Thank you, Pastor. Let me get
one little look here. Thank you, buddy. Thank you for a blessed, blessed
weekend. It's always delightful to be
here. You listen well, and I trust hear well. And I thank God for
you, for your pastor and his wife, for the blessed fellowship
he's given us in the gospel of his son. Three words used repeatedly through
the scriptures, particularly in the New Testament. They are
on my mind in recent months and years, almost incessantly. Those three words are the title
of my message this morning, and I'm going to be looking at a
number of texts, so if you want to follow me through the scriptures,
fine. If you wish to just jot down the references, and listen
and then look at them later, that's fine. But I want you to
hear what the book teaches. My subject this morning is he
was made. He was made. Throughout the New Testament,
the word made is used to describe that which our blessed Lord Jesus
became as our mediator. The word was made. flesh. God's dear son Jesus Christ our
Lord was made of the seed of David. This one who was made
a living, the first man Adam was made a living soul and the
last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Christ has redeemed us
from the curse of the law being made a curse for us for it is
written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. God sent forth
his son made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them
that were under the law. Christ was made a surety, surety
of a better covenant or a better testament. Now, in all those
places, the word translated made means something experienced. It of
necessity involves an experience. It is an actual transformation
of a person or a thing by something done to it. The word means cause
to be or cause to become. It always refers to a transformation. It always speaks of something
experienced. He was made. He was made. Now write this down somewhere
in your Bible so you can refer to it. You will need to. I promise
you, you will need to. The word never means to reckon. It never means to impute. It never means to treat as. It never means to pretend, never. Nowhere in all the word of God
does this word made mean to reckon, to impute, to treat as, or to
pretend. It means caused to become. Caused to become. He was made. Now all that our Lord Jesus Christ
is in his eternal Godhead, if I can use such language, he is
always eternally by nature. His omniscience, omnipotence,
and omnipresence are divine attributes. He always is omniscient, omnipotent,
omnipresent. His holiness, His righteousness,
His majesty, His glory, His infinity, His immutability, His sovereignty,
His supremacy are all His because He is God. All of those things
describe God. And without all of those things,
God would not be God and could not be God. All that Christ is
in His Godhead, He always is, was, has been, and will be. But all that He is, all that He is, as the God-man,
our mediator, all that he was made as our representative, all
that he became as our surety, that he was made to be. made to be in obedience to his
own father's will, by his own voluntary compliance with the
triune God in the everlasting covenant. In this message, I
want to show you from the scriptures as best I can what Christ was
made to be so that he might make you his. what Christ was made to be, that
He might bring many sons to glory. Without these things, you could
not face God in eternity. Without these things, God could
not receive you as His own. Without these things, there would
be no salvation for anyone. These things Christ was called
to become that we might become the sons of God and be made the
righteousness of God in him. Now, I want you to keep your
Bibles open on your lap and look at 10 passages of scripture,
10 passages of scripture. All that Christ was made, he
was made for us so that he might redeem us unto himself a peculiar
people, zealous of good works. Let's begin here in Hebrews chapter
seven and verse 22. Hebrews 7, 22. The book of Hebrews,
I'm sure your pastors told you many times, the key word is better.
Everything in the Old Testament is pictured and Christ is better.
Better than the angels, better than Moses, better than Joshua,
better than Aaron, better than Melchizedek, he's better. Hebrews
7.22. By so much was Jesus made a surety
of a better testament. In the beginning, before ever
the earth was made, when the triune Jehovah, Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost, dwelt alone in the ineffable glory of eternal
deity, God made a covenant. The three persons of the Godhead
made a covenant with a representative person, Christ Jesus, our Lord,
who stood forth as our surety. Now, when we read in the scriptures
about a testament or a covenant, the two words are the same. One
time the translated covenant, another time the word is translated
testament. It's exactly the same thing. When we read in the scriptures
about this testament or covenant, don't ever get in your mind the
idea that somehow God logically and sequentially did this and
thought that and deduced this and inferred the other and came
up with this. Don't think like that. Don't
think like that. Infinite. Infinite. Can you get your mind
around that? I can't. I can't. God is eternal. Let's try to get hold of that.
