Appreciating the Sacrifice of Christ

[Music] so once when my family and i were short on cash you know in the early days you've got you know one income and four kids and you're you know doing your best to uh to make things work we're looking around for what to hawk you know something to kind of make up a a lack you know we've been through challenging times ourselves i've been through that moment of temptation when you're tempted to to pay your rent with the help of mr visa you know or mr discover card or you know some of those which doesn't help because if you didn't have the money to pay the rent then what makes you think you're going to have the money to pay it when it comes in but we've we've certainly been in those places i won't tell you the choices i made uh we can talk about that another time but this is one of those cases where we're looking for whatever we can and so we had had a large plastic bank it's from the ground to maybe be about right here it was really pretty large it was a an imitation dr pepper bottle it was a large plastic bank with a large cap on the top and a place in which to you know put your coins and it was filled with coins so we figured well it's time to roll some of those coins right and take that to the bank and get what cash we could and there was actually a separate bag that was filled with what i what i thought was just three dollars worth of dimes uh we had put so much in there and among the things i put in there just to keep them someplace was my collection of coins from other countries and such because i always wanted to be sort of a coin collector until i determined it cost more money than i was willing to invest in being a coin collector but i did have some coins in there from even from my youth and wasn't sure what this was they just looked like dimes and i brought not the same dimes as you'll find out because i was looking for cash so i was doing what it could but i had these three dollars worth of dimes i'm not sure if you can if you can see them and i realize why they were separate from the rest because they were silver they were pure well pure as you get you know pure for for purposes of public consumption you know 99 perhaps point eight or nine i don't have them anymore i hocked them uh to be able to to get some money so so here i had these three dollars worth of silver dimes and at first i'm thinking well whoa what can what can what how much is silver worth you know i wanted to find out as quickly as i could to see if there was you know what more value there were and then as i was sitting there cross-legged on the floor with all these coins splayed out and i had the three nominally three dollars worth of dimes in my hand it struck me i literally had in my hand 30 pieces of silver and it struck me that i was able to carry in the palm of my hand the value that someone two thousand years ago believed was worth the life of jesus christ that someone had made a calculation and decided that the life of the savior of the world was worth what he could cup in the palm of one hand and it just struck me that a decision like that was made in the past and then it struck me further do i ever make that kind of calculation do i ever undervalue the sacrifice of jesus christ in my life and trade the value of that for something so relatively unworthy and so i began meditating on that and it's been the meditation of some years in terms of what truly is the value of the sacrifice of jesus christ how can i appreciate that sacrifice further so i don't forget what was truly given up so i don't forget what that sacrifice actually means and here is the passover is coming so quickly for all of us i thought it'd be an appropriate topic to discuss today so that's what we're going to talk about today do we do you and i truly appreciate the sacrifice of jesus christ and i hope to talk over the course of this sermon about at least a few reasons that we should and a few meditations that hopefully will help put that sacrifice in perspective and so the title today is appreciating the sacrifice of christ and i'll say as i begin the sermon today but we do have a number of articles in the living church news if you're looking for material to fuel your passover studies it's almost hard to just list them all in the course of a sermon it's one thing that especially dr meredith not to mention other writers as well have touched on time and time and time again there's times when i've heard some people say in the church of god that oh if only we had more ministers to visit us if only we had more access to the ministry and had more sermons and i would dare say here in this last age that we are drowning in spiritual content from our teachers how many person even of the perhaps the highest times of the church when ministry etc were the most accessible could go to the internet and look up all the articles perhaps that the apostle paul had ever written and see videos of every sermon that had been given in jerusalem it had a bi-monthly magazine the living church news that would come out to them i just i don't think we have we can compare that to a time in the past i think in the laodicean age there will be an increase in windiness we are really spiritually rich in so many ways i'll just give one example dr meredith wrote a very similarly titled article we must appreciate the sacrifice of christ that was in the living church news 2009 march april but if you'll just go back even if you're just going to keep yourself to the march april issues i think you'll find a lot of content that's worth dwelling on but that's we're going to focus on today is reasons we should appreciate the sacrifice of jesus christ first i want to discuss the uncrossable gulf the gulf that seemingly cannot be crossed you know when god created humanity he did it with a remarkable hope in fact that hope should be something personally motivating for us if you'll turn to first john in chapter 3. there's a way the apostle john describes it and the role that this hope should play in our lives that hope isn't lost on us but sometimes some of the things we speak about can seem very theoretical they can seem very abstract but there is real world consequence to these things and i find the statement in first john that we're about to read challenges me a bit and gives me perspective in terms of what our calling truly represents in first john chapter 3 starting in verse 1 behold what manner of love the father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of god and it's easy to take the phrase children of god and see how that is applied to you and to me and to not appreciate the fullness of what that means because god is god and if we have any sense that we're somewhat close to being like god we don't appreciate what it actually means to be god and so he continues in terms of what that implies he says that's a manner of love that he has bestowed on us that we should be called children of god therefore the world does not know us because it did not know him beloved now we are children of god like a child in the womb is your child but notice the child in the womb hasn't seen its destiny yet it's sort of in darkness there in mom's womb and doesn't see what its eventual purpose is not until it's actually born and actually gets to see mom and dad and sees its destiny the analogy of the fact that we're not born until the resurrection is baked into so many scriptures he continues beloved again verse two now we are children of god and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be we have not yet been born but we know that when he is revealed the returning jesus christ we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is and everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure it is an understanding it is a comprehension that if god's purpose