Well, turn with me to Matthew's
Gospel. Starting a series like this, you might think I've got
the series all planned out in my head beforehand. Nothing could
be further from the truth. I don't know where we'll go.
Each week, as the preparation goes ahead, we see where we're
going, as it was all the way through the book of Isaiah. But
today, I'm minded to look at Matthew's Gospel, chapter one
and you might say well you're two or three weeks too late shouldn't
we have done this in the run-up to christmas isn't christmas
the time to do well you know what i've told you about christmas
before we who truly believe celebrate the fact that god became man
all the time that christmas is just a midwinter It's just a midwinter celebration
in the middle of the darkness. Please don't think that there
is anything about that with a religious significance. Today, and every
day, we who believe rejoice that God became man. In Matthew's
Gospel in chapter 22, and don't turn there, stay in Matthew chapter
1, but in Matthew 22 verse 42, the Pharisees were constantly
trying to catch Jesus out in his ministry, and he asked them
a question. He asked the Pharisees a question,
and his question was very simple. What think ye of Christ? What do you think of Christ?
What is your opinion of Christ? A big wide world around us, all
around us, neighbours, colleagues, family, all around us. What do
you think of Christ? Because I tell you, there is
not one solitary more important question than that and your answer
to it. What think ye of Christ? Who
is Christ? There's a leaflet that I give
to Jehovah's Witnesses when they come to the door. Jesus Christ? Who is he? What think ye of Christ? Who is he? Because on that false
teaching of theirs concerning him, the error of their whole
religion pivots, and their condemnation is clear in the fact that they
do not honor the Son. They seek to honor God, but they
do not honor the Son, and the word is quite clear. He who does
not honor the Son does not honor the Father. Who is Jesus Christ? Where is he from? Why did he
come into this world? Where is he now? What will he
yet do? What thinking of Christ? These
are not academic questions. They're not. They're not just
things like you might get interested in some aspect of history, you
might get interested in some aspect of world economics. They're
just academic questions, really. These are not. These are issues
of eternal life and death. The Lord Jesus Christ said in
his high priestly prayer, John 17 verse 3, this is life eternal. What is life eternal? That they,
the people, might know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ
whom thou hast sent. If you know God, and the only
way you can know God is to know him in Christ, The saints in
the Old Testament, true believers in the Old Testament. How did
Abel know God, the son of Adam and Eve? Do you know how Abel
knew God? He knew Him in Christ. That's why Abel's sacrifice of
a lamb was accepted. We know God in Christ, and this
is life eternal. If you know God, and you only
know Him in Jesus Christ, this is life eternal. Is that not
something that rings a bell with you? Life, eternal, in a world
of death and of disease and of problems and of failure and of
political turmoil and crisis. Eternal life. The promise of
God of eternal bliss. It's about the issues of eternal
life and death. The Bible reveals God's eternal
intent. What is God's eternal intent? If it's possible reverently to
ask such a question. And the answer I would give is
this. The scripture's answer to that, and the scripture is
the word of God, so it's God's answer to this, is that he has
a kingdom. And his intent is that that kingdom
be populated with people who are qualified to be his citizens. Citizens of that kingdom. Citizens. He calls it Zion. He calls it
the Israel of God. When we were singing in that
hymn about Israel, to ransom captive Israel, don't just think
of Jews in the Middle East, in Palestine, think of the Israel
of God. the believers of God. God's eternal
intent has been that there will be a kingdom, His kingdom, His
gloriously triumphant kingdom, populated with people, a multitude
that no man can number, who are qualified to be there. But, but,
what does the Scripture say about all people without exception?
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Oh, that's,
that's, they need a rap on the knuckles for that, don't they?
No! No, in the purposes of God, in accordance with the character
of God. and the justice of God, and the absolutely unchanging
purity of God, they deserve nothing other than condemnation. They
cannot inhabit the kingdom that God intends them to inhabit.
They cannot. It's impossible for God to continue
to be God and allow sinners into His heaven. He cannot do it.
His kingdom cannot be populated by anything that defiles. How
are these people that God is determined to populate his kingdom
in eternity, how is he to qualify them for that? Answer? Offended
divine justice. What's offended divine justice?
