The Sin Bearer Produces Sin Slayers - Brandon Scalf

Heritage Church Tulsa

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2 ,000 years ago, Jesus Christ the righteous was brutally bloodied, beaten, and broken.

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He was scourged with whips and chains, embedded with rusty nails and fractured pieces of glass.

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His flesh was violently ripped from his body as spectators mocked him and covered him with their saliva.

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And if that wasn't enough, after that torture, he was forced to carry a very heavy wooden cross up a monstrous hill called, by those who knew of its infamy,

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Golgotha, which means the place of the skulls. And it was there, on that hellish hill, that he was publicly and shamefully crucified.

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And for those of you who don't know what that means, it means that his body was literally filleted and laid across two beams of wood that made up a cross where two beams, as I said, crosses, hands and feet, were nailed to it.

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This cross was raised and he hung there in agony as his flesh ripped and his lungs gasped for air.

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That last part might surprise some of you because Jesus Christ did not die simply by getting wounds in his hands or even on his back, but he died from asphyxiation.

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He died not from the blood that ran from his body, but he died not being able to breathe.

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I won't go into too much more detail as we went through it in quite detail on Good Friday.

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But what you need to know is that Jesus Christ, when he was crucified for our sins, suffered greatly.

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He suffered physically in ways that you and I can't even imagine.

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With that said, the Bible makes clear, though, that is not the worst of it. As horrible as it was that he experienced this type of torture, it was worse that he experienced the wrath of God.

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Yes, of course, what he experienced on the cross was excruciating, so much so that a word had to be created to explain it.

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The word excruciating literally means from the cross. And Jesus, according to the predetermined plan of God, felt that pain, but he also felt the pain of absorbing, meaning the wrath of God on our behalf.

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At the cross, the cup of God's wrath that was promised throughout the Old Testament, do you and me, was violently pressed against our

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Lord Jesus' innocent lips. And he was made to drink the hell that you and I deserve because of our sinfulness and because of our rebellion and because of our desire to be and act as God, but the beautiful thing about our

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Savior is that he stood his ground. He did not falter, he did not fail, and he welcomed the cup.

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He desired the cup. He sovereignly orchestrated for the cup to be in front of him that he may drink every last drop down to the very dregs.

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And then, as theologians have said throughout the century, he flipped it over in victory, exclaiming, it is finished.

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And in so doing, he bore our sins, and by virtue of his merit, God freely and forever forgives us, those of us who have placed our faith in Christ's finished work so that we may taste, see, savor, and promote his transcendent goodness and glory and dwell in his courts forever.

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This is the beauty of the gospel. But as you will see, when we look at our text, that does some things for us, more than just forgiving us of our sin, between our salvation and glory, that is the grave, there is something called the

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Christian life. And in the Christian life, we all, you and me, need help. We need help to be more holy, we need help to see our sin, we need help to kill our sin, and we need help to be more loving.

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We need help to stand firm against the schemes of the devil and to battle our own disordered lusts and passions.

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So as we look at our text, we will see that Jesus died, not just to make us passive recipients of what he has purchased for us on the cross, namely communion with God, forgiveness of sin, but he died on the cross so that we would all become, in him,

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Jesus -treasuring, cross -cherishing, iniquity -hating sin -slayers.

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In other words, there is a purpose in Christ's death beyond saving you from the precipice of hell and getting you into heaven.

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Now, getting into heaven is awesome, but here on this side of eternity, we are being conformed to the image of the son.

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And there's a link between Christ's death and your sin -killing.

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And we're going to see that. We're going to see that from our text, 1 Peter chapter two, verse 24.

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And we're going to see that Christ's sin -bearing work on the cross thrusts his elect, that is, those who have placed their trust in Jesus Christ, into Holy Spirit -wrought work of sin -killing.

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So if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, and all -sufficient word.

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For the sake of context, I'm going to start reading in verse 21. This is the word of God.

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For this you have been called, speaking of suffering, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps.

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Who did not sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth? Who, being reviled, was not reviling in return, while suffering?

