Sunday Sermon: He Became Sin Who Knew No Sin (2 Corinthians 5:21)

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August 12, 2018

Pastor Gabriel Hughes preaches on 2 Corinthians 5:21, and how in the cross of Christ we see both the love and wrath of God displayed, for our benefit and for His glory. Visit fsbcjc.org for more info about our church.

00:15: You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.
00:22: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a
00:27: New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.
00:34: Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the
00:39: Corinthians. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.
00:45: The Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.
00:54: Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.
01:01: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come.
01:12: All of this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
01:22: That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
01:34: Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.
01:41: We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
01:48: For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
02:00: Let us pray. Our great God and Savior, what an incredible and beautiful truth this is to have read this in this way and understand the mysteries of these things that were happening spiritually as people beheld a
02:19: Savior who was hung on a cross, dying for our sins. That is,
02:24: Christ cried out to his Father in heaven, my God, my
02:29: God, why have you forsaken me? And the people heard this and were puzzled by what it was he was saying and what was happening there.
02:37: It has been shown to us through your Son and through his apostles that what was happening was the wrath of God was being poured out upon his
02:49: Son, who was dying in our place, so that by faith in him and this finished work on the cross and his resurrection from the grave, we would have the forgiveness of sins.
03:04: How would we be able to behold such mysteries if we were not told such things and revealed this truth in the pages of your word?
03:14: It was prophesied before Christ came, it was fulfilled in his body and by his blood, and then it was attested to by the apostles who were there and saw it.
03:26: So now as we rejoice in this great truth that has been given for our sake, so we even get to taste of this body and drink of this cup when we come to the
03:38: Lord's table this morning. Bless this place as we gather as your people.
03:47: May there be no divisions among us. But even as we were once divided from God and by his blood we have been reconciled, so we also know that by the blood of Christ we have been reconciled to each other.
04:04: So may we be the people of God this morning, rejoicing in your great and mighty, wondrous work through the blood that was shed in Jesus Christ our
04:15: Savior, in whose name we pray. And all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated.
04:23: Whenever we talk about the Pharisees, we think of the Pharisees as the villains of the story and everyone else in the story of Christ views them that way also.
04:35: And it is right that we should consider them the villains of the story. After all, it was they who conspired with the
04:41: Romans to put Jesus to death. Jesus the hero of all of Scripture.
04:47: So yes, the Pharisees are very much the villains. The very first time they are introduced in the
04:53: Bible, it is in Matthew chapter 3, when John the Baptist is baptizing and he sees there the
05:00: Pharisees and the Sadducees and he says, you brood of vipers. That's the way that the
05:07: Pharisees are first addressed in the Scriptures. You brood of vipers. Who told you to flee from the wrath that is to come?
05:16: The next time they are mentioned is in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus' first great sermon that we have in the pages of Scripture, Matthew chapter 5, verse 20.
05:25: He says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not inherit the kingdom of God.
05:33: So as the Gospel writers have presented to us these scribes, these
05:39: Pharisees, and these Sadducees, of course we recognize them as the villains of the story.
05:44: It is the very way that they are introduced and it is the role that they play in the crucifixion of Christ, our
05:51: Lord. And the way we view this story when we read it is probably much like an old western.
05:57: They're dressed in black. They wear the black hats. So everybody knows the Pharisees are the villains.
06:04: And then along comes Jesus riding into town, clothed in white. He's wearing the white hat.
06:10: And when he comes in and he says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, all the people say, yeah, amen, hey.
06:18: Glad somebody is finally saying it. There's a new sheriff in town. He's here to clean up this place.
06:24: He's putting the scribes and the Pharisees in their place. But that's not the way that the people viewed the
06:33: Pharisees. The Pharisees, according to the people, were the heroes of the story.
06:40: They weren't the villains. The people loved the Pharisees. They were their spiritual heroes.
06:49: So we see the story, and we have the complete story laid out for us in the Bible, and the way
06:54: Matthew writes it, he presents the Pharisees as the villains because they are. But the people there didn't see them that way.
