Salvation is of the Lord. That's what's been preached from
this pulpit for many, many years. Salvation is God's doing. Salvation is God's mercy toward
sinners, undeserving sinners, wretched sinners. But when you say salvation of
the Lord, what does that really mean? I'd venture to say that
most everyone that is meeting today would tell you that they
believe salvation is of the Lord. But do they really believe that? That's a question of the most
critical importance. Is salvation of the Lord? Absolutely
it is according to Scripture. Well, does it mean that God has
made salvation possible? And it's up to man to believe
it? No, that's not what it means. If it's up to man to obtain it,
since it's made possible for everyone to believe, if that's
so, then salvation cannot be of the Lord. It's of man. Isn't that right? Isn't that right? Every part of salvation rings
forth loudly the splendor of God's grace. Every part of it. What do we see in the wondrous
election of God? We see His grace. God elected
a people before the foundation of the world. What did the people
have to do with it? I see grace in that, don't you,
Gary, in God's election? God chose a people by His sovereign
grace. What does the believer see in
the redemption of his soul? Why, he sees grace. Nothing but grace. Every man
and woman ever born does not have the ability to save themselves. So the divine intervention of
God's grace in the life of a chosen sinner, He'll tell you it's nothing
but grace. Sovereign grace. All God's doing. What do we see in our conversion?
We see grace. What do we see in justification
and sanctification? We see grace and grace alone. What keeps a man in the preservation
of God? Nothing but grace. There's only one place to find
The marvelous grace of God. And you know where that is, don't
you? Most of you have been told most of your life, right here.
It's in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's where it is. Christ is
the captain of our salvation. I like that. He's the captain.
and bringing many sons unto glory. And friends, if we're to ever
be truly, truly saved, it will be by Christ, the Captain of
our salvation. So just for a few minutes this
morning, by God's grace, I think I told you last week I wouldn't
keep you 30 and I went 34. This week, if I keep you more
than 30, I'm going to buy you all lunch in the Fellowship Hall. And my text this morning is found
in Hebrews chapter 2, if you would turn there with me. Hebrews
chapter 2. Just one verse of Scripture.
Verse 10. Hebrews 2. Verse 10, For it became Him, who Christ, for whom are all
things, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things. Always remember when you see
that word, whom, that salvation is in a person. It's not in do's
and don'ts. It's not in creeds and ceremonies. It's not in church law. It's
in Christ. It's in whom. In whom we have
redemption. For it became Him for whom are
all things, and by whom are all things, and bringing many sons
unto glory." Now it doesn't say every son unto glory, does it?
Many. Bringing many sons unto glory
to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. I have basically two points that
I want to give you briefly. The first is the Lord Jesus Christ
is a perfect Savior. Perfect. Perfect Savior. The justice of a thrice holy
God demands perfection. That's what it demands. It's not an option. Either perfectly
holy and perfectly righteous or you are damned and condemned
in your sins. And perfection is something I
readily admit that I don't know much about. I've never done anything
perfectly. What man calls perfect falls
way, way short of what God calls perfect. I know that. His ways
are higher than ours. His thoughts are higher than
ours. We've never done anything that hadn't been tainted with
sin. But God's divine justice and
the law of God's divine justice requires, demands absolute perfection. And the good news of the gospel
is just this. Now listen, God who demands perfection
becomes the perfection that He demands. God sent His perfect Son and
His perfect Son became what we are seeing. So that we might what? Become
perfect in Him. Perfectly righteous, perfectly
holy, perfect! So much so that now when God
looks at the sinner, He sees His perfect Son. There's no other way. You see,
dear sinner, the Lord Jesus Christ is adapted for the work of saving. Do you know why? He's God. Does that come as a surprise
to any of you? Christ is God. God the Father, God the Son,
God the Holy Spirit. God. Christ is God. And it's necessary for Him to
be so. It says in our text, "...for
it became Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things."
That has to be God. Who but God could sustain the
enormous weight of human guilt in their sin? Oh my! Who but
the Divine One was able to bear the awful load of wrath which
was to be carried upon His shoulders? Can any other than God do that? One old writer said, what knowledge
but omnipotence could understand all the evil and what power but
omnipotence, omniscience could understand and what power but
omnipotence could undo all that evil. It took God to redeem us
from our sin. And it's been revealed to us
that Christ is God and it will be forever the grateful admiration
of His people. If God's shown you that Christ
is God, that's a divine revelation. You can't figure that out on
your own. God has to show it to you. And they who reject the
divinity of Christ I tell you, you have a poor, poor foundation
to rest upon. I remember not many years ago,
a friend of mine and Teresa's owned a condo in Florida, and
one of the hurricanes came up. And he sent us pictures, miles,
miles of pictures. past the beaches, there was sand
everywhere where the wind had blown the sand off the beaches.
I mean, two and three and four miles away from the beaches,
sand just piled up on the streets and in people's yards and on
people's houses. Sand ain't much of a foundation,
is it? It can be blown around easily.
The fickle sand would seem to be more stable than the basis
of one's hope who does not see the divinity of Christ. Not see
that he's God. But true believers, they build
their foundation upon the solid rock. Christ, the sure foundation. That's where my hope is built.
My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. We sing that song, I dare not
trust the sweetest frame, but I wholly lean on Jesus' name,
on Christ, the solid rock I stand on. It would be an impossibility
for one man to work out his own perfect obedience, and even a
further impossibility for one man to bear God's wrath on himself
and appease God in any way. It's an absolute impossibility.
But friends, how then could he Christ do it for others and for
those countless multitudes whose ruin was to be reconciled. What a holy God. Holy God. He was God. But friends, we know
that if Christ had been God alone, He still would not have been
fit for a perfect Savior. What? What did you just say? That's right. Why? He had to
become a man. That's right. He had to become
a man. Man had sinned and man must suffer. He must take upon himself the
seed of Abraham that he may stand in the chosen sinner's room instead
and become their federal head. Christ must become a man. And
you know what? He did. Oh, He was a perfect
man. So much so that the Scriptures
say He knew no sin. He didn't even know what sin
was. But when we see the Lord Jesus
standing before us, being the Son of God, we see by God's grace
that we now have a substitute that is both just and justified. And that's your hopeless moment,
Bill. That your God is just. You deserve death and I deserve
death because of our sin, but God is just and He's also the
justifier. Why? Because He became sin for
us. You see, He can touch humanity
in its weakness, being a man, and yet He can touch divinity
in all its power. Oh, he can bridge the distance,
can he? The distance which separates
fallen man from the perfection of the eternal God. Oh, the mighty
gulf that God did span at Calvary. No nature but one as complex
as Christ, the Son of God, would have been perfectly adapted for
the work of salvation. That's why there's only one way.
There's only one who could be salvation for the sinner. Oh, a good doctor should have
some acquaintance with the disease that he treats. Now, I don't
know about you, but I don't want to go to a doctor who's never
treated what I got. Would you? If I've got a brain
tumor, I don't want to go to a foot doctor. No siree. But how remote, how much so does
our Lord know the remedy of our sickness? Our Savior knew all
concerning our disease. Why? For He took our infirmities
and He bore our sicknesses. He was tempted in all points
like we are. He didn't look at sin from the
distance of heaven, but He walked and lived in the midst of it
as a man, as a man. He lived more than 30 years in
the very center of it, seeing sin in all different shapes and
forms that we haven't even seen. I've still got sin about me that
I know nothing about. God reveals a little more of
it to me. It seems like every day, but
I know that there's still fathoms of the depths of my sin that
I haven't seen. God has. Christ has. He saw it
in demonic forms, for hell was let loose against him. But let
me tell you this, the more terrible the conflict was, the more glorious
his victory was. He saw and he experienced sin
carried to its furthest extent. Did he not? Why, it crucified
God Himself. How horrible is sin? It crucified
God! It nailed Christ, the heir of
all things, of heaven and earth, to the cursed tree. Men, I say
this about every week, and I really don't apologize, but I want to
talk about man's free will. Man's free will took the Lord
of glory and hung Him on a cross, killed Him, and thought they
were doing God a favor. I don't much want to talk about
my free will when I really understand what it is. But he understood the disease
we have. He studied the whole case through
and through. He's familiar with our sickness
and our disease more so than anyone that has ever lived. You say, well, what about the
deceitful and desperately wicked heart? Scripture says, who can
know it? Christ can. He's the only one
that knows the depths of the wickedness and deceitfulness
of our hearts. He understands it all, dear friends. His lifelong walking the hospital
halls of human nature had taught him something about our disease,
everything about our disease. And you know what? He knows the
subjects, too, upon whom he's going to operate. He knows this
personally, doesn't he? God gave us to him before the
foundation of the world. He knew man. He knew what was
in man better than the most skilled surgeon. He knew it by experience. As
I said, He Himself took our infirmities and He bore our sorrows. He Himself
was the patient, and He Himself was the medicine, and He Himself
is the cure. We're in good hands. those that
trust in Christ. He took upon Himself the nature
of the people He came to save. So every experience as a man
made Him perfect as our Redeemer. That's what I want you to see.
If you only see that today, that's what I want you to see. Every
attack of the mind instructed Him. Every throb of pain made
Him wise as a man. made him the more accomplished
to work out the purposes of God in the bringing of many sons
unto glory. He's a successful Savior. He
is a successful Savior. And I mean by this that in one
sense, he's already finished the work of salvation. It's finished. All that has to be done to save
a soul, Christ has already done. Isn't that something? There's
no more ransom to be paid. It's been paid in the fullest.
