Classic: Three Imputations (Part 2)

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No Compromise Radio Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author,

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Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the

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Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.

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Now if you take a look at verses 13 and 14, there's something that's very interesting here.

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If your mind hasn't, if your ears don't have smoke coming out of them yet, I think they'll start coming out right now.

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So all have sinned because of imputation, verse 12, now verse 13, for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

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Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

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Why did anyone die between Adam and Moses? No Mosaic law. No love your neighbors yourself in Leviticus.

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There's no law to break. How can I be condemned and judged and sent to hell for someone who hasn't even given me a law?

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Answer, because you've been credited with Adam's sin. And everybody between Adam and Moses who died, why did they die?

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The wages of sin is what? Death. Why did anyone between Adam and Moses die when there was no law to break?

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Answer, they died because of Adam's sin credited to their account. I ask this question.

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If a baby never personally sins, how could a baby ever die? Answer, unless you want to attribute to them some kind of sinning in the womb, sinning when they're days old.

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The only way you can get your mind wrapped around this is by believing in federal representation. The reason why babies die is because they have been credited with Adam's sin by imputation by a sovereign

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God. Because if you don't have sin in your account, you don't die.

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They're not dying for their own sins. By one transgression,

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Adam brings condemnation to all those connected with him. Now you say, you know what?

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I don't like this. I'm liking it less and less as you go. You might be excited about this,

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Mike, but I'm getting less and less excited about this. Let's go to 1 Corinthians. You are going to see soon.

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I don't mean to turn to 1 Corinthians, that was just talk. That's what I'm saying. The detractors are saying, the retractors, sorry.

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You are condemned for a sin that's not your own, yet you were going to be justified by a righteousness that's not your own.

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You will be, and you are condemned for a sin you did not commit, and you will be justified and declared righteous by a righteousness not of your own.

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That's the argument in Romans 5. Well, I wasn't there when

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Adam sinned, and you weren't there when Jesus made propitiation for sinners either, were you?

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Well, it's my sin and Adam's sin contributing to my problem.

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Then it's going to be Jesus's righteousness and your decision for Christ and your merit contributing to your solution.

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No, Romans chapter 5 teaches this. Adam's sin is credited to your account, and you're condemned by a sin not your own, and you're going to be justified by a righteousness,

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Christ Jesus, that is not your own. By no personal fault of your own, Adam sinned, and God credits your account with that sin.

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By no personal merit or work of your own, Jesus Christ lives righteously, and through faith alone credits his righteousness to you.

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So if you say, I want to be involved with Adam and sinning there in Adam, it's like I was in the garden sinning with him.

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So now you're at Calvary making righteousness with Jesus? No. By no personal fault of your own,

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Adam sinned, and you get credit for it. And by no personal merit of your own, the last

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Adam, Jesus, the second and ultimate man grants eternal life by a work of his own.

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That's Romans 5. Now, why am I getting so worked up about this? Here's why. This is what propelled me into this sermon.

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We have groups of people now saying, Adam wasn't a real person. Here's what happens.

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Genesis 1, evolution, poetry, it's not that big a deal, it's a myth, it's a legend, can't do this six day deal.

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When Genesis 1 falls, what's the next chapter that falls? Genesis 2.

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Romans 5 is a good answer too. When Genesis 1 is gone, then Genesis 2 is gone too.

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So if there's not a real six day creation, if it's not divine fiat creating God as the one creating, then

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Genesis 2 with Adam, he wasn't really real either. So here's my question. If Adam isn't real, is the second

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Adam real? Can you have the gospel without Adam? Do you mean to tell me, like some do, and I'll quote them in just a second, we had some hominoids and we had some

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Nathanael man, we had some Nebraska man, although they've determined Nebraska man was just, they found a tooth and they said, that's the

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Nebraska man. Sadly, they just found that it's the tooth of a pig. It wasn't a man at all.

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No correlation between men and pigs in Nebraska. And so what we have, I've got to get you to laugh for just a second because your mind's going,

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Adam sin, my account, I wasn't there. But here's the thing. You've got to tie both of them together.

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I can't teach second imputation without the first one, but I want to put them both together. If Adam was not true, how do we explain sin?

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And then how do we explain the last Adam as true? You say, I don't really want Adam, but I want the second

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Adam. Paul believed in the first Adam and the last Adam. Moses believed in the first Adam.

