Alright brethren, let's go back
there to Isaiah 53. I want to try to bring a message this morning
that will help us to remember our Lord as we observe His table. And I just want to preach from
one verse, Isaiah 53 verse 12. If we go back to eternity and
we listen to God the Father and His dear Son in a covenant to redeem His people, this is
what we would hear right here. God the Father promised His Son,
I will divide you a portion with the great and you'll be given
the glory to divide the spoiled with the strong, with those that
you've made strong in your righteousness. I'll give you the greatest glory
in heaven. You'll be the greatest in heaven.
All will come and bow down and praise you and I'll give you
the glory to divide all the victory with your people. And here are
the conditions the Son of God in human flesh would have to
accomplish You must make intercession for
the transgressors. How so, Father? You must bear
the sin of many. And then what? Then you'll be
numbered with the transgressors. You'll be counted with the transgressors. Then what? you'll pour out your soul unto
death. And the Son of God agreed, and
right at that moment, he became the lamb slain from the foundation
of the world. Our Lord Jesus has now risen
victorious, and he has his reward. He's entered into glory. Because
He accomplished the work. He did what He coveted to do
and the Father did what He coveted to do. And our Redeemer is there
victorious now. His name is exalted above every
name. He has all the praise and honor
and glory in heaven. And I can just see our departed
brethren. Right there at His feet. giving
Him all the praise and the honor and the glory, right beside Noah
and Abraham and the Apostle Paul, all bowed down before the Great
One, singing His praises right now. He who is exalted with the greatest
reputation in glory, He who's exalted and has the greatest
reputation in heaven, earth, and hell, the greatest reputation,
the King of kings and the Lord of lords, he earned it. He earned
it by making himself of no reputation
and taking the place of guilty, vile worms like you and me. And eternally redeeming us to
God. That's what He did. There's four
things declared here that our Great Substitute did and they'll
be our divisions and I pray God will give us Grace now to remember
our Lord as we look at these things. Our Lord here begins
at the end. He begins with the pouring out
His soul to death and works back to what the purpose of God was
in it. He begins with He poured out
His soul unto death and He works back to the whole purpose was
He was making intercession for the transgressors. So we're gonna
begin where he begins, with the death, and it says here, here's
the first reason our Redeemer's exalted above all. He hath poured
out his soul unto death. The death of the prince of life. Just think of that. The death
of the prince of life. That's the only way that God's
elect could be saved from this death. That's the only way we
could be given life, is for the prince of life to pour out his
soul unto death as our head, as our surety, as our representative. Our death came by the first Adam,
and so as God purposed it, our life would come by the death
of the last Adam. In the garden, God promised Adam
death when he disobeyed God. He promised him that. It was
not an as if. God knew what was going to take
place, and God worded it that way. He said, of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for
in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And the
moment Adam disobeyed God and he ate of that forbidden fruit,
broke that law, he plunged his dagger into his own heart. and
he plunged a dagger into the heart of all his children. He
killed himself and he killed all his people. Spiritual death
entered in. Separation from God entered in.
And there's nothing any sinner could do about it. No sinner
could save ourselves from that. Nobody. But before that happened
and the eternal purpose of God, God foreordained from everlasting
that he would save his elect from death. He would save His
elect from death. He would save us from that endless
second death, which is just an eternity of suffering, being
separated from the glory of God in darkness. He would save us
from that death, and He foreordained that He would do it. He would
save us by the death of the Prince of Life, dying that death in
our room instead. And that's why we read in the
Scripture, without the shedding of blood, there's no remission
of sin. He doesn't mean just that a few
drops of blood has to be sprinkled out. He means the blood's got
to be drained out every drop till there's no life left. Life
for life, that's what he means. The only way we could live. Are
you a guilty sinner in yourself? Are you a guilty sinner? If God
just saved you, If you were the only sinner God saved, He just
saved you. If He did that without upholding
His justice, in other words, if He'd saved just you without
condemning you to death and making you suffer that eternal death
that you deserve, He'd cease being God. Because He'd cease
being holy. All His attributes would be Destroyed
if he saved one sinner without upholding his justice That's
who he is Holy God God purposed to save a multitude no man can
number a multitude no man can number But the way he would do
this the only way he could do this is God would save them by
Upholding his justice he had to do that He had to honor his
law. He had to condemn the guilty.
