What Jesus Accomplished — Gary Wilkerson

I kind of come to you on a bit of a bittersweet Sunday for me. It is just a delight to be here with you, but also just in memory of it was this day three years ago that my father passed away in a tragic car accident driving on a small road down in East Texas.

I say bittersweet because we miss him, but at the same time just want to get the chance to look to see what God has done here in this church. We delight in that, that he lived his life well and he's with Jesus.

That's really good news. There's a new movie out called Heaven is for Real and I haven't seen it, but it seems a little strange to me like this little boy goes up into heaven and the angels ask him like a question like you want us to sing you a song and he goes, do you know we will rock you?

I'm not sure that's really what heaven's like, but I think my dad knows, my mom knows what it's like. They've gone to be with Jesus and I know they know the real thing. I'm not saying the movie's not real, but I'm just saying they know the real thing, right?

Hunger for the Word of God

All right, are you hungry for the word of the Lord church? Hungry for God's word? This is not my message, but I've just been stuck in Nehemiah chapter 8 and the last couple Sundays at my church I've just opened this up and read it to them.

It's Nehemiah 8 and verse 4. You don't even have to turn there, but listen to how the people of this day loved the word of God. How thrilled they were that the word of God could be spoken to them. I think sometimes we need to be reacquainted with this type of passion for God's word.

It says here in Nehemiah chapter 8 verse 4, Ezra the scribe stood on a high wooden platform that had been made for the occasion. To his right stood, and it mentioned his names, and to his left stood another group of names, verse 5.

Ezra stood on the platform in full view of the people, and when they saw him open the book, they all rose to their feet. Then Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people chanted, Amen, Amen, as they lifted their hands, and they bowed down and worshiped the Lord God with their faces to the ground.

Do you see what's happening here? This is not a choir. This is not a worship team. This is a man standing up on a stage in front of a pulpit, and he gets ready to speak the word of the Lord. He opens the book, and all the people began to stand and shout, Amen, Amen, Amen to the word of the Lord.

He hadn't even started preaching yet, and they were shouting, Amen, Amen. See, I'm into my sermon. You haven't even said Amen once. But he was just, here's what he did. He went like, now you do. I wasn't looking for that.

He just opened, and the people go, Amen, Amen, glory to God. And some of them, and we don't have space to do this here, but some of them just jumped to their feet and their arms spread out, and others fell down on their knees and on their faces and said, we get to hear the word of the Lord today.

We get to hear the words from the mighty God of heaven. He's speaking to us in the assembly today, and all the people just, man, they just shouted, and they chanted, Amen, Amen, Amen. It's like, he opened the books today I'm going to be preaching from, and he couldn't even start.

It's like, Amen, Amen, glory to God in his presence. So real in a place, so alive, and that's what I hunger for, is that we as the church of Jesus Christ, and I believe this last generation before Jesus comes, get so hungry for the word of the Lord.

It's not sermon tasting. It's not sermon critiquing. It's not, I liked his first point. It's not, they finally got Gary to wear a tie. It's not any of that stuff. It's, it's the glory of the Lord demonstrated through the power of his living word in the church today.

So, I'll tell you what, why don't you stand with me, and let's just raise our hands, and let's just say, Amen, Lord, to your word. We say, Amen, to your word. We say, Amen, to your word. We want to hear your word, God.

We want to hear your word today, God, not my words. We want to hear your word, Jesus. Speak, Jesus. We are hungry to listen to you. Speak to us today, God, a mighty God, great God, wonderful God, glorious God.

Speak. Oh, when you speak, God, the heavens and the earth shake. Your kingdom comes. Your will is done. When you speak, lives are changed. Hearts are transformed. Addictions are set free. Children come to Christ.

Marriages are restored. Healing takes place with one word from heaven. We thank you, God. We thank you for your great and mighty word. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Amen.

Amen. You may be seated. I want to talk today about what Jesus accomplished. When he said, It is finished, when he stretched his hands out after the cross had done its work on his body and his life, and he breathed his last, as he's breathing his last, he says, It is finished.

Jesus’ Finished Work on the Cross

I want to tell you what he accomplished in that finished work. It wasn't just that he finished religion, or that he finished his 33 years. It wasn't just that he finished his sermons, or that he finished his healing ministry.

He accomplished something that is profound, that is outstanding, that may surprise some of you, what it is that Jesus accomplished. When I was a freshman in high school, first semester it was kind of boring, but then the second semester, I don't know if any of you young, if there's some teenagers here in the room, some of you young guys, or some of you older guys remember this when you were, if you remember back 75 years ago, Pastor Carter, when you were a teenager.

