Let us turn to God's Word and
turn into that portion that we've just read in the familiar words
of the 22nd Psalm. I want tonight to draw your attention
to the concluding verse, the last verse of the Psalm. They
shall come and shall declare His righteousness unto a people
that shall be born. that he hath done this. In Psalm
22 and verse 31, they shall come and shall declare his righteousness
unto a people that shall be born that he hath done this. And the subject matter that I
want us to take up from the words that we've just read is that
of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. As you know, the psalm is messianic.
We were looking at it recently and I remark there now that there
are two principal parts to the psalm. In the opening part, the
first 21 verses, we have the prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ,
how He addresses His Father, how He pleads with Him in the
midst of all His agonies upon the cross. And then in the latter
part from verse 21 through to the end, we see that He does
not pray in vain. His prayer is heard and His prayer
is answered. And the significant words are
those that we find in the middle of verse 21, for thou hast heard
me. Now the Father was pleased to
hear him in his prayer and to answer his cry. Now as I say
we were recently looking at this psalm on a Thursday evening a
couple of weeks ago and then we considered that remarkable
opening verse of the psalm My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken
me? Why art thou so far from helping
me and from the words of my roaring? And remember how those words
were spoken by the Lord Jesus, we have the record in the Gospels
both in Matthew and in Mark how that when the earth was shrouded
in darkness from the sixth hour to the ninth hour. There was
a gross darkness over the face of the earth and then in that
ninth hour the Lord cries out, my God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? What awful blackness must have
entered into his soul? How he was suffering. And yet as I say that prayer,
Although it seems he was altogether forgotten by God, forsaken of
God, in such a derelict condition in his soul, yet his prayer was
heard and his prayer was answered. For thou hast heard them. Or
doesn't the Lord say before they call, I will answer, whilst they
are yet speaking, I will hear, even in the darkest hours. the Lord hears the cry of his
children. And what a situation this was
that the Lord Jesus found himself in. How he speaks of those sufferings
throughout the whole of this psalm. How he was surrounded
by enemies on every hand. So he says there at verse 20,
deliver my soul from the sword My darling from the powder of
the dog. Or he calls his soul his darling,
or as the margin says, my only one. He has a real soul. And
here he is suffering so much in his soul, although there are
these references to those who are about him, those who are
scoffing him and ridiculing him. Previously there at verse 12,
many bulls have compassed me, strong bulls of Bashan have beset
me round, they gout upon me with their mouths as a ravening and
a roaring lion. Verse 16 he says, for dogs have
compassed me, the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me,
they pierced my hands and my feet. He speaks then of bulls,
strong bulls, roaring lions, dogs, how they would, if they
could, devour him. As I said, We are told in the
margin the significance of that title that we have for the psalm. That expression, ḥajjilat shayhah,
means the hind of the morning. Here is that one who is the hind,
who is being set upon by all these beasts of Prague, how they
would seek to destroy him and devour him. And yet, in the midst
of all of these things, It is that that transpires in his soul. It's not what men are doing. It's what is taking place in
the very depths of that human soul as the Lord feels the wrath
of God. As God visits upon him all that
was due to the sins of his people. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? But then as we come to the words
that we announced just now as our text, the final verse, we
see that all this suffering is not in vain. He will finish the work and He
will see all the fruit of His suffering. They shall come and
shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born
that He hath done this. And how significant are those
final words? You will see that the word this
is italicized. It's been added then by the translators
of our authorized version. It's a word that they've introduced,
an additional English word to try to bring out the meaning
of what's being said, but it's not a translation of any Hebrew
word. Literally, the Psalm finishes
with those three words, He hath done. He hath done. And of course we have the equivalent
in the New Testament. Those words, it is finished.
It's all done. Oh, He has accomplished that
for which He came. As He says in the course of His
ministry, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me. and
to finish his work. That was the great burden of
his life, to do the will of the Father. And to finish the work
that the Father had given to him in the eternal covenant. And so, in the prayer, that remarkable
prayer of John 17, he says, I have glorified thee on the earth,
I have finished the work that thou gavest me to do. And then
again, when we see Him actually there expiring upon the cross,
dying, making the great sacrifice. Well, no man was able to take
His life from Him. He had power, He had authority
to lay that life down. And He had power and authority
to take that life again. And so, we read how He said,
It is finished. And He bowed His head. and gave
up the ghost, saying to the Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."
