Turn, if you will, to Isaiah
53 as we study together then again this morning. I don't think
we could beat that to read and take our time as we study together
concerning the passage. You have a Bible? There may be
one right on the table, I believe, back there if you all don't have
one. You can follow us. Is that one laying there? Go
ahead and get it. It would be interesting to follow. If that
isn't a Bible laying there, well, I'm saying something. The Old Testament and the book
of Isaiah, if you're not acquainted with the books, turn to the front
there and find out where you're located. It's the 53rd chapter
of Isaiah. It is a chapter that portrays
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ in point of time, having been
prophesied by this Old Testament prophet some 700 years before
it took place. It's such detailed analysis that
you must Remind yourself that God spoke to those Old Testament
prophets like has been said again this morning. Now before I read,
I've said this more times than one, and concerning the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ, until we're brought to the place, and
few people are ever brought there, that your sin and my sin is what
nailed the Savior to the cross, you'll never make that place
called heaven. That's all there is to it. We
talk about somebody else put Him to death, somebody else put
Him to death. If this passage before us doesn't plainly teach
that it was our transgressions and our inequities that did that,
then I'll quit reading, as well as other places. When we brought
to the place where we said, I was guilty, it wasn't a matter that
I wasn't there, that I'm not guilty, those people portrayed
the same image that we're made up of there. For example, in
the Garden of Eden, you mentioned the Garden of Eden this morning.
We were in the loins of Adam. Adam is a representative character.
You say, well, I would have done different had I been there. No,
you wouldn't. Adam represented all mankind after what we would
have done had we been. In fact, we were in the loins
of Adam. The Lord Jesus corrected that. The Pharisees said, well,
we decorate the graves out here on Memorial Day, and we say that
if we had been there in the days of our father, whose graves we
decorate, we wouldn't have been. He did kill the prophets. He
said, you're a witness against yourself. You're only betrayers. Your own conversation betrays
you. That you're calling them your
parents and your fathers, and you're honoring them. You've
done just what they would have done. See, that's the kind of
God we're faced with. That's the presence of God. Now,
it'll be strange when Elias Old West says, well, God's not an
austere man. Oh, yes, he is, too, brother.
More austere than we'll ever portray. It's a serious thing.
to fall into the hands of not a dead God that you hear, but
a living one, a living God. Now, with those two remarks in
mind, let's read together, and I'll read slow, and see if we
can pick up some truth. Isaiah 53, the question is asked,
Who hath believed our report? Or that report is the teaching,
the doctrine that you speak about in the New Testament. It's preaching.
Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the
Lord revealed? The answer is, the man believes
the report to whom the arm of the Lord is revealed. That's
what the Apostle Paul quoted again in Romans 10. He plainly
says, well, it went out to all the world, but who believed it?
He goes ahead to tell you, brother, that few people believe it. To
whom the arm of the Lord is revealed. Unless God reveals Himself to
you, you're not going to believe in it. For he shall grow up before
him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground." Now,
this is God the Father speaking here, Jehovah God speaking of
Himself. He shall grow up before the Father
as a plant and as a root out of dry ground. Now, roots don't
grow out of dry ground. We're having that kind of trouble
right now. This is an unusual growth of
the Savior's birth and so on and so forth, you see, out of
dry ground. He has no form, no commonness. And when those folk
like Herod and Pilate and those folk who hear about putting him
to death, when they see him, I'm missing him, my Lord. And
when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire
Him, and there's no beauty in us that He should desire us,
apart from His own purpose, and it's up to Him. If He sees something
in us, He'll never desire us. See, He didn't see that. He chose
us not because of what we were or what we did or what we didn't
do, but before anybody ever did good or evil. He chose Jacob,
and He rejected Esau. There it is. So it's a matter
of Him not seeing in us something, but His own purpose and grace
is the thing that brings that choice. He is despised and rejected
of men. Now, if you didn't get any more
of a particular air of that than just the general statement there
of man, you'd say, well, mankind, somebody else rejected. Wait
a moment. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief, and we hid, and we hid as it were
our faces from him, and he was despised, and we esteemed him
not." I want you to notice his pronoun down to here as we go
now. Surely he hath borne everybody's grief. No, he has borne our grief,
the distinctive here. Surely he hath borne our grief,
carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem Him stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions. Here it is. He was bruised for our iniquities,
the chastisement of our pieces upon Him, and with His stripes
we are healed. You've never seen anything any
clearer than that as you look at the house pointed down through
there in Isaiah. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have
turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. What put Christ to death is the
iniquity of the elect, particularly so, brother. Just driven home
over and over again. If God didn't choose you and
take your iniquity and your transgressions upon himself and die for those
iniquities, you're still in your iniquities. That's how clear
it is. People fight this. They say,
I don't believe that damnable doctor and all that stuff. The
Lord was particular with what he did and choose what is called
a bride. And that same man who fights
that would fight you over the fact that he chooses his bride. It's wrong for God to do such
a thing. But I tell you, I chose mine.
