How Am I Saved?

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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We'll open your Bibles, please, to Isaiah chapter 53, and this morning we'll complete a short two -part series that we've had in this great, this monumental, one of the most monumental chapters in Isaiah, if not the entire

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Bible, Isaiah 53. You might recall from last week, when we looked into these verses, we found that this chapter is all about Jesus Christ, and that's a position

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I will not repeat and give you all the proof for, but we found that this is about Jesus Christ and none other.

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We saw also that it was according to God's will that this Jesus died, and that men, despite all outward appearances, had no control over him.

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It was all by God's will, it was all by Jesus following God's will as he died on behalf of sinners.

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And this morning I want us to look at this same chapter, and I want us to answer a question. And we'll develop this question as we go, it's not as simple as it may seem when

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I put it to you, but it's the title of this message, how are we saved? How are we saved? In Isaiah 53,

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I'm going to read verse 4, then I'm going to read verses 10 through 12, then we're going to jump into this text, and we're going to try to answer this question, develop this answer to the question, how are we saved?

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So with that, please stand as we read God's Word, Isaiah 53, verse 4, and then 10 through 12.

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God bless the reading. Now the proclamation of His Word, please be seated.

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Let us ask God's help in both of these processes of proclaiming and hearing,

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Heavenly Father. We come now to the Word of God, and I pray,

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Father, that you would help it to be explained clearly and that Jesus Christ would be lifted up and honored and portrayed clearly as crucified as His Word is proclaimed, and you have, we trust,

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Father, that you have prepared hearts to hear this Word, and all of us will be edified and brought closer to you by this, by this grace that you have given us this morning.

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We ask in Jesus' name, Amen. You know, in a couple of weeks,

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God willing, on May 17th, actually, fairly early in the morning, I'm going to do something that all of us do with some regularity.

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I'm going to entrust my health, my safety, I'm going to trust my very life to something about which

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I know almost nothing. I have very little understanding of this thing I'm going to put my life into.

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Now, I might have some basic ideas that would pass muster in a good 8th grade science class, but maybe not even that.

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I couldn't give an intelligent answer to King Arthur's question, how does it work?

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This thing in which I'm going to entrust my very life, what's going to happen?

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I'm going to, Lord willing, on the 17th, with Pastor Owens, fly to Cleveland, Ohio, in order to attend the

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Fire Pastors Conference there. Now, I understand that when the pilot, and when

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I mention pilot, I have to stop for a moment because I'm entrusting my life here. I don't know if the pilot's a he or a she.

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I don't know where they went to pilot school. I don't know if they finished top or bottom in their class.

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I know nothing about this pilot, and I won't know anything about them until we get to certain altitude and, you know, they come on to the

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PA system and say, hello, I'm your pilot. And you find out about the pilot and what altitude you're at, but that's when

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I find out about the pilot. Before I go trust my life to this pilot, I know nothing about them. I have some idea that when they rev up the engines and the thrust is greater than the weight, which

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I looked up, I wish I hadn't, 175 ,000 pounds of airplane, or jet plane.

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When the thrust is greater than the weight and something about the shape of the wing cause lift on one side to be greater than the pressure on the other, something like that, this thing's going to take off.

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And my life is in the hands of this thing that some of you being engineers understand much better than I, but I have very little idea of what's really happening other than I usually land and I'm okay.

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All of us do this at some level. I asked a few of you how the brakes on your car or the brakes on the cars around you work.

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And you know, very few understand that when you put pressure on that pedal, what happens and all the things that have to happen correctly in order for the car to actually slow and come to a halt.

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And yet, with all this lack of understanding, all of us are very happy to get onto the road and trust those brakes, which

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I would argue very few of us have any real understanding of how they work. Now, no Googling allowed. I don't want you looking up now how they work so when we meet for fellowship later, you can tell me, hey,

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I know how it works because you just found out. But when you rode here this morning, most of us don't know really how those work any better than I understand why

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I'm going to be safe in that plane. I'm trusting my very life, as you trust your life to something about which you have very little understanding.

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Well, there's a way that all of us, not most of us, but all of us are trusting in something and we're trusting in something for something that's much more important and longer lasting than this life.

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We're trusting in eternity. If you're in the Lord Jesus Christ, you're trusting in Him, your faith in Him and what

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He accomplished, what we read through in Isaiah 53, Him bearing your iniquities in order to bring you to God, your eternal soul at stake.

