By A Single Offering

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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As I was preparing for this week, I mentioned at the onset that we're not in 1 Corinthians 16.

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And I wrestled, I prayerfully wrestled with the text that we could or should look at today.

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And I thought, what text of scripture is suitable for the occasion when we celebrate the triumphant bodily resurrection of the

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Lord Jesus Christ? On the Lord's Day, you could say the Lord's Day of all Lord's Days, what message could or should be preached to God's assembled people?

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And I thought, you know, we could study one of the accounts of the empty tomb, like our brother just read a few minutes ago.

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We could give our attention to the resurrection in greater detail, looking deeper into the doctrine and the practical significance of this reality, like we did a few weeks ago.

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Or we could look at an Old Testament prophecy, but we did that on Friday. And there's just so many places that we could go on a day when we want to consider

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Christ. We could go to so many texts, and I suppose so long as we preach from the

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Bible, we can't go wrong. But today, as we reflect on the finished work of Christ, not only on the cross, but now seated at the right hand of the glory of the

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Father, I perfectly settled on this passage in Hebrews chapter 10. And the reason for that is because it can really only be described as the gospel, the whole gospel, and nothing but the gospel.

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And so today, as we rejoice in Christ's resurrection, we're going to give our attention to the very thing that I believe, that I trust will amaze us and fill us with praise,

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God's praise, for all of eternity. Namely, the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And because I know most of the people in this room, I think fairly well, I don't think that there are many of you that I'd have to argue with about the necessity to frequently and faithfully proclaim the gospel in the context of the local church.

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I think almost all of us would agree with a statement that D .A. Carson made when he said,

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A gospel assumed becomes a gospel confused, which eventually leads to a gospel lost.

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And yet, what happens for many of us, and what has happened to countless other churches over the last 2 ,000 years, what still happens to churches today, is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is accepted by the believer, it's accepted by the church, it's celebrated by the church, and then eventually it becomes routine.

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And it falls into contempt. And then it becomes neglected. And then eventually the gospel of Jesus Christ is lost in that church, and lost in the hearts of those people.

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And I don't know about you guys, but when I'm looking on my iPhone for the next podcast to listen to, if I get a list of the latest podcasts that are available, there might be one that says the gospel of Jesus Christ, or something that is very much gospel -themed, and then maybe something that is apologetics -themed, and then something that is really controversial.

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And I don't know about you, but typically I click on the controversial one first.

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I want to hear something new, I want to hear something juicy, I want to hear a perspective that I haven't heard before.

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And yet, we need the gospel, and we need to rehearse the gospel regularly.

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We might think that the type of thing where churches fall away from the gospel, we might think that something like that would never happen to us, but this is exactly what happens to every church that feels that it no longer needs to herald the basic message of the gospel of God to the people of God.

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The people of God need the gospel just as much as the sinners on White Avenue, as the people who are not yet believers in Christ.

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And I once heard John MacArthur tell a story about such a church. I think, as far as I can tell, they were the kind of church that we would want to be like.

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A group of faithful men and women established a church. They planted a church in their city with the intent of preaching the gospel and preaching the

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Bible. And this group of earnest believers treasured Christ. They loved the

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Bible, and when they finally constructed a building of their own, they built an archway at the entrance of the building.

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And on the archway, they had these words engraved in the stone of that arch.

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It said, we preach Christ crucified. We preach Christ crucified.

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And this statement wasn't an exaggeration. The men in that church did just that.

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They preached the gospel. They preached the whole counsel of God, but they always brought the gospel to bear on the text.

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Christ was proclaimed, crucified, yes, and risen, yes, and coming again, yes.

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But as the years passed and people came and left, as often happens in churches, the congregation and the teachers in that church grew tired of rehearsing the gospel.

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All the details of the gospel. And interestingly, at the same time, an ivy vine began to grow on the outside of the church building.

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And as it climbed its way up the archway, it blocked the word crucified. So that the arch read, we preach

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Christ. And the church did that. They preached Christ, but they became tired of all of the details.

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And then eventually what had happened was the desire to preach Christ gave way to desires to preach sermons that were more relevant and in keeping with the appetite of that contemporary culture.