Sin. The sin of his people. It must
be satisfied. The demands of justice must be
satisfied regarding those people's sins. And what is the demand
of the justice of God? It is death. The soul that sins,
it shall die. In the day that you eat thereof,
said God to Adam and Eve, you shall surely die. And he died,
and he died. But it says that God has no pleasure
in the death of the wicked. Now you might think that that's
saying that he really doesn't want to do it. No, it's not saying
that. It's saying that the justice
of God is not satisfied just in the mere death of a sinner.
It must go on for eternity. It can't be that the sinner dies
and then that's it and therefore can be resurrected to newness.
No, no. God has no pleasure in the death
of the wicked. His justice is not satisfied. That's why he has no pleasure.
His justice is not satisfied by the death of the wicked. The
death offered must please God's justice. Look at Isaiah. I'm turning back there already.
Isaiah 53 and verse 10. Speaking. of the death of the
Lamb of God who would come to pay the penalty for the sins
of his people. In verse 10 it says, yet it pleased the Lord
to bruise him. Why did it please God to bruise
his son? Why did it please God to punish
his son? because in the punishment of
his son, the justice of God was fully satisfied. He hath put
him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul
an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong
his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his
hand. He shall see of the travail of
his soul, the work, the bearing of the penalty of his soul, And
God shall be satisfied. He shall have pleasure. By his
knowledge shall my righteous servant Christ justify many,
for he shall bear their iniquities as a substitute. The one coming
must be suitably qualified to pay the sin debt of others, and
must have the infinite capacity, the ability, to make satisfaction
to the offended justice of God. Now Matthew begins the New Testament
record of the man, the man who was born, Jesus, and that he
is God who has come to redeem the multitude of his people from
the curse of the law. As it says in Galatians 3.13,
Christ has redeemed us, his people, from the curse of the law. How?
By being made a curse for us. So first of all, I want to see
a Redeemer promised. A Redeemer promised. You might
wonder why is there this genealogy down to verse 16, well 17 if
you include the verse that gives some statistics of it. Why all
these verses? Why is that so important right
at the start of the Gospel of Matthew? Why is it so important? It proves that Jesus Christ was
the Redeemer the saviour that God had promised. He wasn't somebody
who became the saviour, he was always, always in the eternal
purpose of God, the one who was purposed to come and save his
people from their sins. He was promised throughout the
Old Testament, because you'll remember, you know I tell you
so often, that Jesus said to the Pharisees of the Old Testament
Scriptures, because that's all they had at the time, you search
the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life.
That's absolutely true. If you want to know the truth
of life, look there, look in these pages. This is it. We have
it. Miracle of miracles. We have
the Word of God right back from the time of Job through Moses
all the way down. We have that in our hands today. We have the Word of God in our
midst today. And the testimony of it all,
says Jesus, is concerning eternal life. He says, these words speak
of me. There's a man. clothed in flesh
and blood like we are, saying to a crowd of religious people,
the Pharisees, that the scriptures that they thought that they were
the experts in, these scriptures, their message is about me. Wow. That's either the most self-centered,
selfish message ever given, or it's the truth of God. I tell
you, it's the truth of God. As soon as man sinned in the
Garden of Eden, right back in the beginning, we have the promise
of a Redeemer to come. In Genesis 3 verse 15, in God
coming into the garden just after the fall, and Satan had beguiled
the woman, and the woman had eaten of the forbidden tree,
and the woman had given the fruit to Adam, and because of love
for his wife, I presume, Adam ate that fruit, knowing what
it would do, that it would put him at enmity with God. In pronouncing
the curse, God says this to them, you know, what have you done?
The woman gave me the apple and I did eat. And to the woman,
what have you done? The serpent beguiled me. And
he says to the serpent, he says to Satan, he says, you're cursed
above all beasts of the earth. On your belly shall you go, dust
shall you eat all the days of your life. And he says in verse
15, I will put enmity, conflict, tension, between you, Satan,
and the woman, Eve, and between your seed, Satan, those that
will come from you with your mindset, Satan, and her seed,
It, the seed of the woman, shall bruise your head. That's a fatal
wound. A bruising, and you, Satan, shall
bruise his heel. A painful, a painful wound. The woman is Eve, obviously,
but the woman is the mother of God's people. It's the line from
which God's people come. You know how in Revelation the
church is pictured as a woman? This woman is the Church, it's
the Church, it's God's Church, it isn't a woman, it's most certainly
not Mary, as highly favoured as she was, it's certainly not
Mary, it's the Church, the godly line from which God's people
come, as depicted in Revelation 12. And then later on, the promise
goes on. And some see it, but the majority
don't. And some see it, but the majority
don't. All the way down through the
flood, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and saw it.