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Now this morning, I want to answer, how are we saved? And I do want to tell you right up front that understanding this process and the means by which we're saved is not what will save you.

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By grace, you've been saved through faith. You believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He gave you faith to believe this is salvation.

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I want us to understand the way of it. I want us to understand what actually happened when

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Christ died for your sins. The means, the process by which we are saved.

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If you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I would argue to you this morning, listen to me, hear the word of God as clearly as I can explain it because you are trusting in something that you don't understand.

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You're trusting in New Age, you're trusting in philosophy, you're trusting in your agnosticism, you're trusting in your atheism, but Ecclesiastes 3 .11

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says God has planted eternity in your heart. You know that there's an eternity to face, and you're trusting in something.

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I would argue you do not understand any better than I understand how a plane works, or maybe I understand how a plane works better than you understand this process by which you're trusting eternity.

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So hear me this morning, at least just hear what I have to say from what the scripture has to say to us about this process, about the way of salvation.

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How am I saved? How does this transaction of salvation actually work?

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If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, this message this morning is meant to bolster your confidence explaining the actual working of salvation.

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If you're outside of Christ, again, I can only plead with you to give me a hearing. Give me a hearing as I am giving you what

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God says in His Word. Jesus Christ said, I am the way and the truth and the life.

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Trust Him or trust the world. Trust Jesus by whom and through whom the world was made, or trust the ruminations of that world which is always straining to be free of its maker, in whom alone is freedom actually found.

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So I just plead for a hearing this morning. If you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, just hear me out.

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And if you do, let our faith be strengthened as we understand the sureness and the certainty of what

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God has given us in the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, the Jews who first heard

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Isaiah chapter 53 preached to them, if you will, they had just been told they were going to be taken away from their land and sent into exile in Babylon.

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As you go through the prophecy of Isaiah from beginning to end, in chapters 36 through 39 you have this sort of historic interlude where the prophetic oracles seem to stop.

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And you have the King Hezekiah cycle, the greatest king. We talked about him some last week. I'm not going to repeat a lot of that, except to say that it was this great king whose sin brought the final judgment of Babylon upon Judah.

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And so chapter 39 ends with King Hezekiah saying sort of, the next generation is going to pay for my sin, not me.

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I'm going to have peace in my time. And then in chapter 40 verse 1 begins the so -called servant songs of which chapter 53, where we're in this morning, is sort of in the middle of it all.

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Chapter 40 verse 1 begins with comfort, comfort my people, tell Jerusalem her sins have been paid for double.

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And the question is, well how? How are our sins paid for double? Isaiah 53 begins to answer that.

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Not only for them then, but that is a picture for our sins paid for now by Jesus Christ.

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Isaiah 53 and the hope of the Jews in that time to be redeemed from their exile which was being prophesied to them at that time is a precursor, a type as we call it, of the redemption we ultimately have in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. So how are we saved?

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How are their sins pardoned? How are sins paid for? How is iniquity pardoned? How am

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I saved? Well Isaiah 53, 10 through 12 is going to give us some guidance here this morning.

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It is by the soul of God's servant,

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Jesus Christ. You notice that soul is in each of those three verses at the end of Isaiah 53.

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In verse 10, his soul makes an offering for guilt. In verse 11, the anguish of his soul brings righteousness as he bears their iniquities.

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And in verse 12, his soul is poured out to death. So we need to talk about this just a little bit, this idea of soul.

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The idea of soul and why this is so prominent here. The word soul is the Hebrew nefesh or nefesh.

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The prophet could have used the word for life which was readily available. That word is Chaim. He poured out his life unto death.

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He poured out his life for your iniquities and so forth, but he didn't. He used the word soul.

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If all he meant was for us to understand that Jesus was going to die, that's what he would have done.

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But he went deeper than that. He went further than that. When we ask, how were we saved? The soul of this

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Savior begins to answer this question for us. What is soul?

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Soul is that immaterial principle of life created by God integrated into the human experience. God who created our material existence, these flesh and blood bodies in which we live, he also created the immaterial existence.

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As I said, Ecclesiastes 3 .11, God has planted eternity in your hearts.

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We wouldn't do any damage to that verse by saying eternity into your soul. God has made you able to know.

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You can only know that there is eternity. The soul is that immaterial part of us that will exist forever.

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The body will deteriorate. The body will die. The soul never will. The soul is that aspect of life that sets humans apart from all other life.

