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 for this message, this gospel message
from the Word of God, the Bible. And if you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles today for the message, I'm going to be preaching
from the book of Isaiah, chapter 9, Isaiah chapter 9. My text is Isaiah 9, verses 6
and 7. And the title of the message
is The True Messiah. the true Messiah. Now the word
Messiah, as you may already know, means the Anointed One. It refers,
obviously, to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Messiah. Back in the Old Testament, the
Anointed One, the Promised One from the Old Testament point
of view. All the Old Testament believers
looked forward according to the promise of God to the coming
of the true Messiah. And throughout the ages of the
Old Testament there were false messiahs. And they had to go to the Word
of God to identify and distinguish the true Messiah from counterfeits.
And it's the same today. Now New Testament believers look
back upon the Messiah who has already come. and again, the
Lord Jesus Christ. And today, there are false messiahs. And when I say that, I'm not
only talking about those crazy people who come along and claim
to be the messiah. Many, many years, well, not many,
many years ago, but several years ago, there was a man named David
Koresh, in Texas who claimed to be the Messiah. Most of us
remember Jim Jones and he claimed or had aspirations of being the
Messiah. Of course, those were false messiahs,
obviously. But the one I'm more concerned
about is the false messiahs being preached today from the pulpits
of America. And that's the issue, you know,
when people are talking about, in this season that we're in,
talking about Christ, Jesus Christ. What I'm concerned with is this,
when I claim to believe in Christ for my salvation, Am I depending
upon, trusting in, believing in the true Messiah? Because
there are counterfeits. And let me tell you something
before I get into these verses here. Satan's main weapon of
deception today, and it will last and it will be so until
the second coming of Christ, is false Christianity. Now, he
uses a lot of weapons, don't get me wrong, I mean there are
others, but his main weapon of deception It's spoken of in 2
Corinthians 4 and verses 3 and 4, talking about how Satan's
desire is to hide the gospel from you. And what he does is
he wants to keep you from looking to, trusting in the true Messiah. And so he creates counterfeits.
2 Corinthians 11 speaks of that. Counterfeit messiahs. And this
popular Jesus today who died for everyone and is trying to
save you if you'll let him, my friend, I'm telling you. And
I'm not just being mean or too judgmental. This is the word
of God. He's a false Messiah. Read the Bible. Now let's look
at this passage. This is a passage of prophecy
of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah prophesied in Jerusalem
mainly. In the southern kingdom of Judah,
you remember the kingdom was divided after Solomon. There
was the northern kingdom and then the southern kingdom. The
northern kingdom was about to be destroyed by the Assyrian
empire. The southern kingdom, mainly
consisting of the Jewish tribe of Israel, of Judah, and Benjamin
also, but Judah was the main tribe. That was the tribe through
which Christ would come according to the flesh. And Isaiah prophesied
in Jerusalem about 700 years before the coming of Christ. And in chapter eight of this
prophecy, he had pronounced a prophecy of judgment and wrath against
Judah and Jerusalem for their sins. God's going to punish them,
he said, because of their sins. But in chapter nine, he begins
in the first five verses. The verse one begins with, nevertheless,
what he's about to say is that now God's going to punish Judah
and Jerusalem, but that does not mean that God's promise of
salvation for his chosen people has failed. Because God's chosen
people is not just the Jewish nation, the physical nation,
But God's elect is made up of a spiritual nation chosen by
Him before the foundation of the world and given to the Lord
Jesus Christ to save. And that's God's elect. God's
elect and they come out of every tribe, kindred, tongue and nation. That promise of the Messiah was
revealed to this nation through the promise that God made to
Abraham that every nation would be blessed through Abraham. And
how? Because Abraham was such a good
guy and he did right, no, Abraham was a sinner saved by grace.
