Now, it would be really wrong
to read this passage of Scripture and not look at a parallel passage,
which is found in the book of Hebrews. And I'll read the three
verses here in Psalm 40 first, and then I'm going to direct
your attention to Hebrews, the 10th chapter. Look here in Psalm
40, verse 6. Sacrifice and offering thou didst
not desire. That wasn't what God was looking
for. That didn't satisfy God. The
offerings of animals in the Old Testament could not meet the
just demands of God, couldn't make the comers thereunto perfect,
couldn't put away sin, couldn't bring in righteousness, and couldn't
satisfy God. God never appointed those Old
Testament sacrifices to be a means of salvation. So He says, sacrifice
and offering thou didst not desire. He says, mine ears hast thou
opened. Burnt offering and sin offering
thou hast not required. Then said I, then said the Savior,
Then said our Redeemer, Lo, I come. Lo, I come. Behold, I come. Who came? Christ came. Who came? The only one who could do something
about our sins. The very Son of God. Then he
says, in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight
to do thy will. O my God, yea, thy law is within
my heart. Now, keep your place here and
turn over with me to Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10. And this, the passage I just
read to you, those verses there are the ones that the apostle
Paul refers to here in Hebrews chapter 10. I'm going to read just a couple
more verses here though. Look at verse 5, Hebrews 10,
5. Wherefore, when he cometh into
the world, remember he said, lo, I come. Wherefore, when he
cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice an offering thou wouldest
not, but a body thou hast prepared me. He had said previously in verse
4, For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats
should take away sin. So God prepared a body for the
Lord Jesus Christ that is the last Adam. The Bible talks about
the first Adam and the last Adam. So he says, in burnt offerings
and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I,
then said the Son of God, then said the Lamb of God, then said
our eternal surety, then said our Savior. Then said our Substitute,
then said our Mediator, then said I, Lo, I come. In the volume
of the book it is written of me." Now, the volume of the Old
Testament book? Indeed. In the volume of the
book it's written of him. All of the Old Testament is about
our Lord Jesus Christ. But I think the book that he
is making reference to here is the book of God's eternal purpose. You will remember, I'm sure,
in the book of Revelation that a book was opened and it had writing on it. It was written on the inside
and on the outside and on the backside. And that's the book
of God, the volume of the book of God's eternal will, of God's
eternal pleasure, the book of God's predestination. And in the volume of God's eternal
purpose, it was written that Christ would come to do God's
will. Now indeed, He did God's will
totally and always and forever. But the specific will that is
being referenced here is His will of salvation, God's will
of redemption. It was written in the book of
God, in the decrees of God before the world ever began, that our
Lord Jesus Christ would come to do, to perform, to complete
the will of God pertaining to salvation and redemption. I've come to do thy will, O God. Above, verse 8, above when he
said, sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering
for sin, thou wouldest not, neither has pleasure therein which are
offered by the law. Then said he, lo, I come. Once again, the Savior had said
it in verse 7, and now Paul quotes him again in verse 9, lo, I come. And as I think back through the
Old Testament, when Adam sinned, and he plunged all of us into
a state of iniquity and sinfulness, I can almost hear the Savior
say, Lo, I come. Adam will get you in this mess,
but lo, I come to make all things right. When the children of Israel rebelled
against God, failed to satisfy His revealed
will. I can almost hear the Son of
God saying, Lo, I come, and I'll make things right. And when after hundreds and hundreds
of years we get to the New Testament When, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians,
the world by wisdom knew not God, I can almost hear the Son
of God saying just before His virgin birth, I can almost hear
Him saying, Lo, I come! Lo, I come! Somebody had to make
things right. We couldn't do it. No angel could
do it. A myriad of angels could not
accomplish that. But lo, Christ said, I come to
satisfy God. I come to redeem my people that
were given to me in covenant grace, he says. Then said he, lo, I come to do
thy will, thy redemptive will, thy saving will. He taketh away
the first. And the words taketh away literally
mean he killed. He obliterated that old covenant. And this is one of the things
that's going on here. The reason Paul's writing this
letter by the inspiration of the Spirit of God is that some
who had professed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and were approaching
God through the merits of and the blood of our Lord Jesus,
some of them were slipping back into the ceremonies and the rituals
of the Old Covenant. And now the apostle reminds them
that Christ came to take away the first to establish the second. That is the second one revealed,
the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace is the
oldest of the covenants, but it was the second one revealed.
