Alright, Matthew chapter 4. Now it begins here in verse 12
and says, Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into
prison, he departed into Galilee. John the Baptist was sent by
God to announce Christ's arrival. He was sent to proclaim the arrival
of the King. John 1.6 says, There was a man
sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness,
to bear witness of the light, that all through him might believe.
He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that
light. And John said, He must increase
and I must decrease. And that time had come. Right
here in our text, that time had come that John was now taken
off the field and put into prison. And now Christ comes forth preaching
the gospel. But you notice here, our Lord
did not go up to Jerusalem where the self-righteous religious
leaders were. That's not where He went. He
went into Galilee, to this place that was despised by those that
were holier than thou. They hated this place because
there were so many Gentiles among them, it was called Galilee of
the Gentiles. And those in Jerusalem hated
Galilee. But our Lord also, we see here,
He didn't stay in Nazareth. That was where He was brought
up. He didn't stay there either because they rejected Him. And
so He left them in darkness. And He went to Capernaum on the
sea coast in Galilee. Now, our subject this morning
is Christ the Great Light. And I have a very simple proposition
for you. Very easy to remember. Christ
is the Great Light. He is the Light. He is the Light
of the Law and the Prophets. Christ is the Light within His
people. He ends the darkness in His people.
And Christ is the light of the gospel we preach. There's three
things. He's the light of the law and
the prophets. He's the light that ends the darkness in His
people. And He's the light of the gospel
we preach. Christ said, I am come, a light
into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide
in darkness. Now first of all, Christ is the
great light that fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. He's the
light of the Law and the Prophets. Our Redeemer came to Galilee
here for the same reason He came to this earth. He must fulfill
the Law and the Prophets. He must fulfill all that was
written. And here He is fulfilling the
prophecy of Isaiah. If you go back to Isaiah 9, We
read there this prophecy that says, The dimness shall not be such
as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted
the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did
more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea beyond Jordan
in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness
have seen a great light. They that dwell in the land of
the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. Now, brethren,
prophecy is God's predestinated event that's going to come to
pass. It's predestinated and it shall come to pass. It's interesting
that people who hate the doctrine of predestination love prophecy
and they love to talk about prophecy. Prophecy is God's predestinated
events that He's going to bring to pass. And so Christ here comes
to Galilee to fulfill the prophets. That's what He comes there for.
We read in verse 14 of our text that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by Isaiah the prophet. Now, the same as Christ is the
light of the prophets, the same as He's the light of the prophets,
Christ is the light who alone fulfilled all the law. He said
in Matthew 5, right there in verse 17, think not that I've
come to destroy the law or the prophets. I came not to destroy,
but to fulfill. And once they're fulfilled, they're
taken out of the way. They're fulfilled. The law wasn't
left for you to fulfill it. He fulfilled it. He fulfilled
it. So the purpose for which Christ
came was to manifest the righteousness of God. God is righteous. He's
righteous. And the purpose for which Christ
came was to manifest His righteousness. If you look in Romans 5, I know
I've gone over this with you, but it bears repeating. In Romans
5, verse 12, We read, as by one man, sin entered
into the world, and death by sin. And so, death passed upon
all men, for that, or in Adam, all have sin. Now read this next
thing here. For until the law, sin was in
the world. That is until Moses gave the
law at Sinai, sin was in the world. But sin is not imputed
when there is no law. There was no law from Adam to
Moses. Now read that carefully. Sin
is not imputed where there is no law. You know what that means?
It means God will not impute sin until a person has been made
sin under the law. That's what it means. God will
not impute sin to anybody until they've been made sin under the
law. Why is that important? Because that's righteous. That's
righteous. If you went before an earthly
judge and you were innocent, and he said, but I'm going to
charge you with guilt, You'd say that's wrong. You're supposed
to impute to me what I am. I'm innocent. You should impute
innocence to me. That's the Greek lexicon's definition
of imputation. It's the imputation of fact.
And it gives the illustration. It says if I have $15 in my wallet,
then I had better impute $15 to my wallet or it's false imputation. Do you get that? That's righteousness. God is righteous. Now read on
there in Romans 5. Nevertheless, death reigned from
Adam to Moses. That means, nevertheless, God
did impute sin to these people that didn't have a known law.
