You can open your Bibles to Leviticus
chapter 1. I'll be honest with you, my heart
is full of what I just listened to. Let me make sure my iPhone
is turned off. That would be really bad. Somebody
called me in the middle of the message, you know. No, it is.
I joked yesterday. about Larry and I closing down
a conference, but if the last message ever preached here was
the one we just heard, that would be the way, you know. If what
the Lord said to us in the last few minutes through our brother
is not enough to bring you to faith, I don't know what else
could be said. If it's not enough to strengthen
your faith, I don't know what I'm going to add to it. I can
go home on that, and I don't mean back to Iowa. But, I told Donnie I'd preach. And I do want to keep my word,
so I'll go ahead and try and see if the Lord will give us
some small nugget of something to get a hold of. And I want
to thank you all. Thank you, Pastor, for inviting
me here. I know you all thank us. You
act like we've done you a favor. I tell you, you all call us,
you give us a vacation, and then you pay us. I've heard of a paid
vacation, but other than this, I've never been paid to go on
vacation. But that's what I feel like.
I'm going to be with some of the people of God. For me, kind
of going back to the area I came from, I was raised mostly in
West Virginia. Come down here among the mountains,
I live in the flatlands right now. And stayed with some folks
from the church, the Kirkpatrick's, hosted me so well. Mary said
in an email to me, we'd set you up with the Kirkpatrick's, but
if you want a motel, we can arrange that. And I said, no, that'll
be fine. I tell you, they're in the Holiday Inn. It's nice.
It's where we stay. The Holiday Inn won't bring you
good food like we got and give you nice conversation. We had
a great time. I was thinking about this. You
know, in the Gospel, we learn that God treats us like the Lord
Jesus Christ. You know, you may think, well,
that's over speaking it. No, it's not. I mean, it's more
than we have a right to think. And we wouldn't dare think it
if the Scriptures didn't say it. But He loves us, not with
a love like He loves His Son. He loves us with that love. He
blesses us not with blessings like what He gives to Christ.
He blesses us with those blessings. We are treated by the Father
as though we were the Son. And we thank God for that. And in a very similar way, And
I think I probably speak for all the preachers, you all treat
us like we're Christ. We come up here and preach the
message of Christ and you come up and thank us for it like we
invented it. Like we did it. You treat us like kings. And
I thank you for all that. There are more than one problem
taken care of in the gospel. We tend to emphasize the legal
problem. We are criminals in God's kingdom. We are sinners in His creation. And we emphasize the putting
away of those sins. And it's right that we do. Because
that is the root of all the other problems. But we also got this
problem. We're dead. We don't just have
to be justified, we've got to be made alive. We're kind of
like this, this is the best way I can think of illustrating it.
Imagine a guy is in prison and has a terminal illness. His execution
date is set for tomorrow morning and the doctor's there and done
some tests and said he's going to be dead by tomorrow morning.
Well you can come in and maybe you can call the governor and
get him a pardon. Won't change anything. He's still dead tomorrow
morning. Or maybe you could find you a
doctor who could work a miracle cure. And he survives till tomorrow
morning. Won't do him any good. Because
the executioner is waiting for him. We need both the legal problem
and the life problem taken care of. Now last night I was speaking
mostly about the life problem. This morning I want to deal a
little bit more with the legal problem. That we're sinners. that were criminals, and the
judge has pronounced sins. The soul that sins is going to
die. And this judge is absolutely
inflexible. He says, I will by no means clear
the guilty. No wonder Job said, how can a
man be righteous in God's eyes? How's that going to happen? But let me get your attention
with this, and I hope this perks up someone's ear, maybe
somebody that's walking around under the weight of their guilt
and a sense of condemnation. There is no good reason for you
to leave here today with a burden of guilt on your
conscience. There is no good reason for it. Now there may be causes, but
there's a difference between a cause and a reason. You see, a reason is a cause
that makes sense. That's why they call it reason.