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So you know, we had all these Nathanael men, how do you even say that word? Neanderthal.

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Bidetus. Okay. And so at a certain time, one became so kind of upright and erect,

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God said, you know what? That's Adam. There's a cover story this week on Christianity Today, the search for the historical

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Adam. And on the cover, it shows like a Nebraska man on there. Pro evolution book, inner varsity press, the language and science of faith.

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Francis Collins. He started this group called Biologos initially. He's not in it now. Theistic, theistic evolution.

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He said, unfortunately, the concepts of Adam and Eve as the literal first couple and the ancestors of all humans simply do not fit the evidence.

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A physics professor at Eastern Nazarene, Giberson, who wrote the book with him, said that Adam and Eve, quote, it's our secondary, our peripheral disagreement that shouldn't cause us to hurl accusations of infidelity at one another.

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It's not that big a deal. Adam wasn't real. They'll go on to say that, did you know monkeys and men are between 95 and 99 % exactly the same when it comes to genetic makeup, encoded

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DNA? Peter Enns talked about literal

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Adams, literal Adam, quote, is at odds with everything else we know about the past from the natural sciences and cultural remains.

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And he was just kicked out of a seminary for teaching things just like that. Enns said, do you know

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Adam? Adam, he wasn't real, but Paul thought he was real. Paul thought

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Adam was real, even though he wasn't. Biologus writer,

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Dennis Lamoureux said, Adam never existed and this fact has no impact whatsoever on the foundational beliefs of Christianity.

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I'm trying to tell you, if you don't have imputation of Adam's sin to everyone else, you don't have Romans five and you don't have a need for the solution, the second

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Adam. Now, Trevor Longman, who's done a lot of good work in Christianity, it's fallen off the deep end.

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I have not resolved this issue in my own mind, except to say that there's nothing that insists on a literal understanding of Adam in Genesis one to three.

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So filled with obvious figurative descriptions, friends, it's a toxic virus that's going around saying first, there's not six day creation.

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And once you get rid of Genesis one, you go straight to chapter two and straight to chapter three. I'm telling you, it's happening everywhere.

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Bruce Waltke trained at Dallas and went on and taught at RTS, a great scholar, has drunk the

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Kool -Aid. If the data is overwhelming in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult.

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We can't go running around telling people that we want to dialogue with and engage in and we want to evangelize without saying, you know what, evolution's true.

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Waltke, scripture has a collectivity represented as an individual that doesn't bother me.

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We have to go with scientific evidence. I don't think we can ignore it. I have full confidence in scripture.

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What's the next word? But it does not represent what science represents.

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Professors at Calvin College, they're off the deep end. The evidence seems, quote, to discredit the fall.

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Eden cannot be a literal description of how things really were in the primal human past. One of their professors said, whether or not

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Adam was historical is not central to biblical theology. Well, it's not really that new.

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C .S. Lewis believed that, so they try to claim him too. Derek Kidner, 1967.

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We had pre -Adamite humans, Adamites. If Adam doesn't exist, there's no reason for a real

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Jesus. The Bible is either credible or it's not credible. Rick Phillips, who we had here, said, can the

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Bible's theology be true if the historical facts on which the theology is based are false?

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If science trumps scripture, what does this mean for the virgin birth of Jesus, his resurrection?

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The hermeneutics behind theistic evolution are a Trojan horse that once inside our gates must cause the entire fortress of Christian beliefs to fall.

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That's exactly right. So what does Christianity today say in their final paragraph in an editorial?

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At this juncture, we counsel patience. We don't need another fundamentalist reaction against science.

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We need instead a positive interdisciplinary engagement that recognizes the goodwill of all involved and that the creative thinking needs time.

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In the long run, it may be the humility of our scholars as much as their technical expertise that will bring us to a deeper knowledge of the truth.

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You see what's there? If you question any of this, A, it scopes trial fundamentalism, and B, you're not humble.

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I don't need to know and revisit this. This is just like what happened in the Presbyterian Church USA and the

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ELCA Lutheran Church years ago. We should revisit maybe, are these, should you really have women preachers or not?

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The Trojan horse comes through and then now we have full on what? Show me every time where women are ordained to the pulpit, what is the very next thing to follow?

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Marrying homosexuals and having homosexuals in the clergy. You show me when Genesis 1 goes out,

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I'll show you what goes out next, Genesis 2. And if the literal Adam and the imputation of Adam's sin to all his posterity goes out, you don't need a savior.

