I want to speak this morning
on the subject of Christ, our surety. Christ, our surety. And we'll begin by reading in
Genesis 43. Genesis 43. And then, hang on
a minute. Okay, I just, there we go. It
is Genesis 43 and we'll begin reading at verse 8. Then Judah said to Israel his
father, send the boy along with me and we will go at once so
that we and you and our children may live and not die. I myself will guarantee his safety. You can hold me personally responsible
for him if I do not bring him back to you and set him here
before you. I will bear the blame before
you all my life. As it is, if we had not delayed,
we would have gone and returned twice. There had been a famine
in the land. There was a famine in Egypt, but there was also a famine in
Canaan, but because of Joseph Egypt had grain. They had stored excess grain
the previous seven years in order to get them through the seven
years of famine that God had revealed to Joseph would come
to pass. Joseph's brothers, he had 11
of them, 10 of them went down there. Jacob would not let Benjamin
go. Benjamin was Joseph's full brother. They had both the same father,
same mother. All the others were half-brothers.
Remember that they were the ones, those ten brothers, were the
ones who had sold Joseph into slavery, and he'd ended up in
Egypt, but while he was in Egypt, He had been promoted to where
the only one with more authority than him in Egypt was Pharaoh
himself. And they went down there to get
grain. And they bought grain, and that
meant they had to deal with Joseph, but they didn't know that it
was Joseph. And on the way home, well, when they were talking
with this man, who they didn't realize was their brother, he
had said, don't come back unless you bring your other brother
with you. So they came back to the land
of Canaan, and when the grain ran out, they said, we've got to go back,
but we cannot go back without Benjamin. And Jacob said, Joseph
is no more. Will you deprive me of Benjamin
as well? Jacob had such affection for
Benjamin that he was pretty much willing to starve rather than
risk Benjamin being kept in Egypt. After all, only nine of the brothers
had come back from Egypt. because Joseph had required that
one of them stay behind. Simeon stayed behind to ensure
that at some point the brothers would have to come back to Egypt. The brothers knew that there
was not any way they were going to get the things they needed
unless they took Benjamin and went to Egypt. So they were trying to come up
with a way that would convince Jacob to let Benjamin go to Egypt. Now, Reuben suggested a way. Go back one chapter, chapter
42 and verse 37. Jacob has just said, you have
deprived me of my children. Joseph is no more, and Simeon
is no more. And now you want to take Benjamin?
Everything is against me. Then Reuben said to his father,
you may put both of my sons to death if I do not bring him,
that is Benjamin, back to you. Entrust him to my care, and I
will bring him back. Now Reuben was Jacob's firstborn. But he was also the one who had
slept with one of Jacob's concubines, which was considered a horrible
thing to do. And later on, when Jacob is pronouncing
blessings, he says of Reuben, unstable as water. And so here, Benjamin, is going
to be put at risk, so to speak. And who speaks up? Unstable Reuben. And what does he suggest? You
entrust Benjamin to my care, and if I don't bring him back,
you can kill my two sons. That picture works religion.
Now you think of that. What was he proposing? He was not saying, I will be
a guarantee for Benjamin. He says, I'll make my two sons
a guarantee. But they're really not even going to be a guarantee. It's simply that if I don't bring
Benjamin back, they die. Now that pictures us trying to
earn salvation, to be our own charity, so to speak. Because
what we say to God is, okay, you demand righteousness, I'll
give it to you, and if I don't, you can kill me. The problem
is, everything we do in an attempt
to pay off our debt to God only increases our debt. Now imagine
if they'd taken Reuben at his word. I mean, Jacob had said,
okay, I'll consent to that. We'll hold your sons hostage.
