I guess we all have a tendency
to impute our own feelings and experiences to others. I know it is true of me, and
I suspect that to a great degree it is true of every believer
in the Lord Jesus Christ. But to see our Lord crowned with
glory and honor, That's enough. That's enough for me. If you remember the story of
Mephibosheth, he was the last remaining surviving descendant
of King Saul. But David has sworn an oath to
Jonathan that he would not destroy all of Jonathan's household.
Jonathan being Saul's son. And one day, David was pondering,
I guess, and it occurred to him. And you know, back then, that
was just the way you came to a throne. It was by fighting. Families, they'd kill one another
to be the top dog. While David had already been
anointed by the prophet and assigned to be the king after Saul died,
there was fighting went on against the household of Saul before
David could finally rule over the entire house of Israel. And he said, is there anyone
left of the house of Jonathan? that I may show him goodness,
kindness. He said, well, there's one guy,
name's Mephibosheth, but he's lame in both feet. He can't walk. And I like that,
I believe that's the way it's put, it says he's lame in both
feet and can't walk. That was his nature, he's lame, can't
walk, that's his activity. He can't walk. They said, well,
you go get him. And they brought Mephibosheth
to David, and Mephibosheth thought for sure he'd been brought there
to be destroyed, just like the rest of his family had. And David
said, from now on, you are like one of the king's sons. You'll
sit at the king's table. You'll live in the king's house. He didn't expect that. But a
day came when, I believe it was David's son, Absalom, ran David
out of town. Mephibosheth did what he could
to help David out. Of course, he was lame in both
feet and couldn't walk. So he sent his servant, Ziba,
with a bunch of food and provisions as David was being run out of
town. And so for a while, David was in exile. But the Lord restored
him, and when he came back into him, there was Mephibosheth to welcome
him. And David said, where were you
when I left? And he said, Ziba, my servant,
betrayed me. It was I who sent you those provisions. And Ziba had taken credit for
it himself. And David had, you know, he had
given all of Mephibosheth's property to Ziba. Let's face it, David was kind
of a hothead. You know, we read the 23rd Psalm and we think he
was this real nice fellow. He was quick with the sword,
quick to take action before he thoroughly checked things out.
And so Dave said, OK. Then you all split it in half.
Mephibosheth, you can keep half. And Mephibosheth said, I don't
care. The only thing I want is to see
my king come home and be on his throne. Ziba can have it all. I don't care. And you know something?
You think of that now. If the Lord this day were to
descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel
and the trump of God, would you say, hold on a minute, Jesus.
I never did get my CDs fully cashed out. I need to run and
get that done. I got a 401k. I want to make
sure I lock the doors on my house so nobody steals anything. Do
you think any of that's going to be on your mind? On that day, that won't be on
anybody's mind. But oh, won't that be a wonderful
sound? Won't that be a wonderful sight? To see our Lord, who at
the present time is despised and held in contempt, come and
show the world who He really is. Crown Him with many crowns. Whatever crowns there may be,
Christ deserves them. want to preach a message, I entitled
it, The Shepherd Stricken, The Sheep Scattered, but we could
as well title it On That Day. Now, there's some difficulties
whenever we approach Old Testament prophecy. It's a stumbling block
to many. They don't know what to do with
it. The tendency is to either overemphasize or totally ignore
any application to the nation of Israel, depending on what
your view of other theological matters is. We know, and we can know it of
an absolute certainty, that God is done with Israel in any old
covenant sort, or in any old covenant way. God entered into
covenant with Israel on Mount Sinai. And the covenant was written
down. Everything God said on Mount
Sinai is part of that covenant. And it was made with Israel for
a specific purpose. The Bible says, Paul properly
interprets it for us, but the promises were made to Abraham
and his seed, and Paul goes on to say, it does not say unto
his seeds, meaning many, but his seed, meaning one. Who is the only man that can
be called the seed of God? the seed of Abraham and the seed
of God. It's our Lord Jesus. And so Paul
goes on to say the law, which was another way they described
that covenant that God made with Israel there on Mount Sinai.