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I don't want to be patient. I don't want engagement. You said, well, you came for a sermon today and you got a no compromise radio show.

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Friends, as your pastor and as your friend and as your shepherd, you need to know that ideas have consequences.

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And if your idea is 68 creation, I want to kind of, you know, not believe that because if I believe it, everybody will think

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I'm stupid, ignoramus, troglodyte, caveman.

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Well, I would just refer you to what was read to us this morning in Acts chapter 7. The first imputation of the

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Bible that cannot be abandoned is the imputation of Adam's sin to everyone except Christ.

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Number two, the imputation of the sins of his people to Christ Jesus.

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So the sins of every believer imputed to Christ's account, reckoned to Christ's account, counted to Christ's bank account as it were spiritually, even though Jesus never sinned.

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Holy, blameless, undefiled. He always does what's well pleasing to me.

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So we have Adam in God's divine plan saying Adam's sin credited to everybody else's account.

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Now we see the second Adam, the last Adam is a better term for him. Jesus Christ having taken all of our sins and bore them on Calvary, even though he didn't commit one of them, imputation.

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S. Lewis Johnson said, when a father strikes oil, the children get rich.

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He lived in Dallas. We have hit a gusher in Jesus Christ. I don't like federal representation.

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Well, when your father hits oil, you like federal representation. You like it a lot.

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When your father squanders your inheritance, you don't like it so much. But here, the gusher hit is

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Christ bearing every one of your sins. He never committed one of them. They were imputed to Christ.

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Now let's turn our Bibles to Isaiah 53. I want to show you substitution.

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I want to show you imputation. Last week, I got two complaints about my sermon.

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Both were the same. Two people confronted me right at that door there. They said, your sermon was too short.

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I said, well, we had two baptisms. We had the Lord's Supper, et cetera. So you make the inference on what that just meant.

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We are all sinful. We are all depraved. We are corrupt.

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We have Adam's sin credited to our account. The list goes on. And we need a savior. We don't have to pay for our own sins.

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I sent out an email this week, and I'll read it again. William Newell was talking to WM Host of China Inland Mission quite a while ago.

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And they were talking about, should Christians think of themselves as nothing because they're so sinful? Mr. Host, I wish you would pray that I may become nothing in the sight of God.

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Mr. Host said, well, Newell, there's no need to pray about that. You are nothing. Take it by faith.

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And so we need a savior. We need someone to have our sins placed upon, imputed to their account.

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Before I get into Isaiah 53, let me say this. If you are here today and you have haunting sins, sins that are in your mind and have replayed themselves on occasion, and there are things in your past that make you think, how could

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God ever love me because of those things? How could I ever be a Christian when I did those things when

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I was an unbeliever? I did those things when I was a believer. This is going to be very good for you, because every sin that you committed, past, present, and future, has been imputed to the account of another and been paid in full.

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God has raised Jesus from the dead. You bear those no more. I love Pilgrim's Progress.

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Pilgrim was in the valley of the shadow of death, and people were tormenting him with old sins.

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The text says, just when he was about come over the mouth of the burning pit, one of the wicked ones got behind him and stepped up softly to him and whisperingly suggested many gravious blasphemies to him, which

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Christian barely thought had proceeded from his own mind. This put

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Christian more to it than anything that he met with before. Even to think that he should now blaspheme him that he loved so much.

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Yet if he could have helped it, he would have not done it. But he had not the discretion either to stop his ears or to know from whence these blasphemies came.

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Friends, you're going to be glad that every one of your sins imputed to the account of another, and you need to take that by faith.

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Look at this imputation. Isaiah 53, verse 4. Seven substitutionary aspects to this imputation.

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We'll look at seven of these. We're just going to go fast. Isaiah 53, verse 4.

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Our sins imputed to Christ's account. Reckoned. Deposited to. Surely he has borne our griefs.

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He bore them vicariously. Put on his shoulders.

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In our place as our representative. He carried them. Number two.

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And carried our sorrows. Sin causes sickness and sorrows and cause and effect are both put together here.

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The burden that we had is placed on Christ. And carried our sorrows.

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Our pains. Our anguish. Our sins. Our trouble. Our bodily infirmity. Our disease.

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Jerome translate this. We thought him to be a leper because of it. Smitten of God. God divinely smiting

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Jesus in our place. Not for his sin, but for imputed sin.

