The Sword Of God's Justice Awakened Against God's Shepherd - Brandon Scalf

Heritage Church Tulsa

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All right, go ahead and grab your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Zechariah.

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That is in your Old Testament, and if you don't know where it's at, go to the book of Matthew and turn left, and it should be just a few pages before that, that is close to the end of the

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Old Testament. The book of Zechariah, and we will be looking at chapter 13, specifically verse 7.

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Zechariah 13 and 7. And as you're turning there, I'm going to pray for our time together because I am in need of help.

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Father, we come before you this evening reminded of the death of our great

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Savior, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And we were reminded in that of our unworthiness, of our vileness apart from Christ, of our sinful disposition that desires to be and act as God.

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And so we thank you for those of us who have bowed our knee to your Son, Jesus, that you have effectually called us, and that you have caused us to be born again, and that you are now walking with us by the power of your

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Spirit conforming us to the image of your very Son. We ask as we embark upon the rest of this evening that you would condescend yet still and flood this place with your

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Spirit that we might see more of Christ, and that we might learn what it means that he took the blows that we deserve, that the sword of God's wrath and vengeance pierced him and not those who deserved it.

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We ask that you would help us to love him in light of that reality more deeply than maybe we had prior to walking in these doors.

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And we ask that you would allow me to preach

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Christ. And we ask this not because we merit any sort of favor from you, but because Jesus Christ the

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Righteous, the Great Shepherd, the God -Man, merited it for us.

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And so we ask it is in his name. Amen.

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About this time every year, I see churches plastering this mantra all over their social media platforms or on mailing cards trying to get me to come to their services.

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The mantra goes like this, Friday is here, but Sunday is coming.

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And I'll just say it. I think that is an unfortunate mantra that churches have adopted.

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And the reason for that is because there is no Sunday without Good Friday. There is no resurrection of the

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Son of God without the death of the Son of God. There is no life found for us in Christ Jesus apart from the blows that the

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Father has for the Son. The glorious reality behind Good Friday, which is why we are here this evening, is that the cross, as Stephen Charnock had said, is the substance of what we believe as Christians.

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And it is the cross that, hear us, Christians. If it wasn't for the cross, we would all still be standing in the path of the wrath of Almighty God.

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And this is something that Christians in history past have understood for centuries.

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For instance, there is a very real reason why Christianity has chosen to use the cross to represent them throughout the years.

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There were many choices on the table, so to speak. Throughout church history, Christians oftentimes let people know that they existed by using the rainbow.

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That is one that has been used in history. Another one is the dove.

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Another one being, of course, the burning bush found in the book of Exodus with Moses. But as you are well aware, the one that stuck, as it were, was a torture device.

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A torture device that was invented by the

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Persians and perfected by the Romans to inflict horrible pain upon those who would come in contact with it.

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It was so vile and so heinous, in fact, that Roman citizens were not even allowed to be crucified because it was so brutal.

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They were protected by law from experiencing such pain. If women were to be crucified, they would be turned around so that their faces would not be seen by the people walking by.

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Because no one, they believed, should see a woman in such anguish. And yet is the symbol that we as Christians have adopted as the symbol that represents all that we really are about.

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Now, of course, the gospel is more than the cross, but it's not less than the cross. And the cross is the centerpiece by which the entire gospel moves around and can function from.

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And the reason for that is because it shows us a very sobering reality.

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Namely, that all of us, apart from Christ, are doomed, damned, and hell -bent for hell.

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There is not one person sitting in this room who left to themselves would waltz into heaven.

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There is not one person in this room who left to themselves would choose to follow good, to do right.

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They would make shipwreck of their life. And if you have not bowed your knee to King Jesus, even now at this moment, and I'm not too naïve to think that everybody sitting in these seats has been actually saved by the blood of the

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Lord Jesus. You are making shipwreck of your life.

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And you are being hypocrites, which comes from a term which means to paint one's face.

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They were, hypocrites were people who acted in plays. We use that word now to talk about people who would come in and sit in church pews and pretend to love

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Jesus, but deny Him with their life. And so it shows us that we do not measure up.

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And it shows us that we are, as Pastor Corey so wonderfully helped us understand, need a

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Savior. That's right.

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There's not one person in here who does not need a

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Savior. Because what was true of the

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Israelites in Zechariah's time is true of each individual person here.

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That we are all sinful, that we are all rebellious, that we are all idolatrous, and we stand in the path of the wrath of God, and we beg

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Him as it were to ground us to powder with our rebellious nature.

