Sinclair Ferguson: The Substitutionary Atonement of Christ

well what a great morning we've had already in God's Word and treating the treasure earlier to listen to Johnny and rather unusual experience for me to be singing alongside RC and CJ who are the only two friends I have in the world neither of whom actually has a first name I hope as we continue on today which is an arduous day for us most of us unlike those Ephesians who listen to Paul for five hours a day every day of the week apparently we're not used to having five hours of Bible exposition but at the end I I really do trust that we will all be able to say that it did as much good and God's Word was at work among us we're coming to our next theme in our series at this conference the title is the substitutionary atonement of Christ and I'm going to ask you to turn back to the passage that dr. MacArthur mentioned last evening the prophecy of Isaiah or as I shall say for the rest of this address Isaiah it's the same prophet and I want to ask you to turn to chapter 52 and verse 13 and keep your Bibles open there this great and and most glorious of Old Testament chapters Isaiah is speaking here as the mouthpiece of God and clearly we recognize of whom the Prophet speaks behold my servant shall act wisely he shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted as many were astonished at you his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his forum beyond that of the children of mankind so shall he sprinkle many nations Kings shall shut their mouths Vic of him for that which has not been told them they see and that which they have not heard they understand who has believed what they heard from us and whom as the arm of the Lord been revealed for he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground he had no farm or Majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him he was despised and rejected by men a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows yet we esteemed him stricken smitten by God and afflicted but he was wounded for our transgressions he was crushed for our iniquities upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with His stripes we are healed all we like sheep have gone astray we have turned every one to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all he was oppressed and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before it's Shearer's is silent so he opened not his mouth by oppression and judgment he was taken away and as for his generation who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living stricken for the transgression of my people and they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him he has put him to grief when his soul makes an offering for sin he shall see his offspring he shall prolong his days the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied by his knowledge shall the righteous one my servant make many to be accounted righteous and he shall bear their iniquities therefore I will divide him a portion with the many and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors our Heavenly Father you are in your holy temple and our prayer is that all the earth will be silenced and silent before you we pray for ourselves that you will unstop our ears that you will melt our hearts by renewing our minds by your truth that as we come to you like Greeks of old and say we would see Jesus we pray but through his word he will manifest himself to those who love him and trust him and to those who as yet do not know him he will for them make a new appearing and thus we pray for his great name's sake amen I attended a school where the one obligatory subject was religious education it was part of the law of the land the content of that religious education varied in my case it was largely memorization of Scripture although I was very far from being a Christian little boy and so part and parcel of school life for me all through my elementary school and high school days was the public reading of scripture I have never forgotten the occasion in the role of students who were prescribed for the reading of the scriptures when one of my closest friends at school who was I think trying to be a Christian but certainly wasn't yet a Christian was assigned this passage for reading in our school assembly and I remember the cringing feeling I had sitting in the back of the assembly when my close friend announced that the reading this morning is taken from the Gospel according to Isaiah the Gospel according to Isaiah I'd been a Christian believer for a couple of years and two thoughts almost instantaneously came into my mind one was his name was Hugh I thought oh Hugh how could you possibly do this in public and the other thought was what you have just said is far truer than you ever realized because this is in a very profound way the Gospel according to Isaiah and if you're particularly familiar with the writings of the Apostle Paul I think you more and more will have become conscious that this whole section of Isaiah from Isaiah 40 onwards made a a powerful impression on the whole thinking about the Apostle Paul as to what the gospel is and how the gospel works and how the gospel is the saving righteousness of God but of course this passage not only makes an impression on the Apostle Paul this passage this passage next interesting lay to the 110th psalm is the most cited passage in the whole of the new testament scriptures and far beyond 110 is the passage in the Old Testament to which there are more allusions in the New Testament than any other passage and one cannot read either the epistles of the Gospels without appreciating here for the Apostles having land at the feet of the Lord Jesus was the passage to which the Lord Jesus must have turned again and again and again and again was he asking the teachers in the