We look forward to our visit. If you exit the building going
downstairs, you will find for each family a little token of
our love, a book that we purchased for you. It goes to Isaiah chapter
fifty-three, that portion of scripture that stands read in
your hearing a few moments ago. Well, it is Christmas time, and
at this time of the year, everyone is strongly emphasizing the incarnation
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we strongly emphasize that as
well here in the house of God. Had our Lord Jesus not come into
this world to save his people by living and dying in their
stead, there would be no salvation. Christ had to come to this earth.
And we do strongly emphasize the incarnation of Christ. It
is a vital truth of Holy Scripture and a vital truth of Christianity.
Charles Spurgeon said this of the incarnation. He said this
is the foundation truth upon which Christianity rests. For
Christ had to come into this world in order to accomplish
the work that the Father gave him to do. And the apostle John
considered the incarnation of our Lord Jesus to be so important
that he made this statement in his first epistle of John. He
said, Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in
the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesses
not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of Antichrist. So the incarnation of the Lord
Jesus Christ is indeed a vital truth. The word incarnation comes
from the root word carnate, which means flesh or carnal. And add the prefix in and you've
got in the flesh. God in the flesh. That's the
doctrine of the incarnation. God's eternal Son, the second
person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, has forevermore
joined his deity with human flesh. In John chapter 1 we read, And
the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among men, or tabernacled
among men, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only
begotten of the Father, full of grace and full of truth. He has come in the flesh, the
Word, the eternal Word, the living Word, that One who has been eternally
the delight of the Father, who dwelt in the bosom of the Father
from even before the foundation of the world. For He is God Himself,
equal to God in every way, co-powerful, co-equal, co-authoritative. He is God. And that One who was
the Eternal of the Ages, the King of kings and the Lord of
lords, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and whose dominion is
an everlasting generation, He stepped out of eternity and He
stepped into time. That's the Incarnation. God came
and joined Himself to flesh. of old eternity it had been ordained
that Jesus Christ would come into the world in the womb of
a young Jewish virgin. He would join his divinity with
a body, Paul says in Hebrews 10, a body that the Father prepared
for him. We thank God for the incarnation
of Christ. And we also strongly emphasize
the perfect life of Christ. Certainly that was necessary
in order to earn for us acceptance with God. The law had been broken
by man. Everything had been wrecked by
man. It would take a perfect man to
make everything right. And the Lord Jesus came, that
perfect man, to render exact obedience to the law of God.
And he obeyed the law every jot and every tittle. Now, the old
theologians used to speak about Christ's active obedience and
his passive obedience, and perhaps that's a good way to speak of
it, and perhaps it isn't, because actually all of his life, and
even in his death, he was actively obeying the will of God. When
he died at Calvary, he was actively taking on the forces of evil.
So though they call that his passive obedience, yet he was
actively obeying God all of his life. But for the sake of dividing
it and understanding it a little better, the writers, the Puritan
writers, talked about the active obedience of Christ. That is,
he came as the perfect servant. to render unto God perfect service
from a pure motive. You see, there are two things
that are required in order to make anything good and anything
perfect. First of all, the thing done
has to be good, and then the thing that is done that is good
must be done from a perfect motive. You've got to have both of those
elements in order to say that something is truly good. It has
to be a good deed, and it has to be done from a good motive.
And that's where we foul up, because oftentimes we do good
things, but it's from a bad motive. And actually, people who do not
know the Lord Jesus Christ, though they do many outwardly good things,
God cannot say it's good because it's not done with a good motive.
It's got to be a good thing done from a good motive. Christ did
only good things, and He did only good things with only a
good motive, and that was to honor His Father. He sought the
will and the glory and the everlasting praise of His Father at all times. He always did those things that
were honoring to the Father. The Scripture says, "...in Him
was no sin." Christ's active obedience, his sinless life,
his obedience to the law of God included three things. It included,
number one, that Jesus Christ, the second Adam or the last Adam,
should obey the whole law in the name of those he represented.