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And again, as the building itself aged, the ivy grew further to the point that it obscured the word

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Christ. And it said, we preach. And then ivy leaves.

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And as more time passed, the preaching itself waned in popularity and became out of vogue.

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And the church turned to other methods to reach people. And eventually when the church faded away to the point that there was no spiritual vitality left, one person noticed that the ivy had spread to the point that the engraved words could no longer be seen through the thick leaves of the vine.

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And it had become a church that no longer preached the gospel of Christ, the person of Christ, the crucifixion of Christ, or even preached at all, and it ceased to be a church at all.

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Now that might sound far -fetched, but I've been in churches like that. By God's grace,

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I was saved in a church like that, where the gospel was lost. And so today, we're going to rehearse the gospel in detail.

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Whether we realize it or not, we need the gospel. And not just a glossing over of the gospel, but we as the people of God, as Christ's blood -bought church, we need a full gospel, a detailed gospel, and we need a frequent gospel.

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And so that's what I intend to bring us today from Hebrews chapter 10. So we'll get into the text, and we'll unpack this further.

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Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 11. I feel like at least once I'm going to say

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Paul wrote, because we've been in Corinthians so long. So forgive me if I do, but the author of Hebrews writes this in verse 11.

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He says, And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.

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So to just catch us up on a bit of context here. Up to this point, the author of the book of Hebrews has been building a case, and he's now reached the crux of his argument.

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And if we were to look back in the book of Hebrews, beginning in chapter 1 and carry on, what you could essentially say is that the author of Hebrews is making the case in three words,

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Jesus is better. Jesus Christ is greater. He is better.

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He is better than everything that has gone before him. In every single regard.

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And so if we look at Hebrews chapter 1, for instance, we see that Jesus had supremacy over the angels.

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In Hebrews chapter 3, we see that Jesus was greater than Moses, and he offers a better rest than that of the promised land.

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In chapter 5, we see that Jesus is the better, the greater high priest.

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In chapter 8, he's the mediator of a better covenant. In chapter 9, he ministered in a better holy place.

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A tabernacle not made with human hands. And then at the end of chapter 9, and then moving now into chapter 10, the author of this book reaches the height of his argument to show that Jesus himself was the better and the perfect sacrifice for sins.

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What we'll see actually, as we unpack this text, is really it lays out what

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I would consider to be a basic but a detailed proclamation, heralding of the gospel.

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We see God. We see the nature of God, the nature of man, Christ, and then to some extent we'll see response.

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But here in verse 11, chapter 10, verse 11, we see a partial summary of what has been taught up to this point.

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We see the priesthood. We see sacrifice. But what we find as we look at this text is we find a problem, and I want us to dwell on this for a moment because this forms the very basis for our understanding of the gospel.

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The very first thing that we find in verse 11 is this, and if you're taking notes, this is my first point.

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Verse 11 shows us an impossible dilemma. Here in chapter 10 and verse 11, we have an impossible dilemma.

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Here we see that God had, as part of his old covenant system of worship, ordained human priests to offer sacrifices in their worship to him, and this was done both to please

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God and to praise God and also to make efforts to atone for the individual sins of the nation of Israel.

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But there was a problem, and this problem isn't just something that we see in the book of Hebrews. It's something that we see in the whole

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Bible. And then if you're looking closely, especially in the Old Testament, the problem was essentially this, that no matter how many animals were slain on that altar, whether the tabernacle or the temple, it could never address the inherent sinfulness of the people of God, the

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Old Testament people of God. It could never fully take away their guilt. It could never fully clear their consciences, and it could never finally atone for all of their repeated sin.

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And so what we see in the Old Testament, the old covenant sacrificial system, is that instead of relieving the guilt of sin, the author writes in chapter 10 and verse 3 that it only served to remind the priests, the people, and all those who participated of their grievous sin and their blood guilt before a holy

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God. I once heard John MacArthur talk about this using the story of medication, that if you are sick and you were to take medication, and maybe after the course of seven or ten days you were to feel better, you would be thankful for that medication.

