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. And if you'd like to follow along
in the message in your Bibles, I'm going to be preaching from
the book of Luke, the gospel of Luke, chapter 24, the last
chapter of the book of Luke. And I have several messages that
I'm going to preach that revolve around the theme of understanding
the Scriptures and how Christ is the central object, subject,
truth of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I'm
going to go to different passages of Scripture in several messages.
Today's message is entitled, Things Concerning Christ. Things Concerning Christ. And
of course, as I've said, I want you to understand that this whole
book, from Genesis to Revelation, is a book of Jesus Christ, which
reveals the truth of the gospel, not just in the New Testament,
but also in the Old Testament, the gospel of God's free and
sovereign grace, salvation for sinners by God's free and sovereign
grace in and by the Lord Jesus Christ, who is identified both
in the Old Testament and the New Testament as God manifest
in the flesh, the God-man, Emmanuel, God with us, and who in the Old
Testament was promised to come in the future and do a work of
redemption as the surety, the substitute of His people, a people
whom God gave Him before the foundation of the world, and
that He would accomplish that great work as prophesied, as
promised in the Old Testament, that work of putting away the
sins of His people by His death, their sins having been charged,
accounted, imputed to him and his righteousness that he would
accomplish in time by his obedience unto death as surety and substitute,
his righteousness imputed to them. And that's the major theme
of the Old Testament as it was promised and prophesied in the
future and as it was typified throughout the Old Testament.
And of course it's the major theme of the New Testament And
of course, New Testament believers, the only difference between Old
Testament believers and New Testament believers is that New Testament
believers look back on the work accomplished in time. And Old
Testament believers, they looked forward to the promise of His
coming to accomplish that work. So I want you to look with me
at Luke chapter 24. This chapter, of course, is revolving
around the historical event of the resurrection of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He came to this earth, and as
God-man, he obeyed the law perfectly, and then he went to the cross,
and he died, and he was buried, and he arose again the third
day. Now all of that was prophesied and promised and typified in
the Old Testament. And you know the story about
how the women, you've got Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the
mother of James, how they went to the tomb after three days
and they found that he was not there. He's not here, he's risen. And then arose Peter, verse 12
of Luke 24. Peter, he ran to the sepulcher,
stooped down. He beheld the linen clothes laid
by themselves and departed, wondering in himself at that which was
come to pass. This was an astonishing time.
And you see, you find here that the disciples were sort of astonished
too, they were confused too. You know, there's an argument
about, well, when were they actually converted? That's not even the
issue here. But I can tell you this, their unbelief was an incredulous
unbelief. They just couldn't believe that
it happened, even though he had told them it was gonna happen.
And then it says in verse 13 of Luke 24, it says, behold,
two of them, that two of his disciples, went that same day
to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem, about three
score furlong. So here's the two disciples.
who were walking to Emmaus on the Emmaus Road. You've heard
of a ministry called the Emmaus Walk, and I don't know much about
that ministry, to be honest with you, but that's where this comes
from, the name. It says they were walking to
Emmaus, and all of a sudden, the Lord himself, the risen Lord,
he appeared to them, but they didn't recognize him. And he
asked him, he said, what are you talking about? And they said,
well, we're talking about all the events that have happened.
They asked him, he said, have you not known what's going on
around here? How that we thought that Jesus,
the Nazarene, was the one, the Messiah. And yet the high priest
and the religious leadership turned against him and led in
his crucifixion. And so, but we, and we're just
confused. We're astonished about this thing.
And look at verse 25. Now this is where my text really
begins. In verse 25. It says, then he, that is the
Lord himself, said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart, to
believe, now listen to this, to believe all that the prophets
have spoken. Now that's the prophets of the
Old Testament. And that goes all the way back
to Genesis. It doesn't start with Samuel. It includes Samuel, he was a
prophet. It doesn't start with Elijah. It doesn't start with Isaiah
and Jeremiah, Malachi, or even John the Baptist. It started
all the way back in Genesis because a prophet is one who spoke the
word of God. Now normally we think of a prophet
as telling the future, and that certainly was included in their
prophecy. But technically a prophet is
not foretelling, it's more forth telling. Telling forth the word
of God. These were men whom God had blessed
with the word of God. People whom God had blessed with
the word of God that he would deliver to his people. And so
Moses was a prophet, you see. You go back, Enoch was a prophet. Jude mentions Enoch as a prophet. So it goes all the way back now.