The first one revealed was the covenant of works, which could
not save anybody. Not back then, not now. The covenant
of works, the law of God, was never given to save a soul. The law of God was given, first
of all, to expose our sinfulness. Romans chapter 3 says that, to
show us our guilt. And then the law of God also
showed us in type and in picture and in shadow the sacrifices
and the offerings for sin and transgressions and iniquities,
which could never put away sin, but all of them pointed to the
sacrifice of the Lamb of God, who would put away our sins. So he taketh away, he killed,
he obliterated the first covenant. that he may establish the second.
And he says in verse 10, by the which will, by God's redemptive
will, we are sanctified, we stand through the offering of the body
of our Lord Jesus once for all. There is no sacrifice or there
is no satisfaction to the law of God through those Old Testament
sacrifices that took Christ himself. So go back to Psalm 40, and let
me just make, oh, three or four points here. And the first one
is this. All of the sacrifices ordained
under the Levitical law, all of the ceremonies, all of the
rituals, all of the offerings ceased when God's faithful servant
entered into this world. to fulfill God's redemptive will. Know this, and I've already said
it, but please understand this. The sacrifices, the ceremonies,
the rituals, the laws of the Mosaic economy were never intended
to be a means of salvation. They were not. There's a very famous reference
Bible that many Baptists carry. And in John chapter 1, in the
Scofield Notes, it says that the people in the Old Testament
were saved by legal obedience. Whereas in the New Testament,
people are saved by grace. Well, I don't believe that first
part, I believe anybody who's ever been saved is saved by grace,
don't you? It's the only way he can be saved.
By God's unmerited favor. He gave us that which we did
not deserve. Nobody was ever converted, saved,
regenerated, redeemed, welcomed by God, made righteous. Nobody
has ever been saved by obedience to any law of God. We read that by the law is the
knowledge of sin. That's what Paul said, I would
not have known sin if it wasn't for the law of God. Now the law
of God, the ceremonial law of God, the Levitical part of the
law of God with the institution of the sacrifices and the offerings,
indeed they all pointed to the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Every lamb, every bull, every goat, every turtle dove that
died on an altar, they all directed the attention of the worshipers
to one who would come and by his own blood, would redeem the
people of God. But those animal sacrifices,
they never redeemed anybody. They never saved anybody. Well,
why then did God require them to be offered? Why were they
useful? Only as types and shadows of
Christ. and to show the worshipers the
nature and necessity of the redemptive work of an innocent victim on
behalf of the guilty. Once the Savior came and laid
down His life, the sin offering for His people, the sacrifices
and the offerings ceased to be offered and had no more purpose. If you've ever studied much about
prophecy, there are some people who think they've got all the
answers, and they believe that when the Lord Jesus comes back,
he's gonna have the temple rebuilt in Jerusalem, and that they're
going to start offering sacrifices to God again. Well, I don't know whether the
temple will ever be rebuilt or not. Maybe it will be. I don't
know. And there may be some people who will reinstitute the sacrifices
of animals, but that's not going to be salvation. In fact, to
even suggest to even suggest that according to the will of
God, people will once again start offering animal sacrifices to
put away sin. It's just heresy. Because that
is to minimize the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The animal
sacrifices, the insistence by the law that they be offered,
are done away with forever. Our Lord Jesus has died the Lamb
of God. That's why it says in Hebrews
10 and verse 18, now where remission of sin is, there's no more offering
for sin. How many times did Christ die?
Once. And when he died, he put away
the sins of all of his people. And he put them away forever.