He had to obey the whole law of God in the name of those he
represented. That was a condition for our
life. He had to internally as well as externally be fully and
perfectly conformed to the law of God. He who made the law was
made under the law in order to redeem them that were under the
curse of the law, to release us from the law, and to bring
us to salvation in Jesus Christ himself. Now, Christ was perfectly
conformed to the law. He was circumcised. He was baptized. He kept the Passover. He kept
all the feasts. He observed the Sabbath. He rendered
tribute to Caesar. He did everything that was required
of us. He did it perfectly. The Scriptures
tell us that we're to obey our rulers and render service unto
them and tribute unto them. Christ did that. He did that
for us. The scripture tells us, honor
thy father and thy mother. Our Lord was mindful of that
law, even when he hung on the cross. And he looked at John
and said, son, behold thy mother. He's still honoring his mother.
And he honored his father always, for his father was the eternal
father, eternal Jehovah. He honored the law in all things.
He was perfectly subject to rulers, and he perfectly obeyed the law.
And then secondly, it required that every part of his obedience
be carried to the highest degree. For the law of God doesn't require
the best that you can do. The law of God requires perfection. The law of God requires exact,
perfect obedience. Or as one writer said, and this
is very simple, but he said it requires perfect perfection.
Perfect perfection. As Leviticus 22, 21 said, it
shall be perfect to be accepted. Before God can have anything
to do with whatever is done, it's got to be perfect. As I
said before, it's got to be a perfect deed rendered from a perfect
motive, and Jesus Christ had to do that. Every part of his
obedience was carried to the highest degree. And then thirdly,
it required that that obedience of Christ had to continue from
birth to death without the least failure in any point. Christ
had to continue in all things written in the book of the law
to do them, even to the end, all of which Christ did. For
Philippians 2 and verse 8 says, He was obedient unto death. He was obedient unto death. Now, Christ's active obedience
was a necessity. The incarnation of the Lord Jesus
Christ was a requirement. But hear me this morning. As
much as we emphasize the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and as much
as we emphasize our Lord's active obedience when he obeyed the
law in his life, We must remember that salvation was purchased,
earned, bought, and paid for when Jesus Christ shed his blood
unto his death. Then we were saved. It's his
passive obedience, or it's his death on the cross that saves.
You see, the law of God says two things. It says law must
be kept. Christ did that. But the law
also says there is a penalty for violating the law. There
is a penalty for breaking the law, and that is punishment,
the death of the soul. And Jesus Christ came to die
in the room and in the stead and in the place of his elect
people. Now, thank God for the incarnation.
Thank God for Christ who came and was born in a manger. But
the Apostle Paul never said, we preach Christ the baby. He never said that. And thank God for his righteous
life. And we do not underestimate the
value of his righteous life. But Paul didn't say, we preach
Christ who lived for us. He didn't say that either. That's
important. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't underestimate
the value of his righteous life upon this earth. But the salvation
of God's elect was bought and paid for when Christ died. That's
why Paul said, we preach Christ crucified. That's what we preach. When he wrote to the Corinthians,
he said, I determined not to know anything among you save
Jesus Christ in a manger. He didn't say that. Save Jesus
Christ the example. Save Jesus Christ the righteous
obeyer of the law. He didn't say that. He said save
Jesus Christ and him crucified. For it's the crucified Christ
who saves sinners. The crucified Christ. Let's talk this morning then
about the death of our Savior. And our text is Isaiah 53, verse
10. Isaiah 53, verse 10, Yet it pleased
the Lord to bruise him, hath put him to grief. When thou shalt
make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days, and
the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Now, I have three points for
you in this message. And I confess to you, I owe a
debt to Charles Spurgeon for this message. I read a couple
of messages of his that gave me some thoughts for the message.
