I want to remember those who
requested prayer. Cynthia asked prayer for her cousins. She said,
Liz and Henderson's real. I couldn't remember her name.
Cynthia's voice is so quiet and my ears are so bad. So those
who don't work together. Pastor Gary Sheppard's having
some hard times right now. Right side there? Right? His right side's not doing well
for some reason and fell out of bed the other night. So I
remember him and his brother Randy. radiation treatments left with
him now. He's already called his pastor and told him what
he wanted for his funeral. Passing off this world into the
next, so remember him and his family in your prayers if you
will. After the worship service in the morning, I'm going to
have the Lord's table. We'll have no afternoon Bible study.
Excellent articles in the book, especially the article line.
Let's begin our worship service with a hymn number six. Come Thou Almighty King. Come
Thou Almighty King. us to pray. Father all glorious,
Lord all victorious, come and reign over us, ancient of days. Come Thou incarnate Word, heard
on Thy mighty sword. Come Holy Comforter Thy sacred
name despair In this glad hour, Thou who almighty
art, Thou who in every art, And there from us depart, Spirit
of power, To the Great One in Three! eternal praises be, ye
Savior Lord, ye Son of God. And to eternity, Avenador. Psalm 139 verse 10, excuse me,
39 verse 10. Remove thy stroke away from me. I am consumed by the blow of
thy hand. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven,
great and glorious, majestic and holy, dwelling in a life
where unto no man can approach, yet wondrously making your habitation
among your people. We praise you and thank you for
mercy and grace. For we know, apart from your
grace and mercy, there would be no hope for us. We'd be without
help in this world. But you and your kindness, your
great purpose, your sovereign will, chose a people out of a
fallen race to save, and came in the person of your
son into this world and lived among sinners. Without a place to lay your head, teaching men, astounding them
with your doctrine, bringing lost sinners to yourself, We are thankful, Father. 20 centuries ago, you went to
Calvary's tree. You gave your back to the smiters,
faced to them that pluck off the herd. You gladly wore the
crown of thorns and took the stripes upon your back. For you
had done nothing wrong. Perfect, pure, holy, spotless,
harmless lamb of God, came to die in the womb instead
of people like us. Once you showed us what we were
and are, we were truly amazed at your
grace. Pray, Father, for those who are
sick, those who are going through trials and tribulations. Thou
knowest every care. His life is over. But we know
that His days are numbered. His months are with Thee. The
bounds are set and He cannot pass. He will live as long as
you have given Him. Not one second longer, not one
second shorter. And no one can take any one of
His days from Him. Pray for Brother Gary Shepherd
as you raise Him up. And you say of David, I shall
not die but live and help us today father as we
hear the gospel as we receive the lord's table to worship you
you're worthy cast aside the things that might hinder us from
doing it clear our minds and hearts to center on jesus christ
help us this day we pray in christ's name amen in number 70 holy Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty
Early in the morning Holy, holy, holy, merciful and
mighty, God in three persons, one in three. Holy, holy, holy, all the saints
adore thee. Casting down their golden crowns
around the glassy sea... Tear of him and stare of him
falling down before thee... Which word that art and evermore
shall be... Behold Him, though the darkness
hide Thee, Though the eye of a sinful man Thy glory may not
see. Only Thou art holy, there is
none beside Thee, Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty All thy
works shall praise thy name Holy, holy, holy, merciful and
mighty! God in three Persons, blessed
Trinity! our master, our savior, our friend,
who stick up closer than a brother. One who is worthy of praise and
honor, or as we consider him in ourselves, we know that what
we have, we have by mercy, we deserve eternal flames. And we ask, Lord, as we return
unto thee that which belongs to you, let us do so with joy
and thanksgiving, realizing and appreciating the fact that we
have a part according to your good purpose in the preaching
of the gospel here and in other places. Help us, Lord, to worship
you now, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Brought your attention back to
Psalm 39. This psalm, as all psalms are,
is messianic. I remember years ago I took a
class from a doctor of theology named Boone, and he was on the
psalms, and he said theologians have separated the psalms into
different types of psalms, psalms that were meant for Israelites,
and psalms that were imprecatory, and psalms that with this and
that, he said, but the fact is that all Psalms are messianic
in nature, they're about the Lord Jesus Christ. And this passage
of scripture is a picture of our Lord Jesus
Christ hanging on a cross, suffering under the wrath of God because
of our sins. And the Psalms typify Christ
in some aspect of his person and work and life in every case. In this particular verse, remove
thy stroke away from me. I am consumed with the blow of
thy hand. And this particular verse represents
the agony of Christ on the cross when the Father, acting as the
judge of all the earth, vented His wrath upon our sins that
were laid on our Savior at this time. So horrible and terrible
was the extent and nature of the punishment that God caused
the day star to go dark. No man, save one, knows the viciousness
of this divine anger. human being who is privy to the
judgment of the angry God. Religion has anesthetized the
populace, touting God's love as generic and universal and
kind of anemic, and wrath and judgment are put
on the back burner if referred to at all. But Scripture makes
it clear that those who remain in unbelief live under the wrath
of God. That's what John the Baptist
said in John chapter 3 verse 36. He said, He that hath the
Son hath life. He that hath not the Son hath
not life and the wrath of God abideth on him. Now wrath is
not necessarily or immediately followed with judgment and can
refer or displeasure. And since unbelievers
are not immediately punished or slain for their sin, the wrath
declared in John 3.36 speaks about anger and displeasure rather
than an act of wrath. And sadly, unbelievers take advantage
of that fact, for they have no fear of God before their eyes.
