Yuba-Sutter Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Rick
Warda. We currently meet at the Yuba
County Library, located at 303 2nd Street in downtown Marysville,
California, on the corner of 2nd and C Street. Weekly services
are held on Sunday at 11 a.m. at the library. For more information,
visit our website at ysgracechurch.com. Now, here's our pastor, Rick
Warda. The title of our sermon today
is God Has Spoken in His Son. The scripture is from Hebrews
chapter 1 verses 1 and 2. God, who at sundry times and
in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son. God has divided all of history
into two parts. He has divided history by the
way in which He has spoken to men. From creation, God spoke
to His people by the prophets. Those prophets were mere men.
Their overarching message was, God's promised Savior is coming. He will save His people from
their sins. He will subdue our enemies. He
will rule in great glory. We know this was God's message
because God summarized what the prophets said in the book of
1 Peter. In chapter one he said, of which
salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently who prophesied
of the grace that should come unto you, searching what or what
manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did
signify when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and
the glory that should follow. First Peter 1 verses 10 through
11. The prophets before Christ's coming spoke of Christ, of His
sin-atoning sufferings and substitutionary death, and the glory that would
follow. The prophets of old spoke of
Christ's coming. They pointed away from themselves
to God who sent them, and to the message of Christ He gave
to them. Though they spoke from God, they
were mere men. Jesus said in Matthew chapter
11, all the prophets and the law prophesied until John, John
the Baptist. This was the first period, the
first era of history. And the second period began when
God sent his son into the world. The message of the Old Testament
is Christ, the suffering servant of the Lord, is coming. But the
message of the New Testament is, He has come. Though God spoke
through prophets in the Old Testament, in these last days, in this last
era of Earth's history, God has spoken to His people, not by
mere men, but directly, in His Son. Prophets of old pointed
away from themselves to the One who sent them. They pointed men
away from themselves to the message God gave them. But in these last
days, the Son of God, God Himself, has come from heaven to be born
as a man, and as man, He who is God has spoken to men. God has spoken in His Son. The Son of God became flesh. God the Son now dwells in the
body and soul of a man. Colossians 2 verse 9. He is the
ultimate messenger. His dignity, His authority, His
power is the dignity and authority and power of God because He is
God. There is no other messenger.
Prophets pointed to Christ who would come, to Christ who sent
them. But the Son of God, in our nature,
God's Christ, does not point away from Himself. He Himself
is the message God has spoken. Christ reveals God the Father
by revealing Himself in His own person and work. Jesus said in
John chapter 14 verse 9, He that has seen Me has seen the Father. If we see Christ with eyes of
faith, we have seen God the Father. Jesus said, I am in the Father,
and the Father is in me. Scripture says that the fullness
of the Godhead, that the Son of God Himself dwells in the
body of the man, Jesus Christ, in Colossians 2 verse 9. Christ
is both God and man. He is the one mediator between
God and men. God was in Christ, 2 Corinthians
5, verse 19. And his name is therefore called
Emmanuel, God with us. His name, according to Isaiah,
is the mighty God, the everlasting Father. And Jeremiah says, he
is the Lord, Jehovah, our righteousness. He is therefore the ultimate
messenger who came from heaven to speak the ultimate message.
That message does not point away from himself. He himself is the
message. The message God has spoken is
the person and work of his only begotten son, God's chosen and
anointed Christ. In his person, he is God and
man. In his God-appointed office,
he is the chosen and anointed Christ, the mediator between
God and men. His work is his sin-atoning death. His message, therefore, is the
message from God the Father from Heaven, the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world. And the world whose sins He has
taken away is the elect remnant of God throughout all the world
whom God chose to save whose sins He laid on Christ. The message of God from heaven
is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is the only message from
God the Father. This is the message He has spoken
from the beginning. Christ is the only revelation
of God the Father. When we hear Him, we hear and
see the person and the purpose and the work and the glory of
God the Father in His Son. Now, Moses was a prophet, and
God gave the law to the nation of Israel by Moses at Mount Sinai. The law is a covenant of works. It was a two-parted covenant
that God made with the nation of Israel. In this covenant,
the people must keep God's commandments. In this covenant, God maintained
the life of the people only if they kept his commands. But if
they broke God's laws, God would curse them for their disobedience.