Oh, this remarkable statement that we find then here at the
end of the psalm, this last verse of the psalm. Luther remarks
in his comments on this verse, I have never met with any verse
like it as yet through the whole of Scripture. He felt it was
the most remarkable of all the words that we find anywhere in
the Word of God. They shall come and shall declare
His righteousness unto a people that shall be born that He hath
done this. Here then we see Christ and we
see the Lord Jesus Christ in His sufferings and we are to
understand those sufferings in terms of the law of God all that
law which is holy that commandment which is holy and just and good
that law that demands a full recompense from the sinner
and the Lord Jesus is answering, He is made of a woman and he
is made under the law those two things he is the seed of the
woman that was promised in Genesis chapter 3 the seed of the woman
made of a woman but also remember he is made under the law and
he is subject to the law and he satisfies the law And so as
we come to consider these words, first of all I want us to consider
something of that that Christ did to the Law of God. What did
the Lord Jesus Christ do to the Law of God? Well, He obeyed it. We have His active obedience
here. They shall come, it says, and
shall declare His righteousness. It is His righteousness. Isaiah
says the Lord is well pleased for His righteousness sake. He
will magnify the law and make it honorable. That's what the
Lord Jesus Christ has done. When He came, He obeyed every
one of the laws of God. He perfectly fulfilled everything. He is spoken of in that chapter
we were looking at this morning 1 Corinthians 15. He is spoken of there as the
last Adam. Well God sees these two men,
the first Adam and the last Adam. and all are either in the one
or the other by nature of course we're all in the first Adam we're
all descended from Adam and Eve we're all sins in Adam but ought
to be those who by grace are in the last Adam why that first
man is of the earth earthy the second man is the Lord from heaven
and he has come and he has come to stand in the law place of
his people and to honor and magnify that law on behalf of his people. I have glorified thee on the
earth, he says. I have finished the work that
thou gavest me to do. Now, the first part of that work
of the Lord Jesus Christ was in a sense completed when he
uttered those words there in John chapter 17. we can think of his different
offices he comes as that one who is prophet, priest and king
and certainly there at the beginning of John 17 we can
say that there is a sense in which his prophetic work was
now completed his teaching ministry had come to its fruition was finished These words,
it says in verse 1, these words, spake Jesus. The reference seems
to be to what has preceded those words that he had spoken in chapters
14 and 15 and 16, the valedictory discourses, where he had spoken
so clearly of the necessity of him going, but with his going
there would be the coming of the Holy Spirit, These words
baked Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and having spoken
and preached to his disciples, now he prays to his Father in
heaven. And he is beginning to enter
into that other aspect, that other office of his covenant
headship. He's not only a prophet, a preacher,
he is a priest. He's the great high priest. And
there we see him as a priest praying, pleading with God. He enters into that priestly
work then in chapter 17 as a praying priest and then in the subsequent
chapters in John we see him continuing in that priestly work but now
not praying but offering sacrifice. And of course the sacrifice that
he will offer is himself. As John the Baptist says, Behold
the Lamb of God. that take us away the sin of
the world. Oh, how important it is that
we understand that great work that the Lord Jesus Christ was
about to accomplish when He would make the one sacrifice for sins. We often refer to that as His
passive obedience, His sufferings. But previously we have all that
he had done in living, he had not only preached but he had
also practiced the things that he proclaimed to the people.
