Let's open up our Bibles to 2 Corinthians
chapter 5 and verse 21.
He made him who knew no sin to
be sin on our behalf, so that we
might become the righteousness of God in him.
Let's go to the Lord in prayer.
Father please, for the sake of your Son,
for the sake of your people, help us
that we might have a greater understanding of
who your Son is and what he has
done for us.
And that that truth would lead us to
greater devotion, greater obedience, most of all greater
love toward him.
In Jesus name, Amen.
We are once again this morning going to
seek to do what any sane man would
call the impossible, and that is to speak
much of Jesus Christ.
As I like to say so often, so
much talk today about the second coming and
things like that, people delight in hearing of
those types of things.
Yet on the day of the second coming,
you'll understand everything there is to know about
the second coming.
And yet you'll be in eternity in heaven
and you will still not even have begun
to comprehend the glory of God in the
gospel of Jesus Christ.
As a matter of fact, for the saints,
that is their delight in heaven, and that
is what keeps eternity from becoming bored.
It is the beauty of God revealed in
the face of Christ.
It is a deeper and deeper knowledge of
knowing what was done in order to achieve
our redemption.
And so we're going to look at that
today and I can assure you that we
will fail.
I will fail in speaking.
And you will fail in hearing because this
subject is is too big for any of
us.
It's one of the reasons I delight so
much in hearing Charles Spurgeon, whenever he was
going to concentrate specifically on the person of
Christ, he would always at the very beginning
of his sermon say, I am going to
fail.
And even if a cherub were to stand
in this pulpit and preach like he had
never preached before.
He would fail because the glory of Jesus
Christ goes beyond all comprehension of mind, only
the mind of God.
Can truly understand, comprehend and appreciate the person
of Jesus Christ.
And that's why, even though in this world
and oftentimes in our own heart, though Christ
may not be the center, I can assure
you in the heart of God, he remains
always from the beginning to the end in
the very center, the very center.
Well, let's look at this passage.
He made him who knew no sin, possibly
the most outstanding thing about Jesus Christ that
is often overlooked is this.
He knew no sin, he had no affiliation
with sin, so unlike us.
You and I were born in sin.
In the book of Job, we understand that
depraved men, they drink down iniquity like it
was water.
We are friends with sin.
We walk hand in hand with sin.
And yet he had no affiliation with sin,
no friendship.
Never did he once walk together with sin.
He was perfect in all his ways.
Now, oftentimes when we think about sin, as
it is defined in many of the confessions,
that sin is lack of conformity to the
law of God, which is the standard of
God's righteousness for us.
So when we think that Jesus had no
sin, we oftentimes think to ourselves, he perfectly
obeyed the law of God.
And that's true.
That's very true.
But I want to take it a little
bit farther to show you how magnificent his
obedience truly, truly was.
One time I had the I guess you
could say the privilege of speaking to a
man who was given to perfectionism.
He was a part of that denomination or
those group of churches that believe that a
saint on this earth can become absolutely perfect
and sinless.
And after talking to him, I found out
that the reason why he believed that is
because he had redefined sin.
So I looked at him and I asked
him this question, I said, what do you
suppose would be the greatest sin a man
could commit?
And he said, well, I don't know.
I never thought about it that way.
And I said, could it be breaking the
greatest commandment that God ever gave?
And he said, well, I suppose.
And I said, well, what is that command
to love the Lord your God with all
your heart, soul, mind and strength?
And then I asked him, have you done
that?
And there I had him trapped, because if
he says no, he has sinned and if
he says yes, he has blasphemed to say
that he gave God all the love that
God merits is blasphemy.
Now, I want you to think about something.
There has never been one second and I
mean that literally.
Not one millisecond in all of human history,
not once in all of human history, not
even for a fraction of a second.
Has anyone ever loved the Lord their God
with all their heart, soul, mind and strength?
Now, we're we have seven billion people plus
on this planet right now.
And if you add it all up back
to Adam, how many billions of people have
walked on this planet and not for even
one fraction of a second?
Has any one of them.
Loved the Lord their God with all their
heart, soul, mind and strength.
And yet, Jesus Christ.
Every second of his life.
He loved the Lord, his God, with all
his heart, soul, mind and strength, he did
throughout his entire life what no one else
in humanity had ever done for even a
second.
Now, do you begin to appreciate a little
bit more of what it means when it
says he knew no sin, that he was
perfectly obedient?
Now, I want you to look at something
else about Jesus Christ.
It says that the writer of Hebrews tells
us that he was tempted in all things.
Just like us, and because of that, he
can be a sympathetic, compassionate high priest, that
he was tempted in all things.
Now, that's true.
But when people read that, they they're not
really comprehending what's going on here, what it's
actually saying.
And let me try to give it to
you in something of an illustration.
Let's say that I'm standing up here and
this is an Olympic platform and I'm standing
up here with the world champion, heavyweight power
lifter, OK, the strongest man on earth.
And we're going to have a competition.
We're going to have a squatting competition.
That means we put a bar on our
back with a lot of weight and we
go down to a certain degree, a 90
degree, at least with our with our thigh,
and then we come back up.
We lift this magnificent amount of weight.
Now, you put an Olympic bar on my
back.
It weighs forty five pounds.
You put an Olympic bar on his back.
It weighs forty five pounds.
I'm OK.
I've got this.
He's he's got this.
He's OK.
Now put on two plates.
OK, each one of those plates weigh forty
five pounds, put on two plates.
I got one hundred and thirty five pounds
on my back.
I'm OK.
He's OK.
Let's go for two plates more.
Now we got two twenty five on my
back.
All right.
I feel it, but I'm OK.
Put two twenty five on his back.
He's like, no problem.