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Because by birth and by choice, we all decide to spurn the loving oversight of God the

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Father. So what the cross teaches us then is that we are all far more wicked than we think we are.

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And it also teaches us that God is a bigger Savior than you think He is.

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And the text that we are going to be looking at today is a prophecy, prophesied by a prophet who was ultimately killed by some of these hypocrites, as was told to us in Matthew 23, when

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Jesus told us that Zechariah was killed right outside of church because of the message that he had to say.

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And I think by the time we get done with this, you will see that as well. Because here's the truth, friends.

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If your Christianity is palatable to even people who play church, you're not preaching the cross.

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If your gospel does not offend people, and it doesn't offend you to the point that you throw yourself at the foot of the cross, you don't believe the real gospel.

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The real gospel gets prophets killed. And the real gospel is more horrific and more beautiful than we ever could dare hope.

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And the text that we're going to look at today is going to show us that God in Christ embraces the very instrument of His own anguish willingly for the sake of His flock.

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That is, God has put on flesh and come as the God -man, Jesus Christ, to live the life that we could not live and to die the death that we all deserve to die, and to take on the punishment and the death and the wrath that we deserve so that His sheep might taste the glories and beauties of life in Him, though they do not deserve it.

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And this, friends, is why we worship. And so if you would please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, and all -sufficient

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Word, and we will look at Zechariah chapter 13, verse 7.

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And I want you to remember before I read it, this is a prophecy written by the martyred prophet

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Zechariah more than 500 years before the birth of Christ. And the prophet utters these words, beginning in verse 7,

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Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man my associate, declares

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Yahweh of hosts. Strike the shepherd, that the sheep may be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones.

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The grass withers, and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Amen? Amen. Please have a seat and place your eyes back upon our theme verse.

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As we look here, we are no doubt blown away by the intensity of what's being said.

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There is at the outset an imperative. And children, look at me for just a second.

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Do you remember what an imperative is? You remember me talking about this in weeks past? An imperative is a command.

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That is, it's when somebody, like maybe your parents, tells you to go clean your room, they're telling you that you ought to do something.

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And it's not up for debate, right? Like if dad tells you or mom tells you to go clean your room, it's not a suggestion, it's a command.

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You must do it. And there are two imperatives found in this one verse.

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The first being, of course, awake, and the second being, just a little bit further down, strike.

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Now, before we can actually expand upon what is going on here and why he is telling this sword to awaken, we kind of need to understand what's happening in context of the book of Zechariah.

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The book of Zechariah is a notoriously hard book to get to the bottom of, as it were.

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And the reason being is because like many prophetic books, it's not linear in fashion.

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So, it's not walking us through what's going to happen in the future chronologically.

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It's more like having a story told from multiple different angles.

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Kind of like the Gospels, for example. We have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and all of them are teaching us about who

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Jesus is, what he has done to save a people for himself, and the miracles that he did, and so on and so forth.

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And they all have a separate purpose. Matthew, for example, is written to the Jewish people to convince

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Jesus that Jesus is what? The Messiah. John tells us that the reason that he wrote his

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Gospel was so that we might believe that he is the Christ, the Messiah. That he is the Son of God, particularly.

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Luke is written primarily as a historical document that would be given to a man by the name of Theophilus to prove the assertions that Theophilus was hearing.

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And so, it was an academic historical book in nature. And then Mark was just kind of maybe the first Gospel on the scene that kind of just wanted to get the story out there.

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And it just kind of hits fast and gets all of it out there. So, some are for Gentiles, some are for Jews, some are for history, some are for believing that Jesus Christ is the

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Son of God. But they all teach the same thing, but from different perspectives. So, they're not untrue.

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They don't contradict one another. They're simply different vantage points. The book of Zechariah is much like that.

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You've got these seeds that jump from one to another, and it's painting a picture about what is to come.

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And basically, what's being said over and over and over is that Israel has lost their mind. God has shown them grace, and they have rebelled and sought to worship idols.

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If you look at some of Zechariah's contemporaries, they get very graphic as to what it looks like to live in Israel at the time.

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He goes on to say that they look like women of the night who give themselves to passerbys.

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It's very dramatic. They give false visions.

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They pretend that they are godly when they are godless. And prior to us getting to our passage, there are three shepherds that are rebuked, shepherds of Israel who have neglected to be the shepherds that they needed to be.

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In Zechariah 10 .3, God says that his anger burns against the shepherds of Israel, and that he will visit punishment upon them.

