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God’s Brave Love-Part 1 (Part B)

Cross Reference Radio / Pastor Rick Gaston
The Truth Network Radio
November 25, 2024 6:00 am

God’s Brave Love-Part 1 (Part B)

Cross Reference Radio / Pastor Rick Gaston

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November 25, 2024 6:00 am

An outline of the suffering of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament 700 years before it happened. All laid out in great detail, God’s plan to save humanity by giving Himself as a substitute to atone for our sins. God’s brave love plan was not reckless, but purposeful to accomplish what He had in store.

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Speaking of Himself, Jesus says, I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright and the morning star. Because Jesus is God, He is the root of David, the root of life.

Because He is a man, He came as a man, He is the offspring of David. And there we see the deity and the humanity of Christ. This is deep doctrine.

It is easy doctrine and it is good. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Isaiah.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now here's Pastor Rick as he continues teaching through Isaiah chapter 53 on this edition of Cross Reference Radio. Romans 10, he says, but they have not all obeyed the gospel for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report? So then faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. Prior to that, Paul was saying we got to send preachers out or else how are they going to believe?

It's not magic. The word has to be spoken and opened up. If Jesus felt that it was necessary to expound on the scriptures of Himself, we must feel that way. Don't you know it's a scene in homes, you have a Christian home. Parents love teaching their children Bible things and that's how it should be. What's the alternative?

Unacceptable. And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Well, the arm of the Lord are His miracles and actions in action, His strength, and it's not always self evident. In fact, most of the time it's not. God's message must be revealed and opened up.

Well, if you are a Jew in the ancient Israel and you had a Bible and you were familiar with it, you would know that the heavens declare His glory. But what else? That it? Okay, I see He's creative. He's powerful.

What does that have to do with me other than it scares me? And no, that's why we have the prophets. That's why we have the stories. You want to see the patience of God in the story of Moses before Pharaoh, the patience of God with those Jews in the wilderness, the patience of God with the church, easily prove how many Sapphira and Ananias do we see today?

None. He's not going around striking people dead. Love suffers long, is patient.

Love never fails, not agape love. So those who reject the Messiah because of His cross are those who are detached from their scripture. They actually said He deserves to die. He's a blasphemer. Because there was nothing He could say. There was nothing He could do that would sway them away from disliking Him.

And why is that? Because He was no respective persons. He couldn't flash credentials. Do you know who I am, Jesus? I don't care who you are. He could have said, do you know who I am?

Watch this. But that's not how He handled them. They disliked the revelation of His self-imposed humanity and His restraints on His sovereignty. They wanted Him to beat the Romans up and anybody else that was Gentile. And so in 1 Corinthians, Paul says, but we preach Christ crucified to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness. The Greeks, they can't understand a king who allows himself to get crucified. And the Jews, they decided they could not accept a Messiah who was crucified when their own scriptures told them so, as I mentioned, like in Psalm 2. Isaiah 53, Psalm 2.

In that order, not in that. Isaiah 53, of course, deals with the suffering and two with the victories. The cross of Christ would never have been had not Jesus overruled His sovereignty with love. If He just simply applied His sovereignty, He would have killed anyone that tried to kill Him. But love overruled that sovereignty. One law overruling another law with no violation of God's law. And so when Jesus said in Matthew 26, do you think that I cannot now pray to my Father and He will provide me with more than 12 legions of angels?

How much more? Does it matter? We know what one angel can do from Isaiah chapter 31, 38, 39. Verse 2, for He shall grow up before Him a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness and we see Him, when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.

Well, they lived that one out. The Father sending His Son to die for sinners does not mean that the Father's love faded for the one He sent to die. On the contrary, so we read, for He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant.

This is the language of love. Consider the Father's care as a tender plant. He watched everything that was going on. He did not send Christ into the world to the virgin birth and say, well, okay, I'll check back into you when it's time for public ministry. The Father saw His Son, Isaiah 52 verse 13, Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. Thrice during His humanity as Christ walked, three times the Father made it clear that the Son was before Him as a tender plant. Matthew 3, 17, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Matthew 17, 5, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

Hear Him. John chapter 12, verse 28, Father, glorify Your name. Then a voice came from heaven saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.