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It cured you. You'd be grateful for it. But if you were to take medication for an ailment and all it did was help to moderately control the symptoms, so every day you take that medication, you get no better, you get no worse, and then eventually you get to the point that as you take the medication, you're just reminded that it doesn't cure you, it doesn't make you better, it just reminds you that you are sick, that you have an ailment that cannot be healed.

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And this is what the sacrificial system did for the Israelites. The sacrificial system became a reminder only and always of their sinfulness.

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And so we see this whole system served. Looking back now from the

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New Testament at the Old Testament, this whole system of sacrifice served as a dramatic demonstration of the holiness of God, of the sinfulness of sin, and of the impossible task of bridging the gaping chasm between God and man.

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And so in this first verse, I'm not sure if you can see it, but in verse 11 we see the presence of this impossible dilemma.

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Here we see that it says, the priests stood daily in their service to God.

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And what this conveyed really from the beginning is the holiness of God, meaning that God was set apart as uniquely good, as complete, as morally impeccable, as pure, as peerless in his perfections.

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And as a result of this, not just anyone could approach God. It had to be those who were uniquely identified by God, who were themselves set apart for Him by something even as unchanging as their bloodline.

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And even then, these men could not approach God. We know that they could not approach God and burn strange fire.

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They could not approach God in whatever time and in whatever way they so desired, but they had to approach

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God in the prescribed ways, in the prescribed times, according to the prescribed places, after their ordination, after their rites of purification, and after their sins had been atoned for.

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And what we see in all of this, in even the structures of the tabernacle or the temple, in the structures, in the rules, in the rituals that were instituted by God himself, what this served to do was to perpetually remind his people of this one sobering reality, that I, God, am not like you.

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I am not like you. I am holy. I am not common.

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I am set apart. And now, I know for many of us in this room, we talk a lot about the holiness of God.

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Perhaps for some of the people in this room, we would say, the holiness of God. I think Amy and I were speaking a few days ago about our favorite attribute.

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And I said, my favorite attribute is God's divine simplicity because it encompasses all of them.

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But a lot of us, if we were honest, we might say, one of my favorite attributes of God is the holiness of God.

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And we talk a lot about it, don't we? And we like churches that talk a lot about the holiness of God.

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But if we were to examine ourselves, just be honest in your examination of yourself today.

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If we were honest with the way that we approach God in our praying, in either the casual attitude of our prayers, in the shortness of our praying,

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I think sometimes about my children as they pray. And sometimes I will stop them and I'll slow them down and say, my son, you're praying to God.

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We need to give him that reverence. When we think about our casualness in prayer, when we think about the perfunctory manner that we read our

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Bibles, in our restrained singing of his praises, if we were to examine our own attitude and behavior on just an average day, we would confess that while the holiness of God is one of the attributes that we talk about the most, it's probably one that we understand the least.

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The actual, true holiness of God. In the book of Hebrews in chapter 12, the author is going to quote from the book of Deuteronomy.

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He's going to quote Hebrews 12 .29. He's going to say, our God is a consuming fire.

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And if we were to run with that metaphor, that our God is a consuming fire, it might be appropriate to say that if God in his holiness is a consuming fire, then he could best be compared to the fire of the sun, or even greater than that, a greater star still.

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I remember a time when Noah, my son, and I would look out our window with a map of the stars on my phone, and we would compare the size of the stars to our own sun.

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And we would see stars like Betelgeuse, that is, I think it's a hundred times or a thousand times the size of our sun.

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If we were to compare God's holiness to that, we could compare, it would maybe be best to compare the blazing fire of God's holiness to one of those stars, with all of its intense heat and its brilliance.

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And if we were to compare God to something physical, something material, then we too would have to adjust our own comparison.

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And before God, we would exist not as kings or queens, as we often think of ourselves, but we would come before this blazing sun in the distant galaxy like a moth or like a gnat.

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And in the heat of the day, we admit that we enjoy all the benefits of God's holiness.

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But when it comes to God, just like a moth or a gnat to the sun, if we get too close, that same heat would utterly consume us.

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There's no way, I don't think humanly possible for me to communicate to you the fullness of the holiness of God, but except to say that think about God's holiness to the best of your abilities, using all of your faculties, and I'll tell you that you've fallen short, infinitely short of the holiness of God.