He was so different to those others, those scribes. and those Pharisees, remember
how the Lord speaks of them as those who were sitting in the
seat of Moses and therefore they are to be regarded and respected
as those who have a most significant position there in Matthew 23
Then spake Jesus to the multitude and to His disciples, saying,
The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. All therefore
whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do. But do not
ye after their works, for they say and do not." They say and
do not, not the Lord Jesus. Or what the Lord Jesus said He
did. His active obedience. And here
we have it. They shall come and shall declare
His righteousness. That He has done this. Oh, He
has done all that the law requires. He has perfectly obeyed it. It's not only His dying, you
see, that's important. It is also His doing that we
have to take account of. There's a positive righteousness
that is necessary for the salvation of sinners. We know how the Lord
is given by Moses. And what we read therefore in
the books of Moses, in Deuteronomy 6 and verse 25, it says, it shall
be our righteousness, it shall be our righteousness if we observe
to do all these commandments before the Lord our God as he
hath commanded us. All that the Lord has commanded
is to be done before Him. There must be that positive righteousness. And if a man keeps the whole
law and yet offends Him one point, he is guilty of all, it says
in James. The law requires a full complete
and perfect obedience. And that is what the Lord Jesus
Christ rendered to the Lord of Gods. Moses describeth the righteousness
of the law. Look at the language that we
find there in that 10th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.
concerning what Moses says concerning righteousness in the law. Moses
describes the righteousness which is of the law that the man which
doeth those things shall live by them. They are to be done. They are to be done. And this
is the Lord Jesus. the only one who has come and
done all those things that the law requires no other man the
first Adam the first man though made in God's image and righteous
as he comes from the hand of his creator God yet he transgresses
he sins Now we all partake now of that
sinful nature, we're all conceived in sin, we're all shaped in iniquity.
There is but this one man, and how he is spoken of again in
Romans, and there in chapter 5. It says, verse 18, Therefore
as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation,
Even so, by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon
all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many
be made, or declared, righteous. And it's speaking, you see, as
in 1 Corinthians 15, of these two men. The first man and the
second man. The first Adam and the second
Adam. By the offense of one, that's
the first Adam. Judgment came upon all men to
condemnation. But then, by the righteousness
of one, that's the last Adam, the free gift came upon all men
unto justification of life. by that first man's disobedience
many were made sinners, by the obedience of the second, the
last Adam, many shall be declared righteous." Oh, it's the great
truth of the sinner's justification. It's in the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's His righteousness. And how the Apostle Paul is brought
to see it and to be the great champion of it. All his great
desire to be found in Christ, he says, not having mine own
righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through
the faith of Christ. The righteousness of God by faith. Oh, that's what he wants, the
righteousness of God. That is that righteousness that
was wrought by the God-man. And how does one experience it
by faith? How we see Paul preaching this
very message there in his sermon in Acts 13, he says concerning
the Lord Jesus by him. All that believe are justified
from all things that they could not be justified from by the
deeds of the law. Their justification is in Christ,
is by faith. in the Lord Jesus Christ. But
let us be careful, lest we should misunderstand, misinterpret the
Word of God. When He says, all that believe
in Him are justified, some want to say, oh well, you see, it's
faith that justifies, isn't it? They make faith a justifying
act. as if faith is that that makes
the man righteous. They put faith, as it were, as
a substitute for works, instead of a works righteousness. They
like to speak of a faith righteousness. And there are those that we read
of in church history, they're called Neonomians. It's a new
law, you see. whereas the Lord of Moses says
you've got to do certain works to make yourself righteous and
men cannot do those works because they've all sinned and the law
as I've said demands a full and a complete and a perfect righteousness
therefore they say oh well God in His goodness and His grace
has given us a different law in the gospel And what God requires
of us now is nothing more than faith. And faith becomes a sort of substitute
for the works, religion. But that's not what the Word
of God really teaches. The language, again, of Paul
there in that fourth chapter of his epistle to the Romans
where he speaks of the faith of Abram. Abram the father of
believers. Abram the great example, the
great pattern of faith. Verse 2 of Romans 4 he says,
if Abram were justified by works he hath went off to glory but
not before God For what saith the Scripture, Abram believed
God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. You see
how they reason here. Abram believed God, and it was
counted unto him for righteousness. Ah! Abram's faith was his righteousness. But it goes on now to him that
worketh is a reward not reckoned of grace, but of death. But to him that worketh not,
but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted
for righteousness." He makes it clear that faith is the very
opposite of work. Faith is the opposite of work. If a man doesn't work, he gets
paid. Now to him that worketh is the
reward, it says, not reckoned of grace but of death. But to
him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly
is faith. It's the object of his faith.