He said the law was a schoolmaster unto Christ. Most translations
say to lead us to Christ, but the word lead is not there. It's
just a schoolmaster unto Christ, or a governor, or a caretaker
unto Christ. The law was put in place to keep
the worship of Jehovah alive in the world, It was put in place
to keep the Jews from acting as badly as the Gentile nations
around them, and to preserve the line of Abraham until such
time as the seed to whom the promises were made had come. Once Christ came and accomplished
the work given him to do, the old covenant was brought to an
end. Why? Its purpose had been accomplished. The old covenant was a contract,
and once a contract's fulfilled, the contract comes to an end.
I used to do some construction and read right up a contract. I'd do this, that, and the other,
and then they would pay me this many dollars. So when I got done,
I presented them with the bill, And if they gave me the required
amount of dollars, that contract was over. A piece of paper was
still there, but it meant nothing. Nobody could do anything with
it. I couldn't go to them again and say, you must pay me that
money again. No. They couldn't bring it to
me and say, hey, you said you'd do this. I'd say, well, I did.
You'll notice that addition there on the end of your house. That's
what's in this contract. Contract's over. Hebrews the
book of Hebrews tells us the contracts over the old covenant
is over because the new covenant has not merely reformed it it
replaced it and the old covenant just kind of faded out of existence
so we know that God has done with Israel in any old covenant
sense but you see the promise of preceded the covenant. And that's an important distinction
to understand, and Paul makes it in Galatians. God made promise
to Abraham, and then later on entered into a covenant. Well,
the covenant came in, served its purpose, is gone. The promise
is still true, and the promise is in Christ. Now, the form of religion that
I was raised in, called dispensationalism. Theologians
love big words. And they try to define all of
history according to, I believe it's seven dispensations, which
indicates seven different ways in which God interacted with
human beings. And the last of them, I guess
the millennium to them is another dispensation, but now we're in
the church age. But they believe that a time
will come when God is going to restore the nation Israel to
the fullness of the land promise, and they will rebuild the temple
and begin offering sacrifices. Well, I wouldn't say that won't
happen. Who knows? Eventually, Israel, as a nation,
may occupy that territory, and they may build a temple, though
they're going to have to knock down the mosque of Omar to do
it, which would be a pretty tricky thing, given the present political
conditions. It could happen, but I'll tell
you one thing. That won't be a fulfillment of
prophecy. God's never going to enter that temple. He will not
accept the sacrifices offered there. It'll be one more form
of false religion. Why? The reality that the temple
and the old covenant only could point to, the reality has come. And when the reality has come,
the shadows disappear. A lot of people carry a picture
of their family or their spouse or something in their wallet
or purse or whatever, and when they're away, when they're separated,
that picture serves a purpose, doesn't it? I used to have one
of Bonnie in my wallet, and it's not like I wouldn't want one.
I think it went through the wash, so it couldn't be used anymore,
and I've just never gotten another one. And when I'd be on a trip
occasionally, I'd look at that picture, and it was meaningful
to me. I was glad it was there. You know something? I never did
drive home, walk in the door, reach in my wallet and get out
that picture and look at it. Why? She was there. And so that old covenant of which
the temple and all those religious services and all that and the
whole of the old covenant, that was the picture. The reality
has come. Yet Paul also says regarding
Israel, the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.
It means he does not favor a people and then remove that favor. And
in the context in which he said it, and it's confused many theologians,
and I cannot speak dogmatically about it, but it seems as though
there may come a time when God does bring a revival among the
natural descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And if He does,
you know what, I'll be tickled to death. Not because there's
Jews being saved, because there's anybody being saved. I can't
find fault with God saving anybody, can you? If He saved the whole city of
Sioux Falls, wouldn't that be wonderful? So whether he does that with
Jews or not, I don't know. But I know this. Whatever we read in the scriptures,
the Bible says is for our benefit. And Christ says the scriptures
are about him. So that's what we always look
for. Now it says here, a Waco sword, verse 7, against my shepherd,
against the man who is close to me, declares Jehovah Almighty,
strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered and I will
turn my hand against the little ones. In all these chapters,
excuse me, there is only one historical event to which we
can point with any scriptural authority. in Matthew 26 verse
31, Then Jesus said to them, All of you will be offended because
of me this night, for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and
the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. You can gather together all the
speculations, and all the thinking, and all the deep studying, and
all the going to the original languages, and the councils,
and the groups, and the meetings of high and mighty theologians.