The covenant of works is this. Keep the law and live. Fail to keep the law and die. The nation of Israel agreed to
this covenant. Exodus 19, verse 8. They agreed
that their righteousness before God came by keeping His commandments. In Deuteronomy 6, verse 25, they
said, It shall be for our righteousness if we observe to do all these
commandments before the Lord our God. But when the people
heard God speaking His law at Mount Sinai, and when they heard
the sound of the exceeding loud trumpet, When they saw the darkness
and tempest and saw Mount Sinai on fire, when they felt the earth
quaking, they were very afraid. Moses himself said, I exceedingly
fear and quake. The people feared because the
words of God's law uncover our corruptions before a holy God. God's law discovers our guilt. The loud trumpet sounded condemnation
and the curse of God upon sinners. God's holy law and justice require
our continuous personal obedience. And God's law sentences all to
death under the curse of God for any failure in disobedience. Therefore, when the people heard
those sin-discovering words and the sound of that justice-heralding
trumpet, it left them in terror of the wrath of God against sinners. When the people saw those sights
and heard those words and sounds, when they heard the sin convicting
words and the sound of God's holy curse announcing trumpet,
they said to Moses, speak thou with us and we will hear, but
let not God speak with us lest we die. Exodus 20 verse 19. They
could not endure what God commanded because they were sinners. The
law discovers our sin. It leaves us as it finds us,
sinners, helpless and hopeless. When the people heard the voice
of words at Sinai, they said they did not want to hear God
speak to them anymore lest they die. When the people said this,
God said the people spoke a good thing. God told Moses to tell
the people that he would raise up another prophet, a prophet
yet to come, a prophet like Moses. He would be one of their brethren,
he would be God's messenger, and he would be the messenger
of another covenant. Like Moses, the coming prophet
would be a mediator who would speak for God to men. But unlike Moses, the coming
prophet would not be a mere man. He would be God the Son in the
nature of man. He would be the one mediator
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 1 Timothy 2 verse
5 Nor would his message be a covenant of works. His message would be
God's everlasting covenant of grace. And so Moses told the
people in Deuteronomy 18. The Lord thy God will raise up
unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren,
like unto me. Unto him you shall hearken according
to all thou desirest of the Lord thy God in Horeb in the day of
the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the
Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any more lest
I die. And the Lord said to me, they
have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them
up a prophet from among their brethren like unto thee and will
put my words in his mouth and he shall speak unto them all
that I shall command him. Moses spoke as a prophet from
God to the people in time past. But according to God's own words,
God would raise up another prophet The Lord Jesus Christ is that
prophet. Acts chapter 7, verse 37. God has spoken to us in these
last days, this last era of earth's history, not by a mere man, but
by the Son of God, who is also the Son of Man. Jesus said, I
have not spoken of myself, but the Father which sent me. He
gave me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak.
And I know that His commandment is life everlasting. Whatsoever
I speak, therefore, even as the Father said to me, so I speak."
John 12, verse 49 and 50. Moses pointed away from himself. He spoke of Christ who would
come. All the prophets in the Old Testament
spoke of Christ. They spoke of his sufferings
and death and the glory of God in which he would reign on heaven's
throne, which would follow his resurrection. All of Old Testament
scripture speaks of the coming Christ and Him crucified, the
Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. But Christ has
come. He came from heaven. He is therefore
above all. He has spoken heaven's message.
He has spoken the message God the Father gave him to speak.
