Looking at what happened on Good
Friday and then looking at the whole events of Easter. And as you can well imagine in
the world, it's a confused picture. Merrin was looking at the newspaper
this morning and they have articles from the Christian leaders of
many denominations and their articles talk about all sorts
of things, the disasters in this world. and talk about Jesus,
but the one thing that we need to do is to make sure that we
see who Jesus is and see what Jesus has done through the lens
of what God says about him. We are to follow what the apostles
said about him. We are to preach the true Jesus. We are to preach the Jesus who
reigns in heaven right now. We are to preach the Jesus who,
as Norm says, is a successful saviour. that he didn't come
to this earth to try and do something. He came to this earth because
he did something. And when he'd finished his work
on this earth, he cried out, it is finished. And what he meant
was that absolutely everything necessary for every one of God's
children to go to heaven was finished. The law no longer stood
against them. It is finished. And Isaiah, 53
is a passage that many people look to, and it's a wonderful
description of our Saviour. But He says in verse 11, He shall
see the labour of His soul and be satisfied. And so we proclaim
a Saviour who is sufficient to save all of His people. We proclaim
a Saviour who now rules this universe from the throne of heaven
as a man and He is satisfied. He is satisfied with His work
of redemption. He is satisfied with what is
happening in this world because it is His world, and He is God. And so, one of the great verses
in the Scriptures that talks wonderfully about our Saviour
and encapsulates the Gospel is on your notes there, and it's
2 Corinthians 5.21. And it's just a simple verse,
but the depth of it could take up an infinite number of sermons
and we would never finish with it. And it says quite simply,
He, God the Father, made Him who knew no sin to be sin on
our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. And the heart of the gospel,
as Norm said a little while ago, the heart of Christianity is
about who God is and about Him being a substitute. The heart
of the gospel is redemption and the essence of redemption is
the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ, said Spurgeon. We
need a substitute. There's a great story told of
Henry Mahan who was visiting a family on his preaching tour
in Southern America and there was a girl in the house and she
kept talking about how wonderful her father was. And the father
had died and she spoke over and over again in the most adoring
terms of her father. And finally, Henry asked the
girl, please tell me about your father. Why do you love him so? And she said that when she was
a little girl, her father had a serious heart condition. And
if he did any strenuous exercise, he was likely to burst things
in his heart and die. And they were at the beach one
day, and she was out swimming and she got caught. dragged out
and her father saw what was happening and he ran down the beach and
he swam out to her and he brought her into shore and the exertion
of it killed him and he died and she said that's why I love
my dad That's why I talk about my dad, because he died for me. And Paul lived his life, as Christians
should live their lives, with those great words in Galatians
2.20, isn't it? I no longer live, but Christ
lives in me. The life I live in the body,
I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me
and gave himself for me. And so this is at the heart of
what really happened 2,000 years ago. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus
is the message of Holy Scripture, and the Gospel of the Lord Jesus
culminates in who He is and what He did. Jesus Christ and Him
crucified is the Gospel. And it's the Lord Jesus becoming
what we were, really becoming what we were, so that we might
become what He is. It's a remarkable passage of
Scripture, 2 Corinthians, and it has such wonderful descriptions
of who Christians really are in their Saviour. in their substitute. And so let's just look through
this small verse of scripture and see if we can, with God the
Holy Spirit's help, guide us to see what these words mean.
And if these words mean what the scriptures cause them to
mean in our lives, then we'll go away from here rejoicing in
the wonders of redeeming love. And like that little girl, we'll
boast about our Saviour. We'll want to brag about Him
and talk about how amazing He is. So the first word in it is
He. And very evidently from the context,
the He there is God the Father. In verse 19 of chapter 5 it says
namely, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting
their trespasses against them. Obviously the world there does
not mean every human being in all of the world because there
are multitudes in hell, from Cain through to Judas, the sons
of Korah, multitudes in our day whose sins will be counted against
them in eternity. So it is God the Father, the
holy, holy, holy God, the creator of this universe, The Holy God
has. God never does anything except
with a perfect design. He never does anything outside
of His sovereign will and purpose. Nothing happens by accident in
this world. Not a drop of rain falls without
God's decree, not a thought of human man happens without God's
decree. Everything in this universe is
God's. Otherwise, in that place where
God does not rule sovereignly, we have to find another name
for Him and we have to find another ruler. This is God's universe. It is perfectly under His control. He does everything with a purpose
and He has made This word made means to cause Him to be. Isaiah 53.10 says that it pleased
the Lord, it satisfied the Lord to bruise Him. He has put Him
to grief. And when you make His soul an
offering for sin. God the Father caused the Lord
Jesus by a transfer, of filth, iniquity, sin, transgression,
shame and guilt, caused him to be those things for chosen sinners
as their surety, as their substitute, as their guarantee, from the
objects of his love, his children, to the darling of his heart.