Well, how could God be just to do that? What's the point of
this verse? Even over them that had not sinned
after the similitude of Adam's transgression. Even over them
that did not have a known law. Even over them that did not break
or transgress a known law, God imputed sin to them. What's He
teaching us? He's teaching us that in Adam,
we transgressed the law. We really broke the law in Adam.
And so God was just to impute sin to us. Because He's righteous. But then we read there in Romans
5, Adam is the figure, he's the type of him that was to come. And so our Lord Jesus came, and
this agrees with all the commandments of God to the judges. This is
the only way you can have all the commandments to the judges.
God said, if a man is righteous, you impute righteousness to him.
If he's guilty, you impute sin to him. That's what God says
throughout the Judges. And so Christ came. Well, Adam
was made sin by disobedience. Well, Christ is not going to
transgress the law. He's holy. He's not going to
transgress the law. God made him sin who knew no
sin, the scripture said. The Lord laid on him the iniquity
of all his people. Now the scriptures never say
that God imputed sin to Christ. It never says that anywhere in
the book. We know He did because He made
Him sin. And having made Him sin, that
shows us the righteousness of God. He would not impute sin
to His Son until His Son had been made sin. Now, I've said
it in the past and other faithful men have said it that Christ
was made sin by imputation. But that's not what the Scriptures
say. It says, He hath made him sin. It says the Lord laid on
him the iniquity of his people. Now that doesn't mean we're dealing
with righteousness here. We're dealing with legal matters
before the law of God. And as I said earlier today,
His Godhead upheld His humanity so that Christ was made sin in
every way except a corrupt nature. He did not have a corrupt nature
and He never was corrupted in Himself. In other words, He never
rebelled against God. He never transgressed against
God Himself. But He was made to bear all the
sin and guilt of His people before God. And He owned that sin. He
owned it to be His own. That's how real it was. And he
was touched with the feeling of our infirmities. That means
he was touched with all the feeling that our sin causes in his body. That's why you read in the Psalms
where he speaks and he says, I can't hold up my head. I can't
raise up my head because of mine iniquities. That's how real He
took our place. Because this is the point, brethren. This is the point. The very purpose
for which Christ came was to manifest the righteousness of
God. You just can't make it to be
righteous to say that God just treated Christ as if he was guilty. That's not righteous. That's
not righteousness. Righteousness is God made him
truly to bear all the iniquity of his people. And then God was
just to impute sin to him. And that's what he did. That's
what the scriptures say. I know that traditionally, you
know, back to the Reformation, you read of some men that say
he was made sin by imputation. That's not what the Word says.
And I realize this too, there were some faithful men who did
understand this, who did preach it. I've got many writers that
I've read who understood this and preached it. But mark this
down though brethren, that doesn't mean Christ himself was made
a sinner. It's different from being made
sin and being made a sinner. A sinner is a rebel against God. He never himself rebelled against
God. He was made to bear our sin.
And then further showing the righteousness of God, once He
bore the sin of His people, God spared not His only Son. He spared
not His only begotten Son. That's how righteous God is.
When sin was found on His Son, He spared Him not. He spared
Him not. to show further how righteous
God is, after God had made Him a curse for us, and He satisfied
divine justice, because He dissatisfied justice, and answered to all
the demands of the law for His people, God raised Him from the
dead, and He raised us in Him. Why? Because it was the righteous
thing to do. That's why He did it. You see,
everything about what Christ did was to manifest the righteousness
of God. Romans 3 tells us that's the
very purpose for which He came. It's to manifest that God is
just and He's the justifier. And so, but our Lord Jesus, I
mean, yes, our God, our Savior, He's not only righteous, He's
true. He's true. And so He spoke all
those prophecies of what would come to pass. So it was a necessity
that Christ fulfill all those prophecies that God might be
true. And so Christ fulfilled everything. Right here we just
have one prophecy that He fulfilled, but you go through the scriptures
and you read it time and again. He did this that it might be
fulfilled, which was written in the prophets. And, you know,
some people will say, well, He just read the prophets and He
was just doing what the prophets said so it looked like He was
the Christ. There was things that were fulfilled as He hung
on the cross. You know, there were things they
did, for instance, burying him in the rich man's tomb. That
was in prophecy. There were things that he did
while he hung on the cross and after he had given up the ghost.
