I want to begin our lesson this
morning in John chapter 18. And I'm going to do this a little
different than what you're used to. I want to spend today or most
of the lesson this morning and try to show you the coming together
of so many things. Winston was talking to me before
the service this morning and he was talking to me about our
indifference to the Word of God and how these great and precious
promises that Peter talked about, we read those things as though
they're not great and precious. And we just kind of, we just
talk about them like we talk about basketball or talk about
something else that we like. And for that reason, for that
reason. I want to take some time this
morning and show you in the Scriptures the coming together of so many
things that add to the meaning of what this chapter is all about.
Our Lord's on His way to the Garden of Gethsemane. And there
He bows His head in prayer like no other man ever prayed. And
prayed until His sweat becomes great drops of blood. And there's
a lot to understand if you're to enter into what he's doing
there. It's not enough just to, I mean,
if we just read the Bible for its historic account and we see
those things, they mean very little to us. And we just kind
of read through them. You have to go back where the
foundation of these things began and get some understanding, at
least in a picture in your head of what's taking place in this
garden. And so that's what I want to do this morning. I want to
spend some time and try to show you all these things coming together to bring about what's about to
take place in this garden. Now the garden and the cross
are the reason and design of everything that is. You know,
we go out here and we look at the trees and the grass and the
birds and all the things around and we go through every day Providence
of God and all these things coming our way and kingdoms rising and
falling and governments coming up and being torn down, all these
things. The reason behind all those things is the garden and
the cross. When you ask, why? Here's the
reason. Here's the reason. His appointments,
Christ's appointments are older than creation. You think about
that. Before creation was, God appointed
a surety. He appointed a representative
of men. His suretyship was before the
creation of the men of whom he was surety. His begatting was
an eternal begatting. We all want to go and next month
we will. We'll all go in some way at least
in our minds and we'll go back to that manger in Bethlehem and
we'll start talking about the beginning. That's not his beginning.
He was begotten in eternity. God said over and I think it's
Psalm chapter 2, this day have I begotten thee. That was a thousand
years before his birth. And he was talking about thousands
and eons before that. This day, he said, have I begotten
thee. I sent my king from all eternity
on my holy hill in Zion. His begatting was an eternal
begatting. And by him, God's mediator, were
all things created, things in heaven. We have no idea of the
creatures that dwell in heaven. You have no idea of its beauty
or what it is or anything about it. Do you? Do you have any idea? Paul said he saw things. There
was no need of him even trying to tell you things he couldn't
utter. There was no way to describe it. No language, no way. He could talk from now on. You'd
never get a grasp of it. He didn't understand it. Wonderful
thing. Well, this mediator of God, he
created all things, things in heaven, things in the earth,
visible, invisible, thrones, dominions. Every king that ever
mounted a throne mounted that throne because of him. Every
dominion, every rule ever established in this earth was established
because of him. You see what he says? I don't
care what it is you want to talk about, things in heaven, things
in earth, visible, invisible, thrones, dominions. What about
principalities? Yeah, those too. Principalities. And powers. And all things were
created for Him, by Him, and for Him. You see that? He is before all things. And
by Him, they all consist. That's why they're here. You
see what I'm saying? This garden and the cross is
the reason for all things. Everything recorded in this book
is in some way connected to Him. Creation, the very fundamental
things of creation He tells us in His Word describe Him and
His work. Listen to this psalm, Psalm 19.
The heavens declare the glory of God. All you've got to do
is walk outside that door and look up. The heavens declare
the glory of God. And the firmament showeth His
handiwork. Is it not the firmament? You
remember our studies in Genesis? I told you that the firmament
was the atmosphere. Is it not the atmosphere that's
conducive to life? Ain't that what he's telling
us here? You're breathing my air. That's what he's saying.
You're standing under my heaven. You're enjoying the light of
my sun. All you have to do is look up, David said. The heavens
declare the glory of God, and the earth showeth his handiwork,
the firmament. Day unto day. What about that? The sun rises and the sun sets.
You've got day and night. One of the first things he did
in creation. Watch this. Day unto day utters speech. Night
unto night showeth wisdom. There is no speech nor language
where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through
all the earth and their words to the end of the world. Now
watch this. In them, in them hath He set a tabernacle. He
built Him a church. He built a place of contemplation. He built a place for men and
women to gather and to look. He set around us the types, the
symbols, the pictures of His glory, and He did it in creation. And he said, you enter into that
church, and you look, and here comes the sun. And the sun rises
like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. From the earliest
dawn of civilization, God hung a sun in the sky before ever
a man walked on this planet. He put that sun there, and that
sun rose, and that sun set. And it pictured him as a bridegroom
coming out of his chamber. And that light comes up, and
every man who sees that light, who's affected by that light,
feels the warmth of that love, that He's shined, the Son of
God, this purpose of God in Christ. And providence. Can you not see
a divine order in providence? It's very difficult. I confess,
it's very difficult in my own life to put your finger on it.