You can bundle everything. They decide, and it's utterly
overturned by one statement from the Lord Jesus Christ. I had a fellow from Malawi, Africa,
and he's been contacting me. He wanted to know, what is your
statement of faith? And those of you that have been
at this church a long time, probably most of you don't even know what
it is. That is so far as a formal statement of what we believe.
When we formed this church back in 1987, you write up corporate
documents, you've got to state in there what you believe, and
you can't get away with just, well, we believe the Bible. Because
virtually every Christian group claims to believe the Bible.
You've got to say, well, what do you think the Bible's saying?
And to make things a little short and easier to write, I put down,
there's a Philadelphia Confession of Faith. And so I told this fellow, well,
the Philadelphia Confession of Faith, but we made some alterations
to it. And to my knowledge, I have not read the Philadelphia Confession
of Faith since 1987. Why? We don't go by that. Literally,
truly, this is our confession of faith. When you think of it, if you
have a confession of faith, or if you are looking at someone's
confession of faith, Do you look at it to say, well,
I agree with that, or do you look at it and say, well, is
that what the Bible really says? Well, if this is the standard,
there's no use wasting much of our time writing something that's
got to be checked by the standard. You stick with the standard. And so I told the fellow, it's
the Bible, and that's the thing here. Our Lord Jesus Christ here,
it's written in the words of scriptures. that His crucifixion,
His arrest, trial, beating, scourging, abuse, crucifixion, death, burial,
resurrection, that's what this scripture is about. Now, chapters 12 through 14 all
represent one oracle or prophetic word, and 14 times in those three
chapters is the phrase, on that day. On that day, when the shepherd
is stricken. We'll see what that day refers
to and what will happen on that day. Of course, we've already
pointed out this is the crucifixion of Christ and the gospel age
that arises from it. This refers to none other day
than the day in which the Lord made the soul of Christ an offering
for sin, when justice exacted the awful penalty of our sin
from Christ. Our sin incurred a debt, and
God always sees to it that his debts are paid. That is, the
debts owed to him are paid. Now three things are associated
with that day. The suffering of the Savior,
the scattering of the sheep, and the purifying of the church. Now when we talk about the crucifixion
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I wish I could do that subject
justice, but it's just, you can't. And I guess one reason we can't
is no matter how much we know about it, there is only one human
in all the universe that knows what really happened. By the
word know, I don't just mean intellectually understands. Someone
who knows it by experience. You know, there are certain events
which if they happen to a person, the only ones who can truly empathize
with him are those who've been through similar circumstances. Sometimes I feel myself really
lacking when it comes to offering comfort and counsel to those
who have, say, suffered the loss of their spouse. Why? I've never
suffered that. I can imagine what it might be
like, but I always have to counsel
them, for lack of a better way, from my imagination and what
I read in the Word of God. I can't say to them, I know what
you're going through. Why? Because I've never been
through it. And we can't say to our Lord Jesus Christ, I know
what you went through. Why? We've never been through
it, and thank God if we were in Him when He went through it,
we never will go through it. Did you hear that? If we were
in Him when He went through it, we never will go through it. No, this ground, the subject
of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, this ground is holy ground,
and we never want to treat it like common ground. It's not
a subject for joking about. It's not a subject for theologians
to sit about and rub their chins and give their theories of this
atonement or that atonement and act as though that event that
happened on that day is something for us to exercise our intellect
with. This is something that is to
be observed. This is something that is to
be known, not just by learning the facts of it, but as much as is possible, knowing
the meaning of it. Things happened on that day that
never happened before and will never happen again. This is the event on which all
of God's eternal purpose hinges. Now I want you to think of that.