There were things that fulfilled the prophets. You see what I'm
saying? So he fulfilled all these prophets
because it was written and it must be. He must fulfill the
Law and the Prophets and that's what he did. And so everything
in this book, Law and Prophets, they all point to Christ. Christ
is the light. If you want to understand what
the Law and the Prophets teach, Christ is the light. He's the
one that's going to shine light on it and make you see it's all
about Him. That's why Peter said this, listen
to this. He said, we have also a more
sure word of prophecy. Where unto you do well that you
take heed. You do well to take heed to this
book. As unto a light. that shineth in a dark place,
until the day dawn and the day star arise in your heart, till
the sun of righteousness arise in your heart, till Christ arises
in your heart. You do well to pay attention
to this book as unto a light that shines in darkness. This
is the light. This is the light because the
law and the prophets is all concerning Christ the light. all of it.
Christ is the great light which shines forth in the word. He
alone is the message of the law and the prophets. A man will
never understand this book until Christ shines the light and makes
him see that this book's not about you and me. This book's
about God. This book's about Christ. And
then you'll have the key and you'll understand the book. Now,
secondly, Christ is the great light who puts an end to his
people's darkness. We read in verse 16 of our text,
the people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them
which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up. Now brethren, that's a description
of you and me. We're born in the same spiritual
condition as these people were in. Right here. We sat, that
is we dwelled in darkness. And we had no intention of coming
out of that darkness. We had no desire to come out
of that darkness and we had no ability to come out of that darkness.
Luke 8 describes it. We sat in the region of death. We sat in the shadow of death. That means we were dead in trespasses
and in sins. A dead man can't do a thing.
A dead man can do nothing. And that's where we were. That's
where we were. You know, creatures that dwell
in darkness, they hate light. If you've ever been in a house
that had cockroaches, you turn on a light, boy, they just scatter
for darkness, you know. Creatures that live in darkness
hate light. Listen to this. Christ said in John 3.19, this
is the condemnation. Light is coming to the world.
And men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds
were evil. For everyone that doeth evil
hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds
should be reproved. You see, that's the condition
of all men, of all men. And so, God's not unrighteous
if just freely by His grace God chose to give a few people light. God's not unrighteous. We all
deserve death. We were all guilty. And so if
God chooses to save some, He's not unrighteous to do that. And
that's what He did. He could have just left us in
that darkness. But God by His grace chose a
people before the world began and He chose to give them light.
He predestinated us into the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ. That means Christ the light is going to come and give
His people light. Just like He did right here.
The people which sat in darkness saw great light. How? To them
light is sprung up. He passed by others but to them
He shined the light. Listen to Isaiah 49 verse 9.
God said to Christ, He said, I'm raising you up that thou
mayest say to them that are in darkness, show yourselves. And they shall feed in the waves,
and their pastors shall be in all high places. Christ is fulfilling
that scripture in our text, isn't He? He's saying to some who were
in Galilee, show yourselves, come into the light. And when
He speaks that word, they come into the light. and then they
feed in the ways and their pastures are in high places. Why? How does this happen? Paul said
in 2 Corinthians 4, 6, for God who commanded the light to shine
out of darkness has shined in our hearts to give us the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He shines the
light, makes you see Christ, makes you see everything that's
required of you is found in Christ. That's what He does. He's the
day star. Christ is the day star. He's
the Son of Righteousness. And when God shines the light,
He arises in the heart like the noonday sun, shining so that
we're no longer in darkness. And doing so, He makes His child
to be a child of light. John 8, 12, he said, I'm the
light of the world, he that followeth me, and that's the same as saying,
he that believeth on me, shall not walk in darkness, but shall
have the light of life. You get that? He shall have the
light of life. Light and life are synonymous
really. There's a few creatures that
live in darkness, but most living things have to have light. You know, years ago, when people
would get sick or have some kind of problem, you know, they would
go to certain places where it was tropical just so they could
be out in the sun, in the light. And the sunlight is good for
you. You don't want to get too much of it, like everything,
but the sunlight is good for you. But Christ the light, He
is life. And when He shines, then a person
has life, and it will never be taken away. It will never be
taken away. For with thee is the fountain
of life, and in thy light we shall see light. Now thirdly,
Christ is the light of the gospel we preach. In our text, as soon
as it speaks of Christ being the great light, it says He began
to preach. That's how the light shines.
