If you will open your Bibles to Luke chapter one again Luke
chapter one. We'll begin reading with verse
thirty one of Luke chapter one. Gabriel speaking here to Mary,
announcing that she will be giving birth to our Lord Jesus. He says, you
will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give
him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be
called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the
throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house
of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end. Thirty-five years ago, next month, I returned for the
second quarter of my first year of I was going to a school that
we would call a free will Bible school. But we began a class which they
call in theological circles, Soteriology, the study of salvation. The word Soteriology is derived
from the Greek word for salvation. And as the teacher began his instruction on this,
he set forth five doctrines, and particularly he set forth
one, and that got everybody to talking about the other four.
He set forth the doctrine of unconditional election, that
God, before the world began, before he ever made any stars,
before he said, let there be light, He chose a people whom
he would save by Jesus Christ. The scripture for this, the most
obvious scripture to me anyway, is Ephesians chapter 1, I believe
it's verse 4, according as he has chosen us in him before the
foundation of the world. And the teacher taught us that
this election, inasmuch as it was before the world began, could
not have had anything to do with what we do, because we hadn't
done anything yet. It was a choice which God made
entirely from His own will, for His own purposes, for His own
reasons. Of course, as soon as He said
this, in the middle of all those free willers, there was a lot
of discussion. A lot of hands went up. And as
discussion went on, they spoke of another doctrine, which we
know as total depravity. And this doctrine teaches us
that natural man, ever since Adam's fall, ever since Adam
sinned, everyone, when they're born in this world, they come
into this world spiritually dead. That they do not have the capacity
within themselves to do anything that would please In fact, they
do not even have the capacity within themselves to understand
the things of God, nor receive the things of God, nor believe
them. And there are scriptures to back
up every point of that. And then there was discussion
of another doctrine, and this doctrine was rejected by all,
a doctrine which we call limited atonement. a doctrine that teaches
us that the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world with those
chosen people, as it were, written upon His hands and in His heart. And when He went to Calvary,
He went with them in mind, just like the high priest of the Old
Testament days. When He went into the temple
to make sacrifice, He went in there not with the names of Egypt
or of Babylon, or of Assyria, but rather he went there with
the names of the tribes of Israel upon his breastplate and upon
his hands according to some. And he offered atonement not
for everyone in the world, he offered an atonement for the
house of Israel. And in like manner the Lord Jesus
Christ came to the world not to make salvation possible for
everyone, not to simply open up the doors of heaven so that
if anyone ever did decide they would like to come in, that they
could. Rather, he came and he made a sacrifice which actually,
really, and completely put away the sins of everybody he represented. And there was another doctrine
spoken of called Irresistible Grace, which teaches that when
the Holy Spirit is sent by God to retrieve one of God's elect
from their deadness, that He goes with divine omnipotence,
that He cannot be stopped, that the Holy Spirit of God does not
merely plead, that He does not merely beg, that He does not
try to get people to come to Christ, but with unstoppable
divine power, He joins Himself to the preaching of the Gospel,
and He gives the Word life. And with that living Word, He
gives life. to God's elect. And those who
could not hear before, begin to hear and understand. Those
who could not see before, see with clarity. And those who could
not believe, call upon the name of the Lord and find salvation. And finally, there was a fifth
doctrine which was called the perseverance of the saints, which
says that everyone who has been called like that by the Spirit
of will not only begin in believing, but will throughout their lifetimes
continue to believe, as the scriptures say, these all died in faith. Now you're very familiar with
those doctrines. They are a part of your religious
heritage, most of you, part of your religious heritage and your
ethnic heritage, seeing that those five doctrines were first
formulated as such in Holland. When I heard those doctrines,
Four out of the five of them made instant sense to me and
I grew to love them and eventually to love all five of them. Now most of the time when people
hear those doctrines immediately they put up a wall. These doctrines
are offensive to natural man. There's no doubt about that when
our Lord began to set them forth in John chapter 6. It says from
this point on many of his disciples no longer followed him. Even those who for a while had
followed the Lord Jesus Christ, thought they understood, thought
they believed, and wanted to be hangers-on of His, once they
heard Him declare, This is the will of My Father which hath
sent Me, that all that He has given to Me I would lose none,
but raise Him up. In the last day they inasmuch
said to Him, You take too much on Yourself, You're putting this
too much in You, You're putting the whole business of salvation
upon Yourself, And upon the sovereign power of your Father, can't have
that, I'm going elsewhere. And yet I find in these doctrines
a wonderful comfort. Yeah, I don't like to be thought
of as totally depraved. I like people to think there's
some good in me. But you know what? I know better. I know better. There is, hopefully hidden from
your view, but there is hidden from you a cesspool of depravity
in the mind of the man that preaches to you, and a list of transgressions
that would curl your hair if you knew them. And there remains within me,
even though I am a child of God, regenerated by the Spirit of
God, In my flesh dwells no good thing, and even in that flesh
I find a strong tendency towards unbelief. And so when I read in the Scripture
that man by nature is totally depraved, that man by nature
is a sinner through and through, that there's nothing in him which
God could like, there's nothing in him to draw out the goodness
of God, I think to myself, well, that's how the Bible describes
man, and yet it says that God saves such men. That means there
may be salvation for even such a one as me. Brethren, I don't need a Bible
to tell me I'm totally depraved. I already know. I'm just glad
the Bible confirmed it and said there is salvation for the totally
depraved. I love the doctrine of unconditional
election. For two reasons. First of all,
I'm glad that this matter of salvation is a matter of God's
choice and not mine. Because I know what my choice
is. So long as God left me to myself, my choice was to reject
Him. And if He for a moment, even now, left me to myself,
I would make that same horrible, rebellious choice. Yes, I chose to follow Christ.
As the old Negro spiritual goes, I have decided to follow Jesus.
Yes, I did. I'll tell you why. Because long
ago, the Lord Jesus Christ, or God, decided to chase me down,
to hunt me down, and put His brand on me and call me His. That's why. I'm glad it's God's
choice, not mine. I'm glad it's unconditional. That is, it was not based upon
me meeting any conditions which He set up. I already know I can't
meet any of His conditions. I cannot even meet the simple
condition to believe on His name. It's not in my power to do that.
If all that God did was simply make salvation available to everybody
and say, OK, whoever wants it can have it, there would be nobody
saved because there's nobody who wants God's salvation. Not until God does something.
God did not look down through history and try to figure out
who would believe Him and then choose them. Why? Because until
He chose them and sent His Spirit to them, they never would have
believed. He did not look down through
history and find out who would be good or who would be religious
or who would meet or perform certain ceremonies or do certain
good works. There was nothing in man to see
or to foresee that would make God say, I like him. I think
I'll save him. I know there's nothing like that
in me. So I'm glad that this choice is all together. in the hands of God. And I'm
glad that when the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world that
he didn't die for every single individual. Now understand this,
it's not as though I enjoy the fact that there are some who
will be lost. Let me explain what I mean. If Jesus Christ
came into this world and he died equally for every man and woman
in this world, what does that mean? It means that making the
difference between whether I'm saved or whether I'm lost is
up to me. If Christ didn't make the difference,
who's going to? If by His suffering under death,
He doesn't make the distinction between those who shall live
and those who shall perish, then who must make the distinction?
I must, at least with regard to me. And what I've already
told you about me, You leave that choice to me, I know what's
going to happen. Oh, I won't say, I wouldn't choose to go
to hell. No, that's for sure. If you say,
hey, what would you like, heaven or hell? Everybody's going to
say heaven. But nobody is willing to choose the way to heaven. And quite frankly, nobody by
nature wants to be rid of his sins. We love them. You say, well, I don't like everything
I do. You know, God's given a measure of common grace to men so that
we can live together and not kill each other. And we regret some of the things
we do. But you know, so far as offending God, that doesn't bother
a natural man at all. In fact, he probably doesn't
even realize he's doing it. But it's good to know. that when
the Lord Jesus Christ came and by his life performed the righteousness
that God required and by his death he paid the penalty for
sin. It's good to know that he did
that for me. And it's good to know that everybody
that he did that for is without sin in the sight of God. Because if the blood of Jesus
Christ did not by itself put away sin, it means I've got to
add something to that work to make it effective for me. And I love the gospel of irresistible
grace. Oh, there might be what we would
call a grace that is resistible. You're hearing the gospel this
morning. I'm doing the best I can to preach it, and I pray that
God will give it some power for you. But you know, I can preach
this gospel, and it's a grace that God even lets you hear it.
But that grace is resistible. You can reject it. You can say,
I'm not going to hear that anymore. I'm not going to listen to that
guy. There have been plenty of people say that. And you know
something? I don't want you to listen to me. I really don't.