And then there's a wonderful description of our Lord Jesus.
Him who knew no sin. From all eternity He had lived
in perfect love and perfect holy communion with His Father and
the Spirit. We have no idea what this is
like. Until we meet the Lord in glory,
we can only imagine with sin-darkened eyes what it must have been for
God to live with God, with perfect holiness, perfection, Perfect
love, untainted by anything. We worry about so many things
from the past and around us now and in the future before us.
What will become of our dearly loved children, our parents,
friends, what sort of world we're living in. None of these things
troubled God in eternity. There were no powers to frustrate
Him, there were no unknowables to ponder, and there was no sin
to defile Him in any way. He lived in this state before
God. And when he came to this earth,
the Lord Jesus, as a man born of a woman, born under the law,
continued to live in that perfect, holy communion with his Father. He's the lamb of God. His father
testifies of him. This is my beloved son in whom
I am well pleased. The Lord Jesus himself challenged
the Pharisees and the people who would kill him. to find any
sin in him. In John 8, verse 46, he says,
Which one of you convicts me of sin? He portrayed himself
openly as their Messiah, as God before them. At the beginning
of his ministry, God the Father proclaimed who he was, John the
Baptist proclaimed who he was, and he proclaimed who he was,
and he said to the Pharisees who knew what he was saying about
himself, you have now three years to find any sin in me." And these
minions of Satan examined him microscopically. For three years
they watched him as a cat watches a mouse it's about to kill. If
possible, they would have had the testimony of demons themselves
who spoke. But the demon said, I know who
you are, the Holy One of God, They eventually had one of his
chosen disciples who was with him from his baptism until that
last fateful night. Judas says, I have betrayed innocent
blood. They took him to Pilate. I find
no fault in him. They nailed him to the cross
and the thief on the cross said, this man has done nothing wrong. These men who knew the law in
the most minute detail, they watched him and his disciples
through the lens of God's strict justice. Just as when the lamb
was brought to the temple to be slain, they examined it to
make sure it had no blemish or defect. These men for three years
examined the Lord Jesus. and after three years of wanting
to find some sin in him, they have only one charge against
him, that he claims to be the Christ of God, a truth he cannot
deny. But we should now stand thankful
that for three years they examined him with such intensity and such
animosity But they testified to us that they had found him
a spotless lamb. There was no sin in him when
he was beaten until the bones of his body were exposed. No
sinful thoughts in Him when His beard was plucked out, no sinful
emotions when He was spat upon, when He was mocked, when He was
nailed to the cross, when He was hung naked, exposed to shame,
no sin, not a sinful thought, no sin. The Lord Jesus' purity
extended beyond what can be seen with our eyes. The command of
God was to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul,
mind and strength. Who on earth can begin to know
what that statement really means? Be honest. You and I don't even
have a clue where to begin the search. But God saw the heart
of His Son. This is my Son in whom I am well
pleased. He had no sin. Sin which was
repulsive to Him was not in Him. But then the next words of this
verse should be shocking to us. Him who had no sin was made to
be sin. And this is the heart of the
Christian gospel, isn't it? This is the heart of how God
saves His people. The Lord Jesus was made to be
what we are. The only man who never knew sin
was the only man who ever lived who really knew how vile sin
really is. And that is because He is God
the Son. So to be made sin was if God
Almighty gathered up all the sins of all His children through
all the ages from Abel to the last of His children to come
into this world, into one enormous, putrefying, seething mass, and
He lays them all on the Lord Jesus. And Jesus says that they
are His sins. They weren't pasted on the Lord
Jesus. He was made sin. He took them
on himself as if they were his. And when God the Father saw sin
in His Son, His wrath was justifiably provoked. The holy law cried
out for satisfaction. Zechariah 13 says, Awake, O sword! Awake, O sword of divine justice! Verse 7 of chapter 13, he says,
Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is my companion. The holiness of God, burst out
when it saw sin on the Lord Jesus. As he hung on that tree, he was
cursed by God under the law and the sins of God's people were
placed on him. And it was just that God did
it. Proverbs 17.15 says, He who justifies
the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike
are an abomination to God. God will never do anything which
impugns His holy character. He will never commit an abomination. And He never saves sinners unless
holy justice is done and seen to be done. It was just. It was right. under God's law
that Jesus be punished by God Himself. As Romans 3.25 says,
this was to demonstrate His righteousness, to demonstrate the righteousness
of God. And the next verse says that
He would be just, so that God would be just and He would be
the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. So the one thing that brings
horror to the mind of God is sin. It mocks His deity. It scorns His love. It challenges