Now let's put some more plates on.
Now, remember, I'm I'm almost fifty four for
another set of plates.
Now we're three fifteen.
Sweat is breaking out on my brow.
OK, and I'm thinking, I know I can
take this down, but I don't know if
I'm coming back up.
You put the three fifteen on his and
he's just standing there.
It's not even breaking the sweat.
Let's put some more plates on there.
So now we're at four oh five.
I go down and I collapse, put four
or five on his back.
He goes down, comes up.
I've collapsed.
He came up and that's why a lot
of people look at that's what Jesus did,
you know, the temptation that was put on
us, we collapsed and that same amount of
temptation was put on him and he stood.
No.
It goes deeper than that.
He has that four or five on his
back, he goes down, comes up, put two
more plates on, he goes down and comes
up, put two more plates on, he goes
down, comes up, put more plates on and
more plates on, he goes down and comes
up.
And this is the point.
It was like a tiny fraction of temptation
can be laid upon us and we fall,
we collapse, multiply that.
Infinitely.
That is what was thrown against Christ, not
equal with what was required to collapse us,
no, infinitely beyond what was required to collapse,
us was thrown upon Christ and he still
stood.
He fought what no man has ever fought.
He felt temptation, no man, no woman has
even ever begun to feel he suffered it
and he overcame.
That's how great he is.
It wasn't that he stood when we collapsed,
it's he stood when we collapsed and then
he kept standing with more and more adversity
piled upon him in every sort of way.
And yet he stood there like this.
That's the magnificence of our Lord, that's the
greatness of our Lord.
Let's go on.
It says here that he made him who
knew no sin.
To be sin on our behalf.
Now, all the great commentary writers from from
the reformers on down through the Puritans, they
give us warnings here and rightfully so, we
need to be very, very careful when we
look at this text, because look at what
I mean.
Actually, look at what it's saying.
He made him who knew no sin to
be sin.
It doesn't just say to bear sin.
It made him to be sin.
Now, what does that mean?
Because we need to go far enough so
that we understand the power of this text.
And yet we can go too far and
enter into heresy itself.
What does it mean that he was made
to be sin?
Well, before we get to that, I want
you to realize something.
You and I, as I have said, were
born in sin.
And yet even even the unconverted man at
times, if his conscience has not been totally
defiled, when he sins, he can feel the
pain of his conscience for the sin that
he has committed.
But when you think that we were born
in sin and that we drink down iniquity
like water for us to be associated with
sin is not that big a deal because
we were born in it.
We've always felt it as a matter of
fact, we don't even know the absence of
it.
But you take Jesus Christ, the trice holy
son of God, when sin came upon him,
when he was made to be sin, just
imagine the terror of it, the sickness of
it, the horrific nature.
It's horrific to think that a sinful man
becomes very, very vile in his sin.
But now imagine a trice holy son of
God who becomes him.
And the weight of that upon him, the
terror of that, how disgusting it would be,
how terrifying, how defiling it would be.
Let me give you an example.
Let's say that some of the fine women
of this church.
Who were raised, let's say, homeschooled, protected, always
lived pure lives, being in the church, being
in godly families, and they decide that they're
going to do an evangelistic outreach to prostitutes
here in Cincinnati.
And one dear woman goes down there and
starts handing out tracts to the prostitutes.
And all of a sudden the police show
up, the paddy wagons show up and they
take the prostitutes and throw them in a
paddy wagon and they grab that dear sister
who'd never even read anything defiled in the
newspaper and they throw her in that paddy
wagon.
The other prostitutes are sitting there laughing, filing
their nails, telling jokes, maybe trying to call
their lawyer, no big deal.
And she's over in the corner of that
paddy wagon, she can't even breathe.
For the shame and the defilement she feels,
they pull them all out of the paddy
wagon and they process them through fingerprinting them
and everything.
You hear the other prostitutes just laughing and
having a big time, making smart remarks to
the police, being emboldened in their sin.
And here's this dear sister, she can't even
stand.
It doesn't even begin to describe what it
meant for our Lord to bear our sin,
but here it doesn't just say he bore
our sin, it says he was made to
be sin.
Now, what does that mean?
A lot of people have looked at this
and not paid attention to it and others
have paid attention to it and gone too
far and said things about the Lord they
should have never said.
But what does it mean?
Well, the answer is found in the second
part of the text.
It says that he was made to be
sin on our behalf so that we might
become the righteousness of God in him.
Now, what does it mean for a believer
to be the righteousness of God?
Does it mean that the moment someone is
saved, they become a righteous being?
No.
No, because the moment you were saved, you
did not become a perfectly righteous being incapable
of sin.
What does it mean for us to be
made to become the righteousness of God?
What does it mean for a believer to
be righteous?
It means this, that the moment we believe
in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior
and it is true saving faith, we are
legally declared before God to be right with
him.
You understand that we are legally declared to
be right with him, although our bodies have
yet to be redeemed, although there is still
this element called the flesh, this aspect of
us that's unredeemed, that this aspect of us
that still draws us into sin that fights
against the spirit, but in our position before
God, the moment we believe in Jesus Christ,
we are legally declared to be right with
God.
And then here's the word that's often left
out and should not be left out.
We are not only declared to be right
with God, we are treated as those who
are right with God.
Do you see that?
We were adopted as sons and daughters.
His wrath has been removed.
We are now treated as those who are
right with him.
So what does it what did it mean
for the son to be made sin?
Did it mean that when he was on
the cross that he himself became defiled and
corrupt and wicked?
Absolutely not.
Even on the cross, he was a lamb
without spot.
Then what does it mean?
It means at that moment he was legally
declared to be guilty in our place and
he was treated by God as the guilty
of the guilty.