07:02: They looked up to the Pharisees. They thought, this is who I have to be like in order to get to heaven.
07:10: And then Jesus comes in and says, no, you have to be better than they are. And let me tell you, as a pastor who is experienced in this, people don't like when you tell them that the teachers they love are hypocrites and heretics.
07:26: So the people did not appreciate Jesus saying these things about the teachers that they were supposed to emulate.
07:35: And we often think that it was the Pharisees and only the Pharisees who were trying to put Jesus to death, and they just manipulated and conned the people to join their side.
07:44: There were lay people who were trying to put Jesus to death. In his own hometown of Nazareth, they tried to throw him off of a cliff.
07:52: They hated the things that Jesus said. Now, we will compartmentalize these stories, and we'll read something like Jesus feeding 5 ,000 people.
08:03: So we'll think, wow, there are 5 ,000 followers of Jesus there. But you miss the next part of the story in the book of John, where he turns around to the masses who are following him and says, why are you here?
08:15: You don't care what I say. You just want more bread. The reason why thousands of people were following him was because they just wanted another miracle.
08:24: They wanted a handout. They didn't actually want to hear what Jesus had to say. They didn't want to hear that they were filthy, rotten sinners who were destined for hell, who had to have a righteousness better than the teachers that they had been looking up to their entire lives.
08:40: You know, folks, there was not a people at this time. In fact, there has probably never been a people in the history of the world who were better at keeping the law of Moses than the
08:51: Pharisees. They were good at it. And you know who was even better than all of them?
08:59: Paul, the Apostle Paul. In Philippians chapter 3, he says, I was a Pharisee of Pharisees.
09:05: I was even better than all of them were. If you think that you have something to boast about in your flesh,
09:11: I have more. He lays out his entire resume, but then he goes on to say, and for all of this that I accomplished in my flesh,
09:19: I count it as rubbish, as dung for the cause of Christ. It's not about what
09:26: I can do in my flesh. It's all about Christ and his righteousness.
09:34: And so Jesus comes along saying, unless you have a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the
09:42: Pharisees, you cannot inherit the kingdom of God. And the reason why I bring this up with you today, my brothers and sisters in the
09:50: Lord, is because if you are a follower of Jesus, you do have a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the
09:58: Pharisees. You cannot keep the law to your own righteousness.
10:06: You needed the righteousness of someone who was without sin, and that is
10:13: Jesus Christ, the righteous. And here in 2
10:19: Corinthians 5, 21, we have one of the most beautiful doctrines in all of scripture given to us in these 24 words.
10:29: For our sake, God made him, Jesus, to be sin, who knew no sin, who was perfect in his righteousness, who had never done anything wrong, so that in him, by faith in Jesus, we might become the righteousness of God.
10:50: My friends, this is the gospel, the gospel of justification by faith, that by believing in Christ, we are justified and we stand innocent before a holy
11:05: God, not because of anything you did, because you couldn't do anything. You couldn't even do what the
11:10: Pharisees and the scribes did, but because of what Christ has done for you in his life and in his death and in his resurrection.
11:21: And even now, for you, is seated at the right hand of God as your advocate, interceding on your behalf.
11:32: For our sake, Christ has done this. And as we consider more deeply this truth this morning, here's how
11:41: I want to divide up this passage. I want to look at this in three ways. He made him to be sin, who knew no sin.
11:52: That's part one. Part two is, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God.
11:59: And then in our last point, I'm going to combine, for our sake and in him, for point number three.
12:07: So first of all, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin.
12:12: What does this mean? What does it mean that Jesus was made sin, who knew no sin?
12:21: Well, there are some heretical views out there to watch out for. Those who have taken this quite literally,
12:28: Kenneth Copeland, who is a Word of Faith preacher and has said that Jesus had to give up his righteousness and he accepted the sin nature of Satan.
12:40: Benny Hinn likewise declares that Jesus did not take my sin, he became my sin.
12:47: According to Benny Hinn, he became one with the nature of Satan. That's not at all what this means.
12:56: And there's a context that has been given to us throughout the Scriptures as to exactly what this means when we read that he became sin, who knew no sin.