I know it's there. And God help me, I want to submit
to it. And I want to look at it in a proper light. I told
them down in Houston one time, one time in my life I'd like
to be like Job. When the trial falls and when
these things happen and bring me down, just one time in my
life, my first answer, the first thought come into my head, I'd
like to say, this is of the Lord. The Lord giveth and the Lord
taketh away. There's a divine order to providence. Think about
this. I can see it in his life. I just
have difficulty seeing it in mine. Think about this. It just happened, somebody said,
that a certain king in a certain time decided to enact a new tax. So Mary and Joseph had to go
to the city of their father, to the city of David, and had
to go there to pay their taxes. And it just happened while they
was there that Mary reached her full term and had a son. And
it just happened there was no place in the inn, so they had
to lay him in a manger. And all this just so happened
because it was foretold a thousand years before he was born. You
see the order in the Providence? It just happened to be that the
shepherds were sitting on the hillside that night looking up
at the sky. It just happened that those wise men, one of them
said, you know, I've heard about this child. I think we ought
to go see him. I heard he was born. Just happened. Just happened to go into Egypt
so Herod couldn't kill him. And it just happened that a prophet
foretold it thousands of years. Had to happen that the Scriptures
might be fulfilled. There's a divine order in Providence,
and it's seen and pointed out in the life of our representative.
He said, I must need to go through Samaria. Why? Because at an odd
time of day, a woman's going to come out. She's coming out
at an odd time of day because she has husbands that are really
not her husband. And she's ashamed and don't want
to hear the other women talk. So she's going to come out at
this time, and I'm going to be sitting on the well when she
gets there. And I'm going to talk to her. And I'm going to
give her the truth. And the truth's going to set
her free. It just happened. It just happened. There is nothing
random or circumstantial about the coming of our Redeemer into
this world and the life He lived and the death He died. I want
you to turn with me to two scriptures and then I will get off of this
and get on with the lesson. Psalm chapter 2, the Psalms of
David chapter 2, and the Acts of the Apostles chapter 4. Just hold your finger in Acts.
And then look with me over here in Psalm chapter 2. Look here
at verse 1. This is a passage everybody is
familiar with. Why do the heathen rage, and
the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against
His anointed, saying, let us break their bands asunder and
cast their cords from them. He that sitteth in the heavens
will laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. Yet, he said, have I set my King
upon my holy hill in Zion. Here he sits. Here he sits. Now,
you kings, beware. Beware. And you kiss the sun,
lest he be angry. Now, all this was said by date. inspired of God 1,000 years approximately
before Christ came into the world. Now, here's Peter and John. Christ
has already come into the world. And he was crucified, laid in
a grave, was raised from the grave, and now sits at the right
hand of God. And Peter and John go out, and
they're out here preaching. And Sanhedrin, the great high
council of Israel, go out and arrest them here in Acts chapter
4 and bring them in. And they charge them and they
said, we don't want you to preach anymore in this name. Now, they
could have killed them. And they were guilty of killing
people because they broke their law. They defied the very law
which they lived by. They transgressed. They were
accused. If what they were saying was
true or not true, then they were guilty of blasphemy. And the
punishment was death. And the disciples knew that.
And they went before expecting to die. But they charged them
instead. And they said, we're going to
turn you loose, but don't preach anymore in this name. And they
said, well, we can't preach anything else. That's all we know. We can't preach it. There's nothing
else to preach. This is it. You've missed it.
This is it. This is all of it. They sent them away. Peter and
John, they came back to the little group where they were assembled.
And they told them. Told them what happened. Told
them what they said. Here's what they said. Look down
here in Acts 4, verse 24. Here's what the people said.