We'll hold their lives hostage to you bringing Benjamin back
to me. Okay, they go up there, they
get grain, and they can't bring, for some reason or another, they're
unable to bring Benjamin back. So when they come back, because they don't have Benjamin,
Reuben's two sons are killed. Let me ask you, what has that
done for Jacob? What has that done to resolve
the problem? Benjamin is still gone. Benjamin's
still lost. Not only that, Jacob is not only
still deprived of Benjamin, he's lost two of his grandchildren. And every time you and I try
to make things better, ourselves in God, all we do is make things
worse. We do not have what is required
to pay the debt we owe, and everything we do in an attempt to pay that
debt only increases the debt, makes things worse. But in chapter
43, Verse 8, Then Judah said to Israel his father, Send the
boy along with me, and we will go at once, so that we and you
and our children may live and not die. I myself will guarantee. I said that the title of this
message is Christ Our Surety. The reason I use that word, that's
the King James Word. Judas said, I will be surety
for Him. I will be surety for Him. I myself
will guarantee His safety. You can hold me personally responsible
for Him. If I do not bring Him back to
you, and set him here before you. I will bear the blame before
you all my life." Now notice how Judah's proposition was different
than what Reuben suggested. First of all, Reuben put his
sons at risk. Judah made himself the one at
risk. He said, you can hold me personally
responsible for him. Now you can see where we're going
with this. This is a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ before
the Father, setting himself as the surety for his people. He says to the Father, you may
hold me personally responsible for them. Now, we often think that the gospel
is an answer to our problem. And it is. But even before it's
an answer to our problem, it's an answer to God's problem. You
say, what's that? Well, God is a just God. He cannot
and will not let the guilty go unpunished. Period. Not going
to happen. And yet he is a God of love and
mercy, and there is a people on whom he has set his love and
affection, and his desire for them is that they be in his presence
fully blessed. Now how's that going to happen? How is God going to bless a people
who are sinners? They are nothing other than sinners. And even all their attempts at
being righteous do nothing but increase their sinfulness in
His eyes. How? God's got a problem. Now I'm playing this out. I realize
God never had a problem, so to speak, but we have to play this
out the way we can understand it. So Christ presents himself
as the surety of his people, not to solve their problem, to
solve the Father's problem. Jacob loved Benjamin, but the only way they were going
to get grain is if he and Benjamin are separated. Bible says your
sins have separated you from your God. And Jacob cannot bear the thought
of being separated from Benjamin. And so Judah says, you send the
boy with me. I will be responsible for him. And if I do not bring you back
or bring him back, and I love the way this is put here, halfway
through verse nine, if I do not bring him back to you and set
him here before you. He didn't just say, I'll ensure
his safety. Because maybe when they got in,
you know, in Egypt, Joseph might have said to him, well, look,
you guys can go back. I'm not going to put Benjamin
in prison. But he's going to stay here in
Egypt. I'm going to set him up in a nice house, and he can live
out his days here. He can find him a wife and start
a family, but he's not going back to Canaan. Well, Benjamin
would have been safe in that situation. But he'd been safe
in Egypt. He'd have been safe separated
from his father. Jacob couldn't have that. So
Judah says, I will bring him back and I will set him right
in front of you. Right in front of you. The Bible says that Christ will
present us holy, blameless in God's sight. His work His work as our surety
will not be complete until we appear in the presence of God
without fault and full of joy. He didn't come here just to save
us from hell. That's part of it, but that's
not all of it by any means. He did not come here to give
us an eternal existence such as we already have. He came here
on a mission from the Father, bearing this responsibility that
he bring all of God's elect into his presence. And Judah went on to say, if
I don't get that done, I will bear the blame before you all
my life. And our Lord Jesus Christ in
the covenant, we can call it that, the covenant He made with
the Father, His agreement to be the surety of the people,
if He doesn't accomplish that, He will bear blame in the sight
of His Father forever. You know, one of the things this
shows is that Jesus Christ did not come here into this world
in an attempt to save everybody. The Father didn't send him to
do that. Because if that's what he was sent to do, and he came
here as a surety for everybody, then he will bear the blame forever
in the sight of God, because he didn't get it done. We know
that the greater portion of the world does not believe. The greater
portion of the world, evidently, will perish under the wrath of
God, separated from Him, full of fault, no joy forever. And if Jesus Christ was the surety
for those people, then He failed and He will bear the blame forever
in the sight of His Father. I don't think that's going to
happen. The Father exalted him in his right hand, and he's never leaving that spot.
He'll have no blame to bear. Judas said, send the boy with
me. That's how Christ works out his
work as our surety. We are united to him. Reuben never talked that way.