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Our imputed sin. Verse 5, number 3. Christ was pierced for our transgression.

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I can put it this way. Christ was pierced for your transgression. If you're a Christian, wounded for your transgressions.

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Verse 5. For your transgressions. For all your rebellion. For all your high handedly denying and defying

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God. Jesus was imputed with those sins. Not just for our sins, but look at transgressions.

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Deliberately crossing the line. Number 4. He was crushed for our iniquities.

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See that substitutionary language? Jesus didn't do this. It wasn't he was crushed for his own iniquities.

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But for our iniquities. Number 4. Crushed for our iniquities. 5. Chastened for our well -being.

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Upon him was a chastisement that brought us peace. Brought us shalom.

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Laid upon him that he might bear it so we might not. By imputation he received those.

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Number 6. And with his stripes we are healed. More substitutionary language. On our behalf.

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In our place. In our stead. Imputed to his account our sins.

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And by his stripe literally. It's a singular. Take all the sins. Put them all together.

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And he gets one massive scourge for that. In our place. Number 7.

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Found in verse 6. Christ has your iniquity placed on him by the father. All we like sheep have gone astray.

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We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid the iniquity of us all.

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God wholly answering sin. And can you believe it? Verse 10. It was all planned by God.

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Can you imagine this? Verse 10. This is shocking. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. It was

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God's will to say even though I've imputed Adam's sin to all his posterity.

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It is my will to take the sin of all those who look to the last Adam. And I'll take their sin and credit it to Jesus' account.

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And even though he never sinned. He'll pay for those sins. Listen to this great new song.

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It's not that new. But it's not an old hymn. Listen carefully. When Satan tempts me to despair.

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And tells me of the guilt within. Upward I look and see him there. Who made an end of all my sin.

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Listen. Because the sinless Savior died. My sinful soul is what?

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Counted free. For God the just is satisfied. To look on him and pardon me.

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That is imputation. And next week we'll learn how his righteousness is imputed to our account.

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Friends, if you're here today. And you would like to go to heaven. There are two ways for heaven.

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What are you doing putting your Bibles away? Everybody starts putting their Bible away. They're like, he's going to wrap it up.

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The plane's ready to land. If you're a Christian, put your Bibles away. You don't need them. But if you're not a

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Christian. You need your Bibles. Because you need to understand. There are two ways to get to heaven. The first way is to perfectly obey

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God's law. To perfectly obey God's law. And the bad news is. A, you haven't done it.

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And B, you've got to pay for somebody else's sin that God has put into your account.

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For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God. But the doers of the law will be justified.

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And we know that by the works of the law. No one can make it. Because no one's perfect enough. Justification by your own works cannot get you anything.

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It's a slap in God's face to think. That you can get to heaven by simply being good. Why would he send

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Jesus to die on your behalf. If you can be good enough to get to heaven without Jesus.

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That was a real nice sacrifice there God that you planned. But I don't need that. That is just like Genesis chapter 3.

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Where Adam didn't believe the gospel. He didn't believe the word of God. The only other way to get to heaven.

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Is by faith alone. Trusting in the works of the second Adam. The last Adam. Jesus Christ.

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Who did perfectly obey the works of the law. That's why when it comes to the death and resurrection of Christ.

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You must believe. You must repent. You must forsake your sins. And say I've been trying to get to heaven.

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By my own goodness and my own righteousness. And by my own sacraments. And all these other things I've done. God says he's done it all.

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And you need to look away from yourself to God in faith. The top lady said a debtor to mercy alone.

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Of covenant mercy I sing. No fear with thy righteousness on. My person and offering to bring.

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The terrors of law and of God with me. Can have nothing to do. My savior's obedience and blood hide.

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All my transgressions from view. The work which his goodness began. The arm of his strength will complete.

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His promises yes and amen. And never was forfeited yet. Things future.

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Things nor things that are now. Nor things below or above. Can make him and his purpose forego.

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Or sever my soul from his love. My name from the palms of his hands.

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Eternity will not erase. Impressed on his heart it remains. In marks of indelible grace.

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Yes I to the end shall endure. As sure as the earnest is given. More happy but not more secure.

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The glorified spirits in heaven. No Compromise Radio.

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With Pastor Mike Abendroth. It's a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a

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Bible teaching church. Firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word.

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Through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6.

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We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org.

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Or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio.