Thank you, Susanna. That is a
great, great hymn. It has such beautiful words. Thank you for that. Go with me
now back to Zechariah chapter 5. My subject is the curse and
wickedness. Talk about the curse, that's
the first vision in Zechariah chapter 5, and then Wickedness. Wickedness. Let me begin the
message this way. The scripture says, all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now, understand this. The God
of the Bible has two ways of dealing with sin. Number one, the method of judgment. upon a substitute. It's beautifully set forth here
in this book of Zechariah back in chapter number three. And if you'll look there with
me in chapter number three, Joshua stands before the Lord in filthy
garments. He represents a sinner All have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. And here's a guilty
sinner standing before the Lord. Now, the issue is not, is he
guilty? He is guilty. Because you'll
read there in chapter 3 and verse 3, Joshua was clothed with filthy
garments. He stood before the angel. That
is the angel of the Lord, is the angel of the covenant. that
is our Lord Jesus Christ. He stands there guilty. There
is no question about His guilt. There is no question about His
sinfulness. He represents all of those who
are brought by the grace of God to in time believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. But as far as Joshua is concerned,
and for all of the Lord's people, God dealt with the iniquities
of Joshua in a just way. Know this, whatever God does
with you and me regarding our guilt and our sin and our wickedness,
it will always be according to the standard of justice. Absolute justice. He won't compromise
His justice. Here's Joshua standing before
the Lord. He's guilty. The Word of God
says he's standing there in his filthy garments. But this is
what the Lord did for him. Look in verse 4. And he answered
and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away
the filthy garments from him. Take the guilt, take the sin,
take the iniquity from him. And he said unto him, Behold,
now this is what's amazing. It's the reason there's the word
behold here. Here's what's astounding. I have
caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with the
change of Raymond. Well, who did the iniquity pass
to? It passed to his substitute.
See, this is how sinners are saved. They're saved by the substitutionary
sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. I've caused your iniquity, Joshua,
to pass from you. Well, who did it pass to? Who
bore his iniquities? Who bore his sins? For you and
me, our guilt is unquestionable. Beyond doubt, the Word of God
tells us. We're guilty. I began all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. Well, how can God
in justice ever receive us, forgive us, and save us? He causes our
guilt, our sin, our iniquities to pass from us to another, a
worthy substitute. That's our Lord Jesus Christ. and He bore the burden of our
guilt. And when the Lord Jesus hung
upon the cross of Calvary, bearing our sins, our transgressions,
our guilt, our iniquities, in His own body on the tree, the
wrath of God took dead aim at His heart, and the wrath of God
punished him, and those in whose stead he was punished have to
go free." That's how God deals in justice with the sins of His
people. And as for us, He gives us a
change of arraignment just like He did to Joshua. You notice the last statement
there, verse 4, and I will clothe thee with the change of Raymond. Our unrighteousness goes over
to Christ. And the righteousness that Christ
established for us by His obedience unto and including His death,
that righteousness He established for us comes over to us. And so God looks at us and in
us He sees no sin. He sees no unrighteousness. He
sees no guilt. Why not? Because it passed from
us to the substitute. That's why
Zacharias says this. Look a little further in this
passage in verse number 9 of chapter 3. The last statement,
and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day. Well,
you know what day that was. That was the day of the death
of the Lord Jesus in the stead of His people. And when our Lord Jesus died,
He removed our iniquity. They had already been taken off
of us and put on Him. Then when he satisfied God's
judgment in his death, then he put our sins away into a land
uninhabited, that is, behind God's back. He buried them in
the depths of the deepest sea. The Lord has all sorts of ways
of describing this full and free forgiveness of our sins. And
God says, therefore, I will remember your iniquities and sins no more. That's God's method of dealing
with sin in a just way, dealing with it
by substitute. But there's another way that
he deals with sin, and it's the method of judgment upon the individual
sinner. If you are so wedded to your
sin, and you will not run to Jesus Christ for salvation, perhaps
in your own mind you think, well, I'm not too bad. I think there
are a lot of people worse than I am. And others need this Savior. Others need this salvation you're
talking about, Jim. But I'm really a pretty good
person. And I think I'll just take my
chances standing before God. I believe my good deeds will
outweigh my bad deeds. My friend, you're so wrapped
up in yourself. You have no awareness of your
guilt before God. Because sin, sin not only is
the wicked things that people do, but it's also, and this is
a terrible sin, it's also the feeling of self-righteousness
that you in and of yourself can make yourself presentable to
God. Impossible. In fact, that attitude
of self-righteousness, I tell you what, that'll merit you.
