Redemption and the Redeemer

… Now tell me, our Lord, we pray that this hour we spend together tonight may not be in vain. May thy Word come home to us. May the one who speaks have guidance that he directs our thoughts into the right channel. May thy blessing rest upon thy Word that something may be done in our hearts and consciences as we meet here this evening. Let thy gracious blessing be upon us, we earnestly pray as we render thanks again for the quietness and comfort in which we meet and what we ask is in the worthy name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. I have to confess that usually when I have a little talk like this, or stand up to preach the gospel, I read a passage of scripture and base what I have to say upon that. But I'm not going to do that tonight. I'm just going to read in succession what you may consider isolated texts. But I think we may see they are very much connected, though isolated, in the pages of our Bible. Now my first text is the last verse of Psalm 25. And I call this a petition as yet unanswered. Though it was written a thousand years before Christ came. The last verse of Psalm 25 is a prayer, a petition of David. And it's a very short petition, here it is. Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles. Well, if you know anything about what is going on in the earth, you know there are plenty of troubles. And probably you've heard people say, well, you know the great troubled spot. At the present moment, rarely. And we who believe the Bible anticipate it will be far more so the great troubled spot. Is it Israel? Here they've got back into the land of Palestine. I had a letter from Egypt the other day, a tiny little place all covered with strange Egyptian stamps. It looked like the head of some ancient pharaoh out of his cottage dug up in Egypt. But anyhow, at the end of it, it was Egypt D-A-R. Do you know what that means? United Arab Republic. They're coming together to what end? To smash Israel. Well, of course, Africa is teeming with unrest and trouble. We are not having a very easy time, are we? Even in this land of ours. Trouble, trouble, trouble. Yes, the world is about as full of trouble, I think, as it ever has been. What about this prayer of David? Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his trouble. Yes, that's what people say today. Look here, if there's a God in heaven, why doesn't he do something about it? Why is it that the world goes on like this? Those of us who dig back into ancient history know the atrocities, the evil, the massacres, the fighting. Why take all the fighting out of our history? Look, there wouldn't be very much left, my dear friends, to talk about. The history of mankind is a history of trouble. And just David, who was raised up of God and was a very remarkable monarch, and inspired of God, he uttered this cry, redeem Israel, O God, out of all his trouble. And you might say, well, why hasn't God done it? Well, because there is another matter that underlies the trouble, which is the real source of all the mystery. I've been telling people recently, I think I've said it, did I tell you? Because I'm old now and I never forget. A long time ago, I picked up an old book, giving us little reminiscences, I should think of about 200 years ago, when John Wesley was riding about the country on horseback and preaching the gospel. There was a rather eccentric old doctor, I think I remember his name, Dr. Wheelman. And in those days, you know, the doctors I'm told went about and usually had a little, nice little stick, probably with a golden knob on it. You knew it was the doctor going about with this little kind of, well, what you call it, this little kind of wedge of office. He went to see an old fellow, Wesley, who was suffering, whether he was gouty or something of that sort, I hardly know. But when he walked into the room, the story was, the old fellow, the old sufferer said, look here, doctor, I'm bare about sick of your nasty syrups and your worthless pills. He said, why don't you strike at the root of my trouble? I want you to strike at the root of all this pain and suffering that I endure. And the doctor, he thought to himself, who said, sir, you want me to strike at the root of your trouble? Yes, it shall be done. And he raised his stick and smashed a great bottle of gin that was standing on the side. You think he had the courage and the candor to strike at the root of the trouble. That was the story I read in the old book, and it's almost subtle, you see. And I said to myself, yes, yes, that is, you dabble about with the surface symptoms and forget the underlying root of all the trouble. Yes, the old fellow wasn't a drunkard, but he was everlastingly toaching himself morally with a minute in the alcohol that negated the efforts that were being made by the well-meaning doctor for his relief. That's the story, but it has a moral. Can we point to what is the root of the trouble? But the answer is, yes, we can. Now, I turned over, I stuck these in because my poor fingers and my sight, I'm slow at tumbling over the pages. I'm going to read you now the end of the 130th Psalm. I think I'll read two verses now. At the end of Psalm 130, we have this. Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem Israel from all his trouble? No, iniquity. That's what lies at the root of the trouble. And that, you see, is a prediction. You say, well, has that been fulfilled? In part, yes, but not completely. And if anybody said, now, preacher, preacher, what do you mean by saying that? Well, what I mean is this. As we shall see in a moment, the great necessary work on which redemption of poor Israel from all their iniquities will be accomplished, the work has been done. The work has been done, but it has not yet been applied in all its fullness. It will be in a coming day, as we Christians definitely believe, a moment will come when we shall see Israel redeemed, yes, redeemed from his troubles, because redeemed from their iniquities, the sins, we'll use that shorter word, sins that underlie the trouble. Now, friends, that's what we gospel preachers have to talk about. That's what lies at the root of all the troubles in the earth. Sin, sin, and what is this sin? Well, we are proclaiming in the scripture, sin is lawlessness. Sin is man, may I use a very ordinary, almost perhaps a slang expression, kicking over the trenches. Have you ever heard people go, oh, yes, he's kicked over the trenches. I suppose it comes to names. Maybe he has horses and donkeys and mules and that kind of thing. Refusing subjection to the higher power. That's what sin is. It came in at the beginning. Mankind breaking loose from the control of the creator. My friends, the creator knows very well how to run affairs in the earth. The fact is man doesn't. He's been trying to do it for thousands of years. There's no nearer the solution, the earth settling down to perfect quietness and order and concert than they were 2,000 or 4,000 years ago. No, because of sin. Yes, because of sin. Now, here is the noise. This isn't a prayer, you see. This is an assertion. He shall. But it shall, as they say, number one. I think I remember enough of what I learned when I was a little kid at school. That indicates the future, doesn't it? He shall. We're looking out into the future. Yes, he shall. He shall. It's a necessary thing because I turn over my pages once more, one after the other, and I come to a verse in Isaiah. Now, let me read this, which I hope shows clearly the importance of redemption from sin. The prophet says to the people of his day, of course, Isaiah prophesied, shall we say, roughly six centuries before Christ. David wrote roughly a thousand years before Christ. He said, behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated between you and your God. He's not there. Now, that's the trouble. Sin drives into a wedge between man and God, between the creature and the creator. My dear friends, let me leave world affair. Too big for us, isn't it? Difficult to govern the village, let alone the world. Look here, let's come down to each one of us, our single being, the individual. What is true of the world at large, or of the nation, is true of the individual, true of me, and true of you. Sin separates from God. And that's what the gospel is talking about. We are talking about the deep, fundamental things. We are not tampering with mere surface details or tinkering, perhaps that's a better word for me to use, with surface details. No, we are coming right down to the root of all the trouble, all the sorrow, all the misery, all the contention, all the strife, and the strife, and the striving. The sin separates from God. Am I talking to those who are not yet? No, God, we may. We Christians, as we shall see before our little talk ends, we shall see what a wonderful thing it is to be brought back into the presence of God in peace because he is righteous. But let us never forget that if God is going to redeem Israel from her sins and iniquities at the end, he has to do the same thing for each one of us. And the fact remains that sin separates from God. My friend, you will never be divinely happy until you know God, until you are right with God, until you are put as it were before him into a new relationship which is that into which every true Christian is introduced. Now, having read those three verses, the petition, O God, do save us from our troubles, yes, we would all pray that, but then comes the assertion, yes, the God says, I am going to save you from the sins that cause the trouble. But remember, sin separates from God. How can it be removed? Well, I have caught my turn to the New Testament, and immediately I do. Look, I have opened up the first chapter of Matthew, and my eye falls upon a very well known verse. When the coming of our Lord Jesus is announced, announced to Joseph concerning the Virgin Mary, she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, a compound name Jehovah, Savior. Why? For he shall save his people from their sin. Yes. When Jesus came, it was the first great move in the mighty work that had to be accomplished that there might be wrought salvation from sin, their power in the life that is, and their penalty in the life to come. Yes, we Christians, we know that wonderful name of Jesus Christ, don't we? And he has made known God to us, and he has wrought the work which availed for the putting away of sin as a matter of judgment. Our sins deserve eternal death. Departure