And in one of his messages, he used three brief points, and
I want to use those for my entire message. And here's the outline.
and get all the outline in, in case you don't get all the message
in on tape. In case I was to preach overtime,
I'll at least give you the full outline. The cause of Christ's
death, the reason of Christ's death, and the results of Christ's
death. And I pray God the Holy Spirit
will be with us while we try and focus in on the central theme
of all of Scripture. We do not understand the Bible
properly unless we understand that the Redeemer, the redemption
by Jesus Christ, the death of the Son of God, is the theme
of this whole book. We don't understand it properly
unless we've seen that. Christ crucified, set forth in
the Old Testament in type and in picture and symbol. Christ
actually crucified in the Gospels and in the rest of the New Testament,
it's the risen Christ who died for us that we worship and that
we look to, Christ who died. Do not be guilty of reading this
Bible to no avail. There are lots of people who
say they know their Bibles and who do indeed know their Bibles,
as it were, from cover to cover. But it's knowing the theme of
this Scripture, and that's Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and
it's knowing Him personally. Oh, to know Him. Paul said to
know Him in the power of His resurrection, to win Him, and
to be found in Him. If there's three desires I have
in my heart this morning, it would be these three. To know
Christ, to win Christ, and to be found in Christ. Those are
three great desires of my heart. And that's the theme of this
book, Christ crucified. Christ crucified. Don't let your
Bible lay around now. Pick it up and read it. Spurgeon
said, reading just yesterday's matter or just this morning,
a new book I've got of Spurgeon's, and he said that he said most
everybody's got a Bible. And he said, it's got a film
of dust across it. And he said, if your Bible's
got a film of dust across it, he said, just take your finger
and write damnation across it. Write damnation across it. Christ crucified is the theme
of this book. Well, let's see that from Isaiah 53. Here's the
first point now, the cause of Christ's death. Yet it pleased
the Lord to bruise him, he hath put him to grief. Now, the person
who reads of the death of Christ as mere history will trace the
death of the Son of God to several sources. Satan. Correct? Most people are thinking, why
did Christ die? And most people think of it as
a tragedy that ought to have been prevented and ought never
to have happened and wish it had never happened. Well, it's
true, he did not deserve to die. That is, he wasn't guilty of
the charges that they brought against him. He did deserve to
die, however. because he bore our sin in his
own body on the tree. And bearing our sin, he did deserve
to die, because the wages of sin is death. And he was reaping,
or he was earning, the just wages of what sin deserves. He bore
our sin in his body. But the average person thinking
about the death of Christ, they look at it this way. They say,
well, Satan brought it to pass. That old devil. An old devil,
that's the way people—an old devil. Believe everything on
that old devil. That old devil. And I doubt if
the devil's got much to do with us. What is it? Somebody said
he sends a third-string demon to fool with us. He doesn't mess
with us. He goes after somebody else,
but he don't fool with us. That old devil, they say. He
brought it to pass. Somebody says it was Judas's
fault. It was Judas's fault. If he hadn't
betrayed him, if he hadn't sold him out, then somebody might
trace it to the Roman soldiers in their cruelty, or Herod and
Pontius Pilate, or the leaders of Judaism. Now, we'll trace
it back to them. Well, certainly all of those
were responsible for crucifying the Lord of Glory. However, people
who read this book with spiritual understanding look beyond Satan's
attack Look on past the Jewish hatred and Judas' betrayal and
the fickleness of the government leaders and see that all of those
were but guilty instruments, guilty instruments used to accomplish
God's eternal decree. Now it's said in Acts chapter
four that The Gentiles and the Jews and Herod and Pontius Pilate
were all gathered together for one common purpose. Now, they
couldn't get together on anything else. They never could agree
on anything. If one of them said, it's raining
outside, the other said, no, it isn't sunshine. Well, it's
getting dark. No, it isn't still light outside. They're just fussing
about everything. But when it came to the matter
of Jesus of Nazareth and what's to be done with Jesus of Nazareth,
they all got together and they all joined hands and said, we're
united now. We're one now. Crucify Him. That's what we all say. They
all got together. Herod and Pilate. with the Gentiles
and the Jews gathered together, but there in Acts 4.28 it says,
"...for to do whatsoever thy will," not purpose, "...thy hand