I've been trying for a long time. I just can't get hold of the
cup. It's bigger than me. God is immutable. Now, those are all true statements,
true statements describing the being of God. God is too vast
for us to have any real comprehension of his being except as we know
him in the God-man, our mediator, Christ the Lord. And so the Lord
God accommodates our understanding and speaks of himself In human
terms, the scripture speaks of the eyes of the Lord. God doesn't
have eyes. He doesn't need any. God's a
spirit. or his ears, or his arm, or his
feet. God is spirit. He doesn't have
a body like we do, but he speaks in human terms so we can get
some idea of his vast, great mercy and grace toward us in
Christ. And so this covenant is not really
an agreement. It's not really something that
the triune God agreed to. It is God's sovereign will. but it's revealed to us in the
sweet terms of covenant. Conditions are proposed by which
God in his justice can save sinners. conditions requiring righteousness
and satisfaction for fallen sinners who haven't yet fallen, that
thereby in the forgiveness of sin, God Jehovah may be feared. God cannot and will not be worshipped
except by forgiveness exercised in a Redeemer in whom he makes
himself fully known in all his glory as God through redemption. And Christ Jesus stood as our
surety. And he said, Father, I will redeem
you. I will go and become a man, and
I will fulfill all righteousness as a man to the infinite satisfaction
of your own holy character. And I will satisfy all the fury
of your justice as the sinner's substitute in the room of these,
my people. Trust them to my hands, and I
will bring them to you at last and say, lo, I and the children
whom thou hast given me not One is lost, trust them to my hands. And the father trusted us to
the hands of his son and struck hands with him. And God ceased
to look to us for anything. God doesn't look to you for anything. Did you hear me? God doesn't
look to you for anything. He trusted his son as our surety
whom we're called to trust when we hear the gospel, the word
of truth, the gospel of our salvation in Jesus Christ. The father trusted
Christ who stood as our surety. and thus stood before him as
the land slain from the foundation of the world, stood before him
as Jehovah said, Kenya, the Lord, our righteousness. And the father
trusting his son blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in his son. A beautiful picture is given
of this in Genesis 43. God gives us this picture of
Joseph down in Egypt. His brethren have come to buy
corn. And Joseph recognizes who they
are. And he hatched a scheme to get
them all to come down there. And he made it appear that they
were thieves and spies. And they swore they weren't,
so he keeps one of the men Simeon. And he says, I'll tell you what
now, if you're going to prove that you're not spies, you go
back and get the old man you say is your daddy, and that little
boy Benjamin, that younger son you say you have, younger brother
you say you have, and bring him and I'll let Simeon go. And so
they go back with the corn in their bags, and they got their
money in their bags, and they tell their father what's happened.
And Jacob says, all these things are against me. And Reuben said. Now daddy, if you'll trust me
with Benjamin, I promise you, I promise you, I'll go up there
and prove to this man who's Lord of the land that we're not spies,
we're faithful brethren and that we're your sons and I'll bring
Benjamin back to you and let me bear the blame forever. And
do you know what Jacob did? He said no. He said no. Then nine verses later, Judah
makes the same offer, exactly the same offer. He said, you
trust me with Benjamin and I'll go to the Lord of the land and
I'll prove that we are faithful brethren, your sons, and I will
bring Benjamin back to you. And if I bring him not back to
you, let me bear the blame forever. And Jacob said, all right, I'll
trust you. You take it. Why? Why did he trust his darling
Benjamin to Judah when he wouldn't trust him to Reuben. Because
our Lord is not the lion of the tribe of Reuben. He's the lion
of the tribe of Judah. And he is made to be a type of
our Lord Jesus as our surety, whom the Father trusted. You
see, the triune God trusted all his glory and all his will and
all his creation and all his people to Christ the surety before
the world was. Trust him. Trust him. Committed
everything to him. That's a savior you can confidently
trust. Look in John chapter 1 verse
14, John chapter 1. In chapter one, verse one, in
the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the
Word was God. Now in verse 14, and the Word was made flesh. We like to hedge things and put
up fences and protect God's Word. Isn't it amazing how how men
think they can protect God. And so we develop systems of
theology and we don't dare cross the system. We don't dare break
out of the box. So the theologians all warn us.
