I'm going to bring a message
today. I entitled it, Things That Surprise, Amaze, and Delight. So I want to draw your attention
to a few scriptures, but first let's pray. Dear Lord, we thank you for your
word. We know that what you said is true. And you spoke from the
beginning. Your word is true, not only from
the beginning, but to the end. Nothing that you've said will
fail. Nothing will prove false. and we can trust you. And this
is very, very important to us because we're all false. Everything
about us is false. Our sin separates us from God
and how desperately we need a salvation that can deliver us from our
sin and from our lies, from our pride, from our selfishness,
from all that we are. that estranges us from you. And
so we pray, Lord, through your word, which is true, you would
show us the truth of your salvation, of your people, and we would
flee to Christ, as we've just sang, under the cross of Jesus,
where heaven's love and heaven's justice meet. Thank you for this
song. Thank you for your word. Thank
you for your grace. We pray, Lord, by your spirit,
you would show these things to us in our heart. In Jesus' name
we pray, amen. I want to read one verse of scripture
to you from Matthew 1 verse 21 and following. It says that in
Matthew chapter 1 An angel appeared to Joseph because Joseph was
espoused, was engaged to Mary, to whom the Lord Jesus was born
miraculously. She knew no man and yet God conceived
the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ in her womb miraculously. And Joseph, being engaged to
her, wondered if, because his soon-to-be wife was pregnant,
that something had gone wrong and she was unfaithful and he
needed to put her away. So while, in verse 20, while
he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared
to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to
take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in
her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son,
and thou shalt call his name Jesus. For he shall save his
people from their sins. This is the Christmas story.
That one verse is the entire Christmas story. The Lord Jesus
shall save his people from their sins. A son born of a woman would
do all that. Verse 22, now, all this was done
that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken of the Lord by the
prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall
bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which
being interpreted is God with us. And so we see here, the angel
of the Lord told Joseph about the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we think of that as something that happened in history, something
we tend to celebrate around this time of the year. And some people
more or less celebrate it, the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But that's about as far as it goes, mostly. Sadly, that's about
as far as it goes. Because if you were to be able
to see the way that heaven thinks about this, you would see that
the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and his life and his sufferings
and his death, his resurrection, his ascension to glory and his
reigning in glory and coming again is the eternal will of
God by which he determined to save his people from their sins
according to his promise throughout scripture. And this is the culmination
of that promise. Coming in the fullness of time,
God sent forth his son. The son of God, never born, and
yet born as a man into this world. Now, salvation is God's work. We need to understand that. I
can't pique your interest in God's salvation. I can't convince
you of your sin or your great need of a savior. I can't persuade
you that Jesus Christ is Lord and that He is the only Savior.
I can't do any of those things. I can't persuade you that He
is the great Savior of great sinners like me. But I can tell
you what God says in His own word about your own sin and about
mine. I can tell you about His grace.
I can tell you about salvation in Jesus Christ alone from His
word because God's word will not return to Him without accomplishing
the purpose for which He sent it. And the reason He sent it
is to give faith and to raise sinners from spiritual death
to spiritual life. And this faith comes to us by
hearing God's Word. And so, I want to tell you what
God has said from His Word concerning the Lord Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. And I pray that God would be
pleased to give voice to his word in your own mind and heart. That you and I, together, might
believe his son as sinners and look to him as sinners for all
of our salvation, trusting and confessing that he has saved
us, not by what we did, not for anything in us, but for his own
purpose and grace and by his own will and work. Salvation
is our greatest need. Salvation is our greatest need.
