Let's turn back to John chapter
12. That was a very appropriate scripture
for our text. John 12. The Lord speaking says in verse
27, Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour,
but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. What is soul trouble? What is
soul trouble? When the spirit is well within, you can endure some outward affliction. But when the soul is troubled,
is your soul troubled? Really troubled? It's a whole different story. Scripture says, a merry heart
doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dryeth the bones. Proverbs 18.14 said, the spirit
of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can
bear? A ship can endure stormy winds
and waves that beat upon the outside of it, but then when
the waves start to come into the ship, it starts to sink. It's impossible for us to comprehend
our Lord's soul trouble. Scripture calls our sufferings
light afflictions which is but for a moment. And it seems anything
but light to us while it's happening. But it's light in comparison
to Christ and the soul trouble that He suffered. The best we
can do to try to enter into what our Lord's soul trouble is, is
to try to think of the very worst soul trouble you've ever experienced. I mean just the worst. And then magnify that and try
to imagine it magnified thousands of times and you still fall short
of it. You and I really haven't suffered
soul trouble. What was our Lord's soul trouble? He said, now is my soul trouble. Our Lord knew beforehand everything
He would bear on the cross. The nearer He came to the cross,
the more the trouble increased. He said in Luke 12.50, I have
a baptism to be baptized with and how am I straightened until
it be accomplished? The night he was betrayed, while
he sat at the table with his apostles, when his thought turned
to the betrayer, it says, he was troubled in spirit and testified,
saying verily, verily, I say unto you that one of you shall
betray me. He came to the garden of Gethsemane,
And the scripture said he began to be sore amazed and to be very
heavy. And he said, my soul is exceeding
sorrowful unto death. So sorrowful he was about to
die right then in the garden and being in an agony He prayed
more earnestly, and His sweat was as it were great drops of
blood falling down to the ground. And then on the cross, these are the words of our Lord.
Psalm 77.2, He says, In the day of my trouble, I sought the Lord. My sore ran
in the night and ceased not. It was black. It was darkness,
darkest night when our Lord suffered. My soul refused to be comforted. My soul refused to be comforted. And I remembered God and was
troubled. I complained and my spirit was
overwhelmed. He says in Psalm 88 too, let
my prayer come before thee. Let my prayer come before thee. Incline thine ear unto my cry,
for my soul is full of troubles. And my life draweth nigh unto
the grave. I have no doubt that Job was
inspired by the Spirit of God even when he was suffering. And
he suffered greater things than most anybody we know. But these
were the words prophetic of our Lord as well. Let my prayer come
before thee. Incline thine ear unto my cry,
for my soul is full of troubles. My life draweth nigh unto the
grave. Well, what troubled the soul
of our Lord so? What troubled his spirit, his
inward, very soul so? The Lord Jesus Christ is holy
God. He's holy God. He's perfect man who knew no
sin. Now he really did hate sin with
a perfect hatred. You and I don't really know sin. We sin when we claim to be against
sin. And that's just so. We don't
hate sin like we ought. We don't hate sin like we want
to. We really don't know sin. We like it when somebody else
is sinned and we can feel like we're not as bad as they are.
We don't know our sin. We prove that. The spotless Lamb of God knew
no sin. And He hated sin. Perfectly. And yet for a worm like you and
a worm like me, the spotless Lamb of God gave
Himself to be made sin for us. There's a huge difference between
being a sinner and being made sin. A sinner is what you and I are. A sinner is somebody who rebels
against God. That's not what our Lord did.
