Those Are Fighting Words

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Tonight, I want to talk about something that I've entitled, Fighting Words. Words to fight for.
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And I believe that if you're any kind of Christian at all, you should be able to stand up for the faith. And there are some things we let slide.
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Some things we say, well, you can believe that, and I can believe that. And I understand that. We don't have to agree on every single thing.
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But there are some words in life that are worth fighting for. And I'd like to give you some of those tonight. In two weeks, we'll probably look at words that we want to fight against.
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But to set this up, let's turn our Bibles to Jude. You might want to say Jude chapter 1, but there's only one chapter in Jude.
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And we're going to set up the fact that you, as a Christian, if you call yourself a
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Christian, you ought to fight. You ought to contend. You ought not to be contentious.
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You ought not to be pugnacious. But you ought to fight for the gospel truths.
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You say, well, I'm a lover, not a fighter. That would be a wrong way to think about the gospel.
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You should love Jesus enough to obey Him. You should both love and fight.
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I'm a lover and a fighter is the right way to think about Christianity. And it's not just for mature believers.
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It's not just for leaders. It's not just for seminary students. If you're a
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Christian tonight, saved by the gospel of Christ Jesus, the sinless work of Christ, His sin -bearing atonement,
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His resurrection from the dead, you ought to contend for the faith. You ought to agonize as you stand up for the truth.
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And so if you go to chapter, the only chapter in Jude, we'll just take a quick look at this.
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And I think I can quickly convince you that you ought to be a lover and a fighter, loving
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God so much you'll obey Him by contending for the faith. Chapter 1, verse 1,
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I have that in my computer notes, but that's just the way they have to do it. But there's just one chapter. So we say
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Jude 1, a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Jude, a brother of James to those who are called, beloved in God the
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Father and kept for Jesus. And he says something very interesting and very wonderful. May mercy and peace and love be what?
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Multiplied to you. What a great benediction to start off. A great intro, if you will. A great greeting if you want to be technical.
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And then he's going to narrow his audience down. It's those who are called, those loved by God, kept for Jesus Christ.
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And then he says again, verse 3, beloved. He's not going to say leaders.
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He's not going to say potential leaders. He's not going to say those who have been Christians for longer than 20 years. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation,
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I wanted to write a book like Romans that talked about the greatness of the gospel. I wanted to write a book like Hebrews that was going to be about superiority of Christ.
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It was going to be positive. It was going to be what we're for. But while I was doing that, as I had my pen in hand, as it were, the quill in my hand,
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I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you, who's the you?
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The you are the called, the beloved, the kept for Christ, the beloved in verse 3, that you contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints.
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It's a fascinating little book, the book of Jude. Who could tell me what the word Jude really means?
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But we had to kind of soften it a little bit, because who could ever call a book this title? What's the real title of the book of Jude, Brian?
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OK, false teachers are here, that's true, but give me another, you know, my name is Michael, but people call me
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Mike. And without the A, sometimes they call me Michelle. I remember when I was a kid, you know, the first time
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I ever had to do a locker in my life, you know, two times this way, back that way, two times back over here.
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And so I'm standing in the school line, and so the teacher said, we'll start alphabetically, and sorry if I can't pronounce your name right, but give us your name, and then tell us your locker number.
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And so they said, Michelle Avendroth. You know, and I'm a fifth grader, seventh grader, and I'm getting called a girl's name in front of all my other buddies and everything else.
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I was so flabbergasted. Instead of saying, my locker is number 12, I said, my locker's 12, 13, 42.
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Now all the friends know my locker combination. But I'm called
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Mike, but my name's Michael. Jude is like Mike. What's like Michael?
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Bruce, Judas. Can you imagine Judas? One scholar said, on the very threshold of a book written about apostasy appears a name which brings to mind a traitor who stands as the worst apostate the world has ever known.
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Judas, a name common enough in the days of our Lord, has been anathema for 2 ,000 years.
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This is true, listen to this statement. Men call their sons Paul or Peter. They call their dogs
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Nero or Caesar. But the name Judas has been blotted out of our language except as a synonym of apostasy and treachery.
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And so here we have this, as one man called, the acts of the apostates. What they do, how they go about doing it.
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And here we have the Spirit of God impelling the half -brother of Jesus to say, we've got to stop right now.
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I wanted to be positive, but now I've got to warn. I had eagerness.
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I was making every effort. I had aggressiveness. It was not like we'd call this in Nebraska lollygagging.
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We were just kind of coasting. No, I had to do it. I was compelled.
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As these people were compelled to come in when we read Luke chapter 14 just a little bit earlier, I was compelled to write this.
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It was like I felt the Spirit of God give me, not literally, but figuratively, a goad in the side as a horse spur goes into the side of the horse.
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That's what I felt the Spirit of God do. So I had to write this instead. And I had to write that you would contend earnestly for the faith.
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This is wrestling language. This is struggle language. This is sweating language. I never liked wrestling when
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I was a kid because I didn't want that much sweat on me from another guy, if I could be quite honest about the whole thing.
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I didn't mind sweat, and I didn't mind a little sweat from football or basketball, but just hand -to -hand, muscle, this kind of combat where you just would sweat all over each other.
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I just, it wasn't, I'm not really into that. Who finds that appealing? I'm not asking for a show of hands.
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And who finds war, literal war appealing? We were talking about the Civil War earlier.
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Well, it's not an appealing thing. You know, there are worse things in war, and that's why we have to fight wars. But here, it's not like Christians, let alone here, this man named
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Jude is walking around always looking for a fight. Sometimes immature Christians do that, especially young men in the ministry.
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They want to fight everybody all the time. Nobody likes war, but in this particular case, there must be fighting.
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Contend earnestly, and the root word for this is, who knows it? I know you know it. What's the root word that's a
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Greek word, but it's also found itself into the fabric of the
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English language? What is the word fight so hard you sweat? Some pastors can't raise their hand.
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Agony, that's exactly right. It's agony with a preposition to make it more intense, to fight athletically, with struggle.
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And by the way, there are certain tenses in the Greek. One tense might be, do it once in a while, every other day.
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One tense might be, you know, it's just once it was done and over. Or there's another tense that means it's happening all the time, that you just don't fight one time, it's a constant fight.
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That's the word here, present tense. Contend earnestly for the faith.
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Couch potatoes cannot do it. This is not sit back and play video game war games. This is real war, fighting for the knowledge of the truth.
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And you notice the text there? What kind of faith? A faith, the faith that's good for you, the faith that's, you know, popular for you.
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No, it's the faith, this particular faith, this message, this gospel, this body of Christian truth.
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And if you've got to choose your battles in life, this is the battle that has been chosen for you. And your response is either obedience or disobedience.
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I believe the Christian faith is worth fighting for. And so, in light of this, fighting for the faith,
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I've picked out several words that I think are worth fighting for, and several words that we should fight against.
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Now, before we do this, just because it's nighttime and it's Sunday night, and let me ask you to see if you can find some words.
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If you look down in your Bible, you're not gonna find it, but just look up at me and tell me some words that you think are worth fighting for that are
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Bible words, either found directly in the Bible or the equivalent thereof. For instance, the word
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Bible isn't in the Bible, but we would fight for the Bible, yes? It's kind of like the word
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Trinity. It's not in the Bible, but it's a fact, and we ought to fight for that.
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So, other ones. If you say these are the non -negotiables, we have to fight for these and stand up for these, or else we would be cowards and disobedient.
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Bruce? Resurrection. Okay, good. I have that on my list. Maybe not this time, but soon enough.
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Yes. Substitutionary atonement. That's on my list. Don't you like those words?
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The resurrection, the substitutionary atonement. We are not monosyllabic people alone here in Christianity.
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Dumbed down. This is a thinking person's religion. Yes. Salvation. What is salvation?
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Good. Inerrancy. That's going to be my first one, because without that, we have nothing to base our faith on.
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Yes. Justification. Good. I don't have that, but I was going to probably add it, because I knew I needed to do it.
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Okay. What else? Joey. Okay. Christ, and we could say
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His person and His work. It's only through Christ, no other Savior. Okay, good. The exclusivity of Christ and His salvation.
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Yes. Okay. The sanctification of Christians. It is worth fighting for.
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Holy nature, that maybe we are initially in Christ, and growing in Christ, and ultimately holy.
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Okay, good. Anyone else? Yes. Deity of Christ. We're kind of starting to sound like fundamentalists in the 1930s, aren't we?
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These are the fundamental issues of the Christian faith. All right. Yes. Karen.
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Virgin birth. Okay. Why is a virgin birth so important? Well, I don't want to tip my hand, because otherwise you can't keep raising your hand.
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Next, you'll be wanting me to have an altar call on Sunday morning. For those of you that weren't here this morning,
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I did something a little different. Okay. Bruce. Oh, I was looking for another one, but that's exactly what happens with the resurrection.