13:05: Let me give it to you in the most layman's terms before we move on and look at some other passages of Scripture.
13:11: To say that Jesus became sin, who knew no sin simply means this, that when Jesus died on the cross in your place, the death that you deserve for your rebellion against God, God looked at Jesus as though Jesus had lived my life.
13:30: And when we read further that we might become the righteousness of God, Christ gave us his righteousness and God looked at us as though we had lived
13:41: Jesus' life. This is a doctrine that is referred to as double imputation.
13:48: Our sins were placed upon Christ on the cross, his righteousness was given to us.
13:55: Something was imputed to Christ. Something from Christ was imputed to us. Double imputation.
14:01: So Christ was killed for us, for our sins. And we live in his righteousness, which was given to us by the grace and mercy of God.
14:16: Let's look at some passages that touch on this. Go to Leviticus chapter 1.
14:22: Leviticus chapter 1. Third book of the Bible. And as this law is being laid out, and of course we have laws that are given in Genesis and in Exodus also, but there's also much narrative in those two books.
14:36: In the book of Leviticus, this is mostly law. And it begins with law. It begins with a command for the people of God for the atonement and the forgiveness of their sins.
14:48: Remember, this is a people who lived in slavery in Egypt, and God, by his mercy, because of a promise he had given to Abraham 400 years earlier, called them out of slavery and into a promised land, the very place that he told
15:03: Abraham he would bring his children. We have over a million children of Abraham now that have been called out of slavery in Egypt.
15:11: They are in the wilderness before entering the promised land, and God has given them their law.
15:17: There has not yet come upon the sin of Israel, because of which God cursed them to wander in the desert for 40 years.
15:25: That wouldn't happen until the book of Numbers. So we have Leviticus that is given by God to Moses to his people, and for the forgiveness of sins that they would be purified before inheriting a land that God has given to them.
15:39: Here is the first of the commands that they are handed. Leviticus chapter 1, beginning in verse 1.
15:44: The Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, Speak to the people of Israel and say to them,
15:51: When any one of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of livestock from the herd or from the flock.
16:00: If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish.
16:08: He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the
16:14: Lord. Now get this. Here is how this sacrifice is to be offered. Verse 4. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.
16:30: You got that? So this lamb that's being brought into a place to be sacrificed is being taken by the priest, and it's being placed on the altar.
16:42: And what the person must do who has brought this lamb to the priest is he must lay his hand on the animal's head.
16:51: And the lamb is going to be slaughtered, throat cut, blood spilled, and then the symbolism of what's happening here is that the sins of this man who has placed his hand on the lamb's head, for himself and for his family, their sins are being transferred to the animal, and that animal is being slaughtered on his behalf.
17:22: And so symbolizing that the transference of sins has taken place, the possessor of the animal is placing his hand on the animal's head as blood is being spilled.
17:35: Does that sound like a fun practice to you, that you would enjoy doing?
17:43: And yet this was the common practice happening daily in the tabernacle and later in the temple for the people of God, that for the forgiveness of sins, blood must be shed.
17:55: We saw this when the very first sin was committed, the rebellion of Adam and Eve against God.
18:01: And yet there in Genesis chapter 3, it says that God made skins for them to cover their nakedness.
18:09: Now, it doesn't say that God slaughtered an animal, but that's what's being implied, because where do those skins come from?
18:18: And so for the forgiveness of sins, that the shame of their nakedness might be covered, blood had to be shed.
18:26: Romans 6, 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
18:35: Lord. What we deserve for our sin is death. And so God gave the people, his own people, this system of sacrifice for the forgiveness of their sins, since blood had to be shed.
18:49: And this animal that was being offered for the forgiveness of sins had to be immaculate, had to be spotless.
18:56: There could be no blemish about it. Whether you're talking about a sheep or a goat or a bull, whatever animal it was that was brought there to the place to be slaughtered for the forgiveness of sins, it had to meet certain qualifications.
19:13: It had to be the best of the flock. It had to be firstborn. It had to be either a male or a female, depending upon the law that had to be followed for the forgiveness of that particular sin.