Do you see that this is the holy
transaction that went on with our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ?
Now, again, when I preach this in the
United States or almost anywhere.
It is very, very hard to preach this.
Why?
Because so little is taught with regard to
the attributes of God.
That's why.
You see, the gospel cannot be truly appreciated,
even the word sin cannot be understood unless
people are mature in their understanding of who
God is.
You see, we see sin is almost a
common thing, something that, well, it's just it
just happens, it just is it is what
it is, as people say.
And we can't understand the horrific nature of
it because we do not understand what it
means for God to be holy and righteous.
That's why it is so necessary for you
to grow in your understanding of the attributes
of God so that you might truly appreciate
the gospel of Jesus Christ, the horrific nature
of sin and how unspeakable it was for
the son of God to hang before his
father as the one who was guilty in
our place, bearing our sin and finally crushed
under the holy hatred of God in our
place.
The holy hatred of God against sin.
Now, let's go on this passage in Second
Corinthians 521, where it talks about him who
knew no sin being made sin.
There is another text in the scriptures that
is just as piercing.
That in the same way opens up a
door and allows us to understand what it
truly meant for Christ to die on the
tree, to bear our sins, and it's found
in the book of Galatians.
And I want us to go there for
just a second.
Chapter three, look at verse 10, for as
many as are of the works of the
law are under a curse, for it is
written curse, it is everyone who does not
abide by all the things written in the
book of the law to perform them.
The curse that comes upon the sinner.
We see evidence of this in the very
beginning when Adam fell, that there was a
curse, that there were thorns, that there were
briars.
We get into the law, Deuteronomy 27, Deuteronomy
28, and we understand the fullness of what
it means to disobey the revelation of God's
righteousness.
To disobey the law of God is to
bring a curse upon a man.
And not just to disobey the worst, the
most the most exquisite or the most important
commands of the law, but to disobey any
aspect of the law was to bring the
curse is a matter of fact, if you
could possibly obey ninety nine percent of the
law, but disobey in one percent, you are
under a curse curse.
It is every man who does not abide
by all the things written in the book
of the law to perform them.
So all of us prior to Christ were
under a curse.
The sinner, apart from Christ, is under a
curse.
Does that terrify you?
It should, it should.
Let me put it this way, if I
were to try to sum up without any
exaggeration what it means for the sinner to
be under a curse, it would be this,
that if you die unreconciled to Christ, the
last thing you will hear.
When you take your first step into hell.
Will be all of creation standing to its
feet and applauding God with joy because he
has rid the earth of you.
That's what it means to be under a
curse.
See, we do not understand how vile sin
is and we do not understand how vile
we are apart from Christ.
That's on that day, even your closest kin,
if they are redeemed and standing before the
throne of God, when they watch you take
your first step into hell, they will bow
down and worship God for having judged you
with righteousness.
I hear these silly evangelists stand up and
say, you know, on the day of judgments,
your mother and your grandmother and all of
them will be weeping and weeping.
They don't want you to go to hell.
They do not get that out of the
scriptures.
But even your mother.
Will stand up and say that God of
all the earth has done right with you,
and if you don't believe that you don't
believe the Bible and you do not believe
2000 years of Orthodox Christian theology, but you've
just fallen into the trap of a soupy
Western American evangelicalism.
And that's all wives tales, humanism.
You say, would God do that?
Is he that bad?
No, you don't understand.
God would do that because he is that
good.
It's that you and your sin is that
bad, but you cannot see it.
You cannot truly understand how vile and wicked
sin truly is.
And if someone says, well, I can, I
can, and I still think that's wrong.
No, you can't.
Let me give you an example.
What Christians.
Defining that loosely, where to the beach.
Today in America, what they wear to the
beach in public.
If they had done that only 50 or
60 years ago or the same thing, the
secular unbelieving authorities would have either fined them,
locked them in jail or sent them to
an institution to have their mental capacity examined.
So what Christians believe is OK today and
see as nothing wrong with it, even secular
unbelieving people 50 years ago thought it was
either criminal or insane.
We cannot judge how vile sin is.
Do you see that?
You know, the old story about the frog,
right?
You take a live frog and throw him
in boiling water, he'll jump right out because
he knows it's boiling.
But you take that frog and put him
in body temperature water and just slowly turn
up the heat and he will roast, he
will boil there in that water because he
becomes accustomed to it.
And that's what's happened to us.
Yes, my dear friend, to be under a
curse and you are under a curse if
you are outside of Christ.
To be under a curse is more terrifying
than any tongue of man or angel could
ever describe to you, but you will know
what it means one day if you do
not repent and believe you will understand what
it means.
But now here's the good news.
Verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse
of the law, having become a curse for
us.
He who knew no sin.
Was made sin on our behalf.
He who was the blessed of Yahweh, the
blessed of God on our behalf on the
cross, he becomes a curse.
It's that great interchange.
It's that great transaction.
In which the holy one or, as Peter
says, the just one takes the place of
the unholy ones, those who are unrighteous and
he bears the punishment for their crimes.
Now, let's go on to give you an
idea of what this is like and just
just listen, we won't we won't turn there,
but I want you to think about the
Beatitudes for a moment that talk about the
man who is blessed before God.
And what we're going to do is we're
going to look at that beatitude and then
I'm going to change it around and show
you the opposite, which is the man cursed
before God.
Let me read the blessed are granted the
kingdom of heaven.
The cursed are refused entrance.
You would be refused entrance, but Christ was
refused entrance on that tree.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?
The blessed are recipients of divine comfort.
The cursed are objects of divine wrath.
It was the wrath of God that Christ
drank on Calvary.
The blessed inherit the land.
The cursed are cut off from it.
The blessed are satisfied.