It's reasonable. But there can be unreasonable
causes, like pride. You might leave every sin all
over you because you're just too proud to admit that it's
there. The thing about pride is it can make it so you won't
confess your sins before men, but it will not get rid of the
sins before God or before your own eyes. You may go through
the day putting on a big show for everybody that you're happy,
but when you're alone in the dark and it's just you and your
conscience, that won't do, will it? You can't talk yourself into
thinking you're good enough for God. Pride might make you walk
out of here with your sins still on you. Unbelief, of which pride
really is just one example. But unbelief, you won't be able
to shake off whatever error of truth still resides within you. I know a lot of you, but I don't
know all of you. I don't know what you've listened to up to
this point. But I know this, every one of us is born wrong.
We're wrong about God the moment we know anything about God. The
moment we know there is a God, we're wrong about Him. We're
wrong about how He does things. The first moment we realize that
we need salvation, we're wrong about how we can get it. And
we stay wrong until God changes us. We stay in unbelief. until God changes that. And so
maybe you'll leave here under your sin in pure unbelief. It
might even be that pure or that unbelief that's just a form of
false pride. You say, well, I'm just not good
enough to be saved. That's not your problem. You're too good
to be saved. I don't care what you say. There's only two states,
really, two spiritual conditions. You are either clothed in the
righteousness of Christ or you are self-righteous, one or the
other. You say, oh no, I just don't think I'm good enough even
for God to save me. And you think that sounds humble, but that's
an insult to God. You've said I'm too big a fish
for God to catch me. I'm too wily for God to get it
done. And really hiding behind that
is your belief and hope that sometime in the future you'll
be good enough for God to save you. And that's just self-righteousness
wrapped in false humility. They say, you know, that's kind
of rough. Well, sometimes you've got to
be a little rough. I want to tell it to you like it is. I
want to unmask you if I can. Not so that I will know who you
are, because it doesn't matter what I think about you. I want
you to know who you are. If God will ever teach you who
you are, you'll be real interested in who He is. There is no reason for you to
leave here. There may be a cause. May God
remove the cause. And may you see there's no reason
for you to leave here under a burden of your sin. And I say that as
though I'm speaking primarily to unbelievers. But we believers still wrestle
with this thing, don't we? We know, as our brother pointed
out, we know some things. We understand how God saves sinners,
and there are times when we feel as though God has saved us, and
there are a whole lot of times when we feel as Brother Johnny
Bell, remember him, said, lost as a ball in high weeds. Lost. And we feel as though grace
has never touched us. And our sins come crashing in
on us. Remember, there's a reason the
devil's called the accuser of the brethren. He'll weasel his
way into your conscience and accuse you of sin. And the point
is, you've got to admit, he's right. Historically speaking,
he's right. We did it. We did it. But he takes that
historical reality and tries to make it a spiritual reality.
And it can be tough in this old mind we've got that, you know,
the flesh and the spirit both share in that one mind and they're
both talking in there. We've kind of got multiple personality
disorder, you know, voices in our head. Telling us different
things. And they both speak with the
same voice. They sound, because it's me. Either way, it's me
in there. Oh, you feel so guilty. No reason
for you to leave your feeling walls. Now, the mechanism of the gospel.
I haven't read anything yet. Let's read from Leviticus 1.