If we remember those days when we started high school, every once in a while, well here's my story. A new student teacher came in, so I was probably 14 at the time, and she was young, she had just got out of college, so she was probably 24, 25, just my age.

Perfect, you know, a 14 year old boy, enamored with this 24, I've never forgotten her name, it's been years ago, her name was Amanda. And so, I just, I wanted to find out what, you know, I wanted to get in Amanda's class, so I could just, you know, just stare at her.

And so, I found out she taught a class, and I signed up for the class. Now, this was in Texas, I'd moved from New York to Texas, my freshman year of high school, and so I was trying to fit in, and everybody wore cowboy hats, and wrangler jeans, and drove pickup trucks, and wrangled horses, and you know, I grew up in New York, so I didn't even hardly know what a horse was, let alone how to, wrangling, I thought I was stealing horses, I didn't know what, so I wanted to fit in, but this was not a good choice if you wanted to fit in, because the boys didn't do this in Texas, but there was a home economics class that was taught by Amanda.

And so, I signed up my second semester for home economics, and I was the only boy in the home economics class. And so, she gave a project, we did several small projects, but she said, you know, this is your, all semester long, you have to work on one particular larger project, and to do this project, you either, you know, you bake a big meal for the whole class, and that's your final grade, your final test, so to speak, or you can make a sweater, and I thought that looks, both of those don't sound too good, and I found one project in this little book that you can choose from, where you can make a t-shirt, and that's easy enough, you know, it's just like some material, and you cut holes, and if there's four holes, you know, one for your waist, two for your arms, one for your neck, it's good.

So, I made a t-shirt that semester for Amanda, and, well, it was for me, but to get, you know, her to impress, to be impressed with my craftsmanship, and I got done with it finally, and I tried it on before, you know, I had to model it for the class, and I was so embarrassed, because the neck, I had cut the hole in the neck like about three times too big.

It looked like one of the, you know, those sweaters that women wear on purpose, where the shoulders fall off? It didn't look right on me, you know, and it's not the kind of t-shirt you want to wear in East Texas.

It'd be fine here in New York City, but not in East Texas. And so, I think I got like a C minus. I have no idea where that t-shirt is. I probably threw it away. I don't really even remember what I did with it.

I probably just left it at the school, like in the trash can. It had no value to me. It didn't keep my interest. It wasn't anything that I wanted to hang on to. Now, here's another short story for you.

Freedom, Reconciliation, and the Value of Accomplishment

I was in East Germany, just days, literally days, the first week or two after the Berlin Wall had come down. You remember Ronald Reagan got up, and he said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall. You know the story.

And so, Gorbachev decided to open up the two countries there. If you remember your history, East and Western Germany was split after World War II, and they put up this wall. And when they put the wall up, and they divided it between these two, East and West Germany.

East Germany becoming communist, and West Germany democratic. West Germany became very prosperous. East Germany got stuck in horrific poverty, and in a government that was full of control, people that were filled with fear.

And sometimes, when that wall went up, families were split. Mom and dad on this side, and college student kids on this side. Brother on this side, brother and sister on that side. And so, there was great divisions.

And after years and years of this wall being up, some people had never even seen each other. And some were so desperate to get out of East Germany, they would try to crawl over the wall. And some of them, many had gotten shot and killed.

And so, when that wall came down, you could imagine, right? Could you not imagine the hearts of those people on both sides of that wall? And we actually got to see there, where they were actually throwing raffling hooks over sections of the wall on the West German side.

And young men and women would be pulling on that wall. And to see that wall come down in one fell swoop, a large six foot section of that wall just crumble to the ground and break into pieces. And to see, on the East German side, the faces of those people with joy.

The wall is gone. We're one. I can go see my family. There's freedom now. And my wife and I and my little son who were there, when that wall fell, we saw a little piece of stone, and it had some graffiti on it.

And I picked it up and I gave it to my wife to put in her purse. That's what men always do. They don't carry a purse. They complain about how big their wife's purse is, and then they put everything we have in our wife's purse.

And so, I took that little piece of stone, and it just became a treasure to me. A piece of history in my hands. A piece of history now in my home. That's an artifact that I'll always want to keep because it speaks to freedom, to see the faces of those people when that wall came down.

And something was accomplished. Something amazing was accomplished for them. They were now free. They were now restored, reconciled, so to speak, with their family. It was a great day and a week in our life there in West and East Germany, and then to be able to cross over into East Germany.

