Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'm going to be preaching from the Old Testament
book, the prophet Isaiah chapter 42, Isaiah chapter 42. And the
title of the message is Christ Cannot Fail. Christ Cannot Fail. This is a prophecy of the Lord
Jesus Christ, what Isaiah is preaching here. And I've talked
about this in all these messages, how Isaiah was a prophet who
told the truth. He was God's prophet who had
a message from God for the people of Jerusalem and the southern
kingdom of Judah. And it was a message of divine
judgment. that God was going to bring judgment
upon the people for their sins. And he mainly, one of the things
that he mainly spoke of was the judgment of the Northern Kingdom
because of their sins, that God was going to destroy them by
using the Assyrian army, a foreign idolatrous nation, empire, the
Assyrians, and he was going to destroy the northern kingdom
and scatter them throughout the world, throughout the known world
in that day. But he also preached judgment
that was coming, impending doom, upon Jerusalem in the southern
kingdom. That would come later on under
the prophecy of Jeremiah. And at the end of Jeremiah's
prophecy, that's when Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army came
in and destroyed Jerusalem and destroyed the temple and took
the people away to Babylon in captivity. And as I said in another
message, that was the end of the state of Israel at that time.
and they never were established as a sovereign state again, because
even when they brought back out of captivity, after being in
captivity 70 years, they were under foreign rule, idolatrous
rule actually, until they were destroyed in AD 70 period. Well, amidst all of these judgments
that Isaiah was prophesying, he pointed the people to the
promised Messiah for eternal salvation and eternal life. And
what he was saying is basically this, folks, salvation is not
in a physical human nation. Our hope is not in a physical
Israel. You know, a lot of people today
kind of think that, you know, you look to the nation Israel
as it is established today and that's our hope. That's not our
hope. Now they are our allies and we ought to defend them as
we would any nation who's in the cause of justice and right. But as far as salvation goes,
there's nothing connected in the Bible with that nation as
it is established now. Now it was for a time, there
was about 1,500 years under the old covenant law that the nation
Israel had some significance as far as eternal life in this
sense alone. That was the nation through which
the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ was to come, specifically of
the tribe of Judah. And it's amazing how even in
their captivity in Babylon, God kept the tribe of Judah intact
until the Messiah came. Because he was made of the seed,
he was a made of Judah, the made of the seed of David, all of
that in his humanity. So understand that. Well, here
in this passage, listen to what the prophet says concerning the
Messiah. Now that's who he's talking about
here. And he says in verse one, behold my servant whom I uphold. Now this is talking about the
covenant relationship of the Godhead and the father and the
son. And Christ here is called the servant of the covenant.
And he was the servant of the covenant. Christ had many identifications. He's the king, the king of kings. He's the servant of the covenant. He's the son of God. He's the
son of man. He's all of those things. You
see, he's a multifaceted person. who did a great work of accomplishment
to save his people from their sins and to bring forth a righteousness
by which God was just to justify them. And in his humanity, he
experienced all the weaknesses, all the infirmities of human
nature, except for one main important truth. He was totally and completely
without sin. Now, human nature, you know,
when we talk about humanity, when we talk about us, we are
fallen in Adam. We're born spiritually dead in
trespasses and sins. We're full of sin, sinful thoughts,
sinful ideas, sinful motives, sinful goals. But Christ in His
humanity was not born of Adam, he was born of the woman, Mary,
but he was conceived in her womb by the Holy Spirit, his humanity
was, his human nature, body and soul. And he came forth from
the womb perfect. He had no sin, he knew no sin.