I didn't let mom or daddy or nobody else tell me who I'd live
forever with, as it were, for the last time here. All we let
cheap have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way, and laid on him the iniquity of us all." Now listen
to me just a moment. This idea says, well, I wasn't
too bad. I wasn't a drunkard. I wasn't
a harlot. I wasn't a whoremonger. I waited a minute. The only sin
that's listed right here is you had your way. I'm going to have
my way about this thing. I'm going to turn my way. Oh,
we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way. And the sin against humanity
is that you had your way about it, didn't you? And just as sure
as you get by with having your way, you will wind your little
ball of yarn up in the regions of the dam. You're headed that
way. Headed that way. Had God not
headed the Apostle Paul off, or me off, or you off, we'd have
gone right on the way we were going. He did head us off. He
headed these people off. He does that. But you owe all
to Him. Say, Lord God, if I have my way
about it, I'm going to do just like I've always done, do the
wrong thing. There's an old song. This is
no good, but there's a lot of truth in it. It says, here I
go, here I go, down that wrong road again, brother. That's the
way you go. How dear it is to me this morning
to know that I'm the one that was guilty of the death of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Forget about the purpose of God
if it rules out the fact that I'm not guilty. But it doesn't
do that. God in His purpose so offered
a lamb as a sacrifice for the sins of many. And those folk
who were included in that many are the very folk who put Him
to death. Wicked hands. Wicked hands crucified
Him. And it was that sacrifice that forgave It had to happen
like that. I don't understand life. It's made up of so many mysteries.
I don't understand people. I don't understand you folks.
And that lets me reflect on the fact you don't understand me,
and I don't understand myself. We don't understand. We're made
up in the most complex makeup it could be. You don't understand
yourself, and you don't understand why you fret yourself. You don't
understand why you worry about things. I'm a child of God. You
don't understand. You can't figure it out. Why
you do things, why you say things, I knew better than that. That's
not the way to settle the matter. Brother, I'm going to tell you
one thing. You better be clear here. That I understand and know
the Lord. is dying in my stead because
of the fact that I was guilty. He took my place. I've heard it in my tea so many
times. People say, well, I wasn't too bad. No, you just had your
way about it. You just had your way about it. Your child wants
to have his way. And the reason he wants to have his way is because
Mama and Daddy happen to be those folk who wanted to have their
way. And he's a chipper. She's a chipper off of the old block.
And we're just a chipper off of the old Adamic block. Yes,
I had my way about it. One more time, the man who has
his way about what you call this little span of life is going
to wind up in the regions of the dam. For it is a fact that
God turns you around and puts you on a way which is called
not his way necessarily, but his way. He was oppressed and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the
slaughter and as sheep before his shearers, He is gone so he
opens not his mouth. He didn't defend himself, he
defended his people. You remember when they came out
from the sword to stay? Some of you brought that here
a while back. He said, you come out here with me, come out here
for me with lanterns, and staves, and swords, and so on and so
forth. I said, well, I thought among you folks at the temples
that nobody sought me out. And he said, we seek Jesus now. He said, if you seek me, let
these go their way. You can't take me and them both. Now that's substitution. He pointed
to those folk who belonged to him. He said, if you seek me,
am I running from you? Yes, I'm He. If you seek me,
let these go their way." Their way. And that happened to be
the way that they were on at the time. It was a person who
belonged to Him. He said, you can't take them,
me too. I like that. He was taken from prison and
from judgment, and who shall declare a generation? Here's
a great study here. He's talking about this generations
and races and on they go, so on and so forth. The Scripture
speaks of two seeds. You could read that, who shall
declare his seed? A young Jew at the age of 37,
a honor Roman, give it out of here and put to death, and no
children. No seed. Now, who's going to declare his
generation? These folk here that are guilty. We're declaring a
generation. Here we are, just a little handful
of people. This is the silliest thing on earth. If you don't
go by faith this morning, a little handful of people meeting here
together, like, why don't you join the ranks down here somewhere?
