The Most Important Theological Lessons (part 3)

God’s Self-Revelation and the Value of Theological Lessons

Well, if you're a visitor, you don't know how idiosyncratic I am, but if you're a regular member, you do. And so you probably aren't surprised when I have object lessons for my kids that are strange, but hopefully memorable.

When I went overseas the first time to teach in India years ago, Kim said, do me a favor, stay safe, and don't bring home any little idols. And so, of course, don't touch wet paint. I, of course, wanted to go get an idol then.

I never thought about it before she mentioned anything. And so I bring home every trip now some kind of little idol, and I'll set them in my house on the windowsill. I set them up upright, and then every time I get home from work, from church, they're laying face down, kind of like Dagon and the Ark of the Covenant and all that in the Bible.

And so I know they're nothing. They're made of nothing. They're false gods. And I thought I want to give a little illustration of the kids. So this week, we were having dinner. I just sat one of the little goddesses right there in the kitchen table, and I said, begin to tell me everything you know about this god.

What can you describe about this god? And they would say it's fake, it's blasphemous, it's false. And then they started to get around to it, and they said, it has ears, but it can't hear. It has eyes, but it can't see.

And then the one that I was waiting for arrived. It has a mouth, but it cannot and does not, what, speak. If you think about it, and Al Mohler was right when he brought it to our attention in his new book, all false gods, you're able to see them, these kind of fake gods.

The Speaking God Versus Silent Idols

You can see them, but they don't speak. But the one true, the one real, the one authentic god of the universe is invisible. You cannot see him, yet he, what, speaks. He reveals himself. He shows who he is by speaking in Scripture.

He condescends to reveals himself so we might understand him. And so in light of that revelation, in light of God knowing something about himself and he did not have to tell us, when he does tell us something about himself, would it be good for us to know what he told us?

He didn't have to say anything except, look at creation and you'll think, power, wisdom, might. But beyond that, there are other things that he has decided to precisely tell us through Scripture, and it would be valuable for each one of us here to understand everything God has said.

True? Every minor detail. And so over the last 20 years of being a Christian, I've learned many things besides Jesus loves me and died for me, and I was a sinner. I've learned many things, and so I thought, while we're waiting for the verse-by-verse exposition of 1 Corinthians to start, what could I tell the congregation that might encourage them and convict them to make the comfortable convicted and the convicted comfortable?

And so we're in the middle of a series, part three today, on the most important theological lessons I have learned in the last 20 years. In the last 20 years of being a Christian, the last 16 or 17 years in ministry, important theological lessons.

Yes, it is a topic, but each topic, we'll go to passages and work through them as we're approaching 1 Corinthians. Someone said, when will we start 1 Corinthians? I don't quite know, but it'll either be next week or the week after or the month after, but we're getting close, because once I start, I don't want to deviate.

We want to just work right through that book that will be good for our church, the study of 1 Corinthians. It'll probably take me about three years to get through, so the things that I want to say now in between, that's what I'm doing, because once I get to 1 Corinthians, if I've got some hobby horse, I can't really tell you the hobby horse if we're in chapter one of 1 Corinthians unless that hobby horse matches 1 Corinthians.

So now while I have the opportunity, I almost said chance, chance I guess is a word Jesus used, and I have an opportunity, so to speak, to tell you some important theological lessons that I think God has helped me with to understand Him better and that will help you as well.

Lessons on God’s Sovereignty, Sanctification, and Christian Thinking

If I need to know these, you do too, because they're not for pastors, they're for Christians. So in review, so far we've learned, number one, that God is utterly sovereign over everything in the universe, including who goes to heaven and who does not.

After all, we've learned that salvation, as Jonah said in chapter two, is from God and of God, and if salvation is God's prerogative to grant, and we know that there is a hell and we know not everyone's going to heaven, we aren't universalists, then that means it's God's decision who goes ultimately and who doesn't.

We're not saying people aren't responsible, they don't have a duty, they don't believe themselves, that's all true, but at the end of the day, God is the sovereign one. We do not believe in this church, God votes for us to go to heaven, Satan votes against us to go to heaven, and we cast the deciding ballot, because we would always cast the ballot that says we love our sins and we don't want to go.

So God has to intervene, He has to send His Son to rescue those who were lost. Number two, there are no shortcuts for holy living. We love shortcuts, we love to have the idea that we work smarter, not harder.