is to make you and make me like him that that is a hope that the more that it is understood the more richly it is comprehended and the more deeply it is woven into our bones and sinews it will motivate us to purify ourselves it is a vision greater than any other god created humanity with this possibility that we us sitting in this chair looking in your mirror when you're at home brushing your teeth you and me that god created a purpose that we could actually become like him to enjoy the life and existence that he enjoys that he and jesus christ enjoy as a part of their family forever it's a remarkable hope but what do all of us eventually do to that hope every single one of us what do we do it's passover season it's the season where if any other season should allow this opportunity passover should to embrace the fact that we all in our own way sabotage that very hope with our own choices and our own actions that we repeat the mistake of adam and eve and come to some point in our life early on where we say you know what god at least in this particular aspect of life not your way but my will be done and we make a different choice and where does that leave us if you turn to romans chapter 3 we'll read one of the classic verses on the subject and get a bit of context what state does that leave us if our purpose the whole reason for our existence is the glorified realm of god existing in glory with god the father in purity and nobleness and truth what does it do romans chapter 3 and we'll start in verse 21 paul writes for now the righteousness of god apart from the law is revealed being witnessed by the law and the prophets now let me pause there and make sure we understand it does not mean the law is done away this very book the book of romans helps to illustrate the law is not done away but it also helps to illustrate that if we think simply by keeping the law that's going to be enough we're making a terrible mistake because right now if all of us in this room every single one of us somehow had the ability to truly commit ourselves to never sinning again for the rest of our lives if you already think that you will probably never sin again for the rest of your lives i invite you to speak to mr strain i'm sure he can help help straighten that out because john says later that if we think we don't have sin we deceive ourselves and truth is not in us but let's say we could let's say we saw some sort of tony robbins presentation or something that was incredibly motivational and somehow we we something snaps and for the rest of your life the rest of my life i would never sin again what does that make us a broken sinner who eventually stopped we still fall so far short of the glory of the one we understand as god so paul continues even the righteousness of god through faith in jesus christ to all and on all who believe for there is no difference for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god every single one of us there is a place that god intends us to be and there is the other place where our actions and choices place us and between those two things is a gulf of unimaginable proportion uh paul writes something else i'd like to read at this time in ephesians chapter two and he's speaking here to the gentiles but it's i hope we understand the spiritual principle behind this and what it represents more broadly ephesians chapter 2 and verse 11. ephesians 2 and verse 11 he says therefore remember that you once gentiles in the flesh who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands that at that time you were without christ being aliens from the commonwealth of israel and strangers from the covenants of promise having no hope and without god in the world notice verse 12 he highlights you were without christ it wasn't just the fact that they were gentiles and not jews that left them in such a state is because the promises started with the jews at first the church was just the jews he was the messiah coming to the jews and he said you know at that time the door hadn't been opened to you you had no hope you had no access you had nothing without christ there literally is no hope there's no hope but he says in verse 13 but now in christ jesus you were once you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of christ that that sacrifice enabled a bridging of the chasm that previously had not been imaginable we don't understand the chasm often because we don't understand what it truly means to be god what that other side is now let's turn for another perspective to the prophet isaiah isaiah 59 we speak of the sacrifice of christ trying to explain that christ paid the full penalty for sin and one of the aspects of sin is separation from our creator isaiah 59 starting in verse 1. behold the eternal's hand is not shortened that it cannot save nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear but your iniquities have separated you from your god and your sins have hidden his face far from you sorry his face from you so that he will not hear that is the nature of sin it separates us from god that's not avoidable there's not a single sin that we can commit we could be pure our entire lives and if there's a single moment a single moment where we decide i'm just going to say one unkind word to my wife today just for this one split second i've been hurt by that previous comment and i'm going to let loose just a little bit i'm not going to say a foul word i'm not going to say something nasty but i am going to disregard her feelings just for a moment and make this one comment for us to think that's just a small sin that somehow in in the face of a an otherwise uncorrupt life that was so small it's so small to think that is small is to fail to comprehend the fullness of what it means to be god and to fail to understand that even the presence of what seems to us to be the smallest sin how far away that is from what it truly means to be god and how far away that is from what he is striving to create in us so read in verse three he describes their sins your hands are defiled with blood your fingers with iniquity your lips have spoken lies your tongue has muttered perversity now if you're like me and i hope some of you are like me so i don't feel quite so bad about myself at least there's company in our mutual misery i read that list in verse three and that doesn't make me think of me my hands defiled with blood i really am pretty sure i haven't murdered anybody this week i think my kids would tell me i'm pretty sure uh they would tell me but then i'd think of my lips spoken lies i have i don't know about this week i want to fess up to this week specifically but i am sure that at the very least i have been tempted to color truth uh in my direction perhaps where my my purpose was not to just be 100 truthful but to be truthful enough to help myself if i'm honest with myself my tongue has muttered perversity is that possible please don't ask my children or my family let's just leave it a rhetorical question and then i have to go back to your hands are defiled with blood and recognize that jesus christ pointed out that hate is the spirit of murder now hating people is really pretty rare if you actually read william harley's book his needs her needs he'll explain the odds go up statistically that a person will one day hate someone after they marry most people go through life not hating anyone but if there's going to be someone someone hates it ends up being a spouse i'm sorry it's the worldly statistics that's the way it is because the spouse is someone you can never get away from right the co-worker that's so irritating you leave that cubicle and you go home to your spouse uh you don't get to leave the spouse right so harley makes a really good point there most of us truly don't hate anyone but there are levels