John chapter 13. John chapter 13, our text will
be found in verse 1. Now before the feast of the Passover,
when Jesus knew that His hour was come, that He should depart
out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were
in the world. He loved them unto the end. Now, the first thing I want us
to see in this passage is that Jesus' hour was come. What does this mean? That He
knew His hour was come. Now, there are many times during
the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ that men desired to take
and kill Him, many times. Many times they desired to take
Him and kill Him, but they were not able to, even though they
wanted to. Why? Because His hour was not
yet come. Go over to John chapter 7. See
this for yourself, John 7 and verse 30. It says, they said therefore
unto him, I'm sorry, I think I've got the wrong text. I just don't like when that happens. It says in John 7 here, it says,
there they sought to take him, but no man laid hands on him
because his hour was not yet come. Jesus told those who came,
Jesus told him who came by night, to take him after that he had
told his disciples that his hour was come in Luke 22 53 he said
when I was daily with you in the temple you stretch forth
no hands against me and Jesus was testifying of their desire
to take him and he calls to mind their desire he says you remember
you remember this that when I was in the temple and taught daily
you sought to kill me but you didn't you didn't What he was
testifying of was that they had no power to take Him. They had no power to do what
was in their hearts to do because His hour was not yet come. Before
this hour, Jesus freely and openly preached the gospel even because
He knew that they couldn't touch Him. He knew that they couldn't
touch Him until His appointed hour to be lifted up on the cross
and suffer for the sins of His people. In Luke 13, the Lord
even, listen to the boldness of this, He told Herod, which
was the key. He told Herod, He said, sent
messengers to Herod, and He said, you go tell that fox that I preach
today and tomorrow and the third day. And the third day. I'll be lifted up, perfected. Nevertheless, I must preach. I must walk today and tomorrow
and the following day, for it cannot be that a prophet should
perish out of Jerusalem." You see, it was necessary. This is
what it's saying, that Christ must of necessity preach for
a certain appointed period of time. a set time. It was necessary that he continue
to declare the Word of God as he was the prophet of God. He
was the prophet of God. Jesus was the elect and anointed
one of God to be the Savior of Israel. Therefore, he must preach
until his appointed hour. Hear what the psalmist said in
Psalm chapter 2. I'm going to have to take this
coat off. I think I'm kind of mic is messing with me. Keep
thinking about it falling off. There, that's more comfortable.
Look in Psalm chapter 2 with me. Look over there in Psalm
chapter 2. Look what God says about these men. They were all
up in arms about trying to take him before his time. And God
asked this question, Why do the heathen rage, and the people
imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth have set
themselves, and the rulers take counsel together. against the
Lord and against His anointed, saying, Let us break their bands
asunder and cast their cords from us. But notice this, He
that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. He that sitteth in the heavens,
you who hate Christ, you who despise God, you who want to
cast off, who don't want to hear His Listen to me. God's going to laugh at you when
He casts you into eternal darkness. He shall laugh at you when your
time is come, when the fires of hell rage over men's souls. I tell you, the God of heaven
shall laugh. You mock Him here, and I tell
you, He'll mock you in eternity. He'll have the last word. God
will have the last word. He that sitteth in the heaven
shall laugh, and have them in derision. I tell you, wicked
men, they think they have power to do what they please. I tell
you, God, if He restrains and withholds men, they can do nothing. They can do nothing. See surely then, that this This
was true of the Pharisees and Jewish rulers, that with every
fiber of their being, hated Christ and wanted to kill Him. And the
words which He spake were the very words of God, and they could
not refute them. The miracles He did testified
of His deity, which they could not deny, and it caused them
much pain and grief. They gnashed their teeth at Him. They hated it, despised Him. And yet if instead of the gospel
melting their hearts, instead of it humbling their hearts to
receive Him, they were only more hardened and more determined
to kill Him. But they were not allowed even
because His hour was not yet come. And I'll tell you this,
later on in the gospel it tells us that when When God appointed
the time of the Lord Jesus when he should die, you know this,
the Pharisees, they said, we can't take him. We can't take
him now, it's Passover. We can't take him now, the people
are adoring him. And that's exactly when they