It's the one that his faith has to do with. It's the Lord Jesus
Christ and Christ's righteousness that the believer is looking
to. And when we come to the end of this chapter we see quite
clearly with regards to Abraham's faith. Paul says he staggered not at
the promise of God through unbelief but was strung in faith giving
glory to God and being fully persuaded that what he had promised
he was able to perform and therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. You see his faith has to do with
what God had promised. And what had God promised? God
had promised the son, the seed, Isaac. But Isaac is a type of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And what Abraham's faith has
to do with is the promise of Christ. Thy seeds, as it says
in Galatians 3, and thy seed which is Christ. all being fully persuaded what
God had promised he was able to perform and it, that is the
promise, that is Christ and Christ's righteousness. That was what
was imputed to Abraham. Christ, Christ is the end of
the law for righteousness to everyone that's believer. This
is what the Lord Jesus Christ has done to the Lord of God.
for He has honoured it, He has magnified it He has obeyed it
in every one of its precepts and statutes and judgments and
commandments there is nothing left undone for He has so magnified
that Law of God they shall come, it says, and shall declare His
righteousness that He hath done this But then, having said something
of what the Lord Jesus Christ himself has done to the law,
secondly, all that the Lord has done to the Lord Jesus Christ,
all that the Lord did to him, what did he do to it? Obedience,
active obedience. When we think of what the law
did to Christ. We think more especially in terms
of His sufferings. What we might term is His passive
obedience. He hath done. If we omit that final words of
the Psalm, He hath done. It is finished. Or what has He
done? He has suffered. He has bled. He has died, He has answered
all the demands of that Lord of God that the sinner had broken.
He doesn't just come to satisfy it in terms of all its holy precepts
and commandments, but He honors and magnifies it also in respect
to all its terrible penalties and punishments. He has suffered,
He has died, finished all the types and shadows of the ceremonial
law. Or there were all those sacrifices
that were made in the Old Testament. All that ceremony, those services
that took place in the tabernacle and then in the temple. But what
of that? What of those offerings? Well, remember how in the epistles of the Hebrews
The Apostle Paul speaks of these things there in Hebrews chapter
10 verse 4 he says, it is not possible
it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should
take away sins wherefore when he cometh into the world he saith
sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not but a body hast thou prepared
mine In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure,
then said I, Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written
of me, to do thy will, O God, above when he said sacrifice,
and burnt offerings, and offering for sin thou wouldst not, neither
hadst pleasure therein which are offered by the law, Then
said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the
first, that he may establish the second, by the which will,
Paul says, we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all. No more sacrifice for sin. Finished! All those types and shadows. Not all the blood of beasts on
Jewish altars slain could give the guilty conscience peace or
wash away the stain. But Christ, the heavenly Lamb. Oh, it's the Lord Jesus Christ,
you see, who is that Lamb. That Lamb of God slain from the
foundation of the world. But when we think of what the
Lord has done to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not just a matter
of the ceremonial law that he has come to fulfill. He's the great antitype of all
those offerings and all those sacrifices, yes. But I'm thinking
more particularly of that Sinaitic law. That law of the Ten Commandments. Oh, that Lord has to be satisfied
in His breach. And what of all those who were
given to Christ in the Eternal Covenant on? They've transgressed. They've broken those commandments. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
that one who has come to satisfy all that the law requires in
order that those sinners might be forgiven. That's what the
Lord has done. It's not just fulfilling the
Levitical types. It's answering the law of God
in its terrible breach. The soul that sinneth it shall
die. The wages of sin is death. And we do. Theologians are wont
to speak of that dying of the Lord Jesus as his passive obedience. They speak of his life, his active
obedience, his obeying all the commandments perfectly. And then
they say in dying it's his passive obedience. And yet, that's not
strictly true. He's not passive in dying. Or
remember, that his death was a voluntary death, therefore
doth my father love me, he says, because I lay down my life that
I might take it again. No man taketh it from me. I lay
it down of myself. I have authority to lay it down
and take it again, he says. This commandment have I received
of my father. How the Lord Jesus is that one
who has come and here he has satisfied the Lord again. And
how has he done it? By his death. How it's spoken
of in scripture. Remarkable words, such as those
we find in Daniel 9.26, Messiah, cut off it says, but not for
himself. He was cut off. He died. He died that awful death. He says here in the Psalm verse
15, My strength is dried up like a potsherd, my tongue cleaveth
to my jaws, and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. He died. Oh, we were speaking
of it this morning. When there in the opening part
of that 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians Paul speaks of the Gospel that
he had received from God. the Gospel that God had revealed
to him. And what is that Gospel? Why
it concerns His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. And what was it that
Christ did? Why He died according to the
Scriptures. He was buried the third day,
He rose again according to the Scriptures. And we thought of
His burial, He was buried. There's the reality
of his death. It was a real death that he died.