of hate you know if you will there's moments when we're not really thinking of our brother or sister and we choose to do something that may cause them harm and we choose it anyway whether it's for ambition whether it's for personal benefit of some sort and i have to think have i truly dealt with every brother and sister in christ i've known or every man or woman in the world in such a way that i can say i have always been completely concerned with that person's well-being and i can't say that i have it's made clear here our sins separate us from god it is a natural consequence of sin i want to note two scriptures without turning there for the sake of time one for instance in leviticus 11 where god says you shall be holy for i am holy you shall be holy for i am holy god doesn't just say that because he's a tough boss but because if he wants you to be with him forever forever you and i we must be holy no one will live with god forever who isn't uh that's mentioned leviticus 11 verses 44 and 45 but many places as well also the prophet habakkuk says of god you are of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on wickedness it's in the first chapter of habakkuk sometimes when we think less of sin and we think the gulf between us and god isn't so much is because we've lost sight of just what god is of just what it means to be the creator and the divine one of israel job had a challenge with that if we turn to the conclusion of the book of job in chapter 44 i think i've made this point before in fact i think i was standing right here i think when i gave the job sermon it was the very same lectern but i just want to cut to the chase here joe was someone very impressed with his own righteousness and it's easy to i won't repeat that sermon but it's too easy to just chalk it off as self-righteousness as if he's a dirty rotten self-righteous person i dare say when i look at job's behavior and his choices in life and the kind of life he was able to live i would aspire to that i would aspire to be able to meet the standards i would aspire to a place in life where god is able to say to the devil have you looked at my servant wally uh who's blameless and upright wow that's that's better than a blue ribbon at the fair right if god himself decides that you are such an exemplary exemplary example i apologize for that i work in editorial if you were such an exemplary individual that god would highlight your behavior as blameless and upright that's remarkable but job did not fully comprehend the gulf between what he uh was without god and what god actually is and after all that he goes through when it finally brings that out of him when god himself confronts job in the whirlwind we see the conclusion job comes to after that when the fullness of the gulf between what god is and what job was is open to his eyes in a way that he had not yet comprehended it finally at least a portion of the reality of that uncrossable gulf comes to his mind and comes before his eyes and he says starting in chapter 42 and we read in verse 1 then job answered the eternal and said i know that you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you you asked who is this who hides counsel without knowledge and then job who wanted to talk to god who felt to a certain extent that god owed him an audience of some sort who had been so faithful in his life and had been so obedient and was experiencing what he was and virtually demanding an audience and saying frankly wise things we continue to benefit from he spoke of god in ways we benefit from some of his statements about god are some of my favorites when he talks about the thunder of his power and what a small whisper we hear of him i've grown i'm sure some of you have as well in my understanding of god's greatness from the statements of job and yet job when he sees a fuller picture of the gulf of how amazing god is compared to himself what does he say in the rest of verse 3 he says therefore i have uttered what i did not understand things too wonderful for me which i did not know you know sometimes we say something and even we don't fully comprehend the fullness of the meaning of what we're saying and so we see a totally different attitude in verse four instead of demanding an audience he says listen please and let me speak you said i will question you and you shall answer me well i have heard of you by the hearing of the ear again not saying truly a difference between i heard you and now i see you but the difference in understanding that comes from only hearing something and now seeing something he's speaking of the growth that he's experienced and understanding god he says i have heard of you by the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees you therefore i abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes he came to comprehend the gulf he was not quite as far up the measure of what it means to be righteous like god is righteous like he thought he had and yet we have to be on that other side that is our whole purpose that's our reason for taking air is to be on the other side that gulf could not and cannot be bridged by our actions alone once we decide and may and choose to go in a particular direction it required the sacrifice of christ but that said when you understand the largeness of that gulf then you begin to appreciate just what it meant for christ to be sacrificed we've seen pictures of maybe you have i enjoy pictures of engineering feats and some of these bridges that span gaps that you wouldn't think mankind could actually make a bridge that we can build these stable structures where people can cross from one place to another and yet here is the gap of gaps but christ's sacrifice was capable of bridging that gap so that we can have god work with us in our lives so we can have his fingers knuckle deep into our character and our personality and the changes that he needs to make so i hope as passover is coming we will meditate on the uncrossable gulf and how he was able to cross the uncrossable gulf on our behalf through his sacrifice a second aspect of the sacrifice of christ that helps me to appreciate it more and i hope will help all of us here is the magnitude of the act i know that's pretty nebulous for a point i hope it's clear when i get into the details i struggle with how to describe this some of our better writers or speakers help me later but the very magnitude of this act and let me explore this by asking a question what is a miracle what's a definition for a miracle i probably should have looked up definitions but i decided to make up my own so here's some definitions of miracles you may you may disagree but i thought you could describe a miracle as an instance when the laws of nature are suspended or overruled or superseded by the god of nature one i think it's pretty good i like it i know that people say well no if it's a law of nature it can never change and so that's why i tried to put all those those verbs in there but another way to put it is a miracle is something that could not happen without the activity of god because it does not make sense according to natural law that if all you had were the laws of nature this thing we call a miracle couldn't otherwise happen and so it points to something beyond the natural that's just what supernatural means something beyond the natural realm we do not just live in a natural realm we live in a supernatural realm and so just setting that up i might ask you what do you think is the greatest miracle in history and you might have different answers you might even have a personal answer you know just judging based on on what's impacted you the most perhaps a healing if i look at biblical examples there are a lot that sort of contend for the top spot for me one would just be creation itself that god created