The message of himself as the Lamb of God, Christ and Him crucified. The Son of God has spoken about
the will of God that He accomplished. He has spoken of His sufferings
and His death, which He accomplished at Jerusalem. Luke 9, verse 31. He has spoken of the eternal
salvation that He obtained for His people by His one offering
of Himself to God for their sins. The message of God is the Lamb
of God, slain to make atonement to God for the sins of his people,
but risen again and now sitting with the glory of God on heaven's
throne. God gave the law through Moses. The law reveals our sin and guilt. It condemns us for our disobedience. It leaves us helpless under a
covenant of works. The law is holy, just, and good,
but we are sinners. Because we are sinners, we cannot
tolerate the message of God's law. We cannot live under a covenant
of works that makes all blessings depend on our own personal obedience
and brings upon us God's curse for our disobedience. We cannot
endure one thing of all that the law commands. But God gave
his law to show us by experience that we are indisputably sinners,
that we cannot live or come to God by a covenant that depends
on us in any way. The law was necessary because
we are blind to our own sin. We suppress God's truth about
ourselves and the truth about himself. But the law serves to
make the sin of our heart evident. It makes our guilt apparent to
us and to others. The law therefore discovers what
we truly are in our nature, the enemies of God in our mind and
by our wicked works, opposed to God and to his sovereign rule. Jesus, who searches the hearts
of men, summarized our true condition when he said, from within, out
of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications,
murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness,
an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things,
Jesus said, come from within and defile the man. Mark chapter
7 verse 21 and 23. The law is holy and just. It is good because it shows us
our sinful condition before God. The law shows God as indiscriminately
and inflexibly just. Ezekiel 18 says, The soul that
sinneth, it shall die. And Romans 6.23, The wages of
sin is death. All in Adam die. All have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. Though the law is holy,
it is weak because it depends on our sinful nature to keep
the law. The law is weak because it provides
no help to sinners, but like Moses of old, the law tells of
the coming prophet. The law tells of a high priest,
and the law tells of a sacrifice. The law requires a sacrifice
and foreshadows God's acceptance of a sacrifice to make atonement
for sinners. But the law never provided a
high priest who could take away sins, and the law never provided
a sin-atoning sacrifice. The law never took away our sins. The law made no one righteous.
Therefore the law cannot give life. The law can only curse
sinners. It leaves us as it finds us,
guilty, condemned, corrupt, helpless, and in terror of God's Word. But in this second period of
history, in these last days, the Son of God has come in human
nature. And God has spoken by Him. He
has spoken in His Son. Prophets of old brought God's
message by the words they spoke. But they also brought God's message
in their lives in what God told them to do. For example, Noah
built an ark. The ark was as much of Noah's
message as his words. The ark speaks of the salvation
of God's elect by the sin-atoning blood of Christ from the flood
of God's judgment. Abraham also. He offered up his
only begotten son, Isaac. Abraham's actions spoke of Christ,
the Lamb of God. As Abraham offered up his only
begotten son, Isaac, God the Father would deliver up his only
begotten son to judgment for the sins of his people. Moses
also spoke by words and by what God gave him to do. Moses offered
the Passover lamb. The message of the Passover is
that God sees the blood of Christ, of the substitutionary death
of his son for his people, and in seeing Christ's blood, he
passes over all who are in Christ, the house where the blood was
sprinkled, and where all in the house were spared from the judgment
of God. God spoke many times through
Moses' actions. When God sent serpents to bite
unbelieving Israelites, Moses hammered out a serpent of brass,
and he hung that serpent on a pole. All plagued and dying from the
serpent bite who looked at the serpent on the pole lived. This
act of Moses spoke God's message. That message was this. God imputed
the sins of his people to Christ. He made him sin for us, for sinners
chosen by God. God's law cursed Christ the substitute
on the cross for the sins of his people. Galatians 3.13 says,
Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree. Therefore, every prophet
spoke God's message by their words and by what God gave them
to do. Now in the same way, but in fulfillment,
God has spoken to us in these last days by His Son and in His
Son. He has spoken by His Son because
Christ Himself preached the Gospel. He has spoken in His Son because