They bowed their head to Christ the King. And they said, Lord,
Thou art God, which made heaven and earth and the sea and all
that in them is, who by the mouth of Thy servant David hath said,
Why do the heathen rage? Talking about these this heathen priesthood and this
heathen council, these men who profess to be ambassadors of
God, teachers of babes. Here's what David was talking
about, they said. Thou hast said through the mouth
of thy servant David, why do the heathen rage and the people
imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth stood
up and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and
against his Christ. For of a truth against thy holy
child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate
with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel were gathered together
for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before
to be done. And that's all. Now I said all
of that to say this, as we read and study the scripture, Let
me know this, that everything from the beginning of creation,
including creation, including providence, including the reigns
of kings, including the behavior of the patriarchs and the sons,
and all these events that happen in time, they all have a purpose. And this purpose is connected
to the garden and to the cross. You'll find it. You'll find it
if you look. And you'll rejoice if you see it. We know that everything
from the beginning of creation has a bearing on what I'm reading,
and what I'm reading has a bearing on what I'm believing, and what
I'm believing has a bearing on my understanding of who my Savior
is, and what He's able to do, and what He has accomplished
for all His elect. It all has a bearing on it. And
the more you know, the deeper you enter into those truths.
And those truths are just unfathomable. They just go on and on and on. And when you think, man, look
at that. Look at that. That's deep. You
ain't scratched the surface. You ain't scratched the surface. Now sometime back, the Lord revealed
to me a few things about this little brook Cedron. which the
Lord crosses to go into the Garden of Gethsemane. So let me read
these first two verses to you here. When Jesus had spoken these
words, He went forth with His disciples over the brook Cedron,
where was a garden, into the which He entreated and His disciples. And Judas also, which betrayed
Him, knew the place. For Jesus oft times resorted
thither with his disciples. I believe the understanding of
this little brook and its place will have a profound impact on
you if you ever get a hold of what this place represents. And
I want to begin back with the son of David, I mean, who plotted against his father
David. Well, that's when he went out
by the gate. And everybody that come in, he had a little spiel.
He told them and told them his father didn't care about Israel
and his father didn't care about their welfare and so on and so
forth. And slowly, slowly, slowly, unbeknownst
to his father, he began to take over the hearts of the people.
And even the hearts of some of the mighty men of God and people
who pretended to be servants of David. Joab. was warned, who
fell under the spell of Absalom. And then you think about that. You think
about his intent to take his kingdom away from him, a traitor,
a traitor. Well, I see another son. His
name was Lucifer. He was son of the morning. He
was son of the morning. I believe he has that name because
he was one of the first of God's angelic creatures. He was the
sun of the morning, of the dawn, of the dawn of this revelation
of Christ. And I know he knew that revelation
of Christ because he wanted to sit in his throne. He wanted
to sit on the mount of the congregation. He was a traitor. He wanted to
take away from Christ what God had given Christ. And he wanted
to take over the kingdom. He wanted to stand up there.
He wanted to be the one glorified. He wanted to be the one with
the crown on his head. Lucifer, son of the morning.
And then Absalom. He's successful for a brief time,
just like Satan. For a brief time, he was successful.
He run David out of the city. David fled from Jerusalem. And he goes out. And when he
leaves Jerusalem, you know where he went? Now this word Cedron,
that's Greek for the Hebrew word Kidron. So when you go into the
Old Testament, the name's not Cedron anymore, it's Kidron.
And you'll find it. And the first thing, when David
left his kingdom in exile, you know where he went? Across
the brook Kidron. That's where he went. The first thing I learned about
this brook, it's the brook of betrayal. Judas knew where it
was too, didn't he? He knew where that brook was.
And so the Lord tells us in John 18, verse 2, Judas also, which
betrayed him, knew the place. Now, Kidron or Sidron means black
waters, dark waters. It was a dark brook, a nasty
pool. And Kidron was a dry wash. It
wasn't a spring-fed stream. It was just a dry wash. And they
took out, when they cleansed the temple from the sacrifices
and all that mess that was in there, all that, I'm not going
to tell you, I don't want to ruin your supper, but all that
stuff out of that tabernacle was taken out and thrown into
that brook. Into that brook. And it lay out there. until it
rained. And then the rain would wash
it down and it'd empty out over its banks into this valley called
the Valley of Kidron, the Dark Valley. Very possibly that valley
that David talked about, that valley of the shadow of death.
Very possibly might have been the picture that he had in his
mind. But it went out over that and all this stuff went out over
that valley. And it caused that valley to
be fertile. So you think about that for a while. What a message
that is. Black waters. All the waste of the temple was
carried out, thrown into that wash. And so we see David leaving
in exile. This is the brook of betrayal,
all right? Here's the next one. Here's the
next name I find in association with this brook. It's a man called
Shimei. Anybody here remember Shimei?
Shimei was of the household of Saul. cousin or something. He was down the line. He wasn't
an immediate threat to the throne or anything or he'd been dead.