A tender plant in His care. They were never separated because the branches are part of the tree. And this is one of the greatest metaphors for explaining to us the humanity of Jesus Christ. When we say the humanity, we don't mean that He worked in soup kitchens. We mean God became a human without giving up being God.

His deity remained, and His sovereignty was restrained. And He lived in the Spirit as a perfect Adam, as Adam should have lived. Tragically, it was not how men saw Him, and it is not how the world sees Him as this tender plant before God, the Christ. This suffering servant given to mankind is the Nazarene. John, in his first letter in the fourth chapter, he writes, And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. And He could have put on right behind that and nobody else. He is the Savior.

There's nobody else. And He did in different ways. It would be nice if the Lord could open the sky and say, Rick, I want you to add some things to some of those verses. You've got some pretty good insights. That's not going to happen though. Anyway, and I know you're, we're glad it's not going to happen.

We like it the way it is, and so do I. The Son is of the Father alone, not made, begotten. Again, what is that? Christ is from eternity past. He's self-existent, and God uses the tree to kind of illustrate this for us. So you have a tree and you have a branch. In fact, what if you have a tall tree that kind of forks at the top? Which one is the branch? Which one is the trunk?

How do you, I'm sure Boris could narrow that down, insignificant to the point. The point is, is that a branch from a tree is not created, it comes forth from. The tree is created under God's creation, of course, but for the sake of illustration, that branch comes forth from the tree. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the tree without assuming a material form, but the Son did assume a body. And so in writing about Israel's Messiah, Isaiah has already in his prophecies used this image, Messiah as the branch in chapter four.

In fact, that one's worth reading. Isaiah four, verse two. In that day, the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and appealing for those of Israel who have escaped.

He'll be beautiful, but not in the eyes of the world yet, as there's nothing in, the comeliness is not there to the world. Then Isaiah 11, there shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse. Jesse was the father of King David. And a branch shall grow out of his roots. It's not a little thing that he says, out of Jesse, because that's connected to the genealogy, the rights to the throne over Israel. Of course, in Revelation 22, 16, we read that Jesus is the root. Well, I want to read it so I don't. Revelation 22, verse 16.

It's beautifully worded. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you these things in the churches, in the churches, the places of assembly. I have to say that because there's just too many Christians that disrespect the church that was bought with the blood of Christ, and it's a reference to local assemblies.

And hiding behind, well, I belong to the universal church, is not good enough. And so he continues to testify these things in the churches, which he named, in the chapters 2 and 3, he named seven of them. He continues, speaking of himself, Jesus says, I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright and the morning star. Because Jesus is God, he is the root of David, the root of life. Because he is a man, he came as a man, he is the offspring of David. And there we see the deity and the humanity of Christ. This is deep doctrine, it is easy doctrine, and it is good.

And the shoot in Isaiah 11, and the branch in Zechariah 400 years after, about 400 years after Isaiah, he continues this in Zechariah 3.8. I am bringing forth my servant the branch. And so it helps to understand just how God became a human. He uses the trees. Think of a tree and a branch that comes from that tree. It's every bit a part of that tree.

And my son is every bit a part of me. That branch is tree, and my son is God. And it's just the only begotten of the father, nobody else, that's what's meant by that.

An extension of God without being separate from God or less than God. The servant is the only begotten son. And so we read in Isaiah chapter 9, a child is born, that is his humanity. And then in chapter 9, a son is given, that is his deity. This is the tender plant before the Lord. Not a start when Jesus came through the Virgin Mary. It was a fulfillment of prophecy.

And this is again heavy doctrine because of its importance, not because it's difficult. He says, and as a root out of dry ground. When Christ came, he owed nothing to his surroundings. Israel gave him nothing.

He didn't need them, but he wanted them. Surroundings which lacked the vision to recognize that he was infinitely more than anything they'd ever come in touch with. Surroundings which made no contribution to what God wanted from them. Surroundings which refused to produce the glory of God through men. May we not be that way. If Christ were to appear, you know, I sometimes make the point, you know, there are some Christians, if Christ were pastoring a church, they'd leave that church eventually. It's a sad commentary on how sin beats us up if we're not careful.