A couple thousand years ago, in
a vassal state, Israel, under the thumb of Rome, God organized events such as
the representative of the greatest empire of that day. He couldn't
stop it. And the leaders of the Jews who
should have known better were the ones that promoted it. How could that happen? God foreordained
it. And everything God ordained regarding
the majestic end of this universe, not just the end of it as like
it comes to a conclusion, but the purpose for which the universe
was created in the first place. All of it hinges on what happens
on that day. God shall be glorified in all
things, and He shall be glorified through His Son, the Lord Jesus
Christ. And Jesus Christ is glorified in this work done on that day. Yes, there's many other things
for which you could give glory to the Lord Jesus Christ, but
nothing like what happened here. Do you remember in the book of Revelation chapter
4, it talks about one seated upon a throne, and he had in
his hand A scroll sealed with seven seals, and there was none
found worthy to open it. It's chapter four or five, I'm
sorry. The two chapters go together, so I don't know exactly what,
but you've got that scroll, the seven seals, and that scroll
written on the front and the back, that is representative
of God's decree of what shall come to pass, in particular with
regard to the redemption of His people. But it's sealed with
seven seals. And don't get hung up on the
number, as though there was actually a scroll up there that had one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven seals stuck on it. It means
it was completely sealed up. Because the number of seven is
the number of completion, number of perfection. But it was completely sealed.
And in those days, what they meant by a seal on a scroll,
rather than taking a scroll that was important and had an important
message and putting it in a box and all that kind of stuff, they
would just drip wax on it and whoever wrote it, and usually
it was something written by the king or something like that,
he had a signet ring, we get our word signature from that,
and he would press that signet ring into that wax. Now that
wax wasn't particularly hard to get loose, but the king's
signet was on there. You dare not take it loose unless
you're the one to whom it was sent or unless you're someone
worthy by the king's own decree to loose the seal on that document
and see what's in there. And so it said, is there anyone
found worthy? And they said, no, there's nobody
worthy up here. Here's that scroll. Here's that
scroll full of wonderful things. And there's no one worthy. open
it. And John says, I began to weep. And then an angel came up, said,
don't weep, John. Don't weep. The lion of the tribe
of Judah has prevailed, and he is worthy to open the seals and
bring to pass what's written in there. So we got this picture in our
minds. Lion of the tribe of Judah. Wow. Big, fierce. hunter, conqueror, roarer, powerful. He's prevailed and he's worthy
to open the seals. But notice, then it goes on and
it gives the experience of John meeting this lion. And John says,
and I turned and I saw a lamb as if it had been slain. John looks at the angel. I thought
you said lion. This doesn't look like a lion. I mean, this is a lamb, not even
a grown-up sheep. This is a lamb. And look, he's
got a mortal wound. He's been sacrificed. But that is the great mystery
of the gospel. that by death our Lord conquered. They've asked me to give a speech
on Memorial Day out there at the cemetery. And many of you have heard me
say this kind of thing before. We certainly and rightly give
honor to those men and women who have died in the protection
of this country. But none of them won their battles
by dying. Dying may have been the result
of their battle, but it was not their death that won. They maybe even were noble enough
characters that they went into a battle that they knew would
result in their death, that their death was unavoidable. but still
it wasn't their death that won. It was not only possible that
our Lord might die in His work, it was not only inevitable that
He might die in His work, His death was His work, and by death
He triumphed. Nobody else has ever done that. He absorbed within Himself, well,
the sins having been laid on Him. He bore our sins in the
body on the tree, says Peter. The prophet Isaiah says the Lord
has laid on Him the iniquity of us all, all His wandering
sheep. God laid that horrible mass of the most disgusting sins
upon our Lord Jesus Christ. He who knew no sin was made to
be a sin offering. And God did to Him, Whatever
it is he does to sinners that come in his presence bearing
sin. He didn't hold back an ounce.
He did not take into consideration that this was his only begotten
son. But everything that God can do
to a sinner in response to his sin, God did to the Lord Jesus
Christ. And as the scripture says, the
soul that sins, it shall die. That's exactly what happened
to our Lord. And he may, at that point, have
looked like a sheep that was slain. He was a lion conquering. Thief on the cross saw it. Nobody
else that day did. He was, on the one hand, the
Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He was, on
the other hand, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, tearing up his
enemies, destroying them, knocking them out of the way. And by the
time he was done, he and all his people were everlastingly
safe from the wrath of God. This event gave our Lord Jesus
Christ the authority, the honor, to approach God upon the throne. He is God, but the Bible pictures
Him sitting at the right hand of God. But God is there on the
throne, and our Lord and Savior, as a human being, And I can't think of another
man to be stupid enough to try this if he ever saw God. But
our Lord, boldly, with confidence, approached the very God of gods
and said, that scroll's mine. And you know what? There was
no argument on the part of God. He said, yes, it is. It's yours.