But Shimei, he was kind of a distant relative. He was a cousin or
a second cousin or something of the household of Saul. And
so when David plead into exile, he went out into this place. And who should meet him but Shimei? And he didn't meet him and greet
him. He had a handful of rocks. And when David and his men approached,
Jimei stood out in the road and threw rocks at him. Now here's
the king and this rebel down here with a handful of rocks
throwing them at him and mocking him. He's mocking him. Ha! You thought you was king, didn't
you? You thought you was somebody. You ain't nobody. Let me tell
you something. Let me tell you what you're doing
here. You're a curse. And you're a curse because you
overthrew my father. It's your bloody hands that brought
down the reign of Saul. And that's why you're out here.
And that's why I'm going to throw rocks at you." And David's men
said, we're going to take his head off. And David said, no,
you're not. No, you're not. He's right. I am out here in
exile. I am out here by the hand of
God. And I'm satisfied to wait on God's hand to deliver me.
God will take care of Shimei. And they just didn't pay any
attention to him. And he just kept right on throwing rocks. Cursing
them, he said. Cursed them. There's the road. Now, when the exile was over,
David came back to Jerusalem. And they met him there, a big
ferry, a big raft or a boat of some kind. Loaded David and his
house up on there and all this stuff. Come back over to Jordan. Now, on the Jerusalem side of
Jordan, here's Shimei. But Shimei ain't got a handful
of rocks no more. Because he sees past that old
condemned king. And he sees the glory of God
coming back over on that boat. And Shimei bows down and begs
David for forgiveness. And David gives it to him. And
he said, as long as you live, I promise you, I'll never slay
you by the sword. So David lives his life, and
Shimei lives his life, and now Solomon is about to take over
the kingship. And Solomon comes to David, and
David said, now let me tell you about somebody. His name's Shimei. He's a traitor. And I granted
him exile, and I granted him Mercy. But don't you trust Him. Don't you trust Him. And so first
order of business, Solomon called Shimei and he said, Shimei, I
want you to build you a house in Jerusalem. And as long as
you stay in that house and stay in Jerusalem, I'm going to count
you a faithful servant. But the day you cross Kidron,
I'm going to treat you as an enemy and you're going to die.
You know that. The day you cross that brook,
You are going to die. Our Lord was given a house of
flesh by which as long as he lived in it, he was considered
a servant of the Lord. He could not be touched because
his hour was not yet come. He lived there by the oath of
the king. He lived and no man could touch
him. He passed right through their midst. Then with handfuls
of rocks to bring him down. Cliffs to throw him off of. Councils
to take him and kill him. They couldn't touch him. They
couldn't touch him. But in the day he passes over
this brook. Now listen to me. He's identified
as an enemy and a traitor. And death is as certain as the
king who swore the oath. The next name I find, his name
is Asa. Asa's father was an ungodly king. These were all kings in Judah.
And Asa, his father was an ungodly king, a vile man who led Israel
into idolatry. But Asa, his son, had a good
heart and he followed the Lord. And the Scriptures say that his
father was tolerated of God because of God's promise to David that
he would raise up a lamp in Israel. And so he raises up Asa, his
son, and puts him on the throne. And he tolerated his father. His father was an idolater. He
polluted the sanctuary. He built groves in the mountains.
He built groves in the temple. He did all of these things contrary
to the Word of God. But God tolerated him. He let
him go because he had another purpose. And his purpose was
in Asa. And he raised up Asa. And Asa
took all the idols of his father and even the idol of his mother. And I found this striking. He
took the idol out of his mother's house and took away his mother's
crown. Took it right off her head. Said,
you're not queen anymore. You're not queen anymore. And
he took all those things down. Took her crown and took all those
idols and took all those things. He took them down beside the
brook Kidron and burned them up. Burned them up. What a picture
of our great King upholding all things by the word of His power,
purging His kingdom and sitting down at the right hand of His
Father, even to the removing of His mother's crown. Huh? Mary is not the Queen of Heaven.
You know why? Because she is an idolater just
like everybody else. And the only rejoicing Mary ever
had was She said, I rejoice in God my Savior. She had to be
saved the same way you did. She had to be saved the same
way everybody else did in Israel. And then came Josiah. Josiah
was the boy king. He took over his reign at eight
years of age. And Israel was in ruin. It was
in peril. It was totally destroyed. And
this young man, he began his reign, and he reigned 18 years.
And when he was 26 years old, they were engaged in trying to
rebuild the temple and these things. And he called on his
servant, Chafin. Chafin was a scribe. He transcribed
the scriptures. And he told Chafin, he said,
you go down there and get Hilkiah, the high priest. He said, I don't
even know what we got to work with. I don't know how much money
we got to do this thing and you need to go down there and take
an inventory of the silver and see where we stand on this thing
and give me some idea of what it is we're trying to rebuild.