The wise preacher in Ecclesiastes chapter 8 and verse 11 says,
because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily,
therefore the heart of the sons of man is fully set in them to
do evil, to do evil. Judgment is coming, we know that,
and that right soon, but the gospel age is the age of mercy
and the age of grace. The acceptable year of the Lord,
spoken of in Isaiah 61, as a product of the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ, also repeated when he preached in Luke chapter 4 to
his hometown. That acceptable year of the Lord
is what we're in right now. Year there being a specific set
of time, and that time was the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ
into this world. That and between the fact that
he will come again that period of time is called the acceptable
year of the Lord in Isaiah chapter 63 Our Lord speaks of his vengeance
Which is his wrath poured out It says this about it In verse
4, he says, For the day of my vengeance is in my heart. It's
stored up. It's there. It's coming. And
the year of my redeeming is coming. So this is the year of his redeeming.
But vengeance is in his heart. Vengeance is in his heart. The
fact is that no man living has knowingly experienced the wrath
of God. You and I have not experienced
the wrath of God, much less his judgment. We haven't. How that
displeasure is exercised is not clearly discernible in our lives,
whether we're believers or not. Trials and tribulations, according
to 1 Corinthians 10, are common to all men. And Job 14.5 said
this, Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. Is that the wrath of God? I don't
know. I don't know. But perhaps this
is the manner in which the wrath of God resides on unbelievers.
And religion likes to speak of judgment in such cases where
others suffer and they do not. But judgment does not address
temporal troubles, diseases, or physical death. Wrath and
judgment address eternal matters. Eternal matters. Eternal punishment
and death without dying. Because this is so, humanity
is void of the understanding of God's judgment, and this is
a mercy. Because if God cut off the lights
on Calvary, there was a reason for it. Our frail frames could
not endure even a bit of what the thrice holy God does when
He vents His anger. We couldn't handle it. We couldn't
handle it. However, one human being is aware
of it. One human being knows it, having
personally experienced it, and he did not tell us what went
on. We can garner some hints of it
in the Word of God, here in Psalm 39. There's a picture when God
cut off the light and dealt with the Lord Jesus Christ for our
sins. And he said, remove thy stroke
from me. Remove thy stroke from me. I
am consumed with the blow of thy hand. When we were boys,
we used to like to stand and swap blows on our shoulders or
our chest. We'd take the lead, we'd just
beat on each other's shoulders, take turns. Our Lord is sitting
there, God Almighty has rolled up his sleeves in this hour and
has begun to pummel me, pummel me. with his fists. That's the
language that is used here. The old hymn says, many hands
were raised to wound him, none would interpose to save. But
the cruelest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that justice
gave. Now our Lord gives us some sense
of the judgment that he underwent. And Gethsemane cried, let this
cup pass from me. What was he talking about? Nobody
really knows. But it has something to do with
Him being made sin for us and suffering under the wrath that
only He knew. And on the cross, after He had
suffered that wrath in those three hours of darkness, He came
out alive on the other side and said, My God, my God, why dost
thou forsake me? We get some sins. He was God,
yes he was, but he was man. According to Hebrews, he suffered
these things and he made a perfect sacrifice and he feared death.
