Go with me, if you would, back
to Isaiah 45. Isaiah chapter 45. God's Word is eternal. It's eternal. Everything that
He says is eternal. Think about that. Everything
He says. Not one word that He has spoken
will ever pass away. Not one word will ever fall to
the wayside. Have you ever said something
and no one heard it and it just kind of fell to the wayside?
Not one word will ever fall to the wayside Not one word will
ever be forgotten. Everything that He spoke in the
beginning will stand true in the end. Everything. So His Word to man a few thousand
years ago is His Word to man today. It's the same Word. He is the Lord. He changes not. His Word changes not. And this is what He said. The
end of verse 21. If you look at the end of verse
21, He said, There is no God else beside Me, a just God and
a Savior. There is none beside Me. So He said in verse 22, Look
unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. For I
am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by Myself, the Word
is gone out of My mouth in righteousness, and shall not return. That unto Me every knee shall
bow, Every tongue shall swear. Every tongue is going to confess. God has revealed Himself in His
Word. Men and women naturally wonder
about God. They naturally wonder, how can
we know who God is? How can we know what to expect
from Him? What will He be and what will
He say and what will He do when we go stand before Him? Well, He has revealed Himself
in His Word. He has revealed Himself. If we
are going to know anything about God, then we are going to have
to know His Word. It is so critical that we know
His Word. If we do not know His Word, then
we cannot know Him. We cannot. And if we do not know
God, then we're in a terrible condition. We're in a dead state. It means we're lost. If we do
not know Him, Our Lord said this is life eternal that they might
know Thee. The only true God in Jesus Christ
whom Thou hast sent. We must know Him. We must know
Him. It makes me so sad. I believe
when the Lord calls a man to preach, He puts something in
here. He gives him a reason to want
to preach. I have a reason Why I want to
preach. I want so badly for this city
to hear the truth. You know they're going to hate
me for that. Paul said, am I your enemy? Because I tell you the
truth. Our Lord said they're going to hate you for that. That's
strange that a man would know they're going to hate you for
that and just so desperately beg the Lord, please give me
the opportunity to tell every person in this city the truth
about the true and living God. It affects me. It hurts me. It makes me so sad when people
do things and say things that evidence the fact that they don't
know who God is. Some things make me angry and
some things such on and so forth. But when you get to the heart
of my emotion, I'm so sad for them. I am so sad for them. Knowing
from this Word what every man is facing, I'm so sad for them. I've told you before that I attended
a wedding one time. And the minister ended the ceremony
with a prayer to God. He said, these are His words,
this is how He closed His prayer. Whomever he or she may be. That's how He closed His prayer. That man does not know who God
is. Self-admittedly. That man does
not know who God is. I was driving down the road in
Kingsport the other day and I saw a big sign. Somebody had made,
you know, professionally had done a big sign in front of one
of these churches and it said, God loves everybody without exception. Whoever put that sign up has
no idea who God is. No idea. Do you know what God
said in His Word? Do we know His Word? Turn with me over to Malachi
1, the last book in the Old Testament. Malachi 1 verse 1 says, The Burden of the Word of the
LORD to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the LORD,
yet you say, wherein hast thou loved us? The LORD said, Was not Esau Jacob's
brother, saith the LORD? Yet I loved Jacob, verse 3 says,
and I hated Esau. and laid His mountains and His
heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness." You know,
that's not just sin, that's a person. People say, well God, He doesn't
love the sinner, He just hates the sin. That's a person, that's
not just sin. He said, I hated Esau. Turn with me over to Psalm chapter
5. Psalm 5, verse 4. It says, For thou art not a God
that hath pleasure in wickedness, neither shall evil dwell with
thee. The foolish shall not stand in
thy sight. Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. It says, you hate all workers
of iniquity. Well, who is a worker of iniquity?
Iniquity means sin. Who is a sinner? Romans 3 says,
all have sinned. All are workers of iniquity.