What do we need to be saved from? Well, the first thing we need
to be saved from, and this will surprise you, we need to be saved
from God, from His justice and from His wrath. And the only
way we can be saved from the justice of God is by being saved
from our sins. Because our sins have brought
God's just wrath upon us. So the first thing we need to
be saved from is the justice of God. We need to be saved from
our sins. We need to be saved from ourselves. We need to be
saved from the deception that we're naturally under. We live
our lives as if everything's okay. And yet all the time God
says we're naturally deceived. And this deception comes from
our own heart. The heart, according to God,
now, this is what God's word says, is deceitful above all
things. Above everything in this world,
above everything that we know, our own heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. No man can know it. So we need
to be saved from God's wrath and justice. And we need to be
saved from our own sins against God and from our own sinfulness.
And if we are, then we will find our greatest joy and worship
for this great salvation. Now, the Spirit of God has recorded
something in Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah was a prophet. And God appeared to Isaiah the
prophet, and it's recorded in Isaiah chapter 6 what Isaiah
saw when the Lord appeared to him. It says in Isaiah 6, In
the year that King Uzziah died, I, Isaiah, saw also the Lord
sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and his train filled
the temple. The robe of his majesty filled
the temple, and above it stood the seraphims, each one had six
wings. With twain he covered his face,
with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. God
is so holy that even these high creatures, these seraphims, these
angels, could not look upon and could not show themselves. They
had to cover their face and their feet and fly. And this is what
they did when they did that. And one, one of these seraphims,
cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of
hosts. The whole earth is full of his
glory. So what is Isaiah seen here?
He's seen the glory of the Lord. Verse 4, And the post of the
door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was
filled with smoke. And this is his reaction. Then
said I, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Now, when
Isaiah saw the Lord, he saw the Lord Jehovah God on his throne. But then, later, later in the
Bible, in the 12th chapter of John, in the New Testament, the
same Spirit of God revealed that when Isaiah saw the Lord Jehovah
on his throne, that the one he actually saw was the Lord Jesus
Christ as King on his throne. This is what Isaiah saw when
he saw the Lord. He saw the Lord Jesus Christ
on his throne in glory as the king. And the seraphim flying
and crying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his
glory, his glory. So Isaiah saw the glory of Christ,
the glory of Christ in heaven. And his immediate response, of
course, was that he himself was a great sinner. And he was concerned
about that. But then, after Isaiah bemoaned
his own sin and the sin of the people, and I know without a
doubt that I am more foul than Isaiah and all of his people,
and yet we know so little about our own sinfulness, don't we?
Because we haven't quite seen what Isaiah saw. But Isaiah's
vision of Christ on his throne and this realization of his own
sinfulness, which is recorded in chapter 6, is followed up
by what he said in chapter 12 of Isaiah. In Isaiah chapter
12, I want to show you what Isaiah said here. Imagine now, this
man, Isaiah, was a prophet and God gave him a revelation of
the truth of God's eternal will, his purpose of salvation. And
Isaiah wrote this down. He wrote it down. And I can only
imagine what Isaiah must have felt when he penned these words
in Isaiah chapter 12. Listen to these. In Isaiah 12
verse 1. In that day, he's speaking about
a future day. In that day thou shalt say, O
Lord. This is the same Lord he saw on his throne. The same King. The one the angels cried, Holy,
Holy, Holy. And the temple shook. The posts
of the temple shook when they heard the words of the angels.