That's the only way he could do it. But what wisdom of God to use the death penalty of one
who is both God and man to make justice and mercy meet in harmony. Do you realize when you look
to the cross, you're looking at God's death penalty? That's
what it was. That was God executing his son
on the cross, manifesting how perfectly righteous he is. Manifesting
that God will by no means clear the guilty. Manifesting that
the just judge of heaven and earth always does right. And
at the same time, he was manifesting how wise he is. How He ordained
to make mercy meet with truth. How He ordained to be a just
God and a Savior in that one death on the cross. That's wisdom and power. Never
let the cross of Christ lose this wonder in your heart, brethren. Never grow dull of hearing what
Christ accomplished on Calvary's tree. Never grow dull of hearing
about how he manifests the righteousness of God, how God is just and the
justifier. This is the purpose for which
he created all things. There's where you behold his
glory. But pay attention to this. I want you to get this description
of our substitute's death here. He hath poured out his soul unto
death. You look at a statement like
that and you just sit and think about that statement. He poured
out his soul unto death. It was deliberate. Our substitute
deliberately did this. He deliberately poured out his
soul like a drink offering poured out by the offerer. Like if I
was to take this glass and just pour out every drop of it, he
poured out his soul to God. It was willing. Our Savior said,
nobody takes my life, I lay it down on myself. He was willingly
fulfilling God's will by pouring out his life's blood unto death. It was purpose, purposely done. This was the purpose of God from
eternity. This is what Christ agreed and
entered into the purpose of God with from everlasting. It was purpose. It was not an
accidental spilling of his life, of his soul. It was on purpose.
And it was sacrificial. He didn't pour out just a little. He poured out his soul until
the last drop unto death. And it was a long pour. It was
a long pour. From the moment his life began,
he was pouring out his soul unto death. His sorrow and his trouble didn't
begin in Gethsemane. Our Lord, from the moment he
came into this world, he was troubled and he bore sorrow. He was pouring out his soul unto
death. Every time he healed some sinner physically, he was pouring
out his soul unto death. Every time he healed some sinner,
he was reminded of that shameful baptism that he was going to
have to bear on the cross. Throughout his life, he was touched
with the feeling of our infirmities. He was pained, he was burdened,
he was stressed with the feeling of our infirmities. So much so that it apparently
aged him beyond his 30 years. Thought about that, how the Pharisees
said, you're not yet 50 years old. Why did they say that? He wasn't but in his early 30s.
I'm sure the pain and stress and burden of being touched with
our infirmities as a sinless man in the midst of a sinful
people, what would that do to your body? It was zeal for God's house that
was eating him up. That's what he said. The zeal
of your house is eating me up. His zealous, his jealousy, his
zealously, zealous for God's house, for his people, for his
glory, for the salvation of those he came to save. I realize that
men say it was his death and not his suffering that saved
his people. But what is the second death? Isn't it eternal suffering? That's what it is. It's a death
that never dies. Our Lord was suffering from the
moment He came forth. Our Lord suffered as a man far
more acutely than you and I have ever suffered. He knew no sin. He was burdened
with the horror of sin in ways we can't even imagine. His suffering was real agony.
He was real. He was a real man. His blood
that he sweat in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, that was
real blood. That was real agony. It was soul
suffering. When he was scourged, that was
a whip that had bones in it. And when he was beaten with that,
That was real. That was a real pain. When they
were nailing those spikes, every single time they hammered those
spikes, it sent real pain through our Lord's body. Listen to his description. He
said, I am poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It's melted
in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like
a pot shard. My tongue cleaveth to my jaws. Thou, my God, my Father, thou
has brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have compassed
me. The assembly of the wicked have
enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my
feet. I may tell all my bones and then
what? They look and stare at me. This was entertainment. Do you
see how sinful we are? This was, this was entertainment
to us. To see somebody suffer what they're
suffering and to just stand back and cross our arm and watch. And say, you know what's happening
to him? God's smiting him. He's getting what he deserves.