19:27: Everything had to be followed to the letter. On Thursday evening, we've been going through the
19:33: Old Testament. This is a study that I've been doing now since, I think, 2012. So in six years of teaching
19:41: Bible study, at one point it was on Wednesday night and then moved to Thursday night. We started in Genesis.
19:47: Now we've just finished up Ezra. We're about to go into Nehemiah this Thursday. And one of the things that those who have been in the class the longest have noticed is how much blood is being shed for the forgiveness of sins.
20:02: Whenever sacrifices are being lifted up or offered there in the tabernacle or then in the temple, and the people of God will sin and they will stop sacrificing, and temple practice will fall apart because the people are not obeying
20:15: God, and then somebody, a king or a priest, will be convicted because they'll realize, we've not been obeying
20:20: God. We have been transgressing His law. Great is our sins. We deserve to be destroyed.
20:27: They will mourn over their sinfulness and then there will be some kind of revival and restoration. There will be their own kind of reformation that will happen in Israel.
20:37: Well, we have to bring back these customs again. We haven't been obeying God's law. If there's going to be forgiveness for sins, we have to do what it is that God told
20:47: Moses and that Moses gave the people. And so there will be a revival in the land, a revival that begins with repentance and a pleading for forgiveness.
20:58: And then when this revival takes hold, the people will bring the best of their livestock into the temple and they will be slaughtered.
21:05: And the scriptures will tell you how many animals, hundreds upon hundreds upon thousands upon thousands of animals, and this will go on for days and days as blood is being shed and animals are being slaughtered and blood is being spilled for the forgiveness of sins.
21:23: It was a gross practice. Why is this so disgusting?
21:31: Because, my friends, sin is disgusting in the eyes of a holy God. It is so wretched and so awful that however bad you feel about slaughtering an animal and having to watch it struggle and die is not even nearly as bad as what you have done before a
21:49: God who made you and gave you the breath that you breathe and then you took that breath and glorified yourself with it instead of God.
21:59: Sin is repugnant. It's awful. It's so terrible that in the book of Habakkuk, the prophet says, your eyes are so holy you can't even look at sin.
22:09: That's how God feels about sin. And everything that needs to be done for the forgiveness of sins is so grotesque because sin is grotesque.
22:21: And we need to pray and ask that we would feel about our sin the same way that God feels about it so that we would understand what we have done and that we need a
22:36: Savior who will save us from the judgment of God that is upon all who have transgressed his law.
22:46: Even here in the law when we read about these sacrifices and these offerings that needed to be made for atonement, for the forgiveness of sins, even this was not enough.
22:59: Because as we've already read as we've been going through 2 Corinthians, in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, the apostle
23:05: Paul said that the ministry of Moses was a glory that was fading. It was never destined to last.
23:11: It wasn't going to endure. It has faded and now it has passed away. But we've been handed a glory that's even greater than the glory of Moses.
23:20: And that's the glory of Jesus Christ, which will never fade and is eternal. In the book of Hebrews, Christ is being given to us as the greater
23:28: Moses. Even Moses himself said there was one that was coming who would be greater than him. In Deuteronomy chapter 18, a prophet who is like me whom you will listen to.
23:39: Jesus is the greater Moses, and Jesus has fulfilled all the law and the prophets, and all this sacrificial system that was given to Israel, to God's people, was but a type or a shadow.
23:53: That's exactly the words that are used in the book of Hebrews. These were just types and shadows of the things that would be fulfilled in Christ.
24:01: You know, folks, praise God that Christ is the sacrificial lamb whose blood was so great and so pure that it was greater than hundreds of thousands of bulls, lambs, and goats that were offered in Israel that we don't have to do this anymore.
24:15: I mean, praise God that we just don't have to go through the yuckiness and the messiness of this. But it's still so important for us to realize what it is that we have done against God and what it required for us to be made right before God.
24:32: You even today could offer hundreds of thousands of bulls, lambs, and goats for the forgiveness of your sins, and all those millions of gallons of blood would still not cover the sins that you committed just this morning.