The cursed are miserable and wretched.
The blessed receive mercy and the cursed are
condemned without pity.
Perfect justice.
The blessed shall see God.
The cursed are cut off from his presence.
The blessed are sons and daughters of God
and the cursed are disowned in disgrace.
The only way you can be anything other
than accursed of God.
Is through the one who was blessed of
God, who took your sin upon himself and
became cursed in your place, you understand that
now in order for us to get an
even greater grasp of what it means for
Christ to be made sin and to be
come a curse on behalf of his people,
I'm going to use Deuteronomy 27 and 28,
and I'm going to take from there the
specific declarations where God says the cursed shall
suffer this or the cursed are like this
before me.
And I'm going to show you how in
order for you to be saved from all
these curses, it was necessary that the Messiah
suffer these curses in your place.
Now, to give you a context on this,
I want you to think about this.
When Israel came out of Egypt.
As they were there, there was two mountains,
Mount Gerasim and Mount Ebal.
In Mount Ebal, they divided up the people
of God and part of the people of
God stood upon Mount Ebal and the other
part of the people of God stood upon
Mount Gerasim and from Mount Gerasim, all the
blessings were declared that would come upon the
person who obeyed God's law.
And on Mount Ebal, all the curses were
shouted forth that would fall upon the man
who was a covenant breaker, who disobeyed God's
law.
Well, you know which mountain belongs to you.
It's not Gerasim, the mountain that belongs to
you is Ebal and every curse of God
for disobedience that was proclaimed upon that mountain
should fall upon you and me.
But in Christ, our Savior, we are redeemed
because when he was on Calvary, every one
of those curses fell upon him.
And I just want to I want to
read a few things.
This is something that I wrote several years
ago, but I want to be very, very
clear.
So I want to read it speaking about
when Christ was on the cross, when he
raised his eyes to heaven to find God's
countenance, his father turned away when he cried
out, my God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?
His father replied, the Lord, the Lord, your
God damns you.
Now, if you think that's harsh, understand that
not only do we see that Christ on
Calvary bore the wrath of God, but down
through the ages, countless theologians, those who you
would most respect, including the Spurgeons and so
on and so forth, said the very same
thing.
This did not originate with me when he
cried out, my God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?
His father replied, the Lord, the Lord, your
God damns you.
The Lord sends upon you curses and confusion
and rebuke until you are destroyed and until
you perish quickly, the Lord smites you with
madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of
heart.
And you will grope at noon as a
blind man gropes in darkness with none to
save you.
The Lord, as the Lord delights over you
to make you prosper, the Lord now delights
over you to make you perish and to
destroy you and you will be torn from
the land.
Curse shall you be in the city and
curse shall you be in the field.
Curse shall you be when you come in
and curse shall you be when you go
out.
The heaven which is over your head shall
be bronze in the earth, which is under
you iron.
You shall be a horror and a proverb
and a taunt among all the people.
Let all these curses come upon you and
pursue you and overtake you until you are
destroyed because you would not obey the Lord,
your God, by keeping his commandments and his
statutes, which he commanded you.
All of these things should have fallen upon
you and me on Calvary in Gethsemane, they
fell upon Christ.
So many people, they think that somehow because
the Romans beat up Jesus, our sins were
paid for.
That is not the case, that is only
part of the curse and the punishment, but
the great part of the curse, the great
part of the punishment is not what the
Romans would do to Jesus, but what God
the Father would do to his only begotten
son, the very thing that he should do
to you throughout all eternity, he does to
his son on Calvary.
You see why we believe in him.
You see why we obey him and follow
him and even sacrifice for him.
It's not because we want to be good
people, it's not because we want to have
nice families, it's not because we have some
standard of ethic and we want to look
conformed to it.
All that is good in its own way,
but in another sense, it's nothing but rot.
We believe in him, we serve him because
of who he is and what he did
for us on that tree, and if we
spent the rest of our lives rotting in
a prison for his name, we would still
have to worship him.
It's not about some silly little thing he
prospers us in.
Or how he makes our lives clean or
how he blesses our children, we believe in
him and we love him because of what
he did and suffered on Calvary, that's the
thing that imprisons our hearts.
That's the thing that tames a wild man,
that's the thing that kills the pride of
the proud in the vein.
And says it makes them say nothing in
my hands, I bring simply to the cross,
I claim it's Jesus.
It's Jesus, I remember going to this this
this homeschool ministry one time in their magazines
and everything else, and I went to him
and I said, I got a real problem
with everything you're doing.
I said, what is it?
I said, I don't see Jesus anywhere.
I do not see Jesus anywhere, so I
don't care how many families supposedly get healed,
I don't care how many lives get fixed,
I don't care how many people get moral
or conservative or anything else.
If Jesus is not the center of it,
it's idolatry and it's right.
We are Christian.
We do everything we do because of him.
And because of what he did for us,
that's it.
That's it.
Anything else is idolatry.
Let me go on.
As Christ bore our sin upon Calvary, he
was cursed as a man.
Now, all this is coming from Deuteronomy 27
and 28.
He was cursed as a man who makes
an idol and sets it up in secret.
He was cursed as one who dishonors his
father or mother, who moves his neighbor's boundary
mark or misleads a blind man on the
road.
He was cursed as one who distorts the
justice to an alien orphan and widow.
He was cursed as one who is guilty
of every manner of immorality and perversion, who
wounds his neighbor in secret or accepts a
bribe to strike down the innocent.
He was cursed as one who does not
conform to the words of the law by
doing them.
Now, there's a passage in Proverbs that I
want to address, it says this like a
sparrow and it's flitting like a swallow and
it's flying, so a curse without cause does
not does not alight.
How could the curse alight upon Christ?
