So we're continuing in our Bible
study in Luke chapter 7 and we're picking up in this discourse
that the Lord had about John the Baptist. And if we, we, we
kind of remember back a couple of weeks when we were in this
portion of scripture and, and John had sent, John was in prison.
He'd sent two of his disciples to Jesus with some questions
and, and 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. And he was a kind of a celebrity.
And if you remember that there hadn't been a prophet in that
land for some 400 years. And 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 lived 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 because it was new and you hadn't had a prophet
in a long time? And 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's, I send, 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's 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. So 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. The results
of that and where we left off as we mentioned
several weeks ago. The people there had different
expectations about what they wanted to see. They wanted to
see, maybe 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
who was like those that were charged
with redeeming, 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 said, 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. 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 chapter 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
has 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. And John is saying, he's here
now. He's with us. And there wasn't
any, 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 you 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 you seek
shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant
whom you 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, in 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, in verse 11 of chapter 1. 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.
And 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, 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 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 chapter three, verse seven, bring forth
therefore fruits. worthy of repentance. And that's
another, it's not like he was telling them, well, you need
to bring forth a list of all your good works and you're 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. 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. There was 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, are taking 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
chapter 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. And 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, I will, I will do this. I will sprinkle clean
water, the water of the word upon you. and you shall be clean
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
is 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, 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 Him that's down here on
the front of the 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
chapter 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, and
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. 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 till 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. Grantest 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
glory may dwell in our land. And then, boy, here is 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 in
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
of that. 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, 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, and eventually he was killed. Just like, which
of the prophets have you not stoned and killed? Isaiah said,
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. 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 to what are they like? And he said, they're likened
to 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, John came neither eating bread nor drinking wine because
that's what that angel said, he shall neither eat strong food
or strong drink. 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.
I couldn't see all of it because the roof of the pickup was in
the way, but Norman 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, we can, 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 are, 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.