When it comes to theological sanctification, that is growing in Christ, looking more and more like Christ, saying yes to sanctification and righteousness more often, and saying no to sin more regularly, it comes through the Spirit's work as He applies the Word of God, and we use words like Paul, when he said we sweat and toil and labor, kapi 'aho, where it takes energy.

You begin to work out with weights or you begin to run, and all of a sudden, after just a few short moments, or maybe minutes, you can tell your body is getting ready for this run, and you begin to sweat and the heartbeat goes up.

It's no different when it comes to sanctification. God in His wisdom could have said, the second you become saved, you walk perfectly, you'll never sin again, but we know perfection and glory isn't until glory.

So we want to, by the Spirit's power, work hard at holy living. Number three, still in review, God does not love me more when I obey. As a Christian, God doesn't love you less or more when you obey or disobey.

We learn in John chapter 17 specifically that when Christ dies for you, there couldn't be a greater manifestation of God's love for you. And if He gives you the greatest gift, salvation, He'll give you everything else, which is less.

And that if you are in Christ, God sees you in Christ. He loves His Son to the uttermost, therefore you are in Him and you are loved to the uttermost, John 17. We live in a society where if we obey, we get the blessings, and if we disobey, we don't.

And somehow we think God is different than a good dad, and that good dad, relatively speaking, would say, of course, son, even though you disobeyed me, you're still my son. Number four, still in review, anxiousness is a sin and a signal of my prayerlessness.

I can tell when I'm anxious and disobeying Philippians chapter 4 and other passages that I am sinning. The opposite word of anxious is to trust. I'm not actively trusting. When it comes to thinking about holy living, we're always to say no to one thing and replace it with the right thing.

And when I am sinning anxiously and I am fretting and I am concerned about things and full of stress, I know I'm taking the weight of the world and the church and the ministry and my marriage on my own shoulders when the Lord says, you are to cast your cares upon Him because literally, 1 Peter chapter 5, He cares for you.

And I am to actively trust in Him. Number five, my feelings should never lead me. Instead, they should serve as a barometer to my actions and attitudes. You know the slogan in society. It's a selling marketing slogan.

If it feels good, do it. That's exactly wrong. I guess that's a good way to market something, you know, just do it the opposite. We do the right thing and then God rewards us with the feelings afterward.

And we looked at that in Proverbs chapter 29 verse 18 and Genesis chapter 4. Happy is he who keeps the law. Don't go by your feelings. We're not asking you to be a robot. God the Son had feelings. We ascribe feelings to God the Father with language.

We are to have feelings but they are never to lead us. For instance, if you say, I'm going to be led by... I won't make a decision unless I have a peace about it. When's the last time you had a peace about getting up and giving a presentation and teaching Sunday school?

Knocking at someone's door to discipline them for church discipline? To going down to the common and preaching the gospel when somebody's standing there saying, I'm going to punch you unless you say something good about Satan or whatever the situation was for Jim here at the church.

I don't know if Jim had a peaceful, easy feeling about it. I'm not sure Eagle's tunes were going through his mind. I digress. Number six, the key to sanctification is thinking. We don't do enough thinking, in other words, in Christianity.

We looked at Romans 6 .11, even so consider or think or calculate yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. We want too many formulas in this Christian life. How to do this? How do I be a better husband?

Well, I just go buy this teddy bear and put it in the freezer and one day she'll, you know, open the thing to get those old blueberries out and out comes a teddy bear and, you know, life is solved. For the disobedient husbands, MacArthur used to say, then, the bad news is that she'll take that frozen teddy bear and use it as a weapon against you.

Number seven, last review. When it comes to evangelism, the most important three things to remember besides the message, obviously, is man is depraved, you preach for the glory of God, and evidentialism is for Christians.

That is to say, when we preach, we realize we're preaching to dead people, spiritually dead. So the only thing that can make them alive is not suggestions, is not padding them and encourage them, but it's the word of God that makes alive like Acts 16 with Lydia.

The preaching discipleship class, we have eight guinea pigs this year. And yesterday, we went to the cemetery right across the street. Met here at 7 o 'clock, I told them about scripture reading and I said, it's time to read the scriptures out loud.

So follow me, and we walked right up to that Catholic cemetery right there, and I made them stand in front of the tombstones and read Acts 2, Acts 3, Acts 7, Isaiah 5, Jeremiah 5, proclaiming the truth of God to dead people.

