Our Heavenly Father, we thank and praise Thee
that Thou hast given to us this wondrous
revelation of Thy love in the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And as we come now to consider this
mystery of Thy grace, this marvelous revelation of
Thy love, this unfolding of Thy great plan
of redemption and the implications that it has
for us in our ministries and in our
life and walk with Thee, speak to us,
minister to every heart.
Let none of us be omitted in the
breaking of the bread.
May the eyes of our hearts be opened
and may we see Jesus high and lifted
up and His train filling the temple.
In His worthy name and for His sake
we ask it.
Amen.
Now, back to 1 Corinthians 2, but we
speak the wisdom of God in a mystery,
even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before
the world unto our glory, which none of
the princes of this world knew, for had
they known it, they would not have crucified
the Lord of glory.
The wisdom of God in a mystery, the
hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world
unto our glory.
Because of man's sin, because of this tremendous
transfer of authority from man to whom God
had given it, to the God of this
world, prince of this world, to Satan, there
has been ever this conflict.
Perhaps Daniel, more clearly than any other, explains
to us the nature of the warfare that
is going on.
You recall that when he prayed and 21
days later, Michael the archangel came saying, I
have been withstood by the princes of Persia.
There had been an unseen and heavenly battle
going on.
And that battle had continued.
We are told in Ephesians chapter one, that
there are principalities and powers and the rulers
of the darkness of this present age.
Satan has established a hierarchy of government, a
hierarchy that had been absolutely effective in controlling
the affairs of men.
I mentioned to you in the earlier service
about the introduction of idolatry into the world
with the Tower of Babel and the enthronement
of Semiramis.
That idolatry continued.
It later on came, no longer Semiramis, but
Astarte, Astaroth.
And then later on we find Juno.
And in Ephesus, we find Diana.
But it is always the idolatry associated with
the lust of the flesh, sexualism, sexual indulgence.
Remember I said there were three times on
the pitchfork.
The first in terms of introduction here is
the lust of the flesh.
And the second is the lust of the
eye.
Now the function of the eye is to
see.
And what we see are things.
On Monday, when there were no day services,
Marjorie and I just went for the first
time.
I don't think we've ever done it.
We just strolled through the shopping mall.
First, we wanted a little exercise.
And secondly, we wanted where was air-conditioned.
And we concluded that that was probably the
best place for an air-conditioned exercise.
But we realized as we walked that everyone
was setting out things in the most attractive,
most exciting way.
And it's always amazing, isn't it, what people
would rather have than money.
It just always surprises me what they're willing
to trade money for.
Can't wait to get rid of it.
And they always trade it for things, big
things or houses.
We drove from seeing Shoshone Falls down one
of the streets.
We saw some of those beautiful estates, looked
like it to me anyway, with five or
six acres of yard, beautifully landscaped.
Well, that's a lovely thing.
I have no objection to it.
If they continue to tithe and then give
offerings to the Lord, I don't object to
it.
I think it's kind of a bad trade.
But that's their business.
That's not mine.
But the point is that things are traded
for money.
Well, you would expect, wouldn't you, if you
had a goddess of sex, the lust of
the flesh, that there would be some kind
of an invented god of things.
And we have it in the scripture.
Baal.
Did you know what the word Baal means?
Literally, it's owner.
And Baal worship was for the purpose of
appeasing the evil spirit that owned the field
or the valley or the village, whatever it
was.
You find Baal Kirgath, the owner of Kirgath.
Baal Peor, the owner of Peor.
And Baal worship was to appease the evil
spirit that owned the real estate, to induce
him to give up the fruit of that
real estate so that one could trade it
for what they wanted.
Now, you remember that the people in the
land that God gave to Abraham, it wasn't
unoccupied land.
There were folks there.
And God was fed up with their idolatry
and their wickedness and their brutality.
They worshipped Ashtaroth, they worshipped Baal, and they
worshipped Moloch.
And the brutality and cruelty and evil associated
with this was so horrendous that God said,
they got to go.
And so his purpose was to give that
to Abraham and to his descendants.
