It's interesting, I struggled
trying to find a title for the message, because when Brandon
records them, they need a title. And here it was all the time.
It just needed Dwight to get up and lead us in this hymn.
In the second verse, it says, Jesus provides a perfect salvation. So that's our title this morning,
is that Jesus Christ provides a perfect salvation. You know, even as believers,
there is so much that God's people simply do not know. There's so
much we don't know. But thanks be unto God, all believers
know enough. Everything we know that is necessary
to know and believe is revealed to God's people in God's Word
by His Spirit. And let me see if I can summarize
three of those things, just the three things that we must know
and believe. Number one, Jesus Christ is the
perfect, holy, righteous Son of God. Every believer in this
world knows and believes that simple truth. Number two, all
men and women, we are all born vile sinners. That's the second
thing we simply must not only know, but believe in our heart.
And number three is that the Lord Jesus Christ took unto himself
the sin of his people and gave them his perfection." That's
the three simple yet profound things. And if we know and believe
these three things, it's because God's Spirit has shown us and
caused us to believe the truth about Christ, about us, as is
revealed in God's Word. And that's as simple as I know
how to say it. Knowing and believing these simple yet amazing truths
is wonderful, it's wonderful. But I have a question for you.
If this is enough to know and believe, and it is, why do God's
people want to, want to, why do they want to, Indeed, why
do they need to keep coming to worship God? Why do they keep
coming to hear more and hear this over and over? Cody just
said it. Gabe said it. I mean, Marvin
said it Wednesday night. Gabe said it three times last
Sunday. Why do we keep coming back? Well,
the answer to that is that God, the Holy Spirit, creates a need
in the heart of God's people to worship Christ. And the desire
to worship him is caused by that need to worship, to come here
in the hope. Let me hear it one more time. Let me hear about him again.
Let me hear those three simple things one more time. Doesn't matter which scripture
you start with, just end with those three things. Have it show
me those three things. God's people, God's people do
not have to be bribed, begged, cajoled, threatened, or pleaded
with to come worship God. And I'll give you an illustration
to make that point. In the wilderness, as they travel
through the desert, Moses did not have to say at any point
in time, he didn't have to say this, Everyone who collects manna
today gets a dollar. Or everybody who picks up manna,
you get a bigger tent. Moses never had to say, how about,
since you don't want to, if we pick up the manna and deliver
it to you, would you be pleased to eat some of the manna? He
never had to say that. He never had to say, without
you, there'd be no hands to pick up the manna. He never said that. Moses didn't have to say, if
you don't pick up manna, you're gonna starve and go to hell.
He never had to say that. And Moses certainly didn't have
to say every morning, please, please, please, please, won't
y'all go pick up some manna? He didn't have to do that. Jesus
Christ is the bread of life. He's the perfect food. Believers
don't have to be robbed, cajoled, threatened, or anything else.
Believers desire and need and want all the bread of life they
can get. Believers want all the Christ
they can hear and have. Now let's go back through these
three simple things. Let me make these points to you
with some scripture. Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 32. Genesis, Leviticus, Exodus, you
know, it's right along in there, come to Deuteronomy 32. And as you're finding that, let
me quote you some scripture from Psalm 18. And remember, our first
point is that Jesus Christ is perfect. He's the perfect, holy,
righteous Son of God. Psalm 18 says, as for God, His
way is perfect. The way of the Lord is tried,
it's refined, it's proven. For who is God, save the Lord,
or who is a rock, save our God. You can stand on this. And in
Deuteronomy 32, it says the same thing. Look at verse one. Give ear, O ye heavens, and I
will speak. And here o'erth the words of
my mouth, my doctrine, my truth. shall drop as the rain, my speech
shall distill as the dew, as a small rain upon the tender
herb, and as the showers upon the grass." It doesn't matter
if we're a brand new believer, a babe in Christ. It doesn't
matter if we've matured some. It doesn't matter if we're tall
grass or just little sprouts. We all need the same thing, which
is the Word of God. We need to hear who Christ is.
