Okay, well, my text this morning
is John 19 and verse 34. Now, there was no planning or
intention on my part that we should arrive at this text or
this chapter of John's Gospel at this time. It's well over
a year now on and off. We had a break for some Psalm
119, but well over a year since we started John's Gospel, And,
as I say, there was no intention on my part that we should come
to this verse on this Easter day. Of course, if you realize,
Easter is basically, it's a pagan festival that was handed down
by the Church of Rome, and it's mixed with Jewish Passover dates.
The reason why it is a different date each year is because it's
in tune with the phases of the moon, as is the Passover feast
in the Jewish calendar. And we attach no significance
to it other than the fact that all the time, all the time, we
celebrate and rejoice in the death and the resurrection of
the Lord Jesus Christ. But I've got three main points
this morning that I want to bring to your attention and get you
to think about. Meditate on these things. Number one, the purpose
of God in the death of Jesus Christ. That's the first point,
the purpose of God in the death of Jesus Christ. Secondly, the
reality of the death of Jesus Christ. It's reality. And thirdly,
what did it accomplish? The accomplishment of Christ's
death. It's the subject of the hymns
we've been singing. First of all then, the purpose of God
in the death of Jesus Christ. You say, what could God possibly
have as a purpose in something as horrendous as that? I mean,
history speaks that it undoubtedly occurred. And most false Christianity,
there's not very much that is true, true to God's Word at any
rate. If this is the acid test, this
book, there's very little of what calls itself Christianity
in these days that is actually true to this book. Most false
Christianity regards the death of Jesus Christ as a tragedy
that should have been avoided at all costs. You know, a bit
like Peter. The disciple, before the crucifixion,
saying, no way, you're not going to die, you're not. And Jesus
said, get thee behind me, Satan, you don't understand the things
of God. Though that he would give us
understanding this morning. But where we've come to, throughout
this Gospel, revealing the deity of the man, the Godhood of the
man, that the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in this
man, born at Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, the son of Mary. the Son of God, the Son of God,
Son of Mary, the Son of God. This hour that we've come to,
or should I say these three hours, these three hours, it's what
He was born for. It was why He came. if you look
in John chapter 12, and you don't need to look these up because
I'll read them out to you, but in John chapter 12 and verse 23,
some Greeks came to ask Philip and Andrew, could they see Jesus?
They'd heard about him. His fame had spread abroad at
that time. and they brought, they come to
Jesus, and Jesus answered them saying, the hour has come. Throughout
the gospel he'd said, the hour has not yet come, but now the
hour has come that the Son of Man, that was the name he had
for himself as he walked this earth, the hour has come that
the Son of Man should be glorified, glorified, glorified, given the
praise that is due to God and God alone. He said, verily, verily,
truly, truly, I say to you, except unless a corn of wheat fall into
the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall
lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep
it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him
follow me, and where I am, there shall also my servant be. If
any man serve me, him will my father honour." What he's saying
there about the corn of wheat is that just as a corn of wheat,
to be fruitful, to produce more wheat, must fall into the ground
and die, so must he die. in the place of his people, that
there should be a fruit, souls saved for eternity, the kingdom
of God populated by people justified to be there, qualified to be
there. It's the time of year when we
sow seeds in the northern hemisphere. I sowed some climbing bean seeds
the other day. They were dead, wrinkled little
husks of dried nothingness, and I put them an inch down in moist
compost. And you know what? Now, there's
beans showing. And in a few months' time, there
will be a harvest of fruitfulness. I mean, those beans, they produce
just so many that my wife will be going mad at me about, why
did you plant so many? Because we've got too many, more
than we can use. It's fruitful. He said he must
die. He said he must die. And the
hour of that death has come. He came to die as a grain of
wheat that much fruit should result to eternal glory, the
glory of God. Because how is God glorified?