everything that is a supernatural act we have come across no laws of nature that can explain all of this not a single one we have some that have worked if there's a book by alexander velinken he's a very popular physicist cosmologist then he wrote a book i wish i could call the title i didn't think of it until just now but it's many worlds in one i think it's talking about a multiverse concept and he believes it's possible that through some quantum tunneling there that's what caused the big bang and caused everything but even he is flummoxed at the very end of his book because he says even then that could only happen unless there were laws in place that were causally before that to happen but laws just govern things that exist how could laws be in place before there were anything else and he just stands on the precipice and says well normally laws are an object of the mind so does maybe a mind of some sort precede all of this and then he backs away and says well that's that's an object of speculation and he can't go the full way so i do think creation is a great contender for one of the greatest miracles in history but then at least in terms of a sort of sensory judgment i'd have to consider the red sea we're leading up to passover i hope that perhaps you're considering some of the examples of the children of israel and what they went through and various movies try to depict it there's times when i think the old ten commandments movie does the red sea best even as bad as the special effects were that was really pretty good in that day it was pretty remarkable and then there's the prince of egypt the animated feature and i actually think the music in that particular scene is actually very good and those get across a certain sense of it when i close my eye all the best movies are you know in your brain right i close my eyes and i imagine what it would be like to be an israelite wandering through the bed of the dead sea as there is a wall of water you know exactly what was that would any israelite have dared to touch the wall of water don't touch it susie it'll all fall it'll all come down on us but there's let me say this if there were little boys amongst the people of israel i do suspect the wall was touched and did it feel like a waterbed did it was there or there's kind of a swirling activity as maybe like a a wind that you couldn't exactly see was somehow constantly keeping it up i don't know but i freely admit i do enjoy imagining what that was like and truly what a miracle that would have been a time when the people walking through had to agree this is not natural right this is not according to the laws of nature all my living days i have never seen something like we are experiencing this is not natural but in my mind and i mean this is this is just me because it's very subjective what is the greatest miracle of the bible i do i do have a winner in my mind let's turn to exodus chapter three [Applause] in exodus 3 we have moses at the burning bush and he's busy making his excuses to god he was not someone lusting after power he's not thinking yes finally i can lead the israelites and conquer the egyptians and such he he was humbled by his experience he was a meek man and so here's god calling him to glory and greatness and he's just finding every excuse in the world not to do it and we'll just jump into the discussion and start in verse 13 of exodus 3 we read then moses said to god indeed when i come to the children of israel and say to them the god of your fathers has sent me to you and they say to me what is his name what shall i say to them and god says to moses i am who i am he said thus you shall say to the children of israel i am has sent me to you moreover god said to moses thus you shall say to the children of israel the eternal god of your fathers the god of abraham the god of isaac the god of jacob has sent me to you and this is my name forever and this is my memorial to all generations you know there's a reason and it took me a while to figure this out when i first started attending services in waco texas a long time ago that when we're reading the bible and we come to the capitalized lord the most bible's way to indicate the tetragrammaton the the yhvh or however you choose to write it that represents sort of god's name that we say the eternal i used to think my first sabbath where are they getting this bible that says that i want the bible the church uses i want to find that well we do a substitution we don't do it on the telecast because it will confuse people but as a part of the culture of the church we tend to say the eternal because that is one way to communicate the meaning of of god's name and here what does god call himself now remember this is the pre-incarnate jesus christ this is the word this is the logos who is interacting with moses and when moses says what is your name he says you will tell them i am has sent you because his existence defines what existence is he is what we say in other instances the ever living one because his life defines what living is all of our lives even put together are barely the shadow of a breath on a cold day compared to the reality of what life and existence is for god solomon said we're like a vapor and i think he was stretching it a bit god so represents existence and life that he could say my name is i am i can't say that best i get might be i i currently am i could say i'm not a neil diamond you know i might have something to say about that so you know you know i am i said well you know neil diamond not forever right we could say i i currently am i am if things keep going my way there's a lot of conditions i would have to pack onto that and yet the logos the the son now the father as we understand them they say i am i am the ever living one i am eternal and so what strikes me as the greatest miracle in the bible is the one whose very life in existence defines life and existing died that the very one who created the world around us whose life and existence we judge what it means to live by that we judge what it even means to exist that that heart stopped beating to a certain extent if a miracle is the suspension of that which is natural is there any more unnatural circumstance that has ever happened in the history of mankind there's even a sense of that at least in my eyes if we'll turn to a couple of well let's turn to matthew chapter 27 and we'll save a little time by not turning to luke but if you'll note luke chapter 19 i'm not going to take the time to read those verses but i would like to call them to mine if you haven't read them i would encourage you to do so in luke 19 we're turning to matthew 27 sorry to be confusing but in luke chapter 19 there it talks about jesus christ's triumphal entry into jerusalem and how excited the people are and he's riding a donkey which has a certain prophetic and historical significance and it says the people were throwing their clothes they put their clothing on the donkey for him to sit on and they put their clothing on the ground so the donkey wouldn't have to walk on the bare ground but could walk on their clothing this is a hundred percent me just so you know when i say this but i know it reminds me of when adam and eve sinned and were naked that god sacrificed an animal to clothe them kind of symbolic of the clothing they would need the covering that they would need for their sin and yet the sacrifice of an animal all of our efforts frankly to cover our own sin what a paltry attempt that is and in a sense here was the one who would cleanse their sins and the equivalent of our own attempts are just laid at his feet because they're nothing neither for him nor the donkey on which he rides but as he was coming in people were praising him you know here's here comes the lord you know hosanna to god in the