He feared death. He's a human being. And we all
do. We all do. This is about the extent of our
knowledge. What he has said in these few
things. We may ponder it in our minds and be thankful that God
has given us faith to believe what He has declared, that only
one man who is both Son of God and Son of Man, deity and humanity
combined in one person, the Word made flesh, knows what the judgment
of God is. And He suffered it, not for Himself. There wasn't nothing to do him
but praise and honor and glory. He lived perfectly in this world
to make himself suitable to be the perfect sacrifice for sin,
the perfect sin offering. He was without spot, without
blemish. Holy and harmless is how it's
described. But it says he died for our sins
according to Scripture. One passage of Scripture, almost
poetic in its beauty, in Zechariah chapter 12. I don't know, it's chapter 13,
or is that right? Verse 7. This is a picture of
what went on on Calvary. Metaphorical language, that means
it speaks, God's speaking of His wrath in a specific way,
as a sword, as a sword of justice. And it says, Awake, O sword,
against my shepherd, that's against the Lord Jesus Christ. And against
the man that is my fellow, he was one with God, thought it
not robbery to be equal with God, because he was God. Praise
the mystery of God, that is God manifest in the flesh. Sayeth the Lord of hosts, smite
the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered, and they were. And then he said, but I'll turn
my hand. upon the little one to save his own. One time, that
sword has left its scabbard in all of history. It's back in
the scabbard again. One time it left that scabbard
in all of history. That was 2,000 years ago on a
lonely hill outside Jerusalem called Golgotha. The place of
the scum, our Lord drew out his sword of justice and placed it
in the bosom of his shepherd and his fellow. And because of
that, he turned his hands upon the little one. The little ones,
that's you and I. Turn over to Isaiah chapter 53.
In Isaiah chapter 53, somebody's phone ringing. Isaiah 53, there are many words
that speak of punishment for sin. And if you want to know
what punishment for sin is, don't look at things happening in people's
lives that might be horrible, cause great catastrophe and disaster
in their lives. Don't look for that. If you want
to know what sin is, there's only one place you understand
how bad sin is. And that's the cross of Jesus
Christ. Because that's where God dealt with sin. That would
be the truth. And in Isaiah 53, there are many
words that speak of punishment for sin, the words that give
us some sense of what our Savior suffered when He was punished
for our sins. Now we know He suffered at the
hands of men. We know that. But He did that
voluntarily. We know that. Because when they
came to capture Him, He merely said, Ego, I may, I am. And they
fell away backwards. And then he gave himself to them
to suffer. Christ suffered for our sins. His death was substitutionary
and voluntary. Men hated and do hate by nature. Men despise God. I'm not talking about the God
that's being preached in this day in the pulpits of America
who can't do anything unless you let him, who's weak and paltry,
who's said to be a gentleman and will never overcome your
will. You better hope he overcomes your will. You better pray to
God he overcomes your will. That God is not God, but the
God of Scripture. The God of Scripture, just like
we say, is holy and just. and truth. And the God of Scripture
is the judge of all the earth. This judgment that Christ suffered
was for our sins. For our sins. It's a substitutionary
debt. That's made clear in Isaiah chapter
53. Every time I read this I think
of that Ethiopian Union. He was leaving, going back to
see Candace, his master, and he had a copy of Isaiah 53. He
said, it must have been a rich man because it cost to get a
scribe to copy a book of the Bible for me, Isaiah 53. He's
reading it. He don't know what it means. And so the Lord directed an apostle
to run and jump in the chair with him. Philip approached to the side
of the chariot and said, sir, do you understand what you're
reading? He said, I can unless somebody help me. He says, who's
this prophet talking about here? He's talking about this fellow
that suffers, suffers death, has all these things happen to
him, esteem spreading, smitten, stricken of God, afflicted. Is
that prophet talking about himself or somebody else? And it says,
fill up from that passage, Isaiah 53, from that passage, preach
to him Jesus Christ. And after he heard the gospel
from Isaiah 53, because you see all they had was the Old Testament,
this time they had the New Testament. When he heard the gospel from
Isaiah 53, the Lord saved him. And the old fellow Ethiopian
youth said, what does it have to do with me being baptized?
I want to confess Christ. He was baptized. Philip said,
do you believe? He said, I believe that Jesus
Christ is the Son of God. He is the Son of God. What he found out that day was
that death of that character represented in Isaiah 53 was
his sovereign substitute. That's the language used. Listen
to how it's used. Notice the word our in verses
4 and 5. Surely he hath borne our griefs. Now he's grieved. He's carried
our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken,
smitten of a God unfaithful. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we are, not might be, could be,
should be, we are healed. We are healed. Look at the last
part of verse 8. It says, He was taken from prison
and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? For he
was cut off out of the land of the living. Why? For the transgression
of my people. was he stricken. Look at verse
11. He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied,
for by his knowledge my righteous servants shall justify many.
How? For he shall bear their iniquities. Then in verse 12,
it says, Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoiled with the strong. Because he had
poured out his soul unto death, he was numbered with the transgressors, There are six words in this passage
that speak of what our Lord suffered on Calvary's day. Each one of
these things speaks of what He went through when God cut off
the lights for those three hours when darkness fell upon the face
of the earth. These are found in verses four
and five. Surely He hath borne our griefs
carried our sorrows, yet we disdain him stricken, smitten of God,
and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities,
and the chastisement of our peace is upon him, and with his stripes
we are healed." Six words. Six words. Stricken, smitten,
afflicted, wounded, bruised, and strife. A strike was laid upon him. Our
Lord was smitten. That means beaten. Beaten. Our Lord was afflicted. That
means humiliated. When he hung on the cross, he
didn't have a tea towel wrapped around him. He was buck-necked,
and he looked like a slaughtered lamb. That crown of thorns dripped
blood down his face, which was bruised and puffed up from men
tearing out his beard and hitting him His back bore, I forget, 300 and some cuts deep
all the way to the bone from the cat-of-nine-tails and the
full skirt. He didn't look like a human being.
He looked like a wounded creature. Our Lord was wounded. What does
that mean? Defiled by wounding. Our Lord was bruised. What does
that mean? Crushed. Shattered. Stripes were laid on our Lord.
Blows were inflicted. We can understand Him saying
in Psalm 39.10, remove that stroke away from me. I am consumed by
the blow of thy hand. Because all that punishment on
the cross, in the darkness, did not kill Christ. We're guilty
of killing Him because of what was in our hearts, but we didn't
kill Him. God poured out His absolute, whole, entire, holy
wrath upon Him, and it didn't kill Him. Those three hours of
darkness represent our eternal hell that He suffered for us.
He suffered our hell, which will be eternal if we went there,
because God can never get enough from us to satisfy His wrath
and judgment. So it'll last forever. He suffered
that for His people. He suffered that. And He came
out on the other side alive. In the temple realm, God sometimes
judges men with natural death. He does. In the Old Testament,
God judged the world with water, and only eight people did in
that ark. He drowned Pharaoh's army in
the bottom of the sea. He opened up the earth and swallowed
3,000 Moses enemies. In the New Testament, In the
early church, Ananias and Sapphira were slain for lying about how
much they offered to the Lord. Strange thing, that, in the early
church, but that happened. These are natural deaths and
have no eternal value. We're all going to die, bless
the Lord coming, we're all going to die. That death is of no eternal
value, none whatsoever. But there was one death. That was the death of our sovereign,
suffering substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. That death was
voluntary. And that death, like no other
death, was actually an accomplishment. You can't say that about our
death. I've never heard it said by the many caskets I put in
the ground. I've never heard somebody say, well, we finally
got it right. I've never heard somebody say that. Did he do a good job of dying?
Nobody says that. Death's gonna come to us. We
ain't gonna come to death. Death's gonna show us who's boss.
Death is the final way that a person must confess, even though he's
silent in his casket, that his will has no power at all. Because
now, Gary D., ten minutes before the last breath was gone, he
willed to live. But it didn't work. It didn't
work. One day, as our Lord was on the
mound of Transfiguration, something miraculous happened. Many things,
actually. His robes glistened brighter
than any fuller could make them, like a bright morning sun. He shone, and then two characters
from the Old Testament, who had long been dead physically, traveled
across time somehow, the space-time continuum, and went through that
Einstein's dark hole. I don't know what the hell had
happened, but they ended up standing right beside the Lord Jesus Christ,
Moses and Elias, all speak of Jesus Christ. And
they stood beside the Lord Jesus Christ and they spoke to Him.
What did they talk about? Politics? Abortion? Homosexuality? Drunkenness? No. Never entered into conversation.
They went all the way across time to presently stand before
the Lord Jesus Christ and say, We want to talk about your death,
which you're going to accomplish at Jerusalem. Luke chapter 9. Luke chapter 9, verses 28 through
31. That's what they talked about.
The death that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. The child of God, his religion,
is the religion of death. If you go back, as is pictured
in type and shadow in the Old Testament, in the tabernacle,
in the temple, that holy of holies, that most holy place, that 15
by 15 foot cubicle, which was the only place in all the landscape
of America that God met with anybody. One time a year, with
the great high priest, on the day of atonement, he met with
him. You go in that place, wasn't nice like this, pretty paneling
all over the place, with old rough curtains hung down, And
there was this thing there in the middle of it called the Ark
of the Covenant with two cherubims facing each other. And there
was before him, between those cherubim was called the Shekinah
Glory or the Glory of God Shining. And when he went in there, he
went in there with blood, and he sprang from the blood. He
sprang on himself, all over the curtains, all over the altar,
all over the cherubim, all over the most holy place. It had that copper smell of death. And it was brown. Not pretty. You want to talk about the religion
of the child of God, it's this. My religion is death. It's death. They spake of him
and the death that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. payment of the sin debt that
was owed by His elect. And because that debt was paid, it will never be accounted against
His people. It can't be. The debt is paid. It's paid.
