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Pastor David Mitchell
Good morning, everyone. We are glad to see each of you today and our online friends.
Glad to have you with us today as well. And Jesse and Viviana and Alondra and Joshua, thank you for visiting with us today.
And also, Marshall, thank you. Always good to see you. We needed a little help because we got a lot of folks out of town for the vacation
Monday. And I can't figure out why they and their kin folks don't come here to visit instead of going there to visit.
Whatever. So we appreciate our visitors helping to pack a few pews this morning. And that was a fantastic end of year school event we went to this week.
Just amazing. I did look around. I remember telling Paul when he first came,
I said, now, Brother Paul, the last thing I want to see is for the school to outgrow the church.
We don't want the tail to wag the dog. And so here's our church. And the school's got, what, 150 in it now?
Plus, you put all the parents. It was like, I don't know, 500 people it looked like. But it was a bunch. And I'm glad Brother Paul doesn't always listen to me.
It's good that he doesn't. But man, from the minute the two of you guys got here,
God put his hand on that school and blessed it. And it's just mushroomed.
And I want to thank Katie and Dave for having the vision to want it to do that. And they knew their dad.
They knew I wasn't called to Christian education. I'm called a pastor. And though I believed in it,
I wasn't gifted at it. And so they said, why don't we see if we could bring someone in who is.
And you met through a friend of a friend. And here we are. So it's been wonderful and still is wonderful.
It's just amazing. And he's not kidding about cleaning up the church either. Paul will probably paint every wall by himself.
I wish he'd get some helpers. But maybe it's therapy. I don't know what that is.
But it's just hard work is what it is. But God blesses everything the man does. It's just amazing.
And Glenda, you're always a blessing. I always get to preach after hearing you play. And it's just wonderful.
All right, guys. Let's go to Romans chapter 15 this morning. And we've made our way down to verses 3 and 4.
And I want to talk a little bit about specifically verse 3 and 4 again, verses 3 and 4 again today.
So Romans 15 and verse 3. For even
Christ pleased not in himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproach thee fell on me.
For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope.
And we talked about last time that verse 3 is actually a quote from the Old Testament.
The apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, quotes the Old Testament. It happens to be Psalm 69.
And we're going to look at Psalm 69 here in a minute if you want to find your way to Psalm number 69.
Because that's where verse 3 comes from, the reproaches of them that reproach thee fell on me.
And what's interesting about it, a lot of the Psalms are called Messianic Psalms. And even though the
Holy Spirit is writing through the mouth of David, as it says in the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit spake through the mouth of David, that shows who the author of the
Bible is. It's the Holy Spirit. It's not David. The penman was David. But what's interesting about it, the way you can tell a
Messianic Psalm when you see it, and what that means, by the way, if you weren't here last time, it means the
Psalm appears to be talking about the life of David and sometimes the trouble he went through and the help he got from God.
But in reality, due to certain quotations in the New Testament, it proves that it's actually talking about Jesus Christ.
So God is using David as a type or a symbol of Jesus Christ so that as you read it, you see about Jesus, not about David.
And that's what a Messianic Psalm is. And that's what Psalm 69 is that we're going to look at here in a minute.
And what was fascinating about this one, we mentioned this last time, is when Jesus was on the cross, he basically was silent while they mocked him, while they spat upon him, while they told him, if you're
God, come down from there. All these things, he just remained silent. It says he was reviled and he reviled not again, doesn't it?
And yet Psalm 69 shows us what he was thinking. Can you even imagine having that information?
What God, the God -man, Jesus Christ, was actually thinking in his mind and in his heart when he's on the cross.
And so that's what we're studying. So let's go to Psalm 69. And I'm just going to review the first couple of verses to give you an idea, if you weren't here last time, what this feels like.
So look at Psalm 69, verse 1. Save me, O God, for the waters are coming in into my soul.
I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I am coming to deep waters where the floods overflow me.
And this is Jesus on the cross, picturing the blackness of darkness forever, which is how hell is described sometimes in the
Bible, picturing true hell, which is separation from the father.
And we looked in the Proverbs last week, a particular proverb where it shows
Jesus with the father before anything was created. It's a beautiful passage. He was always with the father, always the father's delight, it says.
And it also says that Jesus was particularly fond of the planet earth, when he could see all of creation with his foreknowledge, but he was particularly fond of the planet earth and of human beings.
And this is exactly why the father, even though the entire human race should be fallen because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, the father decided in his wisdom and love to give us, the saved, to Jesus, his son, as a love gift.