Julia says, you send him with me. And you know something? When
Christ came here, we went with him. And when Christ lived the
life we could not live, we were with him. When Christ went to
the cross, we were with him. When he went into the grave,
we were with him. When He came out of the grave,
we were with Him. And when He ascended on high
at the right hand of the Father, we were with Him. Now you think
on that a minute. We haven't experienced all of
that, have we? But in the sight of God, these things are already
accomplished. They are already done. We are in Him. We are with Him. Judah said, I will guarantee
his safety and bring him back. And that's the promise that our
Lord made, not so much to us as to his father. Father, you
entrust your people to me, and I'll see to it that every last
one of them is brought home. and I will set them before you.
Now turn over to Hebrews chapter seven. Beginning at verse 22. Because of this oath, Jesus has
become the guarantee, the surety of a better covenant. Now, our
translation says, because of this oath, and that is truly,
it's even, it took even more freedom than we would say with
a paraphrase. Actually, what the word means
is because of such great things. Now, what great things was he
talking about? The oath. And the oath is mentioned back
here, verse 17, for it is declared, you are a priest in the order
of Melchizedek. And then the last part of verse
21, the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, you are
a priest forever. And so the writer of Hebrews
goes on to say, because of these great things, these great statements, the priesthood of the Levites,
was simply a matter of rules. I mean, they were priests because
in the Old Covenant, God said, okay, tribe of Levi, they'll
be the priests. It wasn't because there was anything
special about Levi. He wasn't among his brethren. We don't find anything about
him that would exalt him above his brethren. God just made it
as one of the rules of the Old Covenant. But our Lord Jesus
Christ, he doesn't come from the tribe of Levi. He comes from
the tribe of Judah. Now there you go. Who is the
surety for Benjamin? Judah. Now the name Benjamin
means son of my right hand. And in other words, Jacob had
lost Joseph and then his wife, Rachel, bore him Benjamin. And that child was so special
to him. You know how the father said
to Christ, sit here at my right hand. Christ is God's Benjamin. And in Christ, we are God's Benjamin. We are the ones he cannot bear
to lose, his favorite. And he was made a priest, not
by the regulations of the Old Covenant, but by God swearing
an oath. And his priesthood was in no
way dependent on the Old Covenant. It says, you're a priest like
Melchizedek. The worst thing about Melchizedek,
the Bible doesn't say much about him. And because there's not
much information, people like to add information to him. And,
you know, in the absence of information, people will make stuff up. We
don't know who Melchizedek was. His name means king of righteousness. And he was the king of Salem,
a city called Salem. And most people believe that
was an early name for Jerusalem or Jerusalem. And he's the one who met Abraham
when they were coming back from the battle with the five kings
of the plain. And he came out, interestingly
enough, with bread and wine. And five kings were together
and all that. And Abraham had told them, you
know, they said, okay, let's divide up the spoils. And Abraham
said, I have raised my hand to God. And, you know, like when
you're swearing off, that I won't take even a shoelace of the spoils. Give my men their deserved portion. I'm not going to take anything
from this battle. And the Melchizedek, priest of the most high God,
King of righteousness, King of Salem. Some believe he was actually
a pre-incarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't
think he was, but he's certainly a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a priest without father
and mother. Doesn't mean he didn't have one. It means he wasn't
a priest because of his father and mother. And Jesus Christ was made a priest
like that. and therefore God swore an oath,
you are a priest forever. Now, as a priest, he has become
the surety. The surety of what? Well, it
says he's become the surety of a better covenant. Now, covenants, agreements, always
requires some kind of performance. Now I know that in the New Covenant
we call it a covenant of promise rather than a covenant of a contract.
And we call it that because in the New Covenant things are simply
promised to us. God did not enter into a contract
with us. So we call it a covenant of promise.
But the New Covenant is a contractual agreement between God and the
Lord Jesus Christ. and he is the one on whom the
success of the new covenant rests. He's the surety of that covenant.