I heard one preacher down in Atlanta one time said, Jesus
paid our sin debt. And then when we went on for
almost an hour trying to explain it really didn't pay, it just
sort of paid. You've got to agree to pay. You've
got to get your will in on it so it'll get done. No, this debt
was paid. Our Lord was satisfied. God Almighty
was satisfied. He was propitiated. His judgment
was satisfied. His justice was satisfied by
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. It says those who believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ will never suffer the second death. Why? Because the debt's been paid.
The old poet said, justice cannot twice demand payment at my bleeding
surety's hand and then again at mine. Cannot. He, Christ said, I am the resurrection
and the life. He that believeth on me shall
never die. Why? Because Christ has already
died in the death he owed. That's the payment that was made. O brave, where is thy victory?
Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died. Straight and smitten and afflicted,
see him dying on the tree. Tis the Christ thy man rejected,
Yes, my soul, tis He, tis He, tis the long-expected prophet,
David's son, yet David's Lord. By His Son, God now has spoken,
tis the true and faithful Word. Tell me, he who hear him groaning,
was there ever grief like his? Friends through fear, his cause
disowning, foes insulting his distress. Many hands were raised
to wound him, None would interpose to save But the deepest stroke
that pierced him Was the stroke that justice gave. Ye who think of sin but lightly
Nor suppose the evil great Here may view it ? See who bears the awful load
? ? Tis the word the Lord's anointed ? ? Son of man and Son of God
? ? See my sovereign Lord and Savior ? ? Nailed to wood my
substitute ? ? Bear my sins ? Take my shame and ill repute. Hear him crying, it is finished. Soon the grave and then the throne. This poor sinner stands rejoicing. For my sins, they are all gone. Here we have a firm foundation. Here the refuge. Christ, the
rock of our salvation, is the name of which we boast. Lamb of God, for sinners wounded,
sacrifice to cancel guilt, none shall ever be confounded, who
on Him their hope is built. As we receive the table of the
Lord, us sinners saved by God, so forth is death, until it comes
to pass. Amen. The night that our Lord was betrayed,
He took the bread and the wine of the Passover feast and break
the bread and handed it to the disciples and said, take heed,
this is my body broken for you. And often as you do this, do
this in remembrance of me. And then He took the cup and
also after He had blessed it, He said, this is the New Testament
in my blood. As often as you eat this bread
and drink this cup, you'll be sure for it in my death until
I'm coming again. This is not a sacrament, that is to say,
no grace will come down from heaven on you when you take this.
This is a memory. It's a remembrance of what? what
we just talked about. Him who suffered the full punishment
of God, who voluntarily gave his life and died in our room
instead. This is about his death, his
body, his blood, given for us. That's why we take this as believers,
to commemorate him in the simplest fashion, By consuming these things,
we're saying Christ in us is the hope of the world. And when
we take these things, they become a part of us. These nutrients
go into our cells. Stay there. Stay there. This is what we do as children
of God. If you're a believer, take this
table gladly, thankfully, rejoicing in the fact that 2,000 years
ago, your debt was fully, completely paid to God by His Son, and you
were accepted in the beloved because of what He did. So we
receive the Lord's table, let's ask the blessings upon the elements.
Father, as we take this table, let us do so with joy and thanksgiving
in our hearts, knowing full well that we are celebrating and rejoicing
in the fact that what you did 2,000 years ago, when you suffered
the punishment for our sin and then died the death that we owe
for sin, We are thankful. Let us take
this with joy and thanksgiving, remembering our life is the product
of His death. In Christ's name. Okay. On the night our old man was
betrayed, he took bread, Passover bread, unleavened bread, and
break it and hand it to his disciples and say, take it, this is my
body, broken for you. As often as you do it, do it
in remembrance of me. That same night, he took the
cup, and after he had blessed it, he said, this cup is the
new testament, a new covenant in my blood. As often as you
eat this bread and drink this cup, you do so for my death.
Until I come again, do this in remembrance of me." And the scripture says they stood
and sang a hymn. Let's stand together. What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that
makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. This is all my hope and peace,
nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my righteousness,
nothing but the blood of Jesus. Tell each other you love each
other. Thank you very much.