Because the ranks are wrong. They won't listen to the truth. I'll make that. You're hearing
the truth. He was taken from prison, from
judgment, and who shall declare a generation? His people. His
people. One generation declared to another.
That's the way the Scripture teaches it. And for he was cut
off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people."
Who's saying that? It's God the Father claiming
us here. For the transgression of my people was his second,
and that people is the people that he gave the Son. And he
made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death,
because he had done no violence, neither was there any deceit
found in his mouth. Why? No reason given. Innocent, not
guilty. That's what we found some time
back. He tried in ecclesiastical courts, in the civil courts,
the lancet, found no fault in it. Man's innocent. Why was he put to death then?
Put to death for your iniquities and your transgressions and mine
and so on, in the purpose of God. And we were guilty. Had
we not been guilty, brother, the sacrifice wouldn't have been
worth a dime. It isn't good for a man who's not guilty. It's
the only way under heaven to get peace and satisfaction, and
get relief, and get pardoned, and that is to say, I'm guilty.
A man sits there and argues, I'm not guilty, I'm not guilty,
I'm not guilty. Your Honor, Judge, guilty as
charged. I'm at your mercy. That's the
way to get pardoned. You ever heard of telling a man
pardoned, the governor pardoned somebody who wasn't guilty? Why
was he up there? But many a man has been put to
the gallows of the electric chair, that's why he wasn't guilty.
Is that right? Yes, sir. Only the guilty are forgiven. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise
him and put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul
an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong
his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his
hand." Now, he's going to die. The Son of God is going to die on
Calvary's cross, and we're reading here that he's going to prolong
his days. How's he going to prolong his days? with a generation called
a generation that shall serve Him. We are prolonging His days.
We are the body of Christ today as it were. He has gone on to
glory and prepared a way and an opening ceremony for us to
follow. But we are those people who declare Him. Who will declare
Him? A generation shall serve Him.
His people shall serve Him. We are the children of the King. He shall see the veil of His
soul. And shall be satisfied. By his knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify many. Who are those many? Look at it.
For he shall bear their nickels. Bear the nickels of who? The
many. The men and the folk he bear the nickels of are one and
the same person here. Therefore we'll divide him a
portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the
strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death. And
just grinding this in. And he was numbered with the
transgressors. Unless you're numbered with Jesus
Christ, I know we say he buried in a buried tomb and he lived
this way and that way, but listen, he's numbered with the transgressors.
He is one of those sheep. He numbered himself with the
transgressors, therefore he identified himself with us and he died in
our stead. He is numbered with the transgressors
and he bears the sin of many. Here it is, it is changed again.
The men and the transgressors are one and made intercession.
for the transgressors. John chapter 15, the great dissertation
on the vine and the branches, Isaiah again, if ever there was
such a thing, Vital Union with Jesus Christ, if you want to
read it that way. But I don't want to read that
whole chapter. I've read this passage in Isaiah
now, and I think that it's really comforting to read the 53rd chapter
of Isaiah as to identifying ourselves, and he identifies himself, with
us. But in this chapter, 27 verses of this chapter. In verse 25,
I'll read it to you here. He said something ahead of there.