Oh, man, it was something I'll treasure forever and have that little piece of stone of the Berlin Wall for the rest of my life. Same thing happened to me when we were in South Africa about three months before Nelson Mandela was set free from Robbins Prison in South Africa.

And to go into Soweto Village there, Soweto Township, and to see the people there and to hear them sing this song, to hear them sing this song. And they sang it in their language, but it was interpreted for me.

And the song was so beautiful. Have you ever heard South Africans sing? And the harmonies are so natural. And they were just singing the song, we see a new Africa. We see a new Africa. We see a new Africa.

Hallelujah. We see a new Africa. And I was going, whoa, that's amazing. That's so beautiful. From people that are oppressed, from people that are shot at, from people that are chased by police dogs. And they have this little glimpse of hope.

Mandela is no longer in prison, and now they begin to see a new Africa. And so I bought on the street corner a T-shirt that said, we see a new Africa. That's a much greater treasure to me than the T-shirt that was misshapen, that was of no value.

The Berlin Wall I'll never give up. The T-shirt I want to keep forever. The heart of that new Africa. And when Mandela was freed, and I could just picture him when he stood in that presidential palace, once labeled a terrorist because of his violent youth, and then to be tempered in a prison for 30-something years, and then to now be an elder statesman who wanted to bring people together and brought forth what was called peace and reconciliation, where there was no retribution, but the biblical principle of if you confess, you can be forgiven.

And that brought peace to the nation. For him to stand in that presidential palace and look across that nation, to stand in that balcony and see thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people gathered around for that day when they said, we see a new Africa, and now they saw a new Africa.

When they wanted to see a new Germany, and they saw a new Germany. There are things that were not yet even accomplished. They saw the future of something that could be accomplished, and they believed, and they sweat for it, and they bled for it, and they believed for it, and they waited for it, and they fought for it, and they marched for it, and then they get to see it with their eyes.

It is accomplished. Look, this is a new Africa. This is a new Germany. This is a new country. This is a new people. You see, things that are difficult to attain, things that cost you much, things that cost you lives, that cost you blood and sweat and tears, things that cost you a long battle in a slow direction, but in the same forceful movement to the things you want to see accomplished.

Those are the things you appreciate greatly, not a half-hearted t-shirt that you want to just try to do to be able to stay in somebody's class. Not like a neighbor who won the lottery. They weren't our neighbor at the time, but they won the lottery a few years back, and it was $3 million, and so they came into this neighborhood where I was living where moderately priced, middle-class homes, suburbanites, and you're on this little one-quarter acre of a lot.

I know that sounds like a lot of land here. That's probably worth $100 million in New York City, but for us, you can buy a quarter acre or so and build a nice little family home in it, but they bought like three acres at the end of this cul-de-sac and started building a home that was probably four times as big and four times more valuable, well over a million-dollar home at the end of our street, and it went to about probably three-quarters of the way complete, and after it was three-quarters of the way complete, I noticed the building had stopped, and I asked the neighbor, what happened with that big mansion down the street, and they said they bought SUVs and Hummers, and they went on vacations, and they bought this land, and they bought the home, and they ran out of money in about six months.

Six to nine months, they ran out of money. See, it came easy to them. There was no real value to it. It didn't cost them anything to obtain what they had, and so they were not wise about how they, it went out fast because it came in fast.

It was nothing that they fought for, that they lived for. It was nothing that they really accomplished, and I want to ask you the question here this morning. What is it that Jesus really accomplished?

What Jesus Came to Accomplish

What was it that he was after? What was he looking for? And I want to suggest to you that some of the things that we think Jesus was after was really not his agenda at all. He was very different than what many of us see Jesus as.

He's preached in many churches as the political Jesus, isn't he? That he came to kind of set a new political way of living about caring for people in a certain way. He's the, it's sort of the democratic Jesus, the democrat who likes to help people on welfare.

Others see him as the right-wing Republican Jesus, you know, and he's a moral issue teacher, and he stands for righteousness and justice, and so we see Jesus sometimes politically, but he didn't come to accomplish a political system, did he?

And some see Jesus as a therapist. He's, and he is this, he's a comforter, but we see him sort of sitting there with a notepad, and we get to lay down on Jesus' couch and tell him all of our problems, and he goes, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, tell me about your mother.

It's probably something to do with your mother. And so, I'm not putting down therapists, but we see Jesus as sort of the great, great therapist in the sky, but Jesus didn't come for psychology, did you know that?