And then again, the peoples increased, and Nimrod came along, and disobedience
came along. And then in Genesis 12, verse
3, God says to Abraham, in you, Abraham, shall all families of
the earth be blessed. What it's saying is, in what
shall come from you, Abraham, all the families of the earth,
what's that? Gentiles included, not just Jews. Gentiles included,
shall all the families of the earth be blessed. What is it
to be blessed of God? It's not just to have a few good
things, it's to be blessed with eternal life. It's to be blessed
with the curse of sin being paid for on your behalf. in Genesis
22 verse 18, just after Abraham has gone obedient to God's call
and gone prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac, who he thought
was the promised seed. I'm sure Abraham thought he was
the promised seed. And he went to slay him, thinking
he was slaying the one who would represent his people. But of
course God said, no, no, I have my own Redeemer. And God shows
him a ram in the bush, which is a picture of Christ. But God
says to him, right at that place, in thy seed, in the one that
shall come from you, Abraham, here's a man who has no children. whose wife is old, they're getting
on for a hundred years old, he says, sorry, he has Ishmael and
then he has Isaac, but apart from that, when the promise was
first made there was no children, but now there's just these two,
and the idea is that a huge nation is coming from him. In thy seed
shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. It's speaking
of salvation. In a specific descendant of Abraham,
a multi-ethnic multitude shall be blessed with God's favour
in spite of their sin. Why? Because in the sea that
shall come, the sin problem, the sin difficulty, the sin barrier
shall be removed in him, and God shall be just in punishing
sin, yet able to justify the people who are sinners. In Galatians
3, Paul writing to the Galatians with the light of New Testament
knowledge, by the Holy Spirit says this concerning Abraham
and the promise to his seed. Now to Abraham and his seed were
the promises made. He says not and to seeds, as
of many, but as of one, to your seed, singular. And that seed,
he tells us who that seed is. Who is the seed that came from
Abraham? It is Christ. How did the seed come from Abraham? Read it. Verse 2 down to verse
16. There it is. There it is. Clear. Clear. To Abraham and his seed,
which is Christ, was the promise made. the promise that the Redeemer
would come to redeem his people so that Christ could return to
glory, saying, behold, I and the children whom God has given
me. He was promised in Israel's history
throughout the Old Testament. He was promised in the Mosaic
law. How was Christ promised in the Mosaic law? Well, what's
the Mosaic law about? It's the commandments of dos
and don'ts, but it's much more the instructions for the temple,
the tabernacle, then the temple worship, and the animal sacrifices,
and the priesthood, and the holy... What were they all pointing to?
They were all pointing to how sinners are made right with God
on the basis of the shedding of blood, for without the shedding
of blood there is no remission of sins. the Mosaic law, the
sacrifices, the temple, in Old Testament types and shadows and
pictures, through the prophets, through the priests, through
some of the kings even, and especially through David, who wrote the
majority of the Psalms, and you read those Psalms, and so many
of them, is what the Messiah would do, is the words the Messiah
would speak, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Oh,
my sins are gone over me. He speaks in Psalm 69. My sins are gone. Whose sins?
His sins. How are they his sins? He was
sinless. They're his sins because he who knew no sin was made sin. 2 Corinthians 5 21. He who knew
no sin was made sin. Why was he made sin? Because
God loaded the sins of his people onto him so that he bore that
sin. He was guilty of that sin, He
was responsible for that sin, and God decreed that He should
pay the penalty for that sin. In the realm of justice in which
we live, it is not possible for one person to pay the criminal
debt of another. You can pay the financial debt
of another, but you can't pay the criminal debt. But in the
decree of the God of the universe, He has decreed that it is just. that one who is suitably qualified
should pay the sin debt of others. And that's what he did. That's
what he said. In all of these scriptures, search
the scriptures, you think you have eternal life in them. These
are they which testify of me, said Christ. And some were expecting
the fulfillment of the promise. Some Not a lot, but a significant
number. We read of some of them. We read
of Simeon in the temple just after Jesus was born. We read
of Anna. They were looking at the Scriptures
and they were expecting a person, a baby to be born who would come
and be the Redeemer that was promised by these Scriptures.
