April 10 2008.

The Lord Jesus told Mary not to touch Him for He had not yet ascended to His Father.

John 20:17 "Jesus saith unto her [Mary Magdalene], Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God."

At His encounter with Mary the Lord Jesus was on the way to present His sacrifice in the Holy of Holies  -  in heaven itself, as the writer to the Hebrews says that He presented His precious blood in heaven.

Our Lord Jesus said to Mary,

"You go and tell my brethren." 

Will you notice dear reader that He said,

"I ascend to my Father and to your Father." 

The relationship in the Trinity of Father and Son is a different kind of relationship because the Son is not generated. 

God is the eternal Father of the eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

God becomes our Father when we trust the Lord Jesus as our Savior. 

At the time we trust Christ  we are born-again into the family of God, and God becomes our Father. 

That is a distinction that the Lord Jesus is making in this passage of Scripture.

Now after having presented His sacrifice, He appears to His disciples. 

Luke 24:39  "Behold My hands and My feet,  that it is I Myself:  handle Me, and see;  for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have." 

And He even ate fish there to demonstrate that He was flesh and bones.

Notice that it says flesh and bones, not flesh and blood, because He had presented His blood in heaven.

The Lord Jesus Christ was alive in a glorified body in which, apparently, life comes from something other than the blood.

The kind of body that you and I have is a body that is made alive because of the blood. 

God said,

Leviticus 17:11   "The life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you … to make an atonement for your souls"  

Blood was given as the sacrifice.

Romans 5:12   "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned."

We all, every single one of us,  belong to the family of Adam and in the family of Adam we are all related because of the fact that death has spread to all of us. 

God has a book of death, and we are all written in it.

But there is another book. 

It is the book of the generation of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

It is the Lamb’s Book of Life. 

The Book of Life is opposite from the book of death, but you get into it the same way you get into the first book. 

We get into Adam’s book by being born into the family of Adam. 

We get into the Lamb’s Book of Life by the new birth, by being born-again into the family of God.

That is why our Lord said to Nicodemus that he must be born-again:

John 3:3   "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born-again,  he cannot see the kingdom of God." 

We can only get our names into the Lambs Book of Life by our faith in Jesus Christ.

John 1:12   "By as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name."

There are some names of individual woman who are in the Lamb’s Book of Life and we see the story of salvation woven into the genealogy of the Lord Jesus found in the Gospel of Matthew.

They are 4 gentile women.

How did they get into the genealogy of Christ.

1)  Tamar.

Matthew 1:3 "Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar…."

We cannot read her story in Genesis 38 without coming to the conclusion that this woman got into the genealogy of Christ  for just one reason  -  she was a sinner. 

If she had not been a sinner, she would not have gotten into the genealogy of Christ.

Tamar had married two of the sons of Judah, and the Lord had destroyed them both because of their wickedness. Judah then promised her his third son, Shelah, when he was old enough to marry. But he did not keep his word, so Tamar took matters into her own hands:

She tricked her father-in-law and was clever enough to get proof that he was the father of her child:

Tamar was a sinner and she got into Christ’s genealogy on that basis.

And that dear reader is where God starts with all of us. We are only born-again when we come to God by faith Christ Jesus. The moment we trust Him for salvation we are born-again.

The Lord Jesus said, 

"I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance" (Luke 5:32). 

The whole human family comes under one category  -  sinners.

Have you been to the Lord Jesus today and confessed your sin to him? 

Has the Holy Spirit convicted you of the things that you have done that God knows all about?

God begins with a lost soul. 

He begins with a sinner. 

If you haven’t come that way  -  as a sinner  -  knowing you need a Saviour  -  you have not come at all. You may think you have and you may be all cleaned up on the outside but never forget  God sees the inside of all our hearts and we can never escape the eyes of God. We can fool ourselves and others but we can never fool God. 

Zechariah 4:10   "For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth."

God knows everything that is going on, and He is still overruling.

2)  Rahab.  

Matthew 1:5    "Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab…." 

Hebrews 11:31   "By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace."

Rahab got into the genealogy of Christ by faith. 

I suppose there is no one who would contend that Rahab got into the genealogy of Christ because of her character, because of who she was. 

When the spies came into the city of Jericho, the testimony of this woman was remarkable. Listen to her as she speaks now to the spies:

Joshua 2:9-10   "I know that the Lord has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us, 

and that all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed."

Rahab the prostitute heard about God and what He had done.

If you think that God was a little hasty in destroying the inhabitants of Jericho, consider the fact that He had given them forty years. How much longer should He have given them? The people of Israel marked time in the wilderness until the cup of iniquity of these people was full. 

God gave them an opportunity to turn to Him, He gave them forty years to turn back to Him. The same God is patient with our different nations today, and this has a lot of people fooled. They think He is not going to do anything because He is patiently waiting in the background. He is long-suffering and He is merciful, not willing that any should perish. 