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In Zechariah 11 .3, he says there is a sound of the shepherds that are wailing, and that he would destroy them.

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And in Zechariah 11 .15 .16, just prior to this, it says that Yahweh said to me, take again for yourself the equipment of a foolish shepherd.

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Behold, I am going to raise up a shepherd of the land who will not care for those who face annihilation, seek young, heal the broken, or sustain one's standing, but will consume the flesh of the fat sheep and tear off their hooves.

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God is judging Israel by giving them shepherds that he will also judge.

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They want nothing to do with God, no matter the grace and the mercy and the compassion that they've shown him.

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And he has promised them destruction. But at the beginning of verse 13, the gospel promise begins to open like a beautiful flower.

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In verse 1 of chapter 13, Zechariah says, in that day, a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for impurity.

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And the question becomes, what is that day? Well, he tells us in the Bible elsewhere, but also just here in chapter 12, in the middle, it talks about the day of the

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Lord. This is the day where Jesus will judge the righteous and the unrighteous.

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It is a day of salvation, friends. On that day, he will cleanse the land of its sin and its impurity, so much so that it will be like a fountain that overflows.

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And as we know, a fountain is used throughout the Bible to talk to us and show us the unending abundance of God's blessing.

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The question becomes, how is God going to cleanse his people of their sin and their iniquity?

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Remember, because Psalm 5 tells us that God cannot dwell with, approve of, or ultimately allow sin.

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He hates all who do iniquity. And so, how can a

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God who cannot look upon, approve sin, hates all who do sin?

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Now, I know many people have heard, God loves the sinner, but he hates the sin. There's no way in the

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Bible. Find that chapter and verse, and I'll go somewhere else. It's not in the

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Bible. As a matter of fact, that is actually attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, who knew nothing of Christ.

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As a matter of fact, he openly denied Christ. And he said, I might actually, at one point he said, I might actually entertain

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Christ if it wasn't for Christ's people. The truth is, sin is not this ethereal thing that hangs off of the side of us.

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Sin is something that we commit. And when we commit it, we're sinners. And God hates sinners.

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Well, that's not very loving. Though, what's loving is that despite the fact that God cannot ultimately dwell with, approve of, or allow any type of sin near him whatsoever, he sends a better shepherd to make a way for those whom he hates to be children of God, to be one of his flock.

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And how does he do that? How does he redeem from sin and impurity?

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By sending the shepherd, the great shepherd of the sheep, the God -man, to receive the punishment that you and I rightfully deserve.

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So back to verse 7, this first imperative.

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Awake! Awake, O sword, against my shepherd.

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Now, this command to awake is riddled with truths.

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The first being that God's sword, which by the way, what is God's sword?

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God's sword throughout the entire Bible is his weapon of war. It is that thing, that weapon that he uses to deal out his vengeance and his wrath.

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It is his sword of justice, as it were. Because here's the deal.

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God is completely and utterly just. You know, when we start talking about, for instance, we're walking through the book of Ephesians, which is littered with the doctrines of grace.

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And we talk about how God predestines and elects a people for himself and chases him down for salvation and causes him in loving kindness to tap out before him.

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A lot of people want to say, well, that's not fair. That's not fair. You're right.

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It is not fair. If you wanted fair, you would get justice.

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And justice says what? That all who stand in the path of the wrath of God deserve his sword of justice.

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They deserve to be put down like the dogs that we are for our rebellion against him.

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As the sword is aimed at every single unrepentant sinner who will not bow their knee to King Jesus.

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Jonathan Edwards in his famous sermon, maybe the most influential sermon that has ever been preached on American soil.

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Sinners in the hands of an angry God. It was preached during the revivals of the 17th century. He says this, the bow of God's wrath is bent.

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It is his weapon of war, of vengeance, and the arrow made ready on the string.

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And justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow.

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And it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God and that of an angry God without any promise or obligation at all that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.

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Friends, at any minute, judgment could come for you and I. And this text shows us that in God's compassion and God's graciousness, that bow or that sword or that bow, as Jonathan Edwards puts it, is asleep.

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But it could be awakened at any time. And he tells it now here in this moment, awake.

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Get up from your slumber. Sleep no longer.

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Because now is the time that I will deal my deathly blow. The question is, to whom shall this sword fall?

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Well, as we've already addressed in our first sermon this evening, not upon the wicked and the ungodly, as it so is deserved.

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So unless, of course, we lay unrepentant. But the mysteries of mysteries is revealed in this text.