That's how the light comes forth. It's through the preaching of
the gospel. He began to say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand. And because Christ is the light
of the word that we preach, brethren, He's the light and He's the truth. And light and truth are always
connected. Just like light and life are connected, light and
truth are connected. Lies and darkness are connected. And light and truth are connected.
The Lord sent a word unto Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. That's Isaiah 9, 8. That's right
after the prophecy that we just read. He said this is how it
was going to happen. This is how they're going to
see that great light. The Lord sent a word unto Jacob,
and it lighted on Israel. Christ came forth, the light.
He came preaching the light, preaching the Word. God chose,
by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe. Why? Because He would. Because He
would. In the wisdom of God, He gave
a space of time in the early world and He showed that no man,
by our wisdom, could find out God. The natural man, he won't
receive the things of God, Scripture says, and he can't receive them.
And so after that, 1 Corinthians 1 says, it pleased God by the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. And so this
is how He's going to save His people. He's going to bring His
people under the preaching of the gospel. And He's going to
make the light to shine so that they hear it and they have eyes
to see. He's going to give them eyes
to see and they believe on Him. You read here, it says in verse
18, Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee and he saw two
brethren. Now this is why he came down
here. He had some elect here. He must go here because he had
some elect here. And they got to be given light.
And he saw Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother casting
a net into the sea for they were fishers. Now you know fishermen.
These nets and their boats and all that, that's their livelihood.
This would be the same as Christ coming to you at your job, wherever
you are, and saying this to you, and telling you to leave your
livelihood. Just trust Him. That's what He did right here.
And He said to them, follow Me, and I will make you fishers of
men. And they straightway, right away, immediately, They left
their nets and they followed Him. They left what they thought
was their livelihood and they followed their true livelihood,
Christ. And look at this, and going on
he saw two more, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother,
and they were in a ship with their father, mending their nets. And he called them and they left
the ship and their father. That's how strong this light
is. It'll make a sinner leave not
only that which he thought, that work of his hands that he thought
was his life. It'll make him leave that. It'll
make him part with father and mother as well and come to Christ. They immediately followed him.
When Christ's light shines and he commands repentance, I can
preach to you all day long and say repent and it will do no
good. But look here, I'm going to show
you something. At the end of our text, look at verse chapter
5. It says, And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and
when he was set, his disciples came unto him, and he opened
his mouth, and he taught them. Where is Christ right now? He's
going up into the mountain. And where is he at? He's set.
He's seated. What's he doing? He's drawing
his disciples to him. And he's teaching us this gospel.
He's using men to do it. But just as real as He stood
there that day and called these disciples, that real from heaven
through the preaching of the gospel, He's calling His people.
And when He shines the light and says, Repent immediately,
you'll have a radical change of mind. That's what repentance
is. A radical change of mind concerning
who you are and concerning who Christ is. You'll see yourself
before you thought you were righteous and had no need of Christ and
you'll see you're a sinner and Christ is your only salvation.
And when He commands you to follow Him, to believe on Him, immediately
His people find ourselves believing on Him. We don't even know what's
happened to us. Yesterday we were sitting here
hearing this word and we were bound and determined we're not
going to believe it. And then one day we find ourselves
believing. What happened? Christ spoke. Christ spoke. The light shined.
The light shined. That's what happened. Listen
to this from Psalm 119, 130. The entrance of thy words giveth
light. It giveth understanding unto
the simple. The entrance of His words. Listen
to this. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet
and a light unto my path. Psalm 43 says, Oh send out thy
light and thy truth. See I said light and truth are
connected. Send out thy light and thy truth. Let them lead
me. Let them bring me unto thy holy
hill and to thy tabernacles. And that's what he does. He shines
this light. He's going to bring you to Christ
where Christ is going to teach you. From then on. And when he
says he's saved by the foolishness of preaching, it doesn't mean
just in the first hour that he shines the light. It means for
the rest of our days, the way we're saved is through preaching
of the gospel. That's right. So Christ is the
great light. And then, look at this, now through
this gospel, he heals his people. That's right, he heals his people.