And so he says, verse 26, or verse 25, that all that the prophets
have spoken, and here's what they spoke, verse 26, ought not
Christ to have suffered these things and to enter his glory. In other words, the death, the
suffering unto death, his burial, and his resurrection, that is
described here as entering into his glory, because that's what
he did. You see that in Acts chapter one, how he ascended
unto glory. The resurrected Christ ascended
unto glory to his father, and his disciples saw it. Well, these
things were written. These things were spoken. These
things were prophesied. And he says, if you know the
Bible, the Bible that they had, then you ought to know these
things. And look at verse 27. It says, and beginning at Moses
and all the prophets. Now Moses would refer to the
first five books of the Old Testament. That's normally called the law,
what the Jews called the Torah. Some called the Pentateuch, five
books. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
and Deuteronomy. And then all the prophets. And
that includes all that the prophets recorded in the Old Testament,
prophesied of. And it says, beginning at Moses
and all the prophets, he expounded unto them, in all the scriptures,
the scriptures that they had at that time, the things concerning
himself. Things concerning Christ. And
then it says that they drew nines when they caught to Emmaus, that
he was leaving but they wanted him to abide with them. And he
did for a little while, he ate with them. And it says in verse
31, of Luke 24, it says, and their eyes were opened, and they
knew him, and then he vanished, he disappeared out of their sight. And I love this passage of Scripture,
verse 32, it says, and they said one to another, did not our heart
burn within us while he talked with us by the way, and while
he opened to us the Scriptures? That's a beautiful passage, because
it speaks of the new heart. that longs to hear and to know
and to understand and hungers for the Word of God. and that
word as it leads sinners to Christ for salvation. It leads sinners
to Christ for forgiveness of all sins. It leads sinners to
Christ for righteousness. How can I be justified before
God? It's only in Christ by the merit
of His obedience unto death, His righteousness alone. The
Old Testament, Moses, the prophets, And later on, we're gonna see
the Psalms. Psalms, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes,
that's the poetic books. In the Old Testament, you have
law books, you have prophetic books, you have poetic books,
you have historical books. All of it are the things concerning
Jesus Christ. Now, what does that mean? That
means it tells us who Jesus Christ is. exactly who He is. He is the Son of God who has
no beginning and no end. He's the second person of the
Trinity. All of these truths are brought
forth in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. He is fully man in every attribute
and characteristic of what a human being is without sin. A perfect, sinless man. He is both God and man. It started out in prophecy talking
about him as the seed of woman because his conception and his
birth was not with the aid of man as you and I were. His conception, his birth, was
a miraculous conception. He was conceived in the womb
of the virgin. by the Holy Spirit, the third
person of the Trinity. And His holy humanity was created
for Him in the womb of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit and He was
born as prophesied in the Old Testament as God-man. He's the Savior of His people.
Why do we need such a person for our salvation? Because we
are sinners. And the Old Testament brings
that out so clearly. The New Testament too. We are
sinners who cannot save ourselves. We cannot cleanse ourselves from
sin. That is, we cannot pay the penalty.