And we're a remnant. The vast majority of humans will not make it to heaven. Bible said,
Jesus himself said, wide is the gate and broad is the way to hell and many there be that go thereby and narrow is the gate to heaven and few there be.
Because the father saved a remnant of that entirely fallen hill deserving race. He saved some of us and gave us as a love gift to his son,
Jesus. And you go in Proverbs, you see before time began, before anything was made, it was made. Jesus, with his foreknowledge could view the earth and loved it and loved the humans.
And so the father gave him some humans. He saved some. That's what saved means, ladies and gentlemen. Isn't it wonderful if we're sitting here and we're saved today.
Saved from a fallen race and from the same blackness of darkness that Jesus was picturing, because as he was on that cross, the scripture tells us that God swept back in time and forward in time and took the sins of all of his people.
Everyone that God foreknew before the foundation of the world everyone that God saw as his own child, the elect, those who would be saved, the sheep, not the goats, the wheat, not the tares, but everyone that he saw that was his, he took their sins, yours and mine, and put them on the body of Jesus while he was on the cross.
He bore our sins in his body. And during that time, the father, who is holy and separate from sin, turned his head from his son, separated himself from Jesus.
And Jesus is feeling it right now. And he's telling us about it. I mean, the Holy Spirit told us about what he's feeling and thinking in his mind while he's on that cross.
He is beginning to feel and sense and understand the separation from God that he has always been
God and with God. John 1 says that, John 1, verse 1 says that, but here all of a sudden he is separated.
And this is what he's feeling. And it feels this water flooding in on him where he feels like his soul is drowning.
That is the feeling of hell. This idea of a deep mire, scientists even tell, physicists tell us that in the center of the earth right now, if you were there, you would feel a feeling of continual falling because there's no gravity in the middle of the earth.
And that is where Shoal is. That is where Hades is, the holding place for the lost until the lake of fire, until they're cast into there later in our future.
But so he was feeling that feeling of falling. He was experiencing hell for us in our place as our substitute.
And this is called the great doctrine of the substitutionary death of Jesus. He died in our place. He died for us.
And the English word for is kind of interesting there because it not only means that he died in our place, but it means he died because of us.
He had to die to save the very remnant that the father gave him. He died because of us and in place of us.
And it's happening. It's happening right here. He is experiencing that separation from the father that he had never experienced in all of whatever we call eternity past, which is kind of a funny word if you think about it because there's no time there.
And we call it past, which is the time. We don't know how to talk about it even. We don't know how to say all the eons of time before time began.
See, that's funny. There's no way to talk about it. But all that there was,
I can tell you this about it. All there was was God. There was no stuff like we think of stuff.
There were no planets yet. There was no ocean. There were no mountains. Jesus said in that beautiful Psalm we looked at last week that before the waters were,
I was. Before the mountains were, before he created the mountains, I was there with him. He's continued the light before the father all the time, but there's no time.
So it's hard to talk about it. So what you had was the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit.
How do we even know there is eternity because love demands an object? If God didn't exist as a
Trinity, there could be no love. And yet the Bible says he is love. He had to have someone to love even before he made anything.
So the Holy Spirit loved the father, the father loved the son, the son loved the Holy Spirit and so forth. God has always existed as he does now.
He doesn't change. So the son was there and the father and the son and the
Holy Spirit had a council before anything was made. And Jesus raised his hand and said, I will die for them because I do love the planet
Earth and I love the human beings and I want some saved. So if that's what it takes father, I will do it. And he agreed to do it before the...
The Bible says in the book of Revelation, he was slain before the foundation of the world. And the father and the son's mind before they made anything,
Jesus was already slain for us. And while this is happening, he hasn't given up the ghost yet, but he's already experiencing hell because he is separated from the father right now while we read this.
And so this is amazing information. So I wanna pick up where we left off last time, verse six. Look at Psalm 69, verse six.
Because, you know, in a little bit, it starts to get... It kind of starts to turn a corner.
And where we left, where we had to stop last week, it was just like, it was like the son of God's experiencing hell and we had to stop, we ran out of time.
So let's pick it up there. Let not them that wait on thee,
O Lord of hosts, be ashamed because of me. He says, for my sake, that means because of me.
Let not those that seek thee be confounded because of me or for my sake.
O God of Israel, because for thy sake, I have become a reproach.
Shame has covered my face. I am become a stranger into my brethren and an alien into my mother's children.
And so Jesus prays within his heart, a prayer for his own disciples that they see
Jesus understood what they were doing. I mean, there weren't any of them left. There were a few women and John, all the rest of them ran.