I want you to hear what I say, but I don't want you to listen
to me, because I am no authority. I do know what's true, but I'm
not the authority. I'm not the power behind what
I'm saying. If you reject me, that'll mean very little, because
I'm just another man walking the face of the earth. But if
you reject what I say, It's according to this Scripture. If you reject
that, it's not me you've rejected, it's the one that sent me to
preach that you've rejected. I wouldn't have you put any confidence
in me. But we all reject the Word of
God. If God said, All right, I've
done all I can. I'm going to send preachers out. They're going
to tell the world and they'll see if they can convince anybody
to follow in this way. Nobody would follow. Every convert of man is a failure. The story is told that Brother
Spurgeon was walking down the street one day, a great gospel
preacher, and he passed this bleary-eyed drunk. The drunk
looked at him and said, Remember me? Spurgeon says, No,
I don't think I do. He says, Well, I'm one of your
converts. Spurgeon said, You look like
my work. Would that you were one of the Lord's converts. And
brethren, if I convert you, you will be just as lost as before
you were converted. What does it take? to convert
a man into salvation, nothing less than God the Spirit coming
with the same power that brought the worlds into existence and
speaking the word of life into the heart. Paul said this, he said, we give
thanks to you that when our word came to you, our preacher, when
we preach to you, It came not in word only, but in power and
in demonstration of the Holy Spirit so that you turn from
your idols to serve the true and living God. Oh, I love irresistible grace because that's
the only kind of grace that would have saved me. And I love the
doctrine of the preservation and perseverance of the saints.
to know that God preserves, that He who began the call will continue
the call, that He who first called me will keep me to the end, so
that having begun in faith, I will die in faith. But when all is said and done,
and those doctrines are wonderful doctrines, and I don't have a
thing to say against them, nor would I diminish their truth
or their importance in any way. But all of them are simply subtopics
under the doctrine of Christ. They are simply the subpoints
under the overarching truth of who Christ is and what He did. And that's why they're so full
of glory, because understood properly, those doctrines are
full of Christ. Therefore and if you've read the bulletin I've
called this message the five points of Jesus ism. Those other
five points that I told you about have been nicknamed the five
points of Calvinism I regret that they were named that. Not
because I have any particular grudge against our brother Calvin
I just hate to see the truth of God given any man's name don't
you. I mean I could I could preach
a message and say, well, them's the three points of Josephism.
You want that? No. And so I'm calling this the
five points of Jesusism, five points concerning the Lord Jesus
Christ, which provide the foundation of the salvation that He brings
to God's people. Now, these five points also can
be brought under one point. Here in verse 31 it says, you
will be with child and give birth to a son and you are to give
him the name Jesus. The Lord Jesus Christ, the one
that you and I worship, the one on whom we have set the hope
of our eternal came into this world, was born
into this world just like everybody else. Now he was conceived differently,
but he was born like everyone else. Mary conceived within her
womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, but once that conception
was accomplished, our Lord Jesus was a single cell. It amazes me that the God of
glory could ever be a man. It amazes me further to think
of Him as an adolescent, or as a child, or as an infant, utterly
dependent on His mother Mary to carry Him around, to feed
Him at her breast. Those things boggle my mind.
Don't they, you? I mean to think that that fellow
there in the temple, Simeon, He took the Lord Jesus up in
his arms. And he says, let me depart in
peace. I've seen your salvation. And he holds up an infant. And
that's amazing to me to think of those things. But it boggles
my mind even further to think that God at one time in a point
of history was a single cell within the womb of His mother
Mary. And at the proper time, about
nine months later, Mary gave birth to a son. Unto us a child
is born. Unto us a son is given. Not a slave this time, but we're
all slaves of God through the law. We're all lawbreakers and
by our breaking of the law we have become under slavery, under
bondage, under obligation to God. Here's one who comes into
the world without sin. without needing to perform labor
to try to put away the sin that already stains his nature, he
comes in as a free-born son of God. And they gave him the name Jesus. If you look over here at Matthew
chapter 1, Matthew 1, verse 21. Gabriel's already spoken to Mary.