Verse three says, because I'll publish the name of the Lord,
ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the rock, his work
is perfect. Do you see that? This is the
only thing we can stand on is the rock Christ Jesus, because
he's perfect. For all his ways are judgment,
all his ways are righteous, they're all holy, they're all true, they're
perfect. A God of truth and without iniquity,
just and right is he. God's Word declares that Jesus
Christ is holy and righteous and perfect. He's the rock upon
which we can stand. Psalm 145, I'm gonna quote it
to you. The Lord is righteous in all
His ways and holy in all His works. He's perfect. Do we realize
that Jesus Christ came into this world, into this earth, the same
way everybody here did? He was born. from his mother,
just like we are, as a man. He lived over 30 years, we know
that. But listen, it didn't matter
whether he was an infant, or a young child, a teenager, or
a full grown man. Not one time in all that 30 plus
years, not one time did he sin, not once. And I realized this
is just impossible for us to really enter into, isn't it? That he never one time did anything,
said anything, thought anything that was sinful. We drink sin
like water. That's how common it is to us.
And I realize it's impossible for us to understand, much less
believe, unless God reveals the truth to us about the Lord Jesus
Christ. Christ is the rock of perfect
righteousness. Now here's the second thing.
All men and women and even children are by nature vile sinners and
therefore cursed of God. How did we get this way? Turn
over just a few pages back to Deuteronomy 27. When Adam in the garden disobeyed
God, he became cursed. And being cursed is like being
infected with a terrible disease. And sin is a disease which is
genetically passed from parents to children. Every generation
gets it. No one's immune. We've all got
the disease of sin in us. We're born with it. Scripture
says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And
the first evidence in the scriptures, if you go back and read in Genesis
when Adam and Eve were cast out, the very next thing that's related
to us is the story of Cain and Abel. These are two boys, same
parents. And one of these boys, Cain,
you know what happened? He got upset. He got offended. His brother made him angry. He
lost his temper. And as scripture says, he rose
up against his brother Abel and slew him. And it's just this
simple. Stan and I are brothers in Christ. We ought to be able to agree
on just about everything, but it would be this simple. Stan
says something I don't like, and I just turn around and pick
up an ax and go wham, and kill him dead. What in the world made
me do that? What made Cain do this to Abel? What made him do this? He had
a disease in here. He had a sickness in here. It's
called sin, and if it's not my way, I will have my way. we've all got it, folks, is just
by the grace of God, I haven't killed Stan already. And we don't
do these things. The Lord restrains us from so
much, but that doesn't make us innocent. And the Lord, as soon
as Abel killed his brother, God said, and now art thou cursed
from the earth. The minute that Adam ate of that
tree, he was cursed of God. Just one sin makes a person cursed
of God. I found a list of things that
would get a person cursed of God. Did you know the Levites,
they were in charge of the law in Israel? And they wrote all
this stuff down. They wrote things down. And go
with me just for a minute through this list in Deuteronomy, which
is, we know the Ten Commandments, don't we? We sort of know what
that says. But they took it a lot further
than that. And they gave some examples here.
And hang on to your seats for a minute. In Deuteronomy 27,
look what it says in verse 14. And the Levites shall speak and
say unto all the men of Israel with a loud voice. Now, they
proclaim this, not, they didn't go like, y'all ought not to do
that. It was like with a loud voice, they said, this will get
you cursed. This'll get you killed. And look
at verse 15, it says, Cursed be the man that maketh any graven
image, molten image, and abomination to the Lord, the work of the
hands of craftsmanship, and puts it in a secret place. And all
the people shall answer and say, Amen. What they're saying is
that one of these days, everybody's going to say, amen, amen. So be it. But what this says
is it, and, and this kind of makes sense to us that, uh, if,
if we sit down and carve out a thing, it looks like a little
fat man and set him up here and say, this is our God. We know
that's wrong. Don't we? We know what's wrong
to make an image like that. And this says, okay, y'all don't
like that, so I'll make him and I'll just carry him around with
me and keep him hidden from you, even that sin. And that'll get
us cursed of God. Now look at verse, 17, cursed be he that removeth his
neighbor's landmark. What this is about is back in
those days, they didn't have fences and things. They would,
when someone in Israel got a piece of property, they set up a little
pile of stones here in this corner, and then they had a little pile
of stones in this corner, and that corner, and this corner,
and that's my land. And over there's my neighbor's
land. What this guy would do is in the middle of the night
he'd get up and tiptoe out in the field and he'd pick up those
rocks and he'd move them over here. And the next night he'd
get up and come out and he'd move them a little further. Well
pretty soon he owns practically the whole land. How'd he get
it? He cheated his neighbor. His neighbor wasn't awake at
two in the morning to see it happen. And this is saying even
the things we do secretly in the heart, when anybody sees
them or not, God sees it, and we're cursed as a result. Look
at verse 18. And we go, surely I wouldn't
do something like that. I wouldn't try to cheat my neighbor
out of a few feet. Look at verse 18. Cursed be he
that maketh the blind to wander out of the way. Now, this one
means, Here's a blind man coming down the road, and he's tapping
along with his stick, you know, and I'm over here and I go, hey,
hey, blind man, you're fixing to get in trouble, you need to,
here, let me show you. Okay, now walk that way, and
he goes, whew, off in a cliff, or falls in a ditch. You said,
who would cause a blind man to do that? That's despicable, isn't
it? Well, it must have been going
on, because that's what the Levites felt the need to write. Look
at verse 19. Cursed be he that perverteth
the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. This fellow
dies, and his widow, she's left, and the lawyer comes and says,
oh, you're so lucky. Your husband left you $25,000. When in fact, husband left her
$100,000 and the lawyers just figured out a way to cheat her
out of that 75. You call all, nobody would do that. Really?
