two or three different places
in your Bible. The first one is in Psalm 110. Psalm 110 is a very short but
wonderful and blessed psalm. that is referred to in the New
Testament, and we'll take a look at that in just a bit. And it
is a Psalm of David regarding the precious Lord Jesus Christ. Now let us pray. Lord, we come before you this
morning, our risen, exalted King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Lord, you teach us in your Word that you reign over this universe. Not one single thing takes place
except that it be by your permission or your direct will. At all the
events, the circumstances, the things that make the papers and
the TV news, all of these things are no surprise to yourself.
But in some mysterious, deep sense and way beyond our ability
to comprehend, All that takes place this very
day will redound to your honor and
glory forever. Lord, we claim to be your people,
but if we are, it is the result of the work of your grace and
spirit in our souls. It is the result of your having
come and lived and suffered and bled and died and rose again
and ascended to glory. It is this wonderful arrangement
in old eternity by Father, Son and Holy Spirit that anyone who
belongs to Christ must have been given to him in old eternity. And we love and rejoice in this
glorious truth. Dear Lord, as we try this morning
to take this book that is indeed your book like no other book,
it is the story, the revelation, the setting forth of our precious
Lord Jesus Christ from Genesis through Revelation. And yet for
much of our lives, we were unable to see Christ in the Old Testament. And what we saw of him in the
New was not true, but twisted and misformed. Lord, we thank you. that you
have shown us the truth as it really is, the precious, precious
gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Lord, as we take these passages
from your Word this day, without your blessing, they will not help us, nor comfort
us, nor strengthen us, But if you bless them to us,
oh, how blessed we would be. Help us, we beg, for the honor
and glory of our Savior and his blessed name. Amen. Psalm 110, David is a king. on earth to the King, and he
says in verse 1 of Psalm 110, the Lord, and look at the spelling,
the capital, all capital letter L-O-R-D, said unto my Lord, capital
L lowercase O-R-D, God said unto my Christ, my Lord,
the Lord Jesus, sit you at my right hand until I make your
enemies your footstool." Now that is where Christ is right
now. David, by divine revelation,
saw this a long time before the events took place on this earth. Oh, probably a thousand years,
if not more, took place between David's writing these words and
their actual occurrence on earth. Sit you at my right hand, this
is the Father speaking to the Son, until I make your enemies
your footstool. Now here's the part I don't want
you to miss because it's going to be material when we come to
the New Testament. One more time, the first line,
at least in my Bible, the first phrase, the first part of a statement
in verse 1. The Lord, the Lord God Jehovah,
said unto my Lord, the Lord Jesus. Okay? That's going to be important
in just a little bit. Verse 2. The Lord shall send
the rod of your strength. Still all capitals, the Lord
God Jehovah shall send the rod of Christ's strength out of Zion. Rule you in the middle of your
enemies. And that's what our Savior is
doing right now. He's not waiting to do it. He
is. Verse 3. Now you know that God won't save
anybody unless they let him. Right? No, that's a big joke. That ain't so. But this is. Thy people, the people that God
chose in eternity and gave to Christ, thy people shall be willing
in the day of Christ's power. And we're living in that day,
and we have been for the last over 2,000 years. And for that
matter, whatever was before that in the Old Testament, God still
saved His people through Christ. They were looking for His coming,
and we're rejoicing in His having come and His coming again. Your
people shall be willing in the day of your power in the beauties
of holiness from the womb of the morning. You, Christ, has
the dew of His youth He's as strong now as the day that he
made this world. His power has never abated. My soul, he had all power from
the beginning, before time ever was, and all the way through
time, right on down to the cross. The dew of his youth. Some of
us know a little something about losing the dew of our youth.
I'm talking to you older guys. I'm leaving myself out, of course.
But I know a little bit about that. Not as much as some people
I could name. Alright, verse 4. The Lord has
sworn and will not repent. This is God speaking to Christ. Not about Him, but to Him. You
are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, the character
that we meet in the Old Testament as well as the New, Melchizedek.
The Lord at your right hand shall strike through kings in the day
of his wrath. He shall judge among the heathen. He shall fill the places with
the dead bodies. He shall wound the heads over
many countries. Might as well include this one
while he's at it. We're just as rotten as all the
rest. Now verse 7. He shall drink of the brook.