Now, under old covenant principles and the principles of any kind
of religion based upon us performing works, well, who's the surety
of that covenant? Us! Each one for himself. But under the gospel, the surety
of the covenant is Jesus Christ. Now, He is the guarantee of that better
covenant, not a bettered covenant. And that's the way some people
like to look at it. They think that the new covenant is just
a new and improved version of the old covenant. Got rid of
some of the ceremonial and civil laws Kind of prettied up the moral
law. And there you got it. New covenant. That's not a new covenant. That's
a remodeled covenant. I like watching those shows where
they remodel old houses. But I don't want a remodeled
covenant. When God promised a new covenant
in Jeremiah chapter 31, he said, I'll make a new covenant. And
the first thing he said about it was, it will not be like the
covenant I made with them when I led them out of the land of
Egypt. And why won't it be like that
covenant? Paul, or it's written in Isaiah, That old covenant, the problem
with it, it wasn't so much the covenant, it was the people.
It says God found fault with the people. And any covenant
that depends upon the people is going to fail because God's
going to find fault with the people. So the very foundation of the
covenant has to be changed because the foundation is where it's
crumbling. It rests on the people. This covenant, the new covenant,
rests upon Christ. It depends upon Christ. He is
the one who is the guarantee of it. The old covenant was a
temporary covenant. It had a beginning. It had an
end. but not the covenant of which
Christ is the mediator in surety. It says in Hebrews chapter 13,
verse 20. Well, once again, I've made a
mistake of writing down the wrong scripture. Let me see if I can
find it real quick. apologize for doing that, but
I'll tell you what it said. It talks about us gaining peace and having peace
through the blood of the eternal covenant. Now you know how we
have basically said that generally
with respect to God and the things of God, we take eternal to mean
not simply an infinite number of moments of time. We're talking
about that which is outside of time. We call the Gospel, the
Scriptures call the Gospel the New Covenant, but it's only called
the New Covenant because in the process of time, it was ratified
later than the Old Covenant was. But in the timeless existence
of God, this covenant has always been. And it shall never end. It didn't
have a beginning in time, and it shall have no end in time. It's made by a God who exists
outside of time. It rests upon a surety whose
essential existence is outside the framework of time. Nothing
in time can touch it. We have an eternal covenant,
and Christ is the surety of that covenant. How did he become,
or how did he act as the surety? He did it by means of his priestly
work. That's why it refers to these
oaths that God made that Christ would be a priest forever. In
his priestly work, where he represented us in the sight of God, and that's
what a priest does. He represents the people in the
presence of God. And our Lord Jesus did that in
his sinless life, and then he did it in his substitutionary
death, he did that in his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension
to the right hand of God. In all of that, he was the surety
of that covenant. I said earlier that until that Christ won't be done is
our surety until we are all in the presence of God. And that's
true as you look at the covenant being fulfilled through the process
of time. But as the scriptures also say,
we are seated with him in the heavenly places. From God's perspective,
brethren, All of his elect, Benjamin, has been returned and is in his
presence. Our Lord has done his work. He
has acted as the surety of this covenant. And this covenant cannot
be broken because it's already been completely and perfectly
fulfilled. I just want to make a couple
of observations about this word as it appears in the Old Testament.
Actually here in Hebrews where it talks about Him being our
surety or guarantee, it's the only place in the New Testament
that Greek word appears. So I can't take you to any New
Testament places to try to compare it, but it shows up quite a few
times in the Old Testament. In each one in kind of a different
shade of meaning. But why don't you look at Psalm
106. Psalm 106. And we'll be looking at verse
35 if I manage to write this one down correctly. We'll actually start with verse
34. They did not destroy the peoples, meaning that when the
Jews went into the land, they did not utterly destroy all the
peoples in the land, as they were told to do. Verse 35, but they mingled with
the nations and adopted their customs. That word, mingled,
is the very same word that Judah used when he said, I will guarantee
his safety. I will be his surety. Now, how
in the world can the idea of surety and then mingling, joining
with, and this joining we're talking about is that And they
did this, actually, even when they came back from the captivity. They came back to the land, and
the men started finding wives from the women of the Gentile
peoples that were living there. And it caused problems. It caused
problems. It was this relationship of marriage
that was considered this mingling. Well, our Lord is our surety.