All right, therefore, look with me at Isaiah, this time chapter
1. Go back to Isaiah, this time chapter 1. Isaiah 1 verse 9 says, Except
the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should
have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. Had God not chosen to save a
very small remnant of people, we all would have been burned
up in His wrath, all of us. Why? Because He is just. That's the
reason why. He is a just God. Genesis 18 says, Shall not the
judge of the earth do right? Shall he not do right? He can
and he will and he must only do what is right. He's just. He's just. He is the just judge. With him justice is going to
be served. It's going to be. This is something
that man naturally does not know about him. It can only be revealed
through His Word. Man doesn't know this. Kingsport
doesn't know this. It can only be revealed through
His Word. And it must be revealed to us.
It must be. Because if we do not know the
truth concerning Him, we will never know Him. And we'll never bow before Him
until we realize that He's a just God who must punish sin. We'll never bow before Him. And
we'll never confess that He is the absolute sovereign Lord of
all. Now this is critical to get a
hold of. This is just critical. And this
is the absolute truth. Man naturally thinks the original
thought that man has toward God, the thought he's born with. People
are born into this world and eventually they think something
about God and they keep that until repentance comes. The thought
that man is naturally born with is God is unjust. That's the thought that all men
and women naturally have in their heart and mind. God is unjust,
and let me explain that. Man naturally believes that he
has to some degree sinned against God. He does not naturally know the
fullness of the sin that he is, but he knows that at some point
in his life he has committed sin against God. But man naturally
believes that when he goes to stand before God, God is going
to say, that's okay, I forgive you. Man naturally believes that He
is going to say, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I have tried
to do some good things to make up for it. And he believes God
is going to say, I see that. I forgive you. You're free to
go. That is unjust. That is unjust. If a man had
committed heinous, heinous, unmentionable crimes, crimes against families,
crimes against communities, crimes against everything that is good
and right in humanity, If that man stood on trial before a judge
with all of the offended looking on, and the man pled guilty, and
the judge said, that's okay, I forgive you. I'm sure you're
sorry. You're free to go. Had that been the judgment, that
would have been an unjust judgment. That would have been an unjust
judge. And that judge would have sinned
against the law. And really, that judge ought
to be executed too. Mankind would be outraged if
something like that happened. But for some reason, that's how
he thinks God is going to deal with him. That's not going to be the case.
We are dealing with a just God. A just God. God said, Adam, in the day that
you eat of that fruit, you are going to surely die. What happened when Adam ate the
fruit? God took his life from him. He died. He didn't say, now Adam, I'm
going to give you one more chance. That's strike one, Adam. He died. God killed him. In the days of Noah, God looked
down on all of the men and women who were standing on the face
of the earth, and He saw that all of them were only evil continually,
all the way to the thoughts of their imagination. And God said,
I am going to destroy every single one of them. What ended up happening
to them? God destroyed every single one
of them. Every one of them, the whole
earth, God destroyed them. God is the one who did it. Now
some are going to hear this and they're going to say, God wouldn't
kill anybody. God doesn't want anybody to die. Then why did His Son die? If God does not want anybody
to die, why did His Son die? Why did He slay His own Son? The Scripture says it pleased
the Lord to bruise Him. Why would the Son of God die? It's because He's a just God
and a Savior. and a Savior. This is who He
is. If we are ever going to come
to know Him, we will know this about Him. He is a just God,
and thank God He's a Savior. I'm a just God and a Savior. As soon as Adam spiritually died
and fell under the curse, do you know what the Lord our God
did? He slew a lamb. He slew an innocent lamb and
he covered Adam and Eve in the innocence of that lamb. He took
the skin of that lamb and he covered them in it. Now that
animal did not pay the debt of their sin for them. But it pictured
and it pointed them to the one who would. In Genesis 6, right after, God
said, I'm going to destroy mankind with a flood. Do you know what
the next verse says? He said, I'm going to destroy
man that I've made on the earth. I'm going to send a flood. Do
you know what the very next verse says? It says, But Noah found grace
in the eyes of the Lord. Noah found grace. God said, I'm
going to put you in an ark. That boat did not eternally save
Noah from destruction. But it pictured and it pointed
Noah and his family to the one who would. God gave His law to
Moses and He said, you tell the people that death is coming to
whoever breaks it. And He said, I want you to keep
it in the ark of the covenant. I want you to make this box and
I want you to keep the law in the ark of the covenant that
it might be preserved forever. But He said, I command you to
seal the top of that ark with a mercy seat. And you tell the people that
I'll meet with them there through the sprinkling of blood. I'll
meet with them there. Now how can God be just? How can God still be just and
save His people? How can He remain just and right
and holy and justify His people? Say, you're free to go and still
be just and right and holy. When Adam was ruined and cast
out because of his sin, and when an entire earth was
destroyed because of their sin. When the law says the wages of
sin must be death, how can God spare His people from what they
deserve and still be holy and just? Three portions of Scripture
will answer that for us. Each one answers it on its own.
But I just can't imagine reading one without reading all three.
Go with me to Psalm 22. Psalm 22, the Lord Jesus Christ
cried to His Father in verse 1, My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping
me? And from the words of my roaring,
O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not. And in
the night season, and am not silent, but thou art holy." Now who's saying this? Jesus
Christ, the Son of God. Look at what the Son of God said
in verse 6. He said, but I am a worm. I am a worm. Why would He say that? Why would
the Son of God say that? Verse 7, He said, 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. Why does
the Son of God need to be delivered? Delivered from what? Verse 14, He said, 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 bowels. My strength
is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my
jaws, and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. For dogs
have compassed me. The assembly of the wicked have
enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my
feet. I may tell all my bones. They
look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them
and cast lots upon my vesture. But be not thou far from me,
O Lord. O my strength, haste thee to
help me. What's happening here? Turn over to 2 Corinthians 5.
2 Corinthians 5 verse 21 says, For He hath made Him to be sin
for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him." The sin of God's chosen people had to be dealt
with. It had to be dealt with, so God
the Father laid it on God the Son. And He justly, in absolute holiness,
according to the commandment of the Law, according to what
the Law demanded, the Judge of the earth did right. He slew
the one who bore the sin, and He set free the ones who
bore the innocence. God has never swept one sin under
the rug. Never. Not one sin committed
by any of His people has ever gone unpunished. Not one sin. He justly dealt with all of them. I mean all of them. All of our
sin when He pressed them into His own Son. Now look with me
at Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5 verse 19 says,
For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, So by
the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover the
law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound. That as sin hath reigned unto
death, Even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal
life by Jesus Christ our Lord. The salvation of all of God's
people has been accomplished. It is complete. It is so complete. By the sacrifice of God our Savior,
we're saved. We're saved. There is nothing
left to be done except for view the salvation. That's it. Just view the finished work.
Listen to this poem titled Christ my all and in all. It says there
is a holy God that I cannot please. But Christ did. He said, this is my beloved Son
in whom I'm well pleased. There is a holy law that I cannot
keep, but Christ did. He said, I finished the work
which thou gavest me to do. There is a perfect righteousness
that I cannot earn, but Christ did. He is the end of the law for
righteousness. There is a convicting record
of sin that I cannot erase, but Christ did. He made Him to be
sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. There is a great judgment that
I cannot endure, but Christ did. He said, My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me? And there is an eternal death
that I cannot rise from, but Christ did. And if He's been made to be my
all and in all, He will raise me up with Him at the last day. When Christ our God said in our
text, look unto me and be ye saved. He was not saying, look
unto me so you can be saved. He accomplished that. He absolutely
accomplished that. By the sacrifice of Himself alone,
He finished that. His declaration to us is, look
unto Me because you are saved. You are quickened from death
to life. That's His Word. The Word that does not change.
The same Word then is the same Word now. You are quickened. You have been given eyes to see.
So just look. Just look, look unto me and enjoy
being saved. That's his word to us. Just enjoy
being saved. Enjoy seeing your Savior. Our Lord said, as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, I will be lifted up for the sin
of my people. Just look and live. There is no God else beside me,
a just God and a Savior. There's none beside me. So look
unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I
am God and there is none else. Now that's a Savior. Hallelujah,
what a Savior. All right, let's all stand together.