Let's hear God speak before I do. The Lord called to Moses and
spake unto him out of the tabernacle. That tabernacle is a picture
of Christ. God's never going to speak to you. He's going to
speak to you out of Christ. It will come through Christ. He
is God's spokesman. He is God's revelation. Spoke
to them out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying,
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man
of you bring an offering unto the Lord, he shall bring your
offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock. If his offering be a burnt sacrifice
to the Lord, let him offer a male without blemish. He shall offer
it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle
of the congregation before the Lord. And he shall put his hand
upon the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for
him to make atonement for him. And he shall kill the bullock
before the Lord. And the priest, Aaron's son, shall bring the
blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that
is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And he shall
flay the burnt offering, and cut it into pieces. And the sons
of Aaron, the priests, shall put fire upon the altar, and
lay the wood in order upon the fire. And the priests, Aaron's
sons, shall lay the parts, the head and the fat, in order upon
the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar. But
as inwards in his legs shall he wash in water, and the priests
shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering
made by fire of sweet savour unto the Lord. Now the mechanism
of the gospel is substitution. I hear people say, the most important
part of the gospel, there is no such thing. Every part of
the gospel is absolutely essential. Now it's not absolutely essential
that you understand every part of the gospel, but it had to
be done. Everything that Christ did was
necessary to be done. I remember in times past and
not understanding this, I said, well it wasn't necessary that
Christ die by crucifixion, just that he died. Well, that's not
true. I guarantee you the Father would
not have put His Son through that if it could have been done
in an easier way. If it could have been a nice
peaceful die in your sleep death, that's what He would have got
if that could have done it. It took something more. Everything
He did, all His suffering, and remember everything of our Lord's
conception unto His death was suffering. See, we couldn't all
have been bad, that's because you've never lived in heaven. If you'd ever lived in heaven,
anywhere on earth is suffering. If you'd ever lived in perfect
righteousness and fellowship with the Father, you'd know that
any existence on this earth qualifies as suffering. This may be the best we've ever
experienced, But it was not the best our Lord Jesus ever experienced.
He came into the slums of creation. He who was the King of all came
among the outcasts. He who was perfectly clean came
to live among the lepers in their filth and their stench and their
disease. All the suffering was necessary.
The main spring, as it were, of the gospel is substitution. Peter described it this way.
The righteous one suffers for the unrighteous to bring us to
God. That's it. Substitution is not
hard to understand. It's simple as can be. He who deserves nothing but blessing
got nothing but cursing. So that we who deserve nothing
but cursing get nothing but blessing. He who did not earn the wrath
of God got it in full. So that we who worked all our
lives to earn it will never receive a drop of it. That's substitution. Don't have to make it any more
complicated than that. Substitution sets forth a just,
righteous, vindictive, and bloody God. And sophisticated religion
has no time for that. They want a soft guy. A God who
loves everyone, and loves them as they are, and perfectly content
for them to be the way they are. who is like a doting grandfather
who will excuse all the misbehavior of his grandchildren. And I know
a little something about that. The Bible is correct when it
says love covers a multitude of sins. God doesn't excuse anything.
He forgives a multitude of sins, but He doesn't excuse any of
them. Never think that grace is God taking a light view of
sin. The grace of God did not make
our sin less sinful. The gospel does not say sin is
not so bad as the law made it out to be. Grace is not law light. See, grace is a satisfaction
of that law, a full and complete satisfaction of God's righteousness
and God's justice and God's vindictive nature. It is right that we not seek
vengeance. Paul said, don't you try to get
back at anybody. They do you wrong, leave it alone.
Why? Give room to the Lord. He'll
take care of it. Yes, we don't seek vengeance.
Why? Because God says, vengeance is
mine. He will get his pound of flesh
for every wrong done. Such doctrine is not accepted
in sophisticated religion. Such doctrine is not accepted,
that is, the doctrine of substitution is not accepted in sophisticated
religion because it sets forth man as a horrible creature in
two ways. First of all, look what man did
to the Lord Jesus Christ. Men said, we need to be nice.
We need to learn to love one another. Well, look what happened
when divine niceness and love showed up. They killed him. They killed him in a most brutal
way. And they had fun doing it. These were not Roman soldiers
filled with the sense of justice, who with sorrow went to Calvary
thinking, this man deserves death and we're going to have to do
this. They mocked him. They spit on him. They had a
party. That's man. The Jews were delighting
in their own way. They were so happy that they
got piled over a barrel and got him to consent to this. That's
man. That's what substitution says
man is. Another reason sophisticated religion doesn't like substitution
is because it says we're so bad that nothing less than the slaughter
of God's Son can save us. You can measure The seriousness
of a disease by the power of the medicine required to heal
it. You go to the doctor, say I'm
not feeling good. He checks you over and says go
and take an aspirin. You'll be fine. You figure I must not have
anything bad. You go and you tell the doctor,
I've not been feeling good. He checks you over and says look,
I want you to go to the hospital. We've got to take some x-rays,
this, that and the other, and they take some x-rays. Everybody's
looking concerned. And they start pulling out medicine,
I mean expensive stuff. And there's needles in units.