We cannot satisfy the justice of God. That's what the Old Testament,
the New Testament is about. We cannot do enough to bring
ourselves into a right relationship with God because we're sinners. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. Why did Jesus Christ, the God-man,
have to come, have to obey the law, suffer, bleed, and die? Because he stood as the surety
and the substitute of the people whom God had given him before
the foundation of the world. And you remember what it says
here. He says in verse 26, ought not
Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his
glory. He was required to suffer unto
death, to die. He was required to be buried
and to be risen again from the dead. Why? Because of the sins
of the elect. God's elect people who were given
to Him before the foundation of the world. He had to die because
their sins were charged to Him. And that's why they're saved,
because having been charged to Him, He paid the penalty in full. Daniel said it in Daniel 9. This
is one of the scriptures I'll be referring to in this series
of messages on things concerning Christ. Daniel said that he would
make an end of sin, he would finish the transgression, and
he would bring in everlasting righteousness. Now how was he
going to do that? By his death on the cross. Shedding
of his blood. Romans chapter three says we
are justified by his blood. That means we are declared by
God to be not guilty. We are declared by God to be
righteous in his sight Based on what? The blood, the cross,
the death of Christ, which equals righteousness. Perfect satisfaction
to God's law and justice. How do you know that Christ accomplished
the work that he was set out to do? He's risen from the dead. Sin demands death. Righteousness
demands life. And what he's telling these two
disciples on the road to Emmaus, he says, this is what the whole
Bible is about. All the prophets, all the scriptures,
the things concerning himself. Now jump across the page here.
And here the Lord is, he's sitting with his disciples, Peter and
James and John, and he was eating with them. In verse 44, look
at Luke 24 verse 44, it says, he said unto them, these are
the words which I spoke unto you while I was yet with you,
that all things must be fulfilled. Now what things must be fulfilled?
All that he did as God-man, all that he did in his death, burial,
and resurrection, he said that all these things must be fulfilled,
listen to that, which were written in the law of Moses and in the
prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. Things concerning him, concerning
Christ. And then it says in verse 45,
then opened he their understanding that they might understand the
scriptures. Now what he's doing here is he's
showing the disciples how to preach the Old Testament. You
see, the Old Testament, somebody said the Old Testament is the
glory of Christ concealed. The New Testament is the glory
of Christ revealed. Well, let me tell you something.
Unless the Holy Spirit gives us eyes to see like He did these
two men on the road to Emmaus, He said their eyes were opened
and they knew Him. Unless the Holy Spirit opens
your eyes, both the Old Testament and the New Testament are concealed. And what He's doing here is He's
opening their understanding. You know, the Bible says the
Son of God hath come and given us an understanding that we might
know Him that is true and that we are in Him is true. so that
they might understand the scriptures. The scriptures, that's the written
word. Well, what written scriptures did they have? Well, they had
the law of Moses. They had the prophets. Did they have all the
prophets that we have today? I don't know, but they had enough. And it says the Psalms, all that
concerned him. And look at verse 46. He says,
and said unto them, thus it is written, and thus it behooved
Christ. In other words, that word behooved
means it was necessary. Over in Hebrews chapter two and
verse 17, the word behooved is used, but it's a different Greek
word. It's the Greek word for debt. Christ was obligated under
a debt, and it was necessary. That's what the word behooved
here in verse 46 means. It was necessary for him to suffer,
for Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third
day. That's his death, burial, and
resurrection. So here it says it was necessary
for him to do it. Why was it necessary? Well, because
the sins of his people, whom God had given him before the
foundation of the world, had been laid to his charge. The
prophet Isaiah spoke of that in Isaiah 53, the Lord hath laid
upon him the iniquity of us all. Who's the all there? Well, that's
his people for whom he died. And he satisfied justice and
brought forth righteousness which is imputed to them. David wrote
in Psalm 32, blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not
iniquity. Well, who did he impute it, charge
it, account it to? He charged it to Christ. And
then over in Hebrews 2.17 when it says the ought there means
that Christ was under the obligation of a legal debt to die for the
sins of His people. It was put to His account and
He had to pay the price. That's called redemption by His
blood. That's called the ransom prize.
He was a ransom for many. And so he paid that price, he
paid the debt in full. So what's the result of that?