Our Lord put it this way. He says, the Father has committed
all things unto the Son. And that scroll was put in His
hands and He is even to this day loosing those seals and bringing
to pass all that God has ordained for the glory of His Son and
the salvation of His people. And you say, well, what is it
doing? What is He doing? Well, just look around. Whatever's
happening, that's what He's doing. He's not merely doing His thing
within the context of the history of this world. The history of
this world is the thing. That's why it is written, He
works all things together for the good, that is, the eternal
good of them who love Him and who are called according to His
purpose. Jesus Christ can do that. He
has the authority, He has the power, He has the will. Our eternal salvation is dependent
on what happened on that day. So no ground is holier, no scene
more awesome, no event more telling of the glory of the living God
than this scene on Mount Calvary. This is a work of God. We might
think, well, is it Jews and the Romans? Yeah, they were instruments
in the hands of God. But as it is written in, again
in Isaiah 53, it was the pleasure of the Lord to crush him. It doesn't say it was the pleasure
of the Lord that he be crushed. It says it was the pleasure of
the Lord to crush him. I mentioned a little bit ago
about all these theologians trying to come up with theories of the
atonement. And, you know, I've been studying this stuff for
a lot of years. And occasionally, you know, I
go down a rabbit hole just trying, you know, learn some things about,
what other people believe. And actually, I was looking up
the words to that song in Christ Alone. And one of the lines in that
song, it's a wonderful song, it says that, I can't quote it
exactly, but when he was crucified, the wrath of God was satisfied. Boy, that's some of the best
news I've ever heard. But you know what? There was a church,
a denomination, wanted to, they were making up a new hymnal,
and they wanted to include that hymn, but they wrote and asked
permission, say, we wanted to say the love of God was satisfied. Really? And I commend the writers for
this. They wouldn't let them do it. You see, this was a work
done by God according to His purpose, and it was a work of
justice. I realize that it demonstrated
His love. He did it because He loved His
people. But it's not like, you know,
if we wanted to demonstrate love, we'd say, well, you know, like
to a spouse or somebody we hope will be our spouse, boy, I love
you so much, I'm going to go out and kill someone. No. The killing served a purpose. Love, the love of God for His
people. That love, He says, I've loved
you with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn you with
loving kindness. That love was eternal and that
love was determined that every object of that love be with Him,
be made like unto His Son. But there was an obstacle to
that happening. God is love, but that's not all
he is. God is also justice. God is also
righteousness. And mercy may say, OK, we're
going to let him into heaven. And justice says, hold on a minute.
Hold on a minute. Nobody gets in here without me
being satisfied. And so while sending the Son
into the world and punishing the Son of God for the sins of
God's people, While that certainly was motivated by love, what you
see going on there is justice, pure, white-hot, divine justice
against sin. Holy ground. Don't make light
of it. It surprises me, and you know,
by the grace of God, I've not been in many churches that are
unlike ours. since 1987. Occasionally I've
had, I've gone to funerals and things like that. And I don't
say this to elevate me, but I am astounded at what people can
be satisfied with. And the only reason I think they
can be satisfied with the, there's no other word for it, the garbage
being fed to them from the pulpit is that they've never had a good
meal. They don't know what the good
food of God's Word, and I don't mean the Scripture, God's Word
as the Bible uses that phrase, the testimony concerning Jesus
Christ. They don't know how wonderful
and blessed it is to hear over and over and over and over again
about Christ and Him crucified. One of the people that wanted
to change that, the love of God is satisfied, said, oh, but the
way you've written it, God sounds so vindictive. Learn a lesson. He is vindictive. He will vindicate himself for
every sin, because every sin is committed against him. There's
nobody else to sin against. We offend one another, we sin
against God. In love, God sent his son and
then exacted the penalty of justice against him. And I don't know how much you
think about what divine justice must be, but I think about it
from time to time, and what little I can understand of it terrifies
me. and our Lord endured the fullness
of it, for a multitude no man can number. I will smite the
shepherd, will scatter the sheep." Here's the hallmark of the gospel
of God, justice. There are gods who are just and
there are gods who are merciful, but Jehovah God is the only God
who can be just and merciful at the same time. Mercy and truth are met together.
