The world is crucified
unto me and I unto the world." It's not his work. The world
becomes a crucified thing and the world treats me as a crucified
thing. That's how Paul lived his life. Glory in the cross. May God grant
us by his sovereign grace and mercy that we would find ourselves
a brethren of our brother Paul.