The Magi, as we'll see in chapter 2 of Matthew, the wise men came
from the East bearing gifts to give to the newborn King. When
Jesus starts his ministry, and he's in the early chapter of
John chapter 1 it is, Nathanael is one of those who is prayerfully
looking for the Messiah to come, the promised Messiah will come.
And so, the promise is fulfilled. This is my second point. The
start of Matthew's record. You know we have four Gospels.
I'm not going to go into great detail, but just briefly to tell
you, we have four Gospels. Why have we got four Gospels? Well, the answer as far as I
can tell, and I think Don Faulkner puts it very well, it's different
views from different angles of the one statue. If you like,
Christ is presented, and he's one statue presented, and then
you go around it in four different angles. And Matthew shows us
Christ as the Saviour King. And Mark shows us Jehovah's suffering
servant. And Luke shows us Jesus, the
son of man, touched with a feeling of our infirmities. Human tenderness. And John shows us the majesty
of God become man. We beheld his glory. the glories
of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Four
gospel accounts. Thank God that we have four gospel
accounts. This is all in the perfect purposes
of God. Why a genealogy? Why does it
start with a genealogy? You know, Paul tells the churches
not to waste their time arguing over the details of genealogies
because it doesn't benefit anybody. So why is there a genealogy?
Well it's just simply this. It's to demonstrate that the
one born of Mary was the seed promised to Abraham. Very, very
few, if any, Jews of that time could trace their genealogy as
clearly as this. You know, the ten northern tribes
had split off in the days of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon,
and they'd gone their own way, and Judah and Benjamin in the
south in Jerusalem maintained that Jerusalem was the only place
where you could worship God because Jerusalem and the temple and
the animal sacrifices was the only true depiction of what Christ
would come and do. But the northern tribes had gone
in the sins of Jeroboam, and they'd gone in their own ways,
and they'd set up their own methods, and God had punished them for
it. He'd allowed the Assyrian, the
great Assyrian Empire, to overrun them. I've told you before, go
to the British Museum. You can see the history of Tilgath-Pinesia
and Sennacherib and all of those. They're real people who really
existed. Their artifacts are there in
the British Museum in London. And you can see that nation existed
and that nation overran the Northern Ten Tribes so that they were
totally intermingled. And so the Jews in the south,
in Judea, Around Jerusalem, despised the northern Israelites who were
mongrels. They were interbred with the
Assyrians. They were the Samaritans. You
know how the Jews despised the Samaritans? The Samaritan woman
said, what are you, Jesus, a Jew, doing talking to me, a Samaritan?
You don't have anything to do with us. Samaritans, they didn't
know where they came from. They had no idea, they couldn't
trace their genealogy, and very few in Jerusalem, in Judea, could
trace their genealogy back to Abraham. They knew they were
the sons of Abraham, but they didn't know the detail. But nobody's
ever been able to discredit the descent of Jesus, which is given
here, exactly as the Old Testament foretold it. All of these people,
down here, 42 generations. Did you notice? 14 and then 14
and then 14. Three 14s, 42. I'm not going
to say anything other than this. Is that not interesting? Do you
remember Revelation? Six times seven, 42. 42 months,
so often. 42 months, three and a half years.
Three and a half years, a time, time, and half. I'll say no more
than this. It proves that it is in the sovereign
purpose of God who has decreed all things. Time does not just
randomly happen, it unfolds. When was Jesus born? When the
fullness of the time was come. When the fullness of whose time
was come? When the fullness of God's time was come, He came.
This genealogy has patriarchs in it, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. It has kings in it, David, Rehoboam,
even Manassas, Manassi. You know, Manassi was the most
evil king, and yet he turned out to be an object of God's
grace. Do you know he did more evil than Ahab even? He was a
dreadful king. He was the son of Hezekiah, who
was a basically good king. And Manassas was a wicked, utterly
wicked king. And yet, he was an object of
God's grace. What does that say to us? However
evil and sinful and hateful of God, that person you know, that
relative, oh, how you bear them up before the throne of grace.
