Now we got it. One, two. The
Gospel of Matthew. It's not that God is so picky.
It's not that He's overly critical. He can't find anything good in
us. And so He tells the truth. And He tells it to us by the
Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew. Now, the Gospels... If you want to read and interpret
the Old Testament correctly, you must use the Gospels to understand
the Old Testament. And if you want to understand
the Gospels, you must refer to the epistles of the apostles.
The Lord Jesus Christ revealed to us the eternal purpose of
God in the Gospels that the apostles explained which is documented
in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And so the only way we can really
know what is being taught in Scripture is if we understand
it reading the Bible almost backwards to the front. But we have to
read it together. It's like one of those those
accounts where you start in the beginning and you read and you
hear what's going to come to the end and you don't understand
the end even when you get there because you've lost your way
along and it can be confusing. But one thing that you must know
is that the Bible is not to be studied as the Bible study. And
this is something that I think that we easily miss and can fall
into this because we meet together, we read God's Word, and we study
it. And we even call it Bible study.
But we really should call it something different, I think.
I think we should call it Christ study. The Bible is the evidence,
is the documentation, is the testimony of who Christ is and
what he has done. And the Gospel of Matthew is
the revelation of who the Lord Jesus Christ is as He fulfills
what God has spoken in the Old Testament. So the first thing
we must learn and keep ever in our view when we're reading the
Gospels is that the Gospels are about Him. I know I heard this
a long time ago and you've probably heard it a hundred times. And
I heard it for the first time from Henry Mahan, but he said
the Bible is about him. It's a hymn book, H-I-M. The
Old Testament is about who's coming and what he's going to
do. The New Testament, the gospels are about the one who came, the
one who's here. And the epistles of Paul are
what he did in his coming. And then the revelation is he's
coming again. So it's all about him. And if
we read the book of Matthew, it's going to be about the Lord
Jesus Christ. Never forget that. Never miss
that. And what we find in the book
of God throughout, from first to last, is this theme, salvation. The Bible is true. Everything
it says is true. There is no truth but what God
reveals in the Bible. And the truth of the scripture
is about Christ. And it's about the Lord Jesus
Christ, who is God, who has become my salvation. Now we can read
about God's characteristics. We can read about his perfections.
We can read about all the things in scripture. About God and about
the Lord Jesus Christ. But we can't really know Him
until He makes Himself known to us. That's the revelation
of Scripture. That's the way it works. And
so the Gospel of Matthew is designed by God, as I read through it,
as I look at it and think about it as an overview, which is what
we're trying to do today. Just an overview. The Gospel
of Matthew as an overview. It's about Christ. But here's
something that we're going to find in the Gospel of Matthew.
is that the gospel announces that Christ has come, the promised
savior, the promised covenant seed, the promised king, the
promised servant of the Lord, the son of man who would take
his people's case, humble himself, do all for them, and then come
to them with compassion and mercy and grace and actually save them. This is what the gospel is about.
It's about Christ offering himself to God according to God's purpose. According to what pleased God.
It was his purpose. It pleased him that the Lord
Jesus Christ would offer himself. And it pleased Christ. It was
his desire to actually do what pleased God. He wanted to save
his people. He wanted to have them for himself.
He wanted to bring them to God. And he did that by offering himself.
And so this is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's about
His authority in all of His anointing from God. In all of His humility. And this is something that surprises
us in the gospel. The humility of He who is God. In all of His mercy and His compassion
and His grace and love to His people, sinners. But the Gospel
of Matthew does something else. It exposes what's inside of us. It exposes our lies, our refuge
of lies. It exposes our hypocrisy. It exposes the facade of man's
religion. And it shows the emptiness of
centuries upon centuries of man's religion. And the fruit of that
religion, what it has led to in the lives of the people who
are in this book. If you keep these things in mind,
that in the book of Matthew, one of the things that God does,
and He does this throughout scripture, but it's really brought to light
and brought to a head here in Matthew, is the exposing of what's
in my heart that's false. exposing of a pretend religion. A religion that's only on the
outside. A religion that wants to deal
with God on my terms. A religion that wants to come
to Him through a recipe I can engage in, or a process of steps
I can follow. That's what the book of Matthew
destroys. It destroys all hope in what
I naturally am, and what I naturally think, and what I naturally trust
in. The book of Matthew does that
for us by the Lord Jesus Christ and by his grace. It exposes
our hypocrisies. And the one who is announced
is shown to us in this book. He is heard. We hear him speak.