Now, Abraham never got occupancy of it, and
Jacob's family didn't.
But when Moses led the children of Israel
out of there, they were going to go
in to do what God had told them
to do, namely to destroy these lands because
they were subject to judgment of their crimes
that they had committed.
And we, you know the history, I needn't
rehearse it, only to tell you that after
Israel got into the land, they never did
what God told them to do.
They never did that.
They never dealt with the people that were
there.
Oh, they took their farms, they took their
land, but they let the people live.
And in so doing, they brought themselves into
terrible bondage.
Let me illustrate it.
Here's a farmer.
Yeah, he got one of the farms from
the Canaanites, and he's trying to get a
living out of it.
Now, the Canaanite did pretty well.
But remember, he was a Baal worshipper, and
the Israelite is a Jehovah worshipper.
Now, God had told them this was a
land flowing with milk and honey, and all
they had found, it was a land full
of brambles and stones and rocks.
Because of the problems that they had in
obeying God, God couldn't bless them.
Well, one day this Israelite farmer is down
there chopping away, got an ox, a couple
of oxen, and he's trying to stir it
up and get some oil so he can
plant it.
And leaning on the fence against the road
there is an old Canaanite farmer that had
owned this piece of property before the Jews
came in.
And then when he gets down there, the
Israelite lets the oxen blow for a little
while, and they chat.
Now, he shouldn't be there, that Canaanite shouldn't
have been there, but he's there.
And you're not doing very well.
When I had this farm, I was getting
a lot more than you're getting out of
it.
Well, that's what they tell me, but I
thought I was a pretty good farmer, but
I'm not doing very well.
You're telling the truth.
I wonder why.
He said, you don't understand how we get
crops here.
You just came in here, you don't know.
Well, how do you get crops?
Did you ever notice that big thick place
in the stone wall down there?
Yeah, I noticed that.
Sure.
What's that mean?
It's got all those brown streaks down it.
Well, that's an altar.
An altar to whom?
To Baal, to the spirit that owns this
land.
You can't get a crop here unless you
make a sacrifice to the spirit that owns
this land, the owner of it, the evil
spirit that governs it.
Well, what do you do?
He said, I kill sheep, but you worship
Jehovah.
Only place you can sacrifice sheep is there
at that tabernacle, but we're more practical.
We got to have food.
I don't know what you get from worshiping
Jehovah, but when I was here, I had
to have a crop to support my family.
Well, what'd you do?
Well, he said, we just killed a lamb,
put the blood of the lamb on the
stone, left the lamb there, and actually, after
we killed it, we took it home and
ate it, but we let the blood out
of it there on those stones as a
sacrifice to Baal.
We didn't want to waste the meat, let
the vultures get it, so we'd take it
home and we'd have lamb stew, but that's
what we did.
We sacrificed it.
You got a good crop?
Oh, you got about three or four times
more than you do.
So that night, when they're asleep, getting ready
to go to bed, the farmer says to
his wife, you know, I talked to the
old man who used to own this place,
and he told me how they got good
crops.
Well, you better find out something, because I
haven't had a new dress for so long,
and this kitchen equipment is worn out, and
if we don't get something, there are going
to be problems, and I'm warning you.
You better figure out some way to get
more money than we've had the last couple
of years here.
I thought this land would be full of
milk and honey, just got that's all I
can find.
So next day, it's real strange.
A lamb just comes running down the field
and leaps up on that wall, and the
old farmer's there whittling on a stick, and
you know what that lamb does?
It runs into his knife.
Three times it runs into it, and it
just lays down in its blood.
It was all an accident, of course.
It wasn't intentional, but boy, they got a
good crop that year, and someone says, what
did you do?
Well, I had an accident with a lamb.
It ran into my knife.
He's not going to say he killed it,
but you know what he did.
He killed it, and we got a good
crop.
That's what that thing in your field is.
That's an altar to Baal.
Baal worship, and you know what the scripture
says in Judges?
Joshua, they feared the Lord, and they served
the gods of the land.
Oh, I wish that had been confined to
them, but I find today churches are filled
with people that say they fear the Lord,
but they serve the gods of the land.
