Okay, get everything cranked
up here. Everybody's in Florida. Good morning, everybody. I want
to start by rather abruptly by trying to
tell you about a conversation that I had with Brother Darvin,
our friend from Arkansas, last week, he stopped by. We wound
up, both of us, me and Carol and Darvin, at Lindsey's funeral last week. And of course, we always have
conversations and some of them are interesting and some of them
are boring. It just depends on what the subject is. But Darwin
made a comment to me or asked me a question. He said, Larry,
do you know what a cornerstone is? And I said, well, I think
I do. But I said, maybe I don't. And he gave me this definition,
this is not in my notes, by the way, so I may struggle here a
minute, but he said, the definition of a cornerstone, which we all
know that Christ is declared to be, the stone which the builders
rejected, the cornerstone, the thing on which the foundation
is laid, a cornerstone, is a stone which ties together or unites
two masonry walls at an intersection. A stone represents the nominal
starting place. Get these terms, it's really
interesting. The nominal starting place. where Clayton starts to
build a house. That's the first block laid.
The construction of a monumental building and usually carved with
the date and laid with appropriate ceremonies. It's something that's
essential, indispensable, and basic. the cornerstone, the chief
foundation on which something is constructed or developed. And if I can, here's Ephesians chapter two
and verse 20. It says, therefore you are no
more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the
saints. and of the household of God.
Now there's a house. What's the cornerstone? It has
to have one. The house that we are, the dwelling
place of God in every sense of the word in you, Christ in you,
the hope of glory. We are his house being many members
built up a house. And we are built upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the
chief cornerstone. Now, that conversation helped me in
this study. the discussion that we had about
that cornerstone. Turn to Isaiah chapter 25. Isaiah
chapter 25. And let me say just a few things
before we read there. Isaiah 25. Now, in Genesis chapter
three and verse 15, we have the first prophecy of our Lord Jesus
Christ, which occurs in all of the scripture. All of you are
familiar with it, but let me read it to you. Where Moses was
speaking to Satan, okay? God was speaking to Satan through
the pen of Moses who wrote these words. They were spoken of God
to Satan. He said, I will put enmity between
you, thee, Satan, he said. I'll put enmity between you and
the woman, and between your seed, which is Adam, okay, in the fall,
and her seed, which is Christ, It shall bruise thy head. The seed of woman will bruise
your head and you shall bruise his heel. Now that's not a lot
of information. It leaves things rather mysterious. You know, what is that really
saying? If that's all we had to read and the only details
that we were given, and it was at one point in time, we'd be
a little absent of all the facts. That's the first prophecy of
the coming of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who would
be born and would be the seed of woman, that much it tells
us. Then in the book of Isaiah in
chapter seven, I'll read, I'll handle it here. In verse 14,
Isaiah writes, listen to this, the Lord himself shall give you
a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive
and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. Now, with
that being said, A little further over, a little more detail is
given to us. The woman spoken of in Genesis three will
be a virgin, added information, and she will conceive and bear
a son. And he will have a name. What's his name? Emmanuel, God
with us. And this revelation progresses
in revealing the great mystery of godliness that we now, and
we now come to the words in Isaiah chapter 25. And here again, we
come to the cornerstone. And what it's saying is, is he's
coming. He's coming. In this mountain,
look at verse six. shall the Lord of hosts make
unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees,
of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain
the face of the covering cast over all people. And the veil
that is spread over all nations." Those terms are familiar to you
because of that veil that was over all, not revealed yet. And he will swallow up death,
verse eight, in victory. And the Lord God will wipe away
tears from off all faces and the rebuke, of his people shall
he take away." That's good news. From off all the earth, for the
Lord has spoken and it shall be said, this is where we'll
spend a little time today. It shall be said in that day,
lo, this is our God. And we've waited for him. and he will save us. This is
the Lord. We have waited for him. We will
be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For in this mountain shall the
hand of the Lord rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under him,
even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill. And he shall
spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth
spreadeth forth his hands to swim, and he shall bring down
their pride together with the spoils of their hands, and the
fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall he bring down,
lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust. Now, you'll recall the story
of Simeon over in the New Testament. I'd like to tie that in here. Simeon was standing in the temple,
having had revealed to him in the past that he would not die
until he saw the Lord's salvation. And when Mary and Joseph brought
the Lord Jesus to present him to the Lord in Luke 2, I think
it was for circumcision, the purpose of circumcision, when
Simeon took that infant up, he took that infant from Mary, and
into his arms, and he said this thing. He said, blessed be God. Lord, now let us thou
thy servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have
seen thy salvation. You know what he's saying there?
This is our Lord. This is our Lord in the words
of Isaiah there, which thou has prepared before the face of all
people, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy
people Israel. Now look back at verse nine.