That's what we did. We esteemed him smitten and afflicted
of God. You know, we're going to take
this broken piece of bread. Our Lord is so kind to us. He
gives us something so simple as a broken piece of bread. A little token to remember. But what a great thing we're
remembering. How he gave himself to be broken
for you, child of God. You know what that is? That's
what breaks our heart. That's what makes a contrite
heart. But this pouring out his soul
unto death went beyond any mere martyr's pain. There's been a
lot of martyrs that suffered. It was way beyond that. It was
a death that he had to permit. He had to permit death to have
a claim on him, because he's sinless. Death had no claim on
him. If you and I mustered up the
courage to lay down our life for one of our brethren, if we
did muster up the courage to do that, all we've done is what
we're gonna do eventually. We just did it a little sooner,
because we deserve to die. Death had no claim on him. Death
had no claim on him. Doesn't that magnify what he
did for us, brethren? He didn't have to die. His death was more than physical
death. It was the second death. It was separation from God. I don't know how he said it. I don't know with what volume
he said it or with what passion he said it. I just can't even
enter into the fact of it when he said, my God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me? People say, well, he didn't bear
hell. That's what hell is, being forsaken
of God. I think it's a shame that self-righteous
men have the audacity to call this licentious doctrine, to
have the audacity to make statements about the gospel of God's free
and sovereign grace, to say, well, if I believe that I was
righteous and holy and that there's no charge the law could bring
against me ever, I'd just live like I wanted to. When the scripture says it's
the goodness of God that leads you to repentance, this is it. This is it right here. It's not
the law that teaches us to live in this world. It's not the law
that's our rule of life that'll make you willing to mourn your
sin and hate your sin and repent from your sin and truly follow
the Lord from a new heart. The law won't do that. You know
what does that? Listen, here's what does it.
The grace of God that bringeth salvation. That's what we're
hearing here now. The grace of God that bringeth
salvation hath appeared to all men teaching us. that denying
ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously,
and godly in this present world. He didn't say the law did that.
He said this grace of God, Christ crucified, that's what teaches
us this. That's what effectually works
it in us. How so? Looking. looking for that blessed
hope and that glorious appearing of the great God, our Savior,
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, who poured out his soul
unto death, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify
unto himself, make a holy people unto himself, a treasured people
unto himself, zealous of good works. It's this message, brethren,
that works that. Is it not? If you have ought against somebody, what is it that's going to make
you come to yourself and not let you keep on in it? Humble yourself to the dust and
say, how can I do this? It's beholding the Lord Jesus
Christ for a vile worm like you, giving himself, pouring out his
soul unto the separation that he endured from God the Father
on your behalf. That's what's going to do it. And I'll tell you something,
if I can hear that and I can hear of this grace of God that
brought salvation to me and gave his only son for me, and this
is what saved me and purified me, and I can go on in my sin
and my rebellion and my hatred and my vile self-righteousness,
I don't know him. This gospel doesn't fail. God
said, my word doesn't return to me void. When he sends this
into your heart and he makes you see Christ suffering on the
cross, bearing your sin on that cross and showing you just infinite,
unparalleled, incomparable mercy and grace and salvation. That word is effectual. That
gospel comes with the power of a thousand atomic bombs into
a man's heart and obliterates that stony heart. It makes you
fall down on your face and say, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. It does. This is the constraining love. You hear me talk about us being
constrained by the love of Christ? This is it. Please don't just hear this as
a doctrine of our Lord's suffering. Brethren, this is our Lord dying
for us. This is the constraining love
right here. This is what's gonna grab you
in the heart and turn you from whatever you've turned away from
him unto, it's gonna turn you from it and turn you back to
him and cause you to walk looking to him. That he gave himself for an embarrassingly
vile, shameful sinner like me with a pure, perfect, infinite
love. That's the love He sheds abroad
in our heart. That's where He makes you see
something of His love and know something of His great love.
And that's what it is that makes you love. We can't make excuses for not
loving. Because God gets the job done.
When He sheds His love, you're gonna love. You're willing to
take your place before God as a sinner, take your place for
all your wrong and all your fault that you've actually been guilty
of. You're willing to do that. And you're willing to hit your
face and say, Lord, forgive me. You're willing to ask your brethren,
forgive me. And you're willing to, when your brethren ask you
forgive, you're willing to say, oh, how can I not show mercy? This is, we're not talking about
a doctrine. We're not talking about something
you go sit down by the shade tree, by the bank of the river,
and you learn a few doctrines, and you go underwater, and you
got right, and everything's good. We're talking about life. Greater love hath no man than
this. That's right. Greater love hath
no man than this, than Christ Jesus laying down his life for
his friends. Well, look at the next thing,
and I'll hurry. He was numbered with the transgressors. If we
could enter into just a little of the greatness of this act,
then we got to keep in mind that our Redeemer's holy. He's holy. He was not a sinner. He never
would be in his heart or in his hand a transgressor. A transgressor,
scripture says, is whosoever committeth sin, he transgresseth
also the law. Sins are transgression of the
law. He's a rebel against God. A transgressor he is. Christ
never transgressed the law. He never sinned. He was separate
from sinners. He's the only man born of a woman
who was holy and without sin. The only one. He never sinned. When he went to Gethsemane, he
went there as the spotless lamb. The just laying down his life
for the unjust. It'd be blasphemy for anybody
to say that Christ Jesus transgressed against God. No, he didn't. No,
he didn't. But God says right here, he was
numbered with the transgressors. What does it mean? Yes, it means
he came near and he made himself the friend of sinners so that
self-righteous Pharisees, who had such a pious reputation and
such a reputation for being so good, would never be seen with
no sinner. And Christ came and drew near
and ate with them. And they said, this man receives
sinners and eats with them. Aren't you thankful? Yes, he
was numbered with the transgressors by the tons of men who accused
him of actual sinful acts. They said he's a wine bibber.