You read a commentary on John 1.14, I'm talking about the best
of them, the best of them, the ones I read and study. They warn
you now, now, this doesn't mean that God became flesh. It doesn't mean that. It doesn't
mean that God became flesh. It means that He took on Himself
humanity. You can't say that God became
a man. Well, let's see. John 1.1, In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. Quite literally, God was the
Word. Verse 14, The Word was made flesh. God became a man? God the infinite became a man? God who cannot change and did
not change became a man? How can God become a man and
not change? I don't have a clue. I don't understand infinity and
eternity, do you? I don't understand it, but God
became a man. God became all that we are, sin
alone accepted. All that we are, sin alone accepted. So that this God, who was made
flesh and became a man and dwelt among us, in whom by his obedience
unto death we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten
of the Father, full of grace and truth, this God As a man
learned how to walk and learned how to talk, he needed
the breast from his mother's milk as much or the milk of his
mother's breast as much as any baby needs the milk of his mother's
breast. He got hungry. He thirsted. He got tired. He sat down in
the well because he came there to rest. He went to sleep. He awoke refreshed. He prayed,
he struggled, he went through this world, he felt all the things
that you feel, went through all the things that you go through.
The Word was made flesh, made flesh. The Word was made flesh
for what the law could not do and that it was weak through
the flesh. God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. all his other
works God could do and did do with no cost and no sacrifice. He created the world out of nothing
and didn't break a sweat. All that God has done, all that
he shall do, everything he's done with no cost and no sacrifice
and no effort except the saving of ourselves. That cost him his own darling
son. Galatians four, verse four. The word was made flesh. When the fullness of time was
come, God sent forth his son made of a woman, made under the
law. Two things here. First statement
tells us of our Savior's virgin birth. You don't really believe
that Christ was born of a virgin, do you? Well, of course I do.
Of course I do. Of course I do. Why, any fool
who denies that's a blasphemy. There are some things so plainly
and vitally associated with the gospel of God and the worship
of God that to deny any of those things is to deny God altogether. There are some things, if you
say no to them, you said no to God. There are some things you
say that's not true, you blaspheme God. I don't care how big a Bible
you tote or how long a religious heritage you've got or how many
of your granddaddies were Baptist preachers. To deny these things
is to deny God, to deny the gospel is to be a blasphemer. Those
who deny or do not believe them are not Christians except in
name. Rather, they're infidels and
idolaters. God's sovereign character. Men
say, well, I wouldn't worship a God like that. I'm sure you
don't. I'm quite sure you don't. I don't
have any question about that. You say God's not sovereign?
A fella called me yesterday talking about absolute predestination. Said some fella believed in absolute
predestination. I plead guilty. You mean God predestinated everything?
Either that or didn't predestinate anything. You mean God's sovereign
over everything? Even the thoughts of men and
the wiggles of Satan? Either that or not sovereign
over anything. Either God controls all things or God controls nothing. You see, uh, you and I, we think
we're in control, especially men. We like to think we're in
control. We just, we like to think we
got it in control, but we don't control anything. Driving down
the road, man, I've got this thing in control, 80 miles an
hour, I can do this. Now, boy, don't you ever do this,
I can. And all of a sudden, the tire blows out. Uh-oh, I'm not
in control anymore. How come? Because you didn't
control the tire, or the nail, or the air, or the way the tire
was made, or the wheel, or the way it was put on. You didn't
control a frazzling thing. You see, you can't control anything
if you don't control everything. You get that? You can't rule
anything if you don't rule everything. Otherwise, your rule is just
pretend. Otherwise, your control is just
a delusion. To deny God's sovereignty is
to deny that he's God. That's like denying that God's
holy. To deny the deity of Christ is to deny the Godhead altogether. Somebody says, well, I believe
that Jesus is a God. It's amazing to me in these days
folks who call themselves conservative Christians have begun to embrace
as Christianity Mormonism. Act like Mormonism is Christianity.