24:46: But one drop of the blood of Christ shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins is enough to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
25:00: How beautiful is that? And how do we receive such a wonderful gift of righteousness?
25:07: What do you have to do? Nothing but believe on His name, and you will be forgiven.
25:19: That's the method of transference that God has chosen to give you the forgiveness of sins.
25:27: Faith that you would believe on the name of the Son of God, and you would be cleansed from all your uncleannesses by faith.
25:38: And we see in the Scripture that even faith is not something we do.
25:45: You don't sit there in your chair and go, I'm concentrating, and if I concentrate hard enough,
25:51: I'll believe and I'll be saved. No, because that would be a work. You would have worked hard enough to concentrate or meditate on something hard enough to guarantee your own salvation.
26:01: The faith that we are given comes not even from us. It is given by God. Hebrews 12 too, let us cast aside every weight and sin which so easily entangles and set our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith.
26:20: He gave us our faith, and He is perfecting us in that faith. As Paul said to the
26:27: Philippians, in Philippians chapter 1, I am confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it on the day of Christ.
26:34: He gave you your faith, and He is growing you in sanctification as you mature in your faith as well.
26:43: And this is the gift of God that He has given to us, not of works so that no one may boast, that by faith we would have the forgiveness of sins.
26:57: For our sake, God made Him to be sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
27:05: Luke 22, 19, when Jesus broke the bread and passed the cup to His disciples,
27:11: He said, this is my body which is given for you. John 10, 15,
27:18: Jesus said, I lay down my life for the sheep. Romans 5, 8,
27:23: God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
27:30: Titus 2, 14, Jesus gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness.
27:36: And 1 Peter 3, 18, Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.
27:47: That's reconciliation. That's the ministry of reconciliation that we've been talking about over the course of the last several weeks in 2
27:54: Corinthians chapter 5. And by the providence of God, I messed up that first sermon and had to preach it again so that I would be here on this morning preaching 2
28:04: Corinthians 5, 21, right before the Lord's table when we have represented for us the body that was broken and the blood that was spilled for the forgiveness of sins.
28:15: As we read here, that these things happen so that we might become the righteousness of God.
28:25: In your bulletin, I had been sure to outline some of the passages that we look at today, including that one from Leviticus chapter 1.
28:33: Let's go next to Isaiah 53. Isaiah chapter 53.
28:41: And we see that this understanding of double imputation, of our sins laid upon Christ and His righteousness given to us, this was prophesied 700 years before it ever even happened.
28:56: That these things would happen according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, according to what
29:01: Peter said at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. Here's Isaiah 53. Let's read the whole chapter, starting in verse 1.
29:09: Who has believed what He has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the
29:15: Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground.
29:23: This is all describing Jesus here. He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire
29:32: Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces.
29:45: He was despised and we esteemed Him not. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed
29:55: Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions.
30:03: He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.
30:16: All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the
30:22: Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not
30:32: His mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that is before its shearers, is silent, so He opened not
30:41: His mouth. You know, I will never forget, before we go on here, I'll never forget an illustration that Brother Chris brought us in a sermon that he preached a couple of years ago, and after a trip that he made down to South America, he had videoed a
30:56: Lord's Supper that was being done there in the church where he was attending, and they actually sacrificed a lamb and spilled its blood, and tied up the lamb, and when it was tied up and laying there on the ground, it didn't move, it didn't struggle, it didn't make a sound.
31:14: It was bleeding and it was crying, bleeding, B -L -E -A -T -I -N -G, not
31:19: B -L -E -E -D -I -N -G, that part had not happened yet, but it was bleeding and crying up until the point that it was tied up and laid there on the ground, and then it just laid there silent, awaiting its execution.
31:35: By the providence of God, this is what happens to lambs when you tie them up, and so it was the same with Christ.
31:43: When He was bound, He did not cry out or despise those who despised
31:49: Him. But as Isaiah even says here, that He, like a lamb, being led to the slaughter, was silent and opened not
32:00: His mouth. And Peter would affirm this later in 1 Peter when he said that He did not revile those who reviled
32:08: Him, and so we must be imitators of Christ and not revile those who revile us.