Our Lord Jesus willingly presented Himself spotless, holy, with
no sin, and was made sin for us. He created the world He was standing
on. He gave the law and the prophets
and the ceremony. He created everything the temple
was made out of and provided the lambs, everything they were
using in religion, He gave it to them. And because they were going to
have to humble themselves and trust Him, they want to kill
Him. Not to stop the charade, but
to keep on doing it. Pretending like they righteous
and holy. And so concerned for God's glory. Pride. And yet for some of those very
sinful wretches, our Lord was made sin. In a load of sin, the Lord hath
laid on him the iniquity of all His people. Just a load of sin. And our sins
became His, so much so that they were His sins. Psalm 38.2, He said, Thine arrows,
speaking to the Father, Thine arrows stick fast in Me. Thy
hand presseth me sore. There's no soundness in my flesh
because of Thine anger. Neither is there any rest in
my bones because of my sin. For mine iniquities are gone
over my head. As a heavy burden, they're too
heavy for me." That had to be so. It had to be so. He's manifesting God's holiness,
God's righteousness. He's manifesting how God is just
and how He's the justifier. And before God would mete out
justice on Him, He had to be made sin for His people. In order for Him to make us the
righteousness of God in Him, He who knew no sin had to be
made sin for us. That's what caused our Redeemer
to be in agony of soul and to sweat blood in the Garden of
Gethsemane. Scripture says you've not yet
resisted unto blood striving against sin. Next time when we
get proud that we haven't sinned as others, you haven't resisted
unto blood striving against sin. He did. That's a little bit more
than God just treating him as if he was sinning. What troubled our Lord so? Each
child of God has the love of God shed abroad in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit. And nothing comforts you like
the communion you have when you have God's presence and you know
God's presence. That comforts you. The whole
world can be turned against you. But as long as you know you're
cleansed by the blood of Christ so that you have peace with God
and know He's all you hope, you can bear the outward. It's not
easy. But you can bear the ugly faces
and the ugly looks and the scowls. You can bear that. You can bear being forsaken and
left alone. You can bear that. Christ bore
that. He could bear that. What was
it that troubled his soul? It was that when he bore the
sin of his people, after he was made to bear the sin of his people,
then he was made a curse for us. Made a curse for us. He knew the love of the Father
perfectly and He loved the Father perfectly. You know how troubling in your soul it is
if your peace with God is interrupted. But we don't love Him perfectly.
We don't know Him perfectly like Christ did. Christ loved Him
perfectly. And He loved Christ perfectly.
And the Lord knew that. He had that full, perfect love
of the Father constantly. And yet He knew when He was made
sin, He would be made a curse for us and He'd be cut off. That's what being made a curse
is. To be cut off from the Father He loved. He knew He would bear
that thick darkness of the light of His Father's countenance being
turned from Him. I know that folks get all in
these debates over what does it mean that Christ was made
sin. But the Lord didn't infuse something into Adam when he was
made sin, when he became sin. He took something from him. He
took His presence, His Spirit. And our Lord on the cross cried
out, O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before
Thee. Let my prayer come before Thee. Incline Thine ear unto my cry,
for my soul is full of troubles. And my life draweth nigh unto
the grave. I am counted with them that go
down into the pit. I am as a man that hath no strength,
free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave,
whom thou rememberest no more, and they are cut off from thy
hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest
pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lies hard upon me,
and thou hast afflicted me with all thy ways. Again, these were words that Job spoke,
but they really are the words of our Lord. Whether he spoke these words
or not is not the thing. This is what he was bearing.
The arrows of the Almighty are within me. The poison whereof drinketh up
my spirit. The terrors of God do set themselves
in array against me. The terrors, the arrows of God
have drinked up my spirit. That's why he said, my moisture
is turned into drought. My spirit is dried up. This is when he cried out, my
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from
helping me and from the words of my roaring? There's no doubt
that the bodily sufferings our Lord bore were excruciating. You just read the things he bore
and they had to be just excruciating. Sinners have borne those things.
I mean, there's been martyrs that have suffered a lot of cruel
deaths outwardly. But this was far, far worse.
This was Him satisfying the justice of God. This was Him bearing
what justice demands of His people. This is being made sin for us.
This is being made a curse for us. This is being made to bear
the wrath of God instead of His people. And right there that day, All this crowd of peoples around
and they're laughing and they're joking and they're seeing friends
they ain't seen in over a year. And they're all going through
their little mock thing like they're worshipping God and their
religion. And this all came upon the heart
of our Redeemer. And He said, right there in the
midst of all of it, Now is my soul troubled. But I want you to behold the
faith of our Lord Jesus by whom we are saved. He said, now is
my soul troubled and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto
this hour. What was the cause? Father, glorify thy name. That was the cause. That was
the cause. The holiness of God. Do you ever think about standing before God. We won't be near as cocky and
puffed up when we stand before Him. We're going to be on our
face. Everybody that ever faced Him
had their face. The holiness of God. The wisdom of God. The longsuffering of God. The mercy of God. The grace of God. The justice of God. The wrath
of God. The righteousness of God. That's
the glory we see on Calvary's Cross. It's the only place where we
behold God's glory. manifest perfectly, fully, totally,
completely, is in Christ and Him crucified on Calvary's tree. And for this cause, glorify the
name of God, he said, I came unto this hour. You want to talk
about the government being upon his shoulder. That's the government
that was on his shoulder. To manifest the glory of God
in burying all the sin of his people, being made a curse for
his people, enduring the hell that justice demanded of his
people, to manifest God's glory in the
salvation of a bunch of hell-deserving maggots. That's what he came forth to
do. For this cause came I unto this
hour, Father, glorify thy name. I wonder how many hours there
will have been when the last one ticks off. From the beginning to the end,
I wonder how many hours will have rolled by in time. And all were made for that hour. All before looked to that hour
and all after looked back to that hour. That's why God created
the world. It was for the Father's glory
that our Lord Jesus set His face like a flint and faced His cruel self-righteous
tormentors, and went to that bitter, shameful cross, it was
to glorify the name of His Father. It was for His Father's glory
that He said... I mean, He could have called at
any time And he said, the Father would send me legions of angels
to deliver me. He didn't have to go to that
cross. He didn't have to bear any of that. But it was for the Father's glory.