I read about it on most days now in our land. Look at verse 20. You know, I
have really struggled with how to deal with this and I'm not
going to read the next three verses. If you want to read the
first line of them, you feel free to. Some things are so despicable
and just so vile, we think, surely nobody does that. Well, it was
not only going on in this day. Paul wrote to the Corinthians
about some of these very things. And they're disgusting and vile. The thing we need to understand,
unless God restrains us, there's nothing we won't do. But look
here at verse 24. Cursed be he that smiteth his
neighbor secretly. We act like we like our neighbor.
First chance we get, we tell the other neighbor, you know
what that guy did? We're acting like, I mean, look at verse 25,
cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent man. Well,
surely none of us would ever be hired to assassinate somebody
or kill somebody. Well, it goes on, goes on. And verse 26, cursed be he that
confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. If you
disagree about one itty bitty tiny thing in this book, you're
cursed of God. This is tough, isn't it? But
now I suspect that we're like most folks. Y'all are, and I
am. We're sitting here thinking, well, I'm glad I didn't do that.
I haven't done that. I wouldn't do that. Well, in
case this lasso hasn't roped any of us in here, let me go
back to verse 16, which I skipped over. Cursed be he that setteth light
by his father or his mother. You know what setteth light means? It means by looks or gestures
to mock our parents in a private manner unseen by others. Want
to hear that again? It means by looks or gestures
to mock our parents in a private manner unseen by others. Let
me see if I can illustrate that to you. As children, Some here,
and we were all children. Did your mom ever come in the
room and say, all right, it's time for bed, get ready, and
turn around to go out? Did anybody ever do this? Give her that eye roll. She couldn't
see it. If she saw it, you knew what
was gonna happen, all right? You were gonna get your pajamas
warmed up, the bottoms of them, real quick. But you didn't let
her see it. You waited until she left the
room and you went, I tell you, that makes us cursed of God. Did your dad ever say, come on
son, I need you to help me rake some leaves out here. And he
starts out and we take our phone or our game and go, he's never
let me do what I want to do. Well, we say that in our, we
don't want daddy to hear that, but we just think it, or we smirk
at him behind his back. You know what that gets us? Cursed
of God. Are we all roped in now? Anybody
here who never did that? And I'll tell you, we never get
too old. My two boys, they pay me respect and honor I don't
deserve. And yet, sometimes I turn around
and I think, they're smirking at me. They're giving me one
of those looks. And it's to the point now where
I deserve it. I deserve it. I don't think right about so
much. But I tell you, the minute we do that, we're not only cursed
of God, we're guilty of all these vile things, too. To offend in
one point of the law is to offend in it all. And we read some of
these things and say, God, never do that. Oh, except for the grace
of God, we would. Because we've already done some
of them. This word, cursed, that we were
reading over and over here, You know what it really means?
I looked it up and I was sorry I did. A word I'd never heard
of. Cursed here means execrated. That even sounds awful, doesn't
it? Execrated. What's that term for words that
sound like what they mean or mean like what they sound? Execrated. That means declared by God to
be evil and detestable to be condemned. The first time one
of us did this to our parents, we were condemned of God. Cursed,
execrated, condemned, detestable, evil in God's sight. I said all that to say this.
Folks, by nature, we're in a real mess. We've got a real problem. All of us. All have sinned and
come short of the glory of God, we're execrated, we're cursed. But when the gospel is preached
and folks see Jesus Christ is holy and righteous and perfect,
and we are all execrated and cursed, you know what happens
when that's preached? The same thing that happened
when Peter preached the gospel at Pentecost. Do you know what
they said? They were pricked in their heart.
