Turn with me to Psalm 110, if
you would please. Psalm chapter 110. Let me say while you're turning,
I so enjoy preaching from the Old Testament Scriptures. It's
important to understand that we don't have two Bibles, the
Old Bible and the New Bible, the Old Testament and the New
Testament. The Old Testament and the New Testament are in
the same book. They're in the same Bible. There's just one
Bible and it contains the Old Testament and it contains the
New Testament. But it's all the Word of God. All of it. From beginning to
end. Both Testaments. Old and new
contain the Gospel to the surprise of many. How many times have
we seen Christ in the Old Testament Scriptures? And we love to see
Christ that way, don't we? We see Him in picture and in
type in the Old Testament. And then the New Testament reveals
Christ in His person. God told Moses and the children
of Israel while still in Egypt. while still under Egyptian bondage,
He told them to slay a Passover lamb. You know the stories of
being obedient. They took the firstling of the
flock, a lamb without spot, a lamb without blemish, and they slew
it, and they took the blood, and they posted it on the doorpost
in the lintel, and God said, when I see the blood, I'll pass
over you. So by that, we read in the New
Testament Scriptures in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul wrote, for even
Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. So by that, what we see
in the New Testament, we know that when Moses and Israel slew
that Passover lamb, that it was a picture of the Lord Jesus'
death. There's a picture of Christ cleansing
blood that covers His people. And when God sees that blood,
when He sees the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, His precious
Son, His darling Son, He passes over us in judgment and in wrath. And He sees the blood of His
Son and He's satisfied. Also in our study in Exodus,
we saw how Moses smote the rock in the wilderness when the people
were complaining of thirst. God told Moses to take his shepherd's
rod and smite the rock. Do you remember what happened
next? Moses smoked the rock and water came forth and they all
drank. Then you're reading along in
1 Corinthians chapter 10 and Paul says, that rock that followed
Israel in the wilderness, well that rock was Christ. See it's
just one book, one message, one gospel. Christ is the one who
in the New Testament was smitten. It's from Christ that flows rivers
of living water. It's Christ who is the water
of life. That Old Testament picture is
fulfilled in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in the New
Testament. Only God and His Word can do
that. The most amazing thing, honestly,
that God has ever given this unbelieving world sits on coffee
tables and on bookshelves and in drawers and in closets and
in attics and garages everywhere. And I'm talking about the Bible.
The Word of God. It's everywhere. You can download
it on your phone for free. You can find them in every motel.
But friends, nobody is much interested in it. But I'm interested. How
about you? I don't suppose you'd be here
if you weren't. And for that I'm thankful. What
about those fiery serpents in the Old Testament? They bit the
people and the people died. What a picture of sin they are. But God commanded Moses to make
a serpent of brass, just like the ones that bit the people.
And God instructed Moses to lift that serpent up on a pole. And God said, whoever looks at
that serpent shall live. And they looked and they lived. Then over in the New Testament,
our Lord, speaking of His own death, said, As Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but
have everlasting life. John 3.14 You see the picture
and the type in the Old Testament fulfilled in Christ in the New.
That serpent of brass was made in the likeness of the serpents
that had bitten the people. Even so, friends, Christ our
Lord was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and He was lifted
up on Calvary's cross. Today, the truth still applies. Look to Him and live. There's
life in a look at the same. It's looking to Christ high and
lifted up that we're saved. And it's Christ that we see throughout
the pages of this book. Old Testament and new. Aren't
you glad that you see Him? Our Lord speaking to the Pharisees,
the scribes, the Sanhedrin, the teachers of that day. He said,
you men search the Scriptures. He was talking about the Old
Testament. That's all they had. He said, you men search the Scriptures,
and in them, that is, the Scriptures, you think that you have life,
but they are they which testify of me. They're about me. They didn't see that. They didn't
see Him in the Scriptures. And if we don't see Him, then
we've missed it. That's what the Scriptures are all about.