highest and the pharisees were disturbed and they're yelling at him from the crowd as he's riding the donkey saying tell your disciples to quit command them to stop speaking to stop this and he said should they not even the stones would cry out because there was a moment there of such glory and significance to the path of all things in the universe and everything that god is doing that was a moment that required praise and had not humans provided that jesus christ was saying that of necessity the stones would cry out because this is a moment of eternal and cosmic significance well i had you turn to matthew chapter 27 and here we have the death of jesus christ starting in verse 45. matthew 27 and verse 45 we read as he was hanging there now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness all over the land the sixth hour to the ninth hour so noon to about 3 p.m it's not natural for darkness to be all over the land for three hours during the brightest time of the day and about the ninth hour jesus cried out with a loud voice saying eli eli lama sabachthani that is my god my god why have you forsaken me he was forsaken by god there which we'll get to in a moment it's part of the price of sin and some have said i think i've heard some talking with members that they've asked what does that mean he was surprised like he's asking why i don't understand i can't embrace that idea because who inspired those words to be in the psalm in the first place that he was quoting it was the pre-incarnate jesus christ in a psalm that is prophesying of his coming death it's a really interesting cycle actually uh jonathan and i were talking about earlier this week that he inspired those words so long ago that he knew he himself would plan on uttering uh from the cross so he says there is my god my god why have you forsaken me again an unnatural act the idea that the two who define what it is to be god the god family would somehow be separated says in verse 47 some of those who stood there when they heard that said the man this man is calling for elijah immediately one of them ran took a sponge filled it with sour wine put on a reed offered to him to drink the rest said let him alone let us see if elijah will come to save him it was a spectacle and people were striving to see what would happen verse 50 it says jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit we know from other texts putting them together that he was stabbed at that time a spear was rammed into his side and he was murdered there then verse 51 behold the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom and the earth quaked and the rocks were split jump to verse 54. so when the centurion and those with him who were guarding jesus saw the earthquake and the things that happened they feared greatly saying truly this was the son of god even the gentiles that didn't have any kind of prophecies to look at that didn't fully comprehend anything that had not been walking with him and hearing certain proclamations saw what happened saw how nature itself responded to the death of this man and they gave testimony that surely this was the son of god it was as if nature itself convulsed at what it was forced to endure in its presence i won't go into uh details uh because it's a little grisly but the a few of us mr mcnair and i and mr weston and uh uh my mother-in-law sana riggs had the opportunity to go see the unplanned movie recently we wanted to see that and see what it's about it's our business talking about abortion and and then so wanted to want to see the movie and i won't go into the details but among the scenes in the movie that probably one of the reasons it has a rated r rating is its realistic depiction of certain kinds of abortion and it talks there's an instance where the abortion the morning after pill they call it is used and sometimes that doesn't go very well for a person and while going into detail the woman who took it just goes through these convulsions and these terrible difficulties and the kind of pain where she said she's just lying on the floor knowing that she's going to die and just praying her mother didn't find her there in such a circumstance and to me i reflect on that and i reflect on this passage and i see the creation itself convulsing that the most unnatural act it has ever witnessed which is the death of its own creator the ever living one had to die so that our sins were forgiven it should put a perspective on our sins but also an understanding of the magnitude of that act all right a third element of christ's sacrifice that i'd like to highlight to help us appreciate it is the incredible choice that it represented you know so much in our life things just happen automatically if you play pool and you're good at it hopefully no gambling it's not the kind of church we we're a part of but if you ever play pool and you're good at it i admire those people that say well okay you see this ball that's going to go in that hole and then this other one's going to go in that hole and this one's going to hit this one and go in that hole and i remember it was a child watching wide world of sports or abc and they would sometimes show these pool championships and i would get nervous i was a sympathetic viewer or empathetic viewer so i'm thinking what if he messes up you know what if it doesn't work and these guys just like they're like new isaac newton was their best friend right and they knew exactly everything that was going to happen it's amazing and so much of the universe around us works like clockwork in fact most neuroscientists today would try to tell you that you work like clockwork that you actually make no choices at all but rather your whole life is the outworking of a bunch of pre-programmed stuff that you have absolutely no control over that there's a technical word for that and that word is hui that is just ridiculous it is a it is paul the apostle paul used a similar word dung he did uh that would be dung actually uh about all the word if it's in the bible it must be all right right the apostle paul would say that's dumb it's ridiculous no one can repent and choose to change unless we actually do have the power of choice the bible discusses the power of choice that we in fact what does he say in the old testament choose life why would god say that if it was just all a terrible lie from the beginning we have the power to choose jesus christ had the power to choose in philippians chapter 2 there's a passage that i would dare say in my experience of the church of god we embrace this passage in a way that i generally don't see many others who call themselves christians embrace philippians chapter 2. starting in verse 5. we're admonished by the apostle paul let this mind be in you which also sorry was also in christ jesus who being in the form of god did not consider it robbery to be equal with god now the word robbery there is a bit odd the footnote in my new king james actually does a pretty decent job if you look at that if you happen to have one and it has that footnote you'll see that they say it could mean something to be held onto that is something to be grasped at you see two children fighting over a piece of lego i may have seen that once or twice in my life and one is clawing at it like the other like he does not want the other child to take it away he said that christ did not see being in the form of god being equal with god as something to be clawed at desperately and kept to himself rather the opposite verse 7 made himself of no reputation taking the form of a bond servant and coming in the likeness of men that passage as well is often awkward in translation my king james actually gets it very well where it says he made himself of no reputation it sounds so light like you just go someplace and you don't tell anyone