What do you start thinking? I must have something bad. Even
if they don't tell you what it is, you know it's bad. Because
they pulled out the big gun. Nothing less. And I use the word
slaughter because that's what it was. These pictures of Jesus dying
on the cross look so sweet. You know, just a few nail prints
here and there, a little bit of blood. Oh my. The prophet
said six, seven hundred years before it ever happened, he said
there's one from who will you turn your face away. I just can't
look at it. You say, well there's two thieves,
they crucified him. No, they weren't beaten up like
he was before they crucified him. There was nothing that could
be done to a man and he didn't stay alive. that they didn't
do to the Lord Jesus Christ. They slaughtered. What does that say about you
and me? That's how bad we are. That's how serious the problem
is. That's the only thing that would
remedy it. Men do not want to look at the
death of Christ as a substitution, but as a demonstration of God's
love. Well, it sure is a demonstration of God's love. God committed
His love toward us, and while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us in our place. It's a demonstration of love
because it's a substitution. Now, I spoke somewhat of the
affection that I have for you from brethren everywhere. It's
so good to get together with you. I've got three children.
I'm just going to be honest. I wouldn't give them one of them
for you. or for the whole lot of you. And I wouldn't expect
you to give up your children for me. If I was a criminal, if I killed
somebody, and the judge said, you're going to be put to death,
you would not stand up and say, here, you take my son. You'd
kill him instead. You wouldn't do it. And if you
did, I'd think you're crazy. But God did it. And what's worse,
He was the executioner. Imagine your child standing on
a scaffold. Would you pull the lever? Let him drive. If his
head was on a block, would you swing the axe? If he was in a
chair, would you pull the switch? God did. Y'all, that's love. That's unimaginable love. But it's love because it's substitution. They set forth Christ's death
as a victory over our enemies. Well, it sure is. But it's a
victory over our enemies because it's a substitution. He conquered not by living, but
by dying. I don't know how long it took the devil and
the demons to catch on to what had just happened. I mean, you
know, we can speculate, but I tend to think they were pretty happy.
until they put two and two together about what just happened. They
killed the Son of God and in so doing released every one of
the children of God from death. How frustrating it must be to
be a devil. Everything you do turns out exactly
opposite what you hoped to gain by it. We got him. Yeah, you did. And when you got
him, you lost everybody else that he died for. In just a few
days, you're not going to have him anymore. Substitution. They say he's a
martyr. Well, he was in a sense. His
message is what motivated those Pharisees to seek his death.
That's what a martyr is. It comes from the Greek word
for a witness. Somebody who dies for his witness. The Lord did. But that's because his witness
was a substitution. Christ's death, above all things,
was a sacrifice. The death of a righteous person
in place of an unrighteous people. It's the work of a holy and just
God who would not budge in negotiation over the payment for sin. The
only change that God was willing to have in the punishment of
sin is who would receive the punishment. But there was no
change in the punishment. Whatever Christ endured is what
we deserve. Not one bit more, not one bit
less. God did not say, I'll punish
my son instead, but since it's my son, I'm going to go light.