And His glory was seen there. This is the same Lord. He says,
And now listen to these words. And think about what Isaiah was
writing here. He knew who the Lord was. He
saw His glory. And he writes these words as
a sinner. And he says, behold, look, consider this. God is my
salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. For the Lord Jehovah is my strength
and my song, and he also is become my salvation. Can you imagine
that? The one he saw on the throne
of glory, the king over all, has become my salvation. Have you ever written something
and you were so excited the thoughts were rushing through your mind
and you had to write it down because it seemed like you were
going to forget it. It was going to get all tangled up in the
process of transferring it to paper. I wonder if Isaiah felt
that. I wonder if he could slow his
thoughts down enough as they raced through his mind to allow
his pen to catch up and write those words. Did he wonder that
these are the very words of God to sinners like himself and to
sinners like you and me? And yet, it's even more incredible. Because in Isaiah 53, Isaiah's
pen must have shook when he penned those words. The one he saw on
his throne and whose glory he saw in the temple of heaven. And he penned them in Isaiah
chapter 12, that the Lord Jehovah has become my salvation. He also
wrote these words in chapter 53, in verse 2, where he says,
This of the one who has become my salvation. He has no form
or comeliness, no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised
and rejected of men. A man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from him, not
because of his glory, because of his shame. Surely, this is why he looks
so hideous to us. Surely he hath borne our griefs. We saw in the Lord Jesus Christ
a man. a man full of shame because our
sins were laid upon him. Surely he hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten
of God, and afflicted. We considered him to be worthy
of what he was receiving because we did not understand But he
was wounded for our transgressions, and he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we, like sheep,
have gone astray. We have turned every one of us
to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity
of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his, this is the Lord of glory. He did not
open his mouth when sin was laid on him, our sins, but he bore
them as his own, as a lamb led to the slaughter. He is brought
as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers
is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison
and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? He had
no judgment, no justice. He was judged, but not in justice
by men, but it was in justice by God. For he was cut off out
of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people
was he stricken, and he made his grave with the wicked and
with the rich in his death, because though he had done no violence,
neither was any deceit in his mouth, yet it pleased the Lord
to bruise him. He has put him to grief when
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. Behold, God is become
my salvation. That's the message of the gospel.
The one who sits on heaven's throne, stooped to Bethlehem's
manger, came to Calvary's cross, went into the grave, and into
the tomb. and rose again and ascended back
to heaven's throne and reigns to save his people and bring
his sheep. And now there are promises in
scripture and these promises concerning this are captured
by these words, these simple words from several places in
scripture which I want to read to you. And the words are these,
he will save us. He will save us. Look at Isaiah
chapter 33. If you have your Bibles, and
if not, don't worry, I'll read it to you. Isaiah 33, in verse
22, he says this, For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our
lawgiver. This is the same Lord that Isaiah
saw. The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver. The Lord
is our King. He will save us. How did he do this? How will he save us? The Lord
is become my salvation. Remember what the old man Simeon
said? When the Lord Jesus was born,
his parents, Mary and Joseph, bring him to the temple. And
when Simeon saw him as a child, he looked upon him and he says,
mine eyes have seen thy salvation. What is God's salvation? It's
the Lord Jesus, the God of glory, born as a child, born as a baby,
to become a man and as a man bear the sins of his people and
become our salvation. We celebrate Christmas at this
time of the year. We may read and we might remember
how Jesus was born as a baby. We might give one another gifts
and receive gifts, but Jesus did not come into the world so
that we might worship a baby. He did not come that we might
give and receive gifts to one another. The Lord Jesus Christ,
the Lord and King of glory, came to die that he might save his
people from their sins. That's what the angel told Joseph.
His name shall be called Jesus. The name means Jehovah is salvation. This is the one who is salvation,
the one born to Mary. He is Emmanuel, God with us. And yet he is man because he
was born as the son of David through Mary. He's a man who
is God, he's the God man, and he's perfect. He's without sin.
He said to his enemies, which of you can convince me of sin?
None of them could. He says in scripture, He knew
no sin, He did no sin, and in Him is no sin. He suffered and
died because He was considered by God a sinner with our sins
on Him. He bore the sins of his people.
