If you will turn with me this
afternoon to Matthew's Gospel, chapter 22, and we'll read our
passage of Scripture this afternoon. Matthew 22 and verse 42. May the Lord bless the reading
of the Scripture. While the Pharisees were gathered
together Jesus answered them, saying, What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he? They said unto
him, Son of David. He saith unto them, How then
doth David in the Spirit call him Lord? Saying, The Lord said
unto my Lord, Set thou on my right hand, until I make thy
enemies thy footstool. If David then call him Lord,
how is it he is his son? And no man was able to answer
him a word, neither does any man from that day forth ask him
any more questions. This afternoon, I want to speak
on that subject that is brought to us in the word of God, and
that is What think ye of Christ? Through the years we've heard
a message or so on this particular text. This particular question,
I believe, is a question that every child of God has dealt
with. It's not a subject, it's not
a question that we will dodge. It's a question that we're willing
and able to answer out quickly. It reminds me of years that's
passed when we were all in a grade school class and how it was a
form of teaching. The teacher would ask a question
and then the first one to raise their hand would have the opportunity
to ask the question. None of the answers were really
true or accurate and that was the form of teaching because
When the student would answer the question, maybe one part
of it or two parts of it, then the teacher would have an opportunity
to go through the answer of the student and give them a more
satisfactory answer. When it comes to the faith of
our Lord Jesus Christ, it is something that every child of
God is ready to raise his hand. He is ready to defend the faith
that he has in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's something that we're
eager to do, because when God speaks life into our hearts,
it is something that we are bubbled up inside, wanting to witness
of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because we know where
we've come from, We know of the destruction that we have passed
by. And now, since God, since the
Lord has come to live within us, now we're ready, we're willing,
and not only willing, but anxious to give an answer of the faith
of Jesus Christ. This afternoon, I want to speak
to you on that very subject. It's a subject that makes us
feel good inside, because within every heart of every child of
God there is a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ. And today,
if there's not a witness within our hearts of the love of God
in Christ Jesus, then know, probably so, there's no life within you
today. There is a song that we sang
here, and we sang it quite often, and it's entitled, More, More
About Jesus, and it goes like this. More about Jesus would
I know, more of his grace to others show. More of his saving
fullness see, more of his love who died for me. More about Jesus
let me learn, more of his love his holy will discern. Spirit of God, my teacher be,
showing the things of Christ to me. There's a pronoun that's
used, and it's me in this song. the whole song is about Jesus
and me. The relationship that we have
with Christ is a personal one. It's not a collective one. It's
not a lack of the church, but it's a personal relationship
that we have with the Lord of glory. That is what gets us through
the darkest hours That is what brings us through every tragedy
in our lives. That is what causes us to have
a joy deep down into our souls. This song, I believe, speaks
about what it is and what we think of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord is precious to the child
of God, and he lives knowing that Christ's word and his sacrifice
that is all important in our life. You see, there's a creed
within our hearts, there's a creed within our souls, and it's all
about what God has accomplished for us. We have many things to
enjoy in this life, You have your families, you have your
jobs, you have your vacations to look forward to, and just
days to come. But you know, the greatest joy
that we'll ever have is knowing God, to know the Lord, to know
that our hearts are secure in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. not something that I've built,
not something that you have tattered together with even a needle or
a thread, but something that has been made for you, that has
been made sufficient for you, that has a foundation that will
never crumble, something that will stand through every storm,
through every storm of life, it will stand firm and it will
be there forever. We have another A verse in the
scripture that says, I dare not trust, or the song, I dare not
trust the sweetest praying, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. No other sound gives the child
of God more hope than knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. We have in our life so many things
that we get involved in, so many things that work, play. The greatest
joy for a child of God is to talk about His love for Almighty
God through Christ. And why is it so? It's so because
we have received the work of Christ. We have received the
ransom purchase of Jesus Christ. We benefit. We are the beneficiaries
of the death of Christ Jesus. Christ died for his people. But more than ever, he died for
me. He died for you in particular. Not collectively, but for you
as an individual. And there it gives us hope. gives
us great joy. Without this joy, without this
hope this morning, we have no hope in this life. It will be
a tireless life and little to look forward to. But in God,
in Christ, in knowing that our salvation is secure in Him, that
we shall be with Him in days to come, gives us great liberty. in this life. This world has
little to offer us. Most of us here today have been