Jerusalem Temple as a twelve-year-old boy who is this of whom the Prophet speaks so that I take it from his earliest years the Lord his father was impressing upon him ever more profoundly the shape and pattern of the ministry to which he was being called as our Lord and Savior and so as he rises from the dead and walks on the Emmaus Road he he chastises his dear followers by saying haven't you understand the scriptures that have taught us that that the Son of man must suffer many things and then enter into his glory you will be familiar unsure with the context of the whole second half of the prophecy of Isaiah from chapter 40 onwards Isaiah is looking forwards into the future when the people of God will be exiled in Babylon when the nation as one commentator says will have been disemboweled and their hopes desecrated and the awful command of God that if his people returned from serving him they would be sent in to the far country the very words that Jesus would later use in the parable of the two sons is language that's drawn from God's Deuteronomic law disobey me and we'll go into the far country and now as Isaiah looks forward in history to their fate and destiny in the far country he sees that their greatest need is for God to bring about a new Exodus a second Exodus and he sees in a marvelous way in chapter 45 coming over the horizon of history the great figure of Cyrus described pagan though he is as especially anointed by God to break down the barriers to God's people returning to the promised land and returning to his promised blessings in Jerusalem and Isaiah gives to the people this glorious offer of a return from exile in their bondage in Babylon and yet simultaneously Isaiah recognizes that that exile in Babylon is neither the darkest exile nor is at the deepest bondage and that what God's people need is not simply a return from Babylon what God's people need is salvation from their sin and guilt from the Dominion of darkness and bondage to Satan and so even as Cyrus is appearing over the horizon in Isaiah chapter 45 already that has begun in chapter 42 to appear over the horizon a shadowy figure described by God as my servant and in a series of poems or songs Isaiah is given an enriched revelation into the into the calling of this servant into the preparation of this servant into the character of this servant until eventually in this the fourth of the servant songs beginning in chapter 52 and going right through chapter 53 he is given this illumination into the suffering of the servant of God and like so much that we find in the scriptures when often when we read the scriptures either a narrative or a psalm a poem unlike some of the things that we find in our Western literature and in our Western poetry very often the place to look in the Hebrew Scriptures for the key to the whole is not just at the end but at the center and if you're using almost any modern translation of the Old Testament Scriptures you'll notice that this passage from the end of 52 to the end of 53 is broken up into five stanzas and it is the third the central of those stanzas that takes us to the very heart of God's revelation to Isaiah and as a matter of fact to the very heart of the gospel and we will get there in a moment but first of all notice the shape of this poem of this song do you notice how it begins in Chapter 52 verses 13 to 15 with the exultation of the servant and then it ends in chapter 53 in verses 10 through 12 with again the exultation of the servant and the shape of this song is what they used to teach us at least in schools in in the old mathematics the shape of this song is in the shape of a a graph a parabola which begins in exultation and goes down to the depths and then brings us up again to a glorious exultation if if you're at all familiar with Philippians chapter 2 you're real that this is the same parabolic shade he is in the farm of God counting equality with God is not something that he grasps but he makes himself of no reputation and he comes down and down and down and once he has come to the place where he has emptied himself and become obedient even to the death of the Cross God highly exalted him and gives him the name of it is above every name it's the very shape of what the Lord Jesus did in the upper room in John chapter 13 newing he had come from God and that he was going to God he laid aside his garments girded himself with the servants towel bowed down further and washed his disciples feet and then he took his place again at the head of the table and asked his disciples if they had any inkling whatsoever as to what it was he had just done he could as easily have said to them don't you yet understand the forth of the servant songs that portrays the suffering and the glory of the Messiah who is to come and so in this marvelous passage we have a kind of tapestry of the suffering servant unlike many tapestries that are there there is side action going on around in order to help us to understand what it is that is really going on in the center at the very heart of the gospel the message of the suffering servant so let's look together for a few minutes of this marvelous song about the suffering servant stanza number one in Chapter 52 verse 13 - worse 15 this is a stanza that explains to us in a very moving way that the serve triumph is wholly unexpected the servants triumph is wholly unexpected Luke says God look at him look at my servant as he acts wisely he shall be high and lifted up and exalted and yet this wisdom is not the wisdom of this world and this exultation is going to come in the strangest and most unexpected of ways because behold his triumph is unexpected because of the nature of his appearance he is to be notice the language so marred beyond human semblance this is Isaiah's sense but the one who is to come in order to repair