He had no sin, it could alight upon
Christ.
Because he bore your sin, he took up
your evil.
He bore all your filthy transgressions against God,
and for that reason, then.
All the curse of God, all the curse
of the law could alight upon him.
I want you to think about this.
David cried out after his great transgression, how
blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose
sin is covered, how blessed is the man
to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
Yet on the cross, the sin imputed to
Christ was exposed before God and the host
of heaven, he was placarded before God and
the host of heaven, he was placarded before
men and made a spectacle to angels and
devils alike.
The transgressions he bore were not forgiven him
and the sins he carried were not covered.
If a man is counted blessed because iniquity
is not imputed to him, then Christ was
cursed beyond measure because the iniquity of all
of us fell upon him.
This is why we love him.
Have you ever wondered why some people?
Missionaries and such, as you see them, famous
ones, martyrs, they seem to have this extraordinary
passion that would cause them to lose everything.
For the sake of Christ.
And yet you find it hard to even
open your Bible in the morning, what's the
difference?
Well, in some cases they were converted and
others are not.
But in other cases, it is this they
simply have seen more of Christ.
Than you.
And it is the beauty of Christ.
It is the greatness of what Christ did
for them that propels them to such devotion
and piety.
There is a statement in Deuteronomy.
When the covenant is renewed.
There is this description of this covenant breaking
man, and although that is found in the
law, it seems to be looking forward even
to Christ.
And this is what it says.
About the covenant breaker, the anger of the
Lord and his jealousy will burn against that
man and every curse which is written in
this book will rest on him and the
Lord will blot out his name from under
heaven.
Then the Lord will single him out for
adversity from all the tribes of Israel, according
to all the crimes of the covenant which
are written, all the curses of the covenant
which are written in this book of the
law.
Christ should well, let me put it this
way.
God.
Should single me out for adversity.
He should single you out for adversity.
You know, there's I've seen guys wax very
boldly when they're surrounded by their friends, but
you get them alone and they cower.
They're not so bold.
I have heard sinners boasting that day I
stand before God.
I'll tell him I disagree with him.
No, you will not.
You will melt before him like a tiny,
tiny wax figurine before a blast furnace.
But imagine this, no comfort of friends, no
comfort of mother or father, no one.
If you have rejected Christ and you die
in that rejection.
Are you've just got enough religion in order
to calm your conscience, and yet you do
not know Christ, you stand before him that
day, you will not be judged in a
crowd, you will be singled out and every
one of your transgressions against the law of
God will be made known.
And then you will hear even from the
lamb.
Depart from me, you are cursed in light
of this.
It doesn't even really matter who wins the
next presidential election, does it?
That's a small thing.
Compared to the eternal salvation of your soul,
let's go on, I
want to go to the garden for a
moment, I mentioned it in brief yesterday, but
I want to go to the garden for
a moment or was it Friday?
Christ is in the garden and I believe
as.
Most conservative theologians today and those down through
church history.
In that garden, which is often overlooked.
The most incredible things happened.
You see, the curse.
It involves so many things that people don't
understand.
In one sense, there's a turning over to
the devil.
The fierce turning over.
To the vile rage of the devil.
Well, there is being turned over to wicked
men.
We see that in the curse being persecuted
and chased, betrayed.
There is the sense of abandonment of God.
There is the sense of the wrath of
God rolling over the soul with such terror
that it cannot even be defined by human
tongue.
It's not even set forth in biblical language.
It is so severe and the physical suffering,
all of it has to do with being
under a curse.
And if you look at Gethsemane.
That's where you see it all beginning.
It is something like this, some of the
Puritans have said it this way, that.
That Christ.
When he became a man, he did not
lay aside his deity, but he did lay
aside the privileges and the glory and the
use of his deity.
He was a real man, though God, he
functioned as a real man and he was
born and he grew in wisdom.
Now, the only way to grow in wisdom
is to lay aside your omniscience.
He grew in wisdom and he came to
understand early he was the Messiah, that he
was the redeemer.
But the Puritans would say it this way,
that that as he grew, he would see
and begin to understand a little more of
what it would cost him to redeem his
people.
And it would like hit him in the
chest, like being hit by a truck and
it would back him up.
And he'd say, not my will, but yours,
and then he would grow in wisdom and
see a little more of what it meant
for him, the cost it would take to
redeem his people and it would hit him
in the chest like a truck and he
would stand and say, not my will.
And then it comes to Gethsemane and there
in Gethsemane, the full measure of what it
would cost him to redeem his people came
upon him to realize that he would be
bearing sin in its fullness, that his father
would forsake him, that it would be turned
over to devils and men and be forsaken
of God upon a tree and be crushed
under the wrath of God.
And it hit him in the chest like
a truck.
He falls to the ground, there's such anguish
that he's bleeding through his skin.
And then, as always, he pulls himself up
and he says, not my will, not my
will.
But yours be done, he took the cup.
Now you say, what was in the cup?
So many preachers, I tell you, you remember
several years ago when Mel Gibson made the
film on The Passion.
Well, when he made that film, I got
all kinds of emails from preachers all over
the country saying, you know, this film is
bad and this and this and everything else.
And I didn't see the film until like
a year or so ago.
But they just talked about how bad the
film was and everything, and I wrote them
back and I'd say, I don't have near
as much problem with Mel Gibson's film as
I do with your preaching.
And the reason why is this, I remember
that film came out and I'm sitting there
and I'm working on my mom's farm and
I'm in my old blue Ford Ranger.
I was digging post holes or something and
I pulled up to where I needed to
unload some posts and my truck was on
and the radio was on.
It was a Christian radio station and the
preacher goes, there's been a lot of talk
about Mel Gibson's film, but for the next
half hour, I want to set out for
you what really happened on the cross.