We see him. We see what he does. And he's
held up to sinners for healing and to dead men for life. He's
the one who has been sent by God to crush pride. And how does He do that? He tells
us what God requires. He shows us that He finds nothing
what He requires in us. And He teaches us our helplessness
and hopelessness apart from Him. And in the book of Matthew, this
is something you'll see, is that over and over again, in all the
Gospels really, and this is something, if you miss this, you miss the
Gospel. That the sinner, in all of the
depravity, and corruption, and defilement, and filth, and shame,
and nakedness, and helplessness, and even the death of his need,
is brought before the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, in all
of his authority, in all of his power, In all of his mission
and purpose and his willingness to take the sinner, and they're
brought into direct embrace. And unless the sinner is brought
into direct embrace with the Savior, there is no salvation. And the book of Matthew shows
this over and over again. And this is what we want to see
in this book. We want to see, because I don't
know about you, but gaining knowledge about the Bible, understanding
its mysteries, in the head, does nothing for my heart. It does
nothing before me to God. But in the book of Matthew, God
takes the problem that we are, the problem of our sin, And He
brings us to the Savior, and He holds Him up before us, and
He lays us low in the dust and humiliation of our pride, and
shows us the plague of our heart, and leaves us before Him, waiting
on Him, waiting on His will, waiting on His word, and waiting
for Him to take and to touch and to take from us the disease
that we have, that disease of sin, to Himself, that we might
be saved by Him. That's what the book of Matthew
is about. And that's what the Gospels are about. Now, we couldn't
understand this. When I look at this book with
my natural eyes, or even when I'm just reading it casually,
I don't see these things. I don't see that this book is
meant to bring the Son of God In human flesh, God with us,
Emmanuel, that's what it says in chapter 1, verse 23. His name is going to be called
Emmanuel, God with us, the Son of God. It brings us to the Son of God,
but not just as God, as the One who was promised by God, the
Son of David and the Son of Abraham, the One who fulfilled all these
things spoken of Him in the Old Testament. And it brings us to
Him. And it causes us to hear His
Word. Causes us to hear what God requires
from us. What He looks for. What He describes
as a blessed man. And it shows us our total emptiness
and our need before Him. And when He does that, when God
the Spirit does that, when God in His grace does that, when
God is gracious to you and to me, when He is really gracious
to us, you know what we see? We see the glory of God. And
we see it in the face of Jesus Christ. Because we see Him in
the book of Matthew. And in the book of Matthew we
see the conclusion of the book. And this is true of all the Gospels. They go through the life of Jesus.
They go through His miracles. They go through His teaching.
They go through His call to sinners. And they finally end up with
this. The Lord Jesus Christ laying down his life in obedience to
God for the salvation of his people and the glory of God and
then rising in victory and triumph seated on God's right hand in
order to bring about all that he earned for them by his authority
and power from the throne of God. That's what the book of
Matthew is about. Destroying our natural religion. Destroying. Putting away all
the things that we would naturally trust in. The Jews had centuries
of living an outward religion. Fulfilling all the ceremonies
and types of the law. Sacrifice after sacrifice. Temples. Priests. Robes. All these days
and feasts and years and It was all to point us to one
thing. The Lord Jesus Christ, what he
would do, who he is, and what would come about because of what
he would do. And it shows us that people in
the book of Matthew cling to that. We want to hold to those
things we can see and touch. And we would rather go through
the motions of religion rather than dealing with God on a heart
level. But the book of Matthew won't
let us do that. It won't do that with us. And just to give you
some examples of this, look at Matthew chapter five. Jesus, we'll go through these
a little more detail, Lord willing, as we go through the book, but
Jesus lays this out. He says in Matthew 5, blessed
are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Now the poor in spirit means those who are impoverished, who
have nothing. A poor person isn't just poor,
he's got a little change in his pocket. He has nothing. Nothing
to pay his debt. Nothing to bring to God to attract
God towards him. Nothing to recommend him to God.
Nothing he can claim. With the rest of the folks who
are spiritual, I'm one of you too. He can't claim that. He's
impoverished. He's absolutely bankrupt before
God and has nothing. And Jesus says, that man is blessed. That's entirely opposite of what
these men Jesus came to believe. They believe that, no, the rich
in spirit are the blessed. Jesus says, no, no. There's only
one kind of blessed man. It's the one who has nothing
in himself. Nothing. And we see this in the
book of Matthew over and over. Look at the next verse, verse
4, Matthew 5, 4. Blessed are they that mourn. for they shall be comforted."
It's not like, blessed are those who have mourned in the past
and now they mourn no more. When God's Spirit touches us
and gives us faith in Christ, you know what He causes us to
do? To mourn over what we are and what we've done. There's
nothing that's more disgusting and sorrowful than when the Lord
pulls back and reveals to you that in light of the truth you
know, in light of what you know about His Word. And you know
some things. You have not lived up to it. You have not trusted
Him. You have not loved the Lord,
your God. If you had, why would you give
yourself over to these desires? Why would you try to gain recognition
from men in order to puff yourself up? No, God's Word, the Gospel,
always lays us low and finds nothing in ourselves and causes
us to mourn over our condition. Paul said it this way, Oh, wretched
man that I am. And he didn't say that in the
past. He said, today I woke up and I'm a wretched man and I
expect tomorrow I'll experience the same thing. I'm not growing
away from my wretchedness, but I'm seeing more and more of Christ
who is the one who has promised the only one good, who fulfills
all for me. That's a blessed man. And these
things are called the B attitudes, but again, You can't be these
things in yourself. And that's what we do as religion.
We say, look it up on the internet. Get me a recipe. I want to follow
the steps. I want to do. Tell me how to be saved. I'll
do it. No, you won't. No, you won't.
Because salvation requires the sovereign work of God in your
heart. revealing to you who He is in
the Lord Jesus Christ and what He's done for sinners. And He
leaves you there, and He leaves you with nothing in yourself,
and that is a blessed man, a man who has nothing, for whom Christ
is everything." And so you see that even in these verses. So
He teaches us the In this book, there's many things we could
talk about here at the overview level, but I want you to see
that the one thing that you see over and over again is what Jesus
said in Matthew 11, 28. You can probably quote it to
me. Jesus said it this way, come unto me. all you who labor and
are heavy laden and I will give you rest take my yoke upon you
and learn of me I am meek and lowly of heart and you shall
find rest for your souls you know that verse that's what the
book of Matthew is doing he's the Lord Jesus Christ himself
God himself is with us The One promised to Adam and Eve. To Eve He said to her, the seed
of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head. And all through
history, all of God's people always looked by faith for the
Son who was coming. The Son who was coming. When
is this One coming who is going to deliver us from the The curse
from the curse our sin deserved, the curse of being under the
control of the evil king, Satan, who afflicts us and brings us
into bondage and holds us in deception and causes us to have
no light in our souls and loves to have it that way. Who's going
to save us from this? The book of Matthew says His
name is Jesus. He's from Nazareth. He's a man
and He's God Himself. He came, He's called Christ and
He proves to us. Look at the first chapter of
Matthew here. You might look at this long list
of genealogy that God gives here. It's the Lord who gave it. There
was a reason for this. I've read this several times
and I've always wondered, why did God give us all these names?
He can't hardly pronounce them. Aminadab and Neasam and all this
stuff. And we get our tongues tied around
it and we forget what we're even reading about. The first verse
tells us why. The book of the generation of
Jesus Christ. You see that? The son of David,
the son of Abraham. If you understand that, then
all the verses that follow are just the details of the conclusion. I love the fact that in the Bible,
God tells us the end at the beginning. He tells us the end at the beginning.
Jesus Christ This is the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David,
the son of Abraham. Why does he say that? Look at
Psalm 132. This is revealed in the book
of Acts, isn't it? If you remember the sermons in
the book of Acts, what did they say over and over again? Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved
of God by signs and miracles and wonders among you, is the
son of David. He's the one to whom all promises.
Psalm 132, he says this in verse 11. The Lord has sworn in truth
unto David. He will not turn from it. Of
the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne. You see that?
This is the promise. This is the eternal promise of
God. And you can look at this. Look at Psalm 110. An amazing,
amazing testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ. The whole work
of salvation in this one psalm, in six verses, Psalm 110 or 7. He says, "...the Lord said unto
my Lord..." This is David speaking in prophecy of who he saw, the
Lord Jesus Christ, and he hears The Lord, the Father, Jehovah
God, the Triune God, speaking unto the Lord Jesus Christ, and
He said, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies
thy footstool. David is speaking of his son,
the one we just read about, Psalm 132, 11. The one who would be
of his body, who would sit on the throne. And here it says,
the throne on which he would sit is the throne of heaven.