In His grace shown to sinners. Those who deserve His eternal
wrath, He shows grace. Evil men plotted the death of
Jesus. The scribes and the Pharisees
throughout His ministry, they hated Him because He was going
to upturn their world and take their position from them in the
Roman Empire. Judas even, one of the twelve
that spent three and a half years with him, Judas betrayed, and
this is Judas' own testimony in Matthew 27 and verse 4. Judas,
with a broken heart, full of remorse for his own state, not
repentance toward God, said, I have betrayed innocent blood. This man, he spent three and
a half years with him, he's innocent of any crime, he's innocent of
any wrong. They blatantly perverted truth
and justice. And they bear their guilt, those
Jews and Judas Iscariot, they bear their guilt and their just
condemnation. Pilate even, the Roman governor,
Pontius Pilate, tried and tried to release him, because he said,
I can't find anything wrong with him. Why do you want to kill
him? There's nothing wrong with this man. I can't find any fault
with him. Read chapter 9 yourself when
you can, and see what it says. It's the account, John's account,
of that situation, where he was tried by the Jews, by the chief
priests, and put in front of Pilate. Why did he have to go
to Pilate? Because the Jews didn't have the authority to kill him
themselves. They needed the authority of
the Roman governor. Read it for yourself in detail. Why couldn't Pilate? He's the
Roman governor. He's Augustus Caesar's viceroy
there in that part of the world. He had the authority of Caesar.
It didn't matter what these Jews said, why couldn't Pilate release
him? We know that, what the answer
is in Acts chapter 2, which is after Jesus has died and risen
and returned to heaven and the day of Pentecost has come and
that fearful disciple so full of bravado and yet when it came
to it so full of cursing and denial that he knew Jesus, he's
preaching in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. And in Acts
chapter 2 and verse 22, he says to them, ye men of Israel, hear
these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you
by miracles and wonders, and he says, you can't deny it, you
saw it, didn't you? Which God did by him in the midst of you,
as ye yourselves also know. Him, what happened to him? Being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God." Sorry, what? God planned
his death? God planned his arrest and his
crucifixion? Him being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God? You! You Jews, you Jewish
leaders, you have taken, you crowd that carried on and did
what they called for. Crucify him, crucify him. You
have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. Though
it was the purpose of God, you bear the guilt of what you did.
You nailed the innocent Son of God to a tree of wood. God had
decreed that his beloved Son, what's the beloved Son of God?
The beloved Son is God, made manifest to us. We cannot know
God. God is unknowable. God is Spirit. God dwells in unapproachable
light. We cannot approach Him. God cannot look upon sin. He
is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. But He laid His glory
aside and took upon Him flesh. human flesh. He was made of a
woman. He was made under the law. Why?
That He might redeem, pay the release price of His people as
a man. That God should become man. God
cannot die for His people. God became man, that as a man
He should die. He is the God-man, and He would
stand surety. Have you ever had anybody stand
surety for you. It's a guarantor. It says, right,
we'll lend you this money, but if you default on it, this other
person will stand in your place. He stood surety for his people,
for the multitude of people. Not everybody, but a multitude
that no man can number, that God the Father, united with his
Son, betrothed to his Son, as the bride of his Son, before
the beginning of time, and pay their sin debt You know, he said,
he's going to come and he will pay the sin debt of these people
to divine justice. How will he pay it? With his
life. How's he going to pay it with
his life? The life is in the blood. He's going to shed his
blood. There's no excuse whatsoever for the perpetrators of this
crime that the Jewish authorities committed, that Judas committed,
but it was all to accomplish salvation from sin's curse for
his people. because God planned and purposed
it. His word must declare the end
from the beginning. It was prophesied in the fall
in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3.15, right at the
start of the Bible, you look there. It was prophesied there.
It's all in, did you notice how many times when Stephen was reading
the passage I read earlier? In fulfillment of Scripture.
It was all to fulfill the Scripture. It was pictured in the fall in
the Garden of Eden. God said to Adam and Eve, the
seed of the woman, the descendant of the woman, who was going to
be the Lord Jesus Christ, the seed of the woman would come.
His heel would be bruised by Satan. The serpent, the Satan,
would bruise his heel. This is the crucifixion. But
in the process, he would bruise Satan's head. That's a fatal,
that's a mortal wound. It was pictured there. It was
pictured in the animal that was slain to clothe Adam and Eve.
Immediately after the fall, God clothed Adam and Eve with animal
skins. Even before you get to the end
of Genesis chapter 3, He clothed them. An animal died, its blood
was shed, it was picturing the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ
who would come and die. In their son Abel, Cain was the
first, Abel was the second. Abel brought a lamb to God and
his worship was accepted because Abel's lamb looked forward to
this one, the Lamb of God. The Lamb of God dying in the
place of his people as a substitute. It was pictured in Noah's altar.
