So we're continuing in our Bible
study in Luke chapter 7. We're picking up in this discourse
that the Lord had about John the Baptist. We kind of remember
back a couple of weeks when we were in this portion of Scripture. John was in prison. He had sent
two of his disciples to Jesus with some questions. And he told them in verse 22,
Go your way and tell John what things you have seen and heard,
how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and to the poor the gospel is
preached. And then when they left, there
was a lot of people that had come out to see John when he
was preaching in the wilderness and baptizing in Jordan. He was kind of a celebrity. If
you remember, there hadn't been a prophet in that land for some
400 years. So it was kind of a novel thing
for them to have one. And in verse 24, it says, what
went you out into wilderness for to see? A reed shaken in
the wind. And what went you out for to see? A man clothed in
soft raiment. Behold, they which are gorgeously
appareled and live delicately are in king's courts. And what
went you out for to see? A prophet? And that's where we're
picking up today. He said, did you just go out
to see a prophet? He hadn't had a prophet in a
long time. He says, I say unto you, and much more than
a prophet, this is He of whom it is written, behold, I send
My Messenger. It's interesting. He caused that
to be written. He's talking about Himself there.
He says, I'm sending My Messenger. before thy face, which shall
prepare the way before thee. For I say unto you, among those
that are born of women, there is not a greater prophet than
John the Baptist. But he that is least in the kingdom
of God is greater than he." And all the people that heard him,
that heard John when he was preaching the gospel, All the people that
heard him and the publicans justified God being baptized with the baptism
of John, but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the counsel
of God against themselves being not baptized of him. And that's
going to be our topic today in our message that we're bringing. the people justified God. So
we just need to back up a little bit about John and what he was
preaching and the results of that and where we left off as we mentioned
several weeks ago. The people there, they had different
expectations about what they wanted to see. Some of them wanted to see a
richly dressed figure that was like those in the religious hierarchy
in the Jewish religion. But he was clothed in simple
garments and didn't eat or drink anything. Wild honey and locusts was his
meat, I think the Scripture says. Did they come out to see someone like those that were charged
with preaching the gospel of the redeeming death of the Savior
to save His people from their sins. But the ones that were
charged with that were, they were kind of, as the Scriptures
say, blown about by every wind of doctrine. And he says, John,
did you think John was a reed shaken in the wind too? You think
that he would go every which way to try and please everybody.
He was very uncompromising in the gospel and sovereignty of
God and he was not going to be involved
in replacing grace with works by just simply administering
a baptism to those that wanted it so they could check that box
off and comply with that. So, he said,
did you come to see a prophet that was like those prophets
of old? The prophets that testified that
Christ should come. And in Acts 3, verse 18, it's
written, But those things which God had before showed by the
mouth of all his prophets that Christ should suffer, he hath
so fulfilled." So this is kind of the prophets talked about
him coming. Acts says that he fulfilled that.
And John is in the middle. He's saying all the prophets
testified that he would come. John is saying he's here now.
He's with us. And as I mentioned, there wasn't
any prophet for about 400 years until John. And Luke mentions
that in chapter 16. He said the law and the prophets
were until John. And since that time, since the
law and the prophets, the kingdom of God is preached and every
man presses into it, And so he had some specific things to say
about John in verses 26 through 28 and how these things relate
to the grace of God and salvation and not of works or of merit. And what he said was, you went
out to see a prophet, but John was much more than a prophet.
