Now this morning's message comes
from the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 2. In verse 2 we read
this, Now God is a God of purpose. He works all things according
to the counsel of His will. Part of His purpose involves
the salvation of a people. Before the creation of the world,
God loved and chose a people. Now His purpose for them was
and still is that they should be blessed with all spiritual
blessings in Christ Jesus. But God is also a God of justice. The scriptures say the Lord is
known by the judgment which he executes. Now as the judge of
all the earth, he'll always do right. He'll give to every man
exactly what that man deserves. He declares of himself that he
will by no means clear the guilty. Now that's an important declaration
to keep in mind. This is what God says about himself.
He said it to Moses. He said, I will by no means clear
the guilty. God made a place called hell
for the devil and his angels. and into that awful place he
will also cast all those whom he finds guilty of sin." So,
even before God made the heavens and the earth, it looked like
there was some kind of controversy within the being of God. The
purpose of His mercy seemed to come in conflict with His demand
for justice. For every person whom he had
chosen as an object of mercy was also justly deserving to
be an object of wrath. On these people, God's mercy
could not allow them to suffer wrath, but God's justice could
not allow them to miss wrath." Now, that seems to be an insurmountable
difficulty. those whom God would bless in
mercy he must punish in justice. But you know the difficulties
that are altogether insurmountable to human wisdom and power are
easily solved by divine wisdom and power. God entered into a
covenant with himself in behalf of his chosen ones and this entire
covenant was committed into the hands of the Son of God As the
Lord Jesus Christ said, all things have been committed unto me by
my Father. Now the entirety of scripture
is given over to a revelation of how that covenant was fulfilled
and how the will of Jehovah prospered in the hands of the Son of God. The Old Testament begins the
revelation as it records God's promise that there would arise
from the woman a seed who would crush the head of the serpent
who had tempted our race into sin. Now Abel believed that promise. He believed God. And in accordance
with that faith, he brought a blood sacrifice. Now that lets us know
that way back there in the days of Abel, The first generation
born on this earth, they already understood that salvation, that
God's blessedness would come by way of a substitute suffering
on behalf of the sinner. Abel believed God and brought
a blood sacrifice. Noah believed and he built an
ark. which would bear God's wrath for him while keeping him safe
inside. A picture of how God's people
are in Christ and in Christ the wrath of God comes against them
but it actually beats against the Lord Jesus Christ and they're
safe inside. Abraham believed God and said
God would provide for himself a sacrifice and indeed God did
in the person of Jesus Christ. David believed and declared that
God had made with him an everlasting covenant part of that covenant
included a descendant to sit on his throne forever but you
know God is determined and always has been determined that all
the glory would be his so he let Israel diminish to where
it was nothing but dry ground and David's ancestry a dead stump
in that dry ground And he left it that way for 400 years until
all natural hope that God's promises would be fulfilled had died. Then God sent his angel Gabriel
to a village called Nazareth to speak to a young woman, a
virgin named Mary. And he had some shocking news
for her. First of all, he told Mary, that she had found grace
in the eyes of the Lord. She is a sinful woman, don't
know of any particular sins except I know this, everyone born into
this world is a sinful person and by nature without hope and
without God in the world and Mary was no exception but she
had found favor, found grace in the eyes of the Lord and that
made all the difference. And the angel went on to tell
her that she was going to have a baby Now not just any baby,
but one who would be great, one who would be called the Son of
the Most High. This baby would sit on David's throne and reign
over Jacob forever and his kingdom would never end. Now we might
be prone to wonder how such a great child could be born of such a
lowly But Mary had a more practical question. She said, how can any
child be born of one who is a virgin? She knew herself to be a virgin.
She knew that she had known no man. And now this angel says,
you're going to have a baby. And so the question that comes
to her mind is, well, how can that be? I'm a virgin. Then the
angel revealed to her the greatest of all mysteries. This child
would have no human forefather. But rather the power of the Most
High would come upon her, come upon Mary, and the Holy One conceived
in her would be quite literally the Son of God. As much the Son
of God as I am the Son of my Father. So our Lord Jesus Christ
Being born of a woman was fully human and being conceived by
God was fully divine. Now throughout our Lord's earthly
life, He gave testimony both to His humanity and His divinity. As to His humanity, He looked
like a human. He lived like a human. He suffered
all the limitations of natural humanity. He grew hungry. He
grew tired. He grew thirsty. There were limits
to His knowledge. He even marveled at things. just
like a human would do. But as to His divinity, there
can be no question. He turned the water into wine.
At His Word, the sea was calmed. He could heal. He raised the
dead. More than this, though, He proved
His divinity. He asserted it certainly by forgiving
sin. No one but God can forgive sin.
But our Lord openly and clearly forgave sin, claiming to be God.
