The Gospel According to Jesus

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y-E-G, all one word, or on Facebook.

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Competing Gospels and the Need for Discernment

Well, I don't start sermons very often with personal anecdotes, but I do have a personal anecdote today. I think it lends well to the theme that is ahead of us. Earlier this week, our family was running errands in our area of town, and in the course of our travels, we passed by a Mormon stake center.

If you know anything about Mormon stake centers, they are the center where all the various groups come together to worship. A central place of worship, you could say, for adherence to Mormonism. And as we drove past, I noticed something that was new on the front lawn adjacent to the street.

It was a large, colorful sign next to the road that read, come and worship with us this Easter. And as I passed by, it gave me reason for pause. Not because the Mormons are trying to grow their religion, not because they're trying to promote their religious services.

If you know anything about the LDS, you know that is just part and parcel of their identity. But what really gave me pause was that I began to reflect on how we are living in a time where various groups are putting together, increasingly, competing claims about the gospel.

And more and more, they are doing so while trying to give the impression that they are the true church, or just another church in the community. Now, at first glance, a sign like that, the one that I saw last week, may seem rather benign to the average person driving by.

I mean, you're looking for a new church, and if Resurrection Sunday is fast approaching, it matters not, does it? Whether one goes to a church where outside of the building, it says Baptist, or Presbyterian, or non-denominational, or Latter-day Saints.

Worship is worship, is it not? And if we were to go into any one of these places, would we not hear about the same Christ who died, who was buried, and who rose again from the grave? Well, if you were to look more closely at that so-called gospel that the Mormons preached just this Sunday, about 10 minutes east, you might find that it would look something like this.

In the Book of Mormon, in 2 Nephi chapter 25, excuse me, in verse 23, readers are told this. For if we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God, for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all that we can do.

Now, it sounds familiar at the beginning, doesn't it? That it is by grace that we are saved. And we want to go to maybe Ephesians chapter 2, for it is by grace that we are saved through faith, and this is not of ourselves, it is a gift of God that no man may boast.

But what does it say there? For it is by grace that we are saved, after all that we can do. Now, in case you're inclined to give the Book of Mormon a pass on that phrase, thinking that it might just be unfortunate wording, we could look at one of their authoritative commentaries on the passage where it reads, indeed, it is only after a person has so performed a lifetime of good works and faithfulness, only after he has come to deny himself of all ungodliness and every worldly lust, that the grace of God, listen how they describe that grace of God, the grace of God, that spiritual increment of power, is efficacious.

If you were to walk into that pale brick building today, you would hear about a Christ who died, who was buried, who rose from the grave, and all this to grant you grace. But in order for you to avail yourself of that grace, you must first labor with all of your might, work your fingers to the bone, and when you are just within an inch or two of that Savior and His grace, of His salvation, you receive, in the words of that commentary, a spiritual increment of power to boost you the remaining distance.

That is what the Mormons mean when they say, come and worship with us this Easter. Now, maybe it wasn't a colorful sign that you saw on the side of the road, but instead, it was a short on social media, a brief video about a man who invited you to participate in a liturgy that is older than the Reformation itself, by at least a thousand years.

And in finding the historicity of this all enticing, you instead decide to go to an Eastern Orthodox temple. This morning, the normal hymns that are usually sung were replaced by a Byzantine chant called the Paschal Triperion, a deep, mysterious, I would describe it, though some might think this is pejorative or I'm speaking ill of it, but a droning type of chant that is likely going to be sung in a tongue that is not at all familiar to you in Greek or in some kind of Slavic language.

You would observe the burning of incense and the offering of prayers for the dead. The chandeliers in the room would be swung by long poles to demonstrate the witness of the worshiping angels who are present.

And worshipers would approach icons, what are viewed as windows into heaven, whereby they are to offer their veneration and love that God might receive that veneration through those icons. And there, the priest would offer a homily about God, or as they called him, the great unknowable being who sent Jesus Christ to live, die, and rise again, and for what purpose?

That through faith and through works and through the sacraments we might achieve theosis, that is, the deification of our persons to become like God in his characters or in his characteristics and in his energies.

And yet, in all of this, there is absolutely no certainty that you will ever attain salvation, no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you plead for that mercy. This is the so-called gospel message that you would hear in that temple.