This is he of whom it is written. And you know, he's the only prophet
that was prophesied of. No other prophet had somebody
else prophecy and say that they would come. In Isaiah, we'll read a couple of
these briefly, but there's three in the Old Testament and then
one in the New Testament. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
saith your God. Comfort ye. the Gospel that saves
people from their sins. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,
and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity
is pardoned. For she hath received of the
Lord's hand double for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth
in the wilderness, prepare you the way of the Lord. Make straight
in the desert a highway for our God. And every valley shall be
exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the
crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. and
the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall
see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it." So,
he's going to smooth out that way to the Lord. Malachi 3.1,
Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way
before me. And that's what Jesus just got through saying here
in Luke chapter 7. And the Lord whom ye seek shall
suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant
whom ye delight in, behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of
hosts. It's interesting that the only
ones that were delighted that he should come were the ones
whom He redeemed. The rest of them weren't that
thrilled about it. And He shall turn the hearts
of the fathers to the children, Malachi 4, 6, and the heart of
the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth
with a curse. And then we find the angel of
the Lord in our first chapter of Luke. A long time ago when
we were at that portion of our study in Luke, the angel appeared
to Zacharias, his father, verse 11 of chapter 1, and there appeared
unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of
the altar of incense. And remember, his father was
a priest, and he was in charge of the altar of incense at that
time. And when Zacharias saw him, he
was troubled, and fear fell upon him. And the angel said unto
him, Fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard. Thy wife
Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name
John. And thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many shall
rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the
sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong
drink. And he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from
his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel
shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him
in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers
to the children. and the disobedient to the wisdom
of the just to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. And that's
just what we read in those Old Testament Scriptures. They're
the same. There's no difference in the
Gospel of the Old Testament and the Gospel in the New Testament. So, John was the herald of the
fulfillment of the coming of the Messiah, and as it said,
Many shall rejoice, and many didn't rejoice. The prophets
of old declared He's coming, and John declared He's here. Behold, he said, behold the Lamb
of God. Now beginning in verse 29, We
have this narration by Luke from the Holy Spirit, and he gives
us a little bit more about John's declaration of the gospel, his
uncompromising position. He's not shaken like a reed in
the wind. He's absolute and solid. in regards to the way of salvation. I was telling Norm the other day,
I was out on West 12th Street and there was a church that had
a big sign up, one of those big billboard signs up, and it says,
Baptism does now save us. It was kind of a misquotation
from 1 Peter 3.21. And if you read that whole chapter
and that whole, just like three or four verses before it and
after it, it says, it was a like figure unto the ark. Now the
ark didn't save anybody eternally. It was just a mechanism to save
them physically, but it was a picture and a type of Christ. And he
says, baptism is a like figure to that. It doesn't save anyone
in its physical application. It's just a picture of what Christ
does in saving His people. What a terrible thing to try
to convince people, all you've got to do is come in and be baptized
and you're saved. What a lie. So, you know, we
have to go back and look at what John required from people who
wanted to be baptized of him. A lot of them, he called them
a generation of vipers. He says, who told you to flee
from the wrath to come? He said, bring forth some evidence
of salvation. Bring forth some evidence. And
that's what he said in Luke 3, verse 7. Bring forth therefore
fruits. worthy of repentance. It's not
like he was telling them, well, you need to bring forth a list
of all your good works and your turning to Christ, and then I'll
baptize you. He said, bring forth some fruit.