He didn't come for, he didn't come for religion either. He didn't come to build a religion. He didn't come to say, you know, I kind of like the Jewish thing. My mom was Jewish. My dad was Jewish. I sort of like Jewishness, but I think I want to start Christianity.

It has a nice ring to it. My name's Christ, and Christianity would be a good way to go about starting a new religion, and, but he didn't come to start a new religion. He didn't come for philosophy. He didn't come to try to equate himself with Socrates and Plato and Confucianism.

He didn't come to try to start some kind of wise, clever words of man. He came for something totally different. If you'll turn in your scriptures to Isaiah chapter 53, verse 11, I want to read one verse, Isaiah 53, 11.

I'm reading it from a different translation. This is not my study Bible, so please don't email me about using this very liberal, it's the new living translation. Don't worry, I'm a King James guy as well, and so you can send all your emails to carterconlan at aol .com, and that's not actually his email address.

But I like this, look at this verse, Isaiah 53, 11. I believe they put it up on the screen, if not, just more listen to my words because they're slightly different, but I think some meaning comes out of here that I think is extremely important.

Verse 11 says, when he sees, this is speaking of Jesus, when he sees, picture now, picture Mandela standing in that presidential palace when he sees, picture those East German, that brother that hadn't seen his sister for 40 years, and that wall comes down, when he sees, when she sees, picture this, when Jesus sees, when his eyes are set upon the delight of his heart, that thing that blood, sweat, and tears fought for, the thing that he laid down his life for, when he sees it, when he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, it didn't come to him easily, it cost him his life, it didn't come to him easily, when he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied.

I don't often think of Jesus as being satisfied. The word satisfied, it comes from an old English word, it comes from two different words, satis, meaning completely done, and the second part of that means already, so the word satisfied means already completely done.

When I look at it, it's already, my nation is, South Africa is free, the Berlin Wall has come down, we're free, it's done, it's accomplished, and so it's saying here, when Jesus sees this, he's satisfied, he sees it as completely done, it is completely done.

Well what is completely done? Is it he came to build his church? Yes, absolutely, he came to do that, yes, he came to set sinners free, yes, he came to touch lives, yes, he came to see, raised up a holy remnant of God, yes, there are some political implications to it, obviously, there are some philosophical implications, there are some social implications, all those things, but Jesus didn't come to start a political movement, he didn't come to start a religious movement, he didn't come to say, hey, you know, I hope by the 21st century, we have more numbers of Christians than we have Muslims, because we want to be number one, I want to start the number one religion in the world, and Jesus has no interest in any of that.

When he sees with his eyes what he's accomplished, when he sees something, he goes, oh, that satisfies my soul, that was worth laying down my life, that was worth the nails in my hand, that was worth the nails in my feet, that was worth the bloody crown of thorns on my head, that was worth the spear in my side, that was worth having to breathe my last, that was worth even having to feel rejected by my Father, whom I am one with, whom I love with all my heart and loves me, and now I had a sense of, my God, my God, my Father, my Father, why have you forsaken me, feeling forsaken, he says, it's going to be worth it all, I'll be satisfied, having gone through all that anguish, and because of his experience, he says, my righteous servant will make it possible, now this last part is God the Father talking about Jesus, he says, my righteous servant will make it possible, make what possible?

That Jesus gets to be satisfied, satisfied at what? At what he's accomplished, what is it that he's accomplished? And here's where I'm going to throw maybe a little twist in your theology here, a mom I heard speak of about 10 days ago, she was saying that she lived a wild life and started living with this guy, got pregnant, and in her pregnancy, the boyfriend didn't want to stay and help her through the pregnancy, he didn't want the responsibility, so he bolts on her, he splits and leaves her alone to have this baby, she has the baby and she's having financial difficulties and she's under stress, so she starts smoking pot, and the pot doesn't do enough and she starts taking pills, and before long she becomes a hardcore drug addict, trying to raise this boy, 3 or 4 years, 4 years of addiction, 4 years of almost near homelessness carrying this little boy around, trying to find a job that she could sustain to keep this boy fed, feeling broken, feeling down, feeling worthless, feeling lifeless, feeling unloved, feeling unneeded, unnecessary, but there's someone who wants to accomplish something, and in her life a little 4 year old boy walks up to her, never been in church a day in his life, never listened to Christian radio or television, comes up to his mom and says, mom, last night God told me he's real, he's real and he loves us, and the mom just got angry and said, son, I don't know who's been telling you this stuff, that's a bunch of hogwash, that's no more real than the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, there is no Jesus, there is no God, he's not real, and the little boy just, mom, God came to me last night and he told me he's real and he told me he loves us.