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That's right, because he has no... The virgin conception means he will be totally human, but he will be excluded from many kind of sin, so he won't have to die for himself.
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He'll die for others. Okay, good. Anybody else? Something else that's worth fighting for.
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If you met somebody in the Christian bookstore, and they were standing there next to some kind of kooky book that was the bestseller, and they said, well, so -and -so, this guy, he doesn't believe in this topic, and you would have to say,
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I can't but not say it. Something that in Christianity that you'd even be willing to lose a friend over.
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Bob. Inspiration. Okay, we can tie all those up together with inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy.
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Good. All right, yes, Justin. Election. Well, knowing me,
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I'd probably fight for it. I'd probably teach a 10 -part series on it on Sunday morning. We'll talk about that maybe a little bit later.
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Okay, good, Chris. Lordship. Jesus is not just Savior, but he's Lord. I'd fight for that.
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Bernard. Perseverance of the saints. What I'm trying to do is to show you how long this series on Sunday night's actually going to be.
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I'm only going to pick a few of these, okay? Perseverance. If God saves you, he can't lose you.
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Can God lose a Christian? That's really the question there. Okay, Steve. Authority of scripture.
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Good, let's bundle all that with inspiration, inerrancy, authority, sufficiency. What the
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Bible says about the Bible's true, but that's exactly right. Good. So without the authority of scripture, we have nothing.
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What else? What else would we fight for? Dottie. The Holy Spirit. We don't believe the
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Holy Spirit is a force. We don't believe the Holy Spirit is some kind of wind. We don't believe that the Holy Spirit, that God first was the
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Father, then he showed up as the Son, and now he's the Spirit. I would fight for the Holy Spirit. Okay, good.
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All right, we can just keep going. Let's just go a little bit farther. You look a lot more awake than you did five minutes ago, though. Yes. Theology.
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How about if I said theology proper, a word about God and who he is, God the Father, I'd fight for theology.
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Okay, good. Yeah, Bernard? Second coming? Would you fight for the second coming?
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The literal second coming? You fight for the literal resurrection, the bodily resurrection?
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Bruce? Orthodoxy. What do you mean, Greek orthodoxy?
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What are you talking about? Would you fight for Greek orthodoxy? Okay, basically what we're doing is we're talking about tonight, almost everything that's been said tonight would fall into the camp of this is evangelicalism.
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Back in the 30s, this is fundamentalism, not what we think of fundamentalism today. This is orthodoxy.
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This is straight, this is cut straight and not some perversion or crookedness. All right, any last ones before I give you a few?
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Depravity, would you fight for sin? We wouldn't fight to sin, but we'd fight about the doctrine of sin.
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Who needs a savior unless we know we're sinners? Yeah, we have to fight for the doctrine of sin and depravity, good.
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All right, just a couple more. Repentance, all right, I would fight for repentance and do usually on a weekly basis.
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All right, Dallas? Literal hell, okay, excellent. That's on my sheet here that I would fight for hell and certainly a literal heaven.
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I see a hand back here. Laurita, what do you want to fight for? She's raising her hand, okay. Laurita, what are you fighting for?
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Judgment, discipline, parental discipline. Good, Jack?
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Okay, maybe we could tie that into the holiness of God and if, oh, I see where you're coming from that if somebody did that in front of us that we would fight for God's reputation and who
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God is in light of that. Okay, good. What'd you say?
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Come on. Oh, she wants to know what the first one is.
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Well, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, does it? All right, last one.
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Okay, I think I just tie that into God's word where we talk with Steve, authority, sufficiency, inerrancy and all that.
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Okay, good. There are some things that are worth fighting for and the text says in Jude 3 that you ought to fight for the
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Christian faith. It is being attacked, it is being fought against and it's just not for men, it's just not for seminary students to say,
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I'll stand up for the faith. It's up to everyone who calls themselves a called one of God, a person kept by Christ Jesus and called love by God.
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So let me talk first of all tonight, my first fighting word is inerrancy.
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Inerrancy, I -N -E -R -R -A -N -C -Y. What's the root word in inerrancy?
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Three letters, er. And if you want to know what inerrancy is, as you talk about, does the
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Bible have errors or does it not? I will fight for inerrancy.
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One man in New England said that inerrancy means free from error of any kind, including historical, chronological, genealogical and scientific errors.
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The Bible contains no errors, totally and completely exempt from errors. It is absolutely true, no mistakes, no flaws, no contradictions, no discrepancies, no inconsistencies, no disagreements, no inaccuracies, no imperfections, no defects, no deceptions, no blunders, no lies, no falsity, no misconceptions, no false impressions.