Well, that means a tree producing fruit. Because the next thing
that he says in that is, he says, you know what? The ax is laid
to the root, and every tree that doesn't bring forth good fruit,
it's going to be chopped down. And the tree that produces the
fruit of works is going to be chopped down because it's not
good fruit. So, not baptism, not keeping the law, not good
works, those are all just fruits of work. And now we come to the
crux of the matter as stated by the Spirit through Luke. Here
in chapter 70, there's a curious revelation to those who did bring
forth evidence of salvation by grace and not because of works. There's two results here that
we find. And in verse 29 says, all the
people that heard him, that heard, you know, the scripture says,
the Lord gives the hearing ear and the seeing eye. And he reveals
his son as it pleases him. He says, the people that heard
him and the publicans, those awful sinner people. And we're
going to run into that a little bit later here in Luke 7. They justified God being baptized
with the baptism of John. And then the other thing that
happened, as I mentioned, there was two results of this. The
Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves,
not being baptized. They didn't bring forth any evidence
of fruit of the Spirit and repentance. And so, result one is the people
who heard the gospel of Christ dying for their sins, paying
the sin debt they owed, who saw in themselves nothing of merit
or worth. In fact, when we read the Scriptures,
we find that quite the opposite is what happens. People that
come to a revelation of being saved by grace say, there was
nothing of worth in me. There was nothing I did. There
was no merit. no reason outside of the eternal
electing love of God that he should have saved me. I deserve,
like that thief on the cross, he said, we deserve what's coming
unto us, but this man, he's innocent. He's justified. That's what these
people are saying. We are all as an unclean thing. and our righteousness is like
filthy rags, and we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities
like the wind have taken us away." That's what Isaiah wrote. That's
how he saw. And that's the experience that
most people come to after they've been saved by grace. They say,
oh man, I had no idea my nature. I had no idea of the effects
of the fall. I had no idea of the consequences
of sin and what that brought about. And Ezekiel declared that
after the new birth, and after all the I-wills of
God, the redeemed will be so far from declaring self-worth
that in actual fact, they kind of enter into this state of loathing
for themselves because of their sinful nature. Oh, man. I just love that passage in Ezekiel
36. And we'll just take the time
to read that real quick. And as in all of our lessons
before where we mentioned this, it's just interesting to highlight
or underline all the I wills of God, all the activities that
God does in behalf of His people, and then the results of those
things. And there's 11 or 12 things that the Lord actively
does in regenerating His people. So starting in verse 22, he says,
Therefore I say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord,
I do not this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for my
holy name's sake, which you profaned among the heathen, whether you
went. So there's no merit or worth there in those people that
are being impacted by His grace. He says, I'm doing this because
of the covenant of grace. Because I swore an oath. I will, number one, I will. I will sanctify my great name
which was profaned among the heathen, which you have profaned
in the midst of them. And the heathen shall know that
I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified
in you before their eyes." When he works a work of grace, they're
going to have a different view of God. They're going to have
a different view of themselves. He said, for I will take you
from among the heathen and gather you out of all the countries
and will bring you into your own land. So there were up to
like three things that God is going to do already. And then will I sprinkle clean
water upon you? And then we come to the first
result. He says, you shall be clean. Not because of whatever
you're doing. You didn't sprinkle yourself.
You didn't plunge into the waters of baptism and come out free
of sin like they implicate in those billboards and things.
He says, I will do this. I will sprinkle clean water.
the water of the Word upon you. And you shall be cleaned from
all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I, another
I will, cleanse you. A new heart will I give you. Well, I'm sorry we don't go out
and perform open heart surgery on ourselves and give ourselves
a new heart. This is something that God does. I will put a new
heart. I will give you a new heart."
And then He says, I'll give you a new spirit. I'll put that in
you. And I will take away the stony
heart out of your flesh. And I will give you a heart of
flesh. And I will put My Spirit within
you and cause you to walk in My statutes And ye shall keep
my judgments and do them." Not just keeping the law, but the
spirit of grace and salvation, the sovereignty of His nature.
And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers,
and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God." Where before
they worshipped themselves, they worshipped the idols, all those
things that we talk about from time to time. And he says, I
will also save you from all your uncleanness. And I will call
for the corn and I will increase it and lay no famine upon you.
He's going to feed his sheep. He's going to make sure that
the sheep get fed. And I will multiply the fruit
of the tree. Remember what John said? The axe is laid to the root of
the tree and any tree that's not bringing forth good fruit
just going to be chopped down and thrown on the fire. But the
fruit of the tree that's from the Spirit of God is going to
bring forth good fruit. Then, when that happens, He says,
Then shall ye remember your own evil ways and your doings that
were not good, and shall loathe yourself in your own sight for
your iniquities and for your abominations. And you know, a
lot of that we just don't see before regeneration. We just don't have that view
of sin. We don't have that view of trying to provide our own
righteousness. We don't have that view of anything
until all these 11 or 12 or 13 things that God says I will do
that make all the difference in how we view Him and how we
view ourselves. That hymn that's down here on
the front The pew here. I was blind. I didn't think I
was blind. But after Amazing Grace, I was
blind. But now I see. So, we look at
the results of God's working in them grace. They justified
God. And what does that mean? It says,
the people that heard Him and the publicans justified God.