Well look at Luke 24, 47. He says, and that repentance
and remission of sins should be preached in his name among
all nations, not just the Jews, but Gentiles too, beginning at
Jerusalem. This is where it all began. And
you, verse 48, you are witnesses of these things. In other words,
he's telling us that it's on the ground and the basis of his
death, his blood, his righteousness. Now look at it that way. You
see, his blood equals righteousness. That's what it's all about. The
Bible says in Romans chapter one and verse 16 that the gospel
is the power of God unto salvation. To everyone that believeth to
the Jew first and the Greek also, verse 70, for therein is the
righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is
written, the just or the justified shall live by faith. Who are
the justified? They're sinners saved by grace,
who are righteous in God's sight because of Christ's righteousness
imputed to them, and they live, they have eternal spiritual life
given them in the new birth from Christ, and they live by looking
unto Christ." Well, that's what this is saying right here, just
in other words. He says, He says it was necessary
for him to suffer to rise from the dead the third day. Why was
it necessary for him to suffer? Because of sins charged to his
account. and he had to pay the debt in
full. Justice had to be satisfied. Why was it necessary for him
to rise from the dead the third day? Because in his death, he
finished the transgression, he made an end of sin, he brought
in everlasting righteousness, he satisfied the justice of God
in full. He paid the debt. His people
must go free. My friend, there is nothing in
the Bible that teaches that any for whom Christ died and was
buried and arose again could end up in hell. That is not in
the Bible. All for whom he died, all for
whom he was buried, all for whom he arose again, the third day,
shall live. Who are they? Well, they're all
who come to faith in Christ. That's why we say, believe in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Somebody said, well, doesn't
matter what I do. If he didn't die for me, I'm
not going to believe. That's not your business. That's God's
business. Don't try to play God. You don't have it within you
to do that. The secret things belong to God. The revealed things
belong to us. And this was the gospel of the
Old Testament, and it's the gospel of the New Testament. It hasn't
changed. Somebody said one time, well, there are different dispensations
of time, different segments of time. God tried to save people
this way, and it didn't work, so he tried another way, and
then he tried this way, and then finally he got to the, no, that
is not the case. I wrote a book called What Is
a Christian? And one of the chapters in that book is who were the
first Christians? Well, my friend, the first Christians were not
Peter and James and Andrew and John and the 12 disciples. They weren't the first Christians.
The first Christians are back in the Old Testament. Abel was
a Christian. He brought the blood of the Lamb,
and he testified in prophecy, and in type, and picture, and
in promise, that Christ, the Lamb of God, would come and die. He shed blood, die, and put away
his sins, and bring him a righteousness that enables God to be just and
justify. Enoch was a Christian. Noah was
a Christian. Noah found what? Grace in the
eyes of the Lord. Abraham was a Christian. Christ
said in John 8, he said, Abraham, saw my, rejoice to see my day. And he saw it and was glad. Moses
was a Christian. See, all of these, they believed
in Christ. Somebody said one time, well,
Christianity is a branch of Judaism. Oh, not so. No, Christianity
is older than Judaism. In fact, Judaism is a denial
of Christianity because those who are religious Jews, they
don't believe the Messiah has come yet. But he has. They reject Christ, Jesus of
Nazareth, as being the Messiah. But see, the Jews didn't come
into existence until they were formed as a nation 400 years
after Abraham. But the gospel of God's grace
in Christ, through his blood and his righteousness, was in
effect long before that. because it was prophesied in
Genesis 3, and it was typified in Genesis 3, it was illustrated
in Genesis 4 through Abel, and all the way up through. And this
is what he's talking about. He says the law of Moses. When
we think about the law of Moses, we think about the old covenant,
and I'll talk more about that in later messages. He says the
prophets. What did they prophesy of? Well,
they prophesied of a lot of things. They talked about the history
of Israel and Judah and prophesied things like Jeremiah, for example.
He prophesied of the captivity of Judah. And he told the people
to repent. And then he told them to accept
what God had said and what the judgment of God, the sentence
of God, because they deserved what they were getting. But that
wasn't the only thing he prophesied of. He told them, Jeremiah told
them that even though they were going into captivity for 70 years
in a foreign land, Babylon, he said, God is not finished, he's
gonna bring them back because Messiah is coming, the Lord our
righteousness. That's what Christ was teaching
these two disciples on the road to Emmaus. What all the prophets,
and what Moses and all the prophets expounded unto them in the scriptures. This is what he was teaching
his disciples, how it behooved Christ, Messiah, the anointed
one, who is himself, that he might suffer and bleed and die
and be raised again. 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.