That's real evangelism with a twist. And you think, yes, you're right, you are idiosyncratic. The answer is, I am, but I hope they remember that unless God the Spirit intervenes, they're preaching to dead people.

You can't run up and begin to rub the tombstone and say, come on out. Come on, we're all here for you. Let's all clap them out of the grave. One, two, three, clap. Three cheers for those in the grave.

Come on, get out. We know you can do it. We just give you five easy steps to get out. No, we proclaim the truth to spiritually dead people. God makes alive through the message of Christ, Romans Chapter 10.

Contentment With God’s Revelation in Scripture

Number eight, and now new information, theological lessons that I think you ought to learn as a congregation. If you've learned them, you can be thankful to God that he's already taught you. Number eight, you must be content with God's revelation in the Bible.

You must be content with God's revelation in the Bible. Please turn to Deuteronomy 29 .29. You probably know the verse, but I'd like you to see it with your own eyes. It's in the Old Testament. Last book of Moses, Deuteronomy 29 .29.

The sooner you can learn this lesson, the better it is. There are certain things that God has purposely not put in the Scriptures. There are certain boundaries that you ought not to go past because God has not spoken of these things.

Maybe that issue is, do babies go to heaven? I need a verse. How do I reconcile the complete sovereignty of God and human responsibility? How do I know who wrote Romans? Is it the Holy Spirit? Is it Paul?

Did Paul write in verse 1 and the Spirit of God wrote in verse 2? How do I say to the personality of Paul, the Spirit of God bore this man along, and exactly what we have in Scripture is Scripture? How can Jesus be fully God and fully man?

I can't quite get it. And when I read one section of Scripture in John 17, it almost seems like he's not God, but I know he is, and I need more answers. And friends, if you want to mature in Christ, one of the best things you could do is to be content with God's revelation.

There is a reason he hasn't put everything in here. Doesn't that make you feel good, by the way, that you realize you're not infinite? If we could figure it all out and we could have all the information, we would be infinite.

But we are finite, frail, fragile human beings who have also been affected by the fall. We are not God. We are not sinless and holy and infinite. We learn. God never learns. And here in Deuteronomy 29 .29, you probably know this verse, but my suggestion is, in light of my comments today, that you allow the secret things to belong to Yahweh, but you do the things that are written in Scripture.

Let's read the verse, Deuteronomy 29 .29. The secret things belong to Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God of Israel, our God. But the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever with a purpose.

What's the purpose of the revelation of God that we do have? That we may observe all the words of this law. And like Israel, so too should you say, I waste too much time trying to figure out how to unscrew the inscrutable, versus this is what the Bible does say about how I'm to love my wife.

This is what the Bible does say about how I'm supposed to submit to my husband. This is what the Bible does say about how I should work hard for my employer, even if he's perverse. This is what the Bible does say about using my spiritual gifts.

And stop trying to make yourself crazy figuring out what God purposely does not want you to know. Isn't that freeing, by the way? We don't have to have it all figured out. It's in what John Calvin said, Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit, in which, as nothing is omitted that is both necessary and useful to know, so nothing is taught but what is expedient to know.

In other words, he left certain things out on purpose. He put certain things in on purpose. Obey what you do know and let the rest go. Submit to God and say, God, you've got to figure it out. You know how human responsibility and divine sovereignty reconcile.

I can't reconcile them, but you didn't reconcile them for me in Scripture, so I will affirm both. Calvin goes on to say, let us treasure the following observation in our minds. Never to feel the least desire to attain any other knowledge concerning doctrine, save what is taught us in Scripture.

Listen now, when the Lord shuts his sacred mouth, let us also stop our thoughts from advancing one step further in our inquiries. That is really good advice. And as you mature in Christ, you'll say, I don't have to force mental closure and create this kind of perfect box in my mind so I can completely grasp this.

Instead, we say to ourselves, I affirm both statements, Jesus is God. I affirm the statement that Jesus is fully man. I know I can't go that he's somehow less than God or less than man. And he is affirmed in Scripture to be both, and I will accept it.

And everything else that's in here, I'll just get busy doing it. I think you'll sleep better at night. Number nine, the ninth lesson, all eschatology is ethical, or maybe let me rephrase that. Real end-time study should change the way you live.