the disfigured image of God is going to become disfigured himself so that marvelous commentator Old Testament scholar Alec Mattia says what Isaiah encourages us to say is not is not the question is this he but as we gaze upon the suffering servant to us the question is this human this is what we mean when we say that he descended into hell that he was as a while to repair our humanity in the process of virtually becoming unmanned deserted by God and so it is completely astonishing for Isaiah that this one who is so marred should at the same time have such an extraordinary effect on the nation's look at what he says he will sprinkle many nations Kings shall shut their mouths because of him the language of sprinkle there incidentally as the language of the Levitical law chord it's the language of the sprinkling of the blood of sacrifice that brings cleansing and forgiveness and here is this picture of the suffering servant disfigured beyond all ordinary humanity and yet the paradox the as yet unresolved paradox of his ministry is that one day this one will sprinkle not simply the Jews but will sprinkle the nation's and suddenly no one who knew his Bible as well as Isaiah knew his Bible would miss the connection between that statement and the great essence of the Abrahamic covenant promise in your seed will all the nations of the earth be blessed and the promise of the second Sam when the father says to his son ask of me and I will give you the nation's for your inheritance but you see it's the tension of the situation miss the tension of the situation and we probably miss the wonder of the grace of God in the gospel if we don't feel that there is so much in the gospel that ought not to be for sinners then we scarcely begin to taste the wonder of God's grace to us and Jesus Christ here is one who gains worldwide triumph by being marred beyond human semblance so the servant will triumph but his triumph will be totally unexpected and so Isaiah now in the next stanza the next few verses of his poem it picks up that notion that the servant is going to suffer so grievously and he begins to focus attention now not so much on the way the servants triumph is unexpected but the way in which the servants humiliation is described a younger generation has taught me the word prequel I think it is a relatively new word at least in the Oxford English Dictionary maybe also in Webster's what is the prequel what we're used to the sequel the prequel is something that you're given afterwards that helps to explain something that you will give an earlier and that's what these following verses are there really the prequel to help us understand and tease out - to pull a strand out of this tapestry and see where it gets its connections and so he describes the servants humiliation so beautifully he describes him so poignant Lee he was growing up before the Lord like a young plant and then these words like a root out of a dry ground that must have meant something very special to Isaiah remember at the end of his call this is a Ligonier conference everyone here remembers the end of his call in Isaiah chapter 6 when everything is being demolished under the judgment of God and yet God says there will be a stump that will remain and then in Isaiah 11 he looks forward to the one who'll be anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit and he says about him there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots that shall bear fruit and and now the Lord is showing to him that this one who would bring hope this one who would be full of the spirit the man of the Holy Spirit who would exercise justice and righteousness who would be marked by perfect holiness there was no beauty in him by nature that we should recognize him or be drawn to him he was the son of David but look at David's house a carpenter and a young maiden and a baby born in a cave an outhouse in Bethlehem this is where the Royal line of David has ended this is dry ground this baby is a tiny chute and you and I would pass his crying as we walk past the cave we would pass him by in the street and think there was nothing unusual attractive extraordinary about him and then as he grew from those inauspicious origins he would experience an ongoing rejection he would be despised I wonder if you've ever been despised I wonder if you've ever had the humiliation of losing your reputation unjustly I remember one occasion coming home to my wife and I sent to her about a situation I said you know the only thing I can lose here is my reputation it's the only thing I can lose so let's go forward I was a grown man and I had no idea whatsoever how appallingly painful it is to lose your reputation and he made himself of no reputation and the disposition of men and women towards him was he was despised and rejected by men how could he be Messiah when he shared our griefs and was a man of sorrows and we we hid our faces from him and esteemed him not isn't this the reason why our Lord Jesus prays in John 17:20 for father father these have been with me and they have seen me in my humiliation my deepest longing for them is that they may see me in my glory he was despised and man esteemed him not and of course all this is really setting us up this is this is the revelation of God that's that's coming to Isaiah 2 to make him say Lord tell me more bring me to the center of the tapestry so that I can I can begin to work out because Isaiah you remember how Peter says this about all the prophets they wrote these things down and then they studied them themselves and they were scratching their heads and saying who was I speaking about when I said this what did God mean here and so he comes you notice in verses 4 through 6 to the servant suffering being explained the servants exaltation is unexpected the servants humiliation as described the