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He was uttering no threats, but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously, who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that having died to sin, we might live to righteousness.

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By his wounds, you were healed. Grass withers, and the flower fades, but the word of our

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God endures forever. Amen. Amen. As we look at 1

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Peter chapter two, verse 24, I want us to attempt to answer the question, what does

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Christ's death have to do with our life of righteousness? You see, often we love to hear of how

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God forgave us of our sin, and we connect it to the work of the cross beautifully, but we oftentimes do not connect it to living a righteous life.

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And so as we look at our text, which is, once again, 1 Peter 2, 24, I want you to see, firstly, the sin -bearing work of Christ.

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It all starts here, it begins here, because it is the beautiful reality of God's substitutionary atonement that sets us free, as it were, to kill sin in the first place.

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He begins by saying, in verse 24, who himself, or he could say he himself, bore our sins in his body on the tree.

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This right here is a mind -blowingly beautiful phrase, and I don't want us to move too fast past it, because in it, there is so much joy to be found.

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He says he himself, he himself bore our sins.

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This here is what's called emphatic personalization. It stretches the reality that he did so voluntarily.

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Jesus was not tricked, he was not coerced, he was not thrust into somebody else's plan.

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It is he himself who took it upon himself to live the perfect life of righteousness and to die in our stead.

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And what Peter wants us to understand, and what he wanted his readers to understand in the first century is that Jesus Christ, the righteous

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God -man and beloved Son of God, bore your sins.

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Now, of course, you read that, but there is more going on here. The nuance of the Greek helps us to understand that he carried a very heavy weight, and it was on his broad shoulders that your sin and my sin was laid.

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Sins that we committed, sins that you committed, sins that the people in the first century committed, very real sins, not something ethereal.

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And it was he himself, by himself, as Hebrews chapter 12 says, for the joy that was set before him carried the heavy weight, the heavy burden of your sin.

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Theologically, he wants us to understand that Jesus died a substitutionary death on behalf of ill -deserving sinners by grace.

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What it means that he bore our sins is that he, in the place of sinners, became sin.

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We can ascertain this from many different texts. Second Corinthians chapter five, verse 21, being a firstmost, that he became sin, who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.

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And the question becomes, why did he do that? Why did he have to bear our sins?

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Well, many of us attend church on a regular basis. We read the Bible, and so we have good answers for this question, but it's never improper to revisit the same ancient truths.

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Friends, the reality is the most terrifying truth in all of Scripture is that God is innately and perfectly good.

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He is completely and gloriously holy and righteous. He is the only source of good, and he is the only one who does good.

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He is transcendent. He is set apart from his creation, both in his powerful might and his moral excellence.

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He loves and executes justice perfectly and justly.

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He is supremely beautiful and garbed in purity. There is no God besides him, and he cannot dwell with, approve of, or ultimately allow sin.

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He utterly abhors it, and all those who revel in it. We can see this from beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation.

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More specifically, Psalm 5, which you've heard me bring up countless times.

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Psalm 5 says, for you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil does not sojourn with you.

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The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all workers of iniquity. You destroy those who speak falsehood, and Yahweh abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit.

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You see, God doesn't just hate sin. He hates the sinner who sins, apart from the grace and mercy of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, because it stands opposed to everything that he is.

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In the garden, when Adam stood and put his own self -made crown on his head, and it asserted that he was

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God, he thrust us all into original sin. We were born in Adam. That is, we were born with a congenital spiritual disease.

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We were born sinning, loving sin, and wallowing in that sin.

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Now, of course, you've been following with us in the book of Ephesians, where it says that we not only were born into sin, but that we are what?

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Dead in our transgressions and sin. So we're born spiritually dead, and we love it.

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We suffer willingly from cardiac sclerosis. That is, a hard heart that desires to rebel against the one true

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God and to act as if we are God ourselves. We do everything that we can to make ourselves happy, and that usually, in our brains, is sin.