And the reason he would sit there is because, not only is he the
Lord, but because he did all that God required him to do. And you can read through this
psalm and see that over and again. Many, many passages. Look at,
if you want to, in your own time, look at 2 Samuel chapter 7. God
gives the promise to David. Or 1 Chronicles 17. Both of these
places, God gives these promises to David. And He teaches us that
the Spirit of God is going to be on Him. The Spirit of God
is going to be on Him. And He's going to fulfill all
that was prophesied that God would fulfill in His promise
to David. And the promises to David are
that Christ would be King. Right? King! And what did Jesus
announce when He came? Repent. for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand." The kingdom of heaven! The people that heard him expected
him to say, they knew that the king was coming, they thought
he might claim to be that king, and they thought he would be
king like every other king. Sitting on a king in Jerusalem,
ruling over them, allowing them to continue in this exterior,
phony religion that did nothing for their souls, Making life
pleasant and perfect, peace on earth, and all these niceties,
that's not why he came. That's not the kind of king that
he is. He came to set aside all of the Old Testament by fulfilling
it in himself and reigning as king, having conquered our enemies,
sin and death and the devil. And this is what He did. He's
the King. He's the King. He's King to deliver
us. King to rule over us. He's King
that we look to, to give us peace. All the blessings God has for
His people, He gives to them through the King. Doesn't He?
David was blessed by God and all Israel was blessed because
of David. He reigned in peace because God
subdued all his enemies. And God subdues all the enemies
of his people in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the king. He's the
king. The kingdom of heaven. The kingdom
of the spiritual realm. And then it says he's the son
of Abraham. Why does he have to be the son
of Abraham? Because he's the seed. The one who would come
after the flesh, through Abraham, be born to him, but more than
that. The one to whom all of the promises of God were given. Given not for himself, but for
his people. He stood as the covenant head
and the one to whom those promises were given. It was all given
to Christ. in the promise he made to Abraham.
And then, remember the promises to Abraham. It sounds like they're
all physical, and the land, and the people, and all these things. And yet, it's speaking about
a spiritual inheritance. A spiritual inheritance. This
is what Jesus, this is what it announces here. The book of the
generation of Jesus Christ. It's about Him. It's about the
Lord Jesus Christ. He came to fulfill. And all these
42 generations, 42 generations. How long is that? I don't know
exactly. More than a thousand years. More
than 1500 years. But it all came about according
to the faithfulness of God. The faithfulness of God. He carried
this all out according to His promises by His faithfulness. But then, it goes on. Look at
the, and I'm not going to read through the account in chapter
1, but get to this part in verse 21. The one we love to read it
over and over. He says, "...and she, Mary, shall
bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus." for he
shall save his people from their sins." This is what they were
missing. This is what the people didn't
understand. He came to do something. He was the king, but he would
be, he was appointed as king and anointed to be king, but
the only way he could be king, the only way he could receive
the promises and fulfill the promises promised to Abraham,
is if he did it by saving his people from their sins. Those
were the enemies. And the salvation from our sins
is the promised blessing. Justification, sanctification,
all these things. You only learn about later in
the epistles of the apostles. It's all about him. It's all
about him. So look at Matthew chapter 5.
I'm sorry, Matthew chapter 8. Actually, look at chapter 5.
In verse 48, what does it say there? In verse 48, Matthew 5,
"...be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect."