They fled the scene. They were not at the cross when he was dying. Most of them were gone because they were ashamed.
Now, what were they thinking? What would you be thinking? Is you walk with him three years and he promises, you know,
I'm the God man. And you know, you know me.
And then all of a sudden human's killing. And they mock him and they say, if your
God come down from that cross and he doesn't do it. So what would you be thinking? You would be ashamed.
You would be embarrassed that you followed him. You would be, your hope would be gone. That's where you and I would be.
And that's where these guys were. And so Jesus, while he's still on the cross, while he's experiencing hell, he's praying for his disciples because he knows how they're going to feel when he dies.
Think about that. They're praying for us too. Any of us in our lifetime that experience doubt, don't we have times when we doubt?
This is the prayer for us. We have like the least little thing can go wrong in our life, we doubt God. I mean, it's not like the father watching his son being butchered so that he's beyond, you can't even comprehend it.
He's a human before he ever even got to the cross. It's not that bad what happens to us, but we just think, okay,
God's not there. Listen, nothing has ever happened to us that God hasn't suffered himself.
He'd never expect us to do something he hasn't gone through. You lose a child to death. He lost his only begotten son, didn't he?
And so there's just nothing bad enough. Dave was talking about what happened at the school this past week.
It's horrifying to think about that. It's not anything near what the father experienced when he watched his son die.
And if you don't believe it, look at what happened. The skies turned dark around the entire planet. The earth quaked.
Some dead came out of their graves and walked around. That didn't really act, if you're not careful, you'll misread that, that the graves were open at that moment, but the dead didn't come out and walk around until after Jesus was resurrected because he came out first.
But you just think about how the father felt when guilty fallen humans killed his son, who was
God, who brought nothing but love to this world, brought nothing but good and love to this world, and they slew him.
And yes, terrible things happen, but guess what? Adam and Eve asked for it. So we got what we asked for.
They said, okay. Satan said, hey, all you know right now is good. Wouldn't you rather know good and evil like we do?
And so Eve said, yeah. So she ate the fruit. So she wanted the evil with the good. And so now that's what we get.
So don't blame God for it, blame Adam and Eve. You may get to heaven, you'll get a chance to tell him that if you want to.
Thanks a lot for the things that you caused to happen on this earth. But guess what? If it'd been us, we'd probably done the same.
We'd probably tasted that fruit, wouldn't we? We probably would have. We're human. So I doubt we'll blame them at all.
We'll probably just be amazed to see them. You're talking about celebrities. How would you like to meet Adam and Eve, right? And there ain't gonna be
Adam and Steve, by the way. I just had to say that. Probably needs to be said more.
So here, here he's praying for his disciples. Don't let my death bring shame.
Don't let them think that because I'm dying, that we lost. That's what he's really saying. So look at verse nine.
For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up and the reproaches of them that reproach thee are fallen on me.
That is the exact quote that we found in Romans a minute ago. Paul was quoting this
Psalm in the book of Romans. The hatred of the fallen race, the hatred of Satan himself for the father, for God the father has been placed upon Jesus when he was on that cross.
So every human, every demon, Satan himself, all of hell who hate
God with every fiber of their being poured all of that out on the son of God because they knew that for any parent, they would far rather die themselves than to see their child die, right?
And they knew that. So they poured all of their hatred and bitterness and bile upon Jesus in front of the father.
And they thought they had the victory when they killed him, didn't they? That's what they thought.
But in fact, it was the victory because that's what slew Satan. So in fact,
Satan was put down at that moment when Jesus died. And especially three days later, when he raised from the dead and Satan began to tremble at that point and still trembling, he's angry as a matter of fact.
So this is interesting that this verse in verse nine of Psalm 69 is quoted there.
But it shows what fell upon Jesus Christ. And no matter how holy a life the
Messiah lived, the fallen race of men accused him of evil.
And they slew him unjustly. Look at verse 10. He's still showing,
God is showing us what Jesus is feeling and thinking on the inside while he's on the cross. When I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach.
So Jesus says, look, while I was alive, while I was in my three years of ministry on the earth, when
I did good things, when I healed people on the Sabbath, they tried to throw stones at me. When I healed someone on the
Sabbath, they tried to throw me off of a cliff. When I fasted like the other godly men, if there were any, did.
When I fasted, that was my reproach. They made fun of me. They reproached me. They called me evil when
I fasted. He said, when I put sackcloth as my garment, I became a proverb to them.