Yeah, it'll be 40 strikes, but it'll be 40 easy strikes. No
sir. A full weight of divine wrath,
and you and I have no clue what it is. I said those words, I
don't know what divine wrath is. I once saw, I was in a bowling
alley, and this was way back, back in the 70's, which for some
of you young kids would be like the dark ages. But I was alive
then. And I was in a bowling alley
and some guy went by with a jacket and said, Vietnam vet, I'm sure
to go to heaven because I spent my time in hell. You know something,
I don't want to make light of what our military suffer. What
we send in to endure and what we send in to do is tough to
bear. But I don't care how bad it is
on the battlefield, it's not hell. We have no idea what hell
is. And we never will. We never will
if we're in Christ. Boy, He knows what it is. He
knows what it is in full. The doctrine of substitution
permeated the sacrificial system of Israel's worship. Spotless
animals served as substitutes for sinful men. Our religion
involves some kind of sacrifice. But you will notice this, near
as I know of any religion, the religion of Jesus Christ is the
only one that sets forth a sacrifice as a just payment for wickedness. You see, while God is vengeful,
He's not bloodthirsty. He says, I don't take pleasure
in him that dies. Now, the gods are pagans. They
love sacrifice just what they're devils. And devils love death. Devils love suffering. They take
pleasure in the death of him that dies. God doesn't. So they're bloodthirsty gods. And that's why they've got to
keep offering them more sacrifices. Because it isn't a matter of
justice. Those gods are never satisfied because they're just
bloodthirsty gods. You've seen me now, I think,
two or three times, I've been taking a drink. I'm water thirsty. Those gods are bloodthirsty,
so they've got to have them a sip once in a while. And so that's
what they offer them. And they're just trying to placate
the temper tantrums and lusts of their weakened gods. God is
just. And a sacrifice, a proper sacrifice,
offered properly by the proper person, he will receive it and
that will be the end of it. It's done. The reason we don't
pretend that that wine turns into real blood and that we're
reenacting the actual sacrifice of Christ is that we know God's
a just God. Christ doesn't have to be sacrificed
again. The God of justice said, here's
what is required in payment of sin. Christ rendered it. And
God said, all that's required is done. I ask for no more. There is no wrath in me. It's
been spent. And wrath will never come up
again. for the people of God. Several things are necessary
for a proper substitution. There's got to be a suitable
substitute. One who has no sins of his own to bear. Someone God will accept. There's
got to be a proper place to offer it. It was the tabernacle in
the days of the Jews. There must be a priest to offer
it. someone whose hands are clean
else he'll defile the sacrifice in the gospel Christ is all those
things he is the sacrifice he is the place it's offered he
is the priest who offers it he is the lamb of God Oh, how many
lambs of men had died in Israel's temple. And all thousands, millions. I was reading there about when
Solomon offered, or dedicated to the temple, hundreds of thousands
of animals just from him. He slaughtered more cattle than
you've probably ever seen. And for all that slaughtered
cattle, sheep, the poor folk, pigeons and doves, Not one sin
was ever put away. Not one. Rivers of bovine blood
cannot put away human sin. The lambs of men never accomplish
anything. John said, Behold the Lamb of
God. Abraham and Isaac walking up
Mount Moriah. Isaac had been well trained about
how you approach God. He said, Father, we got to work.
You've got the tinderbox with the fire in it. Where's the lamb? Abraham, you talk about seeing
Christ's day. This is one of the times he saw
Christ's day. He said, son, God will provide himself a lamb for
the sacrifice. I wish I had half the faith Abraham
did. He didn't have a Bible. There
wasn't a Bible. He believed God. He believed
God enough to tell those fellows when he was going up the mountain.
He said, you all stay here, me and the boy, we're going to go
up and worship and we're going to come back. You say, how could
Abraham ever do that to his son? He figured it only for a little
while if it happened at all. He believed in substitution.
Somebody else was going to take this. He said, God will provide
providio to see to it. Our Lord will see to it. And
some thousands of years later, Jesus Christ walks by where John's
baptized. God said, John, that's the one.
He said, there he is. There's the Lamb of God. Abraham
said he'd provide one. There he is. He's the Lamb. And he is the tabernacle. He's where God lives. Bible says
the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and that word translated
dwelt the same word the New Testament uses to describe the tabernacle
That's God tabernacling with his people God is in Christ Reconciling
the world to himself He is where we can meet God and
not die Now I'll tell you this everybody here is going to meet
God That's going to happen Few of us, maybe many of us, will
live to tell about it. And then he is the priest that
offers the sacrifice. He entered the holy place with
his own blood. And not that holy place over
there in Israel. He entered the very presence
of God. He offered himself without spot to God. People say, will
you accept Jesus? He was never offered to you.