Every nation would be blessed through him because the promise,
the main promise given to Abraham was the promise of the coming
of the Messiah. And so Isaiah in chapter nine,
he begins talking about a day of salvation. He talks about
a day when God would give light to his people. That's the gospel
light. The gospel of how God saves sinners
by his grace and mercy through the Lord Jesus Christ, who is
the Lord our righteousness. how God would gather in his nation,
he would multiply the nation, he would increase the nation,
his spiritual nation now, the kingdom of God. This is talking
about salvation. This is not talking about an
earthly land, or an earthly temple, or an earthly nation. It's talking
about a nation made up of God's elect. He said he would increase
their joy like those who had a great, great inheritance. And then he says he's going to
set them free. And all that was coming down
upon the Jews as a people, You see, that they were not to look
to earthly things for salvation, they were looked to the promise
of God of the true Messiah. And so how would all of this
salvation be accomplished? And here's what he says in verse
six, look at it, Isaiah 9, six, for unto us a child is born and
unto us a son is given. This is a prophecy of the person
of Christ who is none other than God manifest in the flesh. The child born, well that refers
to his incarnation. That refers to that miraculous
conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit
where that would result in a child, a human child being born, and
this child conceived in her womb by the Holy Spirit, not by the
aid of man. And this speaks of Christ's humanity,
that he's born. It's said in Hebrews chapter
10, a body hast thou prepared me. This is the human body. And
Christ was every bit human. without sin. And you need to
understand that and keep that in mind. He is the sinless man. And then a son is given. Notice
the son is not born. The son is given. You see, Christ
is the second person of the Trinity. He is eternal. His sonship, His
office as Son, is an everlasting, eternal matter. And it's a mind-boggling
thing. But here's what we have prophesied
by Isaiah, that this Messiah, the true Messiah, is God in human
flesh. He's the Word made flesh to dwell
among us. And I can think of so many passages
that would support this in the New Testament. Matthew 1.21,
his name shall be called Jesus for he shall save his people
from their sins. And then in Matthew 1.23, what's
it say? His name shall be called Emmanuel,
which being interpreted as God with us. Now, this is the type
of person that it takes to save sinners from sin. You see, and
we're gonna see this as you go through, as you look at the scriptures.
For example, over in the book of Romans chapter one, listen
to this. Paul opens up talking about the
gospel. And in verse three of Romans
one, he says, this gospel is concerning God's son, Jesus Christ
our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the
flesh. Now being the seed of David,
we'll see this in just a moment in Isaiah nine. He came through
the lineage of King David. That's part of the royal covenant
that God made with David as recorded in second Samuel chapter seven.
His humanity was through Abraham and specifically narrowed down
to King David. And that's a messianic promise.
And it says in verse four, he was declared to be the son of
God. You see, he wasn't made to be
the son of God. He was made of the seed of David.
His sinless humanity had a beginning. And it was made, created by God. A body hast thou prepared me.
But now his sonship was not created. It's always been that way. Revelation
talks about him. He's the alpha, the omega, the
beginning, the end. His priesthood after the order
of Melchizedek in the book of Hebrews chapter seven. And what
that's talking about is you can't trace his genealogy as a son
back to anybody, that he has a genealogy according to his
humanity. Matthew records it, Luke records
it. But he was declared, verse four of Romans 1, declared to
be the son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness,
by the resurrection from the dead. So he had to die. But God cannot die. But this
person who is God, he did die. And that's to be attributed to
his sinless humanity. Now, man cannot create, give,
or sustain life. Only God can do that. But this
person who is sinless man, he did create and he does give and
sustain life. That's to be attributed to his
deity. Now, granted, these are mind-boggling
truths. But if you want to know the true
Messiah, This is how he's identified, and listen to what he says in
Isaiah six, the next line. He says, for unto us a child
is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon
his shoulder. The government of what? Well,
people say, well, he rules the whole universe. Well, that's
true. But the government that he's talking about here is the
government of the kingdom of God. It's the government of the
covenant of grace. And what he's saying is this,
upon this particular person, who is God in human flesh, the
true Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, the whole salvation,
The whole continuance and preservation, the whole order of the kingdom