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The Bible is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Pretty good definition of inerrancy.
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Now let me ask you this. If inerrancy goes out of the window, what are we left with?
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In other words, why is this so important to fight for? Does it affect anything? Will it have any kind of influence on what we do or say or believe?
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Why is inerrancy important? Anyone? We wouldn't know what to believe, what part's right, what part's wrong.
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If this is wrong, maybe everything else is wrong. Good, other comments before I, pardon me?
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No, go right ahead. Okay, good, listen to what
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Harold Lenzel said. I will contend that embracing a doctrine of an errant scripture, one with errors, will lead to a disaster down the road.
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It will result in the loss of missionary outreach as I read this. Think about the liberal churches that you know.
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Once a church says no to the Bible and its authority, what happens to missions? It will result in the loss of missionary outreach.
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It will quench missionary passion. It will lull congregations to sleep and undermine their belief in the full -orb truth of the
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Bible. It will produce spiritual sloth and decay and it will finally lead to apostasy.
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So we wanna stand up for the inerrant truth. Why don't we turn our
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Bibles to, could be many places. Matter of fact, I'm gonna keep asking you because I need to keep you awake tonight.
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If you were going to say there are five passages in the Bible that teach the
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Bible's inspiration, its authority, its efficiency, its inerrancy, something about being
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God -breathed and everything else, what would those passages be? Okay, Brian? Okay, do you know that by heart?
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Okay, thy word is truth. Bernard? Psalm 19 talks about natural revelation and specific revelation about God's law and how it's good and upright.
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Good, that's another one. Another? Okay, we could go there.
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There's a couple other kind of A list versus B list, but certainly I like Joshua 1 .8.
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Bob? 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17, good. Well, why don't we turn to one that I picked and so far you haven't all picked.
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Let's turn to 2 Timothy chapter one and I wanna remind you that the word of God is worth fighting for.
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And if you fail to speak, Lenzel would say it is cowardice, but more than that, it is sinful.
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If you do keep silent when people blast away, you should feel very uncomfortable in other words.
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And here we have many enemies of the Bible and most of the enemies are gonna say something like men wrote the
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Bible. And here, 2 Peter chapter one, verse 20 and 21, talk about God's word.
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We could have gone to 2 Timothy chapter three that it's God breathed out, but here I wanna make sure we understand that even though God uses sinful men to write scripture, the spirit of God as the spirit of God would hover over the womb of Mary, so too the spirit of God hovers over the writers and their sinfulness.
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So we get exactly what God wants us to know from the authors.
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All right, 2 Peter chapter one, verse 20 and 21.
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We wanna make sure that we understand God's word properly because if out of the 2000, thus sayeth the
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Lord's one is wrong, then we're in big trouble. And here, Peter, in the midst of false teachers is going to write how do we know that the prophetic word has the right origin?
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But we know this first of all, chapter one, verse 20 of 2 Peter, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation.
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He's going to say this is an important thing, a list, top of the chart, knowing this first of all, a primary truth that must be understood.
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He also says, know this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation.
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Is is a word that means comes into being. No prophecy comes into being by one's self.
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It's not necessarily talking about that's your interpretation of a Bible verse. It's talking about how
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God reveals his truth through people. We're talking about revelation, not some kind of interpretation.
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Remember, it's all against false teachers and the false teachers would just come up with something and they would say, this is true, thus saith the
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Lord. And Peter is saying, you just can't make something up. We get scripture when
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God reveals it. How do I know my interpretation is true of verse 20? Verse 21 tells us, for no prophecy, no
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God's truth coming from a human being, as the spirit of God overrides all that, was ever made by an act of human will.
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James, Jude, Peter, Paul, did not just sit down one day and said, I think I'll write some of the
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Bible. This might be good. No, not by an act of human will, but men moved by the
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Holy Spirit spoke from God. We don't get tons of details. We don't get the little tiny nuances, but we know it's the
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Holy Spirit moving men. Can anybody remember from a few weeks ago, what kind of metaphor this is of God moving these men?
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What's the moving metaphor? Where do we get this? Where does it come from?
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Look at this word, you would say, oh, it belongs out where? Out in sea.
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Remember? The sail's up and the wind blows the sail and the wind blows that ship wherever it wants to.
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That's the same thing that's happening here. Here we have the spirit of God blowing the sails of the men's ships, as it were, to write everything perfectly.