32:15: Displaying exactly as He did in His gentleness, in His love and His affection for sinners.
32:22: Verse 8, By oppression and judgment He was taken away, and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of My people?
32:35: And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence and there was no deceit in His mouth.
32:45: There we have prophesied He was even going to be buried in the tomb of a rich man, of Joseph of Arimathea, 700 years before it happened.
32:55: Verse 10, Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush Him. He has put Him to grief.
33:01: When His soul makes an offering for guilt, He shall see His offspring, He shall prolong
33:07: His days. I repeat to you again, It was the will of the Lord to crush Him. Verse 11,
33:14: Out of the anguish of His soul He shall see and be satisfied. By His knowledge shall the
33:20: Righteous One, My servant, make many to be accounted righteousness, and He shall bear their iniquities.
33:27: Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the many, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out
33:34: His soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors, which is what our
33:45: Lord Christ is doing for us even now. What a beautiful chapter.
33:53: And if there is any section of Isaiah 53 that you should memorize, it's all of it.
33:59: But more specifically, verses 5 and 6, He was pierced for our transgressions,
34:05: He was crushed for our iniquities, upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.
34:12: All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to His own way, and the
34:17: Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He made Him to be sin, who knew no sin for our sakes.
34:29: 1 John 4 .10, In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent
34:35: His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation specifically means that God's anger has been turned away by the ransom that Christ paid for us.
34:47: R .C. Sproul explains, Propitiation brings about a change in God's attitude, so that He moves from being at enmity with us to being for us.
34:59: Through the process of propitiation, we are restored into fellowship and favor with Him.
35:07: The ministry of reconciliation. The next part of the verse in 2
35:14: Corinthians 5 .21 that we look at is that next half, so that we might become the righteousness of God.
35:21: If you're still here in Isaiah 53, turn over to Isaiah 61. Isaiah 61, we'll look at the last two verses, 10 and 11.
35:32: I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exult in my
35:38: God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation.
35:45: He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels.
35:59: For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the
36:07: Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.
36:16: What this is very specifically telling to us, and is prophesied through the prophet Isaiah, what we are being told is that we will be given a righteousness that comes not from ourselves.
36:28: It comes from someone else, and we will be clothed in it, and that is the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
36:36: My friends, on the cross, there was something incredible, and there was something mysterious that was happening, and we can barely fathom what it is, even on this side of the cross, and those who were right there who saw it, who witnessed the spectacle, they didn't understand it either.
36:53: When Jesus cried out, Eli, Eli, lemme subachthani, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
36:59: The people were trying to figure out what it was he was doing exactly. Well, he was quoting from the Psalms, but some thought he was calling for Elijah.
37:08: They said, wait, wait, wait, before you do it, let's see if Elijah comes down to him. They did not understand these things, and we think we're smarter than everybody else that we read about in the
37:19: Gospels. Well, if I had been one of the disciples, I wouldn't have been as thick -headed as they were. No, you probably would have been dumber, because by the age of 13, they had the entire
37:30: Torah memorized, all of the five first books of the Bible. Do you even have one book of the
37:35: Bible memorized? Let alone Leviticus? Yet these people had that much of the
37:40: Bible memorized, and yet when the disciples were there with Jesus, and he's showing them the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, they still couldn't figure it out?
37:48: We wouldn't have been any smarter than they were. We think we're smarter because we have the prophecy of God more fully confirmed, as Peter talks about in 2
38:00: Peter 1. The story has been written. We can read the whole thing now from beginning to end. We can even read the end, and the end hadn't happened yet.
38:09: And it's all right here in the pages of God's word. And it was predestined for us that we would have a righteousness that comes not from ourselves, but comes from God, the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
38:22: And all of these things are divinely mysterious. We could have stood there at the cross, and we could have beheld it with our eyes, but there was something that was going on behind a veil that we can't see.
38:34: Something was happening in a spiritual realm that we don't have eyes to behold, and we cannot comprehend.
38:41: But we simply must have faith to know that it was being done and has been done on our behalf.