When Noah came out of the flood, he built an altar, and he sacrificed
an animal on that altar, and there was a sweet-smelling savour,
it said, arose to heaven. That's speaking, because Ephesians
tells us that when Christ died, there was a sweet-smelling savour
to God. It's speaking of the same thing.
What's the sweet-smelling savour? The just anger and wrath of God
against the sin of His people. is propitiated, it's taken away,
it's turned away, it's dealt with, it's there no longer because
of what he has done. It's pictured in Abraham with
his son Isaac, his only Isaac, not his only son, he had another
son called Ishmael, but this is his only Isaac, the one in
whom the seed, in Isaac shall your seed be, in Isaac shall
the promise be. And he told him, take your son,
your beloved son, and take him to Mount Moriah, where I'll show
you, and sacrifice him there on an altar." And they went,
and Abraham obeyed, and he went, and I'm sure he fully believed
that if he killed his son, God would raise him from the dead.
I wonder if he even believed that this one was the promised
seed by whom the rest of the people of God would be justified
from their sins. But when it came to it, God said
to him, don't touch him, withhold the knife, don't kill him, God
will provide himself a sacrifice, and he turned and looked and
there was a ram caught in the bush, caught in the thicket,
and that was the one that was the sacrifice in the place of
Isaac. And then there was the Passover lamb, the Passover lamb
at the exodus from Egypt, which spoke of The angel of death was coming
through Egypt that night, the last of the plagues, to kill
the firstborn in every house in Egypt, including the houses
of the Israelites. But in the houses of the Israelites,
a lamb was slain, the Passover lamb was slain, and its blood
was painted on the doorposts and the lintels. And when the
slaying angel of death came through the land that night, the angel
looked and said, when I see the blood, I will pass over, hence
the Passover. When I see the blood, saw the
blood and passed over. In all the Mosaic law, in the
temple sacrifices, in the animal sacrifices, in the shed blood,
they were killed, all of them, to symbolise redemption. Redemption is payment of a penalty,
payment of a price, payment... Get some money when you lend
an item to a pawn shop, P-A-W-N shop, and then you go and redeem
it back out of that situation. You buy it back. He redeemed
his people from the curse of the law by his shed blood. These
animals were all killed to symbolize that redemption by Messiah's
blood. So, we read in Revelation 13
verse 8, of Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of
the Trinity of God, that He is the Lamb slain from the foundation
of the earth. John the Baptist came as His
forerunner, just before Him. There was 400 years of silence,
not a word from God, complete silence. They had their scriptures
that were written at that stage, but then 400 years of silence,
and then John the Baptist came, just as the forerunner of Jesus,
exactly, exactly as the Word of God has said. And he pointed
to God's Lamb. Behold the Lamb of God that taketh
away the sins of the world, he said to his disciples. He said
the death of this one would redeem his people from the law's curse.
The Psalms speak of the anguish of Christ as a man dying for
a multitude of men. It's incredibly detailed in places. Read the book of Isaiah, read
Isaiah 53, it's incredibly detailed, unbelievably detailed, but it's
there. You know, the modern unbelieving
theologians, they all say, oh, it's so right, it can't have
been written before it happened. It was written before it happened,
it really did, it really was. Jeremiah spoke of a redeeming
sacrifice. Look at Daniel chapter 9, I refer
you to this very often, and in verse 24, 70 weeks are determined upon thy
people and upon the holy city to finish the transgression.
He's saying this is when Messiah comes. To finish the transgression. To make an end of sins. To make
reconciliation for iniquity. To bring in everlasting righteousness. To seal up the vision and the
prophecy and to anoint the most holy. Know therefore and understand. that from the going forth of
the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah
the Prince shall be set... All of these things, do you know,
are exactly fulfilled in history, and yet it was written before.
How can it be so? Because the God who controls
all things, ordained all things, He knows it because He ordained
it. How does He know the end of it from the beginning of it?