Now, if you'll humor me just one more time, imagine instead that we went to a Roman Catholic cathedral. Maybe you were invited by a friend, and this week you observed one of the most important masses, in fact, the most important mass on the Catholic calendar.

And as you watched the priest consecrate the elements before the altar, you wondered to yourself, what in the world is going on? To quote one Roman Catholic publication, this is what is happening just down the road.

When the priest pronounces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from his throne, places him upon the altar to be offered up again as the victims for man's sin.

It is a power greater than that of monarchs or emperors. It is greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of seraphim and cherubim. Indeed, it is greater even than the power of the Virgin Mary.

The priest brings Christ down from the heaven and renders him present on our altar as the eternal victim for the sins of man, not once, but a thousand times. The priest speaks, and lo, Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest's command.

At Roman Catholic masses around our city today, the priests, bishops, and archbishop proclaimed that it was not enough that Christ died, was crucified, and raised 2 ,000 years ago, but he must be crucified every day, a thousand times a day.

As the priest orders him off his throne to be slain again, and it is by believing, and then by striving to complete meritorious works, and then participating in this perpetual sacrifice that one may be saved from their sins, and perhaps only after you have endured a thousand or more years in purgatory.

These are just a few of the competing so-called gospels that we would see preached in our city, preached to thousands upon thousands of people this very morning. And frankly, how many more watered-down, seeker-sensitive gospels would we find in many other evangelical churches in our city today?

And it begs the question, with so many competing gospels, so-called gospels, how can we know that we have the one true gospel? And this week, as we celebrate this Resurrection Sunday, as we remember Christ's finished work on the cross on our behalf, we're going to look at chapter 3, look at verses 14 and 15, and we will find this one true gospel proclaimed by the Lord Jesus Christ.

Not by cults, not by apostate churches, but the gospel according to Jesus. A glorious and a scandalously gracious gospel that is clearly foreshadowed in the Old Testament, that is made plain in the New Testament, and that today, brethren, for those of you who are here, as we seek to rejoice in Christ, that today promises us eternal life by faith alone in our crucified and risen Savior alone.

Today I want us to revel in the gospel. I know this is a bit of a dark start to it, but I want us to see, by contrast, the beauty and the freedom, the blessedness of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The gospel that was once for all delivered to the saints. The gospel that is alone able to save our souls. The gospel that, if we have placed our faith in Christ, has indeed already been the source of salvation for our souls.

Sin, the Biting Serpent, and the Bronze Serpent in Numbers 21

So looking at verses 14 and 15, we're going to follow a logical flow. This flow of the gospel message as Christ presents it in John chapter 3. And in verse 14, we will first consider this, what I'm calling sin, the biting serpent.

In verse 14, we find Jesus interacting with a man named Nicodemus. Verse 1 tells us, if we were to look at the larger context, that he is a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, who came to Jesus under the cover of darkness at night so as not to be seen by others to learn from him.

And as our Lord has been interacting with Nicodemus in chapter 3, he has been trying to explain to him what it means to be born again. But if you're acquainted with this passage, you know well that Nicodemus just is not getting it.

In fact, as he goes along, our Lord even issues a bit of a rebuke. He says, are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? So as Jesus speaks to this man about how we can have eternal life, he goes back to a scene that would have been very familiar for Nicodemus.

As you may know, Nicodemus as a Pharisee, the Pharisees were often preoccupied with the Jewish moral law, with the books of Moses, with the law of Moses. In fact, if you were a Pharisee like Nicodemus in the first century, it would be expected of you as part of your training that you would memorize the full five books of the Torah, those first five books of the books of Moses.

Now I don't know about you, I've got a wide margin Bible, but still by this measure that's 327 pages that they would memorize from this Bible in preparation to become a Pharisee. Some went even further and memorized the whole of the Old Testament canon.

And so as our Lord is bringing this up to Nicodemus the Pharisee, he is working with material that he is familiar with and is a master communicator of the gospel. Our Lord does not give up on Nicodemus when he doesn't understand, but he adjusts his approach and uses this familiar illustration.

And he takes him back to a scene that we find in Numbers chapter 21 in verse 4. There as we read in Numbers 21, we find the nation of Israel as they made their way through the wilderness from Egypt to the promised land.