And I said, praise the Lord.
So I sat in my truck.
He talked about the Romans.
He talked about a whip.
He talked about thorns.
He talked about nails.
He talked about a spear and the side
of Christ.
And he concluded with an impassioned plea for
people to pray a prayer.
And I and I just screamed out, you
have not preached the gospel, you don't even
understand the gospel yourself.
Do you think, honestly think that that Christ
purchased us on that tree, that he won
our salvation just because a bunch of Romans
did all that to him?
Do you think that he was in the
garden?
Bleeding through his skin with anguish.
Because of a Roman cross, well, then explain
to me how for the next three centuries,
countless followers of Jesus Christ went to the
same Roman cross, singing hymns and counting it
joy to die and die as their master
had died.
So as the captain of our salvation, weaker
than us, what was in the cup?
What was in the cup?
That's a very good question.
I want us to look at, well, before
I do that, let me give you an
illustration.
I was teaching at a reformed school.
It was a Christian school that was solidly
founded upon reformed principles.
So the scriptura, the trivium and other things
like that, beautiful work.
And I walked in, I looked at the
headmaster and he said, she said, she goes,
what will you be teaching on?
And I said, well, who will I be
teaching?
She said, well, kindergarten through the 12th grade
in chapel.
And I said, well, that makes it kind
of difficult.
She said, why?
I said, I'll be teaching on propitiation.
And she said, it won't be a problem.
I said, what?
It won't be a problem.
So I got up there and I preached
a sermon on propitiation that I could have
preached in the seminary.
And when I got to the point of
what was in the cup, I asked the
students what was in the cup.
And I remember this little girl, she couldn't
have been more than eight or nine.
She raised her hand.
And I called on her in true reformed
fashion, she stood up, stood to the side
of her desk, put her hand on her
desk like this, and she said, sir, the
wrath of almighty God was in the cup.
Behold, out of the mouth of babes being
able to proclaim what most preachers just simply
bypass or don't understand, how can he pay
for our sins only this way, that he
drank the wrath of almighty God when he
was on that tree, the holy, righteous hatred
of God against evil that should fall upon
you for all the evil you have committed
and for the fact that you are evil.
It fell upon Christ, listen to what the
prophets say, first of all, in Psalm 75,
for a cup is in the hand of
the Lord and the wine foams, it is
well mixed and he pours out of this.
Surely all the wicked of the earth must
drain and drink down its dregs.
Then listen from Jeremiah, for thus the Lord,
the God of Israel, says to me, take
this cup of the wine of wrath from
my hand and cause all the nations to
whom I send you to drink it.
They will drink and stagger and go mad
because of the sword that I will send
among them what was in the cup, the
wrath of almighty God.
Oftentimes here, people say, well, you know, heaven's
heaven because God is there and that is
true, and then they'll say, but hell is
hell because God's not there.
Untrue.
Hell is hell because God is there in
the fullness of his wrath, burning continuous or
continual burnings, as we hear in Isaiah against
the wicked.
And you say this, well, how can hell
be eternal?
Two reasons, one.
It is of infinite duration because they have
committed crimes against an infinitely good God.
But secondly, realize this.
Those in hell.
They do not repent.
They hate God even there, as some theologians
have said, hell is locked from the inside.
And if the king were to come down
into hell and push open the door and
say, come out, be free, all you have
to do is bow your knee to me.
Every person in hell would run to the
door and slam it shut and say, I'd
rather rot in hell because never forget this
in hell.
We have Romans one carried out.
To its perfect degree.
Men are turned over to themselves, they did
not come to God while they were alive
because God is good and they are evil.
And in hell, they are given over completely
to that evil so that they are who
they really are and they would not want
to bow the knee to God, even if
it would cause them to cease from suffering.
Now, I want you to imagine for a
moment that we're in a small village here
in this.
This church, just a hundred meters out the
door here is a dam a thousand miles
high and a thousand miles wide, and it's
filled to the brim with water.
And in one second.
We hear this magnificent, horrifying crash.
The dam has broke completely split in two
from top to bottom and a wall of
water is about to fall upon us, doesn't
matter how fleet of foot you are, doesn't
matter how strong the swimmer you are, you
will not escape.
There is no hope.
And right before the water reaches us, the
ground opens up and drinks it down so
that not one drop of water even splashes
upon your pant leg.
This is what Christ did for you on
Calvary.
He opened himself up, he swallowed down and
extinguished the wrath of God against his people.
Imagine a millstone.
When I was a missionary in Peru, they
said I could still see millstones in some
of the old granaries.
Imagine a millstone that weighed ten thousand pounds
and upon it another that weighed ten thousand
pounds.
And you take just a grain of wheat
and you put it in between the two
in a fraction of a second, it feels
the immense pressure and then explodes under the
weight and is ground to nothing unless a
grain of wheat falls to the ground and
die and abideth alone.
But if it die, but die crushed under
the wrath of God for the scriptures say
in Isaiah fifty three ten and it pleased
the Lord to crush him.
You see, as I said Friday, God cannot
simply lay aside his justice.
He cannot love at the expense of justice.
So in order to demonstrate his love to
his people, he had to do something with
their sin.
Their sin had to be punished.
But he is such a loving God.
He became a man and he suffered the
punishment in our place.
He extinguished the wrath of God because he
satisfied his own justice.
And now he can freely love us because
he has paid for all our crimes now.
I want you to realize something when we
talk about pardon and listen carefully, there have
been cases where presidents and governors and the
like have pardoned criminals at the end of
their office.
They have the right to pardon certain men
and they pardon them.
There have been men who have gotten away
with crimes and there have been men who
have been pardoned, who later commit suicide because
they cannot live with the fact, even though
they are pardoned, they cannot live with the
fact that their crime is outstanding.
They never paid for it.
They live lives of misery.
That's I hear sometimes preachers using the same
illustration, you know, like the governor pardoned this
criminal, so God has pardoned you.
No, it's nothing like that.
You see, when a governor pardons a criminal,
that criminal's crime is still outstanding because it
was never paid for, it's still in the
books, it's there to defile his conscience every
day.
But that's not the case with the Christian.
Your conscience is clean.
Why?
The crime is not in the books.
Why is it not in the books?
Because it was paid for.
It is no longer outstanding.
It's gone.
It's completely gone as though it never happened.
And thus you are free.
That's what it means to be pardoned in
Christianity.
Now, I want to give you something.
One of my favorite authors of all time
and favorite books of all time is John
Flavel, the Puritan, his first volume, The Meditorial
Glories of Christ.
And in that he talks about a certain
transaction before even the creation of the world
in eternity between the father and the son.
And I just want to read it to
you because it's so beautiful.
I want you to listen to it.
The father speaks, my son, here is a
company of poor, miserable souls that have utterly
undone themselves and now lie open to my
justice.
That's you.
Justice demands satisfaction for them or justice will
satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them.
What shall be done for these souls?
And then Christ speaks, oh, my father, such
is my love to and pity for them.
That rather than they shall perish eternally, I
will be responsible for them as their surety,
their guarantee.
Now, listen to what it says.
Listen to what Flavel is trying to get
across here.
Bring in all thy bills that I may
see what they owe thee, Lord.
And what he's saying is Christ didn't enter
into this transaction to save his people unaware
of what it would cost him.
For example, a young man, you know, gets
married and he's all full of love and
romance and everything.
And then he comes to me six weeks
later and he looks at the ring on
his hand and he says, what have I
done?
I had no idea what I was getting
into, and if only I knew I wouldn't
have done it.
That's not the way Christ came to die.
He said, bring in all thy bills, everything
they owe me.
Let me see them.
And then he goes on, bring in all
thy bills that I may see what they
owe thee, Lord, bring them all in.
Now, listen to this label is trying to
get a justification here.
Listen to what he says.
Bring them all in that there may be
no after reckonings with them.
Now, do you understand that young person, you
understand that old person?
Bring in all the bills.
Because when I pay for all these.
I want to be sure there will be
no bill left outstanding and nothing else they
have to pay or add to it, I
want to pay it all.
So that they are perfectly and completely and
forever free of them.
And then he goes on, bring them in,
bring them all in that there may be
no after reckonings with them at my hand,
thou shalt require it.
I will rather choose to suffer their wrath
than they should suffer it upon me, my
father, upon me be all their debts.
And then the father says, but my son,
if thou undertake for them, if you take
their place.
Thou must reckon to pay even the last
might, expect no abatements when you take that
cross.
Don't you think I will diminish the punishment
because it's you, my beloved son, my justice
demands full payment, and if you take their
place, I will not slacken my hand.
If I was to crush them, I will
crush the.
Me.
He says this.
Expect no abatements, if I spare them.
I will not spare you, the only way
you could be spared the judgment of God
is that Christ was not spared the judgment
of God and the son.
Replies content father.
Let it be so, charge it all upon
me, I am able to discharge it, who
can say that I hear these silly, silly
songs that are written today, you know, God
looked all over heaven to see if there
was an angel willing to die and God
looked all over to see if there was
a man willing to die.
It wouldn't have mattered if he found an
angel willing to die or a man willing
to die.
And no one could do this, only God
could pay the justice of God and fully
satisfy for our crimes.
And such was the love of God.
That he would do this, that he would
do this now, I want to come to
an end by reading a text to you,
you remember Abraham.
And his son, Isaac, and Mount Moriah, and
this is what it says now, I want
you to listen to the language, I am
one, I'm old school.
In the sense that I will see the
scriptures as a unity, even though they are
many, many books written by many, many different
people, and even though we have to interpret
the context and understand the reader and everything
about it, I believe that it even transcends
all that and that on every page it's
talking about Jesus.
Everything is hinting at him.
Now, listen to the language of God when
he speaks to Abraham.
Take now your son, your only son.
Whom you love, do you hear that language
any other place?
Like in the New Testament.
About another person.
For God so loved the world, he gave
his only.
His only begotten, his only son, he says,
take now your son, your only son whom
you love, Isaac, and go to the land
of Moriah and offer him there is a
burnt offering on one of the mountains of
which I will tell you.
And see, old man makes the journey.
I think it is also very interesting that
when Isaac finds out he is to be
the sacrifice.
There seems to be no struggle.
No holding the boy down to tie him,
he lays down.
And Abraham possibly draws forth the very flint
knife that he used to circumcise the boy,
he draws back the knife and as his
will gave in to the will of God
and the hand descended down upon the son.
Abraham heard this, Abraham, Abraham, do not stretch
out your hand against the lad and do
nothing to him.
For now, I know that you fear God
since you have not withheld your son, your
only son for me.
And then all of a sudden, Abraham turns
around and he finds a ram in the
thicket caught by its horns and he cries
out, Jehovah Jireh, the Lord will provide.
The Lord has provided.
We hear that story and we all go,
what a that was tense, but what a
beautiful ending to the story.
My dear friend, it wasn't the ending.
It was only the intermission century after century
rolls by and we sit in the audience
wondering, when will the curtain open again to
tell the second part of the story?
And then it opens.
And there's the son of God.
His son, his only son, whom he loves
hanging on a tree, and then God takes
the knife out of Abraham's hand.
And drives it into the heart of his
only begotten son, one poet said, offer up
the sacrifice, creation sends forth the call, offer
up the sacrifice, one life to pay for
them all.