Manasseh was an object of grace in the end. He was in the line
from which Jesus came. There were princes, Zerubbabel.
There was a harlot, Rahab the harlot in Jericho. Rahab the
harlot. There was a foreigner, Ruth,
the Moabites. She shouldn't have been in the
line, should she? There was, ah, what's the thing that the
Jewish religion hates more than anything else? Is it not sexual
immorality, adultery? There was an adulteress there,
Bathsheba, the wife of Uzziah. Bathsheba, the line decreed by
God from which Messiah would come. There it is in detail.
The early church preachers, the Apostle Paul, the other apostles,
a man called Apollos, who you'll read about in Acts chapter 18. Apollos, who was an eloquent
man. And it says in Acts 18, 28, when Priscilla and Aquila
had heard him, and he wasn't quite right on the gospel, and
they took him aside and explained the gospel to him. And he was
a mighty preacher. He was knowledgeable in the scriptures.
And it says of his preaching after that, it says, he mightily
convinced the Jews, and that publicly, showing by, what was
the point? What are you preaching for, Apollos? What's the purpose of your preaching?
He was determined to show that Jesus the man, born at Bethlehem,
was the Christ promised of God. That was it. Why? Because without
Christ, who alone can justify God's elect, his kingdom would
not be accomplished. Jesus was born of the line of
God's people in the world, of the woman, of the church. As
it says in Revelation chapter 12, read it for yourself later,
I won't take time to go there now. At the time decreed by God,
when the fullness of the time was come, made of a woman, born
of a virgin, Joseph's God-given intent. This man, the more I've
read this chapter in this last week, and you know it's very
familiar. If you've been brought up in a Church of England school
in England in the last 50 to 60 years or more, well, more
than that in my case isn't it? I keep forgetting how old I am.
But you know this, because from five years old it's ground into
you, when the local vicar comes and visits the church at Christmas
time, and all of this thing. These stories, you know, when
Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the days of Herod the King, it's
in there, from those very early days. And it never struck me,
quite as it had this week, the integrity of this man Joseph. What absolute wonderful integrity, must be
God-given. He's not a holy man in himself
any more than anybody else is, but God gave him integrity because
from him the line of descent ensured the prophesied place
of birth at Bethlehem, Bethlehem Ephrathah. Though you are least
among the dozens of Judah, out of you shall come one who shall
be the Messiah. in the house of bread, is what
Bethlehem means, the city of David. David was from Bethlehem,
the city of David, and David's greater son came from there.
Joseph was there to ensure the line of descent, though he was
not the biological father of Jesus, nevertheless, in his betrothal
of Mary, and his marriage to Mary, at the command of the angel,
Just such amazing integrity given by God. And the virgin birth,
how that man, to avoid public scandal, he was already engaged,
betrothed, and that had a lot of meaning. And the angel said
to him, take her now and marry her. And marry her. So that the world around thinks
you are married, and the woman who is pregnant is having your
baby. Make that be the appearance for
the sake of respect for this woman who is highly favoured.
And so he does, so that it might be fulfilled which was spoken
of the prophet. A virgin shall be with child. People say, well I don't think
you need to believe in the virgin birth. If you don't believe in
the virgin birth, you don't believe in a Christ that can save you
from your sins. Do you get that? Anybody listening? Oh, I don't
believe in the virgin birth. I don't think we need to believe
in things like that. If you don't believe that Christ is the son
of a virgin, the son of God, then you have no savior. For
no son of Adam can possibly save another from their sins. The
virgin birth isn't academic. And the respect that Joseph showed
in that married state, They didn't live as husband and wife until
after Jesus was born. The Catholics, of course, get
it completely wrong because they say that she was then forevermore
a virgin. Absolute rubbish, no she wasn't.
There were brothers and sisters born. You read about the brothers
and sisters in John's Gospel, chapter seven. He had several
brothers and sisters. The people said, don't we know
about his brothers and sisters? Of course she didn't live as
a virgin after that. But until after he was born,
Joseph lived in the state of marriage but preserving her virginity,
respect within the married state, and the child of Mary was born. Unto us a child is born, unto
us a son is given. The child of Mary was born, the
Son of God was given. Why was the Son of God given?