It's almost as if Simeon was repeating what Isaiah had said
here in verse nine. And it shall be said in that
day, lo, this is our God, our God that's distinguishable. He is distinguishable. He's different
from all other. And we've waited for him, it
says, and he will save us. This is our Lord. How can we describe Simeon's reaction? How can we describe his response
to seeing God's salvation in that infant that he held in his
hands? It was the sacrifice which Paul
admonished us, his reaction was. It was a sacrifice that Paul
admonished all of God's people to make in Hebrews 13 and verse
15, when he said, by him therefore, because of that salvation, because
of his salvation, his redemption, His righteousness, which is given
to us without works. let us offer the sacrifice of
praise to God continually. That is the first fruits of our
lips giving thanks to his name. Simeon's reaction was thanksgiving
and praise to the news and the revelation that he was holding
and was looking at God's salvation, thy salvation. And that response,
which is being glad, which was being glad and rejoicing, is
a confession of every elect believer's faith. Every one of them. That's
common to every chosen sinner that God ever saved. They're
gonna offer thanksgiving and praise. And you find that in
every situation in the Old and New Testament. It's a confession of faith, one
that makes up the testimony of every sinner who ever tasted
the grace of God. And in that day, verse nine,
in that day, the day when our sins were put away, our sin was
put away, not taken away, put away. The day the news was revealed
to every believer To every elect chosen of God, they all are attended
with the same songs of praise and thanksgiving. Our text is
the final words of chapter 25. Obviously we read, didn't read
the first five verses, but we see this response of the elect
to that great feast of the gospel. Look at verse six, wine on the
leaves. Fat, the marrow of fat. It's
the feast of the gospel where the record of Christ's work is
revealed. It's a feast that every chosen
one of God participates in. Maybe not participates in, but
experiences. In that day, he lifted the veil
that we saw a while ago from the eyes of his people He swallowed
up death in victory. It was and is the good news of
our finished salvation. That's the feast upon which we
satisfy ourselves. It was and is the good news of
finished salvation, which is the only possible good news for
a ruined sinner. Outside of that finished salvation,
they have no hope. They have no, the religion has
no hope. It is that gospel of our salvation
and it causes a common response from every sinner that's ever
saved and given faith by our God, our Father. Now, let me
hasten to say this, I'm not talking about You are my experience of
grace. I'm not saying that our experience
is the same from one person to another. Those can be and are different
for practically multitudes, everyone. of the people saved by God, but
the response to God's redemption in Christ is the same for every
elect. So they're gonna be thankful
and they're gonna rejoice. And the first words that proceed
from the lips of these blood-brought sinners is this, verse nine,
lo, this is our God. This is our God. I've waited
for him and he will save us. He will save us. Their statement
is exclusive and they have abandoned all of their idols. We have denied
ourselves, everyone chosen of God. We denied our own personal
merit, our own free will, and any form of religion that we've
ever professed. This is our God. This is our
God. That's the expression of the
believer. The emphasis of this declaration lands on two words,
this and our. This is our God. He saves by grace and He saves
by His power and according to His purpose in the eternal covenant
of grace. This is our God. It's finished. It's finished. He's not the God
whose hands are tied that we hear of in lots of religion,
most of all of religion. He's not the one who's done all
he can do, as Brother Maurice used to say, who's made salvation
possible. That's not our God, but he never
actually saves anyone. He just makes it possible. No,
that's not our God. This is our God, the one who's
finished it. We've waited for him, verse nine. This is the testimony of every
Old Testament saint that was ever given faith to look to this
day of the Messiah. And that day was the future,
was in a future place at this point. He was the lamb slain
before the foundation of the world, but it did not remove
the necessity of him suffering in time, so to speak. He was
the cornerstone. And when you look at a cornerstone
on a house, you see two walls, and he's right in the middle
of it. The Old Testament, he's coming. The cornerstone is there,
he come. And the other wall from which
that foundation stone sets is the new covenant. He's coming,
He's here, and He is coming again. And He's the cornerstone of those
two walls from which those two walls extend. We've waited for
Him. All the New Testament saints
do the same thing, who are now looking to the heavens for His
return. They waited, Abraham, and we
wait. as did Abraham, who looked for
a city whose builder and maker is God. But you know what? We've waited for him. The sheep
don't even, those written in the Lamb's book of God, don't
even know their name is there, but yet they wait. And they don't
even know they're waiting. There they go about their sinful
experience, existence. They're trying out this religion
and that religion. And then suddenly God builds
a road, brings them in here, sits them down before a gospel
preacher and tells them, I love you in Christ. Those words ring true and it
germinates in their soul when they hear it. And after considering
their life and their response, suddenly they have the realization, this is what I've been waiting
for. Didn't even know it. I'm found of them that sought
me not. That's what our Lord said. And they cry out, lo, this is
our God. We've waited for Him. I can remember
the time vividly, vividly, when the Lord gave me a hearing of
the gospel. And maybe I'd heard it before.
I don't deny that at all. But I didn't really hear it.