Probably most people would say that this is talking about that
little stream that ran through Jerusalem right before you get
to the Mount of Olives. He shall drink of the brook in
the way, therefore shall he lift up the head." Now the pictures
that people have drawn of this brook and of our Savior walking
through it and getting a handful of water, they make it as clear
as any water filter can get it clean in our generation. But
that ain't what it is. This is the filthiest body of
water this world has ever seen. All the refuge from the sacrifices
and the blood of the animals that were sacrificed in that
temple went into this stream. And that's what our Lord drank. This was not crystal clear H2O. No, this is a polluted stream
because this Savior came to save polluted sinners. Are you polluted? Alright, Matthew chapter 22. And in this brief reading in
Matthew 22, we will run into that statement that I mentioned
to you having to do with David's Lord. David's Lord. If you'd have been here Wednesday
night, we read verse 15 through 44, and I had time to comment
on those, but I do not have that time this morning. So let me
just point out for you that beginning in verse 21 of Matthew 22, that
here are three parties within the Jewish religion. At this
time, there were three of them. One of them called themselves
the Herodians after Herod the king. They loved him as king
and no doubt somehow were gratified financially or some other way,
I don't know however, but it was good for them. And so they
formed a party within the Jewish religion. And then the second
one has to do with the Sadducees. And they were the ones that,
more than any other at least, They would take whole parts of
the Bible and just say, well, that's not so, and this is not
so, and yet it's plainly in the Scriptures. And their favorite
subject was to deny any such thing as a resurrection. Now, if there ain't no resurrection,
you and I don't have any hope. And then the third group is the
Pharisees. So the Herodians in verse 16, Their purpose now is to get our
Lord to make some statement that will cause Him to lose any acceptance
with the population as a whole. So they ask Him, is it right
to pay taxes to Caesar? And our Lord said, bring me a
coin. And they brought Him a Roman
coin and He said, Whose image is this?" And they said, Caesar's. So he said, render to Caesar
the things that are Caesar's, and render to God the things
that are God's. Then the next question from the
Sadducees, they make up this highfalutin story about, boy
she must have been some woman, but she was married to seven
brothers in succession. And the Old Testament said that
if a man died without having any children, that his brother,
considering that he's without a wife, would marry the brother
that died's wife, and that she would bear children. So they've
just spent no telling how long getting this story, tweaked it
just like they wanted it when they brought it to the Savior.
And He tells them just plain as day. He said, in heaven we'll
be like the angels of God. There will be no such thing as
husbands and wives. We'll be as the angels. As far
as that matter goes, I don't see how there can be any such
thing as females and males. So that blew their theory wide
open. So the Pharisees who had put
all of these groups up to this, Now you know that in every church
in this county is run by somebody. I call them the chiefs and the
rest of them are just Indians. But they often, when the issue
is right, They'll throw down the axe between themselves and
take sides against the common enemy. And that's what these
people are doing regarding Christ. So the Pharisees bring to our
Savior a question about the law, which is the greatest commandment
in the law. And the Lord simply answered
it. That you should love the Lord your God with all your heart,
mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. And
so, their whole effort was destroyed. But the Lord Jesus decides it's
His time to ask the question. It's in verse 41. Matthew 22,
41. While the Pharisees were gathered
together, Jesus asked them, saying, What think you of Christ? Now that's my title this morning.
What do we think of Christ? Whose Son is He? They say unto him, the son of
David, the son of David. Not directly, but as you know,
in David's ancestry, in his family tree. He said to them, how then
does David in spirit, by the Holy Spirit of God, call him
Lord? When he said in Psalm 110 verse
3, recorded in verse 44 in our Bibles in Matthew 22, the Lord
said to my Lord, sit you on my right hand till I make your enemies
your footstool. And they're flabbergasted. They
have no answer for this question. And that's what brings us now
to this subject. This is a title. of the Lord's own making. What
think you and what think I of Christ? No man was able to answer him
a word, neither dared any man from that day forth ask him any
more questions. They thought, we're smarter than
this guy is. But it turns out they weren't.