Now, that was owner.
That was Baal worship.
So, worshiping Juno or Ashtaroth, they got license
for immorality.
Worshiping Baal, they got the means of accumulating
things.
Now, there's one other type of worship we
find associated here, and that's the worship of
Moloch.
When Marjorie and I arrived in Africa, it
was in Egypt.
We stayed at the American University Guest House.
We arrived the night before the day that
Parliament opened, and then Farouk was king of
Egypt, and the parade route went right by
the American University Guest House.
So, we were out there standing up on
the Wainscote High brick wall, holding on to
the steel iron rods and fence that went
around the property.
So, we were over the heads of the
folks standing on the sidewalk, and we could
look down the street and see these gorgeous
Arabian horses as they were outriders for the
state's coach, and they came prancing with all
their pride and beauty, and then the black
horses that pulled the...
I think there were six black horses that
pulled the coach, and in there was the
king Farouk and his queen, and as he
came down the street, the people picked up
the cry, Malik Kabir!
Malik Kabir!
Great King!
Malik, M-L-K.
King.
Moloch.
Radicals.
M-L-K.
King.
Well, who's the king at the World Service?
Isn't it Prince of Darkness?
So, what they had, and according to some
of the archaeologists, there were at times in
certain places great statues of the king, and
he's there like Abu Simbel down on the
Nile River.
So, elsewhere there were statues of the king.
In some cases, they had his hands out
and hands clasped so, so that the forearms
on the thighs made a basket, and it
was all giant size.
Into that basket would be placed lighted charcoal.
There were tunnels that cut into the rock
that went out behind the statue, and there
the priest had bellows made of goatskin that
had been peeled off and properly attached, and
they would work these bellows and force the
air up through until that became like a
blacksmith's forge, a very hot charcoal fire.
The worshipers of Moloch would come, speak to
the priest, tell the priest what they wanted.
Now, when they sacrificed to Moloch, it was
to get position.
Pride of life is associated with position.
Governor of a province, mayor of a city,
on the council, some position.
You know, when you've had all of the
sexual indulgence you can tolerate, and all of
the things you can accumulate, there's only one
thing left, and that's power over people.
And so, they would come to Moloch.
Now, the offering, the typical offering to Moloch
was a baby, usually a firstborn son, but
since he was made out of stone, he
didn't have two good eyes, what he wanted
was a baby, sometimes a girl, and try
to get it eight days, ten days, two
weeks old.
And the parents would come and stand there.
Both of them had to agree, had to
come together.
And they would tell the priest what position
they were asking Moloch to give them, and
then the father would take the little child,
like some basketball player does, trying to get
the trajectory to put the ball through the
basketball hoop.
The father would take the child and get
the trajectory, and then throw the little child,
arms and legs flailing, perhaps screaming, to land
squarely in the fire, and to be consumed
as a living sacrifice to Moloch.
Now, that's what the children of Israel did.
They were feared Jehovah, and they served the
gods of the land, and the gods of
the land were Ashtaroth, and Baal, and Moloch.
Evidencing the control that the god of this
world has, even on the people that were
to be a people to show forth his
praise, how they were seduced, and induced, and
beguiled, and chose to serve the gods of
the land.
Now, this has continued down to the present.
You say, oh, we don't have that today.
Oh, don't we?
You don't think so.
Well, I beg to differ with you.
We still have the same three goddesses and
gods today.
And you as pastors know that in among
your people are parents that seemingly have made
decisions to sacrifice their children to their own
personal ambitions, and sometimes even in Christian work.
Whenever we come to the place that we
are prepared to sacrifice integrity in the glory
of God for sexual indulgence, for possessions, or
for position, it's a type of idolatry.
For all that's in the world is the
lust of the eye, the lust of the
flesh, and the pride of life.
Now, I said that I was going to
take you back to Ephesians chapter 2, and
I propose to do so now.
I want you to notice in 21, principalities.
These would be the evil spirit that governed
countries, and power, and might, and dominion, and
every name that is named, not only in
this world, but also in that which is
to come.