He was offered to God. How presumptuous to think that
God would ever set forth His Son to us. to receive him or
reject him, to pass judgment on him as to whether he's worthy
for us to call him Savior or Lord. He was never presented
to us for our scrutiny. He set himself before God and
said, I am without sin, but I bear the sin of many. And the father
said, right, you don't have any of your own, but you have a lot,
and you're going to pay for it. And he did. And the father said,
I accept your payment. That's enough. But all of this leaves out one
important aspect of the gospel. And that is, sin must be laid
on the substitute. How did that happen? Well, first
of all, the Bible says God does it. All we like sheep have gone
astray. And the Lord has laid on Him
the iniquity of us all. People say, yeah, you see, Christ
died for everybody. No, He laid on Him the iniquity of all His
sheep. He said, all we like sheep went astray. Not a thing was
done for the goats. You know, the gospel is not a
process of turning goats into sheep. The preaching of the gospel
is the business of finding the sheep. They've been sheep from
before the foundation of the world. They're just lost sheep.
Wandering, stupid sheep. You know, of all the things sheep
need, it's shepherds what they need. Because they can't look
out for themselves. And all God's sheep, their sins
were laid on Christ by God. Why did God do it? Because we
never would. First of all, we'd probably never
be willing to admit we had any to lay on Him. And any pride
we'd refuse to do it, because nobody's going to pay my price. My uncle lay dying at 75 years
old, and my dad tried to talk to him about the gospel. And
he said, I wouldn't be right, for me right here at the very
end, after all this sin, to lay it on Christ. I wouldn't be right. How stupid it makes us. How stupid. And then we couldn't provide
anything God would accept. That's why God must do it. But while it is true that this
thing has been done by God, it must be played out in earth's
history. He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,
but He must also be the Lamb slain in time. At the appointed
time, in due time, God sent His Son into the world. And He didn't
just send Him to come down here and look around. He sent Him
to do what had to be done, and that involves sin being laid
on him, actually, in history. We've got to be real careful
that we don't get so full of abstract theology. We forget
this is real stuff. This is stuff that actually happened. It's not whatever will be, will
be, whether it ever happens or not. It's whatever God says will
happen, happens. And it's got to happen. It's
got to play out. But you know something? This
thing's also got to be done in your heart. The gospel can't be out here
to you and save you. The gospel cannot just be the
preordained plan of God and a historical event a couple of thousand years
ago. It's got to be something that happened in your heart or
you're lost. Now I can't describe to you what
that experience will be like, what kind of effect it will have
on you. Some people are more emotional than others. Some people, their emotional
makeup is the most momentous things, don't seem to move them.
Others, they cry at the drop of a hat. So I can't tell you
what kind of emotions may sweep over you, but I know this, this
thing's got to be played out in your mind and in your heart.
God laid the sin on His Son before the world began. He laid the
sin upon His Son some couple of thousand years ago in history. And the Holy Spirit will come
and convince you of sin. And He'll teach you, if it is
to be put away, you must lay your hands upon the Son and blame
Him for your sin. You must understand. That in
laying your hands on Him, you make Him responsible for what
you have done. You say, that wouldn't be right for
me to do that. No, it wouldn't. But if you don't, you're lost
forever. You must put your hands on the
head of the Savior, knowing it's going to kill you. But it happened
2,000 years ago. Don't get all tied up in this
time business or eternity business. Something's got to happen in
your heart. You've got to understand your sins cost the Savior something. It did. This is confession of sin. You
know, men will make a virtue out of anything. You can imagine
God gave this law about sacrifices and it wasn't long before people
were proud about how good a lamb they brought. They'd come over
to the temple and say, look at this thing, man, he's white all
over. I've got a good breeding program going over at my house.