And you and I think the same things about ourselves. You know,
we could tell God a thing or two. I know it's stupid. But we're idiots. What can I
say? Me and you and everybody else included. What do you think of Christ? Last Sunday morning I tried to
preach on, is Christ my all? And I'd like to bring that text
back into play, which was in Colossians 3.11, Christ is all
and in all. And I'd like to use it in this
fashion. Then we'll take a statement out of Colossians chapter 3 in
another verse, and that will finish us up this morning. What
think you of Christ? There was a time when this world
did not exist. No matter what they tell you
about how many billions and gazillions of years it's been, they don't
know how to get out of the rain. These people can tell you what
was here millions and millions of years ago. Somebody's just
crazy to swallow this junk. I'll tell you this flat out. You cannot believe that we're
descended from apes or monkeys or whatever else is out there
and believe the gospel of Christ because Moses wrote in the book
of Genesis the story of creation, and Christ said in John chapter
5, I think it is, and verse 40-something, He said, If you don't believe
Moses, you can't believe Me. Now what that means is, if you
don't believe the Old Testament, you can't believe the New. Because
a lot of this stuff is just repeated all over the Bible. Old and New
Testament. There was a time when this world
was not. And if we argue this matter of
creation, it ain't about what Moses said, it's what God says
about His Son as our Creator. If Christ is all, and He definitely
is whether I know it or not, where was He when this world
did not exist. We learn the answer to that question
out of John 17 in verse 5, which is that high priestly prayer,
when the Lord Jesus said to the Father, Glorify You, Me, with
the glory which I had with You, when? Before the world was. You want to know where Christ
was before this world was made? He was in eternal glory. Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. Secondly, there was a time when
this world was created. If Christ is everything, and
he is, where was he then? I'll read you another statement. I'm going to have you turn to
some of these before I get through here. And this will be a good one.
It's not far from Matthew. John chapter 1, just two or three
verses in John's Gospel chapter 1. Now if you're one of these
electronic people, you can just hit the buttons and it will pop
up. But I ain't got there yet. Saving that for my next life.
John chapter 1, beginning with verse 1. In the beginning was the Word,
capital W, that's Christ. He is indeed the Word of God. And the written Word of God has
one main subject, and that's Christ. In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Christ is God. The same was in the beginning
with God. Now here's our statement in verse
3. But if I'd have told you that sooner, this is where you'd have
been already. All things were made by Him. Everything was made
by Christ. And without him, without Christ, was not anything made that was
made. What does that mean? He made
everything. Thirdly, we'll refer to this one, the
scripture. I'll read you most of it off
by notes. Third thing is, there was a time when sin came into
this world. It was not here at the beginning.
How long Adam and Eve lived before eating of that forbidden fruit,
nobody knows. Some people say just a short
time. Some people say this, that. If we needed to know that, we
would know it from this book. There was a time, there was a
time when sin came into this world. And it wasn't Eve's sin that
put us in the shape we're in. It was Adam's sin. How come? Because Adam is the federal head
and representative of the entire human race. So that it's just
like Congress. What they do, whether we like
it or not, we do. Because they're our representative. I wish they'd come home and stay.
But Adam is our representative, not Eve. And I don't have time
to really go into it, but it's so important for us to see that
when Christ came, He is said to be made of a woman. I'll come
back to that in just a little bit. So there was a time when
sin came into this world, and Christ, in Genesis 3.15, the
very first promise in the Bible, it says, "...the seed of the
woman shall bruise the serpent's head," that's Satan's head, So the Lord Jesus is the promised
light and life and truth of this holy Bible and this holy gospel. Now I need you to turn to Galatians. See, I'm giving you just easy
stuff. Shugs Curtis didn't get started this morning before we
were already looking for Genesis, you know. Galatians. Chapter 4. Oh my goodness, if
you've not really seen these verses, you're in for a treat. Not only did sin come into the
world, but it didn't take long when sin came into the world
to manifest itself in how people worshipped God. There were two
boys born to Adam and Eve. I'm sure there must have been
many more, but these were, as I understand it, the first two.
Abel worshipped God like God declared that he must be worshipped,
while his brother Cain worshipped God with the produce of his own
making. And God refused his sacrifice
and accepted Abel's, and Cain got mad and killed his brother. So in Galatians chapter 4, let me read you this statement first.
