Earlier this week I read a pretty good article about the art of preaching. One of the things that it said was that preaching is not the purpose of preaching. Gospel preaching cannot accomplish anything in and of itself. Even when everything declared during the course of that sermon is doctrinally correct, there is no efficacy in the spewing out of those words. But what preaching does is surround the preacher and his hearers with the Person and things of God. The Word is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, only when it is wielded by the omnipotent hand of the Lord.
A little boy has fallen into the lake and is at the point of suffocating and drowning. But he’s been pulled from the water and people are doing their best to save his life. They are pushing on his chest to keep blood flowing to his brain, and they are trying to force the water out of his chest. They are pushing their own breath into his lungs in order to feed his starving cells.
Like that little boy, as sinners we are smothering in the poisonous atmosphere of sin, and our lungs are refusing to breathe righteousness on their own. The preaching of the gospel surrounds that suffocating sinner with the oxygen of spiritual life. But it requires the Holy Spirit to force that life into the soul of that sinner. I suppose that the purer the air, the better chance that the drowning victim has of surviving. And when it comes to religious preaching, it is absolutely essential to preach the pure and saving message of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are lots of themes which can and ought to be declared from the pulpit and even from the root-top of the scriptural Baptist church. But to try to force a drowning victim to eat is pointless, if he cannot breathe. And to ask him to count backward from a hundred is a waste of time, if his lungs are filled with water. Give that sinner Christ; give that sinner life through Christ. That is what Paul was doing in the Jewish synagogue in Antioch.
We have spent a couple of weeks looking at the introduction to Paul’s message. He talked about the call of Israel and he mentioned a little about their history. Then he introduced John the Baptist, whose job it was to introduce the Lord Jesus Christ. But it’s Christ who is the pure oxygen of the gospel; it is Jesus who is “the way, the truth and the life.” So when his introduction was finished, Paul moved on to the Saviour. Of King David, the Lord “gave testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will. Of this man’s seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus.” This morning, I’d like to consider 3 things from these verses: prophecy, prejudice & the provision of Christ.
First, the PROPHECY.
If you had to prove to someone that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, the place to begin is prophecy. When millions of people pour over the latest rehash of the stupid prognostications of Nostradamus, you can be sure that people today still have a thirst for knowledge about tomorrow. And the Bible contains GENUINE prophecy. It names names and gives dates about things that were future at the time of those pronouncements. Yes, there are general prognostications which we now know how to understand, but there are hundreds of prophesies which could have only one specific fulfillment and multitudes of those have been precisely fulfilled. Through the comparison of prophecy and fulfillment we know that the Bible is a supernatural book. And turning that around, when the people to whom we are witnessing profess to believe that the Bible is a supernatural book, then the power of the prophecy is greatly enhanced.
So did you notice how many references Paul made to prophecy & the promises of God in his message? He could have said in verse 17: “The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers, and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with an high arm brought he them out of it … Just as he had promised to Abraham.” And in verse 19 he could have said: “And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Chanaan, he divided their land to them by lot… “ just as He had promised and prophesied. He called Samuel a “prophet,” because one of his responsibilities was to declare the Word of God. A week or so ago, we had a lesson about Saul, the first King of Israel, and I pointed out to you that this was according to the prophecy of God. And then Paul referred to David: “Of this man’s seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus.” “Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent. For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him. And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre. But God raised him from the dead.” “And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.”
A perfectly acceptable and Biblical title of the Lord Jesus might be “The Son of Promise,” because there were so many promises and prophecies made about Jesus. And they began in Genesis 3 on the same day that man first sinned against God, because salvation from that sin is what the Lord Jesus is all about. “Of this man’s seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus.” Jesus was promised to be born at a specified time, at a specified place in a special & miraculous way: He was to be born in Bethlehem to a woman who was a virgin. It was prophesied that he would be visited and adored by people of great position, and yet his immediate earthly king would slaughter innocent children in trying to kill him. It was prophesied that Jesus would be preceded by a forerunner, just as Paul said in this message. That His ministry would begin in Galilee, but that He would enter Jerusalem in a victorious fashion. There were so many prophesies about the suffering and death of Christ that not even an honest blind man can fail to see that the hand of God was involved. Hated without a cause, and betrayed by a friend. Sold for 30 pieces of silver; not 29 and not 35, but 30 pieces of silver. And it was prophesied that money would eventually be used to purchase the field of a pottery-maker. It was said that He would be numbered with transgressors, be beaten, mocked and spat upon. Long before Jesus’ birth it was declared that he would have his hands and feet pierced as in crucifixion, but that not a bone of his body would be broken. There were prophecies about His thirst upon the cross and that he’d be offered vinegar to drink. “And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre. But God raised him from the dead.” After these there were a dozen other promises made about Christ. Among which is the promise that he would be buried with the rich, but that he would rise from the grave. And it’s to this that Paul referred in verses 33 and 35.