determined to be done." Now, we dare not charge God with the
hideous sin of the death of Christ, but at the same time, the death
of Christ with all of its glorious effects for the salvation of
sinners, we must trace to the fountain of all blessings even
Jehovah God. The Scripture says, Isaiah says,
it pleased the Lord to bruise him, he hath put him to grief. Isaiah looks on past Satan. He never mentions Satan. He never
mentions Judas. He never mentions the Jews or
Herod or Pontius Pilate or the Roman soldiers. He looks past
all of those and he traces this monumental event. of the death
of Jesus Christ all the way back to God the Father, and it says
it pleased the Father to bruise Him. He, the Father, the everlasting
Jehovah, He put Him to grief. He did it. He brought it to pass. Oh, we must understand that God
the Father was not an indifferent or just a mere spectator at the
crucifixion of Christ. He brought it to pass. He arranged
everything. Everything was unfolding right
on schedule. Why did He do all of this? Why
did Christ die? Why did the Father put Him to
grieve? Why did the Father bruise His
soul? Why was His soul made an offering
for sin? Why was it that He was wounded
for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities? It was because
of the Father's everlasting love for His covenant people. The
Father brought it to pass. He purposed it. God so loved
the world. that he gave his only begotten
Son. So we trace the death of Christ
to God the Father. We trace it to God's decree.
Now we know from Revelation 5 that God has a book. And that book contains all the
destinies of all things from beginning to end. John said,
I saw that book sealed with seven seals. And that book contains
all the destinies, all the events, all the circumstances of all
of time. The hymn writer said, Chained
to his throne a volume lies with all the fates of men, with every
angel's form and size drawn by the eternal pen. Everything from
beginning to end has been marked out and designed and planned
by the all-wise, all-knowing God. And in that book, there's
a blood-stained page, and on that page contains all the events,
right down to the little minute circumstances and little known
happenings of the time. Everything is written in that
book concerning the death of Jesus Christ and all the events
before that, and all of that page is written with the same
eternal hand. God brought it to pass. God did
it. Jesus Christ was put to death
by the solemn decree of God. And then we trace his death to
the Father's will and pleasure. You see, Christ did not come
into this world unsent. Yes, he laid in Jehovah's bosom
from all eternity, the Father's eternal delight. But in the fullness
of time, when the time was ripe, the Father delivered him up.
Paul says in Romans 5, in due time, when the payment was due,
do you know anything about The bill's coming due. It's due on
the fifth of the month or it's due on the first of the month.
For when the bill came due, when divine justice said the payment
is due now, in due time, Christ came. He came for the ungodly. He came for sinners. My friends,
this is truly astounding. The offended judge, the offended
judge, sends his only begotten Son in order to redeem the offenders, in order to save those who'd
spit in his face. He didn't come to save good people. He didn't look down through time
and say, well, now, I see those folks there in Rocky Mountain.
They're going to be pretty good and better than most. And based
upon that, I believe I'll send my son to die for them because
they're going to be fine people. No, he died for sinners. He died
for the ungodly. Paul says, when we were enemies,
we were reconciled by his blood. Enemies? Would you give the precious
one of your bosom? Would you give your precious
son to die for enemies? God did. Sure again. You remember the story of Abraham
and Isaac? Of course you do. Abraham sent Isaac, or took Isaac
up on Mount Moriah to offer him as a sacrifice, as God told him.
Take your son, your only son, whom you love. That precious
boy of yours, teenage boy by now he was, Isaac was, God said,
take him up on a mount that I'll show you and offer him as a sacrifice
to me. And you read Hebrews chapter
11 and you'll find that in Abraham's heart and in his mind, he actually
carried through with the sacrifice. In his mind, he went through
with it. Now, we know that when the dagger went up and Isaac
was bound upon the altar, of course, they had walked up and
they had the sacrificial knife and they had the wood and they
had the fire. And Isaac said, Father, where
is the sacrifice? You've got to have a sacrifice
to worship God. You know that, don't you? Is
there anybody in this room who doesn't know that? You can't
worship God apart from sacrifice? Isaac knew that. There will be
no worship of the Holy God apart from an innocent victim dying
in the place of the guilty. There can be no worship of God
without a perfect sacrifice. Isaac said, where is the sacrifice?
And Abraham said, my son, God will provide himself a sacrifice. They got up there and the sacrificial
knife went up and God said, stop! I say, you believe me? There's
a ram caught in the thickets. Take it and kill him in your
son's stead. Now, what led Abraham to offer his son on the altar? Faith and obedience. And what faith and obedience
led Abraham to do, love for sinners constrained God to do. Love for
sinners. God had but one eternal Son,
the darling of His eternal delight. Oh, how the Father loves the
Son. They've been forever together, enjoying one another's company.
Somebody said God made man because He needed somebody to fellowship
with. The triune God fellowshiped together with each other from
eternity past and were quite content with each other's fellowship.
I'm persuaded because it was a perfect fellowship. Yet God gave up His only begotten
Son. He gave him up on account of
love. And what Abraham only did in his heart, God did in reality. He plunged the sacrificial knife
in his son's heart. He carried it through. For had
he not, there wouldn't have been any salvation for us. God did
it. He did it because he loved us.
Which leads me to say that the sufferings of Christ's soul and
the wrath he had to bear were the effects of being bruised
by the father. I want you to think about something. Many a dying saint has been comforted by the presence
of God when at death's door. I hope to be, don't you? I know I'm going to die. will be sooner than I expect.
It always is, isn't it? Always sooner than we figure.
But when time comes for me to die, if I'm conscious and if
I'm not drugged, if I'm aware of what's going on, I believe
that God will comfort me. I just believe that, Joe. I believe
I'll have dying grace. I sure do. I believe God's grace
is sufficient for all of our needs. I don't need dying grace
right now, I need living grace. Don't you? I need a healthy dose
of that. I need living grace. But when
the time comes for me to die, I believe I'll be comforted by
the presence of God." But Christ was not comforted by the presence
of God at His death. He cried out, My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? The sunshine of God's countenance
that has encouraged many a dying believer was withdrawn from Christ,
taken away. Underneath us are the everlasting
arms of God holding us up. But when Christ died, God's arms
weren't underneath him. God's hand was against him, pressing
against him. God was striking his equal. The Scripture says, he hath put
him to grief. This was the very highest point
of Christ's woe. The Father turned against him
and put him to grief. God forsaking God. Martin Luther
said, how can that be? The Father put him to grief.
The Father took the sword of justice out of its sheath. That
sword ought to cut on us. It glistened. That sword of justice
glistened in the brightness of holiness. The sword was drawn
out from that sheath. God the Father took the sword
of justice and smote the shepherd, and smote the shepherd, and the
sheep go free. His wounded by transgressions,
his bruised by iniquities. It pleased the Father to bruise
him, to bruise him. He had put him to grief. Well,
here's the second point. That's the cause. The Father
brought it to pass. You see, we must never think
that God the Father was cold and harsh and cruel and that
Jesus Christ came down here to get the Father in the notion
of loving us. It wasn't like that at all. God
the Father chose us in love. He fixed His heart upon us. And
I know that for the sake of our limited understanding, we say,
God chose us in the covenant of grace, and the Father, Son,
Spirit got together. But actually, God has always
loved us. You can't go back to a point
in time and say, well, now there He started loving us. He has
always loved us. As long as He's been God, He's
loved His elect. As long as He's been on His throne,
He's purposed to save His people. As long as God's been around,
there's been a surety for God's elect, the Lord Jesus Christ. God hadn't been indifferent.
Christ came into this world because God did love us. God did care. God was affectionate toward his
elect, and he decreed we should not perish. We should be saved. It's not God's will that any
of his elect should perish. But then all of them should come
to repentance. Well, here's the second point,
the reason of Christ's death. When thou shalt make his soul
an offering for sin. Now let me be just as plain and
just as clear as I can possibly be. Jesus Christ was the offering
for sin in the sense of a substitute. A substitute. He was the just
dying for the unjust. Picture it like this. God the
Father, loving his own, longed to save. God is love. I'm not ashamed
to say that. Are you? I know that the Armenians
have run all over the country and say, smile, God loves you,
And good news, America, God loves you and all that sort of stuff.
And we know that God loves His elect in Jesus Christ. God loved
His Son. He loves us in Him. But God is
love. Now, don't ever forget that.
God is love. We do not—our heavenly Father
is not cruel. He's not harsh. He's a loving
Father. He's a whole lot more of a loving
Father than I am a loving Father. I try to be a loving Father to
my children. But I fail. You want to be a
loving father, but you're going to fail. Going to fail. Oh, but our Father, He's always
loved us. He's always been a loving Father
to us. He's always had our best interest at heart. And He's always
been mindful of us. There's never been a second that
God hasn't been mindful of us. God thought on us in eternity
past. He thought on us when He sent
Christ to die for us. He thought on us when the Spirit
came to regenerate us. He's still thinking about us.
The Scripture says He's mindful of the poor and the needy. You
poor? Anybody poor in spirit this morning? Anybody in here needful? God
is mindful of such creatures, the poor and the needy. Oh, if
He would remember me. Remember me. Be mindful of me."
Well, he has been for eternity. God longed to save. He is love. He is plenteous in mercy. But,
if I may phrase it this way, justice tied his hands. For,
you see, sinners must be punished. The law must be honored. Below
the infinitely wise God said, wait a minute. I found a ransom. I found a way. Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, will go to the earth and take man's place, and
he'll be offered as an offering for sin at Calvary—an offering
for sin. Let me picture this for you back
in the Old Testament. You remember the man was the
head of the household, head of his family and all things, and
in He led his family in worship. Picture in your mind a Jewish
man leading his wife and children. They go into the tabernacle,
and he's tied a rope around a young lamb, a male lamb of a year of
age. And he leads that lamb along
with his family. They come along behind him. He's
leading this lamb. They go to the door of the tabernacle,
and the priest is there. And the priest says, What can
I do for you this morning? I'm such a sinner. God help me,
I'm such a sinner." His wife's crying. She says, I need mercy. I need mercy. And the man says,
Mr. Priest, I know that the seed
of the woman is coming someday. I'm looking to him. And I know
that this lamb You can't put away sin, but I know it's a picture
of that one who will come, that Messiah we're looking for. It
says, take this lamb, offer him to God as a sacrifice. The priest
takes the lamb, and the man stands back, puts his arm around his
wife. His children are standing there,
and they all watch. The priest takes that lamb, leads
it up, and he takes that sacrificial knife, splits his throat, and
catches the blood in a basin. There is a fire built on that
brazen altar. He takes that carcass and he
lays it up there on that fire. It starts burning and the smoke
ascends and he takes that bowl of blood and he pours it out. He doesn't tip it over. He doesn't
accidentally spill it. He deliberately pours it out. Jesus Christ died the substitute
of sinners. We ought to have died. There are some of us in here
this morning who feel perhaps even more at this present moment.
We feel more than ever how much we ought to have died. We're
always learning that, aren't we? How much we deserve the wrath
of God. But God offered up His Son for
us. He died as our substitute. And
He didn't spill His blood. He poured it out. He was a willing
victim. He was a willing offering. What
He did, He did deliberately. He did willfully. And He did it out of love. He
did it to honor the Father, and He did it because He loved me,
and He loved you. He loved all of His elect, and
He was mindful of us when He died on the cross. He knew what
He was doing. He knew He was laying down His
life as a sacrifice for James Byrd, who would live in the twentieth
century. And He saw me, and He saw all
of His seed. He saw all of His people. He
said, I lay down my life for the sheep. He was made a sacrifice
for sins, and in three hours on the cross, in three hours,
He bore all the wrath and all the hell that all of God's elect
would have had to have suffered forever. For you see, we could
never, even by spending an eternity forsaken by God in hell, we could
never even pay for one sin. We couldn't get one sin paid
for, much less the whole mass that we have. And what we are,
because that's what we are, we don't just have sin, we don't
just sin, we aren't sin. We've got a principle of sin
in us. But in three hours, Christ bearing
our sins on the cross, He paid the debt that we owe to the justice
of God. And though our debt was huge
and immense, and though it was beyond human calculation, Christ
paid to the utmost farthing all we owe to the justice of God.
