Last week, we began a message
entitled, The Same Word from Three Prophets. Let us re-read
our three texts of scripture for this message. In Isaiah 118,
we read, Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord.
Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.
Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. And then
Jeremiah 616 says, Stand at the crossroads, and ask for the ancient
paths. Ask where the good way is, and
walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. And finally,
in Matthew 11, verses 28-30, we read, Come unto me, all you
who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart,
and you will find rest for your souls. Now here is the word of
three prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and our Lord Jesus. Each of them
is saying the same thing, or at least leading our hearts in
the same direction. God calls us to reason, to listen
to words and come to conclusions about what is said. One of Satan's
means of distracting people from the truth is to occupy their
minds with feelings, and there are plenty of preachers serving
as his ministers, appearing to be angels of light and ministers
of righteousness, but in truth they are angels of darkness and
ministers of unrighteousness. We are not saying that feelings
or emotions are bad. In fact, how can we not be emotionally
affected by the word of God's glorious gospel? But that is
emotion produced by rational truth, not just a feel-good experience
produced by the right music or the preacher's artful use of
language to make us feel warm and cozy or ecstatic, when, in
truth, he has said nothing of substance. The Bible says, buy
the truth and do not sell it. So, before we look for any specific
sort of experience, we must first be certain that it is based on
truth. I urge you, with all that is
in me, to make truth your goal, especially in things pertaining
to God. Do not settle for shallow religious
experiences, but give yourself to a relentless pursuit of truth,
rational truth. based on scriptural declarations. Our Lord said, You shall know
the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Let no one dissuade
you from this pursuit, and lead you captive by vain religion
devoid of the soul-freeing truth of Christ and Him crucified. Last week we noticed that God
calls us to reason which involves listening to words, discerning
their meaning, and coming to conclusions about what we have
heard. Usually, reasoning involves drawing
conclusions by comparing and combining two statements, often
called premises. But in Isaiah 1 verse 18, God
gives us one premise and then moves straight to the conclusion.
Our sins are as scarlet and crimson, yet they shall be made white
as snow and wool." This leaves us wondering how it is we get
from crimson and scarlet to white as snow and wool. Our Lord's
words in Isaiah bring us to Jeremiah's crossroad, and we are called
on to ask for the ancient in good way, the path that takes
us from scarlet and crimson to white like snow and wool. This
first characteristic of the path for which we ask is that it is
ancient. So ancient is this path that
it is older than time itself. Well, Christ is that premise,
that word of meaning that gets us from scarlet and crimson to
snow and wool in a logical, reasonable manner. He fills the gap in religious
logic from sinner to God. He fully acknowledges our scarlet
and crimson nature and does not try to get to snow and by denying
our natural color. He does not try to fill the gap
by indicating that anything less than snowy and woolly white will
be acceptable to God. In other words, he does not try
to fill the logical gap by changing either the premise or the conclusion. Rather, he is the reasoning that
gets us from crimson to snow, scarlet to wool. Now, how is
he the reason? First, He qualified himself by
living the snowy and woolly life of pure righteousness that we
could never live. If snowy and woolly righteousness
is the conclusion and we cannot produce it, then someone else
must produce it for us. That someone is Jesus Christ.
Second, by a judicial act of God, Christ was made scarlet
and crimson with the sin of those God entrusted to His care. Isaiah
described it like this. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way, but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Peter described it in this way. He himself bore our sins in his
body on the tree. Now there are mysterious aspects
of this transaction. How can the sin of one person
be transferred to another? How can the suffering of one
person lead to the justification of many? God does not give us
complete answers to those questions, but He assures us from His book
that such things are exactly what did happen. Let us not fall
short of faith by getting stuck on wondering how these things
can be so. Faith is not a matter of understanding
how these things could happen. It is just believing that they
did happen, and that they are the reason we can have a confident
hope in Christ Jesus. Third, Christ suffered God's
righteous wrath against the sins He bore. Peter wrote that Christ
suffered as the righteous person in the place of unrighteous people
in order to bring us to God. We can imagine the suffering
of a crucifixion. It was so horrible that our word
excruciating comes from the word crucify. but our Lord's suffering
went beyond what He bore as a fleshly creature nailed to a cross. That
is as bad as what men can do, but God can do much worse. It
is written that God made Christ's soul an offering for sin. The
soul suffering of the Savior is indescribable to us. You and
I may have gone through some psychological pain in our lives,
but nothing like what our Lord endured. God became Christ's
righteous and offended judge. God poured out into His soul
the fullness of divine wrath against sin. If we are in Christ,
we will never know what that means. But all that defines an
eternal hell was unloaded on Jesus Christ, the Substitute.