There's always been a disagreement among theologians as to the state, or that's not the right
word I'm looking for, the people for whom Christ died. There are
those who say he died for everybody who ever lived in order to make
salvation, redemption a possibility. But the Word of God does not
speak of salvation or redemption as being a possibility. It is
never spoken of in such a way that it leaves the removal of
sin up to the will of man. No, our Lord Jesus, when He came,
He put an end to our sins. And He did it forever. He obliterated
our debt. We have no debt to God. We are
indeed debt free. The law of God, you see, was
designed to identify and expose sin and point to that one who
would come and do away with sin forever. That's why Romans 10.4
says, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believe it. So all of the sacrifices which
they would cease when Christ, God's faithful servant, came
into the world. Psalm 40 is a prophecy of him
coming and doing that. Hebrews chapter 10 is a record
that he did what he set out to do. Then here's the second thing
I want to show you. The promised Messiah was Jehovah's
faithful, voluntary servant. You'll notice a little phrase
here in Psalm 40. It's the second phrase of verse
6. Mind ears, Hast thou opened? And in order to understand that,
we need to go back to Exodus chapter 21. Turn back to Exodus
chapter 21. Exodus 21. When it talks about mine ears
thou hast opened, It's another way of saying, mine ears hast
thou bored through with an awl. In other words, he's talking
about a faithful servant. And that's our Lord Jesus. Exodus
21. Now these are the judgments,
verse one, that these are the judgments which thou shalt set
before them. If thou buy in Hebrew, servant,
six years he shall serve. And in the seventh year, he shall
go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he
shall go out by himself. If he were married, then his
wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him
a wife and she have born him sons or daughters, the wife and
her children shall be her masters, and he shall go out by himself.
And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife,
and my children, I will not go out for free, then his master
shall bring him unto the judges, He shall also bring him to the
door, under the doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear
through with an awl, and he shall serve him forever." And you see,
this is a picture of our Lord Jesus, the faithful, perfect
servant of Jehovah. And He has a wife. He has a bride. His people. And we're called
not only His bride, but we're called His children. After all,
He's the everlasting Father. And anywhere He goes, His children
are gonna go with Him. So He is the perfect voluntary
servant who said, in effect, I will do everything demanded
by my God to spare my children and spare
my bride. That's our Lord Jesus. You see,
yes, He was ordained in the covenant of grace to come. God appointed
Him to be the Savior. But at the same time, He came
willingly and voluntarily. He is the willing servant of
Jehovah. In Isaiah chapter 52, God refers
to Him as being the servant. Isaiah chapter 53, he's the faithful
servant of Jehovah. He came to do in his life what
we could not do ever in our lives. He came to fulfill all the law
of God. He came to live perfectly. He
came to obey parental law, civil law, divine law, and he did just
that. And then he fulfilled the law
of God by laying down his life voluntarily to save his people. You remember in John chapter
10, he said, no man takes my life from me. I have the power
to lay it down. I have the power to take it again.
They couldn't take his life. When Simon Peter cut off the
right ear of Malchus, who was the servant of the high priest,
our Lord reattached that ear to that man's head, and He told
Peter, He said, put your sword up. Listen, if I wanted some
assistance, I could call 10,000 angels. But he said, but how then would
the word of God, the prophecies of God concerning my death, how
could that be accomplished? He laid down his life, the willing
servant of Jehovah. And then he took it up again. He's Jehovah's faithful servant.
Now, let me tell you this. He who is Jehovah's faithful
servant was Jehovah's equal. He had to be Jehovah's equal.
All of creation is commanded to serve the Lord because He's
the creator of all things. All rational beings are obligated
to serve God because He made us and in Him we live and move
and have our being. But our Lord Jesus Christ, He
came and He served the Father because He wanted to. There was
no commandment. He owed nothing. We owe a debt
of obedience and gratitude to our God. He owed nothing. And He had nothing
to gain. For He is Himself Jehovah. Look
at, go back to Psalm. And look at Psalm 45. Psalm 45.