What does that mean? Justified means to render or
to regard as just, innocent, and righteous. They had a view
of a God that was different after those things occurred than before
they were saved through hearing that gospel. Their view of God
in regards to their sin was that God was totally righteous. totally
righteous, and He would have been totally just
in condemning them, and they clearly understood that. They
said, we're there like that thief on the cross. We're guilty. We're guilty, but this man is
innocent. But a few minutes earlier, both
of those guys were cursing him and railing on him and saying
all kinds of unrighteous things about him. But suddenly, these
11 or 12 things that we read about in Ezekiel happened to
him in the blink of an eye. And he says, oh, I have a different
view of him now than I had a few minutes ago. He's innocent, but
we're guilty. God in His infinite sovereignty
was righteous in all His actions. And in this they saw that He
by grace exercised mercy on them through substituting His own
Son which satisfied His justice. And you know, last week, Norm
was gone, so we were filling in and we were talking about
the constancy of the Gospel. And we find that here. It's the
same principles, the same Gospel in the Old Testament. God is just. He's totally righteous. And we find that written about
even in the Law and the Prophets, just like He said. In Deuteronomy
32, verse 1 says, Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak. And
hear, O earth, the words of My mouth. My doctrine shall drop
as the rain. My speech shall distill as the
dew in the small rain upon the tender herb as the showers upon
the grass, because I will publish the name of the Lord and ascribe
ye greatness unto our God." Verse 4, you could underline this all
day long. He is the rock. His work is perfect. For all His ways are judgment,
a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is He." He's just. So the next verse, of course,
speaks to the nature of man. If you go and read the rest of
that in Deuteronomy, he says, but you corrupted. You corrupted
all that. And if you back up to chapter
31, Moses, he was kind of lamenting to the Lord and he says, I know
that after I die, you guys are all going to just fall into corruption. But he always brings the Gospels.
God is perfect. He's the rock. And you know it's funny that
they didn't even wait until Moses died. They said, no use putting
that off until after you die. We'll just go ahead and be corrupt
now. And that's what they did. So, the psalmist wrote of this
great mystery whereby God could be just and render what sin is
due and still be the justifier and totally righteous throughout
the whole process. In Psalm 85, verse 7, the psalmist
wrote, Show us Thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us Thy salvation. It
wasn't like he said, you know what? We've been good. You owe
us. Which is what a lot of works type religion tries to promote. Show us mercy. Mercy is something
you don't deserve. Mercy is what you get when you're
guilty of something and they don't deliver the punishment
that you actually have coming. Grant us Thy salvation. I will
hear what the Lord God will speak, for He will speak peace unto
His people and to His saints, but let them not turn again to
folly. Surely His salvation is nigh them that fear Him that
that glory may dwell in our land." And then, boy, here's just the
most wonderful verse. It's just poetry. Mercy and truth
are met together. Righteousness and peace have
kissed. Those two things that are seemingly
irreconcilable are brought together in the person of Christ. And
truth shall spring out of the earth and righteousness shall
look down from heaven. Well, you know, the Apostle Paul
wrote about that in Romans, the third chapter, beginning in verse 24. He said,
being justified freely by His grace through the redemption
that is in Christ, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness for
the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance
of God. To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness,
that He might be just and at the same time the justifier of
them which believe in Jesus. In order to be just, the penalty
must be paid. And at the same time he's the
justifier because he set his son to be the propitiation to
take that judgment in our place. He shall see the travail of his
soul and shall be satisfied. By His knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities."