They're all about Him. It's a hymn book. I'm going to
say it again. H-I-M. Full of hymn. It's all
about the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, a long time ago I asked
you to turn to Psalm 110. Are you still turned there? Look
at verse 1 with me. The Lord said unto Milo, Sit
thou at my right hand until I make Thine enemies, thy footstool. Now I read just about everybody
I could, every commentator I could find on this verse. I read Brother
Mahan concerning this verse and he made a very good and valid
point. He said this, he asked, suppose
you and I lived in the days of David. That would have been seven
to nine hundred years or so before Christ ever came into the world,
before Christ was ever born. If that was the case, what are
we going to do with this statement found here in verse one? Who
is the Lord who said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand? Now I need you to stay with me
on this. This will be a blessing to you,
I believe, if you will. David says, The Lord. See, there's
only one Lord. That's important to know. It's
The Lord. Just one. It doesn't say A Lord. It says The Lord. The Lord mentioned
here is the Heavenly Father. This is the God of heaven and
earth. David said, The Lord. God Almighty. He said to My Lord. The Lord
Jesus Christ. The Messiah. My Lord. The Christ. David's Lord. My Lord. I hope
He's your Lord. David knew that the Lord our
God was and is one God. You know that? God is one God
in three persons. We'll talk about that more in
a minute. And you may say, Preacher, can you explain that? I sure
can. I'm not even going to try. But
I know that it's true. I know that God is a triune God. And the reason I know is because
God's Word says He is. There are three that bear record
in heaven. The Father, the Word, which is
Christ who is the Word, same thing, and the Holy Ghost. And
these three are one, one God. And David knew that God was in
three persons. Yet he calls here the Father
and the Son, both Lord. It's kind of like the same thing
that Thomas did when he put his fingers in the Lord's scars and
the Lord's hands inside. He said, my Lord and my God. Same thing. He's Lord and he's
God. He's God and he's Lord. And the
Father is Lord and the Son is Lord. Jesus Christ and God are
one and the same. The Lord said that. He said,
I and my Father are one. That's pretty plain, isn't it?
He said, He that has seen Me has seen the Father. So we know
that they're one. Now listen, follow me on this.
Listen to what David is saying here. He's saying, The Lord,
the Heavenly Father, the Lord of heaven and earth, has said
to My Lord, My Redeemer, My Messiah, the Lord Jesus, My Representative,
My Substitute. That's who He's talking about.
What did He say to him? He said, Sit thou. That's it. I go, that don't sound right.
What must I do to be saved? That's always the question men
ask. What must I do to be saved? Oh, here we see something, friends,
of our great high priest. He's the great high priest. I'm
telling you, no Old Testament priest could ever sit down. Not
in the presence of God. You won't find any priest in
the Old Testament Scriptures ever sitting down. No sirree. I used to have a teacher say,
no sirree bobtail horsefly. I don't know what that means,
but it means no. I knew that. It meant no. Matter
of fact, there were no chairs in the tabernacle. There was
no place to sit in the temple. And the reason that these Old
Testament priests never sat down is simply because their work
was never done. Never done. Their work was never
finished. Their sacrifices were never effectual. They must be offered again and
again and again. Sacrifice after sacrifice and
they never sat down. But the Lord of heaven and earth,
God the Father, He said to my Lord, He said to my Great High
Priest, He said to my Redeemer, my Mediator, my Lord and my Savior,
Jesus Christ, the very One that represents me before God, He
said to Him, sit down at my right hand. He sits down because His
work's finished. He sits down because he has by
one offering, and that's the offering of himself, perfected
forever, them that are sanctified. And God said, set thou at my
right hand. How long must he sit here? Until
God make all his enemies his footstool. Until every enemy
of his and his people are conquered. The enemy of sin, the enemy of
Satan, the enemy of self. The last enemy will be death,
hell, and the grave. Friends, there's no understanding
of eternal security. There's no lasting assurance
of everlasting hope. There's no competence and rest
except for that which is found in the person and the work of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Preachers have been telling folks
for years now what they need to do in order to be saved. They
say God needs you, God wants you. That ain't so. It's just
not so. False preachers will tickle man's
ears and make them feel good about themselves and they'll
convince men that God has no hands but their hands and no
feet but their feet. But that wasn't David's God,
was it? No, that was the idols made by man's hands. He said
they've got feet and they can't walk. Voices and they can't talk
and noses and they can't smell and they went right down on the
line. He said, they're dead just like the ones that made them.