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See, animals don't have souls. An animal wants to live. An animal will fight to live, but that's sheer instinct.

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They have no idea of tomorrow. They have only today. They have this moment. You know there's a tomorrow because you have a soul.

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Deep in your soul too often and for too long ignored is that certainty of eternity.

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The afterlife as some call it. This knowledge, this idea that you have, and whether you're seeking it from some of the outside means, the things that are outside of Christ as I spoke of a moment ago, this knowledge, this striving after an answer to eternity is proof that you have a soul.

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It's proof of God's Word that he planted eternity into your heart or your soul or your inner man.

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Your attempts to find an answer to eternity proves that you have a soul. And here is this word, this soul, that is describing the work of this

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Savior. How are we saved? Soul has so much to do with this.

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Verse 10, And yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring.

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He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hands. You see, you're saved by the soul of Jesus Christ, offered to God in answer for your sins.

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By the soul of Jesus Christ. It's offered up to God in answer for your sins, an offering.

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He makes a soul, an offering. It's temple language. We call it cultic language, but it means the temple.

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And that whole process of bulls and goats constantly coming and being sacrificed for the people's sins.

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They lay their hand on the head of the beast, and the beast is then slain, and the blood is poured out on the mercy seat, and so forth.

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Offering. That's what that brings to mind. But we know from the book of Hebrews that the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin.

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Why can it not? Why can the blood of bulls and goats never take away sin?

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Well, they have no soul. They don't correspond to us. The blood is poured out, and that's a type that puts in mind the awful price of sin, the depth of sin, and the fact that they have blood, and we need blood, and all life needs blood, only makes us similar in that one way.

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But they don't have a soul. They don't have eternity striking before them. All they can do is picture the redemption that Jesus Christ was going to accomplish some centuries later.

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So because they're only aware of the moment, the best they can do is to picture that greater, that final offering that can actually take away our sin.

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And I think that's why the prophet Isaiah says that he offered up his soul rather than just his life, that aspect of human existence that will continue forever.

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You see, Jesus had, and he has, a soul. That's part of what it means in Hebrews 2 .17,

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that Jesus had to be made like his brothers in every respect. But consider this for a moment with me.

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If Jesus had offered up only his body on the cross, if it was only his physical self on the cross, it would have been only a temporal offering.

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He would have been just the physical part of him. But he made his soul an offering, his eternal soul to save that part of you that is eternal.

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So he came to bring eternal life. The offering to God had to match the goal.

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His eternal soul offered up to save our eternal souls. I think there's a reason, and I just want to address this in case you're wondering about this, is why doesn't the

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New Testament repeat this? The New Testament authors were very concerned to focus in and to make sure that their readers then understood the historicity and the literality of Jesus coming in the person, or God coming in the person of Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ was man, never not

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God. He was always God. We call it the hypostatic union, and I'm not going to say very much about that, except that that describes the fact that he was

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God and he was man, and the two weren't confused, but he was God in the flesh.

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The word became flesh, as the apostle John writes in his gospel. But those authors were very concerned to make sure that people didn't think of Jesus Christ as an apparition, as anything other than literally man.

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Colossians chapter 1 verse 21, Paul says, And you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he is now reconciled in his body of flesh.

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Not in his soul, though that's true, we have that in Isaiah 53, but what was his concern? In the body of his flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

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Peter, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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What's his concern? That his readers, and that we, know that Jesus Christ literally came, lived as a man, and died as a man.

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The historicity, the literal nature of Christ's life and death.

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1 John 1 .1 So there's no conflict between Old and New Testaments.

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It's a matter of focus. It's a matter of the emphasis that was needed for the time. And so the two coordinate together.

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He died in his body, in his body he bore our sins, and he offered up his soul as an offering for your iniquity.

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You're saved because he carried you, his offspring, to the cross in his soul.

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In his soul. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring.

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He saw his offspring while on the cross, is what this is saying to you. He saw his offspring while he suffered on the cross.

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Now, when was this offspring given to him? When did he know who this offspring was? Well, Ephesians 1 .4

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says that God chose us to be in Christ when? Before the foundation of the world. Well, that's obviously before you or I existed, and were able to do anything good or evil.

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But that verse is commonly taken, and I would take it this way, to mean before time itself, before eternity in sort of a way.

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That there never was a time when those who are in Christ, the offspring who he saw when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring.