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The gospel itself, upon him who is not only absolutely innocent and holy, but who stands in the nearest and closest relationship to Yahweh, it's to him that the sword will drought itself in blood.

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The death and judgment that God awakens for poor sinner will fall upon.

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And so the first point that I really want you to see this evening is the sovereign slaying of God's shepherd.

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The sovereign slaying of God's shepherd. Look with me back at our theme verse. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd.

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Against my shepherd. As I said, there is three false shepherds being talked about in the book of Zechariah up to this point.

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But it is not on them that this sword rightly falls, but it is

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God's shepherd. You see this word, my. My shepherd.

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It's God's shepherd. The shepherd that none of us deserve. The shepherd that is more beautiful than you could ascertain.

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The shepherd that is more mighty than you and I. Who will carry the weight of our sin and will take the blows of God's sword.

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And of course, this great shepherd is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. We get a clue, and we'll get to this in a moment, because he says against the man, my associate.

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But this theme of God's great shepherd is picked up in the New Testament by none other than Jesus Christ himself.

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Who identifies himself with God's shepherd, saying that he is the one and only good shepherd.

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Every other shepherd is a bad shepherd. This Christ, he's a good shepherd. John 10 11,

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Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. And the good shepherd does what? He lays down his life.

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John 10, a little bit further down the road in verses 14 through 16, he says again,

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I am the good shepherd, in case you forgot. I am the good shepherd. And I know my own, and my own know me, even as the

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Father knows me. And I know the Father, and I lay my life down for the sheep. And I have other sheep which are not of this fold, and I must bring them also.

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And they will hear my voice, and they will become one flock with one shepherd, and they will follow. Jesus is

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God's shepherd. Who he sent to bore the sins of his flock.

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The names that were written on his hands, as it were, when he was crucified.

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1 Peter 2 24 25 makes this irrefutably clear when he says, it was

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Jesus who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that having died to sin, we might live to righteousness.

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By his wounds you are healed, for you were continually straying like sheep. But now you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

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Speaking, of course, about Jesus. So the one whom

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God commands this sword to slay was none other than Jesus, the good shepherd.

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And it's Jesus as the good shepherd of his sheep who receives the sword of divine justice, of divine wrath, directly to his bosom instead of the sheep who deserve it.

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Now that is a shepherd. I'm reminded of a

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John MacArthur quote. He's speaking about pastors, and a lot of people really like a pastor who makes them feel good about themselves, and you know, even if he coddles them in their sin.

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And he says, sheep do not remember how good a shepherd is because of how well he pets them, how well he protects them and feeds them.

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Friends, Jesus is a good shepherd. And though you want to say he pets us, sure, but nothing pales in comparison to being thrust through.

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The shepherd was spotless and blameless. There was no guile found in his mouth.

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He was innocent. His nation lied about him.

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His pastors, essentially, those who were in the temple, the Sanhedrin and the

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Pharisees, upheld this lie. They refused to see him in the scriptures.

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They killed him because they did not want the shepherd that Jesus or that God had for us.

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They wanted a shepherd in their own making. Don't be too hard on them because you and I do it all the time.

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It's interesting when the Bible speaks about how when we continue in a life of sin, it's as if we're crucifying the Lord Jesus over and over again.

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Now, there's a lot of theological unpacking that needs to happen there, and you're not actually crucifying the Lord Jesus. But the idea here is, friends, we, if we were there, we would have done the exact same thing.

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But lest you think that this is something that just happened to Jesus, let us keep going.

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This shepherd, though spotless and blameless, offers himself as the ultimate atonement for our sins.

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And that's not to cause in us reverence and gratitude for his unparalleled sacrifice as a shepherd who protects his sheep.

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Why? Because sovereign God sovereignly slayed the good shepherd for you and me.

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The second thing that I want you to see here as a subplot, as it were, is not only was it against God's shepherd, it was against God's son.

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There was an assault, as it were, on God's son. There was a slaying of the shepherd. Now there's an assault on God's son.

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It begins to impact more so who this one is who would fall lovingly on the sword.

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It says, and against. So awake, O sword. Get up from your slumber and thrust yourself at the shepherd and against the man, my associate.

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Now, there are two things that we must consider here. The first one is man.

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The second one is associate. Who is the man and who is the associate? Well, they're most certainly the same thing as the shepherd, but more specifically, how do we make sense of this?

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Well, it's not just sub -shepherd because you might be able to conclude, although if you hadn't read the New Testament, which spoiler alert, we just did that, but if you hadn't, you might assume that maybe he's talking about Zechariah.

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Maybe Zechariah will be this shepherd that would sacrificially fall upon his son or fall upon his sword for the sake of his people.

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But one, that wouldn't achieve salvation because he needed to be the God -man, which is the point of the exact thing that we're looking at here.

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He needed to be the man, the God -man, or in this order, the man -God. He needed to be man.

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So this is, of course, true. Jesus is man, was man, and is man.

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If you've been to Shepherd's Institute, you're keyed into that distinction that's made there. And he was, and is, and always will be

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God. So he is, and was man, and always will be man, and he always was, and always will be, and is

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God. He is the God -man. He is the man -God.

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This is what theologians in history past have called the hypostatic union. The God, or the

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Jesus rather, is fully God and fully man. That he is truly

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God and truly man. He's not 50 % God and 50 % man, or 30, 70, or so on and so forth.

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He is 100 % God, 100 % man, 100 % of the time. And he needed to be both for very important reasons, which is why this prophecy is linking these two things together.

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The reason that he needed to be man is because man were the ones who stood in the path of wrath of God.

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They were the ones who got themselves into this problem in the Garden of Eden, right?

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Adam got us into a whole bunch of mess. He thrust the world into sin, and thus we are born into a congenital spiritual disease.

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We are born into original sin. By nature we come out of the womb rebellious in all our pursuits, hating

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God. Because our federal head threw down God's loving kindness for his own man -made crown.

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And you would have done the same thing too, which is why ever since then you've been acting in accordance with your father,

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Adam, by joining him in sinful rebellion. And Adam was a man.

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Man caused the problem, and only man can pay for the problem. God cannot punish, for instance, goats, bulls, and sheep to atone for our sin.

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Well, pastor, wasn't that what happened in the Old Testament? Yeah, but you notice how that never worked. They had to keep doing it until the final sacrifices came.

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And all those were types and shadows pointing to this very moment when

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Jesus would act as the final sacrifice and fall on the sword. And he needed to be man so that he could identify with man and so that he could pay for man's problem.

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Which is why Hebrews 2, 14, and 15 says, Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, that is the children of God, he himself likewise also partook of the same, that is the same nature, the same stuff, blood, skin, right?

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He cried sometimes when he had to have surgery stuff leaked out of his nose.

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His mother had to counsel him when he was scared and afraid. He had to grow in wisdom and stature with men.

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Why? Because he was man. He lived as a man.

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He was biologically a man. He was a man. And there's a reason he had to partake of the same nature because it goes on in Hebrews that through death, he might render powerless them who has the power of death, that is the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

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So you see, Jesus had to be man.

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He had to partake of the same nature so that he could get man out of the predicament they were in.

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That's why God had to put on flesh and come on a rescue mission to seek and save the lost because he could not wipe the slave clean or else his justice would be perverted.

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Men needed to pay for their sin, and men will pay for their sin. Men will pay for their sin either because they refuse the free offer of the gospel of Jesus Christ, or they will fall on the same wrath, the same sword, that we see

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Jesus falling on here. Either Jesus, the God -man, pays for our sin, or we will pay for our sin.

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Not only that, but it's also said he could identify with us in our weakness. You notice what I was talking about, Jesus is and will always be man, but I said that Jesus always was

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God. You see, he added Godness, or he added humanity to his

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Godness. In him becoming human, he did not. God, the second member of the

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Trinity, Jesus Christ, the eternal generator of the sun, which we'll talk about here in a moment, did not lose anything by becoming humanity.

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He only gained something. He did it so that he could pay for our sin, but he also did it that he might identify with us, which is why at the end here, in verse 17 of Hebrews chapter 2, he goes on and says, at the end, verse 18, for since he himself was tempted in that which he suffered, he is able to come to the help of those who are tempted.

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Because Jesus coming in the flesh not only made him a human to pay for human's problems, but to help identify with you and your weakness and your finiteness and your fleshliness without sin.

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When Jesus, before he was to meet the cross, cried out in the garden of Gethsemane, and he said,

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Father, let this cup pass from me, if it so be your will. He wasn't fearful of the whips.

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He wasn't fearful of the chains. He wasn't not fearful of those spikes that would be driven through his hands, though undoubtedly they will be.

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He wasn't afraid of all of those wounds that would be ripped over by his purple garment, though it would hurt.