I always back up and read, for this is fitting and proper. You
should read the whole chapter. He says, If I had not done among
them the works which none other man did, That's what you were
magnifying again this morning here. When John asked, he said,
go ask him, he said, is this the Christ, or do we look for
another? He said, you could go tell John that certain works
are coming to pass, and they're typical of the working that continue
on. Verse 24, then, If I had not
done among them the works which none other man did, they had
not had sin. But now have they both seen and
hated Both me and my father, what a statement. Verse 25, why? But this cometh to pass for a
purpose, that the word might be fulfilled that is written
in their law, they hated me without cause. They hated me without
cause. Now if you're going to look again,
you're going to ignore what I've read. If you're going to get
by with saying, they hated me without cause. Now Herod hated
me without any cause. And Pilate hated me without any
cause. And the Pharisees, and the publicans,
and the scribes, and those folk in their official capacity, hated
me without cause. Wait just a moment. Wait just
a moment. The folk that he spoke of in Isaiah, we, our, they,
many, and so on and so forth, are the ones who hate him without
cause. Now that word without cause is a very interesting word
right here. For it is a Greek word, dorian. And it is spoken
of in other places, or used in other places, would give us a little light
on the subject here as to how we hated it. Well, I never did
hate God. Well, that's another lie. You
didn't have to tell. That adds to the list. That's
the best way to tell a person. Well, I never did hate God. No,
you just lied again. People don't want to acknowledge
that. So well, I don't hate anybody. I love everybody. No, that's
not so. You love self. You're born loving self, in love
with self, not in love with God. But in the Gospel according to
Matthew, that word is used again. So turn back, if you will, to
the 10th chapter of Matthew and the 8th verse of that chapter. Freely is the word. Freely. He's
hated me freely. You have trouble? Are there people
that you don't have any trouble liking? Are there other people
you have trouble liking? in this life, if you're not,
you're unusual. These people that I try my best
to like, I can't like them. And I don't get any love lost.
And other people don't have any trouble liking you if you just
lavish your affection on them. And then in turn, somebody said
that was a chemistry or something. Well, that's a good way to excuse
sin, I guess. You know, if you just love folk
who love you, you said, what reward have you? How about those
who hate you? Now I know you're not in love
with everybody. wife, just like you are your own. I'm not using
that kind of language. I'm saying, though, that freely
give, freely experience giving. Now watch this verse of Scripture
right here. This is what the Lord said. That verse of Scripture
says, "...they hated Me without cause." And that word, cause,
is freely. Just as free, how could God ordain the death of
His Son at the same time wicked hands freely put Him to death?
That's what He said happened. I don't know. I'm not interested
too much in how it all happened. I want to know who's guilty.
So here's the verse in the 8th verse of that chapter, the 10th
chapter of Matthew. He gives some instructions there. He sent the 12 out there and
commanded them, say, go not into the way of the Gentiles and into
any of the cities of Samaritans, enter ye not. But he went that
way. I wonder why he'd tell you to
do something he didn't do, because he's sovereign. What he does is he pleases. With
whom he pleases, nobody can stay at his hands. How come you do
that? You don't ask God questions. You don't question His way. And
he says, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
As you go, preach saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Listen to this. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers,
raise the dead, cast out the devils, freely you have received,
freely give." Did you know I'm reading the same word? If I was
reading the Greek, I'd say, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers,
raise the dead, cast out devils. Doreen, have you received? Doreen,
give. That means without cause have
you received. There's no cause for you receiving
good at the hands of God, and there's no reason for you to
not give freely. That's what that says. Look at
it. What a verse of Scripture. It doesn't mock any. Theologian
off his feet just to think, so what? That sure stops me in my
track. I'm not that free as I live.
Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils
freely, receive freely again. Romans 3.24. Let's get another
word on it. I wanted to comment on this before
I go further as to they hated me without cause. I want to give
you three or four reasons why they hated me and why they hate
you. He said they hated you there.
because they hate me." He said, it's the servants who know better
than these lords. We've heard some messages on that servitude,
that you're bond slaves because you're liberated. That's the
contradiction of time, but so anyhow. And you want that master
and none other. So in this third chapter of Romans, and verse 24 of that chapter. Now watch this again. It's hard for me to take my time.
I'm censured lots of times, and I accept that. I think fast and
speak fast. I don't say what I'm thinking.
I lose my train of thought. So excuse me if I get ahead of
you. We'll come back to it. Just raise
your hand and say, let's run that. I remember teaching a Bible
class once and said, a man's dead now. I don't know whether
he got anything or not. But he has a big shot out of one of
the big churches there, and somebody invited him to come. He came.