We've got nothing but the best lambs over there. Boy, God's
going to like this. Not realizing that that sweet
little lamb has got to die because you're such a wretch. They didn't
realize, you know, they would go through it, I can imagine,
they would sit there, that's how it had to be done at the gate
of the temple or tabernacle, everybody's seen it. And they'd
be proud, they'd lay their hands on there thinking it was a big
deal. See now, I'm obeying God. No, what you're doing is confessing
you're such a wretch, the only way for God not to destroy you
is for your sin to be laid on that sweet little animal and
it killed, slaughtered, and torn to pieces for your sake. People talk about getting saved
like they did something virtuous. How happy God was they did something
good. And what a benefit to God it was and how they're better
than other people because they made their decision for Jesus. When you call upon the name of
the Lord for His salvation, you're admitting to the whole world.
You're worthless. You're so worthless you need
a savior. And you're such a coward, you're willing to let Him suffer
for you. See, there's nothing, there's
no virtue in trusting Christ. And that doesn't make you worthy
of boasting. There's great honor for Christ
in it. But it's shameful. We're admitting we can't. and
that we're willing to let someone else suffer in our place. The gospel calls on us to defile
Christ with our filth, to charge Him with our iniquity, and to
let Him suffer for our crimes. Any takers? Say, I'd never do
that to Christ, and you'll go to hell. You know, the law can make you
afraid of sin. Morality and moral religion can
make you try to be good and avoid sin. But you will learn to hate sin
and hate your sin if you ever see it on the Savior. Well, if we could think for a
moment when we're playing fast and loose with sin, and I know
everything we do is tainted with it, But you've got to admit there,
there's a difference between tripping over sin and another
thing, sin with a high hand. I tell you, we think different
about sinning and small sins, but we realize that every time
we sin, in the very real sense, we're heaping more upon the Savior. Oh, I hate it when I see it on
him. To confess. To lay our hands
upon the sacrifice is to confess our belief that He is able to
do the job. He is able to save the uttermost
of them that come to God by Him. When we come to Christ, to lay
our hands upon Him as our sacrifice before God, we're saying, I'm
a sinner, but Jesus Christ is good enough to save this sinner.
I'm weak, but He's powerful enough to deliver me. I'm a wretch,
but He's glorious enough to save me. The word actually means, or one
of its meanings anyway when it talks about laying hands is to
lean upon. To pass upon Him the weight of
our guilt. For most of us, sin is not a
burden. Righteousness is. We try to be righteous and it
doesn't work. It's tough. And by nature we
don't even like it. Sin, that's easy. And most of
us, the primary reason we don't jump into sin any more than we
do is we're afraid of what it'll cost us. It's not because we don't like
it. All the burden of sin. It's got
to be laid on Him though. We've got to lean the weight
of our filth upon Him. Religion, what is the process
of religion? It's trying to hide sin. Religion
is a process of trying to overcome sin. Or just plain deny sin. Be done with religion. It'll
do you no good. It'll just deceive you all the
way to hell. It'll give you a broad road finely paved with lots of
fringe that ends in death. There's a way that seems right
unto a man, but the ends thereof are death. And that's just religion.
It looks right. And don't tell me it doesn't. There wouldn't be so many people
following it if it did not have the appearance of wisdom about
it. We sin. It only makes sense that the
proper response to that is to start doing good. And that's
what religion will tell you. Forget it. Stop. Don't do that
anymore. It'll kill you. Sin is on you. And if it stays
on you, it'll kill you forever. You say, Preacher, you don't
understand. I'm in a Bible conference. Why are you talking about sin
being on me? Because Adam's your father. That's why sin's on you. Why do you think sin's on me?