God was in Christ. As we said of Matthew 1.23, His
name shall be called Emmanuel, God with us. The Son of God,
as God, in all of His fullness dwells in the body of Christ. But God has also spoken in His
Son because Christ Himself is the Lamb of God. He is the high
priest who offered himself to God for the sins of his people. His life and death and resurrection
and ascension to glory on the right hand of God are the message
God gave him to preach. He fulfilled the will of God. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 5 through
14. He spoke God's message in his
words and by his life and in his death. Christ and Him crucified,
the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world is the
message God has spoken in these last days. This is the new covenant
in Christ's blood. It is the message from heaven,
spoken by the prophet Moses said would come by Christ. He is God's
son. He is the mediator. We must hear
Him. He is the only messenger and
this is the final message. All who speak from God speak
only this message. All who hear God hear this message. All who believe God's message
have heard from God. They believe Christ. In these
last days, God has spoken to us in his son. In Christ crucified,
God reveals his character. In Christ crucified, God makes
known his eternal purpose. Ephesians 3 verse 11. God can
only be heard and seen and known in Christ and him crucified. God's work and God's glory are
only seen in Christ and him crucified. What has God spoken by His Son? John 1 verse 17 says, The law
was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
God is holy. His law is holy. His law must
be honored. His justice must be upheld. It is right for God to take vengeance
on sinners. But what the law does not reveal
is how God can be just and yet justify the ungodly. And this
is the grace and truth revealed in Jesus Christ. Our sins are
against God. Psalm 51 verse 4. They offend
God's law and justice. But God promised Abraham that
he would justify the heathen by the Lord Jesus Christ. That
he would declare them to be righteous. Galatians 3 verse 8. How could
God declare those to be righteous against whom his justice cried
for vengeance? How could God declare the heathen
to be righteous if he is just? The answer to this is God's message
of grace and truth. It pleased God, in His grace,
to lay the sins of His people, against whom His justice was
offended, to lay them on the Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten
Son. In Isaiah 53, verse 8, the Lord
said, For the transgression of My people was He stricken. God determined to take away the
offense of our sins and make peace with us in the death of
his son. If God had not revealed this,
it could not have been imagined. When in all of history have you
ever seen an offended person make peace with his enemy in
a manner that upheld God's justice by bearing the full cost to that
justice in the death of his only son? When, throughout all of
history, have you ever found a case where the offended lawgiver
and judge bore the full cost of restitution to his law by
bearing the guilt and punishment of the lawbreaker against himself? This is God's work alone. This occurred only once in history. God did this in His Son. This is the message God has spoken
in His Son. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21 says,
He hath made him sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be
made the righteousness of God in him. When we were enemies,
Romans 5 verse 10 says, we were reconciled to God by the death
of his Son. God delivered up His Son to justice. God honored His law in the obedience
of His Son and obedience of love that required His own death under
the most hateful, shameful, soul-tormenting suffering that no man on earth
could ever fathom. Christ fulfilled the law by His
love, which moved Him to lay down His life for those who offended
His God. And Christ prayed for them. He
made peace with God for them. He made peace in the blood of
his cross. Colossians 1 verse 20. God was
offended and rightly so. We alienated ourselves from him. In our minds and by our wicked
works, we were the lawless and self-righteous ones. We could
not live under a covenant of works. We could not bear the
curse of the law. We sought to change the law rather
than submitting to it. And though we were lawless, we
tried to retain our integrity by changing God's law, by making
laws to justify our lawlessness, by inventing religious rules
to make ourselves look good before men, and human laws to justify
our perverse lifestyles. We tried to overthrow God's rule
and His judgment against us for our sins. While we were thus
opposed to God and opposed to our own salvation because we
rejected God's testimony against ourselves, God, in infinite grace,
viewed our sins as both His enemies and our enemies because they
separated us from Him. God set His love on His people
from eternity. He took their sins that separated
them from Him. He laid those offenses on His
Son. He made His Son sin for us. He required His Son to keep His