about your business successes or you don't tell them your title at the company where you work no it's so much more than that it literally means to empty himself that the one who was the creator the law goes emptied himself of that chose voluntarily to empty himself to be like you and me i am me and even i don't want to be like me right and it's hard for me sometimes to comprehend the greatness of that and so i try to think of an equivalent some of you have seen movies disney used to put out several like the shaggy d.a some of you remember that i think that was disney i'm not sure it's often dogs because dogs are trainable and they would never have one change into a cat i don't think you can't really not really train a cat there are some cats that look like they're trained they're lying because they're cats they're just another way to manipulate other people but dogs they love you and they can be trained and so you have movies where there's a person and somehow he comes under some weird curse or something happens the star is aligned differently or he drinks some weird potion next thing you know he's a dog it's like oh no how did i get to be a dog and he's running around town and he's being a dog but he's not really a dog you know why because he's still narrating the movie dogs actually can't narrate anything they're not i love dogs but they're not that intelligent they're dogs they do many things we won't list today that humans generally would choose not to do if we had to live the life of a dog it would be degrading someone essentially once did king nebuchadnezzar had his greater human faculties stripped from him to humble him and he lived in the wilderness like an animal for years and so i think well maybe emptying myself to be a dog and then i think that doesn't cut it do i think the difference somehow between me and god is just about the same as between me and a dog if so i don't comprehend god all that well so i try to go lower maybe it's an earthworm maybe it's a bacterium i don't know all i know is the god for whom even a man like job said i abhor myself is indeed great and that god our creator chose to empty himself of all of those things willingly to become like you and i are and what was his approach as he did so we know in luke 22 in other places in the gospels where he says not my will yours be done that was voluntary you make a choice when you say god not your will sorry god not my will that would be the love is it god not my will be done because i want this and i want that and you know what i don't want to die in a crucifixion i don't want to go through that i'd really rather something else if there's some other way but it was voluntary i don't do it as frequently as i should but one of my favorite exercises in the days leading up to passover is trying to take the time to imagine christ's life trying to take time to imagine what it was like living day to day in the environs of jerusalem and you know in his hometown but preaching not his hometown jerusalem but growing up in the home but coming to jerusalem to preach and and the things that he faced when he was making some of those final comments before his before his death and it's frustrating because like many of you have been protected for some of this i grew up in the world i didn't really start attending until i was 18 and i've seen some of those jesus movies that are just terrible some of them are considered classics but there was one in particular that i wish they'd just retitled jesus the dude who was high on dope because he's walking around the entire time you would think that was the one uh jesus christ superstar was not that one it was a different one that was meant to be in period and the actor who played him just has this stone cold face on all the time and as he interacts it's like interacting with a righteous robot of some sort and you get no sense that he was a human being like us who was making choices day by day and hour by hour and moment by moment that he was making those choices and you get no sense of that from movies like that at all these movies like that and if you turn to hebrews chapter four when jesus christ said not my will but yours be done it's very easy and i'm not saying this is wrong but it's very easy to just think of his sacrifice but i want to highlight that he essentially made that same choice second by second for 33 and a half years for 33 and a half years he made that choice the result is hebrews chapter 4 starting in verse 14. we're told seeing then that we have a high prie a great high priest verse 14 who has passed through the heavens jesus the son of god let us hold fast our confession for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses but was in all points tempted as we are yet without sin let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need in all points tempted as we are and it's easy to dismiss this there was an association many of us were connected with in the past so much time has gone on i hate to say our former association as we used to say because for some people they don't even know about the previous uh bearer of god's words that decided to cast it aside requiring dr meredith to take a stand but i remember ministers of that organization explaining no no you misunderstand this he wasn't tempted to do all these things you think he was tempted to be a child molester do you think you really want to picture your savior tempted for every individual kind of sin that you can think of do you really want to think of that and you can go further well you know i've been an actuary i've worked with spreadsheets handling billions of dollars there's times you don't want to be the guy who flubbed up and accidentally moved 500 000 and it's tempting you know to adjust the spreadsheet just a little bit so it doesn't exactly look like you did that and i can't say well jesus doesn't know what it's like to go through this he never had to deal with microsoft excel you know he didn't he has no idea what it's like to feel this particular temptation and i'm sorry those comments by those particular ministers of the past were lies of the devil because it doesn't mean that in every individual sin he had to feel all the particulars he didn't have to feel a temptation to lie with a spreadsheet to fully feel the force of the temptation to lie he doesn't have to feel the force of temptation to a particular kind of sexual sin to know what it feels like to be tempted toward sexual sin and because he made that choice and said to god not my will but your will every second of every minute of every hour of every day for 33 and a half years then we can have confidence that no matter the sin we go to him with that he can say i know what that's like i know what that's like and i can help the choice if you think about that you're expanding the sacrifice of jesus christ to more than just the final moment and recognizing that he gave up something very important for 33 and a half years and that is he emptied himself of being god so he could live like we do so that we could have confidence in what he's done but it certainly culminates in his sacrifice on the cross he'll turn to john chapter 10. i'm a boy so i like to think about stuff like this john chapter 10 i'm not saying girls can't think about it too i'm not a sexist but i believe there's a difference and oh yeah boys like to think about stuff so anyway john chapter 10 oh this isn't actually the verse i was thinking about with that i was getting ahead of myself i do want to point out because i'll go ahead and point this out then i'll get to the verse i was thinking of that jesus christ made a choice to die it wasn't like some law of gravity that's requiring him that he's compelled and doesn't have a choice and he's drug along the way we see in john chapter 10 starting