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He wasn't asking to get out of trouble because it was going to hurt him. He was asking if God could alter the plan of making him drink down the cuff of his wrath and piercing him with the sword of his divine justice that no one on this earth who would fall to their knees and worship

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Jesus would ever taste. If that could pass, he'd be into that idea, because it's so much worse than you think it is.

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This sword is so much more powerful, so much more damning, and so much horrible than you think it is.

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And it was in his humanity, not his godness, that he asked such a question.

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Because why? He could identify with a little bit of fear. And he didn't succumb to it because he lived by the power of the

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Holy Spirit, and he did not sin, and it was not sinful fear. But so that he could identify with you, he had to be made like man in every respect, yet without sin.

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Secondly, he is God. He's not only man, he's also God, and he needed to be God because no human being could withstand the wrath of God.

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The Heidelberg Catechism in question 17 asks, why must Jesus also be true God? Answer, so that by the power of his divinity, he might bear the weight of God's anger in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life.

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Jesus is not only the Good Shepherd, he's not only human, he's not also man, but he is also the second member of the

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Trinity, the eternally generated Son. There was never a time when Jesus was not the

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Son of God. There was never a time where he will cease being the Son of God. And while he was on the earth, he was still the

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Son of God, the Son of God's love.

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Worlds were created through him and for him and to him. Nothing was made that has been brought into existence apart from him.

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And all of this, all of this redemptive history put on display, namely end of the cross, is a theater where God's glory goes on display as he gathers his flock after having fallen on the sword.

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So the assaulting of God's eternally, eternally generated Son serves to establish, wait to hear me on this, rather than undoing

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God's purpose, it seeks to establish it. This shows us then that this, this is a plan.

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This is a sovereign, planned out thing. Jesus did not happen to just walk on the scene and God goes, you know what might be cool?

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If we kill him and he'll live as an example for everybody else. No, Jesus did not die since you have an example of what it looks like to be humble.

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Though Jesus does have an example for you on how to be humble. He died to absorb the wrath of God on your behalf and to take the sword of divine justice and plunge it through himself for those who would be his own.

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This was planned before the foundation of the world and what theologians have called the covenant of redemption.

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Before the worlds began, a plan was enacted and we see this, right?

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In the book of Ephesians as we've been walking through it, God chose those whom he would save, planning their salvation.

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And then he sent the son to purchase redemption for his elect, for his sheep, to forgive them of iniquity, to cleanse them of sin and impurity.

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And they send the Holy Spirit to apply that salvation, to woo and to win those who are hell -bent on putting their own man -made crowns on their head and living life as if there wasn't a bow aimed right at them because of their godless lifestyles and impure heart.

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And this was planned before the foundation of the world. According to the classic view of the covenant of redemption, Christ accepted the following conditions before putting on flesh and coming in the incarnation.

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He agreed that he should take up human flesh, be born of woman and under the law. Second, that he should fulfill the whole law of God on behalf of his elect, achieving for them a full righteousness where Adam had failed.

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Talk about this. And then that he should receive in their place the punishment, the sword of divine wrath that his people had deserved by their sins.

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In return, God promised him the salvation of all the elect that his brothers adopted through him as well as dominion over all things.

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This is why Jesus' name is lifted high above all names.

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That's why he's given a name above all names. It's why every knee will eventually bow, and every knee and every tongue will eventually confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord to the glory of God the Father. That's why

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Jesus is so great. God sovereignly planned to slay his own son, the

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God -man, the second member of the trinity, God in the flesh, the good shepherd, taste death.

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Third thing that I want you to see is the scattering of the shepherd's sheep as if it wasn't enough that he would fall upon the sword of God's divine justice.

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He's left utterly alone and isolated. Here we see the second imperative.

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Children, do you remember what I just said an imperative was?

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Do any of you remember? The command. That's right.

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Good job whoever said that. It's a command. It's a command.

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And so the first command was, awake, O sword! The sword is aimed at the shepherd, the

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God -man. And now, in this prophetic vision,

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God commands that sword. And at this point,

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I was going to go into great detail about what that means. What did it mean that the sword struck him?

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Well, of course, it means everything that Pastor Corey said and stole my thunder on with the nails of the feet and the cross and all of the earthly things that come along with it.

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The blood that ran down the cross and the torturous event that was crucifixion.

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I will expand a little bit before moving on, which is actually good for time's sake, which is that Jesus didn't actually die from being crucified.

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See, we think that all of those wounds are actually what caused Jesus to be crucified.