For lack of a better way to say it, He mingled with us. He mingled
with us when He came here and lived among us, became one of
us. He mingled with us in His life. This is kind of on the same page
as where Judah said, I'll take the boy with me. But Christ didn't just come here
and hold all of us at arm's length and do the work He had to do
in the nasty world, you know, and then try to get out of it.
He came here right among us. He joined Himself to us. And while He didn't learn our
customs or adopt our customs, And of course, adopting the customs
as mentioned there in Psalm 106 means they started worshiping
false gods and carrying on like those nations did. Our Lord didn't
start doing that, but you know what? He bore all of our customs
and ways of doing things. He bore our sin in His body on
the tree. He mingled with us to such a
degree We are counted as married to him. And when we were married
to him, you know, legally, if a man marries a woman and she
has debt, that debt becomes his. And that's exactly what our Lord
did. He mingled with us. He married
us, took on our debt. became the guarantee, guarantor,
surety of our debt. But he did more than that. It
wasn't just like a cosigner of a loan. And it means if I wanted
to get a loan, but the bank doesn't trust me, I've got to get somebody
else they do trust, who will put their name second on the
loan. That means if I miss a payment, they call that person. So it's
not like the Lord, he's not just standing here. And if we miss
one payment of righteousness that we owe to God, Well then,
okay, I'll write a check for that payment. Friends, we came
into this world already in default on the loan. We came in here
bankrupt. Jesus Christ is not a mere cosigner
who's making the missing payments for us, and then later we'll
expect that we pay him back. He took on the debt, the entirety
of it, and paid it all. I heard Brother Mahan say a lot
of powerful things in the years that I was privileged to listen
to him preach. But if he had never said anything
else, he said one thing, it's stuck with me to this day and
it's so powerful. If Christ paid my debt, I don't
owe it. Do you believe that? Well, you
got to receive it. I can't receive it because he
didn't pay it to me. He didn't give me money so I
could go to God and pay my debt. He went directly to God, my creditor,
and he paid my debt and the debt was canceled before I ever opened
my eyes and took my first breath in this world. He intermingled. in Jeremiah 30. Jeremiah 30. And this is the chapter just
before Jeremiah tells about the New Covenant. Before he speaks
about the New Covenant, look at what it says here in Jeremiah
30, verse 21. will be one of their own. Their ruler will arise from among
them. I will bring him near and he
will come close to me. For who is he who will devote
himself to be close to me?" That word devote is the same word, surety. And our translation says himself,
strictly what it says there, who is he who will make his heart
a surety to be close to me? Now the heart is the essence
of a person. And this is a prophecy of our
Lord coming, this one, this leader who will arise among them. He
said, I will bring him near. He will come close to me. He
will make his heart, his whole being a surety to be close to me. And we're in him. we are in Him. So we are close
to God, near, so near to God, nearer I cannot be, for in the
person of His Son, I am as near as He. And then in Hosea chapter
9 verse 4, Chapter 9, verse 4 of Hosea. Now these are words of judgment,
but they show us something of how this word for surety can
be used. They will not pour out wine offerings
to the Lord, nor will their sacrifices please him. The word translated
please, same word. Those sacrifices will not be
a surety, a guarantee for him to God, not in God's sight. Not all the blood of bulls and
goats on Jewish altars slain can give the guilty conscience
peace, nor wash away the stain. Think of how many thousands upon
thousands of animals were slain at the temple and their blood
poured out and not one sin was ever put away by it. But when
Christ came, not one sin, not one of those animals, not their
sacrifices could ever be a surety. Christ came. He was pleasing
to God. and therefore was a surety of
the covenant, a surety for his people. Brothers and sisters, I know we doubt, I know we fear. We are like the disciples of
whom the Lord said, O ye of little faith. Oh, I'm glad that salvation,
well, it comes through faith. It's not by faith. I'd hate to
try to get to heaven on my faith, wouldn't you? I don't think I
can make it. I've got something better. Brothers
and sisters, we have Christ. He's our guarantee. And God will not turn him away. He will not turn away anyone
that pleads the name of His Son. And while we may fear and while
we may doubt, we don't have any good reason to do either one.