They mocked me, made fun of me, Jesus is thinking. They that sit in the gate, the leaders, like Pilate, for example, the
Roman leaders, the Jewish leaders, those that sit at the gate and speak philosophy all day, they spake against me,
Jesus said. And I was the song of the drunkards. Drunkards mocked me.
When he was on that cross, they mocked him, didn't they? And you know, to this very day, the leaders of this world mock him.
They mock God, they take their little bitty fist, put it up there at God and say, we'll show you what we can do.
Well, he's gonna show them what he can do pretty soon in our near future. Because at the second coming of Jesus Christ, he's gonna fill the valley of Megiddo with blood of these leaders and humans and their armies that will rise as high as the halter on the horses.
And it's not gonna be a pretty sight, but it is gonna be a just sight. So the very things that Jesus did to save us caused the people to believe he was a loser and a liar, that he wasn't who he claimed to be.
You have doubts now? Listen, that's normal. But imagine how these people felt when they followed him for three years and then he dies at the hand of sinners, mocked that he couldn't save himself.
How would you have felt? Would you have had a little doubt, you think? But listen, doubt is not the end of the world for a Christian, because doubt is just as fleeting as our faith can be sometimes, because human faith is fleeting.
And a lot of folks today, thank God that folks around this church, because you've heard me preach 1 ,000 times.
I don't preach the whole Bible, I just pick the best parts and preach them 1 ,000 times, not really. But I mean, we understand in this church that we're actually saved by the faith of Christ, not our own belief.
We're given a gift in Ephesians 2, 8, 9, is Jesus' faith was given to us.
Our faith would have never been strong enough to save us because it's here today and gone tomorrow. We doubt as much as we believe.
And if that's salvation, we're in trouble. But if you read it carefully, in the
Greek anyway, and in the King James, the other modern versions do not record it properly. It says that we're saved by the faith of Christ.
Read Galatians 2, which one is it? It says, nevertheless, I live and I live by the 220, right?
Read Galatians 2, 20. And you'll see it says by the faith of Christ, not faith in Christ.
Now that'll blow your mind if you think about it, because the world has taught us incorrectly about that.
But we have Jesus' faith. So listen, when your belief turns into doubt, you don't need to feel like you're the only human experiencing that.
All these people did when they watched their savior die. And yet, guess what happened to these very disciples three days later?
When they saw him after the resurrection, they became the boldest, most strong people on the face of the earth.
And they turned the whole world upside down with the gospel. Peter, who denied Jesus three times, preached one sermon, 5 ,000 people saved in a moment of time.
And the Bible says it got to a place where it wasn't like in the Jewish days where you had to lay hands on a person to impart the
Holy Spirit. There were too many people getting saved. They just didn't have enough hands to lay on them. So everything switched dispensationally to that point where it just says as they believe the
Holy Spirit dwelt their bodies. That's how it is now. You don't have to lay hands anymore.
Now in the church age, when you believe the Holy Spirit and dwells your body, you can be on a desert by yourself, maybe have one little page out of this
Bible and you read it and the Holy Spirit calls you and you say, Lord, what can I do like Paul did?
And all of a sudden you are saved. And at that very minute, you're indwelt by the
Holy Spirit. So all of these things Jesus foresaw and the doubt that they had, he knew what would happen when he came out of that grave.
He knew they would become the bravest, most amazing witnesses that ever lived over the rest of their lives.
Many of them were killed for their faith later. Why would they die for a lie? I mean, if they didn't think
Jesus was out of that grave, why would they die? But you know what? They saw him.
He said, look, put your finger in the holes in my hand. Look at my side. This is me. I am Jesus. I'm here,
I'm back. And we're gonna change the world together. And they became the boldest people that ever lived.
Literally turned the world upside down. You go into every place, every corner of this world, where you see any kind of a good economy and you see life is pretty good is because it's based on the gospel.
It's where the Bible has been. And you see where everything is dirty and filthy and they're poor and they have nothing, that's where Muhammad went.
You know, that's where Buddha was. So those people changed the world in the first century.
And we've been doing it ever since. It's our job now to be the salt and the light. And that's what we're here for, to be salt and light.
Well, we're here to glorify God and to bring glory to God. But our secondary duty is to be salt and light in this world.
So here we see in verse 13, but it's for me, my prayer is unto thee,
O Lord, in an acceptable time, O God, in the multitude of thy mercy, hear me in the truth of thy salvation.
Now, this is what's interesting. This particular verse, let me take a drink. Everybody take a deep breath and wake up for a second.
