Our Substitute

Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. I'm weary of my crying. My throat is dried. Mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head. They that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty.

Then I restored that which I took not away. O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee. Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel.

Because for that sake I have borne reproach. Shame has covered my face. I am become a stranger unto my brethren and an alien unto my mother's children. For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproach thee have fallen upon me.

Let's pray together. Father, thank you for this precious passage of your word, and I pray that you'd give us wisdom and give us the voice, Lord, to pronounce your glory, to be clear and bold in setting forth your perfect truth and the hope of all sinners, Lord, the gospel. May your name be exalted and your people trust in you more and more. If there's any lost, Lord, that hear this, I pray your mercy upon them. You're able and you delight to show mercy. Thankful for that. Bless the message, Lord, to our hearts. the worship to the glory of our Savior. In his precious name, we ask it, amen. Now, David cries, save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul. They're not fixing to come in. They're not about to come in. They're not rumored to be coming in. They're not in danger of coming in. This is the voice of panic now. This is resignation to the fact that there's no fixing this on our own. There's no, there's no refuse of our own making.

And this is when a sinner begins to cry to God. A ship hits an iceberg and immediately there's concern. First thought is, OK, we have to check for damage. We need to see what happened. Let's do something about this. And then it's revealed that the damage is pretty concerning, and the level of worry is raised a little bit. And the conclusion has come to that eventually this ship is going to sink. There's a lot of water coming in. And the next thought is, how much time do we have? This is a big ship. This is all spiritual analogy of sinners and how they reason, you know, God's a good guy. Everybody says that the Lord is good and that he's merciful. And, you know, it's it's a big world and I'm just one part of it. And everybody's a sinner. You know, I'm just doing my best.

It's a big ship. And it'll take a long time to sink. Help will come. And then some calculations are made, and it's determined that you don't have as much time as you thought you did. The next thought is, how close is the nearest ship that could help us? Let's go and contact, send out a distress call. And the call goes out, and the ship is contacted, but it's going to take a lot longer than it's going to take for the ship to sink, and the concern is raised even higher. But still, there's not panic. We have lifeboats, after all. You see, the sinner always has something to fall back on. My goods outweigh my bad, after all. I've done some bad things, but I've done some good things, too. We have lifeboats.

We'll just have to have the lifeboats ready when the time comes, and we'll wait in them And we'll float in them until help comes, but then we realize that there aren't enough lifeboats for everybody. And by this time, the ship has begun to list dramatically, and people, even people who weren't even aware that anything had happened, understand now that something's wrong. But there's still many who don't know the extent of the problem, but you do. you know there's no time, you know there's not enough lifeboats to go around, you know it's bad, but you still haven't panicked. Somebody's wrong, somebody's bound to be wrong, somebody made a mistake, somebody who, they miscalculated how long it's gonna take for this ship to sink, and they've miscalculated the time for help to arrive, or maybe The number of lifeboats to people was a mistake and miscalculated and there's always a grasp of hope.

There's always an inkling of hope. But then soon the reality sets in. I'm going in the water. I'm going in the water and people can't live in this water. This is not going to be just a an afternoon swim. I'm going in. Waters are coming in around me even now, and I can't do anything about it. And I'm not going to survive. That's where David is. The waters are coming into my soul. And the excuses, the false comforts, all of them are behind me now. It's too late for that.

When the waters begin to rise to the point that you know that they will overflow you and they begin to actually overflow you and there's no time, there's no lifeboat for you, you will cry to God. Well, Chris, you mean that God's people will cry to him. No, I mean everybody will. Everybody will.

Some, many, will not know until it's too late that the waters have overwhelmed them God said in Proverbs 1, 27, when your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you, then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer. He said, those that don't know me, those that have not chosen the fear of the Lord, as we'll see later in this passage, they're going to cry to me too. Then shall they call on me, but I will not answer. They shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.

For that they hated knowledge. And knowledge is a person. They didn't hate what they were being taught in church. They didn't hate knowing things. They didn't hate being smarter than other people so they could argue with them. They hated somebody. They hated the wisdom of God, and they did not choose the fear of the Lord.