And there came a time when I went home after hearing the gospel
of grace, and I was dealing with words like mercy, justification. I was dealing with a God who
saved whoever he wanted to save. Dealing with terms like adoption,
redemption, and God on a throne. And I said to myself, you know,
I've never seen this before. But that man showed it to me.
And I went home and opened up my Bible. And there it all was. There it all was. And I'd never
heard those terms before. I knew at that point in time,
this is our God. He is God. And in verse nine,
it says, he will save us. There's no hint of failure. There's
no hint of possibility. There's no hint of probability
and no hint of some condition that I've got to meet. He just
gonna do it. He will save us. Now that confidence comes through
the hearing of the gospel. Religion disdains such a confidence
and they scoff at such a testimony and they call us arrogant, presumptuous, audacious, And they say that
He can save us or that He might save us, but that's not the language
of the sinner who's been given faith. He has. He has. And He will save us. This is our God. Verse nine, it says, this is
our God, He is the Lord. This God is the Lord. For in
Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Father,
Son, and Spirit. If you've seen Christ, you've
seen the Father. You've seen the Father. The elect,
the chosen of God, speak of Him in terms of His sovereignty.
His rule and His reign. The elect don't despair of salvation. They just don't. Because Christ
is Lord over all. And He's taken their case and
redeemed them by His blood. And that leaves nothing to doubt. If you have cast your lot with
the little Lord, the Jesus of this religion around us, whose
power is only effectual by the exercise of your own will and
by your permission, what confidence can you have in a Lord who's
weaker than you are? It just doesn't make any sense. When possible, or what possible
hope Can there be for those whose assurance rests in the fact that
they have done great things for the Lord and prophesied in His
name and cast out devils and done many great works in His
name? Where will their confidence be
when they hear these words? I never knew you. I never knew
you. This is not the case with God's
chosen people. It's just not. This is our God. He is the Lord. Who can turn
Him back? Who can stay His hand? He will
save us. He will. When they threw Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego in that furnace, Before they threw him
in, they asked him if our God's gonna save us. They said, well, we know that He can if He wants
to. You know what the other words were? He said, and He will. And
He will. We've waited for Him. Having
been made to know Our awful state and our condition and having
been made to hunger and thirst for righteousness that we can't
produce ourselves, the elect can't be satisfied with anything
less than a sure and complete salvation worked, wrought by
the sovereign, immutable Lord over all. You just can't have
confidence in anything else. Our Lord is salvation. This salvation, this righteousness
causes you to rest when the world's burning down, on fire. This is what the ruined sinner
has waited for. We've waited for him. We will be glad and rejoice in
his salvation. We don't speak of ourselves in
reference to salvation. We speak and rejoice in his salvation
because he's Lord and he cannot fail. Glory belongs to the Lord
for his salvation. Old Simeon, picture him again,
glorified our Lord just that way. And having read that again
last night, some this morning, he glorified our Lord so much
so, so much so, that even Joseph and Mary, his mother, marveled
at the things Simeon said about their child, Mary's child, when
Simeon spoke of him. I'm not sure I can describe that,
but now I want you to look briefly
here at verse 10. Here's the reason, the reason
for our rejoicing is that the work of our Lord is finished. It was finished on Mount Calvary
and it says this, for in this mountain shall the hand of the
Lord Rest. Emmanuel, Emmanuel, God with
us. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not
working on saving us. He's not working on saving us.
He's finished it and He's resting. He's finished salvation and there's
nothing left to do but to rest. and we rest in his rest. Hebrews chapter four, verse nine
reads like this. There remains therefore a rest
to the people of God. For he that is entered into his
rest, he also has ceased from his own works. And as God did
for us, we rest because he rests. Let us labor therefore to enter
into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of
unbelief. We labor and we strive to enter
into rest because our flesh would have us to work and to labor
and to strive to do good works, to justify
ourselves, but that spirit But God's spirit is contrary to the
flesh that drives us to do that. Our spirit strives to lay aside
all those things. We fight the good fight of faith. And it's a fight to lay aside
those things and not to have any confidence in them, but to
rely solely on Christ and his work. Now in closing, look at
verse six. I didn't put it in. And in this
mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto us, unto all people,
a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the leaves, of fat
things full of marrow, of wines on the leaves well refined. When you read those words, read
those words as pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ and the feast
of salvation, which he brought to us in his church. In this place, in this place,
we have a feast and it is indeed a feast of fat things. He made
the feast and he called us to it by building the very streets
and the roads that bring us here to hear the good news for needy
sinners like us. He's the very essence of the
feast itself. And I tell you, a person that
has no need to hear this gospel, to assemble with his brothers
and sisters, forsaking not the assembly of ourselves together,
I don't know about them. I don't
know about them. I realize some can't, but they
won't do. God's sheep do. Finally, let's just read verse
nine again. And it shall be said in that day, lo, this is our
God. We've waited for him and he'll
save us. This is the Lord. We've waited
for him. We will be glad and we'll rejoice
in his salvation.