servant suffering is explained and he brings us now to the great paradox but surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows and yet we esteemed him stricken smitten by God and afflicted you see is in the position as Isaiah as he gets this word from God he's in the position he's looking forward actually to to the confession of believers in the New Testament day the first Christians looking back on this and and saying we never puzzled it out he made it so clear to us but we never puzzled it out we can't understand how he could be one who would bear our griefs and carry our sorrows who went about doing good but then was treated as a derelict was beaten and chastised and smitten and afflicted well of course that eyes were blind until the Lord Jesus opened their eyes to just to put things together that faith should have been able to see that what was happening to him was that he was becoming a curse for us but the blessing promised to Abraham might flow through his cross and reach the nation's but you notice how how Isaiah Thomas says now come now camp on this for a little while steal yourself to look into the heart of the Cross where he was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities and chastised to bring us peace and beaten in order that we might be healed I don't know if they say it any longer but they used to say that every kind of wound known to medical science could be found on the body of the dying Lord Jesus Christ he was wounded but not only wounded that was X down or really he was crushed he was crushed it's not quite the same language here but I do still think there's an echo of what the Lord had promised in genesis 3:15 here don't you that as the Lord Jesus would crush the head of the serpent his own heel would be crushed and he was being inwardly crushed and then he's portrayed as one who is actually suffering for for our peace a chastisement now that's interesting because basically basically is family language punishment is legal language chastisement is family language and at at the same time here's one with his stripes we are healed who is judiciously beaten Jew notice how how perfect this statement is because as it speaks about the sufferings of Christ it moves from from the relatively external to the internal Jesus is wounded Jesus is crushed Jesus is chastised within the context of his family Jesus is beaten he is legally punished and just as there seems to be a kind of increasing intensity and the description of the sufferings of Chryslers there's an increasing intensity in the description of Quietus that he suffers he's he's wounded for transgressions for for breaking the law of God but then what he is bruised for is iniquity he is inwardly crushed for the inner perversion of my heart and because of my because of my dispise there is no peace Seth my god for the wicked he undergoes chastisement in the family to bring me into the family so that as he is beaten with rods and a legal judgment my whole being my sickness may be relieved and I may be set free and in this Isaiah says the Lord Yahweh Jehovah was present we like sheep have gone astray turned everyone to his own way but the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all let me pause here just to underline a a series of things you and I need to grasp that Isaiah is teaching us about the nature of Christ's atonement number one this atonement involves the imputation of our sins to the Lord Jesus and the imputation of the Lord Jesus righteousness to us the Lord lays upon the Lord Jesus he is wounded for our transgressions he is bruised for our iniquities he takes what is ours and it's counted to him and when he goes to the cross as one who knew no sin he goes to the cross as one who is there going to be made sin he is going to bear our sins on his own body to the tree as Simon Peter says and yet marvelously when he makes his soul an offering for sin by his knowledge verse 11 the righteous one my servant will make many not just to be accounted innocent you understand there is a difference between the gospel and what happens in an ordinary law court unless that law court happens to be in Scotland where there are three verdicts that can be given you're either going to receive a guilty verdict or a not guilty verdict don't transfer that to the gospel as though that's all the gospel gives you now what the gospel gives you is this that your sins are imputed to the Lord Jesus Christ he's wounded for transgressions that are ours and iniquities that are ours and a dis peace that is ours and a sickness that is ours and it becomes his and he takes it he takes all the judgment against my sin takes all the judgment of his holy father against the sin of all of his people but when you come to faith in Jesus Christ you not just pronounce not guilty as thought to say you're free now start again try again know by his righteous knowledge perhaps by the knowledge of his righteousness he will account many to be righteous by his righteousness his life of obedience his obedience to the death of the Cross what's so important for us to understand that what Jesus is doing throughout the whole course of his life is obeying his father in our place not just that he may then be qualified to be the perfect sacrifice who's able to bear the judgment of his father against our sin but in order that when we come to faith in Jesus Christ the righteous one not only do we understand that our sins have been imputed to him but we understand that his perfect righteousness is counted as ours as we trust in him I love to say and I love to think and I love to say it again that you and I can stand before the judgment seat of an infinitely holy God as righteous as the Lord Jesus Christ because the only righteousness you have to stand before that throne is his righteousness isn't that glorious and this