That's what it takes to hear the gospel, to fall in love with
the Lord Jesus Christ, to see Him for who He is and to see
ourselves for what we are, is to have the gospel preached to
be pricked in the heart. And what did they say? What shall
we do? What are we going to do? I'm in a mess. I'm execrated. I'm cursed. Indeed, what is man
to do? Let's get to that third point.
Turn over to Psalm 18. Psalm 18. The good news is that Jesus Christ
takes away the sin of all his people, all their sin, and he
gives them his perfection. Sounds pretty simple. Let's read
just a little bit about it here in Psalm 18. Have you got verse
30? As for God, His way is perfect. His way is absolutely perfect.
The word of the Lord is tried, it's proven. He is the buckler,
He's the protector to all those who trust in Him. For who is
God? Save the Lord. Who is a rock? Save our God. Where can we stand
if what I've said is true? It is God that girdeth me, and
watch, he girdeth me with strength and he maketh my way perfect. Okay, what that just said, this
is what it really said, me who is vile and cursed and execrated,
somehow that can be made perfect. All my execration can be put
away and I can be viewed by God as perfect. I think that's what
it's saying. Turn over to 2 Samuel 22. 2 Samuel chapter 22. And listen to this illustration,
which I hope is effective and does not presume upon the grace
of God over much. But as a lad, we realize that
the Lord Jesus Christ worked in his father's carpenter shop. He worked as an apprentice in
Joseph's carpenter shop. And let's just suppose that one
day one of his sisters walked into the carpenter shop, and
Joseph is there with our Lord, they're working, and his sister
walks in and says, Daddy, I don't feel so good. Something's wrong,
I don't feel, and then promptly throws up all over the workshop. And then Joseph goes, oh, honey,
honey, honey. And he picks her up and starts
out the door and he says to Jesus Christ, his apprentice, he says,
I'll take care of her. Will you clean this mess up? Do we know what Jesus Christ
would have said? I can tell you what he didn't
say. You know what he didn't do? He
didn't go... He didn't even think, who am I,
the maid here? He didn't have any thoughts like
that. Do you know what he would have
said? Some variation of this? Yes sir, I'll do it. And he would
have thought, I'll be happy to. Look at 2 Samuel 22, verse 31.
As for God, his way is perfect. Jesus Christ, in that situation
and in all others, did the perfect thing in action, in thought,
and in deed. As for God, His way is perfect. The Word of the Lord is tried.
It's been proven. He is a buckler, a protector
to all them that trust in Him. For who is God? Save the Lord.
And who is a rock? Save our God. God is my strength
and power. And look at this precious phrase,
and He maketh my way perfect. Me, the execrated one, the vile
one, the condemned one, The despised one, he can make my way perfect? That's what the Word of God says
here as I read it. Well, how does Jesus Christ make
my sinful way perfect? The answer to that is he did
it at Calvary. He took all my terrible sins,
even my eye-rolled sins, and my smirk sins, and even my silent
sins, He takes them on himself, puts them away, and he gives us his people. Yes, sir, I'll do it, and I'll
be happy to. Christ became execrated and cursed
so his people would be made perfect. Now turn to Exodus 88, which
was read to us earlier. Exodus 8. And this is the account of the
fourth plague on Egypt. It was the plague of flies. I
must suggest you do yourself a favor and never get on the
computer and look up flies. There are over 120,000 species
of flies. There's house flies. We know those guys, right? There's
a thing called a blowfly. All it does, it will only land
on a dead thing where it lays its eggs and eats. There's a
thing, horseflies. Some of us been bit by one of
those, right? Horsefly, big fly. There's gnats, there's fruit
flies, there's drain flies. I did not know mosquitoes are
a type of fly. I didn't know that. Sand flies. There's a thing, if you ever
go to coast or a sandy area, there's a thing called a no-see-um.
It's this little, tiny, bitty black fly, and you just feel
something, and you look down, and here's this little thing,
little black thing on you. And they get in swarms, and they
can be such pests. And they're actually called midges. And the list goes on and on and
on. But do you know what the dictionary
says about them? There's only two things they
all have in common. They carry disease and they bother people. That's the two things they do.