Folks who openly deny that Jesus Christ is God and the crook who
started the thing Deceived a bunch of folks by convincing them that
he went running through the woods with 600 pounds of gold plates,
and he didn't weigh but about 160 pounds himself. And he's
running with his gold plates because he's got a new revelation
from God. And folks said, well, now we
can't judge them at all. We don't want to be severe. So, well, Brother Smith. You do see how stupid that is,
don't you? Worse than stupid, it's the compromise
of the character of God to embrace as true that which is false. It's a compromise of the character
of God to embrace as worshipers of God those who deny the very
core being of the Almighty. For you see, the core being of
God is not like the core values of that fellow in the White House.
That means we don't have any, except maybe you might find a
little one underneath the fingernail here. God's core character is
all that is. Holiness is His wholeness as
God. To deny anything about Him is
to deny everything about Him. To deny factual redemption, to
teach that Christ died for some folks who go to hell, is to teach
the blood of Christ is not worth any more than a little water
some priest sloshes on a fellow's face. It's useless. It's useless. If Christ did not
effectually redeem all His people, He didn't redeem anybody to deny
irresistible grace. Folks, they'll tell us that fella
up in Virginia, what's his name? Robertson. He's the head of the
television outfit. Yeah. Pat Robertson, a few years
ago, he was praying. Oh, he got hold of God by the
arm and had a whole slew of folks gang up and twist God's arm back
behind his back. And we were prayer warriors together
and we turned that hurricane away from the coast of Virginia.
Got God to change his mind. We did that because God controls
the world. But now when it comes to your
will, when it comes to your will, now
we can't expect God to interfere with that. We can't expect God
to do anything about that. God doesn't have any power over
your will after all. Why, that would make man totally
subject to God's will. And we just can't have that.
We just can't have that. That's because you blaspheme
God. He who can alter the order of nature won't have any problem
altering your will. So it is with the virgin birth
of our Redeemer. To deny that He is born of the
Virgin is to deny that He is God altogether and to deny that
He is the Holy Redeemer. It is another denial of the gospel.
We don't worship the Virgin Mary. We don't adore her. We don't
give her any adulation. Mary was a sinner saved by grace
just like you and I are. But our Lord Jesus was born of
the Virgin's womb. Our Lord made the law, and then
he was made of a woman and made under the law, made to be subject
to God's law. He who gave the law at Sinai
came down here and made himself subject to the ceremonial law,
the civil law, and the moral law, because God requires of
man righteousness, complete Perfect obedience to all His holy law. You won't get to glory without
being perfect. Is that right? Perfect. It must be perfect to be accepted. Walk before me and be ye perfect,
for I'm perfect. Well, how on earth can that be?
No fallen man can perfectly obey the will of God. You're right.
But a man who's not fallen can. And this man is the infinite
God. And by his obedience unto death,
he brought in everlasting righteousness and fulfilled the law and thus
became the end of the law. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believe it. That means that
I'm not any longer under the law. I don't owe the law anything. I'm not condemned by it. I'm
not threatened by it. I'm not terrorized by it. I don't
obey it. I don't disobey it, but I don't
obey the law. No, I obey my Redeemer. There's a huge difference. I'm
not ruled by the law. I don't, well, folks like to
pretend they do, you know. Religious folks put it in their
creeds and confessions of faith and they say, well, now, we're
not under the ceremonial law, but we are under the moral law.
We have to keep that. Well, which one do you keep?
Oh, well, we don't keep it perfectly. Well, then you don't keep it. You don't keep it. God didn't
say, do the best you can. He said, do it. Do it. We keep
the law by faith in Christ. Christ is our Sabbath. We don't have a Sabbath day.
Well, Sunday's the Sabbath. No, it's not. It's Sunday. It's
Sunday. And Saturday's not the Sabbath
either. It's Saturday. Christ is our Sabbath. We rest
in Him. Well, I just, I do this to show
my love to the Lord. No, you don't. You act like you're
doing it so other people will think you love the Lord. It's
exactly why you do it. Ooh, you're too plain, preacher.
Let me see if I can get plainer. You do it in a show of hypocrisy,
nothing else. You just make a show of religion,
a show of religion. Look at Romans chapter 1. Christ was made David's seed. The opening verses of this chapter,
Paul describes the gospel for us in detail, giving it to us
in simple statements, but very detailed. He says, Paul, the
servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto
the gospel of God, which he promised afore by his prophets in the
Holy Scriptures. What is this gospel that God
promised in the prophets? It's concerning his son. It's
concerning his son. You hear fellows on television,
these, you know, religious, I don't know where they breed these fellows.