it'll merit you everlasting torment. Because if you dare to put your
righteousness alongside of the righteousness of Jesus Christ,
and you say in your heart, I think I'm good enough. You're in great trouble. You're
a fool. You're a fool. Learn this. God's gonna deal
with your sins. It's just no question about that.
Now, if he dealt with your sins in the Lord Jesus, those sins
are put away, and the Spirit of God will make you aware of
that. He will teach you that, and He'll cause you to come to
the Lord Jesus Christ in faith and say, Be merciful to me, I'm
the sinner! And you'll find out He's already
been merciful to you. He's sent a Savior for you. But
if you go through life in your arrogance and in your stubbornness,
maybe you say, well, religion is good for the rest of the folks
here, but not for me. Or maybe you're watching this
morning and you say, hey, if you want to do this, preacher,
that's fine. If you want to believe that way,
fine. But I like to say, I'll take my chances at the judgment.
You're an absolute fool. You're a fool. And God's going
to deal with your sins. He has to because He's a God
of justice. A God of justice. And the two
visions that Ron read to us. In chapter 5 of Zechariah, we
see God dealing with the wicked. With those who persist in unbelief. We see God dealing with them
in the strictest of justice. First of all, there's the vision
of the flying roll. It's a very large roll, 30 feet
long, 15 feet wide, flies across the face to the earth, and it's
open. It's like a great banner. Maybe you've seen, I've seen
on television, if you've been to the beach, you'll see a plane
going across, has a big banner flying behind it, got some message
that they're advertising a restaurant or a resort or whatever it is.
Well, Zechariah, he's amazed. He sees this banner going across,
not merely across Jerusalem, But he sees it in this vision
going around the world. And it's open. 30 feet long,
15 feet wide. And everybody sees it. And it
goes everywhere. And it's got writing on it, writing
on both sides. And it represents the law of
God and its curse. Because you see, the law of God
says, Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things
that are written in the law to do them. And if you this morning
are endeavoring to satisfy God, to please God, to honor God by
your life, thinking, well, the Lord's going to reward me for
my endeavors of obedience, my effort toward pleasing Him, the
law of God places you under a curse. And here's the thing about this
role, it goes everywhere. The Bible says we are all under
the law by nature. And the law condemns us. The
law examines you. It examines me. It examines our
thoughts, our motives, our imaginations, our dreams, our words, our actions,
everything about us. And the Law of God written on
both sides of that roll. Here's what it is. It's the very scroll of God's
Law. It's a scroll. And it judges you. The Lord said to the Jews, He
said, don't think I'm going to judge you. He said, Moses is
going to judge you. That law that you trust, you
say, well, I'm living by the law. That's what's going to judge
you. See, nobody else is going to pronounce any kind of judgment
against you. The law of God has examined you
already. And Romans 3 says, it's found
us all guilty. And one of the most difficult
things for any of us to acknowledge is our guilt before God. Man
is so arrogant, and so very proud, and so very righteousness, that
he would rather go to hell than face God and say, I'm guilty,
show me mercy. Well, that's the height of arrogance.
But you'll admit your guilt, or you'll die in your sins. You see, you're a sinner. Me
too. Not because we feel like it,
but because God says we are. Note the size of this again.