And he was and is impeccable, which means he had no possibility
to commit sin. He's God manifest in the flesh. But He came into the world to
serve, to serve the covenant that He had made with His Father
to save His people from their sins. And in His humanity, both
the Father and the Holy Spirit and the deity of Christ upheld
Him. All that, you remember in the
Garden of Gethsemane when He was experiencing the suffering,
beginning to experience physical suffering. He said, Father, if
it be possible, let this cup pass from me. He wasn't shirking
his responsibility or asking to get out of what he promised
to do. He was simply praying to his Father, help me get through
this in his humanity. And the Father helped him. He
was sweating great drops of blood in the garden and then went to
the cross. And he said, Father, in thy hands
I commend my spirit. So behold my servant, God says,
whom I uphold, mine elect. You know, when we talk about
election in the Bible, and I know people don't like to hear this,
but you're talking about God's chosen people whom he chose and
gave to Christ before the world began. That's the elect. That's
the ones whom Christ come to die for. He redeemed them. And
that's the ones who will be brought under the gospel and hear it
and believe. You see, those who don't believe,
they're not elect, they're reprobate, scripture says. And again, I
know people don't like to hear that, but that's what the Bible
teaches. You can ignore it if you want to, but that's not what
it teaches. That's what it teaches. And so
he says mine elect. Well, Christ was the first chosen. in the everlasting covenant of
grace before the world began. The Father chose the Son, and
that's why we say in order to save sinners from their sins,
there has to be a God-appointed, able, and willing substitute. And the only one who fits all
three, appointed by God, able to save, and willing, is Christ. No other person. No other supposed
Messiah. Buddha couldn't answer that.
Mohammed couldn't answer that. None of them could. Christ is
God manifest in the flesh. He was appointed by God before
the world began. The scripture tells us that.
Paul spoke of it in 2 Timothy chapter one, how we are, if we're
saved, we're the product of a salvation that was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began. He was appointed by God. Secondly,
he's able. How is he able? Because he is
not only God, he's also man without sin, the God-man. So he's able
and he's willing. He said that, he said in John
chapter, I think it's chapter six or chapter 10, I can't remember,
but he said, no man takes my life from me, I lay it down of
myself. The Bible says that he, for the
joy that was set before him, endured the suffering of the
cross, and all of that. So he's willing. Well, he says,
my servant whom I uphold, this is Isaiah 42, one, mine elect,
in whom my soul delighteth. God delights in the Son, the
Father delights in the Son, the Spirit delights in the Son. Remember
at His baptism, the Father spoke, said, this is my beloved Son
in whom I'm well pleased. And the Spirit descended in the
form of a dove and put His stamp of approval. He says, I have
put my Spirit upon Him. He shall bring forth judgment
to the Gentiles. Whoa, now wait a minute now. Isaiah? Gentiles? One of the things that got Isaiah
into trouble with unbelieving Jews is because he spoke of the
salvation of Gentiles. And to the unbelieving Jews,
the only way a Gentile had any hope of salvation is that he
must become a Jew first. He must come into the Jewish
religion and be circumcised, the males, and accept all the
traditions and all the laws that they put upon people. But that's
not the way God saves sinners. And that's not the elect of God.
And that's not, listen, that's not what a spiritual Israelite
or Jew is. God chose a people out of every
tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation, we're told in the book of Revelation.
He says it's to the Jews first and to the Greek or the Gentile
also. It came in time to the Jews because they received the
revelation of it, the truth of it first. And then it spread
out. But see, God has a people, Jew
and Gentile, and they are all together make up what the Bible
tells us is a spiritual nation. who inhabit a spiritual city,
the heavenly Jerusalem, and they're known by their faith in Christ,
and their repentance of all that man highly esteems. And so, now how's he gonna bring
forth judgment to the Gentiles? He's gonna bring the gospel to
them. The gospel is the gospel of judgment. In other words,
by nature, as we are naturally born, Our judgment is skewed. It's off. It's wrong. How do
you judge saved and lost, see? You don't know the reality of
what it is to be saved and what it is to be lost until God brings
the gospel to you, how he saves sinners. By nature, you know,
a lot of people would say, well, anybody who's immoral, and who,
like a thief or a robber or a drug pusher or a murderer, now they're
all lost. But anybody who's religious and
sincere and tries to be a good person is saved. Well, that's
wrong judgment. You say, why is that wrong? Well,
because God requires a perfect righteousness, which nobody can
produce, not even by their good works. That's why Christ in the
Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 and verse 20, he said, except
your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes
and the Pharisees, you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom
of heaven. The Bible says that God has appointed
a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by
that man whom he hath appointed, and they have given assurance
unto all men, and he hath raised him from the dead. For God's
people, the Bible says in Romans 10 verse 4, Christ is the end
of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. A
person can go through their life religiously, sincerely, trying
to be the best they can be, but they will still fall short of
the glory of God, the perfection of righteousness that can only
be found in Christ. And when you see that, God has
brought judgment to you. He's equipped your mind and your
heart to see the truth. And look at verse 2. It says,
He shall not cry nor lift up nor cause His voice to be heard
in the street. In other words, that's talking
about Christ and His demeanor. Oh, I know He came through on
the temple and drove out the money changers and all of that.