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And so over and over again in our Bible, we're reminded of this fact that God is holy.

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We see it all the way from the beginning of the Bible to the end. I won't read them all, but places like the

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Song of Moses in Exodus 15 -11, where Moses says, Who is like you,

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O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?

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When the prophet Isaiah, we're familiar with this vision, when the prophet Isaiah had a vision of God seated on his throne in Isaiah 6, there were seraphim, angelic beings that stood above him, and the

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Hebrew word for seraphim literally means burning ones. Next to this consuming fire, these burning ones are there, and they had three pairs of wings.

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With one pair they flew, with one pair they covered their feet to be modest, to express modesty in God's presence, and with the other set of wings, they covered their faces

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And kids, maybe I'll ask you, why do you think those seraphim in God's presence covered their faces with their wings?

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I don't know. Because their glory could not compare to his, and his holiness was such that they could not even bear to look at him.

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And so we read there that the seraphim cried out, not even to God, but to one another,

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Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.

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And nowhere else in the whole Bible, nowhere else do we read love, love, love, or mercy, mercy, mercy, or grace, grace, grace.

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As good as all of those things are, nowhere else do we see that in the Bible, but only here in relation to God's holiness is it pronounced, holy, holy, holy is the

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Lord God of hosts. And we know what Isaiah did in fear. He cried out, he said, Woe is me, for I am lost.

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I'm a man of unclean lips. He says, I dwell amongst a people of unclean lips.

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My eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. This is the God of the Bible. I know you guys, many of you know this, but this is the

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God of the Bible that we worship. This is the God of the Bible that's seated on his throne at this very moment.

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He is not like you. As often as we try to create him in our own image, we try to relate to him like he would be one of us, he is not common.

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I'm preaching his word now, and he is holy. And this is the

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God of the Bible whom we have sinned against every single day of our lives. Every single minute, perhaps.

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Every single hour. And you might say, but I haven't sinned this minute. And I always go back to something

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I heard a brother say, that you have never loved the Lord your God the way that he deserves to be loved.

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You have never loved the Lord your God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind, and with all of your strength.

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And that's why it says in scripture that, for we have all fallen short, sorry, for we have all sinned, and fall, presently, present tense, we all fall short of the glory of God.

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So the author writes in Hebrews 10, verse 11, that these priests offered the same sacrifices over and over again to this holy

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God, but they could never take away the sins of the people. And what we see is that God is not only more holy than we could ever imagine,

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I don't want to offend you too badly here, especially if you're visiting with us, but at the same time it's true that God is not only more holy than we could ever imagine, but that the depth of our own depravity, of our own sinfulness, is deeper than we could ever fathom.

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We are far more sinful, not only than we'd like to admit, but that we even think of ourselves.

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And what we see in this sacrificial system is that it taught this. We don't see it today, but it taught this in a very graphic way.

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I was looking at a commentary on one of these instances where the Passover would be sacrificed, the

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Passover lambs would be sacrificed, and one commentator says, it was a bloody mess, from sunrise to sunset.

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At some Passovers, there would be as many as 300 ,000 lambs slain within a week.

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I did the math, 42 ,000 per day. Lambs slain at the temple.

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And the blood from these sacrifices would often run out of the temple grounds and into the book

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Kedron, and at that time, during the Passover, this stream running through would be running red with the blood of the sacrificial lambs.

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A river of blood running adjacent to Jerusalem. And we're inclined to think that, we're inclined to think very little of our sin, as if to think that our sinning against God were a very small thing.

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But nothing could be further from the truth. This graphic imagery shows us not only the ugliness of our sin, but the deadliness of sin as well.

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The wages of sin is death. The wages of sin against a holy God is eternal death.

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And I found a commentary on part of this text, or this subject, from Thomas Watson, a

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Puritan pastor. And he pointed out, he said, and think about this, just how we are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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He said, Sin first tempts, and then it damns. It is first a fox, and then a lion.

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Sin does to a man, as Jael did to Sisera in the book of Judges.

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This is what she did. She gave him milk. He laid down, feeling secure.