took him, when they said they wouldn't. They did. All because it was in the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God that delivered him up. to
them. Consider this truth in light
of the time that His hour was come. Now notice this. Notice
when His hour was come. Look at this in our text. His
hour was come, it says, now before the feast of the Passover, when
Jesus knew His hour was come, that He should depart out of
this world unto the Father. It was during the hour, the time
of Passover. And we know that Jesus Christ
is the fulfillment of this feast. This feast of Passover, Jesus
Christ we know is the Lamb of the Passover. This Passover feast
was first kept by Israel while they were slaves in Egypt. Remember the Lord had sent those
plagues before, but none of those plagues delivered Israel. He sent the flies, He turned
the water into blood, He sent the frogs and the lice, and all
of these different plagues. And what did that do but harden
Pharaoh's heart? It didn't cause him to let them
go. What was it? What was the curse? What was
the plague that caused Pharaoh to let them go? It was the Passover
that set them free. The Passover. And remember, Moses
was commanded of God. This was the Passover, that he
was to take a lamb, take a lamb from among the goats and the
sheep, without spot and without blemish, and he was to set it
aside. Did you get that? Look over there
with me. Go to Exodus. I believe it's chapter 12. Yes, Exodus chapter 12. Look
at verse 5. This is what God commanded concerning
the Feast of the Passover. He said, Your lamb shall be without
blemish, a male of the first year. You shall take it out from among
the sheep and from the goats, and you shall keep it up until
the fourteenth day of the same month." Now why is that? Have you ever wondered why He
set that sheep aside, that lamb? He set that lamb aside for inspection. That lamb was to be inspected.
It was to be without spot. It was to be without blemish.
And it was set aside so that for fourteen days they could
observe the Lamb to make sure that it was without spot and
blemish. Even so, my friend, was Jesus
Christ set aside for a certain period of time. He was set aside
for the three years of His ministry. for the purpose of inspection. God says, behold. What does that mean? Look. I
lay in Zion a stone for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone. Something that has been tested.
You would not want to put your house and build the foundation
of your house on some land that has not been tested. It might
shift. You put your land on a cliff
that has not been tested, it might fall into the sea. God
says, I have laid aside a stone, and this is a tried stone. The Lord Jesus Christ, behold,
that Jesus Christ was declared to be the Lamb of God by John
the Baptist. He said, behold, the Lamb of
God that taketh away the sin of the world. Now there's a declaration.
So what did they do from that point on? They began to try Him. They began to test Him. As we
said, as I said in the previous message this morning, I said
that the Jews wanted to trip Him up. They were always looking
for opportunities to twist Him, to try to defame Him. They meant
it for evil, but God meant it for good. You see that? That God meant their testing,
their trying to trip Him up. They did it for evil, but I tell
you, God meant it for good to show you that He is a Lamb without
blemish. Did they ever trip him up? Did
they ever find any reason to accuse him? No, they did not. He is the spotless lamb of God. Satan tried him in the wilderness. You remember, he took him out
for 40 days in the wilderness. The scripture says he fasted. God willing, I'm going to eat
in a little while. I tell you, I may have been without food
for a couple of days. Forty? And I tell you, our Lord Jesus
was weak in the flesh. His flesh was weak. And He was
tempted of Satan. And what did He say? The Prince
of this world has come and found nothing in me. No sin which to
hold on to. He's been tried, proven to be
righteous. And I tell you, he was tried
of God and found righteous. What did God say about his son? He said, this is my beloved son
in whom I am well pleased. God tried him. He was tried of
men. He was tried of Satan, and he
was tried of God. And so after this time of trial,
the Passover lamb was set aside for 14 days and tried. And when
he was found to be pure, when he was found to be spotless,
what did they do? The Scripture says, And the whole
assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the
evening. Shall kill it. What's the purpose of the Passover
lamb? It was to kill it. Jesus said,
I've come for this hour. What shall I say then? Father,
save me from this hour? No, for this reason I came into
the world, to give my life a ransom for many. He came to die. Jesus had proven himself to be
the Christ, the Son of God, and there is no doubt of this. If
you this morning refuse to believe Jesus is the Christ, it will
not be because of proof. You hear me? God has not left
himself without witnesses. Now you can say you don't believe
it, but you're just a fool because the evidence is plain. The evidence
is plain. He is the Lamb of God. He is
the righteous man. He is the one that God sent.