But dear reader, God will judge. God does not like to judge  -  judgment is His strange work. 

God wants to save.

God saved Rahab the harlot,  and He would have saved anybody who would have turned to Him. 

"By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe." 

They had opportunity to believe but did not.

Rahab believed God and she was saved.

Rahab was a remarkable woman. 

In her heart she believed God.

And by faith God saved her.

Here are some definitions of faith. 

Real faith is not that which a man holds, but that which holds him. 

Real faith is not that which a man assents to, but that which he submits to. 

There are a great many people today who only nod their heads and say, "Yes, I’m a Christian." dear reader, that is not saving faith. 

Saving faith is when we believe God and we submit to Him.

Real faith is not an object of worship, but an impulse of life.

Spurgeon said, 

"It is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee; it is Christ. It is not even thy faith in Christ, though that be the instrument; it is Christ’s blood and merit."

Titus 3:5   "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit."

Man is justified by faith, not by works, not by character, not by anything else. The only thing we have to hold out to God is the weak hand of faith. Then He does all the rest.

Here we have this woman Rahab. She had no claim on God. But she got into the genealogy of Christ because she believed God. She was saved on that basis and that alone, and we are saved on that basis alone.

1 Corinthians 1:30   "But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." 

Christ Jesus is everything that we need. I wish I could get that over to you. He has been made unto us wisdom. He is our righteousness. He is our sanctification and our redemption. Whatever it is that we need for today, we will find it in Him entirely.

3)  Ruth.

Matthew 1:5   "Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab, Boaz begot Obed by Ruth…" 

Ruth was a Moabite, but she was a delightful person. 

The first two women we have considered were pretty sad. 

We cannot say much for Tamar and we cannot say much for Rahab; but we can say a whole lot for Ruth. 

Actually, she is not presented on the pages of Scripture as a sinner.

 Have you ever noticed that? 

She is a woman of beauty and a woman of character.

She could never have gotten into the genealogy of Christ because of her loveliness. There was a law that shut her out. The Mosaic Law said:

Deuteronomy 23:3   "An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the Lord; even to the tenth generation none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the Lord forever."

The Law condemned her. 

The Law always condemned the best people who have ever lived. 

The Law shut her out.

If we read the Book of Ruth, we find that this was the thing her mother-in-law had told her while still in the land of Moab, before they left for Bethlehem. Naomi had called together her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, and talked to them and told them in effect, that they should rather go back home to their parents homes because the people of Moab would ostracize them because they were Moabites? 

The Mosaic Law shuts them out. 

They could never be accepted among the people of Israel.

They would have to live in perpetual poverty, for Naomi had lost everything. And they would have to accept perpetual widowhood, because none of the Israelite men  would risk marrying a Moabite.

Orpah  went back to her home.

But Ruth went with Naomi. She made a conscious  decision that Naomi's God would be her God also.

She was willing to pay the price.

And she went back to Bethlehem.

One day Boaz came into the field and saw her gleaning. He saw something special in Ruth at once and he fell in love with her. But because of what her mother-in-law had said, Ruth was startled to find that someone was interested in her, and her question was:

Ruth 2:10   ""Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner."

Boaz of course told her,

Ruth 2:11   ""It has been fully reported to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people whom you did not know." 

God has made a way for us to come to him and to be a part of His new creation by giving for us His only begotten Son to die on the cross. I an part of His new creation because of grace. Marvelous, infinite, amazing grace and you also can be born-again right now because of the amazing,  marvelous,  infinite grace of God.

Will you trust Christ to be your Saviour?

Why not trust Him now?

Grace is love in action. 

That is what grace is.

We can talk about loving, and that’s all it can be, just talk.

I remember the old story about the young man who wrote his girl a letter. He wanted to be poetic, and he was! He wrote, "I would swim the widest ocean for you. I’d climb the highest mountain for you. I’d crawl across the burning sands of the desert for you, and I would trudge through the snowstorm neck-deep for you." And then he put a little P.S. at the end of the letter: "If it doesn’t rain next Wednesday night, I’ll be over to see you." May I say to you, friend, there’s a lot of talk about loving today, but not very much of it is being demonstrated.

Somebody loved Ruth. Somebody loved her so much that he was willing to risk everything for her. And he did. Boaz put his mantle of protection around her. He put his arm of love around her and brought her as his wife into the congregation of the Lord. 

God gave His Son to die for us, and the Lord Jesus came willingly. This was on the human plane so that we could understand  something of His great love for us.

Free from the law, O happy condition!
Jesus hath bled, and there is remission;
Cursed by the law and bruised by the fall,
Grace hath redeemed us once for all.

Once for all— O sinner receive it!
Once for all— O brother believe it!
Cling to the cross, the burden will fall;
Christ hath redeemed us once for all.

Now are we free— there's no condemnation;
Jesus provides a perfect salvation;
"Come unto Me," O hear His sweet call,
Come, and He saves us once for all.