is what he's saying he's saying look closely to see the glory of this gospel there is imputation here second there is substitution here in my place condemned he stood wounded for my transgressions bruised for my iniquities in my place condemned he stood and sealed my pardon with his blood hallelujah what a savior yes now note he is our representative Jesus is our representative this may not mean much to some of you but it's a very important thing to see he is our representative he represents us before the father but he's not just a representative your representative in Congress if you're privileged to have taxation and representation which some of us aren't I'm not complaining about it but it's true he represents you there he doesn't substitute for you he doesn't come along when you're in trouble and take your place he may serve for you but he doesn't stand in your place as a substitute and this suffering servant stands in our place as a substitute so that a great exchange takes place in order that I might stand where he now stands he comes and stands where I ought to stand and takes my place you know it's just possible that Barabbas the Bandit that his first name was Jesus you know that's some of you from the textual traditions of the New Testament but what the people were being offered was Jesus the Son of God or Jesus Barabbas jesus the son of the Father or jesus the son of the Father the Bandit my dear friends Barabbas would never in the rest of his life have said you know but Jesus came and represented me he would have said he came and he took my place I had until recently apart from our joint glorious faith one thing in common with Johnny Erickson tada and she let me down she watched the Titanic movie I've never seen the Titanic movie but I've a friend a dear friend who was minister of a church in Glasgow called the Harper Memorial Baptist Church and the reason the church has that name is because the memorial to John Harper was a memorial to their minister who sailed on the Titanic sailed on the Titanic and if I remember rightly he gave someone who was not a Christian his place on the boy that's not merely representation that's substitution that's why in the Garden of Gethsemane he he agonizes as he does thirdly it's imputation it's substitution thirdly it's penalty notice the language that's used here as as is this the Jewish people looking back who have come to faith beginning to understand what Christ has done all we like sheep have gone astray we have turned every one to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all John Brown the great old Scottish writer thought that the picture here was of the sheep going astray and as they went astray they were in danger of an awful death at the hands of and and of course the shepherd would come and he would he would put himself before the sheep the reason you know the shepherd is a good shepherd is because he lay down his life for the Sheep and you remember how that seems to be the significance of the fulfillment of Zechariah prophecy when the when the fountain is opened for sin and uncleanness how will that take place Zachariah asks and the answer the Lord gives him is I will smite the Shepherd and the sheep will be scattered and the Shepherd comes and he dies on the cross a violent death for death that is a penalty for sin general Vanneman hyams great him great is the gospel of our glorious God where mercy met the anger of God's rod a penalty was paid and pardon bought that sinners lost at last might be brought to him all that the praises of my heart be thine for Christ has died that I may call him mine that I may sing with those who dwell above proclaiming Jesus king of love but there's a fourth thing here yes indeed marvelously through our Lord Jesus Christ there is imputation and substitution and penalty but but there's something else in this central picture in the tapestry and it's the hand of deity it's the hand of deity notice verse 6b the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all this is the heart of the cross my friends that he was there because it pleased the Lord to bruise him he has put him to grief you understand that this is why our Lord Jesus wrestled as he did in the Garden of Gethsemane not simply because of the physical suffering which must have been awful for him to contemplate but because what he was being called to do there was not an ounce of his holy humanity could ever desire he was being called saw to give himself to the judgment of God but he would for the very first time in that thirty-three-year-old humanity as the Godman cry out I am for sick why you see he could never want that that was really the last temptation of Christ wasn't it what devilish fiends appeared in the Garden of Gethsemane to taunt him that this is what his Heavenly Father wanted him to do now isn't that divine child abuse not when you read the prophecy of Isaiah and see how already in these suffering servant songs Jesus has been portrayed as one who delights to listen to the voice of his father and who goes willingly to the cross and to the suffering and knows that his father will sustain him even when he is unconscious of his father's presence and not when we remember that if David cried over his son or Absalom my son my son Absalom my son but in the very end being of God there would be a cry that would go out that would silence all heaven oh Jesus my son my son Jesus my son says Jesus now hold that thought if you can if you can bear to hold that fart hold this this Bible truth beside her Jesus says the reason my father loves me is because I lay down my life for the Sheep isn't that something that his father's heart bursts with the the awfulness of what his son was willing to go through at the same time the heavenly father as it were his heart was bursting with that almost contradictory