which you think the Lord Jesus
Christ is not worthy. Oh my. I believe that one of the evidences
of an interest, a real and honest interest in Christ is the ability to rejoice in
the fact that he is indeed Lord of everything. and that nothing could give you
greater joy and satisfaction than to see Him vindicated before
all creation as Lord of heaven and earth and everything in heaven
and everything on earth and below the earth. It will be great to see Him come
back in glory. The only ones who saw Him left
in glory were His apostles. The rest of the world saw him
die in what they considered humiliation. They are in for a real big surprise
when he comes back. And I don't, I don't wish anybody
harm, but I can't wait to see him glorified and honored in
the way he deserves. two kinds of crowns in the Greek
language. There's the Stephanos, which
is a crown of victory. And there's the Diadem, which
is a crown of authority. And he should have all of them,
all of them of every kind. Now let's return to Deuteronomy
chapter four. At this point in time, Deuteronomy
4, the Jews have wandered about the desert. We
call it wandering. They were led here and there
by God. But they could have been in the promised land a generation
before. But through unbelief, They had
incurred God's anger and he said, I swore in my anger they will
never enter my rest. Unbelief. But now, everyone of that generation
that had been 20 years or older had died in the wilderness. The
only ones remaining of that generation were Joshua, Caleb, and Moses. And they had already conquered
some territory east of the Jordan River, and two and a half tribes
had gained their allotment in that area. But now it is time
for the remainder of Israel to cross the Jordan which would
be to truly and fully enter in to that land the Lord had promised
them. Crossing the Jordan always has
significance in the scripture. And so Moses, who had led them
out of Egypt and through the wilderness, was giving them his
last words. even though he was one of the
only three remaining of that generation who came out of Egypt
as adults, he would not be allowed to go
in to the promised land. God told him he could go up on
a mountain and he could look. I guess the mountain was tall
enough that it gave him a view. of the majority of the promised
land. And he could go see it, but he
couldn't enter it. And the interesting thing is,
if you look back at chapter 3 and verse 26, Moses has been told he won't
go in the land, and Moses has pled with the Lord that he be
allowed to go in. And God told him, no, you can
see it, but you can't go in. And then Moses says this, but
because of you, meaning because of the Jewish nation, the Lord
was angry with me and would not listen to me. That is enough, the Lord said.
Do not speak to me anymore about this matter. Now in this, we
see that Moses stands before Israel as they're about to enter
the promised land as a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ under
the curse, under the wrath of God. because of us." Moses said, because of you the
Lord's angry with me. And we see our Lord Jesus as
he suffers for our sins, as he's there upon the cross. God's angry
with him. God, the judge of all, is pouring
out his wrath upon him. Why? He did always those things
that pleased the Father. In him was no sin. He did no
sin. Why is he suffering the anger
and wrath of God? Because of us. And our Lord, in his natural
life, could not enter the promised land. He died. He was consumed. Now, in his resurrection, he
resurrects as Joshua, Hebrew version of the name Jesus. Jesus
who saves his people from their sins. It's the same person, but
just like all of us who are in Christ are a new creation, so
is our resurrected Lord, a new creation. So far as who he was,
he's the same man. But so far as how he appears
in the presence of God, he's a brand new person without sin.
And he goes into the land and takes us with him. So now this is Moses speaking,
and this is the Lord speaking to us. even as he lived his natural
life and died that natural death in our behalf. And he says to
us, we who were only children in
Egypt, we who were just young folk when
God did all this work that he did in bringing descendants of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob out of Egypt. He says to us, ask about the
former days, long before your time. From the day God created
human beings on the earth, ask from one end of the heavens to
the other, has anything so great as this ever happened? or anything
like this ever been heard of. Now what I want us to gain from
this, of course we know when we read the Old Testament, we're
not just to look for Israel's history so that we're filled
in on the events of Israel's history. We know that the things
spoken here have to do with our Lord Jesus Christ. and the gospel
that came by him. And we realize that the Jewish
nation, particularly at this point, is representative of the
church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we look at these events
and we take them to heart. We do what many in Christendom
thinks you're not supposed to do, we spiritualize them. We don't think that if we were
to go over the Middle East and go in the Transjordan area, they
call it, the east of the Jordan, that we could stand there and
then if we crossed the Jordan, we'd be in the promised land.