here a few days. We've gone through grammar school
and high school and college. We've gone through two or three
different careers. And now in the last parts of
our life, we look back and I ask myself the question, what is
it? What is it? that this world has
offered me? What has all of the companies
that I've worked for given me? What is it that my neighbors
has afforded me? What is it that my best of friends
have given me? The answer is little or nothing
in this life. If all that you ever have is
in this life, you have nothing. You have little, you have nothing
if you don't have God. If you don't have Him, we have
little or no satisfaction. First of all, I'm thinking now
about what you think of Christ. And my first point this afternoon,
and I do have three, the first one is, what do you think about
the person of Christ? Whose son is he? This is the
question our Lord put to the Pharisees in the words in our
text. But it's a question that I put
to you today. What do you think of the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ? Once again, years ago, I remember
we were asked to go home and to write on paper what we believe. what we believe to be true of
Almighty God, just in order to put things on paper. And I have
found it so. To speak is to one thing, but
to write is something else. And when you receive a letter
from a friend, when you read the words from his hand, you
get more of perspective of who that person is. Our Lord Jesus
Christ, is the Lord of Glory in our life. This truth has been
communicated to us today, and I want to speak more about that.
No one that has ever partaken of the Spirit of God will speak
lightly of Him. In this day and time, people
use the name of Jesus Christ too lightly. We use the name
God too lightly. It is the eternal heavenly Father
that we speak of. And when we speak of Jesus Christ,
we may even use the term the Lord Jesus Christ, my Lord, full,
full description of who Christ is. But in this day and time,
we use it too lightly. But for every child of God today,
we speak up without hesitation and we say with a clear voice,
as those of old who did, thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God. I think of all the denominations. I think of all the churches.
I think of all of the millions of people today who profess to
be children of God. And I ask this question to them
today. I ask this question to you. What do you think of the person
of Jesus Christ? Whose son is he? If Jesus Christ
is not the very God of very God, then why should I preach another
sermon for it would be not a gospel. It would only be a system of
moral ethics and philosophy. It is the divinity of our Lord
that gives the sanction to the death of our Lord Jesus Christ
and makes him such a high priest as becoming us one who, by his
infinite mercy of his sacrifice, could make a full and perfect
sacrifice to an infinite and offended God. But if Jesus Christ
be no more than a mere man, if He be not truly God, we might
say He might be the most violent sinner that ever appeared in
the world. For He accepted the divine adoration
from the man who had been born blind, as we can read in John
9, verse 38. And he said, Lord, I believe,
and he worshiped him. Those who know Christ have a
witness concerning his divinity. It is his divinity that is the
foundation of the person of Jesus Christ. Besides, if Christ be
not properly God, Our faith is in vain. We are yet in our sins,
for no creature, being through the highest order, could possibly
merit anything of God's hands. In this day and time, we have
a faith that is not a faith of Almighty God. It is a faith that
we put together all by ourselves. Men today believe but yet they
have no understanding of who the person of Jesus Christ is. We cannot believe upon the Lord
Jesus Christ unless we know who he is, that he is the Son of
God and that he is God himself. The scripture says that he was
in the form of God, that in him dwelleth the fullness of the
Godhead. When our Lord Jesus Christ walked
on this earth, He was God. He was fully God. The Spirit,
the Father, and the Son is manifested wherever the Lord Jesus Christ
was. Not one time will you find in
the Scripture a separation of the Son and then the Father and
the Spirit. They are always accompanied in
the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ assumed
that title before Abraham was I Am. And again, I Am, I Am,
the Father, our One. He is one with the Father. He
is the God-man. He is both God and man. But secondly, what do you think
of the manhood and the incarnation of Jesus Christ? For Christ was
not only God, but he was God and man in the same person. Many times we'll find the neighbor
a friend who believes in God, but they don't believe that he
was God and man. There's a separation there. Yes,
he was this, but he was that at this time. We believe that
Christ was fully God at all times and had all the power of his
father. They said unto him, the son of
David. That was the answer of the Pharisees. That was the best that they could
come up with. They knew that he was from the
tribe of Judah. They knew that he was from the
house of David. So they answered the question
like that. He was a son of David, but The
son of David is a descriptive term of our Lord, but it doesn't
speak as clear as we want to be clear today. Yes, he was a
son of David, but yet the Lord was David's Lord. He was the
son of David, but yet he was David's heavenly redeemer. And that is a particular mark
that we want to make clear. And then I'd like for you to
say, thank with me this afternoon. And that what do you think of
Christ and the love of Christ? Do you not think it is wondrous
that love that Christ has for us, especially when we consider
that we were Christ's bitter enemies at one time and that
he would have been infinitely happy if we had, if we wouldn't