I don't know, I've read that verse before, and I thought,
wow, that's something I'm going to have to continue to strive
at. I am not there yet. I keep working at it. You're
not going to get it that way. You're not going to get it that
way. Look back at chapter 5, the same verse in verse 17. Jesus said it this way, think
not that I'm come to destroy the law of the prophets I'm not
come to destroy but to fulfill." And then in verse 20 he says,
I say to you that except your righteousness exceed the righteousness
of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into
the kingdom of heaven." So I understand now that Christ came to fulfill
the law and the prophets. I need a righteousness that surpasses
even the righteousness of the best people I know. And I have
to be perfect as my Father. Christ is laying out for us what
God requires. And then he lays out for us where
that is to be found. It's in himself. He's the one
who fulfills it. I came to fulfill it, he says
in verse 17. But then look at chapter 8. He
says that there was a leper. A leper that came. Verse 2 of
chapter 8. A leper came. He was defiled. The plague of
his heart We think about leprosy and we think about, we're immediately
drawn to the physical characteristics of it as we're thinking about
it. But remember now, look over at verse of chapter 9 and verse
10. Verse 10 of chapter 9. It came
to pass as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans
and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. And
when the Pharisees saw it, they said to his disciples, why does
your master eat with publicans and sinners? And when Jesus heard
it, he said to them, they that behold, That means healthy need
not a physician, but they that are sick. If you have no sickness,
you don't need a doctor. And they spoke about publicans
and sinners, and Jesus spoke about sickness. Because here's
a leper. He comes to him. And like I said,
we think about the physical characteristics of leprosy. But God is bringing
this leper before us to show us the plague that is in us. This is what you are. When you
read the Bible, never think about it as a book about her or him
or somebody else. Always read it, this is God shining
the light on who I am. When he says leper, realize that
this man had been a leper a long time. He had come to know his
leprosy as a problem that he couldn't solve. He couldn't,
nothing could heal him. and God in the gospel. He doesn't
record this by accident. Remember what John said? I suppose
if all the works of Jesus were written, that the world couldn't
contain the books. But why did you choose these
things, Lord, that you might believe? That's what he says
in John 20, 31, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ.
So here's a man, a leper, foul, plagued by leprosy, unclean before
God. And before men, men would view
him as the off scouring and scorn him and despise him because he
was a leper, poor soul, a leper under the curse of God. And he
comes to Jesus. And you see in his coming, what
God is saying to us in this book, don't miss this. Don't miss this. If you're going to be saved,
you have to come to Christ as a leper. If you're going to be
saved, you have to come to Him foul, diseased, plagued, dying,
helpless. And then He comes and He worships
Him. And when you come in this way, when the Spirit of God causes
us to come, you know what you do? You bow down low in the dust
and you say, Lord, save me. If you don't save me, I have
no hope. save me from myself don't leave
me to what I am that's what he was a leper and he lays himself
there before Christ and worships him and he says if thou will
you can make me whole if you will Lord and he doesn't go anywhere
else he's tried other things perhaps he knows his disease
is terminal And he says, Lord, if you will, you can make me
clean. And he waits. What's he going
to do? Is it his will? Will he do something? And Jesus says, I will. I will. Be thou clean. And he touched
him. He spoke. And it was his word
that brought cleansing. His touch taking the sickness
that he was to himself and then bearing away that sickness from
him and healing him. This was a personal, an individual,
interaction between a sinner and Christ. That's what we need.
I need to come to Jesus. I need to come to the one who
saves his people from their sins. The one who is the king, who
has all authority. And you see that in the next
miracle in John 8, the centurion comes. A centurion understood
what authority was. The book of Matthew is about
the king and all of his authority and all of his regal majesty
coming In lowliness and humility, condescending like David did
to the people that he served as a king. He fought the Lord's
battles. And he comes to these people and with compassion, with
his heart of mercy. And the centurion says, I know
that if you just speak the word, you don't have to physically
go to the location. Whatever is afflicting My servant,
you can remove just by your bare command. And he understood that
he had authority. And he says, speak the word only. And we need that, don't we? Lord,
speak your word to me. Only your word will save me. And all that I need is your command
to me to be healed, to be healed from my sin, that your word would
come to me. And so you see these things over
and over again. The next one is that Peter's
mother-in-law has a fever. Even the apostle's mother-in-law.
Mom, you too are a sinner. The fever has stricken you down. You are afflicted. You need the
Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't that what that's saying?
Come to Jesus. Go to Him. And then in chapter
9, there's a man paralyzed, can do nothing for himself. And his
four friends believed that Christ would save him and could save
him. And so they took him to Jesus where he was, opened the
roof up, let him down on his own bed. He couldn't even move.
was quadriplegic, couldn't move, couldn't get up, couldn't help
himself. And Jesus looks at this man, totally paralyzed, and He
says to him, a surprising thing, your sins are forgiven you. You
see what Christ came to do? He has authority over all things.
He heals the leprous man, but the purpose He came was to save
us from our sins. And so when we come to Him, we
come to Him to be saved from my sin. from my sin, from my
sin, Lord. That's the problem. It's the
problem of my heart. It's my problem before God. And
if you don't raise me from the dead that my sins deserve, then
I'll die under the wrath of God. Isn't that the problem? Isn't
that why we come to the Lord? Isn't that why this is a good...