It's funny being a pastor. You can see, it's funny being out there and seeing me too. I know that's funny, but it's fun to be able to watch all these people at once because it's like this.
Last Sunday was like this. We couldn't start the service because everybody was yacking because everybody was just all excited and it stayed that way all through the sermon.
And today it's like everybody stayed up too late last night because it's holiday and we watched movies or whatever we did, right?
So wake up, because here's what I want you to see this morning. This is pretty amazing.
If you take everything we talked about last Sunday, where Jesus is experiencing the water flooding and like he's drowning in the mire, which is the clay that you, it's like think of quicksand is what it speaks of, where you sink and the harder you try to get out, the farther you sink and you can't get out and it kills you, right?
That's what he felt like. He felt like he was gone and he was, he was experiencing hell, right?
But today, as we keep reading, we get all the way down to verse 13, it begins to change because the father did not leave him in hell, did he?
The father did not leave himself separated from his son, did he? And so look at this, verse 13.
But as for me, my prayer is unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time. In other words, when the time is right, when the time is acceptable,
O God, in the multitude of your mercy, hear me, because he's crying out for God to save him and God's not there.
From his viewpoint, God is gone because God separated himself from him. And that's how people in hell feel every second of every all millennia of time that they're there, which is forever.
They feel that all the time, separation from God. And now he's saying, but have mercy on me, hear me, in the truth, truth of your salvation.
Now, this gets a little bit interesting if you know a little bit about Hebrew, because when you look at this phrase, at an acceptable time, hear me, see
Jesus being the God man understood why God wasn't hearing it.
But as a man, he didn't understand. Does that make sense? I mean, he kind of understood it, but as a man, he felt the disappointment.
It's amazing. No one could have made this up. You know, no human can make up a story like this.
Because when humans make up stories, they make themselves look good, right? This makes the humans look pretty bad.
At an acceptable time though, then I want you to hear me. While I'm on the cross, during part of the time that I'm on the cross, you won't hear me.
I will experience hell in the place of, and for, and because of all my people and your people, Father.
The one, listen, the Bible says, no man comes to Jesus unless the father draws him. And Jesus said, of all them,
I will lose nothing. But we'll raise them up in the end. That's the people we're talking about.
The ones he will save. And so he suffered this hell for them, but yet he says in an acceptable time, hear me and have mercy.
And don't let me stay like this. Wow. So this word in Hebrew for acceptable, is ratzon is how you pronounce it.
But it literally means delight. The most common meaning for it is delight.
So you would have to translate it at a delightful time, but it doesn't seem to fit, does it? It can be translated acceptable, which is a better King James guy's got it right.
That's a better one. But what's really interesting about it is it comes from a little root Hebrew word, ratzon, which means to be pleased with or to be satisfied.
Now, I want you to think about that a minute, because if you know doctrine, you just got goosebumps. Because when you talk about the whole of the doctrine of salvation, it's huge.
I mean, you've got justification. You got, I don't want to say the one that's about to teach here, but you've got redemption.
You've got the calling, you've got ransom. You got so many ways you can study the salvation experience in the past tense, in the present tense, in the future tense.
I mean, you got all this, you're going to be glorified someday. All these things are part of it. But the part this is talking about is called propitiation.
You remember that word? Who can tell me what the best, simplest, modern English translation for that would be today?
What is propitiation? Satisfied. Well, do you see that?
In this word itself, ratsaw means to satisfy a debt. Can you believe that?
To satisfy a debt. So Jesus is on the cross and he's gone through this whole thing about I'm covered by the water.
I'm drowning. I'm falling into the pit. I'm done. And all of the things that I did for you, they mocked me for it.
They're casting stones at me. They're killing me. Now they're just letting me hang on a cross and I'm done.
And then he says, but when you're satisfied and the debt is paid, have mercy on me and hear me.
And that's exactly what happened. Listen, as soon as the father had placed the sin of every single man, woman, and boy and girl who would ever be saved upon the body of Jesus, the father was propitiated.
Now, what does that mean doctrinally? Propitiation means that a holy, good God cannot be in the presence of sin ever.
At any point, if there's such a thing as a point, I keep pointing at Bill because he's a physics professor.
So if there's any point in time, at no point in time and no point in eternity can the father ever be in the presence of sin.
So how are you and I going to get to heaven? Because we've had sin, haven't we? Well, Jesus would have to take it away.
And to do that, he took it upon himself. And when that happened, the Hebrew word says in an acceptable time, the better translation would be at a time when the debt was fully paid and God the father's wrath against sin and his holiness that can't be in the presence of sin was satisfied, then you will hear my prayer and you will raise me up.
Wow, this is what he's praying. This is what he's thinking. And this fits everything we've ever read in the
New Testament about this great doctrine of propitiation as well. Let me just show you.
I'll show you in two places. Isaiah 53 in the Old Testament and Romans chapter three in the New Testament.
Look at what it says about propitiation because this is what we just saw happen. We just saw from the inside innermost parts of the mind of Jesus Christ.
We saw him say to God, I know I'm separated from you, but as soon as the debt is paid, please come back.
Please come back and raise me up. And you better believe God answered that prayer because every prayer
Jesus ever prayed got answered. Yes, by the way. We know our prayers get answered yes and no.
His God answered yes. Every one of them. The only one you might say didn't, but it really did was the one in the garden when he said, if you could take this cup from me, but what did he end the prayer with?
Nevertheless, thy will be done. So it was answered, right? But look at this, Isaiah 53 10.
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. Now this is Old Testament talking about the Messiah for them in the future, when he would come to the earth, all the
Jews expected it. They didn't expect it to happen this way. I could go into why at another time.
We don't have time for that, but basically it's because they weren't reading scripture to the last 300 years before Jesus came, the
Pharisees arose and they stopped teaching the real Bible and they started teaching from books called
Targums, which was what they said the Bible actually meant. Kind of like modern versions of the Bible in English, like the good news for modern man, that's not a
Bible, that is a paraphrase of what someone says they think it means. And that is how the
Jews missed Jesus. I've got copies of those in my study where you can read it. And you take this passage in Isaiah 53 and those
Targums totally changed the wording where it's obviously talking about the coming Messiah. They made it sound like he was talking about the children of Israel, that the children of Israel were the ones that would suffer.
And it totally removed the fact that it's talking about a person who would suffer. So they missed it except for Anna and Simeon who didn't miss it because they read the actual scriptures.
Great thing to know. But anyway, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. So it's talking about Jesus. The Lord is the father here.
It pleased the father to bruise the son. He hath put him to grief. So who is it that ultimately put
Jesus on the cross? Was it the Romans? Was it the Jews? Who was it? It was the father because it was the only way to save a remnant and give them to his son as a love gift.
And Jesus said, well, let this cup pass from me. If there's any other way to save him than this, do it. And the father said, no, there's not.
He said, nevertheless, I will be done. So now he's on the cross and this is what he's thinking. And he's saying, well, when the sin that is paid though, please come back.
And the father did. But here we see it in Isaiah that the father put
Jesus to grief when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed.
Now, I want you to remember that little phrase. I don't have time to get to it today, but when we get back into Romans in a minute ago, a minute in the future and Psalm 69, we're gonna see this phrase, the seed of the
Messiah. And you're gonna need to tie it in with this phrase in Isaiah So the father will see his seed, but by the way, who is that?
That's us. These are the elect. This is the wheat. This is the sheep.
The seed of Christ is different than the seed of the woman. The seed of the woman is the tares, the satanic, the ones who follow
Satan. When Jesus looked at the Pharisees, he says, you're of your father, the devil, his deeds you will do. Where I go, you cannot come.
I'm from above, you're from below. They never were gonna be saved. They couldn't get saved if they wanted to. He said, where I go, you cannot come.
He didn't say you won't come. He didn't say you won't choose to come. He said, you cannot come there because Jesus could see who they were.
He could see the sheep from the goats. I'm not sure we can always do that.
I think sometimes we can sense it, but if the Holy Spirit lets us, but that's a whole nother subject too.
And I wouldn't debate on that anyway, but he says, he shall see his seed. That's the good seed. That's the wheat seeds.
And he will prolong his days. Well, that's interesting to look at in Hebrew. Talking about you get to live forever.
Wow, all this is tied together. And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hands.
Now talking about the Messiah again. And he says, the father will see the travail of the son's soul while we're reading it in Psalm 69.
While he's on that cross, the father will look down and see the travail of his soul. He will hear the words that he's praying while he's on the cross that we couldn't hear if we didn't have
Psalm 69. We get to hear it together. This is what the father heard. And he shall be what?
Satisfied. That is propitiation. When he hears the prayers of his son on that cross in hell, separated from God in the mire, in the quicksand of hell, it says, and then at some point, the father will be satisfied that the sin that has been paid.
And then by knowledge of the son of God, my righteous servant, many shall be justified.
Now notice it doesn't say all. It says many, that's the elect. Those are the ones that will be saved.
It's not every human. Many will be justified by just having knowledge of the man who died on the cross.
How do you get knowledge of that? That's called the gospel, the good news. People have to tell it to you. You've got a witness.
You got to take this Bible and show it to them. Or you got to give it to them on the radio or under the TV or at church or on the street or somewhere.
And by this knowledge, my righteous servant, Jesus Christ will justify many.
For he will bear their sins. That's what he did on the cross. Therefore will
I divide him a portion with the great. Jesus will be the greatest name ever named. Because he has poured out his soul unto death.
He was numbered with the sinners. He bear the sins of many, not all.
Jesus did not die for every human being's sins. Like the preachers nowadays say, you go back 150 years ago, they did not say that.
Most of the preachers 150 years ago said that Jesus died for the sins of his own.
That's the elect, the sheep. He did not die for the sins of the goats. You know how we know that? Because everybody that had one drop of his blood paid for them, they're all saved.
His blood is the ransom. So anyone who's ransomed is saved. So he did not die for everyone, just like the scripture says here.
He bore the sin of many, not of all. Now listen, logic is kind of interesting. When you study that, you study logic.
Everybody should study logic because God said, come let us reason together. So you should go get a college course in logic if you haven't had one.
Because this is true. All can never mean many.
Or I should say it this way. Many can never mean all. Many can't mean all.
Many is a subset of all. You understand what I'm saying? It's not the same. It can never mean all.
But sometimes in the scripture, the word pas in the New Testament, which we sometimes translate as all, sometimes all can mean many.
Because what it can mean is all from a certain subgroup. So that can be confusing when you're reading scripture, where you find scriptures that sound like they're saying,
Jesus died for all men. What it means is he died for all kinds of men. He died for some people in every race, in every nation, in every world.
And if you study Paul's writings and everything he said in the context of those verses, you'll see exactly what it means.
And so anyway, it's scripture. He bore the sins of many and he made intercession for the transgressors.
Now let's look at Romans chapter three, verse 23 for a moment. This word satisfied was the main word in this passage.
Is that God the father looked at the travail of the soul of the son and he was satisfied.
His holiness and his wrath against sin was satisfied because God's law was the soul that sinneth it must die.
And God had put all the sins of all of his souls that he would save on Jesus.
And he died in their place. And so that law was fulfilled. And so he's just to save us now. It is just for him to save us because the sin debt has been paid in full.
And this is what Jesus was referring to when he said at an acceptable time, hear my prayer and have mercy on me and raise me from this place.
Romans 3, 23 for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. This is part of the
Romans road, by the way. When you witness people, you normally show us 3, 23, they've sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
So they need a savior. You've got that. I got to understand they need a savior first. Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.
So the only way that a human being can be made righteous and that's what justified being means.
It means to be made in God's view as if you've never sinned. That's what justified. The only way you can be justified is through grace, through the redemption of Jesus.
What does that mean? He paid a price to set you free. That's what redeemed means. Pay a price to set you free.
That's what happened on the cross. Until that happens, the father is not satisfied that you can come to heaven.
You ain't coming unless he died for you in your place. And then later you receive him as your personal
Lord and savior, which you won't do unless the Holy Spirit wakes you up. So you have to be called. You have to be called.
That's all through the scripture, but it ain't in modern preaching, but it's all through the scripture. You can go back 150 years ago, it's in all the sermons too, but not now.
No, now it's all just a side whether you want to join the church or not. You'll be all right. Listen, the
Holy Spirit's got to come to you and wake you up and say, look at him. The one that you won't receive, look at him.
Just look, he's done everything for you. He died for you. There he is. Can you see him? And he opened your eyes and you see him and then he's irresistible.
And then naturally you receive him as your Lord and savior because you see who he is. You're a sheep and you're starving to death and he's got the food.
He's the shepherd. That's how salvation works. And so being justified, made righteous before a
Holy God freely, it's not something you paid for. It's not something you did to get it. It's a free gift.
You're called and it's given to you as a gift. There's about 33 things he gives you at the moment he saves you.
And freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Jesus paid the price to buy you out of the slave market of sin and set you free.
Verse 25 says, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.
There's the word, propitiation. It means it's what satisfies God that he can now justly save you.
Wow, and this is all caught in a little phrase in Psalm 69 is the acceptable time.
When it's the acceptable time, when the sin debt is paid and God is satisfied to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God to declare,
I say at this time, his righteousness that he might be, listen to this, just and the justifier of him which believes in Jesus.
So not only is it just, not only is God our justifier that makes us righteous, but it's just for him to do that.