And then I want you to go down
to the second chapter in the first verse.
And you, who were dead in trespasses and
sins, were in time past, you walked according
to the course of this world.
You did.
I did.
You walked according to the prince and the
power of the air.
You did.
You walked according to the spirit that now
works in the children of disobedience, among whom
also we all had our manner of life
in times past, fulfilling the lusts of our
flesh, past in the lusts of our flesh,
fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of
the mind.
This is the things that we could see,
and the positions we could occupy, and were
by nature the children of wrath, even as
others.
Now I've cited that just to establish that
the race of men, wicked men, was under
the control of the God of this world.
Wherever you go, wherever you are, it's true.
I've told you about Africa, where they cicatrized
the back, where they cut the back.
But there are a lot of other marks
that you see in other parts of the
world which are equally definitive.
Now, such were we.
Such were all men.
There were no exceptions.
All have sinned and come short of the
glory of God.
All are under the sentence of death.
No exceptions whatever.
However, there was, in the fullness of time
was come, one woman who by her choices
had sought to please God, and God chose
her as a vessel.
He overshadowed her, and one cell in her
body was quickened, not by male sperm, but
by the Holy Ghost.
And that person that was born of Mary
was Emmanuel, God come in the flesh.
Now, remember what we had back here in
1 Corinthians 2, the hidden mystery.
And remember the problem that God has.
He has to defeat his ancient foe, and
he has to vindicate his holiness and satisfy
the law so that he can be just,
and the justifier of those that repent and
believe.
So Mary, chosen vessel, one cell in her
body, quickened by the Holy Ghost.
And that which is born of her is
God come in the flesh.
We are told by the Council of Nicaea
later that he was very God, a very
God, no less God.
And he was very man, a very man,
no less man.
Perfect union, God come in the flesh.
Now, as a babe, then he is to
be nurtured at the breast of Mary.
He's to be tended and protected.
God, in order to provide for the family,
has those that have been scattered are out
there.
I don't know who they are, but I
know this, that one time 10 tribes went
and they took scripture with them when they
went, those 10 scattered tribes.
And maybe they are, I don't know whether
they are or not.
I don't, I just know this, that they
knew the stars and they knew the message
and they were called magi.
And, and they, they were watching and they
learned from God by means that he used
to communicate that there was going to be
one born who was of the utmost importance,
a king.
And so they brought kingly gifts.
These three wise men, they bought gold and
frankincense and myrrh, very expensive gifts.
And they came and they laid these kingly
gifts at the feet of this infant.
And God had a purpose in it because
the enemy was stirred up.
Something was happening and he didn't know what
was happening, but he had to stop it
because he's the God of this world and
he's the prince of this world.
And he has a king that's amenable to
his suggestions.
And so the king says, now you go
down there and you find every baby under
two years of age and you kill it.
And the angel says, you get up Joseph
and you take Mary and the babe and
you go where I'll show you into Egypt.
And isn't it marvelous?
In their little pack on the back of
a donkey, they had gold and frankincense and
myrrh, which would sustain them in their 12
years as refugees in Egypt for their years.
Oh, I think it's marvelous.
I think it's so thrilling how God makes
the wrath of men to praise him, how
he prepares.
And so they trekked down into Egypt and
there they live protected and they lose sight
of it and they forget about it.
Then the angel of the Lord says, you
can go back home to Nazareth.
So they go around about way.
They don't go through Jerusalem.
They go up and cut across and go
into Nazareth.
And we're told that Jesus increased in wisdom
and stature and favor with God and with
man.
And at the age of 30, he's now
been an apprentice carpenter.
He's become a journeyman carpenter.
He's become a master carpenter.
And he has been there working in that
home with Joseph to care for his mother
and the others in the family.
And John has been set forth.
That's a cousin of Jesus.
And so Lord Jesus goes down to the
Jordan and there John is proclaiming there one
coming after me who's preferred before me.
He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire.
I'm not worthy to unlatch his sandals and
loosen them.
He's coming.
And down into the water comes the Lord
Jesus.
And John sees and God gives revelation to
John.
That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God.