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And then she brought him low. Sin first brings us pleasures, which delight,

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Watson says, delight and charm the senses. And then it comes with its nail and its hammer.

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Sin's last act is always tragic. And so here we have, just in verse 11, the holiness of God in one hand, the priests representing man because they can't represent themselves, and the sinfulness of man in the other.

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And before Christ came to this sin -ravaged world, the priests were always standing there.

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Standing, it says. There was not a chair. Of all the furnishings in the tabernacle and in the temple, there was no chair in the tabernacle.

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The priests always had to be standing. They always had to be working. They always had to be sacrificing.

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And in a very real sense, they were always spinning their wheels. And so if we think just the

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Thursday before Good Friday, this summed up the existence of the people of God.

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They helplessly lived at the center of this great dilemma. How can sinful people like you and me ever be right with the living

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God? I know this has become routine for us, but how can sinful people like you and like me ever be made right before a living

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God? E .W. Pink writes this. He says, Because God is holy, acceptance with him on the ground of our creaturely doings is utterly impossible.

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A fallen creature, you, a fallen creature, could sooner create a world than produce that which would meet the approval of infinite purity.

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You could sooner create another earth than appease a holy God. And so this was the dilemma in which the nation of Israel lived for 2 ,000 years.

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But we know, as Christians, we know that God had a plan. And so we look at verses 12 and 13 again back in Hebrews 10.

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But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.

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So here we see that in the face of this impossible dilemma, which was point one, God has prepared, and this is point two, a perfect sacrifice.

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At the Father's perfectly and sovereignly ordained time and place, he sent his only begotten

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Son, the God -man, Jesus Christ, not just to be the mediator between God and man, which he was, not just to be an exemplary and righteous man, which he was, not just to be a great high priest who performed or who made the offering of a perfect sacrifice, which he fulfilled, but he sent

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Christ, Jesus Christ, the God -man, the Son of God, the second person of the

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Trinity, he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that ends all sacrifices.

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And again, we might think that we all know this, so it doesn't need to be rehearsed again.

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We should have preached on 1 Corinthians 16 because we didn't know the details of that. But then

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I come across things like this. Our brother, Paul Washer, wrote this in his book,

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The Gospel's Power and Message. He said, One of the greatest maladies of contemporary gospel preaching is that it rarely explains the cross of Christ.

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It is not enough to say that he died. All men die. It is not enough to say that he died a noble death.

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Martyrs do the same. He writes, We must understand that we have not fully proclaimed the death of Christ with saving power until we have cleared away the confusion that surrounds it and expounded its true meaning to our hearers.

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Christ died bearing the transgressions of his people and suffering the divine penalty for their sins.

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He was forsaken of God and crushed under the wrath of God in our place.

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So unless we want metaphorical ivy vines obscuring our view of the gospel, we must never stop preaching

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Christ crucified. And so, kids, you were asked yesterday by grandma,

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What happened on Good Friday? What do we remember on Good Friday? You guys answered it right yesterday.

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Christ went to the cross and died in our place, right? Is that what you said? Jesus died for our sins.

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So what happened on that Good Friday and what was happening on that cross on Friday morning and Friday afternoon when

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Christ hung on that cross in our place? What I'm going to do is give us just briefly a multi -faceted view of what was happening to our

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Lord Jesus on that cross. And we'll look just quickly at four different aspects of Christ's crucifixion.

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So we have the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and now we've got the work of Christ. We've got the solution, the perfect sacrifice of Christ.

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And the first thing that we see is this. We see from verse 12, it says that Christ offered himself on the cross.

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It says, for all time, a single sacrifice for sins.

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So sacrifice is the first word. And we find this in our Bibles, in Ephesians 5, verse 2, where it says

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Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

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Hebrews 9, verse 26, Christ has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

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And what this means is that because the wages of sin is death, someone had to die for sin.

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And without the shedding of blood, we're told in Scripture, there is no forgiveness. And 42 ,000 lambs per day sacrificed during the

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Passover was insufficient to satisfy God's perfect justice. The blood of lambs and goats was not sufficient.