Because I know what humans are like. We may like to brag we're worse
than others, but the truth is we know we're all alike. One
man's sin may be more destructive than another man's sin, but one
man's sin is not any more evil than another man's sin. You know
it, I know it, we do sin. Sin's on you, unless it's on
Christ. If you won't identify yourself
and all your guilt and filth with the Lord Jesus Christ, it's
not going to stick to you. Do you stand before God? And
there is no sacrifice for you to claim. When we lean upon the Lord Jesus
Christ and cast upon Him the burden of our sin, we are doing
this in God's place, which is Christ. We are doing it publicly. The
gate of the tabernacle. Private faith doesn't save anybody. From the heart. The Bible says
it's got to be voluntary, meaning from the heart. If you do this
as an act of religious obligation, forget it. It's just not going
to do you any good. If you're playing the religious
game of making your confession of Christ before all men, and
everybody comes up and says, oh, you're such a sweet boy.
You're 12, it's time. Forget it, that's not laying
your hands on the head of the sacrifice. Why should we be willing to do
this? Well, the first thing that ought
to motivate us is apart from laying our sin upon Christ, apart
from that, we are lost forever. But here's another reason to
encourage us. He can handle it. He can take
it. I've done all I can to try to
make you understand what an awful thing happened to Christ because
of sin. When it describes this sacrifice
here in Leviticus 1, and I read that it killed Kill it, then
cut its throat, drain its blood, and already he shall flay the
burnt offering. Cut its flesh from its bones, gut it, cut it to pieces, lay
it out on the fire, and burn it to ash. That's what I said
to the Lord. And I must lay my hands upon
his precious hand, knowing that it's going to make that happen.
But I do it knowing this, he can take it. What's more, and
blessed be his name, he's willing. That leper came to our Lord and
said, if you're willing, you can make me clean. I know you
can. And we take all those healings,
don't we, as a picture of Christ's salvation? But there was a certain
aspect of our Lord's work of salvation that was never pictured
by those healings. For it to properly be pictured,
for our salvation to properly be pictured by the cleansing
of the leper. When Christ healed that leper,
He cleansed him of his leprosy. The leprosy would have had to
appear on Christ. He had become a leper. if the picture would have been
full and complete. He had to take on the leprosy. To give sight to the blind, he'd
have had to lose his. I think of those demons he cast
out. They'd have had to enter him. He said, I've never had
one, Lord. I think of the day of crucifixion.
You couldn't see it. There's no description of it
in the Bible because you can't see what demons are doing. But
you imagine what went on in our Lord's head. You imagine what
the accuser and the brethren were saying to him then. To our
elder brother. Oh, he said some of it to the
Pharisees. You think you're the son of God? Would God ever let
his son be like this? If you're the Christ, if you're
really who you said you were, come on down. Oh my. He's willing. Are you a spiritual leper? He
will not shrink back from your filthy touch. Would you let a
leper touch you? You might be willing to pay for
his medicine. But you're not going to let him touch you, are
you? The Lord would. And He'll let you touch Him in
all your filth. Are you dead and dying? He will
not resist the death that flows from your sin. Do you need a Savior? Here's
one. Are you so lost you can't save
yourself? Well, here's somebody who can
save you. A preacher wouldn't be right. Well, go ahead thinking
that way. You'll be lost. But the Savior says, come. You come. You wrap your filthy
arms around me. I'll take you. What's more, I'll
wrap my clean arms around you. I've got a father, I think of
him, got his son coming home with hault manure on him. Imagine
what that meant to a Jew. Hung on his neck. He'll take you. He will. He said, even if it comes to
me, I won't reject Him. Let me see if I can say this
and you understand what I mean by it. He is more willing to
save you than you are to be saved by Him. You say, how do you know? Well, because He declared His
willingness. Maybe some of you have never declared your willingness
to be saved by Him. And you may withhold it. And
if you do, you will die. May God give us all grace to
put down that pride. Accept who we are. Lay our hands
on the blessed head of the Savior, knowing what it's going to cost
Him. But knowing He's able and willing, confess our sins upon
Him and go free. Thank you for listening. The
Lord bless you. Substitution is the heart of
the gospel.