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Cedar Lake SDA Church

The Everlasting Gospel

Mark Howard

1. The Goodness of God

2. Another Gospel

3. The Lord Our Righteousness

4. Preparing the King’s Highway

5. Righteousness by Faith

6. And They Don’t Take American Express

7. Looking Unto Jesus

Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you today for the Holy Sabbath.

And Lord, not just any Sabbath, but a Sabbath where we have the emblems of reminder of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us so long ago.

And even now stands interceding for us by virtue of that sacrifice in the temple in heaven.

And we rejoice in that this morning and we just ask, Father, that the Spirit of God would enlighten our understanding to help us to sense a little bit more of the significance of the wonderful plan of salvation brought out through your son Jesus.

We ask and pray these things in his name.

And the Bible says here, When the hour had come, He, that is Jesus, sat down and the 12 apostles with him.

Then he said to them, with fervent desire, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God." Now, if you're looking at it in the New King James version, rather, what does the word fervent look like?

Should be italicized, it's a supplied word, and what it would say literally in the Greek is, with desire I have desired to do this.

And the point is that Jesus is heavily burdened in his heart.

He so is longing to have this time with his disciples because he wants to reveal something significant to them.

This is the last conversation he's going to have prior to the sacrifice on Calvary, and he wants to really communicate to them what is about to take place.

The problem is that they weren't ready to receive it.

Verse 24 says, Now there was also a what?

A dispute among them as to which of them should be considered the greatest.

And this posed a problem because it created a barrier where Jesus couldn't get through to communicate the truth they wanted to communicate.

This is the whole reason Jesus instituted what we call the ordinance of humility or the foot washing service.

This is why he assumed the role of a servant because he was trying to, in the words of Desire of Ages, bring them down from the stilts of human pride so that they would be open and ready to receive the gospel.

I want you to notice a statement from Desire of Ages, page 650.

It says, speaking of the ordinance of humility, this ordinance is Christ's appointed preparation for the sacramental service.

While pride, variance, and strife for supremacy are cherished, the heart cannot enter into fellowship with Christ.

That's not just then, that's now as well.

In other words, the gospel of Christ can be the greatest and is the greatest thing in the world, but there are things that will bar us from receiving the benefit of it.

3 of them listed here, pride, variance, and strife for supremacy, and that's where the disciples of Christ were.

We are not prepared to receive the communion of his body and his blood, therefore it was that Jesus appointed the memorial of his humiliation to be first observed.

That is, before the supper, we have the foot washing.

It's designed to help us to come to a sense of our need of Christ for salvation.

And so it was here with these early disciples.

There was a work of preparation that needed to be done.

Now, I tried to figure in the Everlasting Gospel series a message that would go in as Communion Sabbath and by nature of Communion Sabbath, it's gonna be a little abbreviated today, but there's a piece that I felt was essential that goes very well with this introduction from the Lord's Supper.

Because in the same way that there were things that barred them from receiving the gospel, there are things that may bar us from receiving the gospel.

The message today is entitled, Preparing the King's Highway.

And it's taken from that reading that we had in Isaiah.

Now you're gonna see that repeated in Luke chapter 3.

In Luke chapter 3, we're introduced to a man named John the Baptist who had a work of preparation to do.

Speaking of John, the Bible says, And he went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of what?

Repentance for the remission of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet saying, the voice of 1 crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill brought low, the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough ways smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." Now, what Isaiah is referring to, and now Luke is quoting from Isaiah, is the practice for the Eastern kings when they would go somewhere of sending forerunners to smooth out the road ahead.

And that included taking the literally the road ahead, the pavement, right?

Take the high places, they would knock them down.

The low places in the road, they would fill in.

If they needed to ford a river or build a bridge, they would do it.

So when the king and his entourage would come through, the road was ready and smoothed out.

Isaiah, in his prophecy of John the Baptist, uses that imagery to point to the work of John, only John's work was not a smoothing out of pavement, not a leveling out of pavement, but of people.

It points out our sin and let me ask you, how many have sinned?

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Now once we all come to terms with that, human pride kind of dissipates, doesn't it?

In other words, who's it, hey, look, I'm more important than this guy, right?

All of a sudden, we're all on the same page.

And so Isaiah uses that language to point to the work of John the Baptist, and that was his work of repentance.

That was what Jesus was trying to bring about as he went and washed the feet of his disciples.

And I want you to note that the message of repentance always accompanies the preaching of the gospel.

We talked before about how the law and the gospel go together.

The law brings conviction, should bring us to repentance.

It's found in the book Steps to Christ, page 34.

It says, even 1 wrong trait of character, 1 sinful desire persistently cherished, will eventually neutralize all the power of the gospel.

As powerful as the gospel is, if we cherish sin and refuse to repent, it will neutralize all the power that the gospel has.

And so the Lord sent John the Baptist to prepare the way with his message.

I want you to go to Luke chapter 5 because we're in the gospel loop.

And Jesus builds on this, the idea of how the repentance, the message of repentance works in connection with the gospel.

Here in Luke chapter 5 verse 31, The Bible says, Jesus answered and said to them, those who are what?

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

Now, most of us don't go call the doctor or go to the doctor when we feel good, Unless you're a hypochondriac.

But for most of us, we don't go to the doctor unless we feel sick.

It's not those who are well who have need of a physician.

And I kind of reversed the language there.

The righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Were there some righteous people that his message didn't apply to?

No, because the Bible says in Romans chapter 3, There was no unrighteous, no not 1.

In fact, when the rich young ruler came to him, he says, Oh, good teacher.

And Jesus said, There's only 1 who's good, and that is God.

Until a man sees his sinfulness, he has no need of Christ in his mind.

Back to Menu

Series

The Everlasting Gospel

4. Preparing the King’s Highway

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

God’s Last Message: Christ Our Righteousness

1h 17m

Loss

41m

I Met God

I Met God 9

40m

The Straight Testimony to Laodicea

54m

You’re Believing a Lie

24m

Who Then Can Be Saved?

46m

What is Righteousness?

50m

Practical Truth for Perilous Times

3. When Righteousness Becomes Sin

1h 2m

The Curse and the Cure

44m

Overcoming Addictions (Evening Meetings)

Overcoming the Greatest Temptation

43m

Righteousness by Faith

Spiritual Warfare and Righteousness by Faith

1h 4m

Christ our Righteousness

Christ our Righteousness - Part 3

1h 5m

Sound Doctrine