There's no more righteousness to be wrought. The perfect robe
of righteousness was finished by Him. There's nothing to be done to
reconcile God to sinners. He's reconciled us unto God by
His blood. It is finished. Is that not what
he cried? It's finished. Christ has finished
transgressions. He's made an end of sin and He's
brought in everlasting righteousness. My question to you is what do
you think of Him? What do you think of Him? Thank God for Christ's perfect
work. I'm perfectly righteous, not
by works of righteousness that I've done, but according to His
mercy, He saved me. Christ is perfect and He's able
to lift us up from the hardness of our hearts and the blackness
of our souls to the very gates of heaven itself. Oh, do you
see the beauty in Him? He's a perfect Savior. He's a
perfect Savior for you. If He's your trust, your hope,
your confidence, everything's going to be alright.
Secondly, and just briefly, how was Christ as our Savior made
perfect? Well, our text tells us through
sufferings. That's very critical. It was
through sufferings, my friend. He was not made perfect in character
by his suffering. He's always perfect, perfect
God and perfect man. No, not in suffering was his
character made perfect, but he was made officially perfect,
perfect as the captain of our souls through his sufferings. You see, the wages of sin is
death, is it not? And the only way that our sin
debt could really be paid was through suffering, through death. The wages of sin, death. Sin could not have been put away
by just holiness. The best performance of an unsuffering
person could not have removed the guilt of man. God couldn't
just say, you know, wave His hand. I mean, He could have,
but it wouldn't have been according to His justice, according to
His law. Suffering is absolutely necessary. Suffering is the penalty of sin. God said to Adam, in the day
thou eatest thereof, what? Thou shalt surely die. Nothing short of death could
meet the cause. This is what I want you to see.
Christ must go to the cross and he must suffer there. He must
bow his head and give up the ghost or else no atonement for
sin would have ever been made for the sinner. would have never
been possible. The curse that came upon us as
the result of sin, Scripture says, curse it as everyone that
continueth not in all things written in the book of the law
to do them. None of us can do. We can't do
anything right. much less all things. And though our Lord and Master
was perfect, if He had never suffered, He never could have
taken our curse. Do you see that? He's perfect
through sufferings. Cursed is everyone that hangeth
on a tree. But without the tree, without
the cross, without the suffering, Christ would not have been our
substitute. Being crucified, he became cursed. Being crucified, he died. And being crucified, he can make
perfect atonement for our sin. Oh, do you see the beauty in
that? What think ye of Christ? Sin demanded punishment. Punishment
must consist of loss And of pain in Christ lost everything. Why they even stripped him of
his clothes while he hung on the cross. He hung there. God
on the cross hanging in agony, pain, didn't resemble a man,
and naked. They stripped from him everything
as a man. That should have been you, and
that should have been me. I'm telling you right now, it
should have. And if you have yet to see that, you've yet to
see the beauty of this man. Because unless you see yourself
as the needy sinner you are, you'll never, ever see your need
of the crucified Savior. His soul, and I'm done. His soul
was exceedingly heavy, even unto death, and in agony, Bill, you're
starting to understand something about real pain, aren't you,
brother? Christ hung in agony on the cross in which no tongue
can describe. I could sit here, even with the
dictionary, and I could not even find the words to say about the
agony and the pain and the suffering that my Savior felt. Words don't describe it. You
can't describe it. Last week we saw the passage
where he cried, my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? We're not even considering the
agony of soul that he felt being forsaken of God. He who was God,
as we said last week, Martin Luther said, God forsaking God,
who can fathom those things? Oh, the pain and the agony just
wasn't physical. But maybe, just maybe, by the
grace of God we can understand a little better today that all
this was for the substitution of chosen sinners. Are you a
needy sinner? I'm asking you, are you a needy
sinner? I know you're a sinner of sin
that comes short of the glory of God. Every man and woman ever
born sinners, but are you a needy sinner? Has God made you needy?
Do you feel your need of Christ? Well, if you have, it's because
He's caused it. He's a perfect Savior. He's perfect
in every way. Perfection is what you need.
It's what you must have to be reconciled to a perfectly holy
and righteous God. And you can never attain it in
your own right and in your own works. It's got to be through
this man. Life is a look at the Savior.
Do you see Him high and lifted up as that brazen serpent was
of Moses? Have you been bitten by the serpent's
poison? Well, sure you have. And you're
dying of sin. Right now, you're dying as we
speak, unless you've looked. Have you looked to Him? Do you
see Him high and lifted up? If God's shown you that, You've
got a good hope. You've got a good hope. Only
God can cause you to look at the crucified one. And if you
desire to look, you know what? God has given you the desire.
You can't even muster that up. So look! If you said, okay, preach a message
and only use one word, I believe I'd say, look. Look. Look to Him. Look to the perfect sacrifice,
the perfect lamb that was slain before the foundation of the
world.