He is the Son of God. And He has come of the seed of
the woman, born of a virgin. The Scripture says, He shall
be called Immanuel, God with us. The scripture says he should
come as a lamb, meek and lowly in heart, a servant of God, a
prophet, a priest, and a king, and Jesus Christ has proven himself
to be all of those things. He shall come to obey the law,
the scripture says, and make it honorable. He shall come to
finish the transgression, make an end of sin, and to make reconciliation
for the iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to
seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.
Only one man fulfills all of Scripture, Jesus Christ. Jesus of Nazareth. This is the
only man who has fulfilled all the Old Testament prophecies.
He is the only one. So if you deny Him and you say
that I have no proof, you're just a fool. You're just a fool
and you're willingly blind to the truth. Only Jesus of Nazareth
has fulfilled all the Old Testament prophecies. Only He is the fulfillment
of all the types and pictures And if you die in your sins,
it will not be because of lack of proof that Jesus is the Christ. If you do not believe that He
is God manifest in the flesh, it will not be because God did
not faithfully prove it. So, now was His hour come. What hour? the hour of his suffering
and death. You shall take the lamb and the
whole congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. Behold that Jesus is the righteousness
of God for all his people, for all of his elect. And it was
for the glory of God that he honored the law in obedience
and pleased God. Is that not so? Jesus obeyed the law of God. But do you realize that that's
not enough? That's not enough. If Christ just honored the law
for us, if he just proved to be the Lamb of God spotless,
that would not do our souls any good. You see, Christ must have been
killed. He must have died. Why must the Son of God obey
the law and die in order to save us? In this picture of the Passover,
consider this. We who are His people are the
firstborn. Remember that the firstborn was
in jeopardy. The firstborn of every household
was in jeopardy. And he said, inspect the lamb,
make sure it's a spotless lamb. And then you kill it. And then
what do you do? You apply the blood to the doorpost and the
top, the lentil. And he said, when I see the blood,
I will pass over you. Do you get that? I will pass
over you only when he sees the blood. You see, Jesus Christ is a lamb
to be slain. The lamb was set aside for inspection,
but it must also have been slain. He has come that he should die
as a substitute for sinners. This is another word for the
gospel, substitution. substitution. You see, Jesus Christ died in
the place of Sinners in the stead of sinners as a representative
man He bore the sins of his people in his own body on the tree His
hour was come what hour that he should suffer that he should
die under the justice of Almighty God And these were not for his sins
He did no sin. Whose sins were they? They were
ours. I tell you, God's either going
to... God's justice will be satisfied.
Listen to me. God's justice will be satisfied.
He'll either kill you or Christ. You'll either die in your sins,
suffering for your sins, or in the substitute. But I tell you,
God's justice is going to be satisfied either way. The soul of the Son of God, friends,
at this time was troubled because He would soon be lifted up from
the earth upon the cross and suspended between heaven and
earth, between God and man as the mediator, as the substitute. And there, it was there on the
cross that God imputed our sins. And I tell you, God, when He
imputed our sins, He made them Christ's own. Now this is something
I cannot explain. I have no illustration for it. I remember an illustration that
one man gave. He said an Indian chief, he said
there was a thief in the tribe and it was a sentence of 40 lashes
by the strongest man of the tribe was the sentence of justice for
a thief. And when they found the thief,
it was the chieftain's own mother who was guilty. And he was a just man. This chief
was a just man. And he would adhere to the law.