End Times Teaching Should Produce Holiness

Real end-time study, eschatology, the study of last things, should make you more holy. Let's turn our Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 4, and I do want to do some exposition in 1 Peter chapter 4. If you love to study end times and you run around with charts and graphs and flow charts, you probably better be the most holy person around here.

That's all I do is I study Daniel, I study Ezekiel, and I study Revelation. When friends, if you do that, you ought to be ultra-holy. When you study end times, if you know Jesus is coming back soon, it's for a purpose, and that purpose isn't for a chart or a graph or to read the Jerusalem Post with new insight.

It is...I'm trying to be careful today. It is so that you'll say, Jesus is coming back, I ought to live in light of that truth. For the theologians in here, and you all are theologians, end-times indicatives come with end-time imperatives.

In other words, Jesus is coming again, statement of faith indicative. In light of that, I am commanded to do X, Y, and Z, and so when you study prophecy, your holiness should increase. After all, think about it from the human level.

My father worked for Northwestern Bell in Nebraska, and he had to go to Tulsa for some work, and he would be gone for a week or two weeks. When my mother would say on Thursday night, your dad's coming home now, there was a tornado of activity going on in that house.

Things were getting done. I hadn't watered the dog for, you know, a week or whatever. Dogs can get their own water. They know what to do. You know, whatever it was, cleaning your room, watering the dog, getting things done that were my responsibility, they got done that night, and they got done with what?

Excellence. Dad. So, if the son, the king is returning, the return of the real king, it's going to happen. We don't want to be found in a lazy position, sinful position, a who cares position, God will work it out anyway, I'm just going to do whatever I want.

We need to be about the father's business. And 1 Peter chapter 4, Paul writes to these suffering Christians, and he tells them what to do when there's end times coming. This would be good for you to read if we were in 2004, Y2K.

You will not see, well, let's look at the verse first, 1 Peter 4, 7, the end of all things is at hand, therefore, stockpile rice and beans, therefore, let's see, what would I stockpile if I could? I remember when we had the big snowstorm last year, I was almost a wreck without coffee because I needed to take the beans and grind them somehow, and I thought, I have not anticipated this contingency.

So I'm downstairs, I'm boiling water out on the grill outside, so we got that for tea, and then I'm down there with a hammer, smashing in this little bag my coffee beans, just fine enough for the French press, and I thought, ah.

So hoard coffee, buy some kind of extra oil tanks and get all the gas ready, you know, if the end times is going to come, let's all sit up here on the roof and just kind of sing Kumbaya and just wait.

You'll find that it's different. You're not allowed to laugh this much. This is an important theological lesson, laugh when appropriate. It's just so different, that's why we laugh. What the world does and what the Bible teaches is exactly the opposite.

The end of all things is at hand, it could happen right now, the imminent return of Christ Jesus, therefore, be of sound judgment. That's the first thing he says, be of sound judgment. He says, I want you to get your mind, and I want you to get it right, and I want you to guard it, and I want you to keep it, and I want you to think with a cool, balanced mind.

I don't want you to run around hither thither, pell mill, listening to every kind of person, get your kind of radio out to know what to do, and crank the little radio batter thing, and whatever they do, I'll do.

Think about things biblically and spiritually. After Jesus cast the demon out of a man, he was sitting clothed in his right mind. Same word here. Thinking about things properly, taking every thought captive.

Jesus is going to return, my mind better be on things like, I need now to have an eternal perspective. Jesus is coming back soon, I ought to make sure that I'm not so heavenly minded, that I'm no earthly good.

I need to be working out who I am in Christ Jesus. Jesus is going to return, I better think properly about the true rewards for Christians at the behemoth seat of Christ Jesus. Jesus is going to return, I better start thinking that I better hold on to my materialistic things with loose hands, because as Luther said, one, two, three, four slits in a hand, and that is so money can go through them very quickly in people.

I just have to hold on to things lightly in this live and grab the gusto kind of life. Then he says, look at what else he says, moving further, the end of all things is at hand, therefore be of sober spirit.

Don't be drunk with the world of the age, don't have some kind of mental intoxication, be in full possession of your faculties. Very similar to what he's just said. Live life correctly in light of Christ's return.

Why? Why do these things? Why think properly? Why be sober spiritually? For the purpose of prayer. Who knows, maybe Peter is thinking, when I was in another trial, and I ought to have been sober in my spirit, and having sound judgment, and been praying, I was sleeping while Jesus was praying in the garden.