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Thomas Watson said this, the word is the chariot in which the spirit of God rides.
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Whichever way the tide of the word runs, that way the wind of the spirit blows.
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And it's the same thing as well for the Bible and these men. So when you say, can
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I trust the Bible? It's written by men. It's not primarily by an act of human will. It's men moved by the
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Holy Spirit, spoke from, what's the text say? God. Now, people play fast and loose with inerrancy, so much so, let me tell you some of the definitions of inerrancy.
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You're gonna be shocked. There's absolute inerrancy. There's full inerrancy.
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There's limited inerrancy. There's inerrancy of purpose. There's accommodated revelation.
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There's non -propositional revelation. There's inerrancy is irrelevant. There are seven views. Why do you think there are seven views of inerrancy?
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Because absolute inerrancy is too hard for people to try to stomach, so they come up with all this other stuff.
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When it comes to salvation, the Roman Catholic Church will say, when it deals with those topics, it's inerrant. But everything else, there might be some kind of scientific problems in there.
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When you say the Bible is inerrant, you're saying it is wholly true. That's exactly what you're saying.
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The Bible is wholly true. I guess we could go to other verses, but we don't wanna do it.
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Number two, I don't think we can get rid of inerrancy. And number two, I don't think we can get rid of the word blood.
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Blood. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter one. I wanna talk a little bit about blood. I was thinking about this in Hebrews a couple weeks ago.
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And let's talk about the word blood. And I don't want any more people giving me like this little pint of blood from the
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Halloween store that I got last week. One is enough. Ephesians chapter one,
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I will fight for the word blood. Now what does the word blood actually mean?
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That's the question. And we need to understand as we talk about the death of Christ, how
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God the Father sees the blood, why it's important.
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And I think Ephesians chapter one seven will give us an initial hint. 408 times in the
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Bible, blood. Ephesians chapter one is this great triune salvation.
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Look at verse three, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ.
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Everything's in Christ, all the blessings. What are these three blessings? Number one, election found in verses four, five, and six.
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Redemption found in verses seven, eight, nine through the son. 10 and 11 as well into 12.
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Seven through 12 is the right section there. And then the
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Holy Spirit in verse 13 and 14 seals us to the day of redemption. Now, if we focus in, in that second section, the spirit of God is in the last section, but in the middle section with the son, it says in verse seven, in him, the son, we have redemption through his blood.
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What is that text not saying? Whenever you study the Bible, it's good to say to yourself, what does the text say?
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And you can figure out what it says by saying, what does it not say? What does the word blood, let me back up.
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What does that text not teaching? Anyone? That's a very general question, but I just want to see where you go with it.
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What's it not saying? Mark. Okay, it's not work salvation because it's not in us.
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It's in him. Good. Keep going. It's only through his blood.
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Okay, good. In his blood, Brian. Okay, it's a very costly thing.
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It'll cost, it's free to us, but costly to the triune God. Okay, good. Remember there was an old science fiction movie back in the sixties.
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I won't tell you the name of it because you might go rent it or something. It's probably not appropriate to go rent. There was some plague and this man died by letting his blood out into this fountain.
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And then anybody that came up to the fountain to get some of this good blood counteracted some of the plague in their lives.
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Could Jesus just, could he have bled in a fountain and anybody who wants to walk up to a fountain can get a little dip of that, just a little canteen of that and they're going to be saved?
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So what is blood? I don't understand then why he says blood. What does blood tell us?
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And who can tell me from two weeks ago on Sunday morning? Who can give me a great definition of the word blood? Okay, Bob.
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Okay, it's violent death. Good, it is a word that is just theologically pregnant with meaning.
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Right? It's got so much, it's not just hemoglobin. It's not just white blood cells.
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It's talking about a violent death. And if you wanted to say that's a violent death, you could say the word blood.
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I can tell you another word that we talked about just a couple weeks ago. If I say this word, what does this word represent to you in your mind?
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Cross. When you think of the word cross, when I say the word cross, what do you think of?
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That up there? That's kind of a nice smooth cross, by the way, up there. I'm glad we have a cross in the church.
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Some churches say, you know, you can't really define Christianity with one symbol. So let's make sure we don't have the cross in the church.
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I'm glad we have the cross in the church. But if I say cross, do you think of wood? If I say blood, you ought not to think of leukocytes.
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Is that a word, Kim? Leukocytes? I think it is. No, not because of that, leukocyte.
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I know parasites. As cross is full of meaning theologically, so too blood is full of meaning theologically.