Hallelujah. A 4 year old boy is having an argument with his mom and he's winning the argument because he's experiencing something that has been accomplished for him and for his mother, and his mother decides to go to church and long story short she and her 4 year old son come to the altar hand in hand to receive Jesus Christ and their new creations in Christ Jesus.

I want to say to you that's what Jesus accomplished, he accomplished that woman's life, he accomplished that little boy's life, when he looks what he's satisfied at is not this building here as beautiful as it is, not the songs as pretty as they are, not the religion of Christianity, not the theological, not the philosophical, not the sociological, not the psychological stuff that we read in the Bible, when he looks at something he's satisfied when he looks at you, when he looks at you and says, aha, there's the work that I wanted to accomplish, there's the work I wanted to accomplish.

Ephesians 2 .10 says it so clearly, for you are God's masterpiece. Isn't that beautiful? When he's finished with you, he doesn't go, it doesn't fit, it's exposing my shoulder, I don't like it. You are far more than a country that finds its freedom in Berlin or in South Africa, you are far more valuable than a piece of stone that I might have in my house or a t-shirt that says, we see in New Africa.

When he looks at those things, yeah, praise the Lord, or praise me, I guess you might say. Those things are good that happen, politics, good things happen in politics sometimes, good things happen sometimes in national movements, good things happen in civil rights movements, good things happen in the justice system, good things happen when laws are changed, but the good thing that Jesus is really satisfied is when he looks at that mom and her little four-year-old boy and says, that really makes me happy.

When he looks at your life, as broken as you think it might be, as distraught as you might be, as hopeless as you might feel, as downcast as you might seem, as deep a sinner as you feel, condemned and convicted by your rebellion and your anger and your running from God, as much as you don't even feel at home here in a crowd of thousands of people, you're here in a Christian setting, but you don't feel like you belong, and maybe you feel that wherever you go, there is a masterpiece that Jesus is doing, and it's called you by your name.

He knows your name. He knows the hairs on your head. He knows your heart. He knows you're going in and you're coming out, the Bible says. And the Song of Solomon says it so beautifully, just with one glance of your eyes towards him, you became his Amanda.

He just, yeah, what's your name? Elena. Jesus looks at you and you go, ah, Elena. How beautiful. She's mine. She's mine. How about you? Just clap your hands. What's your name? Betsy. Jesus just goes, ah, my Betsy.

That's my Betsy. Have you met my Betsy? She's so sweet. I just love. See, we don't see Jesus that way. We say, Betsy, try harder. Betsy, when's the last time you cooked for your husband? Am I going to get you in trouble?

Is that your husband? No? Oh, sorry. Changing subjects? Oh, man, he just, he sees you and he knows you by name. You ever sing that song? He knows my name. He knows my every heartache. And something still the same.

I don't know. Maybe we could sing that at the end of the service today. He just knows you and he loves you and he cares about you. And the good news is he's satisfied. He says, yeah, I'm satisfied. Because I say to him, thank you for knowing my name.

Thank you for loving me. But I know you're not satisfied with me yet. But I'm working on it. You saved me. Now, you made me righteous. You made me justified is the theological word, just as if I've never sinned before.

In other words, I'm now in right standing with God. But since you've done that, I'm coming to you still unclean and a lot of bad thoughts and a lot of bad deeds and a lot of bad actions and a lot of bad motives.

But since you did this for me, I'm going to do this for you. I'm going to work on getting better. But it's the same power that justifies you, that sanctifies you. And in much of scripture, I know we read the word sanctification in a more of a progressive sense.

We're going to progressively get more and more sanctified. But about 90 of the time, the word sanctified is mentioned in scripture. It is mentioned as something that's already done. You were sanctified, having been sanctified by the blood of Jesus.

You are washed. You are cleansed. You are sanctified. That's what it means. I can't really wrap my mind around that fully. I can't fully understand that. But I can believe it that he has done the work for me.

He is accomplishing his work. He is accomplishing. When he looks at what he's accomplished, past tense, he looks at accomplished and he sees a life that's clean. He sees a life that's holy. He sees a life that is pure.

Many of us in this room today can't say to ourselves, I am the righteousness of God in Christ. We can't say that. God is satisfied in a different way and he has accomplished something different than what we think we need to accomplish.