A real death. He was cut off. Christ also hath
once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust. That's what he
did. He suffered in the room and in the stead of others to
bring sinners to God. And so he cries out here at the
beginning of the psalm. Really, we might say in a sense
that this psalm contains all that was transpiring in the soul
of Christ, all those hours, those three hours that he was suffering
upon the cross. When there was that great darkness
over the face of the whole earth, the psalm begins, My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me? The psalm finishes, he has died. All we see here the soul of the
Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of all those sufferings. And
what dreadful sufferings. This is the great I am that I
am. Then he says, verse 6, But I
am a worm and no man. a reproach of men and despise
of the people, all they that see me laugh me to scorn, they
shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, he trusted
on the Lord, that he would deliver him, let him deliver him, seeing
he delighted in him, as if the Father no more had any delight
in him. Oh, how they ridicule and scoff
him. We see them, verse 13, they gaped
upon me with their mouths as a raveling and a roaring lion.
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of
my bones. The sufferings of the Lord Jesus.
And what is He doing? He's satisfying the law of God.
It's a judicial death. A judicial death that He must
die. Oh, He hath redeemed us, says Paul, from the curse of
the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed
is everyone that hangeth upon a tree. And this is it, you see,
it's finished. In thus dying, the Lord Jesus
completed the work that had been given in the eternal covenant.
being found in fashion as a man. Paul says he became obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross. Again, look at the
language that we find in the book of Daniel. Daniel 9.24,
to finish the transgression it says. Or this is Messiah cut
off to finish the transgression. to make an end of sin, to make
reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness,
to seal up the vision and the prophecy, to anoint the most
holy. All of that's fulfilled in Christ.
The work is finished. And that's what it says. That's
the language of Scripture. Those verses that we've already
made reference to in John 17 and John 19, When He says to
the Father, I have glorified You on the earth, I have finished
the work that Thou gavest Me to do. And then on the cross
He says it is finished. He bows His head. He gives up
the ghost. And all the words, the word that
He uses to finish, to complete, to accomplish, Christ was, it says, made perfect
through sufferings. The Lord Jesus Christ was made
perfect through sufferings. He was perfect. Always perfect. But all the perfection of the
work that he accomplished by one offering He hath perfected,
it says, forever them that are sanctified. Who are the sanctified?
They are those who were set apart. That's the basic meaning of the
word to sanctify, to set a thing apart. They are those who were
set apart. They were given to Him in the
eternal covenant. It was for these that He came
and by one offering He hath perfected them, the sanctified ones, forever. Well, what does Moses say in
his song there in Deuteronomy 32 concerning God? His work is
perfect. All the works of God are perfection. And so the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ was a perfect work. This is why we call ourselves
particular Baptists. Because we believe that by His
death the Lord Jesus Christ actually accomplished something. He didn't
just make all men salvable. That's what the Arminian might
say. He died for the world. Now I know it says that. He's
the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. But we
have to understand the significance of the word world in relation
to the Jewish world. They thought, you see, that they
owned me. were the people of God. Well, they were God's peculiar
people in the Old Testament. They were a typical people, but
they are typical of all the election of grace. And when we come to
the New Testament and we find the word, world, being used,
Christ is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our own,
he says, John, but for the sin of the whole world. We see that
in a Jewish context. He's saying that this salvation
is for the elect sinners of Gentiles, as well as Jews. But when the
Arminian sees the word world, he imagines that Christ has actually
died for everyone. Now if that is the case, does
it mean, according to the Arminian, that everybody is going to heaven?