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There never was a time that you, if you're in Christ now, were not in Christ.

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Well, this verse in Isaiah confirms the truth of Ephesians 1 .4. It confirms that Jesus knew who he was dying for when he went to the cross.

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It confirms our doctrine of what we call particular redemption, or limited atonement, if we want to go with the older way that that was described.

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What does that mean? Does it mean God, in a capricious way, is just waving his hand and sending a whole bunch of humanity to hell?

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No. It means that God gave to Christ a people that he knew and he knows by name, and they were placed in him.

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It was part of that covenant between God the Son and God the Father that God the Father would give to God the Son this people for whom he would suffer and die and redeem his offspring.

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You see, God is not up in heaven waiting with bated breath to see who might be willing to accept his

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Son in their heart. And many of us believe this. Many of us think this way.

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It's not what the Bible would say for how you're saved.

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You don't go to God and say, Well, I've decided to accept Jesus into my heart. You go to God in repentance for your sin and by faith in Jesus Christ saying,

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He died for me, and pleading forgiveness of God for your sin.

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By the work of Jesus Christ and your faith in it. Not by your New Age philosophy.

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Not by your philosophy. Not by your agnosticism. Not by your atheism. By faith in Jesus Christ and knowing that God gives you faith to believe and doesn't put you in Christ because you gave up your faith, but that simply confirms that he had put you in Christ before the foundation of the world.

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That Christ on the cross shall see his offspring, shall know those whom he is creating. Descendants, children.

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He made something new. That's Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus.

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He created a people. A people once sinners now redeemed.

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A people once part of the world now whose citizenship is in heaven. So how are you saved?

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What's this mechanism by which you're saved? By being his offspring.

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By faith being a part of a new creation, a new people. Verse 11, out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied.

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By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

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You're saved by the soul of Jesus Christ whose anguish of soul makes your righteousness a reality.

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There's three things I want us to understand from this verse. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied.

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By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

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The first is out of. This is two words. Out of the anguish. Well, the out of is instrumental.

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It tells of how something is accomplished. Out of the anguish of his soul, something happens.

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Something gets done. Okay? And second is that word anguish. Out of the anguish of his soul.

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Anguish is a very strong word that means toil and things that are hard to endure in this life.

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Joseph in Genesis chapter 41 verse 51, he spoke of his troubles with this word.

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His troubles being thrown in that pit by his brothers. They were going to kill him, and then they sold him to some traitors, and he ended up in a foreign land.

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He ended up in prison for something he hadn't done. He spoke of his troubles with this word anguish.

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Ecclesiastes 1 .3 speaks of the futile and never -ending toils that men endure in this life with this word.

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In Jeremiah chapter 20 verse 18, remember Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet. As he saw

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Babylon coming, and he heard God's word that Babylon was going to come and bring terrible judgment against Judah, but they wouldn't listen.

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They wouldn't repent. They wouldn't follow God's word. He wept over them. With Judah, Jeremiah chapter 20 verse 18, this weeping prophet uses that word, this anguish, to describe

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Israel at its lowest spiritual ebb. So first, out of his instrumental, out of the anguish, that very strong word, and finally, by his knowledge.

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By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.

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By his knowledge is not his knowledge, not a knowledge in him, though Jesus knew all men.

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Jesus knew everything and knows everything. But by his knowledge is your knowledge, the people's knowledge of him.

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It's like a precursor to faith. By knowing him, by understanding the propositional truths, yes, by putting your faith in him primarily, by your knowledge of him are we made righteous.

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See, the cross of Jesus Christ was a very grim affair. I mean, nobody would doubt that. But consider that his suffering was deeper by far than just the pain in his body.

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You know, he had a thief on either side of him. He had a thief on the left and a thief on the right. We don't know which was the one who said, remember me when you enter your kingdom.

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I don't know if it was on the left or right, but it was one of the two, but there were thieves on both sides of him. Well, they felt no less or no more pain than he did, and he no more or less than they.

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I mean, Rome crucified men in droves. They knew how to do it. They knew how to make it as long -lasting and as torturous as possible.

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And in this, the pain in his body, Jesus was, as a man, really no different. He felt the same pain that the men on either side of him felt.

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But here's where it is eternally different, infinitely different. Here's how we're saved.

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Because Jesus' suffering was more than the pain in his body. It was the anguish of his soul. It was the anguish of his soul.