When he says he accomplished it, he accomplished your complete and total righteousness. Now you're going to grow. You're going to mature. You're going to find some old ways, a way in your life, some habits and hangups and things that you'll get healed and delivered and repent of.

But when he looks at you, it's not like you're almost there, but you're not all the way there. Years ago, my father and our ministry, World Challenge, as I said to you earlier, moved down to Texas. In Texas we bought a piece of property to take Teen Challenge graduates who wanted to become pastors and leaders and evangelists and opened up this training center.

Four hundred acres and buildings on it, beautiful buildings, gym, cafeteria, dormitories, houses. It was quite a spectacular place. Then my dad got it in his heart, as you know, to move back here to New York City.

So he wanted to do something. The Lord put something on his heart with that piece of property, 400 acres and millions of dollars worth of buildings. He was going to allow Youth With A Mission, another ministry down in Texas, to have it for what, I remember the phrase everybody kept throwing around, ten cents on the dollar.

You know what that means? It's pretty obvious. So if it's worth two million, you get it for $200 ,000. If it's worth three million, you get it for $300 ,000. I don't remember what they valued the land at, but they ended up selling it for ten cents on the dollar, probably $200 ,000, $300 ,000.

Now although it was a gift in one sense, if you were the recipient of that, if you were Youth With A Mission saying, I got three million dollars worth of property, 400 acres for $300 ,000, in some sense you would say it's a gift, right?

But in another sense, no, because you still owe a little bit. You still have to, each month, write that check out and say, here's $1 ,000, here's another $1 ,000, eventually I'll pay off that $300 ,000, and then it'll be satisfied, the debt will be satisfied, it'll be paid in full.

You see, some of us approach our faith like that, that Jesus wanted to give us what, Romans chapter 5, I think it's verse 17 says, the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall cause many to reign in Christ, shall cause you to reign, you will reign with Christ.

And the idea is there's an abundance, and that word there in the Greek is hupo, which means hyper, so he gives you hyper grace, isn't that awesome? I mean it's not just grace, but it's like grace on steroids, I mean it's hyper grace, it is crazy grace, and then he gives a gift of righteousness, but many of us don't see it as hyper grace, it's just grace, it's not extravagant grace, it's just grace, and many of us see it as a 10 cents on the dollar righteousness.

So he paid 90 of it, he did that at the cross, but he's waiting for that check every month from you, pay off the rest, make yourself righteous by doing all your good deeds, and if you lack in one month, he sends, you know, Joey from Brooklyn, where's my money?

It's not, it's not, it's not right, that's not what Jesus means here when he says he was satisfied, he's not satisfied, like hey how's the payment going this month Joey, it's not what satisfies him, what satisfies him is his word on the cross, it is finished.

I'm totally satisfied, because you've been made righteous, past tense, the hyper grace, the grace abounding has been poured out on you, it's been poured out on I, and now we have that kind of grace. Could you imagine, and I'll close with this, could you imagine being a bystander in heaven when this work was being accomplished, and the father was looking down and saying, watch this guys, my servant's gonna make it possible, gonna make what possible?

Access to God Through Christ’s Accomplished Work

That you and you and you and you and you and me, that we could be loved by God, that we could be acceptable to God, that we could be seen as righteous, that we could be seen as the apple of his eye, we could be seen as the light of his life, we could be seen as one who could keep company with great joy now, not one who's trying to earn a place in God's table, but one who's been given a place at God's table, and could you imagine being a bystander sort of looking over God's shoulder?

Odds are if you weren't already fully sanctified, or if you weren't at the place where you were tracking with God's heart, you would say, no way, no way that you could accomplish through one act on the cross, no way those drops of blood could cause the father God in his just purity and his holiness to find a people now that are made righteous, holy, and acceptable to come into that very throne room of grace, the curtain torn.

If you were a bystander in heaven watching that, you said, there's no way that's possible, there's no way, but Jesus made a way, hallelujah, he made a way for it to be possible for you and I to come into places that you never thought we could be before, and it shows the great value that he has for you.

You're not an afterthought, you're not a mistake, you're a miracle, alright, and some here today, some here today just simply need that, the acceptance of God's through the provision of his finished work for you, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all unrighteousness and moves us from a place of being far from God and outside of his family life into being accepted by the work that he finished for us.

There's some in this room today that need to make that step of faith saying, Jesus take me from the kingdom of darkness, a family that's not been, a member who's not been born yet into the family of God and save me today Jesus, and others it's the idea of knowing that once he has poured out his blood, once he has looked at the work, he's satisfied with that, he sees you as valuable to him, he's really happy about you.