And the day when it came, when her sentence was to be carried
out, and he sat on his throne, and they strapped his mother
to the stake, ready for the strongest man to whip her with forty lashes,
which her frail body couldn't withstand. She would have surely
died under the lashing. And just as he began to sentence
her and to nod to the executioner, the chieftain took off his robe,
he wrapped himself around his mother, and he said, Begin. And his back took the stripes
for his mother. Now that's not even close to
what the Lord Jesus Christ did. He actually took our guilt. And when God punished him, he
punished our guilt in him. Do you see now why it is that God
should pass over you who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? because
He bore our sins in His own body and God's justice poured out
on Him without mercy and He suffered enduring the wrath of God for
His people. And by His stripes, we are healed. We are healed. Over in Lamentations, Lamentations
chapter 3. Listen, if there's ever to be
any mercy for sinners, it must be by this way. Look at this
in Lamentations 3. Lamentations 3 and verse 29. putteth his mouth in the dust. He, God, putteth his mouth, Christ,
in the dust. If so be there may be hope. He giveth his cheek to him that
smiteth him. And he is filled full with reproach. The scripture says, the reproaches
of them that reproach thee fell on me. The Lord said that by
the mouth of the psalmist. The reproaches of them, you,
your reproaches, your sins, Your hatred for God, your despise
of His authority, your lack of obedience to God's law is a reproach. But the reproaches of them that
reproached thee fell on me. If there is to be any mercy,
the Lamb of God must be slain. Justice must be satisfied. And is this not the prophecy
in Isaiah that says that he shall see of the travail of his soul
and be satisfied? Satisfied. Oh, my soul, behold
the bleeding brow of thy Redeemer, whose soul was troubled and sweat
as it were great drops of blood. Behold Him that was pierced with
thorns, and His hands and His feet pierced with nails, His
side pierced with the spear, and out of His wounds His precious
blood flows as a fountain for atonement of sins. He was wounded for our transgression. He was bruised for our iniquity. See, the Savior's face was put
in the dust, and He bore our sins, and God's justice was satisfied. But not only did God appoint
Jesus to be our Lamb, but consider this, Jesus Himself willingly
did it. When God appointed Him to be
our Savior, Jesus Christ willingly received the office. He willingly received to be the
Passover Lamb. Listen to these scriptures, and
I'll just quote them for you. Galatians 1 and verse 4, the
scripture says, Who gave Himself for our sins? Galatians 2 and verse 20, I am
crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Not I, but Christ liveth
in me in the life that I now live in the flesh. I live by
the faith of the Son of God, listen, who loved me and gave
himself for me. Titus 2, 14, who gave himself
for us that he should redeem us from all iniquity. Is this not the testimony of
Abraham, as I said before, God shall provide himself a lamb. See then that the Passover lamb
was not appointed by force or extortion. Sometimes I tell Andrew, my son,
I tell him, I say, Mom and I are going somewhere, and you are
responsible for your sister. Do you know what I get? Oh, Dad,
do I have to? Do I have to be responsible?
I know that she's going to do this and this and this, and then
I'm going to get in trouble for what she did. Oh, do I have to? Oh, believer, Christ did no such
thing when God gave you to Him. When God gave you to His Son,
He said, I will. I love them that you have loved. I will be their surety. I will
be their Savior. You know what it's going to take,
Son? Yes, it'll take my death, and I'll do it willingly. Now, before the Feast of the
Passover, when Jesus' hour was come, that He should depart out
of this world unto the Father, listen, having loved His own. I'm no English scholar, but that's
past tense, isn't it? Loved. Believer, when did Jesus begin
to love you? I tell you he's always loved
you. Don't look for any reason for
him to love you in you. You won't find it. He loved you
because of grace. He loved you because he would. Jesus, having loved his own,
he gladly, lovingly, willingly came to die for us. I'm so thankful the scripture
doesn't say this, whosoever loveth the Lord Jesus Christ shall be
saved. Aren't you thankful for that?