He was the offering for sin. Now, for whom did he die? He
said, I laid down my life for the sheep. He died for his people. You see, the Bible teaches a
redemption that really redeemed. The Bible teaches a reconciliation
that really reconciled. It teaches a ransom that was
really delivered. Christ offered himself as the
offering for sin to the justice of God. His offering was accepted,
and all for whom he was offered must Go free. Twice payment,
God's justice does not demand. First it my bleeding shirt, his
hand, and then it mine. One of the greatest lies that
Satan has ever propagated is this, that Christ died for everybody.
That he died as equally for Judas as he did for Paul. That's a
lie. That's not so. These preachers are lying to
us out here that are telling us such stuff. Three greatest
lies they're telling today, and these are false prophets. And
they tell these three lies wherever they go. They say God loves everybody. They say Christ died for everybody.
And they say the Holy Spirit's trying to save everybody. That's
three big lies now. Three big—they're not little
white lies. They're black lies. They're bad lies. They're terrible
lies. Lies that were hatched in hell.
Satan's a propagator of those lies because he's the father
of lies. God loves his elect. Christ died for his sheep. The
Spirit of God is calling God's people to salvation in Jesus
Christ. Well, here's the third point.
The effects or the results of Christ's death. The latter part
of verse ten. When thou shalt make his soul
an offering for sin, hear three things. He shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days. and
the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." The effects of the results of
Christ's death. Number one, he shall see his
seed. Sinners shall be saved by Christ's death. Now, this congregation has become
fruitful since we left. I understand the nursery's growing.
A lot of newborns around being expected and so forth. We have
offspring by life. By life. Christ had offspring
by death. That's how he gets his offspring.
He has offspring by death. Sinners shall be saved by Christ's
death. On the cross, He saw all those
who would live eternally by His death. He saw us with love. He saw us with mercy. He saw
us with compassion. And He died for us. He shall
see His seed. And He's happy. He's satisfied. He wasn't worrying whether or
not they'd live or not. He wasn't worrying whether or
not that they might be stillborn. No, he knew his seed would live.
His seed would live. For his death sought to that.
His death ensured that. Secondly, he shall prolong his
days. Bless his name when he died, his life wasn't ended. He was only held a prisoner in
death's tomb for three days and nights. And on the third day
the conqueror arose from death, he birthed the iron bars of his
prison house, and he ever lives to make intercession for us.
And in prolonging his days, he prolongs our days forever. He shall prolong his days. And
thirdly, and the pleasure of the Lord shall—I like that. shall prosper in His hand." God's pleasure. What is God's
pleasure? What is God's will? What is God's
desire? That all of His elect be saved
from sin by the death of Jesus Christ and brought to faith and
repentance by the Spirit of God. It's God's will that all of His
chosen ones be washed in the blood of Christ. and robed in
Christ's righteousness and appear before Him without spot and without
blemish or any such thing. That's God's will and pleasure. Jesus Christ calls God's will
and pleasure to prosper, to be successful. For someday there
will arise from a perfect multitude in glory a shout of hallelujah,
Hallelujah to the Son of God. Hallelujah! The Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth. Hallelujah! Worthy is the Lamb
that was slain. And it will be seen in that day
that God's pleasure prospered in the hands of Jesus Christ. It's God's will and pleasure
that sinners be brought to faith in the son of God. I got a phone call the other
day from a dear lady. She said, I read something you
wrote in the newspaper about predestination, and she said,
I like. I like that. She said, I believe God has an
elect people. She said, you know, I'm a primitive
Baptist. And I said, is that right? She
said, yes. And she said, my brother-in-law is an elder in the Primitive
Baptist Church. And she said, my brother-in-law
read that article on...