from God to die in sin is to die in a state of utter alienation from God. I know I have said it the last year that you and I are old, and I keep on saying it. My dear friend, you are unconverted. Don't hope to go to heaven. You say, what? I say it again, if you are unconverted, don't hope to go to heaven. The first time a man in the Bible got near heaven, do you know what he said? His name was Jacob. He was running away. He had been swindling. His mother put him up to some tricks to get a blessing that really would have come to the elder brother. And running away after bad behavior, swindler, a supplanter, he went to sleep with a stone pillow in a rather jittery spot. He would be dreaming, and he saw heaven open, and he saw angels of God descending on what looked like a ladder. And what did he say? Oh, did he say, oh, how wonderful it is? He said, how dreadful is this place. This is none other than the house of God. This is the place of heaven. Awful. Don't hope to go to heaven. No, hell would be one degree better. What? To live in the searching light that condemns those. My dear friend, if you don't know God, if you are not converted, I say it to you in love. If I didn't have a care for your soul, I wouldn't say it, but I must warn you, don't hope to go to heaven. Because except this thin question is settled, except you are put right with God, heaven is no place. You haven't got the nature that would like heaven. We talk about the poor fish out of water very well. It is. It breathes. Does it breathe? It gasps. It opens its poor little mouth. It's air. It isn't water. No. It's death. It isn't a sphere in which it lives. No, it's to fly when living a sinful life in this world, heaven isn't the place for me. No. But the Lord Jesus came to deal with this great matter. He comes to say, look, his people, which doesn't mean merely Jews, as we can now call them, Israelites. No, it means those who really belong to him. Those who acknowledge him as the savior and Lord and master of their lives. Yes, if once we are brought to that, if the Lord Jesus becomes to us the savior who died that we might live and our hearts bow to him, if we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus as Lord, believing in our hearts that God has raised him from the dead, we are saved. And we at once become possessed of another nature, which would be very much at home in heaven. Why do I say that? Well, because I've got another scripture. Now, this is scripture number five, which I must just read in your hearing. And here, indeed, I've got something to say to my good brothers and sisters in Christ who I know many of you are. You are Christians. Many of you, you trusted the savior in bygone days. Now, this is my fifth and last scripture in the first epistle of Peter. And in chapter three, I'm only going to read the early part of one verse, where he writes, For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. Now, here is the way in which the whole question may be divinely set. Sin entails suffering. The world is full of it. Yes, because sin dominates the earth. Suffering beyond the grave for those who die unconverted. Why? Because sin entails suffering. Why did Christ suffer? He suffers for sin. It is true, in a certain sense, he suffers for righteousness because he was in a very unrighteous world. And at last, there was a perfect man in the midst of sinful men. And they hated him and his father, and they put him out by way of the malefactor's gibbet, the cross. But when he was thus put out by the action of evil men, something else happened. What happened? Why? He offered himself as the great atoning sacrifice. What the scripture calls the propitiation. That is to say, he said in effect, let me be the one who bears the judgment and the cross. You say, how could he do it? He could do it, and he could do it on this universal scale because of who he really was. Had he not been the mighty son of God, had he not been God manifest in the flesh? My friends, what a wonderful thing we are talking about. The God who acts in righteousness and who has to bring in judgment upon sin comes in the person of his son into manhood as his isle bearer. I've often told, oh, I've told it here, surely I have, about the lady teaching the little deaf and dumb boy, you know, who saw the picture. And I was talking on their fingers, of course. This was many years ago, I think nearly a hundred years, when there was very little done to the deaf and dumb. She was a kind of pioneer in the work. And she showed him the picture, the cross. And all in the back of the picture, the masses of the people, the multitude standing afar off. And she said, now Willie, that's Jesus, and he's dying, he's dying for all these. And you know, it was wonderful. He was a very intelligent little chap, little deaf and dumb. He sat on his fingers and he did it. But why? Only one? Only one? How can this one die for all these? Yes, there's a theological question for you. Well, the good lady, I believe, lifted up her heart in prayer to the Lord for a moment. And then he thought, I don't know what to do. There's a bunch, a bundle of rather faded roses on the table. And when she touched one of these, the petals, not the leaves, the petals of the rose