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Why? Because, like I said, we're born into it. We participate in it. But also, another biblical layer is that we are held captive by it.

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We are held captive by it. We are enslaved to sin. Romans 6, 17, and 8, 34 claims that we are, in fact, slaves of sin.

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Romans 7, 14 says that we are in bondage under sin. Romans 8, 28, 8, 21 says that we are slaves of corruption.

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But don't just take Paul's word for it, although you should. Jesus also makes this claim in John 8, 34, when he says, truly, truly,

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I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. This means that sin is completely inward, it's pervasive, and it is lord over our life, apart from the lordship of Jesus Christ.

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Not only that, but it's dreadful. The wages of sin are death. So there is this death sentence that is hanging all over every single one of us.

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In other words, what I'm trying to say is that the reason that Jesus had to bear our sins is because we have many of them.

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We exist spitting on God's glory, and we are alienated from him, and he owes us nothing but divine wrath.

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What specifically am I talking about? My fear is that every time a preacher begins to talk about sin, we either do one of two things.

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We either say, he's talking about sin, but he's not naming a sin, and so I don't have to actually think about what he's talking about.

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I'll push it off over here and worry about that later. Because sin is a concept, it's conceptual, it's ethereal, it's peripheral, it's out there somewhere.

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It's not here. Or we listen and we think, yeah, that's my husband.

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Or yes, that's my wife. Or yes, that's my cousin, or that's my friend.

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Very rarely do we actually sit and contemplate, no, what sins is he talking about?

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What sins did Jesus have to die for, for me?

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So when it says that Jesus bore our sins, it's not saying that Jesus abstractly or theoretically died for some concept.

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He's speaking of very real, very actual, very everyday sin that you and I either flippantly commit or egregiously and boldly commit.

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For instance, when it is speaking of sin here, it's speaking of your self -righteousness. It's speaking of your pride.

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It's speaking of your envy and your covetousness, of your greed, of your laziness, of your gossiping, of your manipulating, your anger, your backbiting, your lying, your manipulating, the unforgiveness that you have in your heart for that person who did that thing that you can't get over, your immature and sinful use of language, tearing other people down, your insatiable lusts, your pornography addictions, your premarital for an occasion, your extramarital affairs.

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I'm not getting in anybody's dirty laundry here. I'm not thinking of anybody in particular.

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I'm trying to get you to the point where you start considering what's going on here. Men specifically, the cowardice and effeminacy that we run to when things get hard.

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Reluctance to lead your homes and wage war against the sin that seeks to destroy it. And for women, heavy -handedness and lack of submission to your husband.

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And I could keep going and I could keep listening. But the point is clear.

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God doesn't punish sin as a nebulous thing. God punished sinners because they sin.

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Nobody, hear me on this, friends. Nobody, hear me on this, is not going to have their sin paid for.

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For those who will not bow their knee to King Jesus and let Him carry the load of our sin, they will pay for their sin.

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The Lord will pour out His wrath upon them. For those who trust in Jesus, He bears their sin.

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He took the punishment. He absorbed the wrath of God on our behalf.

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How does He do that? Well, He does it in His body on the tree.

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Look with me at our verse. Jesus, who He Himself bore our sins in His body on a tree.

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But what's happening here is this verse is essentially Peter's summary, which he's the author of this book, by the way, and application of Isaiah's prophecy about Jesus found in Isaiah 53.

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In Isaiah 53, verses four through six, it says this, and I know you're gonna know this. Surely our griefs

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He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried. Yet we ourselves have seemed

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Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted, but He was pierced through for our transgressions.

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He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our peace fell upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.

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All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us have turned his own way, but Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.

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So every single thing that I read on that list, God punished

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Him as if He had committed every single one of those sins on your behalf.

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Romans 5 .8 makes this explicitly clear when it says, but God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us. He didn't die for those who needed to clean themselves up, or He didn't die for those who cleaned themselves up, rather.

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He didn't die for those who had tried real hard to be really good people. He died for those who stood in the path of the wrath of God and who committed sin and commit sin.