Mary is betrothed to a man named Joseph. Joseph finds out that
his betrothed is with child. He didn't want to expose her
to public disgrace, so he's going to divorce her quietly. So an
angel appears to him. And he says in verse 20, Joseph,
son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife,
because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son,
and you are to give him the name Jesus. Now here's why. He will
save his people from their sins. Now this name Jesus is one and
the same as the name Joshua. I understand in Hebrew it's pronounced
something like Yeshua and possibly a shortened version of it. I
was reading something that gives me the impression that a shortened version of it
is named Jesse. But all these names, what they have in common
is this. It combines the Hebrew word for
save or salvation and the Hebrew word for Jehovah. And it says
Jehovah is my salvation. Now lots of little Hebrew boys
bore that name. But here's the one who rightly
owns it. The Lord Jesus Christ comes into
the world, not simply bearing a name that points out that Jehovah
is salvation. He bears that name because He
is Jehovah God, bringing salvation to God's people. His name tells
us this, that He is the Savior. You will call His name Jesus
because He will save. Not a try-to-be Savior. Not a
going to attempt salvation. Not simply going to provide salvation. But someone who will actually
save His people. Secondly, it tells us that He
comes into this world with a people. Because it does not say He will
save everyone. It says He will save His people.
There is a people of the world and there is a people of Christ.
We are all the people of the world by birth, but we become
the people of Christ by God's electing grace, by Christ's redeeming
work, and by the call of the Spirit of God. We are the people
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He will save His people from
what? Their sins. Now, He did not come into the
world to save us from all the trouble we get into in this world.
nor even all the trouble that our sins cause us in the world.
Though isn't it true that God even spares you from most of
the trouble that your sins would bring you in this world? No,
He has something much bigger in mind than simply relieving
sorrow, relieving our troubles in this life. Rather, He comes
to save us from sin, not just its effects, its actual presence. to save us from the penalty of
it, from the power of it, and in due time, brethren, and this
is something to rejoice in as we look forward to it, He will
save us from the very presence of it. Paul says, when I would
do good, evil is present with me. Don't you hate that? Don't
you hate the fact that every time you want to do something
good, every time you'd like to read the Scriptures and gain
some blessing from it, every time you'd like to pray and lift
your heart in praise towards God or pour out your troubles
to Him, every time you'd like to testify of the Gospel, every
time you'd like to love, there's a principle within you that corrupts
it all, that hinders you from doing it, maybe even utterly
overthrows you in the attempt. And not a thing you can do remains
unstained from sin. Oh, when I would do good, evil
was present with me. But he who was born in Bethlehem,
who rightly bears the name Jesus, shall in his time, at the appointed
hour, deliver me entirely from sin." Thank God his penalty is already
gone. Do you realize that? child of God do you believe that
that's what exactly what Paul said there is therefore now no condemnation
to them who are in Christ Jesus and even though your sin continues
you say well the Bible says the man that's born of God won't
continue in sin well maybe you won't continue in sin but your
sin continues doesn't it you keep doing it we all know that We keep doing it, but thank God
the penalty for it's gone. As the psalmist said, he has
not dealt with us according to our transgressions. Would you even want the Lord
to take one day's worth of sin? Say, all right, I'm going to
forgive all the rest of them, but now these you did today,
you're going to have to pay for. Brethren, I don't want one minute
of my transgressions left to my account. All blessed be the
name of Jesus. He saves us from our sins. And even though sins trip us
up and hinder us in our way, yet he has delivered us from
the overwhelming power of them if we're in Christ. They can
never finally win the day. For though temptation often makes
us fall, the power of sin has been broken so that it can never
keep us down, and it can never make us abandon Christ, and the
power of sin can never make us do what Paul accused the Jews
of doing, going about to establish our own righteousness. You know
what the most powerful or the most destructive power of sin
is? Really? So far as destroying
souls? Oh, there's some sins that got some particular destructive
power to them. But you know what the greatest
power of sin is? To put you on a course of trying
to be good in order to gain the blessings of God. Because when we sin, what happens? By the law is the knowledge of
sins, says the scripture. When we sin, our conscience bears
testimony against us. And we don't use that testimony
rightly. We don't use that testimony to make us run to Christ, to
find forgiveness in Him. Here's what that testimony does
to us. It mixes with our sinful pride and says to us, oh, you
sinned. You're going to have to do something
to make up for that. You're going to have to stop that sin. You're
going to have to put a little bit extra in the offering plate.
You're going to have to make sure you need to start going
to church more often. You need to read your Bible more
faithfully and pray more. And it'll put you on a course
of doing something. That's what sin does. It makes
you try to be good. That doesn't make any sense.
We're talking about what it does in human beings, and human beings
rarely make sense. You say, preacher, we shouldn't
try to be good. Nothing wrong with trying to be good. But if
you try to be good in order to gain the favor of God, it'll
kill your soul. Graveyard dead. He saves us from that overwhelming
power of sin, and He will in time save us from the very presence
of it to where it will simply be a bad memory. Here are the five points of Jesusism.
