God’s Brave Love-Part 2 (Part C)

You say there's a sin you committed but you're not sure it's a sin, you think you're right and you say maybe I'm wrong and you go to sleep and you die in your sleep and now you're going to hell because you never repented. That person doesn't understand salvation. That person does not understand the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin like the blood that flows through the veins.

It's not dependent on a password, it's dependent on my confession of faith in Jesus Christ and there's nothing more powerful than that and Satan can't stop it and I love it. 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. Isaiah chapter 53 is where Pastor Rick will continue teaching today on this edition of Cross Reference Radio. When he says my people, it could apply several applications, all of them would be right. It could be God saying my people for the transgressions of my people he was stricken, then you have to identify who's God's people, but those who come and receive the benefit from all that took place because of this or the prophet Isaiah could have in mind his people in the day that he was preaching or the Jewish people. So you can have, you can say it's either believers or it's Jewish peoples. The Holy Spirit knew that ultimately the application would be understood to mean all who believe in Christ.

All who believe in Christ will benefit from him being stricken and all who reject the message will not benefit and that's why he will come to the many versus not everyone. Verse 9, and they made his grave with the wicked but with the rich at his death because he had done no violence nor was any deceit in his mouth. Well he had allies amongst the rich because they knew he was not evil.

Again, sentenced as a criminal with the expectation that he would receive a criminal's burial. That was the Sanhedrin's expectation. They're the ones that petitioned Pilate, break his legs, it's the Sabbath, let him die and then cart his body into the ditch with the other outlaws. That was their intention but they were never in control even though they thought they were in control of their hearts and their actions but not of all that was taking place. And had it not been for Joseph of Arimathea, that's exactly what would have happened. But God was ahead of them the whole time. They intended this disgraceful death and a disgraceful burial for daring to oppose them.

How dare you disagree with me? How dare you point out that I'm not holier than thou because Jesus did that just by doing what he was doing, just by healing people and preaching sermons on the righteousness of God and the iniquity of men. So the burial of Jesus Christ is as much a part of the gospel as is his death.

Now don't miss that. The burial is just as much a part of the gospel as is the death because the burial is proof that he actually died and without that the resurrection is kind of pointless. You have to have a confirmed death and he did die. Paul gets into that in 1 Corinthians 15. It takes up almost a whole chapter on the resurrection. These were the authorized custodians of scripture. They never bothered to look into Isaiah 53 or they just conveniently ignored it. But the rich at his death.

As I mentioned Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, both wealthy men, both brought a substantial amount of frankincense and myrrh for the preparation of the body. It's interesting that death in the Hebrew here is plural and it focuses on the two deaths that are associated with sin. There is the death of the body and there is the death of the relationship with God. That's what happened in Genesis chapter 2, in the day that you eat of the street you will die.

And though physically they did not die instantly, spiritually they did, that relationship was no longer going to be the same ever again. Not in this side of heaven. And so Messiah, his spiritual death and taking and becoming sin for us. He became sin. He who knew no sin became sin for us. He took our sin on him and that is the spiritual death. And then of course the death of his body.

Temporary, both of them temporary. 2 Corinthians 5, for he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. And thus we have my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Well, you've got sin on you. In that state, there's a severance, but that state did not remain. We're going to come to that in a minute.

What happened? What happened after he died and paid the price, at that instant, didn't take but an instant, because he had done no violence it says here in verse 9. The rich, they were there with him, as I mentioned the two rich men that made it through the eye of the needle. Remember Jesus said it's easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven? Well here's two men that went through that needle and they'll be in heaven.

There are many of them. Abraham was rich, which the prosperity teachers love to point out with their gold teeth. Anyway, that's a caricature. It says here in verse 9, nor was any deceit found in his mouth. Well that's what he said of Nathanael, the first time he engaged him not the first time he saw him.

He saw Nathanael and Nathanael did not see him as he does with all of us. John chapter 1 verse 47, behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no deceit, no guile. And you know, do you like a person around in your life that's always lying to you? Deceiving you? You can't trust them? Oh man, I want to believe you.