The Son of God was given to redeem. Now, very quickly, come to the
main point. Jesus, Emmanuel. Who is he? Where is he from? Remember questions
I asked at the start. Why did he come? Where is he
now? What will he yet do? Let's start
with Emmanuel. Look at those verses from 21. His name shall be called Jesus.
He shall save his people from their sins. It was so that it
would be fulfilled what the prophet said in Isaiah 7 14. Behold a virgin shall be with
child and shall bring forth a son and they shall call his name
Emmanuel. Which being interpreted is God
with us. which, so that people of other
languages can know it, is God with us. Emmanuel, God with us.
God with us, God alongside us. Not just in company with us,
but empathetically alongside us. The invisible God, made manifest. The God that no man has seen
at any time. The God that no man can see and
live, made manifest. made in this context touchable,
communicable. They walked with Him. The disciples
said, we walked with Him, we saw Him, we heard His words,
we followed Him. John says, no man has seen God
at any time, but the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the
Father, He has declared Him. How would you know God? you know
him by Jesus Christ. As I've said so many times, Philip
said, show us the Father and that will suffice. Show us the
true essence of God and that will suffice. And Jesus said,
Philip, have I been so long with you and you have not seen me?
He who has seen me has seen the Father. This is the very Word
of God. This is This is the inaccessible
thought of the invisible God expressed in words that we can
see and hear and feel and touch. He is fully man. He is flesh
and blood and bones and anatomy because he is the son of Mary.
He has the same flesh and blood and anatomy that we do, the same
living processes, hunger, and thirst, and fatigue, and sorrow,
and joy. But in that body, says Paul,
dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily. The fullness of it, dwelling
in Him, the fullness of God. God contracted to a span, as
Charles Wesley put it. He is made of a virgin woman,
and therefore, He is made without Adam's sin. In Adam, all die. All of us who have the traceability
back to the genes of Adam have sin within us, but he does not,
for he is the Son of God. In Hebrews 2, which we saw a
couple of weeks ago, I took you there, I won't take you there
now, just for the sake of time, but he partook of the children's
flesh. The children are his elect. in
flesh and blood in this world, but they can't go into heaven
because they're sinners. So what must he do? He himself,
God, must partake of the same flesh and blood that he might
do what? That he might die. as a sinful man, though he himself
without sin yet made the sin of his people, he might die to
pay the penalty for the sins of his people. As a spotless
man, he lived his life in this world without sin. Why? Why? To prove that he was a fitting
Passover lamb, like they kept the Passover lamb for 14 days,
to show that it was without blemish and without spot. He was conceived
of the Holy Ghost, therefore not with Adam's sin. And so He
was the Son of God. And being the Son of God, He
has infinite capacity to pay the debt of an innumerable multitude,
to save that multitude from their sins, from the condemnation of
their sins. What a blessing this is, to be
enabled to see it, isn't it? There are all sorts of things
that make one person to differ from another. But the one that
stands out in my mind above everything else is this ability, this blessing,
this condescension of God to show you, to show you why Christ
came, who He is, what He came for. You see, So much of even
Orthodox Christianity, Evangelical, Reformed Christianity, it constantly
burdens folk with responsibility to earn their acceptance with
God by some work that they do, something that they do, some
measure of sanctification that they achieve. And that's not
what God says. What does God say? What does
God say? Look to Christ, doesn't He? That's
what God says. What must I do to be saved? Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, look to Christ. You see, He is the
only one who is worthy. Revelation 6. Who is worthy? Who is worthy to unloose the
seals of the plan of God for a kingdom populated with redeemed
people? And I looked and there was none
worthy, none. And I wept much because there
was none found worthy. So there's not going to be a
heaven. So there isn't going to be a kingdom of God. So there
isn't going to be a population redeemed. There isn't going to
be a population that are there. I wept much. Don't weep, John,
don't weep. Look, in the midst of the throne,
look, the lion of the tribe of Judah has triumphed. And I looked
and I beheld a lamb as it had been slain, because the lion
of the tribe of Judah, in the capacity of a lamb that was slain,
was able and qualified and capable of paying the sin debt of the
people that He would redeem. And they sing His praise in Revelation
chapter 6. Why is He worthy? Worthy is the
Lamb that was slain. Why? Because He has redeemed
us unto God by His blood. That's it. He's redeemed us to
God by His blood. The Word became flesh and dwelt
among us. And we beheld His glory, says
John, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth. For a little while He was made
lower than the angels for the suffering of death. the death
due to his elect, and he suffered it that they might not suffer
it. He is the ransom that God has found, so that his people
can justly be delivered from going down into the pit of hell,
which is what Job said in the first book written in the Bible.