38:49: I remember I made a When We Understand the Text video talking about who killed Jesus. Yes, the
38:56: Jews put him to death. Yes, the Romans were involved, who nailed his hands and feet to the cross, their instrument of death, and raised him up.
39:06: They were the ones who had control over the law at that particular time. So, of course, they did it, but it wasn't by their will that Christ was put to death, but God's.
39:16: Ultimately, and what we just read here in Isaiah 53, is it was God's will to crush him, and God was the one who put
39:23: Jesus to death. And when I made that video and showed different passages of Scripture pointing out how this is true,
39:31: I had a woman who came up to me, face -to -face came up to me, and she said, thank you for that video, because my whole life, and I've been a
39:39: Christian for 30 plus years, my whole life, I was wondering, how is it that Jesus' death is the forgiveness of sins for me because the
39:49: Jews killed him and the Romans killed him? Like, why is that the forgiveness of sins? Because the
39:55: Jews put Jesus to death. I didn't understand how that worked. I simply had faith because of what the
40:01: Bible said, but it still didn't make sense to me until you pointed out and showed it from the
40:06: Scriptures that it was the Lord's will to crush him. God put Jesus to death, and Jesus himself said, you don't kill me,
40:14: I lay down my own life and have the authority to take it back up again.
40:21: And because of this that God has done for us that we have the forgiveness of sins, not because men put
40:27: Jesus to death, but because Christ laid down his own life willingly to be a sacrifice for our sins.
40:34: So there were so many things that were going on here spiritually that our eyes cannot see.
40:40: And we will behold these mysteries as we read it in the pages of Scripture because God has illuminated it to us through his prophets and his apostles.
40:48: But we can barely grasp this until the day comes when our faith shall be sight.
40:56: And when we enter into glory, we will be like him because we will be made to be like him, as it says in 1
41:03: John 3, 2, and we will see him as he is. And then my friends, we will spend all eternity beholding beautiful wondrous things that our physical eyes and mind simply cannot grasp.
41:17: It's beautiful and wonderful, this doctrine that is called penal substitutionary atonement.
41:24: That's what we have laid out for us in 2 Corinthians 5, 21. You say, well, Brother Gabe, you just said it was double imputation.
41:31: Yeah, it's both. The doctrine of double imputation is studied here, as well as the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement.
41:38: And whenever I get to mentioning some of these doctrines, you just might say to yourself, oh, Brother Gabe, you're starting to sound like a seminary class now instead of a sermon that I'm supposed to be listening to in church.
41:47: Why don't you just speak English? You don't have to be afraid of these terms and these names that are given for these particular doctrines.
41:54: All you need to know is this, that these things, like these 24 words that we have, I think it's 15 words in Greek that we have in 2
42:02: Corinthians 5, 21. These words have so been studied and pondered over for 2 ,000 years in the history of the church that there is not a thought that you can have about it that somebody else hasn't already thought about because this truth that is being given to us is so beautiful and wonderful that it is worth studying for 2 ,000 years.
42:25: And the men who have this great, deep theological religious knowledge who have gone before us and have studied these things have come up with a name for this because it has been studied so much.
42:38: How about we group all of the doctrines and teachings that involve this one thing into one category and we have it in the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement.
42:48: It's not a made -up doctrine that was made by men. It's simply taking the truth that is expressed to us in Scripture and giving it a term so that all the teachings that fall under this category would be right there for us to review.
43:02: As men and women have studied this over the centuries, it is so beautiful and wonderful that it has the privilege of being given a name, but even the name cannot encapsulate the beauty of this doctrine that is given to us in the forgiveness of sins through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
43:27: The doctrine of the atonement is a beautiful word that brings forth praise in the heart of every
43:36: Christian who looks upon the cross and sees the love of the
43:43: Father displayed in His Son, Jesus Christ, who laid down His own life and shed
43:48: His blood for our sins. But this doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, which is the gospel, a friend of mine,
43:58: Nate Pickowitz, said a rejection of penal substitutionary atonement is a rejection of the gospel. Either you're saved through the work of Christ on the cross, or you're not saved at all.