Then what does he say? Very, very interesting, end of all things is at hand, BBC. What should you do? Number three, found in verse eight, love each other, that's so odd. Verse eight of 1 Peter 4, above all, highlight this, he says, put this at the top, didn't start with the right order, this is at the top, keep fervent in your love for one another because love covers a multitude of sins.

Love, love, love. You search this section here, love one another, love covers, and that fervent love there means to stretch and to strain, if you ever drop something behind a couch and you try to reach over to it, and you don't want to move the couch because you're afraid of what you're going to find under the couch, so you're just going to kind of lean over, and you can just feel like, if I could just stretch a little bit farther to kind of get at that little piece of thing there.

That's that word fervent, to stretch, to strain, see there's a bunch of people at the church that maybe aren't so lovable, and the Bible says it's the end days, stretch out to love them anyway, interestingly, because love covers a multitude of sins.

In other words, there's a list of sins that you keep against someone else, possibly, a list of the things that they've done to you, and they've offended you, and they've gotten you, and they've done sinful activities against you, and he basically says, Jesus is coming back, get rid of the list.

Who needs the list? Jesus, I know you're coming back, but I've got to keep this list. People don't know who they've offended. I think of the world when they say, you don't know who you're messing with.

Some people say in marriage, love is blind, I would say, no, love covers sins. I used to call it a big asbestos sin blanket, you just need to throw that blanket on the other person. Jesus is coming back.

Oh, you say, I've been hurt. Maybe, but the Bible teaches you to cover sins. Show me a bitter person, and I'll show you someone who needs to cover sins more. Proverbs 10 is where Peter gets this, love covers all transgressions.

Cover and keep covering, and keep covering. Number four, look in verse nine. If you thought the last one was odd, this is peculiar. The end times is coming. What do you do? Quick, go to the Mount of Olives, so you're closer upon the Jesus' return, because that's where he's coming back.

Get there close, sell it all. No, be hospitable to one another without complaint. Be hospitable to one another without complaint. I don't know if you are a hospitable person, but I know that when people stay at my house for longer than a few days, it can be problematic.

After all, poor Richard's almanac says, fish and visitors smell in three days. See, you know that. This is not entertain, this is not, well, I'm going to open my house up on Saturday for my friends. The word here in Greek is what?

Be a lover of strangers. Be a friend and a lover of someone you don't even know. Is it good to have guests over at your house? Absolutely. But when there's end times, you say, I've got to get to know people I don't know.

One man said, did you know that in the New Testament, hospitality was a distinctive mark of Christians and Christian communities? And all the guys, if you're like me, you're like, that's my wife's department.

Good to go. Wife, take care of that. Obey that vicariously for me. Did you know it is a qualification in 1 Timothy 3 for elders to be hospitable? Of course, ladies are to be hospitable, but so are elders.

Be hospitable to one another. There was a Dear Abby column years ago. I am presently completing the second of a three-year survey of hospitality or lack thereof in churches. To date, of the 195 churches I have visited, I was spoken to in only one by someone other than an official greeter, and that was by a person who asked me to move my feet, a lover of strangers.

It's going to be hard, so he says, but don't complain. Practice hospitality. And then lastly, if it's the end times found in verse 10, the fifth thing he says, there are other things in scripture, but Peter focuses on these things to those scattered Jews.

And each one has received a spiritual gift, employed in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Instead of hunker down, serve other Christians. Get out there and serve other Christians.

Use your spiritual gift. Your spiritual gift, if it's teaching, is it for you. If your spiritual gift is help, it's not for you. And look at the language Peter uses. It's kind of, it's convicting. Use your spiritual gift because you want to be a good steward of God's grace.

In other words, if you're not using your spiritual gift, you're not a good, what, steward. And when it comes to gifts, verse 11, he says, they're speaking and serving gifts. Whoever speaks, let him speak as it were the utterances of God.

If you're a speaker, preach the word. Whoever serves, let him do so as by the strength which God supplies, so that in all things, God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever.

If you like to study end times, and you should because it's everywhere in scripture, it should promote your holiness. So if you want to have some kind of pet doctrine, end time theology, don't just study for the facts and the charts and the flow chart.

I want you to study and say this, Lord, make me different in light of your soon return. Number 10, number 10, the 10th lesson I learned that I think you should learn, and you probably learned this already at the church, let me say it in a negative fashion for teaching style and then we'll fill in the positive.