God says, deliver him, the sinner, from going down into the pit
of just condemnation in hell. Why? Why can God deliver? Why can God decree that the sinner
be delivered? Because he's found a ransom.
And what is the ransom? It is the blood of his own precious
son as a substitute. If God had not deigned to become
the same flesh and blood of his children, he could not have saved
them from condemnation. Why do we rejoice? Because if
God hadn't done that, we couldn't be saved from sin. God, in His
Spirit, God in His eternal state, He cannot suffer the penalty
for sin as a substitute. And man, the best of men, is
too limited. But in Christ, Christ, who is
as fully God as if he were not man, and who is as fully man
as if he was not God, he can make satisfaction to that offended
justice. I tell you, this is not the stuff
of trivial nativity plays. It isn't. That we love to go
and watch the little children do, or maybe not as the case
may be, but it isn't the stuff. of trivial nativity plays. It's
the pivot of the history of creation, that God became man. Look at
Luke chapter 2. Luke chapter 2 and verse 8. Let's
just read a little of Luke's account. And again, I hardly
need to look at it for what I was taught when I was about five
or six years old in primary school. There were in the same country
shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock
by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and
the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore
afraid. They were scared stiff. And the angel said unto them,
fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings, good news of
great joy, which shall be to all people, all kinds of people. For unto you is born this day
in the city of David, a child is born, a son is given. Unto
you is born this day in the city of David, Bethlehem, a Saviour,
which is Christ the Lord, which is the Messiah promised of God.
And this shall be a sign unto you, you shall find the babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. And suddenly
there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising
God and saying glory to God in the highest and on earth peace,
goodwill toward men. No wonder it was announced like
that. It isn't just sentimentality. It's powerfully true. Why was
he called Jesus? We've seen Immanuel God with
us. Why Jesus? Joshua. That's the name, Joshua. You'll find in your New Testament,
you will find when they refer to Joshua in the Old Testament,
they use Jesus. And you think, oh no, not Jesus
of Nazareth, Jesus Joshua. You know, if Jesus was able to
take them into the promise, it means Joshua, because it's the
same. That's the Greek word for Joshua. It means Savior. Why Jesus? Savior. Call his name
Jesus. Savior. He shall save his people
from their sins. Not Moses. Not Moses. Not the law of Moses, no. John
says, 1.17, the law was given by Moses, defining the absolute
standard of God's holiness. The law was given by Moses, but
grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, the Savior. Listen what
the Savior says in Isaiah, 700 to 800 years before he came.
Isaiah 45, verse 21. This is the pre-incarnate Christ
speaking. This is the Word of God. The
one who was in the beginning with God, who is God. He said,
there is no God else beside me, because Israel know this, there
is one God. The Lord your God is one God.
There is no God else beside me, a just God. and a Saviour. So His justice is never violated
in any way, and yet He saves sinners from their sins. There
is none beside Me, no other God, no other Saviour. Look unto Me,
Look unto Jesus and be you saved, all the ends of the earth. Why
are you saved in looking to Jesus? Because in looking by faith you're
exercising the faith God has given to each and every one of
those for whom he died and paid the just penalty on the cross
of Calvary. He says, for I am God and there
is none else. I am God. Any Jehovah's Witnesses
listening to this, look at that verse. This is Jesus speaking
before he came. I am God and there is none else. What do we say in response to
that? Exactly what the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 9
verse 15. Thanks be to God for his unspeakable
gift. We're going to be sharing bread
and wine shortly. Why is it so significant? Because
it speaks, it reminds us that salvation is accomplished because
God became man, that his body might be broken and his blood
shed to pay the just penalty for the sins of his people, that
his people might be made the citizens of His eternal kingdom. I pray that God will use the
preaching of Christ, not just this, but by other faithful preachers
to speak to the hearts of anybody, anywhere listening to this, whoever
you might be, and draw you to embrace Christ, to take refuge
in Him, to trust Him, to believe Him, to follow Him, to obey His
gospel call. Amen.