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Someone had to die for sin. So when we stood under the just wrath of God and our record of transgressions demanded that we die, that every person that has placed their faith in Christ, that all of humanity demanded that we die,

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Christ came as the perfect sacrifice, as the Passover lamb of Passover lambs.

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Not 42 ,000 in one day, but one lamb in one day. And he took our death upon himself.

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Like we looked at a few weeks ago, so that we would never die. So that death would simply be just the blink of an eye, sleep, and then

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Christ, and then glory. And so Christ was our sacrifice on the cross in our place.

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And in Christ, death was swallowed up in victory on Calvary, and then in the empty tomb.

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So that's one perspective, one aspect of Christ's crucifixion. The other is this.

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Not only did Christ himself become a sacrifice, but he also suffered on the cross for our justification.

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Our justification, or it says in 1 John, our propitiation. And what this means is that when

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Christ went to the cross, he satisfied God's perfect wrath for sin as our penal substitute.

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And he accomplished our justification so that we would be declared righteous by God.

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And so what this means is that on the cross, as some people would say, when Christ was on the cross, or when he was in the

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Garden of Gethsemane, he was afraid of death on the cross, of the tortures and the suffering of Roman execution.

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That wasn't his primary concern. What was his prayer? Father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me.

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And what was in that cup? But it was the full measure, the full potency of the wrath of God.

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And so we see in texts like 1 Peter 3, 18, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.

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In the Old Testament, we don't think of the Old Testament often as teaching the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ, but in Isaiah 53, verse 11, it says,

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Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied. He took our penalty on that cross, and by his knowledge shall the righteous one,

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Jesus, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.

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2 Corinthians 5, 21, He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God.

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He became sin on that tree. And so as Christ hung on that tree, he became accursed of God.

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As I said, the full potency of God's wrath was poured out on him.

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Again, we can't fully appreciate that. It's from another world, it would seem.

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But I was thinking about an experience that I had that somewhat maybe captures the essence of it.

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Kids, I can't remember if I've ever told you this story, so you might find this interesting, but my dad was a fisherman, and he loved to take our family on all kinds of fishing trips.

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And because my dad always loved the best fishing spots, and he always disdained the crowds, we always ended up going to, maybe a nice way of putting it is exotic fishing locales, places that were either unconventional or even forbidden.

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And I remember he was working a job in southern Alberta, and we stayed with him outside of Canmore for two months.

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And he heard from some locals that there was an excellent fishing spot in Kananaskis country, probably where P .J.

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would camp. And so he took my brother and I on this drive to this fishing spot, and we went down this gravel road, and we went past a large reservoir, this massive reservoir filled with water.

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And then we went down a hill, and then he ended up pulling off into the ditch. And getting out of our vehicles, we bushwhacked for a while, and eventually the trees opened up and gave way to this riverbed.

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And so my brother and I came barreling out of the trees to this riverbed to look at the place that we would be fishing.

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And as we surveyed the terrain, we saw riverbed and trees and rocks and shrubs, and then to our left, this giant hydroelectric dam.

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I think this was a forbidden fishing locale. And so my dad had heard that there was a great fishing spot at the base of this giant dam.

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And so my dad said, don't worry, it's safe. We can fish here. He just warned us, just keep your eye on the dam and keep your eye on the water level around you.

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And I remember distinctly that day, I caught absolutely no fish.

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And the reason was, is because I was not fishing. I was standing at the base of this sheer concrete slab, watching for any sign that the gates might open and that water from that reservoir would come rushing into the valley below.

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And I was keenly aware, because we drove past it, that there was a reservoir filled, absolutely filled to the brim with millions of gallons of water.

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And that if somebody in a control room somewhere maybe in Calgary pushed a button, those gates could open and wipe us away in a second.

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And I think that's actually a perfect image, or at least the best image I can gather for what it's like to abide under the just wrath of God.

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Except instead of a concrete slab, it is simply

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God's patience and God's grace that holds back the torrent of his just wrath, the torrent of his perfect, righteous justice.

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And so imagine for a moment that I take you to this fishing spot, and there we're fishing, and I'm fully comfortable, and you're there watching the dam and all of a sudden the gates at the top of the dam open and those millions of gallons of water come rushing down the sheer concrete slab toward you and your fishing spot and pouring into the valley.