I was preaching one night. It's rather clear what I'm saying,
you know, and he raised his hand, he said, he had a tape, he used
a tape recorder, he said, run that through again. I'll never
forget that, run that through again. We ran many statements
through again, over and over and over again, millionaires,
have plenty of money but no peace, no satisfaction. I'd run it through
again. Listen to this right here, how
were you justified? Well, I just called up God one
time. and told him, and I think it would be nice for him to come
my way and do things for me that nobody else had done for him
and didn't tell him. You couldn't do them for yourself, you know.
No, no, you didn't call up anybody. It was his initiative. And he
freely forgave you. without cause." Here's the word
again. It's three times it's used, only three times. The word
cause is used other places in the Scripture, but it's not used
in this sense at all. All has sinned and come short
of the glory of God. That's Romans 3.23. Being justified
freely, without cause, just as freely as you hated the God of
all grace, He freely justified you. That's pretty free, isn't
it? being justified freely by His grace through the redemption
that Isaiah speaks of, the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. Now,
if you're saved this morning, God didn't owe you a thing. He
takes all the glory so you can't brag about it. That's what He
does. He takes all the glory so you
can't brag about it. And if somebody says, well, I
think God made some mistakes, then you don't have to worry
about it. That's pretty good if you think
of it. Well, I think that God made a mistake. That's all right.
That's His mistake. So He takes all the glory so
you won't brag about it. And then if there's any mistakes
to be made, He makes them. He doesn't make them. He can't
do anything but right. There's no danger of Him doing
you wrong. So much for that. They hated
Him without cause. I wonder why they hated Him.
Well, for the sake of time, I'll do something Brother Lane gone,
and homiletics, you know, doesn't strike with me too well because
I get hung up on the alphabet, and I can't get the message.
I'm not against that. That's good. People follow you
through by saying, D means devil, or DD means Dr. Divinity. It don't make any difference.
It don't make any difference to me, but just follow the thought
through. But I'm going to give you three reasons right quick
here. in the next 19 minutes, the Lord willing, or less. I
want to give you three reasons and give you at least some of
the reasons that will satisfy you and me, too, why they hated
him. And they hated him without cause.
There was no reason for them hating him. Well, I'm going to
reason them backwards for a moment right here and then give you
the last one as being not the least, but the greatest. They
hated him because of the deity. You know what that means, don't
you? They hated him because he didn't just say that he was God,
he was God. But they said, they said, you
said so and so. They hated him. They wanted to
kill him over the fact that these deities, that he was God. He
was God in flesh. They hated him because of his
doctrine. He said so and so. You remember?
He said, this temple, he said, you know, it was built 46 years.
He said, three days. He said, he'd raise it up again. It's dark. That's just one little
thing. I'm going to bring it into the surface here. And they
hate him because of his deeds. This man has done nothing amiss.
That's what Herod's wife, I guess, Apollo's wife said. He said,
this man has done nothing amiss, so be careful what you say and
what you do right here. But they accused him of all kinds
of things. Look what he's done. He broke
the Sabbath. Let's look at some of those things for just a moment.
Let's start now with his deeds and wind up with his deity, for
it was his deity that was the problem. It was his deity that
was the problem. When the trial was over, he said,
find no fault in it. Well, why go put him together?
He said he was guilty of blasphemy because he said he made himself
God. Well, in the New Testament, turn
to Luke, if you will, and let the fifth chapter, fifth I'll just give you one or two
on account of the several before me here, in my mind as to the,
they hated his deeds and they hated what he had to say, he's
adopting his teaching, and they hated him because he was God.
If it had been some politician like Caesar, they could have
said, we have no God but Caesar, we have no ruler but Caesar,
we have no king but Caesar. But they found out long since
different. They long since found out different.
Those folk have gone on at Old Earth Day Tabernacle, at Day
Tabernacle, then left the scene, and their name went off of the
sign boards and billboards and political schemes and so on and
so forth, and they found out he was God, not Caesar. And we'll
do the same thing. All right, let's see what took
place here. Healed a paralytic, I believe,
he did here. Yeah, verse 17 of the 5th chapter
of the book of Luke, "...and it came to pass on a certain
day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors
of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of
Galilee, and Judea, and Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was
present to heal them. And behold, men brought in a
bed," a man brought in on that bed, of course, a man which was
taken with palsy, And they sought means to bring him in and to
lay him before him. And when they could not find
that way that they might bring him in because of the multitude,
they went up on the housetop and led him down through the
tiling, through the ceiling, through the roof, with his couch,
and found himself in the presence of Jesus. And when he saw their
face, he said unto him, not to them, Man, thy sins are forgiven
thee. Now I'm not dealing with that
text, I'm dealing with something else here. And the scribes and
the Pharisees began to read and say, who is this which speaks
blasphemy? Now why did they say he spoke
blasphemy? Because he made himself God.