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What a Savior. It was

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He Himself who willingly, lovingly, for the joy who was set before Him, it was

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He who bore our sins. And His body on a tree.

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Of course, referencing the cross. Jesus Christ bore our sins and His body by brutal death on the world's most heinous torture devices known to man.

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And in so doing, He secured for those who would bow their knee to Him, divine favor and full forgiveness.

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If Jesus buries it, bears it, He carries it. And if He carries it, it's a sure done deal.

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Because our Savior is that good. He's that strong.

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He's that amazing. But it doesn't stop there.

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The second thing that I want you to see as we look at this verse is the sin -killing work of Christ's posterity.

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Now, posterity is just a fancy word that means His heirs are those who come after Him, those whom

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He died for, right? And so we've seen the sin -bearing work of Christ.

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Now I want you to see the sin -killing work of Christ's posterity. Verse 24 again,

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He who Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that, so that, having died to sin, we might live to righteousness.

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One of the issues that I often see in the church today, and if I'm honest, one of the issues I sometimes see in myself is the proclivity to overemphasize or at least emphasize the forgiving work of Christ to the extent that it overshadows and underemphasizes our need to pursue holiness.

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What do I mean by that? Certainly, you can't overemphasize the truth of what

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Christ has done for us. Certainly, we can't wrap our minds fully around, fully around everything that He has done for us.

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And certainly, we can't make too much of grace unless we think about grace incorrectly.

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Do we, do you have a similar proclivity to overemphasize the forgiving work of Christ and overemphasize

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His grace in covering our sin so much so that we neglect holiness or the pursuit of righteousness?

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In other words, what I'm asking, if it's not clear, and I'm afraid it might not be, is are you using the grace of God as a means to drive you to holiness or are you using it as cover fire to continue sinning?

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Jesus covered that. Well, yes and amen, He did, but He did it so that some things could happen, amen?

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So that those who have, having been dead to sin might live to righteousness.

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If you didn't know I was going here, there's a little phrase, little phrase is so that.

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And if you don't pay attention to any sermon I ever preach or you're not at Shepherd's Institute, it's called a injunction.

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And it exists to join two clauses, one that generally expresses action and the other one expressing purpose.

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So we call it a purpose clause, if you will. So the action is what we just covered.

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Jesus Christ bore the sins of His elect by dying on the cross and absorbing the wrath of God on their behalf.

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And the purpose, according to this text, though it's not the only purpose, hear me say this. The Bible's like a diamond and there are many different ways to view what

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Jesus Christ accomplished because the gospel is so beautiful. We will spend eternity diving into the depths of the gospel and what that has done for us.

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But the purpose, according to this specific text at this specific time is that we, those who have been dead to sin would live to righteousness or to live righteously.

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In other words, what Peter wants us to understand by extension because he's writing to this group of people originally is that Christ's work of sin -bearing produces sin -killing in His people.

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Did you catch that? Christ's work of sin -bearing produces in the life of the

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Christian the desire to slay sin. It changes their orientation where they once were headed headlong into the path of the wrath of God, living licentiously, doing every single thing that they can to please themself, to live hedonistically, wearing their own self -made crown, calling themselves in their own way

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God of their own lives by virtue of what they're doing. Now they see things differently.

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They now want to please God. They now want to live righteously because who wouldn't?

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First John 3 .9 says everyone who has been born of God, everybody who has been regenerated, everybody who has had this sin -bearing work applied to them does not sin because his seed abides in him and he cannot sin because he has been born of God.

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John also says in 1 John 1 .8, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

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You see, there's two interesting ideas going on here, which maybe I should have prefaced before I read both of these verses.

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It sounds like a contradiction.

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On the one hand, John says we cannot sin because we've been born of God. On the other hand, he says if we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

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What he's getting at is once again, your orientation has changed. Where you once had to sin, now you can say no to sin.

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The one who has been born again desires not to sin because he's been born of God.

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I mean, it's a circular argument. Everyone who has been born of God does not sin because the seed abides in him and he cannot sin because he's been born of God.