of God, the church, salvation, is conditioned upon Him. It's put upon His shoulder. He bears the responsibility. He bears all the accountability. to save them, to keep them, and
to bring them to glory. It's all on Christ. Now you see, this is establishing
the grace of God in the gospel. People today, they talk about
a Jesus who's trying to save everybody if they'll let him,
and they put the, really they put the success of the kingdom
of God on the shoulders of the sinner to make the right choice. But the Bible teaches that man
is fallen by nature in Adam and born dead in trespasses and sins,
ruined by the fall. And if left to himself, he will
not make the right choice. That is concerning salvation
now. Concerning how God saves sinners, man by nature, all of
us by nature, as we're naturally born in sin. If the choice is
up to us, we will fail and the kingdom will fail. Years and
years ago, there was even a preacher, a false preacher, who talked
about hell as being a monumental failure of God to save people,
that he was trying to say. That's a lie. That's not the,
listen, that's not the God of the Bible. That's not the true
Messiah. Back before the foundation of
this world, the scripture teaches, God the Son, God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit made a covenant a covenant
of redemption, a covenant of grace, where God chose a people,
gave them to His Son, and put all of the salvation of those
people upon His shoulder, conditioned upon Him. Christ was made the
surety, which means this, that means that He became fully accountable
for all the debt of their sins. Their sins were imputed, the
scripture says. God was in Christ. reconciling
the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. What
does that mean? That he imputed them to Christ.
He charged them to Christ. And then Christ, in order to
pay that debt, what did he have to do? He had to meet the condition. And the condition was to satisfy
the justice of God in their place as their substitute and surety
and die on that cross. That's why he died. His resurrection,
is in light of his death. He had to die to be resurrected.
And what did he do in his death? Well, look at this. He established
righteousness that enables God to be just and justify the ungodly. A righteousness that's imputed,
charged, accounted to his people. But let's look back at verse
six here. He says, for unto us a child
is born, unto us a son is given. The government shall be upon
his shoulder. And his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor. You know, in the original Greek
manuscripts, there were no punctuation marks. These were added by the
translators. And I would say that the comma
after wonderful shouldn't be there, it's Wonderful Counselor. He is a wonder, Christ is a wonder. Counselor, that means that the
truth comes from him and is in him. whatever truth that I need
to know concerning how God saves sinners by His grace through
the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, I find
that in this wonderful counselor, the Lord Jesus Christ, the mighty
God, He is God in every attribute of His nature, the everlasting
Father, That probably should be translated better as the Father
of Eternity. Isaiah is not confusing the distinction
between the persons of the Trinity here. God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Now we can't understand the Trinity,
we just know it's true. But there is a distinction of
persons. What Isaiah is talking about
is Christ's relationship to His people, His kingdom as the Father
of eternity because eternal life comes from Him. And when we're
born of God, the new birth, you must be born again, which is
the fruit and the effect and the result of what Christ accomplished
as God-man in His death. All the sons, all the children
of God come forth from Him. So He's the everlasting Father.
He's the Prince of Peace. Peace between God and sinners,
made by the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood of the cross. You see
that? Now His name. You know, name in the Bible is
a little bit different than what we think of it today. Our names
are just labels, you know. If, you know, my name's William,
for example. And I'm really not sure exactly
what the name means. I'll have to look it up, but
I know they always talk about William the Conqueror. Well,
if that's what it means, I can tell you right now, I'm not a
conqueror. But names in the Bible, number one, they stood for the
person himself. They stood for him revealed,
distinguished and identified, and his presence. And look at
verse seven now. Now here's the Messiah, the true
Messiah. What will the true Messiah do? Well, all of the government,
the salvation, the welfare, the wellbeing of his people is upon
his shoulders. And what's going to happen now?
Verse seven, of the increase of his government and peace,
there shall be no end. He's going to be successful.
It's not conditioned on you or me. If it were, it'd fail. Think
about the old covenant in the nation Israel. Did they keep
the conditions and the terms and the stipulations of the old
covenant? No, they failed. Do you think
you would have done any better under that conditional covenant?