Superstition, religious superstition and error in religion and darkness
reigned on this earth. Everywhere. Everywhere. If Christ is all, where was he
when this took place? Where was he? He is all. He is all. Now, let me just take
you right straight out of this book, Galatians, alright? We'll
start with verse 4. But when the fullness of time,
when it became time for God to do what He intended to do forever, when the fullness of the time
was come, God sent forth His Son. made of a woman. Now why does Paul put that there?
Because it is critical to the gospel. If the Lord Jesus is
Adam's descendant, then he can't be our Savior and our substitute
and our God. If it was Adam's seed and not
Eve's, we would have no Redeemer. Do you understand that? God sent forth his Son, made
of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under
the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And, verse
6, because you are Son, Not going to be, you already
are. God's not surprised who His people
are. He chose them in old eternity,
gave them to Christ by name in the covenant of grace. Because you are sons, God has
sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts crying, Listen, when God saves a sinner,
it's not an accident. It's on purpose. It's on purpose. Wherefore, you are no more a
servant, but a son. We start out in this world servants
of the devil. I didn't say sons of the devil.
I said servants of the devil. But bless God, that day comes
that's been purposed forever. No more a servant now, but a
son. And if a son, then an heir. An
heir of God through Christ. Number five, there will
come a day when this world shall come to an end. People shall rise from the grave
or the sea Or wherever they are and in whatever circumstances
they were buried or whatever, wherever people are will have
no bearing on the fact that this is how it's going to be. People
shall rise from the dead and stand before God. Now listen to John 5.22. It says, The Father judges no
man, but has committed all judgment unto the Son. You understand
that? The judge on that great day is
none other than Christ himself. If that ain't true, then cut
that verse out of your Bible. Be a Thomas Jefferson. He didn't
believe in miracles, and he cut every one of them out of his
Bible. We do the same thing. We just ignore it. We skip over
it. We bypass a lot of places in our Bibles because we don't
like what they say. I've been there and done that,
and I'm afraid I might still be doing that. Romans 14.10 says, we shall all
stand before the judgment seat of Christ. What did I say? 14.10. Finally, number 6. Now, I've got two more little
short pages. On this one page, one day may
not be long, or it may be a lot longer than any of us can imagine.
One day there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and all will
be perfect. If Christ is all, where will
He be then? Philippians, let's turn to Philippians. Chap, just over to your right
a little bit. If you hit the book starting
with T, you've already gone too far. Philippians chapter 2, verses 9, 10, and 11. Philippians 2 verse 9, wherefore
God also has highly exalted him, that's the Lord Jesus, and gives
him a name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth
and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess,
indeed will confess, willingly or unwillingly confess, that
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Now, let me change gears just
a little bit. We're taking a statement found
in Colossians 3 and verse 4, Christ is our life. This has to do with Christ being
all. These things are things that
cannot be dispensed with when we're trying to answer what question?
What do I think of Christ? What do I think of Christ? And I'm putting you with that
same eye now, all of us together. If the Lord Jesus is our life,
then He is the life of our spiritual obedience. Now, we're all born
physically, And, you know, we start off a tiny little baby
and then we get real big like myself. But that's not what this
is about. We're not trying to change our
body, though I'd like to a little bit here and there. But it has
to do with spiritual things, the soul. the new mind that Christ gives
to believers. In John 11, verse 25, the Lord
Jesus was talking to Lazarus' older sister by the name of Martha.
And she's spouting off all this stuff about what she believes
about the resurrection, and she's talking about you know, way off
somewhere. And it's easy for people to say,
sure, I believe in the resurrection because I ain't planning to need
it for a while, you know. But her brother is already dead. And our Lord said, Martha, I
am the resurrection and the life. Not going to be. I am the resurrection
and the life. He that believes in me, though
he were dead physically, yet shall he live spiritually. But in the case of her brother,
our Lord raised him from that grave. He was dead and buried
four days. And she said, by now he stinks. And our Lord said, roll back
the stone. And he said with a loud voice,
Lazarus, come forth." And Lazarus got up and came forth, grave
clothes and all. By our natural birth, we are
dead in sin. We're all born in that condition.