It's 30 by 15. 30 feet long, 15 feet wide. The exact measurements of the
porch of Solomon's temple, where people came to worship God. exactly
the size. But something else, exactly the
size, we've studied about the tabernacle, the holy place, the
holy place that had the table of showbread, the altar of incense,
and over here the golden lampstand, 30 by 15. 30 by 15. What's the teaching here, Jim? If you go worship God, See, it's
like somebody comes to Solomon's porch and will go in and worship
God. If you're going to worship God, you've got to understand
this. If you come to God on the basis
of your own works, your deeds, your thoughts, your perceived
goodness, you'll never enter in. But if you approach God on the
basis of a perfection and a righteousness that's already been established
by the Lord Jesus Christ, come on in. Come on in. There's no acceptance with God
apart from perception. People think, well, you know,
God's a forgiving God. Well, He does forgive sin, but
in a righteous way. And He doesn't just erase it.
Well, we'll pretend that never happened. He deals with it in
the strictest of justice. When you read of the Lord Jesus
dying on the cross for sinners, know this, God spared not His
Son. All the hell, all the fury, all
the vengeance of God met in the heart of the Son of God. There's
nothing pleasant about his death, nothing sweet about his death
in the sense of, well, he was so peaceful. He didn't die a
peaceful death. It was a violent death. Bloody
death. An agonizing death. Because that's
what God's justice demands. Oh, if you could see that. Preacher, what is it going to
take to put my sin away? It took the death of the Son
of God. My soul, if that ever get a hold
of you, if it ever get a hold of me, we'd never be the same. We'd be rejoicing in Christ Jesus,
our substitute and Savior, every day. Every day. He is the Lord, our righteousness. And you see, here's what Zechariah
is told by the angel in verse 3. This is the curse. Hear me,
somebody's going to be cursed on account of our sin. Somebody's
going to bear the curse of God's wrath. The curse of God's law. I don't care who you are. You
say, I live a good life and so forth and so on. You die without
Christ, you're going to bear the curse. And you'll bear it
forever. But I'm here to tell you Christ
Jesus bore the curse of God's broken law for a multitude of
sinners. He was cursed. God's law found
our sins on Him and cursed Him. Curse the Holy One. Why, oh why, God, did you strike
out against your Son? Because I have laid on Him the
iniquity of all of my people. and I can't spare him anything. When Judas died and went to hell,
you think God spared him judgment and justice and wrath? No. But he can't ever pay his debt
that he owes to God. You see, that's why hell's forever. The Lord Jesus took the guilt
of all of His sins upon Himself. God didn't take it easy on Him. All of hell poured into His heart. God didn't take it easy on Him. And He drank, the Bible says,
the cup of God's indignation, and He drank it dry. Not one drop remains for all
those in whose stead He died. But if you die in unbelief, and
let me just warn you one more time, you die without Christ. The law of God that cursed that
Savior, the same law of God is going to curse you. In fact,
you're under the curse now. and you'll be under the curse
forever. Jim, you're trying to scare us? I wish I could scare
you a little bit. You don't have any idea who you're
dealing with. The second vision, the vision
of the basket with the woman inside. Zechariah has shown an ephah,
The IFA was the largest basket to carry corn and wheat and barley,
things like that. It was the largest thing they
had to measure for dry measurement. It was like a basket. Imagine
in your mind a huge, huge basket. And this basket, it goes forth
across the world just like that flying roll. goes across the
world. Look at verse 5. The angel that
talked with him, the Christ who talked with him, he went forth
and he said unto me, lift up your eyes and see what this is
that goes forth. Here's something else going forth.
And Zechariah said, what is it? He said, this is an ephah, this
is a basket. It's a basket that goeth forth.