5 and 6. Psalm 45. 5 and 6. Thy throne, O God. O Son of God. O servant of Jehovah, thy throne,
O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of thy kingdom is
a right scepter. Thou lovest righteousness and
hatest wickedness. Therefore, thy God hath anointed
thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." He was anointed. He was anointed as the prophet,
as the priest, and as the king. Christ was anointed. He had to
be Jehovah's equal. And Jehovah's faithful servant
came on a specific mission. Call his name Jesus, for he shall
save his people from their sins. He came on a specific mission
to save his people. He came to save a specific people,
his people. the people given to Him in covenant
grace. It was a gift, the people of
God were a gift from the Father to the Son. They're His people. And they shall be saved of Him
who came to save them. The redemption of Christ Jesus,
the redemptive work of Christ Jesus, was not an effort to save. It was the accomplishment of
salvation. And when the spirit of grace
quickens us, he makes us to know that the work of redemption,
the work of our salvation, is already completed by the Lord
Jesus Christ. And then let me say this real
quickly. Thirdly, Christ faithfully fulfilled the prophecies concerning
the coming Messiah. Then said, I, lo, I come in the
volume of the book it is written of me. Thank God he came. Thank God he came. If he had not come, there'd be
no salvation. What could we have done? Nothing. Salvation is not up to man. It's
not up to our will. It's not up to our decision.
It's not up to us saying yes to the Lord. The salvation of
God's people was entrusted to our suitable, glorious, Jehovah's
Son. It was all in His hands. And
I know this of Him, the Bible says, He shall not fail. He can't
fail. He can't fail. Lo, I come, he
said. Sadly, at this day, in this point in
history, free willism, it still is a lie that's readily accepted
throughout the world. I was watching some program the
other night. They said, well, you know, we all have a free
volition. We don't have a free will. Our
wills are in bondage. In bondage. That's why Christ
spoke to those Pharisees and said, ye will not come to me
that you might have life. Now, preachers can say it's up
to man's will if they want to, and many of them do, and they're
not ashamed to worship the idol of free willism. But God's people
can't worship an idol. We can't worship man's so-called
free will. We worship the God who has His
will over everything. among the armies of heaven and
among the inhabitants of the earth. Our Lord says, lo, I come to do thy will, O God. Lo, I
come. All hope is not lost. Lo, I come. There's the Savior. In the Old Testament, Christ
is referred to by many titles, the Anointed of the Lord, the
King, David's Lord, the Child Born, the Son Given, the Mighty
God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, God's Servant
Whom He Upholds, the Branch, the Lord Our Righteousness, the
Messenger of the Covenant, and many more titles as well. But
never, never is it even hinted at that he might fail. That's the most, one of the most
ungodly things I've ever heard anybody say. That he can't do,
Christ can't do what he wants to do. That makes the sinner
God. We're not gods. We're not going
to be gods in eternity. We're not going to be deities,
and we're certainly not deities now. The Lord reigns forever and ever.
And then the last thing I want to say is Christ, when he came,
would perfectly accomplish the will of God. He said, I delight
to do thy will. It was his joy. He perfectly performed all the
precepts of God's revealed will. He freely yielded himself to
perform the work of redemption, and he rendered full satisfaction
and propitiation to justice. He paid our debt, and God was
satisfied. How do you know? An empty tomb
tells us that. and see Him out there with His
disciples, and He begins to ascend into heaven. The fact that He
ascended back to glory, that's evidence that God accepted His
sacrifice. And when God said, Sit here upon
the throne at My right hand till I make all your enemies your
footstool, that's evidence that He was successful, that He's
exalted. his work of redemption, he accomplished
our complete salvation. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. And some people say, well, that's
too simple, and surely man has to do something. I'll tell you
what has to happen. The Spirit of God has to work
in the heart, and then we will turn from every wicked, ungodly
way of the imagination regarding salvation, and we'll turn to
Christ, because the Lord does His work in us. Okay, let's sing
closing song. Be thou my vision, three,