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You see, when God poured out his wrath for the sins that he bore, that's chapter 53, verse 4, which we started with.

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Surely he bore our griefs and our sorrows. It was in his soul that he felt this wrath.

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That's where he suffered for your sins. 2 Corinthians 5 .21. I hope you haven't gotten tired of hearing this one, because I used it a lot last week.

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But he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us. That's the New Testament corollary to exactly what

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Isaiah is saying here. You see, sin is deep down within.

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Your body commits sin. We reach out our hand and we sin. We let our eyes drift away and we sin.

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But it's the inner man, it's the heart, the spirit, the soul, if you will, where your desire for sin resides.

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In that part of your being that God created so you could commune with him. That gift of your creation that elevates you above the beasts.

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That's where your sin takes cover. That's where your sin waits for an opportune time to spring forth.

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When Jesus was made to be sin for us, it was in his soul that he felt this agony for the sins that were being placed upon him.

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In his soul, not just in his body, as awful as that was. But Isaiah adds to that.

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In that eternal part of man is where he felt this wrath.

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That's where he felt this grief. You know, you and I are used to sin.

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For you and me, sin's familiar. It's way too familiar. Now, we don't say something like, hello, old friend, or be flippant about it, but neither are we so far removed from it that it causes us anguish as it caused

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Jesus anguish. It reminds me again of the gravediggers in Hamlet. And Hamlet is asked, why can they sing?

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Why can they be so light about it? And I'm paraphrasing here, and basically he says, well, they're used to it. They've forgotten how grave it is to dig a grave.

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They've just gotten accustomed to it. You see, when Jesus in his soul felt sin, he felt something that he had never encountered before.

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Now, he had been with sinners. He ate and drank and had fellowship with sinners.

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He touched lepers. He knew what sin was. But in himself, he hadn't.

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He was made in every way like us. He was tempted in all ways as we are, yet without sin.

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And so imagine God's righteous one, the one who never sinned, the one who came to answer for our sin, who knew no sin, who had never done anything other than perfectly accomplish

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God's will. And in his soul, becoming sin for you.

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Think of all the things that you've done, the thoughts that you've had, myself included.

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And now, those are being placed upon one in the very depth of his being, in his soul, who had never done or thought or even considered anything like that.

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But wept over those who did them. It's in his soul where he felt this.

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Jesus became something he had never been. He knows and he knew sin better than any of us could, but not because he sinned, not because he ever took any part of it, but because he was so perfectly holy and not sinful, antithetical to sin.

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Sin to him was more abominable than mere mortals could ever grasp. When he became what he had never been or done, this was the anguish of his soul.

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He suffered the anguish you and I should feel when we sin. He secured our eternal salvation by suffering for our sin there in that depth of his person, in his soul, that eternal part of us, that ongoing part that will never die.

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That's where he suffered. In his soul for you. By his knowledge, shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous and he shall bear their iniquities.

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Again, the knowledge is your knowledge of him, not his knowledge of you. Though he knows all things, but that's not what's being said here.

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The new King James have it by his knowledge. The ESV is much better here. It's by your knowledge of him and what he has done for you that you're made righteous.

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It's 2 Corinthians 5 .21 again. In order that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

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That's an early precursor to the New Testament idea of faith. Faith is that mysterious movement of the

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Holy Spirit. As we sang, I know not how the saving faith to me he did make known.

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And his faith has propositional content. It has knowledge. Do you know that Jesus loved me and gave himself up for me?

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Do you have the proposition in your mind that Jesus Christ was

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God, always was God, always will be God, God the Son, the second person of the

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Trinity, and in him God became flesh, God became man and walked among us? He lived a perfect life.

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He died for your sins. He was buried on the third day. He was resurrected. Those are propositions that we hold to.

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Those are the content of our faith. And faith is the apprehension of this in your soul, if you will.

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The full trust in God and what he has done in Christ. How are we saved?

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By knowledge of this righteous one. By faith in this righteous one. By faith in Jesus Christ and what he did in redeeming you from your sin.

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Suffering in his soul for your sin. Accounted righteous is that form of the verb that we discussed last week, and we'll not go into a lot of detail, but it's that causative verb, cause to be righteous.

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Your knowledge of him and what he has done is only one side of the equation. That's the mental understanding of the statements the

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Bible makes about Jesus. But it's he who causes you to be righteous. It's all of the cross.