law, to magnify it. He delivered up His Son to judgment,
to uphold and satisfy His own justice. Romans 8 verse 32. God must be glorified. But we have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. We failed to do the one thing
we were created to do, to honor God. Therefore, for His own namesake,
God honored His own law in the obedience of His only begotten
Son by His voluntary substitutionary death under the wrath of God
for His people. Christ loved the church and gave
himself for it. How holy is God? See what he
did when the sins of his people were imputed to his darling son. He delivered up his son to the
curse of his own law. This is the measure of the evil
of our sin. This is the measure of God's
holy justice. This is the revelation of the
love and grace of God, which passes knowledge, Ephesians 3
verse 19. This is the message God has spoken
by His Son and in His Son. This message reveals God's grace
and truth. It reveals the character of God's
person. It reveals God's eternal purpose
of grace to save a chosen people for Himself. It reveals God's
work to save His people in His Son. And it reveals God's glory,
how He can be holy in His justice. and yet justify the ungodly out
of the riches of His grace in Christ Jesus. Now, I pray that
this scripture from Hebrews 1 verse 1 and 2 would cause you and me
to ask this question. Has God spoken to me? How will
I know if He has? What will He say? How will He
speak? The answers to these questions
are of ultimate importance. But thankfully, the answer to
all of these questions is given in this simple statement. God
has spoken unto us in His Son. We know if God has spoken to
us, because we believe His Son. Jesus said, He that is of God,
heareth God's words. John 8 verse 47. God's Word is
His testimony of His Son. In 1 John 5 it says, If we receive
the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. For this is
the witness of God, which he hath testified of his Son. He that believeth on the Son
of God hath the witness in himself. He that believeth not God hath
made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave
of his Son. And this is the record that God hath given to us, eternal
life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath
life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." 1
John 5, verses 9-12. Therefore, if God has spoken
to us He has spoken to us of His Son, that He is Christ, that
by Himself He washed His people from their sins in His own blood,
and that He is the glory of God. In other words, we have heard
from God if we believe the Gospel of Christ and Him crucified.
The cry of the psalmist answers our question. He said, Say unto
my soul, I am thy salvation. Psalm 35 verse 3. If God has
spoken to us, he has convinced us in our conscience that Christ
is all of our salvation. God's Word accomplishes His will. It never fails to do so. In Isaiah
55, verse 11, God said, So shall my word be that goeth forth out
of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void,
but it shall accomplish that which I please. When God speaks,
the deaf hear. When God speaks, the blind see. When God speaks, the unclean
is made clean. When God speaks, the dead live. When God speaks to us, we will
believe Him. God's Word cannot be resisted. God said, let there be light.
God's Word made that light to shine out of the darkness. And
when God commands the light of the gospel of Christ to shine
in the dark emptiness of our souls, we see and we believe. That light is the gospel of Christ. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing
by the word of God concerning His Son, Romans 10, verse 16-17. When God speaks, He convinces
us that Christ accomplished all of our salvation on the cross.
He speaks to us in life-giving power. When God speaks, He convinces
us of our sin. He persuades us that Christ came
to save sinners, and that He did save them by His work alone. When God speaks, He makes the
truth of Christ's substitutionary work all of our confidence for
eternal salvation. Faith in Christ alone, as all
of my salvation, is the result of God speaking to us the gospel
of His saving power. If God has spoken to me, I believe
his word concerning Christ has all of my salvation. The psalmist's
cry, saying to my soul, I am thy salvation, shows that if
God has spoken to me, I am fully persuaded of two things. First,
I am a great sinner and nothing at all, but Jesus Christ is my
all in all. Do you, as a sinner, look to
Christ in His sin-atoning death as all of your salvation? And
do you come to God by faith in His blood, asking and depending
on Him to save you to the uttermost by His grace alone? Do you find
all of your hope in God's Word that He receives sinners without
anything from them, but in spite of their sin, for what He thinks
of Christ alone? If you believe Christ, then God
has spoken to you. You've just heard a sermon by
our pastor, Rick Warda. You may contact us by email or
by phone, or download a copy of this sermon by visiting our
website at ysgracechurch.com.