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It's not true. Although it is true that Jesus suffered more beatings and more floggings and more scourgings than anyone probably ever had who was crucified because Pilate was hoping that by flogging him and scourging him that he could be done away with the situation and cause the

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Jewish people to be satiated. And so he beat the heck out of him and sent him on his way and said, hey, is that good enough?

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And the Jews were like, no, you've got to kill this guy. And so Pilate reluctantly crucifies him after having done what usually doesn't happen before crucifixion.

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So it added to the speed of his death. But actually the reason that people die in crucifixion is because of asphyxiation.

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What happens is they nail a person to a cross, and here, of course, Jesus, and they nail the hands up like this.

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And then, of course, they nail the feet and they put it on a block of wood that would be slightly slanted so that they would begin to slip.

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And the reason that we say that it was a torture device created by the Persians and perfected by the

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Romans is because it was a brutal way to die. Because what would happen is you have all of this weight pulling down, and they knew exactly where the nerve endings were to where it would produce the most amount of pain as it pulled on you, but not enough to cause you to bleed out and die.

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And what would happen is over time, you would begin to slip. And what would happen is your lugs would actually compress upon one another and just hang in there.

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And it's as if somebody is squeezing your lugs and you can't breathe. And so what do you do? You do what you can.

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You try to lift yourself up by those nails that are in your hands and on your feet. They rip and they tear and they hit those nerve endings, and then you fall again, and then you can't breathe.

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And you repeat this over and over. It would take weeks sometimes. But eventually, you would not have enough energy to continue, and you would finally go down for your last time and go, that's it.

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I can't go up anymore. And you don't ever again. Jesus was struck by humans.

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But more than that, more than that, he was struck by God.

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And it was the wrath of God that ultimately struck him.

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Isaiah 53, 10 and 11 is another prophecy, maybe a more famous prophecy of the suffering servant,

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Jesus Christ the righteous. It says, but Yahweh, God was pleased to crush him. You see, friends, we know that this was sovereignly planned because the

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Bible tells us. And we know that it was also planned because it pleased

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Yahweh. It pleased God to crush him. It delighted

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God to thrust his divine wrath into him, his sword of divine justice, putting him to grief.

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If you would place his soul as a guilt offering, he will see his seed, that is Christians, he will prolong his days, and the good pleasure of Yahweh will succeed in his hand.

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As a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied by his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant will justify the bidding, so he will bear their iniquities.

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The sheep deserve the blow, but the shepherd receives.

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And the striking was more than a beating, though it wasn't less than that. 2 Corinthians 5, 21 says he, that is

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God, made him, that is Jesus, who knew no sin, who was perfect in every way, right? To be sin, that is to be, to pay for the weight of our sin.

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It's as if Jesus saw God, or God saw Jesus in the punishment of him as us, the righteous for the unrighteous, or right, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

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1 Peter 3, 18, for Christ also suffered for sins once and for all. Yes, he suffered on the cross, but he suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death and the flesh, but he made alive and the spirit.

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And once he was strike, it says what? That the shepherd of the sheep, after he had been stricken, his sheep would be scattered.

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Strike the shepherd, it says, that the sheep may be scattered.

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Jesus, in Mark 14, 27, and also in Matthew, tells the disciples that he himself was fulfilling this prophecy.

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So another way that we know that this is talking about Jesus is because Jesus specifically tells us that when he gets crucified, this very passage has been fulfilled.

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In Mark 14, 27, Jesus said to his disciples, you will fall away, he says, because it is written,

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I will strike down the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered.

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You see, not only was

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Jesus accused of things he didn't do, not only was Jesus crushed for sins that he did not commit, not only did he volunteer to have the sword of God's divine justice impale him, send him to stand in our stead to experience the wrath of God on our behalf, he also experienced it, experienced it by himself.

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Now, most of us know what it is to go through a hard time, but not many of us know what it is to go through a hard time without at least a phone number that they can call.

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Jesus, on the other hand, was betrayed by his best friend, and he knew as soon as God picks up that sword to thrust to me, it's over.

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Judas, for a few dollars, well, enough dollars to buy a field, but on the grand scheme of things, not very much, handed him over to be killed.

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The rest of his disciples fleed. Peter, the one who's like, we'll never leave you, just the night before, denies that he ever knew him, because he knew if he stood even where he was supposed to stand, a sword would find him.

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And so Jesus stands before the Sanhedrin, having his hair ripped from his face, being spit on and mocked, while the people who loved him the most acted as if he was some vile vermin who could not even be looked upon.