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It's all of faith. When you come to Christ, you didn't exercise something you had within you.

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You exercised something that God gave to you. Faith, it's born to you. You're not born with faith.

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You don't have to put your faith somewhere, though we use that terminology, and I use it quite often. But you put your faith somewhere because it's faith that God gave you.

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It's not faith he gave you to see what you'll do with it. He gives you faith to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

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He causes this. By his knowledge shall the righteous one my servant make many to be accounted righteous.

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He causes your righteousness. Too often, we strive for it ourselves, like the hymn we just sang.

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Don't wait until you're able. Don't wait until you're better. Don't wait until you've figured out what

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God wants. Like I've obeyed most of the Ten Commandments most of the time. I haven't committed the big sins.

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I've done the little ones here and there. No, no, no. Faith in Christ and Him alone.

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The righteousness that He can give, which is the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5 .21 He shall bear their iniquities.

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You're saved by the soul of Jesus Christ, which is where He bore your iniquities. Whose iniquities? Those whose faith is in Him.

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Those who by faith trust in Him. By knowledge of who He was, who He is, what

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He did, what He does, what He is now doing. But by that knowledge, by that faith, made righteous.

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The righteousness of God. How am

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I saved? We're talking about the mechanisms here. I want us to understand how it is, what this process is that God accomplished in Jesus.

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He bore our iniquities. He bore our iniquities. There's more here than just that He suffered.

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He did suffer. He suffered horribly. But He suffered in soul deep anguish. But then what happened?

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What has that to do with how am I saved? Well again, just a short study of the word that's here.

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And He shall bear their iniquities. The word for bear is used of Solomon for the forced laborers in 1

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Kings 5 .29. Remember he had all the forced laborers? Well they were under hard labor. And they had to bear these burdens of working to build all of his projects.

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It's used in Nehemiah 4 .4 of rebuilding Jerusalem's walls. The difficult, the strenuous effort that they had to put forth.

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Christ bore your burden on the cross. Your iniquities were put on Him. Your suffering became

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His. Or actually the suffering that we should have became His. Where He cried out just once,

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My God, why have you forsaken Me? For you and Me, but for Him and His mercy.

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But for you and Me, that cry would never end. Say, My God, why have you forsaken Me? As we suffer in our soul for eternity.

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Not in purgatory where they pretend you can get prayed out.

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No. Talking eternal suffering. Jesus said once, My God, why have you forsaken

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Me? As He suffered in His soul for our sins. As He felt that anguish. If you go into this eternity without Jesus Christ, you'll call out,

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My God, why have you forsaken Me? For all eternity. My God, why have you forsaken

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Me? Because you did not believe in My Son. My God, why have you forsaken Me? Because you've died in your sins.

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My God, why have you forsaken Me? For all eternity. And the answer is the same.

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Because you despised My Son and His cross. Because when

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He suffered for sin, you said, I'll have no part of it. My God, why have you forsaken

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Me? Because Jesus did not bear your iniquities.

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How am I saved? How can I be saved? By Jesus having in His soul borne the burden that you properly owe to God.

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Verse 12 says, Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the many, and He shall divide the spoiled with the strong, because He poured out

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His soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors.

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You are saved by the soul of Jesus, which He poured out to death. Which He poured out to death.

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And again, remember, His soul was poured out to death. He's saving people from eternal damnation.

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And so He saves them by bearing in His soul that ongoing aspect of humanity.

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You're saved by the soul of Jesus, which He poured out to death. And it's also in that word that He bore our sins.

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It comes from the Hebrew word which means to lift something up. There's a derivative of this word that's used for princes who are lifted up above the teeming masses, if you will.

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This word can commonly mean to carry a load in the usual sense. To put a backpack on and carry it.

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You're bearing it. You're lifting it up and you're putting it on your shoulders and going with it. But it also has to do with sin.

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He bore our sin. Listen to Exodus 34, verse 7.

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Now this is Moses who's seeing God's glory pass him by. And as God's glory passes him by and He's protecting him in the cleft of the rock there.

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You remember this scene. Exodus chapter 34. And He declares His name to Moses. And He says,

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The Lord, the Lord God, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression.

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Forgiving is from our word which means to lift up and to carry something away. I'll just give one more example of this word because you'll get the point here.

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In Leviticus 16 .22 when the scapegoat is released.