They said he's a gluttonous man. That makes me wonder if our Lord
was a big man. They called him a gluttonous
man. He probably don't look anything
like we think he looked, because all we got is Hollywood images
and pictures. They said he's a gluttonous man. They said he's Beelzebub. They
called him the devil. You say, yeah, but he wasn't
guilty of that. Let me tell you something that hurts. One of
the greatest pains in this world is to be accused of something
that you ain't done. That hurts, because there's nothing
you can do about that. This man was sinless. If you
and I get accused, they ain't said the half of what's true.
But this man was sinless, and they called him the devil. Yes, in earthly courts he was
numbered with the transgressors. They found him guilty of sins
he never committed, but it's more than that. Most everybody
here has a good reputation. You brethren have a good reputation,
and you want that. Imagine if one of these brethren
became guilty of just one shameful sin, one crime. and you went
down to the courthouse and you pled guilty to it and you said,
I did it. And you convinced everybody,
the judge, the court, your friends, your family, everybody that you
really and truly are guilty of that crime. And the judge sentenced
you to a life in prison. And everybody was ashamed of
you and everybody left you and would have nothing to do with
you. It wouldn't be anything compared to what Christ went
through, or what he did here. God numbered him, God accounted
him as one of the transgressors. Think about that. Christ took the record book.
The scripture speaks of God's record books. He doesn't have
to have a record book, but you get it. He speaks of a record
book with every sin you've ever committed in it. Christ Jesus
took that record book that has your name at the top and blotted
your name out and put his name there. But it's more than that. God doesn't play pretend. When
God numbered him as a transgressor, guilty, worthy of death, why
did he do that? Remember, he's working backwards
to what this whole thing was. He started with the death. He
started with him in glory, and then he spoke about the death,
and then he said it because he was numb with the transgressor.
Why? Here's the next thing. Because he bare the sin of many. Theology has that backwards. That's right side up. He bare
our sin. The Lord laid on Him the iniquity
of us all, and for that reason, God accounted Him a transgressor. There was the first sinner, Adam.
Why did God impute sin to him? Did He come to him and impute
sin to him, and that made Adam a sinner? No. By a prior act
that made Adam a sinner, God came to him and accounted him
a transgressor. That's imputation. When the Lord
Jesus Christ speaks into the court of your conscience and
says you're made the righteousness of God in Him, why? How can He impute righteousness
to you? Because by the obedience of one. That's the prior act that made
you righteous. By the obedience of one, He made
you righteous. And so God accounts you righteous.
And when it comes to our Lord Jesus putting our sins away,
His obedience was that He presented Himself the spotless Lamb of
God who would never transgress, would never transgress, who was
holy in His heart, separate from sinners, higher than the heavens.
And He goes to God, the spotless Lamb, and presents Himself. And
God made Him sin who knew no sin. He made Him sin for us. You see, Christ Jesus literally
took the place of His people. He literally became us, brethren. This is beyond my imagination.
It's beyond anything I can explain. It's beyond anything I can really
declare. But He became His people. He was really made of a woman.
He was really made under the law. He was really made sin. He was really made a curse. And
He's really made higher than the heavens right now, brethren.