even a part of it, not withstanding we had perished before. We are sinners, but we have Christ
and we have his love. This love, the scripture says,
restrains us. I thought of an illustration
of the love that Christ has for us, and that would be a family. I'm looking at a family, a father,
And let's say that the father has five sons. Each son is loved
of the father. But there's one son, we'll call
him the youngest son. And my question to you is this,
how much concern to the youngest son is how much concern do the
younger son have concerning the love that the father has for
the other four? Do you think he spends much time
trying to figure out how much his father loves his four brothers? I think not. I think that the
only thing that captivates his mind and heart is how much my
father loves me. That is the factor of the love
that Christ has for us. It is a desire within every one
of our hearts as children of God to know more of the love
of God for us in Christ Jesus. I know today that God loves you
as his children, but I must tell you that the love that God has
for me is completely different from that that he has for you. Because the love that God has
for each one of his children is completely different. It's
like the love that you have for your own children. You love them
all. But if you were honest with me,
you would have to say in a quiet voice, there's one, there's one,
one child that has won my heart and soul. And that is the illustration
that I want you to think about now. When it comes to the love
of Christ for you, you have a special place in the heart, in the life
of God, and in the work of Christ in your life. It is this love
that God has for you that causes you to believe and to trust and
rely upon the finished work of His work on the cross. That love
of God is something that carries us through every day. As the
love of a father for a son, it will carry every boy through
every day. And I think today the greatest
gift that God gives us is to feel and to experience that special
love that God has for us as his sons. Thirdly, I would have you
to look and to think with me concerning what you think of
the being justified by Christ. In this day and time, Justification
is not a top priority in the preaching, in the pulpits in
this country. Everyone has some general idea
of what it is to be justified. I feel that I can speak for so
many because my heart is riddled with the same thought. You know,
we're all not all together unprofitable in our own mind. But the scripture
says that we are unprofitable. That all of our righteousness
is as filthy rags. And there is nothing that I can
ever do to earn than to receive the grace of Almighty God. There
is nothing good. All that you see and all that
you hear and all that will ever come from me will be the worst
filth of this world. Because this flesh will never
be converted in this life. only death will take care of
this flesh and bring us unto God. This morning I would have
you to know that being justified by Christ is a work that is wholly
of God. There's nothing that I can stop
doing today to be justified. There's nothing that I can do.
I can't move. I can't change jobs. I can't
change friends to be justified before God. There's nothing that
I can do to enhance my position before Almighty God. It's the
work of God in the work of Christ on the cross of Calvary. It's
what Christ has done for me. It's what Christ has done for
you. And it's what Christ will do
for others. when God comes and reveals Himself
to His children, we'll come to know that special love of God,
and we'll come to know what it is to be justified, to be cleansed,
to be set free of all of our sins. Not that you'll not sin
again, but you'll be free of them. You'll be reckoned to be
righteous before Almighty God. May God bless the thought this
day. Those who feel that they can
do something and let Christ make up the rest will find that they
are mistaken in days to come. They forget that God is a consuming
fire and that when we stand before God, we stand before Him without
anything, without any of our filthy righteousness in this
life. regardless of what we become,
whatever profession we take up on ourselves, it will not enhance
us before Almighty God. We stand before God in the days
to come, and there will only be one question asked, who represents
this one before the throne of God? and our Lord will speak
for us and that we are His. And we wear the robe of our Lord
Jesus Christ. We wear the same righteousness
of Christ before Almighty God. We have nothing to bring before
Him. We have nothing but disgust and
sin in this life. We need someone to bear our witness
for us before God. The scripture says, the life
that I now live in the flesh, says the apostle, is the faith
of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Does
it speak to you today of what that means? The life which I
now live in the flesh is the faith of the Son of God? That
is all that we need in this life. All we need is to have the faith
of Jesus Christ in our life. The life which I now live in
the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son
of God who loved me and gave himself for me. It's not my life. It's His life that is betrayed
before God. That is the life that God looks
upon. He doesn't look upon you going
to work or what job you do or how good you are at it. He looks
upon us today, upon how we are with Jesus Christ. That's the
only thing that God can see within us today. It gives us great hope
today because we know that even though I can't be perfect, yet
He is. He shall be, and He shall be
there evermore. I can be faithful to you for
a period of time, but my resources may be diminished. I may not
be able to continue to be faithful to you in days to come. A wife,
a husband, they get married and they're faithful to each other.