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Remember the high priest puts his head on the goat and confesses the sins of Israel and they're symbolically transferred from Israel onto the goat.

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And what does it say in Leviticus 16 .22? The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.

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The goat carried the sins. He lifted them away. He bore them away from the people.

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One of the problems with Pilgrim's Progress though I don't want to denigrate that great work. It's a wonderful story.

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But when Pilgrim comes to the cross, you remember he's got that bag of sin and he's trying to figure out how to get rid of it and what does he do when he gets to the cross?

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Finally, he takes it off and he puts it there. Hallelujah and praise God because at the cross and the cross only can you find forgiveness of sin.

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At the cross and the cross only were your sins dealt with. So my objection is a slight one because it should have been taken up to heaven.

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It should have been lifted off his shoulders and not dumped by him on the ground. But that's a small objection and I don't want anybody to stop reading

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Pilgrim's Progress. It's a great and enduring work. But the idea here is that your sins were carried away by Jesus.

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How am I saved? What happened with these sins? I confessed my sins? No, Jesus bore your sins.

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Jesus lifted them away. That burden is no longer yours. Oh, we live in a greater and greater sensitivity to our sins and knowledge of sin and the more we appreciate what's being said here by Isaiah in these few verses, the more abhorrent our sin is going to be to us.

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But the burden of it, the crushing, agonizing burden of it is

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Jesus Christ for liberty. Christ has set us free, says the Apostle Paul. You're free from your sin.

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Now go forth in that freedom. And one major aspect of that freedom, I would argue, is the freedom to confess our sin and repent of our sin because Christ has set us free of the agony that that sin causes.

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He has borne it before God. Your sin's carried away by Jesus. They became

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His. He suffered His soul for your sin. Because He knew no sin, He was able to take in Himself all the punishment and bear it and to lift it away.

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Do you understand this blessed relief that's being spoken of? Now we can't ever lose our own horror at our own sin.

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In fact, if you're growing in the image of Christ, if you're progressing in holiness, then you're growing in horror and agony and even disgust at your own sin.

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As your revulsion at sin grows, ought not also your gratitude for what Jesus Christ did to take away your sin grow as well?

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So I've been asking, how am I saved? I want us to understand this mechanism. You're not climbing onto a plane like me and just sort of haphazardly hoping that this pilot knows what he's doing or that she hasn't had too many drinks last night and that the mechanics did a good job.

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And even if all that worked, I wouldn't know how the plane stays in the air and why

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I'm actually going to be, Lord willing, safe on it. Do you understand how your salvation works?

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Jesus in His soul suffered for your sin. And Jesus, by suffering in His soul for your sin, bore,

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He lifted, He took away your sin. He lifted it away so that you or I bear it no more.

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Every day we trust our lives to things or to people or processes we know next to nothing about. Lord willing,

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Isaiah 53, 10 through 12 has taught us something more of the how of our salvation about what has actually happened to our sin, to your sin.

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It was borne away. Jesus Christ felt in His soul the agony of it.

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He offered up His soul to death. I trust that your faith will be bolstered by knowing the how of salvation.

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It's all of faith. It's all of grace. And this doesn't conflict with that. So this sermon has been a bit more about the mechanics of it.

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And yet, does that not give us more confidence in the certainty we have in the salvation we have in the

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Lord Jesus Christ? Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? Because if you do, you're trusting in a sure and certain word.

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The word of God is forever. It endures forever. It never changes. Do you not know the

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Lord Jesus Christ? You too are trusting. And I would argue you're trusting in something you don't understand very well.

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I probably know more about how the jet airplane stays in the air than you know about what you're trusting in with your eternal soul.

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Set that aside. Put your faith in Christ Jesus. Stop trying to make yourself righteous.

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Stop ignoring what the scriptures have to say about sin and redemption and faith and repentance.

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And put your faith in Christ, the sure and certain rock, the reliable one, who will certainly bring you to God if you would trust in Him and what

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He's done on the cross. Amen? Heavenly Father, again, we are grateful to have been able to come to Your presence.

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I pray, Lord, that You would just be with Your people as we consider this word, that our hearts have been fertile ground to hear it, and that,

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Lord, we would appreciate more and more what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross, how He made His soul on offering for our guilt.

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And by that redemption, Father, we know that we can stand without trembling before You. We give

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You thanks for this. I pray we'd ever be more, be ever more sensitive to our sin and ever more grateful to Jesus Christ and what