But his ministry was not coming down out of the clouds on a white
horse, bearing a sword and a shield, and forcing people to bow in
that way. Somebody told me one time, they
said, well, God doesn't force people to believe against their
will. Well, it's against our natural wills, but what God does,
he gives us a new will. God in salvation in the new birth,
he gives us a desire to believe in him. He makes us willing in
the day of his power. Verse three, a bruised reed shall
he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench. He
shall bring forth judgment unto truth. His ministry was preaching
the truth and supporting his authority by the miracles that
he performed. He wasn't like a bloodshedding,
bloodthirsty conqueror, you see. But now here's my point in this
message. Christ can never fail. Verse
four, he shall not fail nor be discouraged, broken, till he
have set judgment in the earth and the isles shall wait for
his law. And the word law there means
his truth, his word. And do you hear that? He shall
not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth.
What does that mean? Till he saves his people all
over this world. He has a people out of every
tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation, and he's gonna save them all,
and he shall not fail nor be discouraged. And what I'm telling
you is this, all whom God chose and gave to him, made him the
surety, the substitute, the redeemer, all for whom he died on that
cross shall be saved. And it's a people out of every
tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. It's not everybody without exception.
Now, people today have the idea, and it's given to them by wrong
teaching and by false preachers, that Christ died for everybody
in the whole world, even those who perish in their sins and
end up in hell, and that the only ones who are saved are the
only ones who will cooperate with Him. And that's not the
case, because the Bible teaches that if left to ourselves, none
of us would cooperate, none of us would believe. That's the
idea that salvation is conditioned on sinners. You know, people
sing that song, Victory in Jesus, and they think that the victory
really has more to do with them than it does Him. I heard a person
say one time, said, well, Christ shall not fail, but we might
fail. Well, that's the problem. The
problem is not that we might fail, we will fail because we're
sinners. Salvation is not conditioned
on you or on me. Salvation is conditioned on Christ
and on Him alone and He fulfilled all the conditions and the requirements
and the stipulations to save His people from their sins and
He shall not fail nor be discouraged. You say, well, what about faith?
Isn't it conditioned on our faith? No. Faith is not the condition
we must muster up within ourselves in order to attain or maintain
salvation. Faith is the gift of God that
comes to God's people through Christ. Ephesians 2, eight and
nine and 10 says this, for by grace are you saved through faith
and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works,
lest any man should boast, for we are his workmanship created
in Christ Jesus unto, not because of, but unto good works, which
God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Do sinners have to believe to
be saved? Yes, but not because their believing
is the seal of it or makes Christ's work successful, because their
believing is the fruit of his successful work. You say, well,
you're just splitting hairs. Well, here's the thing. A Christ
who fails to save any for whom he died is a false Christ. There
was a man, a preacher in Chicago years ago, I think it was even
during the 40s, maybe the 50s, who preached a message in which
he made this statement. He said, hell is a monument to
the failure of God to save those he's trying to save. Well, my
friend, that's not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible
will never fail. If God places the dependency
of salvation on ourselves, sure it would fail. But thank God
he doesn't, or no one would be saved. He shall not fail nor
be discouraged till he hath set judgment in the earth, and that's
the salvation of his people, and the Isles, even Gentiles,
shall wait for his law. God has a people out there. And
we preach, somebody said, well, why don't you just preach to
the other? I don't know who they are until we preach to them and
they believe. God brings them to faith. So he tells us to go
preach to everyone, go into all the world and preach the gospel
to everyone. Anybody who will listen. Isaiah,
he's preaching to the people of Judah, Jerusalem. And he said
in chapter one, He said, if it weren't for a small remnant of
believers, they would all perish just like Sodom and Gomorrah.