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But if you say you have no sin, we deceive ourselves so the truth is not in us. This is not a riddle.

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It's simply the truth. Changed hearts change people's actions.

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1 Peter 1, 14. If you flip back just a page or two, it says that we should not be conformed to our futile conduct because a new holy conduct has been purchased for you and for me by the precious blood of Jesus.

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Verse 14, as obedient children, not being conformed to the form of lust which were yours in your ignorance, be like the holy one who called you.

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Be holy yourselves also in all your conduct because it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.

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Not only that, but Paul echoes the same reality in Titus 2, 14 when he says Jesus gave himself for us so that he might redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good works.

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You see, when you have been confronted with the realities of the gospel of what

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Jesus Christ has done to bear your sins, you become a sin killer. And this means you go to war with your indwelling sin.

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You go to war with that which killed your savior or at least was the catalyst, right?

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Because God, according to Acts chapter two, killed Jesus. That he killed him so that you might taste life.

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So don't coddle that which killed Jesus Christ.

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Charles Spurgeon said, if you had a very favorite knife which you prized much but someone took it and with it murdered your mother, you would loathe the instrument with which so foul a deed was done and sin which you prized and played with has the blood of Christ on it.

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It cut him to the very soul, so now you hate it. You say to yourself, how can

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I love that cursed thing that made my savior bleed? How can you love that sin that your savior bore?

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How? That's what Peter's saying. Peter's saying how, how does

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Christ bore our sins and he bore our sins that we might kill our sins.

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We've seen the sin bearing work of the Lord Jesus Christ. From this text, we've seen the sin killing work that God's children are called to.

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The third thing that I want you to see as you look at this text is the sin healing ball of Christ's wounds.

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There's yet more to be had, friends. Jesus himself bore our sins, verse 24 says, in his body on the tree so that purpose caused, having died to sin, we might live to righteousness and by his wounds, you were healed.

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By his wounds, you were healed.

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Sin, you see, inflicts wounds on a people.

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Yes, sin makes you stupid. Yes, sin is silly.

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Yes, sin causes harm to other people, but it causes harm to you.

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And the good news of this text, friends, in fact, the good news of the Bible, beginning even in the book of Genesis, is that God meets us in our mess and in our misery.

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Sin is not just something that needs to be killed because it was the catalyst that caused

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God to pour his wrath upon his son. It also causes misery.

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Apart from the work of Christ, we would all be in a situation of misery.

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And Christ pulls us from our misery and he applies the balm of Christ's work onto our wounds.

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Practically, this means we're not fighting this war by ourselves and just like any war, you might win, but you might experience some injury.

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So don't let anybody tell you that fighting sin is easy or there won't be some kind of wound or that sin itself hasn't caused wounds that need the balm of Jesus applied to it.

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Jesus will always pour the balm of grace all over every sin you've ever committed if you have faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Friends, if you don't sound like an antinomian every once in a while, you're not preaching the gospel.

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Although I think in this sermon, I'm not running the risk of sounding like an antinomian. But that doesn't mean that there's not consequences to the sin that you commit.

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What is one of the ways that he heals our wounds? Well, the

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Bible makes clear that he removes the guilt of our sin. So he doesn't just remove the penalty of sin, which is experiencing the wrath of God, but also the guilt of sin.

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No longer are those who trust in Jesus held responsible for their sin as their penalty.

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But God sees you as he sees Christ's and you can run to the throne of grace and experience his blessing and you do not have to feel condemned.

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Romans 8, verse one is one of the most beautiful verses in all of scripture. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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You see, that's hard for us to fully wrap our mind around, right, because if somebody sins against you, you ain't forgot it.

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And you oftentimes hold it against them. And even if they're not sinning against you, you're remembering their sin against them and you're channeling everything that you're experiencing in that moment through what you experienced when they sinned against you or vice versa.

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People experience you that way, but not God. Christ bore our sins and it's as if we had never sinned in the first place.