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And here it is the sacrificial death of Christ. Why is the sacrificial death of Christ a non -negotiable for Christianity?
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That's my point. Why is it non -negotiable? Lewis? Okay, excellent.
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Anybody else want to add anything to that? Yes, Amelia? Okay. So blood has to be shed, but there has to be more than just bloodshed.
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There has to be a sacrificial death. And if you take a look at Ephesians chapter one, I think we can get a little more insight here.
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In him we have redemption. Don't forget, how do you redeem somebody back in those days?
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There would be slaves and you would say, I want to redeem you. I want to buy you out of the slave market.
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You would buy them out with some price. And what was the price? That price was called the ransom.
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It cost you to redeem them. And when you see the word redemption, it is that we are being redeemed out of the slave pit of sin at the price of Christ's life, right?
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That's ransom was already included in the redemption. It could say, in him we have redemption through ransom, but all the
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Jews, all the Gentiles who would read this would say, yes, it cost and it cost him his life.
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And it didn't even have to say his life because we know it did through his blood. So we need to make sure we understand the sacrificial death of Christ, where Jesus gives his life a ransom for many.
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I turn with me to Hebrews chapter nine, just quickly. I'm not gonna do another jet tour through Hebrews, but I am gonna do a jet tour through Hebrews chapter nine and some blood just so you see it.
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So you're reminded that it's not goats and calves, but it is a blood that will grant eternal redemption.
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Hebrews chapter nine, verse 12 to start.
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Peter calls this precious blood. Hebrews 9, 12, and not through the blood of gold boats.
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Sorry. Okay, not through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood.
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And again, remember, you just did not cut the goats veins and arteries so it would bleed out.
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And you go, you know what? I think I'll save on bulls and goats. I think I'll just go ahead and let some blood out.
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I've actually seen stories of people in India where they need some blood for a sacrifice and for some
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Hindu deal that they'll just come up and they know the right artery and the vein to cut in the big bull.
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And if you wanna go for the carotid or the jugular, it's gonna kill the thing. So you pick smaller ones and you've even seen horses probably sometimes, haven't you?
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And you just see the rippled muscles and then you can kind of see the veins on the outside of those muscles.
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And if you just cut that perfectly, you can put up a little container and you've gotta hold the bull in some kind of pen, little cuts, and then just fill those things up.
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And you say to yourself, why kill these goats and bulls all the time? I could just get the blood out because it's through the blood.
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I don't need to kill the thing. But here we know that those things had to be killed, dead, not through the vicious death of goats, verse 12, and calves, but through his own vicious death, he entered the holy place once for all having obtained redemption.
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What kind of redemption? An eternal redemption, an eternal ransoming, a eternal releasing.
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And then it just goes like crazy with this blood talk. Verse 13, blood of goats.
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Verse 14, blood of Christ. Verse 14, how much more will the blood of Christ?
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Theological shorthand for the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. Listen to what
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Lloyd -Jones says, sin is so terrible, so foul, and so vile that nothing could deal with it but the blood of Christ.
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And that is what happened on the cross. It is not a patching over, a covering over of sin.
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It is not God saying, don't worry, all is well. It is God showing us sin as it is, bringing it out to the light and then dealing with it.
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Sin is so bad, so terrible, that God the Son had to die to pay for that sin.
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Now, if anybody says to you, well, I'm a visitor to the church and we sing nothing but the blood, what do you mean by that?
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How would you answer the question? There is power, power, wonder -working power.
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I mean, just think, if you walked into a church service and you know nothing about Christianity and you walk in and they're singing about there's power in the blood, what would you think?
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I think these people are pretty kooky, is what I would think. What would you do if you walked into a
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Buddhist service or an Islamic service or a Hindu service and they're chanting about the blood? So if someone says to you, you sing this weird song called
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There's Power in the Blood, what do you mean by that? You would say what? There's wonder -working power in the blood of the
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Lamb. Okay, I guess you're the only one raising your hand.
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So powerful that it can do what? Okay, there you go, great.
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Did Jesus shed his literal blood, by the way, at Calvary? Yes, but it was more than that.
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It was more than that, he bled and then he died. Did he bleed to death?
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No, it had nothing to do with that. One man said, references to blood are a vivid way of saying that we owe our salvation to the death of Christ.
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All right. Third word, substitution. Right on the heels of blood, let's talk about substitution.
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Who can tell me what substitution is? Anyone? Substitution. Okay, one thing takes the place of another.
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Scott? You sure? Okay, good.