And he said, not my will, but thine be done. He glorified God's name. He alone has glorified God's
name. Because he finished the work
the Father gave him to accomplish. He absolutely finished it. He
magnified the law, made it honorable, So that sinner, you sitting here
today that trust the Lord with your pitiful faith, with faith
so full of sin that if we really could see it, and as God sees
it, we'd probably say it's no faith at all. And yet God says, you have thoroughly,
fully, completely honored His law throughout the totality of
your life. You didn't do that. You'll never
do that. You'll never get one ounce of
glory for that. Ever. He did that. He did that. That's how you see depravity
without it just being a box you check off. Oh, He said depravity.
We covered that today. It's knowing you won't ever,
ever, ever stand in anything you've ever done. That right
there, what He did is the glory that glorified the Father. Right
there. You see our depravity when you
see Christ and what He did for His people. He justified each one that the
Father entrusted to Him. That means, if we could see this
image of a book that God speaks about, and He just knows it,
but if you saw a book in glory, and you could look into that
book and see all your sins, how big do you think that book
would be? How big do you think your book would be? Just your
book, not your neighbor's, just yours. And God says, this is what being
justified is. There's no record here of any
sin, ever. All I have here is records of
righteousness, and perfect righteous deeds, and perfect love, and
perfect love to me and to my people. That's all I have here. That's being justified, made
righteous before God. And he suffered all in perfect
faith to God without one hint of unbelief. Not a hint of unbelief. Not even
when He was on that cross and He was bearing that darkness
and there was no answer from the Father. And you and I, when we don't
feel like we have God's presence, we have it. We really do. It's
not like the God is never turned away from His child from God's
point of view toward us because He's reconciled His people to
Himself and His Son. It's only from our perception.
But our Lord was cut off. I don't know how that could be,
but He was cut off. And even when He's cut off, there's
not a hint, not even a hint of unbelief in Him. Perfect fidelity
to the Father. Perfect faith that glorified
the name of God. We won't get any glory for our
faith either. We don't want any, do we? You want to trust that God's
going to save you because of your faith, because of the quality
and the degree of your faith. If you do, face your salvation. Face not our salvation. Faith
just merely It's just believe in God. Trust in the Lord. But His is perfect. Perfect. It's that faith by which
we're justified. That faith. That's why we believe
in Him that we might be justified by the faith of Him. And He had perfect, perfect,
perfect unwavering love to the Father and to His people. I know we won't get any glory for that. And because our Redeemer glorified
the Father so, the Father glorified our Redeemer. He says there in
verse 28, Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both
glorified it and will glorify it again. Pink had a good observation
on this. He said three times the Father
spoke audibly unto the Son. This is where he said, I have
glorified it. It's a lot more than that. I
mean, He's glorified the Son in the heart of everybody He
saved from the beginning. Glorified Him in all the shadows
and types and all of His providence. But speaking from heaven, this
is what He said, and this is good. He said, He did it at the
beginning, in the middle, and at the end of His ministry. And in each case, it was in view
of His death. At the Jordan, when He was being
baptized, Christ went down symbolically into the place of death. The
Father spoke from heaven. On the Holy Mount, Moses and
Elijah had talked with Him of His decease. And He spoke from
heaven, glorified the Son. And here, the Lord Jesus had
just announced that His hour was at hand. All three times
the glory had to do with His death. And this is why those
in whom He has revealed His glory are so taken up with the preaching
of the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is why. This is why the Gospel never
gets old to His people. While the Pharisees are saying,
tell us how good we are and tell us what we can do, God's people
just want to hear more of the Redeemer. Saying, God forbid that I should
glory, saving the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the
world is crucified unto me and unto the world. And God glorified His name again
when He raised Him from the dead and sat Him at His right hand,
glorified the God-man, glorified, and there all His people are
seated in Him. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Absolutely complete. Right now
our Redeemer is seated there. The Father has glorified His
name because That's how the Father glorified His name in His Son. And He raised Him up glorified,
and we see Him there glorified. This is my beloved Son in whom
I'm well pleased. And here's the Father's Word.