Righteousness and peace have kissed. Where? On the cross. God's righteousness is justice
must be satisfied with regard to the sins of God's elect. Mercy
says, but they cannot die. I can't let them die. I can't
let them be punished. But somehow or another, righteousness,
God's demand for it. And the word in Greek, the word
righteousness, it also means justice. Justice and peace. have kissed each other at the
cross. Mercy and truth, truth about
who God is and the truth about who we are. They found a place
where they could meet and be friends, and that's at the cross. In Isaiah 45, 21, declare what
is to be the Lord speaking here. Present it. Let them take counsel
together. Who foretold this long ago? Who
declared it from the distant past? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no God apart from
me, a righteous God and a Savior. There is no other. Here's the hallmark of the gospel
of God, it is strictly just. Every demand of righteousness
that God ever made is fully met in the gospel, and yet the fullness
of mercy is shown. In false religion, one or the
other is emphasized at the expense of the other. You have those
who, God's a righteous God. Yes, Jesus Christ died, but if
you don't live this that way and the other, well, you're gonna
go to hell anyway. And then you've got those others,
oh, God's a God of love. He'd never hurt anybody. Tell
that to his son. Tell that to the people in hell. I saw a humorous bumper sticker
one time. It had a picture of Noah's Ark. Noah's Ark had a
big bumper sticker on the back that said, Smile, God Loves You. Oh, they got this idea of our
Lord Jesus as some sweet man that you couldn't possibly offend.
He's a lion. Who is he? Who is this that comes
up from Bozra? robe stained in the blood of
his enemies. That's the Lord Jesus. In one person, God's Son, righteousness
and peace, mercy and truth are combined in one perfect unity
and nowhere else. Someday you will stand before
a just God and be judged. And if the gospel you believe
and are trusting in is not a gospel filled to the top with righteousness judgment will not go well with
you. If you think that the gospel is that God is just too nice
to punish, you're in for a big surprise. If you think God is so unjust
that He will accept your feeble efforts at trying to be good
enough for Him. If you think He is so unjust
that when you get up there He's going to take your good deeds
and put them on one side and your bad deeds on the other and
see how it comes out. I can tell you how it's going
to come out. You're going to have one side full of innumerable
wicked, filthy deeds and on the good deeds side you're going
to have nothing. How do you think that's going to work out? But blessed be God, he sent his
son, the shepherd of his sheep, and rather than strike the sheep,
he struck the shepherd. Rather than kill the sheep, he
killed the shepherd. And such was the death of the
good shepherd. that all that God had against
the sheep was fully resolved. And we who are the sheep of God, who went astray, turning to our
own way, Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. And you know,
something can't be in two places at once. If it's on Him, it's
not on me. And he went through that horrible,
horrible death, fulfilled all that death means. And it was
read to us this morning, he that is dead is freed, that is justified
from sin. Our Lord died. All that sin that
he bore, gone. Gone. Why could the Lord God
say, I will forgive their sins and their iniquities I'll remember
no more because they're going to be put on Christ and he's
going to get rid of them. There's no sin to remember. It's
gone. And the promise goes out and
it's as valid today as it was when it was first spoken. Whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Have you called on his name? Have you quit trying to be good? Have you laid down all the tools
by which you tried to build up some kind of building or secure
city wall or whatever it was of your righteousness to shield
you from the wrath to come? And just presented yourself to
God through Jesus Christ. and said, have mercy on me, oh
God. According to all your tender
compassions, blot out all my transgressions. I've said it probably 10,000
times. And here's the wondrous thing
in all of history. God has never said no to a sincere
plea for mercy. That's just so. Well, may God
honor his name.