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When God looks at us, he sees the finished and perfect work of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And so when you repent of sin, you can walk forward understanding that there is no condemnation and actually begin to walk in the light.

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The way that I think about this, because my brain is weird, is children. Now, I don't have children, but I hope that that will change someday.

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But I see a lot of children at Heritage. My family has children.

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I was a child once. And all my time of witnessing children learn how to walk, but I have never seen a kid or a toddler walk three steps and go, you idiot.

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All you have to do is put one foot in front of the other.

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No, what do they do? They take one step, they take a half of another step, they face plant, and what does every parent on the face of the earth do?

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That's right, you got another half a step in. Friends, because Jesus Christ bore our sins,

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God can look at us like that child. And when we're taking one step, killing sin and continuing to do that,

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He can stand up. And the Psalm says, He sings songs over us. That He looks at us with delight.

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And we can keep walking because we don't have to keep looking back. I did that, I did that,

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I did that. No, you didn't. Jesus Christ paid for that on the cross. And here's the rub, here's where it hurts sometimes.

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That person that you are unforgiving to, that you remember their sin, Christ has done that for them too if they have faith in Him.

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And the Bible tells us if we come to them and continually remind them of that thing that they have repented of, that they have used to, or rather they have gotten rid of that guilt, then we're actually being an accuser.

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We're acting more like Satan than God. He gives us all things through the cross.

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Romans 8 .32 says, He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him over for us all, how we now also with Him freely give us all things.

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So not only does He remove the guilt of sin, but He remedies the disease of despair. Well, when you realize that nothing is held against you, that should rightly be held against you, your despair disappears as you gaze upon the beauties and glories of the finished work of Jesus Christ, the righteous.

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It cures us from our love of sin. Remember, our orientation changes and we now hate what

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God hates and we love what God loves. This is why many of us, when we come to Christ and we walk with the

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Lord Jesus and we're committed to a local church and we walk hand in hand with our brothers and sisters, our friends 10 years later do not recognize the people that we are.

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Our values have changed. The things that we desire change. We don't like to do those sinful things we used to do anymore because we're cured from our love of it.

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And the balm of Christ also arouses our dead heart, which has long been indifferent to God into a life of righteousness.

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He causes us to walk in his statutes. Friends, this is the promise of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31.

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When we become Christian and he takes our dead stony heart and replaces it with a heart of blood that bleeds red with blood with him, he causes us then to love his law and to walk in his statutes.

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And so the God that we once rebelled against now becomes in Christ our Lord and Savior. And we bow our knee to him and we walk not begrudgingly, but happily looking to the cross in thankfulness.

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We mortify as the Puritans have said, and we vivify. We put to death that sin, but you can't just put to death a sin because something needs to fill its place.

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And so we must vivify. We must stir. We must do things that stir our affections for Jesus.

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You can't just say, I'm not gonna do that sin anymore and then just sit there and not do it anymore. Because our hearts, as John Calvin has said, are idle factories and we need

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God's grace. And so the Puritans would talk about how these two things work in tandem, that they cannot be separated from one another.

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We must repent of and put to death sin, and we must then do things that stir our affections for the

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Lord Jesus. We must read our Bibles. We must be involved in fellowship, right?

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We must do the things that we feel like glorify the Lord. And we have so many people in this church who are so gifted and they give of their time and talents to this church.

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That's one of the ways you can vivify. Maybe if you're feeling tempted while on the computer, grab your systematic theology book and start reading

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Joel Beeky or Wayne Grudem so you can underline all the parts that you aren't supposed to believe.

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Do you hear what I'm saying? Christ bore our sin. Because of that, we are forever and freely forgiven.

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And out of that forgiveness, we then become sin killers. They don't coddle that which killed

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Jesus. We put it to death because we have new desires. Because we have a new

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Lord and we have a Savior. So as you walk out of here, how do you use this?

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How do you maybe apply it more specifically to your life? Well, I have a few things. And then we will conclude for the evening.

