A Greater Sickness VIII: Christ's Work for You | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for Media Grazie, joined by Dr. John Snyder, author of The Behold Your God Study and pastor of Christ Church, New Albany.

If you've been following the podcast for the last couple of weeks, you know we've been in a fairly long series where the backdrop of it is the coronavirus, and COVID -19, and the global shutdown.

But we don't talk a lot about that because we're focusing on man's greater plague, the greater sickness, and that is sin.

Now last week was one of my favorite episodes that we've talked about, where we got to begin talking about the cure.

And let me encourage you, if you've not gone back and listened to that, stop here and go back. What we introduced is that the cure is not a plan, it's not a path, but that cure is a person, and that person is

Jesus Christ. And important for us to remember is that Jesus, the only being in all of creation that has two natures, fully

God, fully man. Now, this week, John, we're gonna be talking about how does

Christ and His perfection, and His perfect life, and that dual nature that we spent a lot of time talking about last week, how does that move into healing the infinite chasm that is created by sin?

Well, we're gonna have to really limit ourselves this week, because when we talk about Christ being mighty to save, mighty to heal our soul's disease, there are just so many things that we could say.

And before we started the podcast, we were talking about the fact that we don't want to approach this in a detached way.

So we don't wanna just say, look, here are some basic categories of the work of atonement, and what

God does to free us from the cruel grip of sin, it's guilt, it's shame, it's power.

I mean, we could do that, and hopefully it would be clear. But we do want to remember that everything we talk about today, for the believer, it's all life and death, and it's not just an abstract gift that God gives us, it's

God Himself, our Redeemer. And we see Him coming, like Isaiah's picture, we see

Him coming out up over the horizon, out from the gates of the capital of our enemy, and the stronghold of our enemy, and He comes and He's covered in the blood of our enemies that He's trampled, and it's

Christ mighty to save. So when we look at these things, we wanna understand what they mean. We want to understand the legal concepts that form the foundation of our peace, so that we're not fluctuating all the time based on our own ups and downs.

But far beyond that, we want that to lead to a real captivation with the person who's our

Redeemer, so that when we shut the cameras off today, we can leave and go home, and with a cheerful consecration, continually devote ourselves to the one who died for us, who lived and died, so that He might be

Lord of the dead and of the living. I mean, one way, because Christ is precious to us. Yeah, yeah, and why is

He precious? Well, it's not because we're great people that just admire His perfect beauty.

It's because we love Him because He first loved us. So let's talk about that love. One of the ways we could describe the work of Christ for us, the objective work that occurred outside of us, and that rescues us, is to just take every way that sin lives against God, that sin moves us to live against God.

So sin is not only against us, it's against our God. Well, how is it against God? And we gave just a handful of things.

Sin is against God's rule. Sin is against God's rules, His commands. Sin is against God's words of hope, the promises.

Sin causes us to live against God's warnings, to just be deaf, unmoved. Sin is against God's character.

Sin is against God's existence. And then we could just say it this way. In every way that sin has led us to live against God, in these categories, we see in the person of the

God -man, a true humanity that has lived for God in every way that we have lived against God.

So Christ has, wherever you look at the life of Jesus Christ, we see Him living for God's rule, for God's rules,

His commands, for God's words of hope, for God's warnings, for His character,

His reputation, His existence. And I think really one of the best places to see this is in the

Gospel of John, because in the Gospel of John, which is really a contemplative gospel, John expects you to already have studied

Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So John fills in the cracks under the

Holy Spirit's guidance and doesn't just repeat the same events that were repeated in the first three

Gospels, but really gives you material that you don't already have. So having this basic outline structure of the life of Jesus Christ and the teaching and the events of Christ's life,

John comes along and he gives us a lot of very personal information about the man, Jesus Christ, that's unique to his

Gospel. Particularly, Christ talks to the disciples in the Gospel of John, often about the interiority of His own life and how

He relates to the Father. And these really do show us this complete consecration of the Son of God.

So listen to verses like this. I have not come, sorry, I have come not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.

So here's a man whose entire reason for his coming, his existence, I got out of bed this morning, what are you gonna do today?

I'm gonna do the will of my Father. Another phrase, another description of His obedience, my food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish

His work. Or another, I always do what pleases

Him, His Father. Or another, at the end of His life, John 17, I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work which you have given me to do.