I don't have any idea where they, what Bible they read, but they'll
talk about, well, the gospel is, the gospel is building houses
for the poor, and the gospel is making hospitals down in Africa,
and the gospel is having schools for the children. Where'd you
get that? Where did you hatch that? Where
did it come from? Where did it come from? Tell me, where did
it come from? The gospel is all together concerning
his son. It's not the Baptist gospel or
Catholic gospel or Methodist gospel. It's not Calvinist gospel
or Lermontian gospel. It's concerning his son, Jesus
Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David. He came
here, David's seed. David's seed. Because David is
the imminent type given in scripture to whom God promised a throne
which would never fall, a throne on which he would have a son
who sat forever. Is that what he promised? 2 Samuel
chapter 7, read it for yourself. That's exactly what he promised.
Well, that can't be. Man, the Jews used to be a state
in 70 A.D. and they just, they got together
some folks over yonder and reestablished their statehood in 1949, but
they hadn't had a king in my soul. They hadn't had a king
in over 2,000 years. There hadn't been a throne over
there in over 2,000 years. Not a nation there either. Not
a nation of Jews. You go find me one who can show
you which tribe he came from. Find me one. When God scattered
that nation, he scattered that nation. There's not a Jew walking
on the earth. I've got some friends who are
Jews converted by God's grace, but Jews physically. I don't
know. There's not one walking on the
earth who can tell you which tribe he came from because God
destroyed that nation because he was going to build a better
nation, a mightier nation called the Israel of God. And that God,
that nation has a king on the throne that never abdicates his
throne. And he's David's son, who is
David's Lord. He's the root and the offspring
of David. He's the root from whom David
came. And he's the man who came from David's loins. He's the
King of Israel, Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, made of the seed
of David. Turn to 2 Corinthians 5, verse
21. For he hath made him, notice the words
to be are in italics. They're added by the translators
to make the sentence read more smoothly. But the sentence reads
like this. For he hath made him sin for us. He hath made him sin for us. Had the Spirit of God intended
for the text to read smoothly and softly, it would have been
written in the Greek text, He hath made him to be sin for us. Plenty of words that he could
have used to express it just that way. But he desired He was
determined, he willed to express this statement with blunt force. He hath made him sin. No qualification, no explanation. He hath made
him sin, who knew no sin. that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. The Lord Jesus was without sin. He knew no sin. He did no sin. He could not sin. And yet, He
was made sin for us. In all these other texts we've
looked at, the word made, means caused to be or caused to become. Here in 2 Corinthians 5.21, the
Spirit of God inspired the apostle to use a different word, far
stronger than that we've seen so far. This word means wondrously,
mysteriously, inexplicably produced, created, and calls to me. When our Lord knelt in Gethsemane's
garden and cried three times, my father, if it be possible,
let this cup pass from me. And at last his heart broke within
him. He cried, reproach hath broken
mine heart. And his sweat, as it were, great
drops of blood fall into the ground. One of the ladies in
our congregation, Regina Henson, a little over
a year ago, left home one morning and got to a stop sign right
in front of the EMS office and fell over with a heart attack.
Doctors asked her husband, said, has she lost someone real dear
to her, father, child? No, no. And the doctor said to
him, said, there is a condition that has long been suspected
but has now been proven called broken heart syndrome. People
really do die from a broken heart. They really do die from a broken
heart. No heart disease, no blockage, deformities like I was born with,
just a broken heart, a broken heart. And she, they just were
sure she wouldn't survive. That's what happened to the Son
of God when He anticipated being made sin for us. He didn't anticipate
paying a debt for us. Though he did that, that didn't
break his heart. That didn't break his heart.