We don't believe that. That's not our promised land,
is it? Our promised land is like, you
know, it says of Abraham that he sought another country. He
sought a city whose builder and maker was God. Yes, God told
him, you go here. And Abraham went there according
to instructions, but he understood, by faith he understood that that
spot of real estate was not really what was being promised to him. And so we look at this and we
ask, well the Lord asks us concerning what God has done for us as his
people, has anything as great as this
ever happened? Or has anything like this ever
been heard of? I mentioned before I started
the message, I think one of the indications of a true believer
is their joy at the thought of our Lord being vindicated before
the whole world. Here's another thing that can
identify a believer. When they hear the gospel, with
spiritual ears. When they see Christ and what
He's done and where He is now with spiritual eyes, they are
stupefied. They may have heard of those
things all through their lives up to that point. That is, these
facts may have been told to them. But such is the darkness of the
human mind and heart that even when the blessed truth of God
is told to a person, he distorts it. He is blind to the glory
of it. He may take up its doctrines.
He may walk according to its practices. But he doesn't see anything amazing
about it. And then the Spirit of God comes
to him and opens his eyes and he sees for the first time. Opens his ears and he hears for
the first time. And he says, oh my, I never saw
anything like this before. I never heard of anything like
this before. And indeed, one way that we know
that the God that we worship is the God, and the gospel that
we believe is the gospel, is that there's nothing like our
God anywhere else, and nothing like our gospel to be found anywhere
else. I entitled this message, Have You Ever Heard of Anything
as Great as This? I guess one of the reasons we
as believers are sometimes stunned at unbelief is having seen something
so wonderful as this, why would anyone have any resistance to
it at all? We're stunned, but then we also
remember we resisted it. We stubbornly refused it until
God in sovereign grace overcame our stubbornness, opened our
eyes to see what we hadn't seen before, and opened our ears to
hear what we hadn't heard before. And that's why we can tell others
of the wonderful things we've seen and heard, and they don't
think that it's particularly wonderful. because the things they can see
and hear have a wonder and glory about them, but they can't see
and hear what we see and hear, and therefore, they just assume
it's something like what they're looking at, whether it be the
glories of the world or the glories of their religion. But have you ever heard of anything
like this? He said, ask about the former
days, long before your time. Now here's something about our
gospel. We sing, tell me the old, old story. You know how
old this story is? It's as old as God. I've heard people say, well,
our church goes all the way back to the Reformation. That's not
far enough. Well, our church goes all the
way back. There's one denomination of churches
that's really thick in the southeast, and if you look at any of their
buildings, they'll have a cornerstone, and it'll say the name of their
church, established A.D. 33. That's too young, too young. To find the beginning of God's
church and God's truth, you have to go back to before anything
but God existed. And that's why he says, go back
to the former days, long before your time, from the day God created
human beings. Ask from one end of the heavens
to the other. That's what he's saying. You go back to the very
beginning of time, and you ask everyone that can give an answer
from both ends of the heavens, and that's how they saw it. You
know, from east to west, north to south. In other words, he's
saying you ask anyone who has ever lived in this world, is
there anything like this? Anything? Anything so great as
what God has done? Has it ever been heard of among
the sons of men? Have the wisest men on earth
ever devised a means of salvation like this one? The seminaries,
they keep turning out really intelligent people who believe
really stupid things. I know that there's some faithful
people come out, and I'm not condemning everybody that went
to seminary, Well, I didn't go to what they would call seminary.
I did get a pre-seminary Bible degree, bachelor's degree. I've been to college. I see how
academics work. And they get in their offices
and they study and they've got to publish. And they've got to
publish something new and interesting. And so with all that brain power,
and I tell you, some of them, they've got a terrific amount
of brain power, but they use it to cleverly distort the Word
of God, because if they stick with the Word of God, there's
nothing new to write. They won't be published. They
won't get anywhere. And some of the most ridiculous
things that have ever been written by men have been written by those
claiming to have found some new and wonderful thing that no one
has seen before. Well, there's something wonderful
that hasn't been seen, not by natural eyes. The scriptures
say, eye has not seen, ear has not heard. What he means by that is the
Lord's not saying that, you know, nobody's been to heaven to see
and hear. Now, that's true. Nobody's been
there to see and hear and could come back and tell us what they
saw and heard. What he's saying is, that God's way of salvation,
what He has prepared for them who love Him, the salvation that
He designed for them, no natural ear ever heard that. No natural
eyes ever perceived that. The heart of man, it never entered
the natural heart of man. It's too wonderful for that.
David said, such things are too wonderful for me. They are high. I cannot attain to them. And then he goes on to express
some of these things. Verse 33, has any other people
heard the voice of God speaking out of fire as you have and lived? Now, the key to understanding
the wonder of that is those last two words, and lived. Everybody's
gonna hear the voice of God. Not many who hear the voice of
God will live. Not the voice of God speaking
out of the fire. He's referring there to our Lord
descending on Mount Sinai. And it says there was lightning
and there was thunder and there was clouds and the sound of a
trumpet and a voice. And the people were terrified.