They said, no way that God can forgive sin. Said, this man,
thy sin be forgiven thee. Something else comes into the
picture right here you want to know too. Who can forgive sin
but God alone? Now, I'm using this as one of
the deeds that he did, but I also said that back of the deeds that
he did, the complaint was that he's deifying himself. He's making himself God. Well,
he didn't make himself God, he was God. But when Jesus perceived their
thoughts, He answered and said unto them, What reason ye in
your hearts? And he came at him from a different
angle. Look at this. "...whether it is easier to say,
Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Rise up and walk." Now
one of the brethren I hear today said to me a couple of Sundays
ago, and somebody was preaching on this, I believe brought it
into focus, and I said, why did the man not walk? And the brother
said, well, he was crippled, that he had palsy. I said, I
understand that to be the disease that he had, but why did he not
walk? And the answer is, brother, his sins were not forgiven. Look
at it. Whether it is easy to say, thy
sins be forgiven thee, or to say, rise up and walk, say what
you may, this man had sins that were not forgiven and he couldn't
walk because of that reason. Now I'm not saying that's the
case necessarily through the Word of God, not the direct case
at least. But indirectly, sins affect people. And they affect you in the physical
realm as well as the spiritual realm. And this man's sins were
not forgiven, therefore he couldn't walk. I know, you all heard me preach
along this line, that the blind man in John 9, for example, said,
what is the cause of this man's blindness? Did his father and
mother sin? Or he said, no, none of that is true, he said. the
works of God might be manifest, that God might be glorified in
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Doing what? Making Him
well. Now you watch the Scripture,
brother, that man who is sick and stays sick, and the Lord
Jesus Christ didn't do anything for, you don't hear that kind
of language. It's the man who was ill, sick,
infirmity, or whatever had a hold on him, and God in the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ made him well. So here's a man who
says, I'm down, and my reason for being down is I'm crippled,
but the Son of God says his sins are not forgiven. I forgive his
sins and he won't. He said, well, it doesn't mean
that. Well, if it doesn't mean that, what does it mean? But that ye
may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive
sin, he said to the sick of palsy, I say unto thee, arise, take
up thy couch, and go into thy house. And immediately he rose
up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed
to his own house, glorifying God. Now, why was it sickness? that God might be glorified.
It just answers the whole question, but I've answered several before
I got there. And they were all amazed, and they glorified God
and were filled with fear, saying, We have seen strange things today. Strange things. I'm talking about
His deeds, and we give you that one to hold on to. Strange things
today. Turn over to the 13th chapter
of Luke. That's all it says. We've seen strange things. They
hate Him because of what's saying. his deeds. And you know why? He said on
one occasion, he said, in secret have I said nothing. And that's
a pretty good statement. He said, in secret have I said
nothing. And then he said, men love darkness and hate light
because their deeds are evil. They like secret systems, you
see. Now this passage of Scripture
that I give you Again, it will help us, and we'll move on. 13th
chapter of the Gospel of Luke, and verse 10 of that chapter. And he was teaching in one of
the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman
which had a spirit of infirmity, 18 years, and was bowed together,
and I expect she would tell you it didn't make a whole lot of
difference, and could no wide lift up herself. That's what
she'd major on. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him
and said unto him, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity."
Now this, you get into trouble sometimes, but I say, that faith
has made thee whole to think that faith is the gift of God
to everybody. And no question right here, it wasn't the woman
seeing him, it was he seeing her. He took the initiative here.
And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made
straight to go and fight God. But the ruler said something.