Proverbs 1, 27 through 29. Everyone sooner or later will cry to God. Even those that trusted in themselves, what did they say at the end? Lord, Lord. Lord, Lord, have we not? And when he had told him, you're not coming in, I don't know who, I never knew you. You're not mine, you don't belong to me. You have no place here. But Lord, Lord, look what we've done for you.

That by the grace of God, because of his sovereign mercy, his elect, his people, his sheep will see the waters before it's too late, and they'll cry to God for mercy. By His grace, we'll see that Christ is the wisdom and the knowledge of God, and we'll trust Him about ourselves instead of trusting in ourselves. And that's what we see in verse three. That's when it comes to this, I'm weary of my crying. I'm gonna cry. until I can't cry anymore, and then I'm gonna save up a little strength and I'm gonna cry some more. My throat is dried.

My eyes fail while I wait for my God. When you can't go to sleep, my eyes are failing, my eyelids are so heavy I can't even keep my eyes open, but I'm still waiting for God. When you come to the place where you see yourself as you are and the predicament that you're in because of your sin. You're not going to want to go to sleep until God has spoken to you in mercy.

Mercy on your soul. We were waiting on other help before. So many things to fall back on, Arthur. But now. We're waiting on God. Now. It's him and me. And that's it. That's it. He either has mercy on me, or I'm a goner. It used to be, how can God let something like this happen? How can, why me? Now, he's my God. I wait for my God. When he becomes your God, You'll wait for him and no other.

They couldn't shut old Bartimaeus up, could they? He was weary of crying, wouldn't he? Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And they told him to shut up, and he cried all the more and all the louder. Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. You and me, this is between you and me. Why couldn't you shut him up? Because he had no other hope. He had no other hope.

And we need to acknowledge here that these are the words of the Savior in this text in prophetic language. And I want to try to be clear about this. We recognize some of the languages concerning the cross and our Lord's suffering on the cross in verse 21 of this. Let's look at that verse. And we see it also, of course, in the rest of this psalm, but it's unmistakable here because this actually came to pass in the New Testament. Look at verse 20.

Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. And I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." And so we know that what happened to our Lord is foretold in the words of this psalm and many others in many places.

I wouldn't go beyond what we know about that. I don't think that you can apply David's words, and I was shaping an iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me to Christ. We've got to be careful about that now. We've got to be careful what we say about things.

I know this is prophetic language that refers to what happened to our Savior. And I understand by his grace the language of our text, the first part of this chapter, when he says, the waters have come in unto me. They've surrounded my soul. My soul is overwhelmed. I cry. He cried, didn't he? He cried to his God, the God, his Father. And we're gonna cry too. But we recognize here the language of our Savior, what happened to our Savior in here.

And so here's substitution. It's a simple word and it's a simple concept. Substitution. The Lord took my place on Calvary. It's everything Concerning the cross that's written in the word of God, refers to his substitutionary work on that cross. He took my place, not just on a wooden cross, but under the wrath of God on that cross. My sin, my sin, he took my place. I know why the waters come into my soul. And by God's grace, I know why they came in into my Savior's soul. because he took my place as the sinner. He took my sin, the scriptures refer to him, bearing my sins in his own body on the tree.

Language that we can't possibly know the depth of or understand completely. We know that he knew no sin. We know that there was no sin in him. But we know also that my sin was laid on him. the language of Isaiah 53.6, and so the language here of our Savior in this psalm is the same. My sins came in unto his soul.

The waters, those aren't physical waters, that's a picture of trouble, of enemies, all of the enemies of Christ. which is continued in the next passage, verse four, they that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head. They hated him without a cause. For which of these good works do you stone me? They hated him wrongfully. Look at that word here, we're gonna read a little bit further. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head. They that would destroy me being mine enemies wrongfully are mighty. Wrongfully. If my enemies destroy me, it won't be wrongfully. We know this is our savior because only he didn't deserve it. Only he didn't deserve whatever he got. I deserve whatever I get and a lot worse, but not him. He was hated wrongfully. by his enemies.

And look, O God, thou knowest my foolishness and my sins are not hid from thee. These waters, they're not just an inanimate, natural threat like physical water. They're active, purposeful enemies. And everything anti-Christ. And look, it's Satan and man.