Having lived a perfect life as a human being, he suffered crucifixion. It says he became obedient to
death, even the death of the cross. Now the physical aspects
of a crucifixion are horrible to contemplate. We read in the
scriptures about dying on the cross, about the Lord dying on
the cross, about him being crucified. And there isn't much description
of it, and the reason is they didn't need to describe it. The
people of that first century, they full well understood what
a crucifixion was. They had seen it happen. It was
the common form of execution for criminals in Rome. And so
it says our Lord was crucified, and that's about all it says
about it. But let me fill in some of the details. They took
our Lord Jesus Christ and they flogged him, beat him within
an inch of his life. I've read that the floggings
that people received at the hands of Roman soldiers would literally
tear the flesh off their back. And sometimes even the internal
organs would be exposed because of the severity of the beating.
Few people survived it. He was beaten and then the cross
beam of that cross was laid upon his shoulders and he was forced
to walk out there to Calvary. And they took about a six or
seven inch nail, nailed it through his wrist area, not in the palms
of the hands as you normally see, but in the wrist area and
through the ankles, nailed to this cross, left there to hang. The form of death in crucifixion
is asphyxiation. When you hang by your arms, it
compresses the chest so much you can't take in a breath. This
form of execution was designed to produce the most pain and
agony and humiliation possible before death. A healthy man could
easily last three days on a cross and the pain of hanging there
by his arms. And then from time to time standing
up on that nail, putting his weight there on that nail that
was through his ankles so that he could take a breath. And they
would stand up and gasp a breath and then hang down again for
hours upon hours and days. Our Lord hung there like that
for six hours. bearing our sins in his body on the tree. There
were spiritual events associated with the sufferings of our Lord.
It says he bore our sin in his body on the tree. He didn't die
just as a criminal in the sight of Rome. He died as a transgressor
in the sight of God, as a sinner in the presence of God. He didn't
just bear what Rome could do. He bore what God does to sinners
if they appear before Him in His sin. All that the divine
justice could demand in payment for the sin of God's chosen people
was visited on the Lord Jesus Christ. and therefore the righteousness
of god was fulfilled by him that is the justice of god you see
in the greek language righteousness and justice of the same word
the justice of god was fulfilled by him so that the righteousness
of god might be fulfilled in us who believe there at the cross
the purpose of mercy was fulfilled and the demand of justice was
satisfied the very rebellion which brought about the condemnation
in Adam was used by God to bring about salvation in Christ. Adam's
rebellious nature was to be found in the chief priests and the
scribes and the leaders of the people in Judaism in that day.
And for that reason they sought the crucifixion of the Lord.
The same rebellion found in Adam was found in the likes of Pilate
and the Roman soldiers who could quite casually kill another man.
But God used that rebellion to bring about His plan of mercy
and the satisfaction of His divine justice. But our Lord, though
He died, did not stay dead. He was raised from the dead.
Raised from the dead because the sacrifice that He made for
sin was sufficient to put away that sin. Therefore, the guilt
which He bore was gone. The Lord will by no means clear
the guilty, but He will not continue to punish the innocent either.
And so Christ was let free of death. And God called him to
his side, said, Sit here at my right hand till I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet. And God gave him glory, glorified
him above all, and gave him a name above every name, that at the
name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess
that Jesus is Lord. to the glory of God the Father
and there is a promise that he will return. He will not let
this world go on forever but when the last of his elect has
been called in by the Holy Spirit which he sent he will return
and he'll execute judgment on the earth. Now so great is Christ's
person and so glorious his work that it can now be declared to
every sinner that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed
to you. Through Him, everyone who believes
is justified from everything that we cannot be justified from
by the law of Moses. Sinners, regardless of their
race, regardless of their religion, regardless of their practice,
regardless of their perversions or their corruptions. To every
sinner goes this promise, through faith in Christ you may be justified
from all things for which you'd be condemned under the law of
Moses. Now this is the glorious gospel,
Christ and Him crucified. Why preach it? Because that's
the message God has commanded us to preach. because it's a
message worthy to be preached. Paul says, I'm not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.
The religions of this world have much to be ashamed of. Freewillism
must be ashamed of their God, because their God's a joke. He's
a being to be pitied. He has so little wisdom he cannot
devise a plan of salvation that is certain to work, and he has
no power to ensure the success of his work. To them, to every
freewheeler, the Bible is simply a litany of divine failure, but
not the gospel. It's a description of divine
success, legalism. has every right to be ashamed
for they worship a God without mercy and a God who is willing
to accept the feeble attempts of men to produce a righteousness
instead of demanding perfect righteousness but in the gospel
God demands and gets a perfect righteousness through Jesus Christ
and therefore is justified in showing his mercy to sinners
this message is the only message that will do sinners any good
It instructs them, for Christ says, I am the truth. It reconciles
them. because it says, God was reconciling
the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against
them. This message causes men to trust God, not themselves. Paul says that he preached Christ
and him crucified so that our faith might not rest on men's
wisdom, but on God's power. May God impress this message
on your hearts, that you may trust Christ and the work which
he has done in behalf of God's people.