And because of the opposition that they faced and other obstacles, they were made to take the long way around. We've all been in situations where we might be required to go take a side street to get around an accident or something like that.

Well here the side street, the detour that they had to take was about another week's worth of travel. And so as they are there making this travel, we read in verse 4 this. Numbers 21 in verse 4, from Mount Hor, they set out by the way of the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom.

And the people became impatient on the way, like children in the back seat saying, how much longer is it going to take? And the people began to become impatient and they spoke against God and against Moses.

Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die? To die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water and we loathe this worthless food in reference to the very manna that God provided from heaven for them.

And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, we have sinned for we have spoken against the Lord and against you.

Pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us. So Moses prayed for the people and the Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live.

So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at that bronze serpent and live. Now as Christ uses this illustration, he makes an important point. The scene from Numbers 21 is fascinating, not only because it is an interesting historical event, but it is in fact a typological event that points forward to something greater, namely Jesus Christ himself.

And as we look carefully at the details, we have to see that before Jesus can get to the good news of this gospel, he first addresses the bad news, at least by inference. We see this picture of a bronze serpent lifted up and it is pregnant with meaning.

For one, this bronze serpent is needed in the first place because of the sinful actions of the nation of Israel. We're told that they spoke against God, they spoke against Moses, and later when they realized their error in verse 7, they cry out, we have sinned.

The source of their problem was not the serpents, but their sinful actions necessitating the bronze serpent to save them from the consequences of their disobedience. Here we see, as our Lord puts this before Nicodemus, a picture of sinners in need of help.

But secondly, the fact that Moses' serpent was bronze is also significant. Interestingly, biblical scholars have pointed out that bronze is a material that is closely related to God's judgment. It's interesting how, when we get into the fine details of some of these texts, all the interesting intricacies that we find.

I'll give you a couple of examples. In the old covenant system of worship, the altar was overlaid with bronze. Some of you might be thinking the mercy seat with the gold finish, but the altar itself was made with bronze, and there the blood of the animals was shed, and offerings were made to make atonement for the sins of the people.

Here at that bronze altar, countless animals died in the place of the children of Israel as their substitutes. All of those bulls and goats and various other animals dying in the place of sinners. Taking, as it were, or at least depicting the taking of that judgment that they deserved.

Now, there's more, though, than just this. If we were to look at the story of Samson in Judges chapter 16 and verse 21, you don't have to turn there, but you can if you'd like. We read that the Philistines seized Samson after he foolishly shared his secret, the secret of his strength, with Delilah, his Philistine fling, and they seized him, gouged out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, where they bound him with bronze shackles, where he was made to grind at the mill in prison.

Or in the case of King Hezekiah, sorry, Zedekiah, when God judged the nation of Judah at the hands of Babylon in Jeremiah chapter 39 and verses 6 and 7. There the king of Babylon, we're told, slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes.

The king of Babylon also slew all the nobles in Judah. He then blinded Zedekiah's eyes. He plucked them out and bound him in fetters of bronze. Again, a picture of God's judgment upon the nation to bring him to Babylon.

And so, as this bronze serpent is raised up in the wilderness, in the sinfulness of the people, their worthiness of judgment, and the need for atonement. There, as they were being bitten by those serpents.

Imagine for a moment if we filled this room full of serpents. And as we are bit by these serpents, the venom is coming into our bodies. We are completely helpless in and of ourselves. We are completely subject to whatever outcome is coming.

And yet, God provides something to make atonement for our sinful actions leading up to that. Now, we see what is happening here. As Jesus points back to that bronze serpent in the wilderness, he is making a necessary point to Nicodemus and to all of us.

We are all Nicodemus. Over 1 ,000 years later, you and I, over 3 ,000 years later, we are all in the same precarious position that those Israelites were in on that day. We too have sinned against God.

We have spoken against God and against man. And we too have been bitten by that ancient serpent. The Puritan commentator Matthew Henry writes this. He says, In this, observe the deadly and destructive nature of sin.

Ask awakened consciences, ask damned sinners, and they will tell you that how charming soever the allurements of sin may be. At last, it bites like a serpent. And as that venom courses through our veins, it is bringing about sin's just wages, death itself, physical death, and eternal spiritual damnation, which is the second death.