It gets the upper hand that way. If Christ were to come, would we recognize him? Could we make a contribution to his ministry? The apostles did. They recognized him. You are the Christ, the Son of God.

And they got clumsy with it. You know, Peter, of course, with a size nine mouth. But man, just not going to find someone that loved Jesus more than Peter loved him. A root, when he says, as a root out of dry ground, and not in the ground, the root is out of the ground, which is pretty much, to men, lying in the pathway, something to be kicked out of the way, of no use to them.

It trivialized him. And this in contrast to he being the tender plant of the Father, who put him in this hostile environment because love is brave. Love of the Father is brave to let the Son go through these things because God is God and he's so superior doesn't mean that he doesn't feel these things.

It's just that those feelings don't take control. And those who have attacked Jesus through the ages have seen no beauty, no desire in him. You think Mao Tae-Sung saw any beauty in Jesus as he was persecuting anybody associated with Christianity, whether genuine or not? He hated Christianity. So did Stalin and the rest of it, because communism is a religion and anybody tells you it's a political entity, they don't understand. They're just a religion trying to behave as a political entity to be able to conquer. Anyway, he has no form of comeliness.

The servant has no appeal by the world's standards. Superficial glances at him causes one to miss it and to miss out. I was thinking today, I was trying to say, man, how did I get saved? How did it happen? If I could just bottle it, I could get others saved. But it's very difficult. It's a supernatural event. However, God uses people to bring about these supernatural events.

There's no question about that. He's not entrusted the gospel to the angels yet. It's largely the work of men. But natural men are blind to the beauty of God. Luke chapter 7 verse 44, then he turned to the woman and said, Simon, now let's pause there, Simon a Pharisee.

He should have recognized these things. Simon invited Christ over. This celebrity rabbi.

Not that Jesus wasn't trying to be a celebrity rabbi, but because of what he did, he became one in the eyes of people. Then he turned, and of course Simon, here's this woman weeping over Christ, and Simon is judging the woman and judging Christ, and Christ picks up on it, and he says, he turned to the woman and said, then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, so he's looking at the woman, but he's talking to Simon, do you see this woman? I entered your house.

You gave me no water for my feet, but she has washed my feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. She saw his beauty, that he wasn't afraid of sinners, that if anyone could be high and lifted up over sinners and trample them, it was him, and he opted not to do that. His humanity was his veiled glory.

She could see it. What was Simon's, I think Simon got saved. I think he was part of giving that account to Luke when Luke did his research.

He says, yeah, he came to my alibi. I was all uppity about things, because we know some of the Pharisees were saved. He's in there writing 1 Chronicles 16, 29.

I'm not going to read it, but I'll reference it to you about the beauty of his holiness, and when we see him, the we there to Isaiah was the Jewish people, but to the church, it's all mankind. Now, you've been hearing me say that the Jews have had this mandate to reach the Gentiles, and of course, they've left this unharvested crop in the field. Well, who is the greatest Old Testament example of that? Jonah. Jonah had no desire to reach the people for God, for Yahweh, which was what they were supposed to be, a blessing to all the peoples of the world since the days of Abraham, and yet, look how he behaved. But at least he had the conversion necessary to tell us how messed up he was. Jonah says, you know, I was a racist. I was disobedient.

All of the key categories I flunked as a prophet, but God in His grace reached out to me, was patient, and using that whole fish thing, I think, was a bit overkill. They could have said that. It wasn't.

It still didn't work. Even after the fish, and he repents, and he sees his self-worth as nothing, and he survives it, and he's sent back, and he's just got this grudge on people going to heaven. There are some people that live with a bulldozer, that just, Christians, you know, it's almost like they don't mind that people are going to hell, in their thinking, in their mentality.

I don't know. Anyway, Isaiah, he names those who smoke the man of sorrows, the zealot Jews. We see him. We the Jews.

We did this. Zealot Jews who were incensed, incensed at being told that they slew their own Messiah, because that's what the apostles told them. According to the scriptures, you killed him, and you got the Bible that says you killed him. Acts chapter 2, verse 23, Peter preaching, him being delivered by the predetermined purpose and foreknowledge of God. That's that brave love right there. He continues, Peter does, you have taken by lawless hands and crucified and put him to death.

