-Transcript-
00:39 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:43 Welcome to KJV Cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here with you today. So excited to be here.
00:48 I thank you so much for tuning in today. Today we are looking at a wonderful topic in God’s Word and that’s the justice of God. And the justice of God can go both ways.
01:01 People may fear the justice of God and surely they will, those that are living out in the world, those that have rejected the Lord’s free gift of salvation, and others should be rejoicing in the justice of God. And that latter part that I mentioned, the justice of God being something to rejoice over, is what I want to focus on for the next little bit here.
01:31 Matthew 12:18. Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him and he shall showjudgment to the Gentiles. And this is speaking of Jesus, of course.
01:39 And I’m gonna read Matthew 12, what led up to that verse that Jesus would show judgment to the Gentiles, which if you know your Bible you know that that is a good thing. Matthew 12. And at that time Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the corn and His disciples were hungered and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat.
02:04 But when the Pharisees saw it they said unto him, Behold thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day. But he said unto them, Have you not read what David did when he was a hungered?
02:14 And they that were with him, how he entered into the house of God and did eat the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?
02:25 Or have you not read in the law how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? But I say unto you that in this place is one greater than the temple. But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.
02:44 For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day. And when he was departed thence he went into their synagogue. And behold there was a man which had his hand withered.
02:56 And they asked him again, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath days that they might accuse him? And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you that shall have one sheep?
03:08 And if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will ye not lay hold on it and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore is it lawful to do well on the Sabbath days?
03:25 Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched forth, and it was restored whole like as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and held a counsel against him, how they might destroy him.
03:34 But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence, and great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all. And they charged them that they should not make him known, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, and whom my soul is well-pleased. I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall show judgment to the Gentiles.
03:57 He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory. And in his name shall the Gentiles trust.
04:15 All right, so here in Matthew 12, I just read verses 1-21. We see something very interesting, and it deals actually really with the Holy Trinity if you think about it. The whole Holy Trinity is what I was gonna say.
04:28 That’s why I kind of rolled that whole. So the Holy Trinity or the whole Holy Trinity. But you know what I mean.
04:34 The three-in-one Godhead, Father God has a plan for mankind and for Gentiles. And Father God’s plan for Gentiles is to send Jesus, amen, to save them. And that is interesting because on the surface the plan was Jesus to be king of Israel, God’s chosen people, to be accepted of Israel.
04:55 But God knows what Israel is going to do. We understand through studying the Bible that God has foreknowledge. That’s why and that’s how God provides prophecy in His Word, which is the future history, what’s going to happen in the future, events that will happen in the future.
05:15 God provides that in his Word because God has foreknowledge. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. You don’t know what will happen tomorrow.
05:23 We could take a guess, and we might be right, we might be wrong, but we certainly don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. The weather man certainly doesn’t know the weather tomorrow. They can try and read those radars, but they don’t know.
05:34 None of us know, amen. But God knows. See, God has foreknowledge.
05:39 And so in His foreknowledge he knew that Christ would be rejected, and he knew that Christ would then provide a path of salvation for the Gentile people. And so if you think about this in light of the idea of justice, the justice of God is great and wonderful for those that accept Christ’s free gift of salvation. This is God’s choice.
06:03 And by the way, God not only has foreknowledge, amen, God has all power. So this is God’s choice, and God’s power is upon Christ. And God puts Christ as the judge of the Gentiles.
06:17 And yet He’s a servant, Philippians 2:7, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And so this service pleases the Father, does it not? It pleases the Father that Jesus didn’t come in on a flaming chariot. He wasn’t put in a massive castle.
06:39 He wasn’t given a sword and made into a war hero. Father God allowed Jesus to come into this world as a lowly servant. There was no room in the inn, Amen.
06:51 He was born in a manger, Amen. He came from a place, I think it was Nathanael said, Nazareth. Is there anything good that comes out of Nazareth? He came from a know-nothing small town, I’d like to say.
07:03 He didn’t have riches. He didn’t even have a home. Jesus mentions that foxes have holes and birds have nests, but he didn’t even have a place to lay his head, Amen.
07:14 He had to ask Peter to show him a penny, amen. Christ was as humble and lowly and relatable as there is. We can use that as an example in our lives.
07:27 This is our judge. This is where God’s justice has come from. This is our path to salvation, and God wrapped it up in a very humble, humble package.
07:39 And so when we think that we need to be exalted, when we want the best seats in the theater, amen, when we want the nicest of the nice things, we need to kind of check ourselves and say, you know what,
07:51 God gave us an example in Christ, and if our judge is this way, if our Lord and Master is this way, then how should we be? Because Christ said in his word, the servant is not greater than the master, Amen.
08:02 And so we must not try to achieve worldly riches and worldly fame. We should not be about vain things, because the word vain in the Bible, as I understand it, means improper use.