If the work of the Lord Jesus Christ is perfect, If he has
satisfied the law with regards to its precepts and its penalties,
and rendered a work that is altogether satisfactory for all the world,
can anyone go to heaven? Payment God cannot twice demand. First at my bleeding surety's
hand and then again at mine, says top lady. That would be
unjust. If Christ has paid the penalty for everyone, how can
God send anyone to hell? That would be a most unjust thing,
a double payment. This is why we say that when
Christ died, He died for a particular people. We are particular Baptists,
in that sense, because we believe in the perfection of the work
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Or what has He done? He has satisfied
the Holy Lord of God for all that were given to Him. But then here we also must recognize
in the text we see, and I've really already intimated this,
it's a success that accrues from the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What does it say? He doesn't shed his blood in
vain. They shall come. Oh, they shall come. All these are people that shall
be born. They shall come. Look at the context. The seed,
it says in verse 30. A seed shall serve him. It shall
be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come. Verse 27. All the ends of the
earth. shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds
of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom
is the Lord's, and He is the governor among the nations. For
they shall come, the Lord says, all that the Father giveth me
shall come to me, and he that cometh to me I shall in no wise
cast out." They come. Those for whom He has died, not
one of them can ever be lost, they must come. All the appointed
time rolls on apace, not to propose, but called by grace, they must
come in that appointed time. For Christ shall see of the travail
of his soul and shall be satisfied. All the success of his great
work. When Paul writes to the Philippians,
remember what he says concerning the Lord Jesus. and concerning
the salvation of those Philippians, confident he says, being confident
of this very thing, that he that hath begun a good work in you
will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ, it will be completed. Or we are to be looking on to
Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. If the Lord has
begun with you Doubt not, the Lord will complete that work
that He has begun in your soul. No abortions with Christ. No
abortions with Christ. There is a people to be born,
it says in the text. A people to be born. It's a people
who are born again. They're born again by the Spirit
of God. Oh, there's a success there.
of that death of the Lord Jesus. He has not shed his precious
blood in vain. O dear dying Lamb, thy precious
blood shall never lose its power, till all the ransomed church
of God be saved to sin no more. But then also here in the text
we see this, do we not? There is to be the proclamation
of these things. the declaration, the preaching,
they shall come, it says, and shall declare His righteousness. Why? Go back, go back to the
days before the flood, what they call the Antediluvian days, before
the great flood, there was Noah, and what was Noah, Peter tells
us, he was a preacher of righteousness. And Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord, he wasn't his own righteousness. He preached the
righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is the message
that must still be proclaimed and preached. Or the determination
of the Apostle. We referred to it this morning,
those words that we have there in that second chapter of the
first epistle to those Corinthians. I determined, he says, not to
know anything among you, save Jesus Christ. and him crucified
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ but also there he speaks
of the work the work of the Lord Jesus and previously in the first chapter verse 23
we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block and
unto the Greeks foolishness but unto them which are called both
Jews and Greeks Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. All is to be declared, you see,
Christ himself is that one who must be preached on to the people. This is how faith comes, is it
not? Remember the language of Paul
again there in Romans 10 and verse 14. Oh then shall they
call on him in whom they have not believed And how shall they
believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except
they be sent, as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of
them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings
of good things? But they have not all obeyed
the gospel. For as I have said, Lord, you
have believed, I report. who hath believed, I report,
to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed." How God must reveal
His arm, make bare His arm, stretch forth His hand and say, they
shall come. Or they can only come when the
Lord does it. It's salvation you see accomplished by the Lord
Jesus, but salvation that also must be applied, made a reality
in the soul of the sinner, or that we might know it. ought
to be those who would be looking to the Lord Jesus and looking
only to the Lord Jesus and looking away from everything else to
the Lord Jesus who is the author and the finisher of our faith. They shall come and shall declare
His righteousness unto a people that shall be born that He hath
done this. He hath done. Oh friends, it's
a finished salvation. Nothing for the sinner to do.
It's all done. Oh God, grant that we might be
those who know then what it is to despair of ourselves and simply
trust, casting all our cares upon Him. Oh, the Lord bless
to us His own Word. Amen.