We'll go over quickly. It talks back in Luke chapter
1 now. That's the overriding, overarching
doctrine. Jesus is the Savior who saves
His people from their sin. Now five sub points under that,
how he will accomplish it in Luke chapter 1 verse 32. Here's the first point of Jesusism.
He will be great. You know that word great should
not ever be used of any other human being. There's only one
man that's ever been great and that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now prophecies and promises concerning the Lord Jesus Christ are merely
statements of fact. When the angel said, he will
be great, then it was established this shall happen. He will be
great. Now he was already great with
regard to being God. I mean God is great. This means in his humanity. Now
we look through his life and during his lifetime he wasn't
all that great. That is he wasn't held in high
esteem. by those who saw Him, not many,
not many. He came unto His own, and His
own received Him not. His own lightly esteemed Him,
but to them who did receive Him, to them gave He the power to
become the children of God. But there weren't many. Oh yeah, there were multitudes
that would follow him for a while. Just like the 5,000 men plus
their wives and children whom he fed with five loaves and two
fishes there in John chapter 5, I believe it was. And then
he goes across the lake and they go around the lake or across
the lake or however they can get. They want to get to where
Jesus is. They're all excited about him. Look at this man.
He took five loaves and two fishes and he fed us all. I'm going
for another free lunch. This man must be a prophet from
God if he could feed all of us with just one boy's sack lunch.
And they followed him over to the other side and he said, you
followed me because you had your fill of the loaves and fishes.
He said, sit down a minute, let
me do some teaching. They began to lay out before
them that salvation was in the hands of God and that they were
in need of it. And that God had committed that salvation into
the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that this thing was entirely
wrapped up in what God would do and what Christ would do.
as God in human flesh. And from that time forward, many
of His disciples no longer followed Him. Our Lord's ministry, as it were,
started out big and dwindled. Now I want you to think of this.
We're talking about His natural life here. It dwindled until the final
day not one stood with Him. I guess we could say one hung
with him, one thief, whose eyes God opened in the last hours
of his life, sided with the Lord Jesus Christ. But the only one
who sided with Christ on that day was one who had nothing to
lose by siding with Christ. Everybody else, it says, all
his disciples forsook him and fled. Was he great in the earth? If that had been the end of his
life, if that had been the whole story, nobody outside of Israel
would have ever given him a second thought again. And by the time
that generation passed away, he'd have never been thought
of again. But you know what? Even though
most men turned thumbs down on him, God saw him as great. When our Lord was baptized he
said this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. In Philippians
chapter 2 verse 9 it says God has highly exalted
him and given him a name above every name that at the name of
Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he
is Lord. Do you realize this business
of repentance is nothing more and nothing less than agreeing
with God about the Lord Jesus Christ? That's really what repentance
is. God set forth His Son as His
Son. You better agree with God about
that. He set Him forth as His beloved Son. You better think
Christ is beloved also. You better agree with God about
His Son. He set forth Christ to be a propitiation, that is,
an atonement sacrifice for sin. You need to agree with God about
that. God's exalted him to the right
hand and given him power over everything and made him Lord
of all. And as Paul says, he must reign
till he puts all his enemies under his feet. And you better agree with God
in the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ as sovereign over
all. He is great. recognized him as
great. They ran to him and said, in
the person of that man filled with demons, and they said, we
know who you are, you're the Holy One of God. They recognized
him, and believers do. At that time, when many of his
disciples no longer walked with him, our Lord turned to the few
that remained and said, well, what about you? Are you going
to leave too? And they said, no. Peter's speaking
for all of them. They said, no. Where would we
go? you have the words of life we believe that you are the Christ
the son of the living God and in time all men will see him
as great and will bow before his throne and call him Lord
they'll see the greatness of his being that he's God man They'll
recognize the greatness of His righteousness, that He did always
those things which please His Father. They'll see the greatness
of His justice, how that He brings about by His own hand the punishment
of the wicked. And they'll see the greatness
of His mercy to all whom the Father chose and committed to
His hand, as He says, all that the Father gives to me will come
to me. And he that comes to me, I'll in no wise cast out. This
is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given
me, I will lose none, but I'll raise him up in the last day.