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But as you walk out of here and as you go to your homes and as you live your life, make sure to contemplate often the enormity and misery of your sin and weep over it.

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As we look at the cross and as we stand in its shadow, as it were, think on the reality that God held

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Christ there to bleed for you because of your sin. You, you, you.

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Let that humble you. And most of all, let it remind you of your need for a

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Savior. But don't stop there.

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That's a horrible place to be. It's a necessary place to be, but not for long.

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The second thing that I want you to do is to meditate often on the person and finished work of our sin bearer.

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The Puritans used to say, for every two glances you take at your sin, take 10 at the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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Friends, no one slayed their sin by looking at their sin. Not one person has put that pet sin to death by gazing at it indefinitely.

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Nobody repents of sin and walks in righteousness by navel gazing.

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Nobody walks in righteousness because of morbid introspection. It's needed.

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But what you need most is to take that gaze and to place it on our perfect Savior who died for us, who lived for us, and who has freely given us all things.

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Thirdly, and this is somewhat graphic, but I mean to put it this way. Put the knife of Christ's substitutionary death to the throat of your indwelling sin and slaughter it.

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You don't feed your sin. You don't gaze at your sin. You put it to death.

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And there is always sin to repent of and to kill. First Peter 5a says, your adversary the devil prowls around like a lion, like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

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How long can you let it pile up before it consumes you? Or as the Proverbs would say, how long can you hold coals before it burns you?

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Genesis 4 -7, sin is lying at your door and its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.

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You must kill it. You must not let it master you. And remember, Christ's sin -bearing produces sin -killing, and his people, where you once were enslaved, you are now free in Christ Jesus, and able where you were not able to before.

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And remember, the reason that you are killing sin is because it killed your Savior, and sin also has never and will never work for your good.

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And lastly and finally, I wanna speak to those of you who do not know the Lord Jesus, for those of you who may not have bowed your knee to him.

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You are an unrepentant sinner, because we're all sinners. Every one of us.

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There's not a person in this room who can claim perfection. There was one perfect man, the

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God -man Jesus Christ, and we killed him. The rest of us are just needing to be saved.

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The rest of us just need the cross. The rest of us rested and basked in a gift that we did not deserve.

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But if you are unrepentant, if you do not recognize and see the beauties and glories of this

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Savior, who has stood in the stead, then I say to you this day, flee unto

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Christ. Close with him. Do not play games. If he is wooing and winning, then run to him.

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Flee to him. The Puritans also once said and made famous the saying, the same ice or the same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay.

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Same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay. You know, this is another way of saying, the gospel message is a sweet aroma to others and to others, it's the stench of death.

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It's foolishness to the Greeks and it's a stumbling block to the Jews. And you may not find anything quite compelling about this

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Savior, but that is your sin in the way, your spiritual blindness, your ineptness to respond to spiritual stimuli.

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Many reject the message of the cross and count it as foolishness. Many will hear it, clinch their self -made and failing crowns and harden their hearts toward the gospel message even further.

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But my prayer today is that this same word of the sun, the same ancient gospel message,

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I'm not telling anyone anything new this evening, that this gospel message of this

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God -man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I pray that it would melt your hearts if you don't know him and cause you to see him in all his beauty and all his splendor and all of his never -ending and ever -deepening grace.

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And if you acknowledge your sin is something so vile in the sight of God that it took the slaughtering of his son to remedy the problem and repent of it, then that means to turn in the other direction and apprehend

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Christ by faith, that he will, on the basis of Christ's merit, freely and forever forgive you of every sin that you have ever committed.

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And he will, by the power of his Spirit, propel you into a life of Christlikeness.

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And friends, someday you will meet him in glory where he will wipe every tear you shed on the path of obedience toward him.

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And you will live in the house of the Lord forever. Friends, you won't get a better offer than that.

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You will not find a better savior than this. And you will not find a better helper than this.

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So friends, look to the sin -bearer and get to sin -killing.

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And remember, along the thorny path of sanctification, there is balm for every bit of pain you'll experience on the way.