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And imagine what it would be like there for a moment to stand in that valley helplessly and to watch this wall of water come toward you.

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And then maybe 20 feet in front of you, the ground opens up and every drop of that water, every bit of that wall of water goes straight down and is swallowed up into the ground.

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And all that's left is you standing in awe in your perfectly dry clothing.

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This is what Jesus Christ did on the cross. In that reservoir, behind God's perfect mercy, behind God's perfect patience, behind his perfect grace, stood all of the judgment of God that we deserve.

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And instead of letting us take it upon himself, he offered himself there to be the propitiation for our sins, to take all of that wrath upon himself, to drink it up dry, to swallow every drop on our behalf so that there is no longer anything left for us.

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That's exactly what Christ did for us on that cross. He took it all for everyone that would place their faith in him.

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And we see what that looked like on the cross when we hear that the sky was darkened in the afternoon.

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The clear blue sky of God's favor was changed and darkened by God's displeasure.

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And we heard it read this afternoon, Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani, my God, my

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God, why have you forsaken me? Christ cried out. And this is a powerful quote

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I read this week. It says, Jesus Christ there on that cross felt the unmitigated wrath of a holy

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God against sin. The darkness was a symbol of that wrath.

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In this line, Hell came to Calvary that day, and the

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Savior bore its horrors in our stead. But not only that,

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Christ not only took the wrath upon himself, but he bestowed upon all of his people, all of those who have repented and trusted in him, his perfect righteousness, as we've talked about many times before, so that when

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God sees the Christian in Christ, he sees one who is perfect, one who is righteous.

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And Martin Luther said this so wonderfully. He said, He died for me. He made his righteousness mine and made my sin his own.

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And if he made my sin his own, then I do not have it, and I am free.

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Quickly, a couple of the other aspects that we see in Christ's death is his reconciliation. Those who preach the gospel are called ministers of reconciliation because through Christ we have peace with God.

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And Charles Spurgeon said of that, The cross is the lighthouse which guides the poor, weather -beaten humanity into the harbor of peace, where in Christ there is no condemnation.

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Lastly, we see the redemption. Redemption from bondage to sin and to Satan.

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And as we've said before, the ransom price was not paid to Satan. It was paid to God.

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And what we see in 1 Peter 1, 18 and 19, Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways, inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without spot or blemish.

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And then Christ says here, or it says here that when Christ had offered for all time, all time, a single sacrifice for sins, he sat at the right hand of God.

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It didn't end on the cross. It didn't end in the tomb. Because Christ rose from the dead on the third day.

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That's what we remember today. He ascended into heaven and he is now awaiting the full consummation of his kingdom when his enemies would be made a footstool under his feet.

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And what we see is that in all of this, only, always and ever, this could only be carried out by Christ himself.

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We needed one who was supreme over the angels. That's why the Jehovah's Witnesses are wrong. We needed one who was supreme over the angels.

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We needed a better deliverer than Moses. We needed a greater high priest who was the mediator of a better and a lasting covenant.

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We needed one who could come as the perfect and the only acceptable offering to God for the sinfulness of fallen man.

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And this last point I'll make very quickly. Verse 14, it says, For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

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And what we see here, my third point that I'll make is this. We see a full, a free, and a final forgiveness.

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I can think of few words that are more comforting in the Bible than verse 14.

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For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

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We've told our kids for a long time as they practice piano that practice makes perfect.

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And because maybe they're better theologians than the person that made that slogan, they said, but dad, no one's perfect.

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And you guys are right. That's true. But in another sense, everyone who has repented of their sin and placed their faith in Christ, even though we are imperfect, truly in our behavior, in our attitudes and all of these things, before God, we are perfect.

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He accepts us. There is no sin between us and him.

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And what a great comfort that is. I don't know about you, but I think about my own sinfulness, that even me now being sanctified, even though the process is incomplete, meaning that I still sin, meaning that I still fall short of the glory of God, meaning that I still don't measure up, even while I still don't measure up, at least internally and how

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I feel, in God's eyes, I am perfect. And if you're a believer in Christ today and now, we celebrate today because you are perfect.