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Let me give you some quotes compiled by Mark Dever, and as I give them, you tell me if they're true or false.
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Okay? Penal substitution,
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P -N -A -L, penalty, is at best inadequate. You say, that's pretty easy, that's false.
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How about this statement? Substitution smacks too much of individualism to represent
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Paul's thoughts adequately. It's not Mark Dever saying this, Mark Dever's taking all these errors.
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By the way, just to give you a little hint, all these are false. There you go, just tell you right ahead of time.
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False. That was James Dunn, by the way.
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Some of these are just so bad, I hate to even read them. Joel Green and Mark Baker, in a book by InterVarsity Press, we believe that the popular fascination with and commitment to penal substitutionary atonement has had an ill effect in the life of the church in the
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United States, and has little to offer the global church and mission by way of understanding or embodying the message of Jesus Christ.
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Lutheran Circles, Gustav Ahlen, he doesn't want us to believe in substitutionary atonement, he wants us to believe that Jesus liberates us from spiritual forces who have enslaved us, and I have a whole list of what people think this substitutionary atonement is like, and the worst one is this.
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When Jesus died in the place of sinners, as we would understand at this church, that it was really not true, because it would be, in effect, divine child abuse that the father would punish the son like that for something he didn't do.
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Now, if somebody said that to me in a bookstore, do you think I would just be quiet? What would you do?
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Your view of substitutionary atonement is like divine child abuse. You just go, oh, thanks, and there's also a real good video on the way out that you could buy too.
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I don't think that would happen, unless it was some Joel Osteen video, then maybe that would work out perfect.
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C .T. Studd said, if Jesus be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him.
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If you don't think it cost much, if you don't think it was in your place, then your response is gonna be a hum and a ho and a yawn.
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All right, let's go to Matthew chapter 27, very, very quickly,
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Matthew 27. Let me show you just simply and clearly and quickly that we believe in substitutionary atonement, that Jesus died the death that we should have died, and we get the righteousness from Christ.
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We talked about it this morning when Pastor Steve read Isaiah chapter 61. And here we find in Matthew chapter 27, this great substitutionary atonement.
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Jesus dies in the place of sinners, on behalf of sinners, in the stead of sinners, and that's what we believe.
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And whether we like it or whether we don't, it's in the scripture. People say, well, I don't like that, all that bloody death.
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I don't like that substitution. Spurgeon would say, well, I never thought you would like it, but it's in the text.
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What are we going to do? Say these verses are somehow written by men. From the sixth hour, darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.
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So from noon until three, we have darkness. It's not usually dark at noon, is it?
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No, Jesus has been on the cross for quite some time, suffering at the hands of men from nine o 'clock to 12, but now we have darkness, and now we're going to see how he was going to be paying for our sins at Calvary.
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The ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying what? We have the translation here.
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Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
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Right from Psalm 22. There's a sign in heaven, or the lack of sign, if you will, darkness.
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Darkness often in the Bible is linked to judgment. You can see that in Amos and Joel and other places.
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God judging our sin on his son for those three hours.
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Why does he say my God, my God? Because he no longer says my father, because God is now judging.
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God is now not intimate with Jesus, as it were. Why, Jesus says, not kind of impatiently, not with sinful questioning.
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Why hast thou forsaken? God purposely forsaking Jesus. And here
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Jesus is cloaked with the garment of sin, and the father turns his back as Jesus is our substitute.
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And he cries, forsaken, I'm left destitute. You've deserted me.
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The unfathomable depths of his suffering, one man says. It's one thing to be forsaken by friends, a wife, a husband, children by their parents, but here the father forsakes the object of his eternal love.
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What Jesus used to call his father, Abba Father. Poet Browning said it this way, yea, once Emmanuel's orphan cry, his universe has shaken.
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It went up single, echoless, my God, I am forsaken. It went up from holy lips amid his lost creation, that of those lost, no son should ever use these words of desolation.
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Jesus receives the punishment that we are due. Now let me just give you a quick run through.
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First Peter chapter three, I'm gonna take you to one, two, three, four, five verses super fast to show you substitutionary atonement if you don't believe
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Matthew 27. I know you believe it, but it's just a figure of speech. Very quickly, first Peter chapter three verse 18.
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And I want you to just see this substitutionary language. One for another.
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Instead of a lamb dying, here is the lamb of God dying. First Peter three 18, quickly. For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust.
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That's substitution language in order that he might bring us to God. Go up a chapter to chapter two of the same book.