Now, we have been going through Genesis talking about sin at length, so I don't want to go too much longer. But it's important, and even for some of you who are visiting with us today, for you to hear this.

A few months ago, I was attending another church in our area. It was a big church. I do not exaggerate when I say it was 40 to 50 times the size of this church. And as I listened to the brother preaching, it was almost painful, I must admit, to hear as he saw it.

And this is not a critique of preaching, by the way. I preach many sermons that I wish I could take back. But as he was preaching, he was preaching the gospel in such a way that he wanted to make Christ relevant without ever mentioning that S word, sin.

Even my children on the way home commented, Dad, why was it that he tried to dance around that, that we are broken? Oh, that we are empty. Oh, that we are sick, that we are weary, that we are needy. The closest we got is that we have darkness.

And as I sat in that auditorium, filled to the gills with people, I just wanted to stand up in front of the crowd and say, sin. It is sin. Sin is your problem. It's not brokenness. Brokenness is a consequence.

It is a side effect of your sin, that emptiness you feel. It's not because you need another possession or you need to add Christ to your life. It is sin. Sin is your problem. I didn't do that. I'm sure Nicole was very glad for that.

But I wanted to say, sin is your greatest problem and your biggest need is not, in the most generic of terms, light for your darkness. It is a savior for your soul, who will bring you out of, who will rescue you from that sin and all of its consequences, to bring you to God.

That is what you need. Now, many of you already know this. But really, we do not know the half of it, do we? And still, there are some who think that sin is but a small problem in our life. It's like a flat tire on your car.

It's a nuisance, but we can get it fixed. We can carry on. Make no mistake about it. As you sit in this room, there is nothing in this world more vile, more grotesque, more egregious, more reprehensible than your treasonous heart towards a good and holy God.

And we need, if we are to look at that, that man lifted up, we must first realize that we have been bit by that serpent. That we are in need of a savior. That we are in need of deliverance. That we are in need of a ransom.

It reminds me of a story I heard once where, in the London Times, one of the columnists would write an article every week bemoaning something that was wrong with the world. And then at the end of the article, he would ask this rhetorical question, what's wrong with the world?

And one day, after reading this article several times over, or several renditions of this kind of article, GK Chesterton wrote back to the editor and he said, dear editor, what is wrong with the world?

I am. That you are what is wrong with your world. I'm going to say it so no one has to stand up and yell it in this room. That your greatest problem is you. That we all like to blame things on our circumstances.

This is why I was late. This is why I didn't get that done. This is why I didn't obey that command. We all like to think that we are much better than we actually are. But you, sir, and you, madam, you are a sinner.

And your greatest need at all times is a savior. But the Lord Jesus doesn't just end there. He continues in the second half of verse 14. And after reminding us of sin, this biting serpent in our lives, Christ speaks secondly about this.

The Son of Man Lifted Up and the Necessity of the Cross

About the Son of Man lifted up. The Son of Man. In verse 14, he says, and Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And I know that it wasn't all that long ago that I said this, but it needs to be said again as often as it needs to be said again.

That there is no God-breathed word in scripture that is meaningless. And the word that I would cue you in on is that word, must. As Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Now there is almost a perfect consensus when we look at this verse that what Christ is speaking about here is the necessity of his crucifixion.

It was necessary that he, like that serpent, should be affixed to a tree, raised up for all to see, and there standing or hanging between heaven and earth, abating the wrath of God. And when we see this word, must, it speaks both to the sovereign plan of God, that God had a plan that must be fulfilled, and of the necessity of atonement for sins.

What differentiates a church that preaches the biblical gospel from the three that I listed in my introduction? It is what theologians might call the great dilemma. How is it that sinful man can be reconciled to a holy God?

How can God, a just, a truly holy, a perfect, a complete God, forgive the wickedness of human sin, of human treason? And this dilemma is strengthened when we read, come across, passages like Proverbs 17, 15, where we read that he who justifies the wicked, he who justifies the wicked, that sounds familiar, doesn't it?

And he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord. How can God justify the wicked? How can God rescue those who have been bit by the serpent? How can God rescue us from all of the problems that we are always, have always, will always make for ourselves?

The greatest problem we have is sin, and a close second, the next greatest problem that we have is that God is good and He must punish sin, that He cannot, He will not, He must not look at sin and simply give you a pass.