Hear You Him. And every time of soul trouble,
the little thing that we have that can be called soul trouble,
I know it's the worst thing to us we've ever suffered. But this is what He says to us. Hear Christ and run to Christ. In Psalm 77, He said, In the
day of my trouble, I sought the Lord. That's Christ. In the day of my trouble, I sought
the Lord. And that's what He commands us
to do, is to seek His Son, hear His Son, go to His Son. I'm fixing
to tell you some of the strongest meat in the very heart of everything
this book is teaching us right here. I'm not going to say it,
the Father is teaching us. He said, this is my Son, hear
Him. Go to Him. Go to Him. What causes us trouble in spirit?
Let me give you four things and I'll close. Temptations by Satan. The devil's tempting. The devil
was permitted to assault Job. And the devil assaulted Job's
friends as well. And how did he do it? By turning
them against each other. And he did the same thing to
Peter and all the apostles. And here's what Peter learned
from it. Whom resist steadfast in the
faith. That means get to Christ. Knowing,
that means trusting Him, that the very same afflictions are
being accomplished in your brethren. That's the opposite of what Job
and his friends were doing. And that's the opposite of what
the apostles were doing. What they all were doing is what
the apostles were doing. Here's why I'm greater than you
are. How do we do that? I wouldn't
have done what they did. I wouldn't have sinned what they
sinned. You know what the Lord's doing by that? I mean, not the
Lord, the Lord permitted the devil to do by that. Sift us
as wheat. There's only one way to get out
of it. You can't get out of it. I can't get out of it. You can't
get your brother out of it. Nobody can get us out of it,
but Christ. Hear ye Him. The only way to
resist is steadfast in the faith. What does that mean? Peter said,
humbling yourself under the mighty hand of God, casting it all into
His hand. The second way we have soul trouble
is because of our ignorance. Now, there's no peace in will
worship. Might as well forget that. Conditional election don't
have any peace in it. Redemption for all and yet for
none won't give anybody peace. A new birth that depends on the
infant to birth themselves, that won't give anybody peace. But
far too often, believers lean to our own understanding and
God says, run to Christ. Hear my son. He's glorified me. Now you go trust Him. Trust in the Lord with all thine
heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding, and all thy
ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thou thy path. The third way we get into soul
trouble is our sin. We sin against God in thought,
in word, in deed. We drink iniquity like water. And sometimes we sin terribly. And most of the time God lets
you know right away and you have soul trouble. But sometimes He
lets you go a long time. And quite frankly, if He doesn't save us out of
it, we'll perish. But there is one fountain for
cleansing. Just one. Just one. Go to Christ, make a straight
path to Christ, confessing everything you are, everything you've done
to Christ and Christ alone. And beg Him for mercy. That's what you need to do. That's
what I need to do. There's never a moment we don't. And He says, I delight to show
mercy. I delight in it. He's not going
to put a condition on you. He's not going to give you some
hoops to jump through. He's not going to withhold it
from you. Right then He'll give you mercy. Right then. Because
He said, I'm not like you. And He purges your conscience
and He's faithful and just to do so. He's faithful and just
to do so. And worst of all is our unbelief. Worst of all is hearing all of
this and not believing God. Thinking we know better. When we look to ourselves, when
we look to providence, when we look to the wind, we look to
the waves, they're weights. Just weighting us down and weighting
us down until unbelief is strong. And just besets us right out
of the way. There's only one way to be saved
from it. It's the same way every one of God's saints throughout
the Scriptures was saved. And that is through faith in
Christ. Go to Christ. Go to Christ. And
he says, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of
witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does
so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that
He has set before us with all the bumps and bruises and hills
and valleys and scrapes and cuts and offenses and everything,
because He set them all before us. Run it with patience. looking
to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy
that was set before Him, the joy of glorifying the Father,
you really want to glorify Him? You're really concerned about
His glory? Go to Him and trust Him. And treat one another like we
really do. He despised the shame, but He
bore it for us and now He sat down there and He's working things
out. And He's not going to let one
of His people perish, brethren. He's going to keep you coming
to Him. When Christ's soul was troubled,
He looked to the Father and the Father commands us to look to
His Son and hear Him. Because He's all your need. He's
all your need. The cure for soul trouble is
always and only by God glorifying His name, by shining into our
hearts to give the excellency of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Christ Jesus. When He does that, all
is well. All is well. It's well with my
soul. It don't matter how the waves
are beating on the ship. All is well with my soul. Amen. Father, we ask You to bless this
world. Make us really look to Christ. Make us stop looking
at others. Make us stop condemning. Make
us condemn ourselves. Break our bones, Lord. Just break
it all. Break us down. Either bring us
to Christ's feet or just Turn us face down in the dirt. Lord, we need you to save. Whatever you have to do, Lord,
we ask you to do it for Christ's sake. Amen.