And this is the will of him who sent me, that all that call upon me, that
all that believe in me, of them I shall lose none, but shall
raise them up in the last day. When all is said and done, And
God, by Christ, has divided the sheep from the goats. Don't think
for a minute that the Lord shall not be great in that day and
that all the creation will see it and all the creation will
recognize it. He shall be great. He shall be
called, here's the second point, the Son of the Most High. He's
the Son of God. This is my Son, says the Father
from heaven, my beloved Son. He's not a Son of God by creation
like the angels and man are called the sons of God. He's not the
Son of God by adoption like the saints are, nor is He the Son
of God simply by fulfilling an office like some of the leaders
of Israel were called sons of God in that way. He's the Son
of God by nature. He is God. His Father is God. Thirdly, the Lord God will give him the
throne of his father, David. If you'll turn back to 2 Samuel,
chapter 23, we'll see what this is talking about. You see, everything
that happens in the New Testament was foretold in the Old Testament.
Now, very few understood what was being said in the Old Testament
until Christ came and fulfilled it. But when he says he'll when
the angel said he'll give him the throne of his father David.
That brought out or. Collected together great promises
of grace. Second Samuel chapter twenty
three. And I forgot to. Oh that's why I can't find it
I'm in first Samuel I forgot to write down the verse I hope
I can find it quick. Verse 1, these are the last words
of David, the oracle of David, son of Jesse, the oracle of the
man exalted by the Most High, the man anointed by the God of
Jacob, Israel's singer of songs. The Spirit of the Lord spoke
through me, his word was on my tongue. The God of Israel spoke,
the rock of Israel said to me. When one rules over men in righteousness,
when he rules in the fear of God, he is like the light of
morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness
after rain that brings the grass from the earth. Is not my house
right with God? Has he not made with me an everlasting
covenant arranged and secured in every part? Will he not bring
to fruition my salvation and grant me my every desire? Now, David said a lot of things
there which were misunderstood for generations
until Christ came. But it is revealed to us what
he meant over here in Acts chapter 2. Verse 30, but he, now Peter is preaching. In verse 30 he says, but he,
David, was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on
oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Back there where we're reading
in 2 Samuel, it says, Is not my house right with God? Or,
as the King James put it, Though it be not so with my house, God
has made with me an everlasting covenant. And maybe what David
was saying there was this. I'm looking around at my sons,
and none of them are really acting right. None of them are acting
like they deserve to sit upon the throne which God has promised. But God made with me an everlasting
covenant in which is wrapped up in my salvation and all my
desires, and it's this, that somebody in my lineage will sit
upon the throne forever." He alone sits on that throne
forever. Solomon was great, but a greater
than Solomon has come. And David's salvation is fulfilled
in this. Jesus has come and he's on the
throne. And what will he do there? The
fourth point, back in Luke chapter 1, he will reign over the house
of Jacob forever. I like the people he reigns over.
Not Israel. Oh yes, our name is Israel. The
church is called the Israel of God. And the name Israel means
one who prevails with man and with God. I'm glad that we bear
that name. But I like this. He rules over
the house of Jacob, because while the house of Israel is my name
by grace, the house of Jacob is the one I feel the most. I
am a Jacob, whose name means cheater, whose name means scoundrel,
whose name means somebody you wouldn't stop and help if you
saw him on the side of the road, like that Samaritan of old. because
he was a scoundrel in every way. Yes, Jacob was. He was not a
sweet, believing man. He was a cheater. And all of God's people are just
like him. And yet he rules over them. He
rules over their lives. He rules over their destinies.
He rules over their sins. so that those sins cannot bring
them into condemnation. He rules over them, and He shall
do so forever. We'll never come to the end of
His term and have to wonder how the next guy's going to do. He'll
never die and have to be replaced by another man whom, well, we
don't know whether he'll do any good or not. Forever. And then this, the last of the
five points of Jesusism. His kingdom will never end. About eight years ago, we voted
a man into office. Some like what he's done, some
didn't like it, and some are indifferent. But no matter what
you think about President Bush, his kingdom's coming to an end
January 20th. And throughout history, there
have been men who have raised up and they have built tremendous
kingdoms and they ruled with an iron fist but their kingdoms
have all come to an end but the Lord Jesus Christ God said to
him sit here at my right hand until I make all your enemies
a footstool for your feet and that's going to happen and there
shall be no enemy left and in fact it says in Isaiah chapter
9 verse 7 of the increase of his government there shall be
no end I don't know everything that that means but I know this
it brings us right back to the first point he shall be great
and it is in his greatness that our salvation rests Heavenly
Father, bless us and help us to see something of His greatness
now in the elements of the table which we partake. In Christ's
name we pray. Amen.