He will by no means clear the guilty, it says in Exodus 34. And this is why every other so-called gospel claim that I mentioned in my introduction must be rejected without equivocation, that if we are to be reconciled, it is not by dressing ourselves up, it is not by seeking out some kind of divinely-assisted sanctification, it is not by making sacrifices on the altar of whatever it is a thousand times a day, but it must be a mechanism that God Himself has authored.

It must be something that is perfectly and uniquely His. Now, some will argue different theories, they call them theories of the atonement. I do not like that word theory because it puts it somehow on a level plane with what I am going to put forward today from God's Word.

So we'll call them views of atonement. Some will argue for the ransom theory or view of atonement. Origen taught this early in the life of the church, that Christ died to pay a ransom to Satan. Some of you are familiar with that one.

I sometimes pick on that one more than most. Others posit the moral influence theory that teaches that God sent His Son to die to show us how much He really does love us. Oh, this is how much you are worth to me.

How much does God love you? God loves you this much, right? We're familiar with that language. That is the moral influence theory. The example theory suggests that Christ went to the cross to show us how we too are to trust and obey God.

Or the governmental theory that tells us that Christ died to show that when God's laws are broken, a penalty must be paid. But I ask you, do any of these theories deal with our greatest problem and with our greatest need?

What does the Word of God say when our Lord says that He must be lifted up, raised up like that serpent in the wilderness? What was happening on that cross? When we say to each other, as we did just a moment ago, He is risen, and we rejoice in the fact that Christ went to the cross, that He went to the tomb, that He rose.

What are we celebrating as it relates to our penalty for sin? Galatians 3 .13, we read that Christ Himself became a curse, that He redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.

But the penalty, the curse that you and I rightly deserve, as Christ hung on that cross, He and only He alone could take. Now, as it relates to our separation from God, not only do we feel that guilt that comes with sin, but the separation that comes with sin.

Oh, Lord Jesus, how do you deal with this? In 1 Peter 3 .18, for Christ suffered, if you know or have been influenced by Roman Catholic theology, hear this, for Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but being made alive in the Spirit.

Or as it relates now to our present standing before God, in 2 Corinthians 5 .21, for our sake He made Him to be sin, who knew no sin, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Do not let anyone tell you that this is an invention of the Reformation Church.

I had a conversation not long ago with someone who said, this doctrine that you are putting forward from these verses was never mentioned once in the first 1500 years of the church. It sounds great, but it's a Reformation invention.

We can go back to the very period of time that John the Apostle lived, and look at Clement of Rome. He died in AD 95, or 96 perhaps it was, and he said this, Jesus Christ our Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God, His body for our body, His soul for our soul.

He gave Himself, translation, as a substitute in our place to pay the penalty that we deserve. Or John Chrysostom, just 300 years after Christ, commenting on this very passage that we are looking at, said, there the hanging serpent healed the bites of serpents.

Here the crucified Jesus cured the wounds inflicted by the spiritual dragon. There a serpent bit and a serpent healed. Here death destroyed and a death saved. I could give you a list, a long list, of how this has always been the teaching of the church from the apostles through.

So when we speak with our Eastern Orthodox friends, we can say to them, you might say there is no witness prior to the Reformation. How many pages would you like? Why do we make such a big deal of the Lord's resurrection or of the Lord's death?

It is because the true gospel, as we see in scripture, is the only way to be right, made right with God. And it is the only gospel that will ultimately glorify Christ. Now you might ask the question, what was Christ doing then on that cross?

If He wasn't just showing us how much He loved us, if He wasn't just showing us how we should trust and obey God, what was He doing? He was there, brothers and sisters, as a vicarious sacrifice, making for us a substitutionary atonement and offering us, through that perfect life and through that atoning death, a double imputation.

His sin upon us and His righteousness, sorry, our sin, I have to back that up, our sin upon Him. That's the only way I meant it. And His righteousness imputed to us. Christ was there on that cross, in that tomb, as a substitute on our behalf.

Horatio Bonar wrote on this substitution, he said, if Christ be not the substitute, He is not, sorry, He is nothing to the sinner. If He did not die as the sin bearer, He died in vain. Let us not be deceived on this point or misled by those who, when they announce Christ as the deliverer, think that they have preached the gospel.