It's not just John's Gospel. Think of the book of Psalms gives a prophecy of this complete obedience of the

Messiah. The writer of Hebrews quotes that and says this. It says, the Messiah said,

I delight to do your will, oh my God, your law is within my heart.

So that's the expression of the Messiah. I must be about the things of my Father, a divine necessity.

I delight to be about the things of my Father. So the result of that, simply put, is this.

There is one humanity, one true human life, body and soul, mind, will, emotions, imagination, the entirety of His person was always devoted to doing what pleased the

Father, to satisfying the law of God. So the law is satisfied.

It looks upon that man and can ask no more. That man has given all the law could ask for.

And the lawmaker is honored. We must never think of our salvation as being accomplished by God lowering his reputation and saying, look,

I love you fallen humanity so much that I am willing for my reputation to be splattered with the dishonor done to me through your disobedience, but I'm gonna get you into heaven anyway.

No, Christ comes and perfectly upholds the law, shows how important the law is, how holy and pure the law is, and in doing so, lifts high the honor of the lawmaker of God, and in doing that, provides a righteousness that can be shared with us.

Now that's where that dual nature comes in. He's the second Adam or the last

Adam. He is our representative, and what He did in His humanity, in His perfect obedience, when we embrace

Him by faith, that is placed or imputed legally, imputed to our account.

It's a transfer, it's an accounting term. It's not a moral transfer.

When our sin was placed upon Him on the cross, it's not a moral thing. He doesn't become sinful.

He doesn't suddenly start delighting in lust and greed and pride and unbelief. He becomes the legal sin bearer.

It's a legal action. When we embrace Christ, His righteousness is given to us,

Paul says. We might become the righteousness of God in Him, and so His perfect life satisfies the law, and when

I'm united to Christ, the law looks at me and sees the righteousness of Christ shared with me, and the law is satisfied with me, so there's no more condemnation coming from the law, and we don't really have time to get into it, but the law, in a sense, the old writer said it this way.

The law no longer comes to you from the hand of Moses to condemn you, to show you you need a savior.

The law now, satisfied, comes to you from the hand of Christ as a friend to guide you and to say you are right with God because of the rightness of Christ.

This is the path you can walk if you want to show God your love and gratitude, and the law shows us the happiest life.

Yeah, I mean, I can't help but think back to Pilgrim's Progress, right? When Christian is on the path and he's being beaten down, and he can't see, or it may not have been

Christian who was on the path being beaten down, but there was a man, and he was being beaten down. It was, and an evangelist told him, yeah, that was

Moses. That was the law beating you down. Yeah, I think that's Christian's companion. So is it faithful? Yeah, so faithful lusts, and the lust in his heart, the covetousness in his heart,

Moses meets him and almost kills him, because that's the job of the law, to show me that I will never be able to save myself, and it drives me to a savior.

And then you walk that path, like you were saying. Right, so the obedience of Jesus Christ, Christ living for God in every way that sin has engaged me to live against God, provides a perfect righteousness that Christ shares with all those who follow him.

But there is another thing, and that is, it makes it so that the Lord Jesus Christ is a sinless sacrifice, or he is a spotless lamb.

And when we think of, and when we think of what the cross was, there are a number of metaphors that the

Bible uses to kind of give us the full picture. So there's atoning sacrifice, where we think of the death of the animal covering the offense of the sin.

There's a ransom, where we think of Christ's death purchasing our freedom from sin's tyranny and guilt.

There's propitiation, that's really the divine perspective of the cross. God looking at the death of his son,

God crushing the son under his righteous wrath, because the son has become the sin bearer.

And when he does that, the wrath of God is satisfied, so propitiated, or satisfied.

And then there's another word that we think of when we think of the cross, and that's reconciliation. And that's the word

I want us to talk about right now. When we think of the impact of sin between us and God, one of the words that ought to come to our mind is alienation.

All right, so I am far from my creator. The picture of Adam and Eve in the garden is clear.

You sin and you're removed from that paradise with God. And there's an angel with a fiery sword at the entrance.

You can never again go back that way. Adam, humanity, human nature will never provide that for you, you know, until the person of Christ.