Isaiah 53 verse 8, we just read it. For the transgression of
my people was he stricken. Because he came to save his people
from their sins. His sheep. His sheep. Those given
to him by his father from eternity. To save them. And that's why
he came. To complete that will of God. To do the will that was
on God's heart. And put in his own heart when
God gave him that will to do. These words, he will save us,
surely there has never been a more comforting, more needed, more
concise promise to guilty, broken-hearted, spiritually bankrupt, spiritually
blind, spiritually naked sinners than this. He will save us. When I lack evidence, when my
obedience seems hypocrisy, when I find no assurance, And when
my sin seems strong and my faith weak, when my heart is cold and
my prayers are jumbled thoughts, and when my memory fails, and
when fears and doubts and troubles rage within, when opposition
from without overwhelms me, and when I find no comfort, then
I hang on these words and this promise. He will save us. He will save us. Peter's prayer received a swift
answer when he cried to the Lord Jesus as he was sinking, Lord,
save me. Never is there a more appropriate
prayer or more effective prayer or a more needful prayer from
the heart and lips of God's people, nor is there ever a prayer more
pleasing to God than this one from an indebted sinner who sees
something of his fearful and frightful condition and his helplessness
before God on his throne. Then this prayer, Lord, save
me. This cry and this plea, this
prayer, springs from the heart of those who know God in Jesus
Christ and who know they have nothing to bring and nothing
to pay, nothing in themselves to depend on other than God's
sovereign and almighty saving grace in Jesus Christ. Is this
not a most precious promise? He will save us. Here is the
promise of God to his people, to every broken-hearted, sin-contrite,
conscience-smitten sinner. Lord, save me. This is a promise
to every bankrupt sinner. This is a promise to all whose
only hope is that God would be gracious to me for Christ's sake. Because when Isaiah spoke these
words, he says, in that day, thou shalt say, as one individual
and yet collectively as all of God's sheep, this is what you're
going to say. Lord, you were angry with me,
but your anger is turned away, and now you comfort me. How is
it turned away? Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid,
for the Lord Jehovah has become my salvation. This is the promise
to all whose only hope is that God will be gracious to me for
Christ's sake. This is the hope of every sinner,
that God would find a way in his righteousness, in his righteousness,
to forgive my sin and accept Christ for me, and thus accept
me in him. This is the hope of every sinner,
that God would think on me in his kindness and accept me for
Christ's sake. Behold, God is my salvation. The promise of God in the gospel
is that he will save sinners by Jesus Christ. He will turn them to himself
to see that their salvation is in him alone. Look at Psalm 145. Psalm 145 and verse 19. I will read this to you. He says,
this is a promise of God. He will fulfill the desire of
them that fear him. God knows who fear Him. How does
God know who fears Him? How does the Lord Jesus Christ
know who fears Him? Because He knows us. He knows
all men. He knows our thoughts. God's
Word divides between the intentions and the motives of our heart.
And He lays us bare and naked and open before His eyes. He
knows us. And He knows who fear Him. And you know why we fear Him?
because he gave us that gift to know ourselves, to be nothing
but sinners, and to see in him our salvation. That's what it
means to fear. To fear God is to fear to be
found anywhere but in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Lord knows
those that fear him, and he will fulfill the desire of them that
fear him. He also will hear their cry. And what is their cry? Lord, save me. Isn't that the
cry of your heart? When all these things overwhelm
us, within and without, isn't that the one thing you need from
God more than anything? Lord, deliver me from my sins. And so he says, he will hear
their cry and he will save them. What a blessed word that is.
Look back at Isaiah in 35, Isaiah chapter 35. In Isaiah 35, In verse 4, he says this. In
verse 3, he says, I like it when God speaks to the weak and poor
and helpless and ruined and lost and sinful, don't you? That's
where I find myself. He says, Say to them that are
of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will
come with vengeance, even God with a recompense. He will come
and save you. He's going to return on your
sin. and death, and hell, and Satan,
and everything that's opposed to your eternal salvation, He's
going to turn His judgments on that, and separate you from that,
and save you from your sins. This is what God has promised
in His Word. And no wonder Isaiah's pen must have shook as he wrote
these words. The Lord has become my salvation.