But I have a great high priest. One who has finished the work.
One that has appeased God's justice. It's not my faithfulness. It's
not my ability or anything else of mine. Men need to quit lying to folks.
It's a matter of my union with Christ. Where He is, I am. What He has, I have. What He
did, I did. And His work is accepted. God
accepted it. And He accepts me and Him, the
Beloved. And that's the only hope I have.
Look at verse 2. It says, The Lord, the Father,
God Almighty shall send the rod of Thy strength out of Zion.
Now, He's still speaking here to the Lord Jesus Christ. He's
still speaking to our Redeemer, the Messiah. And he says, the
Lord shall send the rod of thy strength. Who are you talking
about? Christ. The rod of His strength. And
it's out of Zion. Rule now in the midst of thy
enemies. What does this mean? Well, throughout the Scriptures,
Zion represents the church. There's no question that Zion
here is the church of God. So we could read this, the Lord,
Almighty God, He'll send the rod of thy strength, Christ's
strength, out of Zion, out of the church. And what is the rod
of power, this rod of strength? Well, it's the gospel. It's the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, God sent Moses down
to Egypt to deliver Israel, His people. He called them My people.
And He sent Him down there to deliver them out of bondage and
slavery. Moses said, I'm a shepherd. He
said, I don't have an army. I don't have any weapons. I don't
have anything. Who am I to go up against Pharaoh? I don't even speak well, He said.
I've got a stutter about me. And God said, well, what's that
in your hand? He said, well, that's my shepherd's rod. He
said, you take that rod in your hand, and you go deliver my people,
for it's the rod of my strength. Moses went to Egypt, and he smoked
the sea with that rod, and it turned to blood. He stretched
out that rod toward heaven, and the scripture said, if darkness
came upon the earth, it could be felt. Only God can do that. And with that rod, He divided
the Red Sea. And with that rod, Moses smoked
that rock and it gave forth water. But the strength and the power
wasn't Moses's. The power of God was in that
rod. For it was the rod of God's power
and strength. What a picture this rod is of
God's Gospel. The Lord says this in verse 2.
The Lord shall send forth out of Zion, out of the church, the
rod of thy strength. What is the rod of Christ's strength?
What delivers His people out of Egypt and slavery and bondage? The bondage of sin. It's none
other than the Gospel. He will send the gospel. Paul
said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It's the power
of God and the salvation to everyone that believes. Do you believe
the gospel is the strength, the power of God and the salvation
to everyone in the world? No. To everyone that believes. Do you believe? It's just that
simple. You'll believe. You'll trust
in Him. You'll depend on Him and nothing or no one else. When
hard times come, we acknowledge that He does all things well.
When trials grow a bit bigger and tougher, then we say, nope,
He's working all things together for my good. When they reach
the point that we can't take it anymore, we remember that
we are never tempted above that which we're able and that God
always makes a way to escape that we may bear it. What a God. What a Lord, what a Savior, what
a great high priest. I can take my sin to Him, Danny,
and He can see that it's put away. What a great high priest. Because it's His own blood that
He offers on the altar. Our great High Priest, our great
Redeemer, sits at the Father's right hand. His work of redemption
is finished. And what are the results? Well,
here we have first a precious promise of God to Christ concerning
His people. The Lord says in verse 3, Thy
people shall be willing. Now you know what that tells
me. That tells me that they used to not be willing. Doesn't it? Thy people shall be willing.