If I throw a rope to a drowning man, I am a deliverer, but is Christ no more than that? He makes a good point here. If I cast myself into the sea and risk my life to save another, I am a deliverer, but is Christ no more?

Did He but risk His life? The very essence of Christ's deliverance is the substitution of Himself, His life for ours. He did not come to risk His life, He came to die. And He came to redeem, not to redeem us, sorry, He did not redeem us by a little loss, a little sacrifice, a little labor, a little suffering, but He redeemed us to God by His blood, the precious blood of Christ.

He gave all He had, even His life for us. There's no illustration in the whole of the Bible that is perhaps more powerful than one that God authored Himself. And that is this picture of the scapegoat under the old covenant system.

In Leviticus 16 and verse 21, we read instructions about this, how Aaron was to lay both of his hands on the head of a live goat. He's already sacrificed one, and now we have a live goat. He's going to place his hands on the head of that live goat.

He's going to confess over it all of the iniquities of the people of Israel. All of their transgressions, all of their sins, as it says in Leviticus 16, and He shall put them on the head of the goat and send it into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness.

The goat shall bear all their iniquities to a remote area, and He shall let the goat go free into the wilderness. It was Christ who was taken outside of the city, outside of the camp, and there on Golgotha, it was as if God placed His hands on the head of His own Son, and there confessed the sins of humanity onto, upon that Son, and there in our place He released Him, not just to run into the wilderness, but releasing by a crushing that it pleased the Lord to crush Him, so that Spurgeon would say, as far as God is concerned, your sin has ceased to be.

He laid it on Jesus Christ, your substitute, and He took it and bore the penalty of it, nay, the thing itself. He, as your scapegoat, carried your sin right away, and it is lost in the wilderness of forgetfulness.

Look with me for a moment and see that Christ on His cross, or even better, that Christ on our cross. See Him suffering. See that Son of God, that Son of Man, enduring the eternal torments of the cross, forsaken of the Father, suffering as our substitute.

Did the God-Man go to the cross to suffer anguish that He might be offered again a thousand times a day on Roman altars? Did He die to enable us to clean up ourselves so that we could engage in a long and uncertain process of sanctification, forever wondering, if I will attain to eternal life, did He die that we might come to Him later with a laundry list of works, seeing Him only as the icing on the cake?

In the words of one, it would be easier to sail across the Atlantic in a boat made of paper. No, but He died, our Lord Jesus, to pay our full sin debt, that He might say on that Roman cross, it is finished.

He died to make atonement for sins, the great exchange above all great exchanges, so that we might be here now before God in this room possessing not our filth, not our filthy rags, the best of our righteous deeds, hoping for some incremental measure of power, but we are standing here, seated here before God, possessing the very righteousness of Christ, clothed in that righteousness.

John Flavel, one Puritan, says, oh, what a complete, finished, perfect thing is the righteousness of Christ. The searching eye of the holy and jealous God cannot find the least flaw or defect in it. It is by a single offering that Christ has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

And what's fascinating is this word for lifted up. The Greek word, it means not only to lift up, but to exalt. Commentators see that not only was Christ lifted up in His suffering, in His atoning work, but He was lifted up in His exaltation at the time of His resurrection.

Sproul says the phrase lifted up is an important one in the gospel and carries the double meaning of crucifixion and exaltation. Another says the evangelist views the death and resurrection of Christ as indissolubly, oh, I practice this word, as one.

Our Lord said, and when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself. John Calvin was so convinced of this. He thought that this was the primary interpretation. The death and resurrection of Christ are historical fact.

My brother prayed that on Friday. That really resonated with me. As true as you're walking through this door about an hour ago, an hour and a half ago, is true. As historically factual as that is, Christ's death in our stead is historical fact.

But more than that, the death and resurrection of Christ are the central, or is the central fact in all of human history. That as Christ lifted up from that grave, and as He appeared to His disciples, and as He appeared to 500 more walking, sitting, going through doors, His vicarious sacrifice was publicly proclaimed as accepted.

And there Christ, the resurrected Christ, stood vindicated that God did indeed accept that offering, that atoning sacrifice on the cross on our behalf. Now, what then is left? That we are great sinners, and that Christ is a great Savior.