His omnipotence. It seeks to destroy His holy
character. It's not just a physical and
emotional act. God is spirit, and sin attacks
Him spiritually. His soul hates sin and the sinner. The Lord God tries the righteous,
says Psalm 11 verse 5. But the wicked and him that loves
violence, his soul hates. And so this was the anguish that
our Saviour felt in Gethsemane. He was to be made sin. He wasn't
fearful of the Romans or the Jews. Not at all. What caused him anguish
that evening, what caused him, as if his heart had broken for
him to sweat great drops of blood, was because he was going to be
made sin. Not just a sin offering, but
sin. Not just a sin sacrifice, but
sin. Not just a ransom for sin, but
sin. More than just a transfer of
a debt, more than just a legal transfer, he was made sin. And his heart, that holy heart
that loved God, fully loved God, broke. As he cried out in agony,
if it's possible, let this cup pass from me." But as I said earlier, the Lord
Jesus always does things with a purpose. God always does things
purposefully. This was done, as this verse
goes on wonderfully to say, He was made sin for us. He was made sin on our behalf,
we who are nothing but sin, immortal souls we are, but who deserve
His wrath, ungodly wretches who live in open rebellion against
God. Us, in this verse, is described
in the rest of scriptures as God's chosen people who look
to Him and live, who are called by His grace, called by that
omnipotence which opens blind eyes and brings spiritual life
where there was death, for those people who were loved with an
everlasting love. on our behalf, the Lord Jesus
did all these things. It's a thing done for another.
And it has pictures in the original language of someone who stands
over and shields and defends and protects another. All great
pictures of our Saviour. It can also mean in our favour,
in our place. in our stead. The Lord Jesus suffered amazingly
all that time ago, and I pray that God would continually stir
our minds to know something of the depths, of the wickedness
of modern teaching. so prevalent in this world that
claims that Jesus somehow tried to do something if only men would
respond in some way, that Jesus' death is sufficient for all if
all would believe. I pray that God would protect
us from teaching that pretends to love people by diminishing
the glory of the Lord Jesus as if His death is something which
is common for all, as if He tried to do something for all. God
the Father loves His people from eternity. He loved His people
before the foundation of the world and He never stopped loving
them. He was not going to entrust their
salvation into the whims of men of any sort whatsoever. And when
His Son came, His Son came with a purpose. He came with an absolutely
clear purpose. He was the Lamb, as the scriptures
say, slain from the foundation of the world. And God's children,
according to 2 Timothy 1.9, were saved in Christ Jesus from before
the foundation of the world. And I'm really troubled by Christian
people who call sin occasional slip-ups, or speak as if the
sin in their life is under control in some way, and they only have
a few little things. Sin is what we are. Sin comes
out of our hearts. The bits that we see, as much
as we try and hide it from each other, the bits that we do see
are just a tiny expression of a heart problem. As Octavius Winslow said, it
is to this natural darkness, this lack of understanding of
how sinful sin is, this ignorance of sin, this lack of the Spirit's
teaching, that we are to attribute all false and erroneous views
that men have advanced, touching the nature and design of Christ's
death. To say that the Lord Jesus came
and tried and failed for those people in hell is an attack on
His deity. All of God was in Christ Jesus. The fullness of deity dwells
in Him. It's an attack on what he has
done this weekend that we remember in so many places the Lord Jesus
is being held up as someone who is not satisfied because he tried
and failed. But Isaiah 53 says so plainly,
isn't it, that he will be satisfied. Hebrews 12.2 says that for the
joy set before him, The joy that the Lord Jesus now enjoys is
the joy of the love of His people from eternity, His bride. He loves His bride with an ever-ending
love. He loves His bride passionately. Nothing He ever did was going
to fail. So that, God always acts without
purpose. This world and salvation of God's
people is not a random activity. We might become. we might be
caused to be, to come into being. This is not perhaps, the might
doesn't mean perhaps, it's just a declaration of absolute certainty
that God will be seen to be just and a saviour and he'll do this
without any compromise to his character. That we might become
the righteousness of God. God's righteousness is a righteousness
that we can have no understanding of until we really meet God.
We must accept it by faith. God's righteousness is a holy
righteousness. God's righteousness is not just
good, doing your best or trying. God's righteousness demands absolute
perfection. God demands absolute holiness. Nothing that isn't perfect will
ever get into heaven. Hebrews 7.26 is on your notes
there. For it was fitting for us to
have such a high priest, such a high priest who sacrificed
himself. Holy is the Lord Jesus, innocent
is the Lord Jesus, undefiled, separate from sinners and exalted
above the heavens. Colossians 1.22 describes the
Lord Jesus' bride. He has now reconciled you in
His fleshly body through death in order with the purpose to
present you before Him wholly blameless and beyond reproach."