This goes forth. And he said, moreover, this is
their resemblance through all the earth. This is what everybody
is eventually going to see, that God measures sin. God measures wickedness. You remember when the Lord was
speaking to Abraham and he talked about the Amorites and he said
that the basket or the vessel is not yet full. It's a basket
of wickedness. It's not yet full. Said their
iniquities not filled up yet. Not time to judge them yet. Our Lord, speaking to the Pharisees
in the New Testament, He said, fill ye up the measure of your
fathers. In other words, think of this
big basket. He says, you go ahead and fill
up the measure of wickedness, you're not there yet. See, God
has judged already and He has determined, that's a better word,
God has determined and appointed the measurement of wrath that
you will commit and then your end is going to come. He's already
measured it out. And He says to the Jews in His
time, fill ye up the measure of your fathers. You're not there
yet. Fill it up. And they would. because
they're gonna kill the Son of God. That'll fill it up. That'll fill it up. So here's
this large basket. And Zacharias sees it. It's going
forth throughout the world. And it has a lid. That's what
he means here in verse eight. He cast the weight of lead upon
the mouth of that 125 pound lead, a top, that sat down on the basket. And the Lord lifted that lead
off of the basket, and inside there was a woman on the inside. Verse 7, again. And behold, there
was lifted up a talent of lead. And this is a woman that sits
in the middle of the ephah. Sits in the middle of the basket.
Got this in your mind? Can you get the picture of it?
Here's this huge basket. And inside's a woman. And the
Lord lifts the lead off of it, which is made of lead. Say that
quickly. Lead, lead. He lifts that off. And Zechariah sees that woman
in there. And then the lid's put back down. The woman. Who is the woman? Well, look at verse 8. She is the personification of
wickedness. And the Lord said, He says, this
is wickedness. Why do you think He chose a woman?
Perhaps, and I'll have more to say about this next Lord's Day
morning, perhaps because it was a woman who first sinned, who
first transgressed God's law. But this woman, sitting in the
middle of the basket, She is the personification of
evil, wickedness, and guilt. And then he says, I lifted up
mine eyes, look down at verse 9. I looked, here came two women. The wind was with their wings.
And they had wings as it were the wings of a stork, very powerful. Two angels, I suppose. Not exact sure who these two
women could represent, but perhaps angels. They're very powerful. And there's the basket. There's
the woman inside. There's the lid. And one on one side, one on another.
They take that basket way up in the air. And they carry it into the land
of verse 11, to build it a house in the land of Shinar in Babylon. And it shall be established and
set there or fixed there upon its base. You got the picture in your mind.
Now, let me tell you something. In many ways, that woman inside
the basket That picture is us. Because we are pure wickedness.
I'm telling you. We're pure evil. We're sin. We're sin without,
we're sin within. And we're held in this massive
basket of the law of God. And the justice of God, like
a lid, comes down upon us. You can't get out. Oh, let me
tell you, you and I are in such an awful condition of sin and
misery and wickedness, we can't get out! The lead's too heavy! It's immovable for us! But let me tell you what Christ
did for His people. He took the lead off. And He took the wickedness to
Himself. And He died upon the cross of
Calvary and paid our sin debt. And we go free. And you see, God says that basket,
it goes around the world. And it makes this announcement.
Unless my Son sets you free, there's no hope for you. Oh,
hear me well. Your life, your salvation, your
righteousness, the forgiveness of your sins is dependent upon
Christ Jesus lifting that lid off and pulling you to safety. May He be pleased to do that
for you for the glory of His grace. And may God put within
our hearts a desire for this great Savior. Lord, save me or
I'll perish. The law has me. And I'm guilty
as charged. I'm guilty. I got no hope. The basket's gonna carry me away
out to Shinar, out to Babylon. I'll be in captivity in God's
hell forever and ever. Oh Lord, you're my only hope. Do you see how the Word of God
shuts us up to Jesus Christ always? I'll have more to say about this
woman next Lord's Day. God willing. Let's get our psalm books. We'll
sing one stanza, 449.