He is real. And I'm saying to you, here's
all I want for you. I don't want you to reduce this
down to a cold, dead, legal transaction. Please tell me you got more love
in your heart for Christ than that. I want you to enter into
something of what our Redeemer did for us, brethren. We just,
we couldn't, you think about this. You think about if one
of your brethren had committed some wicked sin that's horrible,
that's shameful, just one. Think about actually taking their
place when you're not guilty of it and actually taking their
place and actually in the mind of everybody involved, You're
the one. You're the guilty one. You did
it. Nobody's looking at that one
who did it anymore. They look at you and say, you did it. Can
you imagine how ashamed you'd be? Can you imagine the pain
that would cause you? Think about that. That's what,
when our Lord tells you and me to lay down our lives for one
another, When he tells us to bear one another's sins, that's
what he's telling us to do. We don't even come close to doing
what he did, because we just won't. We just can't bear it. We got our reputations, we think. Brother Henry used to say there's
three ways about a man. There's the way he thinks of
himself. There's the way others think
of him. And here's the way God knows him to be. But we have
this image of ourselves, so we can't possibly let our stellar
reputations be tainted. He made himself of no reputation. He became the one that God looked
upon and said, Holy God said, he's worthy of death! Do you get that? That's what
he did for us, brethren. It was as necessary and as real
as him being made of a woman. If it wasn't, he wouldn't have
been made of a woman. If it wasn't necessary, he wouldn't
have been made under the law. It was necessary because if it's
gonna be righteousness, if it's gonna be justice, if justice
is gonna be set forth, it just ain't justice to punish the innocent. And I know that's hard. I wouldn't
say he was even numbered with the transgressors if the scripture
didn't say it. But I'm telling you, brethren, this is his glory. This is his glory, that to manifest
how just and right he is before God would even punish his son,
he made him bear our sin and charged him with it so that when
he poured out justice on him, it was the right thing to do.
Not saying he did it, not saying his heart was tainted or he was
made polluted or anything like that, but I'm saying it was a
real taking of our play. It was a real substitution. That's
love. That's love. That's more than
if you just laid down your life for somebody. That's more than
if you just said, here, take my heart and give it to them.
They need it. It's more than that. Much more
than that. It wasn't just His life for a
life. It was how He gave that life. It was what He bore to give us
eternal life. Do you get what I'm saying? And a man gonna hear this and
say, well, if I believed that, I'd just live like I wanted to.
You're living like you want to now. You fast your heart after
hearing this message. God's people wish we could live
like we want to. I try to live honoring to Him,
but I ain't ever done it. A love like this, if I could live to Him like I
ought to live to Him, He wouldn't have had to come to do this. But what He does by this is He
keeps me from looking at me and thinking, I've done a pretty
good job. He keeps you from doing that, and that's walking before
Him. It keeps you from looking at yourself and saying, I'm just,
you're wrong. It keeps you from that. It keeps
you looking and saying, I'm the sinner. It keeps you esteeming
your brethren better than yourself. This is walking in godliness.
And this is the only message that does it. It's the grace
of God that brings salvation. What was he doing and all that?
He was making intercession for the transgressors. When we read
that, we think of him standing there, hanging there on the cross
and praying, Father forgive them for they know not what they do.
That is intercession. But brethren, everything he bore
for us, now this was the purpose from the beginning, it was to
make intercession for us. And what he did in all of this,
he was making intercession and he made, he made intercession
for us. I don't see Christ in the act
of praying here, I see that he made intercession for the transgressors,
for you and me. His death made intercession.
If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ,
the righteous. And He is, He is intercession. He is the propitiation for our
sin. He is that. He made it. Sometimes you and I see our sins and the Lord The Lord shows you. He gives you a clear look at
your sin. But the devil is always ready to accuse and the devil
is always making you have those... It's unbelief when we start thinking
that because of our sins we're really not a child of God and
we're going to perish and we're going to be destroyed. We're
like the butterfly that's in the He got stuck in between two
window panes, and he's fluttering around in there, and there's
a bird on the outside, and that bird's just pecking at that glass,
and that butterfly's just a-fluttering, and every move the butterfly
makes, he thinks the bird's fixing to just devour him. And every
move the bird makes, he thinks he's fixing to devour the butterfly.
That's us and the devil. But there's an invisible barrier
between us and the devil that is Jesus Christ the righteous. And the devil's accusations can't
stick. He'll never get to us because
God's justice says, I'm satisfied and my child will never be charged
with sin. There's no condemnation. He's
righteous. Intercession has been made and
I'm satisfied. That's why the next verse says,
oh, break out and sing, brethren. Break out and sing. Brethren,
he's our portion. He's our inheritance. He's right
now dividing the spoils of his victory with us. And as we come
to this table and we remember the Lord Jesus gave everything,
we remember that no part of his body or soul was kept back. He
poured out his soul to the last drop till the cup was drained. And when you sit here and you
take of this cup of wine, remember that, remember his broken body,
remember his shed blood and let us go forth and pour out our
soul. Let us pour out our heart in
thanksgiving. Let us pour out our lives in
gratitude and let us live to him who poured out everything
for us. Alright, Brother Rob. You, Brother
Adam. Come.