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Absolutely perfect. And then in verse 17, he says, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.

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Again, what a comforting thought that some people say that God forgets our sin.

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No, he doesn't just forget our sin. To forget our sin is a passive act.

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No, but what it means when God forgives our sin, it's an active act.

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He actively does not remember that. And so if we notice the language, we see here that while this little nuance seems inconsequential, it means that God knows that we are still imperfect, that he still expects us to stumble.

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He still knows that we will sin. He is acquainted with our weakness, and yet he actively puts our sin out of his mind.

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Psalm 103, 14, he knows our frame. He remembers we are dust, and yet he still puts our sin out of his remembrance.

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Psalm 102 or 103, 10 to 12, he has removed our sin from us as far as the east is from the west.

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In Jesus Christ, we don't just have justification in the past tense like the

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Jews, but in Christ, God applies Christ's one perfect sacrifice once for all time in the past, in the present, and in the future.

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And this is the point that the author, I almost said Paul, of Hebrews is trying to make, that Christ's perfect single sacrifice is efficacious for all time.

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And so it says in Hebrews 9, 12, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood.

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What did he secure? Thus securing an eternal redemption.

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And what does that mean for the believer? Verse 18, where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

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Sin has been dealt with. That's what we remember on Good Friday. That's what we remember on Resurrection Sunday, that once in the past,

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God dealt with it all, and it is put away. There is forgiveness of sin.

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There is no longer any offering needed for sin. There's perfect forgiveness.

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God will not judge his son. He will not pour his wrath on his son, and then again pour his wrath on the one who has placed his faith in his son.

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And kids, you might appreciate this image. I'll finish with this. I once heard of a story of a father and his daughter.

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They were farmers working in a field, in a large prairie, and seeing smoke in the distance, the father noticed that there was a prairie fire growing, and it was upwind from them, meaning the wind was blowing the fire in their direction.

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And seeing that the fire was growing and being thrust in their direction by the winds, the father knew that him and his daughter would soon be engulfed in flames.

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The flames reached high, 10, 20, 30 feet in the air, was burning everything in its path.

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And so the father, to the surprise of his daughter, started a fire of his own in that prairie on that grass, dry, and he lit the grass on fire, and the fire again spread and blew with the wind.

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And then as the fire that he had started began to smolder, he took his daughter right into the center of that swath of grass that had been burned by the fire.

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And there in the center of that swath, him and his daughter took refuge from this massive prairie fire.

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And when this raging prairie fire, with all of its heat, approached them in the swath of burnt grass, his daughter looked at him terrified, but the dad assured his daughter, he said, the flames cannot get to us.

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They cannot harm us. We are standing where grass has already been burned.

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And there the man and his daughter survived the heat of that fire. And so it is with the judgment of God and the atoning work of Christ.

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The Christian who abides in Christ is safe. That ground cannot be burnt again.

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On that Friday, God's judgment was poured out on Christ. He took the wrath for sin in its full potency.

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He endured the wages of sin. And then he rose from the grave on the third day.

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And this means that there is no judgment left for those who are found in him.

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And so, if you're a Christian today, children, if you're a Christian today, if you repent of your sin and believe in Christ, if you're found in Christ, it does not matter if you're afraid of death.

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It does not matter when judgment draws near. You may come before the judgment seat of Christ with much fear and trembling, but if you come before him standing in the perfect righteous life, the work of Christ on the cross,

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God's wrath, just like the fire, will not come near you. Do you believe that?

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So I'll finish where we started. We must forever be a people whose hope is in this gospel, that God is holy, that we are not, that Christ died on our place, and that through repentance and forgiveness of sin, by his grace, we can be saved.

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This is the gospel of the Bible. This is the gospel of Resurrection Sunday. This is the gospel of God.

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It must forever be our hope. It must forever be written on the archway of this church.

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We must never let the ivy of this world cloud our remembrance, our hope, and our trust in the gospel.

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We must forever be a people who preach Christ and him crucified, and more importantly, who trust in Christ crucified, who trust in Christ resurrected, who trust in Christ coming again.