And John says, I have need to be
baptized of you.
And the Lord Jesus said, no, but that
all righteousness may be fulfilled.
Now, baptism was to those who came in
evidence of repentance.
And those who came prior to his coming
all had much sin of which to repent.
They had walked according to this course of
this world, according to the prince and the
power of the air.
They were dead in their trespasses and sins
and they needed to repent of sin.
But this one, of whom the silence of
heaven would be shortly broken and the voice
of God would say, this is my beloved
son in whom I'm well pleased.
God never could have said that about anyone
else at the age of five, much less
than at the age of 30.
But he always did those things that pleased
the father.
The only person that ever walked and left
his footprints in sand, that the father could
say, I'm well pleased.
Oh, so what could he come for baptism?
So what could he change his mind about
or set his mind?
Well, he is God come in the flesh
and as the eternal son, he has the
right to be worshiped, the right to have
the worship of angels, the right to have
men honor his name.
But we are told in the Kenosis chapter
in Philippians, let this mind be in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus, who being
in the form of God, thought it not
something to be grasped after or insisted upon
that he should be equal with God, but
being found in fashion as a man, he
deliberately accepted the limitations of his humanity.
Do you understand what baptism meant to the
Lord?
The laying aside of the right to act
in his essential deity as son.
He did not lay aside his deity.
He laid aside the right to act in
his deity and he accepted the limitations of
his humanity.
Why?
That in all things he might be like
unto his brethren, so that at another time
he could say, as the father sent me,
so send I you.
Our Lord Jesus was conceived by the Holy
Ghost, indwelt by the fullness of the Godhead
bodily.
He went into the water of baptism, saying
by it that he accepted the limitation of
his humanity.
He presented his body to the father and
when he came out of the water, John
said, I saw the Holy Ghost like a
dove come upon him.
And later on in Nazareth, he said, the
spirit of the Lord is epi upon me.
He didn't say in me because the spirit
of God had been in him from his
conception and birth.
But his divine human personality was now clothed
upon and covered and anointed by the spirit
of God.
And as F.B. Meyer, in one of
the great little books, number 37 in Moody
Colportage series, said, in that book, Christ for
the Christ life, for the self life, we
must remember that everything done by Christ in
the three years of his public ministry was
done by the father through the Holy Spirit
and was not done by him in his
essential deity, his son.
For if it had been done by him
in his essential deity, his son, he never
could have said as the father sent me,
I so send I you.
But since he accepted the limitation of his
father, presented his body to the father and
the spirit of God came upon him and
everything done by him was done by the
father through the spirit.
Then he was in all points like unto
his brother.
But he had the spirit without limit and
we certainly with very, very severe limits.
But we must understand, though, what this meant.
So our Lord Jesus then went high into
the mountains there overlooking the valley of the
Jordan until he found a cave where he
could thus be apart from the sun and
shaded a bit.
And there without food and without water, he
ministered to perhaps by angels, but there alone
for 40 days, he exposed himself now to
the conflict with his ancient foe.
The one that he said, I be Satan,
fall as lightning from heaven down to earth.
Now he is there and the conflict is
joined and the proposition is presented to his
intellect, to his mind.
What is it?
What does the enemy have to present?
Remember what he has?
The lust of the flesh, the lust of
the eye, the pride of life.
And he said, you're hungry.
That's the desire of the flesh.
If you would say the word, you can
turn these stones into bread.
And our Lord Jesus said, man shall not
live by bread alone, but by every word
out of the mouth of God.
And he resists the temptation.
And then he said, if you will bow
down and worship me, I will give you
the kingdoms of the world.
If you'll cast yourself down, your angels will
protect you.
Temptation, all that the enemy had, he brought
and he focused on the Lord Jesus and
he met it with the word of God
and he resisted it.
Totally and completely.
And then down to begin his ministry, first
in Cana and then to Nazareth, where he
takes the scripture from Isaiah, the spirit of
the Lord is upon me.
He has anointed me, has sent me and
said, this day is the scripture fulfilled in
your ear.
And three years of public ministry, drawing to
himself 12 that will have special relationship with
him.