The point of this is that the Apostles expected that their brethren in the flesh should have been expecting and anticipating the arrival of their Saviour. Their eyes should have been scanning the horizon watching for the arrival of the ship of their salvation, in exactly the same way that Christians today should be awaiting the return of this same Saviour, based upon other unfulfilled promises of God.
Jesus Christ is the Son of Promise.
But when the Promised One arrived it was into the teeth of overwhelming PREJUDICE.
“They that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, Nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, They have fulfilled them in condemning him. And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain.”
This, of course, is a statement of fact. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”
The Bible and history records that Jesus was and is the Christ, the Son of God. He went about his homeland doing wonderful, good and beneficial things. He healed the sick and raised the dead; He fed great multitudes and blessed small groups. And “He did no sin, neither was there guile in his mouth.” He never hurt nor offended in any way, except that he pointed out the heresies of the hierarchy in Israel.
So why did the majority of the priests of the nation desire Pilate to crucify Jesus? Newspaper reporters might investigate the situation and say that it was because Jewish leadership had embraced certain heresies that Jesus condemned. Or they might say that the people were confused about the background of Jesus. If they had known who His grandfather was and where he was born, they would have received Him. If they had been sure of His miracles and that they were done in the power of God rather than Satan, they would have believed Him. A reporter would probably have said that those poor people of Jerusalem just didn’t have all the facts. But that is not what the record shows. They had the facts, but they also had a native prejudice AGAINST those facts.
Please return to Romans 3. This is the classic and oft-used scripture to teach that all souls are sinners. “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” This scripture has often been preached to you and in your presence, who are not Jews. But notice that the whole thrust of the Apostle Paul is that despite the advantages that the Jews had, they were just as alien from the Lord as the blackest African or the most wretched Viking. “What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.” Well then are we Jews better than those wicked Gentiles? “No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.”
Clearly, it is not native intelligence which causes men to choose Christ. Nor is it what we ordinarily think of as “stupidity” which makes them desire Pilate to crucify Him. What Paul was teaching in Romans 3 was that the privileges that Israel had in possessing the law and even the prophets, didn’t give them a genuine advantage over the rest of us.
Someday there is going to be a pitcher in baseball who will consistently throw the ball at 112-115 mph. Some baseball players are better batters than others, and that gives them an advantage over the rest when it comes to the average pitchers, but when it comes to that man who throws 112, not even the advantaged will have an advantage. The people of Israel had the promises concerning Christ in their hands in the form of the Scriptures. And many of them knew those promises and prophecies backward and forward, but when the fulfillment of those prophecies stood before them, they were as blind men to Him. Because the things of God are spiritually, not intellectually, discerned. Because the spiritually dead are incapable of seeing the truth. Because there is none that seeketh after God, even when He is the most kind and beneficent Being in the universe.
Just as the average criminal isn’t looking for the police, neither is the sinner looking for Christ. Until the Lord gives us new hearts, we all join with the priests, crying out, “Crucify Him, crucify Him.”
But Paul goes on to say that there was a PURPOSE AND PROVISION in these things.
“Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.”
Among the many prophecies of the coming Saviour, there are multitudes which say that He would sacrifice His life in order to win His people. Not to win their affection, but to buy them out of their sinful slavery. In fact the very first of all the prophecies hints at that: “And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
When Abraham took his teenage son to Mount Moriah in order to sacrifice him to the will of the Lord, it was as a visual prophecy of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. And when the Lord stopped Abraham from slaying Isaac, and provided a ram as a substitute, that too was a picture of the fact that Jesus would “give His life a ransom for many.” A multitude of the Psalms, and particularly those written by Jesus’ great-grandfather David, point out that Christ would die before He would reign. And then along came the great prophets like Isaiah saying the same thing.
There is only one way to obtain deliverance from the penalty of God’s law and to become a citizen of His Kingdom. That is to satisfy the demands of God’s law. Since we are sinners, then it means that we must pay the penalty proscribed against us. Whoops, that penalty is death. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
“And the wages of sin is death.” “Wherefore as by one man sin came into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” How can anyone meet the requirements of that law and survive?
It is impossible.
Yes, it IS impossible, but Christ Jesus, the sinless son of David, and the infinite Son of God, went to the cross with the purpose of satisfying the demands of the law against us. As when God told Abraham that he would have to slay his son, but then supplied a ram as a substitute, the Law of God said that you and I must die for our sins,
But the Lord has supplied a Lamb to be our Substitute. “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” – verses 38-39.
The Lord has made a way of escape for us, through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And now He requires that you acknowledge that fact and repent of your soul-damning sins, and that you in love and faith rest your soul and your eternity on the Substitute, Christ Jesus. Have you done that? Are you doing that this morning? Will you do that right now? Repent of your sins and trust the Lord Jesus Christ.