Because He ordained it. After three score and two weeks
shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself. No, he was sinless. For the people. The people of
the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary,
and so on. And the other text I want to
refer you to is Zechariah chapter 12 and verse 10. And I will pour,
again, this is about 400 years before Christ came, I will pour
upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem
the spirit of grace and supplications. Now listen to this. and they
shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall
mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be
in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his
firstborn. Do you know on that day of Pentecost
that I mentioned, Those that had crucified Christ, the great
crowd, I'm not saying many of the ruling people, the ruling
Pharisees, but the people that had cried with them, crucify
him, they mourned, they mourned. What shall we do? What can we
do? We realize that we have committed
a dreadful crime and 3,000 of them were turned to belief in
God and in his Christ that day. Here, in the death of Jesus Christ,
the purpose of God in the death of Jesus Christ, here, as the
Psalms say over and over again, but in Psalm 85 verse 10 it says
this, mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace
have kissed. In the death of Christ, The perfect
unbending justice of God concerning sin and His law and His righteousness
is upheld throughout, and yet peace and mercy are shown to
His people who are sinners by nature deserving of hell, and
yet because of what Christ has accomplished in His death, Righteousness
and peace have kissed. Thereby we have peace with God
through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so God, who
cannot change, God who cannot, he says, I cannot clear the guilty.
God is angry with the wicked every day. He cannot clear the
guilty. He remains perfectly just with
his law, with his righteousness. You know, we're often lamenting
the fact that our justice in these days in our courts is a
complete sham. That criminals, that felons,
that people that deserve to be punished are walking away with
the merest slap on the wrist, and free to go and commit exactly
the same crime again. Not so with the justice of God.
The justice of God is absolute and unrelenting. He remains perfectly
just, but because Christ has died, The people that were united
with Him before the beginning of time are justified from the
curse of the law. The death of Jesus answers the
demands of God's strict justice for all who were placed in eternal
union with Him before the beginning of time. And that's a multitude
that no man can number. The only way you know them is
they come to believe the gospel of His grace. They come to trust
the Christ of God. So that's the purpose of God
in the death of Christ, but what about the shocking facts of Christ's
death? You know, He really did die.
the shocking facts of it. Religion has glamorized the cross. He died a horrible, cruel, shameful
death on a cross. Today, people wear a cross as
an item of jewelry. They put them up as icons in
church buildings. But you know, crucifixion was
not a glamorous death. was not a beautiful death, it
was a shameful death. It was the death that was reserved
in the Roman Empire for the worst of offenders. God ordained that
Jesus would be lifted up to die. The Jewish method of execution
was stoning in a hollow. The victim was put down in a
hollow and the whole of the people threw stones at them until they
were dead. No, he wasn't going to die like that under Jewish
justice. He was going to die on a Roman
cross. He would be lifted up to die.
This was all in the purpose of God. If we had a right view of
the death of Jesus on the cross of Calvary, we wouldn't make
an item of jewellery out of it, we wouldn't wear a cross as an
ornament. any more than we would wear a
hangman's noose if we still had capital punishment in this land.
When Christine and I and Jill were much younger there was still
capital punishment. And I remember the news of people
going to the gallows and hanging. In America there's still capital
punishment in some states. You would no more hang, put a
hangman's noose as a piece of jewellery round your neck or
on your wrist. or a model electric chair, or a syringe with a lethal
injection. You wouldn't wear that as jewellery,
would you? At Calvary, Jesus, the man who was God, was nailed
to a cross, was lifted up, was dropped into a hole and was reviled. We read it right at the start.
All they that passed by, they that passed by railed on him,
wagging their heads and saying, Ah, you talked about destroying
the temple and raising it up in three days. Well, come down
now and show us that you can. Lamentations had prophesied 600
years, I don't know exactly, but a long time before. Exactly
that situation. Is it nothing to you, all ye
that pass by, behold and see if there be any sorrow? Like
unto my sorrow. Man of sorrows. What a name. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief, says Isaiah. Man of sorrows. and acquainted
with grief. Why? Because of the sin and the
injustice against God's holy law. He, God's Lamb, I don't
know how, I don't know the mechanism, but I just believe what the Word
of God says. He was loaded with the iniquity of a multitude. He has made Him, says 2 Corinthians
5.21, God has made Him His Son, who is God in the form of a man.
He has made Him to be sin. He's made Him sin. He never committed
a sin, but God made Him sin. that there, that sin might be
His, and He'd pay the penalty for it, He'd own it, and He'd
be responsible for it. Why? That His people might be
made the righteousness of God in Him, and thereby qualified
for His kingdom, for eternal glory. such that their sins,
the sins of his people, became his sins. He says in Psalm 69
verse 5, this is the Son of God as the man loaded with the sins
of his people. And he says this a thousand years
before it actually happened in time. He said, O God, my sins
are not hid from thee. He never committed a solitary
sin, but he took ownership of the sins of his people. My sins
are not hid from thee. And the justice of God exacted
the full penalty of those sins on him. God, who cannot look
on iniquity, deserted him. "'My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?' was the cry of Jesus from the cross. As he sweat
as it were great drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane,
what caused that sweat was not the thought of the nails piercing
his hands and his feet, It was the thought of his heavenly Father.