You know, God commanded Pharaoh to let his people go. And when
Pharaoh refused and rebelled, he made himself cursed. And God
cursed him and all the Egyptians with flies. And the flies bothered
them and brought disease and death. And when Adam disobeyed
God, sin became like flies. They bother people and bring
death and disease. And there's big sins, horse flies. There's tiny ones, so-called
no-see-ums. We get so used to them, we don't
even pay attention to them anymore. We almost take them for granted.
And yet, mosquitoes carry malaria. I didn't know this. Houseflies
carry over a hundred kinds of disease. Flies are like sins. Where they come, death is sure
to follow. And flies came on Egypt. Now,
God put a curtain around his people in Goshen. And I don't
know, all those billions of flies are going everywhere and all
of a sudden they hit this wall and they don't come in the ocean.
You don't come there. No sin is permitted in God's
presence, ever will be, never has been. But you know, Those flies came to Egypt, death
followed, and when Pharaoh finally had enough, he went to Moses
and said, I need you to intercede for me. I need you to ask your
God to stop all this. He said, this is worse than,
you know why we don't see sin the way it really is? We couldn't
stand it. We'd fall over dead. It would consume us. If God hadn't
restrained the flies, they'd have killed every Egyptian there
was. But Moses did intercede. He went to his father and said,
Father, they've had enough. Let's stop this. And Christ intercedes
for his people. And God took away their sins,
all of them, the great ones, the horsefly sins, the ones we
think nobody sees, the no-see-um sins, the most vile ones, the
blowfly sins. Christ took them all. All of
them, really, all these millions of my sins, All the billions
and billions of flies that were in Egypt. How many were left
after Moses interceded? When Moses said, Father, they've
had enough. God said, all right, I'll take
them away. How many were left? This blessed me so much. Look
at verse 31 of Exodus 8. And the Lord did according to
the word of Moses. And he removed the swarm of flies
from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people. There remained,
how many? Not one. That's amazing, isn't
it? Not one. If we are a child of
God, how many sins did we commit? Millions. Millions. How many
of our sins remain in God's sight? Not one. We're perfect. We're perfect in God's sight.
Where did these sins go? All these sins of God's people
go. When a fly, whether it's a horsefly, housefly, mosquito,
a no-see-um, when it lands on us, what do we do? The first
thing we try to do is get it away from us, right? We try to
swat it, shoo it, kill it before it does any permanent damage.
Now stay with me here just a minute. Do we think for a minute when
the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified and nailed on that tree, after
having been beaten by those soldiers and having had the skin of his
back whipped off with a cat-and-iron tail, nails driven through his
hands and feet, do we not understand he was a bloody mess in a dry
and desert place? where there's thousands of kinds
of flies, millions of flies. Do we not see him hanging on
that tree, swarmed by flies? The Lord was attacked by flies.
You know what he didn't do? He didn't shoo one fly away from
himself. He said he couldn't, he had his
nails, his hands nailed to the tree. They were nailed there
on purpose. So that not, because he needed
to be stopped from swatting the flies so we could see and understand
he could not swat the flies because he chose not to swat the flies. He chose rather to let them bite
him, sting him, suck the blood out of him, lay their eggs in
him. He chose to do that. You know
why? So there wouldn't be one fly left. So there wouldn't be
one sin left on his people. He took them all. He took them
all. So it wouldn't happen to his
people. So their sin would be gone, just like the flies of
Egypt. There remains not one. The father said to the son, Go
down there and clean up this mess that my people have made."
And the son responds, "'Yea, Lord, I rejoice to do thy will,
O God.'" And he did. In the last day, do you know
what the Lord Jesus Christ commands some? He says, "'Depart from
me. Depart from me. You are covered
with flies. you're full of sin. But do you
know what he says to God's people? The Lord Jesus Christ says, enter
into the place I have prepared for you from all eternity. And
God's people, for the very first time in their entire life, will
have a thought that is not tainted with sin. we will speak a word
for the first time in our whole life that is not cursed as sin. His people, when our Lord says,
enter in to the place I prepared for you from all eternity, do
you know what his people will say? Yea, Lord, I rejoice to
do thy will, O God. At your command, I can enter
and I'll be glad. I'll be glad. Now that's the
good news. What a day that'll be. If we
know and believe who Christ is and who we are and what he's
done for us, we too can even now say, thanks be unto God for
his unspeakable gift. He gave His Son for us that we
might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Now that's as
simple as I know how to tell it, and I hope that it will be
a blessing to us. Alright. Brother Dwight, have
you got a closing hymn picked?