And He absorbed it, and endured it, and survived it. And in so
doing, He bore away the sins of His so that they are no more. So first, Christ lived a perfect
life, enabling Him to be a qualified substitute for sinners. Second,
God judicially assigned the sins of His elect to Jesus Christ.
And third, God punished Christ for those sins. That brings us
to four. By another judicial act, God
grants the snowiness and wooliness of the Savior's righteousness
to all those whose crimson and scarlet the Lord Jesus bore. And thus, by this process of
divine reasoning, we get from scarlet to crimson, to snow and
wool. Isaiah has told us to reason
with God, and we have. Isaiah brought us to Jeremiah's
crossroad by saying we are scarlet and crimson. Jeremiah tells us
to stand at the crossroads and ask for the ancient and good
Now which of these paths is the right one? Which of the crossroads
is the one that leads to life? Let us first do what Jeremiah
instructs us. He says, stand. Let us refuse
the urge to rush ahead before we know which direction to go.
It is written, the one who believes does not make haste. There is
a way, a path that seems right to a man, but the ends thereof
are death. It is our supposed wisdom that
brought us to the crossroads in the first place, a place of
confusion and uncertainty. So it is certain that our wisdom
cannot show us the right path to take. Nor should we trust
this decision to those around us rushing to the path everyone
else is taking. Recall that it is the broad road
that leads to destruction that is found by so many people. So
first, let us just stop and be willing to stand until we are
shown the right path. Then let us ask for the ancient
path. Let us call on our God to show
us the right path. We do not know the right path,
but He does, and He will answer us if we ask with a heart ready
to take whatever path He points out. Do not think for a moment
that God is such a one to deny the earnest question of a seeking
heart. It is He that creates such earnestness
and seeking so we can be certain he will not despise the very
thing he creates within the hearts of his people. Ask, and the answer
shall be given. But beware, for the evil one
stands ready to give an answer as well, and we must be certain
not to follow his advice. So then, how can we know if we
have learned and taken the right path? Here are some questions
that will reveal the answer to us. First, is our path an ancient
path? older than time itself, or have
we been turned aside to our own way or one of the new and exciting
ways of man's invention? Second, is it a path on which
we are told, go this way, or do we hear, come unto me? God
does not send us on our journey, but calls us to himself. The
Lord Jesus said, I am the way. Therefore, in calling us to himself,
he sets us free. on the right path. Is it a narrow
path? The Scriptures say it is a narrow
path, and there are few that find it. I don't believe that
the narrow path is difficult to find. It is just a little
more difficult to find than the broad path. Rather, I believe
that the human principle that the truth must lie with a majority
leads people to look no farther than the broad road of destruction
that has so many people on it. No one seeks another path so
long as he thinks he is on the right path, so the narrow path
is hidden from them by virtue of their sense that they have
already found the right path. But the ancient way is a narrow
way, with few people walking it. It is only as wide as one
man, our Lord Jesus. So men and women enter in, not
in groups, but individually. This path is so narrow and is
entered through a gate so narrow that a person cannot enter it
with anything of his own. He brings no luggage, no food,
not even his own clothes of self-righteous works. He walks through naked
and is immediately given a robe of righteousness to wear. He
does not walk hand in hand with any others, no matter how dear
to him. Each person walks this path as
an individual following the Lord." And that brings us to this. Is
it a path in which we follow the Lord? We walk the path of
His cross. By this I do not mean that we
take up a life of suffering as our Lord did. It is certain that
those who would live devoted to Christ will suffer persecution. But that is not what I mean when
I say we must walk the path of His cross. I mean what the writer
of Hebrews meant when he wrote, having therefore brethren boldness
to enter in the holiest by the blood of Jesus. We do not enter
with the blood of Jesus. Jesus already did that for us.
We enter by his blood, a token of a sufficient sacrifice for
our sins. Is it a path that brings us rest
for our souls? Jeremiah says the ancient and
good path leads our souls to rest. Christ says that coming
to him causes us to find rest for our souls. Well, now just
what rest is that? Well, it's the rest of ceasing
from our own labors to please God. What path are you on? The path of trying to please
God by your own efforts, or the path of spiritual rest based
on the fact that Jesus has finished all our labors? The grace of
the Lord be with you.