For he who is God as a man, for him to forsake him, that was
what was the dreadful thought. If it be possible, take this
cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but
thine be done, is what he said. And as a result, because He bore
the condemnation of His people. Therefore, as Romans 8 tells
us, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are
in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh, but according
to the Spirit. The sins of Judah and Israel,
that's His people, His people, not just Jews. the Israel of
God, Jews and Gentiles, they were looked for, and they were
not found. Why? Because He, in this act
of dying on the cross, took them away. When it comes to the day
of judgment, there will be no sin found for the people of God.
But how could one man, you might ask, this man Jesus, born in
Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, three and a half years of public
ministry, how could one man, however good that one man was,
and undoubtedly he was good, How could he pay the sin debt
of a multitude? Answer, because that one man
is God. As Paul the Apostle tells us
in Colossians chapter 2 verse 9, the fullness of the Godhead
dwelt bodily in him. We have seen his divinity throughout
John's Gospel, in the months we've been looking at it. He
said, was it two weeks ago, when they came to arrest him, and
he said, who do you seek? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth.
And he said, I am. And they fell backwards onto
the ground. Because I am is the name of God.
He spoke the name of God. He who was a man spoke the name
of God. He, though being in the form
of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made
himself of no reputation. This is the Scripture that I'm
quoting. You know it. This is what the Word of God
says. He who was eternal God in eternal glory, he laid that
glory aside and came down to earth and was obedient. to death,
He came to die, displaying perfect obedience to the Father. Obedience
unto death, even the death of the cross, says Philippians.
In this hour, which was in actual fact three hours of darkness,
there was darkness over all the earth. Divine wrath against the
sin that Christ was bearing was vented. The wrath and justice
of God was vented on the sinless one who was made sin for his
people. And in verse 29, now there was
set a vessel full of vinegar, He said, I thirst. There was
vinegar there. They lifted a sponge filled with
vinegar on a hyssop pole up to his mouth. And when he had received
the vinegar, he said, It is finished. That's it. The debt has been
paid. There is nothing left to pay.
That's what he meant. He didn't mean I am finished.
It's over. I'm going to die now. It is finished. The work of paying the price
to the justice of God. It is finished. There is no more
to be paid. Read the article in the bulletin
that I put in by Don Faulkner on that very verse. It is finished. No more to be paid. How complete
is that removal of the sin debt, no works, not one required. There's no purgatory to make
up for sin. There's nothing needed because
He on the cross has finished it. Who is it that died? None
other than God in human flesh. As Paul said to the Ephesian
elders on the beach at Miletus in Acts 20 and verse 28, take
heed therefore to feed the church of God. with food, with teaching,
with the truth of God. Feed them. Feed the church of
God, which He, who? God. The church of God, which
He, God, hath purchased. How has He purchased it? With
His, whose? God's own blood. God has purchased
His church. Purchased, redeemed. Redeemed
from the curse of the law. Redeemed from its sin. How? With
His own precious blood. You are not redeemed, says Peter.
with precious stones and gold and silver, but with the blood
of Christ, of a lamb, without blemish and without spot. He
who is God, God who is life. Do you know why you have life
this morning? Do you know why you're breathing,
your heart's beating, you're thinking? It's because God has
granted you another day of life. God who is life, who has God
who is spirit himself cannot die. How can God die? God is
the source of all life. But he really did die as a man
for men. God became man that he might
die. That's why God became incarnate. Let me just read you one more
verse from Hebrews chapter two and verse 14. For as much then
as the children, that's his people given to him, are partakers of
flesh and blood, there it is, flesh and blood, yeah? partakers
of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same
flesh and blood, that through death, because only as a man
could he redeem, through death, God can't die, he became man
that he might die, that as a man he died, that he might destroy
him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. This is what
God has accomplished. So what is the accomplishment
then of the death of Jesus Christ? God's justice is satisfied. God's
justice is satisfied. No more to pay. It is finished.