That was the purpose of the Lord Jesus' came, wasn't it? To present
you before Him wholly blameless and beyond reproach. He is discussed
in the Scriptures as being a God who entered into a covenant.
Hebrews 13.20 talks about the eternal covenant in the blood
of the Lord Jesus. And in Hebrews 7 it talks about
Him being the guarantor or the surety of a better covenant. And many of you, including me,
have borrowed money and we've had guarantors. In these days,
if you go to the bank, if Mel goes to the bank and she borrows
a couple of thousand dollars and Glenda goes guarantor for
her, they will seek Mel in time for the money. Mel is responsible
for paying the money. And if Mel defaults, then they
will say to Glenda, you owe us $2,000 or whatever it is. The
sureties in Jesus' day were different sort of sureties altogether.
When the arrangement was made, no longer would they ever look
to Mel for satisfaction of that debt. The debt was Glenda's. They would only ever look to
Glenda for satisfaction of that debt. And so when the Lord Jesus,
in that eternal covenant, in a sense shook hands with God
the Father, The responsibility of getting all of God's children
into heaven was Jesus' responsibility. That's why he's called the Good
Shepherd. The Good Shepherd takes responsibility for the sheep.
If the Good Shepherd has 100 sheep and only 90 come back,
you don't go harassing the sheep. You go to the Shepherd and say,
where are the other 10? You were responsible for 100,
where are 100? The Lord Jesus took responsibility,
absolute responsibility, to present all of God's children all of
those he loved from eternity, to present them wholly blameless
and beyond reproach. And the scriptures talk of our
Saviour. He will not fail. Jesus did not fail. Jesus now
is satisfied. So this is a righteousness is
that gets people into heaven with great joy, great joy from
God, great joy from the other saints. It's a righteousness
that's established under the law of God. It's a righteousness
established before men, seen by thousands of witnesses. This
is the righteousness that we are before God. The Lord Jesus
is described in Jeremiah as the Lord, our righteousness. And
in Jeremiah 33, he describes his church, Jerusalem, and she
is described as the Lord, our righteousness. We have either
Jesus' righteousness or we have absolutely nothing. I have Jesus'
righteousness or I go to hell. In my Adam flesh I am sinful
and nothing but sinful, but in Jesus I am righteous, perfectly
righteous. It's not the righteousness that
men see as righteousness, it's God's holy righteousness. And all this happened because
the Lord Jesus loved His people in eternity. He loved His people
as He walked on this earth. and worked out a manifest, demonstrable
righteousness for them. And it happened at Calvary when
he stood in their place, bore the wrath of God that they deserved. until Divine Justice said, it
is finished. God the Father is satisfied. It happens in conversion when
God the Holy Spirit comes and opens our eyes to see who we
really are. as sin and to see who the Lord
Jesus really is as holy and righteous. And he opens our eyes to see
that wonderful sacrifice of our Saviour. And it happens in our
continual experience as the Lord Jesus sends His Spirit into this
world, into the hearts of His people, and He takes, as John
16 says, He takes the things that Jesus earned, the things
that Jesus has, and He makes them known to us, and He continues
to make them known to us. Over and over again in every
day of our lives we need to know that my standing before God is
on the basis of who Jesus is and nothing I ever do. It's always
on the basis of who Jesus is. And so just as the Jews searched
in vain for sin on the Lord Jesus, God sees no sin in His children. David, that great sinner, we're
reminded of his sins so often. We need to be reminded of his
Saviour more often. David says, Blessed are those
whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed
is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. The sins of God's people are
covered. Old things are gone. In 2 Corinthians
5 it says, Old things are gone. They've passed away. Behold,
all things have become new. Verse 17. Our sins have been
blotted out. They have been taken away. Jeremiah
says that they will be searched for on that great day of judgment
and they will not be found. All things become new. Here I
stand before God, a holy God, a righteous God, the God to whom
every man shall give an answer. the God who must punish, and
I stand before Him without one crime, without one offence. I stand before Him as one who
has perfectly fulfilled all of God's law and all of God's will
from the moment of my birth until I am caused to leave this world. I have perfectly obeyed God,
not in myself, never in myself, But I've done it in the Lord
Jesus, my substitute. All that we are, Christ became. All that He is, we have become. We are members of His body, flesh
of His flesh, bone of His bone. And as He is, so are we in this
world. He's a great Saviour. He's a
wonderful Savior. He's a satisfied Savior. He's
a successful Savior. And God the Father is delighted
with Him. And God the Father is delighted
with all who are in Him. God the Son, my substitute. Amen.