I would have been screaming at them, you stupid idiots, you know. But Peter doesn't do that. He ends up bringing a lot of them to Christ. Many of those that came to Christ that day became a problem to Paul. It's real stuff dealing with sin. Will there be people in heaven that you didn't like on earth?

Absolutely. But it won't be that way anymore. I mean, I won't get to heaven if someone comes up to me, hi, hey, I used to come to your church.

We won't have that conversation, because I'll be telling them, you know, I used to like you till you said that. Then of course, Stephen, Acts chapter 7, you stiff necked, uncircumcised in heart and ears. I mean, Peter, no one flayed them better than Stephen. You always resist the Holy Spirit.

As your fathers did, so do you. And remember, he's one of them. Well, not a Pharisee, he's, what we would say is a messianic Jew, watch out for that title.

There's nothing any more special about being a messianic Jew than a gentile Christian, really the same thing. Anyway, he says, which of the prophecies your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the just one. Well, we don't have it on record in scripture, but it's believed King Manasseh had Isaiah killed.

But we don't have to, because we know that there were others that were killed. Even Jesus mentioned Zechariah killed at the altar. Anyway, he says, of whom you have now become betrayers and murderers. Straight out, nothing unclear about that, you murdered the Messiah, and the Bible told you you'd do this. And do you think they would go, oh, we repent.

They killed him for saying that. Well, gentile pagans would go on to persecute the Lord's followers, not only as Paul began to preach the gospel in gentile territories, but even to this day. In Paul's day, they were enraged at being told that their gods were trash, worse than trash. Paul tells us in Corinthians, they worship demons to this day. We say this about all the false religions that are out there. You're worshipping Satan. Well, is it true?

All of them. Useless concoctions of the God Makers Club. And it doesn't take far. It doesn't take much research to look back and say, where does my religion come from? Well, we can trace ours back to Genesis. We could back it up with the prophecies. We could back it up with science. Incidentally, so I try not to watch Christian anything's really. I do read, you know, Christians that are in heaven have left some writings that I like a lot.

Anyway, but this one, I took the bait. It was a Christian astronomer telling us about the Star of Bethlehem. Now, I'm saying to myself, well, I know the answer to this one and I hope he gets this right. Well, God in His mercy gave us fast forward because there was no way I'm going to sit through 46 minutes, because formal education teaches people to present 40, 11 different wrong views than the right view. I prefer showing you the right view, then we can get to some of the others. Well, he does.

He goes through all of those and I fast forward and he gets it right. And so I'm happy about that. It's a miracle. You're not going to chart where the star came from.

You're not going to say, oh, this is the one time that Jupiter, Mars, and Venus all got together. It's a miracle. And it's part of the faith, the virgin birth. It's a miracle. There's no scientific explanation. There's only a spiritual explanation. Why does the sun not gobble up the earth?

Well, according to some, it's going to. Well, because it's a miracle. God is keeping it in place.

He has designed and engineered these things. So, I don't know how I got onto this, but I had to get that astrology thing out of my system. So, Acts chapter 19 verse 26. Moreover, you see and hear, not only at Ephesus, but throughout almost all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people saying that they are not gods which are made with hands. And so, there's the Gentiles doing the same thing that the unbelieving Jews were. To Stephen, they were doing it to Paul.

This is how it is. There's no beauty that we should desire him. Well, he's full of beauty in the eyes of God, that tender plant. He's full of beauty in the eyes of those who are saved. And we hopefully can find a way to be used by God to share that with lost souls.

If you've ever witnessed someone and led them to Christ, is there a greater feeling? When Jesus said to his disciples, I have meat to eat you know nothing about. He's talking about leading someone into the kingdom and was that woman at the well.

They were like, who gave you something to eat? Totally missed it, but they got it all later. And so, that's us, right? At first, we miss a lot of things. And then as we grow and mature in Christ, we start picking up a lot of things. Verse 3, he is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him.

He was despised and we did not esteem him. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel, mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.

You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new additions of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick right here on Cross Reference Radio.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-11-25 08:14:13 / 2024-11-25 08:23:45 / 10

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