Children of God, O glorious calling!
Surely His grace will keep us from falling;
Passing from death to life at His call,
Blessed salvation once for all.

Words:    P.P. Bliss.

Thanks: SermonAudio.com

Amen!

4)  Bathsheba.

Matthew 1:6   "And Jesse begot David the king. David the king begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah."

Actually, Bathsheba’s name is not given. I think that the Spirit of God, in wonderful reticence, omitted her name because the sin is not hers. It is David’s sin. Yet he happens to be the man of whom God says, "He is a man after My own heart." How can that be, since God is a holy God? This account concerning Bathsheba reveals that we can have the assurance of salvation.

David never lost his salvation. He said in great confession, 

"Restore to me the joy of Your salvation" (Psalm 51:12a). 

He had lost his joy,

but not his salvation.

Now look at it for just a moment. This man committed an awful sin (the record is in 2 Samuel, chapter 11).

Can he get by with it?

The king of Babylon could have gotten by with it, and did; the pharaoh of Egypt got by with it; the Caesars of Rome got by with it; and Hollywood and TV stars are getting by with it. 

But David could not get by sin.

Why?

Because he was God’s man. 

That dear reader is the difference between the sin of a believer and the sin of an unbeliever. 

If you are a child of God and you commit sin, you will not get by with it. 

The unbeliever will get their beating from the devil.

God takes care of His own children. He disciplines His own children.

After David had sinned, he sat back on his throne and looked around, thinking, I wonder if anybody knows? 

In his confession he tells us:

Psalm 32:3-4   "When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was turned into the drought of summer."

David sure got into the pigpen, 

but he did not stay there. 

Oh, he sure was disturbed! 

And he looked around, wondering if anybody knew.

A lot of Christians are like that.

If you are a child of God you have to sooner or later  talk to somebody about your sin. Sin is a very heavy burden. It will give us a hernia.

And Nathan the prophet stepped up with a little story to tell the king. 

It went something like this:

"There happens to be two men in your kingdom that I’d like to tell you about. One has flocks and flocks of sheep and herds and herds of cattle. Living next door to him is a poor man who had only one little ewe lamb. A visitor came to this rich man and, in order to prepare a meal for his guest, the rich man killed that little ewe lamb. He had all these other sheep of his own, but he killed his poor neighbor’s little pet lamb."

David rose up from his throne in anger.

Isn't it  interesting how easy it is for us to see the sin in other people’s lives.

And he said,

"The man who has done this thing shall surely die!

And he shall restore this lamb fourfold."

Nathan is truly the bravest man in the Bible. He said,

"You are the man!"

David could have been very pious.

"Me?

Why, I would never do a thing like that.

Take this man Nathan out and execute him!"

That would have ended it.

But David is God’s man.

He has been suffering under the burden of unconfessed sin. His bones have been burning within him! He acknowledged his sin, and he went to God and he made his confession:

"I have sinned against the Lord." Then God says, "David, because you did this thing, you are causing the unbeliever, the heathen, to blaspheme Me."

And after more than 3,000 years, they still blaspheme God because of David’s sin.

We can truly  thank God that He did not give David up. David longed to come back to God and be in fellowship with Him. Reading his psalms convinces me that no one loved God more than David did. And God didn’t throw him over. God received him. But God took him to the woodshed, and He never removed the lash from his back. Tragedy came. That first little one born of Bathsheba died. Later, one of his daughters was ruined; a son was guilty. Another son  -  the one he loved above all else, whom he had spoiled, the one David wanted to succeed him on the throne  -  this boy Absalom raised an insurrection against him.

God never took the leash from off David's back all the days of his life and David never complained because he knew his own sin and though God forgave him entirely he remained a very humble man.

Today we have men who are brazened in that they think they are forgiven yet they have never repented of their sin and they have no remorse for things they have committed that has caused so much grief and pain in their victims lives. They have no compassion for the ones they have ruined by their evil deeds.

It is a serious thing to have accepted Christ as Savior and then to live in sin, to nullify what you do by being a spiritual baby, never growing up, doing nothing in the world but building a big pile of wood, hay, and stubble.

Apostle Paul said the same thing in different language in

1 Corinthians 3:11 "For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."

Our salvation is a foundation.

We rest upon it, but we also build upon it.

We can build with six different kinds of materials  -  wood, hay, stubble, gold, silver, and precious stones.

Any time we as a born again child of God live like one of the Devil’s children, we are crucifying the Son of God  -  because He came to give you a perfect redemption and to enable you by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to be filled with the Spirit and live for Him.

May I persuaded you this day in Christ Jesus, if you are found guilty, not to remain babes in Christ, but rather to grow up, and face your sin head on and the people you have greatly wronged in this life.

Psalm 34:8   "O taste and see that the Lord is good  ... "

THIS PAGE UPDATED:  10-4-2008.