And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because
Jesus is healed on the Sabbath day. And he said unto the people,
There are six days in which men ought to work, and them therefore
come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day. The Lord then
answered him and said, Thou hypocrite, Doth not each one of you on the
Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him
away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter
of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound low these eighteen years, be
loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? Is all sickness
because of Satan?" Binding people. We just read, verse 6, that sickness
was to the glory of God. I would say all healings are
to the glory of God. As you get in trouble here about
what causes sickness, Not all reason given in respect to the
same demand. It's just Satan bound this woman.
And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed.
That's a good word to use this morning. Ashamed. And all the
people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. What are they complaining about?
They're complaining about his deeds. And this time, the deed
that he did, it was a good deed he did, but he did it on the
wrong day. You know, there's a danger of doing the right thing
at the wrong time or the wrong thing at the right time. And
they were playing with that particular game to say, his deeds, look
what he did. I wonder what the trouble was.
If I go further with you, I'm not going further in that dimension,
but you know the Scripture jammed at those occasions, just like
I just read. It said, no, it wasn't because they healed somebody,
it was because of the fact that he made himself God. Nobody but
God has a right to say your sins are forgiven. You see? Back behind
us, let's back up just a little bit and get another one here.
His doctrine. I guess no better place to turn to there than Matthew
27, the closing portion of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and also the closing portion of the life Some other folk around
there of interest, we find those two thieves there in the 27th
chapter of Matthew. And verse 44, 43 possibly and
44 to be helpful here to it. Verse 41, this really gives us
more light on what I was reading in Isaiah 53 here as to we. Verse
41, likewise also the chief priest mocking him with the scribe and
elders said, well, that's not hard to take. We say, look what
that religious crowd did. Wait just a moment before you
censure somebody else. He saved others. Himself he cannot
save. Well, they told the truth. That's
exactly right. If he saved himself, he couldn't
save others. As I said a few moments ago,
he saved us, he had to die. If He be the King of Israel,
let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him."
Well, he didn't believe because He came down from the cross.
He believed because He remained on the cross, and was taken down
from the cross, and was resurrected, put in a grave, see? He's not
coming down, He's going up. He trusted in God, let Him deliver
Him now, if He will have Him. For He said, I am the Son of
God. Here it is. That's the problem. He did. I
am the Son of God. Now watch it, child of God. Here's
one of them. You go identify yourself with
one of these thieves. Two thieves were crucified beside
him. One of them, in the closing minutes of his life, saw what
we call deathbed repentance to be true, brother. He was transported
into the glory realm by the forgiving work of the Son of God. The thieves
also, didn't say one of them, but the thieves also, which were
crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth. Now forget
about one of those seeds. We just want to get ahold of
one of them. You know yourself that if you read further, you'll
find after one of those seeds, after casting the same thing
in his teeth that the scribes and the Pharisees and everybody
else did, and later on, brother, ask to be remembered when thou
comest into thy kingdom. The Lord Jesus Christ took him
by surprise and said, I'll remember you when I get there. But he
does as he always does. He took him by surprise and let
him know he was already there. He said, the day shall die, thou
shalt be with me in paradise. The man died happy. You see? It's all over one thing. They
complained about his deeds. They complained about his doctrine.
They said, no man ever spake like this man. So that's why
we didn't take him. But they complained about his
deity. Let's get one or two here along the line of what we're
talking about. Move on to the Gospel of John there for a little
bit. There's much to say about his deity. Chapter 5 will be a place we
can slow down for just a moment right here and read that 18th
verse. And then we'll have to back up
because you're again here, I think, in that. Okay, Jesus says in
verse 17, But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto,
and I work. We are identified with one another
in such a union that I do nothing, I say nothing that my Father
hath not ordered me to say and to do. For this reason the Jews
sought the mord to kill him, because he not only had broken
the Sabbath, I believe I was right a few moments ago, I think
I'm on the right track, because he not only had broken the Sabbath,
but said, Watch it now, not because of his deeds, not because of
what he said, but because of who he actually was. He was God,
but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal
with God. I'm going to close here just
a moment. If you study the Word of God, you'll find out that
there wasn't no division among them, no argument about the thing,
when they say, oh, this is a great prophet. Nobody fuss about that. He was a great prophet, but he
is more than a prophet. Oh yes, Nicodemus speaking to
the Lord. We know that our teacher come
from God. He was a teacher come from God.