44:09: And this is a doctrine that has been under attack and has been under attack even in recent months.
44:16: A man by the name of Brian Zahn, a pastor who is just two hours from here, wrote a book, and the whole book is meant to slam the doctrine of the atonement.
44:27: He calls God a monster if God the Father sacrificed
44:32: His own Son. He says atonement is man's theory.
44:38: It is not biblical, and it makes God out to be a monster if you believe that.
44:45: And this is a man who's a pastor. He's not the only one. There's another fellow, a songwriter by the name of Michael Gunger.
44:53: As a matter of fact, we have a song in our hymnal that was co -written by Michael Gunger. He wrote that the doctrine of the atonement was horrific.
45:04: William Paul Young, who wrote the book called The Shack. By the way, he's the best -selling
45:11: Christian fiction writer since C .S. Lewis. And he has called the doctrine of the atonement a lie, a monstrous lie that we dare not repeat or preach in our churches.
45:25: In response to this, Owen Strayen, who's a professor over at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, he wrote the following.
45:32: What truly horrifies sinful humanity is not, in the end, Scripture's stubborn reliance upon blood atonement.
45:41: The problem is much deeper. What truly offends human nature about the atonement is the greatness of the
45:47: God who forgives through it, the lavish nature of the mercy that flows from it, the salvation for the wicked accompanied by it.
45:57: It is precisely this salvation our fallen hearts reject. It is exactly this forgiving
46:03: God we defy and even dare to correct. We must take care here.
46:09: To promote the cross without the atonement means we do not promote the cross at all.
46:17: Martin Lloyd -Jones wrote a book in which—well, I don't think he wrote this book.
46:23: I think it's actually a book that just compiles all the sermons that he taught regarding the
46:28: Sermon on the Mount, which Jesus preached. And here's what Martin Lloyd -Jones said about how we can know the true teacher from the false teacher, even through the doctrine of the atonement.
46:38: The false prophet talks about Jesus, Martin Lloyd -Jones said. He even delights to talk about the cross and the death of Jesus.
46:47: But the vital question is, what is his view of that death? What is his view of the cross?
46:54: There are views being taught which are utterly heretical and a denial of the Christian faith.
47:01: The one test is this. Does he realize that Christ died on the cross because it was the only way to make expiation and propitiation for sins?
47:14: Does he believe that if God had not punished his sin there in the body of Christ on the cross—
47:20: I say it with reverence— then even God could not have forgiven him?
47:27: Merely to talk about Christ and the cross is not enough. Is it the biblical doctrine of the penal substitutionary atonement?
47:36: That is the way to test the false prophet. The false prophet does not say these things.
47:41: He talks about the cross. He talks about the people around the cross and he sentimentalizes about our
47:47: Lord. He does not know anything about what Paul referred to as the offense of the cross.
47:56: As D .A. Carson has said, if you want to see the wrath of God, look at the cross.
48:05: For God's wrath was poured out upon his Son for our sake, for the forgiveness of sins.
48:12: D .A. Carson goes on to say, do you want to see the love of God? Look at the cross.
48:20: God's love and his wrath meet there and his wrath is satisfied in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins.
48:30: That brings me to the final point of this sermon. Today, we might become the righteousness of God in him, for our sake, the way it begins in him, the way that it ends.
48:44: And I simply single this out to say only this, that you receive this gift of righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ.
48:55: Romans 3, 24 and 25, 23 through 25 rather, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
49:10: God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.
49:19: Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing.
49:28: It is the gift of God, not of works so that no one may boast.
49:34: ♪ What can wash away my sin?
49:49: Nothing but the blood of Jesus What can make me whole?
50:12: Breast, no, no, what?
50:24: For my voice I see Nothing but snow, no, snow, no
51:46: This is all my hope and peace Nothing but the blood of Jesus This is all my righteousness
52:01: Nothing but the blood of Jesus Oh, precious is the flow
52:11: That makes me white as snow
52:17: No other fount I know
52:22: Nothing but the blood of Jesus Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.
52:36: For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.
52:41: On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.