It means that they didn't used to be. That means that all of
us by nature, because of sin, are not willing to come and to
bow to God and His Christ. And that's exactly what the Lord
Jesus Himself said. He said, you will not come to
Me that you might have life. That's pretty simple, isn't it?
That's pretty direct. You will not come to Me that
you might have life. Scripture's so clear. It's not
of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that
showeth mercy. We all understand that, can't
we? Do we believe it? That's another matter, isn't
it? Oh, may God enable you to believe Him. Secondly, we're
told who this promise is to. It says it's made to thy people. Who's He talking to? The Lord's
talking to Christ. This is the Lord God, the Heavenly
Father, and He's talking to the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son,
and He says that these people are Thy people. These people
belong to the Lord Jesus. God gave them to Him. And listen,
let me let you in on something. He's not going to lose one of
them. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me. Every single
one of them are going to be saved. Did you notice that the two words
shall be there are italicized? They were added by the translator. So the text actually reads, Thy
people, willing. Thy people, willing. God's people,
willing. Christ's people, willing. You
won't have to sing verse after verse of an invitational hymn
to get them to come to Christ. You won't have to plead and beg
for a lost sinner to come. God makes men and women willing,
not in a forceful way, but in a loving, drawing way of kindness. Isn't that how He dealt with
you? He's so gentle. By nature, we're not willing
to come to be saved. By nature, we're not capable
of coming to be saved. No man can come to me. John 6.44. No man will come.
John 5.40. But listen, when God gives a
sinner life, that sinner is going to come, just like old Lazarus
did. And you won't have to sing 20
verses of Just As I Am to entice them, to beg them, to threaten
them, or shame them. They will come. Thirdly, we see when they will
come. It's in the day of His power,
not before. in the day of Christ's saving
power, but not until. Mr. Spurgeon once said in a message
that God's people are willing people, and they are. He said
you can tell who the people of God are by the fact that they're
willing. They're willing to come hear
the gospel. They're willing to agree with
God and take sides against themselves with God. They're willing to
trust in God's only provided mediator. He said, but to others. Mr. Spurgeon said, to you I preach
week after week and I tell you and I bid you to flee from the
wrath of God to come. I tell you of Christ and I bid
you to come to Him. I persuade you to look to Christ
and Him alone. But one can only conclude that
either the day of God's power has not yet come or you do not
belong. God's people are willing in the
day of His power, willing to submit to sovereign grace, willing
to trust themselves into the hands of the mediator, willing
to cling to Christ and trust His perfect work of righteousness
alone as all they need to be justified before God. There are
some of you that have heard the Gospel for some time now, and
you refuse to believe, or you refuse to profess Christ publicly
in believers' baptism. You know, when that eunuch understood
what Philip was preaching to him, up in his chariot, the first
thing he mentioned was baptism. I'm talking about the eunuch,
not Philip. It was the first thing that God commands after
believing. He says, repent and be baptized,
every one of you. He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved. But he that believeth not shall
be damned. And that believing eunuch, he
said, there's some water right there. What hinders me from being
baptized? Philip said, do you believe with
all your heart that the Lord Jesus is God, the Son of God? And he said, I believe, I believe. What hinders me? And the eunuch
commanded the chariot to stand still. And he and Philip both
went down to the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he
baptized. Oh, you read on through that
chapter. The Lord took Philip away. He winds up in the city
walking around, don't even know how he got there. I love that
story. Men and women today who use the
thief on the cross as an excuse not to be baptized. Let me tell
you something. If that man could have been baptized,
he would have been baptized. You better believe he would have
been. And if you were nailed to a cross, you would have an
excuse not to be baptized too. But you're not. So you don't.