He's despised and rejected because our iniquities were laid upon
Him. And then in Jeremiah chapter 30, I'll read this one to you
also. Isaiah chapter 30, in verse 10, he says, Therefore fear thou
not, O my servant Jacob, saith the Lord, neither be dismayed,
O Israel. Jacob was a thief, a scoundrel,
a liar. saith the Lord, neither be dismayed,
O Israel, because he sees us in Christ, who is the Prince
of God. For, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed
from the land of their captivity, and Jacob shall return, and shall
be in rest, and be in quiet, and none shall make him afraid.
That's what salvation does. It takes away our fear of the
wrath of God, because we see, by God-given faith, that in the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, God has fully spent his wrath
on his son for his people and thus saved us from our sins.
And then another verse in Zephaniah, if you can find Zephaniah, be
of good cheer. Zephaniah chapter three, listen
to this. In verse 14, this is a promise
of God and a prophecy. to all of God's children, saved
by His grace, who in themselves are nothing but sinners, who
fear God because of their sin, and knowing that He must save
them, and they put their trust in Him. Verse 14 of Zephaniah
chapter 3, Sing, O daughter of Zion! That's another way of saying,
sing you who are the elect of God, the church of the living
God, who've cast your internal soul on the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, sing, O daughter of
Zion, shout, O Israel, be glad and rejoice with all the heart,
O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away thy judgments. He has cast out thine enemy,
the King of Israel, even the Lord. is in the midst of thee,
thou shalt not see evil any more. In that day it shall be said
to Jerusalem, Fear thou not, and to Zion, Let not thy hands
be slack. Listen to this in verse 17. The
Lord thy God in the midst of thee, this is the Lord Jesus,
is mighty. He will save. He will rejoice
over thee with joy. He will rest in his love. He
will joy over thee with singing. He will save us. He will save
us because of his love. And this is what we remember
this time of the year. Turn to one more scripture in Galatians
chapter 4. And this sums it all up. The
Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, is God Almighty, the King of
glory, who stooped to do and die, that He might bring sinners
like me and you to Himself. And He preaches this message
to you and to me, that we might believe Him, that we might run
out to Him in our heart and confess, as Isaiah said we would, O Lord,
Thou wast angry with me, But now you comfort me. Behold, God
is my salvation. Galatians chapter 4, verse 1. Now I say that the heir, as long
as he is a child, differs nothing from a servant, though he is
Lord of all, but is under tutors and governors until the time
appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children,
were in bondage under the elements of the world. We were God's children
by His choice, by His determination. We were going to be His children,
and He's going to do something to make us His children. But
even though in God's book we were His children, we didn't
know anything about it. We were just like everybody else.
Verse 4. But when the fullness of the
time was come, this is talking about when Christ was born, God
sent forth His Son, His only begotten Son, made of a woman,
Mary, made under the law, just like every man put under the
law, the Lord Jesus Christ had to come under the law and do
all that he did to God in order that we might live by his obedience. He was made under the law in
verse 5 to redeem us that were under the law, that we might
receive the adoption of sons. That's the message of the gospel,
redeemed by the blood of Christ, that we might be made righteous
in his obedience unto death, and that because we were righteous
before God, God sent forth the spirit of his son into our hearts
and gave us faith and life in our soul, that we might know
we are the sons of God by God's redeeming work, by the spirit
given to us because of his eternal choice of us in Christ. Let's
pray. Dear Lord, we pray that at this
time and every time of the year we would look to the Lord Jesus
Christ and we would say with the prophet Isaiah, behold, God
is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. For the Lord Jehovah has become
my salvation. He also is my strength and my
song. What else could a sinner hope for than to be so delivered? If God is my salvation, then
my salvation must be perfect. It must be complete and eternal.
It must never fail, and I must be saved to the uttermost. It
must be all his doing, and I must be the object of his saving grace
and eternal love. Thank you for this, dear Lord.
We pray that you would teach this to us, each one, in our
heart. And we might go, as Isaiah did, trembling for the wonder
and the majesty of your person and the amazing grace that you
came to us in the Lord Jesus Christ to save us from our sins.
In his name we pray, amen.