fell, as they will, you know, when they are almost done. And the little chap watched her for a couple of minutes. She took these and began tearing them up and making them into little black, little tiny black little petals, little petals, you might almost say. And she made a tiny little heap of them. And he watched, and he watched, and he watched. And then when she'd made her heap, she pulled off her wedding ring and she put it down. And she said, Willie, which will you have? He only had one. These are many, many, many, many, using just the kind of thing that he had said about the picture. But she didn't take long to decide. He plucked for the one. He said, may I have the one? Oh, she said, why will you have the one and not the other one? Oh, he said, because one gold. Many, many, many. The golden saviour has appeared, God himself manifest in the flesh. And when he died, he died as the sacrifice for sin. He suffered. He suffered the judgment I say with an adoring heart that my many sins deserved. He suffered for me. And that's what you Christians are saying. Yes, he suffered for me. We want all of you to be able to say that. Yes, I take my place here. I take my place here. He suffered for me. He suffered for sin. I was amongst the unjust ones, the many. He, the one unique, just one. And why did he not suffer? That he might bring us to God. Sin separates and the suffering saviour unites. Sin drives the wedge between fallen man and the mighty creator. But the creator comes down into human life in perfection, of course. His humanity was unique, but he comes into it that he may become the suffering saviour. And we who have received him are brought to God. Brought to God. Oh yes, you'll be all right in heaven if you're brought to God, but you won't be if you're not. Brought to God. Now, let me have a word to my Christian friends and brethren. Look, let us ever remember this is the great reality that we know and enjoy. We're not brought, don't they, brought to the church or brought to the meeting or brought to intercourse with other Christians. All those are quite subsidiary matters. They flow out of this great matter that is stated so simply in these words. I could say, my dear brother or sister in Christ, what a wonderful meeting. We, who have been converted, who have received the Lord Jesus Christ as the saviour and the new master and lord of our lives, we are brought to God. We are put into touch with God in a way we never could have been. As a matter of fact, we Christians know when we read the scriptures, we are far more really brought into touch with God through the sacrifice of Christ and the consequent coming of the Holy Spirit of God. When risen from the dead, he went up into heaven and the Holy Ghost descended. We are more really brought into touch with God than ever Adam was in touch with him when in innocence he walked in the garden of Eden. For a little time, I don't know how long, he was in touch with God in the cool of the evening, so it puts it. The Lord in some form, I don't know, we are not told, therefore I don't speculate. He appeared and Adam could speak to God, but he was in touch with God. Alas, sin came in, lawlessness, he bruised the creator, of course over a small matter. The devil isn't a fool. He never suggested that Adam should take some great gigantic step, some accrued thing, no, no, no. When the train come out of Basingstoke and it's going, where is it going? Is it going on to Salisbury or is it going to Winchester and Southampton? Well, all I know is whichever it's going, it will take its departure from the other line, take a mighty smashing jump of a hundred yards. Oh, dear me, no. It will slip off as simply as possible over the rail brought down, I don't think to a razor edge, but to a very fine edge. Of course, the devil didn't say, now Adam looks hungry, defies the creator, no, no, no. He said, look, they get slip off, it will be just as effective. And poor Adam slipped off on the road of sin, and we are all on the road of sin by nature. And now look, brought to God, brought to God. I can remind you, my dear Christian friends, we are brought to God in a new relationship. We are made children of God. We are endowed with a new spirit, because we have in dwelling the spirit of God. We have with all of us fresh prospects. When life ends, or when, as we Christians expect, and we hope not, far ahead lies the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we pass into that glorified condition that is predicted, we shall be there as those who are in relationship with God and who know God. Look, I'll tell you what this says to me, and I hope it says it to you, my dear. Hello, Christian. Look, we must cultivate the knowledge of God while we are here. How can you do it? Somebody may say, well, you see, you can pray to God in a way that a person utterly unconverted, they may call out in an agony of mind, oh God, something or other, but no, they don't know God. You and I do, Christian. Let us cultivate the habit of intercourse with God. If I may venture to tell you, one of my exercises is just that, to continually press it in upon me for myself personally. Oh, how easy to get, and there are, though I'm older, good many things pressing in upon me even at the