But he's more than a teacher come from God. He was God come
to teach his people. And as long as you play with
those sidelines and bypass metaphors, you don't change. But the moment
they attempted to say, this man's saying that he's equal with God,
he wasn't saying he's equal with God. It wasn't what he said.
It wasn't what he did. It was who was he? And the battleground of the Old
Testament and the entire New Testament was not what he could
do, it wasn't what he said, it was who is this man? Until you
come to know who he is, there's no saving faith. Though it be
exercised over and over and over again as such." They said, yeah,
we believe in Jesus, and when He comes, we believe in this
man when the Messiah comes. See, the Samaritan woman even
said that until God revealed Himself to her. But men said,
yeah, we believe in Jesus. When the Messiah comes, He'll
do greater miracles than this one. Didn't know He was. Did
you know that I'm standing here this morning ready for an accusing
finger to be pointed to me as the world of religionists do
so, to tell you that the vast majority of people, the vast
majority of people, the vast majority of religionists have
made profession of faith in a Christ that does not exist. They're
looking for one to return. who is the antichrist instead
of Christ. They missed the whole boat. They would accept anything
today, the morals, the immorals, the anything else that's added
to our generation, yet the religious crowd accepted the first go-around.
Isn't this wonderful that we can come together at the expense
of truth? And they do not know who Jesus
is. All you've got to do is open
your Bible and begin to get some of the credentials, he said,
and they'll fight you like a lion. One more. One of those controversial
subject matters that took place with Jesus and the Jews in John
8. Let's not miss that and look
at two or three things right here for just a moment. There
will be two scriptures in John chapter 8 and verse 41. Boy, did he lay it on the line,
this crowd. He said, sure I do deeds. Yeah,
I'm guilty of doing, if you want to use guilt right here, I do
deeds, I do the deeds of my father. And the reason that you don't
accept the deeds of my father is, I'm not your father. How
plain is that? So you do the deeds of your father.
Well, I don't believe that. I don't believe that two kinds
of people in this world, one of them gets saved because God
set out to save them, and the other one gets saved because
he wanted his own way and God let him have his way. Well, you'll
learn when life's over with and wake up in the readings of the
damned if that's so. Nobody gets saved because of
any reason at all except that God saves him. And there'd be
nobody in heaven that could have missed that place. Can you let that soak in? There'll
be nobody in heaven who could have missed heaven, for God set
out to save a people in His absolute way of doing things to go be
there. And there's no man can miss hell. Who's there? Is that good enough theology?
There's no man can keep him, man in hell, a rich man in hell,
it wasn't no possible way for him to miss that awful place.
He even talked about his brothers missing this place, and the Son
of God said, listen, no more miracles added to the revelation
of God. If somebody would rise from the
dead, they didn't listen to the one I'm preaching about this
morning. He rose from the dead, and they hated him worse. There's
only two places to go. And if you go to heaven, you're
going to have to blame God for it. And if you go to hell, You'll
blame yourself for it. Most people are going to wake
up in the readings of the dame and say, that poor stumbling
to before preachers I heard told the truth. I'm here because of
the fact that I did not listen. Do they have a listening ear? 841, you do the deeds of
your father, then said unto him, we are not born of fornication.
We have one father, even God. He just told them, said, you
do the deeds of your father, I do the deeds of my father.
In the 10th chapter of John, And this verse will close, 1033.
He tells them his credentials comes from his father. My father
which gave me them is greater, that's the people, and no man's
able to pluck them out of my father's hand. I and my Father
are one." They hated that because they weren't in his hand. Then
the Jews took up stones again to stone him. I'm talking about
salvation here. They weren't in that right hand. Jesus answered
them, "'Many good works have I showed you of my Father. For
which of those works do you stone me?' The Jews answered him, saying,
"'For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy. And because
of thou being a man, make us thyself God.'" They hated his
deity. They hated his deity above everything
else. And in so doing, they get into, I don't like the way he
talks. I don't like the way people speak of you like that. Say,
I don't like the way the man talks. And I don't like the way
the man looks. No, they don't like you because
you just is. That's it. Hate him in that cause. And he
loved us, just as freely. Let's stand. Don't forget the evening service,
coming back again. Brother Lane will be back and
he'll bring the particular service. It's good to be here. You just
missed it.