You wouldn't have, neither would I. That covenant was given to
show their sinfulness, their depravity, Their need of grace,
their need of a righteousness they could not produce by deeds
of law shall no flesh be justified, declared not guilty or made righteous.
So how is the success of the kingdom of God ensured? It's all upon the shoulder of
the true Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. And of the increase of
his government and peace, there'll be no end. And he says in verse
seven, upon the throne of David, That's a messianic prophecy. That's not talking about literally
King David. That's who King David typified.
And through whom the promise would come, he was made of the
seed of David according to the flesh and upon his kingdom to
order it. Even King David himself, a sinner
saved by grace, on his deathbed, he said, I have a hope because
God has made a covenant with me that is ordered in all things
and sure. Now, how could it be ordered
in all things? Who ordered it? Who set it all in order? God
did. Not you, not me, not even King
David. God did. And he ordered it in
Christ. And it's sure because Christ
is the surety. See, if you believe that Christ
died for everybody equally and just simply made people savable,
and people could only be saved if they would meet certain conditions,
then Christ is not your surety. You are based upon your decision. But that would be a failure.
You see, as I said, ruined by the fall, how are God's people
redeemed? Redeemed by the blood. And out
of that blood, out of that righteousness, His righteousness imputed, comes
life, that's regeneration by the Spirit. That's the new birth.
So it's ordered in all things. And he said, verse seven, of
the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no
end upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order
it and to establish it. Now, how's it established? Look
at, with judgment and justice from henceforth even forever.
Judgment and justice. Now, I want you to think about
what I'm about to tell you. If you were to go around and
ask the average professing Christian, what is the greatest attribute
or the main attribute of God? Most people today would say something
like love. But I want you to know something,
that is not right. Now, having said that, I want
you to understand this. I'm not denying God's love. God, it's not simply that God
loves. The Bible says God is love. And love is a great and wonderful
attribute. Without His love, there'd be
no salvation. But the main attribute that I'm speaking of, God's glory,
which is mentioned here, is God's holiness, God's justice. You see, God must be just when
He saves. That's the problem. The soul
that sinneth must surely die. The wages of sin is death. Yes,
the gift of God is eternal life, but it's through Jesus Christ,
the true Messiah, and right here, as He establishes it with judgment
and justice. Sin must be dealt with. God cannot show love. God cannot show mercy. God cannot
show grace apart from justice and judgment. That's right. We talk about God's grace and
it's amazing grace. Well, Romans 5.21 tells us, just
as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through
righteousness. Now, righteousness is justice.
and its grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life. But how? By Jesus Christ our
Lord. You see, God is going to show
His love to His people. But 1 John 4, 10, herein is love,
not that we love God, wasn't conditioned on our love to Him
or our doing anything, but that He loved us and sent His Son
to be the what? Propitiation. A sin-bearing sacrifice
that satisfies justice by the payment of debt, of the debt
through death. The propitiation for our sins.
Christ is the embodiment of God's love. Christ is the embodiment
of God's grace and mercy. But all of that is founded upon,
established upon judgment and justice. Now where are you going
to find judgment and justice? Christ on the cross, dying for
the sins of his sheep. His church, God's elect. And
what did He do on that cross? He finished the work. He paid
the price. He satisfied justice and He brought
in everlasting righteousness where God could show love and
grace and mercy to His people in a way that honors His holiness,
His righteousness, His truth. God must be just. He's a just
God and a Savior. So yes, God is love, but his
love is in Christ. Outside of Christ, there is no
love from God. There's just justice, wrath,
and that's damnation for a sinner. So God's love, God's grace, God's
mercy right here, it's all established upon judgment and justice, righteousness
imputed. And he says in verse seven, the
zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. This is God's purpose,
this is God's grace, this is God's glory, and it will be accomplished. It's not a conditional thing
with God, it's a sure thing with God in Christ, the true Messiah. Christ is the Lord our righteousness. He's the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believeth. 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
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
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at 1-1-0-2 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia 3-1-7-0-7. Contact us
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today and may the Lord be with you.