Aren't you glad that the Sermon on the Mount about what's required
of you didn't fill all the pages of the book of Matthew? Aren't
you glad? I am so glad, because the people who came to Jesus
heard what He said, and they knew. He has all authority. God requires perfection of me.
I see that only Christ is good. God is going to find what He
requires of me. He's going to have to find it
in His Son. And they came to Christ. And they laid themselves
low because God brought them. God afflicted their souls in
their bodies in the Scripture. But we understand those to be
the plague of their heart. Because the Spirit of God shows
them their sin. So look at these things. Look at Matthew 20. In verse... I'm just bringing these things
out in overview. So as you read through the book
of Matthew, keep these things before your mind, before your
view. It's about Christ. It's about how He fulfilled what
God would have Him to do as the King and the covenant, the promised
seed of the covenant, where all the eternal and spiritual blessings
God has for His people were given to Him. And he would fulfill
all the conditions of that covenant for his people. And then he comes
and describes what God requires of us and exposes and washes
away the refuge of our lives, the thing that we try to cover
ourselves in. And he leaves us as these diseased
and helpless people to come to him alone. And he even tells
us, come to me, come to me. And then here in Matthew 20,
28 he says, whoever in verse 27 whoever will be chief among
you let him be your servant even as the son of man came not to
be ministered unto but to minister and to give his life a ransom
for many this is why he came to give his life remember I said
at the beginning he wanted to offer himself In Matthew 26,
or maybe it's not 26, maybe it's one of the other Gospels, he
says, with desire, I have desired to drink this cup and eat this
bread with you. What is he talking about? He
set his face like a flint to go to Jerusalem to pour out his
soul as an offering to God. And God afflicted his soul. for
His people as an offering that God could accept and make propitiation
so that God would be pacified and His justice would be satisfied
so He would turn the justice of God in defense of His people
and come to their rescue in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so He
gives His life a ransom to pay for our redemption. And what
is the liberty to which He sets us free? It's the forgiveness
of sins so that we can come to God by Him And so then in Matthew,
a little later, the people recognize him as king. Remember? They cried
out, Hosanna to the King of David. And I'm not going to... be able to put my finger on that,
but you see that just at the outset, just at the cusp, at
the point of time before the Lord Jesus Christ goes and offers
Himself as a ransom for His people, the people say, Son of David! Hosanna! Oh, save us! Save us! And they were imagining that
He was going to bring in a physical kingdom. But they were simply
speaking what the Spirit of God was going to do as He goes to
the cross. He was going there as the anointed
King to do what God gave Him to do and save His people. And
so here's the other thing you need to understand when you read
the Gospels or the Epistles or any place in Scripture. The next
thing that happens in the book of Matthew is the death, the
suffering and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is God doing? He's holding before our eyes,
not only is it required that you come to the Lord Jesus Christ,
but He holds before our eyes that in coming to Him, you must
see God in Him. You must see God satisfied with
Him. You must see God offering Him
in order to bring you to Himself. And that in His offering, God
is well pleased. And He has fulfilled the whole
covenant, all the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in what
He did in His life, in doing the will of God. And so we see
Him We see him being treated spitefully by men and giving
himself to it. We see the spit that they hurled
in his face hanging from him. We see the lash on his back opening
the wounds. We see the scorn in their faces,
these proud and arrogant hypocrites. We see them, how they treated
the Lord Jesus Christ. And don't miss this, when we
see that, This is me. This is you. This is the way
our sin treats the Son of God. And Christ came to die, to pay
the ransom price, to free us from these enemies, this evil
king, this sin that we see throughout scripture. He did this for his
people. He laid his life down for them. And then you look at He goes
on after he lays his life down and he rises again. What is this?
But the testimony of God, the validation that all he said,
what he came to do, was actually true and fulfilled by him. And
then, in the end of the book, in Matthew 28, look at this. In Matthew 28, in verse 16. The eleven disciples went away
into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.