Offer up the sacrifice, the innocent one must
be slain, offer up the sacrifice.
And bring man back to God again, I
hope that actually there's a hymn on your
mind right now.
And it's this.
All the vain things that charmed me most.
I sacrifice them to that blood that in
light of this.
You see that everything else is vain, that
your desires to be anything else other than
his servant.
That your desires to know anything else but
his salvation are just vain and stupid and
unwise.
Flavel when he's writing one of his kin,
and I can't quote him directly, it's too
long, but he says something like this.
He says, I write, but I write as
one who sees and writes by moonlight.
What he's saying is I don't see clearly.
I can't describe to you his glory.
Then he says, oh, fair sun and fair
stars and fair moon, but oh, fairer Lord
Jesus, oh, fair flowers, fair trees and fair
blooms, but oh, fair, fairer, fairer Lord Jesus.
And then he stops with his pen and
he says, no, no, I've wronged him in
speaking this way.
And then he rewrites it and he says
this.
Oh, dark and pitiful son.
Oh, blemished moon, but oh, fair Lord Jesus,
oh, dark and black and twisted flowers.
But oh, fair, fair, fair Lord Jesus died.
And he rose again on the third day,
his death was, in a sense, a vindication
of God's righteousness.
And when God raised him, he vindicated his
only son.
This is my beloved son.
Hear ye him.
This is the one I have chosen.
There is no way to be reconciled to
God except through his beloved son who now
sits at his right hand.
He died.
He rose again and he ascended into glory
and he is what is esteemed.
There is no other name.
We're so foolish and stupid, blind.
We see beauty in so many things that
are trivial.
We look at ourselves in the mirror and
we're impressed.
All of it is pitiful, dark and twisted,
every ambition that doesn't have Christ at its
very center.
It's high treason.
Christ, Christ alone, I love just just listen
to this, I love this passage and it
was used by the ancient church, not so
much now.
It's the psalm of ascension.
Listen to what it says.
What it's saying is that after Christ rose
again from the dead, then for 40 days
he showed himself and then he ascends up
into heaven.
The man, Christ Jesus, ascends up in heaven.
And Spurgeon uses this and I love I
love the way he does it.
It goes like this.
He takes from Psalms 24 and Christ, the
man, the victor.
Here, God's chosen one stands at the very
gates of heaven and he cries out in
a loud voice, lift up your heads, O
gates and be lifted up old ancient doors
that the king of glory might come in.
And when all of heaven hears that voice,
they rush to the wall, they climb upon
the parapet, they look over and they ask
this question, who is this king of glory?
Who dare call out to these doors?
What man is bold enough to demand that
these doors be opened to him since the
beginning of time?
No one has called out to these doors.
No one has dared lay his hand to
the latch of these gates.
Who is this king of glory?
And Jesus responds, the Lord, strong and mighty,
the Lord, mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O gates and lift
them up old ancient doors that the king
of glory may come in.
And when those doors were opened to him,
all of heaven found their gaze set eternally
upon the one they were made for.
All hail the power of Jesus name.
Let angels prostrate fall, bring forth the royal
diadem and crown him Lord of all.
Crown him with many crowns.
And he goes up to the throne and
a greater than Xerxes sits there, and yet
he doesn't wait for a scepter to be
extended to him to see if it's proper
for him to climb the stairs.
He climbs the stairs by his own virtue
and his own merit, the son of God
has returned home the victor and he sits
down beside his father.
It is finished.
It is finished indeed.
This is why we're Christian.
Young people, listen to me.
In this drab, horrid, twisted, vile, pathetic world,
why would you set your heart on any
hero when you have such a victor in
heaven?
And know this, this is the one, the
thing that is most beautiful, the one who
sits there on that throne is flesh of
your flesh and bone of your bone.
The one who sits upon that throne is
your elder brother.
And in the great congregation before God, he
is not ashamed to call the brother brethren.
This is amazing.
Hey.
This is amazing.
So waste your life if you choose, waste
your life if you choose, waste your life
if you choose.
Oh, don't waste your life.
And if you're sitting there today and you're
saying, oh, is it for me?
Is it for me?
I'm unconverted.
But is it for me?
Do you long for it to be for
thee?
So, yes, then it's for thee.
Then come all who are weary and heavy
laden.
But there's nothing.
I am so tired of hearing people tell
me, but I heard the message.
There's nothing in my heart.
I must wait until God does something to
me that is not biblical language.
The biblical language is if you hear his
voice today, do not harden your heart.
Come, come, come.
My heart is dead.
Then seek him all the great Calvinistic preachers
down through the ages.
They were great because they truly believed in
the sovereignty of God and election.
But they would not allow a sinner to
use the sovereignty of God as an excuse
for their own rebellion against God.
You are required, no matter who you are,
if you hear my voice to repent of
your sins and to draw near.
To cry out to him, to seek him,
and you say, well, I seek him and
I seek him, but I feel nothing, I
see nothing, then keep seeking him.
He has commanded thee to seek him, but
it is his prerogative of when he makes
himself known, but he has promised that to
all who seek him, he will make himself
known.
Don't you use the sovereignty of God as
an excuse for your you being passive?
Seek the Lord, seek the Lord, seek the
Lord, seek the Lord.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you
will be saved.
Repent of your sins, turn from your iniquity,
acknowledge your foolish ways, fall down before him,
cry out to him because he is a
merciful God, abounding and loving kindness.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you for your word.
Thank you for the gospel.
Thank you for the joy that it brings
to the saint's heart, though he hear it
a thousand times a day, it is more
beautiful every time.
Lord, save, save and add to your church,
Jesus name, Amen.