Why? Because Adam is our father. We're
the offspring of Adam. In Christ alone, we are made
spiritually alive. By nature, we are said to be
without God and without Christ. But in Christ, this book tells
us that we know God and are united to God in Christ. Christ is our
Savior, our Redeemer, our Lord, our all, our everything, our
life. By nature, we are children of
wrath. In Christ, we are children of God. By nature, we are under
the law's curse. But in Christ, we are free from
the law. O happy condition, Jesus has
bled and there is remission. Hymn number 205, right in your
book. Alright, here's the final thing. And I don't know that I've ever
tried to state anything in this manner before, but I'm
going to try it. Christ is the life of our righteousness
and holiness. Like in 1 Corinthians 1.30, of
God are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Christ is everything. Either he's everything or he
ain't nothing. There's no in-between. No in-between. These things concerning Christ
concerning him as our righteousness, our holiness, and our sanctification,
these things have to be viewed from two different vantage points. One of them is a legal view of
these things in Christ. And the other is to view them
experientially. Okay, those two things. Legally and experientially. Legally, before the law of God,
we're just plain sinners. Everything it demands of us,
we cannot give it. And if we give it half what it
demands, it's as if we gave nothing. And if we break one of the laws
or one of the Ten Commandments, the Scripture says we've broken
all of them. They stand and fall together. So the law of God must be satisfied
by our own selves. And if you know anything at all
about grace and the gospel, you know that that will send us straight
to hell because we cannot keep it. But what we could not do in keeping
the law, Christ did. If all the Lord Jesus had to
do was to pay our sin debt, to suffer, bleed and die for our
sins on Calvary's tree, he could have come down here as a grown
man and gone to the cross the very next day and salvation would
be accomplished. So why did he come in the womb
of Mary? Why is it that he was born in
this world looking just like any other boy that was born in
that day, and that he lived on this earth something like 30
years before he began his public life and ministry? He must worship
God in the synagogue as well as the temple in Jerusalem, the
synagogue in Nazareth, and he must keep all of these things
perfectly. Why? because he is earning and
meriting for his people a perfect righteousness and holiness. And
we must have this, or God cannot accept us and will not accept
us. Therefore, the Lord Jesus imputes
to us, catch that word, imputes to us, holiness and righteousness. All of it. We don't contribute
10% in Hymn 90. It's all or nothing. And it's
all Christ. And it's all grace. Alright,
the second word that I used, which I don't think I've used
before, is experientially. It has to do with experience.
But it is a different kind of experience in that it is for
us to grasp what these things mean and how they belong to us. By nature, we love sin and we
love darkness and we hate holiness. We need a new nature and a new
spirit in Christ We have this new nature and this new spirit,
this new heart. It is called holiness and righteousness,
not imputed, but imparted. You hear me? How is that done? Because when we are born again,
We have two people living inside of us, just like the Lord Jesus
had inside of Himself. Except in His case, it was His
divine nature, and the other was a sinless human nature. But you and I have within us
a sinful human nature, and in Christ we have received from
Him a divine nature, a new nature. Let me read it to you, and I
want you to see it in your Bibles, and I'll call or quits. 1 John 3. I'm almost afraid to get this
close to 1 John 3 because I would like very much to read the chapter
and explain it a little bit, but I'll have to As Scott Richardson would say,
leave or go. Let somebody else have a turn. Did I tell you chapter 3? 1 John
3, beginning at verse 1. Behold what manner of love the
Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the
sons of God. Therefore, the world knows us
not, because it knew God in Christ not." Beloved, now listen carefully,
now are we the sons of God? Right now, if we're in Christ,
we're the sons and daughters of Christ. Now are we the sons
of God? And it does not yet appear what
we shall be, but, now watch this, We know that when He shall appear
at the second coming of Christ, when He makes Himself known to
His people, both those that were dead and those that were still
alive on this earth when He comes back, when He shall appear, we
shall be like Him. How on earth can we do that?
Here's the answer. For we shall see Him as He is. Now, you know what that's called? a transforming sight. It's seeing Christ and being
made like Him all at one time. All at one time. All right, I'm tired of talking.
Are you all tired of listening?