I do want to believe you. It's a messed up situation when someone has so forfeited trust too many times. Yahweh verse 10, yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him. He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days and the pleasure of Yahweh shall prosper in his hand. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. The Godhead was settled on this within the Trinity. You know, we try to describe the Trinity, a triangle in three corners, you know, height, width, depth, all joined together, but still one thing. It's just the best we could do, but it's sufficient.

At least it is for me. But they were settled on this. His life and his death were mapped out.

Not an accident. He alone was a worthy sacrifice, something that we have to point out to unbelievers. They're not going to know this. Maybe there's some residue from Christian exposure in their life and they might get it, but without assistance they're not going to go very far. We don't deserve his love. Mary was not sinless and could never have been on his level, could never have been on the cross for us, neither could any of the apostles or prophets, no one but God. It was not the bruising that pleased the Father. It was the selfless sacrifice for the unworthy. That teaches us about the heart of God and his care for sinners.

It's almost insulting. You could look at it this way. It's almost insulting to challenge God's grace. It's almost insulting to not believe that his love is more powerful than our sin. That our sin does not cancel out his love. The only thing that could cancel out the love of God is a willful, deliberate, final defiance of who he is. Otherwise, Christian's not going to do that. And what comes out of that realization is this desire to please him and to not sin.

And that is a serious thing and Satan knows it and he fears it. Every writer of the New Testament makes reference to these last three verses in Isaiah in the story of Christ, except for James and Jude. Now, that's not a demerit on their part.

What they were dealing with didn't go in that direction. But Matthew, Luke, Mark, Paul, Peter, John, they all quote this section. Isaiah is the most quoted of the Old Testament prophets in the New Testament. He has put him to grief. God paid the price. When you make his soul an offering for sin. Well, he's the Lamb of God and that's where, you know, he took our sin upon him and cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Well, because of sin.

That's the answer. But it was just a flash and that's all it took. Mankind apart from Jesus Christ is nothing to offer God. What does man, what do you, what are you going to, you know, I'm sorry, the little drummer boy when you, I won't take his sins away. It's a nice little story of the Christmas season. You know, everybody out of the Goldenebmer and somebody created, hey, there's a drummer boy.

All you can do is play this beat. Well, that's fine. But it wouldn't take away his sin. Neither would the Goldenebmer that they offered the baby Jesus or his parents, that wouldn't take away their sin.

Only the blood of Christ did that. And so the sin offering has to do with the principle of violating God's will. The trespass offering has something to do with practicing doing that. So you have the sin offering that deals with the principle of sin. You have the trespass offering that deals with the practice of sin. God is very clear. In the Old Testament sacrifices, they tell man what's messed up and what God's view of these things are. And God's view of sin is bloody. It's not, he doesn't wink at it.

It's very serious. He shall see his seed. Well, his generation was denied physically. Who will declare his generation? But his spiritual offspring are innumerable. Those who spiritually, and this is covered, I'm not going to quote it because we're almost out of time, but we can take Hebrews chapter 2, verse 13. We can do that.

I don't like these silent moments. I like to keep talking. Verse 13, again, again, I will put my trust in him and again, here am I and the children whom God has given me. So there's other scriptural precedents for this teaching to back it up.

It's not just, hey, I got a good idea. It is scriptural. Again, you can reference Isaiah 8, 18. He shall prolong his days. Well, what does that mean? It means he didn't remain dead.

That's what that means. Never again. Hebrews 9, 28. Christ died once.

Never again will he die. And so now we get back to, I told, you know, what is the outcome of becoming sin for us? The judgment, the Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani.

Then what? Well, to the victor go the spoils. And he's the victor. Ephesians 1. And he put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church. Ephesians 4, 8. When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive.

That is the victor claiming his spoil. He set souls free. He became sin.

Then what? He set the captives free. He paid the price fully. He drank the dregs of the cup. He didn't go halfway and become almost sin or get close to our sin.