And that last Adam, you know, satisfying the law, is able to reconcile. How do you do reconciliation?

Well, again, when we think of the amazing grace of God, we might be tempted to think that God is so extraordinarily kind to us that he reconciles us to himself by just ignoring the offense that's between us.

Well, that goes back to what you were talking about earlier. God doesn't lower the standard. He doesn't lower the law.

Right, so he cannot make a Christian by doing this, by saying to us, look, let's just forgive and forget, all right?

Think of a judge who has a criminal in front of him. You know, let's say someone who's done some atrocious things.

And the evidence is laid out. And if the judge is friends with that teenager's dad, you know, they went to school together, and he says, look, yeah, you've done this, you know, drunk driving, you've killed this child or whatever.

But you know what? I know your dad, so let's just not talk. Let's just not look at this offense.

Let's just pretend it's not there, sweep it under the carpet. We would despise a judge that acted that way, but we want

God to act that way with us. God, because you love us, can't you just sweep this under the carpet? And the answer is no, because mercy and justice have to, because they're united in the character of God, they're not really divided, they're not really two separate things.

We could think of a just mercy or a merciful justice. They run together in our rescue, and both are acting.

So how can that be? And the answer is that Christ becomes the object of the offense.

So for reconciliation to occur, the object of offense has to be removed. So if there's an alienation between you and me, it's because there's an object of offense between us, something we did, all right?

That object has to be removed, and then we are free to express friendship again.

So God removes the object of offense between Him and the sinner by placing the sinner's sin upon Christ at the cross.

Christ becomes the sin bearer. Christ becomes the object of offense.

Christ becomes the object of God's infinite wrath so that you can be reconciled, because there's no more offense between you and God.

The sin been removed. You hope in that work of Christ in the cross, that sin is placed upon Christ, and you are free to come to God without fear.

And God is, as a just judge, free to love you infinitely without being unjust, because He has poured out

His wrath on the bearer of your sin, so the object of our offense. So, John, we hear this all the time, and I think that there is a big danger that it becomes commonplace to us.

I was talking to somebody the other day who lives in Colorado, and they've got these just beautiful mountains in the backyard, and I was commenting on that, and the guy just said, oh, yeah, yeah, they're back there.

Humankind is so ridiculous because we can see the majestic and treat it as common, and I think sometimes there's a danger that we can do that with these beautiful realities.

Paul helps us a lot with this in Galatians. So look at chapter three, verse 10 through 13.

For as many as are the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, curse it is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, curse it is everyone who hangs from a tree, hangs on a tree.

So, John, this is a really powerful image. Jesus became the curse for us, but why is that so central?

And how important is it really for us to understand it? Paul's picture there of Christ becoming a curse, so not just being cursed, not just being under the wrath of God as the sin bearer, but becoming the curse for us.

Really is a helpful metaphor to keep us from taking the cross lightly.

Paul is actually quoting from Deuteronomy chapters 27 and 28, where Moses, if you remember

Deuteronomy, is kind of Moses's farewell sermons. Three long, very significant sermons to the nation saying, before you enter the land, you need to understand these things because you're about to inherit all these things that were promised to Abraham when it comes to the land.

And you're the people of God, but if you're not careful, if you break covenant with God, these are going to be the consequences.

So he lines them up and he gives this whole issue of blessings and cursings by lining them up at two mountains.

And let me read what Paul Washer says there here about this. It's in his book, The Gospel's Power and Message by Paul Washer.

It really is such a simple, but deep and helpful book on the gospel. So let me read sections from Paul Washer.

He says this, in Deuteronomy 27 and 28, God divided the nation of Israel into two separate camps, placing one on Mount Gerizim and one on Mount Ebal.

Those on Mount Gerizim were to pronounce the blessings that would come to all who diligently obey the

Lord their God. Those on Mount Ebal were to pronounce the curses that would fall upon all who refused such obedience.

Though Christ had the right to the blessings of Gerizim, you know, that mountain should have cried out to the

God -man every possible blessing from God because of his perfect obedience. It was from Mount Ebal that his own father thundered against him as he hung on Calvary's tree.

So the curses of God were leveled against the sun. And there's two chapters of these, you know, these lists of things.

Let me read you just a few to kind of give you an idea. Christ bore the curses of Deuteronomy 28 like this.