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First Peter chapter two verse 24. Substitutionary language. And he himself, if you ever see himself after he, it's emphatic in the
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Greek and in fact it is, he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
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Substitutionary atonement. Galatians chapter three verse 13. Let's see how fast we can get there.
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It's kind of like Bible drill when you're a kid. Galatians chapter three verse 13. Language of substitution.
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But dying on our behalf. Jesus dying instead of us. It's as if God takes eternity of hell, compresses it into three hours and then dumps it on Christ.
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And he pays for our sins. Can't look on sin, couldn't look on his son as he was bearing sin.
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God always judging sin even on his son. And here, Galatians chapter three verse 13. Listen to the language of substitution.
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Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse, what? For us.
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Two more. Second Corinthians chapter five, 21. This is my tombstone verse. If you want to bury me, then
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I'd hope you put this verse on my tombstone. Second Corinthians chapter five verse 21. It's probably the most concise substitutionary atonement verse that I could think of.
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He made him who knew no sin. That rules all of us out. The father makes the son who knew no sin to be sin or sin on our behalf.
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What's the language of substitution? On our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him. And I'll just give you the last one.
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Hebrews 9, 28, that Jesus bears the sin of many. On behalf of, in place of, instead of.
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The way, by the way, I like to explain it is when you meet someone and they don't understand substitutionary atonement,
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I try to take them back to the Old Testament where there was the Passover lamb. What'd you have to do with that Passover lamb that was a year old?
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The sin was so bad that the lamb, who's now a one -year -old ram, would have to die in the place of the family.
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On our behalf, in our stead, substitutionary atonement. God knew that we were unable to make our own salvation so he had to do it for us.
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Jesus took everything that we were due. By the way, let me ask you this question.
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If you believe in substitutionary atonement where Jesus dies for all your sins, past, present, and future, can you please tell me how you can believe that you can lose your salvation?
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It was everything. Now, if you tell me you've got a friend who said they're a Christian and now lives like the devil, well, that's a different question.
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There are people who say they're Christians and don't act like it. There is a category for those people. I say
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I'm a Christian, but I don't act like it. The category there is called self -deception.
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But the category here that says, you know, I've sinned as a Christian. Can I out -sin myself out of the kingdom?
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The answer is no, and you shouldn't. First answer is no, you can't sin yourself out of God's kingdom because Jesus has paid for all your sins.
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And how could you, Romans chapter six would ask the question, how could you?
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You can't lose your salvation if you believe in substitutionary atonement. The perfect man dies for the sins of his people.
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Those sins are placed on Christ. Christ's perfect righteousness is placed on us and you have the great transaction.
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Questions about that? Your time is just gone, basically. All right, any questions about substitution?
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Any questions about inerrancy? If you believe in inerrancy, if you believe in substitution, and if you believe in the blood of Christ, you only believe in it because of what?
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Because of who? Because God has allowed you because of whom?
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Yes, whom? Him? Whom? Yes. That's right.
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Whom? Him. If you can answer the question, him, it should be whom?
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It's because God has allowed you to see this. You're not better. You're not theologically more astute.
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God has opened our eyes to realize that these are truths worth dying for, worth living for. You can ask the pastors around here and you can talk to Dave and Steve and Lewis and Pradeep.
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Without inerrancy, we have no ministry. We have no local church life. We have no authority. We have no anything.
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Without the blood of Christ, there's no payment for God. How can we pay God off with something we have?
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Our hands are tainted by sin. And without substitution, how can we stand before God? You lose these things, you lose everything.
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And you lose especially the response of praise and thanks. Summed up in this little song, when
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I stand before the throne, dressed in beauty not my own, when I see thee as thou are, love thee with unsinning heart, then,
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Lord, shall I fully know, not till then, how much I owe. Let's pray.
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Thank you, Lord, for this night. Thank you for these truths that aren't just seminary truths. There aren't just college truths.
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They're truths that church people should know. And we are thankful for an inerrant Bible. We're thankful for a
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Bible we can trust. We're thankful that Jesus Christ, in a vicious manner, had paid for our sins.
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And it was in such a way that we can only look to you and say, we don't deserve it.
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It's all of grace. And, Lord, I pray for our church. I pray for me as well, that we would, with now sinning hearts, love thee by obedience and praise and thanks and sacrifice.
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And we'll look forward to that day in glory with unsinning hearts. We will completely and with finality and with a glory in our hearts know how much we owe you.
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And we could never pay it back. And so we just say, oh, but grace. Thank you so much for what you've done in Jesus' name.