divine emotion that said or my son died my son that you should obey me like this it's it almost undoes me that you should be so obedient to me as we get free alekos of it when we see our own children doing something marvelous because they love us and our hearts swell with pride it's not just heaven's love and heaven's justice that meat on the cross it's heavens pride and the son the angel says about peering over the balconies of heaven and amazement of what the Sun is doing and casting us aware a side glance if they dare to the father to say what is he going through as he watches his son so perfectly obedient even to the death of the cross don't you think the heavenly father on that occasion was able to sing my Jesus I love thee if ever I loved thee my Jesus tis now thou art mine while verses seven through nine the servants triumph is unexpected the servants humiliation is described the servant suffering is explained the servants obedience is underlined you notice that he was oppressed and afflicted yet he opened not his mouth don't say anything his father had said take it all and like a lamb that's led to the slaughter like a sheep that before it's Shearer's is silent so he opened not his mouth isn't one of the marvelous things that we find I think particularly in Luke's Gospel and Luke 23 there are seven occasions in Luke chapter 23 when those individuals most intimately involved in the crucifixion of our dear Lord Jesus seven times they declare he is absolutely innocent of any of these crimes with which he is being charged and you know what these crimes were the crime of blasphemy but he made himself equal to God the crime of treason that he proclaimed himself to be a king the very crimes of which you and I are most guilty before the judgment seat of God blasphemy but we've made ourselves in a thousand ways the center of the world and treason that we have said we will not have you to rule over eyes and in silence he takes our place in obedience he bears our judgment he became obedient to death even death on a cross I notice you're very good at this what's the next word therefore therefore there is got to be other four and that's in verses 10 through 12 isn't it the servants rightful humiliation leads to his glorious exaltation he is rightfully humiliated because he takes our place he is wrongly executed because he is innocent of any of these crimes and therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name that's above every name and we see it all here the name above every name oh it was the will of the Lord to crush him and put him to grief but he brings justification he divides his portion with the man he divides the spoil with the strong because he pours out his soul to death he bears the sin of many and he makes intercession for the transgressors it's this marvelous picture of Jesus being highly exalted highly exalted glorious raining pouring out his Holy Spirit as he is exalted at the right hand of the Father he goes to his father he goes to his father who has said to my son if you'll do this then you may ask of me and I will give you the nation's for your inheritance there they are Chadd france lebanon thailand belize Ecuador Bolivia Sudan los Honduras all the way along the nations for Christ's inheritance and he comes in glory and that great angel trained us as he has come near to the throne of God and the angels have cried out who is this King of glory and those angels accompanying him have responded to them it is the Lord the King of glory opened the gates and let him in and as he goes for the throne of his Heavenly Father his father says what is your wish and the son says dear father you said you promised ask of me and you would give me the nation's for my inheritance and they need us to send the Holy Spirit in order to accomplish that may I now send the Holy Spirit when there is Pentecost and there is the preaching of Peter and there is the martyrdom of Stephen there is the conversion of Saul and eventually there's you and the reason most of us are in this room this morning is because these words have come gloriously true two things to say number one there was a man from Africa one day he was traveling home he was reading actually reading this very passage and a Christian found him in the middle of the desert he was reading out loud it was in antiquity he was reading this passage out loud and the man who was a Christian sent to him do you understand what you're reading and he said how can I possibly understand this unless somebody explains it to me and you know the story the man was Philip the man who had Isaiah 53 was a was a treasurer a high official from Ethiopia perhaps the Sudan and Philip told him the good news about Jesus and the man came to faith that's all this has been this morning this is the good news about Jesus are you trusting him for the forgiveness of your sins the cleansing of your conscience bowing before him to be the lord of your life what a great thing it would be if a conference you did that and have another question for those of you who are already believers I can put it like this and the words of Hudson Taylor the founder of the great China Inland Mission if Jesus Christ be God and died for me is there anything too great for me to do for him our Heavenly Father we bow in reverence before our great Savior and King thank you that you've given us this promise and the gospel that we who have seen him in his humiliation even in our own day or one day see him in his exalted glory and we pray until that day dawns that we may trust him love him and serve him with all our being we ask this with the forgiveness of all of our sins and the assurance of our salvation in his great name you

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Length: 56min 32sec (3392 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 02 2015