That's from Isaiah 53, 11. We're all familiar with that
verse. But that allows Him to be just
and the justifier. And people come to realize that
when they've been born again, when they've been regenerated
by the Spirit. They say, He's just. He would have been just if He
would have sentenced me to eternity without Him. But through His
mercy and through His grace, He's also the justifier by sending
a substitute in my place. And that's what John required
for his baptism. That's the understanding that
he required for those people that wanted to be baptized. The
understanding that all we like sheep have gone astray and the
Lord had laid on Him, on the Son, the iniquity of us all. Again, from Isaiah 53. The Pharisees,
on the other hand, they rejected all that. They rejected the counsel
of God. The counsel of God said He's
He's totally righteous. He's totally just. He's innocent
in this substitution. And John was not baptizing them
because they did not qualify. He says, what you're bringing
forth does not represent what we just talked about here Christ
being our substitute. That He died for our sins. That He was buried and rose again
the third day. Nothing you're bringing is pictures
at. You're bringing the law. You're
bringing the works. They rejected the fact of their
sinful nature. All these have I kept from my
youth up. I tithe. I do this. I've kept
all the law. except the one about lying. So, a little one. They rejected
the only means by which your grace, God, could be both just
and the justifier and still be totally righteous in that. They rejected all that. They
rejected John Eventually, he was killed. Just like which of
the prophets have you not stoned and killed? Isaiah says, you
know what? I'm all alone and they're trying
to kill me. That's just the nature of man at enmity with God and
with His righteousness and with His justice. Then he goes on to this interesting
part next. And we're kind of leaping ahead
maybe into a little bit of the next section. He's looking at
these people and these religious folks. And the Lord said in verse
31 of Luke chapter 7, Where unto then shall I liken the men of
this generation? What are they like? He said,
they're like unto children sitting in the marketplace and calling
to one another and saying, we have piped unto you, and you've
not danced, and we have mourned you, and you've not wept. And
he says, you know, John came neither eating bread nor drinking
wine, because that's what that angel said, he shall neither
eat food or strong drink. And so they criticized him for that.
John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine,
and you say, well, he has a devil. He doesn't dress like us. He
doesn't eat like us. And he's saying all kinds of
horrible things about us. He called us a generation of
vipers because we didn't bring forth
evidence of grace. And then he says, and the Son
of Man is come eating and drinking. And you say, behold, a gluttonous
man and a winebibber. And you know why they didn't
like him? Because he ate with the awful people. He ate with
sinners. He ate with the publicans. So
they didn't like either one of them. They had their little tirade
against John because he didn't fit the mold. And they didn't
like Christ because he didn't fit their mold. But he said, you know, wisdom
is justified of all her children. Wisdom. And that'll be our topic
for next time. And we'll probably go to Ephesians
again. Imagine that. Where it says,
the manifold wisdom of God. Yesterday, when we were coming
back, Norm and I had been down to Carson, we were coming back,
and there was just the most gorgeous rainbow you ever saw. And the wind was blowing, and
it was raining, and right over these little side lakes along
the highway over there in Washington, there's this big old rainbow.
And I couldn't see all of it because the roof of the pickup
was in the way, but Norman had, he said, you can see the whole
thing! That word manifold means much
variegated. And when you look up variegated,
it means multicolored. And that is his, I set my bow
in the clouds as a remembrance of my covenant. And when we look
at that and we say, well, he says, man, you can see the purple
and the blue, and you can see the red and the green, and we
can see the seven colors that we normally associate with a
rainbow, but we know that there's an infinite amount, a spectrum
of color that way and that way. It's manifold, it's much, much
variegated. And all those things that God
has entered into from before the foundation of the world enter
into that wisdom and how He is both the just and the justifier
of His people. So we'll stop there and always
we say be free from John chapter 8 verse 32 and 36. The Son make
you free, you are free indeed. So, thank you for your attention
and until next time.