He took it all on him. And he spiritually satisfied the payment. But it would be useless to an individual if they don't accept it, which is the whole purpose of John chapter 1, verse 12.

I have received him. So anyway, and the pleasure of our Lord shall prosper in his hand. A commentary on the Godhead that this is something that God wanted to do, as painful as it was. Jesus of Nazareth, as the hand of God for salvation, shall prosper in his hand.

Now the 11th verse. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied by his knowledge. My righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.

I mean, I love this. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. Christ was pleased with the outcome. When he sees the souls in heaven that have converted to him from life without him, he's happy about that. It is the joy of our salvation. We bless God by that. You know, you can bless God by just being his child. You know, you have a little toddler, one year old, and you're just outside with them and they're running around and they're just blessing you.

They don't even know it. They're giggling and running and doing everything, but they're blessing you as an adult. Well, there's some of that between God and us. We can just bless him by belonging to him.

Blessing in the sense of pleasing, of bringing joy. It's what God wants, soul saved. So the cross of Christ, the redemption of man, the resurrection of Christ, the kingdom age, the new heaven and the new earth, all of that are built in. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. Hebrews 12, looking under Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. There he is, equal with the father, there in the Godhead, but who for the joy that was set before him.

What's that? The saved souls. That's the only thing that that could ever be. It's amazing how the value God puts on us convert. The angels rejoice when one sinner repents because it brings pleasure to God too. It's what God wants and we have all these naysayers out there, how could I love God? And it's just so full of error and poison and bitterness by his knowledge, his divine knowledge. Remember Jesus said in Matthew 12, verse 42, a greater than Solomon is here. Yeah, because he got more knowledge than Solomon ever had. Solomon is the wisest guy in the world, you know, the wisest fool is what he turned out to be. But Christ said it all right as to this is what it should have been. And it speaks to both Solomon, a greater than Jonah is here and certainly the second Adam, the man that God intended man to be. My righteous servant shall justify many.

Now we come to recurrent cleansing. Why does it say he shall justify many? Because it's not everyone, it's not a universal salvation. There are those that teach the universal fatherhood of God. Well, God loves all people, nobody's going to hell.

And what some of the Bible teaches? Bible very clearly says that there is a penalty for defying God, for being against him. Now this recurrent cleansing, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. There are those that have a bad doctrine here. They think that if your sin is a Christian and you forget to repent or don't get a chance to repent or don't see that you need to repent when you do repent, your sin is still on you. Well, that's salvation by works. That's not what the Bible teaches. 1 John 2, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins and not only for ours but also for the whole world. He died for anyone who would come to receive him. So, blood.

Paul Brand brings us out and fearfully and wonderfully made. He was a surgeon and he talks about how blood cleanses as it flows through. So if you hold your arms up in the air, after a while they become painful because the flow of blood from the heart is not moving through the veins and carrying rich oxygen and cleaning out, you know, the metabolism, the lactic acids that build up in there. You need blood to push that out. And that's what the blood of Christ does with sin and guilt. The flow of the blood without recurrent cleansing, salvation would be based on a password. And I bring this up because I've had, the topic is not suicide, the topic is recurrent cleansing, the blood of Jesus Christ. Those that will say, well, if you committed suicide you go right to hell because you didn't get a chance to repent.

So you don't understand. But the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. There is now therefore no condemnation for Christ Jesus.

You can't arbitrarily come along and say, oh, but you didn't say the password, you're going to hell on a technicality. The grace is quite powerful. And I will remind you about the death of Solomon. He didn't get to repent, did he? But Solomon is listed in Hebrews 11 as among the faithful of God. Not Solomon, Samson.

They're just testing you. This is serious stuff because, you know, you say there's a sin you committed but you're not sure it's a sin. You think you're right and you say, maybe I'm wrong and you go to sleep and you die in your sleep and now you're going to hell because you never repent it. That person doesn't understand salvation. That person does not understand the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin like the blood that flows through the veins.