in verse 15 as the father knows me verse 15 even so i know the father and i lay down my life for the sheep he was not thrown to the ground he was not forced to the ground he said i lay down my life for the sheep i actively do this i choose to do this verse 17 therefore my father loves me because i lay down my life that i may take it again no one takes it from me now you might say well didn't pontius pilate take it from him didn't the jews of the day take it from him but even makes that point to pontius pilate you would not be able to do this unless the authority to do this were given to you he makes another point we'll make in a moment but he says i lay it down of myself i have power to lay it down and i have power to take it again this command i received from my father that does not mean that jesus was affecting in a certain miraculous sense his own resurrection and his own death and somehow he just died because he decided well i guess i die now rather this is plain speaking language don't overread this based on protestant or catholic twists and turns in their own interpretations just like anyone else he had the choice to put his life down and he did in fact the verse i was thinking of earlier is actually in matthew it's matthew 26. what kind of choice did jesus christ have he had quite a choice and he highlighted that choice to the apostles matthew 26 after when they were coming to arrest him and peter struck out with his sword trying to physically defend jesus christ christ corrects him for that he says in verse 52 we read but jesus said to him this is matthew 26 52 put your sword in its place for all who take the sword will perish by the sword or do you think i cannot now pray to my father and he will provide me with more than 12 legions of angels if at any point he had decided this isn't worth it mankind is i'm gonna write them off i don't love them enough to go through what i'm about to go through i've been on the cross for three hours this is too much this is too much if he came to that point 12 legions of angels the number of allegiant has varied through history and the numbers people report tend to vary but at least the sources i've read around there around the middle or so of the first century a legion was about 5 000 troops so can you imagine jesus christ at a word deciding i'm done this is not worth it and then 60 000 angels appear in the sky to take care of business i imagine jerusalem would become a crater the size of canada but he didn't choose to do that he actively chose moment by moment to embrace everything he was going through what did that involve well it involved our penalties we'll go through them shortly i hope we in a short list i hope you'll meditate on these before passover but we know from romans 6 that the wages of sin are death we earn death so jesus christ experienced death romans 6 23 he paid that penalty he paid the penalty of physical suffering sin causes physical suffering not just ours but the sin of others there are people that get sick at work not because they were disobeying god but because the guy in the other cubicle disobeyed god and came to work and decided to cough all of his viruses everywhere in the department and so jesus christ allowed his body to be ravaged a body that deserved no punishment whatsoever allowed it to be flayed and torn to pieces so that even his very muscles and bones were exposed and showing to the world he described that and actually mr strain read some of those verses to us in the bible study this past weekend if you missed it please go online and see it at lcg webcast but he actively allowed that i can't imagine that would be in my mind as lash after lash after lash after lash came that suddenly there wouldn't be a point when sixty thousand angels seems like a good option and yet with each one he simply waited for the next he chose to allow that to happen then ultimately we've already discussed it a bit he allowed himself chose to embrace the punishment of separation from god we already read isaiah 59 2. we read mark did we read mark 15 let's turn to i think we did mark 15. let's read it again for emphasis mark chapter 15. i've heard this said as well by some of those in the past who tried to sway us from our understanding mark chapter 15. we read this in a different gospel mark chapter 15 and verse 33 when the sixth hour had come there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour verse 34 and at the ninth hour jesus cried out with a loud voice eloy eloy lama sabachthani which is translated my god my god why have you forsaken me quoting from psalm 22 words he had inspired many centuries before for this time and i have alluding to some of those apostate ministers in the past tried to say there's no way god abandoned him at that time there's no way god turned his back because the message to us will be that god might turn his back on you in your hardest time and you in the depths of your depression and you in the bottomless pit of your suffering and god would never do that and all i can say is those people have no idea what the lesson of christ's sacrifice is because he did endure separation from the father so that we would never have to that was the point the point was to experience the impact of the consequences of sin so we would never have to so my assurance that god will never abandon me is not simply some theological construct about what god is but it is the sacrifice of jesus christ knowing he paid that penalty so i never will have to i will never in my life have to know a separation from god because of the choice the active voluntary choice that jesus christ was willing to make on that passover so the last thing i'd like to discuss concerning reasons to appreciate christ's sacrifice are the results are the results for instance turn to psalm 103 one of the marvelous results of christ's sacrifice is forgiveness it is easy to not understand the fullness of that you know sometimes when we're counseling for baptism those who've grown up in the church it's a little bit harder i know for me it was obvious man i was a christmas keeper and i was a ham sandwich eater and i was a go on a sunday kind of guy so my sins really seemed pretty blatant i was very open to the idea that i did not know god and i needed to be forgiven but those of us not me but those of you who have grown up in the church i know it can be a bit of a challenge because sometimes those things aren't so obvious and we pray you don't think well i guess i better go out and be a heroin addict so i really know what it means to sin and and to be forgiven when if you just examine your life you'll find the things you need to see you'll see the differences between you and god you don't have to go make up a fake terrible life your life's terrible enough as it is compared to god we have to see god rightly if we will see ourselves rightly that's why i often like to use job when i'm counseling with those who have grown up in the church because job was in a similar spot he could not see himself rightly but his problem the solution rather was to see god rightly and suddenly he saw himself in perspective so part of the challenge in the times leading up to passover those days whether we're baptized or not i do hope we all take advantage of this time because if we're not baptized yet it's only because god's looking forward to that in the future it should be a part of our ark in existence it is a part of our life plan and we should all take advantage of these days one of the blessings is forgiveness and that forgiveness is utter in psalm 103 starting in verse 1. david writes in psalm 103 bless the eternal o my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name bless the eternal oh my soul and forget not all his benefits who forgives all your iniquities who heals all your diseases who redeems your life from destruction who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies oh take the time to think about the words it is so easy to pass on too often and i've done this to a certain extent even in the sermon it's not wrong to put all the verses the bible together to understand something we should do that we should do that if you understand what god says about something look at everything he says but there need to be those times when we don't treat it quite as a buffet of multiple items but as one bite of juicy steak that we're willing to take time and savor and notice what it says in verse 4 who redeems your life from destruction do any of us take the time to fully comprehend what would be our life without god in it but then more who crowns you the king of all there is the ruler of all existence crowns you with love and kindness and tender mercies let's jump to verse 10. we read this of god he has not dealt with us according to our sins nor punished us according to our iniquities for as the heavens are high above the earth so great is his mercy toward those who fear him if you ever wonder if you're at the limits of god's mercy then you imagine how far are the heavens from the earth as we understand let's say heaven's plural it's not stopping at the atmosphere how far is that if we wonder if we're at the edges of god's mercy we don't fully comprehend the fullness of jesus christ's sacrifice verse 12 as far as the east is from the west so far has he removed our transgressions from us i was counseling with a woman an older woman who had attended the worldwide church of god long ago she's she's dead now i i do miss her she was a wonderful woman many health challenges once she left she got into smoking and other things and it just ravished her body and by the time she came back she'd been broken by many of life's experiences and it was a pleasure and a privilege to baptize her it took me another deacon to get her into the water safely we borrowed some church that had steps we could get into the baptism together very easily and and i remember shortly after that i was on a trip with a local elder and she called thankfully we'd stop for lunch and she called and i was able to step outside and she was just in tears and she just heard a beautiful sermon by dr meredith and he talked about the high standard of this life but she was just so broken over her sins of the past and the devil was whispering doubts in her mind are you really sure god has actually moved those sins away from you i'm not saying vocally but that's what she was tempted by that thought how in the world could god truly remove your sins for they are vast and all i had there was the phone but i explained to her that's why we talked about this as far as east is from the west it's not that these sins are simply distant from you they're not on your life's radar screen anymore how much further apart can you get than east and west i said you need to study and meditate on the magnitude of christ's sacrifice because the price that was paid for you was the life of the creator and if anyone in the world is forgiven it's the person for whom that price is paid and i hope it helped i don't know next time i saw her she was happier so i hope it helped but it is something we have to understand it is a marvel that we are forgiven you know there is an unpardonable sin and sometimes we get really caught up in that and i don't want to get bogged down in the technical details and just say if you're capable of repenting truly feeling sorrow and turning your life and striving to do what's right repentance is not possible for those who have crossed that line what sin is so great what sin is so bad that should you choose to drop to your knees before god and say i do not want this anymore i want what you keep telling me you hold out to me that somehow god says wow sorry the sacrifice of my son just isn't sufficient it is sufficient and we have access to forgiveness you know we hold ourselves to a standard won't turn there for the sake of time but in the book of matthew jesus christ doesn't commend peter when peter says oh master how often should i forgive my brother you know seven times i'm pretty good at this aren't i jesus right seven times you know who would really do that then jesus says no seventy times seven and it was not permission to become a sin accountant where you're marking down oh boy i can't wait for 491 i'm not forgiving you anymore that was his way of saying you should find an endless well of forgiveness because that's what i am not me god does god give us advice and then not follow it himself those times when it is hard to kneel and request forgiveness do we think that maybe he's run out that maybe somehow this time i've finally exceeded that no we have forgiveness we have access to the divine nature we have access to the divine nature turn to second peter and verse one and again this may be a very familiar verse to so many of us but please please i beg of you don't let familiarity with these verses somehow caused them to be tuned out in your mind for the magnitude of what these verses say in second peter in chapter one starting in verse one we read simon peter a bond servant and apostle of jesus christ to those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteous righteousness of our god and savior jesus christ grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of god and of jesus our lord as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness understand he's talking to people just like you and me the difference between us and those of the first century is time it's nothing more than time their clothing looked different their hairstyles looked different but they were human beings just like you and i and peter promises them promises them that the divine power has given to them and us all things pertaining to life and righteousness there's nothing god is holding back for you that price that was paid involves giving access to everything moving forward verse 4 well i'll say through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue verse 4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust partakers of the divine nature do we understand that at all i don't want to get into pentecost very much and let's all be thankful that that holy day is coming as well but the sacrifice of jesus christ opens up a door where we're not just humans anymore we're not just people walking along the earth of mere flesh and blood in a human spirit but god is able at forgiveness with jesus christ's life his life being given on our behalf to be able to take some of his very own nature and put it inside you and inside me that would not be possible there is no vessel in the world of man's devising there is no faberge egg there's no artifact we can create that is pure enough and good enough to be worthy of containing part of the divine nature and yet that sacrifice on our behalf the price that our creator was willing to pay with his own life has made you and i among the most precious vessels in existence that god can say i will put my nature there and he did so when hands were laid on you by the ministers he set apart to help convey that blessing there is so much to consider i hope we will take the time to meditate on the significance and the value of the sacrifice of jesus christ in this time you know we're told in first john in chapter 4 verse 19 that we love him because he first loved us there's a reason that the holy days start with passover there's a reason that the very first festival must be passover because without it the rest can't happen i pray that all of us this passover season grow to appreciate that much more the sacrifice of jesus christ [Music] you

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Published: Fri Mar 19 2021