Because I tell you what, my love is not worthy. I would have no confidence whatsoever
My love seems so cold, but the scripture says, he that believeth
on the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved. And I know this by
faith, I see he has always loved me. Is he not the immutable God,
the unchangeable God? Do you suppose his love should
change? His love doesn't change. He's always loved us. The love
of Jesus Christ is an ancient love. He said, I have loved thee
with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness
have I drawn thee. Christ's love does not extend
to the whole race of human men. Look at this. Having loved, who? Loved his own. He said, All that the Father
giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out. Who are going to come to Him?
Who are going to believe on Him? Those that the Father gave Him.
Those that He loved from eternity. This is a sure thing. This is
not by chance. I tell you, if salvation depended
upon you to believe on Him, I would not preach. It would be a futile
effort. But I preach because He promised
that His people will hear and will come. And having loved not
the whole world, but His own. Not every man without exception,
but His own. Who was it that He passed over
in Egypt? Only those with the blood He
passed over. And I tell you, only if the blood
is applied by the Holy Spirit to your heart will He pass over
you. Christ's love extends only to
His own. He makes this plain in His prayer
in John 17. He said, I pray not for the world,
but for them which Thou hast given Me out of the world. Jesus gave Himself not for all
men without exception, but for all men. He gave Himself to be
testified of in due time, the Scripture says. Who are His own? Those who believe. Dost thou believe that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God? It doesn't matter if your parents
believe or your children believe. It only matters this. Do you
believe? This is not a light thing. If
you believe, John says, you are born of God. You are his own, and he has loved
you, and he always will love you. And notice this, he loved
his own, his elect, which were in the world. All this should
give you comfort. God knows where you are. A lot of times we forget or we
feel as though God doesn't understand. There is not one thing that happens
to you that he is not completely aware of. Did you hear that? Not one thing.
Matter of fact, there's not anything that ever happens to you, believer,
that He has not purposed. These things that happen to you
are not insignificant to Him. He knows them. He knows where
you are. He knows what's going on with
you. He loves you. And He realizes you are in the
world. He knows you're still in this
old flesh. He's not ignorant of that. He
loves his own which are in the world. And notice this, he loved
them until the end. Is this not a comfort to you? He that has loved you and does
love you will love you. How long? How long will He suffer
with us? To the end? To the end. He that hath begun
a good work in you shall perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Why then do you fear? God says, Fear not, thou worm,
Jacob, I have redeemed thee. Should this not completely annihilate
our fears? If He has loved you and He loves
you even while you're in this world, the Scripture says even
when we were without strength, Christ died in due time for the
ungodly. If He has loved us even in this
present state of our sin and depravity, will He not continually
love us? Yes, He will. His love doesn't
change. He gave Himself for us. And therefore
his grace abounds. How tedious and tasteless the
hours when Jesus no longer I see. Sweet birds, sweet prospects,
sweet flowers have all lost their sweetness to me. Midsummer sun
shines but dim, the fields strive in vain to look gay. But when
I am happy in him, December is as pleasant as May. His name
yields the richest perfume and sweeter than music his voice.
His presence dispels my gloom and makes all within me rejoice. I would, were he always such
nigh, have nothing to wish or to fear, no mortal so happy as
I, my summer would last all the year. My Lord, if indeed I am
thine, if thou art my sun and my song, say why do I languish
in pine and why are my winters so long? Oh, drive these dark
clouds from the sky. Thy soul-cheering presence restore. Or take me to thee on high where
winter and clouds are no more. Believer, He knows where you
are. He has loved you. He has shed His blood for you,
and He will love you until the end. This is His Word for you. His hour has come. He is the
Passover Lamb, the righteousness of God, the Lamb slain for our
sin, risen for our justification, and this same Lamb has loved
you. He does love you, and He will
love you. May God add these blessings to
His Word this morning. I pray that God give you comfort
in this. Let's stand. We'll be dismissed in prayer.