And when they saw Him, they worshipped Him, and some doubted. And Jesus came and He spake to
them, saying, All power, authority and power, all power is given
unto Me in heaven and in earth. He was the King, remember? The
Son of David, the King. The kingdom of heaven is at hand,
and here he is, he says, it's all been given to me, all power. And why? Well, this is the fulfillment
of Psalm 110. He says, Go ye therefore, teaching
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I've commanded you. And lo, I'm with you always,
even unto the end of the world. There is an incoming. But the
reason why the world goes on as it is today, and all that's
occurring in the world, is the fulfillment of the decree and
the command of the King. Bring my people. Bring them in. How? Preach the gospel. Tell
them to be baptized. What does that mean? It means
to own their sin and recognize that all righteousness has been
fulfilled by the Lord Jesus Christ in His taking our sins, dying
under the wrath of God, being buried, having been those sins
put away, and rising again in victory and triumph over all
our sins. tell them to be baptized, testifying
to the fact that Christ has done everything for me. I died with
Him. I died in Him. I now have been
risen with Him. The Spirit of God has brought
Him. Christ crucified before my eyes. I see that God offered
Him. I see that He offered Himself.
I see the humility of Christ, the compassion of Christ towards
sinners. And I come to Him. I don't come pretending. I don't
come not admitting what I am. I come guilty. Guilty. It's so easy to look at others
and see problems, isn't it? It's so easy. But when the gospel
comes to us, it's like there's only one person in the mirror,
and it's me. But then the gospel also takes
away our concern by putting in the mirror the glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ. And when we see him revealed
in the gospel mirror, then we fall on our face and we cry in
thanksgiving to God, oh God, our father. Remember what Jesus
says? When you pray, pray this way,
our father. He made God our father by his
own redemption of his people. This is the gospel. It's the
gospel of who Christ is. Son of Abraham, Son of David,
Son of God, God with us, Jesus, the one who would save his people
from their sins. He did it all by himself. This blood, he says,
is the new covenant in my blood. It means the covenant has been
fulfilled. Every blessing secured to all his people because he
shed his blood. All the promises of God of eternal
life are in Christ and they're nowhere else. And so he leads
us to Christ and in this coming he's telling us, look to him. Faith is something described
in scripture in so many ways. He says it's looking. It's coming. It's calling. It's seeking. It's drinking. It's eating. It's
running. It's laying hold. It's all these
things. It's like it's a man. It's a
person in a body doing all these things. Thirsting and hungering. For one thing, the Lord Jesus
Christ, the gospel lifts him up. He says to Nicodemus, in
answer to Nicodemus' conundrum, how can these things be? He says,
look to the one crucified, the one hanging on that cross. who
was cursed because the people were bitten by sin and bitten
under the wrath of God. He was cursed. Look to Him. Look
to Him. Come to Him. Healing is only
in Him. Life is only in Him. If you have
the Son, He says, you have life. Now let me take you to one scripture
in John 3 and 36. Because this is what coming to
Christ is all about. He says in John 3.36, He that
believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. And he that believeth not
the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. This is a matter of life and
death, of eternity. Eternal life, eternal death.
Because the wrath of God abiding on us is the very worst thing. This is the reality of it. It's not a pretend religion.
God is serious. God is holy. We have a problem. We're sinners. There's another
problem. God is holy. Christ took our sin. If we trust
Him, if we believe Him, if we look to Him only, it's evidence
that God has already put our sins on Him and He has borne
them. But in holiness, God has to be
satisfied, and Christ did that too. You see? He's everything. I pray that God would give you
to come to Christ, to trust Him, to see Him as God's King, anointed,
God's promised Messiah, the one who gave His life a ransom for
many, and fall on your face and say, Find me in Christ. Lord, when you think of me, think
of him, and think of him only. Because I have no righteousness,
and I know I can't produce it. And I don't want to try to steal
your glory, because I don't deserve any. And it would be a self-deceived
conceit to think that I could. But help me to come in all honesty,
in the nakedness of my need, and put me in contact with the
will and the word and the touch of my savior and save me from
my sins and lay yourself there and may the Lord God himself
give us faith in Christ for his name we pray amen let's pray
dear lord we pray that you would lead us through your word Help
us not to think of it as Bible study, but as Christ study. Help us to think of the seriousness
of our condition and our sin and the fact that we can do nothing
ourselves. And help us to see that you undertook
in eternity, knowing what we were in ourselves, and you have
saved us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we hear the gospel,
and it's the best news we've ever heard and the only thing
that we trust in that the Lord Jesus Christ himself gave his
life a ransom for many we pray Lord that that redemption that
he earned would be given to us we would be forgiven all our
sins as the paralytic the man lying there with no ability that's
what we are Lord we're there before you even brought by friends
Providentially, and yet here we are with your word before
us. Lord, speak your word to us in our heart. Raise us from
the dead. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.