And they said to Moses, we don't want to hear from him again.
You go up, you know, and you talk to him and then you tell
us what he said. But they heard it. God spoke to them out of the
fire, that fire representing His white-hot holiness. We are told, even as believers,
to remember this. Our God is a consuming fire. We must never trifle with the
things of God because He's not a God to be trifled with. But He says Has there ever been any other
people who heard the voice of God as He spoke in His holiness and lived to tell about it? God spoke in His holiness to
the whole world in the day of Noah. And no nation, no people
survived. Eight persons did. But they weren't
a nation. They weren't a people. Then God spoke to Egypt. Spoke
to Egypt from His holiness and His wrath. They didn't survive. Not the firstborn. And you and I, we have heard
God speak from the fire. We have heard God speak in His
Spirit as He comes and does what the Lord said. He will come and
convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. That's God speaking from the
fire. We've heard it. And when we heard it, we may
have thought it was going to kill us. We may have said like Isaiah
did when he saw God in His glory, woe is me, I am ruined. But it didn't kill us. He revealed a measure of our
sin to us, sufficient measure of our sin to let us know that
our sin is bigger than we can handle. Enough of our sin to
let us know that a holy God must have satisfaction against our
sins. That a holy God must demand payment
for our sins. And it was terrifying to learn
that. We heard Him speak of righteousness
and knew we could never attain unto that. We heard Him speak
of judgment and knew we couldn't survive it. And He spoke to us from the fire
that fell upon the Savior on the cross. Now when you know the entire
gospel, you know that our Lord's suffering on the cross was a
demonstration of His love. But the most obvious character
of God that's revealed at the cross is His holiness, His righteousness,
and His justice. For there hangs a man who never
did anything wrong. But the sins of a multitude no
man can number has been laid upon them. He's been made accountable
for them. And God the just visited on him
the full weight of vengeance against sin. People somehow think, well I
haven't sinned so bad that God will send me to hell. I've done the best I can. Is
that going to be good enough? You think God will cut you some
slack? Because you did the best you
could? Or you went to church? That was His own beloved Son
on the cross. He didn't cut Him any slack.
That was His Son bearing sins that He Himself did not do. And
still, God did not cut Him any slack. He didn't hold back. But everything that should have
fallen upon his elect fell upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything,
believer, now think on this. May God soak your heart with
it. Everything you should experience,
Christ experienced. Every torment of hell set aside
for you. was poured out on Christ. Every
moment of an eternal suffering was poured out on Him. And we heard it. We heard His voice. And we lived. We heard all that. We heard the fierceness and the
wrath of Almighty God and we lived. Verse 34, has any God ever tried
to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings,
by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched
arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the
Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes.
Now there were some there on this day, age 40 to 60, who in
their youth had seen the things that Moses was talking about.
They were young, but they had seen them. They'd seen the Nile
turn to blood. They'd seen flies and frogs and
all those plagues. And they had witnessed Passover
night. They had marched out with their
mothers and fathers. Marched right out of Egypt. They'd
seen the Red Sea opened up before them. And they'd crossed it. And they'd
seen the cloud and the fiery pillar stand between them and
the Egyptians as the Egyptians came with all their chariots
and all their armies to recapture them. And when they got to the other
side, they saw that fire lift up. And those foolish Egyptians tried
to use the way of escape that God had made for the Jews. And
they ran into that sea. And what was a way of salvation
to the Jews became a trap for the Egyptians. And God let the
waters flow over them. And he wiped out the Egyptian
army. Wars. They'd seen battle as those in
the wilderness were upset with them being there. They'd already
fought some wars with the kings of the areas to the east of the
Jordan. They'd seen all that. Had that ever happened before?
Had any of the gods that men worshipped in that day ever done
something like that? No. Actually, when you look at what
pagan religion does, They're busy trying to save their God,
not the other way around. Do you remember when the Ark
of the Covenant was put in the temple of Dagon, the God of the
Philistines? They woke up. And there's the
Ark of the Covenant. And Dagon tipped over, broke
into pieces. And they quick tried to set him
back up. The next day, same thing. You know, if you have to help
your God, you've got the wrong God. If your God needs you for anything,
you've got the wrong God. He said, tried to take for himself
one nation out of another nation. Even though the Jews were from
a different ancestry, that is a different immediate ancestry
than the Egyptians, They would trace their ancestry back to
Abraham and back on to Shem, the son of Noah. The Egyptians
would trace their ancestry, I believe, back to Ham, the son of Noah.