present moment, and to shut out those moments of quietness where one can talk and speak humbly in the presence of God, or read the holy book in which God speaks to me, in which, instructed by the Spirit of God, because we have the Spirit of God, we may get God's mind concerning us. Yes, we Christians have been brought to God. Well, my dear friends, then let us cultivate that. If you want to see, and I'm sure we all, we Christians do, some residing, wrought, even in our day, in this land of ours, let us Christians see to it that we maintain contact, spiritual contact with God himself, made known to us in Christ, even as we pass through this world. We have been brought to God. The sin that separated us from God, having been dealt with sacrificially as a matter of judgment in the great atoning death of our Savior. Yes, I should say to all of you, my friends, you may know the piece, the rest of being able to say, sinner? Yes, I have been a sinner. I'm not going to attempt to defend myself as before God. The more I know of God, the more conscious I am, little things that I might have overlooked, even in my early Christian days, I strike me now as not being according to God. Yes, I'm a sinner right now, but the judicial question, the question of my sins as a matter of judgment in the presence of Almighty God, it is settled by the all-efficacious sacrifice of Christ. He was delivered, I can say, and you Christians, oh, you can say it too, can't you? He was delivered, you say, from my offense. He was raised again from my justification, and therefore, in consequence of that, justified, cleared from all the guilt and condemnation of sin by his sacrifice, I have peace with God. What a wonderful thing that is. Of all of you, my hearers here this evening got that peace, that settlement of this great question, so that no longer need it be said of you that your sins are separated you from God. No, they've been dealt with in the sacrifice of Christ. They have been atoned for in the offering of himself when he suffered for our sins, and we stand cleared and at peace, knowing God's favor, I'm thinking still of that first verse of Romans 5, the grace or favor in which we stand, you Christians, and we can rejoice in hope of the glory of God. We have a nature now which will suit that glory when we enter it, and the glory will suit us, but if we were unconverted and living the life of sin in the world, the glory would condemn us, and we should be utterly miserable in its presence. Now, I feel I have pretty well given you the simple message that seems to be laid upon my heart. It began with the desire, oh God, not only Israel, but all of us, look at the poor world, oh God, that the poor world can only be saved from all its troubles, yes, the Lord would say, remember, there'll be no salvation from trouble until there's a settlement of sin. Sin separates from God, that must be dealt with, that is the root of all the trouble. And the blessed Lord Jesus came into the world that he might save his people, those who received him in the simplicity of faith, to whom he is Lord and Master, that he might save his people from their sins, and to that end he suffered for sin. When he died on the cross of Calvary, and he died there, that this awful wedge, and I venture to put it, this wedge of sin that has been driven in between us, sinful creature of God, might be removed, and that we who receive the gospel and are brought into peace with God, well, we are brought to God, and in that we can rejoin, and the more the world sees, my Christian friends, that we are a little bit different, and that we have been brought to God, and that we are walking in communion with God, and in the light of God, and under the power of the word of God, well, I'm going to say the better Christians we shall be. We are brought to God, let us see to it, my dear Christian friends, that we maintain spiritual contact with God, in prayer, and by his word, that his word governs our lives, that we live, not as the world does, but as under divine authority, guided by his word. That is the life that pleases God. That is the life which has some effect for God, as we pass through the world as it is at present. God granted every one of us may be brought into the wonderful privilege of knowing God. You are brought to God through the sacrificial work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I think we must have one more hymn before we close our meeting. The hymn I thought of is number, I think the number is 189. It's a short hymn of three verses, and look, I hope you're all going to sing this and mean it. This is what we Christians certainly mean. We say, thy work, not mine, O Christ, speaks gladness to this heart. It tells me all is done, it bids my fear depart. To whom say these? Who can alone for sin atone? Nor shall I sleep. 189. To whom say these? Who can alone for sin atone? Nor shall I sleep. Nor shall I sleep. Thy work, not mine, O Christ, can be done to this world. Thy work, not mine, O Christ, can be done to this world. To whom say these? Who can alone for sin atone? Nor shall I sleep. Thy work, not mine, O Christ, can be done to this world. To whom say these? Who can alone for sin atone? Nor shall I sleep. Nor shall I sleep. …