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They were cowards, and they ran away. They were cowards, and they denied him.

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They were evil, and they betrayed him, and they were the same people who did ministry with him day in and day out, and they fled.

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Look to this Christ, who in his great shepherdness stood waiting to take the sword in by himself, friends, and not only him, but everybody else.

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There was one guy and his mother who was at his crucifixion. Can you imagine that we do so little for the one who gave so much, and we don't think about the sacrifice that this one has made, this great shepherd, and he stood alone so that you and I would not have to, so that we might be brought in as sheep into a fold and to be loved and cared for and saved from this sword.

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He was put outside the camp so that the author of Hebrews says to run where he is, that we might behold his glory, that we might give our lives for this one, and there's so much more to say.

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It's so little time. Now before you go, let me just try to, as best

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I can, just apply a little bit of what we have heard thus far. One could contemplate often the enormity and misery of your sin and weep over it because God's shepherd, the

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God -man, his eternally regenerated son, died for it.

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As we look on this Good Friday anticipating the resurrection, this shows us that God accepted the payment.

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As we stand in the shadow that is Good Friday, think of the reality that God held

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Christ there to bleed for you and to cleanse you of your sin, so that you might not have to stand and be impaled by this divine sword of justice.

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Let it humble you, let it wreck you, and let it remind you of your need for a

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Savior. Not one of us here at this church deserves it. Not one of us here is holier than the other.

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The cross is a great beacon that screams, none of us measure up. Let us run to the foot of such a cross and secondly meditate often on the person and finished work of our sin bearer, the great shepherd, the

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God -man, the eternally generated son. The Puritans often said, for every two glances you take of your sin, take ten looks at the person and finished work of Jesus Christ.

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How could you not worship? How could you not get out of your bed on Sunday morning?

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How could you not be involved in everything there is to do to promote the name and the glory and beauty of Jesus Christ when you see that he took on your punishment?

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How could you live in sin? How could you not repent? Charles Spurgeon once said, how could you love the very knife that killed your beloved

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Savior? And three, putting some practical skin on it, put the knife of Christ substitutionary death to the throat of your indwelling sin.

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The sin and the iniquity that we are cleansed from, we were cleansed from it and have now been given the Spirit to stand by the power of the

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Spirit saying no to that sin and we must kill it. We must slaughter it. We don't pet it.

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We don't feed it. We do not gaze at it. As the sword of divine justice cut through the flesh of Jesus Christ, we ought to by being reminded of the substitutionary death of Christ.

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Sin is never working for your good. And lastly and finally, as I said earlier on,

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I am not too naive to think that just because everyone here claims to be a

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Christian or has come here to sit at these pews regardless of any sort of profession, that every single person here is a

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Christian. That not every single person here has had the blood of Christ applied to their life.

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And so I ask you today, if that's you, don't play games with God.

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Who cares if you're in leadership of the church? Who cares if you serve and come to Shepherd's Institute?

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Who cares if you have a ministry and who cares if you go out and do abolition ministry or street evangelism or because you grew up in the church?

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God knows. And you know the state of your heart. I would urge you to look upon this

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Christ, this Savior, this great Shepherd and say that I know, as the

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Puritans have also said, that the same sun that hardens the clay melts the ice. So for some of you, you're going to tune out what

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I am saying. Some of you are going to let it melt you and you will receive the fountain of living waters that cleanse from sin into purity.

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The cross may seem silly to you. In fact, the Bible promises that many of us will find it foolish.

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It's not a sophisticated message. It's just the real one. Throw down your man -made crowns.

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Do not clinch them. Do not harden your hearts towards the message that you are hearing today.

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In the book of Hebrews, the author reminds us, quoting from an

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Old Testament passage, if we hear his voice, we ought not harden our hearts as they did the rebellion.

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Speaking of those the Exodus wilderness wanderings.

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Do not harden your hearts this day. If Christ is wooing you and attempting to win you and showing you what it looks like that you have a

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Savior that was willing to be pierced through for you, not just physically, but to absorb the punishment that you will either avoid by resting in him or experience on the day that you see

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Jesus, when you take your final breath. Prince, this great shepherd, let him be the one to whom the sword falls.

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Father, we thank you. We thank you that although we are undeserving and ill -deserving children of wrath, you have sent forth your great shepherd of the sheep to absorb the wrath of God on our behalf, to take on the sword of divine justice.

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Help us live in light of that reality. We ask this in Jesus' meritorious and bachelor's name.