It's not dependent on a password. It's dependent on my confession of faith in Jesus Christ and there's nothing more powerful than that and Satan can't stop it. And I love it. It does not applaud sin. It just makes, it tells, your salvation is not made out of eggshells. I don't know why Christians want to fuss about that.

I think some Christians have a mentality where it's their role to bulldoze as many people into hell as they can with their theology. You know, the ones that say it's rigged. Sorry, you weren't chosen.

It's rigged. You didn't have a choice. Gosh, come on, how can you even say such a thing if you did that with somebody else they would charge you with all sorts of crimes but you described that to God. Anyway, let's finish this.

So much more. Many, as Paul said to Thessalonians, not all have faith. 1 Peter chapter 2, he himself bore our sins in his own body on a tree. Verse 12, therefore, I will divide him a portion with the great and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul unto death and he was numbered with the transgressors and he bore the sin of many and made intercession for transgressors. This is an epilogue to all of the chapter, the 53rd chapter as we know it. It's a review of every, the final word on what's been said in a language that we can understand. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the great.

What does that mean? Well, introduce it with Philippians 2, 9. Therefore, God also has highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every other name.

Very clear. You know Brigham Young, one of the great theologians of Mormonism? Do you know he, they named universities after this guy. He believed people lived on the sun.

You can check it all you want. Too late, he said it, he's dead, he can't take it back. He believed that.

Let's name a university after him. This is the madness of men. But I bring him up because they try to say that Jesus was the brother of Satan. I mean, to come up with these things, like can't you just accept the word of God for what it is?

I'll give you a choice. Accept the Bible, or, never mind, never mind, it's just flesh rearing up. And he shall divide the spoiled with the strong.

What does that mean? It sounds like there are some equals, but there's not. That's why I just prefaced it with Philippians. Those reigning in the millennium with Christ, who's that going to be? When he sets up his kingdom in Jerusalem, amongst people who never experienced death on earth, and death will be almost non-existent, and people will multiply like rabbits, how are they going to learn about the Gospel?

It's not going to be through osmosis. Somebody's going to have to teach them. And what about the whole world? You know, globally, the deserts are going to bloom again.

It's going to be real estate everywhere. Revelation 5.10, and he has made us kings and priests to our God, and we shall reign on earth. I believe that's what that has to do. He shall divide the spoiled with the strong. He's taking other people with him into the kingdom age to be part of his kingdom, and they will have authority and righteousness, and that will be us. Because he poured out his soul unto death.

There's the result. Romans 5.5, hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. God has got this thing for pouring. The problem is that we have a flesh that can clog up the line if we're not careful, and he was numbered with the transgressors. I wish we had more time for this, but this, from the incarnation to the baptism and the crucifixion, well, I take the baptism because this is just one of the fun ones. He lined up with those ready to go to John the Baptist and repent that they were not living the life according to the law of Moses. And John the Baptist was saying, you got to get right back to our roots in Scripture.

And they were coming into the water to say, I'm going to get back. And John, as Jesus came out for the first time, unless they met before, which is possible, but at this moment, what he saw in the eyes of Jesus is not what he saw in any other human being ever. Matthew 3, 14, John tried to prevent him, saying, I need to be baptized by you, and are you coming to me? And then Matthew will give us that it might be fulfilled, and of course, he baptized him. For I say to you that this which is written must still be accomplished in me, and he was numbered with the transgressors, for the things concerning me have an end. So within three years of his public ministry, we find Jesus saying, the Scripture in Isaiah applies to me. I will be numbered with the transgressors. He was already numbered at the baptism. He will be numbered on the cross between the two outlaws, and he bore the sin of many. Again, a repeated superlative for the Scripture says, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame, and those who don't believe in him are not part of the many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

I'll close with this. He intercedes his finished work of the cross without saying a word. He does it through the cross. His intercession is blood red.

He doesn't have to say a word to intervene on our behalf. The cross finished the work, and that's why he said, it's finished. That intercedes for us, for those who come to Christ. 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 editions 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.