The Lord will send on you cursing and confusion and rebuke until you are destroyed and you will perish quickly.

The Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you and to bring you to nothing, Deuteronomy 28.

Again, cursed will you be in the city and cursed will you be in the country.

Another verse, cursed will you be when you come in and cursed will you be when you go out. And at the end of the whole list of curses, which

I'm just reading a few, he says, moreover, all these curses will come upon you and they will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed because you did not obey the voice of the

Lord your God to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded you. When Christ was on the cross, it is as if, not just a few of these, but every one of those listed in chapter 28 and that all of them come against Christ.

The curses of God, your father will pursue you when you go in or out at home or abroad, they will pursue you and destroy you even though you were the one man that deserved the blessings.

But that's how the father treated the son so that Teddy James or John Snyder could be brought to God in peace.

So that's why Paul is able to say to these Galatians who were all idol worshipers at one time,

Christ redeemed us, bought us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us.

It's so beautiful how the Old Testament and the New Testament really do, it is one message.

And several episodes when we talked about foreshadowing and how we could see the plan of redemption even in the

Old Testament, this is no different. We see the foreshadowing of Christ's redemption of the cure in Leviticus and the day of atonement.

Yeah, the day of atonement is another wonderful one. Day of atonement, one day a year that the priest, that the high priest alone, after all these very specific, very precise preparations, washings of the priest, of the clothing, of the right order of the putting on the clothing.

And then the bull offered and then we have these two goats and all of this and then blood brought in into the temple, into the holy place, into the

Holy of Holies. And there's incense sprinkled and the whole Holy of Holies is filled with smoke, the smoke of the incense as it's been placed on the fire there.

There's the Ark of the Covenant, the two golden angels with their faces covered pointed toward each other.

There's this great plate, the mercy seat. The blood is sprinkled on that mercy seat. It's never washed off.

Every year the blood is sprinkled again and the glory of God descends into that place and the priest intercedes on behalf of the people once a year.

It's such a beautiful and powerful picture of the work of our

Lord Jesus Christ. Our high priest going in, not yearly, Hebrew says, once for all.

With his own blood. With his own blood and he pours out his blood, not in an earthly mercy seat, so to speak, before the heavenly throne, his death is effective and every one that he represents, every person who hopes in him, their sin is then expiated or removed and like we talked about reconciliation.

But you think about this, the Lord gave them two goats to give the full picture of reconciliation.

All right, one goat brought to the priest, throat's cut, blood's drained, the animal is taken and offered as a sacrifice and that blood is then taken and sprinkled over a second goat.

Now the second goat is a picture of how the shame is carried away. Why don't you read that passage from Leviticus 16?

Yeah, Leviticus 16. He shall take from the congregation of the sons of Israel two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering.

Then Aaron shall offer the bull for the sin offering, which is for himself, that he may make atonement for himself and for his household.

He shall take two goats and present them before the Lord at the doorway of the tent of meeting. Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats, one lot for the

Lord, the other lot for the scapegoat. Then Aaron shall offer the goat on which the lot of the

Lord fell, on which the lot for the Lord fell and make a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot for the scapegoat fell shall be presented alive before the

Lord to make atonement upon it, to send it into the wilderness as the scapegoat. All right, so the two goats.

One is killed as a sacrifice to show that the payment due for every sin is death.

And so justice is satisfied. The penalty of justice has fully been expressed on that goat.

And then the other goat, the priest prays over the goat. And as he prays over the goat, he confesses the sin of the nation over this goat.

And then someone is chosen to lead this goat outside of the

Israel camp, never again to return, never to be seen again, to just wander forever that direction, you know.

And it's a wonderful picture of what Christ has done. Christ, both goats, Christ's death satisfying the righteous requirement of an offended law.

Death is the payment for sin. And then Christ carrying our shame, the shame of our most wretched thing, the shame of the sin that if it was played on a movie screen in front of our family or our friends or our church or our coworkers, we would never again show our face in that part of the world.

We would just run and never come back because of the horrible shame of how sinful we can be.

That shame placed on the Lord Jesus Christ in his work on the cross and removed from us forever.

And it really is just a picturesque way of expressing what Micah says in chapter seven.