And that faithfulness is bound by love between the one and the
other. Today, what we have is all of
God and it's not any of ourselves. The faith we have is not my faith,
it is the faith that I have inherited from Almighty God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. I have one more thing that I'd
like to speak to you about. It's a passage of scripture.
Justification is called by some as the wholesome doctrine of
the scripture. Why would you think they would
call justification the wholesome doctrine of the scripture. Because this one doctrine is
the summation of who Christ is to us. He is our justification. He is even our sanctification. I remember so many years ago,
I heard the word sanctification for the very first time. It was
a long word in the scripture and I had little understanding
of what it meant. And for many years I thought
it was my faith that I had in this life. But my sanctification
is not my works in this life. My sanctification is that which
is Christ. It's his life. It's his merit. It's his finish work for me. The scripture says, oh, everyone
that thirst, come unto me, come unto the waters of life and drink
freely. Come and buy without money and
without price. Behold this morning, the fountain
that I speak of that is so precious is the fountain and the side
of our Lord Jesus Christ. The fountain that every child
of God is eager to rush underneath is the bleeding side of our Lord
Jesus Christ. It's not of this world, it's
of God. It's of the Spirit this morning.
And to everyone that finds his way under the bleeding side of
our Lord Jesus Christ and is washed and is cleansed by the
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, you're justified and you're sanctified
in knowing Him. Look unto Him whom we have pierced. It was my sins that opened the
side of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was my sins that caused the
blood to flow from his side. It was my sins that nailed him
to the cross. It was my sins that took his
life on the cross of Calvary. Every child of God should focus
our hearts and our minds upon the passion of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Because when we have the Lord's
Supper, we take within our hand the wafer that represents the
bread, which represents the body, the broken body of our Lord Jesus
Christ. And then we take the wine that
represents that blood, that shed from the side of our Lord Jesus
Christ. These two brought together, the
broken body and the blood of Christ, represents my justification,
represents my sanctification, represents my life, my hope before
Almighty God. All the things of this life are
all gonna pass away. All of my friends are gonna pass
away. All of my neighbors are gonna
pass away. All of my jobs are all gonna
pass away. Our mothers and fathers will
all pass away. All of our brothers and sisters
will soon pass all away. And we'll be left, left without
anything in this world. But if we have Christ, we have
everything that our minds and hearts can desire. I think of Naaman when Naaman
was cleansed of leprosy. When he looked down and found
his body clean without leprosy, do you think that there was joy
in his heart and soul? When I think of the woman with
the issue of blood, when our Lord healed her, do you think
that she looked upon her body with great joy and amazement? Do you not see today that if
we see ourselves as we really are, filled with symbolic leprosy,
filled symbolically with an issue of blood, and we look upon ourselves
today, and we see someone that God looks upon as white and clean
and righteous before Almighty God, does not this cause you
to give praise unto your Lord and Savior, knowing that it was
He, not you, His work, not yours, that has brought you into the
faith of Jesus Christ. This is what it is to be a Christian. This is what it is to believe
and trust God. This is something we commend
to all that hear us. It is the witness of our hearts,
our souls, that all that we love might know Him and see the grace
of God as God has revealed it to us. May God bless you. May God richly bless you today. May God open blind eyes. May God open our hearts to receive
the grace that is in Him. In Jesus' name, amen.