08:15 But going back to Matthew 12, there’s a lot of good stuff in here that I want to get to about God’s justice, God’s plan, versus what man understood. And if you look at how Matthew 12 starts, Jesus, on the Sabbath day, okay, which was the holy day, the day that the law said you aren’t to do any kind of work or anything, right?
08:40 There’s tons of laws about what not to do on the Sabbath day. On the Sabbath day, Jesus is walking through a cornfield with His disciples.
08:47 And think of times past, okay, they were hungry. You can’t go to the diner and let someone serve you. You can’t go to the Waffle House and just go ahead and sit down and let someone serve you back in Bible times.
09:05 You know, it was an agricultural time. And I have to imagine that walking through the cornfield, that was about as easy as it would get to go ahead and grab some food, because there’s the corn just hanging off the stalk. We live in an area there where we’ve got, an area here in Kings Mountain, we’ve got a lot of cornfields, Amen, and I see them.
09:24 And even driving at relatively high rates of speed, I can see the corn just hanging off there waiting to be plucked, amen. And I’m sure early in the morning and at evening time, the critters come out also seeing that same corn. And so, you know, it would be totally normal if you were hungry, walking through an area that had corn to go ahead and take one.
09:47 But on the Sabbath day, that would have been considered against the law. Verse two, But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day. But he said unto them, Have you not read what David did when he was hungered and they that were with him? And so we see here that there is a conflict with the Pharisees.
10:08 Who were the Pharisees? They were the Jewish people, Amen. They were the upper crust of the Jewish people. They were kind of like the lawyers or the experts in the law.
10:20 And because you have to understand in the Jewish times, in the temple, they wouldn’t have preachers like we have today in church. They would have experts, quote unquote, reading the scrolls. And they would just read the scrolls, right? And that’s how they had their service.
10:34 And the Pharisees were kind of the experts. And what they were doing is accusing Jesus and his disciples of breaking the law and saying, This guy’s calling himself God and here he is breaking the law or profaning the law, right?
10:48 And what Jesus immediately reminds them of is David, who clearly they would have had a lot of respect for. King David would have been someone that they looked up to as someone that was known as a mighty man of God, that David ate the showbread.
11:05 And David broke the law when David was hungry and he was on the run. He ate the bread that was supposed to be offered to God and it was okay. And then you have verse 4, He entered into the house of God and did eat the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests.
11:24 Verse 5, Or have you not read in the law how that on the Sabbath days the priests of the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? Verse 6, But I say unto you that in this place is one greater than the temple.
11:35 So here we have Jesus pointing out that man has not been able to keep the law and that great men of God and men of God have broken the law and that the law is impossible to keep. And then Jesus is letting them know this very important truth that he is greater than the temple, Amen, that he fulfills the law.
11:55 And that’s the idea of the justice of God, that God gave us the law to show us that we could never keep the law. If anyone were to ever think that they were good enough, that they didn’t need forgiveness of sin, right?
12:10 They could then just go look at the law and see how they had never been able to fulfill the law and they would realize that, oh I fall short, I need a Savior. God gave us the law to show us our sin nature, to show us our need.
12:24 And then what did God give us to fulfill that? Christ Jesus. God gave us Christ Jesus so that we could be saved because Christ fulfills the law and Christ overcame all of the obstacles that we have to being saved because we are with sin and we cannot depart from sin on our own.
12:43 So we needed someone to be our substitute, to pay the price for us, to have that offering, the sinless spotless Lamb.
12:51 And that’s why we’re saved by the blood of Christ because the Bible tells us that without the shedding of blood, there’s no remission of sin. And that Christ died on the cross at Calvary so that we could be saved. And then once we’re saved, this is what Christ is pointing out here, we’re no longer under the law, Amen. We’re no longer under the law.
13:07 Our works don’t save us, our works won’t redeem us, amen? And Christ did it all for us. And that is the justice of God. And there’s so much more to this that I’m gonna get to on the next episode, but for now I want you to think about this idea that Jesus Christ fulfilled the law and that we’re not under the law and that we should behold Christ
13:27 and love Christ and think on what he’s done for us and not try to earn our way into heaven or spread some kind of false gospel that deals with works or what a denomination says to do or anything else.
13:37 It’s by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. And there’s many examples of this throughout the Bible, but this is a great example, an example that anyone could really grasp a hold of when they see God’s chosen people accusing Christ, wanting to destroy Christ for saying that the truth that he is God and that he has overcome the law, that he has fulfilled the law, Amen.
14:03 And so it’s a wonderful truth here in the Scriptures. Again, I thank you so much for listening.
14:06 Tune in next time as we go deeper into this truth where we learn more about the love of God.
14:13 I thank you so much for listening. Take care, God bless, and Amen.