It was us. It was our sin. It was our hatred of him that put him on the cross. It was the will of God. It was the purpose of God. We did whatsoever his hand and counsel determined before to be done. But don't use that as excuse before God for what we did. That's just the glory of the Lord's providence and grace in sending his son to be the propitiation for our sins. He used us, but it was willfully that we attacked and tortured, abused and murdered him.

Spiritually speaking, we know what these enemies are, my own wicked heart, We're the Lord's enemy by nature now. We can sing, oh how I love Jesus, till we're blue in the face. But until we know he loves us, we're not gonna love him, and we don't love him, and we're just being religious. So it's us, primarily, and then Satan, of course. The serpent will bruise. the seed of the woman's heel, all the way back in Genesis chapter 3.

This world was the enemy of Christ. He said, I've overcome the world, but they're going to hate you like they hate me. Those that hate me without a cause, that's this world. He said that when he was on this earth. The law of God is my enemy by nature. The law of God, the handwriting of ordinances is against me. It's against me. And it was against Christ in this case, because he bore my sin.

But remember that word wrongfully, that one word in this text, this has to be our Lord Jesus, because all of our enemies, they pursue us rightfully. We deserve it. That's what the thief said on the cross. He said, we're in the same condemnation as him, but we're in this condemnation justly. We have people that are murdering us and have tortured us and put us on the most horrible possible way to kill somebody, the cross, but we deserve it. Luke 23, 39. One of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.

But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds. But this man hath done nothing amiss. That's the word wrongfully in our text. That thief said to the other, you're under the wrath of God. And he's under the wrath of God. But the difference is you deserve it. You deserve it. I'm in the same condemnation too. I deserve the wrath of God. And by nature, I'm a child of wrath, even as others.

But 1 Peter 3.18, thank God for the gospel, for Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, the just in the stead, in the place of the unjust, the just as substitute for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. That's what has to happen. The Son of God's got to bring us to God. That's the good Samaritan.

You're not getting there. You can't walk an aisle and get to God. You can't walk far enough to get to God. There's a great gulf fixed between us and God. But Christ suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. That's the only way you're getting to God. And He did that by suffering the just for the unjust. being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit. He was, and his life wasn't taken from him. It was laid down and he took it up again.

Verse five identifies the ultimate enemy, my sins, sins. All of my other enemies are what they are to me because of my sins. if it's not for my sin. And look, it's sin that causes every problem there is in this world. And I can't say it's somebody else's sin. It's my sin. It's on me. I'm to blame.

And yes, this too is the language of the Savior. Now listen, we don't believe, I don't believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was made to be sin in any literal way. I don't think he became sin itself. I don't see any scripture to back that up, but I tell you what I do know from the scriptures. He owned my sin as his own. He owned my sin as his own sin. All of my other enemies are just a result of my one enemy, my sin, my sin.

And this is his language as I said, you know, often the illustration. of a co-signer, of someone who co-signs on a debt is used. And I've got some qualifications about that, but you understand that. If you put your name down on a loan as co-debtor with someone, then when they, if and when they default on that, You're guilty, you owe it. It's not like you owe it, it's not as if you owe it, you owe it. It's your debt. And that's what the word surety has to do with in the scriptures, a surety, a security for someone who cannot satisfy the law. It's not complicated.

And when my Lord became my surety. Here's how that illustration doesn't quite hold up. He did that knowing I was going to default on him. He did that knowing I couldn't live up to the glory of God. I would come short of the glory of God. He consigned his own soul as an offering for my sin before I ever sinned. He became surety for my soul, my debt, my sin before God.

And so in that sense, the cosigner is a pretty good illustration. But he knew from the beginning. And when the Lord refers to as his sin here, it's my sin, just like my righteousness before God is his righteousness. This is very simple. People make it way more complicated than necessary.

How am I righteous before God? Because I've done righteousness? No, because I stand before God in the sinless one, in the righteous son of God. He's my representative. And my Lord, when he died on Calvary, that was me paying for my sin. And he actually paid for my sin. How many times do we have to see that in the scripture before we start to blur the lines? There's no blurred line here. It was my sin. It was always my sin. It was my sin before he died on Calvary. It was my sin while he was dying on Calvary. And it's my sin now that he paid for on Calvary. The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He suffered for sins, the just.