If I owed more money than all of you put together could pay,
and you managed to get together in order to keep me from losing
everything, losing my family, going to prison, and you managed
to get the money to pay the debt, and you had to lose all your
own possessions, you might not feel good about it. And you might
be disgusted with having worked so hard and have to give it all
up for one friend. But it wouldn't break your heart. But for the Son of God, who knew
no sin, to anticipate being made sin. Not made to look like sin, not
treated as though He were sin, made sin, just like the Word
was made flesh. so that now there sits in glory
a man who's touched with the feeling
of our infirmities. He knows intimately every pain
we experience. Every sorrow. Every heartache. He knows better than we can ever
know what it is to be seen before God. For this man is himself
God. And he's touched with the feeling
of our infirmities. That means he's able to sucker. Oh, what a good old English word
that is, sucker. We don't use it nowadays. We
miss so much by corrupting the English language. I'm not saying
anything concerning that we corrupt language all the way through
history, but we lose so much by corrupting language from our
forefathers because we lose certain shades of meaning. by substituting
words. Sucker doesn't just mean to help.
No, no, no. Help is what you do if there's
a dog laying on the steps out there and he's a stray and you
pick him up and give him some food. That's what you do. Sucker
is what you do when you've got a baby you dropped out of your
own arms, his legs are broken. You pick that child up with a
broken heart. and you hurt because that child
hurts. It's to help with feeling. It's to help with passion. And God, omnipotent, in human
flesh, sitting on the throne of glory, helps with passion. I can't so in all trials and
temptations and struggles. He was made sin for us by a mighty
wondrous transfer of grace. And when our sins were made his,
our sins were imputed to him. And God drew forth his sword
and slew his son in our room instead. That we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. How fully so, as fully as he
was made sin for us. All the righteousness that God
requires, Christ is to his people. And all that Christ is as the
God-man mediator, we are in him. Well, Curtis and I were talking
down here last night about the song of Solomon. Y'all
been talking about his studies in the song of Solomon and I
was asking about it. And he said, so often it's so difficult to
tell who's talking, Christ or his bride. I said to him, that's
all right, buddy. That's all right. There's a reason
why it's difficult to tell who's talking. Because anything that
is true of Christ as our mediator. Are you listening to me? Everything
that is true of Christ as the God-man, our Savior, everything,
everything is true of all who are one with Him. Is He holiness? He is that holiness
without which no man shall see the Lord. Is He sanctification? He is our sanctification. Is
He redemption? He's our redemption. Is He wisdom?
He's our wisdom. Is He salvation? He's our salvation.
So fully, so really, so truly are we one with Him that everything
He is, we are in Him and everything He possesses as the result of
His mediatorial obedience. As your pastor has said at every
service in his prayers since I've been here, through his merit,
through his merit, through his merit, by his obedience unto
death, by his blood atonement, by his perfect righteousness,
everything that he earned from God, we earned in him. When he obeyed God, I obeyed
God. When he died, I died. When he satisfied justice, I
satisfied justice. When he ascended to glory, I
ascended in him. When he sat down on the right
hand of the majesty on high, I sat down in him. We're one
with him. Can you get hold of that? One
with him. So much so that he says, Father,
the glory that thou hast given me, I have given thee. The glory he possesses as Lord
over all, I've given it to everyone of my own. And then folks talk
about, will there be any stars in my crown? Folks, they get their Sunday
school pins, you know. I've seen fellows that have to
make a loop down here to keep from dragging the floor. I want
you to have been in Sunday school every day for all these years.
So what? So what? Well, he was... I met your brother Walter Gruber
this morning, earlier about, been down in Mexico 45 years.
In 45 years, God used him to establish 39 gospel churches. 39 that are still existing. I go down and preach to them
every year. 39 gospel churches, 45 years!
I don't know anybody in history God used to do such a thing.
Know anybody else? Oh boy, he'll have a big mansion.
Yeah, he will. It's called heaven. Well, don't
you think that counts for something special? What? Something special from God? You did something you really
think God's going to reward you for? You got to be kidding. Surely you can't be that drunk
on Babylon's fornication. Surely you can't. Oh, no, no. Our acceptance is in the beloved
and with the beloved and as sure as the beloved and as full as
the beloved. Oh, God make you to believe him. and find acceptance with God
in Him. Now, I know that's just five
of the ten texts. If I live long enough, I'll give
you the rest of them sometime. God bless you.