Justification Includes Christ’s Active Obedience

Justification is more than God treating you just as if you never sinned. Well, I'm justified and we teach the kids, you know, kind of what is another little grace. We'll teach kids G-R-A-C-E, God's riches at Christ's expense, and we do some of those things and they're good little tools to help.

But it's not a helpful tool to only believe that God's justification means this. God treats me as if I've never sinned. What's wrong with that? Here's what the theologians do, they'll say there's two kinds of obedience of Christ.

The obedience that says, I'll go to the cross and die on the behalf of those you've given me, Father. We believe that because we believe that Jesus was an atonement for our sins. He purchased redemption for us.

He was the ransom price. He was not only the priest putting the sacrifice there, he himself was the sacrifice. But furthermore, we need to understand that Jesus lived a perfect life in our place. And so turn your Bibles to Matthew chapter 3.

This is called the active obedience of Christ Jesus. This answers the question, why did Jesus not come on Friday, Good Friday, die, be raised from the dead on Sunday? Why did he have to live a 30-year perfect life, 33 years of perfect living?

Why? Why not just come down and die here for humanity? The answer we'll find is that Jesus not only died for our sins, he was the sin bearer on our behalf, but also he lived a perfect life in our place.

He obeyed. To obey is better than sacrifice, and you'll see this kind of language in the Scripture. And it will make your slogan turn into Jesus' justification is just as if I've never sinned, to God sees me as just as if I've never sinned, and God sees me just as if I lived a perfect life that Jesus lived.

So for instance, back to anxiety, I say to myself, yeah, I'm an anxious person, but I'm sure thankful that Jesus Christ was never anxious. Jesus died for my anxiousness. God's wrath was poured out upon that sin on Jesus.

But also I have the one who I'm found in, and Jesus never was anxious his entire life. It helps. Look at Matthew chapter 3. We'll look up a couple of verses. Matthew chapter 3, the gospel of the king, it says in verse 13, when Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John to be baptized by him.

Now we all know that this is not because Jesus was a sinner. Did Jesus sin? No. So John understands that. He says, as he tries to prevent him, I have need to be baptized by you. I'm a sinner. You come to me.

You're the one to be baptizing me, not the other way around. You don't sin, Jesus. I sin. But Jesus, to identify with humanity, certainly, and to then do everything that humanity was to do actively, Jesus says, permitted at this time for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

Then he permitted him. Jesus comes not just to bear our sins, but he comes to live a perfect life in our place. A lifetime of obedience to God. Legal obedience is essential to true righteousness. You can look at Deuteronomy 6 to find that out.

Let's turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and I want to talk about this a little further. You say, what good does this do? This is just theological nitpicking. Who here has ever heard of J. Gresham Machen?

J. Gresham Machen. Some have. Machen's on his deathbed, and he writes a telegram to his friend, John Murray. He's, I believe, in Philadelphia. Machen is in North Dakota. And here is his last words to John Murray.

I'm so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it. If it wasn't for Jesus living a perfect life in my place, there's no hope. And Machen knows if Jesus dies for our sins alone, that brings us back to neutral.

That brings us back to Eden. That brings us not to heaven. We need an active righteousness to get us to heaven. So you say, he treats us just as if I never sinned, and if I never sin in the future. And he treats me like I perfectly obeyed every law that was ever written, because Jesus did that in our place.

There's this double function. Our sins get credited to Jesus' account, even though he didn't sin. Jesus' righteousness gets credited to our account, even though we didn't act righteously. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, when John MacArthur was here preaching, this is what he preached.

I think he called it 12 Greek words or 15 Greek words. And it's so important because in our culture today, it's not like 300 years ago in New England. It's not like France and Germany 500 years ago. We forget about this wonderful thing.

I'm not only treated as if I never sinned, I'm treated as if I perfectly obey. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21, he made him who knew no sin. The father makes Jesus who knew no sin. I mean, everybody's ruled out.

We know it's not John the Baptist. It's not Daniel. It's Jesus. The father made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. It's as if you take all of the sins of all the elect, of all those who'd ever believe, and you put it together in one big pile or one big clump, and then that's what Jesus is turned into by imputed sin.

He knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. That word sin is not talked about sacrifice, never talked about sacrifice in that regard. It's as if God says, here's this big clump of massive sin of all time for all those who'd ever believe, and Jesus is treated as if he did those, as if he was those even though he never was because he never sinned on our behalf so that we...