So what hinders you who believe? I can only assume that the day
of His power has not yet come to you. or you're simply unwilling
to bow and believe on Christ. Is it nothing to you all ye that
pass by, behold and see, if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow
which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in
the day of his fearsome? How long will you halt between
two opinions? God's people shall be willing
in the day of His power, and God's people will come to Christ. Let another come in his own name,
and him you'll receive, the Lord said. But our Lord said, I come
in my Father's name, and you receive me not. But thy people,
God's people, they're willing to come. They're willing to believe
on Christ. They're willing to rest in His righteousness. They're
willing to forsake their idols. When? In the day of His power.
The matter of salvation is not just a simple profession or a
personal decision or a handshake with the preacher. What good
is that going to do? The matter of redemption is not
turning over a new leaf. My mom used to tell me to straighten
up and fly right. I couldn't straighten up. I couldn't
fly right. It's not simply a reformation
of life. Salvation takes a miracle. It
takes the power of God. A believer is willing to bow
to Christ, to bow to His gospel. That takes a miracle. Nothing less. Well, in closing,
I want you to look at the new character God gives to those
who are willing in the day of His power. It says, they shall
be willing in the beauty of holiness. Oh, that word beauty here means
magnificence. It means an ornament of excellence. It means majesty. Those clothed
in the righteousness of Christ can have no greater beauty. And
I'm telling you, friends, if an angel was instructed to descend
from heaven, and instructed to come and take something off the
earth to bring before the Lord, something the most beautiful
of all His creations, it wouldn't be the roses or the lilies that
they would bring. It wouldn't be the most colorful
or exotic creature of the deep oceans or the recessed jungles
or the birds of the air, as beautiful as they are. It would be the
redeemed child of God, covered in the perfect righteousness
of Christ. That one conformed to the image
of God's Son. They come in the beauty of holiness. In Christ, as holy and righteous
as God Himself. Do I understand that? No, I don't. But by His grace, I believe it
with all my heart. From the womb of the morning
it says, most all the commentators believe that this means from
the earliest periods in their life, but we know that's not
so. Many people are saved and redeemed later in their lives.
I was thinking about that, the womb of the morning. Have you
ever looked out at the dew? on the ground in the morning
and ask yourself, how did that get there? It didn't rain the
night before. Where does this dew come from?
Well, it comes mysteriously, doesn't it? And it comes divinely. How are God's people brought
to Christ? Same way. Mysteriously. Divinely. Christ died the just for the
unjust. Can you understand that? No.
But why did He do it? That He might bring us to God?
We come from the womb of the morning. We've been birthed of
God. Born again from the womb. Divinely
chosen. Divinely called. Brought. Blessed. Born again. Not of corruptible
seed, but of incorruptible by the Word of God. Thou, Christ
Jesus, hast the dew of thy youth. That's the sweetest thought of
all. There was a promise made to Christ concerning His people.
And that sets our fears to rest concerning the church. We shall
be willing in the day of His power. We shall come in the beauty
of holiness from the womb of God's grace. But here we have
another promise. This one is to Christ Himself.
He has the due of thy youth. The same Lord that led troops
into battle still has the due of youth. And He still leads
His troops along. God's still in the saving business
for Him. The reason I know that is because
the Son came up this morning. When He's through saving, He's
going to wrap this thing up. The omnipotent arm that smoked
the sinner with His Word still smites sinners today. He has
to do with His youth. He's the same yesterday, today,
and forever. He never changes. He's not a
worn out Christ. He's God over all, blessed forever.
He's not the little old man upstairs pleading and begging and wanting
you to let Him have His way. No, sir. With authority, with
power, with conviction. Do you hear Him speak? This is
no defeated Christ. He's not trying to save. He doesn't
want to save and can't. Have you heard the joyful noise?
Jesus saves. Come to Christ. If you can, then
today is the day of His power to you. May God enable you to
trust in Christ. Only those He makes willing in
the day of His power will. Sounds to me like we need to
be petitioning the throne of God, begging Him for mercy. May
God make it so.