Why is it just? Because Jesus paid the sin debt. It's the only reason God can justly save us.
So where's the boasting then? It's excluded. You can't save yourself.
You can't do good stuff to get saved. You can't do enough bad stuff to stay lost. It's not a matter of what you do.
It's what God has done for you. It's what Jesus did on the cross. That's why we call it the finished work of Christ.
He finished it. Last thing he said before he died was it is finished. What's finished? I paid the sin debt.
So where's the boasting? It is excluded. By what law are you saved? Of works? Nay, but by the law of faith.
And by the way, God gives you the faith as a gift. You didn't just work it up. You didn't have a mental pep round and say,
I believe, I believe, I believe. Oh, now I believe. It doesn't work that way. The Holy Spirit had to call you, open your eyes, open your ears and have you look up and now you see it.
Now you've got it. Now you see it. And one of the things he gives you is the faith of Jesus Christ. And so you're justified by that faith, which he just gave you as a gift.
And therefore we conclude, by the way, you can't lose that faith. These people that go to these churches where they tell you to lose your salvation, they're not, like they have not read the scriptures nor understood the scriptures at least.
You cannot lose something like that gift, which is the faith of Christ, which is eternal that the
Holy Spirit put in you. You can't lose something like that. It can never end. It's eternal.
Once you're saved, you're saved. But don't get saved by this modern thing.
Dear Jesus, come to my heart and save me, amen. Now, if you prayed that, it doesn't mean you weren't saved because if you had the desire to be saved, you got saved because the
Holy Spirit is the only person who can put that desire in your heart. So think about that. Anybody ever worry about like, am
I really saved? Well, did you ever have a desire to be saved? Because if you did, you're saved because the
Holy Spirit, let me read you this, some of your visitors. Let me read you Romans 10, 13 in the
Greek. In English, what does it say? My friend Marion's laughing because I went through this with him already.
In fact, this verse may be what the Lord used to save my friend Marion, but it says in the
English, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, right? You know what it says in Greek?
For whosoever desires to call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. See the difference?
Who puts the desire there? The Holy Spirit, because you don't naturally have it. There's none that seeketh God, not one.
It's a miracle. So when God puts that in you, you got it forever. Now, does that mean you'll never have doubt?
No, you'll have doubts all the time. First thing, something goes wrong, you're gonna doubt God. That's human nature, but what's nice about it, the
Holy Spirit who lives in you can call up your new man and say, listen, just because something bad happens because Adam and Eve asked for that to happen to humans and that's gonna happen because it's what they asked for and God in his wisdom brought that to pass, that doesn't mean
God is not with you. It means you're learning a lesson from God is usually what it means. So anyway, so it's excluded, can't be saved by works, nay, but by the law of faith.
Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified, in other words, made right with God by faith without the deeds of the law.
Isn't that amazing? And all of that was taking place on the cross in his heart and mind and the father was watching it, the father was hearing it, the father was hearing his prayers and the father answered his prayers.
And you say, well, three days later, he rose from the grave. That's not entirely accurate. Three days later, they discovered that he had risen from the grave because for three days, he went down into Shoal and preached to the people in Abraham's bosom.
He's already out of that grave. He was instantly out of that grave. I'm not sure he ever went in the grave, his body did.
I don't know, but I know this, that on this cross, God answered his prayers once the sin debt was paid and God ended the separation and they were in unity and oneness again.
And Jesus went to Shoal for the better part of three days, preached to them, the
Old Testament saints who were saved, but they couldn't go to heaven yet because the blood had not been applied yet. And then
Jesus took them with him and he applied that blood at the mercy seat in heaven and ushered them into heaven.
And now people go straight to heaven when they die. They don't go to paradise or Abraham's bosom all because of the blood's been presented.
Everything changed at that point. But all of this is what had to happen first. Isn't that amazing?
And the father had to hear that prayer first and he did. And so the rest is history, as they say.
Let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, thank you for your word and the clarity of it.
We thank you that you've given it to us and preserved it and that you will preserve it to the last generation.
And Lord, we just thank you for each person here because it's nothing by accident. You brought us here together, these exact people to hear from you today.
And Holy Spirit, thank you for being our teacher. We ask you to go with us and do our time of fellowship now.
Bless the food we're about to have and the rest of our day. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.
All right, if you're visiting with us and you don't know this, we have a meal every Sunday after church and we bring enough for visitors.
So please stay if you can. If you don't already have plans to stay, we'd love to fellowship with you. And if you can't stay, then come next time and bring a dessert, preferably banana pudding.