Yeah. He says, Who is a God like you who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious acts of the remnant of his possession?

He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in an unchanging love. He will again have compassion on us.

He will tread our iniquities underfoot. Yes, you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

I want to give an illustration as we kind of draw this to a close of Christ's work for us. And we've talked about the wrath of God being poured out on Christ.

That means there is just one place where it is safe for a sinner to hide.

There's one place where the wrath has already come and will not come again. And that is in the person of Christ to belong to Christ.

I am all his and he's all mine. By faith. So let me give an illustration that was given to us here at the church a number of years ago by a really wonderful, gracious pastor, preacher,

Andrew Davis. Andrew Davis was pastoring in Australia. And I want to make sure I try to get this right.

I'm bad about details sometimes. But he was pastoring in Australia and he met a family who gave him this story. One time there was a brush fire sweeping through some of the, you know, some of the thousands of acres of the

Australian outback. So as it's moving toward this one family, other families had fled.

And I guess this family felt that there was no way to really make it. And so the dad had a plan.

And so as they're watching, you know, in the distance, the sky filled with the black smoke, the dad goes out and he catches a part of the property on fire purposefully.

And the wind's blowing. So the wife and the kids, what are you doing?

Like fire's the problem. Why did you start a fire here? And so as the wind blows, that fire just travels that way.

And then as the big fire, thousands of acres of fires coming their direction, they go and they stand in this acre that's already been burnt.

And when the fire comes, it doesn't touch them because there's no fuel there for them.

Fire has already passed by that piece of property. And they're just standing in that burned over district, you know, and that burn spot, there's no fuel for the fire.

And so it dies when it reaches them. Christ is the place where the wrath of God has come and has consumed him.

And he died in his humanity. And but because of his innocence, the father raises him again to demonstrate that he accepts the sacrifice.

Now, the only place where there's no fuel for the wrath of God to burn anymore is in that God man is to be his.

He who knew no sin becomes sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

That's the only safe place to hide. So the work of Christ for us, really, it's summed up in first Peter three, verse 18.

For Christ also died for sins once for all the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God.

And having been put to death in the flesh, but sorry, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.

So Christ's work for us. There's an ideology today that uses the name gospel, but has none of the good news in it.

And yet many of its ideas and doctrines are finding their way into more and more churches across America.

That is why we believe the film American Gospel Christ Alone is an important film for every church, family and Christian in America to view.

The Bible is explicit. False teachers must be called out by name. I mean, Paul called out

Peter, you know, the top dog. He called them out when he was acting in such a way that was out of line with the gospel.

We are exporting the very worst of what Christianity has to offer. I'm strong.

I'm healthy. I'm blessed. I'm favored. I am a victor. Not a victim. I'm gonna live a long, productive, faith -filled life.

In terms of biblical Christianity, Christianity is about dying.

To learn more about American Gospel Christ Alone, visit MediaGratia .org or click the link in the description below.

Well, I really hope and pray that in considering the work of Christ in us and the reconciliation offered by Christ and the work that He has done truly causes us to stop.

And for those of you who are believers, let it stop you and warm your heart to truly worship this

Christ, this Messiah. Before we wrap up, and John, you read a prayer today from Robert Hawker, one thing

I do want to do, we mentioned last week, I want to mention it again. Right now, MediaGratia, we have an online platform called

MediaGratia Online. And we're running a special right now in the midst of coronavirus where we can understand that pastors are under particular stress and a particular difficulty.

And we wanted to find a way to encourage them. And one way that we thought of to do that is to offer every minister a

MediaGratia Online study for free. And so if you want to participate in that, just go to MediaGratia .org.

There'll be a description. There will be a link in the description below where you can get information on that.

Or just email us, info at MediaGratia .org. Well, here's Robert Hawker's prayer.

I believe Hawker is an 18th century evangelical revival, British revival pastor, preacher during the time of George Whitefield.

This is what he says. Dear gracious Father, oh, for the grace to contemplate the love you have shown me in the

Son. Lord, I would be lost, swallowed up day by day in the unceasing meditation of it.

Dearest, blessed, precious Jesus, give me to think of nothing else, to speak of nothing else, but by faith to possess in anticipation the joys of your redeemed until I come through you and in you to the everlasting enjoyment of them in your kingdom of glory.