One of whom is ultimately to choose to
betray him.
And only three will be considered close enough
to him to go with him to the
mountain of revelation.
And the one of the three that had
gone with him to the mountain of revelation
to whom God had said, this is the
Christ, the son of the living God.
And he then begins to explain to them
how that he, he must go to Jerusalem
and be killed and be raised from the
dead.
And this one of them, Peter listens to
the voice of Satan and says, no, no,
no, you don't have to do that.
You don't be this far from you, Lord.
And the Lord Jesus said the very one
to whom he had said, flesh and blood
has not revealed this unto you, but my
father, which is in heaven.
He now says, get thee behind me, Satan.
Speaking through Peter, evidencing that a person can
speak, be taught by God one day, one
hour.
And if he lends himself, he can bring
that which is not of God, but of
the enemy.
So we are to trust and try all
things.
And our Lord Jesus recognized who it was
trying to dissuade him from fulfilling the purpose
of the father.
So we come then to that moment in
time when his ministry has been completed.
The 11, the 12th having betrayed him or
about to betray him, having left the place
of the supper to go on out to
complete the transaction and the bargain to get
the money that was to come to him.
And the Lord Jesus goes into the garden
and goes aside taking three with him as
he went further.
And then he goes apart from them and
he prays.
Have you seen him praying there?
Have you ever wondered why it was that
as he prayed, perspiration like great clots of
blood, was perspiration burst out of his brow
and his face.
Have you ever seen that?
Why?
Do you know why?
Let me explain.
The Lord Jesus Christ was now fulfilling the
purpose for which he'd come.
Do you remember the text that says he
was made to be sin for us.
He who knew no sin that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him.
The Lord Jesus Christ now is extending the
hands of his love out through time.
And in a sense he is reaching around
a race of wicked men and he is
identifying himself with that race.
In a sense he's reaching out to me
and he's reaching out to you and he's
crushing us to himself.
So that his identification with us is so
complete.
I want you to hear what I'm saying
very carefully.
His identification with us is so complete that
it is as though in the eyes of
his father he is made to be what
we were.
Now how can I explain that to you?
Perhaps if I bring the illustration that came
from an experience in Sudan it will help.
My task, our task, was to get the
language of the people in the area.
One tribe there was the Ngesina tribe.
We were forbidden by the government to go
into their area but they brought their cattle
down, their flocks, down into our area.
And so while they were there with their
flocks and herds I could go with them
and pick the language off their teeth as
they spoke and record it to make the
sample we needed to compare their language as
the other languages in the area.
This particular day we'd awakened as we usually
did about six o'clock.
We'd had breakfast and I was walking out
across the, through the grass.
It was all brown, brilliant, blighted with the
sun.
And even though the sun was off to
my shoulder, wasn't in my face, the reflection
on the brown grass was so bright that
I had my helmet pulled down over my
forehead.
And my eyes squinted up about as tight
as I could get them.
And I was looking down at the path
because I didn't want to have any more
of that light burn my eyes than I
had to.
I glanced up and see where the path
was going and I saw a dark bundle
there.
And I didn't know but what maybe it
was a couple of bundles of thatch grass
because the women were out getting the grass
to go and repair their roofs and re
-thatch their roofs where it needed it.
I thought maybe they'd gotten tired and left
it there to pick it up in the
morning.
But as I got nearer, I smelled a
strange smell.
A smell of something rotten.
And I looked up and there in front
of me was a leper.
Now I'd seen lots of pictures of lepers,
motion pictures of lepers.
I'd read books about leprosy.
I'd talked with missionaries that had worked with
lepers.
You see the leper is, leprosy is not
a type of sin.
Leprosy, the leper is the picture of the
sinner.
And now I was coming on to a
leper.
The first one that I'd ever encountered in
the flesh.
Never seen one before.
Close up.
And I walked up to him and there
he sat, his feet in front of him.
He had no toes.
They'd been eaten away and there were just
maggot filled ulcers on the end of his
feet.
Big pads on his knees and on his
elbows told me how he moved like this.
He had no fingers.