It's enough. His righteousness is upheld. He doesn't change. He's still
as righteous. His righteousness is upheld. His kingdom is populated
with redeemed, justified, sanctified sinners. It's neatly, gloriously
summarized in John 19.34. One of the soldiers, he found
him dead, didn't need to break his legs, not a bone of him should
be broken. Why does it say that? That the
scripture might be fulfilled, that the scripture might be fulfilled.
They broke the legs of the other two to hasten their death. They
didn't need to with Jesus for he was dead already. But one
of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side. His hands and
his feet were pierced with nails to nail him to the cross. But
a soldier stabbed a spear into his side and forthwith came there
out blood and water. You say, oh how gory, what a
gory message. I tell you it's full of the most
blessed truth. Blood and water, what could that
mean? We're going to sing in a minute
a hymn by Augustus Toplady, Rock of Ages Clef for me, it's very
well known. Let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the
blood, referring to this verse, let the water and the blood from
thy riven, your cut, your open side which flowed. Let the water
and the blood from thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin
the double cure. Do you know I've sung this hymn
for the last 54 years, something like that, on and off, and I've
always sung this and it never arrested me, and what does it...
Be of sin the double cure. Be of sin the double cure. cleanse
me from its guilt and from its power, blood to remove the guilt,
water to disarm sin's power. Be of sin the double cure, cleanse
me from its guilt, the blood cleanses from the guilt of sin,
and its power. The water, which speaks of the
Spirit of God, cleanses from the power of sin. The soldier's
spear pierced the side of Jesus' dead body, exactly as Zechariah
had promised. They shall look on me whom they
have pierced. Even Revelation chapter 1 verse
7 says, Behold, he comes with clouds, and every eye shall see
him. You're included in that, whether
you believe him or not. Every eye shall see him and confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
And they also which pierced him, pierced his hands and his feet
and his side. The dual results of the death
of Jesus Christ was blood, in which is life, Deuteronomy says
the life is in the blood, that blood flowed to pay the demands
of divine justice, that the soul that sins it shall die in the
blood of Christ for his people, the sin debt was paid, the justice
was satisfied, be of sin the double cure, save me from its
guilt, the blood washes away the guilt for he's paid for it,
there's no Who shall bring any charge to God's elect? Christ
has died. It's done. He's done it. And
water, speaking of the sanctifying Spirit of God. This is the eternal
legacy of Christ's death for the multitude of His people,
loved with everlasting love. He said, On that great day, John
7, 37, in the last day, the great day of the feast, that's the
Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus stood and cried, saying, if any man
thirst, let him come to me and drink. He that believeth on me,
as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers
of living water. He also said something similar
to the Samaritan woman in John 4. This speaks of the Spirit
of God. You can't have the justifying
benefits of the blood of Christ without the sanctifying benefits
of the Spirit of God. Ephesians 5, 25 and 26 speaks
of the washing of water by the Word. It's sanctification of
the Spirit, as he says to the Thessalonians, sanctification
of the Spirit, setting apart by the Spirit and belief of the
truth. It's a living thing. It's not just a mental, I know
that doctrine therefore that's fine. It's a living thing. Water
and blood. Not blood without water, not
water without blood. The goal of God's kingdom is
unending intimate communion between God and his people, between Christ
and his bride. The elect multitude loved in
sovereign grace before time, but the bride is born, the Bride
of Christ, the people, the multitude, are born and live as sinners. Don't we all? Don't we all? Isn't
that what we are by nature? Children of wrath even as others.
Demanding God's eternal wrath, the penalty for sin. Because
in His kingdom, we read in Revelation, nothing that defileth can enter
in. Nothing can enter in that defiles. So by the death of Christ,
the blood has cleansed from defilement, from sin, and the water has given
the spirit whereby God makes his abode with his people on
earth." The spirit, he comes to his people and makes his abode
with his people. And the two can't be separated.
You can't have the justification of the blood without the sanctification
of the water, which is the spirit. This really is, as John says
in his epistle, 1 John 5.20, this really is true God and eternal
life. When Christ was lifted up on
that cross, as Romans 4.25 says, He was lifted up for the transgression
of His people, to pay its penalty. He died. He really did die. Water
and blood came from it. But he didn't stay dead. He was
raised. Why was he raised? To prove that
it had paid the penalty in full. To prove that he'd accomplished
that for which he went to the cross. To prove that if you believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ, you not only might have, but you
can be assured that you have eternal life. Amen.