When God called Isaiah to preach, he commissioned him to go preach.
And you know what God said to him? He said, they won't hear
you. They're not gonna hear you. They're gonna reject you. All
of that. During the beginnings of the
New Testament church, there were thousands saved. but they were
scattered because of persecution throughout the world. And the
Lord told His disciples that as we neared the end of the new
covenant age, which we're in now, there would be fewer and
fewer. There would be more and more
false Christians, false prophets, but there'd be few and fewer
true preachers, true gospel preachers, and true believers. And so we
see that happening in our day. There's a lot of people who claim
to be Christian, but they don't believe the gospel, the true
gospel. They believe in a salvation by
works. It's just like what I've said about false religion, especially
false Christianity, the two things that kind of, there's a lot of
things that market, that show its failure. But the two things
that are common to all of them is number one, they believe that
salvation is conditioned on sinners in some way, to some degree,
at some stage. You see that in a lot of people
who claim they believe you can be saved by grace, but you can
lose it because of your attitude or behavior. And that's not the
case. Grace saves sinners in the beginning,
in the middle, and in the end, because it's all conditioned
on Christ. So they believe salvation conditioned on sinners, and they
measure righteousness and holiness on a sliding scale by comparing
themselves to each other, rather than on the perfection of righteousness
that can only be found in Christ. If God requires perfect righteousness,
then where does that leave me? It leaves me with no hope of
salvation. but in Christ, the Lord, my righteousness,
who put away my sins by his death on the cross and established
the only righteousness by which God is just to justify me. And
that's why my favorite hymn, and I sing that song, my hope
is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus'
name. on Christ the solid rock I stand,
all other hope is sinking sand. And in the song that we sing,
Nothing But The Blood, one of the verses says, this blood,
this death of Christ, this is all my hope and peace, this is
all my righteousness. You see, we're failures. And
I know people don't wanna hear that. I had a man tell me one
time as he was listening to a good gospel preacher, a true preacher,
and he asked me, he said, would you tell that fellow I'm not
as bad as he says I am? And I told him this, I said,
son, if you believe the word of God, you're worse than what
he's telling you. We just don't know how bad we
are. It's not because of human immorality. The Bible says that
that which is highly esteemed among men, is an abomination
to God. Luke 16, 15. When Cain brought
his offering to worship the Lord, God rejected him. Why? People say, well, it's because
Cain was insincere. You don't know that. I believe
Cain was as sincere as able. But the problem with Cain's offering
was there was no blood. And God had established to Adam
and Eve when He slew animals, death, shed blood, and made coats
of skin, and removed their fig leaf aprons, their own works,
and clothed them in those coats of skin, which was a picture
of the obedience unto death and the righteousness of Christ freely
imputed to God's people. That's how I'm righteous before
God. Christ's righteousness is charged to my account as my sin,
my debt of sin was charged to Him. And He was made sin, the
Bible tells us, for us, for His people. that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him. His righteousness has imputed
us. And I quoted this in a lot of
messages, Romans 4, 6, blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth
righteousness without works. Blessed is the man whom God imputeth
not iniquity. My sin, I'm a sinner, but I'm
saved by grace. That's not an excuse for me to
throw caution to the wind and go out and sin like nothing else. No, I'm to fight sin. I'm to
be a warrior against my own sin. But my friend, I live in the
peace of God that passes understanding, knowing that my sins cannot condemn
me because Christ did not and will never fail. My sins cannot
condemn me because God does not charge them to me. He charged
them to Christ, and He charges me with Christ's righteousness.
How do I know that? Because the Holy Spirit brought
me under the gospel and gave me a spirit of life and brought
me to know and to love and to believe the gospel of Christ,
which tells me that Christ will never fail nor be discouraged. I hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
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today and may the Lord be with you.