Go down there and get me some estimates on this thing and take
some inventory so I know where we stand on this thing of getting
this temple back, getting these repairs done. And so he did.
And he went down there and got Hilkiah and went about the task
the king gave him to do and they were down there and Hilkiah searching
through the ruins and kicking things around trying to get some
idea of what they had to do, what was still usable and what
wasn't and how much silver they had. Hilkiah stumbled on the
book of the law and he found it. And he took it to Chaffin
and he said, look here what I found. And Chaffin read it and he went
back to the king and showed it to the king. And Shapin, the
scribe, sat down and declared these things to the king. Read
it to the king. Word for word. Took this book
and read him what God had to say. And the king ripped his
clothes. Ripped his clothes. Fell down
on his face before God. And he said, we're in trouble.
We're in trouble. And he told Shapin and Hilkiah,
the high priest, And every other faithful servant he had there
around the throne, he said, you go seek God's counsel and see
what it is I have to do. Go see what God's willing to
do in this thing. The king was crushed in his heart,
coming to understand the fierce wrath of God that was kindled
against them. Every mother's son in the place
guilty of gross negligence to the Word of God. Now watch this,
2 Kings 22 verse 18. I know I'm over my time. Just
be tolerant, please. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel
as touching the words which thou hast heard, because thy heart
was tender and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord when
thou heardest what I speak against this place and against the inhabitants
thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse And
it's rent by clothes and wet before me. I also have heard
you. I heard you. And the king commanded
Hilkiah the high priest and the priest of the second order and
the keepers of the door to bring out of the temple of the Lord
all the vessels that were made for Baal and for the grove and
for all the host of heaven, angelic creatures, all these symbolic
things. Get them out of there. And he
burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and
carried away the ashes to Bethel. And he brought out the grove
from the house of the Lord without Jerusalem unto the brook Kidron,
and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it into small powder,
and cast the powder on their ungodly graves, their idolatrous
graves out there in that valley. He ground up in the powder and
just throwed it out there on them. 2 Kings 23.12. And the
altars that were on top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which
the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh
had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, did the
king beat down and break them down from thence and cast the
dust of them into the brook Kidron. Now listen to this verse in Hebrews,
talking about this young man and talking about our Lord. Thou
art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, who in
the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications
with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save
him from death, he was heard in that he feared." You see that
picture in that? Josiah, the young king, brought to bear on him the fierce
wrath of God and the exceeding sinfulness of sin and what these
men had done in transgression unto God, what he'd done bowed
his head before God. And then in 2 Chronicles 29,
Hezekiah now reigns in Israel. And he orders the Levites to
sanctify themselves according to the law and go straightway
into the temple, carry out everything that defiled it, to cleanse it,
sanctify it, and remove all the filthiness from it. Verse 16,
And the priests went out into the inner court of the house
of the Lord to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness
that they found of the temple of the Lord into the court of
the house of the Lord. And the Levites took it and carried
it out abroad into the brook Kidron." What a picture of the
Lord Jesus Christ in His substitutionary body carrying out into this valley
of Kidron all the vile abominations of His people. He was made to
be sin for us who knew no sin. Cross that brook. Cross that
brook as our representative and become a traitor. A vile traitor. Ain't that what we were? Huh? It's our sins. It's our sins. He had no sins. It's our sins
that he's mourning for. It's our sins that brought him
there. Now with all those things in
mind, I want you to listen to this verse over in Psalm 110.
This is talking about the accomplishments of the coming Redeemer. Psalm 110, verse 7. He shall
drink of the brook in the way. He shall drink of it. You think
of it. That old, vile, nasty stream. Did he actually bend
down? I don't believe he did that,
although he might have. But symbolically, he drank. He drank what we are. He bore
our sins. As literally as I can say that,
He bore our sins in His own body on that tree. And in this garden,
these sins are being made known. They're coming up before Him.
And this wrath is evident before Him. And He's showing us the
effect of these things. The effect of these things. He must, in order to accomplish
salvation, the salvation of His elect, have their sins laid upon
Him. He must receive into Himself
and become what they are to taste death for every man. The Bible
said to lift up his head. Ain't that what it says there
in Psalm 110? In order to lift up his head in judgment. Every
sin, every sin, everything he did, It had to be done to the
perfection of that law. Everything he did to hold up
the head. All this conquering and all these
things that he accomplished. To hold up his head. Every sin
of God's elect had to be punished. Had to be mourned over. Had to
be mourned over. Had to be sensed and realized
in the soul. That's what's going on in the
garden. Now next week, Lord willing,
we'll get into this thing of the garden and I'll try not to
go so long. Thank you.