But here's the thing, they're all descendants of Noah. And therefore, even though they
were a chosen people, even though they were blessed in the eternal
counsels of God, even as they were in Egypt. They went down
there. There's only 70 of them. That's
hardly a nation. They grew to a lot of people, but they're
still part of the nation of Egypt. But out of the nation of Egypt,
God carved out a people for His name. And when He got them to
Sinai, that's when He made them into a nation. And you and I,
what are we? Do we come into this world different
from the rest of the world? Something special about us? The
Bible says, by nature, We were just like children of wrath. There's nothing special about
us. But out of this mass and mess of humanity, God in sovereign
grace chose out a people to make them into what Peter calls a
holy nation, a royal priesthood. and with a mighty hand and an
outstretched arm, with testings, with miracles, with demonstrations
of unspeakable power. He delivered those people from
that nation and made them into a new nation. You don't find the Jews going
out of Egypt with their swords in their hands saying, we defeated
the Egyptians. You don't see them going out
of Egypt, fighting Egyptians and being
victorious over them. They were ready to go, and when
God said go, they walked out. And no one touched them. Who's
the mighty one here? They'd been through all the plagues,
they'd seen it all. They'd been through the Passover,
they'd seen it. Now they're let out. And friends, what mighty things God did to separate us from this world
and make us His own. And you and I did not lift a
finger. You and I did not do battle with
the forces of evil. We have not entered God's rest with our swords drawn. We've not been victorious over
anything. Paul says this, thanks be to
God who gives us the victory. He won the victory and he hands
it to us. And John describes that victory
this way. Faith is the victory that overcomes
the world. Now, it doesn't mean that by
faith we can go out and overcome the world and all of it's sinful.
No. The mere act of believing is victory over the world. Because the world's character
is unbelief. And the world, and that spirit
which rules in the world, Satan. They do everything they can to
make you stop believing. They tried to keep you from believing. And then once you believe, they
keep trying to stop making you believe. And yet you keep believing. And John said, that's the victory.
They may overcome you in many things pertaining to this world.
They may take what you own. They may persecute you. They
may bring your head down in sorrow. They might kill you, but they
will not overcome you. So long as, like those people
mentioned in Hebrews 11, these all died in faith. That was the victory right there,
given to us in Christ. I see Christian groups talking
about the so-called victorious life. And it always has something
to do with being happy and gaining worldly blessings of some kind
or another or overcoming this or that sin. Victory for the
believer is believing. Verse 35, you were shown these
things so that you might know that the Lord is God. Beside Him there is no other. Child of God, reflect regularly
on what God did to save you. Go back to the beginning of time and see all the things God has
worked together. for your eternal good. This book
what an amazing history of redemption and salvation. Abraham an idol worshiper. God said go to the land I'll
show you. And he went. Why did he do that.
As God working in. He sees two children in the womb
of Rebecca. And he says, the elder will serve
the younger. As it is written, Jacob have
I loved, Esau have I hated. Boy, what an act of love and
grace there. Think of how he sent his son
and all that he did through his son. Not only his mighty works
of power and the miracles that he did, but that beyond imagination
work that went on there at the cross. How did God lay your sins
on Christ? I don't know. Only God can do
that. How can Christ, God in human
flesh, how can He bear the wrath of God and die under it and yet
raise again? I don't know. That is above my pay grade, as
they say. It doesn't matter though that
I can't understand it. All I'd have to do is know that's what
it was. Has there ever been a God like that? And that he did all
of that for sinners like you and me. He did that for a group
of ungrateful, complaining, rebellious people. And he's not ashamed to call
them brethren. You ever hear of anything like that? And He brought them into a land
of rest in which no work is required, in which they must do nothing
to enjoy the full range of all the blessings that that land
has to offer. Now, there are people who observe
a weekly Sabbath day, and if they want to, that's fine. You
and I have entered an eternal Sabbath already. I know we'll
experience that rest better when we're gone from this world, but
spiritually speaking, you're already at rest. You've already
found rest in Christ. You have crossed over Jordan.
And God has driven out all your enemies before you, and you possess
the land. Now do you know of any other
religion that free? Do you know of any other religion
that truly and honestly doesn't require anything from you? Do you know of any other religion
that finds people so wicked as you and me and makes them to
be like God's own son? And does all of that at his own
expense, by his own strength and power, and just hands it over. Search through history, you won't
find a religion like that. You won't find a gospel like
that. And you won't find a God like that. And that's why I've
said many times, if the God we believe in isn't God, There is
no God. And if the gospel we believe
is not the truth, there is no truth. We've got it good. So very, very
good. We have things. We see things and hear things
that nobody else can. And when we describe them, They
either just scratch their heads, not understanding or saying,
I never heard anything like that. That's right. Well, may God bless
His Word.