They were rotted away, little bones sticking through
the proud flesh.
Around his neck someone had put a leather
thong with a half a gourd.
And in it I could see how he
got food.
He'd take the palms, heels of his hand
when he saw a little grain and he'd
pick it up and he'd put it in
the gourd.
Then when he got a little of it,
he'd shake the gourd and try to get
the grain to ride to the top and
get up.
Put his tongue down and lift the grain
with his moist tongue.
And here he was, his eyelid way turned
down, matter seeping out down his cheeks.
His nose just a rotting hole in his
flesh.
His lips turned down and teeth all but
gone.
And he's holding out his hands to me
and he's saying, put yourself in my place.
What if you were here and I were
you?
What would you want me to do for
you?
Overcome with emotion I said to him, under
my breath in English, oh I'll do anything
I can to help you.
And when I said that the picture seemed
to change.
Up till then I'd been looking at a
stranger that I'd never seen before.
But when I said I'll do anything to
help you, in my eyes the whole scene
changed and I was the leper and the
Lord Jesus was where I was.
And he was saying, I'd do anything to
help you.
Now don't misunderstand me.
I didn't do what I'm about to tell
you.
But I realized for the first time what
the Lord Jesus had done.
If I had done for that leper what
Christ did do for me, this is what
it would have meant.
I would have had to have reached out
calculating all of the filthy disease and have
lifted him up and put his feet on
my feet, his hands in my hands, his
face on my face.
And then somehow in the alchemy of love
I would have had to have so compressed
and so pulled that his disease would have
appeared to have gone out on me and
my health on him.
The word says, he was made to be
sin for us.
He who knew though that we might be
made the righteousness of God in him.
He identified himself with us so completely that
in the eyes of his father he was
us.
He was there.
He the just one, we the unjust.
And the purpose was that he might vindicate
the holiness of God and satisfy the justice
of God and make it possible for God
to be just and the justifier of them
that believe in Jesus, that repent of their
sin and savingly embrace him.
Well, there he is in the garden playing
with great drops of blood bursting from his
brow.
And when he comes out and they would
put thongs upon him, he accepts the thongs.
Why?
Because he's not coming out as himself.
He's coming out as me and I deserve
the thong.
And when they buffeted him and bruised him
and scourged him, he accepted it.
Why?
Because you deserve the wrath of God.
You deserve everything that the law could do.
And when he went to the cross, he
was there in his identification with you to
the place that what he consented to have
the nails driven through his hands and feet.
Why?
Because he was there as me, as you.
Representing us by our identification because the word
had been so explicit.
It said the soul that sinneth, it must
die.
And only by his identification with us to
that end, could he satisfy the law in
our behalf and vindicate the law and uphold
the righteousness of God.
And he died the just for the unjust
that he might bring us to God.
But before he died, in those three awesome
hours, when darkness covered the cross and surrounded
it, all of hell came.
That was a preternatural and unnatural darkness.
It was the darkness made by the prince
of darkness surrounding the son of God.
And we are told in the Psalms exactly
what happened.
How that his heart melted within him like
wax.
And how that he was buffeted and bruised
so that he didn't even resemble a man
anymore.
And when there wasn't anything more that hell
could do to him because of its hatred
of him as God and the God's law
and holiness could do to us because of
our iniquity and sin and God's law has
been vindicated and his holiness upheld, the Lord
Jesus said it's finished.
And he died and he gave up the
ghost.
Everything hell could do had been done.
Now what has happened?
By our Lord Jesus going to the cross,
light is said to darkness, do your worst.
Truth is said to the lie, have your
day.
Life is said to death, what have you
to do?
Do it now.
And hatred, love said to hatred, work all
that you could ever work.
And when he said it's finished, he had
not only done all that was necessary to
make it possible for God to forgive and
pardon us, but he had also taken every
spear and every arrow and every club that
hell had and he died.
And three days later, that God life that
could not die returned again to that body
and he was raised from the dead.
And he led captivity captive and the foe
was defeated in open conflict.
From where you are, Brother Fred, would you
lead us in closing prayer?