My righteousness is not like Christ's righteousness. My righteousness is Christ. It is Christ. And I never did one single thing to deserve God's blessing. And my savior never did one single thing to deserve God's wrath. And yet he bore it for me that I might be the righteousness of God in him."

When you read that text in 2 Corinthians 5, whatever the full passage is, but verse 21, understand what's being said there. The Lord did not impute our transgressions unto us, but he made his son to be sin for us. He bore my sin, He bore the guilt of my sin, He bore the penalty for my sin, and He put my sins away on that cross, never to be seen again.

Verse six, let not them that wait on thee, O Lord, God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. And let me back up just a little bit and talk about that a little bit more. Is it shocking, does it shock you to hear And this is not the Lord himself. This is David writing this. This is David referring to his sins. But we know in prophecy that it's referring to the Savior who bore our sins. He took my sins as his own. He owned them before God.

No question about that. But is it shocking to hear that the Lord would say my sins are not hid from thee? Well, is it more shocking than the fact that God poured out his wrath on his son? That's pretty shocking. Make that make sense. Make it make sense that God poured out his wrath on his only begotten son. Well, here's how it makes sense. He bore my sins. He died for my sins. He was punished for my sins. Well, how do you make our text make sense? My sins are not hid from thee. He bore my sins. Same answer.

It's not any more shocking than the fact that God actually poured his wrath out. on His holy, only begotten, well-beloved Son. So we shouldn't be shocked by that. There's nothing mysterious really about that except for the fact that how could God love a wretched worm like me and give His only Son for me? That's the great mystery of it. The fact that Christ's sacrifice was sufficient? Yes, mysterious in the depth of it. We'll never exhaust the depth of it. It's not really complicated. Let's quit complicating it. He took my place. He bore my sins. And he put them away.

So when the Lord refers, let's look at verse six. Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel, because for thy sake I have borne reproach. Shame hath covered my face. And there's more to these two verses than might meet the eye on the surface. This is a key verse. Because it's important to understand that in the original Hebrew here, the words ashamed and confounded are not adjectives. They're not describing, they're not saying, don't let them be confounded. Don't let that be a word that describes them. That's a verb. Let them not be confounded. It says, don't let them be put to shame. Let not them be reproached.

Why? For my sake. For my sake. He gives a very good reason why we should not bear the reproach that we deserve. And remember, as we read forward a while ago, he said, I've restored that which I took not away. And he did. You did that for us. I have borne it. Shame. Don't be ashamed because for thy sake, I have borne that reproach. Don't let them be reproached for my sake, because I've borne that reproach.

You see how the wording is? You might think it means, well, they might be confounded because of what happened to me. That's not what it's saying. He's praying that they not be confounded or ashamed, that they be, and look, we ought to be ashamed of sin, right? So he is in effect saying, let them be sinless. Let them be without guilt. Let them be justified in thy sight for my sake. Why? Because for thy sake, I've borne it. I carried it. I bore it in my own body on the tree. I put it away. I suffered for their shame. I was punished for their guilt.

So for that reason, for my sake, because I bore it for your sake, for the holiness of God, the Lord Jesus Christ did what he did on Calvary first for God, the father. He pleased the father. He fulfilled the law of the father. He satisfied the justice of the father. He did it for God's sake, for the father's sake. And then of course, for our sake, as well. Let them not be put to shame. I have borne it. I have carried it. I have. The shame has covered my face and not theirs. Substitution.

And that's what we're going to praise him for forever, throughout all eternity. and never get tired of praising him for, because my shame covered his face, that I might stand before God unashamed in the spotless righteousness of my Savior. Now, one last thing in this psalm that we could never see everything here tonight, we didn't even read, but just a small portion of it.

But notice that the Lord blesses these who wait upon God. They're those whose shame he himself bears, and this is cause and effect, not in the order that man's religion has it. We love him because he first loved us, but here's what's important. Our Lord prays for these who wait upon God. those who wait upon me, who wait upon God, those for whom he bears their reproach, just as he did in Luke 23, 34.

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment and cast lots. Now he's clearly speaking of those who stood by that very day as he was on the cross. But notice the language of verses 20 through 28. Let's look here. 20 through 28.

Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Let their table become a snare before them, and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened that they see not, and make their loins continually to shake. Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate, and let none dwell in their tents.

For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten, and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded. Add iniquity under their iniquity, and let them not come into thy righteousness, but let them be blotted out of the book of the living. and not be written with the righteous."

Now, who's he talking to there? He's talking to two different sets of people, isn't he? He's not going to say, Father, forgive them, and then of the same group of people say, block them out of your book. There's two different kinds of people at that cross. There were two different kinds of people hanging on crosses next to him. And there's two kinds of people in this world.

When the Lord intercedes for his people, he does so effectually. When he says, Father, forgive them, they're forgiven. And he says, blot them out, they're blotted. And so we see here the effects of his substitutionary death, that clearly there are those for whom he hung there for the purpose of forgiveness, for the purpose of saving their souls, for the purpose of putting away their sin.

And then there were those that were there too, and all across this world, to whom he clearly did not die for. He clearly did not pray, forgive them of those whom he said, Lord, let them not be among the righteous. Blot them out of your book. Can't be the same people. There's only one answer. God can't forgive you of your sins and blot you out of his book, the book of the living, and refuse to allow you into his righteousness.

And notice the language there, into his righteousness. That's our righteousness before God. Our Lord knew those that were his from the beginning. That's why he interceded the way that he did on the way to the cross. I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine, and all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. Now, why do we talk about that? Do we take some kind of weird, malicious joy in people being excluded? Not one bit.

I hope everybody that I know comes to the Savior. I hope that the Lord shed his precious blood for every one of them. But what I do delight in about this is that whoever he died for, they're saved. They're saved. He didn't try to save anybody. He didn't make salvation possible for anybody. He didn't offer salvation to anybody. He saved somebody. He saved some people.

And that's very clear in the language of our text. The same them in John 17 now, where he said, I pray for them, is the same them in Psalm 69, six. where we read a while ago, let not them, they own thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed. The reason that they should be unashamed is for my sake, because of what I've done for them. That's the them, his people, his sheep, his elect, clearly described and distinguished is the word I'm trying to say. here in our text and all through the scriptures.

God's love is in Christ alone now. If you're entertaining some idea or anybody that hears this, that Christ died with the desire that all men be forgiven of their sins, maybe you haven't read that psalm. Maybe you haven't read the scriptures at all. Because he laid down his life for his sheep, and he said, they hear my voice, and they follow me, and they shall never perish. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about that.

If his salvation is contingent upon a decision, that we entertain any idea of that, then we need to wake up. We need to read the word of God and believe. And only God can give us faith to lay hold of Christ as all of our righteousness and as our sin-bearing substitute. Our only hope is Christ. When you come to Christ, you can be sure you're coming to a victorious Savior.

He doesn't hope you'll be saved. He doesn't really, really, really want you to be saved. He saved you. If he brings you to himself and you are able to believe on him and rest in his righteousness and shed blood, he flat saved you. And he didn't save you because you come to him. You come to him because he saved you.

He's going to get all the glory and you're going to be fine with it. You're going to be real fine with it. He said, all that the father giveth me shall come to me. and him that cometh to me, when they do, they shall, and when they do, I will in no wise cast them out.

That's a sure hope. That's what sinners need. They need a sure hope. They don't need it. They don't need a maybe, so if, and it's up to you. We need a savior. If it's up to me when the waters are coming in under my soul, then I'm a goner. That's what Savior means. Somebody that actually saves you. A Savior doesn't leave it up to you. No Savior leaves anything up to you. If somebody pulls you out of a fire, they didn't leave anything. Are you sure you wanna go? No, they take hold of you and they pull you out of the fire.

And our Savior is the Savior. He's the mighty Savior, the all-sufficient. Successful Savior. If your salvation ever depended on you deciding to come to Christ, then it still does. If it ever depended on you, then it still does. Thank God. For the good.

Perfect hope that we have. in him. By his grace, we heard his voice and we followed him, and he's promised us that we shall never perish. No man can pluck us out of his hand. I'm glad it doesn't depend on me. We're in his hand. All glory under his holy name for flat saving us and keeping us. Amen. Let's pray.

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