We see there in verse 23, Jesus went about all Galilee teaching
in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom. And
connected with that, look what happened, and healing all manner
of sickness and all manner of disease among people. You see,
they connected his preaching with the healing of these physical
diseases. And the picture there is, is when through the preaching
of the gospel, Christ heals our spiritual disease. He heals our
spiritual disease. There's some there that said
we're possessed of devils. And they were lunatic. Remember
that demoniac that was in the, he dwelt in a graveyard. And
he was possessed of a devil. Christ came to him and told the
devils to depart. And they departed. And he was
in his right mind, Scripture says. He saw Christ, he believed
on Christ. That's what it is to have a right
mind. And this is what Christ does when He comes. He heals
us of our disease. Isaiah 58, 8 says, Then shall
thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall
spring forth speedily, and thy righteousness shall go before
thee, and the glory of the Lord shall go behind thee. Now preacher,
do you mean when He heals us of our disease, do you mean He's
going to cure us of cancer? He can. But you're going to get
sick again and die. But I tell you, He does something
better than that. He cures us of what causes all diseases. Sin. Sin. What is it that makes
young people disobey their parents? Why is it more fun to to disobey
than to obey. Sin. Sin. If you've ever disobeyed
your mother and father, then know you're a sinner. That's
why you did it. You don't disobey to become a
sinner. You disobey because you are a
sinner. That's right. But Christ cures His people of
our sin. That's why He went to the cross.
He was purging the sin of His people. He was putting away the
sin of His people. He was answering to divine justice
and He put it away so that God remembers the sin of His people
no more. And that's why the scripture
says, if we walk in the light, as He is in the light. We have
fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ
His Son cleanseth us from all sin. That's how God can receive
us. Because Christ's blood put away. Without shedding of blood is
no remission. Christ shed His blood for His people and He remitted
all the sins of His people. Listen to 2 Timothy 1.10. Our
Savior Jesus Christ hath abolished death and hath brought life and
immortality to light through the gospel. If you have light
and immortality, you got health. If He's abolished death for you,
you got health. You're never going to die. And
that's what He said. He said, those that believe on
Me, though we're going to die physically. What does that teach
us? It teaches us that He's not using
these bodies of death. He's not using anything that
came from Adam. These bodies are going to die
because we're sinning in our flesh. He's created something out of
nothing by speaking His Word. Just like in the first creation.
He spoke everything into existence out of nothing. He speaks it
out of nothing and creates it out of nothing. Creates a new
man, a new spirit in His child. And when we die, the reason He
said we're not going to die, we're going to be with the Lord
immediately. You picture some believer, And
maybe he has a heart attack and he dies. And before his body
touches the ground, he's with the Lord in spirit, in spirit. And one day he'll raise a new
body incorruptible and that believer will be with Christ for eternity
in body and in spirit. That's right. So, when this happens,
what do we do? Look at John 3. What do we do
when this happens? When Christ has done this, well,
before, we were just bragging on ourselves. But when He shined
this light, we stop bragging on us and we start bragging on
Him. Look here. John 3, 21. He says, But he that
doeth truth cometh to the light. That's how you do truth. You
come to Christ the light. That's what John's talking about
all through his first epistle and second epistle. That's how
you do truth. You come to Christ the light.
And look, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are
wrought or worked in God. That's why we come to Christ
the light that our deeds might be made manifest that we didn't
work them. Christ worked them all. God our
Savior wrought them all. from making us righteous to coming
and entering in and making us holy within and bringing us faith
in Him, preserving us, bringing forth good works in us. Everything
is worked in Him. He did it all. We start glorifying
Him and we stop glorying in ourselves. That's when the light has shined.
Alright brethren, now we're going to observe the Lord's table.
His broken body and shed blood. And I want to read you something
before we do this. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10-15,
he said, I speak as to wise men, judge ye what I say. The cup
of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood
of Christ? The bread which we break, is
it not the communion of the body of Christ? What does he mean
by that? He says, we being many are one
bread and one body because we are all partakers of that one
bread. We're one. That's what we're
signifying here. By the blood and body of Christ,
we've been made one with Christ. Alright. Brother Rob, you and
Brother Kevin, will you all come forth and pass out the elements? Lord, as we do this, I come here
to remember you. Remember us, Lord, and do with us as you please.
Amen.